The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer (ebook reader below 3000 .TXT) 📕

disturb me in my task.

Yet I could make little progress. Between my mind and the chapter upon

which I was at work a certain sentence persistently intruded itself.

It was as though an unseen hand held the written page closely before my eyes.

This was the sentence:

 

“Imagine a person, tall, lean, and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow

like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long,

magnetic eyes of the true cat-green: invest him with all the cruel cunning

of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect…”

 

Dr. Fu-Manchu! Fu-Manchu as Smith had described him to me on that night

which now seemed so remotely distant—the night upon which I had learned

of the existence of the wonderful and evil being born of that secret

quickening which stirred in the womb of the yellow races.

 

As Smith, for the ninth or tenth time, knocked out his pipe on a bar

of the grate, the cuckoo clock in the kitchen proclaimed the hour.

 

“Two,” said James Weymouth.

 

I abandoned my task, replacing notes and writing-block in the bag that I

had with me. Weymouth adjusted the lamp which had begun to smoke.

 

I tiptoed to the stairs and, stepping softly, ascended to the sick room.

All was quiet, and Mrs. Weymouth whispered to me that the patient still

slept soundly. I returned to find Nayland Smith pacing about the room

in that state of suppressed excitement habitual with him in the approach

of any crisis. At a quarter past two the breeze dropped entirely,

and such a stillness reigned all about us as I could not have supposed

possible so near to the ever-throbbing heart of the great metropolis.

Plainly I could hear Weymouth’s heavy breathing. He sat at the window

and looked out into the black shadows under the cedars. Smith ceased

his pacing and stood again on the rug very still. He was listening!

I doubt not we were all listening.

 

Some faint sound broke the impressive stillness, coming from the direction

of the village street. It was a vague, indefinite disturbance,

brief, and upon it ensued a silence more marked than ever.

Some minutes before, Smith had extinguished the lamp.

In the darkness I heard his teeth snap sharply together.

 

The call of an owl sounded very clearly three times.

 

I knew that to mean that a messenger had come; but from whence or bearing

what tidings I knew not. My friend’s plans were incomprehensible to me,

nor had I pressed him for any explanation of their nature, knowing him

to be in that high-strung and somewhat irritable mood which claimed him

at times of uncertainty—when he doubted the wisdom of his actions,

the accuracy of his surmises. He gave no sign.

 

Very faintly I heard a clock strike the half-hour. A soft breeze

stole again through the branches above. The wind I thought must

be in a new quarter since I had not heard the clock before.

In so lonely a spot it was difficult to believe that the bell

was that of St. Paul’s. Yet such was the fact.

 

And hard upon the ringing followed another sound—a sound we all had expected,

had waited for; but at whose coming no one of us, I think, retained complete

mastery of himself.

 

Breaking up the silence in a manner that set my heart wildly leaping it came—

an imperative knocking on the door!

 

“My God!” groaned Weymouth—but he did not move from his position

at the window.

 

“Stand by, Petrie!” said Smith.

 

He strode to the door—and threw it widely open.

 

I know I was very pale. I think I cried out as I fell back—

retreated with clenched hands from before THAT which stood

on the threshold.

 

It was a wild, unkempt figure, with straggling beard, hideously staring eyes.

With its hands it clutched at its hair—at its chin; plucked at its mouth.

No moonlight touched the features of this unearthly visitant,

but scanty as was the illumination we could see the gleaming teeth—

and the wildly glaring eyes.

 

It began to laugh—peal after peal—hideous and shrill.

 

Nothing so terrifying had ever smote upon my ears.

I was palsied by the horror of the sound.

 

Then Nayland Smith pressed the button of an electric torch which he carried.

He directed the disk of white light fully upon the face in the doorway.

 

“Oh, God!” cried Weymouth. “It’s John!”—and again and again:

“Oh, God! Oh, God!”

 

Perhaps for the first time in my life I really believed (nay, I

could not doubt) that a thing of another world stood before me.

I am ashamed to confess the extent of the horror that came upon me.

James Weymouth raised his hands, as if to thrust away from him

that awful thing in the door. He was babbling—prayers, I think,

but wholly incoherent.

 

“Hold him, Petrie!”

 

Smith’s voice was low. (When we were past thought or intelligent action,

he, dominant and cool, with that forced calm for which, a crisis over,

he always paid so dearly, was thinking of the woman who slept above.)

 

He leaped forward; and in the instant that he grappled with

the one who had knocked I knew the visitant for a man of flesh

and blood—a man who shrieked and fought like a savage animal,

foamed at the mouth and gnashed his teeth in horrid frenzy;

knew him for a madman—knew him for the victim of Fu-Manchu—

not dead, but living—for Inspector Weymouth—a maniac!

 

In a flash I realized all this and sprang to Smith’s assistance.

There was a sound of racing footsteps and the men who had been

watching outside came running into the porch. A third was with them;

and the five of us (for Weymouth’s brother had not yet grasped

the fact that a man and not a spirit shrieked and howled in our midst)

clung to the infuriated madman, yet barely held our own with him.

 

“The syringe, Petrie!” gasped Smith. “Quick! You must manage

to make an injection!”

 

I extricated myself and raced into the cottage for my bag.

A hypodermic syringe ready charged I had brought with me

at Smith’s request. Even in that thrilling moment I could

find time to admire the wonderful foresight of my friend,

who had divined what would befall—isolated the strange,

pitiful truth from the chaotic circumstances which saw us

at Maple Cottage that night.

 

Let me not enlarge upon the end of the awful struggle.

At one time I despaired (we all despaired) of quieting the poor,

demented creature. But at last it was done; and the gaunt,

bloodstained savage whom we had known as Detective-Inspector

Weymouth lay passive upon the couch in his own sitting-room. A

great wonder possessed my mind for the genius of the uncanny

being who with the scratch of a needle had made a brave

and kindly man into this unclean, brutish thing.

 

Nayland Smith, gaunt and wild-eyed, and trembling yet with his

tremendous exertions, turned to the man whom I knew to be

the messenger from Scotland Yard.

 

“Well?” he rapped.

 

“He is arrested, sir,” the detective reported. “They have kept

him at his chambers as you ordered.”

 

“Has she slept through it?” said Smith to me.

(I had just returned from a visit to the room above.) I nodded.

 

“Is HE safe for an hour or two?”—indicating the figure on the couch.

“For eight or ten,” I replied grimly.

 

“Come, then. Our night’s labors are not nearly complete.”