The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, Sax Rohmer [knowledgeable books to read TXT] 📗

Nayland Smith wandered aimlessly about the library.

“I am sorry to have to press you, Mr. Eltham,” he said, “but what was the nature of the warning to which you referred, and from whom did it come?”

Mr. Eltham hesitated for a long time.

“I have been so unfortunate,” he said at last, “in my previous efforts, that I feel assured of your hostile criticism when I tell you that I am contemplating an immediate return to Ho-Nan!”

Smith jumped round upon him as though moved by a spring.

“Then you are going back to Nan-Yang?” he cried. “Now I understand! Why have you not told me before? That is the key for which I have vainly been seeking. Your troubles date from the time of your decision to return?”

“Yes, I must admit it,” confessed the clergyman diffidently.

“And your warning came from China?”

“It did.”

“From a Chinaman?”

“From the Mandarin, Yen-Sun-Yat.”

“Yen-Sun-Yat! My good sir! He warned you to abandon your visit? And you reject his advice? Listen to me.” Smith was intensely excited now, his eyes bright, his lean figure curiously strung up, alert. “The Mandarin Yen-Sun-Yat is one of the seven!”

“I do not follow you, Mr. Smith.”

“No, sir. China today is not the China of ’98. It is a huge secret machine, and Ho-Nan one of its most important wheels! But if, as I understand, this official is a friend of yours, believe me, he has saved your life! You would be a dead man now if it were not for your friend in China! My dear sir, you must accept his counsel.”

Then, for the first time since I had made his acquaintance, Parson Dan showed through the surface of the Rev. J. D. Eltham.

“No, sir!” replied the clergyman⁠—and the change in his voice was startling. “I am called to Nan-Yang. Only One may deter my going.”

The admixture of deep spiritual reverence with intense truculence in his voice was dissimilar from anything I ever had heard.

“Then only One can protect you,” cried Smith, “for, by Heaven, no man will be able to do so! Your presence in Ho-Nan can do no possible good at present. It must do harm. Your experience in 1900 should be fresh in your memory.”

“Hard words, Mr. Smith.”

“The class of missionary work which you favor, sir, is injurious to international peace. At the present moment, Ho-Nan is a barrel of gunpowder; you would be the lighted match. I do not willingly stand between any man and what he chooses to consider his duty, but I insist that you abandon your visit to the interior of China!”

“You insist, Mr. Smith?”

“As your guest, I regret the necessity for reminding you that I hold authority to enforce it.”

Denby fidgeted uneasily. The tone of the conversation was growing harsh and the atmosphere of the library portentous with brewing storms.

There was a short, silent interval.

“This is what I had feared and expected,” said the clergyman. “This was my reason for not seeking official protection.”

“The phantom Yellow Peril,” said Nayland Smith, “today materializes under the very eyes of the Western world.”

“The ‘Yellow Peril’!”

“You scoff, sir, and so do others. We take the proffered right hand of friendship nor inquire if the hidden left holds a knife! The peace of the world is at stake, Mr. Eltham. Unknowingly, you tamper with tremendous issues.”

Mr. Eltham drew a deep breath, thrusting both hands in his pockets.

“You are painfully frank, Mr. Smith,” he said; “but I like you for it. I will reconsider my position and talk this matter over again with you tomorrow.”

Thus, then, the storm blew over. Yet I had never experienced such an overwhelming sense of imminent peril⁠—of a sinister presence⁠—as oppressed me at that moment. The very atmosphere of Redmoat was impregnated with Eastern devilry; it loaded the air like some evil perfume. And then, through the silence, cut a throbbing scream⁠—the scream of a woman in direst fear.

“My God, it’s Greba!” whispered Mr. Eltham.

In what order we dashed down to the drawing-room I cannot recall. But none was before me when I leaped over the threshold and saw Miss Eltham prone by the French windows.

These were closed and bolted, and she lay with hands outstretched in the alcove which they formed. I bent over her. Nayland Smith was at my elbow.

“Get my bag,” I said. “She has swooned. It is nothing serious.”

Her father, pale and wide-eyed, hovered about me, muttering incoherently; but I managed to reassure him; and his gratitude when, I having administered a simple restorative, the girl sighed shudderingly and opened her eyes, was quite pathetic.

I would permit no questioning at that time, and on her father’s arm she retired to her own rooms.

It was some fifteen minutes later that her message was brought to me. I followed the maid to a quaint little octagonal apartment, and Greba Eltham stood before me, the candlelight caressing the soft curves of her face and gleaming in the meshes of her rich brown hair.

When she had answered my first question she hesitated in pretty confusion.

“We are anxious to know what alarmed you, Miss Eltham.”

She bit her lip and glanced with apprehension towards the window.

“I am almost afraid to tell father,” she began rapidly. “He will think me imaginative, but you have been so kind. It was two green eyes! Oh! Dr. Petrie, they looked up at me from the steps leading to the lawn. And they shone like the eyes of a cat.”

The words thrilled me strangely.

“Are you sure it was not a cat, Miss Eltham?”

“The eyes were too large, Dr. Petrie. There was something dreadful, most dreadful, in their appearance. I feel foolish and silly for having fainted, twice in two days! But the suspense is telling upon me, I suppose. Father thinks”⁠—she was becoming charmingly confidential, as a woman often will with a tactful physician⁠—“that shut up here we are safe from⁠—whatever threatens us.” I noted, with concern, a repetition of the nervous shudder. “But since our return someone else has been in Redmoat!”

“Whatever do you mean, Miss Eltham?”

“Oh! I don’t quite know what I do mean, Dr. Petrie.