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

“Ah!” she cried, casting back her head scornfully, and releasing a cloud of hair, through whose softness gleamed a jeweled headdress. “No? He cannot? Do you know what it means to have been a slave? Here, in your free England, do you know what it means⁠—the razzia, the desert journey, the whips of the drivers, the house of the dealer, the shame. Bah!”

How beautiful she was in her indignation!

“Slavery is put down, you imagine, perhaps? You do not believe that today⁠—today⁠—twenty-five English sovereigns will buy a Galla girl, who is brown, and”⁠—whisper⁠—“two hundred and fifty a Circassian, who is white. No, there is no slavery! So! Then what am I?”

She threw open her cloak, and it is a literal fact that I rubbed my eyes, half believing that I dreamed. For beneath, she was arrayed in gossamer silk which more than indicated the perfect lines of her slim shape; wore a jeweled girdle and barbaric ornaments; was a figure fit for the walled gardens of Stamboul⁠—a figure amazing, incomprehensible, in the prosaic setting of my rooms.

“Tonight I had no time to make myself an English miss,” she said, wrapping her cloak quickly about her. “You see me as I am.” Her garments exhaled a faint perfume, and it reminded me of another meeting I had had with her. I looked into the challenging eyes.

“Your request is but a pretense,” I said. “Why do you keep the secrets of that man, when they mean death to so many?”

“Death! I have seen my own sister die of fever in the desert⁠—seen her thrown like carrion into a hole in the sand. I have seen men flogged until they prayed for death as a boon. I have known the lash myself. Death! What does it matter?”

She shocked me inexpressibly. Enveloped in her cloak again, and with only her slight accent to betray her, it was dreadful to hear such words from a girl who, save for her singular type of beauty, might have been a cultured European.

“Prove, then, that you really wish to leave this man’s service. Tell me what killed Strozza and the Chinaman,” I said.

She shrugged her shoulders.

“I do not know that. But if you will carry me off”⁠—she clutched me nervously⁠—“so that I am helpless, lock me up so that I cannot escape, beat me, if you like, I will tell you all I do know. While he is my master I will never betray him. Tear me from him⁠—by force, do you understand, by force, and my lips will be sealed no longer. Ah! but you do not understand, with your ‘proper authorities’⁠—your police. Police! Ah, I have said enough.”

A clock across the common began to strike. The girl started and laid her hands upon my shoulders again. There were tears glittering among the curved black lashes.

“You do not understand,” she whispered. “Oh, will you never understand and release me from him! I must go. Already I have remained too long. Listen. Go out without delay. Remain out⁠—at a hotel, where you will, but do not stay here.”

“And Nayland Smith?”

“What is he to me, this Nayland Smith? Ah, why will you not unseal my lips? You are in danger⁠—you hear me, in danger! Go away from here tonight.”

She dropped her hands and ran from the room. In the open doorway she turned, stamping her foot passionately.

“You have hands and arms,” she cried, “and yet you let me go. Be warned, then; fly from here⁠—” She broke off with something that sounded like a sob.

I made no move to stay her⁠—this beautiful accomplice of the arch-murderer, Fu-Manchu. I heard her light footsteps pattering down the stairs, I heard her open and close the door⁠—the door of which Dr. Fu-Manchu held the key. Still I stood where she had parted from me, and was so standing when a key grated in the lock and Nayland Smith came running up.

“Did you see her?” I began.

But his face showed that he had not done so, and rapidly I told him of my strange visitor, of her words, of her warning.

“How can she have passed through London in that costume?” I cried in bewilderment. “Where can she have come from?”

Smith shrugged his shoulders and began to stuff broad-cut mixture into the familiar cracked briar.

“She might have traveled in a car or in a cab,” he said; “and undoubtedly she came direct from the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu. You should have detained her, Petrie. It is the third time we have had that woman in our power, the third time we have let her go free.”

“Smith,” I replied, “I couldn’t. She came of her own free will to give me a warning. She disarms me.”

“Because you can see she is in love with you?” he suggested, and burst into one of his rare laughs when the angry flush rose to my cheek. “She is, Petrie why pretend to be blind to it? You don’t know the Oriental mind as I do; but I quite understand the girl’s position. She fears the English authorities, but would submit to capture by you! If you would only seize her by the hair, drag her to some cellar, hurl her down and stand over her with a whip, she would tell you everything she knows, and salve her strange Eastern conscience with the reflection that speech was forced from her. I am not joking; it is so, I assure you. And she would adore you for your savagery, deeming you forceful and strong!”

“Smith,” I said, “be serious. You know what her warning meant before.”

“I can guess what it means now,” he rapped. “Hallo!”

Someone was furiously ringing the bell.

“No one at home?” said my friend. “I will go. I think I know what it is.”

A few minutes later he returned, carrying a large square package.

“From Weymouth,” he explained, “by district messenger. I left him behind at the docks, and he arranged to forward any evidence which subsequently he found. This will be fragments of the mummy.”

“What! You think the mummy