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

face was very drawn, but he shook his head grimly.

“Dangerous, yes, I agree,” he muttered; “his existence is a danger to the entire white race which, now, we are powerless to avert.”

Dr. Fu-Manchu recovered himself, took up the lantern and, turning abruptly, walked to the door, with his awkward, yet feline gait. At the threshold be looked back.

“You would have warned Mr. Graham Guthrie?” he said, in a soft voice. “Tonight, at half-past twelve, Mr. Graham Guthrie dies!”

Smith sat silent and motionless, his eyes fixed upon the speaker.

“You were in Rangoon in 1908?” continued Dr. Fu-Manchu⁠—“you remember the Call?”

From somewhere above us⁠—I could not determine the exact direction⁠—came a low, wailing cry, an uncanny thing of falling cadences, which, in that dismal vault, with the sinister yellow-robed figure at the door, seemed to pour ice into my veins. Its effect upon Smith was truly extraordinary. His face showed grayly in the faint light, and I heard him draw a hissing breath through clenched teeth.

“It calls for you!” said Fu-Manchu. “At half-past twelve it calls for Graham Guthrie!”

The door closed and darkness mantled us again.

“Smith,” I said, “what was that?” The horrors about us were playing havoc with my nerves.

“It was the Call of Siva!” replied Smith hoarsely.

“What is it? Who uttered it? What does it mean?”

“I don’t know what it is, Petrie, nor who utters it. But it means death!”

XIV

There may be some who could have lain, chained to that noisome cell, and felt no fear⁠—no dread of what the blackness might hold. I confess that I am not one of these. I knew that Nayland Smith and I stood in the path of the most stupendous genius who in the world’s history had devoted his intellect to crime. I knew that the enormous wealth of the political group backing Dr. Fu-Manchu rendered him a menace to Europe and to America greater than that of the plague. He was a scientist trained at a great university⁠—an explorer of nature’s secrets, who had gone farther into the unknown, I suppose, than any living man. His mission was to remove all obstacles⁠—human obstacles⁠—from the path of that secret movement which was progressing in the Far East. Smith and I were two such obstacles; and of all the horrible devices at his command, I wondered, and my tortured brain refused to leave the subject, by which of them were we doomed to be dispatched?

Even at that very moment some venomous centipede might be wriggling towards me over the slime of the stones, some poisonous spider be preparing to drop from the roof! Fu-Manchu might have released a serpent in the cellar, or the air be alive with microbes of a loathsome disease!

“Smith,” I said, scarcely recognizing my own voice, “I can’t bear this suspense. He intends to kill us, that is certain, but⁠—”

“Don’t worry,” came the reply; “he intends to learn our plans first.”

“You mean⁠—?”

“You heard him speak of his files and of his wire jacket?”

“Oh, my God!” I groaned; “can this be England?”

Smith laughed dryly, and I heard him fumbling with the steel collar about his neck.

“I have one great hope,” he said, “since you share my captivity, but we must neglect no minor chance. Try with your pocketknife if you can force the lock. I am trying to break this one.”

Truth to tell, the idea had not entered my half-dazed mind, but I immediately acted upon my friend’s suggestion, setting to work with the small blade of my knife. I was so engaged, and, having snapped one blade, was about to open another, when a sound arrested me. It came from beneath my feet.

“Smith,” I whispered, “listen!”

The scraping and clicking which told of Smith’s efforts ceased. Motionless, we sat in that humid darkness and listened.

Something was moving beneath the stones of the cellar. I held my breath; every nerve in my body was strung up.

A line of light showed a few feet from where we lay. It widened⁠—became an oblong. A trap was lifted, and within a yard of me, there rose a dimly seen head. Horror I had expected⁠—and death, or worse. Instead, I saw a lovely face, crowned with a disordered mass of curling hair; I saw a white arm upholding the stone slab, a shapely arm clasped about the elbow by a broad gold bangle.

The girl climbed into the cellar and placed the lantern on the stone floor. In the dim light she was unreal⁠—a figure from an opium vision, with her clinging silk draperies and garish jewelry, with her feet encased in little red slippers. In short, this was the houri of my vision, materialized. It was difficult to believe that we were in modern, up-to-date England; easy to dream that we were the captives of a caliph, in a dungeon in old Bagdad.

“My prayers are answered,” said Smith softly. “She has come to save you.”

“S-sh!” warned the girl, and her wonderful eyes opened widely, fearfully. “A sound and he will kill us all.”

She bent over me; a key jarred in the lock which had broken my penknife⁠—and the collar was off. As I rose to my feet the girl turned and released Smith. She raised the lantern above the trap, and signed to us to descend the wooden steps which its light revealed.

“Your knife,” she whispered to me. “Leave it on the floor. He will think you forced the locks. Down! Quickly!”

Nayland Smith, stepping gingerly, disappeared into the darkness. I rapidly followed. Last of all came our mysterious friend, a gold band about one of her ankles gleaming in the rays of the lantern which she carried. We stood in a low-arched passage.

“Tie your handkerchiefs over your eyes and do exactly as I tell you,” she ordered.

Neither of us hesitated to obey her. Blindfolded, I allowed her to lead me, and Smith rested his hand upon my shoulder. In that order we proceeded, and came to stone steps, which we ascended.

“Keep to the wall on the left,” came a whisper. “There is danger on the