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

fact would argue in favor of its being sound.”

“At present I am hopelessly mystified.”

“Well, then, I will not bias you towards my view. But just study the situation, and see if you can arrive at the reason for this sudden journey. I shall be distinctly encouraged if you succeed.”

But I did not succeed, and since Smith obviously was unwilling to enlighten me, I pressed him no more. The train stopped at Rugby, where he was engaged with the stationmaster in making some mysterious arrangements. At L⁠⸺, however, their object became plain, for a high-power car was awaiting us, and into this we hurried and ere the greater number of passengers had reached the platform were being driven off at headlong speed along the moon-bathed roads.

Twenty minutes’ rapid traveling, and a white mansion leaped into the line of sight, standing out vividly against its woody backing.

“Stradwick Hall,” said Smith. “The home of Lord Southery. We are first⁠—but Dr. Fu-Manchu was on the train.”

Then the truth dawned upon the gloom of my perplexity.

XXIII

“Your extraordinary proposal fills me with horror, Mr. Smith!”

The sleek little man in the dress suit, who looked like a head waiter (but was the trusted legal adviser of the house of Southery) puffed at his cigar indignantly. Nayland Smith, whose restless pacing had led him to the far end of the library, turned, a remote but virile figure, and looked back to where I stood by the open hearth with the solicitor.

“I am in your hands, Mr. Henderson,” he said, and advanced upon the latter, his gray eyes ablaze. “Save for the heir, who is abroad on foreign service, you say there is no kin of Lord Southery to consider. The word rests with you. If I am wrong, and you agree to my proposal, there is none whose susceptibilities will suffer⁠—”

“My own, sir!”

“If I am right, and you prevent me from acting, you become a murderer, Mr. Henderson.”

The lawyer started, staring nervously up at Smith, who now towered over him menacingly.

“Lord Southery was a lonely man,” continued my friend. “If I could have placed my proposition before one of his blood, I do not doubt what my answer had been. Why do you hesitate? Why do you experience this feeling of horror?”

Mr. Henderson stared down into the fire. His constitutionally ruddy face was pale.

“It is entirely irregular, Mr. Smith. We have not the necessary powers⁠—”

Smith snapped his teeth together impatiently, snatching his watch from his pocket and glancing at it.

“I am vested with the necessary powers. I will give you a written order, sir.”

“The proceeding savors of paganism. Such a course might be admissible in China, in Burma⁠—”

“Do you weigh a life against such quibbles? Do you suppose that, granting my irresponsibility, Dr. Petrie would countenance such a thing if he doubted the necessity?”

Mr. Henderson looked at me with pathetic hesitance.

“There are guests in the house⁠—mourners who attended the ceremony today. They⁠—”

“Will never know, if we are in error,” interrupted Smith. “Good God! why do you delay?”

“You wish it to be kept secret?”

“You and I, Mr. Henderson, and Dr. Petrie will go now. We require no other witnesses. We are answerable only to our consciences.”

The lawyer passed his hand across his damp brow.

“I have never in my life been called upon to come to so momentous a decision in so short a time,” he confessed. But, aided by Smith’s indomitable will, he made his decision. As its result, we three, looking and feeling like conspirators, hurried across the park beneath a moon whose placidity was a rebuke to the turbulent passions which reared their strangle-growth in the garden of England. Not a breath of wind stirred amid the leaves. The calm of perfect night soothed everything to slumber. Yet, if Smith were right (and I did not doubt him), the green eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu had looked upon the scene; and I found myself marveling that its beauty had not wilted up. Even now the dread Chinaman must be near to us.

As Mr. Henderson unlocked the ancient iron gates he turned to Nayland Smith. His face twitched oddly.

“Witness that I do this unwillingly,” he said⁠—“most unwillingly.”

“Mine be the responsibility,” was the reply.

Smith’s voice quivered, responsive to the nervous vitality pent up within that lean frame. He stood motionless, listening⁠—and I knew for whom he listened. He peered about him to right and left⁠—and I knew whom he expected but dreaded to see.

Above us now the trees looked down with a solemnity different from the aspect of the monarchs of the park, and the nearer we came to our journey’s end the more somber and lowering bent the verdant arch⁠—or so it seemed.

By that path, patched now with pools of moonlight, Lord Southery had passed upon his bier, with the sun to light his going; by that path several generations of Stradwicks had gone to their last resting-place.

To the doors of the vault the moon rays found free access. No branch, no leaf, intervened. Mr. Henderson’s face looked ghastly. The keys which he carried rattled in his hand.

“Light the lantern,” he said unsteadily.

Nayland Smith, who again had been peering suspiciously about into the shadows, struck a match and lighted the lantern which he carried. He turned to the solicitor.

“Be calm, Mr. Henderson,” he said sternly. “It is your plain duty to your client.”

“God be my witness that I doubt it,” replied Henderson, and opened the door.

We descended the steps. The air beneath was damp and chill. It touched us as with clammy fingers; and the sensation was not wholly physical.

Before the narrow mansion which now sufficed Lord Southery, the great engineer whom kings had honored, Henderson reeled and clutched at me for support. Smith and I had looked to him for no aid in our uncanny task, and rightly.

With averted eyes he stood over by the steps of the tomb, whilst my friend and myself set to work. In the pursuit of my profession I had undertaken labors as unpleasant, but never amid an environment such as this. It seemed that generations of Stradwicks listened to each