The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu, Sax Rohmer [nonfiction book recommendations .txt] 📗
- Author: Sax Rohmer
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Having looked upon the awful Chinese doctor, the memory of
his face, with its filmed green eyes, could never leave me.
The idea that he might be near at that moment was a poor narcotic.
The howling and baying of the mastiff was almost continuous.
When all else in Redmoat was still the dog’s mournful note yet rose on
the night with something menacing in it. I sat looking out across the sloping
turf to where the shrubbery showed as a black island in a green sea.
The moon swam in a cloudless sky, and the air was warm and fragrant
with country scents.
It was in the shrubbery that Denby’s collie had met his mysterious death—
that the thing seen by Miss Eltham had disappeared. What uncanny secret
did it hold?
Caesar became silent.
As the stopping of a clock will sometimes awaken a sleeper, the abrupt
cessation of that distant howling, to which I had grown accustomed,
now recalled me from a world of gloomy imaginings.
I glanced at my watch in the moonlight. It was twelve minutes past midnight.
As I replaced it the dog suddenly burst out afresh, but now in a tone
of sheer anger. He was alternately howling and snarling in a way
that sounded new to me. The crashes, as he leapt to the end
of his chain, shook the building in which he was confined.
It was as I stood up to lean from the window and commanded a view
of the corner of the house that he broke loose.
With a hoarse bay he took that decisive leap, and I
heard his heavy body fall against the wooden wall.
There followed a strange, guttural cry…and the growling
of the dog died away at the rear of the house. He was out!
But that guttural note had not come from the throat of a dog.
Of what was he in pursuit?
At which point his mysterious quarry entered the shrubbery I do not know.
I only know that I saw absolutely nothing, until Caesar’s lithe shape
was streaked across the lawn, and the great creature went crashing
into the undergrowth.
Then a faint sound above and to my right told me that I was not the only
spectator of the scene. I leaned farther from the window.
“Is that you, Miss Eltham?” I asked.
“Oh, Dr. Petrie!” she said. “I am so glad you are awake.
Can we do nothing to help? Caesar will be killed.”
“Did you see what he went after?”
“No,” she called back, and drew her breath sharply.
For a strange figure went racing across the grass.
It was that of a man in a blue dressing-gown, who held
a lantern high before him, and a revolver in his right hand.
Coincident with my recognition of Mr. Eltham he leaped,
plunging into the shrubbery in the wake of the dog.
But the night held yet another surprise; for Nayland Smith’s voice came:
“Come back! Come back, Eltham!”
I ran out into the passage and downstairs. The front door was open.
A terrible conflict waged in the shrubbery, between the mastiff and
something else. Passing round to the lawn, I met Smith fully dressed.
He just had dropped from a first-floor window.
“The man is mad!” he snapped. “Heaven knows what lurks there!
He should not have gone alone!”
Together we ran towards the dancing light of Eltham’s lantern.
The sounds of conflict ceased suddenly. Stumbling over
stumps and lashed by low-sweeping branches, we struggled
forward to where the clergyman knelt amongst the bushes.
He glanced up with tears in his eyes, as was revealed by
the dim light.
“Look!” he cried.
The body of the dog lay at his feet.
It was pitiable to think that the fearless brute should have met
his death in such a fashion, and when I bent and examined him I
was glad to find traces of life.
“Drag him out. He is not dead,” I said.
“And hurry,” rapped Smith, peering about him right and left.
So we three hurried from that haunted place, dragging the dog with us.
We were not molested. No sound disturbed the now perfect stillness.
By the lawn edge we came upon Denby, half dressed;
and almost immediately Edwards the gardener also appeared.
The white faces of the house servants showed at one window,
and Miss Eltham called to me from her room:
“Is he dead?”
“No,” I replied; “only stunned.”
We carried the dog round to the yard, and I examined his head.
It had been struck by some heavy blunt instrument, but the skull
was not broken. It is hard to kill a mastiff.
“Will you attend to him, Doctor?” asked Eltham.
“We must see that the villain does not escape.”
His face was grim and set. This was a different man from the diffident
clergyman we knew: this was “Parson Dan” again.
I accepted the care of the canine patient, and Eltham with
the others went off for more lights to search the shrubbery.
As I was washing a bad wound between the mastiff’s ears,
Miss Eltham joined me. It was the sound of her voice,
I think, rather than my more scientific ministration,
which recalled Caesar to life. For, as she entered, his tail
wagged feebly, and a moment later he struggled to his feet—
one of which was injured.
Having provided for his immediate needs, I left him in
charge of his young mistress and joined the search party.
They had entered the shrubbery from four points and drawn blank.
“There is absolutely nothing there, and no one can possibly have left
the grounds,” said Eltham amazedly.
We stood on the lawn looking at one another, Nayland Smith,
angry but thoughtful, tugging at the lobe of his left ear,
as was his habit in moments of perplexity.
WITH the first coming of light, Eltham, Smith and I tested the electrical
contrivances from every point. They were in perfect order.
It became more and more incomprehensible how anyone could have entered
and quitted Redmoat during the night. The barbed-wire fencing was intact,
and bore no signs of having been tampered with.
Smith and I undertook an exhaustive examination of the shrubbery.
At the spot where we had found the dog, some five paces to the west
of the copper beech, the grass and weeds were trampled and the
surrounding laurels and rhododendrons bore evidence of a struggle,
but no human footprint could be found.
“The ground is dry,” said Smith. “We cannot expect much.”
“In my opinion,” I said, “someone tried to get at Caesar;
his presence is dangerous. And in his rage he broke loose.”
“I think so, too,” agreed Smith. “But why did this person make
for here? And how, having mastered the dog, get out of Redmoat?
I am open to admit the possibility of someone’s getting in during
the day whilst the gates are open, and hiding until dusk.
But how in the name of all that’s wonderful does he GET OUT?
He must possess the attributes of a bird.”
I thought of Greba Eltham’s statements, reminding my friend
of her description of the thing which she had seen passing
into this strangely haunted shrubbery.
“That line of speculation soon takes us out of our depth, Petrie,” he said.
“Let us stick to what we can understand, and that may help us
to a clearer idea of what, at present, is incomprehensible.
My view of the case to date stands thus:
“(1) Eltham, having rashly decided to return to the interior of China,
is warned by an official whose friendship he has won in some way
to stay in England.
“(2) I know this official for one of the Yellow group represented
in England by Dr. Fu-Manchu.
“(3) Several attempts, of which we know but little, to get at
Eltham are frustrated, presumably by his curious `defenses.’
An attempt in a train fails owing to Miss Eltham’s distaste
for refreshment-room coffee. An attempt here fails owing
to her insomnia.
“(4) During Eltham’s absence from Redmoat certain preparations
are made for his return. These lead to:
“(a) The death of Denby’s collie;
“(b) The things heard and seen by Miss Eltham;
“(c) The things heard and seen by us all last night.
“So that the clearing up of my fourth point—id est, the discovery
of the nature of these preparations—becomes our immediate concern.
The prime object of these preparations, Petrie, was to enable someone
to gain access to Eltham’s room. The other events are incidental.
The dogs HAD to be got rid of, for instance; and there is no doubt
that Miss Eltham’s wakefulness saved her father a second time.”
“But from what? For Heaven’s sake, from what?”
Smith glanced about into the light-patched shadows.
“From a visit by someone—perhaps by Fu-Manchu himself,” he said in a
hushed voice. “The object of that visit I hope we may never learn;
for that would mean that it had been achieved.”
“Smith,” I said, “I do not altogether understand you; but do you
think he has some incredible creature hidden here somewhere?
It would be like him.”
“I begin to suspect the most formidable creature in the known world
to be hidden here. I believe Fu-Manchu is somewhere inside Redmoat!”
Our conversation was interrupted at this point by Denby,
who came to report that he had examined the moat, the roadside,
and the bank of the stream, but found no footprints or clew
of any kind.
“No one left the grounds of Redmoat last night, I think,” he said.
And his voice had awe in it.
That day dragged slowly on. A party of us scoured the neighborhood
for traces of strangers, examining every foot of the Roman ruin
hard by; but vainly.
“May not your presence here induce Fu-Manchu to abandon his plans?”
I asked Smith.
“I think not,” he replied. “You see, unless we can prevail upon him,
Eltham sails in a fortnight. So the Doctor has no time to waste.
Furthermore, I have an idea that his arrangements are of such a character
that they MUST go forward. He might turn aside, of course,
to assassinate me, if opportunity arose! But we know, from experience,
that he permits nothing to interfere with his schemes.”
There are few states, I suppose, which exact so severe a toll from one’s
nervous system as the ANTICIPATION of calamity.
All anticipation is keener, be it of joy or pain, than the reality
whereof it is a mental forecast; but that inactive waiting at Redmoat,
for the blow which we knew full well to be pending exceeded in its
nerve taxation, anything, I hitherto had experienced.
I felt as one bound upon an Aztec altar, with the priest’s obsidian
knife raised above my breast!
Secret and malign forces throbbed about us; forces against which
we had no armor. Dreadful as it was, I count it a mercy that
the climax was reached so quickly. And it came suddenly enough;
for there in that quiet Norfolk home we found ourselves at hand
grips with one of the mysterious horrors which characterized
the operations of Dr. Fu-Manchu. It was upon us before we realized it.
There is no incidental music to the dramas of real life.
As we sat on the little terrace in the creeping twilight,
I remember thinking how the peace of the scene gave the lie
to my fears that we bordered upon tragic things. Then Caesar,
who had been a docile patient all day, began howling again;
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