The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu, Sax Rohmer [nonfiction book recommendations .txt] 📗
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- Author: Sax Rohmer
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I think, must have shaken the nerve of any man.
“But, Mr. Smith,” he said, “surely I am safe enough here!
The place is full of American visitors at present,
and I have had to be content with a room right at the top;
so that the only danger I apprehend is that of fire.”
“There is another danger,” replied Smith. “The fact that
you are at the top of the building enhances that danger.
Do you recall anything of the mysterious epidemic which broke
out in Rangoon in 1908—the deaths due to the Call of Siva?”
“I read of it in the Indian papers,” said Guthrie uneasily.
“Suicides, were they not?” “No!” snapped Smith. “Murders!”
There was a brief silence.
“From what I recall of the cases,” said Guthrie, “that seems impossible.
In several instances the victims threw themselves from the windows
of locked rooms—and the windows were quite inaccessible.”
“Exactly,” replied Smith; and in the dim light his revolver
gleamed dully, as he placed it on the small table beside the bed.
“Except that your door is unlocked, the conditions tonight
are identical. Silence, please, I hear a clock striking.”
It was Big Ben. It struck the half-hour, leaving the stillness complete.
In that room, high above the activity which yet prevailed below,
high above the supping crowds in the hotel, high above the starving
crowds on the Embankment, a curious chill of isolation swept about me.
Again I realized how, in the very heart of the great metropolis, a man
may be as far from aid as in the heart of a desert. I was glad that I
was not alone in that room—marked with the death-mark of Fu-Manchu;
and I am certain that Graham Guthrie welcomed his unexpected company.
I may have mentioned the fact before, but on this occasion it became
so peculiarly evident to me that I am constrained to record it here—
I refer to the sense of impending danger which invariably preceded a
visit from Fu-Manchu. Even had I not known that an attempt was to be
made that night, I should have realized it, as, strung to high tension,
I waited in the darkness. Some invisible herald went ahead of the
dreadful Chinaman, proclaiming his coming to every nerve in one’s body.
It was like a breath of astral incense, announcing the presence
of the priests of death.
A wail, low but singularly penetrating, falling in minor cadences
to a new silence, came from somewhere close at hand.
“My God!” hissed Guthrie, “what was that?”
“The Call of Siva,” whispered Smith.
“Don’t stir, for your life!”
Guthrie was breathing hard.
I knew that we were three; that the hotel detective was within hail;
that there was a telephone in the room; that the traffic of
the Embankment moved almost beneath us; but I knew, and am not
ashamed to confess, that King Fear had icy fingers about my heart.
It was awful—that tense waiting—for—what?
Three taps sounded—very distinctly upon the window.
Graham Guthrie started so as to shake the bed.
“It’s supernatural!” he muttered—all that was Celtic in his blood
recoiling from the omen. “Nothing human can reach that window!”
“S-sh!” from Smith. “Don’t stir.”
The tapping was repeated.
Smith softly crossed the room. My heart was beating painfully.
He threw open the window. Further inaction was impossible.
I joined him; and we looked out into the empty air.
“Don’t come too near, Petrie!” he warned over his shoulder.
One on either side of the open window, we stood and looked down
at the moving Embankment lights, at the glitter of the Thames,
at the silhouetted buildings on the farther bank, with the Shot
Tower starting above them all.
Three taps sounded on the panes above us.
In all my dealings with Dr. Fu-Manchu I had had to face nothing so uncanny
as this. What Burmese ghoul had he loosed? Was it outside, in the air?
Was it actually in the room?
“Don’t let me go, Petrie!” whispered Smith suddenly.
“Get a tight hold on me!”
That was the last straw; for I thought that some dreadful
fascination was impelling my friend to hurl himself out!
Wildly I threw my arms about him, and Guthrie leaped
forward to help.
Smith leaned from the window and looked up.
One choking cry he gave—smothered, inarticulate—and I found him slipping
from my grip—being drawn out of the window—drawn to his death!
“Hold him, Guthrie!” I gasped hoarsely. “My God, he’s going!
Hold him!”
My friend writhed in our grasp, and I saw him stretch his arm upward.
The crack of his revolver came, and he collapsed on to the floor,
carrying me with him.
But as I fell I heard a scream above. Smith’s revolver went
hurtling through the air, and, hard upon it, went a black shape—
flashing past the open window into the gulf of the night.
“The light! The light!” I cried.
Guthrie ran and turned on the light. Nayland Smith, his eyes
starting from his head, his face swollen, lay plucking at a silken
cord which showed tight about his throat.
“It was a Thug!” screamed Guthrie. “Get the rope off! He’s choking!”
My hands a-twitch, I seized the strangling-cord.
“A knife! Quick!” I cried. “I have lost mine!”
Guthrie ran to the dressing-table and passed me an open penknife.
I somehow forced the blade between the rope and Smith’s swollen neck,
and severed the deadly silken thing.
Smith made a choking noise, and fell back, swooning in my arms.
When, later, we stood looking down upon the mutilated thing which had
been brought in from where it fell, Smith showed me a mark on the brow—
close beside the wound where his bullet had entered.
“The mark of Kali,” he said. “The man was a phansigar—
a religious strangler. Since Fu-Manchu has dacoits in his
service I might have expected that he would have Thugs.
A group of these fiends would seem to have fled into Burma;
so that the mysterious epidemic in Rangoon was really an outbreak
of thuggee—on slightly improved lines! I had suspected something
of the kind but, naturally, I had not looked for Thugs near Rangoon.
My unexpected resistance led the strangler to bungle the rope.
You have seen how it was fastened about my throat?
That was unscientific. The true method, as practiced
by the group operating in Burma, was to throw the line
about the victim’s neck and jerk him from the window.
A man leaning from an open window is very nicely poised:
it requires only a slight jerk to pitch him forward.
No loop was used, but a running line, which, as the victim fell,
remained in the hand of the murderer. No clew! Therefore we
see at once what commended the system to Fu-Manchu.”
Graham Guthrie, very pale, stood looking down at the dead strangler.
“I owe you my life, Mr. Smith,” he said. “If you had come
five minutes later—”
He grasped Smith’s hand.
“You see,” Guthrie continued, “no one thought of looking for a Thug in Burma!
And no one thought of the ROOF! These fellows are as active as monkeys,
and where an ordinary man would infallibly break his neck, they are entirely
at home. I might have chosen my room especially for the business!”
“He slipped in late this evening,” said Smith. “The hotel detective saw him,
but these stranglers are as elusive as shadows, otherwise, despite their
having changed the scene of their operations, not one could have survived.”
“Didn’t you mention a case of this kind on the Irrawaddy?” I asked.
“Yes,” was the reply; “and I know of what you are thinking.
The steamers of the Irrawaddy flotilla have a corrugated-iron
roof over the top deck. The Thug must have been lying up there
as the Colassie passed on the deck below.”
“But, Smith, what is the motive of the Call?” I continued.
“Partly religious,” he explained, “and partly to wake the victims!
You are perhaps going to ask me how Dr. Fu-Manchu has obtained power over
such people as phansigars? I can only reply that Dr. Fu-Manchu has secret
knowledge of which, so far, we know absolutely nothing; but, despite all,
at last I begin to score.”
“You do,” I agreed; “but your victory took you near to death.”
“I owe my life to you, Petrie,” he said. “Once to your strength of arm,
and once to—”
“Don’t speak of her, Smith,” I interrupted.
“Dr. Fu-Manchu may have discovered the part she played!
In which event—”
“God help her!”
UPON the following day we were afoot again, and shortly at handgrips with
the enemy. In retrospect, that restless time offers a chaotic prospect,
with no peaceful spot amid its turmoils.
All that was reposeful in nature seemed to have become
an irony and a mockery to us—who knew how an evil demigod
had his sacrificial altars amid our sweetest groves.
This idea ruled strongly in my mind upon that soft autumnal day.
“The net is closing in,” said Nayland Smith.
“Let us hope upon a big catch,” I replied, with a laugh.
Beyond where the Thames tided slumberously seaward showed the roofs
of Royal Windsor, the castle towers showing through the autumn haze.
The peace of beautiful Thames-side was about us.
This was one of the few tangible clews upon which thus
far we had chanced; but at last it seemed indeed that we
were narrowing the resources of that enemy of the white race
who was writing his name over England in characters of blood.
To capture Dr. Fu-Manchu we did not hope; but at least there
was every promise of destroying one of the enemy’s strongholds.
We had circled upon the map a tract of country cut by the Thames,
with Windsor for its center. Within that circle was the house from
which miraculously we had escaped—a house used by the most highly
organized group in the history of criminology. So much we knew.
Even if we found the house, and this was likely enough, to find it
vacated by Fu-Manchu and his mysterious servants we were prepared.
But it would be a base destroyed.
We were working upon a methodical plan, and although our cooperators
were invisible, these numbered no fewer than twelve—all of them
experienced men. Thus far we had drawn blank, but the place for which
Smith and I were making now came clearly into view: an old mansion
situated in extensive walled grounds. Leaving the river behind us,
we turned sharply to the right along a lane flanked by a high wall.
On an open patch of ground, as we passed, I noted a gypsy caravan.
An old woman was seated on the steps, her wrinkled face bent,
her chin resting in the palm of her hand.
I scarcely glanced at her, but pressed on, nor did I notice that my friend
no longer was beside me. I was all anxiety to come to some point from
whence I might obtain a view of the house; all anxiety to know if this
was the abode of our mysterious enemy—the place where he worked amid
his weird company, where he bred his deadly scorpions and his bacilli,
reared his poisonous fungi, from whence he dispatched his murder ministers.
Above all, perhaps, I wondered if this would prove to be the hiding-place of
the beautiful slave girl who was such a potent factor in the Doctor’s plans,
but a two-edged sword which yet we hoped to turn upon Fu-Manchu. Even
in the hands of a master, a woman’s beauty is
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