Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer (read aloud TXT) 📖
- Author: Sax Rohmer
Book online «The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer (read aloud TXT) 📖». Author Sax Rohmer
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. A MIDNIGHT SUMMONS
CHAPTER II. ELTHAM VANISHES
CHAPTER III. THE WIRE JACKET
CHAPTER IV. THE CRY OF A NIGHTHAWK
CHAPTER V. THE NET
CHAPTER VI. UNDER THE ELMS
CHAPTER VII. ENTER MR. ABEL SLATTIN
CHAPTER VIII. DR. FU-MANCHU STRIKES
CHAPTER IX. THE CLIMBER
CHAPTER X. THE CLIMBER RETURNS
CHAPTER XI. THE WHITE PEACOCK
CHAPTER XII. DARK EYES LOOKED INTO MINE
CHAPTER XIII. THE SACRED ORDER
CHAPTER XIV. THE COUGHING HORROR
CHAPTER XV. BEWITCHMENT
CHAPTER XVI. THE QUESTING HANDS
CHAPTER XVII. ONE DAY IN RANGOON
CHAPTER XVIII. THE SILVER BUDDHA
CHAPTER XIX. DR. FU-MANCHU’S LABORATORY
CHAPTER XX. THE CROSS BAR
CHAPTER XXI. CRAGMIRE TOWER
CHAPTER XXII. THE MULATTO
CHAPTER XXIII. A CRY ON THE MOOR
CHAPTER XXIV. STORY OF THE GABLES
CHAPTER XXV. THE BELLS
CHAPTER XXVI. THE FIERY HAND
CHAPTER XXVII. THE NIGHT OF THE RAID
CHAPTER XXVIII. THE SAMURAI’S SWORD
CHAPTER XXIX. THE SIX GATES
CHAPTER XXX. THE CALL OF THE EAST
CHAPTER XXXI. "MY SHADOW LIES UPON YOU”
CHAPTER XXXII. THE TRAGEDY
CHAPTER XXXIII. THE MUMMY
“When did you last hear from Nayland Smith?” asked my visitor.
I paused, my hand on the syphon, reflecting for a moment.
“Two months ago,” I said; “he’s a poor correspondent and rather soured, I fancy.”
“What—a woman or something?”
“Some affair of that sort. He’s such a reticent beggar, I really know very little about it.”
I placed a whisky and soda before the Rev. J. D. Eltham, also sliding the tobacco jar nearer to his hand. The refined and sensitive face of the clergy-man offered no indication of the truculent character of the man. His scanty fair hair, already gray over the temples, was silken and soft-looking; in appearance he was indeed a typical English churchman; but in China he had been known as “the fighting missionary,” and had fully deserved the title. In fact, this peaceful-looking gentleman had directly brought about the Boxer Risings!
“You know,” he said, in his clerical voice, but meanwhile stuffing tobacco into an old pipe with fierce energy, “I have often wondered, Petrie—I have never left off wondering—”
“What?”
“That accursed Chinaman! Since the cellar place beneath the site of the burnt-out cottage in Dulwich Village—I have wondered more than ever.”
He lighted his pipe and walked to the hearth to throw the match in the grate.
“You see,” he continued, peering across at me in his oddly nervous way, “one never knows, does one? If I thought that Dr. Fu-Manchu lived; if I seriously suspected that that stupendous intellect, that wonderful genius, Petrie, er—” he hesitated characteristically—“survived, I should feel it my duty—”
“Well?” I said, leaning my elbows on the table and smiling slightly.
“If that Satanic genius were not indeed destroyed, then the peace of the world, may be threatened anew at any moment!”
He was becoming excited, shooting out his jaw in the truculent manner I knew, and snapping his fingers to emphasize his words; a man composed of the oddest complexities that ever dwelt beneath a clerical frock.
“He may have got back to China, Doctor!” he cried, and his eyes had the fighting glint in them. “Could you rest in peace if you thought that he lived? Should you not fear for your life every time that a night-call took you out alone? Why, man alive, it is only two years since he was here among us, since we were searching every shadow for those awful green eyes! What became of his band of assassins—his stranglers, his dacoits, his damnable poisons and insects and what-not—the army of creatures—”
He paused, taking a drink.
“You—” he hesitated diffidently—“searched in Egypt with Nayland Smith, did you not?”
I nodded.
“Contradict me if I am wrong,” he continued; “but my impression is that you were searching for the girl—the girl—Karamaneh, I think she was called?”
“Yes,” I replied shortly; “but we could find no trace—no trace.”
“You—er—were interested?”
“More than I knew,” I replied, “until I realized that I had—lost her.”
“I never met Karamaneh, but from your account, and from others, she was quite unusually—”
“She was very beautiful,” I said, and stood up, for I was anxious to terminate that phase of the conversation.
Eltham regarded me sympathetically; he knew something of my search with Nayland Smith for the dark-eyed, Eastern girl who had brought romance into my drab life; he knew that I treasured my memories of her as I loathed and abhorred those of the fiendish, brilliant Chinese doctor who had been her master.
Eltham began to pace up and down the rug, his pipe bubbling furiously; and something in the way he carried his head reminded me momentarily of Nayland Smith. Certainly, between this pink-faced clergyman, with his deceptively mild appearance, and the gaunt, bronzed,
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