The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer (best novels for teenagers TXT) 📖

gigantic fungi—poisonously colored—

hideously swollen—climbing from the floor up the slimy walls—

climbing like horrid parasites to such part of the arched roof

as was visible to me.

 

Fu-Manchu picked his way through the fungi ranks as daintily

as though the distorted, tumid things had been viper-headed.

 

The resounding blows which I had noted before, and which had never ceased,

culminated in a splintering crash. Dr. Fu-Manchu and his servant,

who carried the apparently insensible detective, passed in under

the arch, Fu-Manchu glancing back once along the passages.

The lantern he extinguished, or concealed; and whilst I waited,

my mind dully surveying, memories of all the threats which this

uncanny being had uttered, a distant clamor came to my ears.

 

Then, abruptly, it ceased. Dr. Fu-Manchu had closed a heavy door;

and to my surprise I perceived that the greater part of it was of glass.

The will-o’-the-wisp glow which played around the fungi rendered the vista

of the cellars faintly luminous, and visible to me from where I lay.

Fu-Manchu spoke softly. His voice, its guttural note alternating

with a sibilance on certain words, betrayed no traces of agitation.

The man’s unbroken calm had in it something inhuman. For he had just

perpetrated an act of daring unparalleled in my experience, and,

in the clamor now shut out by the glass door I tardily recognized

the entrance of the police into some barricaded part of the house—

the coming of those who would save us—who would hold the Chinese

doctor for the hangman!

 

“I have decided,” he said deliberately, “that you are more worthy

of my attention than I had formerly supposed. A man who can solve

the secret of the Golden Elixir (I had not solved it; I had merely

stolen some) should be a valuable acquisition to my Council.

The extent of the plans of Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith and

of the English Scotland Yard it is incumbent upon me to learn.

Therefore, gentlemen, you live—for the present!”

 

“And you’ll swing,” came Weymouth’s hoarse voice, “in the near future!

You and all your yellow gang!”

 

“I trust not,” was the placid reply. “Most of my people are safe:

some are shipped as lascars upon the liners; others have departed

by different means. Ah!”

 

That last word was the only one indicative of excitement

which had yet escaped him. A disk of light danced among

the brilliant poison hues of the passages—but no sound reached us;

by which I knew that the glass door must fit almost hermetically.

It was much cooler here than in the place through which we had passed,

and the nausea began to leave me, my brain to grow more clear.

Had I known what was to follow I should have cursed the lucidity

of mind which now came to me; I should have prayed for oblivion—

to be spared the sight of that which ensued.

 

“It’s Logan!” cried Inspector Weymouth; and I could tell

that he was struggling to free himself of his bonds.

From his voice it was evident that he, too, was recovering

from the effects of the narcotic which had been administered

to us all.

 

“Logan!” he cried. “Logan! This way—HELP!”

 

But the cry beat back upon us in that enclosed space and seemed

to carry no farther than the invisible walls of our prison.

 

“The door fits well,” came Fu-Manchu’s mocking voice.

“It is fortunate for us all that it is so. This is my

observation window, Dr. Petrie, and you are about to enjoy

an unique opportunity of studying fungology. I have already

drawn your attention to the anaesthetic properties of the

lycoperdon, or common puff-ball. You may have recognized the fumes?

The chamber into which you rashly precipitated yourselves

was charged with them. By a process of my own I have greatly

enhanced the value of the puff-ball in this respect.

Your friend, Mr. Weymouth, proved the most obstinate subject;

but he succumbed in fifteen seconds.”

 

“Logan! Help! HELP! This way, man!”

 

Something very like fear sounded in Weymouth’s voice now.

Indeed, the situation was so uncanny that it almost seemed unreal.

A group of men had entered the farthermost cellars, led by one who bore

an electric pocket-lamp. The hard, white ray danced from bloated gray

fungi to others of nightmare shape, of dazzling, venomous brilliance.

The mocking, lecture-room voice continued:

 

“Note the snowy growth upon the roof, Doctor. Do not be deceived by

its size. It is a giant variety of my own culture and is of the order

empusa. You, in England, are familiar with the death of the common house-fly—

which is found attached to the window-pane by a coating of white mold.

I have developed the spores of this mold and have produced a giant species.

Observe the interesting effect of the strong light upon my orange and blue

amanita fungus!”

 

Hard beside me I heard Nayland Smith groan, Weymouth had become

suddenly silent. For my own part, I could have shrieked in pure horror.

FOR I KNEW WHAT WAS COMING. I realized in one agonized instant

the significance of the dim lantern, of the careful progress

through the subterranean fungi grove, of the care with which

Fu-Manchu and his servant had avoided touching any of the growths.

I knew, now, that Dr. Fu-Manchu was the greatest fungologist

the world had ever known; was a poisoner to whom the Borgias were

as children—and I knew that the detectives blindly were walking

into a valley of death.

 

Then it began—the unnatural scene—the saturnalia of murder.

 

Like so many bombs the brilliantly colored caps of the huge toadstool-like

things alluded to by the Chinaman exploded, as the white ray sought

them out in the darkness which alone preserved their existence.

A brownish cloud—I could not determine whether liquid or powdery—

arose in the cellar.

 

I tried to close my eyes—or to turn them away from the reeling forms

of the men who were trapped in that poison-hole. It was useless:

 

I must look.

 

The bearer of the lamp had dropped it, but the dim,

eerily illuminated gloom endured scarce a second.

A bright light sprang up—doubtless at the touch of the fiendish

being who now resumed speech:

 

“Observe the symptoms of delirium, Doctor!” Out there,

beyond the glass door, the unhappy victims were laughing—

tearing their garments from their bodies—leaping—waving their arms—

were become MANIACS!

 

“We will now release the ripe spores of giant entpusa,”

continued the wicked voice. “The air of the second cellar

being super-charged with oxygen, they immediately germinate.

Ah! it is a triumph! That process is the scientific triumph

of my life!”

 

Like powdered snow the white spores fell from the roof,

frosting the writhing shapes of the already poisoned men.

Before my horrified gaze, THE FUNGUS GREW; it spread

from the head to the, feet of those it touched; it enveloped

them as in glittering shrouds… .

 

“They die like flies!” screamed Fu-Manchu, with a sudden febrile excitement;

and I felt assured of something I had long suspected: that that magnificent,

perverted brain was the brain of a homicidal maniac—though Smith would

never accept the theory.

 

“It is my fly-trap!” shrieked the Chinaman. “And I am

the god of destruction!”