The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer (best novels for teenagers TXT) đ
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of the night-piece.
The Surrey shore was a broken wall of blackness, patched with
lights about which moved hazy suggestions of human activity.
The bank we were following offered a prospect even more gloomyâ
a dense, dark mass, amid which, sometimes, mysterious half-tones
told of a dock gate, or sudden high lights leapt flaring
to the eye.
Then, out of the mystery ahead, a green light grew and crept down upon us.
A giant shape loomed up, and frowned crushingly upon the little craft.
A blaze of light, the jangle of a bell, and it was past. We were dancing
in the wash of one of the Scotch steamers, and the murk had fallen again.
Discords of remote activity rose above the more intimate
throbbing of our screw, and we seemed a pigmy company
floating past the workshops of Brobdingnagian toilers.
The chill of the near water communicated itself to me, and I
felt the protection of my shabby garments inadequate against it.
Far over on the Surrey shore a blue lightâvaporous, mysteriousâ
flicked translucent tongues against the nightâs curtain.
It was a weird, elusive flame, leaping, wavering, magically changing
from blue to a yellowed violet, rising, falling.
âOnly a gasworks,â came Smithâs voice, and I knew that he, too, had been
watching those elfin fires. âBut it always reminds me of a Mexican
teocalli, and the altar of sacrifice.â
The simile was apt, but gruesome. I thought of Dr. Fu-Manchu
and the severed fingers, and could not repress a shudder.
âOn your left, past the wooden pier! Not where the lamp isâ
beyond that; next to the dark, square buildingâShen-Yanâs.â
It was Inspector Ryman speaking.
âDrop us somewhere handy, then,â replied Smith, âand lie close in,
with your ears wide open. We may have to run for it, so donât
go far away.â
From the tone of his voice I knew that the night mystery of the Thames
had claimed at least one other victim.
âDead slow,â came Rymanâs order. âWeâll put in to the Stone Stairs.â
A SEEMINGLY drunken voice was droning from a neighboring alleyway as Smith
lurched in hulking fashion to the door of a little shop above which,
crudely painted, were the words:
âSHEN-YAN, Barber.â
I shuffled along behind him, and had time to note the box of studs,
German shaving tackle and rolls of twist which lay untidily in the window
ere Smith kicked the door open, clattered down three wooden steps,
and pulled himself up with a jerk, seizing my arm for support.
We stood in a bare and very dirty room, which could only
claim kinship with a civilized shaving-saloon by virtue of
the grimy towel thrown across the back of the solitary chair.
A Yiddish theatrical bill of some kind, illustrated, adorned one
of the walls, and another bill, in what may have been Chinese,
completed the decorations. From behind a curtain heavily brocaded
with filth a little Chinaman appeared, dressed in a loose smock,
black trousers and thick-soled slippers, and, advancing,
shook his head vigorously.
âNo shaveeâno shavee,â he chattered, simian fashion,
squinting from one to the other of us with his twinkling eyes.
âToo late! Shuttee shop!â
âDonât you come none of it wiâ me!â roared Smith, in a voice of amazing
gruffness, and shook an artificially dirtied fist under the Chinamanâs nose.
âGet inside and gimme anâ my mate a couple oâ pipes. Smokee pipe,
you yellow scumâsavvy?â
My friend bent forward and glared into the otherâs eyes with a vindictiveness
that amazed me, unfamiliar as I was with this form of gentle persuasion.
âKop âold oâ that,â he said, and thrust a coin into the Chinamanâs
yellow paw. âKeep me waitinâ anâ Iâll pull the damâ shop down, Charlie.
You can lay to it.â
âNo hab got pipeeââ began the other.
Smith raised his fist, and Yan capitulated.
âAllee lightee,â he said. âFull upâno loom. You come see.â
He dived behind the dirty curtain, Smith and I following, and ran up
a dark stair. The next moment I found myself in an atmosphere which
was literally poisonous. It was all but unbreathable, being loaded
with opium fumes. Never before had I experienced anything like it.
Every breath was an effort. A tin oil-lamp on a box in the middle
of the floor dimly illuminated the horrible place, about the walls
of which ten or twelve bunks were ranged and all of them occupied.
Most of the occupants were lying motionless, but one or two were
squatting in their bunks noisily sucking at the little metal pipes.
These had not yet attained to the opium-smokerâs Nirvana.
âNo loomâsamee tella you,â said Shen-Yan, complacently testing
Smithâs shilling with his yellow, decayed teeth.
Smith walked to a corner and dropped cross-legged, on the floor,
pulling me down with him.
âTwo pipe quick,â he said. âPlenty room. Two piecee pipeâ
or plenty heap trouble.â
A dreary voice from one of the bunks came:
âGive âim a pipe, Charlie, curse yer! anâ stop âis palaver.â
Yan performed a curious little shrug, rather of the back than of
the shoulders, and shuffled to the box which bore the smoky lamp.
Holding a needle in the flame, he dipped it, when red-hot, into an old
cocoa tin, and withdrew it with a bead of opium adhering to the end.
Slowly roasting this over the lamp, he dropped it into the bowl
of the metal pipe which he held ready, where it burned with a
spirituous blue flame.
âPass it over,â said Smith huskily, and rose on his knees with the assumed
eagerness of a slave to the drug.
Yan handed him the pipe, which he promptly put to his lips,
and prepared another for me.
âWhatever you do, donât inhale any,â came Smithâs whispered injunction.
It was with a sense of nausea greater even than that occasioned by the
disgusting atmosphere of the den that I took the pipe and pretended to smoke.
Taking my cue from my friend, I allowed my head gradually to sink lower
and lower, until, within a few minutes, I sprawled sideways on the floor,
Smith lying close beside me.
âThe shipâs sinkinâ,â droned a voice from one of the bunks.
âLook at the rats.â
Yan had noiselessly withdrawn, and I experienced a curious sense
of isolation from my fellowsâfrom the whole of the Western world.
My throat was parched with the fumes, my head ached.
The vicious atmosphere seemed contaminating. I was as one droppedâ
Somewhere East of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
And there ainât no Ten Commandments and a man can raise a thirst.
Smith began to whisper softly.
âWe have carried it through successfully so far,â he said.
âI donât know if you have observed it, but there is a stair
just behind you, half concealed by a ragged curtain.
We are near that, and well in the dark. I have seen nothing
suspicious so farâor nothing much. But if there was anything
going forward it would no doubt be delayed until we new arrivals
were well doped. S-SH!â
He pressed my arm to emphasize the warning. Through my half-closed eyes
I perceived a shadowy form near the curtain to which he had referred.
I lay like a log, but my muscles were tensed nervously.
The shadow materialized as the figure moved forward into the room
with a curiously lithe movement.
The smoky lamp in the middle of the place afforded
scant illumination, serving only to indicate sprawling shapesâ
here an extended hand, brown or yellow, there a sketchy,
corpse-like face; whilst from all about rose obscene sighings
and murmurings in far-away voicesâan uncanny, animal chorus.
It was like a glimpse of the Inferno seen by some Chinese Dante.
But so close to us stood the newcomer that I was able to make out a
ghastly parchment face, with small, oblique eyes, and a misshapen head
crowned with a coiled pigtail, surmounting a slight, hunched body.
There was something unnatural, inhuman, about that masklike face,
and something repulsive in the bent shape and the long,
yellow hands clasped one upon the other.
Fu-Manchu, from Smithâs account, in no way resembled this crouching
apparition with the deathâs-head countenance and lithe movements;
but an instinct of some kind told me that we were on the right scentâ
that this was one of the doctorâs servants. How I came to that conclusion,
I cannot explain; but with no doubt in my mind that this was a member
of the formidable murder group, I saw the yellow man creep nearer,
nearer, silently, bent and peering.
He was watching us.
Of another circumstance I became aware, and a disquieting circumstance.
There were fewer murmurings and sighings from the surrounding bunks.
The presence of the crouching figure had created a sudden semi-silence
in the den, which could only mean that some of the supposed opium-smokers
had merely feigned coma and the approach of coma.
Nayland Smith lay like a dead man, and trusting to the darkness,
I, too, lay prone and still, but watched the evil face bending
lower and lower, until it came within a few inches of my own.
I completely closed my eyes.
Delicate fingers touched my right eyelid. Divining what was coming,
I rolled my eyes up, as the lid was adroitly lifted and lowered again.
The man moved away.
I had saved the situation! And noting anew the hush about meâ
a hush in which I fancied many pairs of ears listenedâI was glad.
For just a moment I realized fully how, with the place watched back
and front, we yet were cut off, were in the hands of Far Easterns,
to some extent in the power of members of that most inscrutably
mysterious race, the Chinese.
âGood,â whispered Smith at my side. âI donât think I could have done it.
He took me on trust after that. My God! what an awful face.
Petrie, itâs the hunchback of Cadbyâs notes. Ah, I thought so.
Do you see that?â
I turned my eyes round as far as was possible. A man had scrambled down
from one of the bunks and was following the bent figure across the room.
They passed around us quietly, the little yellow man leading, with his
curious, lithe gait, and the other, an impassive Chinaman, following.
The curtain was raised, and I heard footsteps receding on the stairs.
âDonât stir,â whispered Smith.
An intense excitement was clearly upon him, and he communicated it to me.
Who was the occupant of the room above?
Footsteps on the stair, and the Chinaman reappeared, recrossed the floor,
and went out. The little, bent man went over to another bunk, this time
leading up the stair one who looked like a lascar.
âDid you see his right hand?â whispered Smith. âA dacoit!
They come here to report and to take orders. Petrie, Dr. Fu-Manchu
is up there.â
âWhat shall we do?ââsoftly.
âWait. Then we must try to rush the stairs. It would be futile
to bring in the police first. He is sure to have some other exit.
I will give the word while the little yellow devil is down here.
You are nearer and will have to go first, but if the hunchback follows,
I can then deal with him.â
Our whispered colloquy was interrupted by the return of the dacoit,
who recrossed the room as the Chinaman had done, and immediately
took his departure. A third man, whom Smith identified as a Malay,
ascended the mysterious stairs, descended, and went out; and a fourth,
whose nationality it was impossible to
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