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

determine, followed.

Then, as the softly moving usher crossed to a bunk on the right

of the outer door—

 

“Up you go, Petrie,” cried Smith, for further delay was dangerous

and further dissimulation useless.

 

I leaped to my feet. Snatching my revolver from the pocket

of the rough jacket I wore, I bounded to the stair and went

blundering up in complete darkness. A chorus of brutish cries

clamored from behind, with a muffled scream rising above them all.

But Nayland Smith was close behind as I raced along a covered gangway,

in a purer air, and at my heels when I crashed open a door at

the end and almost fell into the room beyond.

 

What I saw were merely a dirty table, with some odds and ends upon

it of which I was too excited to take note, an oil-lamp swung

by a brass chain above, and a man sitting behind the table.

But from the moment that my gaze rested upon the one who sat there,

I think if the place had been an Aladdin’s palace I should have

had no eyes for any of its wonders.

 

He wore a plain yellow robe, of a hue almost identical with that

of his smooth, hairless countenance. His hands were large,

long and bony, and he held them knuckles upward, and rested his

pointed chin upon their thinness. He had a great, high brow,

crowned with sparse, neutral-colored hair.

 

Of his face, as it looked out at me over the dirty table,

I despair of writing convincingly. It was that of an archangel

of evil, and it was wholly dominated by the most uncanny

eyes that ever reflected a human soul, for they were narrow

and long, very slightly oblique, and of a brilliant green.

But their unique horror lay in a certain filminess

(it made me think of the membrana nictitans in a bird)

which, obscuring them as I threw wide the door, seemed to lift

as I actually passed the threshold, revealing the eyes in all

their brilliant iridescence.

 

I know that I stopped dead, one foot within the room, for the

malignant force of the man was something surpassing my experience.

He was surprised by this sudden intrusion—yes, but no trace of fear

showed upon that wonderful face, only a sort of pitying contempt.

And, as I paused, he rose slowly to his feet, never removing his

gaze from mine.

 

“IT’S FU-MANCHU!” cried Smith over my shoulder, in a voice

that was almost a scream. “IT’S FU-MANCHU! Cover him!

Shoot him dead if—”

 

The conclusion of that sentence I never heard.

 

Dr. Fu-Manchu reached down beside the table, and the floor slipped

from under me.

 

One last glimpse I had of the fixed green eyes, and with a scream I was

unable to repress I dropped, dropped, dropped, and plunged into icy water,

which closed over my head.

 

Vaguely I had seen a spurt of flame, had heard another cry following

my own, a booming sound (the trap), the flat note of a police whistle.

But when I rose to the surface impenetrable darkness enveloped me;

I was spitting filthy, oily liquid from my mouth, and fighting down

the black terror that had me by the throat—terror of the darkness

about me, of the unknown depths beneath me, of the pit into which I

was cast amid stifling stenches and the lapping of tidal water.

 

“Smith!” I cried… .“Help! Help!”

 

My voice seemed to beat back upon me, yet I was about

to cry out again, when, mustering all my presence of mind

and all my failing courage, I recognized that I had better

employment of my energies, and began to swim straight ahead,

desperately determined to face all the horrors of this place—

to die hard if die I must.

 

A drop of liquid fire fell through the darkness and hissed

into the water beside me!

 

I felt that, despite my resolution, I was going mad.

 

Another fiery drop—and another!

 

I touched a rotting wooden post and slimy timbers.

I had reached one bound of my watery prison. More fire fell

from above, and the scream of hysteria quivered, unuttered,

in my throat.

 

Keeping myself afloat with increasing difficulty in my heavy garments,

I threw my head back and raised my eyes.

 

No more drops fell, and no more drops would fall; but it

was merely a question of time for the floor to collapse.

For it was beginning to emit a dull, red glow.

 

The room above me was in flames!

 

It was drops of burning oil from the lamp, finding passage through

the cracks in the crazy flooring, which had fallen about me—

for the death trap had reclosed, I suppose, mechanically.

 

My saturated garments were dragging me down, and now I could hear

the flames hungrily eating into the ancient rottenness overhead.

Shortly that cauldron would be loosed upon my head. The glow of the

flames grew brighter…and showed me the half-rotten piles upholding

the building, showed me the tidal mark upon the slime-coated walls—

showed me that there was no escape!

 

By some subterranean duct the foul place was fed from the Thames.

By that duct, with the outgoing tide, my body would pass,

in the wake of Mason, Cadby, and many another victim!

 

Rusty iron rungs were affixed to one of the walls communicating with a trap—

but the bottom three were missing!

 

Brighter and brighter grew the awesome light the light of what

should be my funeral pyre—reddening the oily water and adding

a new dread to the whispering, clammy horror of the pit.

But something it showed me…a projecting beam a few feet

above the water…and directly below the iron ladder!

 

“Merciful Heaven!” I breathed. “Have I the strength?”

 

A desire for laughter claimed me with sudden, all but irresistible force.

I knew what it portended and fought it down—grimly, sternly.

 

My garments weighed upon me like a suit of mail; with my chest

aching dully, my veins throbbing to bursting, I forced tired

muscles to work, and, every stroke an agony, approached the beam.

Nearer I swam…nearer. Its shadow fell black upon

the water, which now had all the seeming of a pool of blood.

Confused sounds—a remote uproar—came to my ears.

I was nearly spent…I was in the shadow of the beam!

If I could throw up one arm…

 

A shrill scream sounded far above me!

 

“Petrie! Petrie!” (That voice must be Smith’s!) “Don’t touch the beam!

For God’s sake DON’T TOUCH THE BEAM! Keep afloat another few seconds

and I can get to you!”

 

Another few seconds! Was that possible?

 

I managed to turn, to raise my throbbing head; and I saw the strangest

sight which that night yet had offered.

 

Nayland Smith stood upon the lowest iron rung…supported by the hideous,

crook-backed Chinaman, who stood upon the rung above!

 

“I can’t reach him!”

 

It was as Smith hissed the words despairingly that I looked up—

and saw the Chinaman snatch at his coiled pigtail and pull it off!

With it came the wig to which it was attached; and the ghastly yellow mask,

deprived of its fastenings, fell from position! “Here! Here! Be quick!

Oh! be quick! You can lower this to him! Be quick! Be quick!”

 

A cloud of hair came falling about the slim shoulders

as the speaker bent to pass this strange lifeline to Smith;

and I think it was my wonder at knowing her for the girl whom

that day I had surprised in Cadby’s rooms which saved my life.

 

For I not only kept afloat, but kept my gaze upturned to that beautiful,

flushed face, and my eyes fixed upon hers—which were wild with fear

…for me!

 

Smith, by some contortion, got the false queue into my grasp,

and I, with the strength of desperation, by that means seized

hold upon the lowest rung. With my friend’s arm round me I

realized that exhaustion was even nearer than I had supposed.

My last distinct memory is of the bursting of the floor above

and the big burning joist hissing into the pool beneath us.

Its fiery passage, striated with light, disclosed two

sword blades, riveted, edges up along the top of the beam

which I had striven to reach.

 

“The severed fingers—” I said; and swooned.

 

How Smith got me through the trap I do not know—nor how we made our way

through the smoke and flames of the narrow passage it opened upon.

My next recollection is of sitting up, with my friend’s arm supporting

me and Inspector Ryman holding a glass to my lips.

 

A bright glare dazzled my eyes. A crowd surged about us,

and a clangor and shouting drew momentarily nearer.

 

“It’s the engines coming,” explained Smith, seeing my bewilderment.

“Shen-Yan’s is in flames. It was your shot, as you fell through the trap,

broke the oil-lamp.”

 

“Is everybody out?”

 

“So far as we know.”

 

“Fu-Manchu?”

 

Smith shrugged his shoulders.

 

“No one has seen him. There was some door at the back—”

 

“Do you think he may—”

 

“No,” he said tensely. “Not until I see him lying dead before me

shall I believe it.”

 

Then memory resumed its sway. I struggled to my feet.

 

“Smith, where is she?” I cried. “Where is she?”

 

“I don’t know,” be answered.

 

“She’s given us the slip, Doctor,” said Inspector Weymouth,

as a fire-engine came swinging round the corner of the narrow lane.

“So has Mr. Singapore Charlie—and, I’m afraid, somebody else.

We’ve got six or eight all-sorts, some awake and some asleep,

but I suppose we shall have to let ‘em go again.

Mr. Smith tells me that the girl was disguised as a Chinaman.

I expect that’s why she managed to slip away.”

 

I recalled how I had been dragged from the pit by the false queue,

how the strange discovery which had brought death to poor Cadby

had brought life to me, and I seemed to remember, too, that Smith

had dropped it as he threw his arm about me on the ladder.

Her mask the girl might have retained, but her wig, I felt certain,

had been dropped into the water.

 

It was later that night, when the brigade still were playing,

upon the blackened shell of what had been Shen-Yan’s opium-shop,

and Smith and I were speeding away in a cab from the scene of God

knows how many crimes, that I had an idea.

 

“Smith,” I said, “did you bring the pigtail with you that was

found on Cadby?”

 

“Yes. I had hoped to meet the owner.”

 

“Have you got it now?”

 

“No. I met the owner.”

 

I thrust my hands deep into the pockets of the big pea-jacket

lent to me by Inspector Ryman, leaning back in my corner.

 

“We shall never really excel at this business,” continued Nayland Smith.

“We are far too sentimental. I knew what it meant to us, Petrie, what it

meant to the world, but I hadn’t the heart. I owed her your life—

I had to square the account.”