The Trail of Fu Manchu

“it is called Rache Churan. Those who have studied under the masters of Rache Churan have nothing to fear from Western violence. Forget your projects. Rejoice only that you live—if you value life.”

CHAPTER 27

THE PIT AND THE FURNACE

Alan Sterling stood upon a wooden platform, clutching a rusty iron rail and looking down upon a scene which reminded him of nothing so much as an illustration of Dante’s Inferno.

Dim figures, inhuman, strangely muffled like animated Egyptian mummies, moved far below. Sometimes they were revealed when the door of some kind of furnace was opened, to disappear again like phantom forms of a nightmare, when the door was closed. A stifling heat rose from the pit.

“The simile of a mummy has occurred to you,” said the voice of Dr. Fu Manchu out of the darkness, that strange voice which stressed gutturals and lent to sibilants a quality rarely heard in the voice of an English speaker. “You are ignorant of Ancient Egyptian ritual, or other images would occur to you. In point of fact, these workers are protected against the poisonous fumes generated at certain points in the experiment now taking place below. These gases do not reach us here. They are consumed by a simple process and dispersed by means of a ventilation shaft. Pray continue to descend.”

Sterling, clutching the rusty iron rail, went down more wooden steps.

To some degree he was regaining mastery of himself, but his brain failed to suggest any plan of action other than to accept the orders of the uncanny being into whose power, once again, he had fallen. Something which Nayland Smith had said, long, long ago—he was quite unable to recall when— came buzzing through his brain like a sort of refrain:

“Behind a house which we have passed a hundred times, over a hill which we have looked at every morning for months together, on the roof of a building in which we have lived, beneath a pavement upon which we walk daily, there are secret things which we don’t even suspect. Dr. Fu Manchu has made it his business to seek out these secret things. . . .”

Here was the theory demonstrated! He was in a trap: he hadn’t the remotest idea where he was. This ghastly place might be anywhere within a fifty mile radius of the house in Surrey. He must wait for a suitable opening; try to plan ahead. He went on down the steps; the heat grew greater and greater. Dr. Fu Manchu followed him.

“Stop!” the harsh voice directed.

And Sterling stopped.

One thing there was which gave him power to control his emotion, which gave him strength to temporize, patience to wait: Fleurette was alive!

Some wizardry of the Chinese physician had perverted her outlook. He, Sterling, had seen such cases before in households belonging to Dr. Fu Manchu. The man’s knowledge was stupendous—he could play upon the strongest personality as a musician plays upon an instrument in an orchestra.

“You will presently observe something phenomenal.” The high voice continued, “something which has not occurred for several centuries. The mating of the elements. At the moment of transmutation, the fumes to which I have referred escape to a certain extent from the furnace.”

Sterling paused, looking down into the hot darkness.

“My facilities here are limited,” Dr. Fu Manchu continued, “and I am using primitive methods. I am cut off from my once great resources—to a certain extent by the activities of your friend—” he stressed the word, speaking it upon a very high note—”Sir Denis Nayland Smith. But it is possible to light a fire by rubbing two pieces of wood together, if your burning glass is absent or if one has no matches. The work is about to complete itself——” his voice rose to a key which Sterling had thought, before, indicated that Nayland Smith was right when he had declared Dr. Fu Manchu to be a brilliant madman. “Note the fires of union!”

The heat of the place as they descended nearer and nearer to the furnace was becoming almost unendurable. But now came a loud and vicious crackling, the clang of metal, and the furnace door was thrown open.

A blaze of light from the white-hot fire poured across the floor below. Mummy-like figures moved in it to approach that miniature hell, now extending instruments resembling long narrow tongs.

From the white heat of the furnace they grabbed what looked like a ball of light, and lowered it to the floor.

The furnace doors were reclosed by two more mummy-like figures which appeared out of the shadows.

The scene became more and more fantastic. The incandescent globe was shattered. Where it had been, Sterling saw a number of objects resembling streaks of molten metal; their glow grew dim and more dim.

“This work,” said Dr. Fu Manchu, “will engage your attention in the immediate future. You have grossly interfered with my plans in the past, and I might justly and perhaps wisely, kill you. Unfortunately, I am short of labour at the moment, and you are a physically strong man——”

“You mean,” asked Sterling, “that you are going to make me work down in that hell?”

“I fear it must be so——” the speaker’s voice was very sibilant. “Continue to the base of the stairs.”

And Sterling, descending, found himself at the bottom of the huge black shaft. The furnace was closed—the Inferno dimly lighted. Not one of the mummy-wrapped figures was to be seen. But the heat——

A tunnel sloped away on his right. Far down it, a solitary lantern appeared, as if to indicate its clammy extent—for, as he could see, this tunnel dripped with moisture and its floor was flooded in places. A grateful coolness was perceptible at the entrance to this unwholesome looking burrow.

“You will observe,” said Dr. Fu Manchu—who invariably spole as if addressing a class of students—”that the temperature is lower here than on the stairs. We are actually a hundred and twenty feet below the surface. . . . We will return.”

The authority behind Dr. Fu Manchu’s orders had a quality which created awe, without making for resentment. Sterling had expereinced in the past this imposition of the Chinaman’s gigantic will. The power of Fu Manchu’s commands lay in his acceptance of the fact that they would never be questioned.

He passed the Chinaman, stepped on to the narrow stair, and clutching the iron rail proceeded upwards.

“It may interest you to learn,” came the harsh voice from behind him, “that human flesh is excellent fuel in relation to this particular experiment. . . .”

Sterling made no reply . . . the implication was one he did not care to dwell upon. He remembered that Dr. Fu Manchu had said, “I had intended to incinerate your body.”

These stairs with their rusty hand-rails, seemed all but interminable. Descent had been bad enough, but this return journey, following on the spectacle below, was worse. Vague gleams from the pit fitfully lighted the darkness. From behind, Dr. Fu Manchu directed a light upon the crude wooden steps. . . .

Sterling found himself back again in a curiously high, narrow, brick corridor which led to the vault in which he had first awakened. He had just passed a low door, deep sunken in brickwork, when:

“Stop,” the imperious voice directed.

There came a sound of rapping on the door—that of a bolt shot free—a faint creaking.

“Step back a pace, lower your head, and go in.”

Sterling obeyed. He knew that the alternative was suicide. This place, he began to realize, in addition to its heat, had a vague but ghastly charnel-house odour. . . .

He went ahead along a narrow passage; someone who had opened the door stood aside to allow him to pass. He found himself in a small, square, brick chamber illuminated by one unshaded bulb hanging on a length of cable. He heard the outer door being bolted.

There was a camp bed, a chair and a table on which stood a glass and a bottle of water. This square brick chamber had never been designed for habitation; he was in the bowels of some uncompleted engineering plant. . . .

The man who had admitted him—who had stood aside when he had entered—appeared now in the doorway—a huge negro with a pock-scarred face.

For one breathless moment Alan Sterling stared, not daring to believe what he saw—then:

“Alt Oke!” he whispered.

The expression on the black face of the man so oddly named defied definition—but it resolved itself into a grin. Ali Oke raised a finger to his lips in warning—and closed the heavy door. Sterling heard the sound of a bolt being shot. . . .

Ali Oke! It was all but incredible!

Ali-called “Oke” because this term was his equivalent for “I understand” or “very good, sir”—had been Sterling’s right-hand man on his Uganda expedition! He found it hard to believe that the faithful Ali, pride of the American Mission School, could be a servant of Dr. Fu Manchu. . . .

Complete silence. Even that queer dim roaring had ceased....

Yet—Sterling reflected—better men than Ali Oke had slaved for the Chinese doctor. He stared at the massive wooden door. A faint, sibilant sound drew his gaze floorward.

A piece of paper was being pushed under the door!

Sterling stooped and snatched it up. It was a fragment from the margin of a newspaper, and on it in child-like handwriting was written in pencil:—

Not speak. Somebody listen. Write something. Can send somebody. Ali.

CHAPTER 28

TUNNEL

BELOW WATER

Investigations in surrey brought some curious points to light

It was late in the afternoon when Gallaho came to Sir Denis’s apartment to make his report. To be on duty for twenty-four hours was no novelty to the C.I.D. man, but he was compelled to admit to himself that he felt extremely tired. Sir Denis, who wore a dressing-gown, but who was fully dressed beneath, simply radiated vitality. He was smoking furiously, and his blue-grey eyes were as keen as if, after a long and dreamless sleep, he had emerged fresh from his bath.

Gallaho, who guessed Sir Denis to be ten years his senior— as a matter of fact, he was wrong—found a constant source of amazement in Nayland Smith’s energy.

He reported that the mews to which Sir Bertram Morgan’s car had been driven was known to have accommodated a Ford lorry belonging to a local contractor.

Nayland Smith laughed shortly, pacing up and down the carpet.

“When it comes to making important engagements in an unoccupied house, but one with which in the past—and he never forgets anything—the Doctor has been familiar; when, above all, he condescends to travel in a decorator’s lorry . . .”

He laughed again, and this time it was a joyous, boyish laugh, which magically lifted the years and showed him to be a young man.

“It’s all very funny,” Gallaho agreed, “especially as Sir Bertram, according to his own statement, examined an ingot of pure gold which this Chinese magician offered to sell to him!”

Nayland Smith turned, and stared at the speaker.

“Have you ever realized the difficulty of selling gold, assuming you had any—I mean, in bulk?”

Gallaho scratched his upstanding hair, closed one eye, and cocked the other one up at the ceiling.

“I suppose it would be difficult, in bulk,” he admitted; “especially if the gold merchant was forced to operate under cover.”

“I assure you it would,” said Nayland Smith. “No further clues from Rowan House, I suppose?”

“Nothing. It’s amazing. But it accounts for an appointment at half-past two in the morning. They just dressed the lobby and two rooms of the house like preparing a stage-set for a one-night show.”

“Obviously they did, Gallaho—and it is amazing, as you say. I remember the place very well; I was there on many occasions during the time Sir Lionel Barton occupied it. I remember, particularly, the Chinese Room, with its sliding doors and lacquer appointments. Those decorations which were not Barton relics—I refer to the preserved snakes, the chemical furnace, and so forth—were imported for Sir Bertram Morgan’s benefit.”

“That’s where the Ford lorry came in!”

Nayland Smith dashed his right fist into his left palm.

“Right! You’re right! That’s where the lorry came in! The missing caretaker?”

“He’s just described by local tradesmen as ‘an old foreigner’——”

“Someone employed by, or bought by, Fu Manchu. We shall never trace him.”

Gallaho chewed invisible gum.

“Funny business,” he muttered.

“Rowan House has known even more sinister happenings in the past. However, I will look it over myself—some time today if possible. What about the lorry?”

“I have seen the former owner” Gallaho pulled out a book and consulted some notes. “He sold it on the fourteenth instant. The purchase price was thirty pounds. The purchaser he describes as ‘a foreign bloke.’ I may say, sir—” looking up at Sir Denis—”said contractor isn’t too intelligent; but I gather that the ‘foreign bloke’ was some kind of Asiatic. It was up to the purchaser to remove the lorry at his convenience.”

“How was the payment made?”

“Thirty one-pound notes.”

“Very curious,” murmured Sir Denis. “Very , very curious. I am wondering what the real object could be in the purchase of this lorry. Its use last night was an emergency measure. I think we may take that for granted. Have you traced it?”

“No, sir. Not yet.”

“Has any constable reported having seen it?”

“No one.”

“What about the Morris out of the yard in Limehouse?”

“I have a short report about that,” Gallaho growled, consulting his notes. “It’s the property of Sam Pak, as we surmised, and various birds belonging to his queer aviary seem to drive it from time to time. My own idea is that he uses it to send drunks home. But it’s for hire, and according to Murphy, who has been on the job down there, it was hired last night, or rather, early in the morning, by a lady who had dined on board a steamer lying in West India Dock.”

“You have the name of the steamer, no doubt?”

“Murphy got it.”

“Did any lady dine on board?”

“The ship mentioned in my notes, sir,” Gallaho replied ill-humouredly, “pulled out when the fog lifted. We have no means of confirming.”

“I see,” snapped Nayland Smith, his briar bubbling and crackling as he smoked furiously. “But the driver?”

“A man called Ah Chuk—he’s a licensed driver; he’s been checked up—who hangs about Sam Pak’s when he’s out of a job. His usual work is that of a stevedore.”

“Has anyone seen this man?”

“Yes—Murphy. He says, and Sam Pak confirms it, that he took the car down to the gates of West India Dock and picked up a lady who was in evening dress. He drove her to the Ambassadors’ Club——” Gallaho was reading from his notes—”dropped her there and returned to Limehouse.”

“Where is the car now?”

“Back in the yard.”

Nayland Smith walked up and down for some time, and then:

“A ridiculous, but a cunning story,” he remarked. “However, Ah Chuk will probably come into our net. Anything of interest in the reports of the men who trailed customers leaving Sam Pak’s?

“Well——” Gallaho’s growl grew deeper—”those that left were just the usual sort. Funny thing, though, is, that some of the customers you reported seeing inside didn’t leave at all!”

“What!”

“Murphy reported seven people, six men and a woman in the ‘Sailors’ Club’. Only three—two men and the woman—had come out at seven o’clock this morning!”

“Very odd,” Nayland Smith murmured.

“There are two things,” said Gallaho, “that particularly worry me, sir.”

He closed his note-book.

“What are they?”

“That funny light, which I had heard of but never seen; and ... Mr. Sterling.”

He stared almost reproachfully at Sir Denis. The latter turned, smiling slightly.

“I can see that you are worrying,” he said. “and quite rightly. He is a splendid fellow—and he was very unhapppy. But an individual described by the hall-porter as a loafer, left this note for me an hour ago.”

He crossed to the writing-table, took up an envelope and handed it to Chief detective-inspector Gallaho. The latter stared at it critically. It was an envelope of poor quality, of a kind which can be bought in packets of a dozen at any cheap stationer’s and upon it in what looked like a child’s handwriting, appeared:—

Nayland Smith No 7 Westminster Court Whitehall

The inscription was in pencil. Gallaho extracted the contents—a small sheet of thin paper torn from a pocket-book. Upon this, also in pencil, the following message appeared:

To;—Nayland Smith N 7 Westminster Court

Whitehall.

In hands ofFu Manchu. In some place where there is a deep pit, a furnace, and a tunnel below water. I know no more. Do your best.

Alan Sterling.

By the same hand which had addressed the envelope, one significant word had been added below the signature:

Limehouse

Gallaho stared across at Sir Denis. Sunshine had temporarily conquered the fog. The room was cheerful and bright. Gallaho found himself looking at a puncture in one of the windows, through which quite recently a message of death had come but had missed its target.

“Is this Mr. Sterling’s writing?”

‘Yes.” Nayland Smith’s eyes were very bright. “What do we know about tunnels, Gallaho?”

CHAPTER

29

AT THE BLUE ANCHOR

The man with the claret coloured nose was becoming quarrelsome. His unshaven friend who wore a tweed cap with the brim pulled right down over his eyes, was drunk also, but in a more amiable way.

John Bates, the landlord of the Blue Anchor, shirt-sleeved behind the bar, watched the pair inquiringly. The man with the claret nose came in at longish intervals, and was usually more or less drunk. Bates supposed that he was a hand in one of the coasting steamers which sailed from a near-by dock. His friend was a stranger, nor did he look like a sailor.

The Blue Anchor had only just opened and there were no other customers in the private bar, which was decorated with sporting prints and a number of Oriental curiosities which might have indicated that the landlord, or some member of his family, had travelled extensively in the East. John observed with satisfaction that the phenomenal fog which had lifted during the day, promised to return with. the coming of dusk.

From long experience of dockland trade, John had learned that fog was good for business. He lighted a cigarette, leaning on the bar and listening to the conversation of the singular pair.

“I bet you half a quid as it was above Wapping.”

The claret nosed man was the speaker, and he emphasized his words by banging his fist upon the table before him. John Bates was certain now that he was a sailor and that he had a pay-roll in his pocket. The other man stolidly shook his head.

“You’re wrong, Dick,” he declared, thickly. “It was somewhere near Limehouse Basin.”

“Wapping.”

“Limehouse.”

“Look here.” Claret Nose rose unsteadily to his feet, and approached the bar. “I’m goin’ to ask you to act as judge between me and this bloke here. See what I mean, guv’nor?”

John Bates nodded stolidly.

“It’s a bet for half a quid.”

Bates liked bets; they always led up to rounds of drinks, and:

“Put your money on the counter,” he directed; “I’ll hold the stakes.”

Claret Nose banged down a ten shilling note and turning:

“Cover that!” he shouted, truculently.

The othe man, who proved to be tall and thin when he stood up, extracted a note from some inner pocket and placed it upon that laid down by the challenger.

“Right.” John Bates inverted a tumbler upon the two notes. “Now, what’s the bet about?”

“It’s like this,” said the red-nosed man—”we was talkin’ about tunnels——”

“Tunnels?”

“Tunnels is what I said. We talked about the Blackwall Tunnel, the Rotherhithe Tunnel and all sorts of bloody tunnels——”

“What for?” John Bates inquired.

“We just felt like talkin’ about tunnels. Then we got to one what was started about fifty years ago and never finished. A footpath, it was, to go under the Thames from somewhere near Wapping Old Stairs——”

“Limehouse.”

The lean man, bright eyes peering out from beneath the brim of his remarkably large tweed cap, had imparted a note of challenge to the word.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Bates. “I never heard of such a tunnel.”

“Fifty years ago, everybody’d heard about it.”

“I wasn’t here fifty years ago.”

“I thought you knew all there was to know about this part o’ the world”

“I know a lot but I don’t know that. The Old Man would know.”

“Well ask the Old Man.”

“He’s upstairs, having a lay down.” Bates turned to a grinning boy who now stood at his elbow. “Keep an eye on that money, Billy,” he instructed. “I sha’n’t be a minute.”

He raised the flap of the bar, came through, and went upstairs.

“While we’re waitin’,” said Claret Nose, “another couple o’ pints wouldn’t do no harm.”

“Right,” the other agreed, and nodded to the boy. “The loser pays, so——” pointing to the notes beneath the inverted tumbler, “you take it out of one of those.”

John Bates returned inside three minutes from his interview with the invisible Old Man. He was grinning broadly, and carrying a cloth-bound book.

“Which of you said Limehouse?” he demanded.

“I did,” growled the man in the tweed cap.

Bates, stepping in between the two, raised the tumbler, and returned a ten shilling note to the last speaker. “The drinks are on you,” he said, addressing the other. “I’ll have a small whisky and soda.”

“Ho!” said the red nosed one, “you will, will you? You will when you tell me where the bloody tunnel was, and prove it wasn’t Wapping.”

John Bates opened what proved to be a scrapbook, placing it upon the counter. He pointed to a drawing above which the words “Daily Graphic June 5, 1885” appeared. There were paragraphs from other papers pasted on the same page.

“There you are, my lad. What the Old Man doesn’t know about this district, nobody can tell him. Never mind about closing one eye, George——” addressing Claret Nose; “I don’t think you could read it even then. It boils down to this: There was a project in 1885 to build a footpath from where we stand now, to the Surrey bank. A shaft was sunk and the tunnel was commenced. Then the scheme collapsed, so the Old Man tells me.”

“Ho!” said the loser, staring truculently at the grinning boy behind the bar. “A small whisky and soda for the guv’nor, and take it out of that——” pointing to the note.

“What did they do with this ‘ere shaft?” growled the man in the tweed cap.

“The Old Man doesn’t know,” Bates replied. Everybody about here, except him, has forgotten all about it. But if you’re in any doubt, I can tell you something else. He told me to tell you.”

“What’s that?”

The voice of the man in the tweed cap exhibited an unexpected interest, and John Bates glanced at him sharply; then:

“You know the old wharf?” he jerked his thumb over his shoulder, “which has been up for sale for years—sort of Chinese restaurant backs right on to it.”

“I know it,” growled the red-nosed man.

“Well, the one and only ventilation shaft of this tunnel comes out there, so the Old Man says; in fact, it must run right up through the building, or at the side of it.”

“Ho!” said the man in the tweed cap. “Have another drink.”

CHAPTER

30

THE HUNCHBACK

Nayland Smith, wearing his long-peaked, large, check cap, and Detective-sergeant Murphy, very red of nose but no longer drunk, stood upon a narrow patch of shingle. That mysterious mist which had claimed London for so many days in succession had already masked the Surrey bank. They were staring up at the roof of that strange excrescence belonging to Sam Pak’s restaurant.

“The ventilation shaft which Bates referred to,” said Sir Denis, “is at the back of the bar, for a bet. It accounts for the heat at that end of the room.

“Why heat, sir?”

“It is probably regarded as an old flue,” Nayland Smith went on, apparently not having heard his query, “and it very likely terminates in that big square chimney stack up yonder.”

“It’s above there that the light is seen.”

“I know, hence my deduction that that is where the ventilation shaft comes out. Unofficial channels, Sergeant, often yield more rapid information than official ones.”

“I know, sir.”

“It was a brain wave to apply to the Blue Anchor for information respecting the site of this abandoned tunnel of fifty years ago. It is significant that no other authority, including Scotland Yard, could supply the desired data.”

“But what’s your theory, sir? I am quite in the dark.”

“It wasn’t a theory, it was a mere surmise until last night, when Sir Bertram Morgan told me that Dr. Fu Manchu had shown him an ingot of pure gold. I linked this with the phantom light which so many people have seen above the restaurant of Sam Pak; then my rough surmise became a theory.”

“I see, sir,” said Sergeant Murphy respectfully: as a matter of fact, he was quite out of his depth.

“There is no sign of the light to-night.”

“No,” snapped Nayland Smith, “and there’s no sign of Forester’s party.”

A stooping figure passed the lighted window in the wooden outbuilding which abutted upon Sam Pak’s.

“They are on the down-stream side of the place, sir. Inspector Forester thought they might have been spotted, and so to-night, he has changed his tactics.”

“Good enough. I hadn’t been notified of this.”

They scrambled up the muddy shingle, climbed a ladder, and entered a little shadowy alley. A figure showed for a moment in misty darkness.

“Gallaho!” Nayland Smith challenged.

“0. K. sir. Everything’s ready.”

“Has the light been seen to-night?”

“Yes. Two hours ago; it hasn’t appeared since.”

“From my memories of Sam Pak, formerly known as John Ki,” said Smith rapidly, “he sleeps as lightly as a stoat. He may appear to be ignorant of the fact that his premises are being covered by the police, but appearances, in the case of an aged and cunning sinner of this kind, are very deceptive. To penetrate a second time to the Sailor’s Club, is rather like walking into the lions’ den.”

“I have heard a lot about Chinese cunning,” growled Gallaho, “and I have seen something of what this Dr. Fu Manchu can do. But you ought to know, sir, that the C.I.D. can put up a pretty sound show. I don’t think for a moment that there’s anything suspected inside there.”

“In any event,” said Nayland Smith, significantly, “don’t waste time if I give you the signal. Several lives are at stake.”

Two minutes later, he lurched into the Chinese delicatessen store of Sam Pak, Murphy close behind him. His make-up was identical with that which he had worn on his previous visit; but whereas in the Blue Anchor he had spoken Cockney, he now assumed that queer broken English of which he had a complete mastery.

The very stout lady was playing patience behind the counter. She did not look up. There was no one else in the shop.

Fourth wife of the venerable Sam Pak, sometime known as John Ki, she had borne him two sons, bringing the grand total to Sam’s credit up to eighteen. She knew something, but by no means all, of the life of her aged husband. He was an influential member of his Tong. He had secret dealings with great people; there was some queer business in the cellar, below the Sailor’s Club; and the Sailor’s Club, although it showed a legitimate profit, was really a meeting place for some secret Society of which she knew nothing, and cared less. Sam treated her well—his affairs were his own.

“Lucky Strike, please,” said Nayland Smith; “club price.”

Mrs. Sam Pak looked up sharply, recognized the new member, grinned at the old and drunken one, and nodded.

“Get them inside,” she said—and focussed her attention upon her cards.

Nayland Smith nodded, and walked to the door which led to the “club”. He opened it, went along the narrow passage, and presently entered the club room, Murphy following.

The place presented much of its usual appearance. One of those games disallowed in Chinatown was being played. A fan-tan party occupied a table on the left. Two nondescript sailormen were throwing dice. Old Sam Pak sat behind the bar, apparently dead.

Nayland Smith and Murphy dropped down on to the dirty settee, half-way up the right-hand side of the room. From the withered lips of Sam Pak a faint whistle emitted.

A hunchback Chinese boy with a patch over his eye appeared from the doorway on the left of the bar and approached the new arrivals.

“Beer!” said Murphy, in a loud, thick voice, assuming his usual role of a hard drinker.

The visible eye of the waiter opened widely. It was a long narrow eye, brilliantly green, and dark-lashed. Automatically, as it seemed, the waiter bent over the table and swabbed it with a dirty duster.

“Sir Denis,” came the soothing voice of Fah Lo Suee, “you are in danger.

“Blimey,” muttered Murphy, “we’re spotted!”

“Thank you,” Nayland Smith replied in a low tone. “I rather suspected it.”

“It is useless to attempt anything to-night. You would find nothing.” She continued to swab the table. “I will join you if you say so. I mean it.”

“I could never trust you.”

“My life has been hell, since something you know about. I am sincere—I don’t wish his death . . . but I must get away.”

“I wonder ...”

Old Sam Pak whistled again, this time more shrilly. One of the fan-tan players deserted the party, and crossed to the door which communicated with the shop.

“Oh God!” whispered Fah Lo Suee. “He knows! If I can save you, will you save me?”

“Yes!” snapped Nayland Smith.

CHAPTER

31

THE SI-FAN

“Hands up!”

Nayland Smith was on his feet, covering the room.

He had noted that the door which now barred the way out to the shop and to the street was a heavy iron door of that kind which at one time gave so much exercise to the police of New York’s Chinatown. The man who had closed the door, turned, and, back to it, slowly raised his hands. He was a short, incredibly thick-set Burman, built like a gorilla, with long arms and a span of shoulder which told of formidable strength.

The other men at the fan-tan table also obeyed the order. Fah Lo Suee, following a moment’s hesitation, caught a swift side-glance from Smith and raised her hands.

Murphy, pistol ready, slipped behind Sir Denis and made for the Burman.

The bowl of a heavy bronze incense-burner stood upon the counter where it was used as a paper-weight and a receptacle for small change. At this moment, the aged Sam Pak— snatching it up with a lighning movement incredible in a man of his years—hurled the heavy bowl with unerring aim.

It struck Nayland Smith on the right temple.

He dropped his automatic, staggered, and fell forward over the table.

Sergeant Murphy came about in a flash, a police whistle between his teeth. Stupefaction claimed him for a moment as he saw Sir Denis lying apparently dead across the table . . . for no more than a moment; but this was long enough for the baboon-like Burman who guarded the door.

In two leaps worthy of the jungle beast he so closely resembled, the man hurled himself across the room, sprang upon the detective’s shoulders, and, herculean hands locked about his neck, brought him to the floor!

Too late to turn to meet the attack, Murphy had sensed the man’s approach. At the very moment that the Burman made his second spring, the detective pulled the trigger.

The sound of the shot was curiously muffled in that airless, sealed-up place. The bullet crashed through the woodwork of the bar, and into a wall beyond, missing old Sam Pak by a matter of inches. But that veteran, motionless in his chair, never stirred.

As the pistol dropped from Murphy’s grasp, the Burman, kneeling on his back, lifted one hand to the detective’s jaw, and began to twist his head sideways—slowly.

“No!” Fah Lo Suee whispered—’Wo!”

The wrinkled yellow lips of Sam Pak moved slightly.

“It is for the Master to decide,” he said, in that seaport bastard Chinese which evidently the Burman understood.

Fah Lo Suee, wrenching the patch from her eye and the cap from her head, turned blazing eyes upon the old Chinaman.

“Are you mad?” she said, rapidly in Chinese. “Are you mad? This place is surrounded by police!”

“I obey the orders, lady.”

“Whose orders?”

“Mine.”

A curtain on the left of the bar was drawn aside—and Dr. Fu Manchu came in ...

The Orientals in the room who were not already on their feet, stood up; even old Sam Pak rose from his chair. The Burmese strangler, resting his right foot upon Murphy’s neck, rose to confront the Master. A queer hush descended where a scene of violence had been. All saluted the Chinese doctor, using the peculiar salutation of the Si-Fan, that far-flung secret society which Nayland Smith had spent so many years of life in endeavouring to destroy.

Dr. Fu Manchu wore Chinese indoor dress, and a mandarin’s cap was set upon his high skull. His eyes were half closed, but his evil, wonderful face exhibited no expression whatever.

Nevertheless, he was watching Fah Lo Suee.

A muffled scream in a woman’s voice, doubtless that of Mrs Sam Pak, broke this sudden silence. There were loud cries; the flat wailing of a police whistle; and then a resounding crash.

The wooden door of the Sailors’ Club had been broken down . . . but the iron door now confronted the raiding party.

Dr. Fu Manchu turned slowly, holding the curtain aside.

“Let them all be brought down,” he directed.

CHAPTEE32

IRON DOORS

inspector gallaho heard the sound of the shot—but very dimly. Later he was to know why it had sounded so dim. At the time he did not understand, and wondered where the shot had been fired. It was not the prearranged signal, but it was good enough.

He was leaning out of a window above a shuttered-up shop. The room to which it belonged, a dingy bedroom, had recently been leased by a respectable man of the sea. The landlady who owned the shop, a little general store, had been given tickets for the second house at the Palladium, as her well-behaved lodger was unable to use them that evening. It was unlikely that she would be back until considerably after midnight.

The room was full of plain-clothes police.

“Jump to it, Trench,” growled Gallaho. “That was a shot!”

The door behind him was thrown open. Heavy footsteps clattered down the stairs. He waited at the window, watching.

He saw Detective-officer Trench come out from the door below and dash across to the entrance to Sam Pak’s restaurant, two men close behind him. He waited until the rest of the party had set out for their appointed posts; then himself descended.

There was a smell of paraffin and cheese on the staircase which he found definitely unpleasant. In the open door-way he paused for a moment, readjusting his bowler. A woman’s scream came from Sam Pak’s shop. Something about it did not sound English. There was a sudden scuffling—a crash— another crash. On the river bank a police whistle wailed.

Gallaho crossed and walked in.

Mrs. Sam Pak, her gross features curiously leaden in hue, sat in a state of semi-collapse upon a chair before one of the small tables. Trench and another man were breaking down the door at the other end of the shop; the third detective guarded the woman.

“What is this?” she demanded. “Are you bandits? By what right do you break up my place?”

“We are police officers,” growled Gallaho, “as you have already been informed. I have a warrant to search your premises.”

The third man turned.

“She locked the door and hid the key the moment we came in, Inspector.”

“You know the penalty, don’t you?” said Gallaho.

Mrs. Sam Pak watched him sullenly.

“There is nothing in my house,” she said; “you have no right to search it.”

The lock gave with a splintering crash—but the door refused to open more than a few inches.

“Hello!” said Trench, breathing heavily “What’s this?”

“Let me have a look,” said Gallaho.

As he stepped forward, torch in hand, the third man advanced also, but:

“Close the shop door, and pull the blinds down,” Gallaho directed, tersely.

He reached the broken door which refused to open fully, and shot the light of his torch through the aperture, then:

“K Division has been blind to this dive,” he growled. “They’ve got an iron door!”

“Whew!” whistled Trench.

The four men stared at each other; then, their joint gazes were focussed upon Mrs. Sam Pak, seated, ungainly but indomitable, upon a small chair which threatened to collapse beneath her great bulk.

“You are under arrest,” said Gallaho, “for obstructing the police in the execution of their duty.”

There came the roar of a powerful motor. The Scotland Yard car concealed not far away, had arrived.

“Open the door,” Gallaho directed, “and take her out.”

The woman, breathing heavily and pressing one hand over her heart, went out without protest.

“What now, Inspector?”

“We’ve got to find another way in. Make contact with Forester. That sailor man of his is on the job again to-night. We shall have to go up the ladder and in at the back window.”

“Very good, Inspector.”

At any hour in any London street, whatever the weather conditions, a crowd assembles magically at the first sign of trouble. A sort of drizzling rain descended through the mist which overhung Limehouse. Few pedestrians had been abroad when that muffled shot had sounded at Sam Pak’s. But now an interested group, eight or ten strong, formed a semicircle before the door as the man detailed to get in touch with the River Police came out and ran rapidly along the street.

As he disappeared in the mist, Gallaho opened the door and stepped out on to the wet pavement. Two police constables came up at the double.

“Clear these people away,” Gallaho directed. “I’m in charge here, and I don’t want loafers.”

At that the two constables got busy with the well-known formula “Move on, there.” The reluctant ones were gently shoved, and by that combination of persuasion and force which is one of the highest assets of the Metropolitan Police, the immediate neighbourhood was cleared of unofficial spectators. Windows had been opened, and heads craned curiously from them. The police car had pulled up half a block away, but now the officer in charge of the party came forward.

“What’s the trouble, sir?” he asked, saluting Gallaho. “Can’t we get through?”

“Iron door,” growled the Inspector.

“That means the finish of Sam Pak.”

“I know it does—and I’m wondering why it’s worth it.”

Forester of the River Police, handling the matter in accordance with his own ideas, had already sent Merton up with a line, and the rope-ladder was attached fully ten minutes before the signal reached him.

The shot in the Sailors’ Club he did not hear. A tugboat was passing at the time and the noise of its passage entirely drowned that of the muffled shot. But he heard the whistle.

Regardless on this occasion of attracting attention the River Police craft was pushed as near as possible to the overhanging superstructure. Forester got on to the ladder, and began to climb. He turned.

“Nobody else until I give the word!” he shouted.

He reached the lighted window and looked in. He saw a dismal kind of bedroom, with a cheap iron bedstead in one corner, a dressing-table by the further window on his right, a chair, a number of odds and ends suggesting occupancy by a woman, and very little else. He crashed a heavy sea-boot through the glass, bent perilously, found that the window was unlatched, and raised it an inch or two with the heel of his boot. Then, descending a rung, he raised it fully, reached over the ledge and drew himself into the room.

He stood for a moment listening. There was not a sound.

He leaned out of the window.

“Come on!” he shouted.

Forester turned left, running along the room in the direction of a half-open door, and found himself upon a staircase, uncarpeted. Not waiting for the party, he went clattering down.

The room above had been lighted by an unshaded electric bulb, and there was a similar crude light upon the stair. But, reaching its foot and jerking a curtain aside, a curtain of some kind of rough patterned material, Forester saw darkness ahead of him.

Voices and bumping sounds indicated that his men were tumbling into the room above.

Forester shot the light of a torch into a place resembling a small restaurant. He stood, he discovered, at the end of a fairly well-stocked bar; dirty plush-covered seats ran along the wall on his left; there were a number of tables and chairs. Some of the tables were upset, and there was a faint tang,, perceptible above the fugg of the place, which told him that it was here the shot had been fired.

Footsteps sounded upon the stairs behind him.

But Forester continued to direct the light of his torch steadily upon a door immediately ahead. It was an iron door of the kind one meets with in strong-rooms.

Forester whistled softly and walked forward.

“Hullo, Chief, where are you?” called a voice.

“O.K. Try to find a switch and light this place up.”

The door, Forester saw at a glance, was one which locked automatically on being closed. Furthermore, a huge steel bolt had been shot into place. He withdrew the bolt, ignoring the scurrying footsteps of his men seeking the light control. Presently, one of them found it and the place became illuminated.

Forester pulled back the catch and hauled the door into the niche which it normally occupied, safe from the view of any casual visitor, and only to be discovered by one definitely searching for it.

A dingy corridor, dimly lighted, opened beyond. Forester found himself confronted by a badly damaged wooden door, the lock wrenched out of place and surrounded by jagged splinters, which lolled drunkenly in the opening. He started along the passage.

Another door, but this of a cheap wooden variety, was open at the end, and presently he found himself in Sam Pak’s delicatessen store. Only one shaded light was burning, that behind the counter.

“Who’s there?” came sharply.

A man was standing in the darkened shop, his hands thrust into the pockets of his overcoat.

“Inspector Forester. Who are you?”

The man drew his hands from his pockets.

“Detective-sergeant Trench, Inspector,” he introduced himself; “C.I.D. You got through from the back, then?”

“Yes, we’re in. Where’s Inspector Gallaho?”

“I’ll get him.”

CHAPTER 33

DAUGHTER OF THE MANCHUS

Nayland Smith tried to fight his way back to consciousness. He found himself unable to dissociate delirium from reality.

“My love, who has never loved me . . . Perhaps it might never have been, but now, it is too late ...”

A woman’s voice, a soothing, musical voice—and someone was bathing his forehead with Eau de Cologne.

Another blank came . . .

He was lying on a camp bed, in a low, square, brick chamber. His head throbbed agonizingly, but a soft arm pillowed his head, and soothing fingers caressed his brow. He struggled again to recover himself. This was phantasy, a distorted dream.

Where was he?

The act of opening his eyes alone had been an exquisite torture. Now, turning them aside, he experienced new pain. A woman, strangely dressed, knelt beside the bed upon which he lay. Her dark hair was disordered, her long green eyes watched him, piteously, supplicatingly, as the eyes of a mother watching a sick child.

Those long green eyes stirred latent memories, stimulating the dull brain. What woman had he known who possessed those eyes?

She was a strange creature. Her beautifully moulded lips moved as if she spoke, softly. But Nayland Smith could detect no words. Her shoulders were bare; her skin reminded him of ivory. And now, perhaps recognizing some return of understanding , she bent, fixing the gaze of her brilliant eyes upon him.

A moment of semi-lucidity came. He had seen this woman before; this woman with the ivory shoulders and the green eyes. But if a woman, why did she wear coarse grey flannel trousers? . . . She was perhaps half a woman and half a man . . .

Hot lips were crushed to his own, as darkness came again.

“You have never known . . . you would never have known . . . but at least we shall die together . . . Wake, oh, my dear! Wake; for the time is so short, and because I know I have to die, now I can tell you . . .”

Nayland Smith, as if in obedience to those urgent words, fought his way back to full consciousness.

The brick chamber and the camp bed had not been figments of delirium. He actually lay upon such a bed in a square brick chamber. The woman tending him was Fah Lo Suee!

Recognizing the return of full consciousness, she gently withdrew her arm from beneath his head, composedly rearranging the silk straps of a tiny garment which afforded a strange contrast to the wrinkled flannel trousers.

Nayland Smith saw that a grey coat, a complement of the trousers, lay upon the floor near by. There was a bowl of water on a little table beside him, a small bottle and a piece of torn silk saturated with Eau de Cologne.

Fah Lo Suee replaced the coat which was part of the uniform of the one-eyed waiter, and quietly seating herself on the solitary chair which the chamber boasted, watched him coolly and without embarrassment.

Had he heard aright? Had he heard this woman—thinking that she spoke to an unconscious man—profess her love? Had she pressed her lips to his? He was beginning to remember;

now clearly recalled all that had happened. Perhaps those later impressions were unreliable, or perhaps—a possibility— it was a deliberate move on the part of this daughter of an evil father. A new plot—but what could its purpose be?

Good God! He was in the power of Dr. Fu Manchu, his lifelong enemy!

It was the end! She had said it was the end, unless he had dreamed. He moved his head so that he could see her more clearly. Heavens! Who and what had struck him? His memories afforded no clue to the identity of his assailant. And Sergeant Murphy? What had become of Sergeant Murphy?

Fah Lo Suee watched him under lowered lashes.

Any make-up which she had worn in her role of Chinese waiter, had been removed. He must suppose that those long lashes were naturally dark. But her lips were pale, and now, from the pocket of the dirty flannel jacket, she took out a lipstick and a mirror which formed the lid of a small round-box. Unaffectedly, she adjusted her appearance to her own satisfaction, delicately rouging her cheeks.

Sir Denis watched her. Slowly he was regaining control of mind and body. Finally, replacing the tiny toilet case, Fah Lo Suee pulled out a yellow packet of cigarettes and bending forward, offered one.

A picture of the elegant Madame Ingomar flashed momentarily before his mind . . . The long jade holder; those patrician cigarettes of the finest yenedji . . .

“Thank you,” he said, and was glad to find that his voice was steady.

He took the cigarette, and Fah Lo Suee, placing another between her lips, dropped the packet back into her pocket, producing a lighter which she snapped into life, and lighting both.

Nayland Smith cautiously sat upright. This ghastly brick chamber, which might have been part of a sewer works, swam around him. His head ached mercilessly. His sight, too, was queerly dim. He had been struck upon the temple. He leaned back against the wall in an angle of which the bed was set.

“Fah Lo Suee,” he said—”for I know you by no other name:

where are we, and why are we here together?

She glanced at him swiftly, and as swiftly looked aside.

“We are in part of the workings of an abandoned Thames tunnel. We are together because ... we are going to die together.”

Nayland Smith was silent for a moment, watching her, and then:

“Is this place below Sam Pak’s” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then the raiding party will break through at any moment.”

“There are iron doors,” Fah Lo Suee replied, tonelessly. “Long before they can force them, we . . .”

She shrugged her shoulders, fixing the gaze of her long, narrow eyes upon him. Nayland Smith met that queer, contemplative gaze.

He realized how rarely in the past, in all his battles with the group surrounding Dr. Fu Manchu, he had looked into the eyes of Fah Lo Suee. How much had he dreamed?—to what extent now were his impressions his own, and to what extent due to the hypnotic power which he knew this woman to possess?

“Fu Manchu’s daughter,” he said: “Do you hate me as your father hates me?”

Fah Lo Suee closed and opened the slender fingers of her left hand. He watched that hand fascinatedly—thinking of the dirty yellow fingers of the Chinese waiter. His thoughts drew his glance floorwards, for there, near the chair upon which Fah Lo Suee sat, lay two crumpled objects which had puzzled him.

They were painted gloves!—gloves which had concealed the varnished nails and slim, indolent fingers of this daughter of the Manchus.

He glanced up again, and swiftly though Fah Lo Suee lowered her lashes, nevertheless, she had answered his question.

And he was silenced.

“I have loved you since the first day I ever saw you,” she replied, quietly.

And, listening to the music of her voice, Nayland Smith understood why so many men had fallen under its spell . . .

“I have had many of those experiences which are ridiculously called ‘affairs’, but the only man I could ever love, was the only man I could never have. You would never have known, for I should never have told you. I tell you now, because, although we could not live together, we are going to die together.”

CHAPTER 34

MORE IRON DOORS

“No way out,” said Gallaho, flashing his light about a low cellar, which contained stores of various kinds: bottles of wine, casks of beer, and cases of gin and whisky. There were cheeses, too, and even less fragrant delicacies of Chinese origin.

“This way, sir,” came a voice from somewhere above. “Here’s the way down!”

Gallaho came out of the cellar, and hurried up to a kitchen where Trench was standing before an open cupboard. The shelves of this cupboard contained all kinds of rubbish—tins, old papers, cardboard boxes. But in some way, probably by accident, the Scotland Yard man had discovered a hidden latch, and had swung all these shelves inward, for they constituted a second, masked door.

Hot, stifling air came up out of the darkness beyond.

“This is just below the bar, Inspector, and I noticed how hot it was at the end of the club room.”

“What’s in there? Be careful.”

Gallaho came forward and shot his light into the cavity. A steeply sloping passage with wooden steps was revealed.

“Come on,” he growled, and led the way.

Ten steps down there was a bend, Gallaho cautiously rounded it, and saw more steps ahead. It was very hot in this place, a thing for which he was quite unable to account. A brick landing was reached. Some of the brickwork had fallen away, and:

“This is built into an iron framework,” came a voice from somewhere behind.

There was a steady tramp of feet upon the stairs.

“Oh!” said Gallaho. “That’s funny!” He paused and looked about him. “I wonder if this is anything to do with the tunnel that Sir Denis has been inquiring about?”

“It’s been built a long time.”

“So I see. Also, it goes down a long way.”

The formation of the steps became more crude, the lower they went. They were merely boards roughly attached to cement. Now came a long, straight passage, brick-walled and cement floored. Gallaho led on; but it was so extensive that before he had reached the end, the whole of the party engaged in searching Sam Pak’s premises filed along behind him.

“This is a queer go,” said someone.

“We must be below Thames level.”

Gallaho pulled up with a jerk.

“Thames level or not,” he growled, “we’ve struck it here.”

“What is it, Inspector?”

Trench and others came crowding forward; Forester, far behind, was bringing up the rear.

“It’s this: another blasted iron door! I want to know the history of this place, and I want to know why no report has ever been made upon it. Iron doors in a restaurant—why?”

CHAPTER

35

THE FURNACE

Alan Sterling had abandoned hope. The message to Nayland Smith written on a leaf of his pocket-book (for nothing had been taken from him with the exception of his automatic) and pushed under the door to Ali, had miscarried, or perhaps it had never been dispatched.

No duties were allotted to him; no one came near the room. He was surrounded by an oppressive silence, through which, from time to time, that muted roaring seemed to vibrate. In his fall he had smashed his wristwatch and so had no means of knowing the time.

Hour after hour went by. He was desperately thirsty, but for a long time resisted his desire to pour out a drink from the water bottle.

Logic came to his rescue. Since he was completely in the power of the Chinese doctor, why should the latter trouble to tamper with the drinking water, when without danger or difficulty he could shoot him down at any time?

And what had become of Ali? Was it possible that he had been detected, and that he, Sterling, was doomed to be left locked in this dark brick prison somewhere in the bowels of the earth, perhaps even under water? So situated, hope of rescue there was none, if those who had placed him there chose to remain silent.

In short, his life depended upon that note having reached Sir Denis, and upon his success in tracing the subterranean tunnel, so vaguely referred to in it.

Hours passed in silence and a great weariness claimed him. Telling himself over and over again “You must not fall asleep . . . you must not fall asleep,” perhaps by the very monotony of reiteration, he presently lost all knowledge of his surroundings.

His awakening was a rude one.

He felt himself seized in a herculean grasp, lifted and then thrown face downward upon the bed!

Blindly, he began to struggle, but his ankles were grasped and firmly tied, throughout being held in such a manner that he was unable to reverse his position. Then, again, he was lifted by his unseen assailant, lightly as a woman lifts a toy dog, and thrown back upon the bed.

A short, yellow man, stripped to the waist, grasped his arms, clasped them together with a remorseless strength which appalled Sterling, and adroitly tied his wrists with some kind of fine, strong twine.

The man was built like a baboon; his forehead was abnormally low, his arms incredibly long and of a muscularity which Sterling found almost incredible. The upper arms resembled the thighs of an athlete. The man had Crotonean shoulders and amazing chest development. His face was like a yellow mask; his sunken eyes registered no expression.

Sterling’s heart sank.

This could only mean one thing. Ali Oke had been detected—his message to Nayland Smith had never reached its destination! Dr. Fu Manchu had changed his mind. Instead of employing him in the subterranean hell, he had determined to kill him . . .

This frightful awakening had temporarily robbed him of the power of speech, but now:

“Who are you?” he demanded, angrily. “Where are you taking me?”

The Burman, ignoring his words, treating him as he might have treated a heavy sack, grasped Sterling by the middle and threw him over his left shoulder. Stooping, he walked out through the open doorway.

As he hung limply across the gigantic shoulder, he could have wept with rage, for his very weakness.

He, a physically powerful man, as normal men go, had no more chance against this deformed monster than a child would have had against himself. Yet, the horrible Burman, with his thick bandy legs, was all of three inches shorter than Sterling!

On to those nightmare stairs which led down into the pit, he was carried. From time to time, fitful gleams of light danced on the iron girders, or sent a red glow up into the darkness. He was being carried to his death: every instinct told him so. ...

One shaded lamp burned in the pit.

It hung directly in front of the furnace door. From time to time, at bends in the staircase, through eyes clouded by reason of his unnatural position, Sterling observed squat figures firing the furnace. The heat grew greater and greater. The place quivered and roared as white hot flames were whipped up under a forced draught.

The bottom reached, his captor and carrier dropped him unceremoniously upon the concrete floor.

Bruised, dazed, he yet succeeded in rolling over into a position from which he could inspect the shadows surrounding that ring of light in front of the furnace.

Several things became visible which conjured up horrible possibilities.

He saw a number of rough wooden trestles, some six feet in length and eighteen inches wide, laid upon the floor in the circle of light.

What could their purpose be?

Some inert body lay quite near to him. He strained his eyes to peer through the darkness; but beyond the fact that it appeared to be the body of a man, he could make out no details. Two muscular Chinamen stripped to the waist appeared now under the light. One, he thought he recognized, unless he was greatly mistaken—for to Western eyes Chinese faces are very similar—as a man who had formed one of the fan-tan party on the night that he and Nayland Smith had visited the Sailors’ Club.

The furnace door crashed open.

Scorching, blinding heat, poured out. Sterling wrenched his head aside. The Chinese stokers, probably professional firemen, fired the furnace, working mechanically and apathetically, although sweat poured down their faces and bodies like rain.

The furnace door was clanged into place again. Sterling lay so near to it that it had been impossible to take more than quick glances about him during the time that the door had been open, for the heat had seared his eyes. Nevertheless he had seen enough to know that his doom was sealed . . . perhaps the doom of all who stood in the path of Dr. Fu Manchu.

The man lying near to him, gagged and bound, was Alt Oke . . .

Alone, this discovery would have been sufficient to dash his last hope. But there was worse.

On the other side of the furnace door and nearly opposite to where he lay, Nayland Smith crouched on one elbow, bound as he was bound. He had glimpsed him searching the place with agonized eyes, as he himself had searched it.

It was the end.

CHAPTER

36

DIM ROARING

“There’s only one thing to do here,” growled Gallaho, banging his fist on the iron door which barred further progress. There’s a bit of a cavity—so I suppose the hinges are sunk. A couple of dynamite cartridges will shift something.”

“It might shift too much,” said Forester, who had pushed his way from the rear, and now stood at the speaker’s elbow. “Wouldn’t it be better to send for a blow-torch?”

“Do you realize how long it would take to blow through this door?” Gallaho demanded. “Are you forgetting who’s inside, and what may be happening?”

“I’m not forgetting. It was just a suggestion. Anyway, it’s going to take time to get either.”

“The longer we stand talking here, the longer it’s going to take.”

Gallaho, in common with many men of action, had a tendency to lose his temper when checked by such a barrier as this iron door.

“What do you suggest?”

“May I suggest something, sir?” came a voice.

“Yes, my man, what is it?”

“The Kinloch Explosive Works in Silvertown carry on all night. We could get there and back in half an hour in the Squad car, and probably bring someone with us who understands how to employ explosives on a job of this kind.”

“Good man,” growled Gallaho. “I’d better come along, as they won’t act without authority. Will you take charge, Forester?”

“Certainly. But if I can get hold of a blow-torch by hook or by crook, I’m going to start.”

“Good enough. No harm done.”

Gallaho adjusted his bowler and set out. He disappeared along the corridor lighted only by the torches of the police. Forester turned to Trench.

“What about getting through to the Yard?” he suggested.

“See if it’s possible to get a blow-torch rushed down.”

“We can try,” Trench agreed. “Leave two men here in case the door happens to open from the other side—and there’s a telephone upstairs in the shop.”

These dispositions were made, and the remainder of the police tramped up the concrete stairs and the wooden stairs into the premises of Sam Pak.

The shop blinds had been drawn—all lights put out. A constable was on duty on the pavement outside. At the moment that they reached the shop, the roar of the Flying Squad motor proclaimed itself as Gallaho dashed by on his journey to Silvertown.

“Here’s the telephone, Inspector,” said one of the men.

Forester nodded to Trench.

“This is your department, not mine,” he said. “You know who to call up, no doubt.”

Trench nodded and stepped behind the counter, taking up the instrument.

He called Scotland Yard and waited.

A tense silence descended upon all the men present until the call was answered.

“Detective-sergeant Trench speaking,” he said, and gave a code word in an undertone. “Thanks.”

A further interval of silence, and then:

“Oh, is he, Inspector? Oh, I see . . . Yes, I suppose so, if those are the orders.”

Trench placed his hand over the mouthpiece and turned.

“The Commissioner is standing by for a report on this job!” he whispered. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he turned up——”

“Hello, sir. Yes, speaking from there, now. I’m sorry to report, sir, that Sir Denis has disappeared. We have reason to believe that he’s been smuggled into the cellars of this place.

An interval of respectful silence, and then:

“The difficulty is, sir, they’ve got iron doors, here. I am speaking for Chief detective-inspector Gallaho, sir. He has proceeded in person to Silvertown to try to get an explosive expert to deal with one of the doors below, here. . . . Yes, sir. We thought a blow-torch might do the trick, if it’s possible to get one down in time. . . .Very good, sir. Yes, every exit is covered.”

He replaced the receiver and turned to Forester.

“The hell of it is,” he said, “we don’t know what’s going on below, there, and we can do nothing! Our only arrest is Mrs. Sam Pak, and I don’t believe she knows a thing!”

“Sst\. . . what’s that?”

All stood silent, waiting for a repetition of the sound, and presently it came—a muffled cry.

“It’s one of the men in the passage,” said Trench, and ran off, Forester following, his heavy boots making a booming sound upon the wooden floor. They were halfway down the stairs when the man who had called out, met them. His expression indicated excitement.

“Come this way, Inspector,” he said, “and listen.”

Their torch lights moving eerily upon brick and plaster walls, they proceeded to the end of the long passage. Another man was standing with his ear pressed to the iron door. He signalled, and they all approached, standing silently, listening.

“Do you hear it?”

Forester nodded, grimly.

“What the hell is it?” he muttered.

A dim, but dreadful roaring was perceptible, coming it seemed, from remote deeps beyond the iron door.

CHAPTER 37

CHINESE JUSTICE

Sterling realized as the horror in this hell pit rose ever higher that the company of the shadow was now complete.

Someone else had been borne down those many stairs and thrown like a sack upon the concrete floor. The doors of the furnace were opened again by the Chinese firemen, and again the heat seared his eyes. He tried to take advantage of that white glare; in a measure, he was successful.

Detective-sergeant Murphy had joined the company of the doomed; trussed and helpless he lay beyond Alt Oke.

The sweating Chinamen fed the hungry furnace.

It was the closest reproduction of the traditional hell which he believed could ever have been created. He struggled to his feet: his ankles were bound, his wrists were bound. But in some way to be upright again, though he could not move a step, seemed to reinforce his failing courage. The furnace doors were reclosed.

“Sir Denis!” he shouted, his voice reverberating in that shadow-haunted shaft. “Sergeant Murphy!”

In his extremity he spoke with the accent of the Middle West; indeed, his father’s face was before him. He saw the home in which he had been born, Edinburgh University, too, where he had taken his degree; all the happy things of life. And Fleurette! Fleurette! Merciful heaven!—where was Fleurette? He would never see her again!

Murphy answered.

“O.K., sir,” he called. “While there’s life there’s. . . .”

A dull thud, that of a blow, terminated the words.

“Murphy!” Sterling cried again, and was in that state when he recognized hysteria in his own voice, yet fought against it. Sir Denis, he remembered to have noticed in the glare of the furnace, had a bandage over his mouth. “Murphy!”

No answer came—but, in silhouette against the light, the gorilla shape of the Burman appeared.

“You yellow swine!” said Sterling viciously, and bound though he was, launched himself upon the broad, squat figure.

He received a blow upon the mouth which knocked him backwards. He tasted blood; his lips were split.

“If I could meet you in the open, you bandy-legged horror,” he shouted, madly, “I’d knock you silly!”

The Burman, who wore heavy shoes, kicked him in the ribs.

Sterling groaned involuntarily. The pain of this last brutality threatened to overcome him. The horrible shadowy place began to swim before his eyes.

His wrists were aching: his hands were numb. Nevertheless he clenched his fists, clenched his teeth. He was writhing with pain; a rib had caved in—he knew it. But his supreme desire was to retain consciousness; to be on the job if any eleventh hour hope should offer.

“Be silent,” came a musical voice out of the darkness. Fah Lo Suee!

“My friend, you only add more pains to those that are to come.”

Sterling succeeded in conquering himself. His maltreated body had threatened to master his brain. But his brain won.

Above the ever increasing roar of the furnace, a voice reached him:

“I’m here, Sterling, old man—I couldn’t speak before.”

It was Nayland Smith.

In some way, the shadows of that dim shaft seemed to possess weight—to bear down on one oppressively. From where he lay, Sterling could not see the mouth of the tunnel, but he was oddly conscious of its presence, somewhere beyond the furnace. There was water above, a great quantity of water, probably the River Thames.

This sense of depth, of being buried far below the surface, alone was horrifying; with the accompaniments which surrounded him, plus a split lip and a dislocated rib, it stretched endurance to breaking point.

And then another voice spoke out of the darkness. It was a voice which, once heard, could never be forgotten: the voice of Dr. Fu Manchu.

“Sir Denis Nayland Smith: you are, I believe, acting for the Secret Service. You are a legitimate enemy. Detective-sergeant Murphy: You are attached to the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard, and therefore entitled to my respect. Mr. Alan Sterling, you have voluntarily thrown yourself into the midst of my affairs, but since your motives are of a kind sometimes termed chivalrous, I shall accord to you also the honours of war.”

The strange cold voice ceased for a moment.

Sterling struggled into a crouching position, ignoring the blood dripping from his chin, striving to forget the sharp pain of his injured rib.

“To-night may well be a climax in my war against folly and misrule; but if I triumph to-night, my path will be clear. My chief enemy will no longer obstruct me in my work, nor treachery live in my household. . . .”

That strange, impressive voice ceased—then uttered a short, guttural command.

The squat Burman appeared in the circle of light, dragging by the heels the inert body of Alt.

It now became obvious that the Nubian was bound hand and foot, and that a cloth was tied tightly over his mouth. His eyes seemed to bulge from his skull; his face was wet with the sweat of fear.

The Burman withdrew into the shadows, but appeared again almost immediately swinging a short, curved sword, which he seemed to handle with familiarity.

“This man is a traitor,” the guttural voice said softly; “I have held my hand too long.”

A swift, hissing word of command; and during some few, dreadful seconds in which Alan Sterling’s heart seemed to remain still in his breast, the Burmese executioner obeyed.

Twining the fingers of his left hand into the frizzy, black hair of the Nubian, he jerked him to his feet with a single movement of that long, powerful arm. And, as the man stood there bent forward, swaying—with one mighty, unerring sweep of the scimitar he severed his head from his body!

“My God!” groaned Sergeant Murphy—”my God!”

Unconcernedly, the executioner threw the body on to one of the wooden frames, lashed the trunk and feet with lines which were attached to the woodwork, and stood up, glancing into the darkness in the direction from which the voice of Dr. Fu Manchu had come.

In response to another hissing command, the two Chinese firemen came forward and threw open the furnace door. They raised the head of the framework to which the body was lashed. The Burman seized the other end.

They began to swing it to and fro, chanting in unison: “Hi yah, hi yah, hi yah!” as they swung.

Then, with a final shouted “HI!” they propelled it into the white heart of the furnace.

They were about to close the door, when the Burman checked them—and stooped . . .

CHAPTER 38

THE BLUE LIGHT

“It’s by no means as simple as all that, Inspector,” the chemist in charge assured Gallaho. “Before I attempt a mining operation such as you describe, I should like to know what’s above and what’s below. Also, what’s on the other side of this wall that you want me to blow down. You say it’s a concrete wall?”

“It appears to be,” growled Gallaho, fretfully; technicians were always an infernal nuisance.

“We could probably blast a way through the wall, but I’m wondering what that wall supports. We don’t want half Limehouse to fall in on us.”

“Well, come and see for yourself; but come provided—for almost anything may be happening to the people we want to rescue.”

“I shall certainly come. Inspector. I don’t fancy the responsibility, but it’s not the kind of thing I want to delegate.”

There were further delays whilst mysterious apparatus was assembled, and Gallaho, seated in the office of the chief chemist, tapped his fingers irritably upon the table, glancing from minute to minute at a big clock over the mantelpiece. Messengers were scouring the extensive works in search of an expert with the musical name of Schumann. His attendance, according to Mr. Elliot, the chief chemist, was indispensable.

Gallaho was getting very angry.

Finally, arrangements were completed. Two workmen who seemed to enjoy this break in their night duties carried mysterious boxes, packages and coils of cable. Schumann, who proved to be a taciturn, bearded German, merely nodded and grunted when the chief chemist explained the nature of the project.

At long last, they all climbed into the police car, and set out recklessly for Limehouse. Gallaho sat in front with the driver. He was altogether too irritable for conversation, and at a point in their journey not far from their destination:

“Pull up!” he directed, sharply.

The brakes were applied, and the car promptly brought to a standstill.

Inspector Gallaho stared forward and upward, and now, resting his hand on the driver’s shoulder:

“Look!” he said. “What’s that? Right over the river bank, in a line with the smokestack?”

The driver looked as directed. And then:

“Good Lord!” he whispered, “what is it?”

There was very little mist in the air, but lowering clouds overhung the river; and there, either in reality or reflected upon them as upon a screen danced that bluish, elfin light;

Gallaho knew that it was directly above the roof of Sam Pak’s.

“Go ahead!” he growled. . . .

There was not much evidence of activity in the neighbourhood of the restaurant. The night life of Chinatown, such as it is, is a furtive life. A constable was standing on an adjacent corner, but there was little now to indicate that anything unusual had taken place there that evening, except the fact that the store was closed.

One or two customers who had applied there had gone away much puzzled by this circumstance.

No doubt there were watchers behind dark windows.

No doubt the fact was known throughout the Chinese quarter that Sam Pak’s had been raided and his wife arrested. But those who shared this secret information kept it very much to themselves, and kept themselves carefully out of sight.

Entering the shop, followed by the technicians with their apparatus:

“Anything new?” Gallaho growled.

Trench was waiting there.

“A most extraordinary roaring sound from somewhere below,” he reported; “and the heat at the top end of the room,” said Gallaho. “I can’t make head nor tail of it.” He walked forward. “Yes; the difference is very marked. What the devil can it be?”

“The place to hear the roaring, sir,” said another voice, “is at the end of the passage, below, outside the iron door.”

“Come on,” said Gallaho, and made his way there. “Any report from the river?”

“Yes. That blue light has been seen up over the roof.”

“I know ... I have seen it myself.”

CHAPTER

39

THE LOTUS GATE

Stark horror coming on top of physical pain all but defeated Alan Sterling. As the furnace doors were reclosed and the three yellow men sweating and half-naked were lost in the shadows outside the ring of light, he thought he heard a groan . . . and he thought that the man who groaned was Nayland Smith.

The gruesome place swam about him; the hard floor seemed to be moving like the deck of a ship.

He ground his teeth together and clenched his fists. He knew that a mighty effort was called for, or he should faint. If this happened he should despise himself; and if he must die, at least let him carry his self-respect to the end.

Nevertheless, it was touch and go. Physical nausea saved him.

He was violently sick.

“The bloody swine!” came out of the darkness which concealed Sergeant Murphy. “By heaven! There’s something coming to this lot!”

“There is something coming to all of us, Sergeant Murphy,” It was the cold, measured voice of Dr. Fu Manchu which spoke. “To-night, I am destroying some of the weeds which choked my path.”

Somewhere in the neighbourhood of the tunnel, the entrance to which Sterling could not see from where he lay, a pump was at work. The roar of the furnace increased in volume. It was like the sustained roar of some unimaginable, ravenous beast.

He took a firm grip upon himself.

He was shaking violently: complete collapse threatened. . . . There was an interval during which the furnace door was opened again, but Sterling resolutely turned his head aside. At the clang of its closing he opened his eyes again.

“Paracelsus,” came that strange voice out of the darkness— and, now, with a note of exaltation in it, a note of fanaticism, an oddly rising cadence—”Paracelsus, although in some respects an impostor, yet was the master of many truths; of the making of gold he knew something, but few have understood his dictum Vita ignis corpus lignum’ (light is the fire, the body the fuel).”

He was silent for a moment. The roar of the furnace increased again in volume.

“The body the fuel . . .” he repeated. “Sir Denis Nayland Smith, Mr. Alan Sterling, Detective-sergeant Murphy. War is merciless, and I regret that you stand in my way. But in order that you shall realize the selflessness of my motives, I wish you, before going to join the shades of your ancestors, to be witnesses of my justice.”

He uttered again that short, guttural command.

A figure walked gracefully out of the shadows into the light.

It was his daughter—Fah Lo Suee. She wore a green robe, cut low upon the shoulders, and of so fine a texture that every line of her slender body might be traced in its delicacy. There were jewels on her fingers and she smiled composedly.

Within the ring of light she knelt, and bowed her head in the direction of the unseen speaker.

The Burmese executioner had followed her. He stood behind her, now, looking upward.

“Of all the spies who have penetrated to my councils,”—the voice became more and more sibilant, rising ever upon a higher key—”this woman, my daughter, has been the chief culprit. There is a traitor blood in her, but she has betrayed me for the last time.”

Fah Lo Suee knelt motionless, her graceful head lowered.

“One who would do the work to which I have set my hand, must forget mercy in favour of justice. Yet because, though execrable, detestable, you are my daughter, I offer you the Lotus Gate of escape. Do you accept it?”

Fah Lo Suee raised her head. She was still smiling proudly.

“I accept,” she said. “I have only loved one man in my life— and I accept on condition that the same gate shall be opened for him.”

“I agree to this condition.”

The tones of the speaker indicated repressed madness.

Fah Lo Suee extended her slender arms.

“Denis Nayland Smith,” she said, and there was tragedy in her musical voice—”until to-night, you never even suspected. I have told you and I am unashamed. You go with me through the gate. Death gives me something that life could never give.”

She paused; only the roar of the furnace could be heard. Then, stretching her arms upward, towards the hidden Dr. Fu Manchu:

“I am ready.”

“To this I had been blind, yet I might have known—for woman is a lever which a word can bend.”

The strange voice, exalted, oracular in mad inspiration, drew nearer in the darkness until Dr. Fu Manchu appeared in the circle of light.

His mask-like face was transfigured, his eyes glittered like jewels. He was a seer, a prophet, a man set above human laws. He carried a small, cut-glass goblet, upheld like a chalice.

“Rise,” he commanded.

Fah Lo Suee stood upright.

“You are ready?”

“I am eager. It is my wedding night.”

“Here is the desire of your heart. . . and death.”

“Good-bye,” said Fah Lo Suee, her lips curved in that proud, fearless smile.

She took the glass and drained its contents.

The crystal crashed to the floor. Fah Lo Suee sank down, slowly; her smile became a smile of rapture. She extended herself upon the concrete still wet with the blood of an earlier victim, and opened her arms ecstatically.

“Denis, my dear, my dear!” she whispered. “Hold me close. Then, I shall not be afraid.”

Her arms dropped—she lay still . . .

Sterling was past speech; even Murphy was silent, Dr. Fu Manchu turned and paced slowly back into the shadows. As he reached them, he uttered that quick, guttural order.

The Burman stooped, and placed the body of Fah Lo Suee upon one of the wooden racks. The two Chinamen appeared and the furnace door was thrown open.

Sterling had reached cracking point.

He heard an hysterical scream, but was unaware of the fact that he had uttered it. His last recollection of the scene was that of a monotonous chanting:—

“Hi yah, hi yah . . .”

CHAPTER

40

A FIGHT TO THE DEATH

Dr. Petrie reached London late at night.

One knowing him, who had met him at Victoria Station, would have noticed that whereas for many years his hair had been streaked with grey, the grey was now liberally streaked with white. He was but recently recovered from an illness which only an iron constitution and a will to live—not for the sake of life itself, but for his wife and newly discovered daughter—had enabled him to survive.

He had advised Nayland Smith of the time of his arrival;

but, jumping from the train, for his activity was unimpaired by the stresses which had been imposed upon him, and looking eagerly up and down the platform, he failed to see the tall, gaunt figure of his friend.

This was unlike Smith.

Leaving a porter in charge of his baggage, he pushed rapidly on to the barrier. There was no sign of Nayland Smith, or even of Fey, that strange, taciturn creature who had been in Smith’s service in Burma, who had now rejoined him in England.

It was unaccountable; a crown, almost crushing to the anxiety which possessed him.

Fleurette!

He recognized in this moment of loneliness, of disappointment, that he had even dreamed of finding Fleurette there. Smith’s last message had held out such a hope. Yet, there was no one here at all!

“Dr. Petrie,” came a voice. “Dr. Petrie.”

Petrie stared all about him, and then recognized that the speaker was a commissionaire.

“Yes!” he said eagerly; “I am Dr. Petrie.”

“Good evening, sir—” the man saluted. “I come from Sir Denis Nayland Smith’s flat, sir. My orders are to ask you to proceed there at once.”

Hope beckoned again, but anxiety remained.

“Is that all, Sergeant?”

“That is all I was told to say, sir.”

“Thank you,” said Dr. Petrie, wearily. “Have a drink as you go out, Sergeant.”

“Thank you, sir. Good night.”

The assembly of his baggage was a tedious business. A man who travelled light himself, on this occasion he was cumbered with many trunks and boxes belonging to Fleurette. He deposited the bulk of them in the cloakroom, and jumping into a taxi, proceeded to Westminster.

Fey admitted him.

Petrie observed with astonishment, for he knew the man for a perfect servant, that a large briar pipe was fuming in an ash-tray in the lobby.

“Good evening, sir.” Fey turned to the hall porter. “Leave the baggage to me. Your room is prepared, sir.”

“Is Sir Denis at home?”

“No, sir.”

Fey took Petrie’s hat and coat and Petrie walked through into the cheerful, lofty, sitting-room. He observed that the curtains had not been drawn in the bay window.

A premonition of some new disaster began to creep upon his mind. Fey joined him almost immediately.

“Whisky and soda, sir?”

“Thank you.”

Fey prepared one in silence, Petrie watching him; then:

“Where is Sir Denis?” he asked.

Fey handed the doctor his drink upon a silver tray, and then:

“I don’t exactly know, sir,” he replied; “and with regard to the pipe, sir: as you are aware, I am not unlike Sir Denis in build, and my orders are to keep walking up and down in view of the Embankment, below, smoking a pipe, but not to show my face too much.”

Petrie set his glass down.

“Do you mean that he is out on some investigation—and that your job is to pretend that he is at home?”

“Exactly, sir—excuse me.”

Fey went out and returned smoking the briar, strolled forward and stared out of the window. The night was damp but not foggy. The sky was overcast. He turned and walked back into the room.

“Is there any news, Fey, of... my daughter?”

“Sir Denis is certain that she is in London, sir, and alive.”

“Thank God!”

Dr. Petrie finished his whisky and soda at a gulp.

“There’s a bit of a mix up, sir, I am sorry to say. Things have been moving very fast. That Chinese devil has got hold of Mr. Sterling.”

“What!”

“But he was 0. K. this morning; we had a message from him. I am a bit anxious to-night, though, and I’m glad you’ve arrived, sir.”

The unusual volubility of Fey alarmed Dr. Petrie anew.

“Where is Sir Denis?” he asked; “I must get in touch with him.”

“He’s gone to a place called Sam Pak’s, sir, in Limehouse. Somehow, I didn’t like the sound of it to-night, sir. This Chinese devil is desperate; it’s a fight to the death . . .”

CHAPTER

41

THE LAST BUS

Fleurette opened her eyes and looked in the direction where she thought the porthole of her cabin should be.

She closed them again quickly. She saw a small curtained window, but not a porthole. This seemed to be a cottage bedroom, very cleanly and simply furnished. She opened her eyes again.

The room remained as she had first seen it—she was not dreaming.

She clenched her hands tightly and sat up in bed.

Only a few hours before, her brain told her, she had parted from Alan in her cabin on the Oxfordshire. She remembered how much that last smile had cost her, that struggle to restrain her tears. She had heard his footsteps on the deck. And then, she had sat down, she remembered quite well, and had poured out a glass of water . . .

And now, what in heaven’s name had happened? Where was she? And how had she got here?

It was very silent, this place in which she found herself, until a slight movement in an adjoining room told her that there was someone in there.

The room was lighted by moonlight, and although she could see that there was a lamp on the table beside the bed, she was afraid to switch it on. Throwing off the bedclothes she slipped lightly to the floor.

She realized that she was wearing a suit of pyjamas which did not belong to her. But, staring at a heap of garments in an armchair, she recognized the suit which she had actually been wearing when she had parted from Alan on the ship!

Her head ached slightly, and she knew that she had been dreaming. It was difficult to believe that she was not dreaming, now. She stepped to the window, and gently drawing the curtain aside, looked out.

She saw a little hedge-bordered garden with a smooth patch of grass in the centre of which stood a stone bird bath.

There was a gaunt looking apple tree on the left, leafless now, a weird silhouette against the moon. Over the hedge, she could see the tops of other trees; but apparently the ground fell away there. She was, as she had supposed, in a cottage.

Whose cottage? And how had she got there?

Above all, where was Alan, and where was her father?

Was it possible that she had been seriously, dangerously ill?—that there had been a hiatus of which she knew nothing—that now she was convalescent?

Perhaps that person whose movements she had detected in the next room was a nurse. She retraced her steps, her bare feet making no sound upon the carpet, and looked for evidence to support this theory. There were no medicine bottles or cooling draughts upon the table beside the bed; nothing but a cigarette case—her own—and a box of matches.

A further slight movement in the adjoining room indicated that someone was seated there, reading. Fleurette had heard the rustle of a turned page.

She recognized with gratitude that despite this insane, this inexplicable awakening, she was cool and self-controlled. The theory of serious illness did not hold good. She felt perfectly fit except for that slight headache. She seated herself on the side of the bed, thinking deeply.

Her first impulse, to open the door and demand of whoever was in the next room what it was all about, she conquered. Fleurette had had the advantage of a very singular training. She had been taught to think, and this teaching availed her now. She crossed to the door very quietly, and by minute fractions of an inch began to turn the handle.

The door was locked.

Fleurette nodded.

A louder movement in the next room warned her that someone might be approaching. She slipped back into bed, drawing the clothes up close to her chin, but preparing to peep under her long lashes at anyone who should come in.

A key was quietly turned in the lock and the door opened.

Light shone in from a little sitting-room; Fleurette could see one end of it from where she lay. A newspaper and some illustrated magazines were upon a table beside which an armchair was drawn up. Her nostrils were assailed by that stuffy smell which tells of a gas fire. A strange looking old woman came into the bedroom.

She was big and very fat. In the glimpse which Fleurette had of her face in the lamplight, before she crossed the threshold, she saw that this was a puffy, yellow, wrinkled face, decorated by wide rimmed spectacles. The woman wore a costume which might possibly have been that of a hospital nurse. In silence she stood just within the little room, looking down at Fleurette.

To her horror, Fleurette saw that the woman carried a hypodermic syringe in her hand.

“Are you asleep?” she whispered softly.

She spoke in English, but with a strange accent. There was something in the crouching attitude of this huge woman, and something in the tones of her voice so threatening and sinister, that Fleurette clenched her hands beneath the coverlet. She lay quite still.

“Ah hah!” the woman sighed, evidently satisfied.

She returned quietly to the outer room, closing and gently relocking the door.

Fleurette listened intently, and whilst she listened she was thinking hard.

Sounds of subdued movements came from the outer room:—the chinking of glass, that subdued popping sound which indicates that a gas fire has been turned off; then a click—and the streak of light beneath the door vanished. Soft footsteps, evidently the woman wore padded slippers, moved beyond the partition against which Fleurette’s bed was set. A door was closed.

Her guardian had gone to bed.

Controlling her impatience only by means of a great effort, Fleurette waited, her ear pressed to the wooden partition.

She could hear the woman moving about in what was evidently an adjoining bedroom, and at last came the creak of a bed, as the heavily built custodian retired. Finally, she heard the click of an extinguished electric light.

Fleurette got up quietly, and began to dress. It did not take her long, but she could find no hat and no shoes. But she found a pair of red bedroom slippers; these would serve her purpose. A handbag, her own, lay on the cheap dressing-table.

Its contents seemed to be undisturbed since she had laid it on the sofa berth in her cabin.

Dropping cigarette case and matches into the bag, Fleurette very quietly drew the curtains aside from the low square window.

It was latched, and the room, though cold, was stuffy. The latch was a difficult problem—it was a very old fitting, much worn and warped. Once, it emitted a terrifying squeak.

Fleurette stopped dead in her operations, and creeping across the room, applied her ear to the wooden partition.

Sonorous snores sounded from the adjoining bedroom.

She raised the window steadily but firmly. To her great surprise it made very little noise. She looked out and saw a neglected flower border immediately below. Then came a moss-grown, paved path leading on the right to a little pergola. This, in turn, communicated with a gate.

Fleurette dropped her bag on to the flower-bed, put on her slippers, and wriggled through the opening. It was not a particularly easy business, but Fleurette was fit and very athletic. She knew that her hands were filthy dirty and her feet muddy, when at last she stood outside; but these things did not matter.

Picking up her bag, she walked quickly around to the gate, opened it, and found herself in a narrow, hedge-bordered lane.

An oak tree overhung it a few paces back on the left—there were other dark buildings ahead. But in none of them did any light show. She looked around her eagerly, sniffing the cold night air, then climbed the opposite bank and saw that where the ground fell away, there were farm buildings, beyond, backed by trees, and beyond these trees, evidently several miles beyond, a searchlight moved regularly. This, she decided, was an aerodrome.

It was utterly, horribly, mysterious, for she should have been far out in the Mediterranean, whereas the very scent of the air told her that she was in England!

In one direction, the lane terminated, beyond the cottage from which she had come, at a gate, with a stile. She decided to proceed the other way. The lane was very roughly paved;

and now, banks of cloud suddenly obscured the moon.

She was forced to walk slowly, for trees overhung the way and it was very dark. She passed two other buildings lying back from the lane on her right, but they showed no signs of life and she pressed on. She came to a wider lane, much better paved, hesitated whether to turn left or right, and finally decided upon right.

From the position of the moon and the darkness in the houses she passed (and these were few,) she realized that it must be late at night, how late, she could only guess.

On the corner of the second lane there was a large house surrounded by a high brick wall; also a post box and an electric lamp standard.

She pulled up, breathing quickly. She had reached a main road.

The lodge of some large residence directly faced her; but, whilst she had been hurrying along, she had been thinking clearly. She heard the sound made by the approach of a heavy vehicle; and presently came the glare of its headlights.

A green motor bus pulled up directly by the lodge gates.

There were very few passengers, but she saw that at least two were alighting. She raced across.

In the light of the standard lamp she read upon the side of the bus: “Reigate—Sutton—London”.

She sprang on to the step, the vehicle restarted. The conductor helped her on board.

“Are you going to London?” she asked, breathlessly.

“Yes, miss. This is the last bus.”

CHAPTER

42

NAYLAND SMITH REFUSES

In the depths below Sam Pak’s the furnace roared hungrily.

Sterling groped his way back through imaginary horrors to the real and greater horror of his actual surroundings.

If he had ever doubted, he knew now what his end was to be. He believed that he was no greater coward than the average man, but just as life with Fleurette had beckoned to him so sweetly, it must end. And what an end!

“Are you all right?” came a shaky whisper from the darkness.

It was Sergeant Murphy.

“Yes, thank you, Sergeant.”

“We’re in hell before our time, sir.”

Sterling tried to control his nerves, to concentrate upon one thing to the exiusion of all others. He must not give this fiendish maniac the satisfaction of seeing him quail. If a woman could meet death as Fah Lo Suee had met it, then— by heaven!—it was up to the Middle West to show its mettle!

“Sir Denis Nayland Smith.” The tones of that implacable voice fell upon Sterling like a cold douche.

“The hour of our parting has come.”

There was a pause; a guttural order.

The sound of a groan from the darkness where Nayland Smith lay, completed the horror of the scene. It was a groan of defeat, of bitter humiliation; then:

“Dr. Fu Manchu,” came Smith’s voice, and—to Sterling it seemed a miracle—its tone was steady, “order your human baboon to untie my ankles. I prefer to walk to death rather than to be carried. This, I think, I am entitled to ask.”

Another order was spoken rapidly. There was a faint scuffling sound—and Nayland Smith walked into the circle of light before the furnace door.

“Oh, my God!” Murphy whispered. “What are they doing up there. Why don’t they break through?”

The Burmese executioner followed Sir Denis out of the shadows, and stood at his elbow.

“Because in your long battle with me, Sir Denis,” Dr. Fu Manchu continued, stressing now a note of insane exaltation, “you have always observed those rules of clean warfare which, rightly or wrongly, are an English tradition, I respect you. I, too, have traditions to which I have always adhered.”

Nayland Smith, his hands behind him, stared up into the darkness which concealed the speaker.

“I bear you no personal animosity; indeed, I admire you. I have won—although my triumph may have come too late;

and, therefore, Sir Denis, I offer you the Lotus Gate of escape.”

“I thank you, but I decline.”

Sterling struggled on to his elbow, watching, and listening.

“He’s playing for time, Murphy! Can’t we do anything to help him?”

“What can we do?”

“You prefer the sword? The end of the common criminal?”

“I decline that also, if I have any choice.”

“You reduce me——” there was repressed frenzy now in the tones of Dr. Fu Manchu—”to the third alternative of ... the fire.”

There followed a moment of silence which Sterling knew that if he lived, he should never forget. Nayland Smith stood in the circle of light, motionless, looking upward. Beside Sterling, Murphy was breathing so heavily that he was almost panting in his suppressed emotion.

“Is there no other alternative?”

“None.”

An order was spoken—one sibilant word. The Burman sprang forward. . . .

CHAPTER 43

CATASTROPHE

Now events began to move rapidly to that astounding conclusion which, although it was the result of men’s combined efforts, seemed to Sergeant Murphy, a devout Roman Catholic who had begun to pray fervently, to be an intervention by a Higher Power.

Sir Denis Nayland Smith in the course of his long career as a police officer, had studied assiduously whenever the opportunity offered, those branches of practical criminology with which his work had brought him in contact, East and West. He was something of a physician, understanding poisons and antidotes. Lock combinations had no mysteries for him, and there were few locks he could not force if called upon to do so. Knot-tying in all its intricacies, as practised by the late Harry Houdini, he had studied in Rangoon, his professor being a Chinese malefactor who was a master of the art.

When the ape-like Burman had come to tie him up, Smith had recognized at a glance that physical resistance was out of the question. It would have called for three powerful men and trained wrestlers at that to deal with him. His peculiar development warned Smith that the man was an expert in the art ofju-jitsu, which, together with his herculean strength, set him in a class apart.

Fah Lo Suee had gone when the tying took place. Nayland Smith submitted, feigning weakness. When he saw the narrow twine that was to be used, he anticipated what was coming, and permitting the man to wrench his arms behind his back, he put into practice a trick whereby many illusionists have mystified their audiences; Chinese in origin, but long well-known to professional magicians of the West. The man tied his thumbs, as well as his wrists. By means of maintaining a certain muscular stress during this painful operation, the result, though satisfactory to Dr. Fu Manchu’s private executioner, was also acceptable to Nayland Smith.

The latter knew that he could withdraw his hands at any moment convenient to him!

The lashings of his ankles was a different matter. Here, he knew himself to be helpless, and recognized expert handiwork.

He had preceded Alan Sterling down the stairs of the shaft, slung sackwise across one incredible shoulder of the Burmese killer . . .

Now, as he stood, his arms apparently tied behind him, but his ankles unlashed, staring up to where Dr. Fu Manchu sat veiled in darkness, he was actually a free man. He held the twine which had confined his wrists tightly clenched in his left hand.

He was calculating his chances—tensing himself for what he must do.

With the exception of his automatic, his personal possessions had not been disturbed; these included a pocket knife. He had opened its most serviceable blade, and held it now concealed in his right hand. He knew but one mode of attack calculated to give him the slightest chance against his scarcely human enemy.

If it failed, his fate could be no worse.

It was not a type of combat which he favoured; but having watched this man performing his ghastly work, he found that his scruples had fled.

As the harsh command was spoken and the monstrous Burman stepped forward, Nayland Smith sprang away, turned—and kicked with all the speed and accuracy of his Rugby forward days! He put every ounce of power in his long, lean body into that murderous kick . . .

The man uttered a roar not unlike the booming of a wounded gorilla—a creature he closely resembled—doubled up, staggered . . . and fell.

A shrill order, maniacal in its ferocity, came out of the darkness above. It was Dr. Fu Manchu speaking in Chinese. The order was:

“Shoot him!—shoot him!”

Smith ducked and darted out of the radius of light into the surrounding shadow where Sterling and Murphy lay. He almost fell over Sterling.

“Quick, quick!” he panted—”your wrists.”

“I’m crocked; don’t count on me. Untie Murphy.”

But Smith cut the twine from Sterling’s wrists and ankles.

“Stay where you are until I give the word.”

He bent over Sergeant Murphy.

“Ankles first. . . now wrists.”

“Thank God!” cried the detective. “At least we’ll die fighting!”

There was a flash in the darkness and a bullet spat on the floor close beside the speaker.

“Can you walk, Sterling?”

“Yes.”

A second shot, and a second bullet whistled by Nayland Smith’s ear. The voice of Dr. Fu Manchu, high-pitched and dreadful, came again, still speaking in Chinese.

“The lights, the lights!” he screamed.

Detective-sergeant Murphy, not too sure of cramped muscles, nevertheless set out through the darkness in the direction from which those stabs of flame had come.

Light suddenly illuminated the pit...

Dr. Fu Manchu stood upon the stairs, his clenched fists raised above his head, his face that of one possessed by devils. A wave of madness, blood lust, the ecstasy of sweeping his enemies from his path, ruled him. That great brain rocked upon its aged throne.

Murphy saw a Chinaman stripped to the waist not two paces from him. The man held an automatic: the sudden light had dazed him. Murphy sprang, struck, and fell on top of the gunman, holding down the hand which held the pistol. A second Asiatic, similarly armed, was running forward from the foot of the stairs. The Burmese strangler writhed on the floor before the furnace.

“Kill them! Kill them!” cried the maniacal voice.

Nayland Smith raced forward and threw himself down beside the struggling men—just as another shot cracked out.

The bullet grazed Murphy’s shoulder.

He inhaled sibilantly, but hung on to the Chinaman. Smith wrenched the weapon from the man’s grasp. He pulled the trigger as he released it, but the bullet went wide—registering with a dull thud upon some iron girder far up the shaft.

The second Chinaman dropped to his knee, took careful aim, and fired again. But he pulled the trigger a decimal point too late.

Nayland Smith had shot him squarely between the eyes.

Dr. Fu Manchu’s mania dropped from him like a scarlet cloak discarded. His face became again that composed, satan-ic mask which concealed alike his genius and his cruelty. He descended three steps.

The place was plunged in darkness.

Fiery gleams from chinks in the furnace door pierced the gloom; one like an abler spear struck upon the contorted face of the Burman, lying now apparently unconscious where he had fallen.

Then came the catastrophe.

A booming explosion shook the place, echoing awesomely from wall to wall of the pit.

“My God!” cried Murphy, grasping his wounded shoulder, “what’s that?”

The words were no sooner uttered than, heralded by a terrifying roar, a cataract of water came crashing down the shaft.

“The river’s broken through!” cried Sterling.

Above the crash and roar of falling water:

“Head for the stair!” shouted Nayland Smith. “All head for the stair!”

CHAPTER 44

AT SCOTLAND YARD

The commissioner of Metropolitan Police stood up as Dr. Petrie was shown into his room at New Scotland Yard.

The Commissioner was a very big man with an amiable and slightly bewildered manner. His room was a miracle of neatness; its hundred and one official appointments each in its correct place. A bowl of violets on his large writing desk struck an unexpected note, but even the violets were neatly arranged. The Commissioner, during a distinguished Army career, had displayed symptoms of something approaching genius as an organizer and administrator. If he lacked anything which the Chief of the Metropolitan Police should possess, it was imagination.

“I’m glad to meet you, Dr. Petrie” he said extending a very large hand. “I know and admire your work and I understand why you asked to see me tonight.”

“Thank you,” said Petrie. “It was good of you to spare me the time. May I ask for the latest news?”

He dropped into an armchair which the Commissioner indicated, and stared at the latter, curiously. He knew that his words had not been prompted by courtesy. In matters of exact information, the man’s brain had the absorbing power of a sponge—and he had the memory of an elephant.

“I was about to call for the last report, Dr. Petrie. Normally, I am not here at this hour. It is the Fu Manchu case which has detained me. Excuse me a moment—I thoroughly understand your anxiety.”

He took up one of the several telephones upon the large desk, and:

“Faversham,” he said, “bring the latest details of the Fu Manchu case to my room.”

He replaced the receiver and turned to Dr. Petrie.

“I am naturally in a state of intense anxiety about my daughter,” said Petrie. “But first, tell me—where is Nayland Smith?”

The Commissioner pulled at his moustache and stared down at the blotting-pad before him; then: “The last report I had left some little doubt upon that point,” he replied, finally, fixing penetrating blue eyes upon the visitor. “As to your daughter, Dr. Petrie, in the opinion of Sir Denis she is somewhere in London.” He paused, picking a drooping violet from the bowl between a large finger and thumb, snipping off a piece of the stem and replacing it carefully in water. “The theory of the means by which she was brought here is one I do not share—it is too utterly fantastic—; but Sir Denis’s record shows that in the past——” he frowned in a puzzled way— “he has accomplished much. At the moment, as you may know, he is very highly empowered;

in fact——” he smiled, and it was a kindly smile, “in a way— in regard to this case, I mean he is, in a sense, my senior.”

The Commissioner’s weakness for parentheses was somewhat bewildering, but Petrie, who grasped his meaning, merely nodded.

“I am very anxious about Sir Denis at the moment,” the Commissioner added.

There was a rap on the door, and in response to a gruff “Come in,” a youngish man entered, immaculately turned out in morning dress; a somewhat unexpected apparition so long after midnight. He carried a cardboard folder under his arm.

“This is Wing Commander Faversham,” the Commissioner explained, staring vaguely at the newcomer, as though he had only just recognized him. “Dr. Petrie’s name will be familiar to you, Faversham. This is Dr. Petrie.”

Faversham bowed formally, and laid the folder open upon the table. Although the Commissioner’s manner seemed to invite familiarity, it was a curious fact that none of his subordinates ever accepted that illusive lead.

“Ah!” said the Commissioner, and adjusting spectacles, bent and read.

“This brings us up to date, Dr. Petrie,” he said in a few moments, looking up and removing his glasses. “Sir Denis, and Detective-sergeant Murphy—attached to the Criminal Investigation Department—visited a restaurant in Lime-house to-night, posing as sailormen. Sir Denis——” he added, in parentheses,—”has a gift for make-up. For my own part I don’t believe in disguise at any time or in any circumstances. However—Chief detective-inspector Gallaho, one of the best men we have here—you agree with me, Faversham?—”

“Absolutely, sir.”

“Chief detective-inspector Gallaho was in charge of raiding operations, assisted by . . .” there was a momentary pause, but the wonderful,memory functioned . . . “Inspector Forester of the River Police branch.”

“So I understand,” said Petrie eagerly, “but what happened?”

“The agreed signal was given,” said the Commissioner, slowly, “and the party entered the premises. But the suspects had slipped into some underground cellar, and I regret to say—for no such report has ever reached me—that an iron door was encountered.”

“An iron door?”

“I was notified by Detective-sergeant Trench, at——” he readjusted his glasses and turned over a page in the folder— “11.49 p.m. Detective-sergeant Trench,” he added, laying his glasses upon the blotting-pad, “is attached to the Flying Squad—that Gallaho was proceeding to the Kinloch Works in Silvertown in order to secure expert advice upon the forcing by explosives of this iron door, or of the wall adjoining it.”

“You will notice, sir,” said Faversham coughing respectfully, “that a party with chemical equipment according to your instructions, left at 12.15.”

The Commissioner nodded.

“I have noted this,” he replied. “The latest news, then, Dr. Petrie——” he fixed his rather tired looking blue eyes upon the latter—”is this: Sir Denis Nayland Smith, presumably accompanied by Detective-sergeant Murphy is, we must assume, a prisoner in the cellars of this place; and according to a report received not more than ten minutes ago, from Chief detective-inspector Gallaho, experts from the explosive works were about to blast a way through the concrete wall, adjoining the iron door. The party to which wing Commander Faversham refers had not then arrived.”

He paused, folded up his spectacles and placed them in a green leather case.

“I am strongly disposed,” he said, slowly, “since this is a case of major importance, to proceed to Limehouse myself;

unless definite news is received within the next five minutes. Should you care to accompany me, Dr. Petrie?”

CHAPTER 45

THE MATCH SELLER

Fey stared reflectively down from the bay window to where beyond the misty Embankment, the Thames flowed. A small steamer was passing, and Fey found himself calculating how long a time must elapse before that steamer would be traversing Limehouse Reach.

To-night, he was assured, his monotonous duty was also a useless duty. These yellow devils knew that Sir Denis was in Limehouse, but stoically Fey continued to smoke the large briar, and to walk up and down in accordance with orders. Dr. Petrie had set out for Scotland Yard not long before. It was trying, even to so patient a man, to stand so near the edge of the arena and yet be unable to see what was going on.

Fey was worried.

He had not said anything to the doctor, but through glasses from a darkened bedroom window, he had been studying an old match seller whose place of business on the Embankment almost immediately faced these flats.

Sir Denis, before leaving on that mysterious affair which still occupied him, had told Fey to watch this man and to note what he did. The man did nothing for five minutes or so, merely remaining seated against the parapet. Then he stood up.

Since Fey had assumed him to be a cripple, this was a surprise. But almost immeditately, the match vendor sat down again.

Fey continued to watch.

One of those derelicts who haunt this riverside thoroughfare came shuffling along, paused for a moment, talking to the man seated on the pavement, and then retraced his steps.

Fey had been wondering, right up to the time of Dr. Petrie’s arrival, if this had been a mere coincidence, or if it had been a signal to a second watcher that there was something to report. For the entrance to the mansions was visible from that point, and Fey was disposed to believe that Sir Denis, in spite of his disguise, had been recognized as he went out that way, and that the news of his departure had been passed on.

His theory was confirmed shortly after Dr. Petrie’s departure.

At about the time that the doctor would have been walking down the steps, the match seller stood up again . . . and again the derelict shuffled along, spoke to him and disappeared.

The match seller was in his usual position again, now, but Fey from time to time slipped into the adjoining room and inspected him through binoculars. Had orders not forbidden it he would have slipped out and had a closer look at this suspicious character. However, he had discovered something.

The apartment was under close observation—and to-night the enemy was aware that Sir Denis was not at home; aware, furthermore, that Dr. Petrie had been and had gone . . .

Dimly Fey detected the sound made by the opening of the lift gate, and knew from experience that someone was alighting on that floor. He stood still for a moment listening.

The door bell rang.

He went out into the lobby, placing his pipe in an ashtray on a side table, and opened the door.

Fleurette Petrie stood there, her hair wind-blown, her face pale!

He observed that she wore a walking suit with the strange accompaniment of red bedroom slippers. They were combing the slums of Asiatic Limehouse for her, and here she was!

Fey’s heart leapt. But his face betrayed no evidence of his Joy.

“Oh Fey!” she exclaimed, “thank heaven I have got here!”

“Very pleased to see you, Miss,” said Fey composedly.

He stood aside as she entered, noiselessly closing the door. Her excitement, intense but repressed, communicated itself to him. Its effect was to impose upon him an almost supernatural calm.

“Is Sir Denis in, Fey?”

“No, Miss. But your father was here less than twenty minutes ago.”

“What!”

Fleurette seized Fey’s arm.

“My father! Oh, Fey, were has he gone? He must be in a frightful state of mind about me. And of course, you had no news for him.”

“Very little, but I tried to reassure him.”

“But where has he gone, Fey?”

“He rang up the Commissioner, Miss, and then went across to interview him.”

“He may still be there. Could you possibly get through for me, Fey?”

“Certainly. I was about to suggest it. But can I get you anything?”

“No, Fey, thank you. I am so anxious to speak to my father.”

Fey bowed and went out into the lobby. Fleurette, tingling with excitement, crossed the room and stared out of the bay window down at the misty Embankment. She retraced her steps, and stood by the lobby door, too anxious even to await Fey’s report. He had just got through to Scotland Yard, and:

“Sir Denis Nayland Smith’s man speaking,” he said. “Would you please put me through to the Commissioner’s office?”

There was an interval which Fleurette found barely endurable, then:

“Yes, sir. Sir Denis Nayland Smith’s man speaking. Dr. Petrie left here recently to call upon the Commissioner, and I have something urgent to report to him.”

“Bad luck,” said a voice at the other end of the wire; it belonged to Faversham, the immaculate private secretary. “Dr Petrie and the Commissioner proceeded to Limehouse not more than five minutes ago.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Thank you, sir.”

“What is it?” Fleurette whispered. “Isn’t he there?”

“Just gone out with the Commissioner. But excuse me a moment——” He spoke into the mouthpiece again. “Would it be possible, sir, to reach them at their destination?”

“Yes,” Faversham replied. “It’s some kind of store. I’ll instruct the people downstairs to get in touch with the officer in charge. Do you wish him to give Dr. Petrie any particular message?”

“Yes, if you don’t mind, sir,” he replied. “Tell Dr. Petrie that his daughter has returned.”

“What!” Faversham exclaimed. “Are you sure? Where is she?”

“She’s here, sir.”

“Good God! I’ll get through immediately; this is splendid news!”

“Thank you, sir.”

Fey replaced the receiver, and came out of the lobby.

“Excuse me one moment, Miss,” he said.

He went into the adjoining room and focussed his glasses upon that spot far below where the itinerant match vendor plied his trade.

The man was standing up—and at the very moment that Fey focussed upon him, he sat down again!

Fey placed the glasses on the table, and returned to the sitting-room.

Fleurette had thrown herself into an armchair and was lighting a cigarette. She felt that she needed something to steady her nerves. The mystery of that hiatus between her parting from Alan on the steamer and her awakening in that little Surrey cottage, was terrifying.

“Excuse me, Miss,” said Fey. “But did you by any chance go to the window a moment ago? I mean, just as I went out to the telephone?”

“Yes.” Fleurette nodded. “I did. I remember staring down at the Embankment, thinking how desolate it looked.”

Fey nodded.

“Why do you ask, Fey?”

“I was only wondering. You see I am sort of responsible for you.”

Very thoughtfully, but to Fleurette’s great amazement he went out into the lobby, took up a large briar pipe, lighted it, and began with an abstracted air to walk up and down the room. Astonishment silenced her for a moment, and then:

“Fey!” she exclaimed. “Are you mad?”

Fey took the pipe from between his teeth, and: “Sir Denis’s orders, Miss,” he explained.

CHAPTER

46

GALLAHO EXPLORES

A stifled boom of an explosion snapped the tension which had prevailed in Sam Pak’s shop from the moment that the man from Kinloch’s had finally been satisfied about the position of the charge, to that when, up there on street level, he had pressed the button.

The time occupied in these methodical preparations had driven Gallaho to the verge of lunacy, and now:

“Come on!” he shouted, making for the head of a descending stairway concealed behind the curtain at the end of the bar. “There’s been time for a hundred murders. Let’s hope we’re not too late!”

The stairway led to a kitchen in which was the ingenious door which in turn communicated with that long underground corridor. The masked door was open now and a length of cable lay along the passage.

“Wait for the fumes to clear,” came a voice from behind.

“Fumes be damned!” growled Gallaho; then: “Hell! What’s that?”

A black jagged hole appeared in the wall beside the iron door. A bluish acrid vapour showed in the torch-light But at the moment that the party led by Gallaho entered the passage-way, there came from somewhere beyond the iron door a rending crash as if a battering ram had been driven through concrete.

Now, hard upon it, followed an awful sound of rushing waters echoing, roaring down into some unsuspected depth!

Part of the wall above and to the right of the gap collapsed, and water began to spray out into the passage ....

“I was afraid of this—did I not warn you?” The voice was Schumann’s. “This place is below the tidal level. It is the Thames breaking in!”

“God help them!” groaned Trench, “if they’re down there!”

Ignoring the vapour and the drenching spray, Galllaho, shining the ray of his torch ahead, ducked, and peered through the jagged opening.

“Be careful! The whole place may collapse!”

The spectacle before the detective was an awe-inspiring one. Within a foot of his right hand, a smooth torrent of yellowish water poured out of some unseen gap, crashed upon a dim structure of wood and iron beneath, and from thence leapt out into the darkness of an incredible pit.

His iron nerve was momentarily shaken.

The depth indicated by the tumult of that falling water staggered him. Trench entered behind Gallaho.

“Stand clear of the water!” the latter bellowed in his ear. “It would sweep you off like a fly!”

He shone the powerful light downwards. There were wooden stairs in an iron framework. The torrent was breaking upon the first platform below, and thence descending, a great, shimmering, yellow coil, to unknown depths. Others were pushing through, but:

“Stand back!” Gallaho shouted. “There’s no more room between the water and the edge!”

Trench pressed his lips to Gallaho’s ear.

“This must be the shaft leading down to the tunnel.” He yelled. “But no one could pass that platform where the water is falling.”

Gallaho turned and pushed the speaker back through the opening into the passage. Startled faces watched them climbing through.

“Forester!” he cried. “Up to the room in the wooden outbuilding. We want all the rope and all the ladder you have!”

“Right!” said Forester, whose usually fresh colouring had quite deserted him, and set off at a run.

Gallaho turned to Trench.

“Did you notice the heat coming up from that place?”

Trench nodded, moistening his dry lips.

“And the smell?”

“I don’t like to think about the smell, Inspector,” he said unsteadily.

At which moment:

“Inspector Gallaho!” came a cry, “you’re wanted on the telephone upstairs.”

“What’s this?” growled Gallaho and ran off.

It was possible to make oneself heard in the corridor, and: “I believe that place leads down to hell,” said Trench. “If so it will run the Thames dry.”

“What’s the inspector’s idea about a rope ladder, Sergeant?”

“I don’t know, unless he thinks he can swing clear of the waterfall to a lower platform. He’s a braver man than I am if he is going to try it.”

There were muttered questions and doubtful answers; fearful glances cast upward at the roof of the passage. Schumann and the works manager had gone out and around to the river front, to endeavour to locate the spot at which the water was entering the cellars.

And now, came Merton, the exA.B. trailing a long rope ladder. As he reached the passage way he pulled up, brushing perspiration from his eyes, and:

“Here I say!” he exclaimed, staring at the spray-masked gap beside the iron door. “I’m not going in there for anybody!”

“You haven’t been asked to,” came Gallaho’s growling voice.

All turned as the detective-inspector came along the dimly lighted passage with his curious, lurching walk.

“Any news?” Trench asked.

“The Old Man’s on his way down.” (The Old Man referred to was the Commissioner of Police.) Dr. Petrie’s with him— the girl’s father.”

“Whew!” whistled Trench.

“The queer thing is, though, that the girl’s turned up.”

“What!”

“She’s at Sir Denis’s flat; they had the report at the Yard only a few minutes ago.”

He divested himself of his tightly fitting blue overcoat, and, turning to Merton:

“I want you to come through there with me,” he said, “because you understand knots and ropes, and I can rely on you. I want you to lash that ladder where I’ll show you to lash it.”

“But I say, Gallaho!” Forester exclaimed . . .

“Unless, of course,” said Gallaho ironically, “you consider, Inspector Forester, that this properly belongs to your province.”

CHAPTER 47

THE WATERSPOUT

Sterling groped his way through darkness in the direction of the foot of the stairs. The roar of falling water was deafening. At one point he was drenched in spray, and hesitated. A small ray shone through the gloom, higherto unbroken except for stabs of yellowish light through chinks in the furnace door. He turned sharply, aware from the pain in his chest that he was fit for little more.

The light came nearer and a grip fastened upon his arm. Close to his ear:

“Around this way—we can’t reach the steps direct.”

The voice was Nayland Smith’s.

A pocket-torch had been amongst the latter’s equipment, and now it was invaluable. Using it sparingly, Nayland Smith indicated the edge of a great column of water which was pouring down into the pit, so that anywhere within ten feet of it one was drenched in the spray of its fall. A rushing stream was pouring down the tunnel, the entrance to which they were now passing.

Even as Sterling, horrified as he had never been in his life, stared along that whispering gallery, a distant lantern went out, swept away by the torrent.

Then they turned left; and, stumbling onwards, presently Sterling saw the foot of the wooden steps. But Dr. Fu Manchu was not there.

His lips close to Sterling’s ear:

“It’s only a matter of minutes,” shouted Nayland Smith, “before the water reaches that ghastly furnace. Then ... we’re done!”

Spray drenched them—a sort of mist was rising. The booming of the water was awful. Sterling had been along those rock galleries cut beneath Niagara Falls: he was reminded of them now. This was a rivulet compared with the mighty Horseshoe Fall; but, descending from so great a height and crashing upon concrete so near to where they stood, the effect was at least as dreadful.

Into the inadequate light, penetrating spray and mist, of Nayland Smith’s pocket torch there stumbled a strange figure—a drenched, half-drowned figure moving his arms blindly as he groped forward.

It was Murphy!

Suddenly, he saw the light, and sweeping his wet hair back from his forehead, he showed for a moment a white bloodstained face in the ray of the torch.

From that white mask his eyes glared out almost madly.

Nayland Smith turned the light upon his own face, then stepping forward, grasped Murphy’s arm.

Far above, a dim light shone through the mist and spray. It revealed that horror-inspiring shaft with its rusty girders, and the skeleton staircase clinging to its walls: this, eerily, vaguely, as a dream within a dream. But it revealed something else:

That ever-increasing cataract descending from some unseen place, sprouted forth remorselessly from one of the upper platforms!

No human being could pass that point. . . .

Nayland Smith staring upward flashed the feeble light of his torch in a rather vain hope that it would be seen by those at the top of the shaft; for that at long last a raiding party had penetrated, he was convinced.

The light above became obscured in ever increasing mist; it disappeared altogether.

Much of that stair which zigzagged from side to side had remained mantled in impenetrable shadow during the few seconds that light had shone through at the head of the pit. If Fu Manchu and those of his servants who remained alive were on the stairs they were invisible.

To one memory Nayland Smith clung tenaciously.

Dr. Fu Manchu at the moment that his killings had been interrupted, had descended three steps and extinguished the lamps. Somewhere, hereabouts, there was a switch.

Suddenly, he came upon it, and reversed it.

There was no result.

The explosion had disconnected the current.

He glanced back ere beginning to climb. Water was creeping up to the first step. Spray and mist obstructed this view of the furnace. He wondered if the Burmese horror, to whom human life meant no more than wood to a circular saw, had triumphed over injury, or if he was doomed to be swallowed in that unnatural tide.

Smith started up the stairs.

He was planning for the imminent catastrophe, nor thinking any further ahead than the moment when the rising water should reach the furnace. He had placed the direction of the fall, and knew that except at one point where the waterspout came perilously near to the stairs, these were navigable to within one stage of the top.

Beyond that point, progress was impossible—and the volume of water was increasing minute by minute.

His feet were wet when he began to mount. The tunnel must be full, now, right to the dead end. It was only a question of time for this forgotten shaft to be filled to its brim.

Sterling was breathing heavily and Sergeant Murphy was giving him some assistance, when Nayland Smith caught up with them on the stairs.

He shouted in Sterling’s ear:

“Did that yellow swine crock you?”

Sterling grasped his arm and gripped it strongly, pressing his lips to the speaker’s ear.

“It’s only my wind,” he explained; “otherwise O.K.”

Smith who had momentarily snapped his torch on, snapped it off again, nursing the precious light. Fighting against the brain-damning clamour of falling water, he tried to estimate their chances.

He guessed that now the tunnel would be full. The flood would rise in the shaft at least a foot a minute. Failing inspiration on the part of the police, ultimate escape was problematical.

But he was thinking at the moment of that white hot furnace when steam was generated. That one point on the stairs almost touched by the waterspout was the only possible shelter. That an explosion there in the depths might wreck the entire shaft, was a possibility which one could not calculate.

Up they went, and up, until the spray cut off by an iron girder lashed them stingingly. Nayland Smith pressed the switch of his torch.

Sterling had sunk down upon the step—Murphy was supporting him. Smith bent to Murphy’s ear. “Stay where you are!” he shouted He groped his way upward.

CHAPTER 48

GALLAHO BRINGS UP THE REAR

“Is it fast?” shouted Gallaho.

“It’s fast,” Merton shouted back, “but you’re not going down there!”

Gallaho bent to Merton’s ear.

“Mind your own bloody business, my lad,” he roared. “If ever I want your advice I shall ask for it.”

Chief detective-inspector Gallaho climbed over the hand rail and began to descend the rope ladder, his bowler hat firmly screwed on to his bullet skull. Immediately, he was drenched to the skin.

Steam was rising from the shaft. The touch of the water was icy, numbing. But he knew that unless the ladder was too short he could reach a point of the staircase just below that ever-increasing cataract, and follow it down. He was a man with a clear-cut idea of what duty demanded.

The ladder proved to be of ample length. Gallaho gained the wooden steps, flashed his powerful torch, and saw that he stood near the waterfall thundering down into those unimaginable depths.

A faint light flickered far below.

Gallaho, his torch in his left hand, held well clear of his body, directed its ray towards that spot of light visible through the mist.

At first, what he saw was no more than a moving shadow, then it became concrete; and in the light, haggard, staggering, he saw Sir Denis Nayland Smith!

Gallaho ran down the intervening steps, and as the light showed more and more clearly the lean angular features, the detective saw the ghost of a smile break through their hag-gar dness.

An unfamiliar wave of emotion claimed him. He threw his arm around Sir Denis’s shoulder, and, shouting:

“Thank God I’ve found you, sir!” he said.

Smith bent to his ear.

“Good man!” he replied.

“The others sir?”

Nayland Smith indicated the steps below, and Gallaho lighting the way, the two began to descend. A sheet of water swept the point at which Smith had left Sterling and Sergeant Murphy.

Their situation had become untenable and they had mounted half-way up to the next platform. Smith’s chief worry was concerned with Sterling who was obviously in bad shape. But the sight of Gallaho afforded just that stimulus which he required. And the detective, throwing an arm around him to help him upwards, and recognizing that he was nearly spent, had an inspiration.

Bending close to his ear:

“Stick it, sir!” he shouted. ‘Your friend Miss Petrie is safe and well in Sir Denis’s flat!”

That stimulus was magical.

Nevertheless, the rope ladder, now nearly submerged in the ever widening waterspout, taxed Sterling to the limit. Murphy followed up behind. Merton, at the top, when collapse threatened, at the critical moment craned over and hauled Sterling to safety.

Nayland Smith came next—Gallaho truculently having claimed the right to bring up the rear.

He had earned that perilous honour.

The men in the brick passage-way broke into unorthodox cheers; nor did Forester check them.

“All out!” cried Nayland Smith. “Anything may happen when the furnace goes!”

The passage already was an inch deep in water, but they retreated along it, Gallaho and Nayland Smith last of the party.

They had reached the masked door in Sam Pak’s kitchen when the furnace exploded. Steam belched out of the corridor as from a huge exhaust. The ancient building shook.

Nayland Smith turned to Gallaho and very solemnly held out his hand.

CHAPTER 49

WAITING

“Nothing to report,” said Inspector Gallaho.

Nayland Smith nodded and glanced at Alan Sterling seated smoking in the armchair. It was the evening of the sixth day after the subterranean explosion in Chinatown, an explosion which had had several remarkable results.

The top of that forgotten pit leading down to the abandoned tunnel was actually covered, as later investigations showed, by the paved yard which adjoined Sam Pak’s restaurant. The ventilation shaft passed right through his premises; and there seemed to be a distinct possibility that the old house as well as the wooden superstructure, were actually part of the abandoned workings, modified and adapted to their later purpose.

A great crack had appeared in one wall of the restaurant. But no other visible damage appeared upon the surface.

Something resembling a phenomenal tide had disturbed Limehouse Reach that night, and was widely reported from crafts upon the river. The shaft with its horrible secrets was filled to within fifteen feet of the top.

Even allowing for secret getaways communicating with adjoining premises, it was reasonable to assume that neither Dr. Fu Manchu nor any of those attached to his service had escaped alive from the fire and flood.

A cordon had been thrown around the entire area with the cooperation of the River Police. Of old Sam Pak and the other Asiatics who had been in the Sailors’ Club, nothing had been seen. A house to house search in the yellow light of dawn satisfied Gallaho that they were not concealed in the neighbourhood. Nothing came of these researches to afford a clue to the mystery.

A guarded communication was issued to the newspapers under the Commissioner’s direction, to the effect that in forcing a way into suspected premises a buttress had collapsed and an old tunnel working been flooded by the river.

Fleet Street suspected that there was a wonderful story behind this communique, but the real story if ever discovered was never published.

Mrs. Sam Pak was let off with a fine and had been covered assiduously ever since. Her movements had afforded no clue to those who watched her. She accepted the disappearance of her aged husband as philosophically as she had accepted his presence. She was permitted to re-open the shop but not the Sailors’ Club.

Enquiries at Dovelands Cottage, Lower Kingswood, revealed the fact that the place belonged to a Mrs. Ryatt, who lived in Streatham and who used it in the summer but let it when possible during the winter months.

The place had been vacant for a long time, but had recently been leased by a gentleman whose address proved to be untraceable, for the convalescence of his daughter who had had a nervous breakdown. Mrs. Ryatt had actually visited the cottage on the evening that her new tenant entered into occupation, and reported that the daughter was an uncommonly pretty girl whose manner was very strange; and the nurse in charge was an elderly foreign woman of rather forbidding appearance.

She had been satisfied, however, of the respectability of her tenant and had returned to London.

No trace of the woman described by Mrs. Ryatt and by Fleurette could be found. . . .

Nayland Smith, tugging at the lobe of his ear, walked up and down the room. He glanced several times at a large clock upon the mantelpiece; then:

“I expected no news, Gallaho,” he said, rapidly. “Yet——”

“Surely you have no doubts left, sir?”

Sterling stared eagerly at Sir Denis, awaiting his reply.

“Fleurette’s manner disturbs me,” snapped the latter. “She seems to have inherited from her mother a sort of extra sense where Dr. Fu Manchu is concerned. It is no doubt due, in both cases, to the fact that he has subjected Fleurette—as he subjected Karamaneh—to hypnotic influences at various times.”

Sterling moved cautiously in the armchair. He was nursing an injured rib.

“In fact,” Smith went on, “I never feel entirely happy about her, when she is not here, actually under my own eyes.”

“Dr. Petrie, her father, is with her,” Gallaho growled.

“I agree, she could not be in better hands. It’s just an instinctive distrust.”

“Based upon her queer ideas, sir?” Gallaho went on in a puzzled way.

He had assumed his favourite pose, one elbow resting on the mantelpiece.

“Surely her manner is to be expected in one who has suffered the sort of things that she has suffered. I mean—” he hesitated, seeking for words—”it will naturally take some little time before she gets over the idea that her movements are controlled. Now that I know her history, I think she is simply wonderful.”

“You are right, Inspector,” said Sterling, warmly. “She is wonderful. If you or I had been through what Fleurette has been through I wager we should be stretcher cases.”

“You are probably right,” said Gallaho.

Nayland Smith, his back to the room, stood staring out of the window. He was thinking of the itinerant match seller, who beyond any shadow of doubt had been a spy of Dr. Fu Manchu. Fey’s report of what had happened down there on the Embankment on the night of the destruction of the Thames tunnel, frequently recurred to his mind, but the match seller—like the other mysterious servants of the Chinese doctor—had disappeared; all enquiries had failed to establish his identity.

He was said to have traded there for many years, but there was some difference of opinion on this point between constables patrolling that part of the Embankment. Nayland Smith was inclined to believe that the original vendor had been bought out, or driven out, and that an understudy made up to resemble him had taken his place.

Suddenly turning:

“Switch the lights up, Gallaho, if you don’t mind,” he said.

The lofty, homely room became brilliantly illuminated.

“Ah!” muttered Gallaho—”this will be the doctor and the young lady.”

The faint but familiar sound of the lift gate had arrested his attention. A moment later, Fey opened the outer door. The voice of Fleurette was heard—as she came running in, followed by Dr. Petrie.

She was very lovely, and ignoring Petrie’s frown, Sterling struggled to his feet.

“Please sit down, dear!” Fleurette pressed her hands on his shoulders. “No! you must rest.

“But I feel so rottenly guilty.”

“I know it’s a shame that this big darling has to come pottering around all the shops with me,” said Fleurette, laughingly. “But there are so many things I want before we leave for Egypt. The longer we stay the more I shall want! And I don’t believe he really minds.” She linked her arm in Petrie’s and leaned her head upon his shoulder. “Do you?”

“Mind?” he said, and hugged her. “It’s a joy to be with you, dear. And although Alan is temporarily crocked, it’s only right that you should get out sometimes, after all.”

“I suggest cocktails,” said Sir Denis, his good humour quite restored; and was about to press a bell when the ringing of a telephone in the lobby arrested him in the act.

“7 can make cocktails,” said Fleurette, gaily. “I’ll make you one none of you has ever tasted before, if you’ll just wait until I take my hat off.”

She ran out. Petrie watched her with gleaming eyes. This miraculous double of his beautiful wife had brought a new happiness into his life, keen as only a joy can be which one has relinquished for ever.

Fey rapped upon the door, and in response to Nayland Smith’s snappy “Come in,” entered.

“Yes, Fey, what is it?”

“There’s a P.C. Ireland on the telephone, sir; he says you know him—and he has something which he believes to be important to tell you.”

“Ireland?” Gallaho growled. “That’s the constable who was on duty at Professor Ambrose’s house on the night the business started.”

“A good man,” snapped Nayland Smith. “I marked him at the time.”

He went out to the lobby.

CHAPTER 50

THE NIGHT WATCHMAN

“Strangely like old times, Smith!”

Nayland Smith stared at Petrie. Gallaho, bowler worn at a rakish angle, sat on the seat before them in the Scotland Yard car.

This was one of those nondescript nights which marked the gradual dispersal of the phenomenal fog of 1934. There was a threat in the air that the monster might at any moment return. The car was speeding along beside a Common. Lamps gleamed yellowly where roads crossed it. One could see, through gaunt, unclothed trees, a distant highroad.

‘Yes,” Smith returned. “Some queer things have happened to us, Petrie, on that Common.”

“The queerest thing of all is happening now,” Petrie went on. “The inevitable cycle of it is almost appalling. Here we are, after all the years, back again in the same old spot.”

“Sir Denis pointed out to me this queer cycle, doctor, which seems to run through our lives,” Gallaho said, glancing back over his shoulder. “I’ve thought about it a lot since. And I can see, now that over and over again it crops up. I suppose Sir Denis has told you that we were actually in your old room early last week?”

“Yes,” said Petrie, and stared vaguely from the window.

There came a silent interval.

Sterling had been deposited in his apartment at a hotel in Northumberland Avenue. “You are under my orders, now,” Petrie had said, “and I don’t want you out on this foul night. I dislike that cough. Lie down when you have had something to eat. I shall of course come and see you when I return. . . .”

The doctor had been loath to leave his daughter at Sir Denis’s flat, where they were staying. But recognizing how keenly he wanted to go, Fleurette had insisted. “I have victimized you all the afternoon, dear; I think you deserve an hour off. I shall read until you come back. . . .”

“This may be a wild-goose chase,” growled Gallaho suddenly, “but on the other hand, it may not. We’ve got to remember the old bloke may have been drunk or he may have been barmy. . . .”

“From what Ireland told me,” said Nayland Smith, “I don’t think either of those possibilities calls for consideration. Hello! Isn’t this where we get out?”

The driver pulled up on a street corner and the three alighted.

This street, lined with small suburban houses, so characteristic of the outlying parts of London, vividly recalled to Petrie the days when he had practised in this very district, and when his patients had inhabited just such houses. There was a considerable stream of traffic and at some points beyond it seemed to be badly congested.

P.C. Ireland was standing in the shadow of a wall which lined the street for twenty yards or so on one side, bordering the garden of a large house situated upon a corner facing the Common.

“Ah, there you are, Constable,” Gallaho said gruffly.

“Good evening,” said Sir Denis. “All luck comes your way in this case, Constable.”

“Yes, sir. It looks like it.”

“Repeat,” Smith directed tersely, “in your own words, what you told me on the telephone.”

“Very good, sir.” The man paused for a moment; then:

“There’s some cable-laying job going on at the comer of the lane there which cuts across the Common; a big hole in the road and a lot of drain pipes stacked up. When the gang ceased work this evening, and the night watchman came on, I thought there was likely to be a jam with the traffic, and so I stepped across and asked him to put another red lamp on this side to show where drivers should pull out. That’s how I got into conversation with him, sir. He’s a bit of a character and he said—I’m sticking as nearly as possible to his own words—if all coppers were human, it might be better for some of them. I asked him what he meant by that; but when he told me the story, which I thought it was my duty to report to you——”

“You were quite right,” snapped Nayland Smith.

“——I called up the inspector, and he told me to stand-by as you suggested, sir; there’s another man on my beat.”

“We’ll get the rest of the story from the night watchman,” growled Gallaho.

“He’s no friend of the Force, Inspector,” Ireland nodded. “He might talk more if you said you were newspaper men.”

“Bright lad!” growled Gallaho. He turned to Sir Denis. “Will you do the talking, sir?”

Nayland Smith nodded.

“Leave it to me.”

The hole in the road with its parapets of gravel and wood blocks protected by an outer defence of red poles from which lanterns were suspended, was certainly obstructing the traffic. But at the moment that the party of three reached it, a temporary clearance had been effected, and the night watchman surveyed an empty street.

His quarters, a sort of tarpaulin cave constructed amidst a mass of large iron piping, housed a plank seat and some other mysterious items of furniture. A fire in a brazier glowed redly in the darkness, and added additional colour to that already possessed by the night watchman.

This peculiar character, who favoured a short grey beard but no moustache—his upper lip appearing to possess a blue tinge in contrast to the redness of his nose—wore the most dilapidated bowler hat which Nayland Smith had ever seen in his life, and this at an angle which startled even Inspector Gallaho. He also wore two overcoats; the outer garment being several inches shorter than the inner.

He was engaged at the moment upon the task of frying bacon in the square lid of a biscuit tin which he manipulated very adroitly with a pair of enormous pincers, obviously designed for some much less delicate task. He looked up as the three men paused, leaning on one of the red poles.

“Upon my word!” Nayland Smith exclaimed, importing a faint trace of Cockney into his accent. “You blokes do get about, don’t you?” He turned to Gallaho. “Funny I should see this chap here, to-night. Last week I saw him down in Limehouse.”

“Did you, now?” said the watchman, evidently much gratified. “I’ll say that’s funny; I’ll say more, I’ll say it’s bloody funny!”

He removed the biscuit tin skilfully, and tipped the rashers with their succulent fat on to a cracked enamel plate. He produced a knife and fork and a great chunk of bread. Standing up, he set a kettle on the fire, then sat down again, and, the plate on the plank beside him, began very composedly to eat his supper.

“Yes, it is funny,” Nayland Smith went on. “I was down there for my paper on the story of that raid in Chinatown. But all the suspects slipped away. It would be last Saturday night, wouldn’t it?”

“It would,” said the night watchman, his mouth full of hot bacon. “That would be the night.”

He dropped some tea into a tin pot, set it on the ground beside him, and continued stolidly to eat his bacon.

“A night wasted,” Nayland Smith mused aloud. “And what a night it was! What ho! The fog.”

“It certainly were foggy.”

“The blooming coppers had something up their sleeve; they kept it to themselves.”

“You’re right, mister.” He spat out a piece of bacon rind, picked it up, contemplated it critically and then threw it on the fire. “Coppers is a lousy lot!”

“Wish I’d stopped for a chat with you, that night, and a spot over the fire.” Nayland Smith leaned across the rail and passed a flask to the night watchman. “Slip a gill in your tea. I’m homeward bound with a couple of pals. I sha’n’t need it.”

“Blimey!” cried the night watchman, unscrewed the flask and sniffed the contents. “Thanks, mister. This is a bit of all right.”

“Those blasted chinks,” Sir Denis continued, “slipped out of that place as though they’d been dissolved,”

“How many, guv’nor?”

“Four, I think they were looking for.”

Mingled with the sound of whisky trickling into a tin mug, came a muted rumbling which examination of the face of the night watchman might have suggested to an observer to be due to suppressed mirth; then:

“You might have done worse than stop for a chat with me, guv’nor,” said the man, re-screwing the flask and returning it to Sir Denis.

CHAPTER 51

NIGHT WATCHMAN’S STORY

“It was this way with me,” the night watchman continued, endeavouring to chuckle and eat bacon at the same time, “as I told the young scab of a copper down there what come walkin’ by. He says ‘you’ve ‘ad one over the eight, haven’t you?’ he says. See what I mean, mister?”

“I know those young coppers,” snapped Nayland Smith, glancing at Gallaho. “They’ve got no sense.”

“Sense!” The night watchman made a strong brew of tea. “What I want to know is: how do they get into the Force? Answer me that: how do they get into the Force? Well, this bloke I’m tellin’ you about. . . .”

The dammed up stream of traffic was trickling slowly past the obstruction, under Constable Ireland’s direction. Things were going fairly well. But nevertheless it was difficult to hear the speaker, and Nayland Smith and Gallaho bent over the red barrier, listening intently. Petrie craned forward also, his hand resting on Gallaho’s shoulder.

“This bloke says to me,” the night watchman repeated, “‘ad one over the eight, haven’t you?” So I didn’t say no more to him, except, ‘Bloody bad luck to you if you ain’t’. That was what I said.”

With all the care of a pharmacist preparing a prescription, he added a portion of whisky from the tin cup to a brew of hot tea in a very cracked mug.

“I let him go—it’s silly talkin’ to coppers. He went away laughin’. But the laugh was mine, if I says so—but the laugh was mine! I’ll tell you what I told ‘im, mate—I told him what I see.”

He swallowed a portion of bread and bacon.

“You’re a newspaper man. Well, you’d have got your story all right, if you stopped, like you wanted to do, that night. What a story. Here it is. I work for a firm, if you follow what I mean; I ain’t a Council man—that’s why I travels so much. Very well. The same firm what done this job ‘ere was on the Limehouse job. . . .”

He added sugar and condensed milk from a tired looking tin to the brew in the mug, stirred it with a piece of wood and took an appreciative sip.

“Good ‘ealth, mister. Where I’m workin’ in Limehouse is on West India Dock Road and not far from the corner of the old Causeway. That’s where you see me, if I heard you right.”

“That’s it,” said Smith patiently; “ a grand fire you had.”

“I’d got some chestnuts,” chuckled the night watchman. “I remember as well as if it were an hour ago, and I’d roasted ‘em and I was eating ‘em. Did you notice me eating ‘em?”

“No, he didn’t,” growled Gallaho; “at least, he never told me he did.”

Nayland Smith grasped the speaker’s arm.

“Oh, didn’t he?” said the night watchman, lifting a tufted eyebrow in the direction of the detective.

“Well, I was. And through the fog there, what did I see? . . .”

He drank from the mug. Rain had begun to fall; the roar of the passing traffic rendered it necessary to bend far over the red pole in order to hear the man’s words. He set down his mug and stared truculently from face to face.

“I’m askin’ a bloody question,” he declared. “What did I see?”

“How the hell do I know, mate?” Gallaho shouted, in the true vernacular, his voice informed by suppressed irritation.

The night watchman chuckled. This was the sort of reaction he understood.

“Course you don’t know. That’s why I ask’ you ... I see a trap what belongs to the main sewer open from underneath. Get that? It just lifted—and first thing I thought was: an explosion! It wasn’t no further from me than”——he hesitated,—”that bus. It was lifted right off. There’s nobody about;

it’s the middle of the night. It was set down very quiet on the pavement, and what did I see then? . . .”

He took another sip from his mug; he had finished the bread and the bacon. Gallaho had sized up his witness, and:

“What did you see, mate?” he inquired.

“Here’s a story for the newspapers,” the watchman chuckled, as Nayland Smith reached across the barrier and offered him a cigarette from a yellow packet. “Thanks, mister—here’s a story!”

He succeeded in some mysterious way in lighting the cigarette from the fire in the brazier.

“A Chinaman popped up . . .”

“What!”

“You may well say ‘what’! But I’m tellin’ you. A Chinaman popped up out of the trap.”

“What kind of a Chinaman?”

Nayland Smith was the speaker, but in spite of his eagerness he had not forgotten to retain the accent.

“Looked like a Chinese sailor, as much as I could see of ‘im through the fog—not that there was a lot of fog at the time;

but there was some—there ‘ad been more. He took a look round. I sat quiet by my fire because, as I told that lousy cop what laughed at me, I thought for a minute I was dreamin’. Then he bent down and ‘elped another Chinese bloke to come up. The second Chinese bloke was old. He was an old Chinee, he were. . . .”

“What did he wear?” Smith inquired, pulling out a notebook and pencil, casually.

“Ho, ho!” chuckled the watchman. “I thought you’d want to make some notes. He wore a kind of overcoat and a tweed cap. But although I couldn’t see his face, I know it was a very funny face—very old and ‘aggard, and he were very tall——”

“Very tall?”

“That’s what I said—Very tall. Another bloke come up next——”

“Also a Chinaman?”

“Likewise Chinese, wearin’ a old jersey and trousers with his ‘ead bare. He bent back like the first bloke had done, and ‘auled up another Chinese——”

“Not another one,” growled Gallaho, acting up to the situation.

“Another one!” the watchman repeated truculently, fixing a ferocious glare upon the speaker, whom instinctively he disliked—”and another old ‘un—” challengingly, the glare unmoved from Gallaho—”and another old ‘un! . . .”

Nayland Smith was apparently making rapid notes; now:

“Was the other old one tall?” he inquired.

“He were not, he was just old.”

“Did you notice what he wore?”

“Listen ...” The night watchman puffed his cigarette and then stood up slowly—”you’re not suggestin’ I’m barmy, are you?”

“You bet I’m not,” snapped Nayland Smith cheerfully. “You’ve given me a grand paragraph.”

“Oh, I see. Well, he wore a seedy kind o’suit like I might wear, and an old soft hat.”

“What did they do?”

“The two younger chinks put the trap back and stamped it down. Then they all crossed the road behind my ‘ut, and that’s all I know about it.”

“Didn’t you see where they went?”

“Listen, mister . . .” The watchman sat down again on his plank seat, refilling his mug from the pot and adding the remainder of the whisky to its contents. “There was nobody about. I ain’t as young as I used to be. If you saw chinks—two of’em tough lookin’ specimens—come up put of a sewer ... see what I mean? Do you know what I done? I pretends to be fast asleep! And now, I’m goin’ to ask you a question. In the circs,—what would you ‘ave done?”

“That’s sense,” growled Gallaho.

“But you reported it to the constable on the beat when he came along?” said Nayland Smith.

“As you say, mister. And he not only give me the bird, he told me I was barmy or blind-oh. It’ll be a long time before I gives information to the bloody police again, whatever I sees—whatever I sees.”

CHAPTER

52

“I AM CALLING YOU”

Fleurette knew that Alan must not be out after dusk in this misty weather. He had developed an unpleasant cough as a result of the injuries he had received; but Fleurette had found a faith almost amounting to worship in the wisdom of Dr. Petrie, her father so newly discovered, but already deeply loved.

He had assured her that this distressing symptom would disappear when the lesion was healed.

She had not wanted Alan to go. Her love for him was a strange thing, impossible to analyse. It had come uncalled for, unwanted; she almost resented the way she felt about Alan.

The curious but meaningless peace of her previous life, her fatalistic acceptance of what she believed to be her destiny, had been broken by this love for Alan. He had represented storm; the discovery of her father had represented calm.

She knew, but nevertheless experienced no resentment of the fact, that she had been used as a pawn in the game of the brilliant man who had dominated her life from infancy. Even now, after her father and Sir Denis had opened her eyes, gently, but surely, to the truth—or what they believed to be the truth—about the Prince (for she always thought of him as the Prince) Fleurette remained uncertain.

Sir Denis was wonderful; and her father—her heart beat faster when she thought of her father—he, of course, was simply a darling. In some way which she could not analyse, her allegiance, she knew, was shared between her father and Alan. It was all very new and very confusing. It had not only changed her life; it had changed her mode of thought—her outlook—everything.

Curled up in the big armchair before the fire, Fleurette tried to adjust her perspective in regard to this new life which opened before her.

Was she a traitor to those who had reared her, so tenderly and so wonderfully, in breaking with the code which had almost become part of herself? Was she breaking with all that was true, and plunging into a false world? Her education, probably unique for a woman, had endowed her with a capacity for clear thinking. She knew that her thoughts of Alan Sterling were inspired by infatuation. Would her esteem for his character, although she believed it to be fine, make life worth while when infatuation was over?

In regard to her father, there was no doubt whatever. Her discovery of him had turned her world upside down. She resettled herself in the chair.

The Prince was fighting for her.

That strange hiatus in her life, about which the doctor had been so reticent, meant that he still had power to claim her. Now, they said he was dead.

It was unbelievable.

Fleurette found it impossible to grasp this idea that Dr. Fu Manchu was dead. She had accepted the fact—it had become part of her life—that one day he would dominate a world in which there would be no misunderstanding, no strife, no ugliness; nothing but beauty. To this great ideal she had consecrated herself, until Alan had come.

“Little Flower ... I am calling you!”

It was his voice—speaking in Chinese!

And Fleurette knew that ancient language as well as she knew French and English.

She sat bolt upright in the armchair. She was torn between two worlds. This normal, clean room, with its simple appointments, its neatness, its homeliness—the atmosphere which belonged to Sir Denis, that generous, boyish-hearted man who was her father’s trusty friend; and a queer, alluring philosophy, cloying, like the smoke of incense, which belonged to the world from which Nayland Smith had dragged her.

“Little Flower—I am calling you.”

Fleurette wrenched her gaze away from the fire.

In the burning logs, the face of Dr. Fu Manchu was forming. She sprang to her feet, and pressed a bell beside the mantelpiece.

There was a rap on the door.

“Come in.”

Fey entered. He brought Western reason, coolness, to her racing brain.

“You rang, miss?”

Fleurette spoke rather wildly; and Fey, although his manner did not betray the fact, was studying her with concern.

“You see, Fey, I arranged to wait dinner until my father and Sir Denis came back. As a matter of fact, I am rather hungry.”

“Quite, miss. Perhaps a little snack? Some caviar and a glass of wine?”

“Oh, no, Fey. Nothing quiet so fattening. But if you would get me just two tiny egg sandwiches with a layer of cress—you know what I mean—and perhaps, yes, a glass of wine . . .”

“Certainly, miss, in a moment.”

Fey went out.

Fleurette pulled the armchair around, so that she did not face the fire. It was a gesture—but a defensive one.

That voice—that voice which could not be denied—”Little Flower I am calling you”—had sounded, she knew, in her subconscious mind only. But because she knew this . . . she feared. If she had not known how this voice had reached her, she would have surrendered, and have been conquered. Because she did know, and was not prepared to surrender, she fought.

They thought he was dead . . He was not dead.

She heard Fey at the telephone giving terse orders. She was really hungry. This was not merely part of a formula designed to combat the subconscious call which had reached her; but it would help. She knew that if she wanted Alan, that if in future she wished to live in the same wholesome world to which her father belonged, she must fight—fight.

She wandered across to a bookshelf and began to inspect the books. One watching her would have said that she smiled almost tenderly. Nayland Smith’s books betrayed the real man.

Those works which were not technical were of a character to have delighted a schoolboy. Particularly Fleurette was intrigued by a hard-bitten copy of Tom Sawyer Abroad which had obviously been read and re-read. Despite his great brain and his formidable personality, what a simple soul he was at heart!

Fleurette began to read at random.

“. . . But I didn’t care much. I am peaceable and don’t get up no rows with people that ain’t doing nothing to me. I allowed if the paynims was satisfied I was. We would let it stand at that. . .”

She read other passages, wondering why her education had not included Mark Twain; recognizing by virtue of her training that the great humorist had also been one of the world’s great philosophers.

“Your sandwiches, miss.”

Fleurette started.

Fey was placing a tray upon a small table set beside the armchair. Removing the silver cover he revealed some delicately cut sandwiches. With a spoon and fork he adroitly placed two upon a plate, removed a half-bottle of wine from an ice-bucket, uncorked it and poured out a glassful.

He set down the glass beside the plate, adjusted the armchair in relation to the fire with careful consideration, bowed slightly, and went out.

The man was so efficient, so completely sane, that no better antidote could have been prescribed in Fleurette’s present mood. Mark Twain had begun the cure; Fey had completed it.

She began to eat egg sandwiches with great relish. She knew instinctively that the expedition upon which her father had gone to-night, with Sir Denis and that strange character, Inspector Gallaho, would result in the discovery of the fact that Dr. Fu Manchu had survived the catastrophe in the East End, of which she knew very little, for they had withheld details. She was disposed to believe that Gallaho, alone, had faith in the Prince’s death; her father’s manner betrayed doubt; Sir Denis had said nothing, but she divined the fact that until he saw Dr. Fu Manchu dead before him he would never believe that that great intellect had ceased to function.

Fleurette ate three sandwiches, drank a glass of wine, and, in a mood of contemplation, found herself staring again into the fire.

“Little Flower, I am calling you.”

His voice again!

She sprang up. She knew, for she had been trained to know, that no voice really had sounded in the room. It was her subconscious brain. But . . . this she knew also—it was real—it was urgent.

Already she began to see again that glamorous but meaningless life out of which she had climbed, assisted by Alan, as a swimmer clambers out of a tropical sea. She could see it in the fire. There were snow-capped mountains there, melting into palm groves, temples and crowded bazaar streets; a hot smell of decay and perfume—and now, all merged into two long, gleaming eyes.

She watched those eyes fascinatedly; bent closer, falling under their thraldom.

“Little Flower, I am calling. ...”

Her lips parted. She was about to speak in response to that imperious call, when a sound in the lobby snatched her back to the world of reality.

It was the ringing of the door bell.

Fleurette stood up again and walked towards the book case. She pulled out Tom Sawyer Abroad, which she had replaced, and opened it at random. She read, but the words did not register. She could hear Fey crossing the lobby and opening the front door of the apartment. She did not hear any word spoken.

She thought she detected a vague scuffling sound.

Fleurette replaced the book, and stood still, very near to the door communicating with the lobby, listening. The scuffling continued; then came a dull thud.

Silence.

A wave of apprehension swept over her, turning her cold.

“Fey!” she called, and again more urgently, “Fey!”

There was no reply.

She ran to the bell beside the mantlepiece, pushed it and actually heard it ringing. She stood still, hands clenched, watching the door.

No one came.

“Fey!” she called again, and heard with surprise the high note upon which she called.

The door opened. The lobby beyond was in darkness.

A tall man was coming in.

But it was not Fey. . . .

CHAPTER 53

POWERS OF DR. FU MANCHU

“I can’t make this out!” said Nayland Smith.

He, Dr. Petrie and Inspector Gallaho stood before the door of the apartment. Smith had rung twice and there had been no reply.

Smith stared hard at Petrie.

“You’ve got the key, sir, no doubt?” Gallaho growled.

“Yes.” Nayland Smith drew a bunch of keys from his trouser pocket. “I have the key, but I am wondering where Fey can have gone.”

They had called on Sterling, the invalid, in his room at the hotel near by, and they had broken the unpleasant news that unless Mr. Samuel Grimes (such was the night watchman’s name) suffered from a singular hallucination, it was almost certain that Dr. Fu Manchu was still alive.

Petrie had attended to his patient, who was of a type difficult to handle; and with a final drink upon which the doctor had frowned severely, they had come away .....

“Dinner for four at eight-thirty was my last order if I remember rightly,” said Nayland Smith. “It’s just possible, of course——” he placed the key in the lock—”that he may have gone down to the kitchen. But why doesn’t Fleurette answer?”

He turned the key and swung the door open.

“Hello!” Gallaho exclaimed, “what’s this?”

“My God!” groaned Petrie.

A heavy smell resembling that of mimosa swept out from the lobby to greet them, and . . . the lobby was in darkness!

Nayland Smith sprang forward, groped for the light, stumbled, and fell.

“Smith!”

Petrie rushed in behind him.

“All right!” came in the staccato fashion which characterized Nayland Smith in moments of tension. “I’ve fallen over . . . somebody.”

Inspector Gallaho switched on the light.

Sir Denis had jumped up. He was staring down, jaws clenched, at an insensible man who lay upon the carpet.

It was Fey.

Petrie raised his hand to his brow and groaned.

“Smith,” he said, in a strangled voice, “Smith! He has got her again!”

“Lend me a hand, Gallaho,” cried Nayland Smith, savagely. “We’ll get him on to the settee in the sitting-room.”

The door being thrown open by Petrie, it was warmly lighted. There was no one there.

Out from that lobby which reeked of mimosa, they carried the insensible man, and laid him upon the settee. He was breathing regularly, but heavily; otherwise, there was complete silence in Nayland Smith’s apartment.

“Can you do anything, Petrie? You know something about this damnable drug of the Doctor’s.”

“I can try,” said Petrie, quietly, and went out to the room which he occupied.

Sir Denis had accommodation for two guests, or, at a pinch, three. Dr. Petrie and his daughter were his guests now; and Fleurette . . . ?

Inspector Gallaho, who had forgotten to remove his bowler, removed it, not without difficulty, showing a red mark where it had been crushed down upon his bullet head.

“This is a hell of a go,” he growled, tossing his hat into an armchair. “It’s easy enough to see what’s happened, sir. This queer smell is one, I take it, you have met with before?”

“I have,” said Sir Denis, grimly.

A powerful anaesthetic?”

“Exactly.”

“Very well. Someone rang the bell, and the moment Fey opened the door, sprang on him with a pad saturated in this stuff—and the rest of the story tells itself.” He began to chew phantom gum. “She’s a lovely girl,” he added. “It’s enough to make a man burst!”

Dr. Petrie came in carrying a medicine case, and kneeling down, began to examine Fey. Gallaho went out into the lobby.

“The smell of this stuff makes my head swim,” he growled.

He was looking for something which might give a clue to the identity ofFey’s assailant. Nayland Smith, tugging at the lobe of his ear, was walking up and down before the open fire, watching Petrie at work; afraid to say what he thought, but suffering much of the agony of mind which he knew his old friend to be experiencing at this moment.

Some sandwiches and part of a bottle of champagne were on a table beside an armchair.

There came a strange interruption.

Someone who had a fresh, mezzo-soprano voice, began to sing very quietly in an adjoining room!

She sang in French, and one would have said that the singer was happy.

Dr. Petrie came to his feet at a bound.

“Good God, Smith!” He grasped Sir Denis’s arm—”that’s Fleurette!”

Gallaho came running in from the lobby.

“The young lady’s in the flat, sir! What the devil does it mean?”

The song was interrupted from time to time, suggesting that the singer was moving about engaged upon some pleasant task, and singing from sheer lightness of heart. Under Dr. Petrie’s tan it was yet possible to detect how pale he had grown.

“I’ll go, Smith,” he said.

He crossed the lobby, entered a short passage and threw a door open; Sir Denis was close behind him.

Fleurette, dressed as they had left her, was amusing herself with hats and frocks and stockings strewn all over the room, and singing lightly from time to time. She was smoking a cigarette.

“Fleurette, darling!” cried Petrie. “Thank God you are safe. Surely you heard us come in?”

Fleurette turned, a cigarette between her fingers, tossing a little green hat on to the coverlet of the bed, and staring in a vaguely puzzled way at the speaker.

There was no recognition in her eyes.

“I am waiting to be called,” she said; “I may have to leave at any moment. Please let me get on with my packing.”

“Fleurette!” Her father stepped forward and grasped her shoulders. “Fleurette! Look at me. What has happened here to-night?”

Fleurette smiled at him as she might have smiled at a perfect stranger; then looked past him with a puzzled frown to where Nayland Smith stood in the open doorway, his face very grim, and his eyes gleaming.

“Nothing has happened,” she replied. “I don’t know you, but it is very kind of you to ask. May I please go on with my packing?”

“She’s hysterical,” came a growling voice beyond Sir Denis. “Something that has happened here to-night has unbalanced her.”

It was Gallaho.

Nayland Smith exchanged a rapid glance with Dr. Petrie. Petrie, his expression indicating that he was exercising a tremendous effort of control, shook his head. He released Fleurette and forced a smile.

“By all means go on, dear,” he said. “Let me know if you want anything.”

Fleurette looked up at him questioningly.

“You are so nice,” she said. “I’m glad you’ve come, but I don’t want anything, thank you.”

Petrie signalled to Smith to go out. They returned to the lobby, Petrie leaving the door ajar. And as they entered it, that same singing, uncanny, now, was renewed.

“There’s no other way out of this flat except through the front door, here, is there?” asked Petrie.

“No.” Sir Denis shook his head. “Except through a window.”

Petrie glanced at Nayland Smith; agony peeped out of his eyes.

“I don’t think it’s likely,” he said. “That is not what I fear.”

“Doctor,” growled Gallaho, “this is a frightful blow. Something so horrible happened here to-night that the poor girl has lost her reason.”

“Something horrible—yes,” said Petrie, slowly; “but. . . she hasn’t lost her reason.”

Gallaho stared uncomprehendingly. Nayland Smith turned to him, and:

“If you knew all that I know of the powers of Dr. Fu Manchu,” he said, “you would know that not only is he alive, but. . .”

“What, sir?”—for the speaker had paused.

“He has been here to-night. I don’t understand.” He began to walk up and down feverishly—”I don’t understand. . . .”

CHAPTER 54

GALLAHO EXPLORES FURTHER

“Have you been on duty all night?”

Chief detective-inspector Gallaho stood in the hall porter’s office. The hall porter, a retired sergeant-major of the Black Watch, rather resented his presence and his manner.

“Certainly; I’ve been on duty all night.”

“I wasn’t suggesting you hadn’t,” growled Gallaho. “I was merely asking a question.”

“Well, the answer is: Yes,”

“The answer is ‘Yes’. Good. Now I’m going to ask you a few more questions.”

The sergeant-major recognized a character at least as truculent as his own; when Gallaho was in difficulties, Gallaho’s manner was far from soothing. The hall porter glanced him up and down with disfavour, and turning to a side-table, began to arrange a stack of letters which lay there.

“You might as well know that I’m a police officer,” Gallaho went on, “and your answers to the questions I am going to ask you may be required in evidence. So make ‘em snappy and to the point.”

The porter tuned: he was no longer so sure of himself.

“Has something happened here to-night?” he asked.

“You are the man that should know that,” said Gallaho; “so you’re the man I’ve come to. Listen—he leaned on the flap of the half-door; “how many apartments are there on the floor where Sir Denis Nayland Smith lives?”

“Four. Sir Denis’s and three others.”

“Who are the occupiers of the three others?”

“One is vacant at the moment. Another belongs to Major General Sir Rodney Orme; the third to Mrs. Crossland, the novelist.”

“Are these people at home?”

“Neither of them, as a matter of fact. The General is in the south of France, and his flat is shut up; and Mrs. Crossland has been in America for some time.”

“I suppose her place is shut up, too?”

“No. As a matter of fact, it isn’t. But their Egyptian servant lives up there, cleans the rooms and looks after correspondence. He has been with them, I believe, for many years.”

“Egyptian servant?”

“Yes, Egyptian servant.”

“Is he up there now?”

“I suppose so.”

“Have you seen him to-night?”

“No.”

“Are there any apartments above that?”

“No; only some storerooms. The lift goes no further than Sir Denis’s floor.”

“I see.” Gallaho chewed invisible gum. “Now, has anybody been up to or down from that floor in the last few hours?”

“No. A gentleman called and asked for the General, but I told him he was abroad.”

“So no one has gone up to the top floor, or come down from the top floor during the past few hours?”

“No one.”

“People have been moving about on the other floors, of course?”

“Two or three have come down and two or three have gone up. But no one I haven’t seen before. I mean they were either residents, friends of residents or tradespeople.”

“Quite.”

Gallaho turned, and went lounging in the direction of the lift. He paused, however, turned, and:

“Where are the kitchens?” he called; “in the basement?”

“Yes. You have to use the service lift if you want to go down there.”

“Where is it?”

“In the passage on the right.”

A few minutes later, Gallaho had stepped into a small elevator, controlled by a very pert boy.

“Kitchens,” he growled.

“What d’you mean, kitchens?” the boy inquired. “The kitchens is private.”

“My lad,” said Gallaho—”when a detective-inspector says to you—’kitchens’—do you know what you do?”

“No, sir,” the boy replied, suddenly awed.

“You take him there, and you jump to it.”

Gallaho presently found himself in a place inhabited by men in high white caps, a hot place informed by savoury smells. His appearance created mild surprise.

“Who’s in charge, here?” he demanded, sharply.

“I am a police officer, and I have some questions to ask.”

A stout man whose cap was higher and whiter than the others, came forward.

“I hope nothing’s wrong, Inspector,” he said.

“Something is wrong, but it’s not your fault. I only want to know one thing. You are of course acquainted with Fey, Sir Denis Nayland Smith’s man?”

“Certainly.”

“Did he order dinner to be prepared for a party to-night?”

“He didn’t. He ordered some sandwiches just before seven o’clock and they were taken up.”

“You are sure?”

“Certain.”

“Thank you.”

Gallaho lounged back to the lift.

The outrage must have taken place shortly after their departure. Otherwise, it was almost certain that Fey would have made arrangements with the chef for dinner. It seemed probable, but not certain, that no stranger had gone up to the top floor, or come down from it. But although the sergeant-major claimed to be acquainted with all those who had visited other floors, Gallaho realized that the evidence on this point was not conclusive, and:

“Have you been on duty all night?” he asked the man running the residents’ lift.

“I came on at six o’clock, sir.”

“Have you taken any strangers up or down during the evening?”

“Strangers, sir?”

They had reached the top floor, and the man opened the gate, and stood there, considering.

“There were guests came to dinner at number fourteen, and a gentleman I hadn’t seen before went up this evening with another resident, but they went out together about half-past seven.”

“Nobody else?” “Nobody at all, sir.”

When Sir Denis opened the door to Gallaho, the latter could hear Fleurette singing in the inner room.

chapter

55

MIMOSA

“I’ve adopted somewhat unusual methods, Smith,” said Petrie, with the ghost of a smile, glancing up from where he sat beside the unconscious Fey.

“I hope to heaven they succeed,” snapped Smith. “He may or may not be able to throw some light upon this business.”

“During the time that I was a guest of Dr. Fu Manchu”—— Petrie was obviously talking with the idea of distracting his mind from the sound of that sweet voice singing snatches of songs in an adjoining room—the Doctor was good enough to impart to me some particulars of his preparation, Mimosa 3— probably the most remarkable anaesthetic ever invented by man. He claims for it that there are practically no evil aftereffects, and of this you yourself have had evidence in the past. The patient may also be readily revived by those means which you have just seen me adopt.”

And even as he spoke the words, Fey raised his drooping eyelids, staring vaguely from face to face.

“How are you, Fey?” said Petrie; “feeling better, I see. Let me help you up. I want you to drink this.”

Fey sat up and swallowed the contents of the glass which Petrie held to his lips. Looking about him in a dazed way, he began sniffing.

“Funnily enough,” he replied, “I feel practically all right. But I can still smell that awful stuff. Miss Fleurette?” He jumped to his feet, then sat down again. “She is safe, sir? She’s safe?”

Fleurette had ceased to sing but could be heard moving about in the inner room.

“She’s in her room, Fey,” said Nayland Smith, shortly.

Fey’s glance wandered to the large clock on the mantelpiece:

“Good God! Sir,” he muttered. “I’ve been asleep for two hours!”

“It’s not your fault, Fey,” replied Dr. Petrie. “We all understand. What we are anxious to hear is exactly what happened.”

“Yes, sir,” Fey replied. “I can understand that——” he paused, listening.

That lighthearted, sweet voice had reached him from the inner room. He glanced at Dr. Petrie:

“Miss Fleurette, sir?”

“Yes, Fey. But please go ahead with your story.”

“I’d just made up my menu, sir.” He glanced at Nayland Smith, who had begun restlessly to walk up and down the carpet. “I mean, I had worked out a little dinner which I thought would meet with your approval, and gone to the telephone in the lobby to talk to the chef down below. I was just about to take up the instrument when the door bell rang.”

“Stop, Fey,” snapped Nayland Smith. “Did you hear the lift gate open?”

“No, sir—of that I am positive.”

“Go ahead.”

“I’m beginning to see the light,” growled Gallaho.

“One moment, Fey,” Nayland Smith interrupted; “this would be, I take it, some ten to twenty minutes after our departure?”

“Exactly, sir. I thought it might be one of the staff who had come up in the service lift, which can’t be heard from here, or old Ibrahim, Mrs. Crossland’s butler——”

“You know this man, Ibrahim?” said Gallaho.

“Yes, sir. He’s an Egyptian. He’s travelled a lot, as I have. He’s a funny old chap; we sometimes have a yarn together. Anyway, I opened the door.”

He paused. He was a man of orderly mind. He was obviously endeavouring to find words in which exactly to express what had occurred. He went on again.

“There was a tall man standing outside the door, sir. He wore an overcoat with the collar turned up, and a black felt hat with the brim pulled down. The only light in the lobby was the table lamp beside the telephone, so that I couldn’t make out his features.”

“How tall was this man?” jerked Nayland Smith.

“Well, unusually tall, sir. Taller than yourself.”

“I see.”

“He held what looked like a camera in his hand, and as I opened the door he just stood there, watching me.”

‘“Yes?’ I said.

“And then without moving his head, which he held down, so that I never had more than a glimpse of his features, he raised this thing and something puffed right out into my face.”

“Something?” growled Gallaho. “What sort of thing?”

“Vapour, sir, with a most awful smell of mimosa. It blinded me—it staggered me. I fell back into the lobby, gasping for breath. And the tall man followed me in. I collapsed on the carpet where you found me, I suppose. And I remember his bending over me.”

“Describe this man’s hands,” Nayland Smith directed.

“He wore gloves.”

“As he bent over you,” said Dr. Petrie, eagerly, “just before you became quite unconscious, did you form no impression of his features?”

“Yes, sir, I did. But I may have been dreaming. I thought it was the devil bending over me, sir. He had long, green eyes, that gleamed like emeralds.”

“We know, now,” said Sir Denis, continuing to walk up and down, “roughly what occurred. But I don’t understand. ... I don’t understand.”

Fleurette in the inner room sang a bar or two with the happy abandon of a child, and Fey glanced uneasily from Sir Denis to Dr. Petrie.

“What don’t you understand, Smith?” the latter asked, sadly.

“Either this deathless fiend, who is harder to kill than an earwig, has employed one of his unique drugs or he has hypnotically dominated Fleurette. Whichever is the true explanation, what is his purpose, Petrie?”

There came a moment of silence. Fleurette, ceasing to sing, might be heard moving about; then:

“I think I see what you mean, Smith,” Petrie replied, slowly. “He could have taken her away or he could have——”

“Exactly,” snapped Sir Denis. “Why has he left her . . . and in this condition?”

“Who are you talking about, sir?” growled Gallaho.

“Dr. Fu Manchu.”

“What! Do you really mean he has been here to-night?”

“Beyond any shadow of doubt.”

“But what for?”

“That’s what we are trying to work out, Gallaho.” Nayland Smith was the speaker. “Frankly, it has me beaten.”

“There’s one line of enquiry,” Gallaho replied, “which with your permission I propose to take up without delay.”

“What’s that?” Petrie asked.

“This tall lad, with the box of poison gas, according to the gentleman with all the medals downstairs, hasn’t come into Westminster Mansions to-night, and hasn’t gone out. You say yourself, Fey—” he stared at the man, chewing vigorously— “that the lift wasn’t used? My conclusion is this, sir.” He turned to Nayland Smith: “Dr. Fu Manchu is somewhere in this building.”

Smith glanced at Petrie.

“Go and take a look at her,” he said. “She’s been quiet for some time. I am very anxious.”

Petrie nodded, and went out.

“If the evidence of the watchman we interviewed to-night can be relied upon,” Sir Denis continued—”and personally, I have no doubt on the point——”