Read The Bride of Fu-Manchu Online
Authors: Sax Rohmer
The Bride of Fu-Manchu
“Without Fu-Manchu we wouldn’t have Dr. No, Doctor Doom or Dr. Evil. Sax Rohmer created the first truly great evil mastermind. Devious, inventive, complex, and fascinating. These novels inspired a century of great thrillers!”
Jonathan Maberry,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Assassin’s Code
and
Patient Zero
“The true king of the pulp mystery is Sax Rohmer—and the shining ruby in his crown is without a doubt his Fu-Manchu stories.”
James Rollins,
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Devil Colony
“Fu-Manchu remains the definitive diabolical mastermind of the 20th Century. Though the arch-villain is ‘the Yellow Peril incarnate,’ Rohmer shows an interest in other cultures and allows his protagonist a complex set of motivations and a code of honor which often make him seem a better man than his Western antagonists. At their best, these books are very superior pulp fiction... at their worst, they’re still gruesomely readable.”
Kim Newman, award-winning author of
Anno Dracula
“Sax Rohmer is one of the great thriller writers of all time! Rohmer created in Fu-Manchu the model for the super-villains of James Bond, and his hero Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie are worthy stand-ins for Holmes and Watson... though Fu-Manchu makes Professor Moriarty seem an under-achiever.”
Max Allan Collins,
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Road to Perdition
“I grew up reading Sax Rohmer’s Fu-Manchu novels, in cheap paperback editions with appropriately lurid covers. They completely entranced me with their vision of a world constantly simmering with intrigue and wildly overheated ambitions. Even without all the exotic detail supplied by Rohmer’s imagination, I knew full well that world wasn’t the same as the one I lived in... For that alone, I’m grateful for all the hours I spent chasing around with Nayland Smith and his stalwart associates, though really my heart was always on their intimidating opponent’s side.”
K. W. Jeter, acclaimed author of
Infernal Devices
“A sterling example of the classic adventure story, full of excitement and intrigue. Fu-Manchu is up there with Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, and Zorro—or more precisely with Professor Moriarty, Captain Nemo, Darth Vader, and Lex Luthor—in the imaginations of generations of readers and moviegoers.”
Charles Ardai, award-winning novelist and founder of Hard Case Crime
“I love Fu-Manchu, the way you can only love the really GREAT villains. Though I read these books years ago he is still with me, living somewhere deep down in my guts, between Professor Moriarty and Dracula, plotting some wonderfully hideous revenge against an unsuspecting mankind.”
Mike Mignola, creator of
Hellboy
“Fu-Manchu is one of the great villains in pop culture history, insidious and brilliant. Discover him if you dare!”
Christopher Golden,
New York Times
bestselling co-author of
Baltimore: The Plague Ships
“Insidious fun from out of the past. Evil as always, Fu-Manchu reviles as well as thrills us.”
Joe R. Lansdale, recipient of the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award
THE COMPLETE FU-MANCHU SERIES BY SAX ROHMER
Available now from Titan Books:
THE MYSTERY OF DR. FU-MANCHU
THE RETURN OF DR. FU-MANCHU
THE HAND OF DR. FU-MANCHU
DAUGHTER OF FU-MANCHU
THE MASK OF FU-MANCHU
Coming soon from Titan Books:
THE TRAIL OF FU-MANCHU
PRESIDENT FU-MANCHU
THE DRUMS OF FU-MANCHU
THE ISLAND OF FU-MANCHU
THE SHADOW OF FU-MANCHU
RE-ENTER FU-MANCHU
EMPEROR FU-MANCHU
THE WRATH OF FU-MANCHU
BRIDE
OF
DR.
FU-MANCHU
SAX ROHMER
TITAN BOOKS
THE BRIDE OF FU-MANCHU
Print edition ISBN: 9780857686084
E-book edition ISBN: 9780857686749
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
First published as a novel in the UK by William Collins & Co. Ltd, 1931
First published as a novel in the US by Doubleday, Doran, 1932
First Titan Books edition: June 2013
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
The Authors Guild and the Society of Authors assert the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Copyright © 2013 The Authors Guild and the Society of Authors
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Frontispiece illustration by John Richard Flanagan, detail from an illustration for “The Unsullied Mirror,” first appearing in
Collier’s Weekly,
June 24 1933. Special thanks to Dr. Lawrence Knapp for the illustrations as they appeared on “The Page of Fu-Manchu” -
www.njedge.net/~knapp/FuFrames.htm
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
Chapter Three: The Bloodstained Leaves
Chapter Five: The Black Stigmata
Chapter Eleven: At the Villa Jasmin
Chapter Fourteen: In Monte Carlo
Chapter Fifteen: Fairy Trumpet
Chapter Seventeen: The Room of Glass
Chapter Eighteen: Dr. Fu-Manchu
Chapter Nineteen: The Secret Jungle
Chapter Twenty: Dream Creatures
Chapter Twenty-One: The Hairless Man
Chapter Twenty-Two: Half-World
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Jade Pipe
Chapter Twenty-Four: Companion Yamamata
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Life Principle
Chapter Twenty-Six: The Orchid
Chapter Twenty-Seven: In the Galleries
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Evil Incarnate
Chapter Thirty-One: Fu-Manchu’s Army
Chapter Thirty-Five: The Section Doors
Chapter Thirty-Six: The Unsullied Mirror
Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Glass Mask
Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Glass Mask (Concluded)
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Search in Ste Claire
Chapter Forty: The Secret Dock
Chapter Forty-One: “I Saw the Sun”
Chapter Forty-Three: KarâManèH’s Daughter
Chapter Forty-Four: Officer of the Prefét
Chapter Forty-Five: On The Destroyer
Chapter Forty-Six: We Board The Lola
Chapter Forty-Seven: Dr. Petrie
Chapter Forty-Eight: “It Means Extradition”
Chapter Forty-Nine: Maître Foli
Chapter Fifty: “The Work Goes On”
“Fah Lo Suee’s slender body seemed to diminish. She sank down until her head touched the carpet.”
CHAPTER ONE
A
ll the way around the rugged headland, and beyond, as I sat at the wheel of the easy-running craft, I found myself worrying about Petrie. He was supposed to be looking after me. I thought that somebody should be looking after him. He took his responsibilities with a deadly seriousness; and this strange epidemic which had led the French authorities to call upon his expert knowledge was taxing him to the limit. At luncheon I thought he had looked positively ill; but he had insisted upon returning to his laboratory.
He seemed to imagine that the reputation of the Royal Society was in his keeping...
I had hoped that the rockbound cove which I had noted would afford harbourage for the motorboat. Nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised when I found that it did.
The little craft made safe, I waded in and began to swim through nearly still water around that smaller promontory beyond which lay the bay and beach of Ste Claire de la Roche. Probably a desire to test my fitness underlay the job; if I could not explore Ste Claire from the land side, I was determined to invade it, nevertheless.