The Bride of Fu-Manchu (30 page)

I had heard the evidence of the chief navigating officer and of the second officer. The vessel belonged to Santos da Cunha, an Argentine millionaire, but he frequently placed it at the disposal of his friends, of whom Dr. Fu-Manchu (known to them as the Marquis Chüan) was one. It was the Marquis’s custom sometimes to take charge, and he, according to these witnesses, was a qualified master mariner and a fine seaman!

His personal servants, of whom there were four, had come on board at Monaco; from this dehumanized quartet I anticipated that little would be learned. The ship’s officers and crew denied all knowledge of a submarine. When the engines had been stopped by Dr. Fu-Manchu and the launch ordered away, they had obeyed without knowing for what purpose those orders had been given.

Personally, I had no doubt that the underwater craft lay somewhere near, but that the doctor had decided to sacrifice himself alone rather than to order the submarine to surface when the coming of the French airman had warned him that his movements were covered.

Why?

Doubtless because he had recognized his own escape to be impossible.

I reached the cabin in which I knew Fleurette to be, rapped, opened the door, and went in.

She was standing just inside—and I knew that she had been waiting for me.

I forgot what happened immediately afterwards; I lived in another world...

When, at last, and reluctantly, I came to earth again, the first idea which I properly grasped was that of Fleurette’s almost insupportable happiness because she had learned that she really possessed a father—and had met him!

Her eagerness to meet her mother resembled a physical hunger.

It was not easy to see these strange events through her eyes. But, listening to her, watching her fascinatedly, tears on her dark lashes as she sometimes clutched me, nervously, excitedly, it dawned upon me that there is probably a great void in the life of one who has never known father or mother.

Her happiness was clouded by the knowledge that she had gained it at the price of the downfall of Dr. Fu-Manchu. I tried to divert the tide of her thoughts, but it was useless.

She, and she alone, was responsible...

It was clear to me that Petrie—sensing that exalted estimate which Fleurette had made of the character of the incalculable Chinaman— had done nothing to disturb her ideals.

How long we were there alone I don’t know; but at last:

“Really, darling,” said Fleurette, “you must go back. I am not going to move. I dare not face—”

I tore myself away; I returned to Petrie’s cabin.

Nayland Smith was there. The two were deep in conversation: they ceased speaking as I entered.

“I have solved a mystery for you,” Sir Denis began, looking up at me. “You recall, when Petrie lay in the grip of the purple plague and Fah Lo Suee was there, the voice which warned you to beware of her?”

“Yes.”

“I was the speaker, Sterling!” said Petrie.

Save for the queer blanching of his hair, he seemed to me now to be restored to something almost resembling his former self. Happiness is the medicine of the gods. He had met a beautiful girl, in whom, as in a mirror, he had seen his wife; had known that this was the daughter snatched from them in babyhood. Then, within a few hours, he had been rescued from a living death to find Nayland Smith at his bedside.

“I suspected it; but at the time I found it hard to believe.”

“Naturally!” Sir Denis was the speaker. “But I have just learned a remarkable and at the same time a ghastly thing, Sterling. Victims of the catalepsy induced by Dr. Fu-Manchu remain conscious.”

“What!”

“It is difficult to make you understand,” Petrie broke in, “what I passed through. Evidently my preparation ‘654’ is fairly efficacious. If you had known what to do next, I should have survived all right. I was insensible, but the injection of Dr. Fu-Manchu’s virus to induce catalepsy restored me to consciousness!

“How long after it had been administered, I don’t know. Incidentally, that hell-cat made the injection in my thigh, under the sheet, while she sat beside the bed. Oh! You’re not to blame, Sterling.”

“She inherits her father’s genius,” Sir Denis murmured.

“As I saw her last,” I said savagely, “she was suffering for it.”

“What? I don’t know about this.”

“He flogged her...”

Sir Denis and Petrie exchanged glances.

“Details can wait,” rapped the former. “Inhuman though the sentiment may be, I cannot find it in my heart to be sorry.”

“Can you imagine, Sterling,” Petrie went on, “that from the time I recovered consciousness and found Fah Lo Suee in the room, I was aware of everything that happened?”

“You don’t mean—”

Sir Denis nodded shortly.

“Yes... even that,” Petrie assured me. “Somehow, when I saw that she-cat coiling herself about you, I forced speech—I tried to warn you. It was the last evidence of which I was capable to show you that I still lived!

“I heard myself pronounced dead; I saw Cartier’s tears. I was hurried away—a plague case. The undertakers dealt with me, and I was put into a coffin.”

“My God!” I groaned, and wondered at the man’s fortitude.

“Do you know what I thought, Sterling, as I lay there in the mortuary?—I prayed that nothing would interfere with the plans of Dr. Fu-Manchu! For the purpose of it all was clear to me. And I knew—try to picture my frame of mind!—that if my friends should upset his plans, I should be—”

“Buried alive!”

Nayland Smith’s voice sounded like a groan.

“Exactly, old man. You have noticed my hair? That was when it happened. When I heard the screws being removed, and saw two evil-looking Burmans bending over me—or rather, I saw them at rare intervals, for it was impossible to move my eyes—I sent up a prayer of thankfulness!

“They lifted me out—my body, of course, was quite rigid, placed me in a hammock and hurried me out to a car in the lane beyond. Of the substitution of which you have told me, I saw nothing. I was taken by road to Ste Claire, carried to the room in which you found me, Sterling, and placed in the care of a Japanese doctor who informed me that his name was Yamamata.

“He gave me an injection which relaxed the rigidity, and then a draught of that preparation which looks like brandy but tastes like death.

“You and I, Smith”—he glanced aside at Sir Denis—“have met with it before!”

“Is Dr. Yamamata on board?” I asked.

“No. I was carried in a sort of litter down to that water cave which Smith tells me you have visited, across it in a collapsible boat which I assume is part of the equipment of the submarine; and from there up to a rock tunnel and down to the beach. A launch belonging to this yacht was waiting, in which I was brought on board. Dr. Fu-Manchu in person superintending. Fleurette was with us. We joined the yacht in sight of Monaco. I resigned myself to becoming a subject of the new Chinese Emperor of the World.”

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

I
had rarely, if ever, seen a display of Gallic emotion to equal that of Dr. Cartier when he entered Petrie’s room in the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo.

He beheld before him a man whom he had certified to be dead; whom he had seen buried. Perhaps his behaviour was excusable. Brisson, who was with him, controlled himself better.

“Because I am the cause of this,” said Petrie, “I naturally feel most embarrassed. But you may take it, Cartier, that weakness now is the only trouble. It’s a question of getting me on my feet again.”

“I will arrange for a nurse.”

The door opened, and Fleurette came in.

As her accepted lover, the incense of worship which the Frenchmen silently offered should perhaps have been flattering. Oddly enough, I resented it.

“This is my daughter, gentlemen,” said Petrie—with so much pride and such happiness in his voice that all else was forgotten.

She crossed and seated herself at his side, clasping his outstretched hand.

“This, dear, is Dr. Cartier... Dr. Brisson, my friends and allies.”

Fleurette smiled at the French doctors. That intoxicating dimple appeared for a moment in her chin, and I knew that they were her slaves.

“I shall require no other nurse,” Petrie added.

It was hard to go; but a nod from Fleurette gave me my dismissal. With a few words of explanation I left the room.

Sir Denis was waiting for me in the lobby.

“I hate to drag you away, Sterling,” he said. “But if any sort of progress has been made at Ste Claire, you can probably help.”

We joined a car which was waiting. I could not fail to recall in the early stages of the journey, that night when, learning at Quinto’s that Petrie was dead, I had launched what was meant to be a vendetta.

I had set out to seek the life of any servant of Dr. Fu-Manchu who might cross my path!

And even now, when the fact had become plain to me that the unscrupulous methods of the great Chinaman, his indifference to human life, were not dictated by any prospect of personal gain but belonged to an ideal utterly beyond my Western comprehension, I did not regret the death of that Burmese strangler with whom I had fought to a finish on the Corniche road.

“The big villa at Ste Claire,” said Nayland Smith, “has obviously been a European base of the group for many years past. It’s impossible to close one’s eyes to the fact, Sterling, that this Si-Fan movement, whatever it may embody, has gained momentum since the days when I first realized the existence of Dr. Fu-Manchu. You have told me that he claims to be responsible for that financial chaos which at the moment involves the whole world. That he has defeated age, I know. And I gather that he professes to have solved the mystery of the Philosopher’s Stone.”

We were clear of Monaco now, and mounting higher and higher.

“In all this, there is one thing which we must bear in mind: it has taken me many years to learn as little as I know of the Mandarin Fu-Manchu. But at last I have discovered his term of official office, and with many blanks I have built up something of his pedigree.”

“Tell me,” I said eagerly.

“He administered the Province of Ho Nan, under the Empress. Judging by the evidence which I have accumulated, he appeared to be of the same age in those days as he appears now!”

“Whatever age is the man?”

“Heaven only knows, Sterling! This I doubt if we shall ever find out. He is affiliated to those who once ruled China. His place in the scheme of things, I take it, may be compared to that once held by the Pretender in England. But he has a legitimate claim to the title of Prince.”

“Sir Denis, this is amazing!”

“Dr. Fu-Manchu is the most amazing figure living in the world today. He holds degrees of four universities. He is a Doctor of Philosophy as well as a Doctor of Medicine. I have reason to believe that he speaks every civilized language with facility; and I know that he represents a movement which already has pushed Europe and America very near to the brink—and which, before long, may push both of them right over.”

“You have prevented that, Sir Denis. An army is helpless without its leader.”

I glanced aside at him as we sped along the Corniche road: he was tugging at the lobe of his ear.

“How do we know that he is the leader?” he snapped. “Think of the living dead whom we chance to have identified. How many more belong to the Si-Fan whose identities we don’t even suspect? His ‘submersible yacht,’ the existence of which, even if I had doubted Dr. Fu-Manchu’s word (and this I have never doubted), is established by the disappearance of every member of his household! The French authorities have never had so much as a suspicion that such a vessel was on their coasts!

“That pool may have been known to the monks in the old days; but you will search for it in vain in Baedeker. Do you grasp what I mean, Sterling? We in the West follow our well-trodden paths; no one of us sees more than the others see. But, under the street along which we are walking, at the back of a house which we have passed a hundred times, lies something else—something unsuspected.

“These are the things that Dr. Fu-Manchu has discovered—or rediscovered. This is the secret of his influence. He is behind us, under us, and over us.”

“At the moment,” I said savagely, “he is in a French prison!”

“Why?” murmured Nayland Smith.

“What do you mean?”

“His submersible yacht, for a sight of which I would give much, is almost certainly armed—probably with torpedoes, improved by Ericksen or some other specialist possessing a first-class brain stolen from the tomb to work for Dr. Fu-Manchu. Therefore, why did he submit to arrest?”

“I don’t follow.”

“I agree that the circumstances were peculiar, and possibly I am pessimistic. But I am not satisfied. I have been in touch with the Foreign Office. The Naval resources of Europe already will be combing the Mediterranean for the mysterious submarine. But”—he turned, and I met the glance of the steel-gray eyes—“do you think they will find it?”

“Why not?”

He snapped his teeth together and pulled out from his pocket a very large and dilapidated rubber pouch, and at the same time a big-bowled and much-charred briar. I recognized the pouch, remembering when and where I had last seen it.