Sax Rohmer - THE DEVIL DOCTOR

the words "_the question_." This was the twentieth century; yet there,

in that damnable room....

Smith threw the door open.

Through a sort of haze, born mostly of horror, but not entirely, I saw

Eltham, stripped to the waist and tied, with his arms upstretched, to

a rafter in the ancient ceiling. A Chinaman, who wore a slop-shop blue

suit and who held an open knife in his hand, stood beside him. Eltham

was ghastly white. The appearance of his chest puzzled me momentarily,

then I realized that a sort of _tourniquet_ of wire-netting was

screwed so tightly about him that the flesh swelled out in knobs

through the mesh. There was blood--

"God in heaven!" screamed Smith frenziedly, "_they have the

wire-jacket on him!_ Shoot down that damned Chinaman, Petrie! Shoot!

Shoot!"

Lithely as a cat the man with the knife leapt around--but I raised the

Browning, and deliberately--with a cool deliberation that came to me

suddenly--shot him through the head. I saw his oblique eyes turn up to

the whites; I saw the mark squarely between his brows; and with no word

nor cry he sank to his knees and toppled forward with one yellow hand

beneath him and one outstretched, clutching--clutching--convulsively.

His pigtail came unfastened and began to uncoil, slowly, like a snake.

I handed the pistol to Smith; I was perfectly cool, now; and I leapt

forward, took up the bloody knife from the floor and cut Eltham's

lashings. He sank into my arms.

"Praise God," he murmured weakly. "He is more merciful to me than

perhaps I deserve. Unscrew ... the jacket, Petrie ... I think ... I was

very near to ... weakening. Praise the good God, who ... gave me ...

fortitude...."

I got the screw of the accursed thing loosened, but the act of

removing the jacket was too agonizing for Eltham--man of iron though

he was. I laid him swooning on the floor.

"Where is Fu-Manchu?"

Nayland Smith, from just within the door, threw out the query in a

tone of stark amaze. I stood up--I could do nothing more for the poor

victim at the moment--and looked about me.

The room was innocent of furniture, save for heaps of rubbish on the

floor, and a tin oil-lamp hung on the wall. The dead Chinaman lay

close beside Smith. There was no second door, the one window was

barred and from this room we had heard the voice, the unmistakable,

unforgettable voice, of Fu-Manchu.

_But Dr. Fu-Manchu was not there!_

Neither of us could accept the fact for a moment; we stood there,

looking from the dead man to the tortured man who had only swooned,

in a state of helpless incredulity.

Then the explanation flashed upon us both, simultaneously, and with a

cry of baffled rage Smith leapt along the passage to the second door.

It was wide open. I stood at his elbow when he swept its emptiness

with the ray of his pocket-lamp.

There was a speaking-tube fixed between the two rooms!

Smith literally ground his teeth.

"Yet, Petrie," he said, "we have learnt something. Fu-Manchu had

evidently promised Eltham his life if he would divulge the name of his

correspondent. He meant to keep his word; it is a sidelight on his

character."

"How so?"

"Eltham has never seen Dr. Fu-Manchu, but Eltham knows certain parts

of China better than you know the Strand. Probably, if he saw

Fu-Manchu, he would recognize him for whom he really is, and this, it

seems, the Doctor is anxious to avoid."

We ran back to where we had left Kâramanèh.

The room was empty!

"Defeated, Petrie!" said Smith bitterly. "The Yellow Devil is loosed

on London again!"

He leant from the window and the skirl of a police whistle split the

stillness of the night.

Such were the episodes that marked the coming of Dr. Fu-Manchu to

London, that awakened fears long dormant and reopened old wounds--nay,

poured poison into them. I strove desperately, by close attention to

my professional duties, to banish the very memory of Kâramanèh from my

mind; desperately, but how vainly! Peace was for me no more, joy was

gone from the world, and only mockery remained as my portion.

Poor Eltham we had placed in a nursing establishment, where his

indescribable hurts could be properly tended; and his uncomplaining

fortitude not infrequently made me thoroughly ashamed of myself.

Needless to say, Smith had made such other arrangements as were

necessary to safeguard the injured man, and these proved so successful

that the malignant being whose plans they thwarted abandoned his

designs upon the heroic clergyman and directed his attention

elsewhere, as I must now proceed to relate.

Dusk always brought with it a cloud of apprehension, for darkness must

ever be the ally of crime; and it was one night, long after the clocks

had struck the mystic hour, "when churchyards yawn," that the hand of

Dr. Fu-Manchu again stretched out to grasp a victim. I was dismissing

a chance patient.

"Good night, Dr. Petrie," he said.

"Good night, Mr. Forsyth," I replied; and having conducted my late

visitor to the door, I closed and bolted it, switched off the light,

and went upstairs.

My patient was chief officer of one of the P. and O. boats. He had cut

his hand rather badly on the homeward run, and signs of poisoning

having developed, had called to have the wound treated, apologizing

for troubling me at so late an hour, but explaining that he had only

just come from the docks. The hall clock announced the hour of one as

I ascended the stairs. I found myself wondering what there was in Mr.

Forsyth's appearance which excited some vague and elusive memory.

Coming to the top floor, I opened the door of a front bedroom and was

surprised to find the interior in darkness.

"Smith!" I called.

"Come here and watch!" was the terse response.

Nayland Smith was sitting in the dark at the open window and peering

out across the common. Even as I saw him, a dim silhouette, I could

detect that tensity in his attitude which told of high-strung nerves.

I joined him.

"What is it?" I asked curiously.

"I don't know. Watch that clump of elms."

His masterful voice had the dry tone in it betokening excitement. I

leaned on the ledge beside him and looked out. The blaze of stars

almost compensated for the absence of the moon, and the night had a

quality of stillness that made for awe. This was a tropical summer,

and the common, with its dancing lights dotted irregularly about it,

had an unfamiliar look to-night. The clump of nine elms showed as a

dense and irregular mass, lacking detail.

Such moods as that which now claimed my friend are magnetic. I had no

thought of the night's beauty, for it only served to remind me that

somewhere amid London's millions was lurking an uncanny being, whose

life was a mystery, whose very existence was a scientific miracle.

"Where's your patient?" rapped Smith.

His abrupt query diverted my thoughts into a new channel. No footstep

disturbed the silence of the high-road. Where _was_ my patient?

I craned from the window. Smith grabbed my arm.

"Don't lean out," he said.

I drew back, glancing at him surprisedly.

"For Heaven's sake, why not?"

"I'll tell you presently, Petrie. Did you see him?"

"I did, and I can't make out what he is doing. He seems to have

remained standing at the gate for some reason."

"He has seen it!" snapped Smith. "Watch those elms."