Sax Rohmer - THE DEVIL DOCTOR

Sax Rohmer

THE DEVIL DOCTOR

Dieses ebook wurde erstellt bei

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Titel Sax Rohmer THE DEVIL DOCTOR Dieses ebook wurde erstellt bei

A MIDNIGHT SUMMONS

ELTHAM VANISHES

THE WIRE JACKET

THE CRY OF A NIGHTHAWK

THE NET

UNDER THE ELMS

ENTER MR. ABEL SLATTIN

DR. FU-MANCHU STRIKES

THE CLIMBER

THE CLIMBER RETURNS

THE WHITE PEACOCK

DARK EYES LOOK INTO MINE

THE SACRED ORDER

THE COUGHING HORROR

BEWITCHMENT

THE QUESTING HANDS

ONE DAY IN RANGOON

THE SILVER BUDDHA

DR. FU-MANCHU'S LABORATORY

THE CROSSBAR

CRAGMIRE TOWER

THE MULATTO

A CRY ON THE MOOR

STORY OF THE GABLES

THE BELLS

THE FIERY HAND

THE NIGHT OF THE RAID

THE SAMURAI'S SWORD

THE SIX GATES

THE CALL OF THE EAST

"MY SHADOW LIES UPON YOU"

THE TRAGEDY

THE MUMMY

Impressum neobooks

THE DEVIL DOCTOR

"When did you last hear from Nayland Smith?" asked my visitor.

I paused, my hand on the siphon, reflecting for a moment.

"Two months ago," I said: "he's a poor correspondent and rather

soured, I fancy."

"What--a woman or something?"

"Some affair of that sort. He's such a reticent beggar, I really know

very little about it."

I placed a whisky and soda before the Rev. J. D. Eltham, also sliding

the tobacco jar nearer to his hand. The refined and sensitive face of

the clergyman offered no indication to the truculent character of the

man. His scanty fair hair, already grey over the temples, was silken

and soft-looking: in appearance he was indeed a typical English

churchman; but in China he had been known as "the fighting

missionary," and had fully deserved the title. In fact, this

peaceful-looking gentleman had directly brought about the Boxer

Risings!

"You know," he said in his clerical voice, but meanwhile stuffing

tobacco into an old pipe with fierce energy, "I have often wondered,

Petrie--I have never left off wondering--"

"What?"

"That accursed Chinaman! Since the cellar place beneath the site of

the burnt-out cottage in Dulwich Village--I have wondered more than

ever."

He lighted his pipe and walked to the hearth to throw the match in the

grate.

"You see," he continued, peering across at me in his oddly nervous

way--"one never knows, does one? If I thought that Dr. Fu-Manchu lived;

if I seriously suspected that that stupendous intellect, that wonderful

genius, Petrie, er"--he hesitated characteristically--"survived, I

should feel it my duty--"

"Well?" I said, leaning my elbows on the table and smiling slightly.

"If that Satanic genius were not indeed destroyed, then the peace of

the world might be threatened anew at any moment!"

He was becoming excited, shooting out his jaw in the truculent manner

I knew, and snapping his fingers to emphasize his words; a man

composed of the oddest complexities that ever dwelt beneath a clerical

frock.

"He may have got back to China, doctor!" he cried, and his eyes had

the fighting glint in them. "Could you rest in peace if you thought

that he lived? Should you not fear for your life every time that a

night-call took you out alone? Why, man alive, it is only two years

since he was here amongst us, since we were searching every shadow for

those awful green eyes! What became of his band of assassins--his

stranglers, his dacoits, his damnable poisons and insects and

what-not--the army of creatures--"

He paused, taking a drink.

"You"--he hesitated diffidently--"searched in Egypt with Nayland

Smith, did you not?"

I nodded.

"Contradict me if I am wrong," he continued; "but my impression is

that you were searching for the girl--the girl--Kâramanèh, I think

she was called?"

"Yes," I replied shortly; "but we could find no trace--no trace."

"You--er--were interested?"

"More than I knew," I replied, "until I realized that I had--lost

her."

"I never met Kâramanèh, but from your account, and from others, she

was quite unusually--"

"She was very beautiful," I said, and stood up, for I was anxious to

terminate that phase of the conversation.

Eltham regarded me sympathetically; he knew something of my search

with Nayland Smith for the dark-eyed Eastern girl who had brought

romance into my drab life; he knew that I treasured my memories of her

as I loathed and abhorred those of the fiendish, brilliant Chinese

doctor who had been her master.

Eltham began to pace up and down the rug, his pipe bubbling furiously;

and something in the way he carried his head reminded me momentarily

of Nayland Smith. Certainly, between this pink-faced clergyman, with

his deceptively mild appearance, and the gaunt, bronzed and

steely-eyed Burmese commissioner, there was externally little in

common; but it was some little nervous trick in his carriage that

conjured up through the smoke-haze one distant summer evening when

Smith had paced that very room as Eltham paced it now, when before my

startled eyes he had rung up the curtain upon the savage drama in

which, though I little suspected it then, Fate had cast me for a

leading rôle.

I wondered if Eltham's thoughts ran parallel with mine. My own were

centred upon the unforgettable figure of the murderous Chinaman. These

words, exactly as Smith had used them, seemed once again to sound in

my ears: "Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered,

with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven

skull and long magnetic eyes of the true cat green. Invest him with

all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race accumulated in one

giant intellect, with all the resources of science, past and present,

and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the 'Yellow Peril'

incarnate in one man."

This visit of Eltham's no doubt was responsible for my mood; for this

singular clergyman had played his part in the drama of two years ago.

"I should like to see Smith again," he said suddenly; "it seems a pity

that a man like that should be buried in Burma. Burma makes a mess of

the best of men, doctor. You said he was not married?"

"No," I replied shortly, "and is never likely to be, now."

"Ah, you hinted at something of the kind."

"I know very little of it. Nayland Smith is not the kind of man to

talk much."

"Quite so--quite so! And, you know, doctor, neither am I; but"--he was

growing painfully embarrassed--"it may be your due--I--er--I have a

correspondent, in the interior of China--"

"Well?" I said, watching him in sudden eagerness.

"Well, I would not desire to raise--vain hopes--nor to occasion, shall

I say, empty fears; but--er ... no, doctor!" He flushed like a girl.

"It was wrong of me to open this conversation. Perhaps, when I know

more--will you forget my words, for the time?"

The 'phone bell rang.

"Hullo!" cried Eltham--"hard luck, doctor!"--but I could see that he

welcomed the interruption. "Why!" he added, "it is one o'clock!"

I went to the telephone.

"Is that Dr. Petrie?" inquired a woman's voice.

"Yes; who is speaking?"

"Mrs. Hewett has been taken more seriously ill. Could you come at