Sax Rohmer - The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu

vessel. In the floods of moonlight gaunt shapes towered above; in the

ensuing darkness only the oily glitter of the tide occupied the

foreground of the night-piece.

The Surrey shore was a broken wall of blackness, patched with lights

about which moved hazy suggestions of human activity. The bank we were

following offered a prospect even more gloomy--a dense, dark mass, amid

which, sometimes, mysterious half-tones told of a dock gate, or sudden

high lights leapt flaring to the eye.

Then, out of the mystery ahead, a green light grew and crept down upon

us. A giant shape loomed up, and frowned crushingly upon the little

craft. A blaze of light, the jangle of a bell, and it was past. We

were dancing in the wash of one of the Scotch steamers, and the murk

had fallen again.

Discords of remote activity rose above the more intimate throbbing of

our screw, and we seemed a pigmy company floating past the workshops of

Brobdingnagian toilers. The chill of the near water communicated

itself to me, and I felt the protection of my shabby garments

inadequate against it.

Far over on the Surrey shore a blue light--vaporous,

mysterious--flicked translucent tongues against the night's curtain.

It was a weird, elusive flame, leaping, wavering, magically changing

from blue to a yellowed violet, rising, falling.

"Only a gasworks," came Smith's voice, and I knew that he, too, had

been watching those elfin fires. "But it always reminds me of a

Mexican teocalli, and the altar of sacrifice."

The simile was apt, but gruesome. I thought of Dr. Fu-Manchu and the

severed fingers, and could not repress a shudder.

"On your left, past the wooden pier! Not where the lamp is--beyond

that; next to the dark, square building--Shen-Yan's."

It was Inspector Ryman speaking.

"Drop us somewhere handy, then," replied Smith, "and lie close in, with

your ears wide open. We may have to run for it, so don't go far away."

From the tone of his voice I knew that the night mystery of the Thames

had claimed at least one other victim.

"Dead slow," came Ryman's order. "We'll put in to the Stone Stairs."

A SEEMINGLY drunken voice was droning from a neighboring alleyway as

Smith lurched in hulking fashion to the door of a little shop above

which, crudely painted, were the words:

"SHEN-YAN, Barber."

I shuffled along behind him, and had time to note the box of studs,

German shaving tackle and rolls of twist which lay untidily in the

window ere Smith kicked the door open, clattered down three wooden

steps, and pulled himself up with a jerk, seizing my arm for support.

We stood in a bare and very dirty room, which could only claim kinship

with a civilized shaving-saloon by virtue of the grimy towel thrown

across the back of the solitary chair. A Yiddish theatrical bill of

some kind, illustrated, adorned one of the walls, and another bill, in

what may have been Chinese, completed the decorations. From behind a

curtain heavily brocaded with filth a little Chinaman appeared, dressed

in a loose smock, black trousers and thick-soled slippers, and,

advancing, shook his head vigorously.

"No shavee--no shavee," he chattered, simian fashion, squinting from

one to the other of us with his twinkling eyes. "Too late! Shuttee

shop!"

"Don't you come none of it wi' me!" roared Smith, in a voice of amazing

gruffness, and shook an artificially dirtied fist under the Chinaman's

nose. "Get inside and gimme an' my mate a couple o' pipes. Smokee

pipe, you yellow scum--savvy?"

My friend bent forward and glared into the other's eyes with a

vindictiveness that amazed me, unfamiliar as I was with this form of

gentle persuasion.

"Kop 'old o' that," he said, and thrust a coin into the Chinaman's

yellow paw. "Keep me waitin' an' I'll pull the dam' shop down,

Charlie. You can lay to it."

"No hab got pipee--" began the other.

Smith raised his fist, and Yan capitulated.

"Allee lightee," he said. "Full up--no loom. You come see."

He dived behind the dirty curtain, Smith and I following, and ran up a

dark stair. The next moment I found myself in an atmosphere which was

literally poisonous. It was all but unbreathable, being loaded with

opium fumes. Never before had I experienced anything like it. Every

breath was an effort. A tin oil-lamp on a box in the middle of the

floor dimly illuminated the horrible place, about the walls of which

ten or twelve bunks were ranged and all of them occupied. Most of the

occupants were lying motionless, but one or two were squatting in their

bunks noisily sucking at the little metal pipes. These had not yet

attained to the opium-smoker's Nirvana.

"No loom--samee tella you," said Shen-Yan, complacently testing Smith's

shilling with his yellow, decayed teeth.

Smith walked to a corner and dropped cross-legged, on the floor,

pulling me down with him.

"Two pipe quick," he said. "Plenty room. Two piecee pipe--or plenty

heap trouble."

A dreary voice from one of the bunks came:

"Give 'im a pipe, Charlie, curse yer! an' stop 'is palaver."

Yan performed a curious little shrug, rather of the back than of the

shoulders, and shuffled to the box which bore the smoky lamp. Holding

a needle in the flame, he dipped it, when red-hot, into an old cocoa

tin, and withdrew it with a bead of opium adhering to the end. Slowly

roasting this over the lamp, he dropped it into the bowl of the metal

pipe which he held ready, where it burned with a spirituous blue flame.

"Pass it over," said Smith huskily, and rose on his knees with the

assumed eagerness of a slave to the drug.

Yan handed him the pipe, which he promptly put to his lips, and

prepared another for me.

"Whatever you do, don't inhale any," came Smith's whispered injunction.

It was with a sense of nausea greater even than that occasioned by the

disgusting atmosphere of the den that I took the pipe and pretended to

smoke. Taking my cue from my friend, I allowed my head gradually to

sink lower and lower, until, within a few minutes, I sprawled sideways

on the floor, Smith lying close beside me.

"The ship's sinkin'," droned a voice from one of the bunks. "Look at

the rats."

Yan had noiselessly withdrawn, and I experienced a curious sense of

isolation from my fellows--from the whole of the Western world. My

throat was parched with the fumes, my head ached. The vicious

atmosphere seemed contaminating. I was as one dropped--

Somewhere East of Suez, where the best is like the worst, And there

ain't no Ten Commandments and a man can raise a thirst.

Smith began to whisper softly.

"We have carried it through successfully so far," he said. "I don't

know if you have observed it, but there is a stair just behind you,

half concealed by a ragged curtain. We are near that, and well in the

dark. I have seen nothing suspicious so far--or nothing much. But if

there was anything going forward it would no doubt be delayed until we

new arrivals were well doped. S-SH!"

He pressed my arm to emphasize the warning. Through my half-closed

eyes I perceived a shadowy form near the curtain to which he had

referred. I lay like a log, but my muscles were tensed nervously.

The shadow materialized as the figure moved forward into the room with

a curiously lithe movement.

The smoky lamp in the middle of the place afforded scant illumination,

serving only to indicate sprawling shapes--here an extended hand, brown