Sax Rohmer - The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu

water beside me!

I felt that, despite my resolution, I was going mad.

Another fiery drop--and another!

I touched a rotting wooden post and slimy timbers. I had reached one

bound of my watery prison. More fire fell from above, and the scream

of hysteria quivered, unuttered, in my throat.

Keeping myself afloat with increasing difficulty in my heavy garments,

I threw my head back and raised my eyes.

No more drops fell, and no more drops would fall; but it was merely a

question of time for the floor to collapse. For it was beginning to

emit a dull, red glow.

The room above me was in flames!

It was drops of burning oil from the lamp, finding passage through the

cracks in the crazy flooring, which had fallen about me--for the death

trap had reclosed, I suppose, mechanically.

My saturated garments were dragging me down, and now I could hear the

flames hungrily eating into the ancient rottenness overhead. Shortly

that cauldron would be loosed upon my head. The glow of the flames

grew brighter . . . and showed me the half-rotten piles upholding the

building, showed me the tidal mark upon the slime-coated walls--showed

me that there was no escape!

By some subterranean duct the foul place was fed from the Thames. By

that duct, with the outgoing tide, my body would pass, in the wake of

Mason, Cadby, and many another victim!

Rusty iron rungs were affixed to one of the walls communicating with a

trap--but the bottom three were missing!

Brighter and brighter grew the awesome light the light of what should

be my funeral pyre--reddening the oily water and adding a new dread to

the whispering, clammy horror of the pit. But something it showed

me . . . a projecting beam a few feet above the water . . . and directly

below the iron ladder!

"Merciful Heaven!" I breathed. "Have I the strength?"

A desire for laughter claimed me with sudden, all but irresistible

force. I knew what it portended and fought it down--grimly, sternly.

My garments weighed upon me like a suit of mail; with my chest aching

dully, my veins throbbing to bursting, I forced tired muscles to work,

and, every stroke an agony, approached the beam. Nearer I swam

. . . nearer. Its shadow fell black upon the water, which now had all

the seeming of a pool of blood. Confused sounds--a remote uproar--came

to my ears. I was nearly spent . . . I was in the shadow of the beam! If

I could throw up one arm. . .

A shrill scream sounded far above me!

"Petrie! Petrie!" (That voice must be Smith's!) "Don't touch the

beam! For God's sake DON'T TOUCH THE BEAM! Keep afloat another few

seconds and I can get to you!"

Another few seconds! Was that possible?

I managed to turn, to raise my throbbing head; and I saw the strangest

sight which that night yet had offered.

Nayland Smith stood upon the lowest iron rung . . . supported by the

hideous, crook-backed Chinaman, who stood upon the rung above!

"I can't reach him!"

It was as Smith hissed the words despairingly that I looked up--and saw

the Chinaman snatch at his coiled pigtail and pull it off! With it

came the wig to which it was attached; and the ghastly yellow mask,

deprived of its fastenings, fell from position! "Here! Here! Be

quick! Oh! be quick! You can lower this to him! Be quick! Be

quick!"

A cloud of hair came falling about the slim shoulders as the speaker

bent to pass this strange lifeline to Smith; and I think it was my

wonder at knowing her for the girl whom that day I had surprised in

Cadby's rooms which saved my life.

For I not only kept afloat, but kept my gaze upturned to that

beautiful, flushed face, and my eyes fixed upon hers--which were wild

with fear . . . for me!

Smith, by some contortion, got the false queue into my grasp, and I,

with the strength of desperation, by that means seized hold upon the

lowest rung. With my friend's arm round me I realized that exhaustion

was even nearer than I had supposed. My last distinct memory is of the

bursting of the floor above and the big burning joist hissing into the

pool beneath us. Its fiery passage, striated with light, disclosed two

sword blades, riveted, edges up along the top of the beam which I had

striven to reach.

"The severed fingers--" I said; and swooned.

How Smith got me through the trap I do not know--nor how we made our

way through the smoke and flames of the narrow passage it opened upon.

My next recollection is of sitting up, with my friend's arm supporting

me and Inspector Ryman holding a glass to my lips.

A bright glare dazzled my eyes. A crowd surged about us, and a clangor

and shouting drew momentarily nearer.

"It's the engines coming," explained Smith, seeing my bewilderment.

"Shen-Yan's is in flames. It was your shot, as you fell through the

trap, broke the oil-lamp."

"Is everybody out?"

"So far as we know."

"Fu-Manchu?"

Smith shrugged his shoulders.

"No one has seen him. There was some door at the back--"

"Do you think he may--"

"No," he said tensely. "Not until I see him lying dead before me shall

I believe it."

Then memory resumed its sway. I struggled to my feet.

"Smith, where is she?" I cried. "Where is she?"

"I don't know," he answered.

"She's given us the slip, Doctor," said Inspector Weymouth, as a

fire-engine came swinging round the corner of the narrow lane. "So has

Mr. Singapore Charlie--and, I'm afraid, somebody else. We've got six

or eight all-sorts, some awake and some asleep, but I suppose we shall

have to let 'em go again. Mr. Smith tells me that the girl was

disguised as a Chinaman. I expect that's why she managed to slip away."

I recalled how I had been dragged from the pit by the false queue, how

the strange discovery which had brought death to poor Cadby had brought

life to me, and I seemed to remember, too, that Smith had dropped it as

he threw his arm about me on the ladder. Her mask the girl might have

retained, but her wig, I felt certain, had been dropped into the water.

It was later that night, when the brigade still were playing upon the

blackened shell of what had been Shen-Yan's opium-shop, and Smith and I

were speeding away in a cab from the scene of God knows how many

crimes, that I had an idea.

"Smith," I said, "did you bring the pigtail with you that was found on

Cadby?"

"Yes. I had hoped to meet the owner."

"Have you got it now?"

"No. I met the owner."

I thrust my hands deep into the pockets of the big pea-jacket lent to

me by Inspector Ryman, leaning back in my corner.

"We shall never really excel at this business," continued Nayland

Smith. "We are far too sentimental. I knew what it meant to us,

Petrie, what it meant to the world, but I hadn't the heart. I owed her

your life--I had to square the account."

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