Sax Rohmer - The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu

No unusual sound, so far, had disturbed the stillness of the night.

Save for the muffled throb of the rare all-night cars passing the front

of the house, our vigil had been a silent one. The full moon had

painted about the floor weird shadows of the clustering ivy, spreading

the design gradually from the door, across the room, past the little

table where the envelope lay, and finally to the foot of the bed.

The distant clock struck a quarter-past two.

A slight breeze stirred the ivy, and a new shadow added itself to the

extreme edge of the moon's design.

Something rose, inch by inch, above the sill of the westerly window. I

could see only its shadow, but a sharp, sibilant breath from Smith told

me that he, from his post, could see the cause of the shadow.

Every nerve in my body seemed to be strung tensely. I was icy cold,

expectant, and prepared for whatever horror was upon us.

The shadow became stationary. The dacoit was studying the interior of

the room.

Then it suddenly lengthened, and, craning my head to the left, I saw a

lithe, black-clad form, surmounted by a Yellow face, sketchy in the

moonlight, pressed against the window-panes!

One thin, brown hand appeared over the edge of the lowered sash, which

it grasped--and then another. The man made absolutely no sound

whatever. The second hand disappeared--and reappeared. It held a

small, square box. There was a very faint CLICK.

The dacoit swung himself below the window with the agility of an ape,

as, with a dull, muffled thud, SOMETHING dropped upon the carpet!

"Stand still, for your life!" came Smith's voice, high-pitched.

A beam of white leaped out across the room and played full upon the

coffee-table in the center.

Prepared as I was for something horrible, I know that I paled at sight

of the thing that was running round the edge of the envelope.

It was an insect, full six inches long, and of a vivid, venomous, red

color! It had something of the appearance of a great ant, with its

long, quivering antennae and its febrile, horrible vitality; but it was

proportionately longer of body and smaller of head, and had numberless

rapidly moving legs. In short, it was a giant centipede, apparently of

the scolopendra group, but of a form quite new to me.

These things I realized in one breathless instant; in the next--Smith

had dashed the thing's poisonous life out with one straight, true blow

of the golf club!

I leaped to the window and threw it widely open, feeling a silk thread

brush my hand as I did so. A black shape was dropping, with incredible

agility from branch to branch of the ivy, and, without once offering a

mark for a revolver-shot, it merged into the shadows beneath the trees

of the garden. As I turned and switched on the light Nayland Smith

dropped limply into a chair, leaning his head upon his hands. Even

that grim courage had been tried sorely.

"Never mind the dacoit, Petrie," he said. "Nemesis will know where to

find him. We know now what causes the mark of the Zayat Kiss.

Therefore science is richer for our first brush with the enemy, and the

enemy is poorer--unless he has any more unclassified centipedes. I

understand now something that has been puzzling me since I heard of

it--Sir Crichton's stifled cry. When we remember that he was almost

past speech, it is reasonable to suppose that his cry was not 'The red

hand!' but 'The red ANT!' Petrie, to think that I failed, by less than

an hour, to save him from such an end!"

"THE body of a lascar, dressed in the manner usual on the P. & O.

boats, was recovered from the Thames off Tilbury by the river police at

six A.M. this morning. It is supposed that the man met with an

accident in leaving his ship."

Nayland Smith passed me the evening paper and pointed to the above

paragraph.

"For 'lascar' read 'dacoit,'" he said. "Our visitor, who came by way

of the ivy, fortunately for us, failed to follow his instructions.

Also, he lost the centipede and left a clew behind him. Dr. Fu-Manchu

does not overlook such lapses."

It was a sidelight upon the character of the awful being with whom we

had to deal. My very soul recoiled from bare consideration of the fate

that would be ours if ever we fell into his hands.

The telephone bell rang. I went out and found that Inspector Weymouth

of New Scotland Yard had called us up.

"Will Mr. Nayland Smith please come to the Wapping River Police Station

at once," was the message.

Peaceful interludes were few enough throughout that wild pursuit.

"It is certainly something important," said my friend; "and, if

Fu-Manchu is at the bottom of it--as we must presume him to

be--probably something ghastly."

A brief survey of the time-tables showed us that there were no trains

to serve our haste. We accordingly chartered a cab and proceeded east.

Smith, throughout the journey, talked entertainingly about his work in

Burma. Of intent, I think, he avoided any reference to the

circumstances which first had brought him in contact with the sinister

genius of the Yellow Movement. His talk was rather of the sunshine of

the East than of its shadows.

But the drive concluded--and all too soon. In a silence which neither

of us seemed disposed to break, we entered the police depot, and

followed an officer who received us into the room where Weymouth waited.

The inspector greeted us briefly, nodding toward the table.

"Poor Cadby, the most promising lad at the Yard," he said; and his

usually gruff voice had softened strangely.

Smith struck his right fist into the palm of his left hand and swore

under his breath, striding up and down the neat little room. No one

spoke for a moment, and in the silence I could hear the whispering of

the Thames outside--of the Thames which had so many strange secrets to

tell, and now was burdened with another.

The body lay prone upon the deal table--this latest of the river's

dead--dressed in rough sailor garb, and, to all outward seeming, a

seaman of nondescript nationality--such as is no stranger in Wapping

and Shadwell. His dark, curly hair clung clammily about the brown

forehead; his skin was stained, they told me. He wore a gold ring in

one ear, and three fingers of the left hand were missing.

"It was almost the same with Mason." The river police inspector was

speaking. "A week ago, on a Wednesday, he went off in his own time on

some funny business down St. George's way--and Thursday night the

ten-o'clock boat got the grapnel on him off Hanover Hole. His first

two fingers on the right hand were clean gone, and his left hand was

mutilated frightfully."

He paused and glanced at Smith.

"That lascar, too," he continued, "that you came down to see, sir; you

remember his hands?"

Smith nodded.

"He was not a lascar," he said shortly. "He was a dacoit."

Silence fell again.

I turned to the array of objects lying on the table--those which had

been found in Cadby's clothing. None of them were noteworthy, except

that which had been found thrust into the loose neck of his shirt.

This last it was which had led the police to send for Nayland Smith,

for it constituted the first clew which had come to light pointing to

the authors of these mysterious tragedies.

It was a Chinese pigtail. That alone was sufficiently remarkable; but

it was rendered more so by the fact that the plaited queue was a false