Sax Rohmer: The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu

Sax Rohmer

The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

Titel Sax Rohmer The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu Dieses ebook wurde erstellt bei

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

Impressum neobooks

The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu

Author: Sax Rohmer

Release Date: May 24, 2008 [EBook #173]

[Last updated: October 13, 2012]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INSIDIOUS DR. FU-MANCHU ***

This etext was updated by Stewart A. Levin of Englewood, CO.

"A GENTLEMAN to see you, Doctor."

From across the common a clock sounded the half-hour.

"Ten-thirty!" I said. "A late visitor. Show him up, if you please."

I pushed my writing aside and tilted the lamp-shade, as footsteps

sounded on the landing. The next moment I had jumped to my feet, for a

tall, lean man, with his square-cut, clean-shaven face sun-baked to the

hue of coffee, entered and extended both hands, with a cry:

"Good old Petrie! Didn't expect me, I'll swear!"

It was Nayland Smith--whom I had thought to be in Burma!

"Smith," I said, and gripped his hands hard, "this is a delightful

surprise! Whatever--however--"

"Excuse me, Petrie!" he broke in. "Don't put it down to the sun!" And

he put out the lamp, plunging the room into darkness.

I was too surprised to speak.

"No doubt you will think me mad," he continued, and, dimly, I could see

him at the window, peering out into the road, "but before you are many

hours older you will know that I have good reason to be cautious. Ah,

nothing suspicious! Perhaps I am first this time." And, stepping back

to the writing-table he relighted the lamp.

"Mysterious enough for you?" he laughed, and glanced at my unfinished

MS. "A story, eh? From which I gather that the district is beastly

healthy--what, Petrie? Well, I can put some material in your way that,

if sheer uncanny mystery is a marketable commodity, ought to make you

independent of influenza and broken legs and shattered nerves and all

the rest."

I surveyed him doubtfully, but there was nothing in his appearance to

justify me in supposing him to suffer from delusions. His eyes were

too bright, certainly, and a hardness now had crept over his face. I

got out the whisky and siphon, saying:

"You have taken your leave early?"

"I am not on leave," he replied, and slowly filled his pipe. "I am on

duty."

"On duty!" I exclaimed. "What, are you moved to London or something?"

"I have got a roving commission, Petrie, and it doesn't rest with me

where I am to-day nor where I shall be to-morrow."

There was something ominous in the words, and, putting down my glass,

its contents untasted, I faced round and looked him squarely in the

eyes. "Out with it!" I said. "What is it all about?"

Smith suddenly stood up and stripped off his coat. Rolling back his

left shirt-sleeve he revealed a wicked-looking wound in the fleshy part

of the forearm. It was quite healed, but curiously striated for an

inch or so around.

"Ever seen one like it?" he asked.

"Not exactly," I confessed. "It appears to have been deeply

cauterized."

"Right! Very deeply!" he rapped. "A barb steeped in the venom of a

hamadryad went in there!"

A shudder I could not repress ran coldly through me at mention of that

most deadly of all the reptiles of the East.

"There's only one treatment," he continued, rolling his sleeve down

again, "and that's with a sharp knife, a match, and a broken cartridge.

I lay on my back, raving, for three days afterwards, in a forest that

stank with malaria, but I should have been lying there now if I had

hesitated. Here's the point. It was not an accident!"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that it was a deliberate attempt on my life, and I am hard upon

the tracks of the man who extracted that venom--patiently, drop by

drop--from the poison-glands of the snake, who prepared that arrow, and

who caused it to be shot at me."

"What fiend is this?"

"A fiend who, unless my calculations are at fault is now in London, and

who regularly wars with pleasant weapons of that kind. Petrie, I have

traveled from Burma not in the interests of the British Government

merely, but in the interests of the entire white race, and I honestly

believe--though I pray I may be wrong--that its survival depends

largely upon the success of my mission."

To say that I was perplexed conveys no idea of the mental chaos created

by these extraordinary statements, for into my humdrum suburban life

Nayland Smith had brought fantasy of the wildest. I did not know what

to think, what to believe.

"I am wasting precious time!" he rapped decisively, and, draining his

glass, he stood up. "I came straight to you, because you are the only

man I dare to trust. Except the big chief at headquarters, you are the

only person in England, I hope, who knows that Nayland Smith has

quitted Burma. I must have someone with me, Petrie, all the time--it's

imperative! Can you put me up here, and spare a few days to the

strangest business, I promise you, that ever was recorded in fact or

fiction?"

I agreed readily enough, for, unfortunately, my professional duties

were not onerous.

"Good man!" he cried, wringing my hand in his impetuous way. "We start

now."

"What, to-night?"

"To-night! I had thought of turning in, I must admit. I have not

dared to sleep for forty-eight hours, except in fifteen-minute

stretches. But there is one move that must be made to-night and

immediately. I must warn Sir Crichton Davey."

"Sir Crichton Davey--of the India--"

"Petrie, he is a doomed man! Unless he follows my instructions without

question, without hesitation--before Heaven, nothing can save him! I

do not know when the blow will fall, how it will fall, nor from whence,

but I know that my first duty is to warn him. Let us walk down to the

corner of the common and get a taxi."

How strangely does the adventurous intrude upon the humdrum; for, when

it intrudes at all, more often than not its intrusion is sudden and

unlooked for. To-day, we may seek for romance and fail to find it:

unsought, it lies in wait for us at most prosaic corners of life's

highway.

The drive that night, though it divided the drably commonplace from the

wildly bizarre--though it was the bridge between the ordinary and the

outre--has left no impression upon my mind. Into the heart of a weird

mystery the cab bore me; and in reviewing my memories of those days I

wonder that the busy thoroughfares through which we passed did not

display before my eyes signs and portents--warnings.

It was not so. I recall nothing of the route and little of import that

passed between us (we both were strangely silent, I think) until we