The Hand of Fu-Manchu quotes

Oppressed with an unaccountable weariness of spirit, I stood within the lobby looking out upon the grayness of London in November.

A slight mental effort was sufficient to blot out that drab prospect and to conjure up before my mind's eye a balcony overlooking the Nile—a glimpse of dusty palms, a white wall overgrown with purple blossoms, and above all the dazzling vault of Egypt.

Upon the balcony my imagination painted a figure, limning it with loving details, the figure of Kâramaneh;

Sounds of shunting upon some railway siding came to my ears; train whistles and fog signals hooted and boomed.

River sounds there were, too, for we were close beside the Thames, that gray old stream which has borne upon its bier many a poor victim of underground London.

The sky glowed sullenly red above.

He flashed the light two or three times. Then we both stood watching the belt of darkness that followed the Surrey shore.

The tide lapped upon the timbers supporting the wharf and little whispers and gurgling sounds stole up from beneath our feet.

Once there was a faint splash from somewhere below and behind us.

"

We see it through together, then, though God knows whither it will lead us.

"

My condition, as a matter of fact, must have been otherwise, and this belief in my powers merely symptomatic of the fever which consumed me; for, as I was to learn, I had failed to take the first elementary precaution necessary in such case.

I, who tracked another, had not counted upon being tracked myself! …

A bag or sack, reeking of some sickly perfume, was dropped silently, accurately, over my head from behind; it was drawn closely about my throat. One muffled shriek, strangely compound of fear and execration, I uttered. I was stifling, choking … I staggered—and fell….

Although I had met him once or twice professionally, I had never hitherto seen him operate; and his method was little short of miraculous. It was stimulating, inspiring.

With unerring touch he whittled madness, death, from the very throne of reason, of life.

Now was the crucial moment of his task … and, with its coming, every light in the room suddenly failed—went out!

I had never before appreciated the multitudinous sounds, all of them weird and many of them horrible, which are within the compass of those great black rats who find their way to England with cargoes from Russia and elsewhere.

From the rafters above my head, from the wall recesses about me, from the floor beneath my feet, proceeded a continuous and nerve-shattering concert, an unholy symphony which seemingly accompanied the eternal dance of the rats.

Sometimes a faint splash from below would tell of one of the revelers taking the water, but save for the more distant throbbing of riverside industry, and rarer note of shipping, the mad discords of this rat saturnalia alone claimed the ear.

The placid manner of this singularly imposing old man rendered proper resentment difficult.

A sense of futility, and of unreality, claimed me; I felt that this was a dream-world, governed by dream-laws.

"You have good reason," he continued, calmly raising the pinch of snuff to his nostrils, "good reason to distrust all that is Chinese.

He spoke the words in such a fashion that they seemed physically to chill me.

The shadows of the room grew menacing; the very silence became horrible.

I longed with a terrible longing for company, for the strength that is in numbers;

To appreciate the solitude and mystery of the sleeping city, a certain sense of prosperity—a knowledge that one is immune from the necessity of being abroad at that hour—is requisite.

The tramp, the night policeman and the coffee-stall keeper know more of London by night than most people—but of the romance of the dark hours they know little. Romance succumbs before necessity.

I had good reason to be keenly alive to the aroma of mystery which pervades the most commonplace thoroughfare after the hum of the traffic has subsided—when the rare pedestrian and the rarer cab alone traverse the deserted highway.

With more intimate cares seeking to claim my mind, it was good to tramp along the echoing, empty streets and to indulge in imaginative speculation regarding the strange things that night must shroud in every big city.

I have known the solitude of deserts, but the solitude of London is equally fascinating.

He whose business or pleasure had led him to traverse the route which was mine on this memorable night must have observed how each of the squares composing that residential chain which links the outer with the inner Society has a popular and an exclusive …

Excepting these illuminations, there was no light elsewhere in the square to show which houses were inhabited and which vacant.

I might have stood in a street of Pompeii or Thebes—a street of the dead past.

I permitted my imagination to dwell upon this idea as I fumbled for matches and gazed about me.

Again I hesitated. What did the darkness mask?

The note of a distant motor-horn rose clearly above the vague throbbing which is the only silence known to the town-dweller.

Gripping the unlighted cigar between my teeth, I placed my bag upon the ground and dropped into the well before the broken window. To raise the sash was a simple matter, and, having accomplished it, I inspected the room within.

The realities seemed to be slipping from me; I could not believe that I looked upon a material world.

This had been a night of wonders, having no place in the life of a sane, modern man, but belonging to the days of the jinn and the Arabian necromancers.

Fu-Manchu was greeted by a universal raising of hands, but in complete silence. He also wore a cap surmounted by a coral ball, and this he placed upon one of the black cushions set before a golden stool.

The gathering darkness precluded the possibility of my observing with certainty, but I think a soft blush stole to her cheeks as those glorious dark eyes rested upon me.

The beauty of Kâramaneh was not of the type which is enhanced by artificial lighting; it was the beauty of the palm and the pomegranate blossom, the beauty which flowers beneath merciless suns, which expands, like the lotus, under the skies of the East.

But there, in the dusk, as she came towards me, she looked exquisitely lovely, and graceful with the grace of the desert gazelles which I had seen earlier in the evening. I cannot describe her dress;

Into that black cavern I stared, gloomily fascinated by the onward rolling sound storm; into that blackness I looked … to feel my scalp tingle horrifically, to know the crowning horror of the horrible journey.

The blackness was spangled with watching, diamond eyes!—with tiny insect eyes that moved; upon the floor, upon the walls, upon the ceiling!

A choking cry rose to my lips.