The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu

“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 lampshade, 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 sunbaked 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.”

“You amaze me!” I said.

“As to his mission among men. Why did M. Jules Furneaux fall dead in a Paris opera house? Because of heart failure? No! Because his last speech had shown that he held the key to the secret of Tongking. What became of the Grand Duke Stanislaus? Elopement? Suicide? Nothing of the kind. He alone was fully alive to Russia’s growing peril. He alone knew the truth about Mongolia. Why was Sir Crichton Davey murdered? Because, had the work he was engaged upon ever seen the light it would have shown him to be the only living Englishman who understood the importance of the Tibetan frontiers. I say to you solemnly, Petrie, that these are but a few. Is there a man who would arouse the West to a sense of the awakening of the East, who would teach the deaf to hear, the blind to see, that the millions only await their leader? He will die. And this is only one phase of the devilish campaign. The others I can merely surmise.”

“But, Smith, this is almost incredible! What perverted genius controls this awful secret movement?”

“Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government⁠—which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence. Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man.”

He wore a plain yellow robe, of a hue almost identical with that of his smooth, hairless countenance. His hands were large, long and bony, and he held them knuckles upward, and rested his pointed chin upon their thinness. He had a great, high brow, crowned with sparse, neutral-colored hair.

Of his face, as it looked out at me over the dirty table, I despair of writing convincingly. It was that of an archangel of evil, and it was wholly dominated by the most uncanny eyes that ever reflected a human soul, for they were narrow and long, very slightly oblique, and of a brilliant green. But their unique horror lay in a certain filminess (it made me think of the membrana nictitans in a bird) which, obscuring them as I threw wide the door, seemed to lift as I actually passed the threshold, revealing the eyes in all their brilliant iridescence.

I know that I stopped dead, one foot within the room, for the malignant force of the man was something surpassing my experience. He was surprised by this sudden intrusion⁠—yes, but no trace of fear showed upon that wonderful face, only a sort of pitying contempt. And, as I paused, he rose slowly to his feet, never removing his gaze from mine.

“It’s Fu-Manchu!” cried Smith over my shoulder, in a voice that was almost a scream. “It’s Fu-Manchu! Cover him! Shoot him dead if⁠—”

The conclusion of that sentence I never heard.

“Because?” inquired Fu-Manchu softly. “Ah! Mr. Smith is so prudent! He is thinking that I have files!” He pronounced the word in a way that made me shudder. “Mr. Smith has seen a wire jacket! Have you ever seen a wire jacket? As a surgeon its functions would interest you!”

I stifled a cry that rose to my lips; for, with a shrill whistling sound, a small shape came bounding into the dimly lit vault, then shot upward. A marmoset landed on the shoulder of Dr. Fu-Manchu and peered grotesquely into the dreadful yellow face. The Doctor raised his bony hand and fondled the little creature, crooning to it.

“One of my pets, Mr. Smith,” he said, suddenly opening his eyes fully so that they blazed like green lamps. “I have others, equally useful. My scorpions⁠—have you met my scorpions? No? My pythons and hamadryads? Then there are my fungi and my tiny allies, the bacilli. I have a collection in my laboratory quite unique. Have you ever visited Molokai, the leper island, Doctor? No? But Mr. Nayland Smith will be familiar with the asylum at Rangoon! And we must not forget my black spiders, with their diamond eyes⁠—my spiders, that sit in the dark and watch⁠—then leap!”

He raised his lean hands, so that the sleeve of the robe fell back to the elbow, and the ape dropped, chattering, to the floor and ran from the cellar.

“Put up your hands!” rapped Smith, “and attempt no tricks.” His voice quivered with excitement. “The game’s up, Fu-Manchu. Find something to tie him up with, Petrie.”

I moved forward to Smith’s side, and was about to pass him in the narrow doorway. The hulk moved beneath our feet like a living thing groaning, creaking⁠—and the water lapped about the rotten woodwork with a sound infinitely dreary.

“Put up your hands!” ordered Smith imperatively.

Fu-Manchu slowly raised his hands, and a smile dawned upon the impassive features⁠—a smile that had no mirth in it, only menace, revealing as it did his even, discolored teeth, but leaving the filmed eyes inanimate, dull, inhuman.

He spoke softly, sibilantly.

“I would advise Dr. Petrie to glance behind him before he moves.”

Smith’s keen gray eyes never for a moment quitted the speaker. The gleaming barrel moved not a hair’s-breadth. But I glanced quickly over my shoulder⁠—and stifled a cry of pure horror.

A wicked, pockmarked face, with wolfish fangs bared, and jaundiced eyes squinting obliquely into mine, was within two inches of me. A lean, brown hand and arm, the great thews standing up like cords, held a crescent-shaped knife a fraction of an inch above my jugular vein. A slight movement must have dispatched me; a sweep of the fearful weapon, I doubt not, would have severed my head from my body.