Daughter of Fu-Manchu (26 page)

Those sunken, commanding eyes ignored my existence. Their filmy but potent regard passed the grovelling men, passed me, and was set upon Fah Lo Suee. Then came a sibilant command, utterly beyond my powers to describe:

“Kneel,
little thief!
I
am standing…”

I twisted around.

Fah Lo Suee, a chalky quality tingeing the peach bloom of her skin, had lowered that insolent head! As I turned, staring,
she dropped to her knees!

And now I saw that Nayland Smith, bound as he was, arms and ankles, had got to his feet. Through the tropical yellow of his complexion, through the artificial stain which still lingered, he had paled.

The hissing voice spoke again.

“Greeting, Sir Denis. Be seated.”

Smith’s teeth were clenched so hard that his jaw muscles stood out lumpishly. But, relaxing and speaking in a low, even tone:

“Greeting,” he replied, “Dr. Fu-Manchu.”

Three times, heavily, Dr. Fu-Manchu beat his stick upon the floor.

Two Burmans came in and saluted him.

I knew them. They were the Dacoits who had been present at the Council of Seven in el-Khârga.

Dr. Fu-Manchu advanced into the room. Extending a bony, clawlike hand, he indicated the kneeling Fah Lo Suee.

And, without word or glance, eyes lowered, Fah Lo Suee went out with her dreadful escort! It was in my heart to pity her, so utterly was she fallen, so slavishly did that proud woman bow her head to this terrible, imperious old man.

As he passed the prostrate figures of the Nubian and the Dyak, walking heavily and slowly, he touched them each with his stick. He spoke in a low voice, gutturally.

They sprang up and approached Rima!

Throughout this extraordinary scene, which had passed much more quickly than its telling conveys, Rima had remained seated— stupefied. Now, realizing the meaning of Fu-Manchu’s last order, she stood up—horror in her eyes.

“Shan! Shan!” she cried. “What is he going to do to me?”

Dr. Fu-Manchu beat upon the floor again and spoke one harsh word. The Nubian and the Dyak stood still. No sergeant of the Guards ever had more complete control of men.

“Miss Barton,” he said, his voice alternating uncannily between the sibilant and the guttural and seeming to be produced with difficulty, “your safety is assured. I wish to be alone with Sir Denis and Mr. Greville. For your greater ease, Sir Denis will tell you that my word is my bond.”

He turned those sunken, filmed eyes in the direction of the big armchair and:

“You needn’t worry, Rima,” said Nayland Smith. “Dr. Fu- Manchu guarantees your safety.”

I was amazed beyond reason. Even so fortified, Rima’s eyes were dark with terror. A swift flow of words brought the Dyak sharply about to take his instructions. Then he and the Nubian escorted Rima from the room.

I tugged, groaning, at the cords which held me. I stared at Nayland Smith. Was he holding a candle to the devil? How could a sane man accept the assurances of such a proven criminal?

But, as though my ideas had been spoken aloud:

“Do not misjudge Sir Denis,” came the harsh voice. “He knows that in warfare I am remorseless. But he knows also that no mandarin of my order has ever willingly broken his promise.”

The Nubian had closed the door leading to the lobby. Dr. Fu-Manchu had closed that of the false cabinet as he came into the room. No sound entered the arena where this menace to white supremacy and the man whose defenses had defied him confronted one another.

“It is a strange fact,” said Dr. Fu-Manchu, “that only the circumstance of your being a prisoner allows of our present conversation.”

He paused, watching, watching Nayland Smith with those physically weak but spiritually powerful eyes. The Chinaman’s
force
was incredible. It was as though a great lamp burned in that frail, angular body.

“Yet, now, by a paradox, we stand together.”

Resting on his ebony stick, he drew himself up so that his thin frame assumed something of its former height.

“My methods are not your methods. Perhaps I have laughed at your British scruples. Perhaps a day may come, Sir Denis, when you will join in my laughter. But, as much as I have hated you, I have always admired your clarity of mind and your tenacity. You were instrumental in defeating me, when I had planned to readjust the center of world power. No doubt you thought me mad—a megalomaniac. You were wrong.”

He spoke the last three words in a low voice—almost a whisper.

“I worked for my country. I saw China misruled, falling into decay; with all her vast resources, becoming prey for carrion. I hoped to give China that place in the world to which her intellect, her industry, and her ideals entitle her. I hoped to
awaken
China. My methods, Sir Denis, were bad. My motive was good.”

His voice rose. He raised one gaunt hand in a gesture of defiance. Nayland Smith spoke no word. And I watched this wraith of terror as one watches a creature uncreated, who figures hideously in some disordered dream. His sincerity was unmistakable; his power of intellect enormous. But when I realized
what
he defended, what he stood for—and that I, Shan Greville, was listening to him in a house somewhere in Regent’s Park, I felt like laughing hysterically…

“Your long reign, Sir Denis, is ending. A blacker tragedy than any I had dreamt of will end your Empire. It is Fate that both of us must now look on. I thank my gods that the consummation will not be seen by me.

“The woman you know as Fah Lo Suee—it was her pet name in nursery days—is my child by a Russian mother. In her, Sir Denis, I share the sorrow of Shakespeare’s King Lear… She has reawakened a power which I had buried. I cannot condemn her. She is my flesh. But in China we expect, and
exact,
obedience. The
Si-Fan
is a society older than Buddhism and more flexible. Its ruler wields a sword none can withstand. For many years
Si-Fan
has slumbered. Fah Lo Suee has dared to awaken it!”

He turned his dreadful eyes on me for the first time since he had begun to speak.

“Mr. Greville, you cannot know what control of that organization means!
Misdirected,
at such a crisis of history as this, it could only mean another world war! I dragged myself from retirement”—he looked again at Nayland Smith—“to check the madness of Fah Lo Suee. Some harm she has done. But I have succeeded. Tonight, again, I am lord of the
Si-Fan!”

Quivering, he rested on his stick.

“I had never dreamt,” said Nayland Smith, “that I should live to applaud your success.”

Dr. Fu-Manchu turned and walked to the lacquer door. Reaching it:

“If you were free,” he replied, “it would be your duty to detain me. My plans are made. Fah Lo Suee will trouble you no more. Overtake me if you wish—and if you can. I am indifferent to the issue, Sir Denis, but I leave England tonight.
Si-Fan
will sleep again. The balance of world power
will
be readjusted—but not as she had planned.

“In half an hour I will cause Superintendent Weymouth—whom I esteem—to be informed that you are here. Miss Barton, during that period, must remain locked in a room above. Greeting and goodbye, Sir Denis. Greeting and good-bye, Mr. Greville.”

He went out and closed the door…

Nearly a year has passed since that night when for the first, and I pray for the last, time I found myself face to face with Dr. Fu-Manchu— the world’s greatest criminal, perhaps the world’s supreme genius— and a man of his word.

Unable to credit the facts, a few minutes after his disappearance, I shouted Rima’s name.

She replied—her voice reaching me dimly from some higher room. She was safe, but locked in…

And an hour later, Weymouth arrived—to find Nayland Smith at last disentangled from the cunning knots of the Sea-Dyak!

“It was possible, after all, Greville! But a damned long business!”

I write these concluding notes before my tent in Sir Lionel Barton’s camp on the site of ancient Nineveh. Sunset draws near, and I can see Rima, a camera slung over her shoulder, coming down the slope.

We are to be married on our return to London.

Of Dr. Fu-Manchu, Fah Lo Suee, and their terrible escort, no trace was ever discovered!

Even the body of Li King Su was spirited away. Six months of intense and world-wide activity, directed by Nayland Smith, resulted in… nothing! “My plans are made,” that great and evil man had said.

Sometimes I doubt if it ever happened. Sometimes I wonder if it is really finished. Before me, on the box which is my extemporized writing desk, lies a big emerald set in an antique silver ring. It reached me only a month ago in a package posted from Hong Kong. There was no note inside…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

S
ax Rohmer was born Arthur Henry Ward in 1883, in Birmingham, England, adding “Sarsfield” to his name in 1901. He was four years old when Sherlock Holmes appeared in print, five when the Jack the Ripper murders began, and sixteen when H.G. Wells’ Martians invaded.

Initially pursuing a career as a civil servant, he turned to writing as a journalist, poet, comedy sketch writer, and songwriter in British music halls. At age 20 he submitted the short story “The Mysterious Mummy” to
Pearson’s
magazine and “The Leopard-Couch” to
Chamber’s Journal.
Both were published under the byline “A. Sarsfield Ward.”

Ward’s Bohemian associates Cumper, Bailey, and Dodgson gave him the nickname “Digger,” which he used as his byline on several serialized stories. Then, in 1908, the song “Bang Went the Chance of a Lifetime” appeared under the byline “Sax Rohmer.” Becoming immersed in theosophy, alchemy, and mysticism, Ward decided the name was appropriate to his writing, so when “The Zayat Kiss” first appeared in
The Story-Teller
magazine in October,
1912, it was credited to Sax Rohmer.

That was the first story featuring Fu-Manchu, and the first portion of the novel
The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
Novels such as
The Yellow Claw
,
Tales of Secret Egypt
,
Dope
,
The Dream Detective
,
The Green Eyes of Bast
, and
Tales of Chinatown
made Rohmer one of the most successful novelists of the 1920s and 1930s.

There are fourteen Fu-Manchu novels, and the character has been featured in radio, television, comic strips, and comic books. He first appeared in film in 1923, and has been portrayed by such actors as Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, John Carradine, Peter Sellers, and Nicolas Cage.

Rohmer died in 1959, a victim of an outbreak of the type A influenza known as the Asian flu.

APPRECIATING DOCTOR FU-MANCHU

BY LESLIE S. KLINGER

T
he “yellow peril”—that stereotypical threat of Asian conquest—seized the public imagination in the late nineteenth century, in political diatribes and in fiction. While several authors exploited this fear, the work of Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward, better known as Sax Rohmer, stood out.

Dr. Fu-Manchu was born in Rohmer’s short story “The Zayat Kiss,” which first appeared in a British magazine in 1912. Nine more stories quickly appeared and, in 1913, the tales were collected as
The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu (The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu
in America). The Doctor appeared in two more series before the end of the Great War, collected as
The Devil Doctor (The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu)
and
The Si-Fan Mysteries (The Hand of Fu-Manchu).

After a fourteen-year absence, the Doctor reappeared in 1931, in
The Daughter of Fu-Manchu.
There were nine more novels, continuing until Rohmer’s death in 1959, when
Emperor Fu-Manchu
was published. Four stories, which had previously appeared only in magazines, were published in 1973 as
The Wrath of Fu-Manchu.

The Fu-Manchu stories also have been the basis of numerous
motion pictures, most famously the 1932 MGM film
The Mask of Fu-Manchu
, featuring Boris Karloff as the Doctor.

In the early stories, Fu-Manchu and his cohorts are the “yellow menace,” whose aim is to establish domination of the Asian races. In the 1930s Fu-Manchu foments political dissension among the working classes. By the 1940s, as the wars in Europe and Asia threaten terrible destruction, Fu-Manchu works to depose other world leaders and defeat the Communists in Russia and China.