Emperor Fu-Manchu (14 page)

Nayland Smith asked him to make a careful copy in case the original should be lost—or stolen. It was late during the second night of their stay at Lao Tse-Mung’s house that something happened.

The secretary worked in a top room, equipped as an up-to-date office, with typewriter, filing cabinets, bookcases, and a large desk. This betrayed the modern side of the old mandarin, and was in keeping with his private airplane, his cars, his electrical lighting plant, and other equipment; a striking contrast to the Oriental character of the reception rooms below.

Tony occupied a room next to the office. Nayland Smith was lodged on the other side of the corridor. He was unaccountably restless. Lao Tse-Mung’s guest rooms had electric lights and all the other facilities of a modem hotel. It was very late when Tony switched off his bedside lamp and tried to sleep. But the night seemed to be haunted by strange sounds, furtive movements which he couldn’t identify or place.

The shadow of Fu-Manchu was creeping over him. He began thinking, again, about the dead Russian, seeing in his imagination the man’s ceaseless battle with clouds of invisible insects. Of course, it had been delirium. But what a queer kind of delirium. Skobolov had died at the hand of Dr. Fu-Manchu. But of
what
had he died?

Tony found himself listening intently for a buzz of insects in the room.

He heard none. He tried to laugh at these phantom fears.

Then he began to listen again.

There
was
a sound—a very faint sound. It was not a sound of insects, and it was not in his room. It came from the adjoining office.

He knew that Sun Shao-Tung had retired two hours before. He had heard him go. Yet something or someone moved in the office.

Tony swung out of bed, stole to the door of his room, opened it cautiously.

Barefooted, he crept along to the office door.

He stood listening, silently.

Yes, there was someone inside!

He began to turn the handle and gently opened the door. As it opened, a draft of cold air swept onto his face.

It brought with it a sense of horror. He shuddered, then fully opened the door.

The office was in darkness. But a beam of moonlight through the open window just brushed the top of the large desk. There was a dim figure in the shadow behind the desk, and two hands, which alone were visible in the moonlight, busily swept up a litter of papers lying there.

Perhaps the lighting created an illusion.
But they were gray hands!

Tony clenched his fists, took a step forward, and a lean figure sprang over the desk, leapt upon him, and had his throat in an icy grip.

He uttered a stifled shriek as that ghastly grip closed on him; it was a cry of loathing rather than fear. But in the face of what he knew to be deadly peril, his brain remained clear. He struck a right, a left to the jaw of his antagonist. The blows registered. The grip on his throat relaxed. He struck again. But he was becoming dizzy.

Desperately, he threw himself on the vaguely outlined figure that was strangling him. He touched the naked body—and the body was
cold.

He was fighting with a living corpse!

Very near the end of his resources, he used his knee viciously. The thing grunted, fell back, and sprang toward the open window.

Swaying like a drunken man, he saw, dimly, a gray figure sweep up something from the desk and leap to the window. Tony tottered, threw out his arms to save himself, and collapsed on the floor. His outstretched hands touched a heavy bronze bowl which the secretary used as a wastebasket.

Pain, anger, gave him a brief renewal of strength. He grasped the bowl, forced himself to his feet, and hurled the bowl at the head of the retreating thing.

It reached its target. He heard the dull thud. It rebounded and crashed against the glass of the opened window.

But the living-dead horror vanished.

* * *

Lights… voices… arms which lifted him… the tang of brandy.

Tony came to life.

The lighted office looked red. His head swam. Through this red mist he saw Nayland Smith bending over him.

“A close call, McKay. Take it easy.”

Tony found himself in a deep rest-chair. He had some difficulty in swallowing. He managed to sit up.

“It went through the window,” he croaked hoarsely, “although… I hit it on the head with… that.”

The bronze bowl lay among a litter of glass.

“I know,” Sir Denis snapped. “It’s phenomenal. We have search parties out.”

“But—”

“Don’t strain your throat, McKay. Yes. It has the cipher manuscript.”

* * *

In Lao Tse-Mung’s library, surrounded by an imposing collection of books in many languages, four men assembled. A servant placed a variety of refreshments on a low table around which they sat, and was dismissed. The staff’s quarters were separated from the house, and the disturbance in the office had not reached them. Mercifully, it had failed to arouse Moon Flower, whose apartment was in the west wing. The thing which had happened in the night was known only to these four who met in the library.

Lao Tse-Mung and his frightened secretary sipped tea. Tony and Nayland Smith drank Scotch and soda. Tony smoked a cigarette and Sir Denis smoked his pipe.

“My chief mechanic reports,” their host stated in his calm voice and perfect English, “that the connections are undisturbed. Six men are now examining the possible points of entry, and if anything is discovered to account for the presence of this thief in my house, I shall be notified immediately.”

“When it’s daylight,” Nayland Smith said, “I’ll take a look, myself.”

“Of course you understand, Sir Denis, what has happened? We have had a visit from a Cold Man. These creatures have been reported in the neighborhood of Chia-Ting on more than one occasion, but never here. It is a punishable offense to touch them. If seen, the police must be informed. An ambulance from a hospital established recently in that area by the governor, Huan Tsung-Chao, is soon on the scene, I understand; the attendants seem to know how to deal with these ghastly phenomena. They are believed, by the ignorant people, to be vampires and are known as ‘the living-dead.’”

“The ignorant people have my sympathy,” Tony declared hoarsely.

“Personally,” Nayland Smith snapped, “I’m not surprised. That master of craft, Dr. Fu-Manchu, has discovered that I am here. That it was he who murdered Skobolov in order to recover this manuscript is beyond dispute. But how he found out that it had fallen into
my
hands is a mystery.”

“I warned you,” Lao Tse-Mung pointed out in his quiet way, “that my house would be watched.”

“You did,” Nayland Smith agreed, bitterly. “But even so, how did the watcher discover the very room in which this manuscript lay? And, crowning mystery, how did the Cold Man get in to steal it?”

As he ceased speaking, the large room seemed to become eerily still. This stillness was broken by a sound which sent a chill through Tony’s nerves. Although a long way off, it was as clearly audible, penetrating, and horrifying as the wail of a banshee. A long minor cry, rising to a high final note on which it died away.

Even Lao Tse-Mung clutched the arms of his chair. Nayland Smith sprang up as if electrified.

“You heard it, McKay?”

“Of course I heard it. For God’s sake, what was it?”

“A sound I haven’t heard for years and never expected to hear in China. It was the warning cry of a dacoit. Fu-Manchu has always employed these Burmese robbers and assassins. Come on, McKay! I have a revolver in my pocket. Are you armed?”

“No.”

“You may have my gun,” Lao Tse-Mung volunteered, entirely restored to his normal calm. From under his robe he produced a small but serviceable automatic. “It is fully charged. What do you propose to do, Sir Denis?”

“To try to find the spot where that call came from.”

Nayland Smith was heading for the door when a faint bell-note detained him.

“Wait,” Lao Tse-Mung directed.

The old mandarin drew back the loose sleeve of his robe. Tony saw that he wore one of the phenomenal two-way radios on his wrist. He listened, spoke briefly, then disconnected.

“My chief mechanic reports, Sir Denis, that the cry we heard came from a point between the main gate and the drive-in to the garage. He is there now.”

“Come on, McKay,” Nayland Smith repeated, and ran out, followed by Tony.

They headed for the main gate, looking grotesque in their pajamas and robes. They slowed down as they reached the gate, stood still, and listened. The sound of voices reached them from somewhere ahead.

Tony found himself retracing that sloping path behind the high wall which led to the garage—the path along which Mai Cha had taken him on the memorable night he had escaped the Master.

The beam of a flashlight presently led them to Lao Tse-Mung’s chief mechanic. He had two other men with him. A tall ladder was propped against the wall, and another man could be seen on the top looking over. Sir Denis was expected, for Wong, the mechanic, saluted and reported. He spoke Chinese with a Szechuan dialect which seemed to puzzle Sir Denis but with which Tony’s travels in the area had made him fairly familiar. Fortunately, he also spoke quite good English.

He had been walking toward this point, scanning the parapet of the wall with his flashlight, when that awful cry broke the silence, and died away. “It came from about here,” Wong said. “I called out, and the nearest man in the search party ran to join me. My orders were not to open the gates and not to disconnect the wiring. The gardeners brought a ladder so that we could look into the road. It is set so that the rungs do not touch the wires. But the man up there can see nothing and I have ordered him to come down.”

“You have heard no other sound?” Tony asked him.

“Not a movement,” the man assured him. “Nothing stirred.”

The gardener descended from the long ladder and was about to remove it.

“One moment,” Nayland Smith snapped. “I want to take a look. This intrigues me.”

“Be careful of the wiring,” Wong warned. “It carries a high voltage and a slight touch is enough.”

“That
wouldn’t interest you,” Tony called out as Nayland Smith started up the ladder.

“That’s just what
does
interest me!” Sir Denis called back.

He mounted right to the top of the ladder. He didn’t look out onto the road; he looked fixedly at the parapet where the wires were stretched. Then he came down. From a pocket of his gown he took his pipe and his pouch.

“There are two other things I must know, McKay. For one of them we have to wait for daylight. The other it’s just possible we might find tonight.” He turned to Wong. “Take the ladder away. I’m glad you brought it.”

He grasped Tony’s arm. “I have a flashlight in my pocket. Walk slowly back to the house, not by the route we came, but by the nearest way to the windows of your room and the office.”

As they started, Nayland Smith, pipe in mouth, kept flashing light into shadowy shrubberies which bordered the path.

“I don’t know what you’re looking for,” Tony declared.

“I may be wrong, McKay. It’s no more than what you call a hunch. But I do know what I’m looking for. It’s a hundred to one chance and if I’m wrong I’ll tell you. If I’m right, you’ll see for yourself.”

They walked slowly on. There was little breeze. Sometimes the flashlight brought about a queer rustling in the shrubberies as of some sleeping creatures disturbed or nocturnal things scuffling to shelter. In the light of a declining moon, bats could be seen swooping silently overhead.

His gruesome experience with a Cold Man vividly in mind, Tony found himself threatened, as they moved slowly along, by a shapeless terror. Partly, it was a creation of the dark and stillness, an upsurge of hereditary superstition. Things he couldn’t explain had happened. At any moment, he thought, icy fingers might clutch his throat again. Of human enemies he had no fear. But what were these Cold Men? Were they human, or were they, as some who had seen them believed, animated dead men, zombies?

Nayland Smith worked diligently, yard by yard.

He found nothing.

And Tony knew, by observing the furious way in which he puffed at his pipe, that he was disappointed.

They had reached the gate lodge, which was in darkness, and had turned left, instead of to the right which was the way they had come, before Sir Denis uttered a word.

Then he said rapidly, “Here’s our last chance.”

They were in a narrow, little-used path, overgrown by wild flowers. It led to the east wing of the house, but not to any entrance. It would, though, as Tony realized, lead them to a point directly below the window of his own room and that of the office.

Tirelessly, Nayland Smith explored every shadow with his flashlight, but found nothing until, in a clump of tangled undergrowth surrounding a tall tulip tree, he pulled up.

“I was right!”

The ray of the lamp lighted a grisly spectacle.

A man lay there, a man whose body was gray, whose only clothing consisted of a loin cloth, and this was gray, and a tightly knotted gray turban. He lay in a contorted attitude, his head twisted half under his body.

“This is what I was looking for,” Nayland Smith said. “Look. His neck’s broken.”

“Good God! Is this—”

“The Cold Man who attacked you? Yes. And you killed him.”

Tony stood, hands clenched, looking at the ghastly thing under the tulip tree. Suddenly in that warm night, he felt chilled…

“The first specimen,” Nayland Smith stated grimly, “to fall into my hands. Rumor hasn’t exaggerated. I can feel the chill even here.” He stepped forward.

“Careful, Sir Denis.”

Nayland Smith turned. “The poor devil’s harmless now, McKay. He’s out of the clutches of Dr. Fu-Manchu at last. Some day, I hope, we shall know how these horrors are created. His skin is an unnatural gray, but I recognize the features. The man is Burmese.” He stooped over the contorted body. “Hullo! Thank heaven, McKay, the hundred to one chance has come off.”

From the gray loincloth he dragged out a bundle of papers, shone the ray of the lamp on it, and sprang upright so excitedly that he dropped his pipe.