Emperor Fu-Manchu (15 page)

“Sun Shao-Tung’s notes and the Chinese manuscript. Our luck’s changed, McKay.” He picked up his pipe. “Let me show you something.” He stooped again, lighted the face of the Cold Man. “Contrary to official belief, dacoity, thought to be extinct, is a religious cult. Look.”

He tore the gray turban from the dead man’s head. Tony drew nearer.

“What, Sir Denis?”

The flashlight was directed on the shaven head.

“The caste mark.”

Tony looked closely. Just above the line of the turban he saw a curious mark, either tattooed or burnt onto the skin.

“A dacoit,” Nayland Smith told him.

“Then it was he who gave that awful moaning cry?”

“No,” Sir Denis replied. “That was my hunch. It was
another
dacoit who gave the cry.”

T
hree times Matsukata, the Japanese physician in charge of the neighboring clinic, had come into a small room attached to Dr. Fu-Manchu’s laboratory in which the doctor often rested and sometimes, when he had worked late, slept. It was very simply equipped, the chief item of furniture being a large, cushioned divan.

A green-shaded lamp stood on a table littered with papers and books, and its subdued light provided the sole illumination. The air was polluted with sickly fumes of opium.

Dr. Fu-Manchu lay on the divan entirely without movement. Even his breathing was not perceptible. A case of beautifully fashioned opium pipes rested on a small table beside him, with a spirit lamp, a jar of the purest
chandu
, and several silver bodkins. In spirit, Dr. Fu-Manchu was far from the world of ordinary men, and his body rested; perhaps the only real rest he ever knew.

Matsukata stood there, silent, watching, listening. Then, once more he withdrew.

Quite a few minutes had passed in the silent room when Fu-Manchu raised heavy lids and looked around. The green eyes were misty, the pupils mere pinpoints. But as he sat up, by some supreme command of his will, the mist cleared, the contracted pupils enlarged. He used opium as he used men, for his own purpose; but no man and no drug was his master.

It was his custom, in those periods of waiting for a fateful decision, which the average man spends in pacing the floor, checking each passing minute, to smoke a pipe of
chandu
and so enter that enchanted realm to which opium holds the key.

But now he was instantly alert, in complete command of all his faculties. He struck a small gong on the table beside him.

Matsukata came in before the vibration of the gong had ceased.

“Well?” Fu-Manchu demanded.

Matsukata bowed humbly. “I regret to report failure, Master.”

Fu-Manchu clenched his hands. “You mean that Singu failed?”

“Singu failed to return, Master.”

“But Singu was a Cold Man, a mere automaton under your direction,” Fu-Manchu spoke softly. “If anything failed, Matsukata, it was your direction.”

“That is not so, Master. Something unforeseen occurred. Where, I cannot tell. But when more than ten minutes past his allotted time had elapsed, Ok, who was watching from the point of entry, reported a man with a flashlight approaching. I ordered Ok to give the warning to which Singu should have replied. There was no reply. I ordered Ok to remove evidence of our mode of entry. It was just in time. A party of men was searching the grounds.”

Dr. Fu-Manchu stood up slowly. He folded his arms.

“Is that all your news?” he asked in a whisper. “The Si-Fan Register is lost?”

“That is all, Master.”

“You may go. Await other orders.”

Matsukata bowed deeply, and went out.

* * *

In Lao Tse-Mung’s library, Nayland Smith was speaking. Gray, ghostly daylight peered in at the windows.

“Dacoits never work alone. During my official years in Burma I furnished reports to London which proved, conclusively, that dacoity was not dead. I also discovered that, like thuggee, it was not merely made up of individual gangs of hoodlums, but was a religious cult. Dr. Fu-Manchu, many years ago, obtained absolute control of the dacoits. He even has a bodyguard of dacoits. Probably the Cold Man, who lies dead out there, was formerly one of them.”

Lao Tse-Mung’s alert, wrinkle-framed eyes were fixed upon Sir Denis. Tony chainsmoked.

“Of the powers of these creatures, called, locally, Cold Men, we know nothing. But we do know, now, that they are—or were—normal human beings. By some hellish means they have been converted to this form. But certainly their powers are supernormal and the temperature of their bodies is phenomenal; they are cold as blocks of ice.”

Tony found himself shivering. His first encounter with a Cold Man had made an impression that would last forever.

“How you got onto the fact that he was lying somewhere on that path is beyond me,” he declared.

“It was a theory, McKay, based on experience. Whenever I have heard that call it has always been a warning to one dacoit who was operating, from another who was watching. Since it’s getting light now, I hope to find out shortly how the Cold Man got into the grounds.”

“But how did he get into the office?”

“That,” Nayland Smith answered, “is not so difficult. There is a tall tulip tree growing close to the house some twenty yards from the window. These Burmese experts often operate from the roof. Evidently, even when changed to Cold Men, they retain these acrobatic powers.

“It’s likely that he lowered himself from the roof to enter the room and returned to the roof to make his escape. But your lucky shot with the metal bowl registered.” He turned to Tony. “It would have killed a normal man. It only dazed the dacoit. He got back as far as the tall tulip tree, sprang to a high branch—and missed it.”

Sir Denis knocked ashes from his pipe and began to reload the charred bowl.

“Your analysis of the night’s events,” came Lao Tse-Mung’s mellow voice, “is entirely logical. But there’s one mystery which you have not cleared up. I refer to the fact that those who instructed this man must have known that the document in cipher was here.”

Nayland Smith paused in the act of pressing the tobacco into the bowl of his pipe.

“I don’t think they
knew
it,” he replied thoughtfully. “But since McKay was identified in Niu-fo-tu as the escaped prisoner, and the dying Skobolov was in the neighborhood at the same time, Fu-Manchu may have surmised that McKay had gotten possession of the document and brought it to me.”

* * *

In the early morning, a party of frightened and shivering men under Nayland Smith’s direction carried a long, heavy wooden box out from the main gate and across the narrow road. In a cypress wood bordering the road they dug a deep grave, and buried the Cold Man.

The body remained supernaturally chilled.

Sir Denis, having dismissed the burial party, set off with Tony at a rapid pace in the direction of the main gate. Soon they reached the spot where the gardeners had placed the ladder that night. Nayland Smith quickly identified it by marks on the soil where it had rested. Then, foot by foot, he examined every inch of ground under the wall for several yards east and west of it.

At last he cried triumphantly, “Look!” and pointed down. “Just as I thought!”

Tony looked. He saw two narrow holes in the earth, which looked as if they’d been made by the penetration of a walking stick.

“What does this mean?”

“It means what I suspected, McKay. I have the key to the main gate. Here it is. Go out and walk back along the road. I’ll sing out to guide you. When you get to the spot where I’m standing, inside, look for similar marks, outside.”

Tony took the key and ran to the gate. He unlocked it and began to do as Nayland Smith had directed. When he reached a point which he judged was near where Sir Denis waited, he called out.

“Three paces more,” came the crisp reply.

He took three paces. “Here I am.”

“Search.”

Tony found the job no easy one. Coarse grass and weeds grew beside the road close up to the wall. But, persevering, he noticed a patch which seemed to have been trodden down. He stooped, parted the tangled undergrowth with his fingers, and at last found what he was looking for: two identical holes in the earth.

“Found ’em?” Nayland Smith called from the other side of the wall.

“Yes, Sir Denis. They’re here!”

“Come back, and relock the gate.”

Tony obeyed, rejoined Nayland Smith. “What does all this mean?”

Sir Denis grinned impishly. “It means two light bamboo ladders, long enough to clear the wiring and meeting above it on top. It’s as simple as that.”

Tony gaped for a moment; then he began to laugh. “So much for Lao Tse-Mung’s fortress!”

“Quite so,” Nayland Smith spoke grimly. “It could be entered by an agile man using only one ladder. Now, to find the last piece of evidence on which my analysis of this business rests. I have examined the wall below the office window, and no one could reach the window from the ground. Therefore, it’s certain that he reached it from the roof as I suspected last night.”

They returned to the house, where Wong was waiting for them.

“The trap to the roof,” he reported, “is above the landing of the east wing. I have had a step ladder put there and have unbolted the trap.”

“Good.” Nayland Smith lighted his pipe. “Show the way.”

Wong ducked his head, stepped into the narrow, V-shaped closet, reached up, and opened a trap. A shaft of daylight appeared in the opening.

“Wait until I’m up, McKay,” Sir Denis directed. “Then follow on. Four eyes are better than two.”

He raised his arms, wedged his foot on a projection, and was gone. Tony followed and found himself lying at the base of the curved Chinese roof, and only prevented from falling off by the curl of the highly decorated edge. Nayland Smith, on all fours, was already crawling along the ledge. Tony glanced over the side and saw at a glance that they were no more than a few yards from the office and his own room below.

As this fact dawned upon him, Nayland Smith turned his head and looked back.

“I was right,” he cried. “Here’s what I was looking for.”

He held up a length of shiny, thin rope. One end apparently was fastened to an ornament on the curling lip of the roof.

Tony turned cautiously and crawled back. He saw, when Sir Denis joined him, that he carried the coil of rope. But it was not until they were in Tony’s room that he explained what, already, was fairly clear. He held up the thin line.

“Notice,” he said, “that it’s knotted at intervals. It’s a silk rope and strong as a cable. You saw that it was fastened to one of the gargoyles decorating the edge of the roof. A dacoit’s rope. I have seen many. His weight, as he first swung down to the window and then hauled himself up again, so tightened the knot that he couldn’t get it free when he returned to the roof. He dared not wait. He ran along the roof to the tulip tree—and broke his neck.”

T
hat night a counsel of war was held. “Whatever information he may have,” Lao Tse-Mung stated, “the Master dare not take active steps against me. It is clear that we hold a document which is of vital importance to him. This is my shield. Your presence, Sir Denis, requires no explanation, nor does that of Moon Flower. But you, Captain McKay, as a secret agent once under arrest, pose a problem.”

“I quite agree, sir,” Tony admitted.

“What are we going to do?” Moon Flower asked, her blue eyes anxious. “Even if Fu-Manchu does not have you arrested, Sir Denis has told you that his awful servants, the Cold Men, can get in almost any night.”

Lao Tse-Mung smiled in his gentle way.

“For a few more nights, possibly, Moon Flower. And I have arranged a patrol of the walls which will make even this difficult. Then, advised by Sir Denis, and in conference with my engineers, I have prepared a surprise for invaders.”

“It boils down to this,” Nayland Smith announced. “We’re all three going to move, tonight. We meet at the house of the lama, Dr. Li Wu Chang, in Niu-fo-tu. I could discard disguise and travel openly, as I’m entitled to do, taking Jeanie with me. Fu-Manchu knows I’m in Szechuan, although I’m uncertain how he found out. It’s open warfare. But in view of all we have to do, this would be to play into Fu-Manchu’s hands. He must be made to believe that I have returned to Hong Kong. Our good friend, Lao Tse-Mung, has undertaken this part of the scheme, and his private plane will leave for Hong Kong tonight.”