Emperor Fu-Manchu (19 page)

Shun-Hi, flushed and excited, came in. Moon Flower ran to meet her.

“Here it is, Miss Yueh Hua. The answer from your father.”

Moon Flower almost snatched the folded sheet of paper right out of Shun-Hi’s hand.

“Quick, Jeanie, is it for tonight?” Nayland Smith snapped.

She read, quickly, tears in her eyes, then looked up. “Yes. Tonight.”

* * *

In the dusk, Tony and Nayland Smith set out. They had weathered a bad storm with Moon Flower.

“I simply dare not take her, McKay,” Sir Denis said. “I understand her eagerness to see her father, but if anything goes wrong tonight, we shall have walked into hell. Whatever happens to you and me, Jeanie will be safe, if she does what I told her to do. You heard my instructions to Lao Tse-Mung. If we get Cameron-Gordon clear, the plans are laid for Jeanie and her father to fly to Hong Kong. Your capture of the Chinese manuscript was a divine miracle. We may have Dr. Fu-Manchu at our mercy. But Skobolov’s correspondence has given me ideas about the Soviet research centre. We are going to take a look at the centre, McKay.”

They followed the route which they took before, when Shun-Hi had led them to the staff entrance of General Huan’s house. But tonight the streets were not thronged. In one quarter, a fringe of which touched their route, they could see lighted lanterns in adjoining streets, and hear barbaric music, but it was soon left behind.

Once clear of the outskirts of the town, two workingmen and their moon-shadows walked along the highway.

There was something melancholy in the empty countryside, in the breathless stillness, which bred in Tony’s mind a sense of foreboding. Nayland Smith had been silent for some time. Suddenly he spoke.

“Your automatic is ready, I take it, McKay?”

And the words suggested to Tony that Sir Denis was feeling the same apprehension.

“Yes, sure.”

“So’s my revolver. Always want to be prepared.”

Tony was obsessed by an urgent need to talk, and so, “You said you had cleared the course,” he said, trying to speak lightly. “To which part of the course did you refer?”

“The last hundred yards,” Nayland Smith replied, and fell silent again.

Twenty paces on, he stopped suddenly and grasped Tony’s arm. “Listen.”

Tony stood completely still and strained his ears. He could hear nothing.

“What do you think you heard?” he asked Nayland Smith in a hushed voice.

“Someone behind us. But there’s no one in sight.”

But, as they resumed their march, Tony knew that the shadow which had fallen upon his spirits had also touched Nayland Smith.

They reached the point where, before, they had turned into the poppy field, but now kept to the high road. Soon they were on the path which Shun-Hi and her friends had followed and deep in the shadow of the cypresses. Tony’s spirits sank even lower in the darkness.

Nayland Smith pulled up, stopped him with a touch.

A weird, plaintive wail rose in the night, and then died away.

“Stupid of me,” Sir Denis murmured. “For one unpleasant moment I thought it was a dacoit. Just a night hawk.”

They came to the lane bordering the high wall. Nayland Smith looked swiftly to right and left before stepping out. The side on which they stood, opposite the wall, lay in shadow. “All clear. Come on!”

Almost silent in their straw sandals, they moved on, nearer to the door in the wall. In the shade of the banyan, Nayland Smith turned aside, plunging into undergrowth. Tony followed. He was completely at a loss until Sir Denis produced a flashlight and shone it on the tangled roots of the great tree.

“Look!”

Tony looked and was astounded by what he saw.

A long, slender bamboo ladder lay there.

“Always glad to learn from the enemy, McKay. This clears the course from here to the laboratory where Cameron-Gordon is waiting for us.”

“You still have me guessing.”

Nayland Smith laughed. “This ladder is light enough for a child to carry and it’s long enough to reach the top of General Huan’s wall. It’s also strong enough to support a man of reasonable weight.”

“But where did you get it?”

“I found a friendly carpenter. Told him I was a gardener employed in a place where there were tall trees to be pruned. He had the ladder ready by evening. I collected it and carried it here early in the morning before anyone was about.”

He dragged the ladder from the roots of the tree.

They returned to the lane, Tony carrying the ladder on his shoulder. “I have to look out for the pear tree?”

“Right. Go ahead. I want to keep an eye on the lane behind.”

Tony tramped on. Promise of action blew aside the cloud of foreboding which had crept over him. And soon, against the bright sky, he saw pear blossoms peeping over the wall like a scene in a Japanese water-color painting.

“All clear,” Nayland Smith called. “Set the ladder up, McKay.”

Tony found a spot among the weeds at the foot of the wall where he could make the base of the ladder firm, and gingerly maneuvered its delicate frame into place.

“All ready.”

“Stand by, McKay. I must make sure that the trellis is strong enough to be safe. We may want to leave in a hurry.”

Nayland Smith went up the ladder with an agility surprising in a man no longer young. Tony watched, breathless with excitement. Sir Denis climbed over the wall and began to climb down on the other side. When his head was level with the pink blossoms, he spoke again.

“Follow on,” he instructed. “Safe as an oak staircase.”

“Do I leave the ladder?”

“No choice, McKay. If it’s moved, we’ll have to drop from the wall.”

Tony was up in a matter of seconds and looked over the top. He saw a well-planted orchard: pear trees, plums, and other fruits. Nayland Smith stood below.

Tony swung his leg over, found a stout branch, and scrambled down.

“What’s our direction, Sir Denis?”

“Not quite sure. Must get my bearings.”

Nayland Smith stood there in the shadow of the wall, tugging at his ear.

“Shun-Hi tried to explain the location of the laboratory.”

“She did. And it’s clear in my mind, now. Follow on.”

* * *

They had to make a wide detour around the house. The property was landscaped as a pleasure garden, with lily ponds and streams of running water and with miniature waterfalls amid a blaze of rockery flowers. In the moonlight it was entrancing.

The laboratory, when at last they sighted it, proved to be partly screened in a grove of orange trees. This was all to the good. It was an ugly building, evidently of recent construction; a long, narrow hut, but much larger than Tony had thought it would be.

“We have to show ourselves in the moonlight to reach the orange trees, which troubles me,” Nayland Smith said. “But at this point we’re not in view from the house.”

“There isn’t a light on in the house,” Tony pointed out.

“That’s what bothers me. Let’s make a dash for it.” They raced across the bright patch of moonlight and into the shadow of the trees.

Two windows of the laboratory building were lighted—a small one near the door and a larger one at the side of the hut. Tony pushed forward, but Nayland Smith stood still, looking back, listening. He said nothing, but joined Tony on a narrow path which led to the door.

He rapped on the panels. The light in the window disappeared. The door opened, and a man in a white coat peered out.

“Smith. Quickly, come in! Who’s with you?”

“Tony McKay, one of us.”

They entered in darkness. The door was closed again and a light sprang up.

Tony saw a tiny room with a table and two chairs, just as Shun-Hi had described. The man in the white coat spoke hoarsely.

“Thank God you found me, Smith, I didn’t know you were in China. And God bless Jeanie for getting my message through. I didn’t want to show a light when I opened the door. I never know when I’m being watched.”

“Nor do I,” Nayland Smith said. “I suggest we start.”

Cameron-Gordon had his hand in a fervent gesture of greeting. “Wait just a few moments, Smith. I want you to see the kind of work I do.” He transferred the handshake to Tony. “You must be quite a man to be here, and I’m glad to meet you.”

He opened a door, beckoned them to follow. They did so reluctantly.

On the threshold they halted simultaneously. There was a muffled buzzing sound and a strange, repulsive odor. The place was lined by glass cases, in which, as Cameron-Gordon switched on the light, they saw feverish activity going on. The cases were filled with insects, some with wings and some without; huge flies, bloated spiders, ants, centipedes, scorpions.

“My God!” Tony muttered.

“I have seen something like this before,” Nayland Smith said, “in another of Fu-Manchu’s establishments.”

“My dear Smith”—Cameron-Gordon was alight with the enthusiasm of the specialist—“he is doing work here which, if it were used for the good of humanity, would make his name immortal. His knowledge of entomology is stupendous.”

“I have had some experience with it,” Nayland Smith rapped dryly. “‘My little allies,’ he once called these horrors.”

Cameron-Gordon ignored the interruption. “His experiments, Smith, are daring beyond what is allowed to be known by God-fearing men. He has bred hybrids of the insect world which never before existed except for sufferers of delirium tremens. I’ll show you some. But he has also prepared drugs from these sources which, if made available to physicians, would almost certainly wipe out the ravages of many fatal diseases.”

“Tell me, Doctor,” Tony said faintly, “what is
that?
” He was staring at a case which contained an enormous centipede of a dull red color. It was fully a foot long and was moving around its glass prison with horrible, febrile activity.

“A Mexican specimen of the
morsitans
species. Twice its hitherto-known largest size. From its toxin he hopes to prepare an inoculation giving immunity from cholera. One of my duties is to extract the toxin.”

“And what about this hideous spider?”

“Known in New Zealand as a katipo, but in this instance, crossed with a tarantula. Its sting is deadly. Dr. Fu-Manchu has made a poison from that creature’s toxin which when swallowed, and it’s tasteless, kills in five minutes; injected, kills instantly. Look at that colony of red ants. Another hybrid species. They multiply from hundreds to millions in a short time. They eat anything. Set loose here in China, they would turn Asia into a desert from the sea to the Himalayas in a few months.”

Nayland Smith was glancing anxiously at his watch. But Cameron-Gordon remained in the grip of his enthusiasm.

“These,” he pointed, “are plague fleas. They are reinforced with plague cultures. One bite would mean the end. I have to feed them.”

Sir Denis broke in. “These cases filled with buzzing flies particularly interest me. What are they?”

“Tsetse flies,” Cameron-Gordon told him, turning. “Each one of the cases is kept at a different temperature, which I regulate. The first, which you’re looking at, is kept at tropical heat, the normal temperature for these insects. The second is sub-tropical. The third is temperate. And the fourth is arctic. So far, we have failed with the fourth. But some of the flies in there are still alive.”

“So I see.”

“They are fed on blood plasma, charged with the trypanosoma of sleeping sickness. They are so reinforced that their bite induces a form of a disease which goes through its entire stages in a matter of days, instead of months. They could operate anywhere short of the Arctic Circle. They are utterly damnable!”

Nayland Smith looked grimly at Tony. “Now we know how Skobolov died.”

And, as he spoke, the light went out.

“I fear,” a cold, sibilant voice said, “that you know too much, Sir Denis.”

* * *

In complete darkness, Tony, his heart beating a tattoo, realized that he stood closest to the door. He reached it, and found it unopenable.

“We’re trapped, McKay!” Nayland Smith said. “What about—”

“What about the other door, you were thinking, Sir Denis?” came the mocking voice. “Unfortunately, as it belongs to my laboratory, I make a point of keeping it locked.”

Tony, cool again after that first shock, began to peer through the darkness in the direction from which the voice came. His hand closed over the butt of his automatic. He had seen something.

High up at the end of this home of insect horrors, he saw a square patch of dim light. He raised his automatic and fired.

The odor of the discharge mingled with the other unpleasant smell which haunted the place. Vibration caused a rattle of glass, but it came from the surrounding cases. Then the silence was complete again, except for the faint buzzing of the tsetse flies and whispering sounds made by some of the other inhabitants of the cases.

“No good, McKay,” Nayland Smith said sharply. “I saw that opening, too.”

“It’s over the door of my workroom,” Cameron-Gordon whispered. “That’s where he is.”

His words were answered by a harsh laugh from Dr. Fu-Manchu.

“Since the arrival of my old acquaintance, Sir Denis, in China, I have made it a practice to look in, unobtrusively, whenever you have remained late at work, Dr. Cameron-Gordon. Tonight I seem to have disturbed your showing your friends this small collection of rare specimens.”

“Enough of this idle chatter,” Nayland Smith barked angrily. “You have trapped us. Very well, come and take us!”

“Sir Denis, how strangely you misread my purpose. If I desired your death, it would be necessary only to shatter any one of the cases of specimens surrounding you—which I assure you I could do without exposing myself to your fire. Should you prefer the tsetse flies? That would be a lingering death. Or perhaps the fleas and the painful result of bubonic plague?”

“You’re not a man, you’re a demon!” Tony rasped.

“I have knowledge which few men possess, Mr. McKay, that is your name, I believe. And as you are clearly a man of courage, possibly you would prefer to try to repel in the dark the attack of my
katipo
, tarantula? He is a strangely active nocturnal creature.”