Emperor Fu-Manchu (22 page)

Nayland Smith didn’t reply. The green eyes were turned upon Tony, and he felt, again, the horrible sensation that they looked not at him, but clear through him.

“You have proved yourself a nuisance, Captain McKay,” the sibilant voice continued, “but not a serious menace. Suppose I offered you your freedom, on two conditions?”

“What conditions?”

“One, that you married Miss Cameron-Gordon.”

Tony’s throat grew dry. “And the other?”

“That you both took the oath of allegiance to the Order of the Si-Fan.”

Tony turned, met a look from the haggard eyes of Cameron-Gordon who cried out, “I don’t understand. I didn’t know you were even acquainted.”

“We were thrown together for a long time, sir. I love your daughter deeply, sincerely. And she has consented to marry me, with your approval… but not until you are free.”

“I have already offered Dr. Cameron-Gordon his freedom,” Fu-Manchu murmured.

“On the same terms,” Cameron-Gordon began, then stopped, sank his head in his hands.

Nayland Smith sat silently, looking neither to the right nor left, but straight ahead at Dr. Fu-Manchu.

“Suppose I decline?” Tony asked hoarsely.

Fu-Manchu struck the small gong. Draperies before one of the several doors were swept aside and Moon Flower came in.

She wore the nurse’s uniform in which Tony had recently seen her.

“Yueh Hua!” he gasped and half-stood up.

“Jeanie, darling,” Cameron-Gordon’s voice rose on a note of deep emotion.

She ignored them. Her blue eyes were turned on Dr. Fu-Manchu who did not even glance in her direction.

“You are happy in your new work?” he asked.

“I am happy, Master.”

“You may go.”

Moon Flower turned and automatically walked out through the opening by which she had come in.

Cameron-Gordon and Tony sprang simultaneously to their feet. Nayland Smith reached out to the right and left and grabbed an arm of each in a powerful grip.

“Sit down!” he snapped. “Don’t act like bloody fools.”

Tony conquered the furious rage which had swept his sanity aside, and sat down. Cameron-Gordon resisted awhile, but finally sank back into his chair. “You damn monster!” he muttered. “Why didn’t I strangle you long ago?”

Fu-Manchu, who had remained impassive, replied in an undertone like a snake’s hiss, “Probably out of consideration for your daughter, Doctor. I am obliged to you, Sir Denis. If you will glance behind you, I think you will realize how childish any display of force would have been.”

Tony turned in a flash.

Four stockily built Burmese, armed with long knives, stood behind their chairs.

Fu-Manchu spoke three guttural words, not in English, and Tony knew, although he heard no sound, that the four bodyguards had retired.

“Now let us hear,” Nayland Smith spoke crisply, “what plans for our welfare you have in mind if your generous offer is declined.”

His irony ruffled Dr. Fu-Manchu no more than Cameron-Gordon’s violence had done. Resting his elbows on the desk, he pressed the tips of his long fingers together. Moon Flower’s evident submission to the will of the perverted genius had shaken Tony so badly that his brain seemed numbed.

Waiting for Fu-Manchu’s next words, he felt like a criminal awaiting sentence.

“There was a time, Sir Denis,” he heard the cool voice saying, “when I employed medieval methods. You may recall the Wire Jacket and the Seven Gates of Wisdom?”

Tony looked aside at Nayland Smith, noted a tightening of the jaw muscles, and knew that he had clenched his teeth.

“Quite clearly,” he replied calmly. “Hungry rats featured in the Seven Gates, I remember.”

“I have abandoned such crudities. Doubtless they were appropriate in dealing with river pirates, if only as a warning to other low-class criminals. But I recognized that they were useless to me. I had to deal with enemies on a higher social and intellectual plane. Therefore, more subtle means were indicated.”

“Go on,” Nayland Smith said irritably. “What do you propose to do with us?”

“I hope to make you understand that it is my methods and not my ideals against which you have fought, without notable success, for many years. In England, I agree, those methods were unusual. In consequence, your Scotland Yard branded me as a common criminal. My political aims were described as ‘The Yellow Peril’.”

Fu-Manchu’s strange voice had increased in volume, had become guttural. He had altered his passive pose. Lean hands lay clenched upon the desk before him.

“Was Scotland Yard wrong?” Nayland Smith asked, coolly.

Fu-Manchu got halfway out of his chair, then dropped back into it.

“Sometimes your persistent and insufferable misunderstanding rouses my anger. This is bad—for both of us. You are perfectly well aware that the Si-Fan is international. Ridding China of Communism is one of its objectives, yes. But ridding
the world
of this Russian pestilence is its main purpose. In this purpose do we, or do we not, stand on common ground?”

Tony almost held his breath. He sensed a storm brewing between these two strong personalities. If it broke, God help all of them!

“As I am still employed by the British government,” Nayland Smith answered calmly, “your question is difficult for me to answer.”

“The British government,” Fu-Manchu hissed. “Why do they soil their hands by contact with the offal that pose as lords of China? Can you conceivably believe, knowing the history of my people, that these unclean creatures can retain their hold upon China, my China? Do you believe that the proud Poles, the hot-blooded Hungarians, the stiff-necked Germans, will bend the knee to the childish nonsense of Marx and Lenin? You asked me what I proposed to do with you. Here is my answer: Work with me, for we labor in a common cause—not against me.”

There was an interruption; a faint bell-note. Dr. Fu-Manchu stooped to a cabinet beside him. A muffled voice spoke. The voice ceased. Fu-Manchu pressed a switch and lay back in his chair, impassive again.

“Well, Sir Denis?” he prompted softly.

“Unofficially,” Nayland Smith spoke slowly, as if weighing every word, “there might be certain advantages. I should be glad to see China rid of the Communist yoke.”

“For which reason, perhaps—and unofficially—you had André Skobolov intercepted in Niu-fo-tu?”

Tony suppressed a groan. Fu-Manchu knew, as Nayland Smith suspected, that he had been seen in Niu-fo-tu.

“André Skobolov?” Nayland Smith murmured. “The name is familiar. A Kremlin agent? But I never met him, nor even saw him.”

Fu-Manchu bent forward. The hypnotic eyes were turned on Tony.

“But
you
met him, Captain McKay, in Niu-fo-tu.”

Tony thought hard, and quickly; tried to act on Nayland Smith’s lead. “I was in Niu-fo-tu for less than half an hour—on the run from jail. I certainly never saw the man you speak of there, and shouldn’t have known him if I had.”

“Then for what other purpose were you in Szechuan?”

“For
my
purpose, Dr. Fu-Manchu,” Nayland Smith cried out fiercely. “His mission was to confirm my belief that the man known as the Master was yourself.”

The overpowering gaze of the green eyes was transferred to Sir Denis. “Then your trusted agent, Sir Denis, who seems to have acquired what he would call ‘a girl friend’ on his way, safely reached the house of Lao Tse-Mung to report to you?”

“Lao Tse-Mung is an old and honored acquaintance who has offered me hospitality on any occasion when my affairs brought me to this part of China.”

“You mean he is an agent of British Intelligence?”

“I mean that he is a patriot, and a gentleman.”

There was a brief silence.

“I, also, am a patriot, Sir Denis. What is more, I hope to save not only the Chinese but the peoples of every nation from obliteration. This will be their fate if the insane plans of the Soviet should ever be put into execution. Their latest instrument of destruction is so secret and so dangerous that research on it is being conducted in this remote area of China.”

“We are aware of this.”

“Indeed?” Fu-Manchu’s tone changed slightly. “We are on common ground again. You regard it with deep concern?”

“We do. If—accidentally—this research plant could be destroyed, its loss would be welcome. Germ warfare is too horrible to be permitted, and Dr. von Wehrner, their chief scientist, is the greatest living expert on the subject.”

Fu-Manchu’s masklike features melted in a cold smile. “You see, Sir Denis, we must work together. I was informed a few minutes ago that Dr. von Wehrner has been recalled to Moscow.”

Nayland Smith started, then shook his head. “Collaboration, I fear, is impossible. The end does not justify the means, and you can’t win me over with persuasive guile any more than you could with physical torture. So I ask you again, what do you propose to do with us?”

Fu-Manchu lay back in the chair, so that his strange, powerful features became half-masked in shadow. The long hands rested on the desk and a large emerald seal which he wore gleamed and seemed to shoot out sparks of green fire as pointed nails tapped the surface of the desk. He spoke in a low voice.

“I anticipated your reply. Yet I never despair of convincing you one day that your government, and others, must accept me, as they have accepted the puppet regime at Peking. But my power in China hangs upon a silken thread. The Kremlin distrusts me. In spite of my acknowledged scientific eminence, I have never been invited to inspect the Soviet research station. And I have not sought an invitation—because I intend to destroy it.”

“In that,” said Nayland Smith, “you have my approval. But you have not answered my question.”

Fu-Manchu’s long fingers resting on the desk became intertwined in a serpentine fashion, and Tony experienced a kind of spiritual chill.

“I shall answer it, Sir Denis,” the whisper went on, almost dreamily. “Your death could avail me nothing and might one day be laid at my door with disastrous consequences; for you are no longer a mere Burmese police officer, but an esteemed official of the British Secret Service.”

“Therefore?” Nayland Smith prompted.

“Therefore, I shall see to it that you disappear for a time. Dr. Cameron-Gordon will resume his work in my laboratory here, or perhaps in another, elsewhere. His charming daughter I shall keep usefully employed. Concerning Captain McKay, I am undecided.”

Tony had been struggling hard to bottle his rising anger, but as Fu-Manchu’s voice ceased the cork came out.

“Then I’ll decide for you!” he shouted, and sprang to his feet.

Nayland Smith grabbed him and threw him back in his chair. “For God’s sake,” he snapped, “shut up.” Then he continued smoothly, “There is one objection to your plans, Dr. Fu-Manchu.”

“From your point of view, no doubt?”

“No. From yours.”

“And what is this objection?” Fu-Manchu bent forward, fixing his strange gaze on Sir Denis’s face.

“I will explain it only if you give me your word—which I respect—that should you decline to accept what I propose, no coercion of any kind be used upon any of us to force compliance, and I am not to be asked to identify others concerned. We shall remain, as we are now, your prisoners.”

Fu-Manchu watched him in silence for some time.

“I give you my word, Sir Denis,” he said quietly.

Tony, fists clenched tightly, glanced at Nayland Smith. What was he going to say? What plan has flashed through that resourceful brain? And what was the word of this arch criminal worth?

“Good,” Sir Denis said calmly. “I accept it. You said before that I had attempted to intercept the man Skobolov. On the contrary, I was unaware that he was in China, nor did I know what I should have had to gain by such an attempt. But your evident interest in his movements suggests that it was something of great importance.”

Dr. Fu-Manchu did not stir; his face remained expressionless. Tony almost held his breath. He knew, now, what Nayland Smith was going to propose.

“By mere chance,” Sir Denis went on, speaking calmly and unusually slowly, “a man unknown to McKay appealed to him to help him. He was very ill and apparently in danger. McKay took him on board his boat, and during that night the man died. His body was consigned to the canal. His sole baggage, a large briefcase, McKay brought with him to the meeting place I had appointed.”

Fu-Manchu’s expression remained impassive. But his long fingers intertwined again. He said nothing.

“From the correspondence in the briefcase, when translated, we learned that the man was André Skobolov. We also learned that he had something in his possession which was of vital interest to the Kremlin. This could only be a bound manuscript, written in Chinese.”

And at last Fu-Manchu spoke. “Which was also translated?”

“It could not be deciphered. May I deduce that this manuscript is the reason for your interest in André Skobolov?”

There was a brief silence. Cameron-Gordon had raised his bowed head and was watching Nayland Smith.

“If it were so,” Fu-Manchu said smoothly, “in what way could this be an objection to my plans?”

“At the moment, it could be none. In the event of my disappearance it might prove a source of annoyance. The manuscript is in safe keeping, but should I fail to reclaim it within the next few days, it will be dispatched to the British Foreign Office to be decoded.”