Emperor Fu-Manchu (9 page)

Dr. Fu-Manchu stood up, crossed to a cabinet, and took out a stoppered jar of old porcelain. With the steady hand of a pharmacist, he poured a few drops into a saucer and restopped the jar. Peko rejoined him with a whistle not of anger, but of joy, grasped the saucer, and drank deeply.

Then the uncanny little animal sprang onto the desk and began to toss manuscripts about in a joyous mood. Dr. Fu-Manchu picked him up, gently, and put him on his shoulder.

“You are a toper, Peko. And I’m not sure that is good for you. I am going to put you in your cage.”

Peko escaped and leapt at one bound onto the high ledge.

“Such is the discipline,” murmured Dr. Fu-Manchu, “of one of my oldest servants. It was Peko to whom I first administered my elixir, the elixir to which he and I owe our presence among men today. Did you know this, my friend?”

“I did.”

Fu-Manchu studied Huan Tsung-Chao under lowered eyelids.

“Yet you have never asked me for this boon.”

“I have never desired it, Master. Should you at any time observe some failure in my capacity to serve you, please tell me so. I belong to a long-lived family. My father married his sixth wife at the age of eighty.”

Dr. Fu-Manchu took a pinch of snuff from a box on the desk. He began to speak, slowly, incisively.

“I have learned since my return to China that Dr. von Wehrner is the chief research scientist employed here by the Soviet. I know his work. Within his limitations, he is brilliant. But the fools who employ him will destroy the world—and all my plans—unless I can unmask and foil their schemes. Von Wehrner is the acknowledged authority on pneumonic plague. This is dangerously easy to disseminate. Its use could nearly depopulate the globe. For instance, I have a perfected preparation in my laboratory now, a mere milligram of which could end human life in Szechuan in a week.”

“This is not war,” General Huan said angrily. “It is mass assassination.”

Fu-Manchu made a slight gesture with one long, sensitive hand. “It must never be. For several years I have had an impalpable powder which can be spread in many ways—by the winds, by individual deposits. A single shell charged with it and exploded over an area hundreds of miles in extent, would bring the whole of its human inhabitants nearly instant death.”

“But you will never use it?”

“It would reduce the area to an uninhabitable desert. No living creature could exist there. What purpose would this serve? How could you, General, with all your military genius, occupy this territory?”

Huan Tsung-Chao spread his palms in a helpless gesture. “I have lived too long, Master. This is not a soldier’s world. Let them close all their military academies. The future belongs to the chemists.”

Dr. Fu-Manchu smiled his terrible smile.

“The experiments of those gropers who seek not to improve man’s welfare, but to blot out the human race, are primitive, barbaric, childish. I have obtained complete control of one of the most powerful forces in the universe. Sound. With sound I can throw an impenetrable net over a whole city, or, if I wish, over only a part of it. No known form of aerial attack could penetrate this net. With sound I could blot out every human being in Peiping, Moscow, London, Paris or Washington, or in selected areas of those cities. For there are sounds inaudible to human ears which can destroy. I have learned to produce these lethal sounds.”

Old General Huan bowed his head. “I salute the world’s master mind. I know of this discovery. Its merit lies in the simple fact that such an attack would be confined to the target area and would not create a plague to spread general disaster.”

“Also,” Dr. Fu-Manchu added, “it would enable your troops to occupy the area immediately.”

* * *

The sampan seemed like sanctuary when Tony and Yueh Hua reached it. But they knew it wasn’t.

“We dare not stay here until sunset, Chi Foh. They are almost sure to search the canal.”

She lay beside him, her head nestled against his shoulder. He stroked her hair. Tony knew he had betrayed himself when he had called out in his mad happiness, “Moon Flower”—in English. But, if Yueh Hua had noticed, she had given no sign. Perhaps, in her excitement, she had not heard the revealing words.

“I know,” he said. “I expect they are looking for us now. But what can we do?”

“If we could reach Lung Chang we should be safe,” she spoke dreamily. “It is not far to Lung Chang.”

He nodded. Oddly enough, Nayland Smith’s instructions had been for him to abandon his boat and hurry overland to Lung Chang. He was to report there to a certain Lao Tse-Mung, a contact of Sir Denis’s and a man of influence.

“What I think we should do, Chi Foh, is to go on up this canal and away from the river. They are not likely to search in that direction. If we can find a place to hide until nightfall, then we could start for Lung Chang, which is only a few miles inland.”

Tony considered this plan. He laughed and kissed Yueh Hua. This new happiness, with fear of a dreadful death hanging over them, astonished him.

“What should I do without you, Yueh Hua?”

They started without delay. It was very hot, and Tony welcomed his large sun hat, gift of the lama. He worked hard, and Yueh Hua insisted upon taking her turn at the oar. There was no sign of pursuit.

In the late afternoon Yueh Hua found a perfect spot to tie up; a little willow-shadowed creek. There was evidence, though, that they were near a village, for through the trees they could see a road along which workers were trudging homeward from the fields.

“It will do,” Tony agreed, “for we shall never be noticed here. But soon I’m going to explore a little way to try to find out just where we are!”

When they had moored the sampan they shared a meal, and Tony went ashore to take a look around.

He discovered that they were moored not more than a few hundred yards from the village, which only a screen of bamboos concealed from them. It was an insignificant little group of dwellings, but it boasted an inn of sorts which spanned the road along which they had seen the peasants walking homeward. He returned and reported this to Yueh Hua.

“I think we should start for Lung Chang at once,” she advised. “The fields are deserted now, and soon dusk will come. I believe I can find the way if we go back a mile or so nearer to Niu-fo-tu.”

Tony loved her more and more every hour they were together. Her keen intelligence made her a wonderful companion. Her beauty, which he had been slow to recognize, had completely conquered him.

“Let’s wait a little while longer, Yueh Hua,” he said yearningly. “I want to tell you how much I love you.” He took her in his arms. “Kiss me while I try.”

* * *

His try was so successful that dusk was very near when Yueh Hua sighed, “My dear one, it is time we left here.”

Tony reluctantly agreed. They pushed the boat out again to the canal and swung around to head back toward Niu-fo-tu.

Tony had dipped the blade of the oar and was about to begin work when he hesitated, lifted the long sweep, and listened.

Someone was running down to the canal, forcing a way through undergrowth, and at the same time uttering what sounded like breathless sobs. It was a man, clearly enough, and a man in a state of blind panic.

“Chi Foh.” Yueh Hua spoke urgently. “Be quick. We must get away. Do you hear it?”

“Yes. I hear it. But I don’t understand.”

A gasping cry came. The man evidently had sighted the boat. “Save me! Help, boatman!”

Then Tony heard him fall, heard his groans. He swung the boat into the bank. “Take the oar, Yueh Hua, while I see what’s wrong here.”

Yueh Hua grasped him. “Chi Foh! You are mad. It may be a trap. We know we are being followed.”

Gently, he broke away. “My dearest—give me my gun—you know where it is.”

From the locker Yueh Hua brought the .38. She was trembling excitedly. Tony knew that it was for his safety, not for her own, that she was frightened. He kissed her, took the pistol, and jumped ashore.

Groans and muffled hysterical words led him to the spot. He found a half-dressed figure writhing in a tangle of weeds two to three feet high; a short, thickset man of Slavonic type, and although not lacking in Mongolian characteristics, definitely not Chinese. He was clutching a bulging briefcase. He looked up.

“A hundred dollars to take me to Huang-ko-shu!” he groaned. “Be quick.”

Tony dragged the man to his feet. He discovered that his hands were feverishly hot. “Come on board. I can take you part of the way.”

He half carried the sufferer, still clutching his leather case, onto the sampan.

“Chi Foh, you are insane,” was Yueh Hua’s greeting. “What are we to do with him?”

“Put him ashore somewhere near a town. He’s very ill.” He dragged the unwanted passenger under the mat roof and took to the oar.

But again he hesitated, although only for a moment. There were cries, running footsteps, swiftly approaching from the direction of the hidden village.

T
ony drove the sampan at racing speed. He could only hope that they were out of sight before the party, evidently in pursuit of their passenger, had reached the canal.

The banks were deserted. Moonlight transformed poppy fields into seas of silver. When, drawing near to Niu-fo-tu, grain succeeded poppy, the prospect became even more fairylike. It was a phantom journey, never to be forgotten, through phantom landscapes. Willows bordering the canal were white ghosts on one bank, black ghosts on the other.

Yueh Hua crouched beside him. The man they had rescued had apparently gone mad. He struck out right and left in his delirium, slapping his face and hands as if tormented by a swarm of mosquitoes.

“Chi Foh,” Yueh Hua whispered, “he is very ill. Could it be—” she hesitated—“that he has the
plague
?”

“No, no, don’t think such things. He shows no signs of having the plague. Take the oar for a few minutes, my dearest. He must want water.”

“Oh, Chi Foh.”

Tony clasped her reassuringly and ducked in under the low roof. He was far from confident, himself, about what ailed the mysterious passenger, but human feeling demanded that he do his best for him.

The man sipped water eagerly; he was forever trying to drive away imaginary flying things which persecuted him. His head rested on his bulky briefcase. His hectic mutterings were in a language which Tony didn’t know. To questions in Chinese he made no reply. Once only he muttered, “Huang-ko-shu.”

Tony returned to Yueh Hua. “Tell me, where is Huang-ko-shu?”

“It is on the Yangtze River many miles below Lung Chang.”

“I told him I would take him part of the way,” Tony murmured. “We must put him ashore when we get across, Yueh Hua.”

“I wish we had never found him,” she whispered, giving up the oar to Tony.

They passed their old mooring place behind Niu-fo-tu and at last reached the river. Tony had insisted on doing most of the rowing and was coming close to exhaustion.

The Lu Ho looked deserted.

“Let me take the oar,” Yueh Hua said gently, but insistently. “There is very little current and I can cross quite easily. You must, Chi Foh.”

He gave in. He watched Yueh Hua at the long sweep, swinging easily to its movement with the lithe grace of a ballerina. What a woman!

Tony found it hard to keep awake. The man they had rescued had stopped raving, become quite silent. The gentle movement of the boat, the rhythmic swish of the long oar, did their hypnotic work. He fell asleep…

“Chi Foh.”
Yueh Hua’s voice. “Wake up. I am afraid.”

Tony was wide awake before she stopped speaking. He drew her down to him. “Where are we? What’s happened?”

He looked around in the darkness. The boat was tied up in a silent backwater. Through the motionless leaves of an overhanging tree which looked like a tree carved in ebony, he could see the stars.

“We are on the left bank, Chi Foh. Lung Chang is not many miles away. But—the man is dead!”

Tony got to his feet. He had a flashlight in the locker; he groped his way to it, found it, and shone its light on the man who lay there.

Beyond doubt, Yueh Hua was right. Their passenger was dead. Yueh Hua knew that Tony had an automatic pistol, but he had hidden the flashlight. He wondered if she would say something about it, and tried to think of an explication. But she said nothing.

Tony searched the man’s scanty clothing, but found no clue to his identity. In a body belt, which he unfastened, there was a considerable sum of money, but nothing else. The big portfolio was locked, and there was no key. This far he had gone when Yueh Hua called out, “Throw him overboard, Chi Foh. He may have died of plague.”

But Tony, who had a smattering of medical knowledge, knew that he had not died of the plague.

“Don’t worry, Yueh Hua. I told you before, there’s no question of plague. I must try to find out who he was.”

He went to work on the lock of the briefcase and ultimately succeeded in breaking it. He found it stuffed with correspondence in Russian, a language of which he knew nothing, much of it from the Kremlin and some from the Peiping Embassy, this fact clearly indicated by the embossed headings on the stationery. The man was a Soviet agent.