The Bride of Fu-Manchu (7 page)

The nearly imperceptible pause had not escaped me. I supposed that a wave of emotion had threatened to overcome her when she found that name upon her lips and realized that the man himself tottered on the brink of the Valley.

“Yes, Mrs. Petrie; a treatment of your husband’s known as ‘654.’”

“Prepared, I suppose, by Dr. Cartier?”

“No—prepared by Petrie himself just before he was seized with illness.”

“But Dr. Cartier, of course, knows the formula?”

That caressing voice possessed some odd quality of finality; it was like listening to Fate speaking. Not to reply to any question so put to one would have been a task akin to closing one’s ears to the song of the Sirens. And the darkly fringed eyes, which, now, owing to some accident of reflected light, I thought were golden, emphasized the soft command.

Indeed, I was on the point of answering truthfully, that no one but Petrie knew the formula, when an instinct of compassion gave me strength to defy that powerful urge. Why should I admit so cruel a truth?

“I cannot say,” I replied, and knew that I spoke the words unnaturally.

“But of course it will be somewhere in my husband’s possession? No doubt in his laboratory?”

Her anxiety—although there was no trace of tremor in her velvety tones—was nevertheless unmistakable.

“No doubt, Mrs. Petrie,” I said reassuringly—and spoke now with greater conviction, since I really believed that the formula must be somewhere among Petrie’s papers.

She murmured something in a low voice—and, standing up, moved to the head of the bed.

Whereupon, my difficulties began. For, as Mrs. Petrie bent over the pillow, I remembered the charge which had been put upon me, remembered Nayland Smith’s words:

“You are not to allow a soul to
touch
him—”

I got up swiftly, stepped around the foot of the bed, and joined Mrs. Petrie where she stood.

“Whatever you do,” I said, “don’t touch him!”

Slowly she stood upright; infinitely slowly and gracefully. She turned and looked into my eyes.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because—” I hesitated: what could I say? “Because of the possibility of infection.”

“Please don’t worry about that, Mr. Sterling. There is no possibility of infection at this stage. Sister Therese told me so.”

“But she may be wrong,” I urged. “Really, I can’t allow you to take the risk.”

Perhaps my principles ride me to death; I have been told that they do. But I had pledged my word that no one should touch Petrie, and I meant to stick to it. Logically, I could think of no reason why this woman who loved him should not stroke his hair, as I thought she had been about to do. It was almost inhuman to forbid it. Yet, by virtue of Sir Denis’s trust in me, forbid it I must.

“It may be difficult,” I remembered saying to him.
How
difficult it was to be, I had not foreseen!

“Surely,” she said, and her soft voice held no note of anger, “the risk is mine?”

Mrs. Petrie bent again over the pillow. She was on the point of resting those slender, indolent hands on Petrie’s shoulders.

She intended, I surmised, to kiss his parched lips...

CHAPTER EIGHT

A
s those languorous ivory hands almost rested on Petrie’s shoulders, and the full red lips were but inches removed from the parched blue lips of the unconscious man, I threw my arms around Mrs. Petrie and dragged her away!

She was light and resilient as a professional dancer. I had been forced to exert considerable strength because of her nearness to the doctor. She was swept back, lying against my left arm and looking up at me in a startled yet imperious way, which prepared me to expect an uncomfortable sequel.

During one long moment she remained motionless, our glances meeting. Her cloak had slipped, exposing a bare arm and shoulder. I was partly supporting her and trying frenziedly to find words to excuse my apparent violence, when, still looking up at me, she turned slightly.

“Why did you do that?” she asked. “Was it... to save me from contagion?”

The cue was a welcome one; I seized it gladly.

“Of course!” I replied, but knew that my assurance rang false. “I warned you that I should not allow you to touch him.”

She continued to watch me, resting in the crook of my arm; and I had never experienced such vile impulses as those which goaded me during those few seconds. The most singular promptings were dancing in my brain. I thought she was offering me her lips, or, rather, challenging me to reject the offer. With a movement so slight that it might have been accidental, she seemed to invite me to caress her.

Yes, the most utterly damnable thing. I, in whose blood there runs a marked streak of Puritanism, I, with poor Petrie lying there in the grip of a dread disease, suddenly wanted to crush this woman—his wife—in my arms!

It was only a matter of hours since I had met Fleurette on the beach of Ste Claire de la Roche and had become so infatuated with her beauty and charm that I had been thinking about her almost continuously ever since. Yet here I stood fighting against a sudden lawless desire for the wife of my best friend—a desire so wild that it threatened to swamp everything—friendship, tradition, honour!

Perhaps I might have conquered—unaided. I am not prepared to say. But aid came to me, and came in the form of what I thought at the time to be a miracle. As I looked down into those enigmatical, mocking eyes, in a silence broken only by the hushing of the pines outside the window—a voice—a groaning, hollow voice, a voice that might have issued from a tomb—spoke.

“Beware...
of her
,” it said.

Mrs. Petrie sprang back. A fleeting glimpse I had of stark horror in the long, narrow eyes. My heart, which had been beating madly, seemed to stop for a moment.

I twisted my head aside, staring down at Petrie.

Was it imagination—or did I detect a faint quivering of those swollen eyelids? Could it be
he
who had spoken? That slight movement, if it had ever been, had ceased. He lay still as the dead.

“Who was it?” Mrs. Petrie whispered, her patrician calm ruffled at last. “Whose voice was that?”

I stared at her. The spell was broken. The glamour of those bewitched moments had faded—dismissed by that sepulchral voice. Mrs. Petrie’s eyelashes now almost veiled her long, brilliant eyes. One hand was clenched, the other hidden beneath her cloak. My ideas performed a complete about-turn. Some hidden, inexplicable madness had possessed me, from the consequences of which I had been saved by an act of God!

“I don’t know,” I said hoarsely. “I don’t know...”

CHAPTER NINE

T
he end of that interview is hazy in my memory. Concerning one detail, however, I have no doubt: Mrs. Petrie did not again approach the sick man’s bed. Despite her wonderful self-discipline, she could not entirely hide her apprehension. I detected her casting swift glances at Petrie and—once—upwards towards the solitary window.

That awful warning, so mysteriously spoken—could have related only to her...

I rang for Sister Therese and arranged that the night concierge should conduct the visitor to her car. I suspected that the neighbourhood was none too safe.

Mrs. Petrie gave me the address of a hotel in Cannes, asking that she be kept in touch. She would return, she said, unless summoned earlier, at eight in the morning. She had fully regained her graceful composure by this time, and I found myself wondering what her true nationality could be. Her languid calm was hard to reconcile with wifely devotion: indeed, I had expected her to insist upon remaining.

And when, with a final glance at Petrie and an enigmatical smile to me, she went out with Sister Therese, I turned and stared at the doctor. I could detect no change whatever, except that it seemed to me that the purple shadow on his brow was not so dark.

Could it be he who had spoken?

His face was dreadfully haggard, looking almost emaciated, and his lips, dry and cracked, were slightly parted so as to expose his teeth. In that unnatural smile I thought I saw the beginning of the death grin which characterized this ghastly pestilence.

He did not move, nor could I detect him breathing. I glanced at the window, high above my head, where not so long before I had seen those crooked yellow fingers. But it showed as a black patch in the dull white mass of the wall.

The pines began whispering softly again:

“Fleurette—Derceto...”

If Petrie had not spoken—and I found it hard to believe that he had—whose was the voice which had uttered the words, “Beware... of her?”

I had ample time to consider the problem and many others as well which had arisen in the course of that eventful day. Dr. Cartier looked in about eleven o’clock, and Sister Therese made regular visits.

There was no change to be noted in Petrie’s condition.

It was a dreary vigil; in fact, an eerie one. For company I had an apparently dead man, and some of the most horrible memories which one could very well conjure up as a background for that whispering silence.

At some time shortly after midnight I heard swift footsteps coming along the passage which led to Petrie’s room. The door opened and Nayland Smith walked in.

One glance warned me that something was amiss.

He crossed and stared down at Petrie in silence, then turning to Sister Therese, who had entered behind him:

“I wonder, Sister,” he said rapidly, “if I might ask you to remain here until Dr. Cartier arrives, and allow Mr. Sterling and myself the use of your room?”

“But of course, with the greatest pleasure,” she replied, and smiled in her sweet, patient way.

Together we went along the narrow corridor and presently came to that little room used by the nurse on duty. It was very simple and very characteristic.

There was a glass-fronted cabinet containing medicines, dressings, and surgical appliances. Beside a little white table was placed a very hard, white enamelled chair. An open book lay on the table; and the only decoration was a crucifix on the distempered wall.

Sir Denis did not speak for a moment, but paced restlessly to and fro in that confined space, twitching at the lobe of his ear—a habit which I later came to recognize as indicative of deep thought.

Suddenly he turned and faced me.

“Sir Manston Rorke died early yesterday morning,” he said, “from an overdose of heroin or something of that kind!”

“What!”

I had been seated on the edge of the little table, but at that I sprang up. Sir Denis nodded grimly.

“But was he—addicted to drugs?”

“Apparently. He was a widower who lived alone in a flat in Curzon Street. There was only one resident servant—a man who had been with him for many years.”

“It’s Fate,” I groaned. “What a ghastly coincidence!”

“Coincidence!” Sir Denis snapped. “There’s no coincidence! Sir Manston’s consulting rooms in Wimpole Street, where he kept all his records and pursued his studies, were burgled during the night. I assume that they found what they had come for. A large volume containing prescriptions is missing.”

“But, if they found what they came for—”

“That was good enough,” he interrupted. “Hence my assumption that they did. Sir Manston had a remarkable memory. Having destroyed the prescription book, the next thing was to destroy... that inconvenient memory!”

“You mean—he was
murdered
?”

“I have little doubt on that point,” Sir Denis replied harshly. “The butler has been detained—but there’s small hope of learning anything from him, even if he knows. But I gather, Sterling”—he fixed a penetrating stare upon me—“that a similar attempt was made here tonight.”

“Here?
Whatever do you mean, Sir Denis?”

But even as I spoke the words I thought I knew, and:

“Why, of course!” I cried. “The Dacoit!”

“Dacoit,” he rapped. “What Dacoit?”

“You don’t know? But, on second thoughts, how could you know! It was shortly after you left. Someone looked in at the window of Petrie’s room—”

“Looked in?” He glanced up at the corresponding window of Sister Therese’s room. “It’s twelve feet above ground level.”