The Hand of Fu Manchu (14 page)

A moment I stood, lost to my surroundings, plunged in a sea of
wonderment concerning the damnable organization which, its tentacles
extending I knew not whither, since new and unexpected limbs were ever
coming to light, sought no less a goal than Yellow dominion of the
world! I reflected how one man—Nayland Smith—alone stood between
this powerful group and the realization of their project ... when I
was aroused by a hand grasping my arm in the darkness!

I uttered a short cry, of which I was instantly ashamed, for Nayland
Smith's voice came:—

"I startled you, eh, Petrie?"

"Smith," I said, "how long have you been standing there?"

"I only returned in time to see our Fenimore Cooper friend retreating
through the window," he replied; "but no doubt you had a good look at
him?"

"I had!" I answered eagerly. "It was Samarkan!"

"I thought so! I have suspected as much for a long time."

"Was this the object of our visit here?"

"It was one of the objects," admitted Nayland Smith evasively.

From some place not far distant came the sound of a restarted engine.

"The other," he added, "was this: to enable M. Samarkan to read the
note which I had pinned upon the door!"

"Here you are, Petrie," said Nayland Smith—and he tossed across the
table the folded copy of a morning paper. "This may assist you in your
study of the first Zagazig message."

I set down my cup and turned my attention to the "Personal" column on
the front page of the journal. A paragraph appeared therein conceived
as follows:—

ZAGAZIG-
Z
-a-g-
a
;-z:-I:-
g
;z-a,g;-
A-,
z
;
i
:
G
,-z:
a
;
g
-A,z-
i
;-gz
A
;
g
aZ-
i
;
g
-:a z i g

I stared across at my friend in extreme bewilderment.

"But, Smith!" I cried, "these messages are utterly meaningless!"

"Not at all," he rapped back. "Scotland Yard thought they were
meaningless at first, and I must admit that they suggested nothing to
me for a long time; but the dead dacoit was the clue to the first,
Petrie, and the note pinned upon the door of the house near the Oval
is the clue to the second."

Stupidly I continued to stare at him until he broke into a grim smile.

"Surely you understand?" he said. "You remember where the dead Burman
was found?"

"Perfectly."

"You know the street along which, ordinarily, one would approach the
wharf?"

"Three Colt Street?"

"Three Colt Street, exactly. Well, on the night that the Burman met
his end I had an appointment in Three Colt Street with Weymouth. The
appointment was made by 'phone, from the New Louvre! My cab broke down
and I never arrived. I discovered later that Weymouth had received a
telegram purporting to come from me, putting off the engagement."

"I am aware of all this!"

Nayland Smith burst into a loud laugh.

"But
still
you are fogged!" he cried. "Then I'm hanged if I'll pilot
you any farther! You have all the facts before you. There lies the
first Zagazig message; here is the second; and you know the context of
the note pinned upon the door? It read, if you remember, 'Remove
patrol from Joy-Shop neighborhood. Have a theory. Wish to visit place
alone on Monday night after one o'clock.'"

"Smith," I said dully, "I have a heavy stake upon this murderous game."

His manner changed instantly; the tanned face grew grim and hard, but
the steely eyes softened strangely. He bent over me, clapping his hands
upon my shoulders.

"I know it, old man," he replied; "and because it may serve to keep
your mind busy during hours when otherwise it would be engaged with
profitless sorrows, I invite you to puzzle out this business for
yourself. You have nothing else to do until late to-night, and you can
work undisturbed, here, at any rate!"

His words referred to the fact that, without surrendering our suite at
the New Louvre Hotel, we had gone upon a visit, of indefinite duration,
to a mythical friend; and now were quartered in furnished chambers
adjoining Fleet Street.

We had remained at the New Louvre long enough to secure confirmation
of our belief that a creature of Fu-Manchu spied upon us there; and
now we only awaited the termination of the night's affair to take
such steps as Smith might consider politic in regard to the sardonic
Greek who presided over London's newest and most palatial hotel.

Smith setting out for New Scotland Yard in order to make certain final
arrangements in connection with the business of the night, I began
closely to study the mysterious Zagazig messages, determined not to be
beaten, and remembering the words of Edgar Allan Poe—the strange
genius to whom we are indebted for the first workable system of
deciphering cryptograms: "It may well be doubted whether human
ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human ingenuity
may not, by proper application, resolve."

The first conclusion to which I was borne was this: that the letters
comprising the word "Zagazig" were designed merely to confuse the
reader, and might be neglected; since, occurring as they did in regular
sequence, they could possess no significance. I became quite excited
upon making the discovery that the
punctuation marks
varied in
almost every case!

I immediately assumed that these constituted the cipher; and, seeking
for my key-letter,
e
(that which most frequently occurs in the
English language), I found the sign of a full-stop to appear more
frequently than any other in the first message, namely ten times,
although it only occurred thrice in the second. Nevertheless, I was
hopeful ... until I discovered that in two cases it appeared three
times
in succession!

There is no word in English, nor, so far as I am aware, in any language,
where this occurs, either in regard to
e
or any other letter!

That unfortunate discovery seemed so wholly to destroy the very theory
upon which I relied, that I almost abandoned my investigation there
and then. Indeed, I doubt if I ever should have proceeded were it not
that by a piece of pure guesswork I blundered on to a clue.

I observed that certain letters, at irregularly occurring intervals,
were set in capital, and I divided up the message into corresponding
sections, in the hope that th capitals might indicate the
commencements of words. This accomplished, I set out upon a series
of guesses, basing these upon Smith's assurance that the death of the
dacoit afforded a clue to the first message and the note which he
(Smith) had pinned upon the door a clue to the second.

Such being my system—if I can honor my random attempts with the
title—I take little credit to myself for the fortunate result. In
short, I determined (although
e
twice occurred where
r
should have
been!) that the first message from the thirteenth letter, onwards to
the twenty-seventh (
id est:
I;
g:-zagAz;i-;
g
;
-Z
,-a;-
g
azi;-)
read:—

"Three Colt Street."

Endeavoring, now, to eliminate the
e
where
r
should appear, I made
another discovery. The presence of a letter in
italics
altered the
value of the sign which followed it!

From that point onward the task became child's-play, and I should
merely render this account tedious if I entered into further details.
Both messages commenced with the name "Smith" as I early perceived,
and half an hour of close study gave me the complete sentences, thus:—

1.
Smith passing Three Colt Street twelve-thirty Wednesday.

2.
Smith going Joy-Shop after one Monday.

The word "Zagazig" was completed, always, and did not necessarily
terminate with the last letter occurring in the cryptographic message.
A subsequent inspection of this curious code has enabled Nayland
Smith, by a process of simple deduction, to compile the entire alphabet
employed by Dr. Fu-Manchu's agent, Samarkan, in communicating with his
awful superior. With a little patience, any one of my readers my achieve
the same result (and I should be pleased to hear from those who succeed!).

This, then was the outcome of my labors; and although it enlightened me
to some extent, I realized that I still had much to learn.

The dacoit, apparently, had met his death at the very hour when Nayland
Smith should have been passing along Three Colt Street—a thoroughfare
with an unsavory reputation. Who had killed him?

To-night, Samarkan advised the Chinese doctor, Smith would again be in
the same dangerous neighborhood. A strange thrill of excitement swept
through me. I glanced at my watch. Yes! It was time for me to repair,
secretly, to my post. For I, too, had business on the borders of
Chinatown to-night.

I sat in the evil-smelling little room with its low, blackened ceiling,
and strove to avoid making the slightest noise; but the crazy boards
creaked beneath me with every movement. The moon hung low in an almost
cloudless sky; for, following the spell of damp and foggy weather, a
fall in temperature had taken place, and there was a frosty snap in
the air to-night.

Through the open window the moonlight poured in and spilled its pure
luminance upon the filthy floor; but I kept religiously within the
shadows, so posted, however, that I could command an uninterrupted
view of the street from the point where it crossed the creek to that
where it terminated at the gates of the deserted wharf.

Above and below me the crazy building formerly known as the Joy-Shop
and once the nightly resort of the Asiatic riff-raff from the docks—
was silent, save for the squealing and scuffling of the rats. The
melancholy lapping of the water frequently reached my ears, and a more
or less continuous din from the wharves and workshops upon the further
bank of the Thames; but in the narrow, dingy streets immediately
surrounding the house, quietude reigned and no solitary footstep
disturbed it.

Once, looking down in the direction of the bridge, I gave a great
start, for a black patch of shadow moved swiftly across the path and
merged into the other shadows bordering a high wall. My heart leapt
momentarily, then, in another instant, the explanation of the mystery
became apparent—in the presence of a gaunt and prowling cat. Bestowing
a suspicious glance upward in my direction, the animal slunk away toward
the path bordering the cutting.

By a devious route amid ghostly gasometers I had crept to my post in
the early dusk, before the moon was risen, and already I was heartily
weary of my passive part in the affair of the night. I had never before
appreciated the multitudinous sounds, all of them weird and many of
them horrible, which are within the compass of those great black rats
who find their way to England with cargoes from Russia and elsewhere.
From the rafters above my head, from the wall recesses about me, from
the floor beneath my feet, proceeded a continuous and nerve-shattering
concert, an unholy symphony which seemingly accompanied the eternal
dance of the rats.

Sometimes a faint splash from below would tell of one of the revelers
taking the water, but save for the more distant throbbing of riverside
industry, and rarer note of shipping, the mad discords of this rat
saturnalia alone claimed the ear.

The hour was nigh now, when matters should begin to develop. I
followed the chimes from the clock of some church nearby—I have never
learnt its name; and was conscious of a thrill of excitement when
they warned me that the hour was actually arrived....

A strange figure appeared noiselessly, from I knew not where, and
stood fully within view upon the bridge crossing the cutting, peering
to right and left, in an attitude of listening. It was the figure of
a bedraggled old woman, gray-haired, and carrying a large bundle tied
up in what appeared to be a red shawl. Of her face I could see little,
since it was shaded by the brim of her black bonnet, but she rested
her bundle upon the low wall of the bridge, and to my intense
surprise, sat down upon it!

She evidently intended to remain there.

I drew back further into the darkness; for the presence of this
singular old woman at such a place, and at that hour, could not well
be accidental. I was convinced that the first actor in the drama had
already taken the stage. Whether I was mistaken or not must shortly
appear.

Crisp footsteps sounded upon the roadway; distantly, and from my
left. Nearer they approached and nearer. I saw the old woman, in the
shadow of the wall, glance once rapidly in the direction of the
approaching pedestrian. For some occult reason, the chorus of the
rats was stilled. Only that firm and regular tread broke the intimate
silence of the dreary spot.

Now the pedestrian came within my range of sight. It was Nayland Smith!

He wore a long tweed overcoat with which I was familiar, and a soft
felt hat, the brim pulled down all around in a fashion characteristic
of him, and probably acquired during the years spent beneath the
merciless sun of Burma. He carried a heavy walking-cane which I knew
to be a formidable weapon that he could wield to good effect. But,
despite the stillness about me, a stillness which had reigned
uninterruptedly (save for the
danse macabre
of the rats) since the
coming of dusk, some voice within, ignoring these physical evidences
of solitude, spoke urgently of lurking assassins; of murderous
Easterns armed with those curved knives which sometimes flashed
before my eyes in dreams; of a deathly menace which hid in the
shadows about me, in the many shadows cloaking the holes and corners
of the ramshackle building, draping arches, crannies and portals to
which the moonlight could not penetrate.