The Hand of Fu Manchu (25 page)

Well enough I knew, and, detecting that faint, haunting perfume which
spoke of the dainty personality of Kâramaneh, my anger blazed up
anew. Came a faint sound of metal grating upon metal, and Smith pulled
open the door, which turned outward upon the steps, and bent further
forward, sweeping the ray of light about the room beyond.

"Empty, of course!" he muttered. "Now for the base of these damned
nocturnal operations."

He descended the steps and began to flash the light all about the
arched passageway wherein we stood.

"The present dining-room of Graywater Park lies almost due south of
this spot," he mused. "Suppose we try back."

We retraced our steps to the foot of the stair. In the wall on their
left was an opening, low down against the floor and little more than
three feet high; it reminded me of some of the entrances to those
seemingly interminable passages whereby one approaches the sepulchral
chambers of the Egyptian Pyramids.

"Now for it!" snapped Smith. "Follow me closely."

Down he dropped, and, having the lamp thrust out before him, began to
crawl into the tunnel. As his heels disappeared, and only a faint light
outlined the opening, I dropped upon all fours in turn, and began
laboriously to drag myself along behind him. The atmosphere was damp,
chilly, and evil-smelling; therefore, at the end of some ten or twelve
yards of this serpentine crawling, when I saw Smith, ahead of me, to
be standing erect, I uttered a stifled exclamation of relief. The
thought of Kâramaneh having been dragged through this noisome hole
was one I dared not dwell upon.

A long, narrow passage now opened up, its end invisible from where we
stood. Smith hurried forward. For the first thirty of forty paces the
roof was formed of massive stone slabs; then its character changed;
the passage became lower, and one was compelled frequently to lower the
head in order to avoid the oaken beams which crossed it.

"We are passing under the dining-room," said Smith. "It was from here
the sound of beating first came!"

"What do you mean?"

"I have built up a theory, which remains to be proved, Petrie. In my
opinion a captive of the Yellow group escaped to-night and sought to
summon assistance, but was discovered and overpowered."

"Sir Lionel?"

"Sir Lionel, or Kennedy—yes, I believe so."

Enlightenment came to me, and I understood the pitiable condition into
which the Greek butler had been thrown by the phenomenon of the
ghostly knocking. But Smith hurried on, and suddenly I saw that the
passage had entered upon a sharp declivity; and now both roof and
walls were composed of crumbling brickwork. Smith pulled up, and thrust
back a hand to detain me.

"
Ssh!
" he hissed, and grasped my arm.

Silent, intently still, we stood and listened. The sound of a guttural
voice was clearly distinguishable from somewhere close at hand!

Smith extinguished the lamp. A faint luminance proclaimed itself
directly ahead. Still grasping my arm, Smith began slowly to advance
toward the light. One—two—three—four—five paces we crept onward ...
and I found myself looking through an archway into a medieval
torture-chamber!

Only a part of the place was visible to me, but its character was
unmistakable. Leg-irons, boots and thumb-screws hung in racks upon
the fungi-covered wall. A massive, iron-studded door was open at the
further end of the chamber, and on the threshold stood Homopoulo,
holding a lantern in his hand.

Even as I saw him, he stepped through, followed by on of those short,
thick-set Burmans of whom Dr. Fu-Manchu had a number among his
entourage; they were members of the villainous robber bands notorious
in India as the dacoits. Over one broad shoulder, slung sackwise, the
dacoit carried a girl clad in scanty white drapery....

Madness seized me, the madness of sorrow and impotent wrath. For, with
Kâramaneh being borne off before my eyes, I dared not fire at her
abductors lest I should strike
her
!

Nayland Smith uttered a loud cry, and together we hurled ourselves
into the chamber. Heedless of what, of whom, else it might shelter,
we sprang for the group in the distant doorway. A memory is mine of
the dark, white face of Homopoulo, peering, wild-eyed, over the
lantern, of the slim, white-clad form of the lovely captive seeming to
fade into the obscurity of th passage beyond.

Then, with bleeding knuckles, with wild imprecations bubbling from my
lips, I was battering upon the mighty door—which had been slammed in
my face at the very instant that I had gained it.

"Brace up, man!—Brace up!" cried Smith, and in his strenuous, grimly
purposeful fashion, he shouldered me away from the door. "A battering
ram could not force that timber; we must seek another way!"

I staggered, weakly, back into the room. Hand raised to my head, I
looked about me. A lantern stood in a niche in one wall, weirdly
illuminating that place of ghastly memories; there were braziers,
branding-irons, with other instruments dear to the Black Ages, about
me—and gagged, chained side by side against the opposite wall, lay
Sir Lionel Barton and another man unknown to me!

Already Nayland Smith was bending over the intrepid explorer, whose
fierce blue eyes glared out from the sun-tanned face madly, whose
gray hair and mustache literally bristled with rage long repressed.
I choked down the emotions that boiled and seethed within me, and
sought to release the second captive, a stockily-built, clean-shaven
man. First I removed the length of toweling which was tied firmly
over his mouth; and—

"Thank you, sir," he said composedly. "The keys of these irons are on
the ledge there beside the lantern. I broke the first ring I was
chained to, but the Yellow devils overhauled me, all manacled as I
was, half-way along the passage before I could attract your attention,
and fixed me up to another and stronger ring!"

Ere he had finished speaking, the keys were in my hands, and I had
unlocked the gyves from both the captives. Sir Lionel Barton, his gag
removed, unloosed a torrent of pent-up wrath.

"The hell-fiends drugged me!" he shouted. "That black villain Homopoulo
doctored my tea! I woke in this damnable cell, the secret of which has
been lost for generations!" He turned blazing blue eyes upon Kennedy.
"How did
you
come to be trapped?" he demanded unreasonably. "I
credited you with a modicum of brains!"

"Homopoulo came running from your room, sir, and told me you were
taken suddenly ill and that a doctor must be summoned without delay."

"Well, well, you fool!"

"Dr. Hamilton was away, sir."

"A false call beyond doubt!" snapped Smith.

"Therefore I went for the new doctor, Dr. Magnus, in the village. He
came at once and I showed him up to your room. He sent Mrs. Oram out,
leaving only Homopoulo and myself there, except yourself."

"Well?"

"Sandbagged!" explained the man nonchalantly. "Dr. Magnus, who is some
kind of dago, is evidently one of the gang."

"Sir Lionel!" cried Smith—"where does the passage lead to beyond
that doorway?

"God knows!" was the answer, which dashed my last hope to the ground.
"I have no more idea than yourself. Perhaps ..."

He ceased speaking. A sound had interrupted him, which, in those grim
surroundings, lighted by the solitary lantern, translated my thoughts
magically to Ancient Rome, to the Rome of Tigellinus, to the dungeons
of Nero's Circus. Echoing eerily along the secret passages it came—
the roaring and snarling of the lioness and the leopards.

Nayland Smith clapped his hand to his brow and stared at me almost
frenziedly, then—

"God guard her!" he whispered. "Either their plans, wherever they got
them, are inaccurate, or in their panic they have mistaken the way." ...
Wild cries now were mingling with the snarling of the beasts....
"They have blundered into the old crypt!"

How we got out of the secret labyrinth of Graywater Park into the
grounds and around the angle of the west wing to the ivy-grown,
pointed door, where once the chapel had bee, I do not know. Light
seemed to spring up about me, and half-clad servants to appear out of
the void. Temporarily I was insane.

Sir Lionel Barton was behaving like a madman too, and like a madman he
tore at the ancient bolts and precipitated himself into the stone-paved
cloister barred with the moon-cast shadows of the Norman pillars. From
behind the iron bars of the home of the leopards came now a fearsome
growling and scuffling.

Smith held the light with a steady hand, whilst Kennedy forced the
heavy bolts of the crypt door.

In leapt the fearless baronet among his savage pets, and in the ray
of light from the electric lamp I saw that which turned my sick with
horror. Prone beside a yawning gap in the floor lay Homopoulo, his
throat torn indescribably and his white shirt-front smothered in
blood. A black leopard, having its fore-paws upon the dead man's
breast, turned blazing eyes upon us; a second crouched beside him.

Heaped up in a corner of the place, amongst the straw and litter of
the lair, lay the Burmese dacoit, his sinewy fingers embedded in the
throat of the third and largest leopard—which was dead—whilst the
creature's gleaming fangs were buried in the tattered flesh of the
man's shoulder.

Upon the straw beside the two, her slim, bare arms outstretched and
her head pillowed upon them, so that her rippling hair completely
concealed her face, lay Kâramaneh....

In a trice Barton leapt upon the great beast standing over Homopoulo,
had him by the back of the neck and held him in his powerful hands
whining with fear and helpless as a rat in the grip of a terrier. The
second leopard fled into the inner lair.

So much I visualized in a flash; then all faded, and I knelt alone
beside her whose life was my life, in a world grown suddenly empty
and still.

Through long hours of agony I lived, hours contained within the span
of seconds, the beloved head resting against my shoulder, whilst I
searched for signs of life and dreaded to find ghastly wounds.... At
first I could not credit the miracle; I could not receive the wondrous
truth.

Kâramaneh was quite uninjured and deep in drugged slumber!

"The leopards thought her dead," whispered Smith brokenly, "and never
touched her!"

"Listen!" cried Sir Lionel Barton.

He stood upon the black rug before the massive, carven mantelpiece, a
huge man in an appropriately huge setting.

I checked the words on my lips, and listened intently. Within
Graywater Park all was still, for the hour was late. Outside, the
rain was descending in a deluge, its continuous roar drowning any
other sound that might have been discernible. Then, above it, I
detected a noise that at first I found difficult to define.

"The howling of the leopards!" I suggested.

Sir Lionel shook his tawny head with impatience. Then, the sound
growing louder, suddenly I knew it for what it was.

"Some one shouting!" I exclaimed—"some one who rides a galloping
horse!"

"Coming here!" added Sir Lionel. "Hark! he is at the door!"

A bell rang furiously, again and again sending its brazen clangor
echoing through the great apartments and passages of Graywater.

"There goes Kennedy."

Above the sibilant roaring of the rain I could hear some one releasing
heavy bolts and bars. The servants had long since retired, as also had
Kâramaneh; but Sir Lionel's man remained wakeful and alert.

Sir Lionel made for the door, and I, standing up, was about to follow
him, when Kennedy appeared, in his wake a bedraggled groom, hatless,
and pale to the lips. His frightened eyes looked from face to face.

"Dr. Petrie?" he gasped interrogatively.

"Yes!" I said, a sudden dread assailing me. "What is it?"

"Gad! it's Hamilton's man!" cried Barton.

"Mr. Nayland Smith, sir," continued the groom brokenly—and all my
fears were realized. "He's been attacked, sir, on the road from the
station, and Dr. Hamilton, to whose house he was carried—"

"Kennedy!" shouted Sir Lionel, "get the Rolls-Royce out! Put your
horse up here, my man, and come with us!"

He turned abruptly ... as the groom, grasping at the wall, fell
heavily to the floor.

"Good God!" I cried—"What's the matter with him?"

I bent over the prostrate man, making a rapid examination.

"His head! A nasty blow. Give me a hand, Sir Lionel; we must get him
on to a couch."

The unconscious man was laid upon a Chesterfield, and, ably assisted
by the explorer, who was used to coping with such hurts as this, I
attended to him as best I could. One of the men-servants had been
aroused, and, just as he appeared in the doorway, I had the
satisfaction of seeing Dr. Hamilton's groom open his eyes, and look
about him, dazedly.

"Quick," I said. "Tell me—what hurt you?"

The man raised his hand to his head and groaned feebly.

"Something came
whizzing
, sir," he answered. "There was no report,
and I saw nothing. I don't know what it can have been—"

"Where did this attack take place?"

"Between here and the village, sir; just by the coppice at the
cross-roads on top of Raddon Hill."

"You had better remain here for the present," I said, and gave a few
words of instruction to the man whom we had aroused.

"This way," cried Barton, who had rushed out of the room, his huge
frame reappearing in the door-way; "the car is ready."

My mind filled with dreadful apprehensions, I passed out on to the
carriage sweep. Sir Lionel was already at the wheel.

"Jump in, Kennedy," he said, when I had taken a seat beside him; and
the man sprang into the car.

Away we shot, up the narrow lane, lurched hard on the bend—and were
off at ever growing speed toward the hills, where a long climb
awaited the car.