The Island of Fu-Manchu

BOOK: The Island of Fu-Manchu
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Contents

Cover

Praise for The Island of Fu-Manchu

Also by Sax Rohmer

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One: Something in a Bag

Chapter Two: A Second Visitor

Chapter Three: BXH 77

Chapter Four: The House in Regent’s Park

Chapter Five: Ardatha

Chapter Six: Dr. Fu-Manchu Experiments

Chapter Seven: The River Gate

Chapter Eight: Limehouse Police Station

Chapter Nine: 39B Pelling Street

Chapter Ten: Barton’s Secret

Chapter Eleven: The Hostage

Chapter Twelve: The Snapping Fingers

Chapter Thirteen: What Happened in Sutton Place

Chapter Fourteen: We Hear the Snapping Fingers

Chapter Fifteen: Nayland Smith Fires Twice

Chapter Sixteen: Padded Footsteps

Chapter Seventeen: Christophe’s Chart

Chapter Eighteen: Zazima

Chapter Nineteen: Flammario the Dancer

Chapter Twenty: The Shrivelled Head

Chapter Twenty-One: Concerning Lou Cabot

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Passion Fruit Tree

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Clue of the Ring

Chapter Twenty-Four: Flammario’s Cloak Slips

Chapter Twenty-Five: A Green Hand

Chapter Twenty-Six: Second Notice

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Father Ambrose

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Drums in the Night

Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Song of Damballa

Chapter Thirty: The Seven-Pointed Star

Chapter Thirty-One: Queen Mamaloi

Chapter Thirty-Two: The Smelling-Out

Chapter Thirty-Three: Dr. Marriot Doughty

Chapter Thirty-Four: The Zombies

Chapter Thirty-Five: Ardatha Remembers

Chapter Thirty-Six: The Vortland Lamp

Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Subterranean Harbour

Chapter Thirty-Eight: “I Give You One Hour”

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Christophe’s Path

Chapter Forty: The San Damien Sisal Corporation

Chapter Forty-One: An Electrical Disturbance

Free Sample of The Turkish Yataghan by William Patrick Maynard

Appreciating Dr. Fu-Manchu

Also Available From Titan Books

“Insidious fun from out of the past. Evil as always, Fu-Manchu reviles as well as thrills us.”—Joe Lansdale, recipient of the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award

“Without Fu-Manchu we wouldn’t have Dr. No, Doctor Doom or Dr. Evil. Sax Rohmer created the first truly great evil mastermind.
Devious, inventive, complex, and fascinating. These novels inspired a century of great thrillers!”—Jonathan Maberry,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Assassin’s Code
and
Patient Zero

“The true king of the pulp mystery is Sax Rohmer—and the shining ruby in his crown is without a doubt his Fu-Manchu stories.”—James Rollins,
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Devil Colony

“Fu-Manchu remains the definitive diabolical mastermind of the 20th century. Though the arch-villain is ‘the Yellow Peril incarnate,’ Rohmer shows an interest in other cultures and allows his protagonist a complex set of motivations and a code of honor which often make him seem a better man than his Western antagonists. At their best, these books are very superior pulp fiction… at their worst, they’re still gruesomely readable.”
—Kim Newman, award-winning author of
Anno Dracula

“Sax Rohmer is one of the great thriller writers of all time! Rohmer created in Fu-Manchu the model for the super-villains of James Bond, and his hero Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie are worthy stand-ins for Holmes and Watson… though Fu-Manchu makes Professor Moriarty seem an under-achiever.”—Max Allan Collins,
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Road to Perdition

“I grew up reading Sax Rohmer’s Fu-Manchu novels, in cheap paperback editions with appropriately lurid covers. They completely entranced me with their vision of a world constantly simmering with intrigue and wildly overheated ambitions. Even without all the exotic detail supplied by Rohmer’s imagination, I knew full well that world wasn’t the same as the one I lived in… For that alone, I’m grateful for all the hours I spent chasing around with Nayland Smith and his stalwart associates, though really my heart was always on their intimidating opponent’s side.”
—K. W. Jeter, acclaimed author of
Infernal Devices

“A sterling example of the classic adventure story, full of excitement and intrigue. Fu-Manchu is up there with Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, and Zorro—or more precisely with Professor Moriarty, Captain Nemo, Darth Vader, and Lex Luthor—in the imaginations of generations of readers and moviegoers.”—Charles Ardai, award-winning novelist and founder of Hard Case Crime

“I love Fu-Manchu, the way you can only love the really GREAT villains. Though I read these books years ago he is still with me, living somewhere deep down in my guts, between Professor Moriarty and Dracula, plotting some wonderfully hideous revenge against an unsuspecting mankind.”
—Mike Mignola,
creator of Hellboy

“Fu-Manchu is one of the great villains in pop culture history, insidious and brilliant. Discover him if you dare!”—Christopher Golden,
New York Times
bestselling co-author of
Baltimore: The Plague Ships

“Exquisitely detailed… At times, it’s like reading a stage play… [Sax Rohmer] is a colorful storyteller. It was quite easy to be reading away and suddenly realize that I’d been reading for an hour or more without even noticing. It’s like being taken back to the cold and fog of London streets.”—
Entertainment Affairs

“Acknowledged classics of pulp fiction… the bottom line is Fu-Manchu, despite all the huffing and puffing about sinister Oriental wiles and so on, always comes off as the coolest, baddest dude on the block. Today’s supergenius villains owe a huge debt to Sax Rohmer and his fiendish creation.”—
Comic Book Resources

“Undeniably entertaining and fun to read… It’s pure pulp entertainment—awesome, and hilarious and wrong. Read it.”

Shadowlocked

“The perfect read to get your adrenalin going and root for the good guys to conquer a menace that is almost supremely evil. This is a wild ride read and I recommend it highly.”—
Vic’s Media Room

THE COMPLETE FU-MANCHU SERIES BY SAX ROHMER

Available now from Titan Books:

THE MYSTERY OF DR. FU-MANCHU

THE RETURN OF DR. FU-MANCHU

THE HAND OF FU-MANCHU

THE DAUGHTER OF FU-MANCHU

THE MASK OF FU-MANCHU

THE BRIDE OF FU-MANCHU

THE TRAIL OF FU-MANCHU

PRESIDENT FU-MANCHU

THE DRUMS OF FU-MANCHU

Coming soon from Titan Books:

THE SHADOW OF FU-MANCHU

RE-ENTER: FU-MANCHU

EMPEROR FU-MANCHU

THE WRATH OF FU-MANCHU

THE ISLAND OF FU-MANCHU

Print edition ISBN: 9780857686121

E-book edition ISBN: 9780857686787

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First published as a novel in the UK by William Collins & Co. Ltd, 1941

First published as a novel in the US by Doubleday, Doran, 1936

First Titan Books edition: September 2014

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

The Authors Guild and the Society of Authors assert the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Copyright © 2014 The Authors Guild and the Society of Authors

Visit our website:
www.titanbooks.com

Did you enjoy this book? We love to hear from our readers. Please email us at
[email protected]
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Frontispiece illustration by Benton Clark, from
Liberty
, November 16, 1940. Special thanks to Dr. Lawrence Knapp for the illustrations as they appeared on “The Page of Fu-Manchu,”
http://www.njedge.net/~knapp/FuFrames.htm
.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Smith threw open the door. Dr. Oster looked up. I cannot recall pressing the trigger.

CHAPTER ONE
SOMETHING IN A BAG


T
hen you have no idea where Nayland Smith is?” said my guest.

I carried his empty glass to the buffet and refilled it.

“Two cables from him found me at Salonika,” I replied: “the first from Kingston, Jamaica, the second from New York.”

“Ah! Jamaica and New York. Off his usual stamping ground. Nothing since?”

“Nothing.”

“Sure he isn’t back home?”

“Quite. His flat in Whitehall is closed.”

I set the whisky-and-soda before Sir Lionel Barton and passed my pouch, for he was scraping out his briar. My dining-room seemed altogether too small to hold this huge, overbearing man with a lion’s mane of tawny hair streaked with white; piercing blue eyes shadowed by craggy brows. He had the proper personality for one of his turbulent, brilliant reputation: the greatest Orientalist in Europe is expected to be unusual.

“Do you know, Kerrigan”—he stuffed Rhodesian tobacco into his pipe as though he had been charging a howitzer—“I have known Smith longer than you, and although I missed the last brush with Fu-Manchu—”

“Well?”

“Old Smith and I have been out against him together in the past. To tell you the truth”—he stood up and began to walk about, lighting his pipe as he did so—“I have an idea that we have not seen the last of that Chinese devil.”

“Why?” I asked, and tried to speak casually.

“Suppose he’s here again—in England?”

Sir Lionel’s voice was rising to those trumpet tones which betrayed his army training; I was conscious of growing excitement.

“Suppose, just for argument’s sake, that I have certain reasons to believe that he is. Well—would you sleep soundly tonight? What would it mean? It would mean that, apart from Germany, we have another enemy to deal with—an enemy whose insects, bacteria, stranglers, strange poisons, could do more harm in a week than Hitler’s army could do in a year!”

BOOK: The Island of Fu-Manchu
7.99Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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