The Island of Fu-Manchu (7 page)

Along that gloomy waterway, with its cuttings and tunnels, I had been transported from the house in Regent’s Park. The body I had seen borne on a stretcher had followed by the same route.

I stumbled, stifled an exclamation, and managed to fall softly.

There was a gap in the stone paving, and I lay still for a while; for I had fallen not two feet from the bar of light, and as I tripped I had seen a shadow move across it!

Someone was in the place from which the yellow light shone.

The next few moments covered long agonies of doubt. But apparently I had not been detected. Carefully moving my hands, I tried to find out what lay between me and the light. A discovery soon came. I had tripped and fallen on a square stone landing from which steps led down to a sunken door. It was from an iron-barred window beside this door that the light was shining.

Inch by inch I changed my position, until, seated on the steps, I could look into a cellar-like room illuminated by a hurricane lamp set on a crate. From this position I saw a strange thing. Because of the imperfect illumination and my angle of vision, at first I could not altogether make out what it was that I saw.

A pair of sinewy hands were working rapidly upon some mysterious task. Bare wrists and forearms I could see, hairy and muscular, but of the head and body of him to whom they belonged I could see nothing. A faint tearing sound and a sort of hiss gave me the clue at last. The man was stitching something up in sailcloth: I could just make out a shapeless bundle.

Now, I felt far from master of myself; but in the almost silent activities of this man who had such powerful arms there was something indescribably malignant.

Who was he, and what was he doing in the cellar?

Observing every precaution, I slightly changed my position again, until I could see quite clearly the nature of the bundle the sailmaker stitched.

It contained a human body!

The worker had started at the feet and had completed the shroud of sailcloth up to the breast.

I closed my eyes for a moment, clenched my teeth. Then, I moved farther down. The body lay on a stout bench and from my constrained position it was still impossible to see more than the arms, up to the elbows, of the worker.

But I saw the face of the dead man.

A
t the moment that I obtained my first glimpse of the face of the man whose body was being sewn up in sailcloth, I saw also that his arms were crossed on his breast.

Both hands had been amputated.

A spasm of anger, revulsion, nausea swept over me. I half withdrew the automatic from my pocket; then sanity conquered: I sat still and watched. Lowering my head inch by inch I presently discerned the pock-marked features of the stitcher. I had seen that hideous mask before: it belonged to one of Dr. Fu-Manchu’s Burmese killers. The yellow lantern light left the sunken eyes wholly in shadow and painted black hollows under prominent cheekbones.

Ss!
hissed the thread drawn through canvas—
ss!
as those sinewy fingers moved swiftly upon their task. My dreadful premonitions were dismissed.

The dead man was not Nayland Smith, but Dr. Oster.

In some incomprehensible way, Fu-Manchu’s servants had smuggled the body from the house in Regent’s Park. I suppressed a sigh of relief. The movements of the dacoit cast grotesque shadows upon the walls and ceiling of the cellar as I crouched staring at the mutilated remains of the man I had shot.

Horror heaped on horror had had the curious result of inducing acute mental clarity. During the few minutes—not more than three—that I remained there, I conceived—and rejected—plan after plan. The best, as I still believe, was to rush the Burman, stun him and await a new arrival—for palpably he could not complete the business of disposing of the body without assistance. Under cover of my automatic I would compel whoever came to lead me to an exit.

This plan was never put into operation.

I was calculating my chances of getting through the doorway and silently overpowering a formidable adversary, when I was arrested by a sound of light, rapid footsteps which approached from beyond the luminous band from that end of the passage which I had not explored. I was too late. Now I must act quickly if I were to escape detection.

Twisting sideways, I began to crawl back up the steps. I gained the passage above, and on hands and knees crept into the shadows. Nor did I win cover a moment too soon.

A gigantic figure, wearing only a dark vest and trousers, passed, with the swift, lithe tread of a panther, down the steps and into the cellar not two yards away. It was Hassan, the white Nubian!

I stood up, my back pressed to an icy-cold wall, automatic in hand, listening.

“Master order fix weights, quick.” (Hassan spoke in odd English, presumably the only language he had in common with the Burman.) “Must move sharp. I carry him. You bring lamp and open River door.”

On hearing those words, yet another plan occurred to me. If I could follow the funeral procession, undetected, this River door to which Hassan referred might serve a living man as well as a dead one. Success or failure turned upon the toss of a coin.

Which way were they going?

If I remained where I was, and the cortège turned left, I could not fail to be discovered; if I moved quickly to the other side of the bar of light, and they went to the right, then my fate would be sealed.

I determined to remain in my present hiding place, and, if the Burman saw me, to shoot him and then throw myself upon the mercy of Hassan.

Much movement, clang of metal, and smothered muttering reached me from the cellar, the husky hiss of Hassan’s voice being punctuated with snarling monosyllables which I judged to represent the Burman’s replies. At last came a significant shuffling, a deep grunt, and a sound of approaching footsteps. The blind Nubian had the corpse on his back and was carrying it out. Fate had spun the coin: which way would it fall?

First came the Burman, holding the hurricane lantern. As he walked up the stone steps I tried to identify myself with the shadows; for, although he presented a target which I could not have missed, although he was a professional assassin, a blood-lustful beast in human form, I shrank from the act of dispatching him.

He turned to the right.

Every movement he had made from the moment of his appearance at the base of the steps had been covered by my Colt. The giant figure of Hassan followed, stooping, Atlas-like, under his gruesome burden. He followed the lantern-bearer.

I had not been seen.

And now, as that death march receded into the distance of the long, echoing passage, I stooped, rapidly unlaced my shoes and discarded them. Silently I followed. The cold of the stone paving numbing my feet, I crept along, preserving a discreet interval between myself and the corpse-bearer, a huge, crouching silhouette against the leading light. His shadow, and the shadow of his load, danced hellishly on the floor, upon the walls, upon the roof of the corridor.

The lantern disappeared. The Burman had walked into some opening on the left of the passage, for against a rectangular patch of light upon the opposite wall I saw the burdened figure bent under its mortal bale turn and vanish too.

I pressed on to the corner. There were descending steps. Preserving a suitable distance from the moving lamp, I followed, and found myself in a shadow-haunted place, a warehouse, fusty as some ancient vault to which the light of the sun had never penetrated, in which, picked out by the dancing yellow light, I saw stacks of cases, through an aisle between which the lantern led me.

At the end of this aisle Hassan dropped his load. The muffled slump of the handless corpse was a sound I was destined often to remember.

“Open the door.” He was breathless. “Got to be quick. We have to make our getaway, too.”

That supernormal clarity of brain remained. The place was about to be abandoned; presumably Dr. Fu-Manchu had already made good his escape. Visualising the Thames as I had seen it through the grille from the floor above, I determined that the door the Burman was already unlocking must be close to water level. My course was clear; the issue rested with me.

A gust of damp air swept into the fusty stagnation of the warehouse: followed, a subdued clangour. The lantern had been set on top of a crate, but dimly I discerned an opening and I knew what it represented. Whereas loads were hoisted to the upper floor, they were discharged to barges from the warehouse by way of this gangway which projected over the river at tidal level. From here the remains of Dr. Oster were to be consigned to old Father Thames and held fast in his muddy embrace until mortal decay cast fragments upon some downstream shallow, fragments which no man should identify.

I could see no searchlights; nevertheless, I could see the opening. I heard laboured breathing—creaking shoes which supported striving bodies. Dimly I heard the splash.

Then, Colt in hand, silent in shoeless feet, I rushed.

Silent, I say? Not silent enough for the blind Nubian. I was almost on the drawbridge, I had passed the Burman, when an arm like a steel band locked itself about me!

“Inshâllâh!”

Never had I experienced such acceptance of complete inertia. I am no weakling; but I know when I am mastered. The automatic was wrenched from my hand; I became crushed to that herculean body, a limp, useless thing. I divined, rather than perceived, that the dacoit stood behind me, knife raised. My brain, my brain alone, remained active.

“Hassan!” I panted. “Hassan, let me go!”

That unbreakable hold relaxed. Inexorably, I was jerked forward. A stinging in my left shoulder and a sense of moisture, told me how narrowly I had escaped death from the Burman’s knife.

A thud—a snarl—the sound of a fall, and then:

“Take your chance,” Hassan whispered. “No other way.”

Lifting me above his head as Milo of Crotona might playfully have lifted a child, he hurled me into the river!

* * *

“Who’s there?”

Breathless, all but spent, I swam for shore. There was a wharf, I remembered, and steps. That plunge into icy water had nearly defeated me. I had no breath with which to answer the challenge. A blue light shone out. I headed for it.

And, as I laboured frantically, a swift beam from the river picked me up. I heard shouted orders, the purr of an engine. My feet touched bottom: I staggered on towards the shore.

“Down the steps, Gallaho! There’s someone swimming in. Dowse that searchlight out there!”

Nayland Smith!

The light behind—it must have come from a River Police craft—shone on wooden steps and painted my own shadow before me. Suddenly, it was shut off. The blue light ahead moved, came nearer, lower. I waded forward and was grasped and held upright—for I was close to the end of my endurance.

“It’s Kerrigan,” I whispered. “Hang on to me. I’m nearly through…”

Chief Inspector Gallaho, a friend of former days, helped me to mount the steps. His lamp he extinguished, but I had had a glimpse of the familiar stocky figure enveloped in oilskins, of a wide-brimmed bowler, a grim red face.

“This
is
a surprise, Mr. Kerrigan,” he said, as though he had unexpectedly met me in Piccadilly. ‘It will be first class news for Sir Denis. You see, you being in their hands made our job a difficult one.”

As we stepped on to the wharf:

“That you, Kerrigan?” came Smith’s crisp voice.

“Yes, by heaven’s mercy! Winded and drenched, but still alive.”

“Straight through to the car,” Smith went on rapidly. “Show a light, someone. A brisk rub down and a hot grog at Limehouse Police Station will put you right.”

Clenching my teeth, which displayed a tendency to chatter, I followed a lozenge of luminous blue which danced ahead along a paved path.

“Here we are. Get in, Kerrigan. I leave you in charge here, inspector. See that nothing, not even a rat, comes out; but make no move without orders from me.”

Feeling not unlike a half-drowned rat myself, I tumbled into a car which stood there in the darkness, and Smith joined me.

“Limehouse Police Station,” he said to the driver. “Step on it.”

We set out along some narrow riverside street in which not one speck of light was visible. Then, Nayland Smith relaxed. He threw his arms around my shoulders, and in a voice quite unlike that in which he had been issuing orders:

“Kerrigan,” he said, “this is a miracle! Thank God you’re safe. Even now, I find it hard to believe. But first—are you hurt?”

The emotion betrayed by that man of iron touched me keenly.

“I’m sorry to have been such a nuisance. Smith,” I replied awkwardly. “It was my own folly that gave you all this trouble. I’m all right, though I don’t deserve to be. A knife scratch on my shoulder; nothing, I assure you.”

“But you are chilled to the bone. Try to tell me all you can. Time is on the side of the enemy.”

As the driver, whom I suspected to be Sergeant Sims of the Flying Squad, whirled us headlong through Limehouse darkness, I told my story. I held nothing back, not even my belief that Ardatha had betrayed me to Fu-Manchu’s thugs.

“Probably wrong there,” Smith commented staccato-fashion. “But no matter at the moment. I followed the Doctor to the garage—and was cleverly locked inside! Place nearly soundproof. When the raid squad arrived, managed to attract their attention. While they were breaking in, Fu-Manchu’s gang smuggled Oster’s body away and smuggled you away, too. Barge on canal with auxiliary motor. House formerly belonged to certain foreign diplomat—hence peep-hole behind china cupboard…”

The brakes shrieked. I was all but thrown from my seat; a headlight shot out. I had the momentary glimpse of a narrow thoroughfare, and of an evil-looking yellow man who staggered aside from the bonnet.

“Try thinkee where you go,” the driver shouted angrily. “Hop-head!”

And we were off again.

“Barton made the only capture of the night—”

“What?”

“Dr. Fu-Manchu’s marmoset! It was for the marmoset Ardatha came back, Kerrigan. While we were searching the house—and little enough we found—the phone rang. I answered it and Dr. Fu-Manchu issued his ultimatum—”