The Mask of Fu-Manchu (13 page)

Fu-Manchu pressed the button of a shaded lamp upon a silver pedestal, and raising a small, pear-shaped vessel from a rack, examined its contents against the light. It contained some colourless fluid.

His hands were singular: long, bony, flexible fingers, in which, caricatured, as it were, I saw the unforgettable ivory fingers of Fah Lo Suee.

He replaced the vessel in the rack and turned to a page of one of those large volumes which lay open beside him. Seemingly considering it, he began to speak absent-mindedly.

His voice was as I remembered it, except that I thought it had acquired greater power: guttural but perfectly clear. He gave to every syllable its true value. Indeed, he spoke the purest English of any man I have ever heard.

“Mr Greville,” he said, “I trust that any slight headache which you may have experienced on awakening has now disappeared.”

I stood watching him where he sat, but attempted no reply.

“Formerly,” he continued, “I employed sometimes a preparation of Indian hemp and at other times various derivatives of opium with greater or less success. An anaesthetic prepared from the common puffball for many years engaged my attention also; but I have now improved upon these.”

He extended one long, green-draped arm, picking up and dropping with a faint rattling sound a number of brownish objects which looked like dried peas and which lay in a little tray upon the table.

“Seeds of a species of
Mimosa pudica
, found in Brazil and in parts of Asia,” he continued, never once glancing in my direction. “I should like you to inform our mutual friend Dr. Petrie, whom I esteem, that Western science is on the wrong track, and that the perfect anaesthetic is found in
Mimosa pudica.
You succumbed to it tonight, Mr. Greville, and you have been unconscious for nearly half an hour. But if you were a medical man you would admit that the effects are negligible. The mental hiatus, also, is bridged immediately. Your first conscious thought was liked with your last. Am I right?”

“You are right,” I replied, looking down at my feet and wondering if a sudden spring would enable me to get my hands around that lean throat.

“Your reflexes are normal,” the slow, guttural voice continued. “The visceral muscles are unimpaired; there is no cardiac reaction. You are even now contemplating an assault upon me.” He turned to another page of the large volume. “But consider the facts, Mr. Greville. You are still young enough to be impetuous: permit me to warn you. That slender thread which confines your ankles, and which I understand Sir Lionel Barton mistook for silkworm gut, is actually prepared from the flocculent secretion of
Theridion
—a well known but interesting spider…

“You seem to be surprised. The secret of that preparation would make the fortune of any man of commerce into whose hands it might fall. I may add that it will not fall into the hands of any man of commerce. But I am wasting time.”

He stood up.

“I have studied you closely, Mr. Greville, in an endeavour to discern those qualities which have attracted my daughter.”

I started violently and clenched my fists.

“I find them to be typically British,” the calm voice continued, “and rather passive than active. You will never be a Nayland Smith, and you lack that odd detachment which might have made our mutual friend. Dr. Petrie, the most prominent physician of the Western world had he not preferred domesticity with an ex-servant of mine.”

Inch by inch I was edging nearer to him as he spoke.

“You cannot have failed to note an improvement in my physical condition since last we met, Mr. Greville. This is due to the success of an inquiry which has engaged me for no less a period than twenty-five years.”

He moved slowly in the direction of the
mushrabiyeh
window, and, frustrated, I pulled up.

“These orchids,” he continued, extending one bony hand to the glass case which occupied the recess, “I discovered nearly thirty years ago in certain forests of Burma. They occur at extremely rare intervals—traditionally only once in a century, but actually with rather greater frequency. From these orchids I have at last obtained, after twenty-five years of study, an essential oil which completes a particular formula—” he suddenly turned and faced me—“the formula
elixir vitae
for which the old philosophers sought in vain.”

Transfixed by the glare of those green eyes, I seemed to become rigid: their power was awful. I judged Fu-Manchu to be little short of seventy, but as he stood before me now I appreciated in the light of his explanation, more vividly than I had understood at the moment of his entrance, how strangely he had cheated time.

I was fascinated but appalled—fascinated by the genius of the Chinese doctor; appalled by the fact that he employed that genius, not for good, but for evil.

“You are a very small cog, Mr. Greville,” he continued, “in that wheel which is turning against me. If I could use you, I would do so. But you have nothing to offer me. I bear you no ill-will, however, and I have given my word to my daughter—whom you know, I believe, as Fah Lo Suee—that no harm shall come to you at my hands. She is a woman of light loves, but you have pleased her—and I have given my word.”

He spoke the last sentence as one who says, “I have set my royal seal to this.” And indeed he spoke so with justice. For even Sir Denis, his most implacable enemy, had admitted that the word of Dr. Fu-Manchu was inviolable. Volition left me. Facing this superhuman enemy of all that my traditions stood for, I found my mental attitude to be that of a pupil at the feet of a master!

“My daughter’s aid was purchased tonight at the price of this promise,” Dr. Fu-Manchu added, his voice displaying no emotion whatever. “I had thought that I could use you to achieve a certain end. But consideration of the character of Sir Lionel Barton has persuaded me that I cannot.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, my voice sounding unfamiliar.

“I mean, Mr. Greville, that you love him. But you love a shell, an accomplishment, a genius if you like; but a phantom, a hollow thing, having no real existence. Sir Lionel Barton would sacrifice you tomorrow—tonight—to his own ambitions. Do you doubt this?”

It was a wicked thought, and I clenched my teeth. But God knows I recognized its truth! I knew well enough, and Rima knew too, that the chief would have sacrificed nearly everything and almost everybody to that mania for research, for achievements greater than his contemporaries’ which were his gods. That we loved him in spite of this was, perhaps, evidence of our folly or of something fine in Sir Lionel’s character, something which outweighed the juggernaut of his egoism.

“For this reason”—Dr. Fu-Manchu’s voice rose to a soft, sibilant note—“I have been compelled slightly to modify my original plans.” Returning to his chair, he seated himself. I was very near to him now, but:

“Sit down!” he said.

And I sat down, on an Arab stool which stood at one end of the table and which he indicated with a bony extended forefinger. Since that all but incredible interview I have tried to analyse my behaviour; I have tried to blame myself, arguing that there must have been some course other than the passive one which I adopted. Many have thought the same, but to them all I have replied: “You have never met Dr. Fu-Manchu.”

He rested his long hands before him upon the glass covering of the table. And, no longer looking in my direction:

“Sir Lionel Barton has served me for the first time in his life,” he said, his voice still touching that high, sibilant note. “By discovering and then destroying the tomb of El Mokanna he awakened a fanaticism long dormant which, properly guided, should sweep farther than that once controlled by the Mahdi. And the Mahdi, Mr. Greville, came nearer to achieving his ends than British historians care to admit. Your Lord Kitchener—whom I knew and esteemed— had no easy task.”

He suddenly turned to me, and I lost personality again, swamped in the lake of two green eyes.

“The Mokanna may be greater than the Mahdi,” he added. “But his pretensions must survive severe tests. He must satisfy the learned Moslems of the Great Mosque at Damascus, and later pass the ordeal of Mecca. This he can do who possesses the authentic relics…”

Vaguely, I groped for the purpose behind all this...

“I would not trust Sir Lionel Barton to respond even to that demand about to be made upon him, if Dr. Petrie and Sir Denis Nayland Smith were not there. Since they are—I am satisfied.”

He struck a little gong suspended on a frame beside his chair. One of the three doors—that almost immediately behind him, opened; and two of those dwarfish and muscular Negroes entered, instantly carrying my mind back to the horrors of Ispahan.

They wore native Egyptian costume, but that they were West Africans was a fact quite unmistakable.

“New allies of mine, Mr. Greville,” said the awful Chinaman, “although old in sympathy. They have useful qualities which attract me.”

He made a slight signal with his left hand, and in an instant I found myself pinioned. He spoke gutturally in an unfamiliar tongue—no doubt that of the Negroes. And I was led forward until I stood almost at his elbow.

“This document is precious,” he explained, “and I feared that you might attempt some violent action. Can you read from where you stand?”

Yes, I could read—and reading, I was astounded...

I saw a note in my own handwriting, addressed to Rima; phrased as I would have phrased it, and directing her to slip away and to join me in a car which would be waiting outside Shepheard’s! Particularly, the note impressed upon her that she must not confide in anyone, but must come
alone…

I swallowed audibly; and then:

“It’s a marvellous forgery,” I said.

“Forgery!” Dr. Fu-Manchu echoed the word. “My dear Mr. Greville, you wrote it with your own hand during that period of thirty minutes’ oblivion to which I have drawn your attention. My new anaesthetic”—he drooped some of the dried seeds through his long fingers—“has properties approaching perfection.”

My arms held in a muscular grip:

“She will never be fool enough to come,” I exclaimed.

“Not to join
you?”

“She will run back when she finds I am not there.”

“But you will be there.”

“What?”

“When one small obstacle has been removed—that which the obstinacy of Sir Lionel Barton has set before me—your behaviour, Mr. Greville, will excite Dr. Petrie’s professional interest. I wish it were in my power to give him some small demonstration of the potentialities, which I have not yet fully explored, of another excellent formula.”

A sudden dread clutched me, and I found cold perspiration breaking out all over my body.

“What are you going to do with me?” I asked—“and what are you going to do with Rima?”

“For yourself, you have my word…” the green eyes which had been averted turned to me again; “and I have never warred with women. I am going to recover the relics of the Masked Prophet and return them to those to whom they properly belong. You are going to assist me.”

I clenched my teeth very tightly.

Dr. Fu-Manchu stood up and moved with his lithe, dignified gait, to one of the glass cases. He opened it. Speaking over his shoulder:

“If you care to swallow a cachet,” he said, “this would suffice. The liquid preparation”—he held up a small flask containing a colourless fluid—“is not so rapid. Failing your compliance, however, an injection is indicated.”

He stood with his back to me. The grip of the two dwarfish Negroes held me as in iron bands. And I found myself studying the design of the white peacock which was carried from the breast of the doctor’s robe, over the shoulders and round to the back. I watched his lean yellow neck, and the scanty, neutral-coloured hair beneath his skullcap; the square, angular shoulders, the gaunt, cat-like poise of the tall figure. He seemed to be awaiting a reply.

“I have no choice,” I said in a dry voice.

Dr. Fu-Manchu replaced the flask which he held in one bony hand and selected a small wooden box. He turned, moving back towards the table.

“The subcutaneous is best,” he murmured, “being most rapid in its effect. But the average patient prefers the tablets…”

He opened a leather case which lay upon the table and extracted a hypodermic syringe. Unemotionally he dipped the point into a small vessel and wiped it with a piece of lint. Then, charging it from a tiny tube which he took from the box, he stepped towards me.

I
remember saying, as that master physician and devil incarnate thrust back the sleeve of my tweed jacket and unfastened my cuff link:

“Since I have your word, Dr. Fu-Manchu, you are loosing a dangerous witness on the world!”

The needle point pierced my flesh.

“On the contrary,” the guttural voice replied without emotion, “one of your own English travellers, Dr. McGovem, has testified to the fact that words and actions under the influence of this drug—which he mentions in its primitive form as
kaapi
—leave no memory behind. I have gone further than the natives who originally discovered it. I can so prescribe as to induce fourteen variations of amnesia, graded from apparently full consciousness to complete anaesthesis. The patient remains under my control in all these phases. Anamnesis, or recovery of the forgotten acts, may be brought about by means of a simple antidote…”