The Wrath of Fu Manchu and Other Stories (10 page)

“It is the thunderstorm. They affect me very much.”

Gregory sat on a hassock, looking at her. There came another electric flicker through the shaded window, a shattering crash of thunder. Mignon flinched; tried to control herself. Gregory took her hand reassuringly. “I don’t know what you were doing out on such a night, Mignon.”

“I came to look for you. At Dover you disappear. I don’t know what has happened.”

“Mignon!”

And in the sudden silence which fell as the thunder died, Gregory heard the footsteps again.

But their pattern had altered. At regular intervals the patrol was halted, and three deliberate beats came. Now, as he felt Mignon’s grip tighten, he glanced back at her, and before she could lower her lashes, he caught an expression of such frantic compassion that it frightened him.

“Mignon, there’s no danger,” he said. “The storm is passing. It was very good of you to come.”

But he knew that whatever she feared, it wasn’t the storm. She opened her eyes, still clasping his hand.

“I am silly, Gregory. Try to forgive me. Why, oh why, didn’t you stay an artist?”

Her manner, her disjointed phrases, told a story of nervous tension for which he could find no explanation.

“Listen, Mignon. Take it easy. Let me give you a cigarette and a little drink, so we can talk quietly.”

“No, no!” She held onto his hand, detaining him. “I don’t want a drink—yet. I want to talk to you—yes. But it is so hard.”

“What do you want to tell me? That we’re not going to see one another again?”

He knew that the words betrayed his secret dreams, but he didn’t care; for he knew, now, that Mignon wasn’t indifferent and he meant to hear the truth.

“No,” she whispered.

Three soft taps sounded distinctly.

Gregory was on the point of asking Mignon if she had heard the queer sound when a third flicker of lightning came and another crack of thunder. She closed her eyes.

“Let’s go downstairs,” Gregory proposed, “and have a drink in the lounge. This room is suffocating.”

He pulled her up from the chair and they moved toward the door. The three muffled taps were repeated.

It seemed to Gregory that Mignon stopped as suddenly as if unseen hands had grasped her.

“Oh, Gregory, I feel so—swimmy! I think I will have a drink now, after all.”

Her manner certainly suggested that she needed one, as she turned and dropped back into the chair. Gregory poured out two drinks, glanced at Mignon’s pale face, and hurried into the bathroom for water.

When he returned he found Mignon had recovered herself a little, and was looking at the sketch he had roughed out. She drank from her glass and looked at the sketch again.

“Is it very bad?” he asked.

She didn’t look up. “No, it’s very good. It was sweet of you.”

Mignon raised her eyes as she spoke, and he had only time to see that they were cloudy with fears when the phone buzzed. Puzzled and bewildered, he took up the receiver.

“Gregory Allen?” a familiar voice demanded.

“Here, Sir Denis.” The caller was Nayland Smith.

“Good. Listen. I have just arrived. Followed you by plane. This is urgent: Don’t leave your apartment until I get there. On no account allow anyone in.”

Gregory hung up, turned—and saw Mignon through a mist. He staggered to the couch, gulped the rest of the brandy. What was the word Mignon had used?
Swimmy
. Yes, that was what he felt, too.

* * *

He fell back. His mind began to wander. He tried to call Mignon, to explain to her—but his voice would not come. He tried to rise. He couldn’t move. But he could hear Mignon’s voice—as from a distance.

With one arm she supported his head. Her fingers caressed his hair. Something wetted his cheek. He looked up, and into her eyes. Mignon was crying. He wanted to console her, to warn her. But he couldn’t speak, couldn’t move a muscle.

“You must try to forgive me,” she whispered. “Try to understand. One day, you will. How sorry I am…”

She had gone. He didn’t see her go, for he couldn’t turn his head. All he could see was the ceiling above him and part of the wall. His brain now was clear enough; but his heart was sick—for at last he guessed the truth. She had doped his drink, and those uncanny footsteps were drawing nearer.

A number of people came in. He recognised the voice of the hotel manager. “How lucky you were in the hotel, Dr Gottfeld.”

Someone bent over Gregory: a tall man. He wore black silk gloves and tinted glasses, with a delicate thumb and forefinger he raised Gregory’s lids. Then he removed the glasses and stared down at him with brilliant green eyes. And Gregory knew he was face to face with Dr Fu-Manchu.

“Very lucky.” The words were spoken with a guttural German accent. “I see from his baggage labels that he is recently in lower Egypt. There was a mild outbreak there of plague two weeks ago. Do not be alarmed. There is no danger—yet. But we must act quickly.”

Conscious—seeing, hearing, but incapable of speech or movement—Gregory heard the man they called Dr Gottfeld volunteer to drive him in his own car to the London Hospital for Tropical Diseases—”Where they know me well,” he explained.

Mentally alert, but helpless as a dead man, Gregory heard that German voice giving explicit directions concerning locking the apartment, destruction of its contents, and fumigation of the rooms. Knowing the symptoms of every variety of plague, he was well aware that the man was a liar.

Why had he been doped by Mignon? Was she in the power of Fu-Manchu? He thought about the drug. Its composition was unknown to him, but he thought there might be some hyoscine. Then he heard a hurried exodus.

Fu-Manchu bent over him, again removing the tinted glasses, and Gregory knew that those hypnotic eyes were claiming him.

“I have studied your career with interest.” The words now were spoken in perfect, curiously precise English. “I recently lost my chief assistant in your particular field of research, Dr Allen. You have become indispensable to me in my search for a way to continue my life—indefinitely. Your service will not be unpleasant. There are rich rewards.”

He was charging a hypodermic syringe when there came a faint buzzing.

A few words, harshly spoken, told him Dr Fu-Manchu carried some kind of two-way radio device which kept him in contact with his associates. When again the Chinese scientist bent over him, he knew that the message had been a warning. The green eyes blazed with frustration.

“Your death could avail me nothing. Your life may yet be of use. I bid you good night, Dr Allen. Convey my deep respects to Sir Denis Nayland Smith.” Gregory was alone in the room.

He fought to retain the state of unreal consciousness in which he was held, but found that his over-taxed brain was defeating the effort. Sleep overcame him.

* * *

As something out of a dream, he heard Nayland Smith’s voice: “What is it, Petrie? Are we too late?”

“Very simple. A knockout drop. It was in this glass—this one.”

“I assure you gentlemen,”—the manager’s frightened voice climbed to a falsetto—“it’s
plague!
”

“Plague be damned!” Dr Petrie snapped. “He’s been drugged. I don’t know what’s in it. But I suspect a proportion of hyoscine.” Gregory silently applauded. “I’m going to take strong measures. Sheer luck, Smith, that I hurried straight from the hospital to meet you and had my bag with me.”

Gregory caught a glimpse of Dr Petrie’s earnest face bending over him, and knew that the doctor had administered an injection.

Recovery was slow, and nauseating, but at last he regained control of his muscles as well as of his brain, sat up and looked about him.

Dr Petrie was watching him with a professional regard.

“Thanks, Doctor!” Gregory grasped his hand. “I agree with you about hyoscine. But I wish I knew the other ingredients.”

Nayland Smith was looking at the drawing of Mignon. He glanced up as Gregory spoke.

“Hullo, Allen. This must be the young lady who informed the management that you were taken seriously ill and then disappeared. They gave me her description.”

Gregory nodded.

“I warned you Dr Fu-Manchu has eyes everywhere. You know now how fascinating those eyes can be. His scouts warned him in some way that I was close on his heels, and once again he has slipped away.”

Nayland Smith put the drawing of Mignon where he found it and glanced at Gregory. There was sympathy in the grey eyes.

“Don’t condemn her,” he said. “She’s in his power as, but for an act of Providence,
you
might have been.” His voice hardened. “You must never under any circumstances try to see that girl again.”

For the next few days Gregory Allen prowled the streets of London, driven by the ridiculous hope that somewhere in the crowds which thronged the Strand and Piccadilly he would see the auburn hair and piquant face of Mignon. His scientist’s brain told him Nayland Smith had been right in warning him that he must never see her again. But against reason was set a desperate urge to find the girl, free her from the spell of Dr Fu-Manchu and take her back to New York with him.

Sometimes in his restless walks, he had the feeling he was followed, but whether by one of Fu-Manchu’s assistants or a Scotland Yard man assigned to protect him, he did not know. Nor did he know where to look for Mignon. He didn’t even know her last name.

With faint hope he had written off to Paris to the weekly magazine which regularly published her sketches. An answer came back promptly. The magazine could not give out contributors’ addresses. But they would see that his message reached Mignon.

The letter filled him with hope. When he returned to his hotel two days later, there was a plain white envelope with his mail: “Exhibition of French art at the Tate Gallery,” it read. “Please come there at 5.30 this afternoon. Wait near the Gauguin paintings, but when I come in pretend not to recognise me. Destroy this note—Mignon.”

Gregory approached the Tate Gallery at dusk. He told himself once again that he was playing with fire; but he could not blind himself to the fact that he had become hopelessly infatuated with the girl.

The building was all but deserted. It was near to closing time. He found the appointed spot and then decided to wait on the other side of the room, pretending to examine the sketches and charcoal studies.

Few visitors came. At every footstep Gregory turned. One man, dark, of a saturnine cast of features and wearing a white raincoat strolled through twice; but Gregory decided that he was probably a gallery detective. He glanced anxiously at his watch. And still Mignon didn’t come.

He had begun to lose heart when he heard light footsteps, and a girl came into the gallery. She wore a scarlet cape, her auburn hair almost entirely hidden by a close-fitting beret.

It was Mignon. But she gave no sign of recognising him.

The dark man strolled in, glanced round, and went out by another door. Mignon, a moment later, went out, too. Gregory followed. She passed through several other rooms and stopped in an empty room devoted to French drawings.

“Mignon!” He grasped her shoulders. “How wonderful!”

She turned her head aside. “I am glad to see you, too, Gregory. But you must be mad. You should hate me—I have done you only harm.”

“I
am
mad, Mignon—mad about
you
. Look at me. I understand it all. Nayland Smith has told me. Don’t reproach yourself.”

She glanced up at him, furtively, timidly. “You should not have come. Nor should I. You had one narrow escape from Fu-Manchu. Why do you take another risk? You must forget me—forget we ever met.”

“I can’t forget you,” he said, “and I won’t even try unless you tell me, here and now, that I have no right to think about you as I do.”

“There is no one else, in the sense you mean,” she whispered. “Think of me, Gregory, as someone inaccessible, a slave.”

He held her. “There are no slaves,” he said tensely. “Come with me—now. Back to America. Nayland Smith has the power of the government behind him. You will be safe from Dr Fu-Manchu.”

Mignon rested her head against his shoulder.

“How I wish it could be, Gregory. It is my father, hopelessly under the power of Fu-Manchu, whom I must protect.” She looked up swiftly. “Every moment you stay with me you are in danger. My father is in danger. So am I.”

He bent to her lips. Mignon thrust her hand against his mouth. Her eyes were wild. “If you value my life, Gregory, dear, please let me go. I mean it. Don’t even look back. Don’t try to follow me.”

She slipped from his arms. He dared not ignore the urgency of her appeal. But as he heard her light footsteps retreating through the next gallery towards the door he
did
look back.

Mignon was out of sight.

Three minutes later Gregory was on the Embankment in front of the gallery, staring right and left. Dusk had drawn in, and the opposite bank of the Thames was curtained in mist. And then in the direction of Millbank, under the light of a street lamp, he had a glimpse of the scarlet cape.

As he set out to follow, another figure passed under the lamp, close behind Mignon—the white-coated figure of the dark man.

Gregory hurried on. Mignon was being covered. But if he could find out where she was going, Nayland Smith could do the rest. For Gregory was determined now to get Mignon away from Fu-Manchu even if he had to kidnap her.

The cape disappeared around a corner not far from the Gallery. The white coat closed up and disappeared also.

Gregory raced to the corner. He was just in time to see Mignon turn into one of the many narrow streets which abounded in this district The white-coated man followed no farther. He went straight ahead.

* * *

Gregory ran on to the head of the street where she had turned. He could see no sign of the scarlet cloak. It was dark in the opening, but there were some lighted windows beyond. He stood listening for the sound of an opening or closing door. He heard nothing—then moved in cautiously.

No sound warned him of his danger. No blow was struck. He suffered a sudden sharp pain—and remembered no more…

Except for a slight headache, he felt no discomfort when he woke up. He took one look around, then closed his eyes again. This must be a dream!