THE DEVIL DOCTOR. Sax Rohmer
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opened the door, felt for,
and found, a key.
We left Kâramanèh crouching against the wall; her great eyes were
turned towards me fascinatedly. Smith locked the door with much care.
We began a tip-toed progress along the dimly-lighted passage.
From beneath a door on the left, and near the end, a brighter light
shone. Beyond that again was another door. A voice was speaking in the
lighted room; yet I could have sworn that Kâramanèh had come, not from
there but from the room beyond--from the far end of the passage.
But the voice!--who, having once heard it, could ever mistake that
singular voice, alternately guttural and sibilant.
Dr. Fu-Manchu was speaking!
"I have asked you," came with ever-increasing clearness (Smith had
begun to turn the knob), "to reveal to me the name of your
correspondent in Nan-Yang. I have suggested that he may be the
Mandarin Yen-Sun-Yat, but you have declined to confirm me. Yet I know"
(Smith had the door open a good three inches and was peering in) "that
some official, some high official, is a traitor. Am I to resort again
to _the question_ to learn his name?"
Ice seemed to enter my veins at the unseen inquisitor's intonation of
the words "_the question_." This was the twentieth century; yet there,
in that damnable room....
Smith threw the door open.
Through a sort of haze, born mostly of horror, but not entirely, I saw
Eltham, stripped to the waist and tied, with his arms upstretched, to
a rafter in the ancient ceiling. A Chinaman, who wore a slop-shop blue
suit and who held an open knife in his hand, stood beside him. Eltham
was ghastly white. The appearance of his chest puzzled me momentarily,
then I realized that a sort of _tourniquet_ of wire-netting was
screwed so tightly about him that the flesh swelled out in knobs
through the mesh. There was blood--
"God in heaven!" screamed Smith frenziedly, "_they have the
wire-jacket on him!_ Shoot down that damned Chinaman, Petrie! Shoot!
Shoot!"
Lithely as a cat the man with the knife leapt around--but I raised the
Browning, and deliberately--with a cool deliberation that came to me
suddenly--shot him through the head. I saw his oblique eyes turn up to
the whites; I saw the mark squarely between his brows; and with no word
nor cry he sank to his knees and toppled forward with one yellow hand
beneath him and one outstretched, clutching--clutching--convulsively.
His pigtail came unfastened and began to uncoil, slowly, like a snake.
I handed the pistol to Smith; I was perfectly cool, now; and I leapt
forward, took up the bloody knife from the floor and cut Eltham's
lashings. He sank into my arms.
"Praise God," he murmured weakly. "He is more merciful to me than
perhaps I deserve. Unscrew ... the jacket, Petrie ... I think ... I was
very near to ... weakening. Praise the good God, who ... gave me ...
fortitude...."
I got the screw of the accursed thing loosened, but the act of
removing the jacket was too agonizing for Eltham--man of iron though
he was. I laid him swooning on the floor.
"Where is Fu-Manchu?"
Nayland Smith, from just within the door, threw out the query in a
tone of stark amaze. I stood up--I could do nothing more for the poor
victim at the moment--and looked about me.
The room was innocent of furniture, save for heaps of rubbish on the
floor, and a tin oil-lamp hung on the wall. The dead Chinaman lay
close beside Smith. There was no second door, the one window was
barred and from this room we had heard the voice, the unmistakable,
unforgettable voice, of Fu-Manchu.
_But Dr. Fu-Manchu was not there!_
Neither of us could accept the fact for a moment; we stood there,
looking from the dead man to the tortured man who had only swooned,
in a state of helpless incredulity.
Then the explanation flashed upon us both, simultaneously, and with a
cry of baffled rage Smith leapt along the passage to the second door.
It was wide open. I stood at his elbow when he swept its emptiness
with the ray of his pocket-lamp.
There was a speaking-tube fixed between the two rooms!
Smith literally ground his teeth.
"Yet, Petrie," he said, "we have learnt something. Fu-Manchu had
evidently promised Eltham his life if he would divulge the name of his
correspondent. He meant to keep his word; it is a sidelight on his
character."
"How so?"
"Eltham has never seen Dr. Fu-Manchu, but Eltham knows certain parts
of China better than you know the Strand. Probably, if he saw
Fu-Manchu, he would recognize him for whom he really is, and this, it
seems, the Doctor is anxious to avoid."
We ran back to where we had left Kâramanèh.
The room was empty!
"Defeated, Petrie!" said Smith bitterly. "The Yellow Devil is loosed
on London again!"
He leant from the window and the skirl of a police whistle split the
stillness of the night.
THE CRY OF A NIGHTHAWK
Such were the episodes that marked the coming of Dr. Fu-Manchu to
London, that awakened fears long dormant and reopened old wounds--nay,
poured poison into them. I strove desperately, by close attention to
my professional duties, to banish the very memory of Kâramanèh from my
mind; desperately, but how vainly! Peace was for me no more, joy was
gone from the world, and only mockery remained as my portion.
Poor Eltham we had placed in a nursing establishment, where his
indescribable hurts could be properly tended; and his uncomplaining
fortitude