The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu. Sax Rohmer
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upright. A second later he was astride the broken gate.
“Up you come, Petrie!” he said, and reached down his hand to aid me.
I got my foot into the loop of chain, grasped at a projection in the gatepost and found myself up.
“There is a crossbar on this side to stand on,” said Smith.
He climbed over and vanished in the darkness. I was still astride the broken gate when the car turned the corner, slowly, for there was scanty room; but I was standing upon the bar on the inside and had my head below the gap ere the driver could possibly have seen me.
“Stay where you are until he passes,” hissed my companion, below. “There is a row of kegs under you.”
The sound of the motor passing outside grew loud—louder—then began to die away. I felt about with my left foot; discerned the top of a keg, and dropped, panting, beside Smith.
“Phew!” I said—“that was a close thing! Smith—how do we know—”
“That we have followed the right car?” he interrupted. “Ask yourself the question: what would any ordinary man be doing motoring in a place like this at two o’clock in the morning?”
“You are right, Smith,” I agreed. “Shall we get out again?”
“Not yet. I have an idea. Look yonder.”
He grasped my arm, turning me in the desired direction.
Beyond a great expanse of unbroken darkness a ray of moonlight slanted into the place wherein we stood, spilling its cold radiance upon rows of kegs.
“That’s another door,” continued my friend—I now began dimly to perceive him beside me. “If my calculations are not entirely wrong, it opens on a wharf gate—”
A steam siren hooted dismally, apparently from quite close at hand.
“I’m right!” snapped Smith. “That turning leads down to the gate. Come on, Petrie!”
He directed the light of the electric torch upon a narrow path through the ranks of casks, and led the way to the further door. A good two feet of moonlight showed along the top. I heard Smith straining; then—
“These kegs are all loaded with grease!” he said, “and I want to reconnoiter over that door.”
“I am leaning on a crate which seems easy to move,” I reported. “Yes, it’s empty. Lend a hand.”
We grasped the empty crate, and between us, set it up on a solid pedestal of casks. Then Smith mounted to this observation platform and I scrambled up beside him, and looked down upon the lane outside.
It terminated as Smith had foreseen at a wharf gate some six feet to the right of our post. Piled up in the lane beneath us, against the warehouse door, was a stack of empty casks. Beyond, over the way, was a kind of ramshackle building that had possibly been a dwelling-house at some time. Bills were stuck in the ground-floor window indicating that the three floors were to let as offices; so much was discernible in that reflected moonlight.
I could hear the tide, lapping upon the wharf, could feel the chill from the river and hear the vague noises which, night nor day, never cease upon the great commercial waterway.
“Down!” whispered Smith. “Make no noise! I suspected it. They heard the car following!”
I obeyed, clutching at him for support; for I was suddenly dizzy, and my heart was leaping wildly—furiously.
“You saw her?” he whispered.
Saw her! yes, I had seen her! And my poor dream-world was toppling about me, its cities, ashes and its fairness, dust.
Peering from the window, her great eyes wondrous in the moonlight and her red lips parted, hair gleaming like burnished foam and her anxious gaze set upon the corner of the lane—was Karamaneh … Karamaneh whom once we had rescued from the house of this fiendish Chinese doctor; Karamaneh who had been our ally; in fruitless quest of whom—when, too late, I realized how empty my life was become—I had wasted what little of the world’s goods I possessed;—Karamaneh!
“Poor old Petrie,” murmured Smith—“I knew, but I hadn’t the heart—He has her again—God knows by what chains he holds her. But she’s only a woman, old boy, and women are very much alike—very much alike from Charing Cross to Pagoda Road.”
He rested his hand on my shoulder for a moment; I am ashamed to confess that I was trembling; then, clenching my teeth with that mechanical physical effort which often accompanies a mental one, I swallowed the bitter draught of Nayland Smith’s philosophy. He was raising himself, to peer, cautiously, over the top of the door. I did likewise.
The window from which the girl had looked was nearly on a level with our eyes, and as I raised my head above the woodwork, I quite distinctly saw her go out of the room. The door, as she opened it, admitted a dull light, against which her figure showed silhouetted for a moment. Then the door was reclosed.
“We must risk the other windows,” rapped Smith.
Before I had grasped the nature of his plan he was over and had dropped almost noiselessly upon the casks outside. Again I followed his lead.
“You are not going to attempt anything, singlehanded—against him?” I asked.
“Petrie—Eltham is in that house. He has been brought here to be put to the question, in the medieval, and Chinese, sense! Is there time to summon assistance?”
I shuddered. This had been in my mind, certainly, but so expressed it was definitely horrible—revolting, yet stimulating.
“You have the pistol,” added Smith—“follow closely, and quietly.”
He walked across the tops of the casks and leaped down, pointing to that nearest to the closed door of the house. I helped him place it under the open window. A second we set beside it, and, not without some noise, got a third on top.
Smith mounted.
His jaw muscles were very prominent and his eyes shone like steel; but he was as cool as though he were about to enter a theater and not the den of the most stupendous genius who ever worked for evil. I would forgive any man who, knowing Dr. Fu-Manchu, feared him; I feared him myself—feared him as one fears a scorpion; but when Nayland Smith hauled himself up on the wooden ledge above the door and swung thence into the darkened room, I followed and was in close upon his heels. But I admired him, for he had every ampere of his self-possession in hand; my own case was different.
He spoke close to my ear.
“Is your hand steady? We may have to shoot.”
I thought of Karamaneh, of lovely dark-eyed Karamaneh whom this wonderful, evil product of secret China had stolen from me—for so I now adjudged it.
“Rely upon me!” I said grimly. “I …”
The words ceased—frozen on my tongue.
There are things that one seeks to forget, but it is my lot often to remember the sound which at that moment literally struck me rigid with horror. Yet it was only a groan; but, merciful God! I pray that it may never be my lot to listen to such a groan again.
Smith drew a sibilant breath.
“It’s Eltham!” he whispered hoarsely—“they’re torturing—”
“No, no!” screamed a woman’s voice—a voice that thrilled me anew, but with another emotion—
“Not that, not—”
I distinctly heard the sound of a blow. Followed a sort of vague scuffling. A door somewhere at the back of the house opened—and shut again. Some one was coming along the passage toward us!
“Stand back!” Smith’s voice was low, but perfectly steady. “Leave it