THE RETURN OF DR. FU-MANCHU

THE RETURN OF DR. FU-MANCHU

BY

SAX ROHMER

CHAPTER I

A MIDNIGHT SUMMONS

"When did you last hear from Nayland Smith?" asked my visitor.

I paused, my hand on the syphon, reflecting for a moment.

"Two months ago," I said; "he's a poor correspondent and rathersoured, I fancy."

"What--a woman or something?"

"Some affair of that sort. He's such a reticent beggar, I really knowvery little about it."

I placed a whisky and soda before the Rev. J. D. Eltham, also slidingthe tobacco jar nearer to his hand. The refined and sensitive face ofthe clergy-man offered no indication of the truculent character of theman. His scanty fair hair, already gray over the temples, was silkenand soft-looking; in appearance he was indeed a typical Englishchurchman; but in China he had been known as "the fightingmissionary," and had fully deserved the title. In fact, thispeaceful-looking gentleman had directly brought about the BoxerRisings!

"You know," he said, in his clerical voice, but meanwhile stuffingtobacco into an old pipe with fierce energy, "I have often wondered,Petrie--I have never left off wondering--"

"What?"

"That accursed Chinaman! Since the cellar place beneath the site ofthe burnt-out cottage in Dulwich Village--I have wondered more thanever."

He lighted his pipe and walked to the hearth to throw the match in thegrate.

"You see," he continued, peering across at me in his oddly nervousway, "one never knows, does one? If I thought that Dr. Fu-Manchulived; if I seriously suspected that that stupendous intellect, thatwonderful genius, Petrie, er--" he hesitatedcharacteristically--"survived, I should feel it my duty--"

"Well?" I said, leaning my elbows on the table and smiling slightly.

"If that Satanic genius were not indeed destroyed, then the peace ofthe world, may be threatened anew at any moment!"

He was becoming excited, shooting out his jaw in the truculent mannerI knew, and snapping his fingers to emphasize his words; a mancomposed of the oddest complexities that ever dwelt beneath a clericalfrock.

"He may have got back to China, Doctor!" he cried, and his eyes hadthe fighting glint in them. "Could you rest in peace if you thoughtthat he lived? Should you not fear for your life every time that anight-call took you out alone? Why, man alive, it is only two yearssince he was here among us, since we were searching every shadow forthose awful green eyes! What became of his band of assassins--hisstranglers, his dacoits, his damnable poisons and insects and what-not--the army of creatures--"

He paused, taking a drink.

"You--" he hesitated diffidently--"searched in Egypt with NaylandSmith, did you not?"

I nodded.

"Contradict me if I am wrong," he continued; but my impression is thatyou were searching for the girl--the girl--Karamaneh, I think she wascalled?"

"Yes," I replied shortly; "but we could find no trace--no trace."

"You--er--were interested?"

"More than I knew," I replied, "until I realized that I had--losther."

"I never met Karamaneh, but from your account, and from others, shewas quite unusually--"

"She was very beautiful," I said, and stood up, for I was anxious toterminate that phase of the conversation.

Eltham regarded me sympathetically; he knew something of my searchwith Nayland Smith for the dark-eyed, Eastern girl who had broughtromance into my drab life; he knew that I treasured my memories of heras I loathed and abhorred those of the fiendish, brilliant Chinesedoctor who had been her master.

Eltham began to pace up and down the rug, his pipe bubbling furiously;and something in the way he carried his head reminded me momentarilyof Nayland Smith. Certainly, between this pink-faced clergyman, withhis deceptively mild appearance, and the gaunt, bronzed, and steely-eyed Burmese commissioner, there was externally little in common; butit was some little nervous trick in his carriage that conjured upthrough the smoky haze one distant summer evening when Smith had pacedthat very room as Eltham paced it now, when before my startled eyes hehad rung up the curtain upon the savage drama in which, though Ilittle suspected it then, Fate had cast me for a leading role.

I wondered if Eltham's thoughts ran parallel with mine. My own werecentered upon the unforgettable figure of the murderous Chinaman.These words, exactly as Smith had used them, seemed once again tosound in my ears: "Imagine a person tall, lean, and feline, highshouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, aclose-shaven skull, and long magnetic eyes of the true cat green.Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern raceaccumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science,past and present, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the'Yellow Peril' incarnate in one man."

This visit of Eltham's no doubt was responsible for my mood; for thissingular clergyman had played his part in the drama of two years ago.

"I should like to see Smith again," he said suddenly; "it seems a pitythat a man like that should be buried in Burma. Burma makes a mess ofthe best of men, Doctor. You said he was not married?"

"No," I replied shortly, "and is never likely to be, now."

"Ah, you hinted at something of the kind."

"I know very little of it. Nayland Smith is not the kind of man totalk much."

"Quite so--quite so! And, you know, Doctor, neither am I; but"--he wasgrowing painfully embarrassed--"it may be your due--I--er--I have acorrespondent, in the interior of China--"

"Well?" I said, watching him in sudden eagerness.

"Well, I would not desire to raise--vain hopes--nor to occasion, shallI say, empty fears; but--er... no, Doctor!" He flushed like agirl--"It was wrong of me to open this conversation. Perhaps, when Iknow more--will you forget my words, for the time?"

The telephone bell rang.

"Hullo!" cried Eltham--"hard luck, Doctor!"--but I could see that hewelcomed the interruption. "Why!" he added, "it is one o'clock!"

I went to the telephone.

"Is that Dr. Petrie?" inquired a woman's voice.

"Yes; who is speaking?"

"Mrs. Hewett has been taken more seriously ill. Could you come atonce?"

"Certainly," I replied, for Mrs. Hewett was not only a profitablepatient but an estimable lady--" I shall be with you in a quarter ofan hour."

I hung up the receiver.

"Something urgent?" asked Eltham, emptying his pipe.

"Sounds like it. You had better turn in."

"I should much prefer to walk over with you, if it would not beintruding. Our conversation has ill prepared me for sleep."

"Right!" I said; for I welcomed his company; and three minutes laterwe were striding across the deserted common.

A sort of mist floated amongst the trees, seeming in the moonlightlike a veil draped from trunk to trunk, as in silence we passed theMound pond, and struck out for the north side of the common.

I suppose the presence of Eltham and the irritating recollection ofhis half-confidence were the responsible factors, but my mindpersistently dwelt upon the subject of Fu-Manchu and the atrocitieswhich he had committed during his sojourn in England. So actively wasmy imagination at work that I felt again the menace which so long hadhung over me; I felt as though that murderous yellow cloud still castits shadow upon England. And I found myself longing for the company ofNayland Smith. I cannot state what was the nature of Eltham'sreflections, but I can guess; for he was as silent as I.

It was with a conscious effort that I shook myself out of thismorbidly reflective mood, on finding that we had crossed the commonand were come to the abode of my patient.

"I shall take a little walk," announced Eltham; for I gather that youdon't expect to be detained long? I shall never be out of sight of thedoor, of course."