Very well....It was murder, calculated, callous murder. This was a game that two could play. What I had done once, I could do again, and again—and every time that I got within reach of any of the foul gang!
Dr. Fu Manchu!
If such a person existed, I asked only to be set face to face with him. That moment, I vowed, should be his last—little knowing the stupendous task to which I vowed myself.
Fah Lo Suee—a woman; but one of them. The French had not hesitated to shoot female spies during the World War. Nor should I, now.
I had reached the head of the steps when Victor Quinton touched my shoulder. Details were indefinite, but my immediate objective was plain. One of the Burmans was covering my movements. I planned to find that Burman; and—taking every possible precaution to insure my own getaway—I planned to kill him....
“You have had bad news, M. Sterling?”
“Dr. Petrie is dead,” I said, and ran down the steps.
I suppose many curious glances followed; perhaps Fleurette had seen me. I didn’t care. I crossed the street and walked up the opposite slope. A man was lounging there, smoking a cigarette—a typical working-class Frenchman; and I remembered that he had stood there for part of the time during which the dacoit had watched the restaurant.
“Excuse me.” I said.
The man started and turned.
“Did you chance to see an Oriental who stood near you here a few minutes ago?”
“But yes, m’sieur. Someone I suppose off one of those foreign yachts in the harbour? He had gone only this last two minutes.”
“Which way?”
He pointed downward.
“Toward the Jardin des Suicides,” he replied smiling.
“Suitable spot, if I catch him there,” I muttered; then, aloud: “Drink my health,” I said, thrusting a note into his hand. “I shall need your kind wishes.”
“Thank you, m’sieur—and good night....”
I remember starting the car and driving slowly down the slope to the comer by the Caf6 de Paris. I had no glimpse of the Burman. Here, viewing the activity which surges around the Casino, seeing familiar figures at the more sheltered caf6 tables, noticing a gendarme in an Offenbach uniform, a hotel bus—I pulled up.
My determination remained adamant as ever; but I suddenly recognized the hopelessness of this present quest. I must cast my hook wisely; useless to pursue one furtive shark. My place was beside Cartier, beside dear old Petrie— in the centre of the murderous school....
I set out. I had not dined; nor had I tasted my wine. But I was animated by a vigorous purpose more stimulating than meat and drink.
That purpose, as I view it now, was vengeance. Some part of me, the Highland, had seen the Fiery Cross. I was out for blood. I had consecrated myself to a holy cause: the utter destruction of Dr. Fu Manchu and of all he stood for.
Petrie dead!
It was all but impossible to accept the fact—yet. I dreaded my next meeting with Sir Denis: his hurt would be deeper even than my own. And throughout the time that these bitter reflections occupied my mind, I was driving on, headlong, my steering controlled by a guiding Providence.
Without having noted one landmark on the way, I found myself high up on the Comiche road. Beyond a piece of broken parapet outlining a sharp bend I could see twinkling lights far ahead, and below were, I thought, the lights of Ste Claire de la Roche. I slowed up to light my pipe.
The night was very still. No sound of traffic reached my ears.
I remembered having stuck a spare box of matches in a fold of the canvas hood. I turned to get it...
A malignant yellow race, the eyes close-set and slightly oblique, stared into mine!
The dacoit was perched on the baggage rack!
What that hideous expression meant—in what degree it was compounded of animosity and of fear caused by sudden discovery—I didn’t pause to consider. But that my own cold purpose was to be read in my face the Burman’s next move clearly indicated.
Springing to the ground, he began to run....
He ran back: I had no chance to turn the car. But I was out and after him in less time than it takes me to record the fact. This was a murder game: no quarter given or expected!
The man ran like Mercury, He was already twenty yards away. I put up a tremendous sprint and slightly decreased his lead. He glanced back. I saw the moonlight on his snarling teeth.
Pulling up, I took careful aim with the automatic—and fired. He ran on. I fired again.
Still he ran. I set out in pursuit; but the dacoit had thirty yards’ start. If he had ever doubted, he knew, now, that he ran for his life.
In a hundred yards I had gained nothing. My wind was not good for more than another hundred yards at that speed. Then—and if I had had enough breath I should have cheered—he stumbled, tottered, and fell forward onto hands and knees!
I bore down upon him with grim determination. I was not ten feet off when he turned, swung his arm, and something went humming past my bent head!
A knife!
I checked and fired again at close range.
The Burman threw his hands up, and fell prone in the road.
“Another one for Petrie!” I said breathlessly.
Stooping, I was about to turn him over, when an amazing thing happened.
The man whipped around with a movement which reminded me horribly of a snake. He threw his legs around my thighs and buried fingers like steel hooks in my throat!
Dragging me down—down—remorselessly down—he grinned like a savage animal cornered but unconquerable.....The world began to swim about me; there was a murmur in my ears like that of the sea.
I thought a car approached in the distance....I saw bloody foam dripping from the dacoit’s clenched teeth....
chapter seventeenth
THE ROOM OF GLASS
when I opened my eyes my first impression was that the dacoit had killed me—that I was dead—and that the Beyond was even more strange and inconsequential than the wildest flight of Spiritualism had depicted.
I lay on a couch, my head on a pillow. The cushions of the couch were of a sort of neutral grey colour; so was the pillow. They were composed, I saw, of some kind of soft rubber and were inflated. I experienced considerable difficulty in swallowing, and raising a hand to my throat found it to be swollen and painful.
Perhaps, after all, I was not dead; but if alive, where in the known world could I be?
The couch upon which I lay—and I noted now that I was dressed in white overalls and wore rubber-soled shoes!—was at one end of an enormously large room. The entire floor, or that part of it which I could see, was covered with this same neutral grey substance which may have been rubber. The ceiling looked like opaque glass, and so did the walls.
Quite near to me was a complicated piece of apparatus, not unlike, I thought, a large cinematograph camera, and mounted on a movable platform. It displayed a number of huge lenses, and there were tiny lamps here and there in the amazing mechanism, some of them lighted.
A most intricate switchboard was not the least curious feature of this baffling machine. Farther beyond, suspended from the glass ceiling, hung what I took to be the largest arc lamp I had ever seen in my life. But although it was alight, it suffused only a dim purple glow, contributing little to the general illumination.
Half hidden from my point of view stood a long glass table (or a table composed of the same material as the ceiling and the walls) upon which was grouped the most singular collection of instruments and appliances I had ever seen, or even imagined.
Huge glass vessels containing fluids of diverse colours, masses of twisted tubing, little points of fire, and a thing like an Egyptian harp, the strings of which seemed to be composed of streaks of light which wavered and constantly changed colour, emitting a ceaseless crackling sound....