At what I judged to be the end of the labyrinth, I was carried up several well-worn steps into a long, rectangular room. I noticed a stout door set in the thickness of the wall, and then I was dumped unceremoniously upon the paving stones. The place contained nothing but lumber: broken fishing tackle, nets, empty casks, old furniture and similar odds and ends. Among these was the dismantled frame of a heavy iron bedstead. Hauling out what had been the headpiece—it had cross bars strong enough for a prison window—the two yellow men laid it on the floor and stretched me upon it.
From first to last they worked in silence.
Deftly they lashed me to the rusty bars until even slight movement became almost impossible and the pain was all I could endure. At first their purpose remained mysterious, then with a new pang of terror I recognized it . . .
Dr Fu Manchu was determined that a second body should not be found in the neighborhood of the Monks’ Arms. Secured to the heavy iron framework I was to be taken out and thrown into the river!
When at last the two had completed their task and one, standing up, raised the lantern from the floor, the horror of the fate which I felt was upon me reached such a climax that again I stifled a desire to scream for help. A sound, faint but just discernible, which came through a grating up in one corner of the wall, told me that the stream beside which the inn was built passed directly outside the door.
Perhaps I had little cause for it, but when the yellow men turned, and he carrying the lantern leading, went back by the way they had come, I experienced such a revulsion from despair to almost exultant optimism that I cannot hope to describe it.
I was still alive! My absence could not fail to result in a search party being sent out. My chances might be poor but my position was no longer desperate!
Why had I been left there?
Dr Fu Manchu’s words allowed no room for doubt regarding his intention. Why then this delay? And—an even greater mystery—what had brought him to the Monks’ Arms and why did he linger? Overriding my own peril, topping everything, was the maddening knowledge that if I could only communicate what I knew to Nayland Smith, it might alter the immediate history of the world.
Audacity is an outstanding characteristic of all great criminals, and that Dr Fu Manchu should calmly recline in that room upstairs while the district all about him was being combed for the murderer of Sergeant Hythe, illustrated the fact that he possessed it in full measure. The clue was perhaps to be found in his words that something had seriously disarranged his plans. I wondered feverishly if happy chance would lead Nayland Smith to the inn. Even so, and the thought made me groan, he would probably go away again never suspecting what the place contained!
Now came an answer to one of my questions—an answer which sent a new chill through my veins.
Dimly I heard the sound of oars. I knew that a boat was being pulled along the creek in the direction of the oak door close to which my head rested.
Of course I was to be transported to some spot where the water was deep, and thrown in there!
I listened eagerly, fearfully, to the creak of the nearing oars; and when I knew that the invisible boat had reached those steps which I divined to be beyond the door, I gave myself up for lost. But my calculations were at fault.
The boat passed on.
I could tell from the sound that an oar had been reversed and was being used as a punt pole. The swish of the rushes against the side of the craft was clearly discernible. I doubted if the little stream was navigable far above that point, but as those ominous sounds died away I knew at least that I had had a second reprieve.
Breathing was difficult because of the bandage over my mouth, and my heart was beating madly. Through the grating a sound reached me—that bumping and scraping which tells of someone entering or leaving a boat. Then I knew that poling had recommenced, but never once did I hear a human voice.
The boat was coming back. I heard the faint rattle of an oar set in a rowlock, the drip of water from the blade; but until the rower had crept past outside the oak door I doubt if I breathed again.
What did it all mean?
Someone, I reasoned, had been brought from the inn and was being rowed downstream to the larger river of which it was a tributary.
Dr Fu Manchu!
Yes, it must be. The monstrous Chinaman, having lain within the grasp of the law, almost under the very nose of Nayland Smith, was escaping!
I tugged impotently at my lashings, but the pain I suffered soon checked my struggles. In fact this, with the damp silence of the cellar and the difficulty which I experienced in breathing, now threatened to overcome me. Clenching my teeth, I fought against the weakness and lay still.
How long I lay it is impossible to say. Those moments of mental and physical agony seemed to stretch out each into an eternity, and then . . .
I heard the boat returning.
This time there could be no doubt. Dr Fu Manchu had been smuggled away—doubtless to some larger craft which awaited him—and they were returning to deal with me.
Yes, I was right. I heard the boat grating against the stone steps, a stumbling movement and a key being inserted in the lock above and behind me. The door, which opened outward, was flung back. A draught of keen air swept into the cellar.
Shadowy, looking like great apes, the yellow men entered. One at my head and one at my feet, they lifted the iron framework to which I was lashed. I have an idea that I muttered a sort of prayer, but of this I cannot be certain, for there came an interruption so unexpected, so overwhelming, that I must have given way to my mental and physical agony. I remember little more.
A series of loud splashes, as though a number of swimmers had plunged into the water—the bumping and rolling of a boat—a rush of footsteps—a glare of light . . .
Finally, a voice—the voice of Nayland Smith:
“In you go, Gallaho! Don’t hesitate to shoot!”
The Monks’Arms (Concluded)
“All right, Kerrigan? Feeling better?”
I stared around me. I was lying on a sofa in a stuffy little sitting room which a smell of stale beer and tobacco smoke told me to be somewhere at the back of the bar of the Monks’ Arms. I sat up and finished what remained of a glass of brandy which Smith was holding to my lips.
“Gad!” I muttered, “every muscle in my body will be stiff for twenty-four hours. It was mostly the pain that did it. Smith.”
“Don’t apologize,” he returned drily, and looking at his blanched face as he stood beside me, I could read a deep anger in his eyes. “We were only just in time.”
“Doctor FuManchu?”
He snapped his fingers irritably.
“A motor launch had crept up in the mist and his yellow demons got him aboard, only a matter of minutes before our arrival. Take it easy, Kerrigan; you can tell us your story later. I found this in your pocket, so I gather that you had succeeded where we failed.” He held up the little notebook which I had found in the eel fisher’s hut. “It tells the story of poor Hythe’s last hours. It was traces of oil on the water that gave him the clue. He selected a hiding place which evidently you found, and watched from some point nearby. He saw the motor craft arrive. It was met by a boat which belongs to the inn. Someone was rowed ashore. He seems to have waded or swum out to the deserted motor launch, and apparently he made a curious discovery—”
“He did.” I stood up gingerly, to test my leg muscles. “He found a mandarin’s cap.”
“Good for you, Kerrigan. So he reports in his notes. He took this back to his hiding place as some evidence in case his quarry should escape him. His last entry says that the boat could only have been making for the Monks’ Arms. The rest we have to surmise, but I think it is fairly easy.”