“You certainly did open it; just as certainly as you once aided in the abduction of Rima from Shepheard’s in Cairo!
“She substituted the duplicates, which of course she had brought with her, for the real relics, and presumably handed the latter to an accomplice in waiting. The phase which followed, Greville—” he smiled that inimitable smile—”is one which I prefer to forget.”
“Let’s all agree to forget it,” said Petrie.
“Dr. Fu Manchu is the greatest master of drugs this old world of ours has ever known. His daughter is an apt pupil. I believe she has a sincere affection for you, Greville—God knows why! But, since you did not dream, we have the word of Fu Manchu that no harm will come to you. Frankly, I think Barton has got off lightly—”
“So do I!” Petrie interrupted again.
“After all, even in this stage of laxity, there are things which are not done. The word of a prison governor to a convict is as sacred as any man’s word to any other man; and according to my view, which may be peculiar, Barton doubled on Dr. Fu Manchu. I believe that super-devil to be too great a character to waste a moment upon revenge. But in the circumstances, Greville, if you don’t mind, I should like to get through to Sir Lionel—and there’s someone there whom Petrie is dying to speak to....”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIRST
WEDDING MORNING
Upon the events of the next few days I prefer not to dwell. At my first interview with Sir Lionel following the loss of the relics of the Masked Prophet, I believed for one hectic moment that he would attempt to strangle me with his own hands.
Perhaps it was the presence of Nayland Smith, alone, which prevented him from making an assault. I can see him now, pacing up and down the Museum Room, clenching and relaxing his trig fists, and looking murder from underneath tufted eyebrows.
“No possible blame attaches to Greville,” said Sir Denis.
The chief growled inarticulately.
“And I would remind you that in somewhat similar circumstances, and not long ago, you personally assisted the same lady to open the Tomb of the Black Ape, in the Valley of the Kings, and to walk away with its contents. Rather a good parallel, I think?”
Sir Lionel stood still, staring hard at the speaker, then:
“Damn it!” he admitted—’you’re right!”
He transferred his stare to Petrie, and finally to me.
“Forget my somewhat harsh criticisms, Greville,” he said. “Unlike Smith, I often say more than I mean. But this cancellation of my address to the Royal Society is going to set poisoned tongues wagging.”
This was true enough. Not only had he been deprived of that hour of triumph in anticipation of which he had lived for many months past, but unpleasant whispers were going around the more scholarly clubs. Scotland Yard, working secretly, had put its vast machinery in motion in an endeavour to trace Fah Lo Suee.
They failed, as indeed we all knew they must fail. Servants of Dr. Fu Manchu perused secret avenues of travel upon which the Customs and the police apparently had no check. There was a theory held at Scotland Yard, and shared, I believe, by our old friend Weymouth, that the Chinese doctor worked in concert with what is known as the “underworld”.
This theory Nayland Smith declined to entertain.
“His organisation is infinitely superior to anything established among the criminal classes,” he declared. “He would not stoop to use such instruments.”
However, the chief’s resiliency of character was not the least amazing of his attributes; and within forty-eight hours he was deep in a book dealing with the Masked Prophet, of which he designed to publish a limited edition, illustrated by selected photographs ofRima’s.
“I don’t know why I allow you to issue your rotten accounts of my expeditions, Greville!” he shouted one day, when I entered the library and found him at word.
He was surrounded by masses of records and untidy heaps of manuscript notes, portfolios, and what-not. Two shorthand typists were in attendance.
“Their scientific value is nil, and they depict me personally as a cross between a large ape and a human half-wit....”
In the meantime he had relaxed no jot of his publicity campaign upon my wedding, to which an added piquancy was given by what happened at the Athenaeum Club.
Following a heated argument there with Sir Wallace Syms, the chief challenged him to a duel within hearing of fully twelve members!
This resulted in a crop of spicy paragraphs, practically all of which included a reference to the forthcoming ceremony at St. Margaret’s. My horror of this ceremony grew with almost every passing hour.
I had been pestered by interviewers and gossip writers for particulars of my family history, my interests in sport, and other purely personal matters, until I was reduced to a state of nerves as bad as anything I had known in the most evil times of the past.
A popular debutante two years before, Rima had spent one hectic season in London under the wing of Lady Ettrington, Sir Lionel’s younger sister and a chip of the old block whom I wholeheartedly detested.
Rima’s decision to abandon society and to join her eccentric uncle in the capacity of photographer had bought down upon her head the wrath of Lady Ettrington. Her later decision to marry me, instead of some society idler, had resulted in my name being written in large letters in her ladyship’s Black Book.
The apartment once known as the breakfast room at Bruton Street, but which the chief had had converted into a sort of overflow library, was rapidly filling up with wedding presents. Rima’s waking hours were distributed between hat shops, hairdressing establishments, and modistes.
Sometimes she would meet me for lunch, at other times she was too busy. Women, however, never seem to tire under this particular kind of stress. One such day would have exhausted me. Of presents to the bridegroom there were notably few. Such friends as I had were distributed all over the world.
Among all this fuss and bother and the twittering of Rima’s bridesmaids (only two of whom I had ever met before), I felt a good deal of an outsider. To me the whole thing was unspeakably idiotic—a waste of time and as utterly undignified an exhibition as only a spectacular wedding can offer.
The chief, however, was enjoying himself to the top of his bent, sparing no expense to make the entertainment a popular one. The number of people who had accepted invitations appalled me.
I knew many of them by name, but few of them personally;
and in cold print it appeared that the bridegroom would be the least distinguished person present at the church.
In many respects those days were the worst I have ever lived through....
But I moved under a cloud. Since the loss of the relics I had felt in some indefinable way that of actual danger from Dr. Fu Manchu there was none. His last project had failed; but I was convinced that failure and success alike left him unmoved. Over and over again I discussed the matter with Nayland Smith and Petrie, and with Superintendent Weymouth, who had been staying somewhere in the Midlands but who was now back in London prior to returning to Cairo.
“In the old days,” he said on one occasion, “Fu Manchu was operating under cover, and he stuck at nothing to get rid of those who picked up any clue to his plans. From what you tell me now it appears that in this last job he had nothing to hide.”
This, then, was not the shadow which haunted me: it was the memory of Fah Lo Suee....
To what extent aided by those strange drugs of which her father alone possessed the secret I was unable to decide, but definitely she had power to throw some sort of spell upon me, under which I became her helpless slave. Rima knew something, but not all, of the truth.