“I suggest that Miss Demuras was tall, and very slender?” Nayland Smith continued. “She had exquisite hands, slenderfingered and indolent—patrician hands with long, narrow, almond nails, highly varnished?”
“You are right. I see you knew her.”
“Her voice was very soothing—almost hypnotic?”
Dr. Norton started violently, and stood up.
“This is either clairvoyance,” he declared, “or you knew her better than I knew her. The implication is that Demuras is not her real name. Don’t tell me that she was a criminal. . . .”
“There still remains a margin of doubt,” said Nayland Smith, rapidly. He suddenly turned and stared at Sterling. “I have just recalled something that you told me—something that you witnessed in Ste. Claire de la Roche. . . . When the Chinese punish, they punish severely. There’s just a chance.”
He twisted about again, facing Dr. Norton. But the latter had construed the meaning of his words. His sanguine colour had ebbed; he was become pale.
“Ah!” cried Nayland Smith. “I see that you understand me!”
Norton nodded, and dropped back into his chair.
“There is no further room for doubt,” he acknowledged. “Whoever my patient was, clearly you knew her. Throughout the time that I attended her, nearly two weeks, she defiantly declined to permit me to make a detailed examination. By which I mean that she objected to exposing her shoulders. In this she was adamant. My curiosity was keenly aroused. She had no other physical reticences. Indeed her mode of dress and her carriage, might almost be described as provocative. But she would never permit me to apply my stethoscope to her back. By means of a trick, as I frankly confess, and which need not be described, I succeeded in obtaining a glimpse of her bare shoulders. She was unaware of this. . . .”
He paused, looking from face to face. He was beginning to regain his naturally fresh colour. He was beginning to realize that his beautiful patient had not been what she seemed.
“There were great weals on her delicate skin—healed, but the scars were still visible. At some time, and not so long ago, she had been lashed—mercilessly lashed.”
He clenched his fists, staring up at Nayland Smith.
The latter nodded, and resumed his restless promenade of the carpet; then:
“Do you understand, Sterling?” he snapped.
Sterling was up—his restlessness was feverish.
“I understand that Fah Lo Suee is dead—that she died alone, in that flat.”
“Dead!”
“Sir Denis!” Dr. Norton stood up. “I have been frank with you: be equally frank with me. Who was this woman?”
“I don’t know her real name,” Nayland Smith replied, “but she is known as Fah Lo Suee. She is the daughter of Dr. Fu Manchu.”
“What!”
“And it was he, her father, who exercising his parental prerogative left the scars to which you refer.”
“My God!” groaned Dr. Norton—”the fiend!—the merciless fiend! A delicate, tenderly nurtured woman!—and an ailing woman at that!”
“Possibly,” snapped Nayland Smith. “Delicately nurtured— yes. I am anxious, doctor, to protect your professional reputation. Your certificate was given in good faith. There is no man on the Register who would not have done the same in the circumstances. Of this I assure you. But——” he paused—”I must have a glimpse of the body of your patient.”
“Why?”
“I think it can be arranged, sir,” growled Gallaho. “I put a few inquiries through this evening after Mr. Sterling ‘phoned me at the Yard, and I found that the deceased lady has been buried in a family vault in the old part of the Catholic Cemetery.”
“That is correct,” Dr. Norton interrupted. “Her only surviving relative, a brother, Manoel Demuras, with whom she had requested the nurse to get into communication, came from Lisbon, as I understand, and the somewhat hurried funeral was due to his time being limited.”
“Can you describe this man?” snapped Nayland Smith.
“His ugliness was almost as noticeable as his sister’s beauty. The yellow streak was very marked.”
“You mean he might almost have passed for a Chinaman?”
“Not a Chinaman. . . .” Dr. Norton stroked his moustache and stared up at the ceiling. “But perhaps a native of Burma—or at least, as I should picture a native of Burma to look.”
“There was Eastern blood of some sort in the Demurases,” growled Gallaho. “They settled in London nearly a century ago, and at one time had a very big business as importers of Madeira wine. The firm has been extinct for twenty years. But there’s a family vault in the old Catholic Cemetery, and that’s where the body lies.”
“I see.”
And thereupon Nayland Smith did a singular thing. . . .
Crossing the room, he jerked a curtain aside, and threw up the window!
All watched him in mute astonishment. Waves of fog crept in, like the tentacles of some shadowy octopus. He was staring down in the direction of the street. He turned, reclosed the window and readjusted the curtain.
“Forgive me, Doctor,” he said, smiling; and that rare smile, breaking through the grim mask, almost resembled the smile of an embarrassed schoolboy. “A liberty, I admit. But I had a sudden idea—and I was right.”
“What?” growled Gallaho, ceasing the chewing operation, and shooting out his jaw.
“We’ve been followed. Somebody is watching the house. . . .”
CHAPTER 8
FOG IN HIGH PLACES
That phenomenal fog was getting its grip upon London again when the party set out. But in the specially equipped car, fair headway was made. At the mysterious, deserted house of Professor Ambrose, Gallaho and Sterling were dropped. The detective had certain important inquiries to make there relative to the accessibility of the adjoining ground-floor flat from the studio of Pietro Ambrose. Nayland Smith went on alone.
He had established contact by telephone from Dr. Norton’s house with the man he was going to see. He knew this man, his lack of imagination, his oblique views of life. He knew that the task before him was no easy one. But he had attempted and achieved tasks that were harder.
The slow progress of the car was all but unendurable. Nayland Smith snapped his fingers irritably, peering out first from one window, then from another. In the brightly lighted West End streets better going was made, and at last the car pulled up before a gloomy, stone-porched house a few paces from Berkeley Square.
In a coldly forbidding library, a man sat behind a vast writing-table. Its appointments were frigidly correct. His white tie, for he was in evening dress, was a miracle of correctness. He did not stand up as Sir Denis was shown in by a butler whose proper occupation was that of an undertaker.
“Ah! Smith.” He nodded and pointed to an armchair.
“Just in time.” He glanced at a large marble clock. “I only have five minutes.”
Nayland Smith’s nod was equally curt.
“Good evening, Sir Harold,” he returned, and sat down in the hard, leather-covered chair.
Sir Denis Nayland Smith’s relations with His Majesty’s Secretary for Home Affairs had never been cordial. Indeed it is doubtful if Sir Harold Sims, in the whole course of his life, had ever known either friendship or love. Nayland Smith, staring at the melancholy face with its habitual expression of shocked surprise, thought that Sir Harold’s scanty hair bore a certain resemblance to red tape chopped up. From a pocket of his tweed suit, Nayland Smith took out several documents, opened them, glanced at them, and then, standing up, placed them on the large, green blotting pad before Sir Harold Sims.