sought to extricate himself, he overbalanced-fell back-and, bearing Weymouth with him-slid into the river!
The mist swallowed them up.
There are moments of which no man can recall his mental impressions, moments so acutely horrible that, mercifully, our memory retains nothing of the emotions they occasioned. This was one of them. A chaos ruled in my mind. I had a vague belief that the Burman, forward, glanced back. Then the course of the launch was changed. How long intervened between the tragic end of that Gargantuan struggle and the time when a black wall leaped suddenly up before us I cannot pretend to state.
With a sickening jerk we ran aground. A loud explosion ensued, and I clearly remember seeing the brown man leap out into the fog-which was the last I saw of him.
Water began to wash aboard.
Fully alive to our imminent peril, I fought with the cords that bound me; but I lacked poor Weymouth's strength of wrist, and I began to accept as a horrible and imminent possibility, a death from drowning, within six feet of the bank.
Beside me, Nayland Smith was straining and twisting. I think his object was to touch Karamaneh, in the hope of arousing her. Where he failed in his project, the inflowing water succeeded. A silent prayer of thankfulness came from my very soul when I saw her stir-when I saw her raise her hands to her head-and saw the big, horror-bright eyes gleam through the mist veil.
Chapter 27
We quitted the wrecked launch but a few seconds before her stern settled down into the river. Where the mud-bank upon which we found ourselves was situated we had no idea. But at least it was terra firma and we were free from Dr. Fu-Manchu.
Smith stood looking out towards the river.
'My God!' he groaned. 'My God!'
He was thinking, as I was, of Weymouth.
And when, an hour later, the police boat located us (on the mud-flats below Greenwich) and we heard that the toll of the poison cellars was eight men, we also heard news of our brave companion.
'Back there in the fog, sir,' reported Inspector Ryman, who was in charge, and his voice was under poor command, 'there was an uncanny howling, and peals of laughter that I'm going to dream about for weeks-'
Karamaneh, who nestled beside me like a frightened child, shivered; and I knew that the needle had done its work, despite Weymouth's giant strength.
Smith swallowed noisily.
'Pray God the river has that yellow Satan,' he said. 'I would sacrifice a year of my life to see his rat's body on the end of a grappling-iron!'
We were a sad party that steamed through the fog homeward that night. It seemed almost like deserting a staunch comrade to leave the spot-so nearly as we could locate it-where Weymouth had put up that last gallant fight. Our helplessness was pathetic, and although, had the night been clear as crystal, I doubt if we could have acted otherwise, it came to me that this stinking murk was a new enemy which drove us back in coward retreat.
But so many were the calls upon our activity, and so numerous the stimulants to our initiative in those times, that soon we had matter to relieve our minds from this stress of sorrow.
There was Karamaneh to be considered-Karamaneh and her brother. A brief counsel was held, whereat it was decided that for the present they should be lodged at a hotel.
'I shall arrange,' Smith whispered to me, for the girl was watching us, 'to have the place patrolled night and day.'
'You cannot suppose-'
'Petrie! I cannot and dare not suppose Fu-Manchu dead until with my own eyes I have seen him so!'
Accordingly we conveyed the beautiful Oriental girl and her brother away from that luxurious abode in its sordid setting. I will not dwell upon the final scene in the poison cellars lest I be accused of accumulating horror for horror's sake. Members of the fire brigade, helmed against contagion, brought out the bodies of the victims wrapped in their living shrouds… .
From Karamaneh we learned much of Fu-Manchu, little of herself.
'What am I? Does my poor history matter-to anyone?' was her answer to questions respecting herself.
And she would droop her lashes over her dark eyes.
The dacoits whom the Chinaman had brought to England originally numbered seven, we learned. As you, having followed me thus far, will be aware, we had thinned the ranks of the Burmans. Probably only one now remained in England. They had lived in a camp in the grounds of the house near Windsor (which, as we had learned at the time of its destruction, the Doctor had bought outright). The Thames had been his highway.
Other members of the group had occupied quarters in various parts of the East End, where sailormen of all nationalities congregate. Shen-Yan's had been the East End headquarters. He had employed the hulk from the time of his arrival, as a laboratory for a certain class of experiments undesirable in proximity to a place of residence.
Nayland Smith asked the girl on one occasion if the Chinaman had had a private sea-going vessel, and she replied in the affirmative. She had never been on board, however, had never even set eyes upon it, and could give us no information respecting its character. It had sailed for China.
'You are sure,' asked Smith keenly, 'that it has actually left?'
'I understood so, and that we were to follow by another route.'
'It would have been difficult for Fu-Manchu to travel by a passenger boat?'
'I cannot say what were his plans.'
In a state of singular uncertainty, then, readily to be understood, we passed the days following the tragedy which had deprived us of our fellow-worker.
Vividly I recall the scene at poor Weymouth's home, on the day that we visited it. I then made the acquaintance of the Inspector's brother. Nayland Smith gave him a detailed account of the last scene.
'Out there in the mist,' he concluded wearily, 'it all seemed very unreal.'
'I wish to God it had been!'
'Amen to that, Mr. Weymouth. But your brother made a gallant finish. If ridding the world of Fu-Manchu were the only good deed to his credit, his life had been well spent.'
James Weymouth smoked awhile in thoughtful silence. Though but four and a half miles S.S.E. of St. Paul's the quaint little cottage, with its rustic garden, shadowed by the tall trees which had so lined the village street before motor 'buses were, was a spot as peaceful and secluded as any in broad England. But another shadow lay upon it to-day-chilling, fearful. An incarnate evil had come out of the dim East and in its dying malevolence had touched this home.
'There are two things I don't understand about it, sir,' continued Weymouth. 'What was the meaning of the horrible laughter which the river police heard in the fog? And where are the bodies?'
Karamaneh, seated beside me, shuddered at the words. Smith, whose restless spirit granted him little repose, paused in his aimless wanderings about the room and looked at her.
In these latter days of his Augean labors to purge England of the unclean thing which had fastened upon her, my friend was more lean and nervous-looking than I had ever known him. His long residence in Burma had rendered him spare and had burned his naturally dark skin to a coppery hue; but now his gray eyes had grown feverishly bright and his face so lean as at times to appear positively emaciated. But I knew that he was as fit as ever.
'This lady may be able to answer your first question,' he said. 'She and her brother were for some time in the household of Dr. Fu-Manchu. In fact, Mr. Weymouth, Karamaneh, as her name implies, was a slave.'
Weymouth glanced at the beautiful, troubled face with scarcely veiled distrust. 'You don't look as though you had come from China, miss,' he said, with a sort of unwilling admiration.
'I do not come from China,' replied Karamaneh. 'My father was a pure Bedawee. But my history does not matter.' (At times there was something imperious in her manner; and to this her musical accent added force.)
