The Mask of Fu Manchu

glance so piercing that it extended my powers to the full to sustain it.

There are few really first-class brains in the world to-day, but no man with any experience of humanity, looking into those long brilliant eyes could have doubted that he stood in the presence of a super-mind.

I cannot better describe my feelings than by saying I felt myself to be absorbed; mentally and spiritually sucked empty by that awful gaze.

Even as this ghastly sensation, which I find myself unable properly to convey in words, overwhelmed me, a queer sort of film obscured the emerald eyes of Dr. Fu Manchu, and I experienced immediate relief.

I remembered in that fleeting moment a discussion between Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie touching this phenomenal quality of Fu Manchu’s eyes, which the doctor frankly admitted he had never met with before, and for which he could not account.

Walking slowly, but with a cat-like dignity, Fu Manchu crossed to the long table, seating himself in the chair. His slippered feet made no sound. The room was silent as a tomb.

The scene had that quality which belongs to dreams. No plan presented itself, and I found myself tongue- tied.

Fu Manchu pressed the button of a shaded lamp upon a silver pedestal, and raising a small, pear-shaped vessel from a rack, examined its contents against the light. It contained some colourless fluid.

His hands were singular: long, bony, flexible fingers, in which, caricatured, as it were, I saw the unforgettable ivory fingers of Fah Lo Suee.

He replaced the vessel in the rack and turned to a page of one of those large volumes which lay open beside him. Seemingly considering it, he began to speak absent-mindedly.

His voice was as I remembered it, except that I thought it had acquired greater power: guttural but perfectly clear. He gave to every syllable its true value. Indeed, he spoke the purest English of any man I have ever heard.

“Mr Greville,” he said, “I trust that any slight headache which you may have experienced on awakening has now disappeared.”

I stood watching him where he sat, but attempted no reply.

“Formerly,” he continued, “I employed sometimes a preparation of Indian hemp and at other times various derivatives of opium with greater or less success. An anaesthetic prepared from the common puffball for many years engaged my attention also; but I have now improved upon these.”

He extended one long, green-draped arm, picking up and dropping with a faint rattling sound a number of brownish objects which looked like dried peas and which lay in a little tray upon the table.

“Seeds of a species of Mimosa pudica, found in Brazil and in parts of Asia,” he continued, never once glancing in my direction. “I should like you to inform our mutual friend Dr. Petrie, whom I esteem, that Western science is on the wrong track, and that the perfect anaesthetic is found in Mimosa pudica. You succumbed to it to-night, Mr. Greville, and you have been unconscious for nearly half an hour. But if you were a medical man you would admit that the effects are negligible. The mental hiatus, also, is bridged immediately. Your first conscious thought was liked with your last. Am I right?”

“You are right,” I replied, looking down at my feet and won dering if a sudden spring would enable me to get my hands around that lean throat.

“Your reflexes are normal,” the slow, guttural voice continued. “The visceral muscles are unimpaired; there is no cardiac reaction. You are even now contemplating an assault upon me.” He turned to another page of the large volume. “But consider the facts, Mr. Greville. You are still young enough to be impetuous: permit me to warn you. That slender thread which confines your ankles, and which I understand Sir Lionel Barton mistook for silkworm gut, is actually prepared from the flocculent secretion of Theridion—a well known but interesting spider....

“You seem to be surprised. The secret of that preparation would make the fortune of any man of commerce into whose hands it might fall. I may add that it will not fall into the hands of any man of commerce. But I am wasting time.”

He stood up.

“I have studied you closely, Mr. Greville, in an endeavour to discern those qualities which have attracted my daughter.”

I started violently and clenched my fists.

“I find them to be typically British,” the calm voice continued, “and rather passive than active. You will never be a Nayland Smith, and you lack that odd detachment which might have made our mutual friend. Dr. Petrie, the most prominent physician of the Western world had he not preferred domesticity with an ex-servant of mine.”

Inch by inch I was edging nearer to him as he spoke.

“You cannot have failed to note an improvement in my physical condition since last we met, Mr. Greville. This is due to the success of an inquiry which has engaged me for no less a period than twenty-five years.”

He moved slowly in the direction of the mushrabiyeh window, and, frustrated, I pulled up.

“These orchids,” he continued, extending one bony hand to the glass case which occupied the recess, “I discovered nearly thirty years ago in certain forests of Burma. They occur at extremely rare intervals—traditionally only once in a century, but actually with rather greater frequency. From these orchids I have at last obtained, after twenty-five years of study, an essential oil which completes a particular formula—”

he suddenly turned and faced me—”the formula elixir vitae for which the old philosophers sought in vain.”

Transfixed by the glare of those green eyes, I seemed to become rigid: their power was awful. I judged Fu Manchu to be little short of seventy, but as he stood before me now I appreciated in the light of his explanation, more vividly than I had understood at the moment of his entrance, how strangely he had cheated time.

I was fascinated but appalled—fascinated by the genius of the Chinese doctor; appalled by the fact that he employed that genius, not for good, but for evil.

“You are a very small cog, Mr. Greville,” he continued, “in that wheel which is turning against me. If I could use you, I would do so. But you have nothing to offer me. I bear you no ill-will, however, and I have given my word to my daughter— whom you know, I believe, as Fah Lo Suee—that no harm shall come to you at my hands. She is a woman of light loves, but you have pleased her—and I have given my word.”

He spoke the last sentence as one who says, “I have set my royal seal to this.” And indeed he spoke so with justice. For even Sir Denis, his most implacable enemy, had admitted that the word of Dr. Fu Manchu was inviolable. Volition left me. Facing this superhuman enemy of all that my traditions stood for, I found my mental attitude to be that of a pupil at the feet of a master!

“My daughter’s aid was purchased to-night at the price of this promise,” Dr. Fu Manchu added, his voice displaying no emotion whatever. “I had thought that I could use you to achieve a certain end. But consideration of the character of Sir Lionel Barton has persuaded me that I cannot.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, my voice sounding unfamiliar.

“I mean, Mr. Greville, that you love him. But you love a shell, an accomplishment, a genius if you like; but a phantom, a hollow thing, having no real existence. Sir Lionel Barton would sacrifice you tomorrow—to-night—to his own ambitions. Do you doubt this?”

It was a wicked thought, and I clenched my teeth. But God knows I recognized its truth! I knew well enough, and Rima knew too, that the chief would have sacrificed nearly everything and almost everybody to that mania for research, for achievements greater than his contemporaries’ which were his gods. That we loved him in spite of this was, perhaps, evidence of our folly or of something fine in Sir Lionel’s character, something which outweighed the juggernaut of his egoism.

“For this reason”—Dr. Fu Manchu’s voice rose to a soft, sibilant note—”I have been compelled slightly to modify my original plans.”

Returning to his chair, he seated himself. I was very near to him now, but:

“Sit down!” he said.

And I sat down, on an Arab stool which stood at one end of the table and which he indicated with a bony extended forefinger.