Since that all but incredible interview I have tried to analyse my behaviour; I have tried to blame myself, arguing that there must have been some course other than the passive one which I adopted. Many have thought the same, but to them all I have replied: “You have never met Dr. Fu Manchu.”
He rested his long hands before him upon the glass covering of the table. And, no longer looking in my direction:
“Sir Lionel Barton has served me for the first time in his life,” he said, his voice still touching that high, sibilant note. “By discovering and then destroying the tomb of El Mokanna he awakened a fanaticism long dormant which, properly guided, should sweep farther than that once controlled by the Mahdi. And the Mahdi, Mr. Greville, came nearer to achieving his ends than British historians care to admit. Your Lord Kitchener—whom I knew and esteemed—had no easy task.”
He suddenly turned to me, and I lost personality again, swamped in the lake of two green eyes.
“The Mokanna may be greater than the Mahdi,” he added. “But his pretensions must survive severe tests. He must satisfy the learned Moslems of the Great Mosque at Damascus, and later pass the ordeal of Mecca. This he can do who possesses the authentic relics....”
Vaguely, I groped for the purpose behind all this....
“I would not trust Sir Lionel Barton to respond even to that demand about to be made upon him, if Dr. Petrie and Sir Denis Nayland Smith were not there. Since they are—I am satisfied.”
He struck a little gong suspended on a frame beside his chair. One of the three doors—that almost immediately behind him, opened; and two of those dwarfish and muscular Negroes entered, instantly carrying my mind back to the horrors of Ispahan.
They wore native Egyptian costume, but that they were West Africans was a fact quite unmistakable.
“New allies of mine, Mr. Greville,” said the awful Chinaman, “although old in sympathy. They have useful qualities which attract me.”
He made a slight signal with his left hand, and in an instant I found myself pinioned. He spoke gutturally in an unfamiliar tongue—no doubt that of the Negroes. And I was led forward until I stood almost at his elbow.
“This document is precious,” he explained, “and I feared that you might attempt some violent action. Can you read from where you stand?”
Yes, I could read—and reading, I was astounded....
I saw a note in my own handwriting, addressed to Rima;
phrased as I would have phrased it, and directing her to slip away and to join me in a car which would be waiting outside Shepheard’s! Particularly, the note impressed upon her that she must not confide in anyone, but must come
I swallowed audibly; and then:
“It’s a marvellous forgery,” I said.
“Forgery!” Dr. Fu Manchu echoed the word. “My dear Mr. Greville, you wrote it with your own hand during that period of thirty minutes’ oblivion to which I have drawn your attention. My new anaesthetic”—he drooped some of the dried seeds through his long fingers—”has properties approaching perfection.”
My arms held in a muscular grip:
“She will never be fool enough to come,” I exclaimed.
“Not to join you?”
“She will run back when she finds I am not there.”
“But you will be there.”
“What?”
“When one small obstacle has been removed—that which the obstinacy of Sir Lionel Barton has set before me—your behaviour, Mr. Greville, will excite Dr. Petrie’s professional interest. I wish it were in my power to give him some small demonstration of the potentialities, which I have not yet fully explored, of another excellent formula.”
A sudden dread clutched me, and I found cold perspiration breaking out all over my body.
“What are you going to do with me?” I asked—”and what are you going to do with Rima?”
“For yourself, you have my word...” the green eyes which had been averted turned to me again; “and I have never warred with women. I am going to recover the relics of the Masked Prophet and return them to those to whom they properly belong. You are going to assist me.”
I clenched my teeth very tightly.
Dr. Fu Manchu stood up and moved with his lithe, dignified gait, to one of the glass cases. He opened it. Speaking over his shoulder:
“If you care to swallow a cachet,” he said, “this would suffice. The liquid preparation”—he held up a small flask containing a colourless fluid—”is not so rapid. Failing your compliance, however, an injection is indicated.”
He stood with his back to me. The grip of the two dwarfish Negroes held me as in iron bands. And I found myself studying the design of the white peacock which was carried from the breast of the doctor’s robe, over the shoulders and round to the back. I watched his lean yellow neck, and the scanty, neutral-coloured hair beneath his skullcap; the square, angular shoulders, the gaunt, cat-like poise of the tall figure. He seemed to be awaiting a reply.
“I have no choice,” I said in a dry voice.
Dr. Fu Manchu replaced the flask which he held in one bony hand and selected a small wooden box. He turned, moving back towards the table.
“The subcutaneous is best,” he murmured, “being most rapid in its effect. But the average patient prefers the tablets.
n
He opened a leather case which lay upon the table and extracted a hypodermic syringe. Unemotionally he dipped the point into a small vessel and wiped it with a piece of lint. Then, charging it from a tiny tube which he took from the box, he stepped towards me.
CHAPTER TWENTIETH
THE MASTER MIND
I remember saying, as that master physician and devil incarnate thrust back the sleeve of my tweed jacket and unfastened my
“Since I have your word, Dr. Fu Manchu, you are loosing a dangerous witness on the world!”
The needle point pierced my flesh.
“On the contrary,” the guttural voice replied without emotion, “one of your own English travellers, Dr. McGovem, has testified to the fact that words and actions under the influence of this drug—which he mentions in its primitive form as
He extracted the needle point.
“This preparation”—he laid the syringe on the glass-topped table and indicated the working bench—”might interest Sir Denis.”
I experienced a sudden unfamiliar glow throughout my entire body. A burning thirst was miraculously assuaged. Whereas, a moment before, my skin had been damp with perspiration, now it seemed to be supernormally dry. I was exhilarated. I saw everything with an added clarity of vision....
Some black, indefinable doubt which had been astride me like an Old Man of the Sea dropped away. I
