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.
She knew that I had followed Fah Lo Suee from Shepheard’s that night in Cairo, but of what had happened later she knew nothing; nor of what had happened in Bruton Street.
But something there was which she knew and had known from the first: that Fah Lo Suee possessed a snake-like fascination to which I, perhaps any man, was liable to succumb. And she knew that this incalculable woman experienced a kind of feline passion for me.
Often, when we had been separated, I surprised a question in her eyes. Perhaps she knew that I dreaded meeting Fu Manchu’s daughter as greatly as she dreaded it herself.
And all the time, while I looked on, feeling like a complete stranger, arrangements for the wedding proceeded. Sir Lionel dictated chapter after chapter of his book, and at the same time several papers to scientific publications which he occasionally favoured with contributions; interviewed representatives of the Press, quarrelled with the caterers responsible for the reception; wrote insulting letters to
I pointed out to him, one day, that since Rima and I would have to live upon my comparatively slender income, our married life would be something of an anti-climax to our wedding.
“You’ve got a good job!” he shouted. “Damn it! I pay you a thousand a year!—and you must make something out of your ridiculous books!”
The discussion was not carried any further. I realised that it was one I should never have begun.
I had his sister Lady Ettrington to cope with, also. She issued an ultimatum to the effect that she would not be present in the church unless it was arranged that I took up my residence elsewhere than under the same roof as her niece Rima. This led to a tremendous row between brother and sister. It took place in the room where the presents were assembled: a draw, in which both parties exhibited the celebrated Barton temperament in its most lurid form.
“You can go to the devil!” was Sir Lionel’s final politeness. “As to being in the church, personally I don’t remember having invited you....”
It had all blown over, however, which was the way with storms in this peculiar family; and being awakened by Belts one morning, that privileged old idiot opened the curtains and announced:
“The happy day has arrived, sir....”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SECOND
DR.
FU
MANCHU BOWS
