The Bride of Fu Manchu

“Is Dr. Cartier following some different treatment in—my husband’s case?”

The nearly imperceptible pause had not escaped me. I supposed that a wave of emotion had threatened to overcome her when she found that name upon her lips and realised that the man himself tottered on the brink of the Valley.

“Yes, Mrs Petrie; a treatment of your husband’s known as ‘654.’“

“Prepared, I suppose, by Dr. Cartier?”

“No—prepared by Petrie himself just before he was seized with illness.”

“But Dr. Cartier, of course, knows the formula?”

That caressing voice possessed some odd quality of finality;

it was like listening to Fate speaking. Not to reply to any question so put to one would have been a task akin to closing one’s ears to the song of the Sirens. And the darkly fringed eyes, which, now, owing to some accident of reflected light, I thought were golden, emphasized the soft command.

Indeed, I was on the point of answering truthfully that no one but Petrie knew the formula when an instinct of compassion gave me strength to defy that powerful urge. Why should I admit so cruel a truth?

“I cannot say,” I replied, and knew that I spoke the words unnaturally.

“But of course it will be somewhere in my husband’s possession? No doubt in his laboratory?”

Her^mxiety—although there was no trace of tremor in her velvety tones—was nevertheless unmistakable.

“No doubt, Mrs Petrie,” I said reassuringly—and spoke now with greater conviction, since I really believed that the formula must be somewhere among Petrie’s papers.

She murmured something in a low voice—and, standing up, moved to the head of the bed.

Whereupon, my difficulties began. For, as Mrs. Petrie bent over the pillow, I remembered the charge which had been put upon me, remembered Nayland Smith’s words: “You are not to allow a soul to touch him——”

I got up swiftly, stepped around the foot of the bed, and joined Mrs. Petrie where she stood.

“Whatever you do,” I said, “don’t touch him!”

Slowly she stood upright; infinitely slowly and gracefully. She turned and looked into my eyes.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because—” I hesitated: what could I say?—”because of the possibility of infection.”

“Please don’t worry about that, Mr. Sterling. There is no possibility of infection at this stage. Sister Therese told me so.”

“But she may be wrong,” I urged. “Really, I can’t allow you to take the risk.”

Perhaps my principles ride me to death; I have been told that they do. But I had pledged my word that no one should touch Petrie, and I meant to stick to it. Logically, I could think of no reason why this woman who loved him should not stroke his hair, as I thought she had been about to do. It was almost inhuman to forbid it. Yet, by virtue of Sir Denis’s trust in me, forbid it I must.

“It may be difficult,” I remembered saying to him. How difficult it was to be, I had not foreseen!

“Surely,” she said, and her soft voice held no note of anger, “the risk is mine?”

Mrs. Petrie bent again over the pillow. She was on the point of resting those slender, indolent hands on Petrie’s shoulders.

She intended, I surmised, to kiss his parched lips....

chapter eighth

“BEWARE...”

As those languorous ivory hands almost rested on Petrie’s shoulders, and the full red lips were but inches removed from the parched blue lips of the unconscious man, I threw my arms around Mrs. Petrie and dragged her away!

She was light and resilient as a professional dancer. I had been forced to exert considerable strength because of her nearness to the doctor. She was swept back, lying against my left arm and looking up at me in a startled yet imperious way, which prepared me to expect an uncomfortable sequel.

During one long moment she remained motionless, our glances meeting. Her cloak had slipped, exposing a bare arm and shoulder. I was partly supporting her and trying fren-ziedly to find words to excuse my apparent violence, when, still looking up at me, she turned slightly.

“Why did you do that?” she asked. “Was it...to save me from contagion?”

The cue was a welcome one; I seized it gladly.

“Of course!” I replied, but knew that my assurance rang false. “I warned you that I should not allow you to touch him.”

She continued to watch me, resting in the crook of my arm;

and I had never experienced such vile impulses as those which goaded me during those few seconds. The most singular promptings were dancing in my brain. I thought she was offering me her lips, or, rather, challenging me to reject the offer. With a movement so slight that it might have been accidental, she seemed to invite me to caress her.

Yes, most utterly damnable thing, I, in whose blood there runs a marked streak of Puritanism, I, with poor Petrie lying there in the grip of a dread disease, suddenly wanted to crush this woman—his wife—in my arms!

It was only a matter of hours since I had met Fleurette on the beach of Ste Claire de la Roche and had become so infatuated with her beauty and charm that I had been thinking about her almost continuously ever since. Yet here I stood fighting against a sudden lawless desire for the wife of my best friend—a desire so wild that it threatened to swamp everything—friendship, tradition, honour!

Perhaps I might have conquered—unaided. I am not prepared to say. But aid came to me, and came in the form of what I thought at the time to be a miracle. As I looked down into those enigmatical, mocking eyes, in a silence broken only by the hushing of the pines outside the window—a voice—a groaning, hollow voice, a voice that might have issued from a tomb—spoke.

“Beware...of her,” it said.

Mrs. Petrie sprang back. A fleeting glimpse I had of stark horror in the long, narrow eyes. My heart, which had been beating madly, seemed to stop for a moment.

I twisted my head aside, staring down at Petrie.

Was it imagination—or did I detect a faint quivering of those swollen eyelids? Could it be he who had spoken? That slight movement, if it had ever been, had ceased. He lay still as the dead.

“Who was it?” Mrs Petrie whispered, her patrician calm ruffled at last. “Whose voice was that?”

I stared at her. The spell was broken. The glamour of those bewitched moments had faded—dismissed by that sepulchral voice. Mrs. Petrie’s eyelashes now almost veiled her long, brilliant eyes. One hand was clenched, the other hidden beneath her cloak. My ideas performed a complete about-turn. Some sudden, inexplicable madness had possessed me, from the consequences of which I had been saved by an act of God!

“I don’t know,” I said hoarsely. “I don’t know...”

chapter ninth

FAH LO

SUEE

the end of that interview is hazy in my memory. Concerning one detail, however, I have no doubt: Mrs. Petrie did not again approach the sick man’s bed. Despite her wonderful self-discipline, she could not entirely hide her apprehension. I detected her casting swift glances at Petrie and—once—upwards towards the solitary window.

That awful warning, so mysteriously spoken— could have related only to her....

I rang for Sister Therese and arranged that the night concierge should conduct the visitor to her car. I suspected that the neighbourhood was none too safe.

Mrs. Petrie gave me the address of a hotel in Cannes, asking that she be kept in touch. She would return, she