shoulder.
“Follow,” he directed.
Since at the moment I could see no alternative to obedience, I stepped cautiously forward.
There was no shock when I passed the black line, but I continued to move warily across that silent floor, in the direction of the opening in which the Chinaman stood, glancing back at me.
The idea of springing upon him the moment I found myself within reach crossed my mind. But —
I knew something of the Chinese, having met and employed many of them. I had found them industrious, kindly, and simple. My knowledge of the punishments inflicted by autocratic officials in the interior was confined entirely to hearsay. Certain stories came back to me, now, counselling prudence. If Nayland Smith were correct, it would be a good deed to rid the world of this Chinese physician—even at the price of a horrible martyrdom.
But I might fail...and pay the price nevertheless.
These were my thoughts as I drew nearer and nearer to the glass door. I had almost reached it when Fu Manchu spoke again.
“Dismiss any idea of personal attack,” he said in a soft voice, the sibilants more than usually pronounced. “Accept my assurance that it could not possibly succeed. Follow!”
He moved on, and I crossed the threshold into a small room furnished as a library. Many of the volumes burdening the shelves were in strange bindings, and their lettering in characters even less familiar. There was a commodious table upon which a number of books lay open. Also, there was a smell in the room which I thought I identified as that of burning opium; and a little jade pipe lying in a bronze tray served to confirm my suspicion.
The library was lighted by one silk-shaded lantern suspended from the ceiling, and by a queer globular lamp set in an ebony pedestal on a comer of the table.
So much I observed as I crossed this queer apartment, richly carpeted, and came by means of a second doorway into the largest glasshouse I had seen outside Kew Gardens. Its floor was covered with that same rubber- like material used in the “radio research room.”
The roof was impressively lofty, and the vast conservatory softly lighted by means of some system of hidden lamps. Tropical heat prevailed, and a damp, miasmatic smell. There were palms there, and flowering creepers, rare shrubs in perfect condition, and banks of strange orchids embedded amid steaming moss.
chapter nineteenth
THE SECRET JUNGLE
the place was a bulb-hunter’s paradise, a dream jungle, in parts almost impenetrable by reason of the fact that luxurious growths had overrun the sometimes narrow paths.
I discovered as we proceeded that it was divided into sections, and that the temperature, in what was really a series of isolated forcing houses, varied from tropical to subtropical. The doors were very ingenious. There was a space between them large enough to accommodate several persons, and a gauge set beside a thermometer which could be adjusted as one door was closed before the next was opened.
Let me confess that I myself had ceased to exist. I was submerged in the flowers, in the jungle, in the vital, intense personality of my guide. This was phantasy—yet it was not phantasy. It was a mad reality: the dream of a super-scientist, a genius whose brilliance transcended anything normally recognized, expressed in rare foliage, in unique blooms.
Dr. Fu Manchu consented to enlighten me from point to point.
At an early stage he drew my attention to species which I had sought in vain in the forests of Brazil; to orchids which Borneo, during one long expedition, had failed to reveal to me:
Indian varieties and specimens from the Burmese swamps.
“This is mango-apple, a fruit which first appeared here two months ago....Notice near its roots the beautiful flowers which occasion the heavy perfume—
At one point in a very narrow path, overhung by a most peculiar type of hibiscus in full bloom, he paused and pointed.
I saw pitcher plants of many species, and not far away
These insectivorous varieties,” said Dr. Fu Manchu, “have proved useful in certain experiments. I have outlined several inquiries, upon which I shall request you to commence work shortly, relating to this interesting subject. We come now to the botanical research room...”
He opened a door, and with one long-nailed yellow hand beckoned me imperiously to follow.
I obeyed.
He closed the door and adjusted the gauge, continuing to speak as he did so.
“You will work under the direction of Companion Herman Trenck——”
“What!” His words aroused me from a sort of stupor. “Dr. Trenck? Trenck died five years ago in Sumatra!”
Dr. Fu Manchu opened the second door, and I saw a beautifully equipped laboratory, but much smaller than that in which I had first found myself.
A Chinaman wearing white overalls resembling my own, bowed to my guide and stood aside as we entered.
Bending over a microscope was a grey-haired, bearded man. I had met him once; twice heard him lecture. He stood upright and confronted us.
No possibility of doubt remained. It was Herman Trenck...who had been dead for five years!
Dr. Fu Manchu glanced aside at me.
“It will be your privilege, Mr. Sterling,” he said, “to meet under my roof many distinguished dead men.”
He turned to the famous Dutch botanist.
“Companion Trenck,” he continued, “allow me to introduce to you your new assistant. Companion Alan Sterling, of whose work I know you have heard.”
“Indeed, yes,” said the Dutchman cordially, and advanced with outstretched hand. “It is a great pleasure to meet you, Mr. Sterling, and a great privilege to enjoy such assistance. Your recent work in Brazil for the Botanical Society is well known to me.”
I shook hands. I was a man in a dream. This was a dream meeting.
Of the bona fides of Dr. Trenck in life there could never have been any question. His was one of the great names in botany. But now, I thought, I had entered a spirit world, under the guidance of a master magician.
“If you will pardon me,” said Trenck, “there is something here to which I must draw the doctor’s attention.”
I made no reply. I stood stricken silent, now most horribly convinced that my first impression had been the true one— that definitely I was dead. And I watched, as that tall, gaunt figure in the yellow robe bent over the microscope. Herman Trenck studied his every movement with intense anxiety; and presently:
“Not yet,” said the Chinaman, standing upright. “But you are very near.”
“I agree,” said the Dutch botanist earnestly.
“That I am still wrong?”
“It is more probable, doctor, that
And it was at this moment, while I firmly believed that I had stepped into the other world, that a phrase flashed through my mind, spoken in a low, musical voice: “Think of me as Derceto....”
Fleurette!
This thought was powerful enough to drag me away from that phantasmal laboratory—powerful enough to make me forget, for a moment. Dr. Fu Manchu, and the dead Dutch botanist who talked with him so earnestly.
Was Fleurette also a phantom?
Did Fleurette belong to the life of which until recently I had believed myself to form a unit, or was she one of the living-dead? In either case, she belonged to Dr. Fu Manchu; and every idea which I had formed respecting her was scrapped, swept away by this inexorable tidal wave which had carried me into a ghost world....
