A new thought: Perhaps this was insanity!
In the course of my struggle with the dacoit I might have received a blow upon the skull, and all this be but a dream within a dream: delirium, feverish fancy...
Through all these chaotic speculations a guttural voice issued a command:
“Follow.”
And dumbly, blindly I followed.
chapter twentieth
DREAM CREATURES
I pound myself in a long, gloomily lighted corridor.
My frame of mind by this time was one which I cannot hope to convey in words. In a setting fantastic, chimerical, I had found myself face to face with that eerie monster whose existence I had seriously doubted—Dr. Fu Manchu. I had been made helpless by means of some electrical device outside my experience. I had seen botanical monstrosities which challenged sanity...and I had shaken the hand of a dead man!
Now, as I followed my tall, yellow-clad guide:
The radio research room,” he said, “in which you recently found yourself, is in charge of Companion Henrik Ericksen.”
This was too much; it broke through the cloud of apathy which had been descending upon me.
“Ericksen!” I exclaimed—”inventor of the Ericksen Ray? He died during the World War—or soon after!”
“The most brilliant European brain in the sphere of what is loosely termed radio. Van Rembold, the mining engineer, also is with us. He ‘died,’ as you term it, a few months before Ericksen. His work in the radium mines of Ho Nan has proved to be valuable.”
Yet another door was opened, and I entered into half light to find myself surrounded by glass cases, their windows set flush with the walls and illuminated from within.
“My mosquitoes and other winged insects,” said Dr Fu Manchu. “I am the first student to have succeeded in producing true hybrids. The subject is one which possibly does not interest you, Mr. Sterling, but one or two of my specimens possess characteristics which must appeal even to the lay mind.”
Yes; this was delirium. I recognized now that connecting link, which, if sought for, can usually be found between the most fantastic dream and some fact previously observed, seemingly forgotten, but stored in that queer cupboard which we call the subconscious.
The ghastly fly which had invaded Petrie’s laboratory—this was the link!
I proceeded, now, as a man in a dream, convinced that ere long I should wake up.
“My principal collection,” the guttural voice went on, “is elsewhere. But here, for instance, are some specimens which have spectacular interest.”
He halted before the window of a small case and, resting one long, yellow hand upon the glass, tapped with talon-like nails.
Two gigantic wasps, their wasted bodies fully three inches long, their wingspan extraordinary, buzzed angrily against the glass pane. I saw that there was a big nest of some clay-like material built in one comer of the case.
“An interesting hybrid,” said my guide, “possessing saw-fly characteristics, as an expert would observe, but with the pugnacity of the wasp unimpaired, and its stinging qualities greatly increased. Merely an ornamental experiment and comparatively useless.”
He moved on. I thought that such visions as these must mean that I was in high fever, for I ceased to believe in their reality.
“I have greatly improved the sand-fly,” Dr. Fu Manchu continued; “a certain Sudanese variety had proved to be most amenable to treatment.”
He paused before another case, the floor thickly sanded, and I saw flea-like, winged creatures nearly a large as common houseflies....
“The spiders may interest you....”
He had moved on a few steps. I closed my eyes, overcome by sudden nausea.
The dream, as is the way with such dreams, was becoming horrible, appalling. A black spider, having a body a large as a big grapefruit, and spiny legs which must have had a span of twenty-four inches, sat amidst a putrid- looking litter in which I observed several small bones, watching us with eyes which gleamed in the subdued light like diamonds.
It moved slightly forward as we approached. Unmistakably, it was watching us; it had intelligence!
No horror I had ever imagined could have approximated to this frightful, gorged insect, this travesty of natural laws.
“The creature,” said Dr. Fu Manchu, “has a definitely developed brain. It is capable of elementary reasoning. In regard to this I am at present engaged upon a number of experiments. I find that certain types of ant respond also to suitable suggestion. But the subject is in its infancy, and I fear I bore you. We will just glance at the bacteria, and you might care to meet Companion Frank Narcomb, who is in charge of that department.”
I made no comment—I was not even shocked.
Sir Frank Narcomb—for some time physician to the English royal family, and one of the greatest bacteriologists in Europe, had been a friend of my father’s!
I had been at Edinburgh at the time of his death, and had actually attended his funeral in London!
A door set between two cases slid open as my guide approached it. In one of these cases I saw an ant-hill inhabited by glittering black ants, and in the other, a number of red centipedes moving over the leaves of a species of cactus, which evidently grew in the case....
In a small but perfectly equipped laboratory a man wearing a long white coat was holding up a test tube to a lamp and inspecting its contents critically. He was quite bald, and his skull had a curious, shrivelled appearance.
But when, hearing us enter, he replaced the tube in a rack and turned, I recognized that this was indeed my father’s old friend, aged incredibly and with lines of suffering upon his gaunt face, but beyond any question Sir Frank Narcomb himself!
“Ah, doctor!” he exclaimed.
I saw an expression of something very like veneration spring into the tired eyes of this man who, in life, had acknowledged none his master in that sphere which he had made his own.
“The explanation eludes me,” he said. “Russia persistently remains immune!”
“Russia!”
I had never heard the word spoken as Dr. Fu Manchu spoke it. Those hissing sibilants were venomous.
“Russia! It is preposterous that those half-staved slaves of Stalin’s should survive when stronger men succumb.
With the third repetition of the name a sort of momentary frenzy possessed the speaker. During one fleeting instant I looked upon this companion of my dream as a stark maniac. The madman discarded the gown of the scientist and revealed himself in his dreadful, naked reality.
Then, swiftly as it had come, the mood passed. He laid a long yellow hand upon the shoulder of Sir Frank Narcomb.
“Yours is the most difficult task of all, companion,” he said. “This I appreciate, and I am arranging that you shall have more suitable assistance.” He glanced in my direction, and I saw that queer film flicker across his brilliant eyes. “This is Mr. Alan Sterling, with whom, I am informed, you are already acquainted.”
Sir Frank stared hard. As I remembered him he had been endowed with a mass of bushy white hair; now he was a much changed man, but the shrewd, wrinkled face remained the same. Came a light of recognition.
“Alan!” he said, and stretched out his hand. “It’s good to meet you here. How is Andrew Sterling?”
Mechanically I shook the extended hand.
“My father was quite well, Sir Frank,” I replied in a toneless voice, “when I last heard from him.”
“Excellent! I wish he could join us.”
In the circumstances, I could think of nothing further to say, but:
“Follow!” came the guttural order.
And once more I followed.
