break-neck job in the dark, but I think we should be wise to put a greater distance between ourselves and the house. Do you know the way?”
“No.”
“I do, from here. I discovered it to-night. There are five more flights of stone steps and then a narrow path —a mere goat track on the edge of a precipice. It ultimately leads one down to the beach. There may be another way, but I don’t know it.”
“But,” said I, as we began to grope our way downward, “when we get to the beach?”
“I have a boat lying off, waiting for me. We have a lot to tell each other, but let’s make some headway before we talk.”
And so in silence we pursued our way, presently coming to the track of which Nayland Smith had spoken, truly perilous navigation in the darkness; a false step would have precipitated one into an apparently bottomless gorge.
Willy-nilly, I began listening again for that eerie recall note which I was always expecting to hear, wondering what would happen if it came and I did not obey—and what steps would be taken in the awful house of Dr. Fu Manchu.
Some parts of the path were touched my moonlight, and here we proceeded with greater confidence. But when it lay, as it often did, in impenetrable shadow overhung by great outjutting masses of rock, it was necessary to test every foot of the way before trusting one’s weight to it.
At a very easy gradient the path sloped downward until, at the end of twenty minutes’ stumbling and scrambling, it ended in a narrow cutting between two huge boulders. Far ahead, framed in their giant blackness, I saw the moon glittering on the sea, and white-fringed waves gently lapping the shore.
Clear of the cutting—which Nayland Smith appeared to distrust—he dropped down upon a pebbly slope.
“Phew!” he exclaimed. “One of the strangest experiences of a not uneventful life!”
I dropped down beside him; nervous excitement and physical exertion had temporarily exhausted me.
There’s definitely no time to waste,” he went on, speaking very rapidly. “It might be wiser to return to the boat. But a few minutes’ rest is acceptable, and I doubt if they could overtake us now. Bring me up to date. Sterling, from the time you left Quinto’s restaurant. I have interviewed the people there, and your movements as reported, prior to the moment when you drove away in Petrie’s car, struck me as curious. You crossed and spoke to a man who was standing on the opposite side of the street. Why?”
“I had seen one of the dacoits watching me, and I wanted to find out which way he had gone.”
“Ah! and did you find out?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Go ahead, Sterling, and be as concise as you can.”
Whereupon I told him, endeavouring to omit nothing, all that had taken place. Frankly, I did not expect to be believed, but Nayland Smith, who in the darkness was busily loading his pipe, never once interrupted me until I came to the incident where, escaping from the worm-man, I had turned to find Fleurette in the room.
“Who is this girl?” he rapped; “and were did you meet her?”
“Perhaps I should have mentioned the incident before, Sir Denis,” I replied, “but naturally I did not believe it to have any connection with this ghastly business. I met her on the beach, out there.”
And I told him as shortly as possible of my first meeting with Fleurette.
“Describe her very carefully,” he directed tersely.
I did so in loving detail.
“You say she had violet eyes?”
“They appear sometimes very dark violet; sometimes I have thought they were blue.”
“Good. Go on with the story.”
I went on; telling him ofFah Lo Suee’s intervention and of how she had tricked the Japanese surgeon; of my second interview with Dr. Fu Manchu, and even of the dream which I had had. Then, of Fah Lo Suee’s midnight visit, outlining what she had told me. Finally, I described my escape, and the opium sleep of Dr. Fu Manchu. Sir Denis had lighted his pipe and now was smoking furiously.
“Amazing, Sterling,” he commented. “You seem actually to have seen what took place in Berlin. You have correctly described my movements up to the time that I reached the house of Professor Krus. This can have been no ordinary dream. It is possible that his girl possesses a gift of clairvoyance which Dr. Fu Manchu uses. And it rather appears that, given suitable circumstances, her visions, or whatever we should term them, are communicated to your own brain. Have you ever dreamed of her before?”
“Yes,” I replied, my heart giving a sudden leap. “I fell asleep at the villa Jasmin shortly after our first meeting, and dreamed that I saw her and Dr. Fu Manchu—whom I had never met at the time—riding in a purple cloud which was swooping down upon a city...I thought, New York.”
“Ah!” rapped Nayland Smith. “My theory was right. There was once another woman. Sterling, who, under hypnotic direction from Dr. Fu Manchu, possessed somewhat similar gifts. The doctor is probably the most accomplished hypnotist in the world. Many of his discoveries are undoubtedly due to his employment of these powers. And it would seen that there is some mental affinity between this girl’s brain and your own.”
My heart beat faster as he spoke the words.
“But as to what happened in Berlin: I arrived to find the Professor’s laboratory in flames!”
“What!”
“The origin of the fire could not be traced. Incendiarism was suspected by the police. Briefly, the place was burned to a shell, in spite of the efforts of the fire brigade....It is feared that the Professor was trapped in the flames.”
“Dead?”
“At the time of my hurried departure, the heat remained too great for any examination of the ruins. But from the moment that Dr. Krus was seen to enter his laboratory, no one attached to his household ever saw him again.”
“Good heavens!”
I groaned, “the very gods seem to have been fighting against poor Petrie.”
“The gods?” Nayland Smith echoed grimly.
“The gods of China—Fu Manchu’s China....”
“Whatever do you mean, Sir Denis?”
“The burglary at Sir Manston Rorke’s,” he rapped, “Sir Manston’s sudden death—the fire at Professor Krus’s laboratory, and his disappearance: these things are no more coincidences than Fah Lo Suee’s visit to the hospital where Petrie lay. Then—something else, which I am going to tell you.”
He rested his hand upon my knee and went on rapidly:
“I dashed back to the aerodrome: there was nothing more I could do in Berlin. There came a series of unaccountable delays—none of which I could trace to its source. But they were deliberate, Sterling, they were deliberate. Someone was interested in hindering my return. However, ultimately I got away. It was late in the afternoon before I reached the hospital. I had had the news—about Petrie—when I landed, of course.
He stopped for a moment, and I could tell he was clenching his pipe very tightly between his teeth; then:
“As is the custom,” he went on, “in cases of pestilence in a hot climate, they had...buried him.”
I reached out and squeezed his shoulder.
“It hit
“I know it did. There is a long bill against Dr. Fu Manchu, but you don’t know all yet. You see, the history of this brilliant Chinese horror is known to me in considerable detail. Although I didn’t doubt your word when you assured me that Fah Lo Suee had not touched Petrie in the hospital, you may recall that I questioned you very closely as to where she was sitting during the greater part of her visit?”
“I do.”
“Well!” He paused, taking his pipe from between his teeth and staring at me in the darkness. “She had brought something—probably hidden in a pocket inside her cloak—”
“You mean—”
“I mean that she
