Brisson gave me a detailed account of the symptoms which had preceded the end—I was not satisfied,”
“Not satisfied of what?”
“You shall hear.”
He paused for a moment and grasped my arm.
“Listen!”
We sat there, both listening intently.
“What did you think you heard?” I whispered.
“I am not certain that I heard anything; but it may have been a vague movement on the path. Are you armed?”
“No.”
“I am. If I give the word—run for it. Ill bring up the rear. The boat is hidden just under the headland. They will pull in, and we can wade out to them.”
chapter thirty-first
FU MANCHU’S ARMY
“your disappearance on the road from Monte Carlo,” Nayland Smith went on, “puzzled me extraordinarily. The guiding hand behind this business had ceased to be a matter of speculation: I knew that we were dealing with Dr. Fu Manchu. But where you belonged in the scheme was not clear to me. I had urgent personal work to do, necessitating the bringing of pressure to bear on the French authorities. Therefore, I delegated to a local chief of police the task of tracing your movements step by step, on the night of your disappearance.
“This was undertaken with that admirable thoroughness which characterises police work here, and involves a house-to-house inquiry along many miles of the Comiche road. In the meantime, working unremittingly, I had secured the powers which I sought....Petrie’s grave—a very hurried one— was reopened....”
“What!”
“Yes; it was a pretty ghastly task. In order to perform it in secrecy we had to close the place and post police upon the roads approaching it. However, it was accomplished at last, and the common coffin in which the interment had taken place was hauled up and laid upon the earth.”
“My God!” I groaned.
“I have undertaken some unpleasant duties, Sterling, but the sound of the screws being extracted and the thought that presently——”
He broke off and sat silent for a while.
“It was done at last,” he went on, “and I think I came nearer to fainting than I have ever been in my life. Not from horror, not from sorrow; but because my theory—my eleventh-hour hope—had proven to have a substratum of fact.”
“What do you mean. Sir Denis?”
“I mean that Petrie was not in the coffin!”
“Not in the coffin!...It was empty?”
“Not at all.” He laughed grimly. “It contained a body right enough. The body of a Burman. The mark of Kali was on his brow—and he had died from a shot wound in the stomach.”
“Good heavens! The dacoit who——”
“Exactly, Sterling! Your late friend of the Villa Jasmin, beyond doubt. You will observe that Dr. Fu Manchu finds uses for his servants—dead, as well as living!”
“But this is astounding! What does it mean?”
Quite a long time elapsed before Sir Denis replied:
“I don’t dare to hope that it means what I wish it to mean,” he said; “but—Petrie was not buried.”
I was literally breathless with astonishment, but at last:
“Whenever can so amazing a substitution have taken place?” I asked.
“The very question to which I next applied myself,” Nayland Smith replied. “Half an hour’s inquiry established the facts. The little mortuary, which, I believe, you have visited, is not guarded. And his body, hastily encased, as I have indicated, lay there throughout the night. The mortuary is a lonely building, as you may remember. For Dr. Fu Manchu’s agents such a substitution was a simple matter.”
“What do you think?” I broke in.
“I don’t dare tell you what I think—or hope. But Dr. Fu Manchu is the greatest physician the world has ever known. Come on! Let’s establish contact with the police boat.”
He stood up and began to walk rapidly down to the beach. We had about reached the spot where first I had set eyes upon Fleurette, when a boat with two rowers and two men in the stem shot out from shadow into moonlight and was pulled in towards us.
Sir Denis suddenly raised his arm, signalling that they should go about.
I watched the boat swing round and saw it melt again into the shadows from which it had come. I met the glance of eyes steely in the moonlight.
“An idea has occurred to me,” said Sir Denis.
I thought that he watched me strangely.
“If it concerns myself,” I replied, “count on me for anything.”
“Good man!”
He clapped his hand on my shoulder.
“Before I mention it, I must bring you up to date. Move back into the shadow.”
We walked up the beach, and then:
“I checked up on the police reports,” he went on. “That dealing with Ste Claire was the only one which I regarded as unsatisfactory. Ste Claire, as you probably know, was formerly an extensive monastery; in fact, many of the vineyards in this neighbourhood formerly yielded their produce to the Father Abbot. When the community dispersed, it came into the possession of some noble family whose name I have forgotten. The point of interest and the point which attracted me was this:
The place is built on a steep hillside, opening into a deep cleft which we have just negotiated, rather less than a mile in length. The chief building, now known as a villa, but reconstruction of the former monastery, is surrounded by one or two other buildings—and there is a little straggling street. It has been the property for the last fifteen years of a certain wealthy Argentine gentleman, regarding whose history I have set inquiries on foot.
“More recently, the lease was taken over by one Mahdi Bey, of whom I have been able to learn very little— except that he practised as a physician in Alexandria at one time, and is evidently a man of great wealth. He it was who closed Ste Claire to the public. However, the police in the course of their inquiries paid a domiciliary visit some time during yesterday afternoon. They were received by a majordomo who apologised for the absence of his master, who is apparently in Paris.
“They were shown over the villa and the adjoining houses, occupied now, I gather, by dependents of the Bey. No information was obtained upon the subject of your disappearance.
“But, in glancing through the police report, bearing in mind that I was definitely looking for a place occupied by Dr. Fu Manchu, a process of elimination showed me that of all the establishments visited, Ste Claire alone remained suspect.
The Argentine owner had built a number of remarkable forcing houses. The police, under my directions and unaware of the reasons for them, were ostensibly searching for an escaped criminal, which enabled them tactfully to explore the various villas en route. I noted in their report that they had merely glanced into these houses, nor did I come upon any account of the enormous wine cellars, enlargements of natural caves, which, I was informed, lay below the former monastery.
The character and extent of Dr. Fu Manchu’s new campaign dawned upon me suddenly, Sterling. I wonder if it has dawned upon you?”
“I’m afraid it hasn’t,” I confessed. “I have alternated between the belief that I was dead and the belief that I was delirious almost throughout the time that I have been in that house. But knowing now that what I saw was not phantasy, I am still in doubt, I must confess, as to the nature of this ‘war’ which threatens.”
“It’s nature is painfully clear,” Nayland Smith rapped. “Somewhere in this place there are thousands—perhaps millions—of those damnable flies! The deaths of which we know were merely experimental. The cases were watched secretly, with great interest, by Dr. Fu Manchu or his immediate agents. It was the duty of one of his
