The Bride of Fu Manchu

“What!”

She watched me, and in the dim light of that room which Nayland Smith had described as the Palace of the Sleeping Beauty her eyes looked like violets wet with dew.

“What did you think I meant to do?” she asked softly. “I have never cared for anyone before. I suppose I am to blame because I cared for you? But although you have not told me— I know what you think of Dr. Fu Manchu...of all of us. You belong to the poor ignorant world. You are not really one of us. You are a spy.”

I tried to take her in my arms, but she eluded me.

“Fleurette! This is madness!”

“The world is mad—Alan.” That moment of hesitation before my name was a rainbow. “But you belong to it, and you must go back. I should hate to believe that you could think me capable of deserting those who have never denied me any thing as long as I can remember. No, dear, I sink or swim with my friends! I am betraying them, now, by letting you go. But the moment you have reached safety—I shall warn them.”

“Fleurette!”

“If I could love you without wronging them, I would—but I can’t.” She rested her hands on my shoulders. “Please say good-bye to me. You must hurry—you must hurry!”

Then she was in my arms, and as her lips met mine I knew that the greatest decision of my life was being asked of me.

The philosophy of a young girl, crazy though it may be, is intensely difficult to upset—and beyond doubt there was fatalism in Fleurette’s blood. Yet—how could I let her go?

My heart seemed to be beating like a steam hammer. I wanted to pick her up, to carry her from that accursed house. She began to plead.

“If you force me to go,” I said, “I shall get you back—follow you if necessary all around the world.”

“It would be useless. I can never belong to you—I belong to him.”

I wanted to curse the name of Fu Manchu and to curse all his works. Knowing, as I knew, that he was a devil incarnate, a monster, an evil superhuman, the monument which he stood for in the mind of this beautiful child—for she was little more— was a shrine I yearned to shatter.

Yet. for all the frenzy of passion which burned me up, enough of common sense remained to warn me that this was not the time; that such an attempt must be worse than futile.

I held her tightly, cruelly, kissing her eyes, her hair, her neck, her shoulders. I found myself on the verge of something resembling hysteria.

“I can’t leave you here!” I said hoarsely; “I won’t—I daren’t. »

A dim throbbing sound had become perceptible. This at first I had believed to be a product of excitement. But now Fleurette seemed to grow suddenly rigid in my arms....

“Oh. God!” she whispered. “Quick! quick! Someone has found out! Listen!”

A cold chill succeeded fever.

“They are closing the section doors! Quick, for your life...and for my sake!”

It was inevitable. For her sake?—yes! If I should be found there...

She sprang to the control button.

The door remained closed.

She twisted about, her back pressed against the door, her arms outstretched— such terror in her eyes as I had hoped never to see there.

‘ “All the doors have been locked as well,” she whispered. “It is impossible to get out!”

“But, Fleurette!” I began.

“It’s useless! It’s hopeless!”

“But if I am found here?”

“It’s unavoidable now.”

“I could hide.”

“No one can hide from him. He could force me to tell him.”

Her lips began to tremble, and I groaned impotently, knowing well that I could do nothing to comfort her— that I, and I alone, was the cause of this disaster about to fall.

And through those dreadful moments, the vibration of the descending doors might faintly be detected, together with that muted gong note which I had learned to dread.

“There must be something we can do!”

“There is nothing.”

Silence.

The section doors were closed.

And in that stillness I seemed to live again through years of life. I had in my pocket the means of saving the world. Useless, now! Within call, perhaps within sight from the terrace, eagerly awaiting me, were Sir Denis— freedom—sanity!

And here was I, helpless as a mouse in a trap, awaiting...what?

My heart, which had been beating so rapidly, seemed to check, to grow cold; my brain jibbed at the task.

What would be Fleurette’s fate if I were discovered there, in her room, by Dr Fu Manchu?

chapter thirty-sixth

THE UNSULLIED MIRROR

Many minutes elapsed, every one laden with menace. Then— came that eerie note which I knew.

Fleurette stood quite still. Used now to its significance and purpose, I could detect the dots and dashes of the Morse alphabet, given at a speed which only an adept could have followed.

The sound ceased.

Fleurette dropped into an armchair, looking up at me, hopelessly.

“They are searching for you,” she said, in a dull tone. “He doesn’t know yet.”

I stood there dumb of tongue and numb of brain for long moments; then ideas began to come. Someone had called me—possibly Trenck—and I had not replied. Nayland Smith had received those messages.

What had they been, and how had he construed them?

This uncertainty only added to the madness of the situation. I had an idea born of experience.

“Fleurette,” I said, dropping upon my knees beside her, “why could I not have come in here as you came into my room when the alarm sounded?”

She looked at me; her face was like a beautiful mask:

immutable, expressionless.

“It would be useless,” she replied. “No one can lie to Dr. Fu Manchu.”

And I accepted the finality of those words, for I believed it. I sprang upright. I had become aware of a faint distant vibration.

“Can the doors be raised separately?”

“Yes; any one of them can be raised alone.”

I stepped across the room and pressed the control button. There was no response. I bent close to the metal, listening intently. I formed the impression, and it was a definitely horrible impression, that the control doors were being raised, one by one...that someone was approaching this room in which I was trapped with Fleurette.

Beyond doubt, that ominous sound was growing nearer— growing in volume. And finally the vibration grew so great that I could feel it upon the metal against which my head rested.

I stepped back—my fists automatically clenched. The door slid open—and Dr. Fu Manchu stood there watching me!

His majestic calm was terrible. Those long, brilliant eyes glanced aside, and I knew that he was studying Fleurette.

“Woman—the lever which a word can bend,” he said softly.

He made a signal with his long-nailed hand, and two of his Chinese servants sprang in.

I stepped back debating my course.

“Heroics are uncalled for,” he added, “and could profit no one.”