Fleurette! What would be the fate of Fleurette? For Dr. Fu Manchu was not human in the accepted sense of the word. He was a remorseless intelligence. Where he could not use, he destroyed. Perhaps he would spare Fleurette because of her remarkable beauty. But spare her—for what?
Petrie! He was helpless indeed, desperately ill. And as for myself, I suffered those hundred deaths which the coward is said to die, during the unaccountable period that I paced up and down that small room.
My mad passion for Fleurette had brought this down upon all of us! In those feverish moments while I had been pleading with her, I should have been clear of this ghastly house. My freedom meant the safety of the world. I had sacrificed this to my own selfish desires. Only by wrecking the elaborate organisation of the Si-Fan—the scope of which hitherto I had never suspected—could I hope to win Fleurette.
Fool—mad fool!—to have supposed that a newly awakened passion could upset traditions so carefully emplanted and nurtured.
What was happening?
I tried to work out what Nayland Smith would be likely to do—to estimate the chances of a raid taking place before it was too late. I could not forget the imperturbable figure in the yellow robe.
That Dr. Fu Manchu was prepared for such an emergency as this it was impossible to doubt. His manner had not been that of a criminal trapped.
I pressed my ear against the door and listened....
But I could detect no sound.
I crossed to the further wall, in which I knew there was another door, but one I had never been able to open. I listened there also, for I remembered that there was a corridor beyond.
Silence. I was shut into a narrow section of the house between barriers of steel.
I estimated that fully an hour elapsed. I knew from experience that these apartments were practically soundproof. My brain was a phantom circus, and I was rapidly approaching a state of nervous exhaustion.. My frame of mind had been all but unendurable when I had thought that I was dead, when I had thought that I was in a state of delirium. But now, knowing that the horrors accumulated about me, the monstrosities, parodies of nature, the living dead men, the incalculable machines were real and not figments of fevered imagination—now, when I should have been most sane, I was more likely to lose my mental poise than at any time during the past.
A dream which I had scarcely dared to entertain had come true—only to be shattered in the very hour of its realisation. That I should ever leave this place alive, I did not believe for a moment. But surely no man had ever held so much in his hands, ever needed life as I needed it at this moment, when I knew I faced death.
I dropped down into a little armchair—one in which I remembered miserably Fleurette had sat—and buried my face in my hands.
If only I could conjure up one spark of hope—find something to think about which did not lead to insanity!
Then I sprang to my feet. It had reached me unmistakably...that dim vibration which told of the section doors being raised!
What did it mean?
That my fate had been decided upon and that they were coming for me? I crossed and pressed the control button. There was no response.
Again, as in Fleurette’s room earlier that night, I felt like a mouse in a trap. It could profit no one, myself least of all, but a determination came to me at this moment which did much to steady me.
I would die fighting.
I tested the weight of the little armchair in which I had been seated. It was about heavy enough for my purpose. I would hurl it at whoever entered.
I pulled open the drawers of a large cabinet which occupied a great portion of one wall. It contained laboratory appliances, presumably belonging to a former occupant, and including a glass mask and rubber gloves. But I found no weapon there.
A pedestal lamp stood upon the table. I wrenched the flex from it, removed the lamp and the shade, and realised that it made a very good club. Armed with this I would rush out and see what account I could give of myself in the corridors.
This useless plan made, I stood there waiting. At least, there would be action to come.
The muted rumbling of the doors continued. Once again, setting the lamp stand upon the carpet beside me, I tested the control—but without result.
That rumbling and the queer throbbing gong note which accompanied it could be heard distinctly when I pressed my head against the framework. But now, abruptly, it ceased.
The section doors were raised....
Yet again I tried the control, but uselessly. I stood there waiting, dividing my attention between the wall with its hidden entrance and the door which I knew.
But silence prevailed; nothing happened.
For fully five minutes I waited, not knowing what to expect, but full of my plan for a fighting finish. At last I determined that I could bear this waiting no longer. Again I tested the control....
The door slid noiselessly open!
What I could see of the corridor outside seemed to be more dimly lighted than usual. There was another white door nearly opposite. A faint, putrid smell reached my nostrils.
Cautiously I crept forward, and peeped out, looking along the passage.
A strange humming sound seemed to be drawing nearer to the light shining out from the room behind me. And then...
I sprang back, stifling a scream that was truly hysterical. The passage was held by an army of flies, of ants, of other nameless things which flew and crawled and scurried....And, not three feet away, watching me with its hideously intelligent eyes, crouched that monstrous black spider I had seen in the glass case....
chapter thirty-eighth
THE GLASS MASK (Concluded)
frenziedly I closed the door, shutting out those flying and crawling horrors.
Then I began a grim fight—a fight to conquer shaken nerves. That long period of waiting had taken its toll; but the terrors of the corridor, crowned by the apparition of that giant spider “capable of primitive reasoning,” had taxed me beyond the limit.
What had happened?
Was this a plan, premeditated?—or had some action on the part ofNayland Smith resulted in a disturbance of this ghastly household?
I dismissed the idea that Dr. Fu Manchu had released this phantom army merely to compass my own death. I had intruded—unwittingly, as he had admitted—upon the delicate machinery of his purpose. But brief though my acquaintance had been with the Chinese doctor, I was not prepared to believe him capable of stooping from that purpose, even momentarily, in response to the promptings of jealousy or of any lower human impulse.
Therefore, if what I had seen conformed to some plan, this plan was not directed against myself, although I might be included in it. If it were the result of accident, of panic on the part of a household disturbed by unexpected events, it could only mean that the doctor had departed—fled before the menace of Nayland Smith!
And by virtue of the fact that I was exercising my brain in hard reasoning, I regained control of that courage which, frankly, had been slipping. And a memory came....
In my frantic search for some weapon with which to put up a fight for life, I had hauled out the drawers of a big cabinet which occupied nearly the whole of one wall of the sitting room in which I now stood.
Among the objects, useless at the time, which I had discovered had been a glass mask of the kind chemists wear.
I formed a desperate resolution. I ran to the drawer in which the mask lay, and slipped it over my head. I saw now that my white overalls, which were made of some unfamiliar material, were adapted to the wearing of this mask: the collar could be turned up and buttoned to the equipment. I fixed it in place, bending before the mirror in the bathroom and contemplating my hideous image.
The rubber gloves!
These, also, I discovered could be attached to my sleeves in a certain manner so that nothing could
