The Bride of Fu Manchu

penetrate between glove and sleeve. My final discovery, that the trousers of the white overalls might be tucked inside the tops of the shoes which a strap was attached for the purpose, convinced me.

Courage returned. I was equipped to face the terrors of the corridor.

I would have given much for a gun, or even a handy club, but in the end I was reduced again to the lamp standard.

Clutching this in my hand, I reopened the door. There was some system of ventilation in the curious mask which I wore—but nevertheless breathing was difficult.

I stood looking along the passage.

The black horror, the giant spider—which, for some reason, although it may have been comparatively harmless, I feared more than anything else—had disappeared. The air was thick with flies; I could hear them vaguely. Some had settled upon the walls. I saw that they were of various kinds.

One of the huge wasps flew straight against my glass mask. I ducked wildly, striking at it—not confident yet in my immunity.

The thing flew by—I heard the fading buzz of its passing....

I came to the end of the corridor and looked down the stairs. My wits were far from clear. At all costs I must remember the route. I found as I stood there that I could remember only that by which Dr. Fu Manchu had first conducted me.

Another way there was, and I had gone by it. The route I remembered would lead me through the bacteriological research room. From thence onward I knew my course.

All the doors were open.

At the entrance to the room where I had seen Sir Frank Narcomb, I pulled up. My knowledge of bacteria was limited; but if the insects were free—so presumably were the germs....

I glanced down at my feet. Large ants, having glittering bodies, were swarming up over the lashings of my overalls!

Stamping madly, I stooped, brushing the things off with my rubber gloves. I saw a centipede wriggling away from my stamping feet. Panic touched me. I ran through the room and out into a short passage beyond.

In that dimly lighted place, surrounded by windows behind which the insects lived, I saw that the doors of the cases were open. Some of the things still hovered about their nests, but many of the cases were empty.

There was no one in the passage beyond—which was even more dimly lighted; but I stepped upon some wriggling thing and heard the crunch of its body beneath my rubber-shod foot.

The sound sickened me.

I pressed on to the botanical research room. A glance showed that it had been partly stripped. I stared through the observation window into that small house where the strange orchids had been under cultivation. They had disappeared.

Looking about at the shelves, I realised that much of the apparatus had been taken away. The doors leading into the first of the big forcing houses were open.

I passed through, and immediately grasped the explanation of something which had been puzzling me: namely, that the escaped insects were scarcely represented here, whereas the corridors beyond were thick with them, flying and crawling.

A sharp change in the atmosphere offered an explanation.

Windows, as well as doors, were open here, admitting a keen night air borne by a wind from the Alps.

Those things were seeking warmth in the interior of the place. And already, so delicate are such plants, I saw that many of the tropical flowers about me were drooping—would soon be dead.

What did this mean?

It was probably part of a plan to destroy such results of those unique experiments as could not be removed.

With every step I advanced the air grew colder and colder— and destruction among the unique products through which I passed was such that I could find time for a moment of regret in the midst of my own engrossing troubles. The palm house, in common with every other place I had visited, was deserted. The doors leading into Dr. Fu Manchu’s study were open...I could see light shining out.

Here was the crux of the situation. Here if anywhere I should meet with a check.

Despite the keenness of the air, I was bathed in perspiration, buckled up in my nearly airtight outfit.

I advance slowly, step by step, until I could look into the study. Then I stood still, staring through the glass mask— which had grown very misty—at a room stripped of its exotic trappings!

The furniture alone remained. This destruction, then, which I had witnessed, was the handiwork of Dr. Fu Manchu himself—or so I must suppose. For here was clear evidence that he had fled, taking his choicest possessions with him.

I paused there for only a few moments; then I ran out into the great radio research room.

Of the masses of unimaginable mechanisms which had cumbered the room, only the heaviest remained. The instruments had gone from the tables. Many shelves were bare. Three intricate pieces of machinery, including that which I had thought resembled a moving-picture camera, were there, but wretched—shattered—mere mounds of metallic fragments upon a grey floor!

There were no insects visible in the big room, which was as cold as a cavern, Indeed, as Nayland Smith had pointed out, a cavern, practically, it was. Doors I had not known to exist were open in the glass walls, but I ran the length of the place and sprang up the stairs beyond.

The door did not close behind me. The whole of that intricate mechanism had been locked in some way.

Gaining the top corridor I glanced swiftly to the right.

A cold grey light—the light of dawn—was touching the terrace.

chapter thirty-ninth

SEARCH IN STE CLAIRE

I ran forward.

“Hands up!” came swiftly.

And even as I obeyed that order, I groaned, filled with such bitterness of spirit as I had rarely known.

On the very threshold—freedom in sight—I was trapped again!

A group of semi-human figures surrounded me in the half light: creatures goggle-eyed, with shapeless heads, to which were attached trunk-like appendages! I raised my hands, staring helplessly about that ghoulish party closing in upon me.

“Search him!” came the same voice, staccato, but curiously muffled.

But now, hearing it, I grasped the truth!

The hideous headdresses of the men surrounding me were gas masks!

“Sir Denis!” I cried, and knew that my own voice was at least as muffled as his.

The leader of the party was Nayland Smith!

Something very like unconsciousness threatened me. I had not fully appreciated how wrought up I was until this moment. Sights and sounds merged into an indistinguishable blur. But presently, out of this haze, I began to apprehend that Nayland Smith was talking to me, his arm about my shoulders.

“Not a soul has left Ste Claire, Sterling; it’s covered from the land and from the sea. When your first message reached me——”

“I sent no message! But what was it?”

“You sent no message?”

“Not a thing! Nevertheless, I think I know who did. What did you take it to mean?”

“According to the system we had arranged, it meant that Petrie was there—but dead. There was a second, much later, which quite defeated me.”

“I don’t know who sent the second. But it’s true Petrie is there—and when I saw him last, alive.”

“Sterling, Sterling! you are sure?”

“I spoke to him. And—by heavens! I had almost forgotten——”

I plunged a rubber-clad hand into the pocket of my overall, and pulled out the creased and folded sheet of