paper.
“The formula for ‘654.’“
“Thank God! Good old Petrie! Quick! give it to me.”
Nayland Smith had discarded his helmet temporarily, and I my glass mask. He dashed away down the steps, leaving me standing there, looking about me.
Six or eight men were by the open door, their heads hidden in gas equipment, and I realised now that they must be French police. I felt very much below par, but the keen night air was restoring me, and after an absence of no more than two or three minutes Sir Denis came running back.
“I don’t think, Sterling,” he said in his rapid way, “that the doctor’s campaign was ripe to open. It depended, I believe, upon climatic conditions. But in any event ‘654’ will be in possession of the medical authorities of the world to-night.
“Petrie’s wish is carried out!”
“I should have raided an hour ago. Sterling, if I had had the foresight to equip the party suitably. We were here before I realised the nature of the death trap into which I might be leading them. I once saw a party of detectives in a Limehouse cellar belonging to Dr. Fu Manchu die the most dreadful deaths....
“The Chief of Police was at the main gate, and I consulted with him. He quite naturally wanted to waive my objections;
but I persisted. The delay was caused by the quest for gas masks, of which there is not a large supply in the neighbourhood. When they were obtained, the men on duty here reported that the door had been opened from inside but that none had come out. I had rejoined them only a few minutes when you appeared.”
“Yet the place is deserted!”
“What?”
“Part of it is infested with plague flies and other horrors, but there is no trace of a human being anywhere.”
“Come on!” he snapped, and readjusting his helmet. “Are you fit, Sterling?”
“Yes.”
I buttoned myself up in my grim equipment. Followed by the police party, I found myself again in the house of Dr. Fu Manchu.
Unhesitatingly I began to run towards the green lamp at the end of the corridor which marked the position of Fleurette’s room—when all the lights went out!
“What’s this?” came a muffled exclamation.
The ray of a torch cut the darkness; then many others. Every member of the party was seemingly provided. Someone thrust a light into my hand and I went racing along to the door of Fleurette’s room.
One glance showed me that it was empty....
“I forgive you, Sterling,” came hoarsely, “but you are wasting time.”
The party tore down the stairs, Nayland Smith and I leading.
“Petrie’s room!” came huskily, “that first....”
We dashed across the dismantled radio research laboratory, eerie in torchlight, through the empty study where Dr. Fu Manchu, wrapped in a strange opium dream, had sat in his throne chair, and on through those great forcing houses where trees, shrubs, and plants to which Dame Nature had never given her benediction wilted in the keen air sweeping through open doors.
Hoarse exclamations told of the astonishment experienced by the police party following us as we dashed through those exotic mysteries. Then, mounting the stair and coming to the corridor with its white, numbered doors, I became aware of a crunching sound beneath my feet.
I paused, and shone the light downward.
The floor was littered with dead and comatose insects, swift victims of this change of temperature! The giant spider had succumbed somewhere, I did not doubt; yet even now I dreaded the horror, dreaded those reasoning eyes.
“We turn right here!” I shouted, my voice muffled by the mask.
I ran along the passage and in at the open door of that room in which I had seen Petrie.
The room was empty!
“They have taken him!” groaned Nayland Smith. “We’re too late. What’s that?”
A sound of excited voices reached me dimly. Then came a cry from the rear. The men under the local Chief of Police had joined us; they had come in by the main entrance.
Yet neither group had discovered a soul on the premises!
“Spread out!” cried Nayland Smith—”parties of two! There’s some Chinese rathole. A big household doesn’t disappear into thin air. Come on, Sterling! our route is downward, not up.”
We pressed our way through the throng of men behind us, Nayland Smith and the Chief of Police repeating the orders.
Sir Denis beside me, I raced back along the way we had come; and although every door appeared to be open, there was seemingly none in that range of rooms other then those I knew. We searched the big forcing houses, meeting only other muffled figures engaged upon a similar task.
But apparently the doors leading into Dr. Fu Manchu’s study and those which communicated with the botanical research room were the only means of entrance or exit!
Out into the big dismantled laboratory we ran. There were two open doors in the wall opposite our point of entrance.
“This one first!” came in a muffled voice.
Sir Denis and I ran across to an opening in the glass wall.
“The Chinaman who arrived in the speedboat went this way,” he shouted.
Shining our torches ahead, we entered—and found a descending stair. Our light failed to penetrate to the bottom of it.
“Stop, Sir Denis!” I cried.
Wrenching off the suffocating glass mask, I dropped it on the floor, for I saw that in the darkness he had already discarded his gas helmet.
“We must assemble a party—we may be walking into a trap.”
He pulled up and stared at me; his face was haggard.
“You are right,” he rapped. “Get three or four men, and notify Fumeaux—he’s in charge of the police—which way we have gone.”
I ran back across the great empty hall from which that curious violet light had gone, and shouted loudly. I soon assembled a party, one of whom I despatched in search of the Chief of Police, and, accompanied by the others, I rejoined Nayland Smith.
We left one man on duty at the door.
Nayland Smith leading, and I close behind him, we began to descend the stairs into the subterranean mystery of Ste Claire.
chapter fortieth
THE SECRET DOCK
“this is where the Chinaman went,” he said. “It speaks loudly for the iron rule of the doctor. Sterling, that although this man had presumably brought important news, not only did he avoid awakening Fu Manchu, but he even left the doors of the palm house open. However, where did he go? That’s what we have to find out.”
A long flight of rubber-covered stairs descended ahead of us. The walls and ceiling were covered with that same glassy material which prevailed in the radio research room. I counted sixty steps and then we came to a landing.
“Look out for traps,” rapped Nayland Smith, “and distrust every foot of the way.”
We tested for doors on the landing, but could find none. A further steep flight of steps branched away down to the right.
“Come on!”
The lower flight possessed the same characteristics as the higher, and terminated on another square landing.
