fascinatedly, tears on her dark lashes as she sometimes clutched me, nervously, excitedly, it dawned upon me that there is probably a great void in the life of one who has never known father or mother.
Her happiness was clouded by the knowledge that she had gained it at the price of the downfall of Dr. Fu Manchu. I tried to divert the tide of her thoughts, but it was useless.
She, and she alone, was responsible....
It was clear to me that Petrie—sensing that exulted estimate which Fleurette had made of the character of the incalculable Chinaman—had done nothing to disturb her ideals.
How long we were there alone I don’t know; but at last:
“Really, darling,” said Fleurette, “you must go back. I am not going to move. I dare not face——”
I tore myself away; I returned to Petrie’s cabin.
Nayland Smith was there. The two were deep in conversation: they ceased speaking as I entered.
“I have solved a mystery for you,” Sir Denis began, looking up at me. “You recall, when Petrie lay in the grip of the purple plague and Fah Lo Suee was there, the voice which warned you to beware of her?”
“Yes.”
“I was the speaker. Sterling!” said Petrie.
Save for the queer blanching of his hair, he seemed to me now to be restored to something almost resembling his former self. Happiness is the medicine of the gods. He had met a beautiful girl, in whom, as in a mirror, he had seen his wife;
had known that this was the daughter snatched from them in babyhood. Then, within a few hours, he had been rescued from a living death to find Nayland Smith at his bedside.
“I suspected it; but at the time I found it hard to believe.”
“Naturally!” Sir Dennis was the speaker. “But I have just learned a remarkable and at the same time a ghastly thing, Sterling. Victims of the catalepsy induced by Dr. Fu Manchu remain
“What!”
“It is difficult to make you understand,” Petrie broke in, “what I passed through. Evidently my preparation ‘654’ is fairly efficacious. If you had known what to do next, I should have survived all right. I was insensible, but the injection of Dr. Fu Manchu’s virus to induce catalepsy restored me to consciousness!
“How long after it had been administered, I don’t know. Incidentally, that hell-cat made the injection in my thigh, under the sheet, while she sat beside the bed. Oh! you’re not to blame, Sterling.”
“She inherits her father’s genius,” Sir Denis murmured. “As I saw her last,” I said savagely, “she was suffering for it.”
“What? I don’t know about this.” “He flogged her....” Sir Denis and Petrie exchanged glances. “Details can wait,” rapped the former. “Inhuman though the sentiment may be, I cannot find it in my heart to be sorry.”
“Can you imagine, Sterling,” Petrie went on, “that from the time I recovered consciousness and found Fah Lo Suee in the room, I was aware of everything that happened?” “You don’t mean——” Sir Denis nodded shortly.
“Yes...even that,” Petrie assured me. “Somehow, when I saw that she-cat coiling herself about you, I forced speech—I tried to warn you. It was the last evidence of which I was capable to show you that I still lived!
“I heard myself pronounced dead; I saw Carrier’s tears. I was hurried away—a plague case. The undertakers dealt with me, and I was put into a coffin.”
“My God!” I groaned, and wondered at the man’s fortitude. “Do you know what I thought, Sterling, as I lay there in the mortuary?—I prayed that nothing would interfere with the plans of Dr. Fu Manchu! For the purpose of it all was clear to me. And I knew—try to picture my frame of mind!—that if my friends should upset his plans, I should be——” “Buried alive!”
Nayland Smith’s voice sounded like a groan. “Exactly, old man. You have noticed my hair? That was when it happened. When I heard the screws being removed, and saw two evil-looking Burmans bending over me—or rather, I saw them at rare intervals, for it was impossible to move my eyes—I sent up a prayer of thankfulness!
“They lifted me out—my body, of course, was quite rigid, placed me in a hammock and hurried me out to a car in the lane beyond. Of the substitution of which you have told me, I saw nothing. I was taken by road to Ste Claire, carried to the room in which you found me, Sterling, and placed in the care of a Japanese doctor who informed me that his name was Yamamata.
“He gave me an injection which relaxed the rigidity, and then a draught of that preparation which looks like brandy but tastes like death.
“You and I, Smith—” he glanced aside at Sir Denis—”have met with it before!”
“Is Dr. Yamamata on board?” I asked.
“No. I was carried in a sort of litter down to that water cave which Smith tells me you have visited, across it in a collapsible boat which I assume is part of the equipment of the submarine; and from there up to a rock tunnel and down to the beach. A launch belonging to this yacht was waiting, in which I was brought on board. Dr. Fu Manchu in person superintending. Fleurette was with us. We joined the yacht in sight of Monaco. I resigned myself to becoming a subject of the new Chinese Emperor of the World.”
chapter forty-eighth
“IT
MEANS
EXTRADITION”
I had rarely, if ever seen a display of Gallic emotion to equal that of Dr. Cartier when he entered Petrie’s room in the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo.
He beheld before him a man whom he had certified to be dead; whom he had seen buried. Perhaps his behaviour was excusable. Brisson, who was with him, controlled himself better.
“Because I am the cause of this,” said Petrie, “I naturally feel most embarrassed. But you may take it, Cartier, that weakness now is the only trouble. It’s a question of getting me on my feet again.”
“I will arrange for a nurse.”
The door opened, and Fleurette came in.
As her accepted lover, the incense of worship which the Frenchmen silently offered should perhaps have been flattering. Oddly enough, I resented it.
“This is my daughter, gentlemen,” said Petrie—with so much pride and such happiness in his voice that all else was forgotten.
She crossed and seated herself at his side, clasping his outstretched hand.
“This, dear, is Dr. Cartier...Dr. Brisson, my friends and allies.”
Fleurette smiled at the French doctors. That intoxicating dimple appeared for a moment in her chin, and I knew that they were her slaves.
“I shall require no other nurse,” Petrie added.
It was hard to go; but a nod from Fleurette gave me my dismissal. With a few words of explanation I left the room.
Sir Denis was waiting for me in the lobby.
“I hate to drag you away, Sterling,” he said. “But if any sort of progress has been made at Ste Claire, you can probably help.”
We joined a car which was waiting. I could not fail to recall in the early stages of the journey, that night when, learning at Quinto’s that Petrie was dead, I had launched what was meant to be a vendetta.
I had set out to seek the life of any servant of Dr. Fu Manchu who might cross my path!
And even now, when the fact had become plain to me that the unscrupulous methods of the great Chinaman, his indifference to human life, were not dictated by any prospect of personal gain but belonged to an ideal utterly beyond my Western comprehension, I did not regret the death of that Burmese strangler with whom I had fought to a finish on the Comiche road.
“The big villa at Ste Claire,” said Nayland Smith, “has obviously been a European base of the group for many years past. It’s impossible to close one’s eyes to the fact, Sterling, that this Si-Fan movement, whatever it may embody, has gained momentum since the days when I first realised the existence of Dr. Fu Manchu. You have told me that he claims to be responsible for that financial chaos which at that moment involves the whole world. That
