he had defeated age, I know. And I gather that he professes to have solved the mystery of the Philosopher’s Stone.”
We were clear of Monaco now, and mounting higher and higher.
“In all this, there is one thing which we must bear in mind:
it has taken me many years to leam as little as I know of the Mandarin Fu Manchu. But at last I have discovered his term of official office, and with many blanks I have built up something of his pedigree.
“Tell me,” I said eagerly.
“He administered the Province of Ho Nan, under the Empress. Judging by the evidence which I have accumulated, he appeared to be of the same age in those days as he appears now!
“What ever age is the man?”
“Heaven only knows. Sterling! This I doubt if we shall ever find out. He is affiliated to those who once ruled China. His place in the scheme of things, I take it, may be compared to that once held by the Pretender, in England. But he has a legitimate claim to the title of Prince.”
“Sir Denis, this is amazing!”
“Dr. Fu Manchu is the most amazing figure living in the world to-day. He holds degrees of four universities. He is a Doctor of Philosophy as well as a Doctor of Medicine. I have reason to believe that he speaks every civilised language with facility; and I know that he represents a movement which already had pushed Europe and America very near to the brink—and which, before long, may push both of them right over.”
“You have prevented that, Sir Denis. An army is helpless without its leader.”
I glanced aside at him as we sped along the Comiche road:
he was tugging at the lobe of his ear.
“How do we know that he is the leader?” he snapped. “Think of the living-dead whom we chance to have identified. How many more belong to the Si-Fan whose identities we don’t even suspect? His ‘submersible yacht,” the existence of which, even if I had doubted Dr. Fu Manchu’s word (and this I have never doubted), is established by the disappearance of every member of his household! The French authorities have never had so much as a suspicion that such a vessel was on their coasts!
“That pool may have been known to the monks in the old days; but you will search for it in vain in Baedeker. Do you grasp what I mean, Sterling? We in the West follow our well trodden paths; no one of us sees more than the others see. But, under the street along which we are walking, at the back of a house which we have passed a hundred times, lies something else—something unsuspected.
“These are the things that Dr. Fu Manchu has discovered— or rediscovered. This is the secret of his influence. He is behind us, under us, and over us.”
“At the moment,” I said savagely, “he is in a French prison!”
“Why?” murmured Nayland Smith.
“What do you mean?”
“His submersible yacht, for a sight of which I would give much, is almost certainly armed—probably with torpedoes, improved by Ericksen or some other specialist possessing a first-class brain stolen form the tomb to work for Dr. Fu Manchu. Therefore why did he submit to arrest?”
“I don’t follow.”
“I agree that the circumstances were peculiar, and possibly I am pessimistic. But I am not satisfied. I have been in touch with the Foreign Office. The Naval resources of Europe already will be combing the Mediterranean for the mysterious submarine. But—” he turned, and I met the glance of the steel-gray eyes—”do you think they will find it?”
“Why not?”
He snapped his teeth together and pulled out from his pocket a very large and dilapidated rubber pouch, and at the same time a big-bowled and much charred briar. I recognized the pouch, remembering when and where I had last seen it.
“I thought I had lost that for you, Sir Denis!” I said.
“So did I,” he rapped; “but I found it on my way down. It’s an old friend which I should have hated to lose. Hello! here we are.”
As he began to charge his pipe, the driver of the car had turned into that steeply sloping lane which led up to the iron gates of the Villa Ste Claire.
“I don’t expect to learn anything here. Sterling,” said Sir Denis, “which is worth while. But there’s no other line of investigation open at the moment. Dr. Fu Manchu’s arrest is a very delicate matter. He has already applied to his Consul, and demanded that the Chinese Legation in Paris shall be notified of the state of affairs! To put the thing in a nutshell:
unless there is some evidence here—and I don’t expect to find it—to connect him with the recent outrages in the neighbourhood or to establish his association with the epidemic, which is frankly hopeless, it means extradition.”
“Have you arranged for it?” I asked eagerly.
“Yes. But even if we get him back to England—and I know his dossier at Scotland Yard from A to Z——”
He paused and stuffed the big pouch into his pocket; some coarse-cut mixture which overhung the bowl of his briar lent it the appearance of a miniature rock garden.
“What!”
“The law of England has many loopholes.”
chapter forty-ninth
MAITREFOLI
the absence of reporters from Ste Claire, the gate of which was guarded by police, amazed me.
“There are some things which are too important for publicity,” said Sir Denis. “And in France, as well as in England, we have this advantage over America: we can silence the newspapers. The only witnesses of any use in a court of law which we have captured so far are the four Chinese bodyservants of the doctor’s who were on board the yacht. Some of these you can identify, I believe?”
“Three of them I have seen before.”
Sir Denis opened the door of the car. We had reached the end of that sanded drive which swept around the side of the villa and terminated near the southerly wing of the terrace.
“Have you ever tried to interrogate a Chinaman who didn’t want to commit himself?” he asked.
“Yes, I have employed Chinese servants, and I know what they can be like.”
Nayland Smith turned to me—he was standing on the drive.
“They are loyal, Sterling,” he snapped. “Bind them to a tradition, and no human power can tear them away from it....”
Many of the section doors had been forced, but more than half the party remained imprisoned. Under instructions from Sir Denis, I gathered, a party had been landed in that tiny bay which was the sea-bound terminus of the exit from the water cave. Suitably prepared, they had landed there, and were operating upon the first of the section doors in order to liberate members of the raiding party trapped in that long glass-lined corridor. The local Chief of Police was still among the missing.
“I think,” said Sir Denis, “we can afford to overlook infection from the hybrid flies, and even from other insects which you have described to me. Those used experimentally by Dr. Fu Manchu—for instance, the fly in Petrie’s laboratory— seem to have survived the evening chill. But you may have noticed that there has been a drop in the temperature during the last two days. I think it was these eccentricities of climate which baffled the doctor. His flying army couldn’t compete with them.”
We spent an hour at Ste Claire; but it was an hour wasted.
When, presently, we left for Nice, where Dr. Fu Manchu was temporarily confined, I reflected that if Ste Claire was a minor base of the Si-Fan, as Fleurette had given me to understand, then the organisation must be at least as vast as Sir Denis Nayland Smith believed.
Ste Claire was a scientific fortress; its destruction in one way and another represented a loss to human knowledge which could not be estimated. His section doors had checked pursuit of the doctor so effectively that, failing my adventurous swim across the pool and discovery of that other exit, the fugitive could conveniently have landed from the motor yacht
