The Trail of Fu Manchu

winds now, for there was urgency in Nayland Smith’s voice.

And as he reached the steps he saw him. . . .

Sir Denis was standing in the open doorway, the lobby behind him in darkness.

“He’s slipped us, I think, Gallaho. We’re too late. But my main concern at the moment is not with him. . . . show a light here. I am looking for the switch.”

Gallaho’s torch flashed in the darkness of that strange Assyrian hall.

“There it is, sir.”

The lights were switched on. It was a queer looking place, of pillars and bas-reliefs, a freak of the former eccentric owner of Rowan House. There was no sound. They might have been alone in the building.

“What the devil has become of Mr. Sterling?”

Gallaho’s face looked very lined and grim. “And I thought I heard a woman scream.”

“I did hear a woman scream,” snapped Smith. “I started around the house in the direction you had taken. Did you notice a door in a sort of archway which opens into the stable yard?”

“Yes, it was locked.”

“Not when I reached it,” Smith replied grimly. “I went in, venturing to use my torch. It communicated with an absolutely unfurnished passage, which I followed, and found myself here, looking out of the open front door—just as Sir Bertram’s car disappeared down the drive. Ssh! What’s that?”

From somewhere within the recesses of the silent house, a faint sound of movement had come. . . .

Slowly and with extreme caution, in order not to rattle the rings, Inspector Gallaho drew aside a curiously patterned curtain which hung in one of the square openings of the Assyrian hall. It was from behind this curtain that the slight sound had come.

A thickly carpeted passage appeared, dimly lighted. There was a door at the further end immediately facing them and one to the right. That at the further end—apparently a sliding door-was ajar . . . and light shone out from the room beyond.

Nayland Smith exchanged a significant glance with the detective, and the two tip-toed along the corridor. Their footsteps made next to no sound upon the thick carpet. Outside the door, both paused, listening.

In the room beyond, someone was walking up and down, restlessly, ceaselessly.

Gallaho displayed an automatic in his open palm. Smith nodded, and drew the door open.

He found himself in a fairly large room which was a combination of a library and a laboratory. It was a type of room with which he had become familiar during the long years that he had battled with Dr. Fu Manchu. There were preserved snakes and reptiles in jars upon a high shelf. Many queer looking volumes in orderly rows appeared behind a big table upon which, in addition to evidences of literary activity, there was a certain amount of chemical paraphernalia. Lacquer was the dominant note.

At the moment of Nayland Smith’s entrance, the man who had been promenading the room turned, startled, and stared at the intuders.

It was Sir Bertram Morgan, Governor of the Bank of England.

“Well I’m damned!”—the growling words came from Gallaho.

“Sir Bertram!” Nayland Smith exclaimed.

Sir Bertram Morgan experienced a not unnatural difficulty in recognizing Smith, whom he had met socially, in his present attire; but at last: “Sir Denis Nayland Smith, I believe?” he replied.

The financier had quite recovered his poise. He was a man of remarkably cool nerve. “The Marquis Chang Hu did not inform me that I should have the pleasure of meeting you here to-night.”

Gallaho exchanged glances with Sir Denis and then stood by the open door, listening—listening for the Scotland Yard car and the raiding party. Sir Denis twitched at the lobe of his ear, staring all about him, and then:

“I fear, Sir Bertram,” he said, “that you have been decoyed here under false pretences.

“Decoyed . . . ?”

Sir Bertram assumed his well-known expression which has appeared in so many Press photographs, his bushy eyebrows slightly raised in the centre.

“I said ‘decoyed’ advisedly. You came with a woman. She is half Chinese. By what name you know her I cannot say. I have known her by several.”

“Indeed! You probably refer to Madame Ingomar?”

Nayland Smith smiled, but without mirth.

“Fah Lo Suee’s invention is failing her,” he murmured;

“that was the name in which she crept into the good graces of Sir Lionel Barton in Egypt three years ago. However, all this is beside the point. You have taken a very grave risk, Sir Bertram.”

The banker, unused to that brusque mode of address which characterised Nayland Smith in moments of tension, stared rather coldly.

“Your meaning is not clear to me,” he replied. “I was invited to this house to discuss what I may term a purely professional matter with the Marquis Chang Hu.”

“Chang Hu? Will you describe Chang Hu?”

Sir Bertram was becoming definitely offended with Nayland Smith, largley because the latter’s force was beating him down.

“A tall, distinguished Chinese aristocrat,” he replied quietly.

“Correct. He is tall, he is distinguished, and he is an aristocrat. Pray proceed.”

“A member of a former Royal House of China.”

“Correct. He is.”

“A man, roughly, sixty years of age.”

“Say a hundred and sixty,” snapped Nayland Smith, “and you may be rather nearer the mark! However, I quite understand, Sir Bertram. May I ask you briefly to outline what occurred?”

“Certainly.” Sir Bertram leaned against a bookcase which contained works exclusively Chinese in character. “I met the marquis by appointment. His daughter, Madame Ingomar, had informed me (frankly, I didn’t believe her) that her father, an advanced student of mineralogy, had perfected a system for the transmutation of gold. I know something of gold . . .”

‘You should,” Nayland Smith murmured.

But his smile was so disarming—it was that delightfully ingenious smile which so rarely relieved the ruggedness of his features—that no man seeing it could have held antagonism.

Sir Bertram was mollified. He smiled in return.

“To-night,” he went on impressively, and pointed to the big table, “an ingot of gold was offered to me by the Marquis Chang Hu, together with the assurance that he was prepared to supply any quantity up to three hundred- weights in the course of the next few weeks!”

“What!”

“Sst!”

Gallaho at the open door had raised his hand in warning.

“Listen!”

The purr of an approaching car became audible.

“It’s Markham with the police,” said Gallaho.

He ran out.

Nayland Smith was staring curiously at Sir Bertram.

“It was pure gold?”

“Pure gold.”

“He claimed to be able to make gold,” murmured Smith. “I wonder ... I wonder. May I ask, Sir Bertram, how the interview terminated?”

“Certainly. Madame Ingomar, my host’s daughter, called out from somewhere in the house. The door was closed, and her cry was somewhat indistinct, but her father, naturally, was disturbed.”

“Naturally”

“He excused himself and went to see what had occurred, begging me to remain here.”

“He took the ingot of gold?”

“Apparently he did.”