The Drums of Fu Manchu

retribution.”

His words chilled me coldly.

Ardatha!

She had defied me, jeered at me, fought with me, but in the end she had saved me. It was a strange romance but I knew that on my side it was real. Ardatha was my woman, and if I lost her I should have lost all that made life worth-while. I think, except for that unreadable expression which seemed to tell me that her words did not mean all they conveyed, I had had but little hope, in spite of my masculine vanity, until I had realized that she had risked everything to rescue me from the cellars of the Monks’ Arms.

I was watching the image of those strange eyes as this thought flashed through my mind.

Good Good! Did he suspect Ardatha?

“In the absence of Sir Denis”—the words seemed to reach me indistinctly—”I must request you, Mr. Kerrigan, to take my message. It is very simple. It is this: Sir Denis has fought with me for many years. I have come to respect him as one respects an honorable enemy, but forces difficult to control now demand that I should act swiftly. Listen, and I will explain what I mean to do.”

That forceful voice died away unaccountably. My brain suggested that the instrument, operated by an unknown principle, had failed. But then conscious thought petered out altogether, I suppose. The eyes regarding me from the screen, although the image was colorless, seemed, aided by memory, to become green . . . Then they merged together and became one contemplative eye. That eye grew enormous—it dominated the picture—it became a green lake—and a remorseless urge impelled me to plunge into its depths . . .

I stood up, or so I thought, from the ottoman on which I had been seated and walked forward into the lake.

Miraculously I did not sink. Stepping across a glittering green expanse, I found myself upon solid land. Here I paused, and the voice of Dr Fu Manchu spoke:

“Look!—this is China.”

I saw a swamp, a vast morass wherein no human thing could dwell, a limitless and vile corruption . . . I saw guns buried in the mud; in pools I saw floating corpses: the fetid air was full of carrion, and all about me I heard wailing and lamentations. So desolate was the scene that I turned my head aside until the Voice spoke again:

“Look! It is Spain.”

I saw a waste which once had been a beautiful village: the shell of an old church; ruins of a house upon whose scarred walls bougainvillea bloomed gaily. People, among them women and children, were searching in the ruins. I wondered for what they were searching. But out of the darkness the Voice came again:

“Look! This is London.”

From my magic carpet I looked down upon Whitehall. Almost that spectacle conquered the magic of the Voice. I fought against mirage, but the mood of rebellion passed . . . I saw the cenotaph partly demolished. I heard crashes all around me, muted but awful. Where I thought familiar buildings should be there were gaping caverns. Strange figures, antlike as I looked down upon them, ran in all directions.

“Your world!” said the Voice. “Come, now, into mine . . ,”

And Ardatha was beside me!

It was a rose garden, the scent of the flowers intoxicating. Below where the roses grew I saw steps leading down to a marble pool upon the cool surface of which lotus blossoms floated. Bees droned amid the roses, and gaily plumaged birds darted from tree to tree. An exquisite sense of well being overcame me. I turned to Ardatha—and her lips were irresistible.

“Why did you ever doubt what I told you?” she whispered.

“Only because I was a fool.”

I lost myself in a kiss which realized all the raptures of which I had ever dreamed . . .

Ardatha melted from my arms . . . I sought her, called her name—”Ardatha! Ardatha!” But the rose garden had vanished: I was in darkness—alone, helpless, though none constrained me . . .

Flat on the carpet of Nayland Smith’s apartment, as I had fallen back from the ottoman, I lay!—fully alive to my environment, but unable to speak—to move!

Living Death

The screen, the magical screen, was black. Faint light came through the windows. Something—some damnable thing—had happened. I had gone mad—or been bewitched. That power, suspected but now experienced, of the dreadful Chinese doctor had swept me up.

With what purpose?

There seemed to be nothing different about the room—but how long had I been unaware of what was going on? Most accursed thing of all, I could think, but I couldn’t move! I lay there flat on my back, helpless as one dead. My keen mental activity in this condition was a double agony.

As I lay I could see right into the lobby—and now I became aware of the fact that I was not alone!

A small, dark man had opened the outer door quietly, glanced in my direction, and then set down a small handbag which he had seemed to carry with great care. He wore thick-rimmed glasses. He opened the bag, and I saw him doing something to the telephone.

I tried to command nerve and muscle—I tried to move. It was futile.

My body was dead: my brain alone lived . . .

I saw the man go. Even in that moment of mental torment I must watch passively, for I could not close my eyes!

Here I lay at the point from which my journeys to China to Spain, to an enchanted rose garden had begun, and so lying, unable to move a muscle, again I heard a key inserted in the door . . . The door opened and Nayland Smith dashed into the room. He looked down at me.

“Good God!” he exclaimed, and bent over me.

My eyes remained fixed: they continued to stare towards the lobby.

“Kerrigan! Kerrigan! Speak, old man! What happened?”

Speak! I could not stir . . .

He placed his ear to my chest, tested my pulse, stood up and seemed to hesitate for a moment. I heard and partly saw him going from room to room, searching. Then he came back and again fully into view. He stared down at me critically. He had switched up all the lights as he had entered. He walked across to the lobby, and I knew that he was about to take up the telephone!

His intentions were obvious. He was going to call a doctor.

A scream of the spirit implored me to awake, to warn him not to touch that telephone. This was the supreme moment of torture . . .

I heard the faint tinkling of the bell as Nayland Smith raised the receiver.

* * *

I became obsessed with the horrible idea that Dr Fu Manchu had in some way induced a state of catalepsy! I should be buried alive! But not even the terror caused by this ghastly possibility would make me forget that small, sinister figure engaged in doing something to the telephone.

That it was something which meant death, every instinct told me.

Yet I lay there, myself already in a state of living death!

Smith stood, the receiver in his hand, and I could see and hear him dialing a number.

But it was not to be . . .

A crashing explosion shook the entire building! It shattered several panes of glass in one window, and it accomplished that which my own brain had failed to accomplish. It provided a shock against which the will of Dr Fu Manchu was powerless.

I experienced a sensation exactly as that of some tiny but tough thread which had held the cells of my brain immured in inertia being snapped. It was a terrifying sensation—but its terrors were forgotten in the instant when I realized that I was my own master again!

“Smith!” I cried and my voice had a queer, hysterical ring—”Smith! Don’t touch that telephone!”

Perhaps the warning was unnecessary. He had replaced the receiver on the hook and was staring blankly