The Island of Fu Manchu

corpse on his back and was carrying it out. Fate had spun the coin: which way would it fall?

First came the Burman, holding the hurricane lantern. As he walked up the stone steps I tried to identify myself with the shadows; for, although he presented a target which I could not have missed, although he was a professional assassin, a blood-lustful beast in human form, I shrank from the act of dispatching him.

He turned to the right.

Every movement he had made from the moment of his appearance at the base of the steps had been covered by my Colt. The giant figure of Hassan followed, stooping. Atlas-like, under his gruesome burden. He followed the lantern-bearer.

I had not been seen.

And now, as that death march receded into the distance of the long, echoing passage, I stooped, rapidly unlaced my shoes and discarded them. Silently I followed. The cold of the stone paving numbing my feet, I crept along, preserving a discreet interval between myself and the corpse-bearer, a huge, crouching silhouette against the leading light. His shadow, and the shadow of his load, danced hellishly on the floor, upon the walls, upon the roof of the corridor.

The lantern disappeared. The Burman had walked into some opening on the left of the passage, for against a rectangular patch of light upon the opposite wall I saw the burdened figure bent under its mortal bale turn and vanish too.

I pressed on to the comer. There were descending steps. Preserving a suitable distance from the moving lamp, I followed, and found myself in a shadow-haunted place, a warehouse, fusty as some ancient vault to which the light of the sun had never penetrated, in which, picked out by the dancing yellow light, I saw stacks of cases, through an aisle between which the lantern led me.

At the end of this aisle Hassan dropped his load. The muffled slump of the handless corpse was a sound I was destined often to remember.

“Open the door.” He was breathless. “Got to be quick. We have to make our getaway, too.”

That supernormal clarity of brain remained. The place was about to be abandoned; presumably Dr. Fu Manchu had already made good his escape. Visualising the Thames as I had seen it through the grille from the floor above, I determined that the door the Burman was already unlocking must be close to water level. My course was clear; the issue rested with me.

A gust of damp air swept into the fusty stagnation of the warehouse: followed, a subdued clangour. The lantern had been set on top of a crate, but dimly I discerned an opening and I knew what it represented. Whereas loads were hoisted to the upper floor, they were discharged to barges from the warehouse by way of this gangway which projected over the river at tidal level. From here the remains of Dr. Oster were to be consigned to old Father Thames and held fast in his muddy embrace until mortal decay cast fragments upon some downstream shallow, fragments which no man should identify.

I could see no searchlights; nevertheless, I could see the opening. I heard laboured breathing—creaking shoes which supported striving bodies. Dimly I heard the splash.

Then, Colt in hand, silent in shoeless feet, I rushed.

Silent, I say? Not silent enough for the blind Nubian. I was almost on the drawbridge, I had passed the Burman, when an arm like a steel band locked itself about me!

“Inshallah!”

Never had I experienced such acceptance of complete inertia. I am no weakling, but I know when I am mastered. The automatic was wrenched from my hand; I became crushed to that herculean body, a limp, useless thing. I divined, rather than perceived, that the dacoit stood behind me, knife raised. My brain, my brain alone, remained active.

“Hassan!” I panted. “Hassan, let me go!”

That unbreakable hold relaxed. Inexorably, I was jerked forward. A stinging in my left—shoulder and a sense of moisture, told me how narrowly I had escaped death from the Burman’s knife.

A thud—a snarl—the sound of a fall, and then: “Take your chance,” Hassan whispered. “No other way.”

Lifting me above his head as Milo of Crotona might playfully have lifted a child, he hurled me into the river!

* * *

“Who’s there?”

Breathless, all but spent, I swam for shore. There was a wharf, I remembered, and steps. That plunge into icy water had nearly defeated me. I had no breath with which to answer the challenge. A blue light shone out. I headed for it.

And, as I laboured frantically, a swift beam from the river picked me up. I heard shouted orders, the purr of an engine. My feet touched bottom: I staggered on towards the shore.’

“Down the steps, Gallaho! There’s someone swimming in. Dowse that searchlight out there!”

Nayland Smith!

The light behind—it must have come from a River Police craft—shone on wooden steps and painted my own shadow before me. Suddenly, it was shut off. The blue light ahead moved, came nearer, lower. I waded forward and was grasped and held upright—for I was close to the end-of my endurance.

“It’s Kerrigan,” I whispered. “Hang on to me. I’m nearly through . . . . ”

Chief Inspector Gallaho, a friend of former days, helped me to mount the steps. His lamp he extinguished, but I had had a glimpse of the familiar stocky figure enveloped in oilskins, of a wide-brimmed bowler, a grim red face.

“This is a surprise, Mr. Kerrigan,” he said, as though he had unexpectedly met me in Piccadilly. “It will be first class news for Sir Denis. You see, you being in their hands made our job a difficult one.”

As we stepped on to the wharf: “That you, Kerrigan?” came Smith’s crisp voice.

“Yes, by heaven’s mercy! Winded and drenched, but still alive.”

“Straight through to the car,” Smith went on rapidly. “Show a light, someone. A brisk rub down and a hot grog at Limehouse Police Station will put you right.”

Clenching my teeth, which displayed a tendency to chatter, I followed a lozenge of luminous blue which danced ahead along a paved path.

“Here we are. Get in, Kerrigan. I leave you in charge here, inspector. See that nothing, not even a rat, comes out; but make no move without orders from me.”

Feeling not unlike a half-drowned rat myself, I tumbled into a car which stood there in the darkness, and Smith joined me.

“Limehouse Police Station,” he said to the driver. “Step on it.”

We set out along some narrow riverside street in which not one speck of light was visible. Then, Nayland Smith relaxed. He threw his arms around my shoulders, and in a voice quite unlike that in which he had been issuing orders: “Kerrigan,” he said, “this is a miracle! Thank God you’re safe. Even now, I find it hard to believe. But first— are you hurt?”

The emotion betrayed by that man of iron touched me keenly.

“I’m sorry to have been such a nuisance. Smith,” I replied awkwardly. “It was my own folly that gave you all this trouble. I’m all right, though I don’t deserve to be. A knife scratch on my shoulder; nothing, I assure you.”

“But you are chilled to the bone. Try to tell me all you can. Time is on the side of the enemy.”

As the driver, whom I suspected to be Sergeant Sims of the Flying Squad, whirled us headlong through Limehouse darkness, I told my story. I held nothing back, not even my belief that Ardatha had betrayed me to Fu Manchu’s thugs.

“Probably wrong there,” Smith commented staccato-fashion. “But no matter at the moment. I followed the Doctor to the garage—and was cleverly locked inside! Place nearly soundproof. When the raid squad arrived, managed to attract their attention. While they were breaking in, Fu Manchu’s gang smuggled Oster’s body away and smuggled you away, too. Barge on canal with auxiliary motor. House formerly belonged to certain foreign diplomat—hence peep-hole behind china cupboard. . . .”

The brakes shrieked. I was all but thrown from my seat; a headlight shot out. I had the momentary glimpse of a narrow thoroughfare, and of an evil-looking yellow man who staggered aside from the bonnet.