I heard a faint buzzing sound—and all the lights went out!
CHAPTER VII
THE RIVER GATE
My first idea, naturally enough, was thatDr. Fu Manchu had given some signal, unobserved, for my dismissal; that I was to be dispatched in darkness. The burner hissing under the retort and its gruesome contents became silent. I sprang to my feet. At least I could go down fighting.Out of impenetrable gloom came the imperious voice, guttural now: “Pray remain seated. Owing to certain extemporized measures, power in the laboratory is controlled from an outside switchboard—and it has been cut off. This means an air-raid warning, Mr. Kerrigan; but it need not disturb you.”
An air raid warning? Then a terrifying idea which I had been grimly repelling—an idea that unconsciousness had lasted for a long time; that this secret laboratory was situated perhaps far away from England—need disturb me no more. However, I remained standing, and with courage greater than I had ever known in the visible presence of Dr. Fu Manchu: ‘‘You appear to be dangerously ill,” I said.
And the ghostly voice replied: “I have brought myself close to death. Science is my mistress and I serve her too well. You may have noticed a small lamp (it is extinguished now) producing a violet light. The condition in which you find me is due to my experiments with this lamp. The green jacket I wear affords some slight protection; but I can discover no formula to reinforce the human economy so that it may cancel its deleterious effects.Dr. Oster, my assistant in these inquiries, developed opacity of the crystalline lens accompanied by other notable pigmentary changes; and although, a fact to which the specimens you have inspected bear witness, racial types react variously, none can sustain these emanations without suffering permanent injury. But you remain standing.”
I sat down.
Whether it was imagination, or whether, as I had sometimes suspected, the eyes ofDr. Fu Manchu possessed a chatoyant quality, I thought that I could see them watching me—shining greenly in the dark like the eyes of a great cat.
“I have submitted certain proposals to Sir Denis Nayland Smith,” he went on, “Although, thanks to my recovery of the chart found by Sir Lionel Barton, I can take suitable precautions, any interference with my plans in the Caribbean may alter the world’s history. You are my hostage. If Sir Denis refuses to pay your ransom(I gather that you hold a minor science degree) I shall invite you to take the place of Companion Oster—of whose services you deprived me—and to carry on those inquiries under, my direction, which his death has interrupted.”
It is beyond the power of my pen to convey any idea of the cloud of horror which swept down upon me as I listened to his words. Before my mind’s eye they appeared, those ghastly fragments of men who had died martyrs to the lust for knowledge which animated this devil in human shape. To their tormented company I was to be added!
How I should have acted, what reply I should have made to that monstrous statement, I cannot say. Although I had detected no movement. Dr. Fu Manchu had retired from his place on the other side of the glass- topped bench, for when he spoke again it was from beyond the hidden doorway.
“I must leave you for a time, Mr. Kerrigan. I strongly urge you to remain seated. Many of the objects here are lethal. I will arrange for the lamps to be relighted. You may smoke if you wish.”
A faint sound indicated that the door had been closed.
I was alone—alone with the violet lamp which blinded, which changed men from white to yellow, which had shattered the supernormal constitution of its Chinese creator; alone with the amputated remains of some who had suffered that this dream ofDr. Fu Manchu might be realized. What was the purpose of these merciless experiments? What power resided in the lamp?
Fumbling in my pocket, I learned that my torch remained undisturbed. Any fate was preferable to the fate ordained by the devil Doctor. I flashed a ray about that awesome room, that silent room which smelled like a mortuary.
It glittered momentarily upon my Colt lying on the couch. It brought to life the head of the Negro grinning in a big jar, and lent uncanny movement to those discoloured hands which for ever had ceased to move.
I stepped towards the red line.
“Consciousness of cerebral pressure” mentioned by Dr. Fu Manchu was not perceptible; the Ericksen apparatus remained disconnected. I crossed the red line and took up my automatic. At the moment I retrieved the Colt an abnormally-tensed sense of hearing told me that the sliding door had been opened.
In a flash I had turned, a ray focused on the wall behind the bench, my finger alert on the trigger.
No doubt the mystery of the lamp had inflamed my imagination, but I thought that by magic a
Common sense dispersed fantasy. The man was a strangler sent by Dr. Fu Manchu to dispatch me.
“Put up your hands!” I ordered.
Blinking in the light, the white Negro obeyed, raising thick, sinewy blond hands, and: “No so loud, sir,” he said hoarsely, “you spoil your chances if you speak so loud.”
That he spoke in English, and spoke with an American intonation, provided a further shock: his seeming friendliness I distrusted.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
“My name—Hassan, sir. I want to help you—“
“Why?”
“White Lady wishes.” He touched his brow as he spoke. “When White Lady wishes Hassan obeys.”
And now my heart gave a great leap.
“The White Lady—Ardatha?”
Hassan touched his brow again.
“Her family I serve, and my father, his father before; long, long time before. White Lady’s order more high than Master’s order, more high than any but God Almighty. Follow Hassan.”
A hundred questions I longed to ask, for this man perhaps held the clue to that torturing mystery never far from my mind; but a quick decision was imperative—and I made it.
“Lead the way,” I said, and stepped forward. “I will use my torch.”
“No light,” he whispered—”no light. Come close and take my hand.”
It was in no spirit of childish confidence that I grasped the muscular white hand; but as I had reached the Nubian’s side and finally switched off my torch, those blinking eyes had told me the truth—Hassan was blind.
“No sound,” he said, in a low voice. “Hassan see with inner eye. Trust Hassan . . . . ”
Along a short passage apparently covered in rubber he led me. Another silent door he opened and closed. The peculiarly nauseating smell of the laboratory was no longer perceptible; the air was cool. We crept up a stone stair, and stood at the top for a while. I thought that Hassan was listening. I could detect no sound, no glimmer of light.
His grip tightened suddenly, and he dragged me sharply to the left for three paces and then stood still again.
Faint footsteps sounded—grew nearer—louder. A beam of yellow light shone past an arched opening not ten feet from where we hid. I watched, holding my breath. The moving rays revealed a stone passage. And now came the bearer of the light—a short, stocky brown man, one of Dr. Fu Manchu’s Burmese bodyguard. He carried a hurricane lamp. He passed. Behind him came two others—they bore a body on a stretcher.
They, too, passed; the sound of footsteps faded, the light grew dim: complete darkness returned.
The most dreadful premonitions attacked me; I grew sick with dread. Whose was the muffled body? What place was this, with its stone-paved passages, whichDr. Fu Manchu had chosen for his lair? As if Hassan divined how near I was to speech: “Ss!” he hissed—and led me on.
Our route lay in that direction from which the bearers had come; and just as I thought I detected a faint light ahead, a sound echoed hollowly through the stone passages, a sound which robbed me almost of my last spark of courage.It was the note of a gong!
Hassan stopped dead. He bent to my ear.
