“You have heard no other sound?” Tony asked him.
“Not a movement,” the man assured him. “Nothing stirred
When the gardener descended from the long ladder and was about to remove it:
“One moment,” Nayland Smith rapped. “I want to take a look. This interests me.”
“Be careful of the wiring!” Wong warned. “It carries a high voltage and a touch is enough!”
“That wouldn’t interest you!” Tony called out as Nayland Smith started up the ladder.
“That’s just what does interest me!” Sir Denis called back.
He mounted right to the top of the ladder. He didn’t look out on to the road he looked fixedly at the parapet where the wires were stretched. Then he came down. From a pocket of his gown he took his pipe and his pouch.
“There are two other things I must know, McKay. For one of them we have to wait for daylight. The other it’s just possible we might find tonight.” He turned to Wong. “Take the ladder away. I’m glad you brought it.”
He grasped Tony’s arm. “I have a flashlamp in my pocket. Walk slowly back to the house—not by the route we came, but the nearest way to the windows of your room and the office.”
And so they started, Nayland Smith, pipe in mouth, flashing light into shadowy shrubberies which bordered the path:
“I don’t know what you’re looking for,” Tony declared.
“I may be wrong, McKay. It’s no more than what you call a hunch. But I do know what I’m looking for. It’s a hundred to one chance and if I’m wrong, I’ll tell you. If I’m right, you’ll see for yourself.”
They walked slowly on. There was little breeze. Sometimes the flashlamp created queer rustling in the shrubberies as of sleeping creatures disturbed or nocturnal things scuffling to shelter. In the light of a declining moon, bats could be seen swooping, silent, overhead.
His gruesome experience with a Cold Man vividly in mind. Tony found himself threatened, as they moved slowly along, by a shapeless terror. Partly, it was a creation of the dark and the stillness, an upsurge of hereditary superstition. Things he couldn’t explain had happened. At any moment, he thought, icy fingers might clutch his throat again. Of human enemies he had no fear. But what were these Cold Men? Were they human—or were they as some who had seen them believed, animated dead men, zombies?
His own encounter with a Cold Man suggested that they were not mortal.
But Nayland Smith worked diligently along, yard by yard.
He found nothing.
And Tony knew, by noting the furious way in which he puffed at his pipe, that he was disappointed
They had reached the gate lodge, which was in darkness, and had turned left, instead of to the right, which was the way they had come, before Sir Denis uttered a word. Then:
“Here’s our last chance!” he said rapidly.
They were in a narrow path, little used, overgrown by wild flowers. It led to the east wing of the house but to no entrance. It would, though, as Tony realized, lead them to a point directly below the window of his own room and that of the office.
Tirelessly, Nayland Smith explored every shadow with his flash-lamp, but found nothing, until, in a clump of tangled undergrowth surrounding a tall tulip tree, he pulled up.
“I was right!”
The ray of the lamp lighted a grisly spectacle.
A man lay there, a man whose body was grey, whose only clothing consisted of a loin cloth, and this was grey, and a tightly knotted grey turban. He lay in a contorted attitude, his head twisted half under his body.
“This is what I was looking for!” Nayland Smith rapped. “Look! His neck’s broken!”
“Good God! Is this—”
“The Cold Man who attacked you? Yes. And you killed him! “
Tony stood, hands clenched, looking at the ghastly object under the tulip tree. Suddenly, in that warm night, he felt chilled.
“The first specimen,” Nayland Smith stated grimly, “to fall into my hands. Rumor hasn’t exaggerated. I can feel the chill even here.” He stepped forward.
“Sir Denis!”
Nayland Smith turned. “The poor devil’s harmless—now—McKay. He’s out of the clutches of Dr. Fu Manchu at last. Some day, I hope, we shall know how these horrors are created. His skin is an unnatural grey, but I recognize the features. The man is Burmese.” He stooped over the contorted body. “Hullo! Thank heaven, McKay, the hundred to one chance has come off!”
From the grey loin cloth he dragged out a bundle of papers, shone the ray of the lamp on to it—and sprang upright so unusually excited that he dropped his pipe.
“Sun Shao-Tung’s notes—and the Chinese manuscript’. Our luck’s changed, McKay.” He picked up his pipe. “Let me show you something.” He stooped again, lighted the face of the Cold Man. “Contrary to official belief, Dacoity (said to be extinct) is a religious cult, like Thuggee. Look!”
He tore the grey turban from the dead man’s head. Tony drew nearer.
“What, Sir Denis?”
The flashlamp was directed on the shaven head.
“The caste mark.”
Tony looked closely. Just above the line of the turban he saw a curious mark, either tattooed or burnt on to the skin.
“A dacoit!” Nayland Smith told him.
“Then it was he who gave that awful cry?”
“No!” Sir Denis rapped. “That was my hunch! It was another dacoit who gave the cry . . .”
Chapter XIV
Three times Matsukata, the Japanese physician in charge of the neighboring clinic, had come into a small room attached to Dr. Fu Manchu’s laboratory in which the Doctor often rested, and sometimes, when he had worked late, in which he slept. It was very simply equipped, the chief item of furniture being a large, cushioned divan.
A green-shaded lamp stood on a table littered with papers and books, and its subdued light provided the sole illumination. The air was polluted with sickly fumes of opium.
Dr. Fu Manchu lay on the divan entirely without movement. Even his breathing was not perceptible. A case of beautifully fashioned opium pipes rested on a small table beside him, with a spirit lamp, a jar of the purest chandu, and several silver bodkins. In spirit Dr. Fu Manchu was far from the world of ordinary man, and his body rested; perhaps the only real rest he ever knew.
Matsukata stood there, silent, watching, listening. Then once more he withdrew.
Some few minutes had passed in the silent room, when Fu Manchu raised heavy lids and looked around. The green eyes were misty, the pupils mere pinpoints. But, as he sat up, by some supreme command of his will the mist cleared, the contracted pupils enlarged. He used opium as he used men, for his own purpose; but no man and no drug was his master.
It was his custom, in those periods of waiting for a fateful decision which the average man spends in pacing the floor, checking each passing minute, to smoke a pipe of chandu and so enter that enchanted realm to which opium holds the key.
He was instantly alert, in complete command of all his faculties. He struck a small gong on the table beside him.
Matsukata came in before the vibration of the gong had ceased.
“Well?” Fu Manchu demanded.
Matsukata bowed humbly. “I regret to report failure. Master.”
Fu Manchu clenched his hands. “You mean that Singu failed?”
“Singu failed to return. Master.”