“There’s the entrance!” Tony exclaimed. “They’re just going in! “So I see,” Nayland Smith spoke quietly. “We must wait awhile, in case there are others to come. We might venture a little farther and then take cover. That stately banyan twenty yards ahead appeals to me.
And three minutes later, having forced a way through tangled undergrowth, they stood in the shade of the huge tree. The gate in the wall was clearly in view.
It was a metal-studded teak door, evidently of great strength; and at the moment it remained open.
“Someone else expected,” Sir Denis muttered.
They waited. And Tony, watching the open door in the high wall, realized for the first time that the high wall alone separated two implacable enemies. The thought appalled him. He and Nayland Smith were alone. On the other side of the wall, in the person of the governor, all the strength of the Red Regime was entrenched.
“Hullo! What’s this?”
Nayland Smith grabbed his arm.
Four bearers appeared from somewhere along the lane, carrying the Chinese equivalent of a sedan chair. It was a finely made chair, and the men wore some kind of uniform. They stopped before the open door; set the chair down.
A tall man, wearing a mandarin robe and a black cap with a coral beard, came out and stepped into the chair. The bearers took it up and passed so close to the banyan tree that Sir Denis dragged Tony down on to his knees. The chair went by. Nayland Smith, still grasping his arm, stared into Tony’s eyes.
“Dr. Fu Manchu!”
Neither spoke during a long minute, then: “It’s too optimistic to hope that he’s leaving Szechuan,” Tony said.
“I’m afraid so,” Nayland Smith agreed. “But, having a revolver in my pocket. I’m wondering if I should have missed such an opportunity!”
Oddly enough, this aspect of the thing had never occurred to Tony. Only as Sir Denis spoke did he realize how deep was the impression which the personality of Fu Manchu had made upon him. The regal dignity and consciousness of power which surrounded the Chinese doctor like a halo seemed to set him above common men.
“I wonder, too.”
“Don’t fall for the spell he casts, McKay. I admit he’s a genius. But—”
Tony looked hard at Nayland Smith. “Could you do it?”
“Once, I could have done it. Now, when I have learned to assess the phenomenal brilliance of that great brain—I doubt myself. My hand would falter. But we can at least carry out our investigations without meeting Fu Manchu! He, alone, would know me. You have no one to fear but the big Nubian.”
They came out of cover. The chair with its four bearers had disappeared in the direction of the town. First, they walked to the door in the wall. Nayland Smith examined it carefully; turned away. “Pretty hopeless,” he rapped.
The lane was deserted, and they followed the high wall for all of a quarter-mile without finding another entrance. Nayland Smith scanned it yard by yard, and at a point where the pink blossom of a peach tree evidently trained against the wall peeped over the top, he paused.
“Apparently an orchard. Do you think you could find the spot at night, McKay?”
“Quite sure.”
“Good.”
Tony asked no questions as they passed on. Another twenty yards and they came to a comer. The wall was continued at a right angle along an even narrower lane, a mere footpath choked with weeds. They forced a way through. This side of Huan Tsung-Chao’s property was shorter than that on the south side, but Nayland Smith studied every yard of the wall with eager attention. It ended where they had a prospect of a river, and turned right again on a wider road.
This road was spanned by a graceful bridge from the grounds of the big house, and Tony saw a landing stage to which a motor cruiser was tied up.
“That river will be the Tung Ho, I suppose,” Nayland Smith muttered; stared up at the bridge; “and this will be the governor’s water-gate.”
“He must be a wealthy man.”
Sir Denis grinned. “Huan Tsung-Chao is a fabulously wealthy man. He’s a survival of imperial days and God alone knows his age. How he came to hold his present position under the Peiping regime is a mystery.”
“Why?”
“He is Dr. Fu Manchu’s chief of staff! I met him once, and whatever else he may be, he is a gentleman, however misguided.”
Tony was too much amazed to say anything. He saw, several hundred yards along, what was evidently the main entrance. A man in military uniform stood outside.
“What do we do now?” he asked.
“Turn back. I don’t want that fellow to see us. Come on!”
They retired around the comer; and Nayland Smith pulled up.
“How high do you guess that bridge to be, McKay, at its lowest point where it crosses the wall?”
Tony thought for a moment, then, “About twelve feet,” he answered.
Nayland Smith nodded. “I should judge it fourteen. In either case, too high.”
* * *
Before a gate in a barbed-wire fence. Dr. Fu Manchu stepped out of his chair. A soldier on duty there saluted The Master as he went in. There were flowering trees and shrubs in the enclosure surrounding a group of buildings evidently of recent construction. A path bordered by a cactus hedge led to the door of the largest of these.
The door was thrown open as Fu Manchu appeared, and the Burmese doorman bowed low. Fu Manchu ignored him and went on his way, walking slowly with his strange catlike step. The place unmistakably was a hospital, with clean, white-walled corridors, and before a door at the end of one of these corridors, above which a red light shone, Fu Manchu paused and pressed a button.
A trap masking a grille in the door slid aside and someone looked out. At almost the same moment the door was opened. Matsukata, the Japanese physician, stood inside.
“Your report,” Fu Manchu demanded tersely.
“There is no change, Master.”
Dr. Fu Manchu made a soft hissing sound, not unlike that of certain species of snakes.
“Show me the chart.”
They went into a small dressing-room. Fu Manchu removed his robe and cap and put on a white jacket similar to that worn by the Japanese. Matsukata turned away, but was back again as Fu Manchu completed his change of dress.
“Here is the chart, Master.”
It was snatched from his hand. Dr. Fu Manchu scanned it rapidly
“You have checked everything—the temperature inside, the oxygen supply?”
“Everything.”
Fu Manchu walked out of the room and into another, larger room equipped as a surgery. In addition to the operating table and other usual equipment, there were several quite unusual pieces of apparatus here and one feature which must have arrested the attention of any modem surgeon.
This was a glass case, not unlike one of those in which Egyptian mummies are exhibited, and the resemblance was heightened by the fact that it contained a lean, nude, motionless body. But here the resemblance ended.
The heavy case rested upon what were apparently finely adjusted scales. A dial with millesimal measurements recorded the weight of the case and its contents. A stethoscopic attachment to the body was wired to a kind of clock. There was an intake from a cylinder standing beside the case; a mechanism which showed the quality of the air inside; and two thermometers. The instrument (known by a sixteen-letter name) for checking blood pressure was strapped to an arm of the inert grey figure and communicated with a mercury manometer outside the case. There were also a number of electric wires in contact with the body.
Dr. Fu Manchu checked everything with care, comparing what he saw with what appeared on the chart.
He began to pace up and down the floor.
“Are you sure, Master,” Matsukata ventured, “that in repairing the spinal fracture you did not injure the cord?”