Fu Manchu’s Bride
by Sax Rohmer
chapter first
FLEURETTE
all the way around the rugged headland, and beyond, as I sat at the wheel of the easy-running craft, I found myself worrying about Petrie. He was supposed to be looking after me. I thought that somebody should be looking after him. He took his responsibilities with a deadly seriousness; and this strange epidemic which had led the French authorities to call upon his expert knowledge was taxing him to the limit. At luncheon I thought he had looked positively ill; but he had insisted upon returning to his laboratory.
He seemed to imagine that the reputation of the Royal Society was in his keeping....
I had hoped that the rockbound cove which I had noted would afford harbourage for the motorboat. Nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised when I found that it did.
The little craft made safe, I waded in and began to swim through nearly still water around that smaller promontory beyond which lay the bay and beach of Ste Claire de la Roche. Probably a desire to test my fitness underlay the job; if I could not explore Ste Claire from the land side, I was determined to invade it, nevertheless.
The water was quite warm, and it had that queer odour of stagnation peculiar to this all but tideless sea. I swam around the point, and twenty yards out from the beach my feet touched bottom.
At the same moment I saw her....
She was seated on the smooth sand, her back towards me, and she was combing her hair. As I stumbled, groped, and began to make my way inland, I told myself that this sole inhabitant of Ste Claire was probably one of those fabulous creatures, a mermaid—or, should I say, a siren.
I halted, wading ashore, and watched her.
Her arms, her shoulders, and her back were beautiful. Riviera salt and sun had tanned her to a most delectable shade of brown. Her wavy hair was of a rich red mahogany colour. This was all I could see of the mermaid from my position in the sea.
I made the shore without disturbing her.
It became apparent, then, that she was not a mermaid; a pair of straight, strong, and very shapely brown legs discredited the mermaid theory. She was a human girl with a perfect figure and glorious hair, wearing one of those bathing suits fashionable in Cannes....
What it was, at this moment, which swamped admiration and brought fear—which urged me to go back—to go back—I could not imagine. I fought against this singular revulsion, reminding myself that I was newly convalescent from a dangerous illness. This alone, I argued, accounted for the sudden weird chill which had touched me.
Why, otherwise, should I be afraid of a pretty girl?
I moved forward.
And as I began to walk up the gently sloping beach she heard me and turned.
I found myself staring, almost in a frightened way, at the most perfect face I thought I had ever seen. Those arms and shoulders were so daintily modelled that I had been prepared for disillusionment: instead, I found glamour.
She was bronzed by the sun, and, at the moment, innocent of make-up. She had most exquisitely chiselled features. Her lips were slightly parted showing the whitest little teeth. Big, darkly fringed eyes—and they were blue as the Mediterranean—were opened widely, as if my sudden appearance had alarmed her.
I may have dreamed, as some men do, of flawless beauty, but I had never expected to meet it; when:
“How did you get here?” the vision asked and rolled over onto one elbow, looking up at me.
Her voice had a melodious resonance which suggested training, and her cool acceptance of my appearance helped to put me more at ease.
“I just swam ashore,” I replied. “I hope I didn’t frighten you?”
“Nothing frightens me,” she answered in that cool, low tone, her unflinching eyes—the eyes of a child, but of a very clever and very inquisitive child—fixed upon me. “I was certainly surprised.”
“I’m sorry. I suppose I should have warned you.”
Her steady regard never wavered; it was becoming disconcerting. She was quite young, as the undisguised contours of her body revealed, but about her very beauty there hovered some aura of mysteriousness which her typically nonchalant manner could not dispel. Then, suddenly, I saw, and it greatly relieved me to see, a tiny dimple appear in her firm round chin. She smiled—and her smile made me her slave.
“Please explain,” she said; “this isn’t an accident is it?”
“No,” I confessed; “it’s a plot.”
She shifted to a more easy position, resting both elbows on the sand and cupping her chin in two hands.
“What do you mean ‘a plot’?” she asked, suddenly serious again.
I sat down, peculiarly conscious of my angular ugliness.
“I wanted to have a look at Ste Claire,” I replied. “It used to be open to inspection and it’s a spot of some historical interest. I found the road barred. And I was told that a certain Mahdi Bey had bought the place and had seen fit to close it to the public. I heard that the enclosed property ran down to the sea, so I explored and saw this little bay.”
“And what were you going to do?” she asked, looking me over in a manner which struck me as almost supercilious.
“Well...” I hesitated, hoping for another smile. “I had planned to climb up to Ste Claire, and if I should be discovered, explain that I had been carried away by the current which works around the headland and been compelled to swim ashore.”
I watched eagerly for the dimple. But no dimple came. Instead, I saw a strange, far-away expression creep over the girl’s face. In some odd manner it transformed her; spiritually, she seemed to have withdrawn—to a great distance, to another land; almost, I thought, to another world. Her youth, her remarkable beauty, were transfigured as though by the occult brush of a dead master. Momentarily, I experienced again that insane desire to run away.
Then she spoke. Her phrases were commonplace enough, but her voice too was far away; her eyes seemed to be looking right through me, to be fixed upon some very distant object.
“You sound enterprising,” she said. “What is your name?”
“Alan Sterling,” I answered, with a start.
I had an uncanny feeling that the question had not come from the girl herself, although her lips framed the words.
“I suppose you live somewhere near here?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Alan Sterling,” she repeated; “isn’t that Scotch?”
“Yes, my father was a Scotsman—Dr. Andrew Sterling—but he settled in the Middle West of America, where I was born.”
The mahogany curls were shaken violently. It was, I thought, an act of rebellion against that fey mood which had claimed her. She rose to her knees, confronting me; her fingers played with the sand. The rebellion had succeeded. She seemed to have drawn near again, to have become human and adorable. Her next words confirmed my uncanny impression that in mind and spirit she had really been far away,
“Did you say you were American?” she asked.
Rather uncomfortably I answered:
“I was born in America. But I took my degree in Edinburgh, so that really I don’t quite know what I am.”
“Don’t you?”
She sank down upon the sand, looking like a lovely idol.
“And now please tell me your name,” I said; “I have told you mine.”
“Fleurette.”
“But Fleurette what?”
“Fleurette nothing. Just Fleurette.”
“But, Mahdi Bey——”
I suppose my thoughts were conveyed without further words, for:
“Mahdi Bey,” Fleurette replied, “is——”
And then she ceased abruptly. Her glance strayed away somewhere over my shoulder. I had a distinct impression that she was listening—listening intently for some distant sound.