All that was me, all that I had proudly been wont to regard as my personality, fought against this command—for a command it was. Yet—the plain fact must be recorded: I stood up....
He took his seat in the dragon-carved chair behind the big table. I had kept my eyes deliberately averted, but now, in the silence which followed, I stole a glance at him. He was staring intently at Fah Lo Suee.
Suddenly he spoke:
“Companion Yamamata,” he said softly, “you may go.”
Yamamata sprang up; I saw his lips move, but no sound issued from them. He bowed, and opening the door which led into the big laboratory, went out, closing it behind him.
Dr. Fu Manchu began to speak rapidly in Chinese, and at the end of the first sentence Fah Lo Suee, dropping her jade cigarette holder into a bronze tray upon the floor, came down to her knees on the carpet and buried that evilly beautiful face in upraised hands—delicate ivory hands—patrician hands—shadows, etherialised, of those of her formidable father.
He continued to speak, and she shrank lower and lower, but spoke no word—uttered no sound. Then:
“Alan Sterling,” he said, suddenly expressing himself in English; “the ill-directed cunning of one woman and the frailty of another have taken your fate out of my control. There are men to whom women are dangerous—you, unhappily, would seem to be one of them.”
And as he spoke, the remarkable fact disclosed itself to me that, although Fah Lo Suee had spoken no word, already he knew her part in the conspiracy!
Good heavens! A suspicion sprang to my mind: Had Fah Lo Suee been watching? Was it she who had trapped me with Fleurette? Was this the end to which she had preserved my life: Fleurette’s swift ruin, my own speedy death?
In its classic simplicity the scheme was Chinese, I thought.
I looked at her where she crouched, abject.
The voice—the strange, haunting voice—spoke on:
“Millions of useless lives cumber the world to-day. Among them I must now include your own. The ideal state of the Greek philosopher took no count of these. There can be no human progress without selection; and already I have chosen the nucleus of my new state. The East has grown in spirit, while the West has been building machinery....
“My new state will embody the soul of the East.
“I am not ready yet for my warfare against the numerous but helpless army of the rejected. The Plagues of Egypt I hold in my hands, but I cannot control the course of the sun....
“It may be that you, a gnat on the flywheel, have checked the machinery of the gods. Alone, you could never have cast a shadow upon my path: one of my own blood is the culprit.”
He stuck a little gong which hung close to his hand upon the table, and the door facing me as I sat opened instantaneously and silently. One of those white-robed, image-like Chinamen entered, to whom Fu Manchu spoke briefly, rapidly.
The men bowed and went out. Fah Lo Suee’s slender body seemed to diminish. She sank down until her head touched the carpet.
Dr. Fu Manchu tapped with a long nail upon the table, glancing aside at her where she crouched.
“Your Western progress, Alan Sterling,” he said, “has resulted in the folly of women finding a place in the councils of state. That myth you call ‘chivalry’ has tied your hands and stricken you mute. In the China to which I belong—a China which is not dead but only sleeping—we use older simpler, methods....We have whips....”
The door suddenly opened again, and two powerfully built negresses entered. Their attire consisted of red-and-white striped skirts fastened by girdles about their waists.
Dr. Fu Manchu addressed them rapidly, but now, I knew, he was not speaking Chinese.
He ceased, and pointed.
One of the negresses stooped; but even as she did so, Fah Lo Suee sprang to her feet with an elastic movement, turned flaming eyes upon that dreadful figure in the high-backed chair, and then, a negress at either elbow, walked out into the palm house beyond.
I glanced at Dr. Fu Manchu, and he caught and held that glance. I realised that I was incapable of turning my eyes away.
“Alan Sterling,” he said, “it is my purpose to save the world from itself. And to this end there must be a great purging. Today or tomorrow, my dream will be fulfilled. One of those bunglers acting for what is sometimes termed Western civilisation may bring about my death by violence. There is none to succeed me....My daughter—trained for a great purpose, as few women have been trained and endowed with that physical perfections of a carefully selected mother, inherits the taint of some traitor ancestor....
“I desire that a son shall succeed to what I shall build. The mother of that son I have chosen. Sex determination is a problem which at last I have conquered. Neither love nor passion will enter into the union. But if you, Alan Sterling, have cast a shadow of either upon the unsullied mirror which I had patiently burnished to reflect my will...then the work of eighteen years is undone.”
His guttural voice sank lower and lower, and the last few words sounded like a sibilant whisper....
He struck the gong twice....
I found myself seized by my arms and lifted off the chair in which I had been seated! Two of his Chinamen—unheard, unsuspected—had entered behind me.
Brief guttural words, and I was swung around, as Dr. Fu Manchu stood up, tall, gaunt, satanic, and from a hook upon the wall took down a whip resembling a Russian knout.
As I was swept about to face the door which communicated with the radio research room, one horrifying glimpse I had in the palm house, dimly lighted, of an ivory body hanging by the wrists....
chapter thirty-seven
THE GLASS MASK
In a frame of mind which I must leave to the imagination, I paced up and down the little sitting room of the apartment numbered eleven.
I was alone, and the door was unopenable; some ten minutes before, I had heard the section doors being closed, also. Whichever way my thoughts led me, I found stark madness lurking there.
Fleurette! What would be the fate of Fleurette? For Dr. Fu Manchu was not human in the accepted sense of the word. He was a remorseless intelligence. Where he could not use, he destroyed. Perhaps he would spare Fleurette because of her remarkable beauty. But spare her—for what?
Petrie! He was helpless indeed, desperately ill. And as for myself, I suffered those hundred deaths which the coward is said to die, during the unaccountable period that I paced up and down that small room.
My mad passion for Fleurette had brought this down upon all of us! In those feverish moments while I had been pleading with her, I should have been clear of this ghastly house. My freedom meant the safety of the world. I had sacrificed this to my own selfish desires. Only by wrecking the elaborate organisation of the Si-Fan—the scope of which hitherto I had never suspected—could I hope to win Fleurette.
Fool—mad fool!—to have supposed that a newly awakened passion could upset traditions so carefully emplanted and nurtured.
What was happening?
I tried to work out what Nayland Smith would be likely to do—to estimate the chances of a raid taking place before it was too late. I could not forget the imperturbable figure in the yellow robe.
That Dr. Fu Manchu was prepared for such an emergency as this it was impossible to doubt. His manner had not been that of a criminal trapped.
I pressed my ear against the door and listened....
But I could detect no sound.
I crossed to the further wall, in which I knew there was another door, but one I had never been able to open. I listened there also, for I remembered that there was a corridor beyond.
Silence. I was shut into a narrow section of the house between barriers of steel.