I glanced down at my feet. Large ants, having glittering bodies, were swarming up over the lashings of my overalls!
Stamping madly, I stooped, brushing the things off with my rubber gloves. I saw a centipede wriggling away from my stamping feet. Panic touched me. I ran through the room and out into a short passage beyond.
In that dimly lighted place, surrounded by windows behind which the insects lived, I saw that the doors of the cases were open. Some of the things still hovered about their nests, but many of the cases were empty.
There was no one in the passage beyond—which was even more dimly lighted; but I stepped upon some wriggling thing and heard the crunch of its body beneath my rubber-shod foot.
The sound sickened me.
I pressed on to the botanical research room. A glance showed that it had been partly stripped. I stared through the observation window into that small house where the strange orchids had been under cultivation. They had disappeared.
Looking about at the shelves, I realised that much of the apparatus had been taken away. The doors leading into the first of the big forcing houses were open.
I passed through, and immediately grasped the explanation of something which had been puzzling me: namely, that the escaped insects were scarcely represented here, whereas the corridors beyond were thick with them, flying and crawling.
A sharp change in the atmosphere offered an explanation.
Windows, as well as doors, were open here, admitting a keen night air borne by a wind from the Alps.
Those things were seeking warmth in the interior of the place. And already, so delicate are such plants, I saw that many of the tropical flowers about me were drooping—would soon be dead.
What did this mean?
It was probably part of a plan to destroy such results of those unique experiments as could not be removed.
With every step I advanced the air grew colder and colder— and destruction among the unique products through which I passed was such that I could find time for a moment of regret in the midst of my own engrossing troubles. The palm house, in common with every other place I had visited, was deserted. The doors leading into Dr. Fu Manchu’s study were open...I could see light shining out.
Here was the crux of the situation. Here if anywhere I should meet with a check.
Despite the keenness of the air, I was bathed in perspiration, buckled up in my nearly airtight outfit.
I advance slowly, step by step, until I could look into the study. Then I stood still, staring through the glass mask— which had grown very misty—at a room stripped of its exotic trappings!
The furniture alone remained. This destruction, then, which I had witnessed, was the handiwork of Dr. Fu Manchu himself—or so I must suppose. For here was clear evidence that he had fled, taking his choicest possessions with him.
I paused there for only a few moments; then I ran out into the great radio research room.
Of the masses of unimaginable mechanisms which had cumbered the room, only the heaviest remained. The instruments had gone from the tables. Many shelves were bare. Three intricate pieces of machinery, including that which I had thought resembled a moving-picture camera, were there, but wretched—shattered—mere mounds of metallic fragments upon a grey floor!
There were no insects visible in the big room, which was as cold as a cavern, Indeed, as Nayland Smith had pointed out, a cavern, practically, it was. Doors I had not known to exist were open in the glass walls, but I ran the length of the place and sprang up the stairs beyond.
The door did not close behind me. The whole of that intricate mechanism had been locked in some way.
Gaining the top corridor I glanced swiftly to the right.
A cold grey light—the light of dawn—was touching the terrace.
chapter thirty-ninth
SEARCH IN STE CLAIRE
I ran forward.
“Hands up!” came swiftly.
And even as I obeyed that order, I groaned, filled with such bitterness of spirit as I had rarely known.
On the very threshold—freedom in sight—I was trapped again!
A group of semi-human figures surrounded me in the half light: creatures goggle-eyed, with shapeless heads, to which were attached trunk-like appendages! I raised my hands, staring helplessly about that ghoulish party closing in upon me.
“Search him!” came the same voice, staccato, but curiously muffled.
But now, hearing it, I grasped the truth!
The hideous headdresses of the men surrounding me were gas masks!
“Sir Denis!” I cried, and knew that my own voice was at least as muffled as his.
The leader of the party was Nayland Smith!
Something very like unconsciousness threatened me. I had not fully appreciated how wrought up I was until this moment. Sights and sounds merged into an indistinguishable blur. But presently, out of this haze, I began to apprehend that Nayland Smith was talking to me, his arm about my shoulders.
“Not a soul has left Ste Claire, Sterling; it’s covered from the land and from the sea. When your first message reached me——”
“I sent no message! But what was it?”
“You sent no message?”
“Not a thing! Nevertheless, I think I know who did. What did you take it to mean?”
“According to the system we had arranged, it meant that Petrie was there—but dead. There was a second, much later, which quite defeated me.”
“I don’t know who sent the second. But it’s true Petrie is there—and when I saw him last, alive.”
“Sterling, Sterling! you are sure?”
“I spoke to him. And—by heavens! I had almost forgotten——”
I plunged a rubber-clad hand into the pocket of my overall, and pulled out the creased and folded sheet of paper.
“The formula for ‘654.’“
“Thank God! Good old Petrie! Quick! give it to me.”
Nayland Smith had discarded his helmet temporarily, and I my glass mask. He dashed away down the steps, leaving me standing there, looking about me.
Six or eight men were by the open door, their heads hidden in gas equipment, and I realised now that they must be French police. I felt very much below par, but the keen night air was restoring me, and after an absence of no more than two or three minutes Sir Denis came running back.
“I don’t think, Sterling,” he said in his rapid way, “that the doctor’s campaign was ripe to open. It depended, I believe, upon climatic conditions. But in any event ‘654’ will be in possession of the medical authorities of the world to-night.
“Petrie’s wish is carried out!”
“I should have raided an hour ago. Sterling, if I had had the foresight to equip the party suitably. We were here before I realised the nature of the death trap into which I might be leading them. I once saw a party of detectives in a Limehouse cellar belonging to Dr. Fu Manchu die the most dreadful deaths....
“The Chief of Police was at the main gate, and I consulted with him. He quite naturally wanted to waive my objections;
but I persisted. The delay was caused by the quest for gas masks, of which there is not a large supply in the neighbourhood. When they were obtained, the men on duty here reported that the door had been opened from inside but that none had come out. I had rejoined them only a few minutes when you appeared.”
“Yet the place is deserted!”
“What?”
“Part of it is infested with plague flies and other horrors, but there is no trace of a human being anywhere.”
“Come on!” he snapped, and readjusting his helmet. “Are you fit, Sterling?”
“Yes.”
I buttoned myself up in my grim equipment. Followed by the police party, I found myself again in the house of Dr. Fu Manchu.
Unhesitatingly I began to run towards the green lamp at the end of the corridor which marked the position of Fleurette’s room—when all the lights went out!