“I will arrange for a nurse.”
The door opened, and Fleurette came in.
As her accepted lover, the incense of worship which the Frenchmen silently offered should perhaps have been flattering. Oddly enough, I resented it.
“This is my daughter, gentlemen,” said Petrie—with so much pride and such happiness in his voice that all else was forgotten.
She crossed and seated herself at his side, clasping his outstretched hand.
“This, dear, is Dr. Cartier...Dr. Brisson, my friends and allies.”
Fleurette smiled at the French doctors. That intoxicating dimple appeared for a moment in her chin, and I knew that they were her slaves.
“I shall require no other nurse,” Petrie added.
It was hard to go; but a nod from Fleurette gave me my dismissal. With a few words of explanation I left the room.
Sir Denis was waiting for me in the lobby.
“I hate to drag you away, Sterling,” he said. “But if any sort of progress has been made at Ste Claire, you can probably help.”
We joined a car which was waiting. I could not fail to recall in the early stages of the journey, that night when, learning at Quinto’s that Petrie was dead, I had launched what was meant to be a vendetta.
I had set out to seek the life of any servant of Dr. Fu Manchu who might cross my path!
And even now, when the fact had become plain to me that the unscrupulous methods of the great Chinaman, his indifference to human life, were not dictated by any prospect of personal gain but belonged to an ideal utterly beyond my Western comprehension, I did not regret the death of that Burmese strangler with whom I had fought to a finish on the Comiche road.
“The big villa at Ste Claire,” said Nayland Smith, “has obviously been a European base of the group for many years past. It’s impossible to close one’s eyes to the fact, Sterling, that this Si-Fan movement, whatever it may embody, has gained momentum since the days when I first realised the existence of Dr. Fu Manchu. You have told me that he claims to be responsible for that financial chaos which at that moment involves the whole world. That he had defeated age, I know. And I gather that he professes to have solved the mystery of the Philosopher’s Stone.”
We were clear of Monaco now, and mounting higher and higher.
“In all this, there is one thing which we must bear in mind:
it has taken me many years to leam as little as I know of the Mandarin Fu Manchu. But at last I have discovered his term of official office, and with many blanks I have built up something of his pedigree.
“Tell me,” I said eagerly.
“He administered the Province of Ho Nan, under the Empress. Judging by the evidence which I have accumulated, he appeared to be of the same age in those days as he appears now!
“What ever age is the man?”
“Heaven only knows. Sterling! This I doubt if we shall ever find out. He is affiliated to those who once ruled China. His place in the scheme of things, I take it, may be compared to that once held by the Pretender, in England. But he has a legitimate claim to the title of Prince.”
“Sir Denis, this is amazing!”
“Dr. Fu Manchu is the most amazing figure living in the world to-day. He holds degrees of four universities. He is a Doctor of Philosophy as well as a Doctor of Medicine. I have reason to believe that he speaks every civilised language with facility; and I know that he represents a movement which already had pushed Europe and America very near to the brink—and which, before long, may push both of them right over.”
“You have prevented that, Sir Denis. An army is helpless without its leader.”
I glanced aside at him as we sped along the Comiche road:
he was tugging at the lobe of his ear.
“How do we know that he is the leader?” he snapped. “Think of the living-dead whom we chance to have identified. How many more belong to the Si-Fan whose identities we don’t even suspect? His ‘submersible yacht,” the existence of which, even if I had doubted Dr. Fu Manchu’s word (and this I have never doubted), is established by the disappearance of every member of his household! The French authorities have never had so much as a suspicion that such a vessel was on their coasts!
“That pool may have been known to the monks in the old days; but you will search for it in vain in Baedeker. Do you grasp what I mean, Sterling? We in the West follow our well trodden paths; no one of us sees more than the others see. But, under the street along which we are walking, at the back of a house which we have passed a hundred times, lies something else—something unsuspected.
“These are the things that Dr. Fu Manchu has discovered— or rediscovered. This is the secret of his influence. He is behind us, under us, and over us.”
“At the moment,” I said savagely, “he is in a French prison!”
“Why?” murmured Nayland Smith.
“What do you mean?”
“His submersible yacht, for a sight of which I would give much, is almost certainly armed—probably with torpedoes, improved by Ericksen or some other specialist possessing a first-class brain stolen form the tomb to work for Dr. Fu Manchu. Therefore why did he submit to arrest?”
“I don’t follow.”
“I agree that the circumstances were peculiar, and possibly I am pessimistic. But I am not satisfied. I have been in touch with the Foreign Office. The Naval resources of Europe already will be combing the Mediterranean for the mysterious submarine. But—” he turned, and I met the glance of the steel-gray eyes—”do you think they will find it?”
“Why not?”
He snapped his teeth together and pulled out from his pocket a very large and dilapidated rubber pouch, and at the same time a big-bowled and much charred briar. I recognized the pouch, remembering when and where I had last seen it.
“I thought I had lost that for you, Sir Denis!” I said.
“So did I,” he rapped; “but I found it on my way down. It’s an old friend which I should have hated to lose. Hello! here we are.”
As he began to charge his pipe, the driver of the car had turned into that steeply sloping lane which led up to the iron gates of the Villa Ste Claire.
“I don’t expect to learn anything here. Sterling,” said Sir Denis, “which is worth while. But there’s no other line of investigation open at the moment. Dr. Fu Manchu’s arrest is a very delicate matter. He has already applied to his Consul, and demanded that the Chinese Legation in Paris shall be notified of the state of affairs! To put the thing in a nutshelclass="underline"
unless there is some evidence here—and I don’t expect to find it—to connect him with the recent outrages in the neighbourhood or to establish his association with the epidemic, which is frankly hopeless, it means extradition.”
“Have you arranged for it?” I asked eagerly.
“Yes. But even if we get him back to England—and I know his dossier at Scotland Yard from A to Z——”
He paused and stuffed the big pouch into his pocket; some coarse-cut mixture which overhung the bowl of his briar lent it the appearance of a miniature rock garden.
“What!”
“The law of England has many loopholes.”
chapter forty-ninth
MAITREFOLI
the absence of reporters from Ste Claire, the gate of which was guarded by police, amazed me.
“There are some things which are too important for publicity,” said Sir Denis. “And in France, as well as in England, we have this advantage over America: we can silence the newspapers. The only witnesses of any use in a court of law which we have captured so far are the four Chinese bodyservants of the doctor’s who were on board the yacht. Some of these you can identify, I believe?”