Читать книгу Fu Manchu's Bride - Arthur Henry Ward - Страница 12
ОглавлениеFAH LO SUEE
The end of that interview is hazy in my memory. Concerning one detail, however, I have no doubt: Mrs. Petrie did not again approach the sick man’s bed. Despite her wonderful self-discipline, she could not entirely hide her apprehension. I detected her casting swift glances at Petrie and—once—upwards towards the solitary window.
That awful warning, so mysteriously spoken—could have related only to her....
I rang for Sister Thérèse and arranged that the night concierge should conduct the visitor to her car. I suspected that the neighbourhood was none too safe.
Mrs. Petrie gave me the address of a hotel in Cannes, asking that she be kept in touch. She would return, she said, unless summoned earlier, at eight in the morning. She had fully regained her graceful composure by this time, and I found myself wondering what her true nationality could be. Her languid calm was hard to reconcile with wifely devotion: indeed, I had expected her to insist upon remaining.
And when, with a final glance at Petrie and an enigmatical smile to me, she went out with Sister Thérèse, I turned and stared at the doctor. I could detect no change whatever, except that it seemed to me that the purple shadow on his brow was not so dark.
Could it be he who had spoken?
His face was dreadfully haggard, looking almost emaciated, and his lips, dry and cracked, were slightly parted so as to expose his teeth. In that unnatural smile I thought I saw the beginning of the death grin which characterized this ghastly pestilence.
He did not move, nor could I detect him breathing. I glanced at the window, high above my head, where not so long before I had seen those crooked yellow fingers. But it showed as a black patch in the dull white mass of the wall.
The pines began whispering softly again: “Fleurette—Derceto....”
If Petrie had not spoken—and I found it hard to believe that he had—whose was the voice which had uttered the words, “Beware ... of her?”
I had ample time to consider the problem and many others as well which had arisen in the course of that eventful day. Dr. Cartier looked in at about eleven o’clock, and Sister Thérèse made regular visits.
There was no change to be noted in Petrie’s condition.
It was a dreary vigil; in fact, an eerie one. For company I had an apparently dead man, and some of the most horrible memories which one could very well conjure up as a background for that whispering silence.
At some time shortly after midnight I heard swift footsteps coming along the passage which led to Petrie’s room. The door opened, and Nayland Smith walked in.
One glance warned me that something was amiss.
He crossed and stared down at Petrie in silence, then, turning to Sister Thérèse, who had entered close behind him:
“I wonder, Sister,” he said rapidly, “if I might ask you to remain here until Dr. Cartier arrives, and allow Mr. Sterling and myself the use of your room?”
“But of course, with the greatest pleasure,” she replied, and smiled in her sweet, patient way.
Together we went along the narrow corridor and presently came to that little room used by the nurse on duty. It was very simple and very characteristic.
There was a glass-fronted cabinet containing medicines, dressings, and surgical appliances. Beside a little white table was placed a very hard white enamelled chair. An open book lay on the table; and the only decoration was a crucifix on the distempered wall.
Sir Denis did not speak for a moment, but paced restlessly to and fro in that confined space twitching at the lobe of his ear—a habit which I later came to recognize as indicative of deep thought.
Suddenly he turned and faced me.
“Sir Manston Rorke died early yesterday morning,” he said, “from an overdose of heroin or something of the kind!”
“What!”
I had been seated on the edge of the little table, but at that I sprang up. Sir Denis nodded grimly.
“But was he—addicted to drugs?”
“Apparently. He was a widower who lived alone in a flat in Curzon Street. There was only one resident servant—a man who had been with him for many years.”
“It’s Fate,” I groaned. “What a ghastly coincidence!”
“Coincidence!” Sir Denis snapped. “There’s no coincidence! Sir Manston’s consulting rooms in Wimpole Street, where he kept all his records and pursued his studies, were burgled during the night. I assume that they found what they had come for. A large volume containing prescriptions is missing.”
“But, if they found what they came for——”
“That was good enough,” he interrupted. “Hence my assumption that they did. Sir Manston had a remarkable memory. Having destroyed the prescription book, the next thing was to destroy ... that inconvenient memory!”
“You mean—he was murdered?”
“I have little doubt on that point,” Sir Denis replied harshly. “The butler has been detained—but there’s small hope of learning anything from him, even if he knows. But I gather, Sterling—” he fixed a penetrating stare upon me—“that a similar attempt was made here to-night.”
“Here? Whatever do you mean, Sir Denis?”
But even as I spoke the words I thought I knew, and:
“Why, of course!” I cried—“the dacoit!”
“Dacoit,” he rapped. “What dacoit?”
“You don’t know? But, on second thoughts, how could you know! It was shortly after you left. Someone looked in at the window of Petrie’s room——”
“Looked in?” He glanced up at the corresponding window of Sister Thérèse’s room. “It’s twelve feet above ground level.”
“I know. Nevertheless, someone looked in. I heard a faint scuffling—and I was just in time to catch a glimpse of a yellow hand as the man dropped back.”
“Yellow hand?” Sir Denis laughed shortly. “Our cross-eyed friend from the Villa Jasmin, Sterling! He was spying out the land. Shortly after this, I suggest, the lady arrived?”
I stared at him in surprise.
“You are quite right. I suppose Sister Thérèse told you? Mrs. Petrie came a few minutes afterwards.”
“Describe her,” he directed tersely.
Startled by his manner, I did my best to comply, when:
“She has green eyes,” he broke in.
“I couldn’t swear to it. Her veil obscured her eyes.”
“They are green,” he affirmed confidently. “Her skin is the colour of ivory, and she has slender, indolent hands. She is as graceful as a leopardess, of the purring of which treacherous creature her voice surely reminded you?”
Sir Denis’s sardonic humour completed my bewilderment. Recalling the almost tender way in which he had spoken the words, “Poor Kâramanèh,” I found it impossible to reconcile those tones with the savagery of his present manner.
“I’m afraid you puzzle me,” I confessed. “I quite understood that you held Mrs. Petrie in the highest esteem.”
“So I do,” he snapped. “But we are not talking about Mrs. Petrie!”
“Not talking about Mrs. Petrie! But——”
“The lady who favoured you with a visit to-night, Sterling, is known as Fah Lo Suee (I don’t know why). She is the daughter of the most dangerous man living to-day, East or West—Dr. Fu Manchu!”
“But, Sir Denis!”
He suddenly grasped my shoulders, staring into my eyes.
“No one can blame you if you have been duped, Sterling. You thought you were dealing with Petrie’s wife: it was a stroke of daring genius on the part of the enemy——”
He paused; but his look asked the question.
“I refused to permit her to touch him, nevertheless,” I said.
Sir Denis’s expression changed. His brown eager face lighted up.
“Good man!” he said in a low voice, and squeezed my shoulders, then dropped his hands. “Good man.”
It was mild enough, as appreciation goes, yet somehow I valued those words more highly than a decoration.
“Did she mention my name?”
“No.”
“Did you?”
I thought a while, and then:
“No,” I replied. “I am positive on the point.”
“Good!” he muttered, and began to pace up and down again. “There’s just a chance—just a chance he has overlooked me. Tell me, omitting no detail that you recall, exactly what took place.”
To the best of my ability, I did as he directed.
He interrupted me once only: when I spoke of that sepulchral warning—
“Where was the woman when you heard it?” he rapped.
“Practically in my arms. I had just dragged her back.”
“The voice was impossible to identify?”
“Quite.”
“And you could not swear to the fact that Petrie’s lips moved?”
“No. It was a fleeting impression, no more.”
“It was after this episode that she subjected you to her hypnotic tricks?”
“Hypnotic tricks!”
“Yes—you have narrowly escaped, Sterling.”
“You refer,” I said with some embarrassment for I had been perfectly frank—“to my strange impulses?”
He nodded.
“No. It was the voice which broke the spell.”
He twitched his ear for some moments, then:
“Go on!” he rapped.
And when I had come to the end:
“You got off lightly,” he said. “She is as dangerous as a poised cobra! And now, I have another job for you.”
“I’m ready.”
“Hurry back to Villa Jasmin—and call me up here if all’s well there. Have you a gun?”
“No. I lent mine to the chauffeur.”
“Take this.” He drew an automatic from his topcoat pocket. “Drive like hell and shoot if necessary. You are a marked man....”
As I hurried out, Dr. Cartier hurried in.
“Ah!” Nayland Smith exclaimed. “I regret troubling you, doctor; but I want you to examine, Petrie very carefully.”
“What! there is some change?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I want you to find out.”
