Читать книгу The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu - Sax Rohmer - Страница 7

"Shen-Yan's is a dope-shop in one of the burrows off the old Ratcliff

Highway," said Inspector Weymouth.

"'Singapore Charlie's,' they call it. It's a center for some of the

Chinese societies, I believe, but all sorts of opium-smokers use it.

There have never been any complaints that I know of. I don't

understand this."

We stood in his room at New Scotland Yard, bending over a sheet of

foolscap upon which were arranged some burned fragments from poor

Cadby's grate, for so hurriedly had the girl done her work that

combustion had not been complete.

"What do we make of this?" said Smith. "'. . . Hunchback . . . lascar

went up . . . unlike others . . . not return . . . till Shen-Yan'

(there is no doubt about the name, I think) 'turned me out . . . booming

sound . . . lascar in . . . mortuary I could ident . . . not for days,

or suspici . . . Tuesday night in a different make . . . snatch

. . . pigtail . . .'"

"The pigtail again!" rapped Weymouth.

"She evidently burned the torn-out pages all together," continued

Smith. "They lay flat, and this was in the middle. I see the hand of

retributive justice in that, Inspector. Now we have a reference to a

hunchback, and what follows amounts to this: A lascar (amongst several

other persons) went up somewhere--presumably upstairs--at Shen-Yan's,

and did not come down again. Cadby, who was there disguised, noted a

booming sound. Later, he identified the lascar in some mortuary. We

have no means of fixing the date of this visit to Shen-Yan's, but I

feel inclined to put down the 'lascar' as the dacoit who was murdered

by Fu-Manchu! It is sheer supposition, however. But that Cadby meant

to pay another visit to the place in a different 'make-up' or disguise,

is evident, and that the Tuesday night proposed was last night is a

reasonable deduction. The reference to a pigtail is principally

interesting because of what was found on Cadby's body."

Inspector Weymouth nodded affirmatively, and Smith glanced at his watch.

"Exactly ten-twenty-three," he said. "I will trouble you, Inspector,

for the freedom of your fancy wardrobe. There is time to spend an hour

in the company of Shen-Yan's opium friends."

Weymouth raised his eyebrows.

"It might be risky. What about an official visit?"

Nayland Smith laughed.

"Worse than useless! By your own showing, the place is open to

inspection. No; guile against guile! We are dealing with a Chinaman,

with the incarnate essence of Eastern subtlety, with the most

stupendous genius that the modern Orient has produced."

"I don't believe in disguises," said Weymouth, with a certain

truculence. "It's mostly played out, that game, and generally leads to

failure. Still, if you're determined, sir, there's an end of it.

Foster will make your face up. What disguise do you propose to adopt?"

"A sort of Dago seaman, I think; something like poor Cadby. I can rely

on my knowledge of the brutes, if I am sure of my disguise."

"You are forgetting me, Smith," I said.

He turned to me quickly.

"Petrie," he replied, "it is MY business, unfortunately, but it is no

sort of hobby."

"You mean that you can no longer rely upon me?" I said angrily.

Smith grasped my hand, and met my rather frigid stare with a look of

real concern on his gaunt, bronzed face.

"My dear old chap," he answered, "that was really unkind. You know

that I meant something totally different."

"It's all right, Smith;" I said, immediately ashamed of my choler, and

wrung his hand heartily. "I can pretend to smoke opium as well as

another. I shall be going, too, Inspector."

As a result of this little passage of words, some twenty minutes later

two dangerous-looking seafaring ruffians entered a waiting cab,

accompanied by Inspector Weymouth, and were driven off into the

wilderness of London's night. In this theatrical business there was,

to my mind, something ridiculous--almost childish--and I could have

laughed heartily had it not been that grim tragedy lurked so near to

farce.

The mere recollection that somewhere at our journey's end Fu-Manchu

awaited us was sufficient to sober my reflections--Fu-Manchu, who, with

all the powers represented by Nayland Smith pitted against him, pursued

his dark schemes triumphantly, and lurked in hiding within this very

area which was so sedulously patrolled--Fu-Manchu, whom I had never

seen, but whose name stood for horrors indefinable! Perhaps I was

destined to meet the terrible Chinese doctor to-night.

I ceased to pursue a train of thought which promised to lead to morbid

depths, and directed my attention to what Smith was saying.

"We will drop down from Wapping and reconnoiter, as you say the place

is close to the riverside. Then you can put us ashore somewhere below.

Ryman can keep the launch close to the back of the premises, and your

fellows will be hanging about near the front, near enough to hear the

whistle."

"Yes," assented Weymouth; "I've arranged for that. If you are

suspected, you shall give the alarm?"

"I don't know," said Smith thoughtfully. "Even in that event I might

wait awhile."

"Don't wait too long," advised the Inspector. "We shouldn't be much

wiser if your next appearance was on the end of a grapnel, somewhere

down Greenwich Reach, with half your fingers missing."

The cab pulled up outside the river police depot, and Smith and I

entered without delay, four shabby-looking fellows who had been seated

in the office springing up to salute the Inspector, who followed us in.

"Guthrie and Lisle," he said briskly, "get along and find a dark corner

which commands the door of Singapore Charlie's off the old Highway.

You look the dirtiest of the troupe, Guthrie; you might drop asleep on

the pavement, and Lisle can argue with you about getting home. Don't

move till you hear the whistle inside or have my orders, and note

everybody that goes in and comes out. You other two belong to this

division?"

The C.I.D. men having departed, the remaining pair saluted again.

"Well, you're on special duty to-night. You've been prompt, but don't

stick your chests out so much. Do you know of a back way to

Shen-Yan's?"

The men looked at one another, and both shook their heads.

"There's an empty shop nearly opposite, sir," replied one of them. "I

know a broken window at the back where we could climb in. Then we

could get through to the front and watch from there."

"Good!" cried the Inspector. "See you are not spotted, though; and if

you hear the whistle, don't mind doing a bit of damage, but be inside

Shen-Yan's like lightning. Otherwise, wait for orders."

Inspector Ryman came in, glancing at the clock.

"Launch is waiting," he said.

"Right," replied Smith thoughtfully. "I am half afraid, though, that

the recent alarms may have scared our quarry--your man, Mason, and then

Cadby. Against which we have that, so far as he is likely to know,

there has been no clew pointing to this opium den. Remember, he thinks

Cadby's notes are destroyed."

"The whole business is an utter mystery to me," confessed Ryman. "I'm

told that there's some dangerous Chinese devil hiding somewhere in

London, and that you expect to find him at Shen-Yan's. Supposing he

uses that place, which is possible, how do you know he's there

to-night?"

"I don't," said Smith; "but it is the first clew we have had pointing

to one of his haunts, and time means precious lives where Dr. Fu-Manchu

is concerned."

"Who is he, sir, exactly, this Dr. Fu-Manchu?"

"I have only the vaguest idea, Inspector; but he is no ordinary

criminal. He is the greatest genius which the powers of evil have put

on earth for centuries. He has the backing of a political group whose

wealth is enormous, and his mission in Europe is to PAVE THE WAY! Do

you follow me? He is the advance-agent of a movement so epoch-making

that not one Britisher, and not one American, in fifty thousand has

ever dreamed of it."

Ryman stared, but made no reply, and we went out, passing down to the

breakwater and boarding the waiting launch. With her crew of three,

the party numbered seven that swung out into the Pool, and, clearing

the pier, drew in again and hugged the murky shore.

The night had been clear enough hitherto, but now came scudding

rainbanks to curtain the crescent moon, and anon to unveil her again

and show the muddy swirls about us. The view was not extensive from

the launch. Sometimes a deepening of the near shadows would tell of a

moored barge, or lights high above our heads mark the deck of a large

vessel. In the floods of moonlight gaunt shapes towered above; in the

ensuing darkness only the oily glitter of the tide occupied the

foreground of the night-piece.

The Surrey shore was a broken wall of blackness, patched with lights

about which moved hazy suggestions of human activity. The bank we were

following offered a prospect even more gloomy--a dense, dark mass, amid

which, sometimes, mysterious half-tones told of a dock gate, or sudden

high lights leapt flaring to the eye.

Then, out of the mystery ahead, a green light grew and crept down upon

us. A giant shape loomed up, and frowned crushingly upon the little

craft. A blaze of light, the jangle of a bell, and it was past. We

were dancing in the wash of one of the Scotch steamers, and the murk

had fallen again.

Discords of remote activity rose above the more intimate throbbing of

our screw, and we seemed a pigmy company floating past the workshops of

Brobdingnagian toilers. The chill of the near water communicated

itself to me, and I felt the protection of my shabby garments

inadequate against it.

Far over on the Surrey shore a blue light--vaporous,

mysterious--flicked translucent tongues against the night's curtain.

It was a weird, elusive flame, leaping, wavering, magically changing

from blue to a yellowed violet, rising, falling.

"Only a gasworks," came Smith's voice, and I knew that he, too, had

been watching those elfin fires. "But it always reminds me of a

Mexican teocalli, and the altar of sacrifice."

The simile was apt, but gruesome. I thought of Dr. Fu-Manchu and the

severed fingers, and could not repress a shudder.

"On your left, past the wooden pier! Not where the lamp is--beyond

that; next to the dark, square building--Shen-Yan's."

It was Inspector Ryman speaking.

"Drop us somewhere handy, then," replied Smith, "and lie close in, with

your ears wide open. We may have to run for it, so don't go far away."

From the tone of his voice I knew that the night mystery of the Thames

had claimed at least one other victim.

"Dead slow," came Ryman's order. "We'll put in to the Stone Stairs."