CHAPTER XXXIII. AN ANTI-CLIMAX
One hour later I stood in the entrance hall of our chambers in the court adjoining Fleet Street. Some one who had come racing up the stairs, now had inserted a key in the lock. Open swung the door—and Nayland Smith entered, in a perfect whirl of excitement.
"Petrie! Petrie!" he cried, and seized both my hands—"you have missed a night of nights! Man alive! we have the whole gang—the great Ki-Ming included!" His eyes were blazing. "Weymouth has made no fewer than twenty-five arrests, some of the prisoners being well-known Orientals. It will be the devil's own work to keep it all quiet, but Scotland Yard has already advised the Press." "Congratulations, old man," I said, and looked him squarely in the eyes. Something there must have been in my glance at variance with the spoken words. His expression changed; he grasped my shoulder.
" She was not there," he said, "but please God, we'll find her now. It's only a question of time." But, even as he spoke, the old, haunted look was creeping back into the lean face. He gave me a rapid glance; then:—
"I might as well make a clean breast of it," he rapped. "Fu-Manchu escaped! Furthermore, when we got lights, the woman had vanished, too." "The woman!" "There was a woman at this strange gathering, Petrie. Heaven only knows who she really is. According to Fu-Manchu she is that woman of mystery concerning whose existence strange stories are current in the East; the future Empress of a universal empire! But of course I decline to accept the story, Petrie! if ever the Yellow races overran Europe, I am in no doubt respecting the identity of the person who would ascend the throne of the world!" "Nor I, Smith!" I cried excitedly. "Good God! he holds them all in the palm of his hand! He has welded together the fanatics of every creed of the East into a giant weapon for his personal use! Small wonder that he is so formidable. But, Smith— who is that woman?" "Petrie!" he said slowly, and I knew that I had betrayed my secret, "Petrie—where did you learn all this?" I returned his steady gaze.
"I was present at the meeting of the Si-Fan," I replied steadily. "What? What? You were present?" "I was present! Listen, and I will explain." Standing there in the hallway I related, as briefly as possible, the astounding events of the night. As I told of the woman in the train—
"That confirms my impression that Fu-Manchu was imposing upon the others!" he snapped. "I cannot conceive of a woman recluse from some Lamaserie, surrounded by silent attendants and trained for her exalted destiny in the way that the legendary veiled woman of Tibet is said to be trained, traveling alone in an English railway carriage! Did you observe, Petrie, if her eyes were oblique at all?" "They did not strike me as being oblique. Why do you ask?" "Because I strongly suspect that we have to do with none other than Fu-Manchu's daughter! But go on." "By heavens, Smith! You may be right! I had no idea that a Chinese woman could possess such features." "She may not have a Chinese mother; furthermore, there are pretty women in China as well as in other countries; also, there are hair dyes and cosmetics. But for Heaven's sake go on!" I continued my all but incredible narrative; came to the point where I discovered the straying marmoset and entered the empty house, without provoking any comment from my listener. He stared at me with something very like surprised admiration when I related how I had become an unseen spectator of that singular meeting.
"And I though I had achieved the triumph of my life in gaining admission and smuggling Weymouth and Carter into the roof, armed with hooks and rope-ladders!" he murmured.
Now I came to the moment when, having withdrawn into the empty house, I had heard the police whistle and had heard Smith's voice; I came to the moment when I had found myself face to face with Dr. Fu-Manchu. Nayland Smith's eyes were on fire now; he literally quivered with excitement, when— " Ssh! what's that?" he whispered, and grasped my arm. "I heard something move in the sitting-room, Petrie!" "It was a coal dropping from the grate, perhaps," I said—and rapidly continued my story, telling how, with my pistol to his head, I had forced the Chinese doctor to descend into the hallway of the empty house. "Yes, yes," snapped Smith. "For God's sake go on, man! What have you done with him? Where is he?" I clearly detected a movement myself immediately behind the half-open door of the sitting-room. Smith started and stared intently across my shoulder at the doorway; then his gaze shifted and became fixed upon my face.
"He bought his life from me, Smith." Never can I forget the change that came over my friend's tanned features at those words; never can I forget the pang that I suffered to see it. The fire died out of his eyes and he seemed to grow old and weary in a moment. None too steadily I went on:—
"He offered a price that I could not resist, Smith. Try to forgive me, if you can. I know that I have done a dastardly thing, but—perhaps a day may come in your own life when you will understand. He descended with me to a cellar under the empty house, in which some one was locked. Had I arrested Fu-Manchu this poor captive must have died there of starvation; for no one would ever have suspected that the place had an occupant…." The door of the sitting-room was thrown open, and, wearing my great-coat over the bizarre costume in which I had found her, with her bare ankles and little red slippers peeping grotesquely from below, and her wonderful cloud of hair rippling over the turned-up collar, Kâramaneh came out!
Her great dark eyes were raised to Nayland Smith's with such an appeal in them—an appeal for me —that emotion took me by the throat and had me speechless. I could not look at either of them; I turned aside and stared into the lighted sitting-room.
How long I stood so God knows, and I never shall; but suddenly I found my hand seized in a vice-like grip, I looked around … and Smith, holding my fingers fast in that iron grasp, had his left arm about Kâramaneh's shoulders, and his gray eyes were strangely soft, whilst hers were hidden behind her upraised hands. "Good old Petrie!" said Smith hoarsely. "Wake up, man; we have to get her to a hotel before they all close, remember. I understand, old man. That day came in my life long years ago!"
