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Page 111
CHAPTER XXVIII
OF all that we had hoped for in our pursuit of Fu-Manchu how
little had we accomplished. Excepting Karamaneh and her brother
(who were victims and not creatures of the Chinese doctor's)
not one of the formidable group had fallen alive into our hands.
Dreadful crimes had marked Fu-Manchu's passage through the land.
Not one-half of the truth (and nothing of the later developments)
had been made public. Nayland Smith's authority was sufficient
to control the press.
In the absence of such a veto a veritable panic must have seized upon
the entire country; for a monster--a thing more than humanly evil--
existed in our midst.
Always Fu-Manchu's secret activities had centered about the great waterway.
There was much of poetic justice in his end; for the Thames had claimed him,
who so long had used the stream as a highway for the passage to and fro for
his secret forces. Gone now were the yellow men who had been the instruments
of his evil will; gone was the giant intellect which had controlled
the complex murder machine. Karamaneh, whose beauty he had used as a lure,
at last was free, and no more with her smile would tempt men to death--
that her brother might live.
Many there are, I doubt not, who will regard the Eastern girl with horror.
I ask their forgiveness in that I regarded her quite differently.
No man having seen her could have condemned her unheard. Many, having looked
into her lovely eyes, had they found there what I found, must have forgiven
her almost any crime.
That she valued human life but little was no matter for wonder.
Her nationality--her history--furnished adequate excuse for an attitude
not condonable in a European equally cultured.
But indeed let me confess that hers was a nature incomprehensible to me
in some respects. The soul of Karamaneh was a closed book to my short-sighted
Western eyes. But the body of Karamaneh was exquisite; her beauty of a kind
that was a key to the most extravagant rhapsodies of Eastern poets.
Her eyes held a challenge wholly Oriental in its appeal; her lips,
even in repose, were a taunt. And, herein, East is West and West is East.
Finally, despite her lurid history, despite the scornful self-possession
of which I knew her capable, she was an unprotected girl--
in years, I believe, a mere child--whom Fate had cast in my way.
At her request, we had booked passages for her brother and herself
to Egypt. The boat sailed in three days. But Karamaneh's beautiful
eyes were sad; often I detected tears on the black lashes.
Shall I endeavor to describe my own tumultuous, conflicting emotions?
It would be useless, since I know it to be impossible.
For in those dark eyes burned a fire I might not see; those silken
lashes veiled a message I dared not read.
Nayland Smith was not blind to the facts of the complicated situation.
I can truthfully assert that he was the only man of my acquaintance who,
having come in contact with Karamaneh, had kept his head.
We endeavored to divert her mind from the recent tragedies by a round
of amusements, though with poor Weymouth's body still at the mercy
of unknown waters Smith and I made but a poor show of gayety;
and I took a gloomy pride in the admiration which our lovely
companion everywhere excited. I learned, in those days, how rare
a thing in nature is a really beautiful woman.
One afternoon we found ourselves at an exhibition of water
colors in Bond Street. Karamaneh was intensely interested
in the subjects of the drawings--which were entirely Egyptian.
As usual, she furnished matter for comment amongst the other visitors,
as did the boy, Aziz, her brother, anew upon the world from his
living grave in the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
Suddenly Aziz clutched at his sister's arm, whispering rapidly in Arabic.
I saw her peachlike color fade; saw her become pale and wild-eyed--
the haunted Karamaneh of the old days.
She turned to me.
"Dr. Petrie--he says that Fu-Manchu is here!"
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