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Page 112
"Where?"
Nayland Smith rapped out the question violently, turning in a flash
from the picture which he was examining.
"In this room!" she whispered glancing furtively, affrightedly about her.
"Something tells Aziz when HE is near--and I, too, feel strangely afraid.
Oh, can it be that he is not dead!"
She held my arm tightly. Her brother was searching the room with big,
velvet black eyes. I studied the faces of the several visitors;
and Smith was staring about him with the old alert look, and tugging
nervously at the lobe of his ear. The name of the giant foe of the white
race instantaneously had strung him up to a pitch of supreme intensity.
Our united scrutinies discovered no figure which could have been
that of the Chinese doctor. Who could mistake that long, gaunt shape,
with the high, mummy-like shoulders, and the indescribable gait,
which I can only liken to that of an awkward cat?
Then, over the heads of a group of people who stood by the doorway, I saw
Smith peering at someone--at someone who passed across the outer room.
Stepping aside, I, too, obtained a glimpse of this person.
As I saw him, he was a tall, old man, wearing a black Inverness
coat and a rather shabby silk hat. He had long white hair
and a patriarchal beard, wore smoked glasses and walked slowly,
leaning upon a stick.
Smith's gaunt face paled. With a rapid glance at Karamaneh,
he made off across the room.
Could it be Dr. Fu-Manchu?
Many days had passed since, already half-choked by Inspector Weymouth's iron
grip, Fu-Manchu, before our own eyes, had been swallowed up by the Thames.
Even now men were seeking his body, and that of his last victim.
Nor had we left any stone unturned. Acting upon information furnished
by Karamaneh, the police had searched every known haunt of the murder group.
But everything pointed to the fact that the group was disbanded and dispersed;
that the lord of strange deaths who had ruled it was no more.
Yet Smith was not satisfied. Neither, let me confess,
was I. Every port was watched; and in suspected districts
a kind of house-to-house patrol had been instituted.
Unknown to the great public, in those days a secret war waged--
a war in which all the available forces of the authorities
took the field against one man! But that one man was the evil
of the East incarnate.
When we rejoined him, Nayland Smith was talking to the commissionaire
at the door. He turned to me.
"That is Professor Jenner Monde," he said. "The sergeant, here,
knows him well."
The name of the celebrated Orientalist of course was familiar to me,
although I had never before set eyes upon him.
"The Professor was out East the last time I was there, sir,"
stated the commissionaire. "I often used to see him. But he's
an eccentric old gentleman. Seems to live in a world of his own.
He's recently back from China, I think."
Nayland Smith stood clicking his teeth together in irritable hesitation.
I heard Karamaneh sigh, and, looking at her, I saw that her cheeks were
regaining their natural color.
She smiled in pathetic apology.
"If he was here he is gone," she said. "I am not afraid now."
Smith thanked the commissionaire for his information and we
quitted the gallery.
"Professor Jenner Monde," muttered my friend, "has lived so long
in China as almost to be a Chinaman. I have never met him--
never seen him, before; but I wonder--"
"You wonder what, Smith?"
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