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Page 120
Inspector Weymouth, dazed, disheveled, clutching his head
as a man who has passed through the Valley of the Shadow--
but sane--sane!--walked out into the porch!
He looked towards us--his eyes wild, but not with the fearsome
wildness of insanity.
"Mr. Smith!" he cried--and staggered down the path--"Dr. Petrie! What--"
There came a deafening explosion. From EVERY visible window
of the deserted cottage flames burst forth!
"QUICK!" Smith's voice rose almost to a scream--"into the house!"
He raced up the path, past Inspector Weymouth, who stood
swaying there like a drunken man. I was close upon his heels.
Behind me came the police.
The door was impassable! Already, it vomited a deathly heat,
borne upon stifling fumes like those of the mouth of the Pit.
We burst a window. The room within was a furnace!
"My God!" cried someone. "This is supernatural!"
"Listen!" cried another. "Listen!"
The crowd which a fire can conjure up at any hour of day
or night, out of the void of nowhere, was gathering already.
But upon all descended a pall of silence.
From the heat of the holocaust a voice proclaimed itself--a voice raised,
not in anguish but in TRIUMPH! It chanted barbarically--and was still.
The abnormal flames rose higher--leaping forth from every window.
"The alarm!" said Smith hoarsely. "Call up the brigade!"
I come to the close of my chronicle, and feel that I betray a trust--
the trust of my reader. For having limned in the colors at my
command the fiendish Chinese doctor, I am unable to conclude my task
as I should desire, unable, with any consciousness of finality,
to write Finis to the end of my narrative.
It seems to me sometimes that my pen is but temporarily idle--that I
have but dealt with a single phase of a movement having a hundred phases.
One sequel I hope for, and against all the promptings of logic and
Western bias. If my hope shall be realized I cannot, at this time,
pretend to state.
The future, 'mid its many secrets, holds this precious one from me.
I ask you then, to absolve me from the charge of ill completing my work;
for any curiosity with which this narrative may leave the reader burdened
is shared by the writer.
With intent, I have rushed you from the chambers of Professor
Jenner Monde to that closing episode at the deserted cottage;
I have made the pace hot in order to impart to these last
pages of my account something of the breathless scurry which
characterized those happenings.
My canvas may seem sketchy: it is my impression of the reality.
No hard details remain in my mind of the dealings of that night.
Fu-Manchu arrested--Fu-Manchu, manacled, entering the cottage on his
mission of healing; Weymouth, miraculously rendered sane, coming forth;
the place in flames.
And then?
To a shell the cottage burned, with an incredible rapidity
which pointed to some hidden agency; to a shell about ashes
which held NO TRACE OF HUMAN BONES!
It has been asked of me: Was there no possibility of
Fu-Manchu's having eluded us in the ensuing confusion?
Was there no loophole of escape?
I reply, that so far as I was able to judge, a rat could scarce
have quitted the building undetected. Yet that Fu-Manchu had,
in some incomprehensible manner and by some mysterious agency,
produced those abnormal flames, I cannot doubt.
Did he voluntarily ignite his own funeral pyre?
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