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Page 21
"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.
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