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Page 56
Like some priest of Tezcat he stood, his eyes upraised to the roof,
his lean body quivering--a sight to shock the most unimpressionable mind.
"He is mad!" I whispered to Smith. "God help us, the man
is a dangerous homicidal maniac!"
Nayland Smith's tanned face was very drawn, but he shook his head grimly.
"Dangerous, yes, I agree," he muttered; "his existence is a danger
to the entire white race which, now, we are powerless to avert."
Dr. Fu-Manchu recovered himself, took up the lantern and,
turning abruptly, walked to the door, with his awkward, yet feline gait.
At the threshold be looked back.
"You would have warned Mr. Graham Guthrie?" he said, in a soft voice.
"To-night, at half-past twelve, Mr. Graham Guthrie dies!"
Smith sat silent and motionless, his eyes fixed upon the speaker.
"You were in Rangoon in 1908?" continued Dr. Fu-Manchu--
"you remember the Call?"
From somewhere above us--I could not determine the exact direction--
came a low, wailing cry, an uncanny thing of falling cadences, which, in that
dismal vault, with the sinister yellow-robed figure at the door, seemed to
pour ice into my veins. Its effect upon Smith was truly extraordinary.
His face showed grayly in the faint light, and I heard him draw a hissing
breath through clenched teeth.
"It calls for you!" said Fu-Manchu. "At half-past twelve it calls
for Graham Guthrie!"
The door closed and darkness mantled us again.
"Smith," I said, "what was that?" The horrors about us were playing
havoc with my nerves.
"It was the Call of Siva!" replied Smith hoarsely.
"What is it? Who uttered it? What does it mean?"
"I don't know what it is, Petrie, nor who utters it.
But it means death!"
CHAPTER XIV
THERE may be some who could have lain, chained to that noisome cell,
and felt no fear--no dread of what the blackness might hold.
I confess that I am not one of these. I knew that Nayland
Smith and I stood in the path of the most stupendous genius
who in the world's history had devoted his intellect to crime.
I knew that the enormous wealth of the political group backing
Dr. Fu-Manchu rendered him a menace to Europe and to America
greater than that of the plague. He was a scientist trained
at a great university--an explorer of nature's secrets, who had
gone farther into the unknown, I suppose, than any living man.
His mission was to remove all obstacles--human obstacles--
from the path of that secret movement which was progressing
in the Far East. Smith and I were two such obstacles;
and of all the horrible devices at his command, I wondered,
and my tortured brain refused to leave the subject, by which
of them were we doomed to be dispatched?
Even at that very moment some venomous centipede might
be wriggling towards me over the slime of the stones,
some poisonous spider be preparing to drop from the roof!
Fu-Manchu might have released a serpent in the cellar,
or the air be alive with microbes of a loathsome disease!
"Smith," I said, scarcely recognizing my own voice, "I can't bear
this suspense. He intends to kill us, that is certain, but--"
"Don't worry," came the reply; "he intends to learn our plans first."
"You mean--?"
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