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Page 73
Smith made no reply. I divined that he was thinking furiously.
Fu-Manchu moved his hand to caress the marmoset, which had leaped
playfully upon his shoulder, and crouched there gibing at us
in a whistling voice.
"Don't stir!" said Smith savagely. "I warn you!"
Fu-Manchu kept his hand raised.
"May I ask you how you discovered my retreat?" he asked.
"This hulk has been watched since dawn," lied Smith brazenly.
"So?" The Doctor's filmed eyes cleared for a moment.
"And to-day you compelled me to burn a house, and you
have captured one of my people, too. I congratulate you.
She would not betray me though lashed with scorpions."
The great gleaming knife was so near to my neck that a sheet of notepaper
could scarcely have been slipped between blade and vein, I think;
but my heart throbbed even more wildly when I heard those words.
"An impasse," said Fu-Manchu. "I have a proposal to make.
I assume that you would not accept my word for anything?"
"I would not," replied Smith promptly.
"Therefore," pursued the Chinaman, and the occasional guttural
alone marred his perfect English, "I must accept yours.
Of your resources outside this cabin I know nothing.
You, I take it, know as little of mine. My Burmese friend and
Doctor Petrie will lead the way, then; you and I will follow.
We will strike out across the marsh for, say, three hundred yards.
You will then place your pistol on the ground, pledging me your
word to leave it there. I shall further require your assurance
that you will make no attempt upon me until I have retraced
my steps. I and my good servant will withdraw, leaving you,
at the expiration of the specified period, to act as you see fit.
Is it agreed?"
Smith hesitated. Then:
"The dacoit must leave his knife also," he stipulated.
Fu-Manchu smiled his evil smile again.
"Agreed. Shall I lead the way?"
"No!" rapped Smith. "Petrie and the dacoit first; then you; I last."
A guttural word of command from Fu-Manchu, and we left the cabin,
with its evil odors, its mortuary specimens, and its strange instruments,
and in the order arranged mounted to the deck.
"It will be awkward on the ladder," said Fu-Manchu. "Dr. Petrie,
I will accept your word to adhere to the terms."
"I promise," I said, the words almost choking me.
We mounted the rising and dipping ladder, all reached the pier,
and strode out across the flats, the Chinaman always under close
cover of Smith's revolver. Round about our feet, now leaping ahead,
now gamboling back, came and went the marmoset. The dacoit,
dressed solely in a dark loin-cloth, walked beside me, carrying his
huge knife, and sometimes glancing at me with his blood-lustful eyes.
Never before, I venture to say, had an autumn moon lighted such
a scene in that place.
"Here we part," said Fu-Manchu, and spoke another word to his follower.
The man threw his knife upon the ground.
"Search him, Petrie," directed Smith. "He may have a second concealed."
The Doctor consented; and I passed my hands over the man's scanty garments.
"Now search Fu-Manchu."
This also I did. And never have I experienced a similar sense
of revulsion from any human being. I shuddered, as though I
had touched a venomous reptile.
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