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Page 84
I stared at Smith, not comprehending what prompted this singular course.
"Now that you can think clearly, Mr. West," he said, "of what
does your experience remind you? The errors of perception
regarding time; the idea of SEEING A SOUND; the illusion
that the room alternately increased and diminished in size;
your fit of laughter, and the recollection of the name Bayard Taylor.
Since evidently you are familiar with that author's work--
'The Land of the Saracen,' is it not?--these symptoms of the attack
should be familiar, I think."
Norris West pressed his hands to his evidently aching head.
"Bayard Taylor's book," he said dully. "Yes! . . . I know of what my
brain sought to remind me--Taylor's account of his experience under
hashish. Mr. Smith, someone doped me with hashish!"
Smith nodded grimly.
"Cannabis indica," I said--"Indian hemp. That is what you were drugged
with. I have no doubt that now you experience a feeling of nausea and
intense thirst, with aching in the muscles, particularly the deltoid.
I think you must have taken at least fifteen grains."
Smith stopped his perambulations immediately in front of West,
looking into his dulled eyes.
"Someone visited your chambers last night," he said slowly,
"and for your chloral tabloids substituted some containing hashish,
or perhaps not pure hashish. Fu-Manchu is a profound chemist."
Norris West started.
"Someone substituted--" he began.
"Exactly," said Smith, looking at him keenly; "someone who was
here yesterday. Have you any idea whom it could have been?"
West hesitated. "I had a visitor in the afternoon," he said,
seemingly speaking the words unwillingly, "but--"
"A lady?" jerked Smith. "I suggest that it was a lady."
West nodded.
"You're quite right," he admitted. "I don't know how you arrived
at the conclusion, but a lady whose acquaintance I made recently--
a foreign lady."
"Karamaneh!" snapped Smith.
"I don't know what you mean in the least, but she came here--
knowing this to be my present address--to ask me to protect her from
a mysterious man who had followed her right from Charing Cross.
She said he was down in the lobby, and naturally, I asked her to wait
here whilst I went and sent him about his business."
He laughed shortly.
"I am over-old," he said, "to be guyed by a woman.
You spoke just now of someone called Fu-Manchu. Is
that the crook I'm indebted to for the loss of my plans?
I've had attempts made by agents of two European governments,
but a Chinaman is a novelty."
"This Chinaman," Smith assured him, "is the greatest novelty of his age.
You recognize your symptoms now from Bayard Taylor's account?"
"Mr. West's statement," I said, "ran closely parallel
with portions of Moreau's book on `Hashish Hallucinations.'
Only Fu-Manchu, I think, would have thought of employing Indian hemp.
I doubt, though, if it was pure Cannabis indica. At any rate,
it acted as an opiate--"
"And drugged Mr. West," interrupted Smith, "sufficiently to enable
Fu-Manchu to enter unobserved."
"Whilst it produced symptoms which rendered him an easy subject
for the Doctor's influence. It is difficult in this case to separate
hallucination from reality, but I think, Mr. West, that Fu-Manchu
must have exercised an hypnotic influence upon your drugged brain.
We have evidence that he dragged from you the secret of the combination."
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