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Page 87
From my brief history of the wonderful and evil man who once walked,
by the way unsuspected, in the midst of the people of England--
near whom you, personally, may at some time unwittingly, have been--
I am aware that much must be omitted. I have no space for lengthy
examinations of the many points but ill illuminated with which it is dotted.
This incident at the docks is but one such point.
Another is the singular vision which appeared to me whilst I lay in
the cellar of the house near Windsor. It has since struck me that it
possessed peculiarities akin to those of a hashish hallucination.
Can it be that we were drugged on that occasion with Indian hemp? Cannabis
indica is a treacherous narcotic, as every medical man knows full well;
but Fu-Manchu's knowledge of the drug was far in advance of our slow science.
West's experience proved so much.
I may have neglected opportunities--later, you shall judge if I did so--
opportunities to glean for the West some of the strange knowledge of
the secret East. Perhaps, at a future time, I may rectify my errors.
Perhaps that wisdom--the wisdom stored up by Fu-Manchu--is lost forever.
There is, however, at least a bare possibility of its survival, in part;
and I do not wholly despair of one day publishing a scientific sequel
to this record of our dealings with the Chinese doctor.
CHAPTER XXI
TIME wore on and seemingly brought us no nearer, or very little nearer,
to our goal. So carefully had my friend Nayland Smith excluded
the matter from the press that, whilst public interest was much engaged
with some of the events in the skein of mystery which he had come from
Burma to unravel, outside the Secret Service and the special department
of Scotland Yard few people recognized that the several murders,
robberies and disappearances formed each a link in a chain; fewer still
were aware that a baneful presence was in our midst, that a past
master of the evil arts lay concealed somewhere in the metropolis;
searched for by the keenest wits which the authorities could direct
to the task, but eluding all-triumphant, contemptuous.
One link in that chain Smith himself for long failed to recognize.
Yet it was a big and important link.
"Petrie," he said to me one morning, "listen to this:
"`. . .In sight of Shanghai--a clear, dark night. On board the deck of a junk
passing close to seaward of the Andaman a blue flare started up.
A minute later there was a cry of "Man overboard!"
"`Mr. Lewin, the chief officer, who was in charge, stopped the engines.
A boat was put out. But no one was recovered. There are sharks
in these waters. A fairly heavy sea was running.
"`Inquiry showed the missing man to be a James Edwards,
second class, booked to Shanghai. I think the name was assumed.
The man was some sort of Oriental, and we had had him
under close observation. . . .'"
"That's the end of their report," exclaimed Smith.
He referred to the two C.I.D. men who had joined the Andaman
at the moment of her departure from Tilbury.
He carefully lighted his pipe.
"IS it a victory for China, Petrie?" he said softly.
"Until the great war reveals her secret resources--and I pray that the day
be not in my time--we shall never know," I replied.
Smith began striding up and down the room,
"Whose name," he jerked abruptly, "stands now at the head
of our danger list?"
He referred to a list which we had compiled of the notable men intervening
between the evil genius who secretly had invaded London and the triumph
of his cause--the triumph of the yellow races.
I glanced at our notes. "Lord Southery," I replied.
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