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Page 67
Quite unemotionally he spoke, then turned again to his book, his test-
tube and retort, in the most matter-of-fact way imaginable. I do not
think the most frenzied outburst on his part, the most fiendish
threats, could have produced such effect upon me as those cold and
carefully calculated words, spoken in that unique voice which rang
about the room sibilantly. In its tones, in the glance of the green
eyes, in the very pose of the gaunt, high-shouldered body, there was
power--force.
I counted myself lost, and in view of the doctor's words, studied the
progress of the experiment with frightful interest. But a few moments
sufficed in which to realize that, for all my training, I knew as
little of chemistry--of chemistry as understood by this man's genius--
as a junior student in surgery knows of trephining. The process in
operation was a complete mystery to me; the means and the end alike
incomprehensible.
Thus, in the heavy silence of that room, a silence only broken by the
regular bubbling from the test tube, I found my attention straying
from the table to the other objects surrounding it; and at one of them
my gaze stopped and remained chained with horror.
It was a glass jar, some five feet in height and filled with viscous
fluid of a light amber color. Out from this peered a hideous, dog-like
face, low browed, with pointed ears and a nose almost hoggishly flat.
By the death-grin of the face the gleaming fangs were revealed; and
the body, the long yellow-gray body, rested, or seemed to rest, upon
short, malformed legs, whilst one long limp arm, the right, hung down
straightly in the preservative. The left arm had been severed above
the elbow.
Fu-Manchu, finding his experiment to be proceeding favorably, lifted
his eyes to me again.
"You are interested in my poor Cynocephalyte?" he said; and his eyes
were filmed like the eyes of one afflicted with cataract. "He was a
devoted servant, Dr. Petrie, but the lower influences in his
genealogy, sometimes conquered. Then he got out of hand; and at last
he was so ungrateful toward those who had educated him, that, in one
of those paroxysms of his, he attacked and killed a most faithful
Burman, one of my oldest followers."
Fu-Manchu returned to his experiment.
Not the slightest emotion had he exhibited thus far, but had chatted
with me as any other scientist might chat with a friend who casually
visits his laboratory. The horror of the thing was playing havoc with
my own composure, however. There I lay, fettered, in the same room
with this man whose existence was a menace to the entire white race,
whilst placidly he pursued an experiment designed, if his own words
were believable, to cut me off from my kind--to wreak some change,
psychological or physiological I knew not; to place me, it might be,
upon a level with such brute-things as that which now hung, half
floating, in the glass jar!
Something I knew of the history of that ghastly specimen, that thing
neither man nor ape; for within my own knowledge had it not attempted
the life of Nayland Smith, and was it not I who, with an ax, had
maimed it in the instant of one of its last slayings?
Of these things Dr. Fu-Manchu was well aware, so that his placid
speech was doubly, trebly horrible to my ears. I sought, furtively, to
move my arms, only to realize that, as I had anticipated, the
handcuffs were chained to a ring in the wall behind me. The
establishments of Dr. Fu-Manchu were always well provided with such
contrivances as these.
I uttered a short, harsh laugh. Fu-Manchu stood up slowly from the
table, and, placing the test-tube in a rack, stood the latter
carefully upon a shelf at his side.
"I am happy to find you in such good humor," he said softly. "Other
affairs call me; and, in my absence, that profound knowledge of
chemistry, of which I have had evidence in the past, will enable you
to follow with intelligent interest the action of these violet rays
upon this exceptionally fine specimen of Siberian amanita muscaria. At
some future time, possibly when you are my guest in China--which
country I am now making arrangements for you to visit--I shall discuss
with you some lesser-known properties of this species; and I may say
that one of your first tasks when you commence your duties as
assistant in my laboratory in Kiang-su, will be to conduct a series of
twelve experiments, which I have outlined, into other potentialities
of this unique fungus."
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