The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu (17 page)

"He has been heavily drugged," said the Doctor, sniffing at
West's lips, "but I cannot say what drug has been used. It isn't
chloroform or anything of that nature. He can safely be left to
sleep it off, I think."

I agreed, after a brief examination.

"It's most extraordinary," said Weymouth. "He rang up the Yard
about an hour ago and said his chambers had been invaded by
Chinamen. Then the man at the 'phone plainly heard him fall. When
we got here his front door was bolted, as you've seen, and the
windows are three floors up. Nothing is disturbed."

"The plans of the aero-torpedo?" rapped Smith.

"I take it they are in the safe in his bedroom," replied the
detective, "and that is locked all right. I think he must have
taken an overdose of something and had illusions. But in case there
was anything in what he mumbled (you could hardly understand him) I
thought it as well to send for you."

"Quite right," said Smith rapidly. His eyes shone like steel.
"Lay him on the bed, Inspector."

It was done, and my friend walked into the bedroom.

Save that the bed was disordered, showing that West had been
sleeping in it, there were no evidences of the extraordinary
invasion mentioned by the drugged man. It was a small room-the
chambers were of that kind which are let furnished-and very neat. A
safe with a combination lock stood in a corner. The window was open
about a foot at the top. Smith tried the safe and found it fast. He
stood for a moment clicking his teeth together, by which I knew him
to be perplexed. He walked over to the window and threw it up. We
both looked out.

"You see," came Weymouth's voice, "it is altogether too far from
the court below for our cunning Chinese friends to have fixed a
ladder with one of their bamboo rod arrangements. And, even if they
could get up there, it's too far down from the roof-two more
stories-for them to have fixed it from there."

Smith nodded thoughtfully, at the same time trying the strength
of an iron bar which ran from side to side of the window-sill.
Suddenly he stooped, with a sharp exclamation. Bending over his
shoulder I saw what it was that had attracted his attention.

Clearly imprinted upon the dust-coated gray stone of the sill
was a confused series of marks-tracks call them what you will.

Smith straightened himself and turned a wondering look upon
me.

"What is it, Petrie?" he said amazedly. "Some kind of bird has
been here, and recently." Inspector Weymouth in turn examined the
marks.

"I never saw bird tracks like these, Mr. Smith," he
muttered.

Smith was tugging at the lobe of his ear.

"No," he returned reflectively; "come to think of it, neither
did I."

He twisted around, looking at the man on the bed.

"Do you think it was all an illusion?" asked the detective.

"What about those marks on the window-sill?" jerked Smith.

He began restlessly pacing about the room, sometimes stopping
before the locked safe and frequently glancing at Norris West.

Suddenly he walked out and briefly examined the other
apartments, only to return again to the bedroom.

"Petrie," he said, "we are losing valuable time. West must be
aroused."

Inspector Weymouth stared.

Smith turned to me impatiently. The doctor summoned by the
police had gone. "Is there no means of arousing him, Petrie?" he
said.

"Doubtless," I replied, "he could be revived if one but knew
what drug he had taken."

My friend began his restless pacing again, and suddenly pounced
upon a little phial of tabloids which had been hidden behind some
books on a shelf near the bed. He uttered a triumphant
exclamation.

"See what we have here, Petrie!" he directed, handing the phial
to me. "It bears no label."

I crushed one of the tabloids in my palm and applied my tongue
to the powder.

"Some preparation of chloral hydrate," I pronounced.

"A sleeping draught?" suggested Smith eagerly.

"We might try," I said, and scribbled a formula upon a leaf of
my notebook. I asked Weymouth to send the man who accompanied him
to call up the nearest chemist and procure the antidote.

During the man's absence Smith stood contemplating the
unconscious inventor, a peculiar expression upon his bronzed
face.

"ANDAMAN-SECOND," he muttered. "Shall we find the key to the
riddle here, I wonder?"

Inspector Weymouth, who had concluded, I think, that the
mysterious telephone call was due to mental aberration on the part
of Norris West, was gnawing at his mustache impatiently when his
assistant returned. I administered the powerful restorative, and
although, as later transpired, chloral was not responsible for
West's condition, the antidote operated successfully.

Norris West struggled into a sitting position, and looked about
him with haggard eyes.

"The Chinamen! The Chinamen!" he muttered.

He sprang to his feet, glaring wildly at Smith and me, reeled,
and almost fell.

"It is all right," I said, supporting him. "I'm a doctor. You
have been unwell."

"Have the police come?" he burst out. "The safe-try the
safe!"

"It's all right," said Inspector Weymouth. "The safe is
locked-unless someone else knows the combination, there's nothing
to worry about."

"No one else knows it," said West, and staggered unsteadily to
the safe. Clearly his mind was in a dazed condition, but, setting
his jaw with a curious expression of grim determination, he
collected his thoughts and opened the safe.

He bent down, looking in.

In some way the knowledge came to me that the curtain was about
to rise on a new and surprising act in the Fu-Manchu drama.

"God!" he whispered-we could scarcely hear him-"the plans are
gone!"

I have never seen a man quite so surprised as Inspector
Weymouth.

"This is absolutely incredible!" he said. "There's only one door
to your chambers. We found it bolted from the inside."

"Yes," groaned West, pressing his hand to his forehead. "I
bolted it myself at eleven o'clock, when I came in."

"No human being could climb up or down to your windows. The
plans of the aero-torpedo were inside a safe."

"I put them there myself," said West, "on returning from the War
Office, and I had occasion to consult them after I had come in and
bolted the door. I returned them to the safe and locked it. That it
was still locked you saw for yourselves, and no one else in the
world knows the combination."

"But the plans have gone," said Weymouth. "It's magic! How was
it done? What happened last night, sir? What did you mean when you
rang us up?"

Smith during this colloquy was pacing rapidly up and down the
room. He turned abruptly to the aviator.

"Every fact you can remember, Mr. West, please," he said
tersely; "and be as brief as you possibly can."

"I came in, as I said," explained West, "about eleven o'clock
and having made some notes relating to an interview arranged for
this morning, I locked the plans in the safe and turned in."

"There was no one hidden anywhere in your chambers?" snapped
Smith.

"There was not," replied West. "I looked. I invariably do.
Almost immediately, I went to sleep."

"How many chloral tabloids did you take?" I interrupted.

Norris West turned to me with a slow smile.

"You're cute, Doctor," he said. "I took two. It's a bad habit,
but I can't sleep without. They are specially made up for me by a
firm in Philadelphia."

"How long sleep lasted, when it became filled with uncanny
dreams, and when those dreams merged into reality, I do not
know-shall never know, I suppose. But out of the dreamless void a
face came to me-closer-closer-and peered into mine.

"I was in that curious condition wherein one knows that one is
dreaming and seeks to awaken-to escape. But a nightmare-like
oppression held me. So I must lie and gaze into the seared yellow
face that hung over me, for it would drop so close that I could
trace the cicatrized scar running from the left ear to the corner
of the mouth, and drawing up the lip like the lip of a snarling
cur. I could look into the malignant, jaundiced eyes; I could hear
the dim whispering of the distorted mouth-whispering that seemed to
counsel something-something evil. That whispering intimacy was
indescribably repulsive. Then the wicked yellow face would be
withdrawn, and would recede until it became as a pin's head in the
darkness far above me-almost like a glutinous, liquid thing.

"Somehow I got upon my feet, or dreamed I did-God knows where
dreaming ended and reality began. Gentlemen maybe you'll conclude I
went mad last night, but as I stood holding on to the bedrail I
heard the blood throbbing through my arteries with a noise like a
screw-propeller. I started laughing. The laughter issued from my
lips with a shrill whistling sound that pierced me with physical
pain and seemed to wake the echoes of the whole block. I thought
myself I was going mad, and I tried to command my will-to break the
power of the chloral-for I concluded that I had accidentally taken
an overdose.

"Then the walls of my bedroom started to recede, till at last I
stood holding on to a bed which had shrunk to the size of a doll's
cot, in the middle of a room like Trafalgar Square! That window
yonder was such a long way off I could scarcely see it, but I could
just detect a Chinaman-the owner of the evil yellow face-creeping
through it. He was followed by another, who was enormously tall-so
tall that, as they came towards me (and it seemed to take them
something like half-an-hour to cross this incredible apartment in
my dream), the second Chinaman seemed to tower over me like a
cypress-tree.

"I looked up to his face-his wicked, hairless face. Mr. Smith,
whatever age I live to, I'll never forget that face I saw last
night-or did I see it? God knows! The pointed chin, the great dome
of a forehead, and the eyes-heavens above, the huge green
eyes!"

He shook like a sick man, and I glanced at Smith significantly.
Inspector Weymouth was stroking his mustache, and his mingled
expression of incredulity and curiosity was singular to behold.

"The pumping of my blood," continued West, "seemed to be
bursting my body; the room kept expanding and contracting. One time
the ceiling would be pressing down on my head, and the
Chinamen-sometimes I thought there were two of them, sometimes
twenty-became dwarfs; the next instant it shot up like the roof of
a cathedral.

"'Can I be awake,' I whispered, 'or am I dreaming?'

"My whisper went sweeping in windy echoes about the walls, and
was lost in the shadowy distances up under the invisible roof.

"'You are dreaming-yes.' It was the Chinaman with the green eyes
who was addressing me, and the words that he uttered appeared to
occupy an immeasurable time in the utterance. 'But at will I can
render the subjective objective.' I don't think I can have dreamed
those singular words, gentlemen.

"And then he fixed the green eyes upon me-the blazing green
eyes. I made no attempt to move. They seemed to be draining me of
something vital-bleeding me of every drop of mental power. The
whole nightmare room grew green, and I felt that I was being
absorbed into its greenness.

"I can see what you think. And even in my delirium-if it was
delirium-I thought the same. Now comes the climax of my
experience-my vision-I don't know what to call it. I SAW some WORDS
issuing from my own mouth!"

Inspector Weymouth coughed discreetly. Smith whisked round upon
him.

"This will be outside your experience, Inspector, I know," he
said, "but Mr. Norris West's statement does not surprise me in the
least. I know to what the experience was due."

Weymouth stared incredulously, but a dawning perception of the
truth was come to me, too.

"How I SAW a SOUND I just won't attempt to explain; I simply
tell you I saw it. Somehow I knew I had betrayed myself-given
something away."

"You gave away the secret of the lock combination!" rapped
Smith.

"Eh!" grunted Weymouth.

But West went on hoarsely:

"Just before the blank came a name flashed before my eyes. It
was 'Bayard Taylor.'"

At that I interrupted West.

"I understand!" I cried. "I understand! Another name has just
occurred to me, Mr. West-that of the Frenchman, Moreau."

"You have solved the mystery," said Smith. "It was natural Mr.
West should have thought of the American traveler, Bayard Taylor,
though. Moreau's book is purely scientific. He has probably never
read it."

"I fought with the stupor that was overcoming me," continued
West, "striving to associate that vaguely familiar name with the
fantastic things through which I moved. It seemed to me that the
room was empty again. I made for the hall, for the telephone. I
could scarcely drag my feet along. It seemed to take me
half-an-hour to get there. I remember calling up Scotland Yard, and
I remember no more."

There was a short, tense interval.

In some respects I was nonplused; but, frankly, I think
Inspector Weymouth considered West insane. Smith, his hands locked
behind his back, stared out of the window.

"ANDAMAN-SECOND" he said suddenly. "Weymouth, when is the first
train to Tilbury?"

"Five twenty-two from Fenchurch Street," replied the Scotland
Yard man promptly.

"Too late!" rapped my friend. "Jump in a taxi and pick up two
good men to leave for China at once! Then go and charter a special
to Tilbury to leave in twenty-five minutes. Order another cab to
wait outside for me."

Weymouth was palpably amazed, but Smith's tone was imperative.
The Inspector departed hastily.

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."

"God knows we have!" said West. "But who is this Fu-Manchu, and
how-how in the name of wonder did he get into my chambers?"

Smith pulled out his watch. "That," he said rapidly, "I cannot
delay to explain if I'm to intercept the man who has the plans.
Come along, Petrie; we must be at Tilbury within the hour. There is
just a bare chance."