The Devil Doctor | Page 9

near the end, a brighter light shone. Beyond that
again was another door. A voice was speaking in the lighted room; yet I could have
sworn that Kâramanèh had come, not from there but from the room beyond--from the far
end of the passage.

But the voice!--who, having once heard it, could ever mistake that singular voice,
alternately guttural and sibilant.
Dr. Fu-Manchu was speaking!
"I have asked you," came with ever-increasing clearness (Smith had begun to turn the
knob), "to reveal to me the name of your correspondent in Nan-Yang. I have suggested
that he may be the Mandarin Yen-Sun-Yat, but you have declined to confirm me. Yet I
know" (Smith had the door open a good three inches and was peering in) "that some
official, some high official, is a traitor. Am I to resort again to the question to learn his
name?"
Ice seemed to enter my veins at the unseen inquisitor's intonation of the words "the
question." This was the twentieth century; yet there, in that damnable room....
Smith threw the door open.
Through a sort of haze, born mostly of horror, but not entirely, I saw Eltham, stripped to
the waist and tied, with his arms upstretched, to a rafter in the ancient ceiling. A
Chinaman, who wore a slop-shop blue suit and who held an open knife in his hand, stood
beside him. Eltham was ghastly white. The appearance of his chest puzzled me
momentarily, then I realized that a sort of tourniquet of wire-netting was screwed so
tightly about him that the flesh swelled out in knobs through the mesh. There was blood--
"God in heaven!" screamed Smith frenziedly, "they have the wire-jacket on him! Shoot
down that damned Chinaman, Petrie! Shoot! Shoot!"
Lithely as a cat the man with the knife leapt around--but I raised the Browning, and
deliberately--with a cool deliberation that came to me suddenly--shot him through the
head. I saw his oblique eyes turn up to the whites; I saw the mark squarely between his
brows; and with no word nor cry he sank to his knees and toppled forward with one
yellow hand beneath him and one outstretched, clutching--clutching--convulsively. His
pigtail came unfastened and began to uncoil, slowly, like a snake.
I handed the pistol to Smith; I was perfectly cool, now; and I leapt forward, took up the
bloody knife from the floor and cut Eltham's lashings. He sank into my arms.
"Praise God," he murmured weakly. "He is more merciful to me than perhaps I deserve.
Unscrew ... the jacket, Petrie ... I think ... I was very near to ... weakening. Praise the
good God, who ... gave me ... fortitude...."
I got the screw of the accursed thing loosened, but the act of removing the jacket was too
agonizing for Eltham--man of iron though he was. I laid him swooning on the floor.
"Where is Fu-Manchu?"
Nayland Smith, from just within the door, threw out the query in a tone of stark amaze. I
stood up--I could do nothing more for the poor victim at the moment--and looked about

me.
The room was innocent of furniture, save for heaps of rubbish on the floor, and a tin
oil-lamp hung on the wall. The dead Chinaman lay close beside Smith. There was no
second door, the one window was barred and from this room we had heard the voice, the
unmistakable, unforgettable voice, of Fu-Manchu.
But Dr. Fu-Manchu was not there!
Neither of us could accept the fact for a moment; we stood there, looking from the dead
man to the tortured man who had only swooned, in a state of helpless incredulity.
Then the explanation flashed upon us both, simultaneously, and with a cry of baffled rage
Smith leapt along the passage to the second door. It was wide open. I stood at his elbow
when he swept its emptiness with the ray of his pocket-lamp.
There was a speaking-tube fixed between the two rooms!
Smith literally ground his teeth.
"Yet, Petrie," he said, "we have learnt something. Fu-Manchu had evidently promised
Eltham his life if he would divulge the name of his correspondent. He meant to keep his
word; it is a sidelight on his character."
"How so?"
"Eltham has never seen Dr. Fu-Manchu, but Eltham knows certain parts of China better
than you know the Strand. Probably, if he saw Fu-Manchu, he would recognize him for
whom he really is, and this, it seems, the Doctor is anxious to avoid."
We ran back to where we had left Kâramanèh.
The room was empty!
"Defeated, Petrie!" said Smith bitterly. "The Yellow Devil is loosed on London again!"
He leant from the window and the skirl of a police whistle split the stillness of the night.
CHAPTER IV
THE CRY OF A NIGHTHAWK
Such were the