The Devil Doctor Part 21

"The Director of the universe," he continued softly, "has relented toward me. To-night, you die! To-night, the arch-enemy of our caste shall be no more. This is my offering--the price of redemption...."

My mind was working again, and actively. I managed to grasp the stupendous truth--and the stupendous possibility.

Dr. Fu-Manchu was in the act of clapping his hands, when I spoke.

"Stop!" I cried.

He paused, and the weird film, which sometimes became visible in his eyes, now obscured their greenness, and lent him the appearance of a blind man.

"Dr. Petrie," he said softly, "I shall always listen to you with respect."

"I have an offer to make," I continued, seeking to steady my voice.

"Give us our freedom, and I will restore your shattered honour--I will restore the sacred peac.o.c.k!"

Dr. Fu-Manchu bent forward until his face was so close to mine that I could see the innumerable lines which, an intricate network, covered his yellow skin.

"Speak!" he hissed. "You lift up my heart from a dark pit!"

"I can restore your white peac.o.c.k," I said; "I, and I alone, know where it is!"--and I strove not to shrink from the face so close to mine.

Upright shot the tall figure; high above his head Fu-Manchu threw his arms--and a light of exaltation gleamed in the now widely-opened, catlike eyes.

"Oh, G.o.d!" he screamed frenziedly. "Oh, G.o.d of the Golden Age! like a phoenix I arise from the ashes of myself!" He turned to me. "Quick!

Quick! make your bargain! End my suspense!"

Smith stared at me like a man dazed; but, ignoring him, I went on:

"You will release me, now, immediately. In another ten minutes it will be too late; my friend will remain. One of your--servants--can accompany me, and give the signal when I return with the peac.o.c.k. Mr.

Nayland Smith and yourself, or another, will join me at the corner of the street where the raid took place last night. We will then give you ten minutes' grace, after which we shall take whatever steps we choose."

"Agreed!" cried Fu-Manchu. "I ask but one thing from an Englishman; your word of honour?"

"I give it."

"I, also," said Smith hoa.r.s.ely.

Ten minutes later, Nayland Smith and I, standing beside the cab, whose lights gleamed yellowly through the mist, exchanged a struggling, frightened bird for our lives--capitulated with the enemy of the white race.

With characteristic audacity--and characteristic trust in the British sense of honour--Dr. Fu-Manchu came in person with Nayland Smith, in response to the wailing signal of the dacoit who had accompanied me.

No word was spoken, save that the cabman suppressed a curse of amazement; and the Chinaman, his sinister servant at his elbow, bowed low--and left us, surely to the mocking laughter of the G.o.ds!

CHAPTER XIV

THE COUGHING HORROR

I leapt up in bed with a great start.

My sleep was troubled often enough in those days which immediately followed our almost miraculous escape from the den of Fu-Manchu; and now; as I crouched there, nerves aquiver--listening--listening--I could not be sure if this dank panic which possessed me had its origin in nightmare or in something else.

Surely a scream, a choking cry for help, had reached my ears; but now, almost holding my breath in that sort of nervous tensity peculiar to one aroused thus, I listened, and the silence seemed complete. Perhaps I had been dreaming....

"Help! Petrie! _Help_!..."

It was Nayland Smith in the room above me!

My doubts were resolved; this was no trick of an imagination disordered. Some dreadful menace threatened my friend. Not delaying even to s.n.a.t.c.h my dressing-gown, I rushed out on to the landing, up the stairs, bare-footed as I was, threw open the door of Smith's room and literally hurled myself in.

Those cries had been the cries of one a.s.sailed, had been uttered, I judged, in the brief interval of a life and death struggle; had been choked off....

A certain amount of moonlight found access to the room, without spreading so far as the bed in which my friend lay. But at the moment of my headlong entrance, and before I had switched on the light, my gaze automatically was directed to the pale moonbeam streaming through the window and down on to one corner of the sheep skin rug beside the bed.

There came a sound of faint and m.u.f.fled coughing,

What with my recent awakening and the panic at my heart, I could not claim that my vision was true; but across this moonbeam pa.s.sed a sort of grey streak, for all the world as though some long thin shape had been withdrawn, snakelike, from the room, through the open window....

From somewhere outside the house, and below, I heard the cough again, followed by a sharp cracking sound like the lashing of a whip.

I depressed the switch, flooding the room with light, and as I leapt forward to the bed a word picture of what I had seen formed in my mind; and I found that I was thinking of a grey feather boa.

"Smith!" I cried (my voice seemed to pitch itself, unwilled, in a very high key), "Smith, old man!"

He made no reply, and a sudden, sorrowful fear clutched at my heart-strings. He was lying half out of bed flat upon his back, his head at a dreadful angle with his body. As I bent over him and seized him by the shoulders, I could see the whites of his eyes. His arms hung limply, and his fingers touched the carpet.

"My G.o.d!" I whispered, "what has happened?"

I heaved him back on to the pillow, and looked anxiously into his face. Habitually gaunt, the flesh so refined away by the consuming nervous energy of the man as to reveal the cheekbones in sharp prominence, he now looked truly ghastly. His skin was so sun-baked as to have changed const.i.tutionally; nothing could ever eradicate that tan. But to-night a fearful greyness was mingled with the brown, his lips were purple ... and there were marks of strangulation upon the lean throat--ever darkening weals of clutching fingers.

He began to breathe stertorously and convulsively, inhalation being accompanied by a significant gurgle in the throat. But now my calm was restored in face of a situation which called for professional attention.

I aided my friend's laboured respirations by the usual means, setting to work vigorously; so that presently he began to clutch at his inflamed throat which that murderous pressure had threatened to close.

I could hear sounds of movements about the house, showing that not I alone had been awakened by those hoa.r.s.e screams.

"It's all right, old man," I said, bending over him: "brace up!"

He opened his eyes--they looked bleared and bloodshot--and gave me a quick glance of recognition.

"It's all right, Smith!" I said--"no! don't sit up; lie there for a moment."

I ran across to the dressing-table, whereon I perceived his flask to lie, and mixed him a weak stimulant with which I returned to the bed.

As I bent over him again, my housekeeper appeared in the doorway, pale and wide-eyed.

"There is no occasion for alarm," I said over my shoulder; "Mr.