The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer

from memory, at the rate of about two
hundred words a minute."
    "He is wasting no time."
    "Wasting time! In addition to the Yucatan book and the work on
Tibet, he has to read a paper at the Institute next week about some
tomb he has unearthed in Egypt. As I came away, a van drove up from
the docks and a couple of fellows delivered a sarcophagus as big as
a boat. It is unique, according to Sir Lionel, and will go to the
British Museum after he has examined it. The man crams six months'
work into six weeks; then he is off again."
    "What do you propose to do?"
    "What CAN I do? I know that Fu-Manchu will make an attempt upon
him. I cannot doubt it. Ugh! that house gave me the shudders. No
sunlight, I'll swear, Petrie, can ever penetrate to the rooms, and
when I arrived this afternoon clouds of gnats floated like motes
wherever a stray beam filtered through the trees of the avenue.
There's a steamy smell about the place that is almost malarious,
and the whole of the west front is covered with a sort of
monkey-creeper, which he has imported at some time or other. It has
a close, exotic perfume that is quite in the picture. I tell you,
the place was made for murder."
    "Have you taken any precautions?"
    "I called at Scotland Yard and sent a man down to watch the
house, but-"
    He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
    "What is Sir Lionel like?"
    "A madman, Petrie. A tall, massive man, wearing a dirty
dressing-gown of neutral color; a man with untidy gray hair and a
bristling mustache, keen blue eyes, and a brown skin; who wears a
short beard or rarely shaves-I don't know which. I left him
striding about among the thousand and one curiosities of that
incredible room, picking his way through his antique furniture,
works of reference, manuscripts, mummies, spears, pottery and what
not-sometimes kicking a book from his course, or stumbling over a
stuffed crocodile or a Mexican mask-alternately dictating and
conversing. Phew!"
    For some time we were silent.
    "Smith" I said, "we are making no headway in this business. With
all the forces arrayed against him, Fu-Manchu still eludes us,
still pursues his devilish, inscrutable way."
    Nayland Smith nodded.
    "And we don't know all," he said. "We mark such and such a man
as one alive to the Yellow Peril, and we warn him-if we have time.
Perhaps he escapes; perhaps he does not. But what do we know,
Petrie, of those others who may die every week by his murderous
agency? We cannot know EVERYONE who has read the riddle of China. I
never see a report of someone found drowned, of an apparent
suicide, of a sudden, though seemingly natural death, without
wondering. I tell you, Fu-Manchu is omnipresent; his tentacles
embrace everything. I said that Sir Lionel must bear a charmed
life. The fact that WE are alive is a miracle."
    He glanced at his watch.
    "Nearly eleven," he said. "But sleep seems a waste of time-apart
from its dangers."
    We heard a bell ring. A few moments later followed a knock at
the room door.
    "Come in!" I cried.
    A girl entered with a telegram addressed to Smith. His jaw
looked very square in the lamplight, and his eyes shone like steel
as he took it from her and opened the envelope. He glanced at the
form, stood up and passed it to me, reaching for his hat, which lay
upon my writing-table.
    "God help us, Petrie!" he said.
    This was the message:
     
    "Sir Lionel Barton murdered. Meet me at his house at
once.-WEYMOUTH, INSPECTOR."
     

Chapter 11
     
    Although we avoided all unnecessary delay, it was close upon
midnight when our cab swung round into a darkly shadowed avenue, at
the farther end of which, as seen through a tunnel, the moonlight
glittered upon the windows of Rowan House, Sir Lionel Barton's
home.
    Stepping out before the porch of the long, squat building, I saw
that it was banked in, as Smith had said, by trees and shrubs. The
facade showed mantled in the strange exotic creeper which he had
mentioned, and the air was pungent with an odor of decaying
vegetation, with which