CHAPTER XXV
I WAS being carried along a dimly lighted, tunnel-like place, slung,sackwise, across the shoulder of a Burman. He was not a big man, buthe supported my considerable weight with apparent ease. A deadlynausea held me, but the rough handling had served to restore me toconsciousness. My hands and feet were closely lashed. I hung limplyas a wet towel: I felt that this spark of tortured life which hadflickered up in me must ere long finally become extinguished.
A fancy possessed me, in these the first moments of my restoration tothe world of realities, that I had been smuggled into China; and as Iswung head downward I told myself that the huge, puffy things whichstrewed the path were a species of giant toadstool, unfamiliar to meand possibly peculiar to whatever district of China I now was in.
The air was hot, steamy, and loaded with a smell as of rottingvegetation. I wondered why my bearer so scrupulously avoided touchingany of the unwholesome-looking growths in passing through what seemed asuccession of cellars, but steered a tortuous course among the bloated,unnatural shapes, lifting his bare brown feet with a catlike delicacy.
He passed under a low arch, dropped me roughly to the ground and ranback. Half stunned, I lay watching the agile brown body melt into thedistances of the cellars. Their walls and roof seemed to emit a faint,phosphorescent light.
"Petrie!" came a weak voice from somewhere ahead. . . . "Is that you,Petrie?"
It was Nayland Smith!
"Smith!" I said, and strove to sit up. But the intense nausea overcameme, so that I all but swooned.
I heard his voice again, but could attach no meaning to the words whichhe uttered. A sound of terrific blows reached my ears, too. TheBurman reappeared, bending under the heavy load which he bore. For, ashe picked his way through the bloated things which grew upon the floorsof the cellars, I realized that he was carrying the inert body ofInspector Weymouth. And I found time to compare the strength of thelittle brown man with that of a Nile beetle, which can raise many timesits own weight. Then, behind him, appeared a second figure, whichimmediately claimed the whole of my errant attention.
"Fu-Manchu!" hissed my friend, from the darkness which concealed him.
It was indeed none other than Fu-Manchu--the Fu-Manchu whom we hadthought to be helpless. The deeps of the Chinaman's cunning--the finequality of his courage, were forced upon me as amazing facts.
He had assumed the appearance of a drugged opium-smoker so well as todupe me--a medical man; so well as to dupe Karamaneh--whose experienceof the noxious habit probably was greater than my own. And, with thegallows dangling before him, he had waited--played the part of alure--whilst a body of police actually surrounded the place!
I have since thought that the room probably was one which he actuallyused for opium debauches, and the device of the trap was intended toprotect him during the comatose period.
Now, holding a lantern above his head, the deviser of the trapwhereinto we, mouselike, had blindly entered, came through the cellars,following the brown man who carried Weymouth. The faint rays of thelantern (it apparently contained a candle) revealed a veritable forestof the gigantic fungi--poisonously colored--hideously swollen--climbingfrom the floor up the slimy walls--climbing like horrid parasites tosuch part of the arched roof as was visible to me.
Fu-Manchu picked his way through the fungi ranks as daintily as thoughthe distorted, tumid things had been viper-headed.
The resounding blows which I had noted before, and which had neverceased, culminated in a splintering crash. Dr. Fu-Manchu and hisservant, who carried the apparently insensible detective, passed inunder the arch, Fu-Manchu glancing back once along the passages. Thelantern he extinguished, or concealed; and whilst I waited, my minddully surveying memories of all the threats which this uncanny beinghad uttered, a distant clamor came to my ears.
Then, abruptly, it ceased. Dr. Fu-Manchu had closed a heavy door; andto my surprise I perceived that the greater part of it was of glass.The will-o'-the-wisp glow which played around the fungi rendered thevista of the cellars faintly luminous, and visible to me from where Ilay. Fu-Manchu spoke softly. His voice, its guttural note alternatingwith a sibilance on certain words, betrayed no traces of agitation.The man's unbroken calm had in it something inhuman. For he had justperpetrated an act of daring unparalleled in my experience, and, in theclamor now shut out by the glass door I tardily recognized the entranceof the police into some barricaded part of the house--the coming ofthose who would save us--who would hold the Chinese doctor for thehangman!
"I have decided," he said deliberately, "that you are more worthy of myattention than I had formerly supposed. A man who can solve the secretof the Golden Elixir (I had not solved it; I had merely stolen some)should be a valuable acquisition to my Council. The extent of theplans of Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith and of the English ScotlandYard it is incumbent upon me to learn. Therefore, gentlemen, youlive--for the present!"
"And you'll swing," came Weymouth's hoarse voice, "in the near future!You and all your yellow gang!"
"I trust not," was the placid reply. "Most of my people are safe: someare shipped as lascars upon the liners; others have departed bydifferent means. Ah!"
That last word was the only one indicative of excitement which had yetescaped him. A disk of light danced among the brilliant poison hues ofthe passages--but no sound reached us; by which I knew that the glassdoor must fit almost hermetically. It was much cooler here than in theplace through which we had passed, and the nausea began to leave me, mybrain to grow more clear. Had I known what was to follow I should havecursed the lucidity of mind which now came to me; I should have prayedfor oblivion--to be spared the sight of that which ensued.
"It's Logan!" cried Inspector Weymouth; and I could tell that he wasstruggling to free himself of his bonds. From his voice it was evidentthat he, too, was recovering from the effects of the narcotic which hadbeen administered to us all.
"Logan!" he cried. "Logan! This way--HELP!"
But the cry beat back upon us in that enclosed space and seemed tocarry no farther than the invisible walls of our prison.
"The door fits well," came Fu-Manchu's mocking voice. "It is fortunatefor us all that it is so. This is my observation window, Dr. Petrie,and you are about to enjoy an unique opportunity of studying fungology.I have already drawn your attention to the anaesthetic properties ofthe lycoperdon, or common puff-ball. You may have recognized the fumes?The chamber into which you rashly precipitated yourselves was chargedwith them. By a process of my own I have greatly enhanced the value ofthe puff-ball in this respect. Your friend, Mr. Weymouth, proved themost obstinate subject; but he succumbed in fifteen seconds."
"Logan! Help! HELP! This way, man!"
Something very like fear sounded in Weymouth's voice now. Indeed, thesituation was so uncanny that it almost seemed unreal. A group of menhad entered the farthermost cellars, led by one who bore an electricpocket-lamp. The hard, white ray danced from bloated gray fungi toothers of nightmare shape, of dazzling, venomous brilliance. Themocking, lecture-room voice continued:
"Note the snowy growth upon the roof, Doctor. Do not be deceived byits size. It is a giant variety of my own culture and is of the orderempusa. You, in England, are familiar with the death of the commonhouse-fly--which is found attached to the window-pane by a coating ofwhite mold. I have developed the spores of this mold and have produceda giant species. Observe the interesting effect of the strong lightupon my orange and blue amanita fungus!"
Hard beside me I heard Nayland Smith groan, Weymouth had becomesuddenly silent. For my own part, I could have shrieked in purehorror. FOR I KNEW WHAT WAS COMING. I realized in one agonized instantthe significance of the dim lantern, of the careful progress throughthe subterranean fungi grove, of the care with which Fu-Manchu and hisservant had avoided touching any of the growths. I knew, now, that Dr.Fu-Manchu was the greatest fungologist the world had ever known; was apoisoner to whom the Borgias were as children--and I knew t
hat thedetectives blindly were walking into a valley of death.
Then it began--the unnatural scene--the saturnalia of murder.
Like so many bombs the brilliantly colored caps of the hugetoadstool-like things alluded to by the Chinaman exploded, as the whiteray sought them out in the darkness which alone preserved theirexistence. A brownish cloud--I could not determine whether liquid orpowdery--arose in the cellar.
I tried to close my eyes--or to turn them away from the reeling formsof the men who were trapped in that poison-hole. It was useless:
I must look.
The bearer of the lamp had dropped it, but the dim, eerily illuminatedgloom endured scarce a second. A bright light sprang up--doubtless atthe touch of the fiendish being who now resumed speech:
"Observe the symptoms of delirium, Doctor!" Out there, beyond theglass door, the unhappy victims were laughing--tearing their garmentsfrom their bodies--leaping--waving their arms--were become MANIACS!
"We will now release the ripe spores of giant entpusa," continued thewicked voice. "The air of the second cellar being super-charged withoxygen, they immediately germinate. Ah! it is a triumph! Thatprocess is the scientific triumph of my life!"
Like powdered snow the white spores fell from the roof, frosting thewrithing shapes of the already poisoned men. Before my horrified gaze,THE FUNGUS GREW; it spread from the head to the feet of those ittouched; it enveloped them as in glittering shrouds. . . .
"They die like flies!" screamed Fu-Manchu, with a sudden febrileexcitement; and I felt assured of something I had long suspected: thatthat magnificent, perverted brain was the brain of a homicidalmaniac--though Smith would never accept the theory.
"It is my fly-trap!" shrieked the Chinaman. "And I am the god ofdestruction!"