The Devil Doctor | Page 8

of hiding; but to hide was unnecessary.
Her slim figure had not crossed the threshold ere Smith had his arm about the girl's waist and one hand clapped to her mouth. A stifled gasp she uttered, and he lifted her into the room.
"Shut the door, Petrie," he directed.
I stepped forward and closed the door. A faint perfume stole to my nostrils--a vague, elusive breath of the East, reminiscent of strange days that, now, seemed to belong to a remote past. Karaman��h! that faint, indefinable perfume was part of her dainty personality; it may appear absurd--impossible--but many and many a time I had dreamt of it.
"In my breast pocket," rapped Smith; "the light."
I bent over the girl as he held her. She was quite still, but I could have wished that I had had more certain mastery of myself. I took the torch from Smith's pocket and, mechanically, directed it upon the captive.
She was dressed very plainly, wearing a simple blue skirt, and white blouse. It was easy to divine that it was she whom Eltham had mistaken for a French maid. A brooch set with a ruby was pinned at the point where the blouse opened--gleaming fierily and harshly against the soft skin. Her face was pale and her eyes wide with fear.
"There is some cord in my right-hand pocket," said Smith. "I came provided. Tie her wrists."
I obeyed him, silently. The girl offered no resistance, but I think I never essayed a less congenial task than that of binding her white wrists. The jewelled fingers lay quite listlessly in my own.
"Make a good job of it!" rapped Smith significantly.
A flush rose to my cheeks, for I knew well enough what he meant.
"She is fastened," I said, and I turned the ray of the torch upon her again.
Smith removed his hand from her mouth but did not relax his grip of her. She looked up at me with eyes in which I could have sworn there was no recognition. But a flush momentarily swept over her face, and left it pale again.
"We shall have to--gag her--"
"Smith, I can't do it!"
The girl's eyes filled with tears and she looked up at my companion pitifully.
"Please don't be cruel to me," she whispered, with that soft accent which always played havoc with my composure. "Every one--every one--is cruel to me. I will promise--indeed I will swear, to be quiet. Oh, believe me, if you can save him I will do nothing to hinder you." Her beautiful head drooped. "Have some pity for me as well."
"Karaman��h," I said, "we would have believed you once. We cannot now."
She started violently.
"You know my name!" Her voice was barely audible. "Yet I have never seen you in my life--"
"See if the door locks," interrupted Smith harshly.
Dazed by the apparent sincerity in the voice of our lovely captive--vacant from wonder of it all--I opened the door, felt for, and found, a key.
We left Karaman��h crouching against the wall; her great eyes were turned towards me fascinatedly. Smith locked the door with much care. We began a tip-toed progress along the dimly-lighted passage.
From beneath a door on the left, and 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 Karaman��h 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,