The Hand of Fu-Manchu | Page 8

have
gathered from Beeton and what I have seen for myself, it is evident that in yonder
coffer"--he pointed to the brass chest standing hard by--"Hale got hold of something
indispensable to the success of this vast Yellow conspiracy. That he was followed here, to
the very hotel, by agents of this mystic Unknown is evident. But," he added grimly, "they
have failed in their object!"
A thousand outrageous possibilities fought for precedence in my mind.
"Smith!" I cried, "the half-caste woman whom I saw in the hotel ..."
Nayland Smith shrugged his shoulders.
"Probably, as M. Samarkan suggests, an ayah!" he said; but there was an odd note in his
voice and an odd look in his eyes.
"Then again, I am almost certain that Hale's warning concerning 'the man with the limp'
was no empty one. Shall you open the brass chest?"
"At present, decidedly no. Hale's fate renders his warning one that I dare not neglect. For
I was with him when he died; and they cannot know how much I know. How did he die?
How did he die? How was the Flower of Silence introduced into his closely guarded
room?"
"The Flower of Silence?"
Smith laughed shortly and unmirthfully.
"I was once sent for," he said, "during the time that I was stationed in Upper Burma, to
see a stranger--a sort of itinerant Buddhist priest, so I understood, who had desired to
communicate some message to me personally. He was dying--in a dirty hut on the
outskirts of Manipur, up in the hills. When I arrived I say at a glance that the man was a
Tibetan monk. He must have crossed the river and come down through Assam; but the
nature of his message I never knew. He had lost the power of speech! He was gurgling,
inarticulate, just like poor Hale. A few moments after my arrival he breathed his last. The
fellow who had guided me to the place bent over him--I shall always remember the
scene--then fell back as though he had stepped upon an adder.
"'He holds the Flower Silence in his hand!' he cried--'the Si-Fan! the Si-Fan!'--and bolted
from the hut."
"When I went to examine the dead man, sure enough he held in one hand a little
crumpled spray of flowers. I did not touch it with my fingers naturally, but I managed to
loop a piece of twine around the stem, and by that means I gingerly removed the flowers
and carried them to an orchid-hunter of my acquaintance who chanced to be visiting
Manipur.

"Grahame--that was my orchid man's name--pronounced the specimen to be an
unclassified species of jatropha; belonging to the Curcas family. He discovered a sort of
hollow thorn, almost like a fang, amongst the blooms, but was unable to surmise the
nature of its functions. He extracted enough of a certain fixed oil from the flowers,
however, to have poisoned the pair of us!"
"Probably the breaking of a bloom ..."
"Ejects some of this acrid oil through the thorn? Practically the uncanny thing stings
when it is hurt? That is my own idea, Petrie. And I can understand how these Eastern
fanatics accept their sentence-- silence and death--when they have deserved it, at the
hands of their mysterious organization, and commit this novel form of hara-kiri. But I
shall not sleep soundly with that brass coffer in my possession until I know by what
means Sir Gregory was induced to touch a Flower of Silence, and by what means it was
placed in his room!"
"But, Smith, why did you direct me to-night to repeat the words, 'Sâkya Mûni'?"
Smith smiled in a very grim fashion.
"It was after the episode I have just related that I made the acquaintance of that pundit,
some of whose statements I have already quoted for your enlightenment. He admitted that
the Flower of Silence was an instrument frequently employed by a certain group, adding
that, according to some authorities, one who had touched the flower might escape death
by immediately pronouncing the sacred name of Buddha. He was no fanatic himself,
however, and, marking my incredulity, he explained that the truth was this;--
"No one whose powers of speech were imperfect could possibly pronounce correctly the
words 'Sâkya Mûni.' Therefore, since the first effects of this damnable thing is instantly
to tie the tongue, the uttering of the sacred name of Buddha becomes practically a test
whereby the victim my learn whether the venom has entered his system or not!"
I repressed a shudder. An atmosphere of horror seemed to be enveloping us, foglike.
"Smith," I said slowly, "we must be on our guard," for at last I had run to earth that
elusive memory. "Unless I am strangely mistaken, the 'man' who so mysteriously entered