The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu | Page 4

"Right! Very deeply!" he rapped. "A barb steeped in the venom of a
hamadryad went in there!"
A shudder I could not repress ran coldly through me at mention of that
most deadly of all the reptiles of the East.
"There's only one treatment," he continued, rolling his sleeve down
again, "and that's with a sharp knife, a match, and a broken cartridge. I
lay on my back, raving, for three days afterwards, in a forest that stank
with malaria, but I should have been lying there now if I had hesitated.
Here's the point. It was not an accident!"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that it was a deliberate attempt on my life, and I am hard upon
the tracks of the man who extracted that venom--patiently, drop by
drop-- from the poison-glands of the snake, who prepared that arrow,
and who caused it to be shot at me."
"What fiend is this?"
"A fiend who, unless my calculations are at fault is now in London, and
who regularly wars with pleasant weapons of that kind. Petrie, I have
traveled from Burma not in the interests of the British Government
merely, but in the interests of the entire white race, and I honestly
believe-- though I pray I may be wrong--that its survival depends
largely upon the success of my mission."
To say that I was perplexed conveys no idea of the mental chaos
created by these extraordinary statements, for into my humdrum
suburban life Nayland Smith had brought fantasy of the wildest. I did
not know what to think, what to believe.
"I am wasting precious time!" he rapped decisively, and, draining his
glass, he stood up. "I came straight to you, because you are the only
man I dare to trust. Except the big chief at headquarters, you are the

only person in England, I hope, who knows that Nayland Smith has
quitted Burma. I must have someone with me, Petrie, all the time--it's
imperative! Can you put me up here, and spare a few days to the
strangest business, I promise you, that ever was recorded in fact or
fiction?"
I agreed readily enough, for, unfortunately, my professional duties were
not onerous.
"Good man!" he cried, wringing my hand in his impetuous way. "We
start now."
"What, to-night?
"To-night! I had thought of turning in, I must admit. I have not dared to
sleep for forty-eight hours, except in fifteen-minute stretches. But there
is one move that must be made to-night and immediately. I must warn
Sir Crichton Davey."
"Sir Crichton Davey--of the India--"
"Petrie, he is a doomed man! Unless he follows my instructions without
question, without hesitation--before Heaven, nothing can save him! I
do not know when the blow will fall, how it will fall, nor from whence,
but I know that my first duty is to warn him. Let us walk down to the
corner of the common and get a taxi."
How strangely does the adventurous intrude upon the humdrum; for,
when it intrudes at all, more often than not its intrusion is sudden and
unlooked for. To-day, we may seek for romance and fail to find it:
unsought, it lies in wait for us at most prosaic corners of life's highway.
The drive that night, though it divided the drably commonplace from
the wildly bizarre--though it was the bridge between the ordinary and
the outre--has left no impression upon my mind. Into the heart of a
weird mystery the cab bore me; and in reviewing my memories of those
days I wonder that the busy thoroughfares through which we passed did
not display before my eyes signs and portents--warnings.

It was not so. I recall nothing of the route and little of import that
passed between us (we both were strangely silent, I think) until we
were come to our journey's end. Then:
"What's this?" muttered my friend hoarsely.
Constables were moving on a little crowd of curious idlers who pressed
about the steps of Sir Crichton Davey's house and sought to peer in at
the open door. Without waiting for the cab to draw up to the curb,
Nayland Smith recklessly leaped out and I followed close at his heels.
"What has happened?" he demanded breathlessly of a constable.
The latter glanced at him doubtfully, but something in his voice and
bearing commanded respect.
"Sir Crichton Davey has been killed, sir."
Smith lurched back as though he had received a physical blow, and
clutched my shoulder convulsively. Beneath the heavy tan his face had
blanched, and his eyes were set in a stare of horror.
"My God!" he whispered. "I am too late!"
With clenched fists he turned and, pressing through the group of
loungers, bounded up the steps. In the hall a man who unmistakably
was a Scotland Yard official