The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu Read Online Free PDF Page A

if
Fu-Manchu is at the bottom of it-as we must presume him to
be-probably something ghastly."
    A brief survey of the time-tables showed us that there were no
trains to serve our haste. We accordingly chartered a cab and
proceeded east.
    Smith, throughout the journey, talked entertainingly about his
work in Burma. Of intent, I think, he avoided any reference to the
circumstances which first had brought him in contact with the
sinister genius of the Yellow Movement. His talk was rather of the
sunshine of the East than of its shadows.
    But the drive concluded-and all too soon. In a silence which
neither of us seemed disposed to break, we entered the police
depot, and followed an officer who received us into the room where
Weymouth waited.
    The inspector greeted us briefly, nodding toward the table.
    "Poor Cadby, the most promising lad at the Yard," he said; and
his usually gruff voice had softened strangely.
    Smith struck his right fist into the palm of his left hand and
swore under his breath, striding up and down the neat little room.
No one spoke for a moment, and in the silence I could hear the
whispering of the Thames outside-of the Thames which had so many
strange secrets to tell, and now was burdened with another.
    The body lay prone upon the deal table-this latest of the
river's dead-dressed in rough sailor garb, and, to all outward
seeming, a seaman of nondescript nationality-such as is no stranger
in Wapping and Shadwell. His dark, curly hair clung clammily about
the brown forehead; his skin was stained, they told me. He wore a
gold ring in one ear, and three fingers of the left hand were
missing.
    "It was almost the same with Mason." The river police inspector
was speaking. "A week ago, on a Wednesday, he went off in his own
time on some funny business down St. George's way-and Thursday
night the ten-o'clock boat got the grapnel on him off Hanover Hole.
His first two fingers on the right hand were clean gone, and his
left hand was mutilated frightfully."
    He paused and glanced at Smith.
    "That lascar, too," he continued, "that you came down to see,
sir; you remember his hands?"
    Smith nodded.
    "He was not a lascar," he said shortly. "He was a dacoit."
    Silence fell again.
    I turned to the array of objects lying on the table-those which
had been found in Cadby's clothing. None of them were noteworthy,
except that which had been found thrust into the loose neck of his
shirt. This last it was which had led the police to send for
Nayland Smith, for it constituted the first clew which had come to
light pointing to the authors of these mysterious tragedies.
    It was a Chinese pigtail. That alone was sufficiently
remarkable; but it was rendered more so by the fact that the
plaited queue was a false one being attached to a most ingenious
bald wig.
    "You're sure it wasn't part of a Chinese make-up?" questioned
Weymouth, his eye on the strange relic. "Cadby was clever at
disguise."
    Smith snatched the wig from my hands with a certain irritation,
and tried to fit it on the dead detective.
    "Too small by inches!" he jerked. "And look how it's padded in
the crown. This thing was made for a most abnormal head."
    He threw it down, and fell to pacing the room again.
    "Where did you find him-exactly?" he asked.
    "Limehouse Reach-under Commercial Dock Pier-exactly an hour
ago."
    "And you last saw him at eight o'clock last night?"-to
Weymouth.
    "Eight to a quarter past."
    "You think he has been dead nearly twenty-four hours,
Petrie?"
    "Roughly, twenty-four hours," I replied.
    "Then, we know that he was on the track of the Fu-Manchu group,
that he followed up some clew which led him to the neighborhood of
old Ratcliff Highway, and that he died the same night. You are sure
that is where he was going?"
    "Yes," said Weymouth; "He was jealous of giving anything away,
poor chap; it meant a big lift for him if he pulled the case off.
But he gave me to understand that he expected to spend last night
in that district. He left the Yard about eight,