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

now proceed to relate.
    Dusk always brought with it a cloud of apprehensions, for
darkness must ever be the ally of crime; and it was one night, long
after the clocks had struck the mystic hour "when churchyards
yawn," that the hand of Dr. Fu-Manchu again stretched out to grasp
a victim. I was dismissing a chance patient.
    "Good night, Dr. Petrie," he said.
    "Good night, Mr. Forsyth," I replied; and, having conducted my
late visitor to the door, I closed and bolted it, switched off the
light and went upstairs.
    My patient was chief officer of one of the P. and O. boats. He
had cut his hand rather badly on the homeward run, and signs of
poisoning having developed, had called to have the wound treated,
apologizing for troubling me at so late an hour, but explaining
that he had only just come from the docks. The hall clock announced
the hour of one as I ascended the stairs. I found myself wondering
what there was in Mr. Forsyth's appearance which excited some vague
and elusive memory. Coming to the top floor, I opened the door of a
front bedroom and was surprised to find the interior in
darkness.
    "Smith!" I called.
    "Come here and watch!" was the terse response. Nayland Smith was
sitting in the dark at the open window and peering out across the
common. Even as I saw him, a dim silhouette, I could detect that
tensity in his attitude which told of high-strung nerves.
    I joined him.
    "What is it?" I said, curiously.
    "I don't know. Watch that clump of elms."
    His masterful voice had the dry tone in it betokening
excitement. I leaned on the ledge beside him and looked out. The
blaze of stars almost compensated for the absence of the moon and
the night had a quality of stillness that made for awe. This was a
tropical summer, and the common, with its dancing lights dotted
irregularly about it, had an unfamiliar look to-night. The clump of
nine elms showed as a dense and irregular mass, lacking detail.
    Such moods as that which now claimed my friend are magnetic. I
had no thought of the night's beauty, for it only served to remind
me that somewhere amid London's millions was lurking an uncanny
being, whose life was a mystery, whose very existence was a
scientific miracle.
    "Where's your patient?" rapped Smith.
    His abrupt query diverted my thoughts into a new channel. No
footstep disturbed the silence of the highroad; where was my
patient?
    I craned from the window. Smith grabbed my arm.
    "Don't lean out," he said.
    I drew back, glancing at him surprisedly.
    "For Heaven's sake, why not?"
    "I'll tell you presently, Petrie. Did you see him?"
    "I did, and I can't make out what he is doing. He seems to have
remained standing at the gate for some reason."
    "He has seen it!" snapped Smith. "Watch those elms."
    His hand remained upon my arm, gripping it nervously. Shall I
say that I was surprised? I can say it with truth. But I shall add
that I was thrilled, eerily; for this subdued excitement and alert
watching of Smith could only mean one thing:
    Fu-Manchu!
    And that was enough to set me watching as keenly as he; to set
me listening; not only for sounds outside the house but for sounds
within. Doubts, suspicions, dreads, heaped themselves up in my
mind. Why was Forsyth standing there at the gate? I had never seen
him before, to my knowledge, yet there was something oddly
reminiscent about the man. Could it be that his visit formed part
of a plot? Yet his wound had been genuine enough. Thus my mind
worked, feverishly; such was the effect of an unspoken
thought—Fu-Manchu.
    Nayland Smith's grip tightened on my arm.
    "There it is again, Petrie!" he whispered.
    "Look, look!"
    His words were wholly unnecessary. I, too, had seen it; a
wonderful and uncanny sight. Out of the darkness under the elms,
low down upon the ground, grew a vaporous blue light. It flared up,
elfinish, then began to ascend. Like an igneous phantom, a witch
flame, it rose, high—higher—higher, to what I adjudged to be some
twelve feet or more from the ground. Then, high