Emperor Fu-Manchu (6 page)

She stared fixedly up at the tattered palm roof.

“A tall man came out. He wore a uniform—an officer. Four men came out behind him. One was a black man, very big. He carried a lantern. The light shone on the officer’s face and on his eyes, which were like pieces of green jade. You saw him in the boat. His eyes are like that.”

“Yes, I suppose they are.”

“I knew he could see me from where I was trying to hide. I turned to run. But I was too late. He called me back. You have heard his voice. No one would ever think of disobeying him. He was very gentle when he asked me some questions, but I was shaking so much I could hardly stand. He told me to wait inside the courtyard until he returned.”

“And did you wait, Yueh Hua?”

“No. When the porter had locked the gate and gone inside the house I sat down on a bench and tried to think what to do. There was an old plum tree growing on one of the walls. It had very strong branches. I climbed up. Then I let myself drop on the other side. I tried twice to steal out of the town. But there were soldiers at both gates. Then I thought I would go down to the river and take a boat or try to swim across. Right at the end of the canal I found your sampan.”

Tony considered this story with some care. It had at least one merit. It could be true. Yet he felt almost certain it wasn’t.

“So you see,” Yueh Hua said, “why I am afraid of him.”

“Yes, of course.” He tried to speak casually. “I suppose he is the Communist governor of the province?”

Yueh Hua shook her head. “No. I think he is something more than that. They treat him like the emperors used to be treated.”

“Do you think he wanted you for himself?”

Yueh Hua shuddered visibly.

“I don’t know, Chi Foh. But I should die if he even touched me.”

Tony began to realize then, as they waited for sundown, that Yueh Hua knew the country well. This was another mark in her favor, for he knew less than nothing about it.

“What sort of place is Lung Chang, Yueh Hua?” he asked.

“A small town, Chi Foh.”

“Your aunt lives there, you told me?”

“Yes.”

“She is married, I suppose?”

“She is a widow. I shall be safe with her.”

“Have you other friends there?”

“I expect they have all gone, those I knew. Everything is changed.”

After careful consideration, he said, “Lung Chang has gone over to the Communists, I suppose, Yueh Hua?”

“Yes.” She passed him a tin cup. “They all had to.”

“You mean, they didn’t want to?”

“No. Lung Chang for ever so long has been the property of the great Lao clan. The people all belonged to the estate. They were content. Now, they are miserable.” Yueh Hua was watching him and smiling. It would be unwise to probe deeper, he decided.

“I have to see a man in Niu-fo-tu. Is it a small place, Yueh Hua?”

“Yes. But there is a market there. I think Niu-fo-tu is dangerous for us, Chi Foh.”

And instinctively he knew she was thinking of the officer with eyes “like pieces of green jade.”

* * *

They set out around sundown. By morning, Yueh Hua said, they would reach a canal which connected with a creek. It was rarely used and they could tie up there until it seemed safe to go on.

They sculled and rested in turn through the hours of the night. Sometimes, Tony would lean on the long oar and bend forward, looking in to see if Yueh Hua was asleep. At a place where the bank he followed became low, he swung in to a point made by several small creeks joining the river, which formed a little delta carpeted with wild hyacinths.

Yueh Hua woke up as the regular sweep of the oar stopped.

“Is anything the matter, Chi Foh?”

“No. I’m just thirsty,” he said quickly. “Shall I make tea?”

“Not unless you want tea. Whiskey will do for me. Would you like some?”

“No, thank you. But I should like some lime juice.” They sat and sipped their drinks, diluted with boiled water cooled in an old clay jar. This was a custom Tony followed throughout his journey. He used to do it in Burma and never had a trace of dysentery.

If Yueh Hua wondered about it, she never said so, and he knew that his use of chopsticks was faultless. Yet he often caught her watching him in a queer way.

He was sure of himself where passing acquaintances were concerned. But he hadn’t counted on a close intimacy with any bred-in-the-bone Chinese. Almost hourly he found himself wondering if Yueh Hua suspected that he wasn’t what he pretended to be.

* * *

It was a dim hour of the night, but old General Huan Tsung-Chao and Dr. Fu-Manchu still remained in conference in the room with the lacquered desk. Apparently, they had conferred there since dusk. Piles of documents littered the desk. General Huan, wearing horn-rimmed spectacles, was reading one of them. He glanced up, began to speak. Dr. Fu-Manchu, fingertips pressed together, sat with closed eyes and compressed lips.

“We can rely upon the armed forces in the four provinces adjoining Szechuan. Some seventy-five percent have joined the Si-Fan. I have a report here from Peiping which states that agents of Free China are securing many recruits, and I have ordered those of the agents who already belong to our Order to make sure of these recruits.”

Fu-Manchu, still keeping his eyes closed, spoke softly. “There is a rapport between the free Chinese and the Secret Service of which our old friend, Nayland Smith, is an active member. Great caution is necessary. We are not ready. And if our present standing with Peiping should be disturbed—if they lost their confidence in me—our strategy would be badly shaken.” His voice sank lower. “This loss of the register alarms me. Such evidence, in the hands of either the Allies or Russia, would destroy us.”

“It is certain that the register could not be in the possession of the man called Wu Chi Foh and equally certain that he could not have stolen it. He was in prison at the time. I doubt if he is concerned in any way.”

“Yet the affair, Tsung-Chao, was so cunningly contrived that some outside agency must have planned it. The escape was brilliantly managed and the complete disappearance of the man and his boat is phenomenal. Some hiding place had been prepared for him.”

General Huan smiled wryly. “That is possible. But he may yet be found. It is now nearing the time when I must prepare to entertain André Skobolov.”

“I have already made my preparations.” Fu-Manchu’s soft voice took on a sound that was more like a hiss. “I have some choice glossina in my laboratory, a highly successful culture. I shall take steps to ensure his mental incapacity and ultimate death. The symptoms will develop some hours after he leaves here. I selected this method as the most suitable. Mahmud and a selected party will cover his movements from the moment of his departure. They will take the first possible opportunity to seize any briefcase he may carry. If he has the register, we shall recover it, and if he has notified Moscow, his death, should the body be found, cannot be laid at your door. The trypanosomes which the insects will inject are so amplified that fatal conditions develop in twenty-four to thirty-six hours.”

General Huan’s wrinkled face assumed a troubled expression.

“I agree, although with reluctance, that this man’s execution is necessary to our safety, but I do not understand how these insects to which you refer (I am a scientist only of war) are to be employed.”

Dr. Fu-Manchu opened his eyes and smiled. It was a deathly smile. He dipped his long fingers in a silver snuffbox.

“I, also, have studied the science of war. But my strategy is designed to prevent it by removing those few who have power to loose upon the world forces of wholesale destruction. It is simple and it is just. I have ordered that one of my Cold Men be brought here. He will arrive about dawn. These living-dead, as the ignorant masses term them, are dispensable. And handling the glossina is very dangerous. I shall smoke awhile, Tsung-Chao, and repose, for I have much work to do. Be so good as to send Chung-Wa to prepare my pipe.”

* * *

Dawn was stealing over the river when Yueh Hua piloted the sampan into the canal. They went up for a mile or more before coming to a place where a gnarled tree hung right over the water, forming a kind of green cover. They tied up under the tree.

It was as Tony was eating his unpalatable breakfast that a slight movement in a field of rape in full yellow bloom drew his attention to the bank. At first he thought he was mistaken. Then he knew he wasn’t.

A pair of bright, beady black eyes peered out intently. Tony stood up, staring under raised hands. And presently, in rapid flight along a path through the five-foot high rape he saw a tiny boy, naked except for a loincloth. “Why should he run away, Yueh Hua?”

He saw her face flush.

“He may have been watching us for all sorts of reasons. I suppose he thought you would beat him.”

An old rush basket, waterlogged and broken, was drifting toward them along the canal. He watched it until it reached the sampan. Then he pulled it on board.

“If anyone comes to ask questions, Yueh Hua, I shall disappear. Say this is your boat, and say that there has been no one else with you.”

“As you wish, Chi Foh. But how are you going to disappear?”

A flight of wild ducks passed overhead. It was the fact that this marshy land teemed with wild fowl which had given him the idea…

“It may not be necessary. If it is, I’ll show you.”

While Yueh Hua washed the rice bowls, he made a sounding with the long sweep. He found more than five feet of water in the canal.

He had no sooner completed this than he saw that his disappearance was going to be necessary.

Far off across the fields, on the side to which they were tied up, a small figure, little more than a yellow dot in the distance, came running along an embankment. Two men in uniform followed.

“Yueh Hua!” He spoke quietly.

She turned. “Yes, Chi Foh?”

“Remember what we arranged. That little devil of a boy is bringing two soldiers. It’s your word against his.”

He ducked into the low cabin and came out carrying the pistol. Yueh Hua had seemed alarmed the first time she saw it, but now she smiled bravely and nodded her approval.

He managed to pull away the heavy iron pin which did duty as a rowlock and tied it to a line, on which he knotted a loop, and threw it overboard. Next, with a piece of string, he fastened the automatic around his neck. Then he went overboard himself, feet first, holding the ground line and the rush basket.

“Oh!” Yueh Hua’s eyes danced joyously for one fleeting moment. “Like snaring wild duck.”

He grinned cheerfully, although he felt far from cheerful, and hauled on the line until he could get one foot into the loop to steady him. Standing on the bed of the canal, he found that his shoulders were well above water. He waded several yards from the sampan, pulled the old rush basket over his head, and disappeared.

Through the basket’s many holes he could see quite well. He unfastened his pistol and held it inside the basket clear of the water line.

If anything went wrong with Yueh Hua’s story, he didn’t mean to hesitate. There might have to be two casualties in the ranks of the People’s Army.

The two men and the boy reached the canal bank. The boy was a grubby, little cross-eyed specimen. The men were shoddily dressed irregulars of the peasant type. They carried old service revolvers.

“We want to see the man, not you,” one of them said.

He seemed to be the senior. The other, deeply pock-marked, stared dumbly at Yueh Hua.

“There’s some mistake!” Yueh Hua stood upright, open-eyed. “There’s no man on my boat!”

“You are a liar!” the boy piped shrilly.

Tony held his breath.

“And you’re an ugly little son of a sow!” Yueh Hua screamed at him. “What lies have you been telling about me? I’m an honest girl. My mother is sick in Chia-Ting and I’m going to nurse her. If my father heard you, he would cut your tongue out!”

“Chia-Ting. Who is your father?” the man asked.

“My father is head jailer at the prison. Only wait until he hears about this.”

This flight of fancy was sheer genius.

“If you’re going to Chia-Ting,” the boy piped, “what are you doing here?”

“Resting, you mangy little pig! I’ve come a long way.” She was a virago, a shrill-voiced river girl. Her blue eyes challenged them. But the man who did all the talking still hesitated.

“Ask her—” the boy began.

The man absently gave him a flip on the head which nearly knocked him over.

“We are doing our duty. What is your name?”

“Tsin Gum.”

“There is a reward for a prisoner called Wu Chi Foh. He escaped from Chia-Ting.”

Tony held his breath again.

“Oh!” Yueh Hua’s entire manner changed magically. “My poor father! When anyone escapes he is always punished.”

“It is a big reward. You have seen no one?”

“No one. How much is the reward?”

The man hesitated, glancing at his pock-marked companion. “Fifty dollars.”

Tony made a rapid mental calculation. Fifty dollars Chinese added up to about two dollars and fifty cents American. Beyond doubt, his recapture was worth more than that.

“Fifty dollars? Ooh!” Yueh Hua clapped her hands. “And my father would be so glad. What does he look like, this prisoner?”

“He is rather tall and pretends to be a fisherman. He is really a dangerous criminal. He is very ugly.”

“I will look out for him all the way to Chia-Ting,” Yueh Hua promised. “If I find him, will I get the reward there?”

“You haven’t searched the cabin,” came the boy’s shrill pipe.

“Look in the cabin,” the senior man directed. Then, meeting a fiery glance from Yueh Hua, “He may have slipped on board,” he added weakly.

His pock-marked assistant scrambled clumsily onto the sampan, one eye on Yueh Hua. He looked in under the low, plaited roof, then climbed quickly back to the bank. “Nobody there.”

They turned and walked off.

Yueh Hua rowed when Tony thought it safe to move, and nothing occurred on the way down the canal to suggest that they were being watched. When they turned into the creek, Tony saw that the left bank was a mere bamboo jungle. But the right bank showed cultivated land away to the distant hills. It was a charming view; acres of poppies, the buds just bursting into dazzling whiteness. Opium cultivation had been renewed in a big way by the Communist government.