The sleek1 little man in the dress suit, who looked like a head waiter (but was the trusted legal adviser2 of the house of Southery) puffed3 at his cigar indignantly. Nayland Smith, whose restless pacing had led him to the far end of the library, turned, a remote but virile4 figure, and looked back to where I stood by the open hearth5 with the solicitor6.
"I am in your hands, Mr. Henderson," he said, and advanced upon the latter, his gray eyes ablaze7. "Save for the heir, who is abroad on foreign service, you say there is no kin8 of Lord Southery to consider. The word rests with you. If I am wrong, and you agree to my proposal, there is none whose susceptibilities will suffer—"
"My own, sir!"
"Lord Southery was a lonely man," continued my friend. "If I could have placed my proposition before one of his blood, I do not doubt what my answer had been. Why do you hesitate? Why do you experience this feeling of horror?"
Mr. Henderson stared down into the fire. His constitutionally ruddy face was pale.
Smith snapped his teeth together impatiently, snatching his watch from his pocket and glancing at it.
"I am vested with the necessary powers. I will give you a written order, sir."
"Do you weigh a life against such quibbles? Do you suppose that, granting MY irresponsibility, Dr. Petrie would countenance14 such a thing if he doubted the necessity?"
Mr. Henderson looked at me with pathetic hesitance.
"There are guests in the house—mourners who attended the ceremony to-day. They—"
"Will never know, if we are in error," interrupted Smith. "Good God! why do you delay?"
"You wish it to be kept secret?"
"You and I, Mr. Henderson, and Dr. Petrie will go now. We require no other witnesses. We are answerable only to our consciences."
The lawyer passed his hand across his damp brow.
"I have never in my life been called upon to come to so momentous15 a decision in so short a time," he confessed. But, aided by Smith's indomitable will, he made his decision. As its result, we three, looking and feeling like conspirators16, hurried across the park beneath a moon whose placidity17 was a rebuke18 to the turbulent passions which reared their strangle-growth in the garden of England. Not a breath of wind stirred amid the leaves. The calm of perfect night soothed19 everything to slumber20. Yet, if Smith were right (and I did not doubt him), the green eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu had looked upon the scene; and I found myself marveling that its beauty had not wilted21 up. Even now the dread22 Chinaman must be near to us.
As Mr. Henderson unlocked the ancient iron gates he turned to Nayland Smith. His face twitched23 oddly.
"Witness that I do this unwillingly24," he said—"most unwillingly."
"Mine be the responsibility," was the reply.
Smith's voice quivered, responsive to the nervous vitality25 pent up within that lean frame. He stood motionless, listening—and I knew for whom he listened. He peered about him to right and left—and I knew whom he expected but dreaded26 to see.
Above us now the trees looked down with a solemnity different from the aspect of the monarchs27 of the park, and the nearer we came to our journey's end the more somber28 and lowering bent29 the verdant30 arch—or so it seemed.
By that path, patched now with pools of moonlight, Lord Southery had passed upon his bier, with the sun to light his going; by that path several generations of Stradwicks had gone to their last resting-place.
To the doors of the vault31 the moon rays found free access. No branch, no leaf, intervened. Mr. Henderson's face looked ghastly. The keys which he carried rattled32 in his hand.
"Light the lantern," he said unsteadily.
Nayland Smith, who again had been peering suspiciously about into the shadows, struck a match and lighted the lantern which he carried. He turned to the solicitor.
"Be calm, Mr. Henderson," he said sternly. "It is your plain duty to your client."
"God be my witness that I doubt it," replied Henderson, and opened the door.
We descended33 the steps. The air beneath was damp and chill. It touched us as with clammy fingers; and the sensation was not wholly physical.
Before the narrow mansion34 which now sufficed Lord Southery, the great engineer whom kings had honored, Henderson reeled and clutched at me for support. Smith and I had looked to him for no aid in our uncanny task, and rightly.
With averted35 eyes he stood over by the steps of the tomb, whilst my friend and myself set to work. In the pursuit of my profession I had undertaken labors36 as unpleasant, but never amid an environment such as this. It seemed that generations of Stradwicks listened to each turn of every screw.
At last it was done, and the pallid37 face of Lord Southery questioned the intruding38 light. Nayland Smith's hand was as steady as a rigid39 bar when he raised the lantern. Later, I knew, there would be a sudden releasing of the tension of will—a reaction physical and mental—but not until his work was finished.
That my own hand was steady I ascribed to one thing solely—professional zeal40. For, under conditions which, in the event of failure and exposure, must have led to an unpleasant inquiry41 by the British Medical Association, I was about to attempt an experiment never before essayed by a physician of the white races.
Though I failed, though I succeeded, that it ever came before the B.M.A., or any other council, was improbable; in the former event, all but impossible. But the knowledge that I was about to practice charlatanry42, or what any one of my fellow-practitioners must have designated as such, was with me. Yet so profound had my belief become in the extraordinary being whose existence was a danger to the world that I reveled in my immunity43 from official censure44. I was glad that it had fallen to my lot to take at least one step—though blindly—into the FUTURE of medical science.
So far as my skill bore me, Lord Southery was dead. Unhesitatingly, I would have given a death certificate, save for two considerations. The first, although his latest scheme ran contrary from the interests of Dr. Fu-Manchu, his genius, diverted into other channels, would serve the yellow group better than his death. The second, I had seen the boy Aziz raised from a state as like death as this.
From the phial of amber-hued liquid which I had with me, I charged the needle syringe. I made the injection, and waited.
"If he is really dead!" whispered Smith. "It seems incredible that he can have survived for three days without food. Yet I have known a fakir to go for a week."
Watch in hand, I stood observing the gray face.
A second passed; another; a third. In the fourth the miracle began. Over the seemingly cold clay crept the hue45 of pulsing life. It came in waves—in waves which corresponded with the throbbing48 of the awakened49 heart; which swept fuller and stronger; which filled and quickened the chilled body.
As we rapidly freed the living man from the trappings of the dead one, Southery, uttering a stifled50 scream, sat up, looked about him with half-glazed eyes, and fell back. "My God!" cried Smith.
"It is all right," I said, and had time to note how my voice had assumed a professional tone. "A little brandy from my flask51 is all that is necessary now."
"You have two patients, Doctor," rapped my friend.
Mr. Henderson had fallen in a swoon to the floor of the vault.
"Quiet," whispered Smith; "HE is here."
He extinguished the light.
I supported Lord Southery. "What has happened?" he kept moaning. "Where am I? Oh, God! what has happened?"
I strove to reassure52 him in a whisper, and placed my traveling coat about him. The door at the top of the mausoleum steps we had reclosed but not relocked. Now, as I upheld the man whom literally53 we had rescued from the grave, I heard the door reopen. To aid Henderson I could make no move. Smith was breathing hard beside me. I dared not think what was about to happen, nor what its effects might be upon Lord Southery in his exhausted54 condition.
Through the Memphian dark of the tomb cut a spear of light, touching55 the last stone of the stairway.
A guttural voice spoke56 some words rapidly, and I knew that Dr. Fu-Manchu stood at the head of the stairs. Although I could not see my friend, I became aware that Nayland Smith had his revolver in his hand, and I reached into my pocket for mine.
At last the cunning Chinaman was about to fall into a trap. It would require all his genius, I thought, to save him to-night. Unless his suspicions were aroused by the unlocked door, his capture was imminent57.
Someone was descending58 the steps.
In my right hand I held my revolver, and with my left arm about Lord Southery, I waited through ten such seconds of suspense59 as I have rarely known.
Lord Southery, Smith and myself were hidden by the angle of the wall; but full upon the purplish face of Mr. Henderson the beam shone. In some way it penetrated61 to the murk in his mind; and he awakened from his swoon with a hoarse62 cry, struggled to his feet, and stood looking up the stair in a sort of frozen horror.
Smith was past him at a bound. Something flashed towards him as the light was extinguished. I saw him duck, and heard the knife ring upon the floor.
I managed to move sufficiently63 to see at the top, as I fired up the stairs, the yellow face of Dr. Fu-Manchu, to see the gleaming, chatoyant eyes, greenly terrible, as they sought to pierce the gloom. A flying figure was racing64 up, three steps at a time (that of a brown man scantily65 clad). He stumbled and fell, by which I knew that he was hit; but went on again, Smith hard on his heels.
"Mr. Henderson!" I cried, "relight the lantern and take charge of Lord Southery. Here is my flask on the floor. I rely upon you."
Smith's revolver spoke again as I went bounding up the stair. Black against the square of moonlight I saw him stagger, I saw him fall. As he fell, for the third time, I heard the crack of his revolver.
Instantly I was at his side. Somewhere along the black aisle66 beneath the trees receding67 footsteps pattered.
"Are you hurt, Smith?" I cried anxiously.
He got upon his feet.
"He has a dacoit with him," he replied, and showed me the long curved knife which he held in his hand, a full inch of the blade bloodstained. "A near thing for me, Petrie."
I heard the whir of a restarted motor.
"We have lost him," said Smith.
"But we have saved Lord Southery," I said. "Fu-Manchu will credit us with a skill as great as his own."
"We must get to the car," Smith muttered, "and try to overtake them. Ugh! my left arm is useless."
"It would be mere68 waste of time to attempt to overtake them," I argued, "for we have no idea in which direction they will proceed."
"I have a very good idea," snapped Smith. "Stradwick Hall is less than ten miles from the coast. There is only one practicable means of conveying an unconscious man secretly from here to London."
"You think he meant to take him from here to London?"
"A boat?"
"A yacht, presumably, is lying off the coast in readiness. Fu-Manchu may even have designed to ship him direct to China."
Lord Southery, a bizarre figure, my traveling coat wrapped about him, and supported by his solicitor, who was almost as pale as himself, emerged from the vault into the moonlight.
"This is a triumph for you, Smith," I said.
"Only half a triumph," he replied. "But we still have another chance—the raid on his house. When will the word come from Karamaneh?"
Southery spoke in a weak voice.
"Gentlemen," he said, "it seems I am raised from the dead."
It was the weirdest70 moment of the night wherein we heard that newly buried man speak from the mold of his tomb.
"Yes," replied Smith slowly, "and spared from the fate of Heaven alone knows how many men of genius. The yellow society lacks a Southery, but that Dr. Fu-Manchu was in Germany three years ago I have reason to believe; so that, even without visiting the grave of your great Teutonic rival, who suddenly died at about that time, I venture to predict that they have a Von Homber. And the futurist group in China knows how to MAKE men work!"
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1
sleek
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| adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢 | |
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adviser
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| n.劝告者，顾问 | |
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puffed
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| adj.疏松的v.使喷出( puff的过去式和过去分词 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
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virile
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| adj.男性的；有男性生殖力的；有男子气概的；强有力的 | |
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hearth
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| n.壁炉炉床，壁炉地面 | |
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solicitor
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| n.初级律师，事务律师 | |
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ablaze
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| adj.着火的，燃烧的；闪耀的，灯火辉煌的 | |
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kin
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| n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的 | |
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9
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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savors
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| v.意味，带有…的性质( savor的第三人称单数 )；给…加调味品；使有风味；品尝 | |
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14
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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15
momentous
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| adj.重要的，重大的 | |
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conspirators
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| n.共谋者，阴谋家( conspirator的名词复数 ) | |
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placidity
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| n.平静，安静，温和 | |
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rebuke
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| v.指责，非难，斥责 [反]praise | |
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19
soothed
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| v.安慰( soothe的过去式和过去分词 )；抚慰；使舒服；减轻痛苦 | |
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slumber
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| n.睡眠，沉睡状态 | |
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21
wilted
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| （使）凋谢，枯萎( wilt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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23
twitched
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| vt.& vi.（使）抽动，（使）颤动（twitch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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unwillingly
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| adv.不情愿地 | |
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vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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dreaded
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| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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27
monarchs
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| 君主，帝王( monarch的名词复数 ) | |
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somber
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| adj.昏暗的，阴天的，阴森的，忧郁的 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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verdant
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| adj.翠绿的，青翠的，生疏的，不老练的 | |
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vault
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| n.拱形圆顶，地窖，地下室 | |
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rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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mansion
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| n.大厦，大楼；宅第 | |
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averted
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| 防止，避免( avert的过去式和过去分词 )； 转移 | |
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36
labors
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| v.努力争取(for)( labor的第三人称单数 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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pallid
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| adj.苍白的，呆板的 | |
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intruding
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| v.侵入，侵扰，打扰( intrude的现在分词)；把…强加于 | |
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rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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zeal
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| n.热心，热情，热忱 | |
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inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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42
charlatanry
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| n.吹牛，骗子行为 | |
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immunity
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| n.优惠；免除；豁免，豁免权 | |
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censure
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| v./n.责备；非难；责难 | |
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45
hue
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| n.色度；色调；样子 | |
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46
groaned
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| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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47
throb
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| v.震颤，颤动；(急速强烈地)跳动，搏动 | |
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48
throbbing
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| a. 跳动的,悸动的 | |
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49
awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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50
stifled
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| （使）窒息， （使）窒闷( stifle的过去式和过去分词 )； 镇压，遏制； 堵 | |
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51
flask
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| n.瓶，火药筒，砂箱 | |
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52
reassure
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| v.使放心，使消除疑虑 | |
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53
literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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54
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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55
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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56
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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57
imminent
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| adj.即将发生的，临近的，逼近的 | |
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descending
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| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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59
suspense
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| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
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60
plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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61
penetrated
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| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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62
hoarse
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| adj.嘶哑的，沙哑的 | |
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63
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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64
racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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65
scantily
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| adv.缺乏地；不充足地；吝啬地；狭窄地 | |
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66
aisle
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| n.（教堂、教室、戏院等里的）过道，通道 | |
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67
receding
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的现在分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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68
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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shipping
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| n.船运（发货，运输，乘船） | |
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70
weirdest
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| 怪诞的( weird的最高级 )； 神秘而可怕的； 超然的； 古怪的 | |
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