Free The Bride of Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer Page A

listened.
    I hesitated no longer.
    Standing upright, I clapped the nose of my automatic against the panel at a point about waist high and fired through the door...
    The report in that tiny, enclosed space was deafening, but the accuracy of my judgment was immediately confirmed. A smothered, choking cry and a groan, followed by the sound of a heavy fall immediately outside, told me that my shot had not gone astray.
    Braced tensely, I stood awaiting what would follow. I anticipated an attempt to rush the room, and I meant to give an account of myself.
    What actually happened was utterly unexpected.
    Someone was opening the outer door of the villa; then I heard a low voice—and it was a woman’s voice!
    I had stepped aside, anticipating that my own method might be imitated, but now, heedless of risk, I bent and listened again. A faint smell of burning was perceptible where I had fired through the woodwork.
    That low, musical voice was speaking rapidly—but not in English, nor in any language with which I was familiar. It was some tongue containing strange gutturals. But even these could not disguise the haunting music of the speaker’s tone.
    The woman called Fah Lo Suee was outside in the lobby.
    Then I heard a man’s voice, a snarling, hideous voice, replying to her; and, I thought, a second. But of this I could not be sure.
    They were dragging a heavy body out on to the verandah. There came a choking cough. Such was my mood that I could have cheered aloud. One of the skulking rats had had his medicine!
    As these movements proceeded in accordance with rapidly spoken orders in that unforgettable voice, I turned to considerations of my own safety. Tiptoeing across the room and endeavouring to avoid those obstacles the position of which I could remember, I mounted on to the writing table.
    Slipping the automatic into my pocket I felt for the catch of the window, found it, and threw the window open: the shutters, I knew, I could burst with a blow, for they were old, and the fastener was insecure.
    I moved farther forward, resting upon one knee, and raised my hands.
    As I did so, a ghastly thing happened—a thing unforeseen. I was faced by a weapon against which I had no defence.
    Pouring down through the slats of the shutters came a cloud of vapour. I was drenched, saturated, blinded by mimosa! A faint hissing sound accompanied the discharge; and as I threw one arm across my face in a vain attempt to shield myself from the deadly vapour, this hissing sound was repeated.
    I fell on to both knees, rolled sideways, and tried to throw myself back.
    But the impalpable abomination seemed to follow me. I was enveloped in a cloud of it. I tried to cry out—I couldn’t breathe—I was choking.
    A third time I heard the hissing sound, and then I think I must have rolled from the table on to the floor. My impression at the time was of falling—falling into dense, yellow banks of cloud, reeking of mimosa...

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE FORMULA
    “S terling, Sterling! Wake up, man! You’re all right now.”
    I opened my eyes as directed, and apart from a feeling of pressure on the temples, I experienced no discomfort.
    I was in my own bed at the Villa Jasmin!
    Nayland Smith was standing beside me, and a bespectacled, bearded young man whom I recognized as one of Dr. Cartier’s juniors was bending down and watching me anxiously.
    Without any of that mental chaos which usually follows unconsciousness, I remembered instantly all that had happened, up to the moment that I had rolled from the table.
    “They drugged me, Sir Denis,” I said, “but I can tell you all that happened.”
    “The details, Sterling. I have already reconstructed the outline.” He turned to the doctor. “You see, this drug apparently has no after-effects.”
    The medical man felt my pulse, then turned in amazement to Sir Denis.
    “It is truly astounding,” he admitted. “I know of no property in any species of mimosa which could explain