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

this.”
    “Nevertheless,” rapped Sir Denis, “the smell of mimosa is still perceptible in the sitting room.”
    The French doctor nodded in grave agreement. Then, as I sat up—for I felt as well as I had ever felt in my life—
    “No, please,” he insisted, and laid his hand upon my shoulder: “I should prefer that you lie quiet for the present.”
    “Yes, take it easy, Sterling,” said Nayland Smith. “There was another victim here last night.”
    “The man in the laboratory?”
    “Yes; but he’s none the worse for it. He dozed off on the couch, he tells me, and they operated in his case, I have discovered, by inserting a tube through the ventilator in the wall above. He sprang up at the first whiff, but never succeeded in getting to his feet.”
    “Please tell me,” I interrupted excitedly, “is there any blood in the lobby?”
    Sir Denis shook his head grimly.
    “I take it that you are responsible for the shot-hole through the door?”
    “Yes, and I scored a bull!”
    “The lobby is tiled. They probably took the trouble to remove any stains. Apart from several objects and documents which they have taken away, they have left everything in perfect order. And now, Sterling—the details.”
    Sir Denis looked very tired; his manner was unusually grave; and:
    “Before I begin,” I said rapidly, “Petrie? Is there any change?”
    The Frenchman shook his head.
    “I am very sorry to have to tell you, Mr. Sterling,” he replied, “that Dr. Petrie is sinking rapidly.”
    “No? Good God! Don’t say so!”
    “It’s true!” snapped Nayland Smith. “But tell me what I want to know—I haven’t a minute to waste.”
    Filled with a helpless anger, and with such a venomous hatred growing in my heart for the cruel, cunning devil directing these horrors, I outlined very rapidly the events of the night.
    “Even now,” said Nayland Smith savagely, “we don’t know if they have it.”
    “The formula for ‘654’?”
    He nodded.
    “It may have been in Rorke’s study in Wimpole Street, or it may not; and it may have been here. In the meantime, Petrie’s case is getting desperate, and no one knows what treatment to pursue. Fah Lo Suee’s kindness towards yourself, following a murderous assault upon one of her servants, suggests success. But it’s merely a surmise. I must be off!”
    “But where are you going, Sir Denis?” I asked, for he had already started towards the door. “What are my orders?”
    He turned.
    “Your orders,” he replied, “are to stay in bed until Dr. Brisson gives you permission to get up. I am going to Berlin.”
    “To Berlin?”
    He nodded impatiently.
    “I spent some time with the late Sir Manston Rorke,” he went on rapidly, “at the School of Tropical Medicine, as I have already told you. And I formed the impression that Rorke’s big reputation was largely based upon his friendship with Professor Emil Krus, of Berlin, the greatest living authority upon Tropical Medicine.
    “I suspected that Rorke almost invariably submitted proposed treatments to the celebrated German, and I hope—I only hope—that Petrie’s formula ‘654’ may have been sent on to the Professor for his comments. I have already been in touch by telephone with Berlin, but Dr. Emil Krus proved to be inaccessible.
    “The French authorities have placed a fast plane and an experienced pilot at my service, and I leave in twenty minutes for the Tempelhof aerodrome.”
    I was astounded—I could think of no words; but:
    “It is Dr. Petrie’s only chance,” the Frenchman interrupted. “His condition is growing hourly worse, and we have no idea what to do. It is possible that the great Krus”—there was professional as well as national jealousy in his pronunciation of the name—“may be able to help us. Otherwise—”
    He shrugged his shoulders.
    “You see, Sterling?” said Nayland Smith. “Take care of yourself.”
    He ran out.
    I looked up helplessly into the bespectacled face of Dr.