Free The Drums of Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer

should not be found in the neighbourhood of the Monks’ Arms. Secured to the heavy iron framework I was to be taken out and thrown into the river!
    When at last the two had completed their task and one, standing up, raised the lantern from the floor, the horror of the fate which I felt was upon me reached such a climax that again I stifled a desire to scream for help. A sound, faint but just discernible, which came through a grating up in one corner of the wall, told me that the stream beside which the inn was built passed directly outside the door.
    Perhaps I had little cause for it, but when the yellow men turned, and he carrying the lantern leading, went back by the way they had come, I experienced such a revulsion from despair to almost exultant optimism that I cannot hope to describe it.
    I was still alive! My absence could not fail to: result in a search party being sent out. My chances might be poor but my position was no longer desperate!
    Why had I been left there?
    Dr. Fu-Manchu’s words allowed no room for doubt regarding his intention. Why then this delay? And—an even greater mystery—what had brought him to the Monks’ Arms and why did he linger? Overriding my own peril, topping everything, was the maddeningknowledge that if I could only communicate what I knew to Nayland Smith, it might alter the immediate history of the world.
    Audacity is an outstanding characteristic of all great criminals, and that Dr. Fu-Manchu should calmly recline in that room upstairs while the district all about him was being combed for the murderer of Sergeant Hythe, illustrated the fact that he possessed it in full measure. The clue was perhaps to be found in his words that something had seriously disarranged his plans. I wondered feverishly if happy chance would lead Nayland Smith to the inn. Even so, and the thought made me groan, he would probably go away again never suspecting what the place contained!
    Now came an answer to one of my questions—an answer which sent a new chill through my veins.
    Dimly I heard the sound of oars. I knew that a boat was being pulled along the creek in the direction of the oak door close to which my head rested.
    Of course I was to be transported to some spot where the water was deep, and thrown in there!
    I listened eagerly, fearfully, to the creak of the nearing oars; and when I knew that the invisible boat had reached those steps which I divined to be beyond the door, I gave myself up for lost. But my calculations were at fault.
    The boat passed on.
    I could tell from the sound that an oar had been reversed and was being used as a punt pole. The swish of the rushes against the side of the craft was clearly discernible. I doubted if the little stream was navigable far above that point, but as those ominous sounds died away I knew at least that I had had a second reprieve.
    Breathing was difficult because of the bandage over my mouth, and my heart was beating madly. Through the grating a sound reachedme—that bumping and scraping which tells of someone entering or leaving a boat. Then I knew that poling had recommenced, but never once did I hear a human voice.
    The boat was coming back. I heard the faint rattle of an oar set in a rowlock, the drip of water from the blade; but until the rower had crept past outside the oak door I doubt if I breathed again.
    What did it all mean?
    Someone, I reasoned, had been brought from the inn and was being rowed downstream to the larger river of which it was a tributary.
    Dr. Fu-Manchu!
    Yes, it must be. The monstrous Chinaman, having lain within the grasp of the law, almost under the very nose of Nayland Smith, was escaping!
    I tugged impotently at my lashings, but the pain I suffered soon checked my struggles. In fact this, with the damp silence of the cellar and the difficulty which I experienced in breathing, now threatened to overcome me. Clenching my teeth, I fought against the weakness and lay still.
    How long I lay it is impossible to say. Those