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

moments of mental and physical agony seemed to stretch out each into an eternity, and then…
    I heard the boat returning.
    This time there could be no doubt. Dr. Fu-Manchu had been smuggled away—doubtless to some larger craft which awaited him—and they were returning to deal with
me
.
    Yes, I was right. I heard the boat grating against the stone steps, a stumbling movement and a key being inserted in the lock above and behind me. The door, which opened outward, was flung back. A draught of keen air swept into the cellar.
    Shadowy, looking like great apes, the yellow men entered. Oneat my head and one at my feet, they lifted the iron framework to which I was lashed. I have an idea that I muttered a sort of prayer, but of this I cannot be certain, for there came an interruption so unexpected, so overwhelming, that I must have given way to my mental and physical agony. I remember little more.
    A series of loud splashes, as though a number of swimmers had plunged into the water—the bumping and rolling of a boat—a rush of footsteps—a glare of light…
    Finally, a voice—the voice of Nayland Smith:
    “In you go, Gallaho! Don’t hesitate to shoot!”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE MONKS’ ARMS (CONCLUDED)
    “ A ll right, Kerrigan? Feeling better?”
    I stared around me. I was lying on a sofa in a stuffy little sitting room which a smell of stale beer and tobacco smoke told me to be somewhere at the back of the bar of the Monks’ Arms. I sat up and finished what remained of a glass of brandy which Smith was holding to my lips.
    “Gad!” I muttered, “every muscle in my body will be stiff for twenty-four hours. It was mostly the pain that did it, Smith.”
    “Don’t apologise,” he returned drily, and looking at his blanched face as he stood beside me, I could read a deep anger in his eyes. “We were only just in time.”
    “Doctor Fu-Manchu?”
    He snapped his fingers irritably.
    “A motor launch had crept up in the mist and his yellow demons got him aboard, only a matter of minutes before our arrival. Take it easy, Kerrigan; you can tell us your story later. I found this in your pocket, so I gather that you had succeeded where we failed.” He held up the little notebook which I had found in the eel fisher’shut. “It tells the story of poor Hythe’s last hours. It was traces of oil on the water that gave him the clue. He selected a hiding place which evidently you found, and watched from some point near by. He saw the motor craft arrive. It was met by a boat which belongs to the inn. Someone was rowed ashore. He seems to have waded or swum out to the deserted motor launch, and apparently he made a curious discovery—”
    “He did.” I stood up gingerly, to test my leg muscles. “He found a mandarin’s cap.”
    “Good for you, Kerrigan. So he reports in his notes. He took this back to his hiding place as some evidence in case his quarry should escape him. His last entry says that the boat could only have been making for the Monks’ Arms. The rest we have to surmise, but I think it is fairly easy.”
    He dropped the notebook back into his pocket.
    “I assume that he crept up to the inn to learn the identity of the new arrival or arrivals. Having satisfied himself in some way, he then set out across country for the A.A. call box. Unfortunately he had been seen—and someone was following him. At a stone bridge which spans the stream the follower overtook him. Yes—I have found the bloodstains. As he received the fatal stroke he toppled over the parapet. A slow current carried his body down to the point at which it was found.”
    He ceased speaking and stood staring at me in a curious way. I was seated on the sofa, rubbing my aching leg muscles.
    “There’s one thing, Smith,” I said, “for which I owe thanks to heaven. Whatever brought you to my rescue in the nick of time?”
    “I was about to mention that,” he snapped. “Someone called up the police (I had just returned from my visit to the scene