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

explain.” I had formed a theory of my own to account for her apparent ignorance of all that had passed between us, and I spoke gently. “I owe you my life, Ardatha, and it belongs to you with all else I have. You said you would try to understand. You must help me to understand, too. What are you doing here?”
    She took a step forward, her eyes half fearful, her lips parted.
    “I am obeying orders which I must obey. There are things which you can never understand. I believe you mean all you say, and I want to trust you.” Prompted by some swift impulse, she came up to me and rested her hands upon my shoulders, watching me with eyes in which I read a passionate questioning. “God knows how I want to trust you.”
    Almost, I succumbed; her charm intoxicated me. As her accepted lover I had the right to those sweet, tremulous lips. But I had read the riddle in my own way, and clenching my teeth I resisted that maddening temptation.
    “You may trust me where you cannot trust yourself, Ardatha,” I said quietly. “I am yours here and hereafter. Shake off this horrible slavery. Come with me now. The laws of England are stronger than the laws of Dr. Fu-Manchu. You will be safe, Ardatha, and I will teach you to remember all you have forgotten.”
    But I kept my hands tightly clenched at my sides; for, once in my arms, all those sane resolutions regarding her would have been swept away, and I knew it.
    “Perhaps I want to do so—very much,” she whispered. “Perhaps—” she glanced swiftly up at me and swiftly down again—“this
is
remembrance. But if such a thing is ever to be, first I must live. If I came with you now I should die within one month—”
    “That is nonsense!” I spoke hotly and regretted my violence in the next breath. “Forgive me! I would see that you were safe—even from
him.”
    Ardatha shook her head. The firelight, which momentarily grew brighter, played wantonly in dancing curls.
    “It is only with him that I can be safe,” she replied in a low voice. “He is well served because no one of the Si-Fan dare desert him—”
    “Why? Whatever do you mean?”
    Her hands clutched me nervously: she hid her face.
    “There is an injection. It produces a living death—catalepsy. But there is an antidote too, which must be used once each two weeks. I have enough for one month more of life. Then I should be buried for dead. Perhaps he would dig up my body: he has done such things before. No one else could save me—only Dr. Fu-Manchu. And so, you see, with so many others I am just his helpless slave. Now, do you begin to understand?”
    Begin to understand? My blood was boiling; yet my heart was cold. I remembered how I had tried to kill the Chinese ghoul, and realized that had I succeeded Ardatha would have been lost to me for ever; that she… But sanity forbade my following that train of thought to its dreadful conclusion.
    Such a wild yearning overcame me, so mad a desire to hold and protect her from horrors unnameable, that, unwilled, mechanically, my arm went about her shoulders. She trembled slightly, but did not resist.
    “You see”—the words were barely audible—“you must let me go. Forget Ardatha. Except by the will of Dr. Fu-Manchu I can be nothing to you or to any man: I can only try to prevent him harming you.” She raised her eyes to me. “Please let me go.”
    But I stood there, stricken motionless, gripped by anguish such as I had never known. My very faith in a just God was shaken by this revelation, by recognition of the fact that a fiend could use this perfect casket of a human soul as a laboratory experiment, reduce a beautiful woman, meant for love and happiness, to the level of a beast of burden—and escape the wrath of Heaven. I wondered if any lover since the world began had suffered such a moment.
    Yet, Fu-Manchu was mortal. There must be a way.
    “I shall let you go, my dearest. But don’t accept the idea that it is for good. What has been done by one man can