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

be undone by another.” I continued to speak quietly, and as I would have spoken to a frightened child. “Tell me first, why you came here?”
    “For Jacob Bohm’s notes that he was making to give to the police,” she answered simply. “I have burned everything. Look—you can see the ashes on the fire.”
    As she spoke, I understood why the fire had burned up so brightly. A glance was sufficient to convince me that not a fragment could be recovered.
    “And when you leave here, where are you going?”
    “It is impossible for me to tell you that. But there are servants of the Si-Fan watching this house.” (I thought of the yellow faced man whom we had nearly run down.) “Even if you were cruel enough to try, you could not get me away. I think”—she hesitated, glanced swiftly up—“that tonight or in the early morning we leave for America.”
    “America!”
    “Yes.” She slipped free—for I had kept my arm about her shoulders. “I just could not bear to… say good-bye. Please, look away for only a moment—if you really care for my happiness: I beg of you!”
    There was abandonment, despair, in her pleading voice. No man could have refused; and after all I was not a police officer. I looked long and hungrily into those eyes which tonight were like twin amethysts, and walked across to the fire.
    “I will try, I will try to see you again—to speak to you.”
    Only the faintest sound, a light tread on the stair, told me that Ardatha was gone…

CHAPTER TEN
BARTON’S SECRET
    “ I don’t blame you, Kerrigan,” said Nayland Smith; “in fact I cannot see what else you could have done.”
    “Damn it, nor can I!” growled Barton.
    We were back in my flat, after a night of frustration for which, in part, I held myself responsible. Barton had admitted us. He had returned an hour earlier, having borrowed my key. The police had forced a way into the old warehouse; they were still searching it when I rejoined the party. The room, the very bench on which Dr. Oster’s corpse had lain, fragments of twine, they had found, but nothing else. The River was being dragged for the body.
    That laboratory which smelt like the Morgue was below water level: it had been flooded. Only by means of elaborate pumping operations could we hope to learn what evidence still remained there of the nature of the Doctor’s mysterious, and merciless, experiments.
    “Infernally narrow escape for both of us, Kerrigan,” said Sir Lionel; and crossing to the buffet he replenished his glass. “Good shot, that of yours.” He squirted soda water from a syphon. “I owe my life to you: you owe yours to Ardatha. Gad! there’s a girl! But what an impossible situation!”
    Smith stood up, and passing, grasped my shoulder.
    “Even worse situations have been dealt with,” he said. “I am wondering, Kerrigan, if you have recognised the clue to Ardatha’s loss of memory?”
    As he began to pace to and fro across my dining-room:
    “I think so!” I replied. “That yellow devil decided to reclaim her, and it was he who destroyed her memory!”
    “Exactly—as he has done before, with others. I said to you some time ago, ‘Fu-Manchu once had a daughter—’”
    “Smith!” I interrupted excitedly, “it was not until I saw Ardatha in Pelling Street that the meaning of those words came to me. If he did not hesitate in the case of his own flesh and blood to efface all memories of identity, why should he hesitate in the case of Ardatha?”
    “He didn’t! Ardatha remembers only that she is called Ardatha. Fu-Manchu’s daughter, whom once I knew by her childish name of Fah-lo-Suee, became Koreâni. You can bear me out, Kerrigan: you have met her.”
    “Yes, but—”
    “Ardathas and Koreânis are rare. Fu-Manchu has always employed beauty as one of his most potent weapons. His own daughter he regarded merely as a useful instrument when he saw that she was beautiful. He found Ardatha difficult to replace; therefore, he recalled her. Oh! she