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

resolved my final doubt.
    “You’re not suggesting, Sir Denis,” I asked, “that we are up against Dr. Fu-Manchu?”
    Rima clutched me now convulsively. Once only had she met the stupendous genius, Dr. Fu-Manchu, but the memory of that one interview would remain with her to the end of her days, as it would remain with me.
    “If I had had any doubts, Barton,” said Nayland Smith, “your identification of the murderer and his accomplice would have settled them. They belong, you tell me, to a secret society on the Slave Coast.”
    He paused, staring hard at Sir Lionel.
    “I believe that there is no secret society of this character, however small or remote, which is not affiliated to the organisation known as the Si-Fan. That natives of the Pacific Islands are indirectly controlled by this group, I know for a fact; why not Negroes of West Africa? Consider the matter from another angle. What are natives of the Slave Coast doing in Persia? Who has brought them here?
    “They are instruments, Barton, in the hands of a master schemer. For what object they were originally imported, we shall probably never know, but their usefulness in the present case has been proved. There can be no association between this West African society and the survivors of the followers of El Mokanna. These Negroes are in the train of some directing personality.”
    It was morning, and the East is early afoot. From a neighbouring market street came sounds of movement and discords human and animal. Suddenly Sir Denis spoke again.
    “If any doubt had remained in my mind. Barton, it would have been removed last night. You may recall that just before the first signal came, someone passed slowly along the street below?”
    “Yes! I heard him—but I couldn’t see him.”
    “I heard him, too!” I cried…
    “I both heard him and saw him,” Nayland Smith continued— “from my post on the minaret. Action was impossible—unfortunately—in the circumstances. But the man who walked along the street last night just before the second attempt on the green box… was Dr. Fu-Manchu!”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

ROAD TO CAIRO
    W eary though I was of all the East, nevertheless, Cairo represented civilisation. I think I have never felt a greater wave of satisfaction than at the moment when, completing the third and longest stage of our flight from Ispahan, we climbed down upon the sands of Egypt.
    Dr. Petrie was there to meet us; and the greeting between himself and Sir Denis, while it had all the restraint which characterises our peculiar race, was nevertheless so intimate and affectionate that I turned away and helped Rima down the ladder.
    When the chief, last to alight, joined his old friend, I felt that Rima and I had no further part in the affair.
    It should have been a happy reunion, but a cloud lay over it—a cloud which I, personally, was helpless to dispel.
    Dr. Petrie, no whit changed since last I had seen him, broke away from Sir Denis and the chief and hugged Rima and myself in both arms. The best of men are not wholly unselfish; and part of Petrie’s present happiness was explainable by something which I had overheard as he had grasped Nayland Smith’s hand:
    “Thank God, old man! Kara is home in England…”
    Mrs. Petrie, the most beautiful woman I have ever met (Rima is not jealous of my opinion), was staying with Petrie’s people in Surrey, where the doctor shortly anticipated joining her.
    I was sincerely glad. For the gaunt shadow of Fu-Manchu again had crept over us, and the lovely wife whom Petrie had snatched from that evil genius was in safe keeping beyond the reach of the menace which stretched over us even here.
    Nevertheless, this was a momentary hiatus, if no more than momentary. Rima extended her arms, raised her adorable little head, and breathed in the desert air as one inhaling a heavenly perfume.
    “Shan,” she said, “I don’t feel a bit safe, yet. But at least we are in Egypt, our Egypt!”
    Those words “our Egypt”