The Bride of Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer Page B

Sterling”—he fixed a penetrating stare upon me—“that a similar attempt was made here tonight.”
    “Here? Whatever do you mean, Sir Denis?”
    But even as I spoke the words I thought I knew, and:
    “Why, of course!” I cried. “The Dacoit!”
    “Dacoit,” he rapped. “What Dacoit?”
    “You don’t know? But, on second thoughts, how could you know! It was shortly after you left. Someone looked in at the window of Petrie’s room—”
    “Looked in?” He glanced up at the corresponding window of Sister Therese’s room. “It’s twelve feet above ground level.”
    “I know. Nevertheless, someone looked in. I heard a faint scuffling—and I was just in time to catch a glimpse of a yellow hand as the man dropped back.”
    “Yellow hand?” Sir Denis laughed shortly. “Our cross-eyed friend from the Villa Jasmin, Sterling! He was spying out the land. Shortly after this, I suggest, the lady arrived?”
    I stared at him in surprise.
    “You are quite right. I suppose Sister Therese told you? Mrs. Petrie came a few minutes afterwards.”
    “Describe her,” he directed tersely.
    Startled by his manner, I did my best to comply, when:
    “She has green eyes,” he broke in.
    “I couldn’t swear to it. Her veil obscured her eyes.”
    “They are green,” he affirmed confidently. “Her skin is the colour of ivory, and she has slender, indolent hands. She is as graceful as a leopardess, the purring of which treacherous creature her voice surely reminded you?”
    Sir Denis’s sardonic humour completed my bewilderment. Recalling the almost tender way in which he had spoken the words, “Poor Karâmanèh,” I found it impossible to reconcile those tones with the savagery of his present manner.
    “I’m afraid you puzzle me,” I confessed. “I quite understood that you held Mrs. Petrie in the highest esteem.”
    “So I do,” he snapped. “But we are not talking about Mrs. Petrie!”
    “Not talking about Mrs. Petrie! But—”
    “The lady who favoured you with a visit tonight, Sterling, is known as Fah Lo Suee (I don’t know why). She is the daughter of the most dangerous man living today, East or West—Dr. Fu-Manchu!”
    “But, Sir Denis!”
    He suddenly grasped my shoulders, staring into my eyes.
    “No one can blame you if you have been duped, Sterling. You thought you were dealing with Petrie’s wife: it was a stroke of daring genius on the part of the enemy—”
    He paused; but his look asked the question.
    “I refused to permit her to touch him, nevertheless,” I said.
    Sir Denis’s expression changed. His brown, eager face lighted up.
    “Good man!” he said in a low voice, and squeezed my shoulders, then dropped his hands. “Good man.”
    It was mild enough, as appreciation goes, yet somehow I valued those words more highly than a decoration. “Did she mention my name?”
    “No.”
    “Did you?”
    I thought a while, and then:
    “No,” I replied. “I am positive on the point.”
    “Good!” he muttered, and began to pace up and down again.
    “There’s just a chance—just a chance he has overlooked me. Tell me, omitting no detail that you recall, exactly what took place.”
    To the best of my ability, I did as he directed.
    He interrupted me once only: when I spoke of that sepulchral warning—
    “Where was the woman when you heard it?” he rapped.
    “Practically in my arms. I had just dragged her back.”
    “The voice was impossible to identify?”
    “Quite.”
    “And you could not swear to the fact that Petrie’s lips moved?”
    “No. It was a fleeting impression, no more.”
    “It was after this episode that she subjected you to her hypnotic tricks?”
    “Hypnotic tricks!”
    “Yes—you have narrowly escaped, Sterling.”
    “You refer”—I said with some embarrassment, for I had been perfectly frank—“to my strange impulses?”
    He nodded.
    “No. It was the voice which broke the spell.”
    He twitched his ear for some moments, then:
    “Go on!” he