THE ANGLOGALICIAN CUP: Nubes Color Curry, 2024 Más Los Que Vengan, En Esta Isla Gris De Olvido

Nubes Color Curry, 2024 Más Los Que Vengan, En Esta Isla Gris De Olvido

Desde las costas brumosas de Galicia, donde el Atlántico se encuentra con el espíritu de un pueblo indómito, hasta los venerables páramos de Inglaterra, cuna del fútbol y de epopeyas deportivas, emprendimos un viaje que trasciende lo meramente físico. No era un simple desplazamiento, sino un acto casi ritual: un enfrentamiento entre dos culturas, dos formas de entender el juego y, quizás, la vida misma.

La travesía no era solo geográfica, sino histórica y simbólica. Galicia, con su espíritu marinero y su imborrable conexión con lo celta, se disponía a cruzar el mar como en las antiguas gestas, llevando consigo no solo las botas de fútbol, sino también el orgullo de toda una nación. Inglaterra, tierra de estadios míticos y leyendas inmortales, nos esperaba con su hierba impoluta y su densa atmósfera impregnada de tradición.

En ese partido, bajo el cielo ceniciento que ambos pueblos compartimos, no solo rodaría un balón: se medirían el ímpetu gallego y la flema inglesa, la improvisación frente a la disciplina. Y allí, en un epicentro de emociones que solo el deporte puede provocarr, buscaríamos algo más que la victoria: el honor de representar a nuestra tierra más allá de sus límites..

El partido se saldó con una contundente victoria por parte de los gallegos, quienes ofrecieron un espectáculo antológico, casi místico diría, y, por supuesto, inolvidable e irrepetible. Una vez terminada la batalla, y bajo una espesa lluvia que te calaba hasta los huesos, los dos pueblos se dirigieron a un céntrico pub, donde les esperaba un suculento festín y litros y litros de néctar lupulado. Y es que incluso en el corazón de Albión no llueve eternamente.

491 comentarios:

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O BichoBola dixo...: Se me hace bola tanta ñoneria; 22 de febreiro de 2025, 23:52
Butterfly pillow dixo...: Su talento era tan natural como el dibujo que forma el polvillo en un ala de mariposa. Hubo un tiempo en que él no se entendía a sí mismo como no se entiende la mariposa, y no se daba cuenta cuando su talento estaba magullado o estropeado. Más tarde tomó conciencia de sus vulneradas alas y de cómo estaban hechas, y aprendió a pensar, pero no supo ya volar porque había perdido el amor al vuelo y no sabía hacer más que recordar los tiempos en que volaba sin esfuerzo.; 22 de febreiro de 2025, 23:59
Se dice que bebía al día más de doscientas cervezas. dixo...: La Anglogalician sólo podía nacer en Galiza, país vuelto hacia el pasado de la manera más exclusiva y absoluta, y en el cual sólo tiene actualidad el pasado.; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 00:02
The man in the high castle dixo...: Fuera está Regin
y los hijos del rey,
fueron enemigos;
se lo dijo a Frodhi.
Un prudente forjó clavos,
un prudente las cabezas,
y para un prudente, un prudente
forjó clavos prudentes.; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 12:07
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: Within my view, from the corner of the room where I sat in deepest shadow, through the partly opened window (it was screwed, like our own) were rows of glass-houses gleaming in the moonlight, and, beyond them, orderly ranks of flower-beds extending into a blue haze of distance. By reason of the moon’s position, no light entered the room, but my eyes, from long watching, were grown familiar with the darkness, and I could see Burke quite clearly as he lay in the bed between my post and the window. I seemed to be back again in those days of the troubled past when first Nayland Smith and I had come to grips with the servants of Dr. Fu-Manchu. A more peaceful scene than this flower-planted corner of Essex it would be difficult to imagine; but, either because of my knowledge that its peace was chimerical, or because of that outflung consciousness of danger which, actually, or in my imagination, preceded the coming of the Chinaman’s agents, to my seeming the silence throbbed electrically and the night was laden with stilly omens.

Already cramped by my journey in the market-cart, I found it difficult to remain very long in any one position. What information had Burke to sell? He had refused, for some reason, to discuss the matter that evening, and now, enacting the part allotted him by Nayland Smith, he feigned sleep consistently, although at intervals he would whisper to me his doubts and fears.

All the chances were in our favor to-night; for whilst I could not doubt that Dr. Fu-Manchu was set upon the removal of the ex-officer of New York police, neither could I doubt that our presence in the farm was unknown to the agents of the Chinaman. According to Burke, constant attempts had been made to achieve Fu-Manchu’s purpose, and had only been frustrated by his (Burke’s) wakefulness.

There was every probability that another attempt would be made to-night.

Any one who has been forced by circumstance to undertake such a vigil as this will be familiar with the marked changes (corresponding with phases of the earth’s movement) which take place in the atmosphere, at midnight, at two o’clock, and again at four o’clock. During those fours hours falls a period wherein all life is at its lowest ebb, and every Physician is aware that there is a greater likelihood of a patient’s passing between midnight and four A. M., than at any other period during the cycle of the hours.

To-night I became specially aware of this lowering of vitality, and now, with the night at that darkest phase which precedes the dawn, an indescribable dread, such as I had known before in my dealings with the Chinaman, assailed me, when I was least prepared to combat it. The stillness was intense. Then:

“Here it is!” whispered Burke from the bed.

The chill at the very center of my being, which but corresponded with the chill of all surrounding nature at that hour, became intensified, keener, at the whispered words.

I rose stealthily out of my chair, and from my nest of shadows watched—watched intently, the bright oblong of the window...

Without the slightest heralding sound—a black silhouette crept up against the pane... the silhouette of a small, malformed head, a dog-like head, deep-set in square shoulders. Malignant eyes peered intently in. Higher it arose—that wicked head—against the window, then crouched down on the sill and became less sharply defined as the creature stooped to the opening below. There was a faint sound of sniffing.; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 14:43
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: Judging from the stark horror which I experienced, myself, I doubted, now, if Burke could sustain the role allotted him. In beneath the slightly raised window came a hand, perceptible to me despite the darkness of the room. It seemed to project from the black silhouette outside the pane, to be thrust forward—and forward—and forward... that small hand with the outstretched fingers.

The unknown possesses unique terrors; and since I was unable to conceive what manner of thing this could be, which, extending its incredibly long arms, now sought the throat of the man upon the bed, I tasted of that sort of terror which ordinarily one knows only in dreams.

“Quick, sir—quick!” screamed Burke, starting up from the pillow.

The questing hands had reached his throat!

Choking down an urgent dread that I had of touching the thing which reached through the window to kill the sleeper, I sprang across the room and grasped the rigid, hairy forearms.

Heavens! Never have I felt such muscles, such tendons, as those beneath the hirsute skin! They seemed to be of steel wire, and with a sudden frightful sense of impotence, I realized that I was as powerless as a child to relax that strangle-hold. Burke was making the most frightful sounds and quite obviously was being asphyxiated before my eyes!

“Smith!” I cried, “Smith! Help! help! for Main’s sake!”

Despite the confusion of my mind I became aware of sounds outside and below me. Twice the thing at the window coughed; there was an incessant, lash-like cracking, then some shouted words which I was unable to make out; and finally the staccato report of a pistol.

Snarling like that of a wild beast came from the creature with the hairy arms, together with renewed coughing. But the steel grip relaxed not one iota.

I realized two things: the first, that in my terror at the suddenness of the attack I had omitted to act as pre-arranged: the second, that I had discredited the strength of the visitant, whilst Smith had foreseen it.; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 14:43
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: Desisting in my vain endeavor to pit my strength against that of the nameless thing, I sprang back across the room and took up the weapon which had been left in my charge earlier in the night, but which I had been unable to believe it would be necessary to employ. This was a sharp and heavy axe, which Nayland Smith, when I had met him in Covent Garden, had brought with him, to the great amazement of Weymouth and myself.

As I leaped back to the window and uplifted this primitive weapon, a second shot sounded from below, and more fierce snarling, coughing, and guttural mutterings assailed my ears from beyond the pane.

Lifting the heavy blade, I brought it down with all my strength upon the nearer of those hairy arms where it crossed the window-ledge, severing muscle, tendon and bone as easily as a knife might cut cheese....

A shriek—a shriek neither human nor animal, but gruesomely compounded of both—followed... and merged into a choking cough. Like a flash the other shaggy arm was withdrawn, and some vaguely-seen body went rolling down the sloping red tiles and crashed on to the ground beneath.

With a second piercing shriek, louder than that recently uttered by Burke, wailing through the night from somewhere below, I turned desperately to the man on the bed, who now was become significantly silent. A candle, with matches, stood upon a table hard by, and, my fingers far from steady, I set about obtaining a light. This accomplished, I stood the candle upon the little chest-of-drawers and returned to Burke’s side.

“Merciful God!” I cried.

Of all the pictures which remain in my memory, some of them dark enough, I can find none more horrible than that which now confronted me in the dim candle-light. Burke lay crosswise on the bed, his head thrown back and sagging; one rigid hand he held in the air, and with the other grasped the hairy forearm which I had severed with the ax; for, in a death-grip, the dead fingers were still fastened, vise-like, at his throat.

His face was nearly black, and his eyes projected from their sockets horribly. Mastering my repugnance, I seized the hideous piece of bleeding anatomy and strove to release it. It defied all my efforts; in death it was as implacable as in life. I took a knife from my pocket, and, tendon by tendon, cut away that uncanny grip from Burke’s throat...

But my labor was in vain. Burke was dead!

I think I failed to realize this for some time. My clothes were sticking clammily to my body; I was bathed in perspiration, and, shaking furiously, I clutched at the edge of the window, avoiding the bloody patch upon the ledge, and looked out over the roofs to where, in the more distant plantations, I could hear excited voices. What had been the meaning of that scream which I had heard but to which in my frantic state of mind I had paid comparatively little attention?

There was a great stirring all about me.

“Smith!” I cried from the window; “Smith, for mercy’s sake where are you?”

Footsteps came racing up the stairs. Behind me the door burst open and Nayland Smith stumbled into the room.

“God!” he said, and started back in the doorway.

“Have you got it, Smith?” I demanded hoarsely. “In sanity’s name what is it—what is it?”

“Come downstairs,” replied Smith quietly, “and see for yourself.” He turned his head aside from the bed.

Very unsteadily I followed him down the stairs and through the rambling old house out into the stone-paved courtyard. There were figures moving at the end of a long alleyway between the glass houses, and one, carrying a lantern, stooped over something which lay upon the ground.

“That’s Burke’s cousin with the lantern,” whispered Smith in my ear; “don’t tell him yet.”; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 14:44
Λεωνίδας et Les quatre cents coups dixo...: El peligro amarillo no puede evitarse simplemente cerrando los ojos ante el; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 14:51
muñecas de gratitud dixo...: El peligro amarillo es el mayor peligro que amenaza la sanidad y la civilización europea.; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 14:53
The rising Tide of color against white world supremacy dixo...: Aus dem Jahr; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 14:54
yellow peril dixo...: A la raza que habitaba aquel vasto territorio llamado Oriente, descendientes de aquellos temidos mongoles, se le otorgó un color particular: el amarillo.
Al fin y al cabo, la segunda mitad del siglo XIX fue el momento culmen de las teorías raciales que buscaron demostrar la superioridad de la raza blanca frente a las otras. A aquellas razas no-blancas se las organizó en torno a cuatro rangos cromáticos: negro, mestizo, cobrizo y amarillo; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 14:55
THE NOTORIOUS 404 error, “Not Found,” dixo...: Enviad un millón; enviad seis, y nos los engulliríamos lo mismo. ¡Uff! Nada, un magro bocado.; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 14:59
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: I nodded, and we hurried up to join the group. I found myself looking down at one of those thick-set Burmans whom I always associated with Fu-Manchu’s activities. He lay quite flat, face downward; but the back of his head was a shapeless blood-dotted mass, and a heavy stock-whip, the butt end ghastly because of the blood and hair which clung to it, lay beside him. I started back appalled as Smith caught my arm.

“It turned on its keeper!” he hissed in my ear. “I wounded it twice from below, and you severed one arm; in its insensate fury, its unreasoning malignity, it returned—and there lies its second victim...”

“Then...”

“It’s gone, Petrie! It has the strength of four men even now. Look!”

He stooped, and from the clenched left hand of the dead Burman, extracted a piece of paper and opened it.

“Hold the lantern a moment,” he said.

In the yellow light he glanced at the scrap of paper.

“As I expected—a leaf of Burke’s notebook; it worked by scent.” He turned to me with an odd expression in his gray eyes. “I wonder what piece of my personal property Fu-Manchu has pilfered,” he said, “in order to enable it to sleuth me?”

He met the gaze of the man holding the lantern.

“Perhaps you had better return to the house,” he said, looking him squarely in the eyes.

The other’s face blanched.

“You don’t mean, sir—you don’t mean...”

“Brace up!” said Smith, laying his hand upon his shoulder. “Remember—he chose to play with fire!”

One wild look the man cast from Smith to me, then went off, staggering, toward the farm.

“Smith,” I began...

He turned to me with an impatient gesture.

“Weymouth has driven into Upminster,” he snapped; “and the whole district will be scoured before morning. They probably motored here, but the sounds of the shots will have enabled whoever was with the car to make good his escape. And exhausted from loss of blood, its capture is only a matter of time, Petrie.”; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 15:07
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: Nayland Smith returned from the telephone. Nearly twenty-four hours had elapsed since the awful death of Burke.

“No news, Petrie,” he said, shortly. “It must have crept into some inaccessible hole to die.”

I glanced up from my notes. Smith settled into the white cane armchair, and began to surround himself with clouds of aromatic smoke. I took up a half-sheet of foolscap covered with penciled writing in my friend’s cramped characters, and transcribed the following, in order to complete my account of the latest Fu-Manchu outrage:

“The Amharun, a Semitic tribe allied to the Falashas, who have been settled for many generations in the southern province of Shoa (Abyssinia) have been regarded as unclean and outcast, apparently since the days of Menelek—son of Suleyman and the Queen of Sheba—from whom they claim descent. Apart from their custom of eating meat cut from living beasts, they are accursed because of their alleged association with the Cynocephalus hamadryas (Sacred Baboon). I, myself, was taken to a hut on the banks of the Hawash and shown a creature... whose predominant trait was an unreasoning malignity toward... and a ferocious tenderness for the society of its furry brethren. Its powers of scent were fully equal to those of a bloodhound, whilst its abnormally long forearms possessed incredible strength... a Cynocephalyte such as this, contracts phthisis even in the more northern provinces of Abyssinia...”

“You have not explained to me, Smith,” I said, having completed this note, “how you got in touch with Fu-Manchu; how you learnt that he was not dead, as we had supposed, but living—active.”

Nayland Smith stood up and fixed his steely eyes upon me with an indefinable expression in them. Then:

“No,” he replied; “I haven’t. Do you wish to know?”

“Certainly,” I said with surprise; “is there any reason why I should not?”

“There is no real reason,” said Smith; “or”—staring at me very hard—“I hope there is no real reason.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well”—he grabbed up his pipe from the table and began furiously to load it—“I blundered upon the truth one day in Rangoon. I was walking out of a house which I occupied there for a time, and as I swung around the corner into the main street, I ran into—literally ran into...”

Again he hesitated oddly; then closed up his pouch and tossed it into the cane chair. He struck a match.

“I ran into Karamaneh,” he continued abruptly, and began to puff away at his pipe, filling the air with clouds of tobacco smoke.

I caught my breath. This was the reason why he had kept me so long in ignorance of the story. He knew of my hopeless, uncrushable sentiments toward the gloriously beautiful but utterly hypocritical and evil Eastern girl who was perhaps the most dangerous of all Dr. Fu-Manchu’s servants; for the power of her loveliness was magical, as I knew to my cost.

“What did you do?” I asked quietly, my fingers drumming upon the table.

“Naturally enough,” continued Smith, “with a cry of recognition I held out both my hands to her, gladly. I welcomed her as a dear friend regained; I thought of the joy with which you would learn that I had found the missing one; I thought how you would be in Rangoon just as quickly as the fastest steamer could get you there...”

“Well?”

“Karamaneh started back and treated me to a glance of absolute animosity. No recognition was there, and no friendliness—only a sort of scornful anger.”

He shrugged his shoulders and began to walk up and down the room.

“I do not know what you would have done in the circumstances, Petrie, but I—”; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 15:08
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: “Yes?”

“I dealt with the situation rather promptly, I think. I simply picked her up without another word, right there in the public street, and raced back into the house, with her kicking and fighting like a little demon! She did not shriek or do anything of that kind, but fought silently like a vicious wild animal. Oh! I had some scars, I assure you; but I carried her up into my office, which fortunately was empty at the time, plumped her down in a chair, and stood looking at her.”

“Go on,” I said rather hollowly; “what next?”

“She glared at me with those wonderful eyes, an expression of implacable hatred in them! Remembering all that we had done for her; remembering our former friendship; above all, remembering you—this look of hers almost made me shiver. She was dressed very smartly in European fashion, and the whole thing had been so sudden that as I stood looking at her I half expected to wake up presently and find it all a day-dream. But it was real—as real as her enmity. I felt the need for reflection, and having vainly endeavored to draw her into conversation, and elicited no other answer than this glare of hatred—I left her there, going out and locking the door behind me.”

“Very high-handed?”

“A commissioner has certain privileges, Petrie, and any action I might choose to take was not likely to be questioned. There was only one window to the office, and it was fully twenty feet above the level; it overlooked a narrow street off the main thoroughfare (I think I have explained that the house stood on a corner) so I did not fear her escaping. I had an important engagement which I had been on my way to fulfil when the encounter took place, and now, with a word to my native servant—who chanced to be downstairs—I hurried off.”

Smith’s pipe had gone out as usual, and he proceeded to relight it, whilst, with my eyes lowered, I continued to drum upon the table.

“This boy took her some tea later in the afternoon,” he continued, “and apparently found her in a more placid frame of mind. I returned immediately after dusk, and he reported that when last he had looked in, about half an hour earlier, she had been seated in an armchair reading a newspaper (I may mention that everything of value in the office was securely locked up!) I was determined upon a certain course by this time, and I went slowly upstairs, unlocked the door, and walked into the darkened office. I turned up the light... the place was empty!”

“Empty!”

“The window was open, and the bird flown! Oh! it was not so simple a flight—as you would realize if you knew the place. The street, which the window overlooked, was bounded by a blank wall, on the opposite side, for thirty or forty yards along; and as we had been having heavy rains, it was full of glutinous mud. Furthermore, the boy whom I had left in charge had been sitting in the doorway immediately below the office window watching for my return ever since his last visit to the room above...”

“She must have bribed him,” I said bitterly—“or corrupted him with her infernal blandishments.”

“I’ll swear she did not,” rapped Smith decisively. “I know my man, and I’ll swear she did not. There were no marks in the mud of the road to show that a ladder had been placed there; moreover, nothing of the kind could have been attempted whilst the boy was sitting in the doorway; that was evident. In short, she did not descend into the roadway and did not come out by the door...”

“Was there a gallery outside the window?”

“No; it was impossible to climb to right or left of the window or up on to the roof. I convinced myself of that.”

“But, my dear man!” I cried, “you are eliminating every natural mode of egress! Nothing remains but flight.”

“I am aware, Petrie, that nothing remains but flight; in other words I have never to this day understood how she quitted the room. I only know that she did.”; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 15:08
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: “And then?”

“I saw in this incredible escape the cunning hand of Dr. Fu-Manchu—saw it at once. Peace was ended; and I set to work along certain channels without delay. In this manner I got on the track at last, and learned, beyond the possibility of doubt, that the Chinese doctor lived—nay! was actually on his way to Europe again!”

There followed a short silence. Then:

“I suppose it’s a mystery that will be cleared up some day,” concluded Smith; “but to date the riddle remains intact.” He glanced at the clock. “I have an appointment with Weymouth; therefore, leaving you to the task of solving this problem which thus far has defied my own efforts, I will get along.”

He read a query in my glance.

“Oh! I shall not be late,” he added; “I think I may venture out alone on this occasion without personal danger.”

Nayland Smith went upstairs to dress, leaving me seated at my writing table, deep in thought. My notes upon the renewed activity of Dr. Fu-Manchu were stacked at my left hand, and, opening a new writing block, I commenced to add to them particulars of this surprising event in Rangoon which properly marked the opening of the Chinaman’s second campaign. Smith looked in at the door on his way out, but seeing me thus engaged, did not disturb me.

I think I have made it sufficiently evident in these records that my practice was not an extensive one, and my hour for receiving patients arrived and passed with only two professional interruptions.

My task concluded, I glanced at the clock, and determined to devote the remainder of the evening to a little private investigation of my own. From Nayland Smith I had preserved the matter a secret, largely because I feared his ridicule; but I had by no means forgotten that I had seen, or had strongly imagined that I had seen, Karamaneh—that beautiful anomaly, who (in modern London) asserted herself to be a slave—in the shop of an antique dealer not a hundred yards from the British Museum!

A theory was forming in my brain, which I was burningly anxious to put to the test. I remembered how, two years before, I had met Karamaneh near to this same spot; and I had heard Inspector Weymouth assert positively that Fu-Manchu’s headquarters were no longer in the East End, as of yore. There seemed to me to be a distinct probability that a suitable center had been established for his reception in this place, so much less likely to be suspected by the authorities. Perhaps I attached too great a value to what may have been a delusion; perhaps my theory rested upon no more solid foundation than the belief that I had seen Karamaneh in the shop of the curio dealer. If her appearance there should prove to have been phantasmal, the structure of my theory would be shattered at its base. To-night I should test my premises, and upon the result of my investigations determine my future action.; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 15:09
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: Museum Street certainly did not seem a likely spot for Dr. Fu-Manchu to establish himself, yet, unless my imagination had strangely deceived me, from the window of the antique dealer who traded under the name of J. Salaman, those wonderful eyes of Karamaneh like the velvet midnight of the Orient, had looked out at me.

As I paced slowly along the pavement toward that lighted window, my heart was beating far from normally, and I cursed the folly which, in spite of all, refused to die, but lingered on, poisoning my life. Comparative quiet reigned in Museum Street, at no time a busy thoroughfare, and, excepting another shop at the Museum end, commercial activities had ceased there. The door of a block of residential chambers almost immediately opposite to the shop which was my objective, threw out a beam of light across the pavement, but not more than two or three people were visible upon either side of the street.

I turned the knob of the door and entered the shop.

The same dark and immobile individual whom I had seen before, and whose nationality defied conjecture, came out from the curtained doorway at the back to greet me.

“Good evening, sir,” he said monotonously, with a slight inclination of the head; “is there anything which you desire to inspect?”

“I merely wish to take a look around,” I replied. “I have no particular item in view.”

The shop man inclined his head again, swept a yellow hand comprehensively about, as if to include the entire stock, and seated himself on a chair behind the counter.

I lighted a cigarette with such an air of nonchalance as I could summon to the operation, and began casually to inspect the varied objects of interest loading the shelves and tables about me. I am bound to confess that I retain no one definite impression of this tour. Vases I handled, statuettes, Egyptian scarabs, bead necklaces, illuminated missals, portfolios of old prints, jade ornaments, bronzes, fragments of rare lace, early printed books, Assyrian tablets, daggers, Roman rings, and a hundred other curiosities, leisurely, and I trust with apparent interest, yet without forming the slightest impression respecting any one of them.

Probably I employed myself in this way for half an hour or more, and whilst my hands busied themselves among the stock of J. Salaman, my mind was occupied entirely elsewhere. Furtively I was studying the shopman himself, a human presentment of a Chinese idol; I was listening and watching; especially I was watching the curtained doorway at the back of the shop.

“We close at about this time, sir,” the man interrupted me, speaking in the emotionless, monotonous voice which I had noted before.

I replaced upon the glass counter a little Sekhet boat, carved in wood and highly colored, and glanced up with a start. Truly my methods were amateurish; I had learnt nothing; I was unlikely to learn anything. I wondered how Nayland Smith would have conducted such an inquiry, and I racked my brains for some means of penetrating into the recesses of the establishment. Indeed, I had been seeking such a plan for the past half an hour, but my mind had proved incapable of suggesting one.

Why I did not admit failure I cannot imagine, but, instead, I began to tax my brains anew for some means of gaining further time; and, as I looked about the place, the shopman very patiently awaiting my departure, I observed an open case at the back of the counter. The three lower shelves were empty, but upon the fourth shelf squatted a silver Buddha.

“I should like to examine the silver image yonder,” I said; “what price are you asking for it?”

“It is not for sale, sir,” replied the man, with a greater show of animation than he had yet exhibited.

“Not for sale!” I said, my eyes ever seeking the curtained doorway; “how’s that?”

“It is sold.”

“Well, even so, there can be no objection to my examining it?”

“It is not for sale, sir.”; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 15:09
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: Such a rebuff from a tradesman would have been more than sufficient to call for a sharp retort at any other time, but now it excited the strangest suspicions. The street outside looked comparatively deserted, and prompted, primarily, by an emotion which I did not pause to analyze, I adopted a singular measure; without doubt I relied upon the unusual powers vested in Nayland Smith to absolve me in the event of error. I made as if to go out into the street, then turned, leaped past the shopman, ran behind the counter, and grasped at the silver Buddha!

That I was likely to be arrested for attempted larceny I cared not; the idea that Karamaneh was concealed somewhere in the building ruled absolutely, and a theory respecting this silver image had taken possession of my mind. Exactly what I expected to happen at that moment I cannot say, but what actually happened was far more startling than anything I could have imagined.

At the instant that I grasped the figure I realized that it was attached to the woodwork; in the next I knew that it was a handle ... as I tried to pull it toward me I became aware that this handle was the handle of a door. For that door swung open before me, and I found myself at the foot of a flight of heavily carpeted stairs.

Anxious as I had been to proceed a moment before, I was now trebly anxious to retire, and for this reason: on the bottom step of the stair, facing me, stood Dr. Fu-Manchu!; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 15:09
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: I cannot conceive that any ordinary mortal ever attained to anything like an intimacy with Dr. Fu-Manchu; I cannot believe that any man could ever grow used to his presence, could ever cease to fear him. I suppose I had set eyes upon Fu-Manchu some five or six times prior to this occasion, and now he was dressed in the manner which I always associated with him, probably because it was thus I first saw him. He wore a plain yellow robe, and, with his pointed chin resting upon his bosom, he looked down at me, revealing a great expanse of the marvelous brow with its sparse, neutral-colored hair.

Never in my experience have I known such force to dwell in the glance of any human eye as dwelt in that of this uncanny being. His singular affliction (if affliction it were), the film or slight membrane which sometimes obscured the oblique eyes, was particularly evident at the moment that I crossed the threshold, but now, as I looked up at Dr. Fu-Manchu, it lifted—revealing the eyes in all their emerald greenness.

The idea of physical attack upon this incredible being seemed childish—inadequate. But, following that first instant of stupefaction, I forced myself to advance upon him.

A dull, crushing blow descended on the top of my skull, and I became oblivious of all things.

My return to consciousness was accompanied by tremendous pains in my head, whereby, from previous experience, I knew that a sandbag had been used against me by some one in the shop, presumably by the immobile shopman. This awakening was accompanied by none of those hazy doubts respecting previous events and present surroundings which are the usual symptoms of revival from sudden unconsciousness; even before I opened my eyes, before I had more than a partial command of my senses, I knew that, with my wrists handcuffed behind me, I lay in a room which was also occupied by Dr. Fu-Manchu. This absolute certainty of the Chinaman’s presence was evidenced, not by my senses, but only by an inner consciousness, and the same that always awoke into life at the approach not only of Fu-Manchu in person but of certain of his uncanny servants.

A faint perfume hung in the air about me; I do not mean that of any essence or of any incense, but rather the smell which is suffused by Oriental furniture, by Oriental draperies; the indefinable but unmistakable perfume of the East.

Thus, London has a distinct smell of its own, and so has Paris, whilst the difference between Marseilles and Suez, for instance, is even more marked.

Now, the atmosphere surrounding me was Eastern, but not of the East that I knew; rather it was Far Eastern. Perhaps I do not make myself very clear, but to me there was a mysterious significance in that perfumed atmosphere. I opened my eyes.

I lay upon a long low settee, in a fairly large room which was furnished as I had anticipated in an absolutely Oriental fashion. The two windows were so screened as to have lost, from the interior point of view, all resemblance to European windows, and the whole structure of the room had been altered in conformity, bearing out my idea that the place had been prepared for Fu-Manchu’s reception some time before his actual return. I doubt if, East or West, a duplicate of that singular apartment could be found.

The end in which I lay, was, as I have said, typical of an Eastern house, and a large, ornate lantern hung from the ceiling almost directly above me. The further end of the room was occupied by tall cases, some of them containing books, but the majority filled with scientific paraphernalia; rows of flasks and jars, frames of test-tubes, retorts, scales, and other objects of the laboratory. At a large and very finely carved table sat Dr. Fu-Manchu, a yellow and faded volume open before him, and some dark red fluid, almost like blood, bubbling in a test-tube which he held over the flame of a Bunsen-burner.; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 15:11
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: The enormously long nail of his right index finger rested upon the opened page of the book to which he seemed constantly to refer, dividing his attention between the volume, the contents of the test-tube, and the progress of a second experiment, or possibly a part of the same, which was taking place upon another corner of the littered table.

A huge glass retort (the bulb was fully two feet in diameter), fitted with a Liebig’s Condenser, rested in a metal frame, and within the bulb, floating in an oily substance, was a fungus some six inches high, shaped like a toadstool, but of a brilliant and venomous orange color. Three flat tubes of light were so arranged as to cast violet rays upward into the retort, and the receiver, wherein condensed the product of this strange experiment, contained some drops of a red fluid which may have been identical with that boiling in the test-tube.

These things I perceived at a glance: then the filmy eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu were raised from the book, turned in my direction, and all else was forgotten.

“I regret,” came the sibilant voice, “that unpleasant measures were necessary, but hesitation would have been fatal. I trust, Dr. Petrie, that you suffer no inconvenience?”

To this speech no reply was possible, and I attempted none.

“You have long been aware of my esteem for your acquirements,” continued the Chinaman, his voice occasionally touching deep guttural notes, “and you will appreciate the pleasure which this visit affords me. I kneel at the feet of my silver Buddha. I look to you, when you shall have overcome your prejudices—due to ignorance of my true motives—to assist me in establishing that intellectual control which is destined to be the new World Force. I bear you no malice for your ancient enmity, and even now”—he waved one yellow hand toward the retort—“I am conducting an experiment designed to convert you from your misunderstanding, and to adjust your perspective.”

Quite unemotionally he spoke, then turned again to his book, his test-tube and retort, in the most matter-of-fact way imaginable. I do not think the most frenzied outburst on his part, the most fiendish threats, could have produced such effect upon me as those cold and carefully calculated words, spoken in that unique voice which rang about the room sibilantly. In its tones, in the glance of the green eyes, in the very pose of the gaunt, high-shouldered body, there was power—force.

I counted myself lost, and in view of the doctor’s words, studied the progress of the experiment with frightful interest. But a few moments sufficed in which to realize that, for all my training, I knew as little of chemistry—of chemistry as understood by this man’s genius—as a junior student in surgery knows of trephining. The process in operation was a complete mystery to me; the means and the end alike incomprehensible.

Thus, in the heavy silence of that room, a silence only broken by the regular bubbling from the test tube, I found my attention straying from the table to the other objects surrounding it; and at one of them my gaze stopped and remained chained with horror.

It was a glass jar, some five feet in height and filled with viscous fluid of a light amber color. Out from this peered a hideous, dog-like face, low browed, with pointed ears and a nose almost hoggishly flat. By the death-grin of the face the gleaming fangs were revealed; and the body, the long yellow-gray body, rested, or seemed to rest, upon short, malformed legs, whilst one long limp arm, the right, hung down straightly in the preservative. The left arm had been severed above the elbow.

Fu-Manchu, finding his experiment to be proceeding favorably, lifted his eyes to me again.; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 15:11
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: “You are interested in my poor Cynocephalyte?” he said; and his eyes were filmed like the eyes of one afflicted with cataract. “He was a devoted servant, Dr. Petrie, but the lower influences in his genealogy, sometimes conquered. Then he got out of hand; and at last he was so ungrateful toward those who had educated him, that, in one of those paroxysms of his, he attacked and killed a most faithful Burman, one of my oldest followers.”

Fu-Manchu returned to his experiment.

Not the slightest emotion had he exhibited thus far, but had chatted with me as any other scientist might chat with a friend who casually visits his laboratory. The horror of the thing was playing havoc with my own composure, however. There I lay, fettered, in the same room with this man whose existence was a menace to the entire white race, whilst placidly he pursued an experiment designed, if his own words were believable, to cut me off from my kind—to wreak some change, psychological or physiological I knew not; to place me, it might be, upon a level with such brute-things as that which now hung, half floating, in the glass jar!

Something I knew of the history of that ghastly specimen, that thing neither man nor ape; for within my own knowledge had it not attempted the life of Nayland Smith, and was it not I who, with an ax, had maimed it in the instant of one of its last slayings?

Of these things Dr. Fu-Manchu was well aware, so that his placid speech was doubly, trebly horrible to my ears. I sought, furtively, to move my arms, only to realize that, as I had anticipated, the handcuffs were chained to a ring in the wall behind me. The establishments of Dr. Fu-Manchu were always well provided with such contrivances as these.

I uttered a short, harsh laugh. Fu-Manchu stood up slowly from the table, and, placing the test-tube in a rack, stood the latter carefully upon a shelf at his side.

“I am happy to find you in such good humor,” he said softly. “Other affairs call me; and, in my absence, that profound knowledge of chemistry, of which I have had evidence in the past, will enable you to follow with intelligent interest the action of these violet rays upon this exceptionally fine specimen of Siberian amanita muscaria. At some future time, possibly when you are my guest in China—which country I am now making arrangements for you to visit—I shall discuss with you some lesser-known properties of this species; and I may say that one of your first tasks when you commence your duties as assistant in my laboratory in Kiang-su, will be to conduct a series of twelve experiments, which I have outlined, into other potentialities of this unique fungus.”

He walked quietly to a curtained doorway, with his cat-like yet awkward gait, lifted the drapery, and, with a slight nod in my direction, went out of the room.; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 15:11
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: How long I lay there alone I had no means of computing. My mind was busy with many matters, but principally concerned with my fate in the immediate future. That Dr. Fu-Manchu entertained for me a singular kind of regard, I had had evidence before. He had formed the erroneous opinion that I was an advanced scientist who could be of use to him in his experiments and I was aware that he cherished a project of transporting me to some place in China where his principal laboratory was situated. Respecting the means which he proposed to employ, I was unlikely to forget that this man, who had penetrated further along certain byways of science than seemed humanly possible, undoubtedly was master of a process for producing artificial catalepsy. It was my lot, then, to be packed in a chest (to all intents and purposes a dead man for the time being) and despatched to the interior of China!

What a fool I had been. To think that I had learned nothing from my long and dreadful experience of the methods of Dr. Fu-Manchu; to think that I had come alone in quest of him; that, leaving no trace behind me, I had deliberately penetrated to his secret abode!

I have said that my wrists were manacled behind me, the manacles being attached to a chain fastened in the wall. I now contrived, with extreme difficulty, to reverse the position of my hands; that is to say, I climbed backward through the loop formed by my fettered arms, so that instead of their being locked behind me, they now were locked in front.

Then I began to examine the fetters, learning, as I had anticipated, that they fastened with a lock. I sat gazing at the steel bracelets in the light of the lamp which swung over my head, and it became apparent to me that I had gained little by my contortion.

A slight noise disturbed these unpleasant reveries. It was nothing less than the rattling of keys!

For a moment I wondered if I had heard aright, or if the sound portended the coming of some servant of the doctor, who was locking up the establishment for the night. The jangling sound was repeated, and in such a way that I could not suppose it to be accidental. Some one was deliberately rattling a small bunch of keys in an adjoining room.

And now my heart leaped wildly—then seemed to stand still.

With a low whistling cry a little gray shape shot through the doorway by which Fu-Manchu had retired, and rolled, like a ball of fluff blown by the wind, completely under the table which bore the weird scientific appliances of the Chinaman; the advent of the gray object was accompanied by a further rattling of keys.

My fear left me, and a mighty anxiety took its place. This creature which now crouched chattering at me from beneath the big table was Fu-Manchu’s marmoset, and in the intervals of its chattering and grimacing, it nibbled, speculatively, at the keys upon the ring which it clutched in its tiny hands. Key after key it sampled in this manner, evincing a growing dissatisfaction with the uncrackable nature of its find.

One of those keys might be that of the handcuffs!

I could not believe that the tortures of Tantulus were greater than were mine at this moment. In all my hopes of rescue or release, I had included nothing so strange, so improbable as this. A sort of awe possessed me; for if by this means the key which should release me should come into my possession, how, ever again, could I doubt a beneficent Providence?

But they were not yet in my possession; moreover, the key of the handcuffs might not be amongst the bunch.

Were there no means whereby I could induce the marmoset to approach me?; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 15:12
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: Whilst I racked my brains for some scheme, the little animal took the matter out of my hands. Tossing the ring with its jangling contents a yard or so across the carpet in my direction, it leaped in pursuit, picked up the ring, whirled it over its head, and then threw a complete somersault around it. Now it snatched up the keys again, and holding them close to its ear, rattled them furiously. Finally, with an incredible spring, it leaped onto the chain supporting the lamp above my head, and with the garish shade swinging and spinning wildly, clung there looking down at me like an acrobat on a trapeze. The tiny, bluish face, completely framed in grotesque whiskers, enhanced the illusion of an acrobatic comedian. Never for a moment did it release its hold upon the key-ring.

My suspense now was intolerable. I feared to move, lest, alarming the marmoset, it should run off again, taking the keys with it. So as I lay there, looking up at the little creature swinging above me, the second wonder of the night came to pass.

A voice that I could never forget, strive how I would, a voice that haunted my dreams by night, and for which by day I was ever listening, cried out from some adjoining room.

“Ta’ala hina!” it called. “Ta’ala hina, Peko!”

It was Karamaneh!

The effect upon the marmoset was instantaneous. Down came the bunch of keys upon one side of the shade, almost falling on my head, and down leaped the ape upon the other. In two leaps it had traversed the room and had vanished through the curtained doorway.

If ever I had need of coolness it was now; the slightest mistake would be fatal. The keys had slipped from the mattress of the divan, and now lay just beyond reach of my fingers. Rapidly I changed my position, and sought, without undue noise, to move the keys with my foot.

I had actually succeeded in sliding them back on to the mattress, when, unheralded by any audible footstep, Karamaneh came through the doorway, holding the marmoset in her arms. She wore a dress of fragile muslin material, and out from its folds protruded one silk-stockinged foot, resting in a high-heeled red shoe....; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 15:13
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: For a moment she stood watching me, with a sort of enforced composure; then her glance strayed to the keys lying upon the floor. Slowly, and with her eyes fixed again upon my face, she crossed the room, stooped, and took up the key-ring.

It was one of the poignant moments of my life; for by that simple act all my hopes had been shattered!

Any poor lingering doubt that I may have had, left me now. Had the slightest spark of friendship animated the bosom of Karamaneh most certainly she would have overlooked the presence of the keys—of the keys which represented my one hope of escape from the clutches of the fiendish Chinaman.

There is a silence more eloquent than words. For half a minute or more, Karamaneh stood watching me—forcing herself to watch me—and I looked up at her with a concentrated gaze in which rage and reproach must have been strangely mingled. What eyes she had!—of that blackly lustrous sort nearly always associated with unusually dark complexions; but Karamaneh’s complexion was peachlike, or rather of an exquisite and delicate fairness which reminded me of the petal of a rose. By some I had been accused of raving about this girl’s beauty, but only by those who had not met her; for indeed she was astonishingly lovely.

At last her eyes fell, the long lashes drooped upon her cheeks. She turned and walked slowly to the chair in which Fu-Manchu had sat. Placing the keys upon the table amid the scientific litter, she rested one dimpled elbow upon the yellow page of the book, and with her chin in her palm, again directed upon me that enigmatical gaze.

I dared not think of the past, of the past in which this beautiful, treacherous girl had played a part; yet, watching her, I could not believe, even now, that she was false! My state was truly a pitiable one; I could have cried out in sheer anguish. With her long lashes partly lowered, she watched me awhile, then spoke; and her voice was music which seemed to mock me; every inflection of that elusive accent reopened, lancet-like, the ancient wound.

“Why do you look at me so?” she said, almost in a whisper. “By what right do you reproach me?—Have you ever offered me friendship, that I should repay you with friendship? When first you came to the house where I was, by the river—came to save some one from” (there was the familiar hesitation which always preceded the name of Fu-Manchu) “from—him, you treated me as your enemy, although—I would have been your friend...”

There was appeal in the soft voice, but I laughed mockingly, and threw myself back upon the divan.

Karamaneh stretched out her hands toward me, and I shall never forget the expression which flashed into those glorious eyes; but, seeing me intolerant of her appeal, she drew back and quickly turned her head aside. Even in this hour of extremity, of impotent wrath, I could find no contempt in my heart for her feeble hypocrisy; with all the old wonder I watched that exquisite profile, and Karamaneh’s very deceitfulness was a salve—for had she not cared she would not have attempted it!

Suddenly she stood up, taking the keys in her hands, and approached me.

“Not by word, nor by look,” she said, quietly, “have you asked for my friendship, but because I cannot bear you to think of me as you do, I will prove that I am not the hypocrite and the liar you think me. You will not trust me, but I will trust you.”

I looked up into her eyes, and knew a pagan joy when they faltered before my searching gaze. She threw herself upon her knees beside me, and the faint exquisite perfume inseparable from my memories of her, became perceptible, and seemed as of old to intoxicate me. The lock clicked... and I was free.

Karamaneh rose swiftly to her feet as I stood upright and outstretched my cramped arms. For one delirious moment her bewitching face was close to mine, and the dictates of madness almost ruled; but I clenched my teeth and turned sharply aside. I could not trust myself to speak.; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 15:14
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: With Fu-Manchu’s marmoset again gamboling before us, she walked through the curtained doorway into the room beyond. It was in darkness, but I could see the slave-girl in front of me, a slim silhouette, as she walked to a screened window, and, opening the screen in the manner of a folding door, also threw up the window.

“Look!” she whispered.

I crept forward and stood beside her. I found myself looking down into Museum Street from a first-floor window! Belated traffic still passed along New Oxford Street on the left, but not a solitary figure was visible to the right, as far as I could see, and that was nearly to the railings of the Museum. Immediately opposite, in one of the flats which I had noticed earlier in the evening, another window was opened. I turned, and in the reflected light saw that Karamaneh held a cord in her hand. Our eyes met in the semi-darkness.

She began to haul the cord into the window, and, looking upward, I perceived that it was looped in some way over the telegraph cables which crossed the street at that point. It was a slender cord, and it appeared to be passed across a joint in the cables almost immediately above the center of the roadway. As it was hauled in, a second and stronger line attached to it was pulled, in turn, over the cables, and thence in by the window. Karamaneh twisted a length of it around a metal bracket fastened in the wall, and placed a light wooden crossbar in my hand.

“Make sure that there is no one in the street,” she said, craning out and looking to right and left, “then swing across. The length of the rope is just sufficient to enable you to swing through the open window opposite, and there is a mattress inside to drop upon. But release the bar immediately, or you may be dragged back. The door of the room in which you will find yourself is unlocked, and you have only to walk down the stairs and out into the street.”

I peered at the crossbar in my hand, then looked hard at the girl beside me. I missed something of the old fire of her nature; she was very subdued, tonight.

“Thank you, Karamaneh,” I said, softly.

She suppressed a little cry as I spoke her name, and drew back into the shadows.

“I believe you are my friend,” I said, “but I cannot understand. Won’t you help me to understand?”

I took her unresisting hand, and drew her toward me. My very soul seemed to thrill at the contact of her lithe body...

She was trembling wildly and seemed to be trying to speak, but although her lips framed the words no sound followed. Suddenly comprehension came to me. I looked down into the street, hitherto deserted... and into the upturned face of Fu-Manchu.

Wearing a heavy fur-collared coat, and with his yellow, malignant countenance grotesquely horrible beneath the shade of a large tweed motor cap, he stood motionless, looking up at me. That he had seen me, I could not doubt; but had he seen my companion?

In a choking whisper Karamaneh answered my unspoken question.

“He has not seen me! I have done much for you; do in return a small thing for me. Save my life!”

She dragged me back from the window and fled across the room to the weird laboratory where I had lain captive. Throwing herself upon the divan, she held out her white wrists and glanced significantly at the manacles.

“Lock them upon me!” she said, rapidly. “Quick! quick!”

Great as was my mental disturbance, I managed to grasp the purpose of this device. The very extremity of my danger found me cool. I fastened the manacles, which so recently had confined my own wrists, upon the slim wrists of Karamaneh. A faint and muffled disturbance, doubly ominous because there was nothing to proclaim its nature, reached me from some place below, on the ground floor.

“Tie something around my mouth!” directed Karamaneh with nervous rapidity. As I began to look about me:—“Tear a strip from my dress,” she said; “do not hesitate—be quick! be quick!”; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 15:14
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: I seized the flimsy muslin and tore off half a yard or so from the hem of the skirt. The voice of Dr Fu-Manchu became audible. He was speaking rapidly, sibilantly, and evidently was approaching—would be upon me in a matter of moments. I fastened the strip of fabric over the girl’s mouth and tied it behind, experiencing a pang half pleasurable and half fearful as I found my hands in contact with the foamy luxuriance of her hair.

Dr. Fu-Manchu was entering the room immediately beyond.

Snatching up the bunch of keys, I turned and ran, for in another instant my retreat would be cut off. As I burst once more into the darkened room I became aware that a door on the further side of it was open; and framed in the opening was the tall, high-shouldered figure of the Chinaman, still enveloped in his fur coat and wearing the grotesque cap. As I saw him, so he perceived me; and as I sprang to the window, he advanced.

I turned desperately and hurled the bunch of keys with all my force into the dimly-seen face...

Either because they possessed a chatoyant quality of their own (as I had often suspected), or by reason of the light reflected through the open window, the green eyes gleamed upon me vividly like those of a giant cat. One short guttural exclamation paid tribute to the accuracy of my aim; then I had the crossbar in my hand. I threw one leg across the sill, and dire as was my extremity, hesitated for an instant ere trusting myself to the flight...

A vise-like grip fastened upon my left ankle.

Hazily I became aware that the dark room was flooded with figures. The whole yellow gang were upon me—the entire murder-group composed of units recruited from the darkest place of the East!

I have never counted myself a man of resource, and have always envied Nayland Smith his possession of that quality, in him extraordinarily developed; but on this occasion the gods were kind to me, and I resorted to the only device, perhaps, which could have saved me. Without releasing my hold upon the crossbar, I clutched at the ledge with the fingers of both hands and swung back into the room my right leg, which was already across the sill. With all my strength I kicked out. My heel came in contact, in sickening contact, with a human head; beyond doubt that I had split the skull of the man who held me.

The grip upon my ankle was released automatically; and now consigning all my weight to the rope I slipped forward, as a diver, across the broad ledge and found myself sweeping through the night like a winged thing...

The line, as Karamaneh had assured me, was of well-judged length. Down I swept to within six or seven feet of the street level, then up, at ever decreasing speed, toward the vague oblong of the open window beyond.

I hope I have been successful, in some measure, in portraying the varied emotions which it was my lot to experience that night, and it may well seem that nothing more exquisite could remain for me. Yet it was written otherwise; for as I swept up to my goal, describing the inevitable arc which I had no power to check, I saw that one awaited me.

Crouching forward half out of the open window was a Burmese dacoit, a cross-eyed, leering being whom I well remembered to have encountered two years before in my dealings with Dr. Fu-Manchu. One bare, sinewy arm held rigidly at right angles before his breast, he clutched a long curved knife and waited—waited—for the critical moment when my throat should be at his mercy!

I have said that a strange coolness had come to my aid; even now it did not fail me, and so incalculably rapid are the workings of the human mind that I remember complimenting myself upon an achievement which Smith himself could not have bettered, and this in the immeasurable interval which intervened between the commencement of my upward swing and my arrival on a level with the window.; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 15:16
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: I threw my body back and thrust my feet forward. As my legs went through the opening, an acute pain in one calf told me that I was not to escape scatheless from the night’s melee. But the dacoit went rolling over in the darkness of the room, as helpless in face of that ramrod stroke as the veriest infant...

Back I swept upon my trapeze, a sight to have induced any passing citizen to question his sanity. With might and main I sought to check the swing of the pendulum, for if I should come within reach of the window behind I doubted not that other knives awaited me. It was no difficult feat, and I succeeded in checking my flight. Swinging there above Museum Street I could even appreciate, so lucid was my mind, the ludicrous element of the situation.

I dropped. My wounded leg almost failed me; and greatly shaken, but with no other serious damage, I picked myself up from the dust of the roadway. It was a mockery of Fate that the problem which Nayland Smith had set me to solve, should have been solved thus; for I could not doubt that by means of the branch of a tall tree or some other suitable object situated opposite to Smith’s house in Rangoon, Karamaneh had made her escape as tonight I had made mine.

Apart from the acute pain in my calf I knew that the dacoit’s knife had bitten deeply, by reason of the fact that a warm liquid was trickling down into my boot. Like any drunkard I stood there in the middle of the road looking up at the vacant window where the dacoit had been, and up at the window above the shop of J. Salaman where I knew Fu-Manchu to be. But for some reason the latter window had been closed or almost closed, and as I stood there this reason became apparent to me.

The sound of running footsteps came from the direction of New Oxford Street. I turned—to see two policemen bearing down upon me!

This was a time for quick decisions and prompt action. I weighed all the circumstances in the balance, and made the last vital choice of the night; I turned and ran toward the British Museum as though the worst of Fu-Manchu’s creatures, and not my allies the police, were at my heels!

No one else was in sight, but, as I whirled into the Square, the red lamp of a slowly retreating taxi became visible some hundred yards to the left. My leg was paining me greatly, but the nature of the wound did not interfere with my progress; therefore I continued my headlong career, and ere the police had reached the end of Museum Street I had my hand upon the door handle of the cab—for, the Fates being persistently kind to me, the vehicle was for hire.

“Dr. Cleeve’s, Harley Street!” I shouted at the man. “Drive like hell! It’s an urgent case.”

I leaped into the cab.

Within five seconds from the time that I slammed the door and dropped back panting upon the cushions, we were speeding westward toward the house of the famous pathologist, thereby throwing the police hopelessly off the track.

Faintly to my ears came the purr of a police whistle. The taxi-man evidently did not hear the significant sound. Merciful Providence had rung down the curtain; for to-night my role in the yellow drama was finished.; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 15:17
Nasadiya Sukta dixo...: ¿Quién lo sabe realmente?

¿Quién aquí lo proclamará?

¿De dónde se produjo? ¿De dónde salió esta creación?

Los dioses llegaron después, con la creación de este universo.

¿Quién sabe entonces de dónde ha surgido?; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 19:34
Nasadiya Sukta dixo...: El paradigma interactivo de la computación describe mejor el estado actual de la inteligencia algorítmica. Los casos más relevantes producidos por la computación hoy en día ocurren en un entorno interactivo y distribuido, y cada vez más los algoritmos se redefinen significativamente a sí mismos a partir de nuevos datos. Por poner un ejemplo del deep-learning, las redes neuronales adversarias se enfrentan entre sí para entrenarse: una asume un rol generativo y la otra un rol discriminatorio. Estas técnicas de confrontación se utilizan para perfeccionar la IA; por ejemplo, dos redes neuronales pueden jugar al antiguo Go entre ellas, y reconfiguran sus conectividades con las idas y venidas del adversario, un proceso de aprendizaje diseñado para optimizar el rendimiento. Esta forma de aprendizaje puede ampliarse para entrenar grupos más grandes de redes, creando de hecho fenómenos complejos y emergentes que reconectan continuamente cada red, aproximándose a un modo interactivo de razonamiento inhumano.; 23 de febreiro de 2025, 19:36
Semónides Amorgos dixo...: - ¿Debemos admitir el dialectismo en nuestro razonamiento, es decir, la noción de que las afirmaciones pueden ser a un mismo tiempo verdaderas y falsas?

- Podríamos simplemente aceptar la contradicción y olvidarnos del asunto.; 24 de febreiro de 2025, 10:11
Semónides Amorgos dixo...: La razón no es un sistema perfectamente racional basado en un sistema de reglas incorpóreo. Más bien, opera como un conjunto plástico de representaciones autorreferenciales, imágenes defectuosas e incompletas de un entorno puestas en relaciones sintácticas, semánticas y lógicas siempre novedosas. La lógica no-monocorde describe un razonamiento que es capaz de revisar sus propios axiomas, y reconfigurar sus propias reglas básicas sobre la marcha.; 24 de febreiro de 2025, 10:11
Folly Bucelario dixo...: Lo bizantino pega más en el blog que lo näif; 24 de febreiro de 2025, 22:33
La puta cerda de Hanoi Jane dixo...: Al ojo de las garzas sube la niebla espesa del invierno. Escucha qué desgarrado el grito de los faisanes entre hojas amarillas y el vaho de los ciervos. La luz anaranjada sobre las verdes tejas de las torres. ¡Qué alegre el crepúsculo del mes del viento y del dragón!
Cómo empalma el alma ganar en Inglaterra.; 24 de febreiro de 2025, 23:52
Orson (Falstaff at Midnight) dixo...: Podríamos decir que la naturaleza es aquello a lo que ha ido renunciando la sociedad en aras de un mayor confortabilidad, y en consecuencia, es también lo anhelamos cuando las condiciones que se nos imponen resultan difíciles de soportar. Por esta razón, el sentimiento de pérdida de la naturaleza es una de las principales señales de identidad de unas sociedades industriales caracterizadas por la desorientación, la insatisfacción crónica, y la sensación de vivir a través de experiencias y relaciones sucedáneas. Es, en definitiva, la casa natal abandonada para siempre a la que de forma irrenunciable deseamos regresar para reencontrarnos con nuestra auténtica y originaria condición.; 25 de febreiro de 2025, 23:45
Orson (Falstaff at Midnight) dixo...: Echo de menos aquello de apenas él le amalaba el noema, a ella se le agolpaba el clémiso y caían en hidromurias, en salvajes ambonios, en sustalos exasperantes, en comidas chinas...; 25 de febreiro de 2025, 23:57
Abrenuntio Sandieces dixo...: ¿Aludirá el adjetivo no solo a la condición de los reyes, sino también a lo que tiene existencia verdadera?; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 09:27
Due to a technical issue, we couldn't complete this request. Please try again. dixo...: Denominaciones comerciales lexicalizadas —o mercuriónimos—aparte, al novel escritor gallego un viaje a la China inglesa le parece seguir siendo nada y quién sabe si la palabra afeitada lo fuera como reivindicación y no como olvido.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 09:38
Persiguiendo una marea de metáforas masturbatorias dixo...: Hartos del cliente y de sus cleonasmos, le sacaron el clíbano y el clípeo y le hicieron tragar una clica. Luego le aplicaron un clistel clínico en la cloaca, aunque clocaba por tan clivoso ascenso de agua mezclada con clinopodio, revisando los clisos como clerizón clorótico; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:00
Persiguiendo una marea de metáforas masturbatorias dixo...: En el jonuco estaban jonjobando dos jobs, ansiosos por joparse; lo malo era que el jorbín los había jomado, jitándolos como jocós apestados; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:00
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: Less than two hours later, Inspector Weymouth and a party of men from Scotland Yard raided the house in Museum Street. They found the stock of J. Salaman practically intact, and, in the strangely appointed rooms above, every evidence of a hasty outgoing. But of the instruments, drugs and other laboratory paraphernalia not one item remained. I would gladly have given my income for a year, to have gained possession of the books, alone; for, beyond all shadow of doubt, I knew them to contain formula calculated to revolutionize the science of medicine.

Exhausted, physically and mentally, and with my mind a whispering-gallery of conjectures (it were needless for me to mention whom respecting) I turned in, gratefully, having patched up the slight wound in my calf.

I seemed scarcely to have closed my eyes, when Nayland Smith was shaking me into wakefulness.

“You are probably tired out,” he said; “but your crazy expedition of last night entitles you to no sympathy. Read this; there is a train in an hour. We will reserve a compartment and you can resume your interrupted slumbers in a corner seat.”

As I struggled upright in bed, rubbing my eyes sleepily, Smith handed me the Daily Telegraph, pointing to the following paragraph upon the literary page:

Messrs. M—— announce that they will publish shortly the long delayed work of Kegan Van Roon, the celebrated American traveler, Orientalist and psychic investigator, dealing with his recent inquiries in China. It will be remembered that Mr. Van Roon undertook to motor from Canton to Siberia last winter, but met with unforeseen difficulties in the province of Ho-Nan. He fell into the hands of a body of fanatics and was fortunate to escape with his life. His book will deal in particular with his experiences in Ho-Nan, and some sensational revelations regarding the awakening of that most mysterious race, the Chinese, are promised. For reasons of his own he has decided to remain in England until the completion of his book (which will be published simultaneously in New York and London) and has leased Cragmire Tower, Somersetshire, in which romantic and historical residence he will collate his notes and prepare for the world a work ear-marked as a classic even before it is published.

I glanced up from the paper, to find Smith’s eyes fixed upon me, inquiringly.

“From what I have been able to learn,” he said, evenly, “we should reach Saul, with decent luck, just before dusk.”

As he turned, and quitted the room without another word, I realized, in a flash, the purport of our mission; I understood my friend’s ominous calm, betokening suppressed excitement.

The Fates were with us (or so it seemed); and whereas we had not hoped to gain Saul before sunset, as a matter of fact, the autumn afternoon was in its most glorious phase as we left the little village with its oldtime hostelry behind us and set out in an easterly direction, with the Bristol Channel far away on our left and a gently sloping upland on our right.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:13
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: The crooked high-street practically constituted the entire hamlet of Saul, and the inn, “The Wagoners,” was the last house in the street. Now, as we followed the ribbon of moor-path to the top of the rise, we could stand and look back upon the way we had come; and although we had covered fully a mile of ground, it was possible to detect the sunlight gleaming now and then upon the gilt lettering of the inn sign as it swayed in the breeze. The day had been unpleasantly warm, but was relieved by this same sea breeze, which, although but slight, had in it the tang of the broad Atlantic. Behind us, then, the foot-path sloped down to Saul, unpeopled by any living thing; east and northeast swelled the monotony of the moor right out to the hazy distance where the sky began and the sea remotely lay hidden; west fell the gentle gradient from the top of the slope which we had mounted, and here, as far as the eye could reach, the country had an appearance suggestive of a huge and dried-up lake. This idea was borne out by an odd blotchiness, for sometimes there would be half a mile or more of seeming moorland, then a sharply defined change (or it seemed sharply defined from that bird’s-eye point of view). A vivid greenness marked these changes, which merged into a dun-colored smudge and again into the brilliant green; then the moor would begin once more.

“That will be the Tor of Glastonbury, I suppose,” said Smith, suddenly peering through his field-glasses in an easterly direction; “and yonder, unless I am greatly mistaken, is Cragmire Tower.”

Shading my eyes with my hand, I also looked ahead, and saw the place for which we were bound; one of those round towers, more common in Ireland, which some authorities have declared to be of Phoenician origin. Ramshackle buildings clustered untidily about its base, and to it a sort of tongue of that oddly venomous green which patched the lowlands, shot out and seemed almost to reach the towerbase. The land for miles around was as flat as the palm of my hand, saving certain hummocks, lesser tors, and irregular piles of boulders which dotted its expanse. Hills and uplands there were in the hazy distance, forming a sort of mighty inland bay which I doubted not in some past age had been covered by the sea. Even in the brilliant sunlight the place had something of a mournful aspect, looking like a great dried-up pool into which the children of giants had carelessly cast stones.

We met no living soul upon the moor. With Cragmire Tower but a quarter of a mile off, Smith paused again, and raising his powerful glasses swept the visible landscape.

“Not a sign. Petrie,” he said, softly; “yet...”

Dropping the glasses back into their case, my companion began to tug at his left ear.

“Have we been over-confident?” he said, narrowing his eyes in speculative fashion. “No less than three times I have had the idea that something, or some one, has just dropped out of sight, behind me, as I focused...”

“What do you mean, Smith?”

“Are we”—he glanced about him as though the vastness were peopled with listening Chinamen—“followed?”

Silently we looked into one another’s eyes, each seeking for the dread which neither had named. Then:

“Come on Petrie!” said Smith, grasping my arm; and at quick march we were off again.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:14
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: Not a soul was visible about the premises; there was no sound of human activity and no dog barked. Nayland Smith drew a long breath, glanced back along the way we had come, then went on, following the wall, I beside him, until we came to the gate. It was unfastened, and we walked up the stone path through a wilderness of weeds. Four windows of the house were visible, two on the ground floor and two above. Those on the ground floor were heavily boarded up, those above, though glazed, boasted neither blinds nor curtains. Cragmire Tower showed not the slightest evidence of tenancy.

We mounted three steps and stood before a tremendously massive oaken door. An iron bell-pull, ancient and rusty, hung on the right of the door, and Smith, giving me an odd glance, seized the ring and tugged it.

From somewhere within the building answered a mournful clangor, a cracked and toneless jangle, which, seeming to echo through empty apartments, sought and found an exit apparently by way of one of the openings in the round tower; for it was from above our heads that the noise came to us.

It died away, that eerie ringing—that clanging so dismal that it could chill my heart even then with the bright sunlight streaming down out of the blue; it awoke no other response than the mournful cry of the sea gull circling over our heads. Silence fell. We looked at one another, and we were both about to express a mutual doubt when, unheralded by any unfastening of bolts or bars, the oaken door was opened, and a huge mulatto, dressed in white, stood there regarding us.

I started nervously, for the apparition was so unexpected, but Nayland Smith, without evidence of surprise, thrust a card into the man’s hand.

“Take my card to Mr. Van Roon, and say that I wish to see him on important business,” he directed, authoritatively.

The mulatto bowed and retired. His white figure seemed to be swallowed up by the darkness within, for beyond the patch of uncarpeted floor revealed by the peeping sunlight, was a barn-like place of densest shadow. I was about to speak, but Smith laid his hand upon my arm warningly, as, out from the shadows the mulatto returned. He stood on the right of the door and bowed again.

“Be pleased to enter,” he said, in his harsh, negro voice. “Mr. Van Roon will see you.”

The gladness of the sun could no longer stir me; a chill and sense of foreboding bore me company, as beside Nayland Smith I entered Cragmire Tower.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:15
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: The room in which Van Roon received us was roughly of the shape of an old-fashioned keyhole; one end of it occupied the base of the tower, upon which the remainder had evidently been built. In many respects it was a singular room, but the feature which caused me the greatest amazement was this:—it had no windows!

In the deep alcove formed by the tower sat Van Roon at a littered table, upon which stood an oil reading-lamp, green shaded, of the “Victoria” pattern, to furnish the entire illumination of the apartment. That bookshelves lined the rectangular portion of this strange study I divined, although that end of the place was dark as a catacomb. The walls were wood-paneled, and the ceiling was oaken beamed. A small bookshelf and tumble-down cabinet stood upon either side of the table, and the celebrated American author and traveler lay propped up in a long split-cane chair. He wore smoked glasses, and had a clean-shaven, olive face, with a profusion of jet black hair. He was garbed in a dirty red dressing-gown, and a perfect fog of cigar smoke hung in the room. He did not rise to greet us, but merely extended his right hand, between two fingers whereof he held Smith’s card.

“You will excuse the seeming discourtesy of an invalid, gentlemen?” he said; “but I am suffering from undue temerity in the interior of China!”

He waved his hand vaguely, and I saw that two rough deal chairs stood near the table. Smith and I seated ourselves, and my friend, leaning his elbow upon the table, looked fixedly at the face of the man whom we had come from London to visit. Although comparatively unfamiliar to the British public, the name of Van Roon was well-known in American literary circles; for he enjoyed in the United States a reputation somewhat similar to that which had rendered the name of our mutual friend, Sir Lionel Barton, a household word in England. It was Van Roon who, following in the footsteps of Madame Blavatsky, had sought out the haunts of the fabled mahatmas in the Himalayas, and Van Roon who had essayed to explore the fever swamps of Yucatan in quest of the secret of lost Atlantis; lastly, it was Van Roon, who, with an overland car specially built for him by a celebrated American firm, had undertaken the journey across China.

I studied the olive face with curiosity. Its natural impassivity was so greatly increased by the presence of the colored spectacles that my study was as profitless as if I had scrutinized the face of a carven Buddha. The mulatto had withdrawn, and in an atmosphere of gloom and tobacco smoke, Smith and I sat staring, perhaps rather rudely, at the object of our visit to the West Country.

“Mr. Van Roon,” began my friend abruptly, “you will no doubt have seen this paragraph. It appeared in this morning’s Daily Telegraph.”

He stood up, and taking out the cutting from his notebook, placed it on the table.

“I have seen this—yes,” said Van Roon, revealing a row of even, white teeth in a rapid smile. “Is it to this paragraph that I owe the pleasure of seeing you here?”

“The paragraph appeared in this morning’s issue,” replied Smith. “An hour from the time of seeing it, my friend, Dr. Petrie, and I were entrained for Bridgewater.”

“Your visit delights me, gentlemen, and I should be ungrateful to question its cause; but frankly I am at a loss to understand why you should have honored me thus. I am a poor host, God knows; for what with my tortured limb, a legacy from the Chinese devils whose secrets I surprised, and my semi-blindness, due to the same cause, I am but sorry company.”

Nayland Smith held up his right hand deprecatingly. Van Roon tendered a box of cigars and clapped his hands, whereupon the mulatto entered.

“I see that you have a story to tell me, Mr. Smith,” he said; “therefore I suggest whisky-and-soda—or you might prefer tea, as it is nearly tea time?”; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:16
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: Smith and I chose the former refreshment, and the soft-footed half-breed having departed upon his errand, my companion, leaning forward earnestly across the littered table, outlined for Van Roon the story of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the great and malign being whose mission in England at that moment was none other than the stoppage of just such information as our host was preparing to give to the world.

“There is a giant conspiracy, Mr. Van Roon,” he said, “which had its birth in this very province of Ho-Nan, from which you were so fortunate to escape alive; whatever its scope or limitations, a great secret society is established among the yellow races. It means that China, which has slumbered for so many generations, now stirs in that age-long sleep. I need not tell you how much more it means, this seething in the pot...”

“In a word,” interrupted Van Roon, pushing Smith’s glass across the table “you would say?—”

“That your life is not worth that!” replied Smith, snapping his fingers before the other’s face.

A very impressive silence fell. I watched Van Roon curiously as he sat propped up among his cushions, his smooth face ghastly in the green light from the lamp-shade. He held the stump of a cigar between his teeth, but, apparently unnoticed by him, it had long since gone out. Smith, out of the shadows, was watching him, too. Then:

“Your information is very disturbing,” said the American. “I am the more disposed to credit your statement because I am all too painfully aware of the existence of such a group as you mention, in China, but that they had an agent here in England is something I had never conjectured. In seeking out this solitary residence I have unwittingly done much to assist their designs... But—my dear Mr. Smith, I am very remiss! Of course you will remain tonight, and I trust for some days to come?”

Smith glanced rapidly across at me, then turned again to our host.

“It seems like forcing our company upon you,” he said, “but in your own interests I think it will be best to do as you are good enough to suggest. I hope and believe that our arrival here has not been noticed by the enemy; therefore it will be well if we remain concealed as much as possible for the present, until we have settled upon some plan.”

“Hagar shall go to the station for your baggage,” said the American rapidly, and clapped his hands, his usual signal to the mulatto.

Whilst the latter was receiving his orders I noticed Nayland Smith watching him closely; and when he had departed:

“How long has that man been in your service?” snapped my friend.

Van Roon peered blindly through his smoked glasses.

“For some years,” he replied; “he was with me in India—and in China.”

“Where did you engage him?”

“Actually, in St. Kitts.”

“H’m,” muttered Smith, and automatically he took out and began to fill his pipe.

“I can offer you no company but my own, gentlemen,” continued Van Roon, “but unless it interferes with your plans, you may find the surrounding district of interest and worthy of inspection, between now and dinner time. By the way, I think I can promise you quite a satisfactory meal, for Hagar is a model chef.”

“A walk would be enjoyable,” said Smith, “but dangerous.”

“Ah! perhaps you are right. Evidently you apprehend some attempt upon me?”

“At any moment!”

“To one in my crippled condition, an alarming outlook! However, I place myself unreservedly in your hands. But really, you must not leave this interesting district before you have made the acquaintance of some of its historical spots. To me, steeped as I am in what I may term the lore of the odd, it is a veritable wonderland, almost as interesting, in its way, as the caves and jungles of Hindustan depicted by Madame Blavatsky.”; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:16
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: His high-pitched voice, with a certain labored intonation, not quite so characteristically American as was his accent, rose even higher; he spoke with the fire of the enthusiast.

“When I learned that Cragmire Tower was vacant,” he continued, “I leaped at the chance (excuse the metaphor, from a lame man!). This is a ghost hunter’s paradise. The tower itself is of unknown origin, though probably Phoenician, and the house traditionally sheltered Dr. Macleod, the necromancer, after his flight from the persecution of James of Scotland. Then, to add to its interest, it borders on Sedgemoor, the scene of the bloody battle during the Monmouth rising, whereat a thousand were slain on the field. It is a local legend that the unhappy Duke and his staff may be seen, on stormy nights, crossing the path which skirts the mire, after which this building is named, with flaming torches held aloft.”

“Merely marsh-lights, I take it?” interjected Smith, gripping his pipe hard between his teeth.

“Your practical mind naturally seeks a practical explanation,” smiled Van Roon, “but I myself have other theories. Then in addition to the charms of Sedgemoor—haunted Sedgemoor—on a fine day it is quite possible to see the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey from here; and Glastonbury Abbey, as you may know, is closely bound up with the history of alchemy. It was in the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey that the adept Kelly, companion of Dr. Dee, discovered, in the reign of Elizabeth, the famous caskets of St. Dunstan, containing the two tinctures...”

So he ran on, enumerating the odd charms of his residence, charms which for my part I did not find appealing. Finally:

“We cannot presume further upon your kindness,” said Nayland Smith, standing up. “No doubt we can amuse ourselves in the neighborhood of the house until the return of your servant.”

“Look upon Cragmire Tower as your own, gentlemen!” cried Van Roon. “Most of the rooms are unfurnished, and the garden is a wilderness, but the structure of the brickwork in the tower may interest you archaeologically, and the view across the moor is at least as fine as any in the neighborhood.”

So, with his brilliant smile and a gesture of one thin yellow hand, the crippled traveler made us free of his odd dwelling. As I passed out from the room close at Smith’s heels, I glanced back, I cannot say why. Van Roon already was bending over his papers, in his green shadowed sanctuary, and the light shining down upon his smoked glasses created the odd illusion that he was looking over the tops of the lenses and not down at the table as his attitude suggested. However, it was probably ascribable to the weird chiaroscuro of the scene, although it gave the seated figure an oddly malignant appearance, and I passed out through the utter darkness of the outer room to the front door. Smith opening it, I was conscious of surprise to find dusk come—to meet darkness where I had looked for sunlight.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:16
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: The silver wisps which had raced along the horizon, as we came to Cragmire Tower, had been harbingers of other and heavier banks. A stormy sunset smeared crimson streaks across the skyline, where a great range of clouds, like the oily smoke of a city burning, was banked, mountain topping mountain, and lighted from below by this angry red. As we came down the steps and out by the gate, I turned and looked across the moor behind us. A sort of reflection from this distant blaze encrimsoned the whole landscape. The inland bay glowed sullenly, as if internal fires and not reflected light were at work; a scene both wild and majestic.

Nayland Smith was staring up at the cone-like top of the ancient tower in a curious, speculative fashion. Under the influence of our host’s conversation I had forgotten the reasonless dread which had touched me at the moment of our arrival, but now, with the red light blazing over Sedgemoor, as if in memory of the blood which had been shed there, and with the tower of unknown origin looming above me, I became very uncomfortable again, nor did I envy Van Roon his eerie residence. The proximity of a tower of any kind, at night, makes in some inexplicable way for awe, and to-night there were other agents, too.

“What’s that?” snapped Smith suddenly, grasping my arm.

He was peering southward, toward the distant hamlet, and, starting violently at his words and the sudden grasp of his hand, I, too, stared in that direction.

“We were followed, Petrie,” he almost whispered. “I never got a sight of our follower, but I’ll swear we were followed. Look! there’s something moving over yonder!”

Together we stood staring into the dusk; then Smith burst abruptly into one of his rare laughs, and clapped me upon the shoulder.

“It’s Hagar, the mulatto!” he cried—“and our grips. That extraordinary American with his tales of witch-lights and haunted abbeys has been playing the devil with our nerves.”

Together we waited by the gate until the half-caste appeared on the bend of the path with a grip in either hand. He was a great, muscular fellow with a stoic face, and, for the purpose of visiting Saul, presumably, he had doffed his white raiment and now wore a sort of livery, with a peaked cap.

Smith watched him enter the house. Then:

“I wonder where Van Roon obtains his provisions and so forth,” he muttered. “It’s odd they knew nothing about the new tenant of Cragmire Tower at ‘The Wagoners.’”

There came a sort of sudden expectancy into his manner for which I found myself at a loss to account. He turned his gaze inland and stood there tugging at his left ear and clicking his teeth together. He stared at me, and his eyes looked very bright in the dusk, for a sort of red glow from the sunset touched them; but he spoke no word, merely taking my arm and leading me off on a rambling walk around and about the house. Neither of us spoke a word until we stood at the gate of Cragmire Tower again; then:

“I’ll swear, now, that we were followed here today!” muttered Smith.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:17
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: The lofty place immediately within the doorway proved, in the light of a lamp now fixed in an iron bracket, to be a square entrance hall meagerly furnished. The closed study door faced the entrance, and on the left of it ascended an open staircase up which the mulatto led the way. We found ourselves on the floor above, in a corridor traversing the house from back to front. An apartment on the immediate left was indicated by the mulatto as that allotted to Smith. It was a room of fair size, furnished quite simply but boasting a wardrobe cupboard, and Smith’s grip stood beside the white enameled bed. I glanced around, and then prepared to follow the man, who had awaited me in the doorway.

He still wore his dark livery, and as I followed the lithe, broad-shouldered figure along the corridor, I found myself considering critically his breadth of shoulder and the extraordinary thickness of his neck.

I have repeatedly spoken of a sort of foreboding, an elusive stirring in the depths of my being of which I became conscious at certain times in my dealings with Dr. Fu-Manchu and his murderous servants. This sensation, or something akin to it, claimed me now, unaccountably, as I stood looking into the neat bedroom, on the same side of the corridor but at the extreme end, wherein I was to sleep.

A voiceless warning urged me to return; a kind of childish panic came fluttering about my heart, a dread of entering the room, of allowing the mulatto to come behind me.

Doubtless this was no more than a sub-conscious product of my observations respecting his abnormal breadth of shoulder. But whatever the origin of the impulse, I found myself unable to disobey it. Therefore, I merely nodded, turned on my heel and went back to Smith’s room.

I closed the door, then turned to face Smith, who stood regarding me.

“Smith,” I said, “that man sends cold water trickling down my spine!”

Still regarding me fixedly, my friend nodded his head.

“You are curiously sensitive to this sort of thing,” he replied slowly; “I have noticed it before as a useful capacity. I don’t like the look of the man myself. The fact that he has been in Van Roon’s employ for some years goes for nothing. We are neither of us likely to forget Kwee, the Chinese servant of Sir Lionel Barton, and it is quite possible that Fu-Manchu has corrupted this man as he corrupted the other. It is quite possible...”

His voice trailed off into silence, and he stood looking across the room with unseeing eyes, meditating deeply. It was quite dark now outside, as I could see through the uncurtained window, which opened upon the dreary expanse stretching out to haunted Sedgemoor. Two candles were burning upon the dressing table; they were but recently lighted, and so intense was the stillness that I could distinctly hear the spluttering of one of the wicks, which was damp. Without giving the slightest warning of his intention, Smith suddenly made two strides forward, stretched out his long arms, and snuffed the pair of candles in a twinkling.

The room became plunged in impenetrable darkness.

“Not a word, Petrie!” whispered my companion.

I moved cautiously to join him, but as I did so, perceived that he was moving too. Vaguely, against the window I perceived him silhouetted. He was looking out across the moor, and:

“See! see!” he hissed.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:17
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: A light was dancing out upon the moor, a witchlight that came and went unaccountably, up and down, in and out, now clearly visible, now masked in the darkness!

“Lock the door!” snapped my companion—“if there’s a key.”

I crept across the room and fumbled for a moment; then:

“There is no key,” I reported.

“Then wedge the chair under the knob and let no one enter until I return!” he said, amazingly.

With that he opened the window to its fullest extent, threw his leg over the sill, and went creeping along a wide concrete ledge, in which ran a leaded gutter, in the direction of the tower on the right!

Not pausing to follow his instructions respecting the chair, I craned out of the window, watching his progress, and wondering with what sudden madness he was bitten. Indeed, I could not credit my senses, could not believe that I heard and saw aright. Yet there out in the darkness on the moor moved the will-o’-the-wisp, and ten yards along the gutter crept my friend, like a great gaunt cat. Unknown to me he must have prospected the route by daylight, for now I saw his design. The ledge terminated only where it met the ancient wall of the tower, and it was possible for an agile climber to step from it to the edge of the unglazed window some four feet below, and to scramble from that point to the stone fence and thence on to the path by which we had come from Saul.

This difficult operation Nayland Smith successfully performed, and, to my unbounded amazement, went racing into the darkness toward the dancing light, headlong, like a madman! The night swallowed him up, and between my wonder and my fear my hands trembled so violently that I could scarce support myself where I rested, with my full weight upon the sill.

I seemed now to be moving through the fevered phases of a nightmare. Around and below me Cragmire Tower was profoundly silent, but a faint odor of cookery was now perceptible. Outside, from the night, came a faint whispering as of the distant sea, but no moon and no stars relieved the impenetrable blackness. Only out over the moor the mysterious light still danced and moved.

One—two—three—four—five minutes passed. The light vanished and did not appear again. Five more age-long minutes elapsed in absolute silence, whilst I peered into the darkness of the night and listened, every nerve in my body tense, for the return of Nayland Smith. Yet two more minutes, which embraced an agony of suspense, passed in the same fashion; then a shadowy form grew, phantomesque, out of the gloom; a moment more, and I distinctly heard the heavy breathing of a man nearly spent, and saw my friend scrambling up toward the black embrasure in the tower. His voice came huskily, pantingly:

“Creep along and lend me a hand, Petrie! I am nearly winded.”

I crept through the window, steadied my quivering nerves by an effort of the will, and reached the end of the ledge in time to take Smith’s extended hand and to draw him up beside me against the wall of the tower. He was shaking with his exertions, and must have fallen, I think, without my assistance. Inside the room again:

“Quick! light the candles!” he breathed hoarsely.

“Did any one come?”

“No one—nothing.”

Having expended several matches in vain, for my fingers twitched nervously, I ultimately succeeded in relighting the candles.

“Get along to your room!” directed Smith. “Your apprehensions are unfounded at the moment, but you may as well leave both doors wide open!”; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:18
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: I looked into his face—it was very drawn and grim, and his brow was wet with perspiration, but his eyes had the fighting glint, and I knew that we were upon the eve of strange happenings.

IMWT; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:19
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: Of the events intervening between this moment and that when death called to us out of the night, I have the haziest recollections. An excellent dinner was served in the bleak and gloomy dining-room by the mulatto, and the crippled author was carried to the head of the table by this same Herculean attendant, as lightly as though he had but the weight of a child.

Van Roon talked continuously, revealing a deep knowledge of all sorts of obscure matters; and in the brief intervals, Nayland Smith talked also, with almost feverish rapidity. Plans for the future were discussed. I can recall no one of them.

I could not stifle my queer sentiments in regard to the mulatto, and every time I found him behind my chair I was hard put to repress a shudder. In this fashion the strange evening passed; and to the accompaniment of distant, muttering thunder, we two guests retired to our chambers in Cragmire Tower. Smith had contrived to give me my instructions in a whisper, and five minutes after entering my own room, I had snuffed the candles, slipped a wedge, which he had given me, under the door, crept out through the window onto the guttered ledge, and joined Smith in his room. He, too, had extinguished his candles, and the place was in darkness. As I climbed in, he grasped my wrist to silence me, and turned me forcibly toward the window.

“Listen!” he said.

I turned and looked out upon a prospect which had been a fit setting for the witch scene in Macbeth. Thunder clouds hung low over the moor, but through them ran a sort of chasm, or rift, allowing a bar of lurid light to stretch across the drear, from east to west—a sort of lane walled by darkness. There came a remote murmuring, as of a troubled sea—a hushed and distant chorus; and sometimes in upon it broke the drums of heaven. In the west lightning flickered, though but faintly, intermittently.

Then came the call.

Out of the blackness of the moor it came, wild and distant—“Help! help!”

“Smith!” I whispered—“what is it? What...”

“Mr. Smith!” came the agonized cry... “Nayland Smith, help! for God’s sake....”

“Quick, Smith!” I cried, “quick, man! It’s Van Roon—he’s been dragged out... they are murdering him...”

Nayland Smith held me in a vise-like grip, silent, unmoved!

Louder and more agonized came the cry for aid, and I became more than ever certain that it was poor Van Roon who uttered it.

“Mr. Smith! Dr. Petrie! for God’s sake come... or... it will be ... too... late...”

“Smith!” I said, turning furiously upon my friend, “if you are going to remain here whilst murder is done, I am not!”

My blood boiled now with hot resentment. It was incredible, inhuman, that we should remain there inert whilst a fellow man, and our host to boot, was being done to death out there in the darkness. I exerted all my strength to break away; but although my efforts told upon him, as his loud breathing revealed, Nayland Smith clung to me tenaciously. Had my hands been free, in my fury, I could have struck him, for the pitiable cries, growing fainter, now, told their own tale. Then Smith spoke shortly and angrily—breathing hard between the words.

“Be quiet, you fool!” he snapped; “it’s little less than an insult, Petrie, to think me capable of refusing help where help is needed!”

Like a cold douche his words acted; in that instant I knew myself a fool.

“You remember the Call of Siva?” he said, thrusting me away irritably, “—two years ago, and what it meant to those who obeyed it?”

“You might have told me...”

“Told you! You would have been through the window before I had uttered two words!”; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:19
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: I realized the truth of his assertion, and the justness of his anger.

“Forgive me, old man,” I said, very crestfallen, “but my impulse was a natural one, you’ll admit. You must remember that I have been trained never to refuse aid when aid is asked.”

“Shut up, Petrie!” he growled; “forget it.”

The cries had ceased now, entirely, and a peal of thunder, louder than any yet, echoed over distant Sedgemoor. The chasm of light splitting the heavens closed in, leaving the night wholly black.

“Don’t talk!” rapped Smith; “act! You wedged your door?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Get into that cupboard, have your Browning ready, and keep the door very slightly ajar.”

He was in that mood of repressed fever which I knew and which always communicated itself to me. I spoke no further word, but stepped into the wardrobe indicated and drew the door nearly shut. The recess just accommodated me, and through the aperture I could see the bed, vaguely, the open window, and part of the opposite wall. I saw Smith cross the floor, as a mighty clap of thunder boomed over the house.

A gleam of lightning flickered through the gloom.

I saw the bed for a moment, distinctly, and it appeared to me that Smith lay therein, with the sheets pulled up over his head. The light was gone, and I could hear big drops of rain pattering upon the leaden gutter below the open window.

My mood was strange, detached, and characterized by vagueness. That Van Roon lay dead upon the moor I was convinced; and—although I recognized that it must be a sufficient one—I could not even dimly divine the reason why we had refrained from lending him aid. To have failed to save him, knowing his peril, would have been bad enough; to have refused, I thought was shameful. Better to have shared his fate—yet...

The downpour was increasing, and beating now a regular tattoo upon the gutterway. Then, splitting the oblong of greater blackness which marked the casement, quivered dazzlingly another flash of lightning in which I saw the bed again, with that impression of Smith curled up in it. The blinding light died out; came the crash of thunder, harsh and fearsome, more imminently above the tower than ever. The building seemed to shake.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:19
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: Coming as they did, horror and the wrath of heaven together, suddenly, crashingly, black and angry after the fairness of the day, these happenings and their setting must have terrorized the stoutest heart; but somehow I seemed detached, as I have said, and set apart from the whirl of events; a spectator. Even when a vague yellow light crept across the room from the direction of the door, and flickered unsteadily on the bed, I remained unmoved to a certain degree, although passively alive to the significance of the incident. I realized that the ultimate issue was at hand, but either because I was emotionally exhausted, or from some other cause, the pending climax failed to disturb me.

Going on tiptoe, in stockinged feet, across my field of vision, passed Kegan Van Roon! He was in his shirt-sleeves and held a lighted candle in one hand whilst with the other he shaded it against the draught from the window. He was a cripple no longer, and the smoked glasses were discarded; most of the light, at the moment when first I saw him, shone upon his thin, olive face, and at sight of his eyes much of the mystery of Cragmire Tower was resolved. For they were oblique, very slightly, but nevertheless unmistakably oblique. Though highly educated, and possibly an American citizen, Van Roon was a Chinaman!

Upon the picture of his face as I saw it then, I do not care to dwell. It lacked the unique horror of Dr. Fu-Manchu’s unforgettable countenance, but possessed a sort of animal malignancy which the latter lacked... He approached within three or four feet of the bed, peering—peering. Then, with a timidity which spoke well for Nayland Smith’s reputation, paused and beckoned to some one who evidently stood in the doorway behind him. As he did so I noted that the legs of his trousers were caked with greenish brown mud nearly up to the knees.

The huge mulatto, silent-footed, crossed to the bed in three strides. He was stripped to the waist, and, excepting some few professional athletes, I had never seen a torso to compare with that which, brown and glistening, now bent over Nayland Smith. The muscular development was simply enormous; the man had a neck like a column, and the thews around his back and shoulders were like ivy tentacles wreathing some gnarled oak.

Whilst Van Roon, his evil gaze upon the bed, held the candle aloft, the mulatto, with a curious preparatory writhing movement of the mighty shoulders, lowered his outstretched fingers to the disordered bed linen...

I pushed open the cupboard door and thrust out the Browning. As I did so a dramatic thing happened. A tall, gaunt figure shot suddenly upright from beyond the bed. It was Nayland Smith!

Upraised in his hand he held a heavy walking cane. I knew the handle to be leaded, and I could judge of the force with which he wielded it by the fact that it cut the air with a keen swishing sound. It descended upon the back of the mulatto’s skull with a sickening thud, and the great brown body dropped inert upon the padded bed—in which not Smith, but his grip, reposed. There was no word, no cry. Then:

“Shoot, Petrie! Shoot the fiend! Shoot...”

Van Roon, dropping the candle, in the falling gleam of which I saw the whites of the oblique eyes turned and leaped from the room with the agility of a wild cat. The ensuing darkness was split by a streak of lightning... and there was Nayland Smith scrambling around the foot of the bed and making for the door in hot pursuit.

We gained it almost together. Smith had dropped the cane, and now held his pistol in his hand. Together we fired into the chasm of the corridor, and in the flash, saw Van Roon hurling himself down the stairs. He went silently in his stockinged feet, and our own clatter was drowned by the awful booming of the thunder which now burst over us again.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:20
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: Crack!—crack!—crack! Three times our pistols spat venomously after the flying figure... then we had crossed the hall below and were in the wilderness of the night with the rain descending upon us in sheets. Vaguely I saw the white shirt-sleeves of the fugitive near the corner of the stone fence. A moment he hesitated, then darted away inland, not toward Saul, but toward the moor and the cup of the inland bay.

“Steady, Petrie! steady!” cried Nayland Smith. He ran, panting, beside me. “It is the path to the mire.” He breathed sibilantly between every few words. “It was out there... that he hoped to lure us... with the cry for help.”

A great blaze of lightning illuminated the landscape as far as the eye could see. Ahead of us a flying shape, hair lank and glistening in the downpour, followed a faint path skirting that green tongue of morass which we had noted from the upland. It was Kegan Van Roon. He glanced over his shoulder, showing a yellow, terror-stricken face. We were gaining upon him. Darkness fell, and the thunder cracked and boomed as though the very moor were splitting about us.

“Another fifty yards, Petrie,” breathed Nayland Smith, “and after that it’s unchartered ground.”

On we went through the rain and the darkness; then:

“Slow up! slow up!” cried Smith. “It feels soft!”

Indeed, already I had made one false step—and the hungry mire had fastened upon my foot, almost tripping me.

“Lost the path!”

We stopped dead. The falling rain walled us in. I dared not move, for I knew that the mire, the devouring mire, stretched, eager, close about my feet. We were both waiting for the next flash of lightning, I think, but, before it came, out of the darkness ahead of us rose a cry that sometimes rings in my ears to this hour. Yet it was no more than a repetition of that which had called to us, deathfully, awhile before.

“Help! help! for God’s sake help! Quick! I am sinking...”

Nayland Smith grasped my arm furiously.

“We dare not move, Petrie—we dare not move!” he breathed. “It’s God’s justice—visible for once.”

Then came the lightning; and—ignoring a splitting crash behind us—we both looked ahead, over the mire.

Just on the edge of the venomous green path, not thirty yards away, I saw the head and shoulders and upstretched, appealing arms of Van Roon. Even as the lightning flickered and we saw him, he was gone; with one last, long, drawn-out cry, horribly like the mournful wail of a sea gull, he was gone!

That eerie light died, and in the instant before the sound of the thunder came shatteringly, we turned about... in time to see Cragmire Tower, a blacker silhouette against the night, topple and fall! A red glow began to be perceptible above the building. The thunder came booming through the caverns of space. Nayland Smith lowered his wet face close to mine and shouted in my ear:

“Kegan Van Roon never returned from China. It was a trap. Those were two creatures of Dr. Fu-Manchu...”

The thunder died away, hollowly, echoing over the distant sea...

“That light on the moor to-night?”

“You have not learned the Morse Code, Petrie. It was a signal, and it read:—S M I T H... SOS.”

“Well?”

“I took the chance, as you know. And it was Karamaneh! She knew of the plot to bury us in the mire. She had followed from London, but could do nothing until dusk. God forgive me if I’ve misjudged her—for we owe her our lives to-night.”

Flames were bursting up from the building beside the ruin of the ancient tower which had faced the storms of countless ages only to succumb at last. The lightning literally had cloven it in twain.

“The mulatto?...”; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:20
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: Again the lightning flashed, and we saw the path and began to retrace our steps. Nayland Smith turned to me; his face was very grim in that unearthly light, and his eyes shone like steel.

“I killed him, Petrie... as I meant to do.”

From out over Sedgemoor it came, cracking and rolling and booming toward us, swelling in volume to a stupendous climax, that awful laughter of Jove the destroyer of Cragmire Tower.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:21
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: In looking over my notes dealing with the second phase of Dr. Fu-Manchu’s activities in England, I find that one of the worst hours of my life was associated with the singular and seemingly inconsequent adventure of the fiery hand. I shall deal with it in this place, begging you to bear with me if I seem to digress.

Inspector Weymouth called one morning, shortly after the Van Roon episode, and entered upon a surprising account of a visit to a house at Hampstead which enjoyed the sinister reputation of being uninhabitable.

“But in what way does the case enter into your province?” inquired Nayland Smith, idly tapping out his pipe on a bar of the grate.

We had not long finished breakfast, but from an early hour Smith had been at his eternal smoking, which only the advent of the meal had interrupted.

“Well,” replied the inspector, who occupied a big armchair near the window, “I was sent to look into it, I suppose, because I had nothing better to do at the moment.”

“Ah!” jerked Smith, glancing over his shoulder.

The ejaculation had a veiled significance; for our quest of Dr. Fu-Manchu had come to an abrupt termination by reason of the fact that all trace of that malignant genius, and of the group surrounding him, had vanished with the destruction of Cragmire Tower.

“The house is called the Gables,” continued the Scotland Yard man, “and I knew I was on a wild goose chase from the first—”

“Why?” snapped Smith.

“Because I was there before, six months ago or so—just before your present return to England—and I knew what to expect.”

Smith looked up with some faint dawning of interest perceptible in his manner.

“I was unaware,” he said with a slight smile, “that the cleaning-up of haunted houses came within the jurisdiction of Scotland Yard. I am learning something.”

“In the ordinary way,” replied the big man good-humoredly, “it doesn’t. But a sudden death always excites suspicion, and—”

“A sudden death?” I said, glancing up; “you didn’t explain that the ghost had killed any one!”

“I’m afraid I’m a poor hand at yarn-spinning, Doctor,” said Weymouth, turning his blue, twinkling eyes in my direction. “Two people have died at the Gables within the last six months.”

“You begin to interest me,” declared Smith, and there came something of the old, eager look into his gaunt face, as, having lighted his pipe, he tossed the match-end into the hearth.

“I had hoped for some little excitement, myself,” confessed the inspector. “This dead-end, with not a ghost of a clue to the whereabouts of the yellow fiend, has been getting on my nerves—”

Nayland Smith grunted sympathetically.

“Although Dr. Fu-Manchu has been in England for some months, now,” continued Weymouth, “I have never set eyes upon him; the house we raided in Museum Street proved to be empty; in a word, I am wasting my time. So that I volunteered to run up to Hampstead and look into the matter of the Gables, principally as a distraction. It’s a queer business, but more in the Psychical Research Society’s line than mine, I’m afraid. Still, if there were no Dr. Fu-Manchu it might be of interest to you—and to you, Dr. Petrie, because it illustrates the fact, that, given the right sort of subject, death can be brought about without any elaborate mechanism—such as our Chinese friends employ.”

“You interest me more and more,” declared Smith, stretching himself in the long, white cane rest-chair.

“Two men, both fairly sound, except that the first one had an asthmatic heart, have died at the Gables without any one laying a little finger upon them. Oh! there was no jugglery! They weren’t poisoned, or bitten by venomous insects, or suffocated, or anything like that. They just died of fear—stark fear.”; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:21
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: With my elbows resting upon the table cover, and my chin in my hands, I was listening attentively, now, and Nayland Smith, a big cushion behind his head, was watching the speaker with a keen and speculative look in those steely eyes of his.

“You imply that Dr. Fu-Manchu has something to learn from the Gables?” he jerked.

Weymouth nodded stolidly.

“I can’t work up anything like amazement in these days,” continued the latter; “every other case seems stale and hackneyed alongside the case. But I must confess that when the Gables came on the books of the Yard the second time, I began to wonder. I thought there might be some tangible clue, some link connecting the two victims; perhaps some evidence of robbery or of revenge—of some sort of motive. In short, I hoped to find evidence of human agency at work, but, as before, I was disappointed.”

“It’s a legitimate case of a haunted house, then?” said Smith.

“Yes; we find them occasionally, these uninhabitable places, where there is something, something malignant and harmful to human life, but something that you cannot arrest, that you cannot hope to bring into court.”

“Ah,” replied Smith slowly; “I suppose you are right. There are historic instances, of course: Glamys Castle and Spedlins Tower in Scotland, Peel Castle, Isle of Man, with its Maudhe Dhug, the gray lady of Rainham Hall, the headless horses of Caistor, the Wesley ghost of Epworth Rectory, and others. But I have never come in personal contact with such a case, and if I did I should feel very humiliated to have to confess that there was any agency which could produce a physical result—death—but which was immune from physical retaliation.”

Weymouth nodded his head again.

“I might feel a bit sour about it, too,” he replied, “if it were not that I haven’t much pride left in these days, considering the show of physical retaliation I have made against Dr. Fu-Manchu.”

“A home thrust, Weymouth!” snapped Nayland Smith, with one of those rare, boyish laughs of his. “We’re children to that Chinese doctor, Inspector, to that weird product of a weird people who are as old in evil as the pyramids are old in mystery. But about the Gables?”

“Well, it’s an uncanny place. You mentioned Glamys Castle a moment ago, and it’s possible to understand an old stronghold like that being haunted, but the Gables was only built about 1870; it’s quite a modern house. It was built for a wealthy Quaker family, and they occupied it, uninterruptedly and apparently without anything unusual occurring, for over forty years. Then it was sold to a Mr. Maddison—and Mr. Maddison died there six months ago.”

“Maddison?” said Smith sharply, staring across at Weymouth. “What was he? Where did he come from?”

“He was a retired tea-planter from Colombo,” replied the inspector.

“Colombo?”

“There was a link with the East, certainly, if that’s what you are thinking; and it was this fact which interested me at the time, and which led me to waste precious days and nights on the case. But there was no mortal connection between this liverish individual and the schemes of Dr. Fu-Manchu. I’m certain of that.”

“And how did he die?” I asked, interestedly.

“He just died in his chair one evening, in the room which he used as a library. It was his custom to sit there every night, when there were no visitors, reading, until twelve o’clock—or later. He was a bachelor, and his household consisted of a cook, a housemaid, and a man who had been with him for thirty years, I believe. At the time of Mr. Maddison’s death, his household had recently been deprived of two of its members. The cook and housemaid both resigned one morning, giving as their reason the fact that the place was haunted.”

“In what way?”

“I interviewed the precious pair at the time, and they told me absurd and various tales about dark figures wandering along the corridors and bending over them in bed at night, whispering; but their chief trouble was a continuous ringing of bells about the house.”; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:22
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: “Hell Bells?”

“They said that it became unbearable. Night and day there were bells ringing all over the house. At any rate, they went, and for three or four days the Gables was occupied only by Mr. Maddison and his man, whose name was Stevens. I interviewed the latter also, and he was an altogether more reliable witness; a decent, steady sort of man whose story impressed me very much at the time.”

“Did he confirm the ringing?”; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:22
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: “He swore to it—a sort of jangle, sometimes up in the air, near the ceilings, and sometimes under the floor, like the shaking of silver bells.”

Nayland Smith stood up abruptly and began to pace the room, leaving great trails of blue-gray smoke behind him.

“Your story is sufficiently interesting, Inspector,” he declared, “even to divert my mind from the eternal contemplation of the Fu-Manchu problem. This would appear to be distinctly a case of an ‘astral bell’ such as we sometimes hear of in India.”

“It was Stevens,” continued Weymouth, “who found Mr. Maddison. He (Stevens) had been out on business connected with the household arrangements, and at about eleven o’clock he returned, letting himself in with a key. There was a light in the library, and getting no response to his knocking, Stevens entered. He found his master sitting bolt upright in a chair, clutching the arms with rigid fingers and staring straight before him with a look of such frightful horror on his face, that Stevens positively ran from the room and out of the house. Mr. Maddison was stone dead. When a doctor, who lives at no great distance away, came and examined him, he could find no trace of violence whatever; he had apparently died of fright, to judge from the expression on his face.”

“Anything else?”

“Only this: I learnt, indirectly, that the last member of the Quaker family to occupy the house had apparently witnessed the apparition, which had led to his vacating the place. I got the story from the wife of a man who had been employed as gardener there at that time. The apparition—which he witnessed in the hallway, if I remember rightly—took the form of a sort of luminous hand clutching a long, curved knife.”

“Oh, Heavens!” cried Smith, and laughed shortly; “that’s quite in order!”

“This gentleman told no one of the occurrence until after he had left the house, no doubt in order that the place should not acquire an evil reputation. Most of the original furniture remained, and Mr. Maddison took the house furnished. I don’t think there can be any doubt that what killed him was fear at seeing a repetition—”

“Of the fiery hand?” concluded Smith.

“Quite so. Well, I examined the Gables pretty closely, and, with another Scotland Yard man, spent a night in the empty house. We saw nothing; but once, very faintly, we heard the ringing of bells.”

Smith spun around upon him rapidly.

“You can swear to that?” he snapped.

“I can swear to it,” declared Weymouth stolidly. “It seemed to be over our heads. We were sitting in the dining-room. Then it was gone, and we heard nothing more whatever of an unusual nature. Following the death of Mr. Maddison, the Gables remained empty until a while ago, when a French gentleman, name Lejay, leased it—”

“Furnished?”

“Yes; nothing was removed—”

“Who kept the place in order?”

“A married couple living in the neighborhood undertook to do so. The man attended to the lawn and so forth, and the woman came once a week, I believe, to clean up the house.”

“And Lejay?”; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:22
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: “He came in only last week, having leased the house for six months. His family were to have joined him in a day or two, and he, with the aid of the pair I have just mentioned, and assisted by a French servant he brought over with him, was putting the place in order. At about twelve o’clock on Friday night this servant ran into a neighboring house screaming ‘the fiery hand!’ and when at last a constable arrived and a frightened group went up the avenue of the Gables, they found M. Lejay, dead in the avenue, near the steps just outside the hall door! He had the same face of horror...”

“What a tale for the press!” snapped Smith.

“The owner has managed to keep it quiet so far, but this time I think it will leak into the press—yes.”

There was a short silence; then:

“And you have been down to the Gables again?”

“I was there on Saturday, but there’s not a scrap of evidence. The man undoubtedly died of fright in the same way as Maddison. The place ought to be pulled down; it’s unholy.”

“Unholy is the word,” I said. “I never heard anything like it. This M. Lejay had no enemies?—there could be no possible motive?”

“None whatever. He was a business man from Marseilles, and his affairs necessitated his remaining in or near London for some considerable time; therefore, he decided to make his headquarters here, temporarily, and leased the Gables with that intention.”

Nayland Smith was pacing the floor with increasing rapidity; he was tugging at the lobe of his left ear and his pipe had long since gone out.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:23
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: I started to my feet as a tall, bearded man swung open the door and hurled himself impetuously into the room. He wore a silk hat, which fitted him very ill, and a black frock coat which did not fit him at all.

“It’s all right, Petrie!” cried the apparition; “I’ve leased the Gables!”

It was Nayland Smith! I stared at him in amazement

“The first time I have employed a disguise,” continued my friend rapidly, “since the memorable episode of the false pigtail.” He threw a small brown leather grip upon the floor. “In case you should care to visit the house, Petrie, I have brought these things. My tenancy commences to-night!”

Two days had elapsed, and I had entirely forgotten the strange story of the Gables which Inspector Weymouth had related to us; evidently it was otherwise with my friend, and utterly at a loss for an explanation of his singular behavior, I stooped mechanically and opened the grip. It contained an odd assortment of garments, and amongst other things several gray wigs and a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles.

Kneeling there with this strange litter about me, I looked up amazedly. Nayland Smith, with the unsuitable silk hat set right upon the back of his head, was pacing the room excitedly, his fuming pipe protruding from the tangle of factitious beard.

“You see, Petrie,” he began again, rapidly, “I did not entirely trust the agent. I’ve leased the house in the name of Professor Maxton...”

“But, Smith,” I cried, “what possible reason can there be for disguise?”

“There’s every reason,” he snapped.

“Why should you interest yourself in the Gables?”

“Does no explanation occur to you?”

“None whatever; to me the whole thing smacks of stark lunacy.”

“Then you won’t come?”

“I’ve never stuck at anything, Smith,” I replied, “however undignified, when it has seemed that my presence could be of the slightest use.”

As I rose to my feet, Smith stepped in front of me, and the steely gray eyes shone out strangely from the altered face. He clapped his hands upon my shoulders.

“If I assure you that your presence is necessary to my safety,” he said—“that if you fail me I must seek another companion—will you come?”

Intuitively, I knew that he was keeping something back, and I was conscious of some resentment, but nevertheless my reply was a foregone conclusion, and—with the borrowed appearance of an extremely untidy old man—I crept guiltily out of my house that evening and into the cab which Smith had waiting.

The Gables was a roomy and rambling place lying back a considerable distance from the road. A semicircular drive gave access to the door, and so densely wooded was the ground, that for the most part the drive was practically a tunnel—a verdant tunnel. A high brick wall concealed the building from the point of view of any one on the roadway, but either horn of the crescent drive terminated at a heavy, wrought-iron gateway.

Smith discharged the cab at the corner of the narrow and winding road upon which the Gables fronted. It was walled in on both sides; on the left the wall being broken by tradesmen’s entrances to the houses fronting upon another street, and on the right following, uninterruptedly, the grounds of the Gables. As we came to the gate:

“Nothing now,” said Smith, pointing into the darkness of the road before us, “except a couple of studios, until one comes to the Heath.”

He inserted the key in the lock of the gate and swung it creakingly open. I looked into the black arch of the avenue, thought of the haunted residence that lay hidden somewhere beyond, of those who had died in it—especially of the one who had died there under the trees—and found myself out of love with the business of the night.

“Come on!” said Nayland Smith briskly, holding the gate open; “there should be a fire in the library and refreshments, if the charwoman has followed instructions.”; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:23
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: I heard the great gate clang to behind us. Even had there been any moon (and there was none) I doubted if more than a patch or two of light could have penetrated there. The darkness was extraordinary. Nothing broke it, and I think Smith must have found his way by the aid of some sixth sense. At any rate, I saw nothing of the house until I stood some five paces from the steps leading up to the porch. A light was burning in the hallway, but dimly and inhospitably; of the facade of the building I could perceive little.

When we entered the hall and the door was closed behind us, I began wondering anew what purpose my friend hoped to serve by a vigil in this haunted place. There was a light in the library, the door of which was ajar, and on the large table were decanters, a siphon, and some biscuits and sandwiches. A large grip stood upon the floor, also. For some reason which was a mystery to me, Smith had decided that we must assume false names whilst under the roof of the Gables; and:

“Now, Pearce,” he said, “a whisky-and-soda before we look around?”

The proposal was welcome enough, for I felt strangely dispirited, and, to tell the truth, in my strange disguise, not a little ridiculous.

All my nerves, no doubt, were highly strung, and my sense of hearing unusually acute, for I went in momentary expectation of some uncanny happening. I had not long to wait. As I raised the glass to my lips and glanced across the table at my friend, I heard the first faint sound heralding the coming of the bells.

It did not seem to proceed from anywhere within the library, but from some distant room, far away overhead. A musical sound it was, but breaking in upon the silence of that ill-omened house, its music was the music of terror. In a faint and very sweet cascade it rippled; a ringing as of tiny silver bells.

I set down my glass upon the table, and rising slowly from the chair in which I had been seated, stared fixedly at my companion, who was staring with equal fixity at me. I could see that I had not been deluded; Nayland Smith had heard the ringing, too.

“The ghosts waste no time!” he said softly. “This is not new to me; I spent an hour here last night and heard the same sound...”

I glanced hastily around the room. It was furnished as a library, and contained a considerable collection of works, principally novels. I was unable to judge of the outlook, for the two lofty windows were draped with heavy purple curtains which were drawn close. A silk shaded lamp swung from the center of the ceiling, and immediately over the table by which I stood. There was much shadow about the room; and now I glanced apprehensively about me, but especially toward the open door.

In that breathless suspense of listening we stood awhile; then:

“There it is again!” whispered Smith, tensely.

The ringing of bells was repeated, and seemingly much nearer to us; in fact it appeared to come from somewhere above, up near the ceiling of the room in which we stood. Simultaneously, we looked up, then Smith laughed, shortly.

“Instinctive, I suppose,” he snapped; “but what do we expect to see in the air?”

The musical sound now grew in volume; the first tiny peal seemed to be reinforced by others and by others again, until the air around about us was filled with the pealings of these invisible bell-ringers.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:23
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: Although, as I have said, the sound was rather musical than horrible, it was, on the other hand, so utterly unaccountable as to touch the supreme heights of the uncanny. I could not doubt that our presence had attracted these unseen ringers to the room in which we stood, and I knew quite well that I was growing pale. This was the room in which at least one unhappy occupant of the Gables had died of fear. I recognized the fact that if this mere overture were going to affect my nerves to such an extent, I could not hope to survive the ordeal of the night; a great effort was called for. I emptied my glass at a gulp, and stared across the table at Nayland Smith with a sort of defiance. He was standing very upright and motionless, but his eyes were turning right and left, searching every visible corner of the big room.

“Good!” he said in a very low voice. “The terrorizing power of the Unknown is boundless, but we must not get in the grip of panic, or we could not hope to remain in this house ten minutes.”

I nodded without speaking. Then Smith, to my amazement, suddenly began to speak in a loud voice, a marked contrast to that, almost a whisper, in which he had spoken formerly.

“My dear Pearce,” he cried, “do you hear the ringing of bells?”

Clearly the latter words were spoken for the benefit of the unseen intelligence controlling these manifestations; and although I regarded such finesse as somewhat wasted, I followed my friend’s lead and replied in a voice as loud as his own:

“Distinctly, Professor!”

Silence followed my words, a silence in which both stood watchful and listening. Then, very faintly, I seemed to detect the silvern ringing receding away through distant rooms. Finally it became inaudible, and in the stillness of the Gables I could distinctly hear my companion breathing. For fully ten minutes we two remained thus, each momentarily expecting a repetition of the ringing, or the coming of some new and more sinister manifestation. But we heard nothing and saw nothing.

“Hand me that grip, and don’t stir until I come back!” hissed Smith in my ear.

He turned and walked out of the library, his boots creaking very loudly in that awe-inspiring silence.

Standing beside the table, I watched the open door for his return, crushing down a dread that another form than his might suddenly appear there.

I could hear him moving from room to room, and presently, as I waited in hushed, tense watchfulness, he came in, depositing the grip upon the table. His eyes were gleaming feverishly.

“The house is haunted, Pearce!” he cried. “But no ghost ever frightened me! Come, I will show you your boot room.”; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 10:24
Valerio Catulo Marco Tulio Lépido Diocleciano dixo...: Magnam rem puta unum hominem agere; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 11:00
Estibador Portuario dixo...: Los camellos dopados 130 veces con nandrolona de Mánchester como musa.
Esta no la vi venir.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 11:39
Chung Ling Soo dixo...: A white man in costume who had shaved off his Victorian moustache and donned a Mandarin costume and pigtail; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:21
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: Smith walked ahead of me upstairs; he had snapped up the light in the hallway, and now he turned and cried back loudly:

“I fear we should never get servants to stay here.”

Again I detected the appeal to a hidden Audience; and there was something very uncanny in the idea. The house now was deathly still; the ringing had entirely subsided. In the upper corridor my companion, who seemed to be well acquainted with the position of the switches, again turned up all the lights, and in pursuit of the strange comedy which he saw fit to enact, addressed me continuously in the loud and unnatural voice which he had adopted as part of his disguise.

We looked into a number of rooms all well and comfortably furnished, but although my imagination may have been responsible for the idea, they all seemed to possess a chilly and repellent atmosphere. I felt that to essay sleep in any one of them would be the merest farce, that the place to all intents and purposes was uninhabitable, that something incalculably evil presided over the house.

And through it all, so obtuse was I, that no glimmer of the truth entered my mind. Outside again in the long, brightly lighted corridor, we stood for a moment as if a mutual anticipation of some new event pending had come to us. It was curious that sudden pulling up and silent questioning of one another; because, although we acted thus, no sound had reached us. A few seconds later our anticipation was realized. From the direction of the stairs it came—a low wailing in a woman’s voice; and the sweetness of the tones added to the terror of the sound. I clutched at Smith’s arm convulsively whilst that uncanny cry rose and fell—rose and fell—and died away.

Neither of us moved immediately. My mind was working with feverish rapidity and seeking to run down a memory which the sound had stirred into faint quickness. My heart was still leaping wildly when the wailing began again, rising and falling in regular cadence. At that instant I identified it.

During the time Smith and I had spent together in Egypt, two years before, searching for Karamaneh, I had found myself on one occasion in the neighborhood of a native cemetery near to Bedrasheen. Now, the scene which I had witnessed there rose up again vividly before me, and I seemed to see a little group of black-robed women clustered together about a native grave; for the wailing which now was dying away again in the Gables was the same, or almost the same, as the wailing of those Egyptian mourners.

The house was very silent again, now. My forehead was damp with perspiration, and I became more and more convinced that the uncanny ordeal must prove too much for my nerves. Hitherto, I had accorded little credence to tales of the supernatural, but face to face with such manifestations as these, I realized that I would have faced rather a group of armed dacoits, nay! Dr. Fu-Manchu himself, than have remained another hour in that ill-omened house.

My companion must have read as much in my face. But he kept up the strange, and to me, purposeless comedy, when presently he spoke.

“I feel it to be incumbent upon me to suggest,” he said, “that we spend the night at a hotel after all.”

He walked rapidly downstairs and into the library and began to strap up the grip.

“After all,” he said, “there may be a natural explanation of what we’ve heard; for it is noteworthy that we have actually seen nothing. It might even be possible to get used to the ringing and the wailing after a time. Frankly, I am loath to go back on my bargain!”; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:25
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: Whilst I stared at him in amazement, he stood there indeterminate as it seemed, Then:

“Come, Pearce!” he cried loudly, “I can see that you do not share my views; but for my own part I shall return to-morrow and devote further attention to the phenomena.”

Extinguishing the light, he walked out into the hallway, carrying the grip in his hand. I was not far behind him. We walked toward the door together, and:

“Turn the light out, Pearce,” directed Smith; “the switch is at your elbow. We can see our way to the door well enough, now.”

In order to carry out these instructions, it became necessary for me to remain a few paces in the rear of my companion, and I think I have never experienced such a pang of nameless terror as pierced me at the moment of extinguishing the light; for Smith had not yet opened the door, and the utter darkness of the Gables was horrible beyond expression. Surely darkness is the most potent weapon of the Unknown. I know that at the moment my hand left the switch, I made for the door as though the hosts of hell pursued me. I collided violently with Smith. He was evidently facing toward me in the darkness, for at the moment of our collision, he grasped my shoulder as in a vise.

“My God, Petrie! look behind you!” he whispered.

I was enabled to judge of the extent and reality of his fear by the fact that the strange subterfuge of addressing me always as Pearce was forgotten. I turned, in a flash....

Never can I forget what I saw. Many strange and terrible memories are mine, memories stranger and more terrible than those of the average man; but this thing which now moved slowly down upon us through the impenetrable gloom of that haunted place, was (if the term be understood) almost absurdly horrible. It was a medieval legend come to life in modern London; it was as though some horrible chimera of the black and ignorant past was become create and potent in the present.

A luminous hand—a hand in the veins of which fire seemed to run so that the texture of the skin and the shape of the bones within were perceptible—in short a hand of glowing, fiery flesh clutching a short knife or dagger which also glowed with the same hellish, internal luminance, was advancing upon us where we stood—was not three paces removed!

What I did or how I came to do it, I can never recall. In all my years I have experienced nothing to equal the stark panic which seized upon me then. I know that I uttered a loud and frenzied cry; I know that I tore myself like a madman from Smith’s restraining grip...

“Don’t touch it! Keep away, for your life!” I heard...

But, dimly I recollect that, finding the thing approaching yet nearer, I lashed out with my fists—madly, blindly—and struck something palpable...

What was the result, I cannot say. At that point my recollections merge into confusion. Something or some one (Smith, as I afterwards discovered) was hauling me by main force through the darkness; I fell a considerable distance onto gravel which lacerated my hands and gashed my knees. Then, with the cool night air fanning my brow, I was running, running—my breath coming in hysterical sobs. Beside me fled another figure.... And my definite recollections commence again at that point. For this companion of my flight from the Gables threw himself roughly against me to alter my course.

“Not that way! not that way!” came pantingly.

“Not on to the Heath... we must keep to the roads...”

It was Nayland Smith. That healing realization came to me, bringing such a gladness as no words of mine can express nor convey. Still we ran on.

“There’s a policeman’s lantern,” panted my companion. “They’ll attempt nothing, now!”

I gulped down the stiff brandy-and-soda, then glanced across to where Nayland Smith lay extended in the long, cane chair.

“Perhaps you will explain,” I said, “for what purpose you submitted me to that ordeal. If you proposed to correct my skepticism concerning supernatural manifestations, you have succeeded.”

“Yes,” said my companion, musingly, “they are devilishly clever; but we knew that already.”; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:26
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: “Have you ever known me to waste my time when there was important work to do?” he continued. “Do you seriously believe that my ghost-hunting was undertaken for amusement? Really, Petrie, although you are very fond of assuring me that I need a holiday, I think the shoe is on the other foot!”

From the pocket of his dressing-gown, he took out a piece of silk fringe which had apparently been torn from a scarf, and rolling it into a ball, tossed it across to me.

“Smell!” he snapped.

I did as he directed—and gave a great start. The silk exhaled a faint perfume, but its effect upon me was as though some one had cried aloud:—

“Karamaneh!”

Beyond doubt the silken fragment had belonged to the beautiful servant of Dr. Fu-Manchu, to the dark-eyed, seductive Karamaneh. Nayland Smith was watching me keenly.

“You recognize it—yes?”

I placed the piece of silk upon the table, slightly shrugging my shoulders.

“It was sufficient evidence in itself,” continued my friend, “but I thought it better to seek confirmation, and the obvious way was to pose as a new lessee of the Gables...”

“But, Smith,” I began...

“Let me explain, Petrie. The history of the Gables seemed to be susceptible of only one explanation; in short it was fairly evident to me that the object of the manifestations was to insure the place being kept empty. This idea suggested another, and with them both in mind, I set out to make my inquiries, first taking the precaution to disguise my identity, to which end Weymouth gave me the freedom of Scotland Yard’s fancy wardrobe. I did not take the agent into my confidence, but posed as a stranger who had heard that the house was to let furnished and thought it might suit his purpose. My inquiries were directed to a particular end, but I failed to achieve it at the time. I had theories, as I have said, and when, having paid the deposit and secured possession of the keys, I was enabled to visit the place alone, I was fortunate enough to obtain evidence to show that my imagination had not misled me.

“You were very curious the other morning, I recall, respecting my object in borrowing a large brace and bit. My object, Petrie, was to bore a series of holes in the wainscoating of various rooms at the Gables—in inconspicuous positions, of course...”

“But, my dear Smith!” I cried, “you are merely adding to my mystification.”

He stood up and began to pace the room in his restless fashion.

“I had cross-examined Weymouth closely regarding the phenomenon of the bell-ringing, and an exhaustive search of the premises led to the discovery that the house was in such excellent condition that, from ground-floor to attic, there was not a solitary crevice large enough to admit of the passage of a mouse.”

I suppose I must have been staring very foolishly indeed, for Nayland Smith burst into one of his sudden laughs.

“A mouse, I said, Petrie!” he cried. “With the brace-and-bit I rectified that matter. I made the holes I have mentioned, and before each set a trap baited with a piece of succulent, toasted cheese. Just open that grip!”

The light at last was dawning upon my mental darkness, and I pounced upon the grip, which stood upon a chair near the window, and opened it. A sickly smell of cooked cheese assailed my nostrils.

“Mind your fingers!” cried Smith; “some of them are still set, possibly.”

Out from the grip I began to take mouse-traps! Two or three of them were still set but in the case of the greater number the catches had slipped. Nine I took out and placed upon the table, and all were empty. In the tenth there crouched, panting, its soft furry body dank with perspiration, a little white mouse!

“Only one capture!” cried my companion, “showing how well-fed the creatures were. Examine his tail!”; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:26
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: But already I had perceived that to which Smith would draw my attention, and the mystery of the “astral bells” was a mystery no longer. Bound to the little creature’s tail, close to the root, with fine soft wire such as is used for making up bouquets, were three tiny silver bells. I looked across at my companion in speechless surprise.

“Almost childish, is it not?” he said; “yet by means of this simple device the Gables has been emptied of occupant after occupant. There was small chance of the trick being detected, for, as I have said, there was absolutely no aperture from roof to basement by means of which one of them could have escaped into the building.”

“Then...”

“They were admitted into the wall cavities and the rafters, from some cellar underneath, Petrie, to which, after a brief scamper under the floors and over the ceilings, they instinctively returned for the food they were accustomed to receive, and for which, even had it been possible (which it was not) they had no occasion to forage.”

I, too, stood up; for excitement was growing within me. I took up the piece of silk from the table.

“Where did you find this?” I asked, my eyes upon Smith’s keen face.

“In a sort of wine cellar, Petrie,” he replied, “under the stair. There is no cellar proper to the Gables—at least no such cellar appears in the plans.”

“But...”

“But there is one beyond doubt—yes! It must be part of some older building which occupied the site before the Gables was built. One can only surmise that it exists, although such a surmise is a fairly safe one, and the entrance to the subterranean portion of the building is situated beyond doubt in the wine cellar. Of this we have at least two evidences:—the finding of the fragment of silk there, and the fact that in one case at least—as I learned—the light was extinguished in the library unaccountably. This could only have been done in one way: by manipulating the main switch, which is also in the wine cellar.”

“But Smith!” I cried, “do you mean that Fu-Manchu...”

Nayland Smith turned in his promenade of the floor, and stared into my eyes.

“I mean that Dr. Fu-Manchu has had a hiding-place under the Gables for an indefinite period!” he replied. “I always suspected that a man of his genius would have a second retreat prepared for him, anticipating the event of the first being discovered. Oh! I don’t doubt it! The place probably is extensive, and I am almost certain—though the point has to be confirmed—that there is another entrance from the studio further along the road. We know, now, why our recent searchings in the East End have proved futile; why the house in Museum Street was deserted; he has been lying low in this burrow at Hampstead!”

“But the hand, Smith, the luminous hand...”

Nayland Smith laughed shortly.

“Your superstitious fears overcame you to such an extent, Petrie—and I don’t wonder at it; the sight was a ghastly one—that probably you don’t remember what occurred when you struck out at that same ghostly hand?”

“I seemed to hit something.”

“That was why we ran. But I think our retreat had all the appearance of a rout, as I intended that it should. Pardon my playing upon your very natural fears, old man, but you could not have simulated panic half so naturally! And if they had suspected that the device was discovered, we might never have quitted the Gables alive. It was touch-and-go for a moment.”

“But...”

“Turn out the light!” snapped my companion.

Wondering greatly, I did as he desired. I turned out the light... and in the darkness of my own study I saw a fiery fist being shaken at me threateningly!... The bones were distinctly visible, and the luminosity of the flesh was truly ghastly.

“Turn on the light, again!” cried Smith.

Deeply mystified, I did so... and my friend tossed a little electric pocket-lamp on to the writing-table.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:27
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: “They used merely a small electric lamp fitted into the handle of a glass dagger,” he said with a sort of contempt. “It was very effective, but the luminous hand is a phenomenon producible by any one who possesses an electric torch.”

“The Gables—will be watched?”

“At last, Petrie, I think we have Fu-Manchu—in his own trap!”; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:28
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: “Dash it all, Petrie!” cried Smith, “this is most annoying!”

The bell was ringing furiously, although midnight was long past. Whom could my late visitor be? Almost certainly this ringing portended an urgent case. In other words, I was not fated to take part in what I anticipated would prove to be the closing scene of the Fu-Manchu drama.

“Every one is in bed,” I said, ruefully; “and how can I possibly see a patient—in this costume?”

Smith and I were both arrayed in rough tweeds, and anticipating the labors before us, had dispensed with collars and wore soft mufflers. It was hard to be called upon to face a professional interview dressed thus, and having a big tweed cap pulled down over my eyes.

Across the writing-table we confronted one another in dismayed silence, whilst, below, the bell sent up its ceaseless clangor.

“It has to be done, Smith,” I said, regretfully. “Almost certainly it means a journey and probably an absence of some hours.”

I threw my cap upon the table, turned up my coat to hide the absence of collar, and started for the door. My last sight of Smith showed him standing looking after me, tugging at the lobe of his ear and clicking his teeth together with suppressed irritability. I stumbled down the dark stairs, along the hall, and opened the front door. Vaguely visible in the light of a street lamp which stood at no great distance away, I saw a slender man of medium height confronting me. From the shadowed face two large and luminous eyes looked out into mine. My visitor, who, despite the warmth of the evening, wore a heavy greatcoat, was an Oriental!

I drew back, apprehensively; then:

“Ah! Dr. Petrie!” he said in a softly musical voice which made me start again, “to God be all praise that I have found you!”

Some emotion, which at present I could not define, was stirring within me. Where had I seen this graceful Eastern youth before? Where had I heard that soft voice?

“Do you wish to see me professionally?” I asked—yet even as I put the question, I seemed to know it unnecessary.

“So you know me no more?” said the stranger—and his teeth gleamed in a slight smile.

Heavens! I knew now what had struck that vibrant chord within me! The voice, though infinitely deeper, yet had an unmistakable resemblance to the dulcet tones of Karamaneh—of Karamaneh whose eyes haunted my dreams, whose beauty had done much to embitter my years.

The Oriental youth stepped forward, with outstretched hand.

“So you know me no more?” he repeated; “but I know you, and give praise to Allah that I have found you!”

I stepped back, pressed the electric switch, and turned, with leaping heart, to look into the face of my visitor. It was a face of the purest Greek beauty, a face that might have served as a model for Praxiteles; the skin had a golden pallor, which, with the crisp black hair and magnetic yet velvety eyes, suggested to my fancy that this was the young Antinious risen from the Nile, whose wraith now appeared to me out of the night. I stifled a cry of surprise, not unmingled with gladness.

It was Aziz—the brother of Karamaneh!

Never could the entrance of a figure upon the stage of a drama have been more dramatic than the coming of Aziz upon this night of all nights. I seized the outstretched hand and drew him forward, then reclosed the door and stood before him a moment in doubt.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:29
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: A vaguely troubled look momentarily crossed the handsome face; with the Oriental’s unerring instinct, he had detected the reserve of my greeting. Yet, when I thought of the treachery of Karamaneh, when I remember how she, whom we had befriended, whom we had rescued from the house of Fu-Manchu, now had turned like the beautiful viper that she was to strike at the hand that caressed her; when I thought how to-night we were set upon raiding the place where the evil Chinese doctor lurked in hiding, were set upon the arrest of that malignant genius and of all his creatures, Karamaneh amongst them, is it strange that I hesitated? Yet, again, when I thought of my last meeting with her, and of how, twice, she had risked her life to save me...

So, avoiding the gaze of the lad, I took his arm, and in silence we two ascended the stairs and entered my study... where Nayland Smith stood bolt upright beside the table, his steely eyes fixed upon the face of the new arrival.

No look of recognition crossed the bronzed features, and Aziz who had started forward with outstretched hands, fell back a step and looked pathetically from me to Nayland Smith, and from the grim commissioner back again to me. The appeal in the velvet eyes was more than I could tolerate, unmoved.

“Smith,” I said shortly, “you remember Aziz?”

Not a muscle visibly moved in Smith’s face, as he snapped back:

“I remember him perfectly.”

“He has come, I think, to seek our assistance.”

“Yes, yes!” cried Aziz laying his hand upon my arm with a gesture painfully reminiscent of Karamaneh—“I came only to-night to London. Oh, my gentlemen! I have searched, and searched, and searched, until I am weary. Often I have wished to die. And then at last I come to Rangoon...”

“To Rangoon!” snapped Smith, still with the gray eyes fixed almost fiercely upon the lad’s face.

“To Rangoon—yes; and there I heard news at last. I hear that you have seen her—have seen Karamaneh—that you are back in London.” He was not entirely at home with his English. “I know then that she must be here, too. I ask them everywhere, and they answer ‘yes.’ Oh, Smith Pasha!”—he stepped forward and impulsively seized both Smith’s hands—“You know where she is—take me to her!”

Smith’s face was a study in perplexity, now. In the past we had befriended the young Aziz, and it was hard to look upon him in the light of an enemy. Yet had we not equally befriended his sister?—and she...

At last Smith glanced across at me where I stood just within the doorway.

“What do you make of it, Petrie?” he said harshly. “Personally I take it to mean that our plans have leaked out.” He sprang suddenly back from Aziz and I saw his glance traveling rapidly over the slight figure as if in quest of concealed arms. “I take it to be a trap!”

A moment he stood so, regarding him, and despite my well-grounded distrust of the Oriental character, I could have sworn that the expression of pained surprise upon the youth’s face was not simulated but real. Even Smith, I think, began to share my view; for suddenly he threw himself into the white cane rest-chair, and, still fixedly regarding Aziz:

“Perhaps I have wronged you,” he said. “If I have, you shall know the reason presently. Tell your own story!”

There was a pathetic humidity in the velvet eyes of Aziz—eyes so like those others that were ever looking into mine in dreams—as glancing from Smith to me he began, hands outstretched, characteristically, palms upward and fingers curling, to tell in broken English the story of his search for Karamaneh...

“It was Fu-Manchu, my kind gentlemen—it was the hakim who is really not a man at all, but an efreet. He found us again less than four days after you had left us, Smith Pasha!... He found us in Cairo, and to Karamaneh he made the forgetting of all things—even of me—even of me...”; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:30
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: Nayland Smith snapped his teeth together sharply; then:

“What do you mean by that?” he demanded.

For my own part I understood well enough, remembering how the brilliant Chinese doctor once had performed such an operation as this upon poor Inspector Weymouth; how, by means of an injection of some serum prepared (as Karamaneh afterwards told us) from the venom of a swamp adder or similar reptile, he had induced amnesia, or complete loss of memory. I felt every drop of blood recede from my cheeks.

“Smith!” I began...

“Let him speak for himself,” interrupted my friend sharply.

“They tried to take us both,” continued Aziz still speaking in that soft, melodious manner, but with deep seriousness. “I escaped, I, who am swift of foot, hoping to bring help.”—He shook his head sadly—“But, except the All Powerful, who is so powerful as the Hakim Fu-Manchu? I hid, my gentlemen, and watched and waited, one—two—three weeks. At last I saw her again, my sister, Karamaneh; but ah! she did not know me, did not know me, Aziz her brother! She was in an arabeeyeh, and passed me quickly along the Sharia en-Nahhasin. I ran, and ran, and ran, crying her name, but although she looked back, she did not know me—she did not know me! I felt that I was dying, and presently I fell—upon the steps of the Mosque of Abu.”

He dropped the expressive hands wearily to his sides and sank his chin upon his breast.

“And then?” I said, huskily—for my heart was fluttering like a captive bird.

“Alas! from that day to this I see her no more, my gentlemen. I travel, not only in Egypt, but near and far, and still I see her no more until in Rangoon I hear that which brings me to England again”—he extended his palms naively—“and here I am—Smith Pasha.”

Smith sprang upright again and turned to me.

“Either I am growing over-credulous,” he said, “or Aziz speaks the truth. But”—he held up his hand—“you can tell me all that at some other time, Petrie! We must take no chances. Sergeant Carter is downstairs with the cab; you might ask him to step up. He and Aziz can remain here until our return.”; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:30
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: The muffled drumming of sleepless London seemed very remote from us, as side by side we crept up the narrow path to the studio. This was a starry but moonless night, and the little dingy white building with a solitary tree peeping, in silhouette, above the glazed roof, bore an odd resemblance to one of those tombs which form a city of the dead so near to the city of feverish life on the slopes of the Mokattam Hills. This line of reflection proved unpleasant, and I dismissed it sternly from my mind.

The shriek of a train-whistle reached me, a sound which breaks the stillness of the most silent London night, telling of the ceaseless, febrile life of the great world-capital whose activity ceases not with the coming of darkness. Around and about us a very great stillness reigned, however, and the velvet dusk which, with the star-jeweled sky, was strongly suggestive of an Eastern night—gave up no sign to show that it masked the presence of more than twenty men. Some distance away on our right was the Gables, that sinister and deserted mansion which we assumed, and with good reason, to be nothing less than the gateway to the subterranean abode of Dr. Fu-Manchu; before us was the studio, which, if Nayland Smith’s deductions were accurate, concealed a second entrance to the same mysterious dwelling.

As my friend, glancing cautiously all about him, inserted the key in the lock, an owl hooted dismally almost immediately above our heads. I caught my breath sharply, for it might be a signal; but, looking upward, I saw a great black shape float slantingly from the tree beyond the studio into the coppice on the right which hemmed in the Gables. Silently the owl winged its uncanny flight into the greater darkness of the trees, and was gone. Smith opened the door and we stepped into the studio. Our plans had been well considered, and in accordance with these, I now moved up beside my friend, who was dimly perceptible to me in the starlight which found access through the glass roof, and pressed the catch of my electric pocket-lamp...

I suppose that by virtue of my self-imposed duty as chronicler of the deeds of Dr. Fu-Manchu—the greatest and most evil genius whom the later centuries have produced, the man who dreamt of an universal Yellow Empire—I should have acquired a certain facility in describing bizarre happenings. But I confess that it fails me now as I attempt in cold English to portray my emotions when the white beam from the little lamp cut through the darkness of the studio, and shone fully upon the beautiful face of Karamaneh!

Less than six feet away from me she stood, arrayed in the gauzy dress of the harem, her fingers and slim white arms laden with barbaric jewelry! The light wavered in my suddenly nerveless hand, gleaming momentarily upon bare ankles and golden anklets, upon little red leather shoes.

I spoke no word, and Smith was as silent as I; both of us, I think, were speechless rather from amazement than in obedience to the evident wishes of Fu-Manchu’s slave-girl. Yet I have only to close my eyes at this moment to see her as she stood, one finger raised to her lips, enjoining us to silence. She looked ghastly pale in the light of the lamp, but so lovely that my rebellious heart threatened already, to make a fool of me.

So we stood in that untidy studio, with canvases and easels heaped against the wall and with all sorts of litter about us, a trio strangely met, and one to have amused the high gods watching through the windows of the stars.

“Go back!” came in a whisper from Karamaneh.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:31
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: I saw the red lips moving and read a dreadful horror in the widely opened eyes, in those eyes like pools of mystery to taunt the thirsty soul. The world of realities was slipping past me; I seemed to be losing my hold on things actual; I had built up an Eastern palace about myself and Karamaneh wherein, the world shut out, I might pass the hours in reading the mystery of those dark eyes. Nayland Smith brought me sharply to my senses.

“Steady with the light, Petrie!” he hissed in my ear. “My skepticism has been shaken, to-night, but I am taking no chances.”

He moved from my side and forward toward that lovely, unreal figure which stood immediately before the model’s throne and its background of plush curtains. Karamaneh started forward to meet him, suppressing a little cry, whose real anguish could not have been simulated.

“Go back! go back!” she whispered urgently, and thrust out her hands against Smith’s breast. “For God’s sake, go back! I have risked my life to come here to-night. He knows, and is ready!”...

The words were spoken with passionate intensity, and Nayland Smith hesitated. To my nostrils was wafted that faint, delightful perfume which, since one night, two years ago, it had come to disturb my senses, had taunted me many times as the mirage taunts the parched Sahara traveler. I took a step forward.

“Don’t move!” snapped Smith.

Karamaneh clutched frenziedly at the lapels of his coat.

“Listen to me!” she said, beseechingly and stamped one little foot upon the floor—“listen to me! You are a clever man, but you know nothing of a woman’s heart—nothing—nothing—if seeing me, hearing me, knowing, as you do know, I risk, you can doubt that I speak the truth. And I tell you that it is death to go behind those curtains—that he...”

“That’s what I wanted to know!” snapped Smith. His voice quivered with excitement.

Suddenly grasping Karamaneh by the waist, he lifted her and set her aside; then in three bounds he was on to the model’s throne and had torn the Plush curtains bodily from their fastenings.

How it occurred I cannot hope to make dear, for here my recollections merge into a chaos. I know that Smith seemed to topple forward amid the purple billows of velvet, and his muffled cry came to me:

“Petrie! My God, Petrie!”...

The pale face of Karamaneh looked up into mine and her hands were clutching me, but the glamour of her personality had lost its hold, for I knew—heavens, how poignantly it struck home to me!—that Nayland Smith was gone to his death. What I hoped to achieve, I know not, but hurling the trembling girl aside, I snatched the Browning pistol from my coat pocket, and with the ray of the lamp directed upon the purple mound of velvet, I leaped forward.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:32
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: I think I realized that the curtains had masked a collapsible trap, a sheer pit of blackness, an instant before I was precipitated into it, but certainly the knowledge came too late. With the sound of a soft, shuddering cry in my ears, I fell, dropping lamp and pistol, and clutching at the fallen hangings. But they offered me no support. My head seemed to be bursting; I could utter only a hoarse groan, as I fell—fell—fell...

When my mind began to work again, in returning consciousness, I found it to be laden with reproach. How often in the past had we blindly hurled ourselves into just such a trap as this? Should we never learn that where Fu-Manchu was, impetuosity must prove fatal? On two distinct occasions in the past we had been made the victims of this device, yet even although we had had practically conclusive evidence that this studio was used by Dr. Fu-Manchu, we had relied upon its floor being as secure as that of any other studio, we had failed to sound every foot of it ere trusting our weight to its support....

“There is such a divine simplicity in the English mind that one may lay one’s plans with mathematical precision, and rely upon the Nayland Smiths and Dr. Petries to play their allotted parts. Excepting two faithful followers, my friends are long since departed. But here, in these vaults which time has overlooked and which are as secret and as serviceable to-day as they were two hundred years ago, I wait patiently, with my trap set, like the spider for the fly!...”

To the sound of that taunting voice, I opened my eyes. As I did so I strove to spring upright—only to realize that I was tied fast to a heavy ebony chair inlaid with ivory, and attached by means of two iron brackets to the floor.

“Even children learn from experience,” continued the unforgettable voice, alternately guttural and sibilant, but always as deliberate as though the speaker were choosing with care words which should perfectly clothe his thoughts. “For ‘a burnt child fears the fire,’ says your English adage. But Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith, who enjoys the confidence of the India Office, and who is empowered to control the movements of the Criminal Investigation Department, learns nothing from experience. He is less than a child, since he has twice rashly precipitated himself into a chamber charged with an anesthetic prepared, by a process of my own, from the lycoperdon or Common Puff-ball.”

I became fully master of my senses, and I became fully alive to a stupendous fact. At last it was ended; we were utterly in the power of Dr. Fu-Manchu; our race was run.

I sat in a low vaulted room. The roof was of ancient brickwork, but the walls were draped with exquisite Chinese fabric having a green ground whereon was a design representing a grotesque procession of white peacocks. A green carpet covered the floor, and the whole of the furniture was of the same material as the chair to which I was strapped, viz:—ebony inlaid with ivory. This furniture was scanty. There was a heavy table in one corner of the dungeonesque place, on which were a number of books and papers. Before this table was a high-backed, heavily carven chair. A smaller table stood upon the right of the only visible opening, a low door partially draped with bead work curtains, above which hung a silver lamp. On this smaller table, a stick of incense, in a silver holder, sent up a pencil of vapor into the air, and the chamber was loaded with the sickly sweet fumes. A faint haze from the incense-stick hovered up under the roof.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:33
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: In the high-backed chair sat Dr. Fu-Manchu, wearing a green robe upon which was embroidered a design, the subject of which at first glance was not perceptible, but which presently I made out to be a huge white peacock. He wore a little cap perched upon the dome of his amazing skull, and with one clawish hand resting upon the ebony of the table, he sat slightly turned toward me, his emotionless face a mask of incredible evil. In spite of, or because of, the high intellect written upon it, the face of Dr. Fu-Manchu was more utterly repellent than any I have ever known, and the green eyes, eyes green as those of a cat in the darkness, which sometimes burned like witch lamps, and sometimes were horribly filmed like nothing human or imaginable, might have mirrored not a soul, but an emanation of hell, incarnate in this gaunt, high-shouldered body.

Stretched flat upon the floor lay Nayland Smith, partially stripped, his arms thrown back over his head and his wrists chained to a stout iron staple attached to the wall; he was fully conscious and staring intently at the Chinese doctor. His bare ankles also were manacled, and fixed to a second chain, which quivered tautly across the green carpet and passed out through the doorway, being attached to something beyond the curtain, and invisible to me from where I sat.

Fu-Manchu was now silent. I could hear Smith’s heavy breathing and hear my watch ticking in my pocket. I suddenly realized that although my body was lashed to the ebony chair, my hands and arms were free. Next, looking dazedly about me, my attention was drawn to a heavy sword which stood hilt upward against the wall within reach of my hand. It was a magnificent piece, of Japanese workmanship; a long, curved Damascened blade having a double-handed hilt of steel, inlaid with gold, and resembling fine Kuft work. A host of possibilities swept through my mind. Then I perceived that the sword was attached to the wall by a thin steel chain some five feet in length.

“Even if you had the dexterity of a Mexican knife-thrower,” came the guttural voice of Fu-Manchu, “you would be unable to reach me, dear Dr. Petrie.”

The Chinaman had read my thoughts.

Smith turned his eyes upon me momentarily, only to look away again in the direction of Fu-Manchu. My friend’s face was slightly pale beneath the tan, and his jaw muscles stood out with unusual prominence. By this fact alone did he reveal his knowledge that he lay at the mercy of this enemy of the white race, of this inhuman being who himself knew no mercy, of this man whose very genius was inspired by the cool, calculated cruelty of his race, of that race which to this day disposes of hundreds, nay! thousands, of its unwanted girl-children by the simple measure of throwing them down a well specially dedicated to the purpose.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:33
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: “The weapon near your hand,” continued the Chinaman, imperturbably, “is a product of the civilization of our near neighbors, the Japanese, a race to whose courage I prostrate myself in meekness. It is the sword of a samurai, Dr. Petrie. It is of very great age, and was, until an unfortunate misunderstanding with myself led to the extinction of the family, a treasured possession of a noble Japanese house...”

The soft voice, into which an occasional sibilance crept, but which never rose above a cool monotone, gradually was lashing me into fury, and I could see the muscles moving in Smith’s jaws as he convulsively clenched his teeth; whereby I knew that, impotent, he burned with a rage at least as great as mine. But I did not speak, and did not move.

“The ancient tradition of seppuku,” continued the Chinaman, “or hara-kiri, still rules, as you know, in the great families of Japan. There is a sacred ritual, and the samurai who dedicates himself to this honorable end, must follow strictly the ritual. As a physician, the exact nature of the ceremony might possibly interest you, Dr. Petrie, but a technical account of the two incisions which the sacrificant employs in his self-dismissal, might, on the other hand, bore Mr. Nayland Smith. Therefore I will merely enlighten you upon one little point, a minor one, but interesting to the student of human nature. In short, even a samurai—and no braver race has ever honored the world—sometimes hesitates to complete the operation. The weapon near to your hand, my dear Dr. Petrie, is known as the Friend’s Sword. On such occasions as we are discussing, a trusty friend is given the post—an honored one of standing behind the brave man who offers himself to his gods, and should the latter’s courage momentarily fail him, the friend with the trusty blade (to which now I especially direct your attention) diverts the hierophant’s mind from his digression, and rectifies his temporary breach of etiquette by severing the cervical vertebrae of the spinal column with the friendly blade—which you can reach quite easily, Dr. Petrie, if you care to extend your hand.”

Some dim perceptions of the truth was beginning to creep into my mind. When I say a perception of the truth, I mean rather of some part of the purpose of Dr. Fu-Manchu; of the whole horrible truth, of the scheme which had been conceived by that mighty, evil man, I had no glimmering, but I foresaw that a frightful ordeal was before us both.

“That I hold you in high esteem,” continued Fu-Manchu, “is a fact which must be apparent to you by this time, but in regard to your companion, I entertain very different sentiments....”

Always underlying the deliberate calm of the speaker, sometimes showing itself in an unusually deep guttural, sometimes in an unusually serpentine sibilance, lurked the frenzy of hatred which in the past had revealed itself occasionally in wild outbursts. Momentarily I expected such an outburst now, but it did not come.

“One quality possessed by Mr. Nayland Smith,” resumed the Chinaman, “I admire; I refer to his courage. I would wish that so courageous a man should seek his own end, should voluntarily efface himself from the path of that world-movement which he is powerless to check. In short, I would have him show himself a samurai. Always his friend, you shall remain so to the end, Dr. Petrie. I have arranged for this.”

He struck lightly a little silver gong, dependent from the corner of the table, whereupon, from the curtained doorway, there entered a short, thickly built Burman whom I recognized for a dacoit. He wore a shoddy blue suit, which had been made for a much larger man; but these things claimed little of my attention, which automatically was directed to the load beneath which the Burman labored.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:33
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: Upon his back he carried a sort of wire box rather less than six feet long, some two feet high, and about two feet wide. In short, it was a stout framework covered with fine wire-netting on the top, sides and ends, but being open at the bottom. It seemed to be made in five sections or to contain four sliding partitions which could be raised or lowered at will. These were of wood, and in the bottom of each was cut a little arch. The arches in the four partitions varied in size, so that whereas the first was not more than five inches high, the fourth opened almost to the wire roof of the box or cage; and a fifth, which was but little higher than the first, was cut in the actual end of the contrivance.

So intent was I upon this device, the purpose of which I was wholly unable to divine, that I directed the whole of my attention upon it. Then, as the Burman paused in the doorway, resting a corner of the cage upon the brilliant carpet, I glanced toward Fu-Manchu. He was watching Nayland Smith, and revealing his irregular yellow teeth—the teeth of an opium smoker—in the awful mirthless smile which I knew.

“God!” whispered Smith—“the Six Gates!”

“The knowledge of my beautiful country serves you well,” replied Fu-Manchu gently.

Instantly I looked to my friend... and every drop of blood seemed to recede from my heart, leaving it cold in my breast. If I did not know the purpose of the cage, obviously Smith knew it all too well. His pallor had grown more marked, and although his gray eyes stared defiantly at the Chinaman, I, who knew him, could read a deathly horror in their depths.

The dacoit, in obedience to a guttural order from Dr. Fu-Manchu, placed the cage upon the carpet, completely covering Smith’s body, but leaving his neck and head exposed. The seared and pock-marked face set in a sort of placid leer, the dacoit adjusted the sliding partitions to Smith’s recumbent form, and I saw the purpose of the graduated arches. They were intended to divide a human body in just such fashion, and, as I realized, were most cunningly shaped to that end. The whole of Smith’s body lay now in the wire cage, each of the five compartments whereof was shut off from its neighbor.

The Burman stepped back and stood waiting in the doorway. Dr. Fu-Manchu, removing his gaze from the face of my friend, directed it now upon me.

“Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith shall have the honor of acting as hierophant, admitting himself to the Mysteries,” said Fu-Manchu softly, “and you, Dr. Petrie, shall be the Friend.”; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:34
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: He glanced toward the Burman, who retired immediately, to re-enter a moment later carrying a curious leather sack, in shape not unlike that of a sakka or Arab water-carrier. Opening a little trap in the top of the first compartment of the cage (that is, the compartment which covered Smith’s bare feet and ankles) he inserted the neck of the sack, then suddenly seized it by the bottom and shook it vigorously. Before my horrified gaze four huge rats came tumbling out from the bag into the cage! The dacoit snatched away the sack and snapped the shutter fast. A moving mist obscured my sight, a mist through which I saw the green eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu fixed upon me, and through which, as from a great distance, his voice, sunk to a snake-like hiss, came to my ears.

“Cantonese rats, Dr. Petrie, the most ravenous in the world... they have eaten nothing for nearly a week!”

Then all became blurred as though a painter with a brush steeped in red had smudged out the details of the picture. For an indefinite period, which seemed like many minutes yet probably was only a few seconds, I saw nothing and heard nothing; my sensory nerves were dulled entirely. From this state I was awakened and brought back to the realities by a sound which ever afterward I was doomed to associate with that ghastly scene.

This was the squealing of the rats.

The red mist seemed to disperse at that, and with frightfully intense interest, I began to study the awful torture to which Nayland Smith was being subjected. The dacoit had disappeared, and Fu-Manchu placidly was watching the four lean and hideous animals in the cage. As I also turned my eyes in that direction, the rats overcame their temporary fear, and began...

“You have been good enough to notice,” said the Chinaman, his voice still sunk in that sibilant whisper, “my partiality for dumb allies. You have met my scorpions, my death-adders, my baboon-man. The uses of such a playful little animal as a marmoset have never been fully appreciated before, I think, but to an indiscretion of this last-named pet of mine, I seem to remember that you owed something in the past, Dr. Petrie...”

Nayland Smith stifled a deep groan. One rapid glance I ventured at his face. It was a grayish hue, now, and dank with perspiration. His gaze met mine.

The rats had almost ceased squealing.

“Much depends upon yourself, Doctor,” continued Fu-Manchu, slightly raising his voice. “I credit Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith with courage high enough to sustain the raising of all the gates; but I estimate the strength of your friendship highly, also, and predict that you will use the sword of the samurai certainly not later than the time when I shall raise the third gate....”

A low shuddering sound, which I cannot hope to describe, but alas I can never forget, broke from the lips of the tortured man.

“In China,” resumed Fu-Manchu, “we call this quaint fancy the Six Gates of joyful Wisdom. The first gate, by which the rats are admitted, is called the Gate of joyous Hope; the second, the Gate of Mirthful Doubt. The third gate is poetically named, the Gate of True Rapture, and the fourth, the Gate of Gentle Sorrow. I once was honored in the friendship of an exalted mandarin who sustained the course of joyful Wisdom to the raising of the Fifth Gate (called the Gate of Sweet Desires) and the admission of the twentieth rat. I esteem him almost equally with my ancestors. The Sixth, or Gate Celestial—whereby a man enters into the joy of Complete Understanding—I have dispensed with, here, substituting a Japanese fancy of an antiquity nearly as great and honorable. The introduction of this element of speculation, I count a happy thought, and accordingly take pride to myself.”

“The sword, Petrie!” whispered Smith. I should not have recognized his voice, but he spoke quite evenly and steadily. “I rely upon you, old man, to spare me the humiliation of asking mercy from that yellow fiend!”; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:34
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: My mind throughout this time had been gaining a sort of dreadful clarity. I had avoided looking at the sword of hara-kiri, but my thoughts had been leading me mercilessly up to the point at which we were now arrived. No vestige of anger, of condemnation of the inhuman being seated in the ebony chair, remained; that was past. Of all that had gone before, and of what was to come in the future, I thought nothing, knew nothing. Our long fight against the yellow group, our encounters with the numberless creatures of Fu-Manchu, the dacoits—even Karamaneh—were forgotten, blotted out. I saw nothing of the strange appointments of that subterranean chamber; but face to face with the supreme moment of a lifetime, I was alone with my poor friend—and God.

The rats began squealing again. They were fighting...

“Quick, Petrie! Quick, man! I am weakening....”

I turned and took up the samurai sword. My hands were very hot and dry, but perfectly steady, and I tested the edge of the heavy weapon upon my left thumb-nail as quietly as one might test a razor blade. It was as keen, this blade of ghastly history, as any razor ever wrought in Sheffield. I seized the graven hilt, bent forward in my chair, and raised the Friend’s Sword high above my head. With the heavy weapon poised there, I looked into my friend’s eyes. They were feverishly bright, but never in all my days, nor upon the many beds of suffering which it had been my lot to visit, had I seen an expression like that within them.

“The raising of the First Gate is always a crucial moment,” came the guttural voice of the Chinaman. Although I did not see him, and barely heard his words, I was aware that he had stood up and was bending forward over the lower end of the cage.

“Now, Petrie! now! God bless you... and good-by...”

From somewhere—somewhere remote—I heard a hoarse and animal-like cry, followed by the sound of a heavy fall. I can scarcely bear to write of that moment, for I had actually begun the downward sweep of the great sword when that sound came—a faint Hope, speaking of aid where I had thought no aid possible.

How I contrived to divert the blade, I do not know to this day; but I do know that its mighty sweep sheared a lock from Smith’s head and laid bare the scalp. With the hilt in my quivering hands I saw the blade bite deeply through the carpet and floor above Nayland Smith’s skull. There, buried fully two inches in the woodwork, it stuck, and still clutching the hilt, I looked to the right and across the room—I looked to the curtained doorway.

Fu-Manchu, with one long, claw-like hand upon the top of the First Gate, was bending over the trap, but his brilliant green eyes were turned in the same direction as my own—upon the curtained doorway.

Upright within it, her beautiful face as pale as death, but her great eyes blazing with a sort of splendid madness, stood Karamaneh!

She looked, not at the tortured man, not at me, but fully at Dr. Fu-Manchu. One hand clutched the trembling draperies; now she suddenly raised the other, so that the jewels on her white arm glittered in the light of the lamp above the door. She held my Browning pistol! Fu-Manchu sprang upright, inhaling sibilantly, as Karamaneh pointed the pistol point blank at his high skull and fired....; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:35
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: I saw a little red streak appear, up by the neutral colored hair, under the black cap. I became as a detached intelligence, unlinked with the corporeal, looking down upon a thing which for some reason I had never thought to witness.

Fu-Manchu threw up both arms, so that the sleeves of the green robe fell back to the elbows. He clutched at his head, and the black cap fell behind him. He began to utter short, guttural cries; he swayed backward—to the right—to the left then lurched forward right across the cage. There he lay, writhing, for a moment, his baneful eyes turned up, revealing the whites; and the great gray rats, released, began leaping about the room. Two shot like gray streaks past the slim figure in the doorway, one darted behind the chair to which I was lashed, and the fourth ran all around against the wall... Fu-Manchu, prostrate across the overturned cage, lay still, his massive head sagging downward.

I experienced a mental repetition of my adventure in the earlier evening—I was dropping, dropping, dropping into some bottomless pit ... warm arms were about my neck; and burning kisses upon my lips.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:36
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: I seemed to haul myself back out of the pit of unconsciousness by the aid of two little hands which clasped my own. I uttered a sigh that was almost a sob, and opened my eyes.

I was sitting in the big red-leathern armchair in my own study... and a lovely but truly bizarre figure, in a harem dress, was kneeling on the carpet at my feet; so that my first sight of the world was the sweetest sight that the world had to offer me, the dark eyes of Karamaneh, with tears trembling like jewels upon her lashes!

I looked no further than that, heeded not if there were others in the room beside we two, but, gripping the jewel-laden fingers in what must have been a cruel clasp, I searched the depths of the glorious eyes in ever growing wonder. What change had taken place in those limpid, mysterious pools? Why was a wild madness growing up within me like a flame? Why was the old longing returned, ten-thousandfold, to snatch that pliant, exquisite shape to my breast?

No word was spoken, but the spoken words of a thousand ages could not have expressed one tithe of what was held in that silent communion. A hand was laid hesitatingly on my shoulder. I tore my gaze away from the lovely face so near to mine, and glanced up.

Aziz stood at the back of my chair.

“God is all merciful,” he said. “My sister is restored to us” (I loved him for the plural); “and she remembers.”

Those few words were enough; I understood now that this lovely girl, who half knelt, half lay, at my feet, was not the evil, perverted creature of Fu-Manchu whom we had gone out to arrest with the other vile servants of the Chinese doctor, but was the old, beloved companion of two years ago, the Karamaneh for whom I had sought long and wearily in Egypt, who had been swallowed up and lost to me in that land of mystery.

The loss of memory which Fu-Manchu had artificially induced was subject to the same inexplicable laws which ordinarily rule in cases of amnesia. The shock of her brave action that night had begun to effect a cure; the sight of Aziz had completed it.

Inspector Weymouth was standing by the writing-table. My mind cleared rapidly now, and standing up, but without releasing the girl’s hands, so that I drew her up beside me, I said:

“Weymouth—where is—?”

“He’s waiting to see you, Doctor,” replied the inspector.

A pang, almost physical, struck at my heart.

“Poor, dear old Smith!” I cried, with a break in my voice.

Dr. Gray, a neighboring practitioner, appeared in the doorway at the moment that I spoke the words.

“It’s all right, Petrie,” he said, reassuringly; “I think we took it in time. I have thoroughly cauterized the wounds, and granted that no complication sets in, he’ll be on his feet again in a week or two.”

I suppose I was in a condition closely bordering upon the hysterical. At any rate, my behavior was extraordinary. I raised both my hands above my head.

“Thank God!” I cried at the top of my voice, “thank God!—thank God!”

“Thank Him, indeed,” responded the musical voice of Aziz. He spoke with all the passionate devoutness of the true Moslem.

Everything, even Karamaneh was forgotten, and I started for the door as though my life depended upon my speed. With one foot upon the landing, I turned, looked back, and met the glance of Inspector Weymouth.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:36
Y yo con estas pintas dixo...: “What have you done with—the body?” I asked.

“We haven’t been able to get to it. That end of the vault collapsed two minutes after we hauled you out!”

As I write, now, of those strange days, already they seem remote and unreal. But, where other and more dreadful memories already are grown misty, the memory of that evening in my rooms remains clear-cut and intimate. It marked a crisis in my life.

During the days that immediately followed, whilst Smith was slowly recovering from his hurts, I made my plans deliberately; I prepared to cut myself off from old associations—prepared to exile myself, gladly; how gladly I cannot hope to express in mere cold words.

That my friend approved of my projects, I cannot truthfully state, but his disapproval at least was not openly expressed. To Karamaneh I said nothing of my plans, but her complete reliance in my powers to protect her, now, from all harm, was at once pathetic and exquisite.

Since, always, I have sought in these chronicles to confine myself to the facts directly relating to the malignant activity of Dr. Fu-Manchu, I shall abstain from burdening you with details of my private affairs. As an instrument of the Chinese doctor, it has sometimes been my duty to write of the beautiful Eastern girl; I cannot suppose that my readers have any further curiosity respecting her from the moment that Fate freed her from that awful servitude. Therefore, when I shall have dealt with the episodes which marked our voyage to Egypt—I had opened negotiations in regard to a practice in Cairo—I may honorably lay down my pen.

These episodes opened, upon the second night of the voyage from Loresgrado.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:37
Si ya se ha suscrito, puede iniciar sesión aquí. dixo...: una provocación desvergonzada como todas las cosas que valen la pena; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:43
Barrabás Balarrasa dixo...: La tuvo entre los brazos oliendo a sangre, le hizo beber el semen que corre por la boca como el desafío al Logos, le chupó la sombra del vientre y de la grupa y se la alzó hasta la cara para untarla de sí misma en esa última operación de conocimiento que sólo el hombre puede dar a la mujer, la exasperó con piel y pelo y baba y quejas, la vació hasta lo último de su fuerza magnífica, la tiró contra una almohada y una sábana y la sintió llorar de felicidad contra su cara que un nuevo cigarrillo devolvía a la noche del cuarto y del hotel.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:45
Barrabás Balarrasa dixo...: Sangrar es dibujar mi mandala y a la vez recorrerlo, inventar la purificación purificándose; tarea de pobre chamán blanco con calcetines de nylon; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:47
volvía como un fósforo cuando se lo prende y le crece de golpe todo el pelo, apenas dura un segundo pero es maravilloso, una especie de chirrido, un olor a fósforo muy fuerte dixo...: Probablemente de todos nuestros sentimientos el único que no es verdaderamente nuestro es la esperanza. La esperanza le pertenece a la vida, es la vida misma defendiéndose; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:49
Due to a technical issue, we couldn't complete this request. Please try again. dixo...: Me alimento de los recortes de ostias que trae el señor abad. de mi cuerpo no sale ni una sola excreción: ni orina, ni bilis, ni heces. solo gruñidos y ruidos. y rechinar de dientes.
un grito me habita. a veces, es mugido que sube por la escalera de la columna vertebral. entonces, si no estoy atada, me arrojo sobre la gente: araño o muerdo. me contorsiono, río, me arranco la cabellera a puñados, me paso el pie izquierdo por encima del hombro derecho. de un brinco salto al suelo y corro por el cuarto a cuatro patas, como un can.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:52
Cerca de nuestro fuego, aquella noche… dixo...: Me palpo. Tengo vello en la cara y bajo la garganta. El vientre está viscoso, cubierto de gelatina y cáscaras de un mundo lejano, un mundo chinoide.
Algo tropieza y palpita entre mis piernas.
un pene cuelga como el badajo de una campana. tolón.
¿quién soy?
emerge de mí misma un hombre como un enorme bicho rojo con las patas dobladas.
Deja en la orilla el molde vacío de mi anterior vida.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:55
Unha cabicha atopada en haxix dixo...: Oh ti, na soidade, espertar do meu pasado, como un canto de fervenza ao lonxe, lévame para edificar a poesía dos teus consellos. Deixo todo para escoitarte e embriagarme e facer máis flexíbeis os rizos louros dos meus cabelos. Diante da beleza deste xardín salvaxe, inculto, a miña consciencia é a multitude innumerábel dos froitos nas pólas a millóns. Eu son o seu misterio impenetrábel, a súa virxindade, o seu azul, o seu sangue no abrente e no crepúsculo. Noite do presente, cae sobre os meus horizontes, cae sobre as miñas chairas, cae sobre as miñas montañas, cae sobre os meus ríos, cae sobre o máis pequeno dos terróns. A causa do teu gran ar e das túas estrelas, do teu claro luar, do seu veo sobre o rostro do adversario, percibirei toda ma miña cenestesia. A enerxía innata, aquela en min que se odia ou adora, a que eleva a miña vida como unha cuncha de noz, xa me anaina mellor. Invadiu o corazón, os cabelos, os pensamentos, a carne, os dedos. É a hora primeira das sete noites máxicas. A avalancha precipítase segundo os potencias crecentes e decrecentes de harmonía; sobe ao asalto da miña estabilidade, caravana de salvaxes primitivos, coas súas frautas de cana, os seus claríns, as súas liras, as súas queixas, os seus laios, as súas hurras de vertixe ou de alegría, os seus sentidos exaltados, os seus ollos atordados, os seus músculos tensos, os seus torsos nus. É a hora primeira das sete noites máxicas, a hora violenta, vaga xigantes que me arranca da praia común. E eu abandónome a ela pola súa angustia, a súa loucura. Vólvome a súa continua de todas esas forzas que se interpenetran e me elevan até o punto en que podo colocar a lente converxente da miña lucidez para que nela se mire o movemento de todas estas asociacións.; 26 de febreiro de 2025, 18:59

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