From my brief history of the wonderful and evil man
who once walked, by the way unsuspected, in the midst
of the people of England— near whom you,
personally, may at some time unwittingly, have been—
I am aware that much must be omitted. I have
no space for lengthy examinations of the many points
but ill illuminated with which it is dotted.
This incident at the docks is but one such point.
Another is the singular vision which appeared to me
whilst I lay in the cellar of the house near Windsor.
It has since struck me that it possessed peculiarities
akin to those of a hashish hallucination. Can
it be that we were drugged on that occasion with Indian
hemp? Cannabis indica is a treacherous narcotic,
as every medical man knows full well; but Fu-Manchu’s
knowledge of the drug was far in advance of our slow
science. West’s experience proved so much.
I may have neglected opportunities—later,
you shall judge if I did so— opportunities
to glean for the West some of the strange knowledge
of the secret East. Perhaps, at a future time,
I may rectify my errors. Perhaps that wisdom—the
wisdom stored up by Fu-Manchu—is lost forever.
There is, however, at least a bare possibility of its
survival, in part; and I do not wholly despair of
one day publishing a scientific sequel to this record
of our dealings with the Chinese doctor.
Time wore on and seemingly brought us no nearer, or
very little nearer, to our goal. So carefully
had my friend Nayland Smith excluded the matter from
the press that, whilst public interest was much engaged
with some of the events in the skein of mystery which
he had come from Burma to unravel, outside the Secret
Service and the special department of Scotland Yard
few people recognized that the several murders, robberies
and disappearances formed each a link in a chain; fewer
still were aware that a baneful presence was in our
midst, that a past master of the evil arts lay concealed
somewhere in the metropolis; searched for by the keenest
wits which the authorities could direct to the task,
but eluding all—triumphant, contemptuous.
One link in that chain Smith himself for long failed
to recognize. Yet it was a big and important
link.
“Petrie,” he said to me one morning, “listen
to this:
“`. . .In sight of Shanghai—a clear,
dark night. On board the deck of a junk passing
close to seaward of the Andaman a blue flare started
up. A minute later there was a cry of “Man
overboard!”
“`Mr. Lewin, the chief officer, who was in charge,
stopped the engines. A boat was put out.
But no one was recovered. There are sharks
in these waters. A fairly heavy sea was running.
“`Inquiry showed the missing man to be a James
Edwards, second class, booked to Shanghai. I
think the name was assumed. The man was some
sort of Oriental, and we had had him under close observation.
. . .’”
