The Hand of Fu Manchu Read Free Page A

bed."
    Nayland Smith, who was bending over an open despatch case which he had
placed upon a chair, turned—and his glance fell upon the petals and
tiny piece of stem.
    I think I have never seen so sudden a change of expression take place
in the face of any man. Even in that imperfect light I saw him blanch.
I saw a hard glitter come into his eyes. He spoke, evenly, but hoarsely:
    "Put those things down—there, on the table; anywhere."
    I obeyed him without demur; for something in his manner had chilled me
with foreboding.
    "You did not break that stalk?"
    "No. I found it as you see it."
    "Have you smelled the petals?"
    I shook my head. Thereupon, having his eyes fixed upon me with the
strangest expression in their gray depths, Nayland Smith said a
singular thing.
    "Pronounce, slowly, the words
Sâkya Mûni,
'" he directed.
    I stared at him, scarce crediting my senses; but—
    "I mean it!" he rapped. "Do as I tell you."
    "Sâkya Mûni," I said, in ever increasing wonder.
    Smith laughed unmirthfully.
    "Go into the bathroom and thoroughly wash your hands," was his next
order. "Renew the water at least three times." As I turned to fulfill
his instructions, for I doubted no longer his deadly earnestness:
"Beeton!" he called.
    Beeton, very white-faced and shaky, came out from the bedroom as I
entered the bathroom, and whist I proceeded carefully to cleanse my
hands I heard Smith interrogating him.
    "Have any flowers been brought into the room today, Beeton?"
    "Flowers, sir? Certainly not. Nothing has ever been brought in here
but what I have brought myself."
    "You are certain of that?"
    "Positive."
    "Who brought up the meals, then?"
    "If you'll look into my room here, sir, you'll see that I have enough
tinned and bottled stuff to last us for weeks. Sir Gregory sent me out
to buy it on the day we arrived. No one else had left or entered these
rooms until you came to-night."
    I returned to find Nayland Smith standing tugging at the lobe of his
left ear in evident perplexity. He turned to me.
    "I find my hands over full," he said. "Will you oblige me by
telephoning for Inspector Weymouth? Also, I should be glad if you
would ask M. Samarkan, the manager, to see me here immediately."
    As I was about to quit the room—
    "Not a word of our suspicions to M. Samarkan," he added; "not a word
about the brass box."
    I was far along the corridor ere I remembered that which, remembered
earlier, had saved me the journey. There was a telephone in every suite.
However, I was not indisposed to avail myself of an opportunity for a
few moments' undisturbed reflection, and, avoiding the lift, I
descended by the broad, marble staircase.
    To what strange adventure were we committed? What did the brass coffer
contain which Sir Gregory had guarded night and day? Something
associated in some way with Tibet, something which he believed to be
"the key of India" and which had brought in its train, presumably,
the sinister "man with a limp."
    Who was the "man with the limp"? What was the Si-Fan? Lastly, by what
conceivable means could the flower, which my friend evidently regarded
with extreme horror, have been introduced into Hale's room, and why
had I been required to pronounce the words "Sâkya Mûni"?
    So ran my reflections—at random and to no clear end; and, as is often
the case in such circumstances, my steps bore them company; so that
all at once I became aware that instead of having gained the lobby of
the hotel, I had taken some wrong turning and was in a part of the
building entirely unfamiliar to me.
    A long corridor of the inevitable white marble extended far behind me.
I had evidently traversed it. Before me was a heavily curtained archway.
Irritably, I pulled the curtain aside, learnt that it masked a
glass-paneled door, opened this door—and found myself in a small
court, dimly lighted and redolent of some pungent, incense-like perfume.
    One step forward I took, then pulled up abruptly. A sound had come to
my ears. From a second curtained