The Hand of Fu Manchu Read Online Free Page A

his warning one that
I dare not neglect. For I was with him when he died; and they cannot
know how much
I
know. How did he die? How did he die? How was the
Flower of Silence introduced into his closely guarded room?"
    "The Flower of Silence?"
    Smith laughed shortly and unmirthfully.
    "I was once sent for," he said, "during the time that I was stationed
in Upper Burma, to see a stranger—a sort of itinerant Buddhist priest,
so I understood, who had desired to communicate some message to me
personally. He was dying—in a dirty hut on the outskirts of Manipur,
up in the hills. When I arrived I say at a glance that the man was a
Tibetan monk. He must have crossed the river and come down through
Assam; but the nature of his message I never knew. He had lost the
power of speech! He was gurgling, inarticulate, just like poor Hale.
A few moments after my arrival he breathed his last. The fellow who
had guided me to the place bent over him—I shall always remember the
scene—then fell back as though he had stepped upon an adder.
    "'He holds the Flower Silence in his hand!' he cried—'the Si-Fan! the
Si-Fan!'—and bolted from the hut."
    "When I went to examine the dead man, sure enough he held in one hand
a little crumpled spray of flowers. I did not touch it with my fingers
naturally, but I managed to loop a piece of twine around the stem,
and by that means I gingerly removed the flowers and carried them to
an orchid-hunter of my acquaintance who chanced to be visiting Manipur.
    "Grahame—that was my orchid man's name—pronounced the specimen to be
an unclassified species of
jatropha;
belonging to the
Curcas
family. He discovered a sort of hollow thorn, almost like a fang,
amongst the blooms, but was unable to surmise the nature of its
functions. He extracted enough of a certain fixed oil from the flowers,
however, to have poisoned the pair of us!"
    "Probably the breaking of a bloom ..."
    "Ejects some of this acrid oil through the thorn? Practically the
uncanny thing stings when it is hurt? That is my own idea, Petrie. And
I can understand how these Eastern fanatics accept their sentence—
silence and death—when they have deserved it, at the hands of their
mysterious organization, and commit this novel form of
hara-kiri
.
But I shall not sleep soundly with that brass coffer in my possession
until I know by what means Sir Gregory was induced to touch a Flower
of Silence, and by what means it was placed in his room!"
    "But, Smith, why did you direct me to-night to repeat the words,
'Sâkya Mûni'?"
    Smith smiled in a very grim fashion.
    "It was after the episode I have just related that I made the
acquaintance of that pundit, some of whose statements I have already
quoted for your enlightenment. He admitted that the Flower of Silence
was an instrument frequently employed by a certain group, adding that,
according to some authorities, one who had touched the flower might
escape death by immediately pronouncing the sacred name of Buddha. He
was no fanatic himself, however, and, marking my incredulity, he
explained that the truth was this;—
    "No one whose powers of speech were imperfect could possibly pronounce
correctly the words 'Sâkya Mûni.' Therefore, since the first
effects of this damnable thing is instantly to tie the tongue, the
uttering of the sacred name of Buddha becomes practically a test
whereby the victim my learn whether the venom has entered his system
or not!"
    I repressed a shudder. An atmosphere of horror seemed to be enveloping
us, foglike.
    "Smith," I said slowly, "we must be on our guard," for at last I had
run to earth that elusive memory. "Unless I am strangely mistaken,
the 'man' who so mysteriously entered Hale's room and the supposed
ayah
whom I met downstairs are one and the same. Two, at least, of
the Yellow group are actually here in the New Louvre!"
    The light of the shaded lamp shone down upon the brass coffer on the
table beside me. The fog seemed to have cleared from the room somewhat,
but