The Shadow of Fu-Manchu Read Online Free

her spine and up again. This treatment made her purr like a contented kitten. It had been preceded by a terrific mauling at the hands of another, muscular attendant, in the course of which Mrs. F. had been all but hanged, drawn, quartered, and, finally, stood on her head.
    An aromatic bath completed the treatment. Mrs. F. was wrapped in a loose fleecy garment, stretched upon a couch in a small apartment decorated with Pompeian frescoes, and given an Egyptian cigarette and a cup of orange-scented China tea.
    She lay there in delicious languor, when the draperies were drawn aside and Professor Hoffmeyer, the celebrated Viennese psychiatrist who conducted the establishment, entered gravely. She turned her head and smiled up at him.
    “How do you do, Professor?”
    He did not reply at once, but stood there looking at her. Even through the dark glasses he always wore, his regard never failed to make her shudder. But it was a pleasurable shudder.
    Professor Hoffmeyer presented an impressive figure. His sufferings in Nazi prison camps had left indelible marks. The dark glasses protected eyes seared by merciless lights. The silk gloves which he never removed concealed hands from which the fingernails had been extracted. He stooped much, leaning upon a heavy ebony cane.
    Now he advanced almost noiselessly and took Mrs. Frobisher’s left wrist between a delicate thumb and forefinger, slightly inclining his head.
    “It is not how do
I
do, dear lady,” he said in Germanic gutturals, “but how do
you
do.”
    Mrs. Frobisher looked up at the massive brow bent over her, and tried, not for the first time, to puzzle out the true color of the scanty hair which crowned it She almost decided that it was colorless; entirely neutral.
    Professor Hoffmeyer stood upright or as nearly upright as she had ever seen him stand, and nodded.
    “You shall come to see me on Wednesday, at three o’clock. Not for the treatment, no, but for the consultation. If some other engagement you have, cancel it. At three o’clock on Wednesday.”
    He bowed slightly and went out.
    Professor Hoffmeyer ruled his wealthy clientele with a rod of iron. His reputation was enormous. His fees were phenomenal.
    He proceeded, now, across a luxurious central salon where other patients waited, well-preserved women, some of them apparently out of the deep-freeze. He nodded to a chosen few as he passed, and entered an office marked “Private.” Closing the door, he pulled out a drawer in the businesslike desk—and a bookcase filled with advanced medical works, largely German, swung open bodily.
    The professor went into the opening. As the bookcase swung back into place, the drawer in the desk closed again.
    Professor Hoffmeyer would see no more patients today.
    The room in which the professor found himself was a study. But its appointments were far from conventional. It contained some very valuable old lacquer and was richly carpeted. The lighting (it had no visible windows) was subdued, and the peculiar characteristic of the place was its silence.
    Open bookcases were filled with volumes, some of them bound manuscripts, many of great age and all of great rarity. They were in many languages, including Greek, Chinese, and Arabic.
    Beside a cushioned divan stood an inlaid stool equipped with several opium pipes in a rack, gum, lamp, and bodkins.
    A long, carved table of time-blackened oak served as a desk. A high-backed chair was set behind it. A faded volume lay open on the table, as well as a closely written manuscript. There were several other books there, and a number of curious objects difficult to identify in the dim light.
    The professor approached a painted screen placed before a recess and disappeared behind it. Not a sound broke the silence of the room until he returned.
    He had removed the gloves and dark glasses, and for the black coat worn by Professor Hoffmeyer had substituted a yellow house robe. The eyes which the glasses had concealed were long, narrow, and