The casual student of modern Chinese history will reply: "Young China."
This is unsatisfactory.
What do we mean by Young China?
In my own hearing Fu-Manchu had disclaimed, with scorn, association with the whole of that movement; and assuming that the name were not an assumed one, he clearly can have been no anti-Manchu, no Republican.
The Chinese Republican is of the mandarin class, but of a new generation which veneers its Confucianism with Western polish.
These youthful and unbalanced reformers, in conjunction with older but no less ill-balanced provincial politicians, may be said to represent Young China.
Amid such turmoils as this we invariably look for, and invariably find, a Third Party.
In my opinion, Dr. Fu-Manchu was one of the leaders of such a party.
Another question often put to me was: Where did the Doctor hide during the time that he pursued his operations in London?
This is more susceptible of explanation.
For a time Nayland Smith supposed, as I did myself, that the opium den adjacent to the old Ratcliff Highway was the Chinaman's base of operations; later we came to believe that the mansion near Windsor was his hiding-place, and later still, the hulk lying off the downstream flats.
But I think I can state with confidence that the spot which he had chosen for his home was neither of these, but the East End riverside building which I was the first to enter.
Of this I am all but sure; for the reason that it not only was the home of Fu-Manchu, of Karamaneh, and of her brother, Aziz, but the home of something else—of something which I shall speak of later.
The dreadful tragedy (or series of tragedies) which attended the raid upon the place will always mark in my memory the supreme horror of a horrible case. Let me endeavor to explain what occurred.
By the aid of Karamaneh, you have seen how we had located the whilom warehouse, which, from the exterior, was so drab and dreary, but which within was a place of wondrous luxury.
At the moment selected by our beautiful accomplice, Inspector Weymouth and a body of detectives entirely surrounded it; a river police launch lay off the wharf which opened from it on the river-side; and this upon a singularly black night, than which a better could not have been chosen.
"You will fulfill your promise to me?" said Karamaneh, and looked up into my face.
She was enveloped in a big, loose cloak, and from the shadow of the hood her wonderful eyes gleamed out like stars.
"What do you wish us to do?" asked Nayland Smith.
"You—and Dr. Petrie," she replied swiftly, "must enter first, and bring out Aziz.
Until he is safe—until he is out of that place—you are to make no attempt upon—"
"Upon Dr. Fu-Manchu?" interrupted Weymouth; for Karamaneh hesitated to pronounce the dreaded name, as she always did.
"But how can we be sure that there is no trap laid for us?"
The Scotland Yard man did not entirely share my confidence in the integrity of this Eastern girl whom he knew to have been a creature of the Chinaman's.
"Aziz lies in the private room," she explained eagerly, her old accent more noticeable than usual.
"There is only one of the Burmese men in the house, and he—he dare not enter without orders!"
"But Fu-Manchu?"
"We have nothing to fear from him.
He will be your prisoner within ten minutes from now!
I have no time for words—you must believe!"
She stamped her foot impatiently.
"And the dacoit?" snapped Smith.
"He also."
"I think perhaps I'd better come in, too," said Weymouth slowly.
Karamaneh shrugged her shoulders with quick impatience, and unlocked the door in the high brick wall which divided the gloomy, evil-smelling court from the luxurious apartments of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
"Make no noise," she warned.
And Smith and myself followed her along the uncarpeted passage beyond.
Inspector Weymouth, with a final word of instruction to his second in command, brought up the rear.
The door was reclosed; a few paces farther on a second was unlocked.
Passing through a small room, unfurnished, a farther passage led us to a balcony.
The transition was startling.
Darkness was about us now, and silence: a perfumed, slumberous darkness—a silence full of mystery.
For, beyond the walls of the apartment whereon we looked down waged the unceasing battle of sounds that is the hymn of the great industrial river.
About the scented confines which bounded us now floated the smoke-laden vapors of the Lower Thames.
From the metallic but infinitely human clangor of dock-side life, from the unpleasant but homely odors which prevail where ships swallow in and belch out the concrete evidences of commercial prosperity, we had come into this incensed stillness, where one shaded lamp painted dim enlargements of its Chinese silk upon the nearer walls, and left the greater part of the room the darker for its contrast.
Nothing of the Thames-side activity—of the riveting and scraping—the bumping of bales—the bawling of orders—the hiss of steam—penetrated to this perfumed place. In the pool of tinted light lay the deathlike figure of a dark-haired boy, Karamaneh's muffled form bending over him.
"At last I stand in the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu!" whispered Smith.
Despite the girl's assurance, we knew that proximity to the sinister Chinaman must be fraught with danger.
We stood, not in the lion's den, but in the serpent's lair.
From the time when Nayland Smith had come from Burma in pursuit of this advance-guard of a cogent Yellow Peril, the face of Dr. Fu-Manchu rarely had been absent from my dreams day or night.