The Bride of Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer Read Free Book Online Page B

long nails were varnished to a jewel-like brightness. I wondered how these two had met, and how such markedly different types had ever become lovers.
    Mrs. Petrie raised her eyes to me again.
    “Is Dr. Cartier following some different treatment in—my husband’s case?”
    The nearly imperceptible pause had not escaped me. I supposed that a wave of emotion had threatened to overcome her when she found that name upon her lips and realized that the man himself tottered on the brink of the Valley.
    “Yes, Mrs. Petrie; a treatment of your husband’s known as ‘654.’”
    “Prepared, I suppose, by Dr. Cartier?”
    “No—prepared by Petrie himself just before he was seized with illness.”
    “But Dr. Cartier, of course, knows the formula?”
    That caressing voice possessed some odd quality of finality; it was like listening to Fate speaking. Not to reply to any question so put to one would have been a task akin to closing one’s ears to the song of the Sirens. And the darkly fringed eyes, which, now, owing to some accident of reflected light, I thought were golden, emphasized the soft command.
    Indeed, I was on the point of answering truthfully, that no one but Petrie knew the formula, when an instinct of compassion gave me strength to defy that powerful urge. Why should I admit so cruel a truth?
    “I cannot say,” I replied, and knew that I spoke the words unnaturally.
    “But of course it will be somewhere in my husband’s possession? No doubt in his laboratory?”
    Her anxiety—although there was no trace of tremor in her velvety tones—was nevertheless unmistakable.
    “No doubt, Mrs. Petrie,” I said reassuringly—and spoke now with greater conviction, since I really believed that the formula must be somewhere among Petrie’s papers.
    She murmured something in a low voice—and, standing up, moved to the head of the bed.
    Whereupon, my difficulties began. For, as Mrs. Petrie bent over the pillow, I remembered the charge which had been put upon me, remembered Nayland Smith’s words:
    “You are not to allow a soul to touch him—”
    I got up swiftly, stepped around the foot of the bed, and joined Mrs. Petrie where she stood.
    “Whatever you do,” I said, “don’t touch him!”
    Slowly she stood upright; infinitely slowly and gracefully. She turned and looked into my eyes.
    “Why?” she asked.
    “Because—” I hesitated: what could I say? “Because of the possibility of infection.”
    “Please don’t worry about that, Mr. Sterling. There is no possibility of infection at this stage. Sister Therese told me so.”
    “But she may be wrong,” I urged. “Really, I can’t allow you to take the risk.”
    Perhaps my principles ride me to death; I have been told that they do. But I had pledged my word that no one should touch Petrie, and I meant to stick to it. Logically, I could think of no reason why this woman who loved him should not stroke his hair, as I thought she had been about to do. It was almost inhuman to forbid it. Yet, by virtue of Sir Denis’s trust in me, forbid it I must.
    “It may be difficult,” I remembered saying to him. How difficult it was to be, I had not foreseen!
    “Surely,” she said, and her soft voice held no note of anger, “the risk is mine?”
    Mrs. Petrie bent again over the pillow. She was on the point of resting those slender, indolent hands on Petrie’s shoulders.
    She intended, I surmised, to kiss his parched lips...

CHAPTER EIGHT

“BEWARE”
    A s those languorous ivory hands almost rested on Petrie’s shoulders, and the full red lips were but inches removed from the parched blue lips of the unconscious man, I threw my arms around Mrs. Petrie and dragged her away!
    She was light and resilient as a professional dancer. I had been forced to exert considerable strength because of her nearness to the doctor. She was swept back, lying against my left arm and looking up at me in a startled yet imperious way, which prepared me to expect an uncomfortable