Criminals -- Fiction; Detective and mystery stories; Fu Manchu, Doctor (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
"I fought with the stupor that was overcoming me," continued West,
"striving to associate that vaguely familiar name with the fantastic
things through which I moved. It seemed to me that the room was empty
again. I made for the hall, for the telephone. I could scarcely drag
my feet along. It seemed to take me half-an-hour to get there. I
remember calling up Scotland Yard, and I remember no more."
There was a short, tense interval.
In some respects I was nonplused; but, frankly, I think Inspector
Weymouth considered West insane. Smith, his hands locked behind his
back, stared out of the window.
"ANDAMAN--SECOND" he said suddenly. "Weymouth, when is the first train
to Tilbury?"
"Five twenty-two from Fenchurch Street," replied the Scotland Yard man
promptly.
"Too late!" rapped my friend. "Jump in a taxi and pick up two good men
to leave for China at once! Then go and charter a special to Tilbury
to leave in twenty-five minutes. Order another cab to wait outside for
me."
Weymouth was palpably amazed, but Smith's tone was imperative. The
Inspector departed hastily.
I stared at Smith, not comprehending what prompted this singular course.
"Now that you can think clearly, Mr. West," he said, "of what does your
experience remind you? The errors of perception regarding time; the
idea of SEEING A SOUND; the illusion that the room alternately
increased and diminished in size; your fit of laughter, and the
recollection of the name Bayard Taylor. Since evidently you are
familiar with that author's work--'The Land of the Saracen,' is it
not?--these symptoms of the attack should be familiar, I think."
Norris West pressed his hands to his evidently aching head.
"Bayard Taylor's book," he said dully. "Yes! . . . I know of what my
brain sought to remind me--Taylor's account of his experience under
hashish. Mr. Smith, someone doped me with hashish!"
Smith nodded grimly.
"Cannabis indica," I said--"Indian hemp. That is what you were drugged
with. I have no doubt that now you experience a feeling of nausea and
intense thirst, with aching in the muscles, particularly the deltoid.
I think you must have taken at least fifteen grains."
Smith stopped his perambulations immediately in front of West, looking
into his dulled eyes.
"Someone visited your chambers last night," he said slowly, "and for
your chloral tabloids substituted some containing hashish, or perhaps
not pure hashish. Fu-Manchu is a profound chemist."
Norris West started.
"Someone substituted--" he began.
"Exactly," said Smith, looking at him keenly; "someone who was here
yesterday. Have you any idea whom it could have been?"
West hesitated. "I had a visitor in the afternoon," he said, seemingly
speaking the words unwillingly, "but--"
"A lady?" jerked Smith. "I suggest that it was a lady."
West nodded.
"You're quite right," he admitted. "I don't know how you arrived at
the conclusion, but a lady whose acquaintance I made recently--a
foreign lady."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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