The Island of Fu Manchu

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“Then you have no idea where Nayland Smith is?” said my guest.

I carried his empty glass to the buffet and refilled it.

“Two cables from him found me at Salonika,”

I replied: “the first from Kingston, Jamaica, the second from New York.”

“Ah! Jamaica and New York. Off his usual stamping ground. Nothing since?”

“Nothing.”

“Sure he isn’t back home?”

“Quite. His flat in Whitehall is closed.”

I set the whisky-and-soda before Sir Lionel Barton and passed my pouch, for he was scraping out his briar. My dining-room seemed altogether too small to hold this huge, overbearing man with a lion’s mane of tawny hair streaked with white; piercing blue eyes shadowed by craggy brows. He had the proper personality for one of his turbulent, brilliant reputation: the greatest Orientalist in Europe is expected to be unusual.

“Do you know, Kerrigan”— he stuffed Rhodesian tobacco into his pipe as though he had been charging a howitzer—“I have known Smith longer than you, and although I missed the last brush with Fu Manchu—”

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