THE READING RHEUM: THE DRUMS OF FU MANCHU (1939)

Following the quixotic brilliance of PRESIDENT FU MANCHU, DRUMS proves less ambitious, but still adds up to a more pleasing potboiler than some previous works in the series. Though the doctor has just missed out on his chance to become a Head of State, he’s decided this time out to intimidate actual politicians into doing his bidding. If they don’t heed the warnings of the Si-Fan’s Council of Seven (missing in the action for a while, though mentioned a few times in PRESIDENT), then Fu engineers their assassinations. Though this seems like a return to the pattern of the early three books, the devil-doctor makes greater use of SF-weapons, such as a new contagion, the Green Death, and a disintegrator ray the size of a fountain pen.

Sax Rohmer debuts yet another earnest young viewpoint character. This time it’s Bart Kerrigan, a fighting reporter who drops everything to join Nayland Smith’s cause. In line with the usual pattern, Kerrigan’s peregrinations bring him into contact with a young woman who seems a recent convert to the Si-Fan, Ardatha. Like Karameneh and Fleurette, Ardatha has partial “Eastern” heritage, though Rohmer never specifies her background, except that she was given a religious education in an Egyptian Coptic Church. Both characters are unremarkable, with the exception of an early exchange between them, when Ardatha decries the ways of modern warfare:

And your Christian rules, your rulers of the West—yes? What do they do? If the Si-Fan kills a man, that man is an active enemy. But when your Western murderers kill they kill men, women and children—hundreds—thousands who never harmed them—

Kerrigan tries to dismiss Ardatha’s animus as “sophistry,” but Rohmer must’ve been aware that he was entering somewhat uncharted territory. Most of Fu Manchu’s pawns do not seek to justify their actions, and even though MASK OF FU MANCHU imagines a Near Eastern uprising like that of the Mahdi Rebellion, the author does not address any sociopolitical grievances. To an extent Ardatha is repeating anti-modernity arguments Fu himself voiced in PRESIDENT, but her protests are rendered nugatory when she allows her amour for Kerrigan to sweep aside her commitment to the cause.

Though Fu’s attempt to control world affairs sounds like a logical development from the previous novel, the various assassination-gambits are fairly dull, since Rohmer neglects to develop any of the political figures. Two of Fu’s prospective targets, Rudolf Adlon and Pietro Monaghani, have names minimally similar to real-life tyrants Hitler and Mussolini, though Rohmer does not make any one-on-one comparisons. The author even disassociates Adlon from the Nazi cause, and portrays the character as courageous as he faces down the devil-doctor in a brief scene. Nayland Smith and Kerrigan manage to foil enough of Fu’s schemes that there’s some suggestion that the Council may depose the doctor as the President of the Si-Fan, but Rohmer only raises this intriguing possibility to dismiss it too easily.

The novel’s primary source of interest—aside from an amusing scene in which Fu dismisses Western techniques of torture as “primitive and clumsy”-- is the revival of Fah Lo Suee. When during this case Smith first hears descriptions of a green-eyed beauty, he tells Kerrigan that she’s both a “zombie” and a “vampire,” even though he knows that she’s nothing of the kind. Later, when Smith and Kerrigan are captives of Fu Manchu, the doctor explains during the events of TRAIL he faked his daughter’s death and brainwashed her, giving her the new identity of “Koreani.” The villain also claims that, prior to Smith’s daring escape, he intended to follow the same pattern with Smith, though Fu doesn’t mention whether or not he would have resurrected his other British captives. Aside from executing Fu’s less important enemies, the entire climax of TRAIL now appears to have been a dumb-show, but one for no particular person’s benefit, given that the only other witnesses to the spectacle would have been the doctor’s utterly slavish subordinates. In any case, after her brainwashing Koreani executes the same functions she did in earlier stories—mostly that of beguiling men-- but with no ambitions of her own. However, when Fu Manchu captures both Kerrigan and Smith, Koreani vaguely recognizes Smith. She’s not intrigued enough with him to intentionally aid his escape, but thanks to her interest Smith manages to secure a device that makes liberation possible. That said, Rohmer still does not choose to let Smith make any comments on the fact that Fu Manchu’s daughter pledged her love to him two novels back.

Fu’s scheme to control the world powers just sort of peters out at the novel’s end, which is probably a consequence of the author returning to his episodic format. Even the title signals the book’s fragmented status, for it’s only in the early chapters that some of Fu’s victims are bedeviled by the sound of mysterious drums. These sounds are the only thing the novel has in common with the 1940 serial, which is essentially a remake of 1932’s MASK OF FU MANCHU. One presumes that the studio only used the title of the book because DRUMS was published the year previous, so that in theory the title might bring in the Rohmer-reading contingent into theaters. For that matter, the serial is more faithful to the drum-motif than Rohmer was, for most if not all episodes have Fu’s deviltry heralded by the sinister music—which is just one of many touches that made the DRUMS serial the best adaptation of Sax Rohmer’s premiere creation.