THE READING RHEUM: THE WRATH OF FU MANCHU (1952, 1957-59)

Prior to Sax Rohmer penning his final Fu Manchu novel, the author also produced three short stories with the devil-doctor.

There’s not a great deal to say about the three very short tales published during the years 1957-59, which stories I would guess Rohmer finished prior to starting the final Fu novel. In the introduction to the 1973 paperback collection of all the fifties stories, “Rohmerologist” Robert E. Briney clarifies that the very short stories were written for magazines that allowed for very little space, and consequently little development.

“The Word of Fu Manchu” introduces another one-shot narrator, Malcolm Forbes, who because of a friendship with Nayland Smith becomes privy to one of the doctor’s many assassinations. Malcolm gets to enjoy a little flirtation with one of Fu’s exotic female agents—a woman named Miss Rostov, who seems to be the doctor’s first Russian henchwoman. But there’s no time for romance here, for Rostov disappears from the story and Fu himself shows up to collect the device he used to execute a wayward Si-Fan agent: a metal disc, similar to many such flunky-killing objects seen in Republic serials,

"The Mind of Fu Manchu” enjoys a female narrator, whom Fu briefly abducts in order to learn more of her scientist boyfriend’s experiments with anti-gravity. The tale offers little to readers, aside from giving them a follow-up to Fu’s experiments with alternate modes of aerial transportation, hearkening back to 1940’s ISLAND OF FU MANCHU.

“The Eyes of Fu Manchu” is easily the best of the shorties. Gregory Allen, also a member of Smith’s very long list of boon friends, happens to be working on methods of extending human life. Since this line of research remains of particular interest to the doctor, he sends another of his exotic ladies, one Mignon, to worm her way into Allen’s confidence. Oddly, though the mission sounds like it should’ve called for an experienced seductress, Fu apparently chooses Mignon for no reason but that she must do anything he says to save her captive father. Predictably, Allen and Mignon fall for one another, making one wonder if the devil-doctor missed his true calling as a yenta. Mignon gets some choice dialogue: having been told by Allen that he considered art as a career rather than science, she remarks, “Science creates horrible things, and art creates beauty.” Perhaps needless to say, Smith prevents Fu from adding Allen to his brain trust. The story may have been inspired by an incident in 1952’s “Wrath of Fu Manchu,” the only story in which Fu seems to be unsure that his elixir vitae can indefinitely preserve his insidious existence.

Though “Wrath” was composed before the three lesser stories, I discuss it last because it deserves the lion’s share of attention. I remarked in my review of RE-ENTER FU MANCHU that I thought perhaps Rohmer had no idea what to do with Fah Lo Suee after her last appearance in 1940’s ISLAND. However, I had completely forgotten that “Wrath” appeared in print prior to the last two novels. I would still maintain that that following her resurrection Fah doesn’t enjoy any standout scenes either in DRUMS or ISLAND, so that her absence in SHADOW isn’t all that much of a come-down. During her minor ISLAND-role as a phony “mamaloa,” Rohmer has Kerrigan claim that she’s still in her brainwashed identity of Koreani. That said, Fu claims that once more his daughter has disobeyed his will by siding with certain unspecified enemies.

“Wrath” eschews any reference to Fah’s brainwashed state; with no explanation, she’s back to being the enchantress of old, including recollecting her antipathy to her tyrannical father. To the extent that Rohmer thought about the matter, he probably reasoned that since certain characters had thrown off Fu’s brainwashing before, it was no stretch to imagine this Oriental “superwoman” doing the same. Another Smith-buddy, a businessman named Thurston (who gets no romantic arc), witnesses a fascinating widow-woman named Mrs. Van Roorden (Fah in disguise) on a luxury cruise. A subsequent murder and a mysterious bequest of the murdered man put Smith on Fah’s trail after the ship disembarks in New York. This allows the policeman to infiltrate a meeting of the Council of Seven (presumably not the same one from the early 20^th century).

Before Smith even fakes the identity of a member in order to sit in on the meeting, he’s somehow aware that Fu’s next plan involves attacking Fort Knox—though not for mere financial gain. Though the doctor no longer has a private island for a permanent base, he still wants the nations of the world to acknowledge the Si-Fan as a world power. Here he resorts to the stick (as he did in DRUMS) rather than the carrot (as in RE-ENTER), for he plans to demonstrate his power by using an atomic weapon to destroy the gold in Fort Knox. This scheme is neutralized by a piece of intelligence Smith learns in the Council-meeting—though this is far from the meeting’s most interesting aspect.

(Though the attack never transpires, it seems likely that Ian Fleming—often said to be a reader of Rohmer—borrowed Rohmer’s idea of a Fort Knox raid for the 1959 James Bond novel GOLDFINGER. Unlike Fu, Goldfinger really does want to loot the fortress of its golden hoard, though oddly, the 1963 movie shifts his motives back to a Soviet-inspired plot to destroy the gold’s value. The more things change--)

Before detailing the momentous encounter between Smith and the daughter of his great enemy, a quick review is needed. Fah and Smith barely interact in most of the early novels, and she never attempts to seduce him, though in “Wrath” Smith mentions some such attempt to Thurston. Then, at the end of TRAIL, when she believes that both she and Smith are doomed to be executed by her father, she confesses, in front of Smith, Fu and various strangers, that she is in love with Smith. Fu fakes slaying his daughter and brings her back in brainwashed form, but Smith never makes the slightest comment about her confession. Happily, Rohmer finally gave his readers a conclusion to this amour fou.

Fah Lo Suee presides over the Council-meeting, and since everyone wears exotic masks, she doesn’t initially see through Smith’s imposture. However, she spots him just as the meeting comes to a close, and, having got rid of the other members—who depart to be arrested by Smith’s colleagues-- she confronts him, asking him not just to give her sanctuary from her cruel father, but to become her lover.

In one or two earlier novels, Rohmer had Smith made some oblique comments on some disenchanting affair of the heart. Rohmer evidently did not forget this barely mentioned aspect of his bulldog policeman:

You are a fascinating woman, Fah Lo Suee, but I locked the door on women and the ways of women one day before you were born…

He admits that this is his presumption, since he doesn’t know when she was born. However, in the 1931 book DAUGHTER she’s said to be about thirty. So even though she’s kept her youthful appearance into her fifties thanks to the elixir vitae, she’s not chronologically much younger than he is. Fah Lo Suee intuits that he’s turned off by the apparent May-December aspect:

To yourself, you are an old man, because there is silver in your hair. To me you are the dream man of my life, because I could never make you love me.

It’s possible that in Rohmer’s mind there was some early encounter between the two that the author never committed to prose, and if so, Fah thus became one of the few Rohmer temptresses not to win her man. To be sure, other interpretations are possible. I’ve mentioned the likelihood that Fah loves Smith precisely because he’s been the foremost enemy of her distant and often indifferent father. Further, MASK OF FU MANCHU implies that Fah Lo Suee has enjoyed many light loves—including an implied chemical seduction of Shan Greville. Thus the reader can’t imagine, as he might with Karameneh and Ardatha, that Fah Lo Suee would come innocent to the bridal bed.

However, though at one point Fah seems close to breaking Smith down with her feminine charms, once more the spectre of Fu Manchu intervenes. Within a “flying saucer” of his own design, Fu has traveled all the way from Cairo to New York, and since he’s heard her willingness to betray the Si-Fan, he condemns his daughter to death. However, Smith’s police allies start breaking into the meeting-place. Fu triggers a device that will flood the building. Then he escapes with his aides, trusting that the water will destroy both his daughter and her beloved. However, one of Fu’s aides, who came along in the saucer, shows up to save both of them. Earlier in the story Fah has mentioned that Fu’s subordinate Huan Tsung was something of a second father to her, bringing her treats and giving her the “sweet perfume” nickname—and here Huan has gone behind his master’s back purely as an act of indirect service to his president:

Time heals all things—even the wrath of Doctor Fu Manchu. And a day must come when Excellency will rejoice to learn that his beloved daughter did not die the death of a drowned rat.

And that’s how Rohmer rang down the curtain on the daughter of Fu Manchu. She and Huan Tsung escape the law, and Smith returns to the workaday world, still giving no evidence of having been in any way personally affected by Fah Lo Suee’s exhortations. Given that in 1952 she went into hiding from her father, there was no way that she could have appeared in either of the last two novels, and it would have been pointless for the author to show the doctor mourning the supposed death of his only offspring. Even though Rohmer did not pass until 1959, it may be that during the 1950s he decided that he ought to wrap up all the loose ends of the devil-doctor’s saga while he still could. “Wrath” does so admirably with respect to Fah, ranking with the character’s best arcs in the thirties and forties.

On a small sidenote, only twice did a character named Fah Lo Suee appear in sound cinema, and in neither MASK OF FU MANCHU nor DRUMS OF FU MANCHU is there much resemblance to Rohmer’s character. The five films produced by Harry Alan Towers simply substitute a wholly Asian beauty, Lin Tang (Tsai Chin), but she too lacks Fah Lo Suee’s rebelliousness and romantic yearning. To the best of my current knowledge, the character has been best served in the Marvel comic series MASTER OF KUNG FU. Not all of Fah’s appearances therein have been perfect, though on the whole it’s arguable that she often comes off better characterized in that adaptation than Fu himself. A small triumph, perhaps-- but a triumph nonetheless.