President Fu Manchu

President Fu Manchu

by Sax Rohmer

Chapter

1

THE ABBOT OF HOLY THORN

Three cars drew up, the leading car abreast of a great bronze door bearing a design representing the beautiful agonized face of the Saviour, a crown of thorns crushed down upon His brow. A man jumped out and ran to this door. Ten men alighted behind him. The wind howled around the tall tower and a carpet of snow was beginning to form upon the ground. Four guards, appearing as if by magic out of white shadows, lined up before the door.

“Stayton!” came sharply. “Stand aside.”

One of the guards stepped forward—peered. A tall, slightly built man who had been in the leading car was the speaker. He had a mass of black, untidy hair, and his face, though that of one not yet west of thirty, was grim and square jawed. He was immediately recognized.

“All right, Captain.”

The man addressed as captain turned to the party and issued orders in a low tone. The leader, muffled up in a leather, fur-collared topcoat, his face indistinguishable beneath the brim of a soft felt hat already dusted with snow, rang a bell beside the bronze door.

It opened so suddenly that one might have supposed the opener to have been waiting inside for this purpose; a short, elegant young man, almost feminine in the nicety of his attire.

The new arrival stepped in and quickly shut out the storm, closing the bronze door behind him. In a little lobby communicating with a large square room equipped as an up-to-date office, but at this late hour deserted, he stood staring at the person who had admitted him.

A churchlike lamp, hung from a bracket on the wall, now cast its golden light upon the face of the man wearing the leather coat. He had removed his hat, revealing a head of crisp, greying hair. His features were angular to the point of gauntness, and his eyes had the penetrating quality of armoured steel, while his complexion seemed strangely out of keeping with the climate, being sun-baked to a sort of coffee colour.

“Are you James Richet?” he snapped.

The elegant young man inclined his glossy head.

“At your service.”

“Lead me to Abbot Donegal. I am expected.”

Richet perceptibly hesitated; whereupon, plunging his hand with an irritable, nervous movement into some pocket beneath the leather topcoat, the visitor produced a card and handed it to Richet. One glance he gave at it, bowed again in a manner that was almost Oriental and indicated the open gate of an elevator.

A few moments later:

“Federal Agent 56,” Richet announced in his silky tones.

The visitor entered a softly lighted study, the view from its windows indicating that it was situated at the very top of the tall tower. From a chair beside a book-laden desk the sole occupant of the room—who had apparently been staring out at the wintry prospect far below—stood up, turned. Mr. Richet, making his queer bow, retired and closed the door.

Federal Agent 56 unceremoniously cast his wet topcoat upon the floor, dropping his hat on top of it. He was now revealed as a tall, lean man, dressed in a tweed suit which had seen long service. He advanced with outstretched hand to meet the occupant of the study—a slightly built priest, with the keen, ascetic features sometimes met with in men from the south of Ireland and thick, greying hair; a man normally actuated by a healthy sense of humour, but to-night with an oddly haunted expression in his clear eyes.

“Thank God, Father, I see you well.”

“Thank God, indeed.” He glanced at the card which Richet had laid upon his desk even as he grasped the extended hand. “I am naturally prepared for interference with my work, but this thing . . .”

The newcomer, still holding the priest’s hand, stared fixedly, searchingly, into his eyes.

“You don’t know it all,” he said rapidly.

“This imprisonment——”

“A necessity, believe me. I have covered seven hundred miles by air since you broke off in the middle of your radio address this evening.”

He turned abruptly and began to pace up and down that book-lined room with it sacred pictures and ornaments, these seeming strangely at variance with the large and orderly office below. Pulling a very charred briar pipe from the pocket of his tweed jacket he began to load it from a pouch at least as venerable as the pipe. The Abbot Donegal dropped back into his chair, running his fingers through his hair, and:

“There is one favour I would ask,” he said, “before we proceed any further. It is difficult to talk to an anonymous man.”

He stared down at the card upon his desk. This card bore the printed words:

FEDERAL AGENT 56

But across the bottom right-hand corner was the signature of the President of the United States.

Federal Agent 56 smiled, a quick, revealing smile which lifted a burden of years from the man.

“I agree,” he snapped in his rapid, staccato fashion. “Smith is a not uncommon name. Suppose we say Smith.”

The rising blizzard began to howl round the tower as though many wailing demons clamoured for admittance. A veil of snow swept across uncurtained windows, dimming distant light. Dom Patrick Donegal lighted a cigarette; his hands were not entirely steady.

“If you know what really happened to me to-night, Mr. Smith,” he said, his rich, orator’s voice lowered almost to a murmur, “for heaven’s sake tell me. I have been deluged with telephone messages and telegrams, but in accordance with your instructions—or” (he glanced at the restlessly promenading figure) “should I say orders—I have answered none of them.”

Smith, pipe alight, paused, staring down at the priest.

“You were brought straight back after your collapse?”

“I was. They would have taken me home, but mysterious instructions from Washington resulted in my being brought here. I came to my senses in the small bedroom which adjoins this study.”

“Your last memory being?”

“Of standing before the microphone, my notes in my hand.”

“Quite,” said Smith, beginning to walk up and down again. “Your words, as I recollect them, were: ‘But if the Constitution is to be preserved, if even a hollow shell of Liberty is to remain to us, there is one evil in this country which must be eradicated, torn up by its evil roots, utterly destroyed. . . .’ Then came silence, a confusion of voices, and an announcement that you had been seized with a sudden illness. Does your memory, Father, go as far as these words?”

“Not quite,” the priest answered wearily, resting his head upon his hand and making a palpable effort to concentrate. “I began to lose my grip of the situation some time earlier in the address. I experienced most singular sensations. I could not co-ordinate my ideas, and the studio in which I was speaking alternately contracted and enlarged. At one moment the ceiling appeared to become black and to be descending upon me. At another, I thought that I stood in the base of an immeasurably lofty tower.” His voice grew in power as he spoke, his Irish brogue became more pronounced. “Following these dreadful sensations came an overpowering numbness of mind and body. I remember no more.”

“Who attended you?” snapped Smith.

“My own physician, Dr. Reilly.”

“No one but Dr. Reilly, your secretary, Mr. Richet, and I suppose the driver of the car in which you returned, came up here?”

“No one, Mr. Smith. Such, I am given to understand, were the explicit and authoritative orders given a few minutes after the occurrence.”

Smith stopped on the other side of the desk, staring down at the abbot.

“Your manuscript has not been recovered?” he asked slowly.

“I regret to say, no. Definitely, it was left behind in the studio.”

“On the contrary,” snapped Smith angrily, “definitely it was not! The place has been searched from wall to wall by those who know their business. No, Father Abbot, your manuscript was not there. I must know what it contained—and from what source this missing information came to you.”

The ever-rising wind in its fury shook the Tower of the Holy Thorn, shrieking angrily round that lofty room in which two men faced a problem destined in its outcome to affect the whole nation. The priest, a rapid, heavy smoker, lighted another cigarette.

“I cannot make it out,” he said—and now a natural habit of authority began to assert itself in his voice—”I cannot make out why you attach such importance to my notes for this speech, nor why my sudden illness, naturally disturbing to myself, should result in this sensational Federal action. Really, my friend”—he leaned back in his chair, staring up at the tanned, eager face of his visitor—”in effect, I am a prisoner here. This, I may say, is intolerable. I await your explanation, Mr. Smith.”

Smith bent forward, resting nervous brown hands on the priest’s desk and staring intently into those upturned, observant eyes.

“What was the nature of the warning you were about to give the nation?” he demanded. “What is this evil growth which must be uprooted and destroyed?”

These words produced a marked change in the bearing of the Abbot Donegal. They seemed to bring recognition of something he would willingly have forgotten. Again he ran his fingers through his hair, now almost distractedly.

“God help me,” he said in a very low voice, “I don’t know!”

He suddenly stood up; his glance was wild.

“I cannot remember. My mind is a complete blank upon this subject—upon everything relating to it. I think some lesion must have occurred in my brain. Dr. Reilly, although reticent, holds, I believe, the same opinion.”

“Nothing of the kind,” snapped Smith; “but that manuscript has to be found! There’s life or death in it.”

He ceased speaking abruptly and seemed to be listening to the voice of the storm. Then, ignoring the priest, he suddenly sprang across the room and threw the door wide open.

Mr. Richet stood bowing on the threshold.

Chapter 2

CHINESE HEAD

In an apartment having a curiously painted ceiling (one might have imagined it to be situated in the crest of a minaret) a strange figure was seated at a long, narrow table. Light, amber light, came through four near-Gothic windows set so high that only a giant could have looked out of them. The man, whose age might have been anything from sixty to seventy—he had a luxurious growth of snow-white hair—was heavily built, weaning a dilapidated woollen dressing-gown;

and his long sensitive fingers were nicotine-stained, since he continuously smoked Egyptian cigarettes. An open tin of those stood near his hand, and he lighted one from the stump of another—smoking, smoking, incessantly smoking.

Upon the table before him were seven telephones, one or other of them almost always in action. When two purred into life simultaneously, the smoker would place one to his right ear, the other to his left. He never replied to incoming messages, nor did he make notes.

In the brief intervals he pursued what one might have supposed to be his real calling. Upon a large wooden pedestal was set a block of modelling clay, and beside the pedestal lay implements of the modeller’s art. This singular old man, the amazing frontal development of his splendid skull indicating great mathematical powers, worked patiently upon a life-sized head of an imposing but sinister Chinaman.

In one of those rare intervals he was working delicately upon the high, imperious nose of the clay head, when a muffled bell sounded and the amber light disappeared from the four Gothic windows, plunging the room into complete darkness.

For a moment there was no sound; the tip of a burning cigarette glowed in the darkness. Then a voice spoke, an unforgettable voice, by which gutturals were oddly stressed but every word was given its precise syllabic value.

“Have you a later report,” said this voice, “from Base 8?”

The man at the long table replied, speaking with German intonations.

“The man known as Federal Agent 56 arrived at broadcasting station twenty minutes after midnight. Police still searching there. Report just to hand from Number 38 states that this agent, accompanied by Captain Mark Hepburn, U.S. Army Medical Corps, assigned to Detached Officers’ List, and a party of nine men arrived Tower of the Holy Thorn at twelve-thirty-two, relieving federals already on duty. Agent 56 last reported in conference with Abbot Donegal. The whole area closely covered. No further news in this report.”

“The Number responsible for the manuscript?”

“Has not yet reported.”

“The last report from Numbers covering Weaver’s Farm?”

“Received at 11.07. Dr. Orwin Prescott is still in retirement there. No change has been made in his plans regarding the debate at Carnegie Hall. This report from Number 35.”

The muffled bell rang. Amber light appeared again in the windows; and the sculptor returned lovingly to his task of modelling a Chinaman’s head.

Chapter 3

ABOVE THE BLIZZARD

In Dom Patrick Donegal’s study at the top of the Tower of the Holy Thorn, James Richet faced Federal Officer 56. Some of his silky sauvity seemed to have deserted him.

“I quite understand your—unexpected—appearance, Mr. Richet,” said Smith, staring coldly at the secretary. “You have greatly assisted us. Let me check what you have told me. You believe (the abbot unfortunately having no memory of the episode) that certain material for the latter part of his address was provided early on Saturday morning during a private interview in this room between the Father and Dr. Orwin Prescott?”

“I believe so although I was not actually present.”

There was something furtive in Richet’s manner; a nervous tremor in his voice.

“Dr. Prescott, as a candidate for the Presidency, no doubt had political reasons for not divulging these facts himself.” Smith turned to Abbot Donegal. “It has always been your custom, Father, to prepare your sermons and speeches in this room, the material being looked up by Mr. Richet?”

“That is so.”

“The situation becomes plainer.” He turned to Richet. “I think we may assume,” he went on, “that the latter part of the address, the part which was never delivered, was in Dom Patrick’s own handwriting. You yourself, I understand, typed out the earlier pages.”

“I did. I have shown you a duplicate.”

“Quite,” snapped Smith; “the final paragraph ends with the words ‘torn up by its evil roots, utterly destroyed.’“

“There was no more. The abbot informed me that he intended to finish the notes later. In fact, he did so. For when I accompanied him to the broadcasting station he said that his notes were complete.”

“And after his—seizure?”

“I returned almost immediately to the studio. But the manuscript was not on the desk.”

“Thank you. That is perfectly clear. We need detain you no longer.”

The secretary, whose forehead glistened with nervous perspiration, went out, closing the door silently behind him. Abbot Donegal looked up almost pathetically at Smith.

“I never thought,” said he, “I should live to find myself so helpless. Can you imagine that I remember nothing whatever of Dr. Prescott’s calling upon me? Except for that vague, awful moment when I faced the microphone and realized that my mental powers were deserting me, I have no recollection of anything that happened for some forty-eight hours before! Yet it seems that Prescott was here and that he gave me vital information. What can it have been? Great heavens”—he stood up, agitatedly—”what can it have been? Do you really believe that I am a victim, not of a failure in my health, but of an attempt to suppress this information?”

“Not an attempt, Father,” snapped Smith, “a success! You are lucky to be alive!”

“But who can have done this thing, and how did he do it?”

“The first question I can answer; the second I might answer if I could recover the missing manuscript. Probably it’s destroyed. We have a thousand-to-one chance. We are indebted to a phone call, which fortunately came through direct to you, for knowledge of Dr. Prescott’s whereabouts.”

“Why do you say ‘which fortunately came through’? You surely have no doubts about Richet?”

“How long with you?” snapped Smith.

“Nearly a year.”

“Nationality?”

“American.”

“I mean pedigree.”

“That I cannot tell you.”

“There’s colour somewhere. I can’t place its exact shade. But one thing is clear: Dr. Prescott is in great danger. So are you.”

The abbot arrested Smith’s restless promenade, laying a hand upon his shoulder.

“There is only one other candidate in the running for dictatorship, Mr. Smith—Harvey Bragg. Yet I find hard to believe that he . . . You are not accusing Harvey Bragg?”

“Harvey Bragg!” Smith laughed shortly. “Popularly known as ‘Bluebeard,’ I believe? My dear Dom Patrick, Harvey Bragg is a small pawn in a big game.”

“Yet—he may be President, or Dictator.”

Smith turned, staring in his piercing way into the priest’s eyes.

“He almost certainly will be Dictator!”

Only the mad howling of the blizzard disturbed a silence which fell upon those words—”He almost certainly will be Dictator.”

Then the priest whose burning rhetoric, like that of Peter the Hermit, had roused a nation, found voice; he .spoke in very low tones:

“Why do you say he certainly will be Dictator?”

“I said almost certainly. His war-cry ‘America for every man—every man for America’ is flashing like a fiery cross through the country. Do you realize that in office Harvey Bragg has made remarkable promises?”

“He has carried them out! He controls enormous funds.”

“He does! Have you any suspicion, Father, of the source of those funds?”

For one fleeting moment a haunted look came into the abbot’s eyes. A furtive memory had presented itself, only to elude him.

“None,” he replied wearily; “but his following to-day is greater than mine. Just as a priest and with no personal pretensions, I have tried—God knows I have tried—to keep the people sane and clean. Machinery has made men mad. As machines reach nearer and nearer to the province of miracles, as Science mounts higher and higher—so Man sinks lower and lower. On the day that Machinery reaches up to the stars, Man, spiritually, will have sunk back to the primeval jungle.”

He dropped into his chair.

Smith, resting a lean, nervous hand upon the desk, leaned across it, staring into the speaker’s face.

“Harvey Bragg is a true product of his age,” he said tensely—”and he is backed by one man! I have followed this man from Europe to Asia, from Asia to South America, from South to North. The resources of three European Powers and of the United States have been employed to head that man off. But he is here! In the political disruption of the country he sees his supreme opportunity.”

“His name, Mr. Smith?”

“In your own interests, Father, I suggest it might be better that you don’t know—yet.”

Abbot Donegal challenged the steely eyes, read sincerity there, and nodded.”

“I accept your suggestion, Mr. Smith. In the Church we are trained to recognize tacit understandings. You are not a private investigator instructed by the President, nor is ‘Mr. Smith’ your proper title. But I think we understand one another. . . . And you tell me that this man, whoever he may be, is backing Harvey Bragg?”

“I have only one thing to tell you: Stay up here at the top of your tower until you hear from me!”

“Remain a prisoner?”

Patrick Donegal stood up, suddenly aggressive, truculent.

“A prisoner, yes. I speak, Father, with respect and authority”

“You may speak, Mr. Smith, with the authority of Congress, of the President in person, but my first duty is to God; my second to the State. I take the eight o’clock Mass in the morning.”

For a moment their glances met and challenged; then:

“There may be times, Father, when you have a duty even higher than this,” said Smith crisply.

“You cannot induce me, my friend, to close my eyes to a plain obligation. I do not doubt your sincerity. I have never met a man more honest or more capable. I cannot doubt my own danger. But in this matter I have made my choice.”

For a moment longer Federal Agent 56 stared at the priest, his lean face very grim. Then, suddenly stooping, he picked up his leather topcoat and his hat from the floor and shot out his hand.

“Good night, Father Abbot,” he snapped. “Don’t ring. I should like to walk down, although that will take some time. Since you refuse my advice, I leave you in good hands.”

“In the hands of God, Mr. Smith, as we all are.”

Outside on the street, beyond the great bronze door with its figure of the thorn-tortured head, King Blizzard held high revel. Snow was spat into the suffering face when the door was opened, as though powers of evil ruled that night, pouring contumely, contempt, upon the gentle Teacher. Captain Mark Hepburn, U.S.M.C, was standing there. He had one glimpse of the olive face of James Richet, who ushered the visitors out, heard his silky “Good night, Mr. Smith”; then the bronze door was closed, and the wind shrieked in mocking laughter around the Tower of the Holy Thorn.

Dimly through the spate of snow watchful men might be seen.

“Listen, Hepburn,” snapped Smith, “get this address:

Weaver’s Farm, Winton, Connecticut. Phone that Dr. Orwin Prescott is not to step outside for one moment until I arrive. Arrange that we get there—fast. Have the place protected. Flying hopeless to-night. Special train to Cleveland. Side anything in our way. Have a plane standing by. Advise the pilot to look up emergency landings within easy radius of Weaver’s Farm. If blizzard continues, arrange for special to run through to Buffalo. Advise Buffalo.”

“Leave it to me.”

“Cover the man James Richet. I want hourly reports sent to headquarters. This priest’s life is valuable. See that he’s protected day and night. Have this place covered from now on. Grab anybody—anybody—that comes out to-night.”

“And where are you going, Chief?”

“I am going to glance over Dom Patrick’s home quarters. Meet me at the station. . . .”

Chapter 4

MRS. ADAIR

Mark Hepburn drove back through a rising blizzard. The powers of his newly accredited chief, known to him simply as “Federal Agent 56,” were peculiarly impressive.

Arrangements—”by order of Federal Agent 56”—had been made without a hitch. These had included sidetracking the Twentieth Century Limited and the dispatch of an army plane from Dayton to meet the special train.

Dimly he realized that issues greater than the fate of the Presidency were involved. This strange, imperious man, with his irritable, snappy manner, did not come under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Justice; he was not even an American citizen. Yet he was highly empowered by the government. In some way the thing was international. Also, Hepburn liked and respected Federal Agent 56.

And the affection of Mark Hepburn was a thing hard to win. Three generations of Quaker ancestors form a stiff background; and not even a poetic strain which Mark had inherited from a half-Celtic mother could enable him to forget it. His only rebellion—a slender volume of verse in the university days, “Green Lilies”—he had lived to repent. Medicine had called him (he was by nature a healer); then army work, with its promise of fresh fields; and now, the Secret Service, where in this crisis he knew he could be of use.

For in the bitter campaign to secure control of the country there had been more than one case of poisoning; and toxicology was Mark Hepburn’s special province. Furthermore, his military experience made him valuable.

Around the Tower of the Holy Thorn the blizzard wrapped itself like a shroud. Only the windows at the very top showed any light. The tortured bronze door remained closed.

Stayton stepped forward out of a white mist as Hepburn sprang from his car.

“Anything to report, Stayton? I have only ten minutes.”

“Not a soul has come out, Captain, and there doesn’t seem to be anybody about in the neighbourhood.”

“Good enough. You will be relieved at daylight. Make your own arrangements.”

Hepburn moved off into the storm. Something in the wild howling of the wind, some message reaching him perhaps from those lighted windows at the top of the tower, seemed to be prompting his subconscious mind. He had done his job beyond reproach. Nevertheless, all was not well.

One foot on the running board of the car, he paused, staring up to where that high light glimmered through snow. He turned back and walked in the direction of the tower. Almost immediately he was challenged by a watchful agent, was recognized, and passed on. He found himself beside a wall of the building remote from the bronze door. Here there was no exit and he went unchallenged. He stood still, staring about him, his fur coat-collar turned up about his ears, the wind frolicking with his untidy wet black hair.

A slight sound came, only just audible above the shrieking of the blizzard, the opening of a window . . . . He crouched close against the wall.

“All clear. Good luck. . . .”

James Richet!

Then someone dropped, falling lightly in the snow almost beside him. The window closed. Hepburn reached out a long sinewy arm, grabbed and held his captive . . . and found himself looking down into the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen!

His prisoner was a girl, little above medium height, but slender, so that she appeared much taller. She was muffled up in a mink coat as a protection against that fierce wind; a Basque beret was crushed down upon curls which reminded him of polished mahogany. A leather satchel hung from one wrist, and she was so terrified that Hepburn could feel her heart beating as he held her in his bear-like grip.

He realized that he was staring dumbly into those uplifted deep-blue eyes, that he was wondering if he had ever seen such long, curling lashes . . . when duty, duty—that slogan of Quaker ancestors—called him sharply. He slightly relaxed his hold, but offered no chance of escape.

“I see,” he said, and his dry, rather toneless voice revealed no emotion whatever. “This is interesting. Who are you and where are you going?”

His tones were coldly remorseless. His arm was like a band of steel. Rebellion died and fear grew in the captive. Now she was trembling. But he was forced to admire her courage, for when she replied she looked at him unflinchingly.

“My name is Adair—Mrs. Adair—and I belong to the staff of the Abbot Donegal. I have been working late, and although I know there is some absurd order for no one to leave, I simply must go. It’s ridiculous, and I won’t submit to it. I insist upon being allowed to go home.”

“Where is your home?”

“That can be no business of yours!” flared the prisoner, her eyes now flashing furiously. “If you like, call the abbot. He will vouch for what I say.”

Mark Hepburn’s square chin protruded from the upturned collar of his coat; his deep-set eyes never faltered in their regard.

“That can come later if necessary,” he said; “but first——”

“But first, I shall freeze to death,” said the girl indignantly.

“But first, what have you got in the satchel?”

“Private papers of Abbot Donegal’s. I am working on them at home.”

“In that case, give them to me.”

“I won’t! You have no right whatever to interfere with me. I have asked you to get in touch with the abbot.”

Without relaxing his grip on his prisoner, Hepburn suddenly snatched the satchel, pulling the loop down over her little gloved hand and thrusting the satchel under his arm.

“I don’t want to be harsh,” he said, “but my job at the moment is more important than yours. This will be returned to you in an hour or less. Lieutenant Johnson will drive you home.”

He began to lead her towards the spot where he knew the Secret Service cars were parked. He had determined to raise a minor hell with the said Lieutenant Johnson for omitting to post a man at this point, for as chief of staff to Federal Agent 56 he was personally responsible. He was by no means sure of himself. The girl embraced by his arm was the first really disturbing element which had ever crashed into his Puritan life; she was too lovely to be real: the teaching of long-ago ancestors prompted that she was an instrument of the devil.

Reluctantly she submitted; for ten, twelve, fifteen paces. Then suddenly resisted, dragging at his arm.

“Please, please for God’s sake, listen to me!”

He pulled up. They were alone in that blinding blizzard, although ten or twelve men were posted at points around the Tower of the Holy Thorn. A freak of the storm cast an awning of snow from the lighted windows, down to the spot upon which they stood, and in that dim reflected light Mark Hepburn saw the bewitching face uplifted to him.

She was smiling, this Mrs. Adair who belonged to Abbot Donegal’s staff; a tremulous, pathetic smile, a smile which in happier hours had been one of exquisite but surely innocent coquetry. Now it told of bravely hidden tears.

Despite all his stoicism, Mark Hepburn’s heart pulsed more rapidly. Some men, he thought, many, maybe, had worshipped those lips, dreamed of that beckoning smile . . . perhaps lost everything for it.

This woman was a revelation; to Mark Hepburn, a discovery. He was suspicious of the Irish. For this reason he had never wholly believed in the sincerity of Patrick Donegal. And Mrs. Adair was enveloped in that mystical halo which haunts yet protects the Celts. He did not believe in this mysticism, but he was not immune from its insidious charm. He hated hurting her, he found himself thinking of her as a beautiful, helpless moth torn by the wind from some green dell where fairies still hid in the bushes and the four-leaved shamrock grew.

He felt suddenly glad about, and not ashamed of, “Green Lilies”. Mrs. Adair, for one magical moment, had enabled him to recapture that long-lost mood. It was very odd, out there in the blizzard, with his radical distrust of pretty women and of all that belonged to Rome. . . .

It was this last thought—Rome—that steadied him. Here was some black plot against the Constitution. . . .

“I don’t ask you, I entreat you to give me my papers and let me go my own way. I promise, faithfully, if you will tell me where to find you, that I will see you to-morrow and explain anything you want to know.”

Hepburn did not look at her. His Quaker ancestors rallied around him. He squared his grim jaw.

“Lieutenant Johnson will drive you home,” he said coldly, “and will bring you your satchel immediately I am satisfied that its contents are what you say they are.”

In the amber-lighted room, where the man with that wonderful mathematical brow sat at work upon the bust of a sinister Chinaman, one of the seven telephones buzzed. He laid down the modelling tool with which he had been working and took up the instrument. He listened.

“This is Number 12,” said a woman’s voice, “speaking from Base 8. In accordance with orders I managed to escape from the Tower of the Holy Thorn. Unfortunately I was captured by a federal agent—name unknown—at the moment that I reached the ground. I was taken under escort of a Lieutenant Johnson towards an address which I invented at random. A Z-car was covering me. Heavy snow gave me a chance. I managed to spring out and get to the Z-car. I regret that the federal agent secured the satchel containing the manuscript. There’s nothing more to report. Standing by here awaiting orders.”

The sculptor replaced the receiver and resumed his task. Twice again he was interrupted, listening to a report from California and to another from New York. He made no notes. He never replied. He merely went on with his seemingless endless task; for he was eternally smearing out the work which he had done, now an ear, now a curve of the brow, and patiently remodelling.

A bell rang, the light went out, and in the darkness that unforgettable, guttural voice spoke:

“Give me the latest report of Harvey Bragg’s reception at the Hollywood Bowl.”

“Last report received,” the Teutonic voice replied, and a cigarette glowed in the darkness, “one hour and seventeen minutes ago. Pacific Coast time: twelve minutes after ten. Audience of twenty thousand people, as earlier reported. Harvey Bragg’s slogan, ‘America for every man—every man for America’was received without enthusiasm. His assurance, hitherto substantiated, that any reputable citizen who is destitute has only to apply to his office to secure immediate employment, went well. Report of end of speech not yet to hand. No other news from Hollywood Bowl. Report sent in by Number 49.”

A moment of silence followed, silence so complete that the crackling of burning tobacco in an Egyptian cigarette might have been heard.

“The report of Number 12—” he glanced at an electric clock upon the table—”at 2.05 a.m.”

“Whereupon, word for word, this man of phenomenal memory repeated the message received from Base 8 exactly as it had been delivered.

A dim bell rang and the room became lighted again. The sculptor picked up a modelling tool.

Chapter 5

THE SPECIAL TRAIN

The special train bored its way through mists of snow.

“They won’t attempt to wreck us, Hepburn!” Federal Officer 56 smiled grimly and tapped the satchel which had belonged to Mrs. Adair. “This is our safeguard. But there may be an attempt of some other kind.”

In the solitary car Smith sat facing Hepburn. Seven of the party which had taken command of the Tower of the Holy Thorn were distributed in chairs about them. Some smoked and were silent; others talked; others again neither smoked nor talked, but glanced furtively in the direction of Captain Hepburn and his mysterious superior.

“You have done a first-class job, Hepburn,” said Smith. “I tricked the man Richet (who is some kind of half-caste) into an admission that this”—he tapped the satchel—”was material supplied by Dr. Prescott.”

“I ordered Richet’s arrest before I left.”

“Good man.”

The train roared through the night and Smith leaned forward, resting his hand upon Hepburn’s shoulder.

“The enemy knows that Dr. Prescott has found out the truth! How Dr. Prescott found out we have got to learn. Clearly he is a brilliant man. I’m afraid, Hepburn—I am afraid—”

He gripped Hepburn’s shoulder and his grip was like that of a vice.

“You have read this thing . . . and the part which is in Father Donegal’s handwriting tells the story. How he was prevented from broadcasting that story I begin to suspect. Note this particularly, Hepburn: I observed that Dom Patrick, when looking over the typescript brought in by James Richet, moistened the tip of his thumb in turning over the pages. A habit. The point seems significant?”

“Not to me,” Hepburn confessed, staring rather haggardly at the speaker.

“Ah! Think it over,” said Smith; then: “I know why you are downcast. You lost the woman—but you got what we were really looking for. Here’s the story of an outside organization aiming to secure control of the country. Don’t worry about Mrs. Adair; it’s only a question of time. We’ll get her.” , Mark Hepburn turned his head aside.

The contents of the satchel had proved to be the completed text of Abbot Donegal’s address, the last five pages revealed a plot which, if carried out, would place the United States under the domination of some shadowy being, unnamed, who apparently controlled inexhaustible supplies not only of capital but of men!

Following this revelation, his new chief, “Federal Officer 56,” had given him his entire confidence. He had suspected, but now he knew, that a world drama was being fought out in the United States. A simple soul at heart, he was temporarily dazzled by recognition of the fact that he had been appointed chief of the staff in an international crisis to Sir Denis Nayland Smith, Ex-Commissioner of Scotland Yard, created a baronet for his services not only to the British Empire but to the world.

And in a moment of weakness he had let the woman go who might be a link, an irreplaceable link, between their task and this thing which aimed to place the United States under alien domination!

In that hour of disillusionment he felt a double traitor, for this man, Nayland Smith, was so dead straight. . . .

An atmosphere of impending harm hovered over the party. Mark Hepburn was not alone in having seen the venomous blizzard spitting snow unto that bronze Face. Among the seven who accompanied them were members of the ancient faith upheld sturdily by the hand of Abbot Donegal; and these, particularly—touched, he told himself, by medieval superstition—doubted and wondered as they were blindly carried through the stormy night. They were ignorant of what underlay it all, and ignorance breeds fear. They knew that they were merely a bodyguard for Captain Hepburn and Federal Officer 56.

Suddenly, appallingly, brakes were applied, all but throwing the nine men out of their chairs. Nayland Smith came to his feet at a bound, clutching the side of the car.

“Hepburn!” he cried, “go forward with two men. This train can slow down but it must not stop!”

Mark Hepburn ran forward along the car, touching two of the seven on their shoulders as he passed. They followed him out. A flare spluttered through snowy mist, clearly visible from the off-side windows.

“Switch off the lights!”

The order came in a high-pitched, irritable voice.

A trainman appeared and the car was plunged in darkness. A second flare broke through the veil of snow. Federal Officer 56 was crouching by a window looking out, and now:

“Do you see!” he cried, and grabbed the arm of a man who was peering out beside him. “Do you see!”

As the train regained momentum, presumably under the urge of Hepburn, a group of men armed with machine guns became clearly visible beside the tracks.

The special was whirling through the night again when Hepburn came back. He was smiling his low smile. Federal Agent 56 turned and stood up.

“This train won’t stop,” said Hepburn, “until we make Cleveland.”

Chapter 6

AT WEAVER’S FARM

“What’s this?” muttered Nayland Smith hoarsely.

The car was pulled up. They were in sight of the woods skirting Weaver’s Farm. Night had fallen, and although the violence of the storm had abated there was a great eerie darkness over the snow-covered landscape.

Parties of men carrying torches and hurricane lanterns moved like shadows through the trees!

Smith sprang out on to a faintly discernible track, Mark Hepburn close behind him. They began to run towards the woods, and presently a man who peered about among the silvered bushes turned.

“What has happened?” Smith demanded breathlessly.

The man, whose bearing suggested military training, hesitated, holding a hurricane lamp aloft and staring hard at the speaker. But something in Smith’s authoritative manner brought a change of expression.

“We are federal agents,” said Mark Hepburn. “What’s going on here?”

“Dr. Orwin Prescott has disappeared!”

Nayland Smith clutched Hepburn’s shoulder: Mark could feel how his fingers quivered.

“My God, Hepburn,” he whispered, “we are too late!”

Clenching his fists, he turned and began to race back to the car. Mark Hepburn exchanged a few words with the man to whom they had spoken and then doubled after Nayland Smith.

They had been compelled by the violence of the blizzard to proceed by rail to Buffalo; the military plane had been forced down by heavy snow twenty miles from the landing place selected. At Buffalo they had had further bad news from Liuetenant Johsnon.

Crowning the daring getaway of Mrs. Adair, James Richet, whose arrest had been ordered by Mark Hepburn, had vanished. . . .

And now they were ploughing a way along the drive which led up to Weaver’s Farm, a white frame house with green shutters, sitting far back from the road. A survival of Colonial New England, it had stood there , outpost of the white man’s progress in days when the red man still hunted the woods and lakes, trading beads for venison and maple sugar. Successive generations had modernized it so that to-day it was a twentieth-century home equipped from cellar to garret with every possible domestic convenience.

The door was wide open; and in the vestibule, with its old prints and atmosphere of culture, a tall, singularly thin man stood on the mat talking to a little white-haired old lady. He held a very wide-brimmed hat in his hand and constantly stamped snow from his boots. His face was gloomily officious. Members of the domestic staff might dimly be seen peering down from an upper landing. Unrest, fear, reigned in this normally peaceful household.

The white-haired lady started nervously as Mark Hepburn stepped forward.

“I am Captain Hepburn,” he said. “I think you are expecting me. Is this Miss Lakin?”

“I am glad you are here, Captain Hepburn,” said the little lady, with a frightened smile. She held out a small, plump, but delicate hand. “I am Elsie Frayne, Sarah Lakin’s friend and companion.”

“I am afraid,” Hepburn replied, “we come too late. This is Federal Officer Smith. We have met with every kind of obstacle on our way.”

“Miss Frayne,” rapped Smith in his staccato fashion, “I must put a call through immediately. Where is the telephone?”

Miss Frayne, suddenly quite at ease with these strange invaders out of the night, smiled wanly.

“I regret to say, Mr. Smith, that our telephone was cut off some hours ago.”

“Ah!” murmured Smith, and began tugging at the lobe of left ear, a habit which Hepburn had come to recognize as evidence of intense concentration. “That explains a lot.” He stared about him, his disturbing glance finally focusing upon the face of the thin man.

“Who are you?” he snapped abruptly.

“I’m Deputy Sheriff Black,” was the prompt but gloomy answer. “I have had orders to protect Weaver’s Farm.”

“I know it. They were my orders—and a pretty mess you’ve made of it.”

The local officer bristled indignantly. He resented the irritable, peremptory manners of this “G” man; in fact Deputy Sheriff Black had never been in favour of Federal interference with county matters.

“A man can only do his duty, Mr. Smith,” he answered angrily, “and I have done mine. Dr. Prescott slipped out some time after dusk this evening. Nobody saw him go. Nobody knows why he went or where he went. I may add that although I may be responsible, there are federal men on this job as well, and not one of them knows any more than I know.”

“Where is Miss Lakin?”

“Out with a search party down at the lake.”

“Sarah has such courage,” murmured Miss Frayne. “I wouldn’t go outside the house to-night for anything in the world.”

Mark Hepburn turned to her.

“Is there any indication,” he asked, “that Dr. Prescott went that way?”

“Mr. Walsh, a federal agent who arrived here two hours ago, discovered tracks leading in the direction of the lake.”

“John Walsh is our man,” said Hepburn, turning to Smith. “Do you want to make any inquiries here, or shall we head for the lake?”

Nayland Smith was staring abstractedly at Miss Frayne, and now;

“At what time, exactly,” he asked, “was your telephone disconnected?”

“At five minutes after three,” Deputy Sheriff Black’s sombre tones interpolated. “There are men trying to trace the break.”

“Who last saw Dr. Prescott?”

“Sarah,” Miss Frayne replied—”that is, so far as we know.”

“Where was he and what was he doing?”

“He was in the library writing letters.”

“Were these letters posted?”

“No, Mr. Smith, they are still on the desk.”

“Was it dark at this time?”

“Yes. Dr. Prescott—he is Miss Lakin’s cousin, you know— had lighted the reading lamp, so Sarah told me.”

“It was alight when I arrived,” growled Deputy Sheriff Black.

“When did you arrive?” Smith asked.

“Twenty minutes after it was suspected Dr. Prescott had left the house.”

“Where were you prior to that time?”

“Out in the road. I had been taking reports from the men on duty.”

“Has anyone touched those letters since they were written?”

“No one, Mr. Smith,” the gentle voice of Miss Frayne replied.

Nayland Smith turned to Deputy Sheriff Black.

“See that no one enters the library,” he snapped, “until I return. I want to look over the room in which Dr. Prescott slept.”

Deputy Sheriff Black nodded tersely and crossed the vestibule.

But even as Nayland Smith turned towards the stair, a deep feminine voice came out of the night beyond the entrance doors, which had not been closed. The remorseless wind was threatening to rise again, howling wanly through the woods like a phantom wolf pack. Flakes of fine snow fluttered in.

“He has been kidnapped, Mr. Walsh—because of what he knew. His tracks end on the shore of the lake. It’s frozen over . . . . but there are no more tracks.”

And now the speaker came in, followed by two men carrying lanterns; a tall, imperious woman with iron-grey hair, aristocratic features, and deep-set flashing eyes. She paused, looking about her with a slow smile of inquiry. One of the two men saluted Hepburn.

“My name is Smith,” said Federal Officer 56, “and this is Captain Hepburn. You are Miss Lakin, Dr. Orwin Prescott’s cousin? It was my business, Miss Lakin, to protect him. I fear I have failed.”

“I fear it also,” she replied, watching him steadily with her fine grave eyes. “Orwin has gone. They have him. He came here for a rest and security. He always came here before any important public engagement. Very soon now at Carnegie Hall is the debate with Harvey Bragg.” (She was very impressive, this grande dame of Old America.) “He had learned something, Mr. Smith—heaven knows I wish I had shared his knowledge—which would have sent Bluebeard back forever to the pinewoods.”

“He had!” snapped Smith grimly.

He reached out a long, leather-clad arm and gripped Miss Lakin’s shoulder. For a moment she was startled—this man’s electric gestures were disturbing—then, meeting that penetrating stare, she smiled with sudden confidence.

“Don’t despair, Miss Lakin. All is not lost. Others know what Dr. Prescott knew——”

At which moment somewhere a telephone bell rang!

“They’ve mended the line,” came the gloomy voice of Deputy Sheriff Black, raised now on a note of excitement.

He appeared at a door on the right of the vestibule.

“All incoming calls are covered,” snapped Smith “as you were advised?”

“Yes.”

“Who is calling?”

“I don’t know,” the deputy sheriff replied, “but it’s someone asking for Sir Denis Nayland Smith.”

He looked in bewilderment from face to face. Nayland Smith stared at Miss Lakin, smiled grimly and walked into a long, low library, a book-lined room with a great log fire burning at one end of it. The receiver of a telephone which stood upon a table near the fire was detached from the rest.

Someone closed the outer door, and a sudden silence came in that cosy room where the logs cracked. Sarah Lakin stood at the threshold, watching with calm, grave eyes. Mark Hepbum stared in over her shoulder.

“Yes,” snapped Smith; “who is speaking?”

There was a momentary silence.

“Is it necessary, Sir Denis, for me to introduce myself?”

“Quite unnecessary, Dr. Fu Manchu! But it is strangely unlike you to show your hand so early in the game. You are outside familiar territory. So am I. But this time, Doctor, by God we shall break you.”

“I trust not, Sir Denis; so much is at stake: the fate of this nation, perhaps of the world—and there are bunglers who fail to appreciate my purpose. Dr. Orwin Prescott, for instance, has been very ill-advised.”

Nayland Smith turned his head towards the door, nodding significantly to Mark Hepburn; some trick of the shaded lights made his lean, tanned face look very drawn , very tired.

“Since you have a certain manuscript in your possession, I assume it to be only a question of time for you to learn why the voice of the Holy Thorn became suddenly silent. In the Father’s interests and in the interests of Dr. Prescott, I advise you to consider carefully your next step, Sir Denis——”

Nayland Smith’s heart pulsed a fraction faster—Orwin Prescott was not dead!

“The abbot’s eloquence is difficult to restrain-and I respect courage. But some day I may cry, in the words of your English King—Henry the Second, was it not?—’Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest . . .’ My cry would be answered—nor should I feel called upon to walk, a barefooted penitent, to pray at the Father Abbot’s tomb beside his Tower of the Holy Thorn.”

Nayland Smith made no reply. He sat there, motionless, listening.

“We enter upon the last phase, Sir Denis . . .”

The guttural voice ceased.

Smith replaced the receiver, sprang up, turned.

“That was a cut-in on the line,” he snapped. “Quick, Hepbum! The nearest phone in the neighbourhood: Check up that call if you can.”

“Right.” Mark Hepburn, his jaw grimly squared, buttoned up his coat.

Sarah Lakin watched Nayland Smith fascinatedly.

“Hell-for-leather, Hepburn! At any cost you must get through to Abbot Donegal to-night. Dr. Fu Manchu warns only once. . . .”

Chapter 7

SLEEPLESS UNDERWORLD

Mark Hepburn replaced a tiny phial of a very rare re-agent on a shelf above his head and, turning, stooped and peered through a microscope at something resembling a fragment of gummy paper. For a while he studied this object and then stood upright, stretching his white-clad arms—he wore an overall—and yawning wearily. The small room in which he worked was fitted up as a laboratory. Save for a remote booming noise as of distant thunder, it was silent.

Hepburn lighted a cigarette and stared out of the closed window. The boom as of distant thunder was explained: it was caused by the ceaseless traffic in miles of busy streets.

Below him spread a night prospect of a large area of New York City. Half-right, framed by the window, the tallest building in the world reared its dizzy head to flying storm clouds. Here was a splash of red light; there, a blur of green. A train moved along its track far away to the left. Thousands of windows made illuminated geometrical patterns in the darkness. To-night there was a damp mist, so that the flambeau upheld by the distant Statue of Liberty was not visible.

A slight sound in the little laboratory on the fortieth floor of the Regal-Athenian Tower brought Hepbum around in a flash.

He found himself looking into the dark, eager face of Nayland Smith.

“Good Lord, Sir Denis! You move like a cat——”

“I used my key. . . .”

“You startled me.”

“Have you got it, Hepburn—have you got it?”

“Yes.”

“What?” Nayland Smith’s lean face, framed in the upturned fur collar of his topcoat, lighted enthusiastically. “First-class job. What is it?”

“I don’t know what it is—that is to say I don’t know from what source it’s obtained. But it’s a concoction used by certain tribes on the Upper Amazon, and I happened to remember that the Academy of Medicine had a specimen and borrowed it. The preparation on the MS., the envelopes and the stamps gives identical reaction. A lot of study has been devoted to this stuff, which has remarkable properties. But nobody has yet succeeded in tracing it to its origin.”

“It is called kaapiT

“It is.”

“I might have known!” snapped Nayland Smith. “He has used it before with notable results. But I must congratulate you. Hepburn: imagination is so rarely allied with exact scientific knowledge.”

He peeled off the heavy topcoat and tossed it on a chair. Hepburn stared and smiled in his slow fashion.

Nayland Smith was dressed in police uniform!

“I was followed to headquarters,” said Smith, detecting the smile. “I can assure you I was not followed back. I left my cap (which didn’t fit me) in the police car. Bought the coat—quite useful in this weather—at a big store with several entrances, and returned here in a taxicab.”

Mark Hepburn leaned back on a glass-topped table which formed one of the appointments of the extemporized laboratory, staring in an abstracted way at Federal Officer 56.

“They must know you are here,” he said, in his slow dry way.

“Undoubtedly! They know I am here. But it is to their advantage to see that I don’t remain here.”

Hepbum stared a while longer and then nodded.

“You think they would come right out into the open like that?”

Nayland Smith shot out his left arm, gripping the speaker’s shoulder.

“Listen. You can hardly have forgotten the machine-gun party on the track when an attempt was made to hold up the special train? This evening I went out by a private entrance kindly placed at my disposal by the management. As I passed the corner of Forty-eighth Street, a car packed with gunmen was close behind me!”

“What!”

“The taxicab in which I was driving belonged to a group known as the Lotus Cabs. . . .”

“I know it. One of the biggest corporations of its kind in the States.”

“It may be nothing to do with them, Hepburn. But the driver was in the pay of the other side.”

“You are sure?”

“I am quite sure. I opened the door, which is in front of the Lotus Cabs, as you may remember, and crouched down beside the wheel. I said to the man: ‘Drive like the devil! I am a federal agent and traffic rules don’t apply at the moment.’“

“What did he do?”

“He pretended to obey but deliberately tried to stall me! In a jam, the gunmen close behind, I jumped out, wriggled clear of the pack, cut through to Sixth Avenue and chartered another cab.”

He paused and drew a long breath. Pulling out the time-worn tobacco-pouch he began to load his briar.

“This ink-shop of yours is somewhat oppressive,” he said. “Let’s go into the sitting-room.”

He walked out to a larger room adjoining, Hepburn following. Over his shoulder:

“Both you and I have got to disappear!” he snapped.

As he spoke he turned, pipe and pouch in hand. Hepburn met the glance of piercing steely eyes and knew that Nayland Smith did not speak lightly.

“The biggest prize which any man ever played for is at stake—the control of the United States of America. To his existing organization—the extent of which even I can only surmise—Dr. Fu Manchu has added the most highly efficient underworld which civilization has yet produced.”

Nayland Smith, his pipe charged, automatically made to drop the pouch back into his coat pocket, was hampered by the uniform, and tossed the pouch irritably on to a chair. He took a box of matches from the marble mantelpiece and lighted his briar. Surrounded now by clouds of smoke he turned, staring at Hepburn.

“You are rounding up your Public Enemies,” he went on, in his snappy, staccato fashion; “but the groups which they controlled remain in existence. Those underground murder gangs are still operative, only awaiting the hand of a master. That master is here . . . and he has assumed control. Our lives Hepburn”—he snapped his fingers—”are not worth that! But let us review the position.

He began to walk up and down, smoking furiously.

“The manuscript of Abbot Donegal’s uncompleted address was saturated with a preparation which you have identified, although its exact composition is unknown to you. His habit, of wetting his thumb in turning over the pages (noted by a spy, almost certainly that James Richet, the secretary who has escaped us) resulted in his poisoning himself before he reached those revelations which Dr. Fu Manchu regarded as untimely. The abbot may or may not recover his memory of those pages, but in is own intersts, and I think in the interests of this country, he has been bound to silence for a time. He is off the air. So much is clear, Hepburn?”

“Perfectly clear.”

“The gum of those stamps and envelopes, reserved for Dr. Prescott’s use at Weaver’s Farm, had been similarly treated. Prescott seems to have left he house and proceeded in the direction of the lake. He was, of course, under the influence of the drug. He was carried, as our later investigations proved, around the bank to the north end of the lake, and from there to the road, where a car was waiting. Latest reports regarding this car should reach headquarters to-night. It was, as suspected, undoubtedly proceeding in the direction of New York.”

“We have no clue to the person who tampered with the stationery at Weaver’s Farm,” Hepburn’s monotonous voice broke in.

“At the moment, none.”

Nayland Smith moved restlessly in the direction of one of the windows.

“Somewhere below there,” he went on, shooting out a pointing forefinger, “somewhere among those millions of lights, perhaps in sight from this very spot—Orwin Prescott is hidden!”

“I think you are right,” said Mark Hepburn, quietly.

“I am all but certain! New York, and not Washington, would be Dr. Fu Manchu’s selection as a base. He has been operating here, through chosen agents, for some months past. Others are flocking to him. I had news from Scotland Yard only this morning of one formidable old ruffian who has slipped though their nets for the twentieth time and is believed to be here. And Prescott will have been brought to the Doctor’s headquarters. God knows what ordeal faces him—what choice he will be called upon to make! It is possible even that he may be given no choice!”

Nayland Smith clenched his fists and shook them desperately in the direction of the myriad of dancing lights of New York City.

“Look!” he cried. “Do you see? The mist has lifted. There is the Statue of Liberty! Do you realize, Hepburn”—he turned, a man all but imperturbable moved now by the immensity of his task—”do you realize what that figure will become if we fail?”

The wild light died from his eyes. He replaced his pipe and audibly gripped the stem between his small, even white teeth.

“We are not going to fail, Sir Denis,” Hepburn replied in dry unmusical tones.

“Thank you,” snapped Nayland Smith, and gripped his shoulder. “Dr. Fu Manchu being a Chinaman, in which quarter of the city should you think it most unlikely he would establish a base?”

“Chinatown.”

Nayland Smith laughed gleefully.

“That is exactly how he will argue.”

In a small room, amber lighted through high windows, a man worked patiently upon a clay model of a Chinese head. A distant bell sounded, and the room became plunged in darkness. Only the glowing end of a cigarette showed through this darkness. A high-pitched guttural voice spoke.

“Give me the latest report from the number responsible for covering Federal Officer 56 in New York.”

“Only one other report to hand,” the modeller replied immediately; “received at eight forty-five. Federal Officer 56 is occupying an apartment in the Regal-Athenian Tower. Federal Officer Captain Mark Hepburn is also located there, and engaged upon chemical experiments. A few minutes after eight o’clock, Federal Officer 56 left by a service door and engaged one of the Lotus cabs. The driver notified the Number covering Lexington exits. A protection car was instructed, but 56 gave them the slip on the corner of Forty-eighth and reached Centre Street at eight thirty-five. Report concluded as follows: ‘Presume he is still at police headquarters as no notification that he has left is to hand.’“

Following a few moments of silence:

“Inform me,” the guttural voice continued, “directly any report is received from Number 38, now proceeding from Cleveland to New York City”

The distant bell rang again and amber light prevailed once more in the small, domed room. The white-haired intellectual sculptor blinked slightly as though this sudden illumination hurt his eyes. Then, taking up tortoise-shell rimmed spectacles which he had laid down at the moment that the light had become extinguished, he dropped the stump of an Egyptian cigarette in an ash tray, having ignited another from the burning end. Taking up a modelling tool he returned to his eternal task.

Chapter 8

THE BLACK HAT

A lotus cab, conspicuous by reason of its cream body-work and pink line, drew up at the corner of Mulberry and Bayard Streets. The passenger got out; a small man/very graceful of movement, dark, sleek, wearing a grey waterproof overcoat and a soft black hat. He stood for a moment beside the driver as he paid his fare, glancing back along the route they had followed.

His fare paid, he crossed Pell Street and began to walk east.

The driver turned his cab, but then made a detour, crossing Mott Street. He pulled up before Wu King’s Bar and went in. He came out again inside three minutes and drove away.

Meanwhile, the man in the black hat continued to walk east. A trickle of rain was falling, and a bleak wind searched the Chinese quarter. He increased his pace. Bright lights shone out from stores and restaurants, but the inclement weather had driven the Asiatic population under cover. In those pedestrians who passed him in the drizzle the man in the black hat seemed to take no interest whatever. He walked on with an easy, swinging stride as one confident that no harm would come to him in Chinatown.

When he passed an open door, to his nostrils came a whiff of that queer commingling of incense and spice which distinguishes the quarter. The Chinaman is a law-abiding citizen. His laws may be different from those of the Western world, but to his own codes he conforms religiously. Only a country cousin on a sight-seeing expedition could have detected anything mysterious about the streets through which the man in the black hat hurried. Even Deputy Inspector Gregory of the branch accountable for the good behaviour of Chinatown had observed nothing mysterious in his patrol of the public resorts and private byways.

Except for a curious hush when he had stopped in at Wu King’s Bar for a chat with the genial proprietor and a look around for a certain Celestial there was nothing in the slightest degree suspicious in the behaviour of the people of the Asiatic quarter. This impression of a hush which had fallen at the moment of his entrance he had been unable to confirm— it might have been imaginary. In any event Wu King’s was the headquarters of the Hip Sing Tong, and if it meant anything it probably meant a brewing disturbance between rival Chinese societies.

He was still considering the impression which this hush, real or imaginary, had made upon his mind when, turning a corner, he all but bumped into the man with the black hat.

The black hat was lowered against the keen wind: the detective, wind behind him, was walking very upright. Then, in a flash, the black-hatted man had gone. Momentarily the idea crossed the detective’s mind that he had not seen the man’s face—it might have been the face of a Chinaman, and he was anxious to meet a certain Chinaman.

He turned for a moment, looking back.

The man in the black hat had disappeared.

It was a particularly foul night, and Gregory had more than carried out his instructions. He trudged on through the icy drizzle to make his report. Secret orders had been received from headquarters calling upon all officers to look out for a very old Chinaman known in London as Sam Pak, and now believed to be posing as a residing alien. His description was vividly etched upon the detective’s mind. The man in the black hat could not possibly fill the part, for this Sam Pak was very old. What this very old man could be wanted for was not clear to the deputy inspector. Nevertheless, that momentary instinct would have served him well had he obeyed it. . . .

The man whose features he had failed to see turned the first corner behind the police officer. When Gregory looked back the man was watching. Seeing Gregory walk on, he pursued his way. This led him past the corner occupied by Wu King’s Bar and right to the end of the block. Here the man in the black hat paused in shelter of a dark doorway, lighting a cigarette and shielding the light with an upraised hand. He then consulted a type-written sheet which he drew from his raincoat pocket. Evidently satisfied that he had not misunderstood his instructions, he replaced the lighter and glanced swiftly right and left along the street. This inspection assured him that none of the few pedestrians in sight was Gregory (whom he had recognized for a police officer). He groped along the wall on his right, found and pressed a bell.

Then again he looked cautiously. Only one traveller, a small, furtive Asiatic figure, was approaching in his direction. A slight sound told the man in the black hat that a door had opened. He turned, stepped forward and paused, seeking now with his left hand. He found a switch and depressed it. He heard the door close behind him. A moment more he waited, then fumbling again in the darkness, he discovered a second switch, and the light sprang up in the narrow passage in which he stood. The door which had opened to admit him was now shut. Another closed door was at the end of the passage. There was a bell-push beside it. He pressed the bell seven times—slowly . . .

Deputy Inspector Gregory had not quite reached the end of the block, when heading towards him through the mist and rain he saw a tall, gaunt figure, that of a Salvation Army captain, grey moustached and bespectacled. He would have passed on, for the presence of Salvation Army officials in unlikely quarters and the most inclement weather was a sight familiar enough. But the tall man pulled up directly in his path and:

“Excuse me if I am wrong,” he said, speaking slowly and harshly, “but I think you are a police officer?”

Gregory glanced the speaker over and nodded.

“That’s right,” he replied. “What can I do for you?”

“I am looking,” the harsh voice continued, “for a defaulter, a wayward brother who has fallen into sin. I saw him not five minutes ago, but lost him on the corner of Pell Street. As you were coming from that direction it is possible that you passed him.”

“What’s he like to look at?”

“He is a small man wearing a grey topcoat and a black soft hat. It is not our intention to charge him with his offence, but it is my duty to endeavour to overtake him.”

“He passed me less than two minutes ago,” Gregory replied sharply “What’s he listed for?”

“Converting money to his own uses; but no soul is beyond redemption.”

The harsh, gloomy voice held that queer note of exaltation which Inspector Gregory had heard so often without being able to determine whether it indicated genuine piety or affection.

“I’ll step back with you,” he said tersely. “I know the corner he went round, and I know who lives in every house on that street. We’d better hurry!”

He turned and hurried back against the biting wind, the tall Salvation Army officer striding along beside him silently. They came to the comer on which Wu King’s Bar was situated— the resort which Gregory had so recently visited; turning around it, they were temporarily sheltered from the icy blast.

“He may have gone into Wu’s,” said Gregory, as they looked along a deserted street, at one or two points of which lights shone out on the rain-drenched sidewalk. “Just stay here, and I’ll check up.”

He pushed open the door of the restaurant. To the nostrils of the Salvation Army official who stood outside was wafted a breath of that characteristic odour which belongs to every Chinatown in the world. In less than a minute the detective was out again.

“Not been in Wu’s,” he reported. “He must have gone in somewhere farther along, otherwise there wouldn’t be any object in going that way; unless he’s out for a walk. There’s no other joint open back there. Do you know of any connections he has in this quarter?”

“Probably many,” the harsh voice replied, and there was sadness in the tone. “He’s attached to our Chinatown branch. I’m obliged to you but will trouble you no further, except to ask that if ever you see this man, you will detain him.”

Gregory nodded, turned, and started off.

“No trouble,” he said. “Hope you find the guy.”

The Salvation Army official walked to the end of the street, gloomily scrutinizing closed doors to right and left, seeming to note the names over the shops, the numbers, the Chinese signs. Then turning to the right again at the end of the block, he walked on through the rain for a considerable distance and finally entered an elevated railroad station. . . .

Salvation Army delegates from all over the United States were assembled in New York that week, and a group of the senior officials had been accommodated at the Regal-Athenian Hotel. Therefore, no one in the vast marble-pillared lobby of that palatial establishment was surprised to see the tall and gloomy captain walk in. No confrere was visible in the public rooms through which he passed: the last had retired fully an hour earlier. Entering a tower elevator:

“Thirty-three,” he announced gloomily.

He stepped out on the thirty-third floor, where two deputies from neighbouring States were sharing an apartment. He did not go to their apartment, however. He opened a door at the end of the long carpeted corridor and began to mount a stair. He met no one on his way, but at the fortieth floor he opened a door and peered out into another deserted carpeted corridor. . . .

Captain Mark Hepburn, pacing restlessly from room to room of the suite at the top of the tower, sometimes looking out of the window at rain-drenched New York below him, sometimes listening to the whine of the elevator, and sometimes exchanging glances with the equally restless Fey, Nayland Smith’s man, who also wandered disconsolately about, suddenly paused in the little vestibule. He had heard quick footsteps.

A moment later the door opened, and a gloomy Salvation Army captain entered.

“Thank God! Sir Denis,” said Hepburn and tried to repress the emotion he felt. “I was getting really worried.”

The Salvation Army captain removed his cap, his spectacles, and, very gingerly, his grey moustache, revealed the gaunt, eager features of Nayland Smith.

“Thanks, Hepburn,” he snapped. “I am sorry to have bothered you. But I was right.”

“What!”

Fey appeared silently, his stoic face a mask.

“A whisky and soda, sir?” he suggested.

“Thanks, Fey; a stiff one.”

A triumphant light danced in Smith’s steely eyes, and:

“It looks as though you had some news,” said Hepburn.

“I have.” Nayland Smith extracted pipe and pouch from the pocket of his uniform jacket. “My guess was right—a pure guess, Hepburn, no more; but I was right. Can you imagine whom I saw down there in Chinatown to-night?”

“Not——”

“No—my luck didn’t go as far as that. But just as I was turning out of Mott Street, right in the light from a restaurant, I saw our friend James Richet—the Abbot Donegal’s ex-secretary!”

“Richet?”

“Exactly; one of the key men. Luck was with me. Then, suddenly, it turned. Of all the unimaginable things, Hepburn . . a real Salvation Army officer came up to me! Following a brief conversation he challenged me to establish my identity, and I was forced to do so.”

He pulled back the top of his tunic, revealing the gold badge of a federal agent.

“A clumsy business, Hepburn. But what could I do? In the meantime I had lost my man. I met a detective officer as I went racing round the corner. He was unmistakable. I know a policeman, to whatever country he belongs, a quarter of a mile away. He had passed my man and did his best. I have memorized all the possible places into which he may have gone. But one thing is established, Hepburn—Dr. Fu Manchu has a Chinatown base. . . .”

Chapter 9

THE SEVEN-EYED GODDESS

James Richet, known to the organization of which he was a member as Number 38, stepped though a doorway—the fifth he had counted—and knew he must be below sea level. This door immediately closed behind him.

He found himself in a lobby with stone-faced walls. A silk-shaded lantern hung from an iron bracket. Immediately facing him was another arched doorway, curtained. Above the curtain-rod glowed a dim semi-circle of light. This place smelled like a joss house. The only other item of furniture was a narrow cushioned divan, and upon this a very old Chinaman was squatting. He wore a garment resembling a blue smock; he crouched forward on the divan, his veinous, claw-like hands resting upon his knees. He was a man of incalculable age: an intricate network of wrinkles mapped the whole of his face. His eyes were mere slits in the yellow skin. He might have been a chryselephantine statue, wrought by the cunning hands of a Chinese master.

A movement ever so slight of the bowed head indicated to Richet that the man on the divan was looking at him. He raised the left lapel of his topcoat. A small badge, apparently made of gold and ivory, not unlike one of the chips used at the Monte Carlo gaming tables, was revealed. It bore the number 38.

“James Richet,” he said.

One of the talon hands moved back to the wall—and in some place beyond a bell rang, dimly. A clawish finger indicated the curtained doorway. James Richet crossed the lobby, drew the curtain aside and entered.

The night out of which he had come was wet and icily cold, but the moisture which he wiped now from his forehead was not entirely due to the rain. He had removed his hat and stood looking about him. This was a rectangular apartment, also stone-faced; the floor was of polished stone upon which several rugs were spread. There were seven doors, two in each of the long walls, two in that ahead of him, and the one by which he had entered. Above each of them, on an iron bracket, a lantern was hung, shaded with amber silk. All the openings were draped, and the drapery of each was of a different colour. There were cushioned seats all around the walls, set between the seven openings.

There was no other furniture except a huge square block of black granite, set in the centre of the stone floor and supporting a grotesque figure which only an ultra-modern sculptor could have produced: a goddess possessing seven green eyes, so that one of her eyes watched each of the openings. There was the same perfume in the place as of stale incense, but nevertheless unlike the more characteristic odour of Chinatown. The place was silent, very silent. In contrast to the bitter weather prevailing up above, its seemed to be tropically hot. There was no one visible.

Richet looked about him uneasily. Then, as if the proximity even of the mummy-like Chinaman in the lobby afforded some sense of human companionship, he sat down just right of the opening by which he had entered, placing his black hat upon the cushion beside him.

He tried to think. This place was a miracle of cunning— Chinese cunning. As one descended from the secret street door (and this alone, was difficult to find) a second, masked door gave access to a considerable room. He realized that a police raid would almost certainly end there. Yet there were three more hidden doors—probably steel—and three short flights of stone steps before one reached this temple of the seven-eyed goddess. These doors had been opened from beyond as he had descended.

No sound came from the lobby. Richet slightly changed his position. A green eye seemed to be watching him. But it proved to be impossible to escape the regard of one of those seven eyes; and, viewed from any point, the grotesque idol displayed some feminine line, some strange semblance of distorted womanhood. . . .

James Richet was a qualified attorney, and had practised for several years in Los Angeles. The yellow streak in his pedigree—his maternal grandmother had been a Kanaka— formed a check to his social ambition. Perhaps it was an operative factor in his selection of an easier and more direct path to wealth than the legitimate practice of his profession had offered him. He had become the legal adviser to one of the big beer barons. Later, the underworlds of Chicago and New York held no secrets from him. . . .

The silence of this strange stone cellar was very oppressive;

he avoided looking at the evil figure which dominated it. . . .

His former chiefs, one after another, had been piled up on the rocks of the new administration. Then a fresh tide had come in his affairs, at a time when he began seriously to worry if Federal inquiries would become focussed upon himself. Some new control had seized upon the broken group of which he was a surviving unit. A highly paid post was found for him as legal adviser and secretary to Abbot Donegal. He was notified that special duties would be allotted from time to time. But in spite of all his cunning—for he was more cunning than clever—he had not up to the present moment succeeded in learning the political aims of the person or persons who, as he had realized for a long time, now controlled the vast underworld network which extended from coast to coast of the United States.

Of his former associates he had seen nothing during the time that he was attached to Abbot Donegal’s staff at the Shrine of the Holy Thorn. Copies of the abbot’s colossal mailing list he had supplied to an address in New York City;

advance drafts of all sermons and lectures; and a precis of a certain class of correspondence.

Personal contact between himself and his real employer was made through the medium of Lola Dumas. His last urgent instructions, which had led to the breakdown of Abbot Donegal during a broadcast lecture, had been given to him by Lola . . . . that provocative study in slender curves, creamy skin and ebony-black hair, sombre almond-shaped eyes (deep, dark lakes in which a man’s soul was drowned); petulant scornful lips . . . Lola.

Lola! She was supremely desirable, but maddeningly elusive. Together, what could they not do? She knew so many things that he burned to learn; but all that he had gathered from her was that they belonged to an organization governed by a board of seven. . . .

Hot though the place was, he shuddered. Seven! This hell-inspired figure which always watched him had seven eyes!

From time to time Lola would appear in the nearby town without warning, occupying the best suite in the best hotel and would summon him to meet her. It was Lola Dumas, on the first day that he had taken up his duties, who had brought him his badge. He had smiled. Later he had ceased to smile. Up to the time that he had fled from the Shrine of the Holy Thorn he had never learned how many other agents of the “Seven” were attached to the staff of the abbot. Two only he had met: Mrs. Adair, and a man who acted as night watchman. Now, shepherded from point to point in accordance with typed instructions headed: “In the event of failure” and received by him on the morning before the fateful broadcast, he was in New York; at last in the headquarters of his mysterious chief!

Something in the atmosphere of this place seemed to shake him. He wondered—and became conscious of nervous perspiration—if his slight deviation from the route laid down in his instructions had escaped notice. . . .

One of the coloured curtains was swept aside and he saw Lola Dumas facing him from the end of the temple of the seven-eyed goddess.

Chapter 10

JAMES RICHET

Mark Hepburn sat at the desk by the telephone, making notes of many incoming calls, issuing instructions in some cases. Nayland Smith, at the big table by the window, worked on material which seemed to demand frequent reference to one of two large maps pinned on the wall before him. Hepburn lighted numberless cigarettes. Nayland Smith was partially hidden behind a screen of pipe smoke.

Despite the lateness of the hour, Fey, the taciturn, might be heard moving about in the kitchenette.

The doorbell rang.

Smith turned in his chair. Hepburn stood up.

As Fey crossed the sitting-room to reach the vestibule:

“Remember orders, Fey!” Smith rapped.

Fey’s Sioux-like, leathern features exhibited no expression whatever. He extended a large palm in which a small automatic rested.

“Very good, sir.”

He opened the door. Outside stood a man in Regal-Athenian uniform and another who wore a peaked cap.

“He’s all right,” said the man in uniform. “He is a Western Union messenger. . . .”

When the door was closed again and Fey had returned to his cramped quarters, Nayland Smith read the letter which the man had delivered. He studied it carefully, a second and a third time; then handed it to Hepburn.

“Any comments?”

Mark Hepburn took the letter and read:

WEAVER’S FARM WINTON, CONN.

DEAR SIR DENIS:

Something so strange has occurred that I feel you should know at once. (I regret to say that my telephone is again out of order.) A man called upon me early this evening who gave the name of Julian Sankey. Before this, he made me promise to tell no one but you what he had to say. He implied that he had information that would enable us to locate Orwin. He was a smallish, dark man, with very spruce lank black hair and the slyly ingratiating manners of an Argentine gigolo. A voice like velvet.

I gave my promise, which seemed to satisfy him, and he then told me that he was a reluctant member of an organization which planned to make Harvey Bragg dictator. He conveyed the idea that he knew the inside of this organization and that he was prepared, on terms, and with guaranteed government protection, to place all his knowledge at our disposal. He assured me that Orwin was a prisoner in New York, and that his (Sankey’s) safety being assured by you, he would indicate the exact spot.

I have an address to which to write, and it is evidently urgent. I shall be in New York tomorrow and will call upon you, if I may, at four o’clock.

What do you think we should do?

Very sincerely yours, sarah lakin.

Mark Hepburn laid the letter down upon the table.

“The description,” he said drily, “would fit James Richet as well as any man I know.”

Nayland Smith, watching him, smiled triumphantly.

“I am glad to hear you say so.” He declared. “You order this man’s arrest; he disappears. He is out to save his skin—”

“It may be.”

“If it is Richet, then Richet would be a valuable card to hold. It’s infuriating, Hepburn, to think that I missed grabbing the fellow to-night! My next regret is that our fair correspondent omits the address at which we can communicate with this ‘Julian Sankey.’ Does any other point in the letter strike you?”

“Yes,” said Hepburn slowly. “It’s undated. But my own sister, who is an honour graduate, rarely dates her letters. The other thing is the telephone.”

“The telephone is the all-important thing.”

Mark Hepburn turned and met the fixed gaze of Nayland Smith’s eyes. He nodded.

“I don’t like the disconnected telephone, Hepburn. I know the master schemer who is up against us . . . ! I am wondering if this information will ever come to hand . . . .”

A man who wore a plain yellow robe, in the loose sleeves of which his hands were concealed, sat at a large lacquered table in a small room. Some quality in the sound which penetrated through three windows, all of them slightly opened, suggested that this room was situated at a great height above a sleepless city.

Two of the walls were almost entirely occupied by bookcases; the lacquer table was set in the angle formed by these books, and upon it, in addition to neatly arranged documents, were a number of queer-looking instruments and appliances.

Also there was a porcelain bowl in which a carved pipe with a tiny bowl rested.

The room was very hot and the air laden with a peculiar aromatic smell. The man in the yellow robe lay back in a carved, padded chair; a black cap resembling a biretta crowned his massive skull. His immobile face resembled one of those ancient masterpieces of ivory mellowed in years of incense; a carving of Gautama Buddha—by one who disbelieved his doctrine. The eyes in this remarkable face had been closed; now, suddenly, they opened. They were green as burnished jade under moonlight.

The man in the yellow robe put a on pair of tinted spectacles and studied a square, illuminated screen which was one of the several unusual appointments of the table. . . . Upon this screen, in miniature, appeared a moving picture of the subterranean room where the seven-eyed goddess sat eternally watching. James Richet was talking to Lola Dumas.

The profound student of humanity seated at the lacquer table was cruelly just. He wished to study this man who, after doing good work, had seen fit to leave his ordered route and to visit the cousin of Orwin Prescott. Steps had been taken to check any possible consequences. But the fate of the one who had made these measures necessary hung now in the balance.

They stood close together, and although their figures appeared distant, but not so perhaps through the lenses of the glasses worn by the Chinaman, their voices sounded quite normal, as though they were speaking in the room in which he sat.

“Lola, I have the game in my hand.” Rcihet threw his left arm around the woman’s shoulders and drew her to him. “Don’t pretend. We’re in this thing together.”

Lola Dumas’ lithe body bent backward as he strove to reach her lips.

“You are quite mad,” she said breathlessly. “Because I was amused once, why should you think I am a fool?” She twisted, bent, and broke free, turning and facing him, her dark eyes blazing. “I can play, but when I work, I quit play. You are dreaming, my dear, if you think you can ever get control.”

“But I tell you I have the game in my hand!” The man, fists clenched, spoke tensely, passionately. “It is for you to say the word. Why should a newcomer, a stranger, take charge when you and I——”

“You young fool! Do you want to die so young?”

“I tell you, Lola, I’m not the fool. I know Kern Adier, the big New York lawyer, is in this. And what I say goes with Kern. I know ‘Blondie’ Hahn is. And Blondie stands for all the useful boys still at large. I know how to handle Blondie. We’re old friends. I have all the Donegal material. No one knows the inside of the Brotherhood of National Equality as I know it. What’s more—I know where to go for backing, and I don’t need Bragg! Lola . . .”

A slender ivory hand, the fingernails long, pointed and highly burnished, moved across the lacquered table in that distant high room.

Six of the seven lights over curtained openings went out.

“What’s this?” muttered Richet. “What do we do now?”

He was inspired by his own vehemence; he felt capable of facing Satan in person.

“Go into the lighted alcove,” said the woman coldly. “The President is ready to interview you.”

Richet paused, fists still half clenched, stepped towards the light, then glanced back. Lola Dumas had gone. She was lost in the incense-haunted darkness . . . but one green eye of the goddess watched him out of the shadows. He moved forward, swept the curtain aside and found himself in a small, square stone cell, possessing no furniture whatever. The curtain fell back into place with a faint swishing sound. He looked about him, his recent confidence beginning to wane. Then a voice spoke—a high-pitched, guttural voice.

“James Richet, I am displeased with you.” Richet looked right, left, above and below. Then:

“Who is speaking?” he demanded angrily. “These stage illusions are not impressive. Was I to blame for what happened? I wish to see you, speak to you face to face.”

“An unwise wish, James Richet. Only Numbers one to twelve have that privilege.”

Richet’s brow was covered with nervous perspiration. “I want a square deal,” he said, striving to be masterful. “You shall have a square deal,” the implacable, guttural voice replied. “You will be given sealed orders by the Number in charge of Base 3. See that you carry out his instructions to the letter. . . .”

in

Mark Hepburn sprang up in bed.

“All right, Hepburn!”—it was Nayland Smith’s voice. “Sorry to awaken you, but there’s a job for us.”

The light had been switched on, and Hepburn stared somewhat dazedly at the speaker, then glanced down at his watch. The hour was 3.15 a.m. But Nayland Smith was fully dressed. Now wide awake:

“What is it?” Hepburn asked, impressed by his companion’s grim expression and beginning also to dress hastily.

“I don’t know—yet. I was called five minutes ago—I had not turned in—by the night messenger. A taxi—perhaps a coincidence, but it happens to be a Lotus taxi—pulled up at the main entrance. The passenger asked the man to step into the lobby and inquire for me——”

“In what name?”

“The title was curiously accurate, Hepburn. It was typed on a slip of paper. The man was told to ask for Federal Agent Ex-Assistant Commissioner Sir Denis Nayland Smith, O.B.E.!”

Hepburn was now roughly dressed. He turned, staring:

“But to everybody except myself and Fey you are plain Mr. Smith!”

“Exactly. That is why I see the hand of Dr. Fu Manchu, who has a ghastly sense of humour, in this. The man proceeded to obey his orders, I gather, but he had not gone three paces when something happened. Let’s hurry down. The man is there . . . so is his passenger.”

The night manager and a house detective were talking to Fey by the open door of the apartment.

“Queerest thing that ever happened in my experience, gentlemen,” said the manager. “I only hope it isn’t a false alarm. The string of titles means nothing to me. But you are Mr. Smith and I know you are a Federal agent. This way. The elevator is waiting. If you will follow me I will take you by a shorter route.”

Down they went to the street level. Led by the manager they hurried along a service passage, crossed a wide corridor, two empty offices, and came out at the far end of the vast pillared and carpeted main foyer. Except for robot-like workers vacuum cleaning, it was deserted and in semi-darkness. A lofty, shadow-haunted place. Light shone from the open door of the night manager’s room. . . .

A man who wore a topcoat over pyjamas was examining a still figure stretched on a sofa. There were three other men in the room, one of them the taxi driver.

Nayland Smith shot a searching glance at the latter’s pale, horrified face, as, cap on the back of his head, he stared over the doctor’s shoulder, and then, pushing his way forward, he too looked once, and:

“Good God!” he muttered. “Hepburn”—Mark Hepburn was beside him—”what is it? Have you ever met with anything like it?”

There was a momentary silence, grotesquely disturbed by the hum of a distant vacuum cleaner.

The prostrate man, whose torso had been stripped to restore cardiac action, exhibited on his face and neck a number of vivid scarlet spots. They were about an eighth of an inch in diameter and on the dull white skin resembled drops of blood. . . .

“Never.”

Mark Hepburn’s voice was husky. The doctor looked up. He was a heavily built Teutonic type, his shrewd eyes magnified by powerful spectacles.

“If you are a brother practitioner,” he said, “you are welcome. This case is outside my experience.”

“When did he actually die?” rapped Nayland Smith.

“He was already dead when I arrived—although I worked over him for ten minutes or more—”

“The scarlet spots!”—blurted the taxi driver in a frightened voice—“That’s what he called out, ‘The scarlet spots’—and then he was down on the sidewalk rolling about and screaming!”

Mark Hepburn glanced at Nayland Smith.

“You were right,” he said; “we shall never get that information.”

The dead man was James Richet, ex-secretary to Abbot Donegal!

Chapter 11

RED SPOTS

“What is it, mister,” the taximan whispered, “some new kind of fever?”

“No,” said Nayland Smith. “It’s a new kind of a murder!”

“Why do you say so?” the hotel doctor asked, glancing in a puzzled way at the ghastly object on the sofa.

But Nayland Smith did not reply. Turning to the night manager:

“I want no one at present in the foyer,” he said, “to leave without my orders. You”—he pointed to the house detective— “will mount guard over the taxicab outside the main entrance. No one must touch it or enter it. No one must pass along the sidewalk between the taxi and the hotel door. It remains where it stands until further notice. Hepburn”—he turned— “get two patrolmen to take over this duty. Hurry. I need you here.”

Mark Hepburn nodded and went out of the night manager’s room, followed by the house detective.

“What about anyone living here and coming in late?” asked the night manager, speaking with a rich Tipperary brogue.

“What’s your house detective’s name?”

“Lawkin.”

“Lawkin!” cried Smith, standing in the open door, “any residents are to be directed to some other entrance.”

“O.K., sir.”

“The use of an office, Mr. Dougherty,” Nayland Smith continued, addressing the manager, “on this floor? Can you oblige us?”

“Certainly Mr. Smith. The office next to this.”

“Excellent. Have you notified the police?”

“I considered I had met regulations by notifying yourself and Captain Hepburn.”

“So you have. I suppose a man is not qualified to hold your job unless he possesses tact.” He turned to the taximan. “Will you follow Mr. Dougherty to the office and wait for me there?”

The driver, a man palpably shaken, obeyed Dougherty’s curt nod and followed him out, averting his eyes from the sofa. Two men and the doctor remained, one wearing dinner kit, the other a lounge suit. To the former:

“I presume that you are the assistant night manager?” said Nayland Smith.

“That is so. Fisk is my name, sir. This”—indicating the square-jowled wearer of the lounge suit—”is James Harris, assistant house detective.”

“Good,” rapped Nayland Smith. “Harris—give a hand to Lawkin outside.” Harris went out. “And now, Mr. Frisk, will you please notify Mr. Dougherty that I wish to remain alone here with Dr.——?”

“My name is Scheky,” said the physician.

“—with Dr. Scheky.”

The assistant night manager went out. Nayland Smith and Dr. Scheky were alone with the dead man.

“I have endeavoured to clear this room, Doctor,” Smith continued, addressing the burly physician in the topcoat, “without creating unnecessary panic. But do you realize that you and I face risk of the same death”—he pointed—”that he died?”

“I had not realized it, Mr. Smith,” the physician admitted, glancing down with a changed expression at the bright red blotches on the dead man’s skin; “nor do I know why you suspect murder.”

“Perhaps you will understand later, Doctor. When Captain Hepburn returns I am sending for certain equipment. If you care to go to your apartment I will have you called when we are ready. . . .”

In an adjoining office, amid cleared desks and closed files, the pale-faced taximan faced Nayland Smith’s interrogation.

“I took him up to Times Square. . . . No, I never seen him before. He gave the address ‘Regal Athenian, Park entrance.’ . . . Sure he seemed all right; nothing wrong with him. When we get here he says: ‘Go in to the desk and ask if this man is in the hotel’—and slips me the piece of paper through the window. ‘Give ‘em the paper’—that was what he said. ‘It’s a hard name—’

“Sure of that?” rapped Nayland Smith.

“Dead sure. I took the paper and started. . . . There was nobody about. As I moved off, he pulled out of his pocket what looks like a notebook. I guess it’s out there now. . . . Next minute I hear his first yell—mister, it was awful! He had the door open in a flash and falls right out on to the sidewalk.”

“Where were you? What did you do?”

“I’m half-way up the hotel steps. I started to run back. He’s lashing around down there and seems to be tearing his clothes off—”

“Stop. You are quite certain on this point?”

“Sure,” the man declared earnestly; “I’m sure certain. He had his topcoat right off and ripped his collar open. . . . He’s yelling, ‘The scarlet spots!’ like I told you. That’s what I heard him yell. And he’s fighting and twisting like he was wrestling with somebody. . . . Gee!”

The man pulled his cap off and wiped his brow with the back of his hand.

“I run in here. There wasn’t a cop in sight. Nobody was in sight. . . . What could I do, mister? I figured he’d gone raving mad. . . . When we got out to him he’s lying almost still. Only his hands was twitchin. . . .”

The night manager came into the office.

“All heat turned off on this floor,” he reported, “and all doors closed. . . .”

Outside the Regal-Athenian the atmosphere was arctic. Two patrolmen watched Mark Hepburn with an electric torch and a big lens examining every square foot of sidewalk and the carpeted steps leading up to the main entrance. Residents who arrived late were directed to a door around the corner. In reply to questions the invariable answer of the police was:

“Somebody lost something valuable.”

The death cab had been run into an empty garage. It had been sealed; and at this very moment two men wearing chemist’s masks were pumping it full of a powerful germicidal gas.

Later, assisted by Dr. Scheky—both men dressed as if working in an operating theatre—Hepburn stripped and thoroughly examined the body and the garments of James Richet. The body was then removed, together with a number of objects found in Richet’s possession. The night manager’s room was sealed, to be fumigated. The main foyer, Nayland Smith ordered, must be closed to the public pending further orders. Dawn was very near when Dr. Scheky said to Hepburn:

“You are not by chance under the impression that this man died of some virulent form of plague?”

Mark Hepburn stared haggardly at the physician. They were dead beat.

“To be perfectly frank, Doctor,” he answered, “I don’t know of what he died. . . .”

Chapter 12

NUMBER 81

In that doomed room, amber lighted through curious Gothic windows, the white-haired sculptor sat smoking Egyptian cigarettes and putting the finishing touches to a sinister clay head which one might have assumed to be his life’s work. Pinned upon a wooden panel beside the tripod on which the clay was set, was some kind of small coloured picture, part of which had been masked out so that what remained resembled a tiny face surrounded by a margin of white paper.

This the sculptor examined through a powerful magnifying glass, and then lowering the glass, scrutinized the clay. Evidently his work was to attempt to produce a life-sized model of the tiny head pinned to the board.

Seeming to be not wholly satisfied, the sculptor laid down the lens with a sigh and wheeled the clay along to the end of the table. At which moment the amber light went out, the dim bell rang. A high-pitched, imperious, guttural voice spoke.

“The latest report from the Regal-Athenian.”

“Received at 5.10 a.m. from Number in charge. Foyer closed to the public by Federal orders. Night manager’s office sealed. Taxi in garage on Lexington. The body of the dead man identified as that of James Richet, late secretary to Abbot Donegal, removed at 5 a.m. to police mortuary. Cause of death unknown. Federal Agents Smith and Hepburn in their quarters in the tower. End of report.”

Followed some moments of silence, broken only by an occasional faint ticking from an electric clock. Then:

“Fix the recording attachment, Number 81,” came an order. You are free for four hours.”

Amber light poured again into the room. Number 81 stood up. Opening a cupboard in the telephone table, he attached three plugs to a switchboard contained in the cupboard. One of these connected with the curious electric clock which stood upon the desk; another with a small motor which operated in connection with the telephone; and a third with a kind of dictaphone capable of automatically recording six thousand words or more without change of cylinder.

As he was about to close the cupboard, a dim buzz indicted an incoming message. The faint hum of well-oiled machinery followed; a receiver-rest was lifted as if by invisible fingers, and a gleaming black cylinder began to revolve, the needlepoint churning wax from its polished surface as the message was recorded. A tiny aluminium disc dropped into a tray below the electric clock, having stamped upon it the exact time at which the telephone bell had rung.

Number 81, as if his endless duties had become second nature, waited until the cylinder ceased to revolve. The telephone-rest sprang up into its place; from the electric clock came the sound of a faint tick. Number 81 pressed a button on the desk. The cylinder began to revolve again and a voice spoke—that of the man whose report had just been recorded.

“Speaking from Base 3. The Abbot Donegal reported missing. There is reason to believe that he slipped away during the night and may be proceeding to New York to be present at the debate at Carnegie Hall. All Numbers along possible routes have been notified, but no report to hand. Number 44 speaking.”

Presumably satisfied that the mechanism was running smoothly Number 81 closed the cupboard and stood up. Thus seen, he was an even bigger man than he had appeared seated; an untidy but an imposing figure. He took up the clay model, lifting it with great care. He slipped a tin of Egyptian cigarettes into a pocket of his dressing-gown and walked towards one of the panels which surrounded the seemingly doorless room.

This he opened by pressing a concealed switch. A descending staircase was revealed. Carrying the clay model as carefully and lovingly as a mother carries her newly-born infant, he descended, closing the door behind him. He went down one flight and entered a small, self-contained apartment. A table littered with books, plans and all sorts of manuscripts stood by an open window. There was a bed in an alcove, and beyond, through an open door, a glimpse might be obtained of a small bathroom. Clearing a space on the littered table, Number 81 set down the clay model. He crossed the room and opened a cupboard. It showed perfectly empty. He raised a telephone from its hook. In German:

“The same as last night,” he said harshly; “but the liver sausage was no good. Also, I must have the real German lager. This which you send me is spurious. Hurry, please, I have much to do.”

These orders given, he crossed to the table and stared down dully at a large open book which lay there, its margins pencilled with numerous notes in tiny, neat handwriting. The book was “Interstellar Cycles” by Professor Albert Morgenstahl, Europe’s greatest physicist and master mathematician, expelled a year earlier from Germany for anti-Nazi tendencies and later reported to be dead.

At this work Number 81 stared for some time, turning the pages over idly and resting a long tobacco-stained finger upon certain of the notes. There was a creaking in the cupboard and a laden wagon occupied its previously vacant space. Upon this wagon a substantial repast was set. Taking out a long-necked bottle of wine and uncorking it, Number 81 filled a glass. This he tasted and then set it down.

He threw open the french windows upon one side of the room, revealing a narrow balcony with a high railing of scrolled ironwork. A weather-beated table stood there, and for a moment Number 81 leaned upon it, gazing down upon a night panorama of the great city below; snow-covered roofs, leaden sky. It was bitterly cold at that great elevation; an icy breeze stirred the mane of white hair.

But, as if immune to climatic conditions, Number 81 bore out the clay head of the majestic Chinaman and set it upon the table. Below him a dome, its veins gilded, every crack and cranny coated with snow, swept down gracefully to a lower parapet. Muffled noises from streets set in deep gullies, reached his ears. He returned for his glass of wine, raised his head to the leaden sky, and:

“To the day of freedom!” he cried. “To the day when we meet face to face.” And now his eyes, glaring insanely, were lowered to the clay head—“To the day when we meet face to face; when those wheels in which I am trapped, which seem to move, inexorable as the planets in their courses, are still forever.”

He drank deeply, then tossed the remainder of the wine contemptuously into the face of the modelled head. He dashed the glass on the paving at his feet and, picking up the work to which he had devoted so many hours of care, raised it in both hands high above his head.

His expression mechanical, his teeth bared in a wolfish grin, far out over the dome he hurled it. It fell with a dreadful thud on the leaden covering. It broke, the parts showering down to the parapet, to fall, meaningless fragments, into some street far below . . . .

Chapter 13

TANGLED CLUES

In the light of a grey wintry dawn creeping wanly through the windows, Nayland Smith and Mark Hepburn stood looking down at some curious objects set out upon the big corner table. These had been found in Richet’s possession.

One was a gold and ivory badge. Hepburn took it up and stared at it curiously. It bore the number 38.

“According to the taximan,” said Nayland Smith, “to whom I showed it, these badges simply mean that the wearer is an official of Harvey Bragg’s League of Good Americans. It appears that no man is eligible for employment by the Lotus Cab Corporation who is not a member of this league.”

“There’s more to it than that,” Hepburn murmured thoughtfully.

“I agree; but I don’t think the man knew it. He admitted that they sometimes had orders from wearers of such badges requiring them to pick up certain passengers at indicated points and to report where they set them down.”

“But he denied that he had any such orders last night?”

“He stuck to it grimly. According to his account, the choice of his cab by Richet was a coincidence.”

Hepburn laid the badge down.

“There are only two other points of interest,” said Nayland Smith, “although we may learn more if we can trace Richet’s baggage. These are his notes of Weaver’s Farm and of this address, and . . . that.”

The object to which he pointed, found upon the floor of the taxi, was certainly an odd thing for a man to carry about. It was a cardboard case made to hold a pack of playing cards . . . but there were no cards!

Several sheets of blank paper had also been found, folded in a manner which seemed to indicate that they had been in the cardboard case. This case, in Smith’s opinion, was the object which the driver had mistaken for a notebook.

“Richet was actually holding it in his hand, Hepburn,” he rapped energetically, “at the moment of his attack. The fact is of first-rate importance.”

Hepburn, eyes half closed, nodded slowly. The nervous energy of this man surpassed anything in his experience. And as if recognition of his companion’s weariness had come to him suddenly, Nayland Smith grasped Hepburn’s arm.

“You are asleep already!” he declared, and smiled sympathetically. “Suppose we arrange to meet for ham and eggs at noon. Don’t forget, Miss Lakin is due at four o’clock. If you meet her—not a word about Richet.”

The bell rang, and Fey, his leathery face characteristically expressionless, crossed the vestibule and opened the door. A woman stood there, tall and composed, her iron-grey hair meticulously groomed as it peeped from beneath the brim of a smart but suitable hat. She was wrapped in furs. Beside her stood a man who wore the uniform of the Regal-Athenian Hotel. He exchanged a glance with Fey, nodded, turned and went away.

“Sir Denis is expecting you, madam,” said Fey, standing aside.

And as the visitor entered the vestibule, Nayland Smith hurried from the adjoining sitting-room, hand outstretched. His lean brown features exhibited repressed excitement.

“Miss Lakin,” he exclaimed, “you are very welcome. I received the letter which you sent by special messenger, but your phone message has intrigued me more than the letter. Please come in and sit down and give me all the details.”

The sitting-room in which Miss Lakin found herself possessed several curious features. The windows which occupied nearly the whole of one wall afforded a view of a wide area of New York City. Storm clouds had passed; a wintry sun lighted a prospect which had a sort of uncanny beauty. Upon countless flat roofs far below, upon the heads of gargoyles and other grotesque ornamentations breaking the lines of the more towering buildings, snow rested. The effect was that of a city of ice gnomes magically magnified. Through clear, frosty air the harbour was visible, and one might obtain a glimpse of the distant sea. Above a littered writing-table set near one of the windows, a huge map of the city was fixed upon the wall; the remainder of this wall was occupied by a map, on a much smaller scale, of the whole of the United States. These maps had one character in common: they were studded with hundreds of coloured pins which appeared to have been stuck in at random.

“The room is rather warm, madam,” said Fey. “Allow me to take your coat.”

The heavy fur coat draped carefully across his arm:

“A cup of tea, madam?” he suggested.

“English tea,” snapped Nayland Smith.

“Thank you,” said Miss Lakin, smiling faintly; “you tempt me. Yes, I think I should enjoy a cup of tea.”

Nayland Smith stood before the mantelpiece, hands behind him. He had that sort of crisp, wavy hair, silvery now at the sides, which always looks in order; he was cleanly shaven, and his dark-skinned face offered no evidence of the fact that he had had only six hours’ sleep in the past forty-eight. He wore a very old tweed suit, and what looked like a striped shirt with an attached collar, but which closer scrutiny would have revealed to be a pyjama jacket. As Fey went out:

“Miss Lakin,” he continued, and his manner was that of a man feverishly anxious, “you have brought me the letter to which you referred?”

Sarah Lakin took an envelope out of her handbag and handed it to Nayland Smith, watching him with her steady, grave eyes. He took it, glanced at the hand-written address, then crossed to the writing-table.

“I have also,” she said, “a note of the place at which we were to communicate with the very unpleasant person who called upon me yesterday.”

Nayland Smith turned; his expression was grim.

“I fear,” he said rapidly, “that we cannot hope for much help from that quarter.” He turned again to the littered table. “Here are three letters written by Orwin Prescott at Weaver’s Farm immediately prior to his disappearance. You know why I detained them and what I have discovered?”

Miss Lakin nodded.

“Copies have been sent to the persons to whom the letters were addressed, but I should judge, although I am not a specialist in the subject, that this is in Dr. Prescott’s hand-writing?”

“I can assure you that it is, Sir Denis. Intellectually my cousin and I are too closely akin for any deception to be possible. That letter was written by Orwin. Please read it.”

A subdued clatter of teacups became audible from the kitchenette to which Fey had retired, as Nayland Smith extracted the letter from the envelope. Sarah Lakin watched Sir Denis intently. He fascinated her. Brief though her acquaintance with him had been, her own fine nature had recognized and welcomed the keen, indomitable spirit of this man, who in an emergency personal and national, had thrown the weight of his trained powers into the scale.

He studied the letter silently, reading it once, twice. He then read it aloud:

“dear sarah,

This is to relieve your anxiety. By this time you will know that I am the victim of a plot; but I have compromised with the enemy, pax in hello, and I congratulate you and those associated with you upon the manner in which you have succeeded in restraining the newspapers from reference to the subject of my temporary disappearance. I have instructed Norbert, who will communicate with you. The experience has been unpleasant and even now I am not wholly my own master. Please conduct yourself as though you were ignorant of this misadventure, but have no fears respecting my appearance at Carnegie Hall. I shall be there. I dislike seeming to mystify, but it would be to my best interests if you make no attempt to communicate with me until the night of the debate. It is unnecessary that I should tell you to have courage.

Always affectionately yours,

orwin.”

“No date,” Nayland Smith commented. “No address. A sheet torn from a common type of writing-block. The envelope, also, is of a very ordinary kind, bearing a New York postmark. H’m . . . !”

He dropped letter and envelope upon the desk and, taking up a tobacco pouch, began to load his pipe. Fey entered with a tea tray which he placed upon a small table before Miss Lakin.

“Cream or milk?”

“Milk, and one piece of sugar, thank you.”

Except for a certain haggardness visible on the face of Nayland Smith and the strangeness of his attire in one obviously trained to conform to social custom, there was little in the atmosphere of this room high above the turmoil of New York to suggest that remorseless warfare raged about the pair who faced one another across the tea-table.

“I am entirely at a loss what to do, Sir Denis.”

As Fey withdrew, the deep voice of Miss Lakin broke the silence; her steady eyes were fixed upon Nayland Smith. He lighted his pipe, paused, looked down at her, and:

“A very foul briar is unusual at tea-time,” he snapped, and dropped his pipe in an ash tray. “Please forgive me. I am up against the greatest and perhaps the last problem of my life.”

“Sir Denis . . .” Miss Lakin bent forward, took up the charred pipe from the tray and extended it towards him. “Surely you know that I understand. I have lived in a wider world than Connecticut, and I want your advice badly. Please concentrate upon the problem in your own way. What should I do? What do you advise me to do?”

Nayland Smith stared hard at those grave eyes of the speaker; then, pipe in hand, began to walk up and down the room, tugging at the lobe of his left ear. They were forty floors above the streets of New York, and yet the ceaseless bombila-tion of those amazing thoroughfares reached them through such windows as were open: the hooting of lorry horns, the roar often thousand engines, the boom of a distant train rumbling along the rails, the warning siren of a tug-boat on East River. The city was around them, throbbing, living, an entity, a demi-god, claiming them—and as it seemed in this hour, demanding their destruction.

“Is the phrasing characteristic of your cousin’s style?” Nayland Smith demanded.

“Yes, broadly”

“I understand. It struck me as somewhat pedantic.”

“He has a very scholarly manner, Sir Denis, but as a rule it is not so marked in his intimate letters.” “Ah. . . . Who is Norbert?” “Maurice Norbert is Orwin’s private secretary.” “I see. May I take it, Miss Lakin, that in this fight for domination of the United States your cousin did not actually aim at the Presidency?”

“He did not even desire it, Sir Denis. He is what our newspapers term a hundred-per-cent American, but in the best sense of the phrase. He hoped to break the back of Harvey Bragg’s campaign. His aims were identical with those of the Abbot Donegal. His disappearance from the scene at this time would be fatal.”

“I agree! But it seems that he is not going to disappear.” “Then do you believe that what he says is true?” “I am disposed to believe it, Miss Lakin. My advice is to conform strictly to the letter and spirit of his request.” Miss Lakin was watching him intently, then:

“I am afraid I don’t agree with you, Sir Denis,” she said. “Why?” He turned and faced her.

“That Orwin was kidnapped we know. Thank God he is alive! Surely he was forced to write this letter by the kidnapers. They are playing for time. Surely you can see that they are playing for time!”

Chapter 14

THE SCARLET BRIDES

In a small, book-lined room, high above New York City, dimly lighted and pervaded by a faint smell of incense, Dr. Fu Manchu, wearing a yellow robe but with no cap crowning his massive skull, sat behind a large lacquered table, his eyes closed. From a little incense burner on one comer of this table a faint spiral of smoke arose-some might have ascribed this to a streak of effeminacy in an otherwise great man, but one who knew the potency of burning perfumes as understood in the ancient Orient would have placed a different construction upon the circumstances. The Delphic Oracle was so inspired; incense cunningly prepared, such as the khyfi of the ancient Egyptians, can exalt the subconscious mind. A voice was speaking as though someone stood in the room, although except for the presence of the majestic Chinaman it was empty.

Dr. Fu Manchu pressed a button, the voice ceased, and there was silence in the incense-laden place. For two, three, five minutes the Chinaman sat motionless, his lean, long-fingered hands resting upon the table before him, his eyes closed.

“I am here, Master,” said a feeble voice speaking in Chinese.

“Listed carefully,” Dr. Fu Manchu replied in the same language. “It is urgent How many of our Scarlet Brides from New Zealand have you in reserve?”

“Fifteen, Master. I sacrificed five in the case of the man James Richet, fearing that some might not survive the cold.”

“It is reported that Danger Number One—I hear you hiss, my friend—invariably sleeps with his windows open. Sacrifice ten more of our little friends. See that he does not sleep alone to-night.”

“My lord, I have no one who could undertake the work. If I had Alt Khan or Quong Wah, or any one of our old servants. But I have none. What can I do in this uncivilized land to which my lord has exiled me?”

Several moments of silence followed. The long ivory hands with their incredible nails, beautiful even in their cruelty, rested motionless upon the table, then:

“Await orders,” said the imperious, guttural voice.

Another button was depressed and there was silence. The pencil of smoke rising from the incense burner was growing more and more faint. Dr. Fu Manchu opened his eyes, staring straight before him; his eyes were green as emeralds, glittering gems reflecting an inexorable will. His right hand moved to a small switchboard. He inserted a plug, and presently a spot of red light indicted that he was connected.

“Is that’A’New York?”

“Kern Adier here.”

“You know to whom you are speaking?”

“Yes. What can I do for you, President?”

The voice was unctuous but nervous.

“We have not yet met,” the imperious tone continued, “but I assume, otherwise I should not have appointed you, that you can command the services of the New York underworld?”

There was a perceptible pause before Kern Alder replied.

“If you would tell me, President, exactly what you want, I should be better able to answer.”

“I want the man called Peter Carlo. Find him for me. I will then give you further instructions.”

Another pause . . .

“I can find him, President.” The nervous voice replied “but only through Blondie Hahn.”

“I distrust this man Hahn. You have recommended him, but I have not yet accepted him. I have my reasons. However, speak to him now. You know my wishes. Report to me when they can be carried out.”

The red light continued to glow; one yellow finger pressed a small switch with the result that the office of Kern Adier, Attorney, and one of the biggest survivors of the underworld clean-up, seemed to become acoustically translated to the study of Dr. Fu Manchu. Adier could be heard urgently calling a number; and presently he got it.

“Hello, Kern,” came a coarse voice; “want the boss, I guess. Hold on; I’ll get him.” There was an interval during which dim sounds of dance music penetrated to the incense-laden room, then: “Hello, Kern,” came in a deep bass; “what’s new with you?”

“Listen, Blondie. I’m telling you something. If you want a quiet life you have to fall into line. I mean it. It’ll be good for your health to go to work again. Either you come in right now or you stay right out. I want something done to-night—you have got to do it.”

“Listen to me, Kern. You’ve spilled a mouthful. But what you don’t seem to know is this: you’ve been washed up—and you figure you’re still afloat. You’re stone dead but you won’t lie down. Come clean and I’ll talk to you. I’m standing all ready on my two big feet. I don’t need your protection.”

“I want ‘Fly’ Carlo, and I’m prepared to pay for him. He has to get busy to-night. President’s orders——”

“President nothing! But listen—you can have Carlo, when I hold the pay roll. That’s my terms now and always. What’s the figure? Carlo will cost the President (like hell he’s the President!) all of two thousand dollars. He can only get him through me. I’m his sole agent and my rake-off is my own pid-gin.”

“Your terms are ridiculous, Blondie. Talk sense.”

“I’m talking sense all right. And I’ve got something very particular to say to you.” The deep, gruff voice was menacing “Somebody got busy among my records last night while I was at a party. If I thought it was you, I’d steal you away from your girl friends, little man. Next time you wrote a love letter it’d be with a quill from an angel’s wing.”

At which moment Kern Adier’s line became suddenly disconnected.

“Hello there!” Hahn bawled. “You cut me off! What in hell——”

His protests were silenced. A guttural voice came across the wires:

“You have been put through to me—the President. . . . Paul Erckmann Hahn—I believe this is your name?—you possess a certain brute force which attracts me. You are crude; but you might possibly be used.”

“Used?” Hahn’s voice sounded stifled. “Listen——”

“When I speak, it is you who must listen. The person ‘who got busy among your records,’ as you term it, was one of my own agents—in no way connected with Kern Adier. I learned much that I had wished to know about you, Mr. Hahn . . .”

“Is that so?” came a bull-like bellow. “Then listen, pet!— You’re a Chink if I ever heard one. That tells me plenty. I’ve been checking up on you. The ‘G’ men are right on your tail, yellow baby. Centre Street has got your fingerprints, and Hoover knows your toenails by sight. You’re using an old hide-out in Chinatown, and there’s a blue-eyed boy from Britain on the trail. You’re in up to the ears, President. You’ll need me badly to save your scalp. Adier can’t do it. He’s out of print. Come up to date and talk terms.”

Long ivory fingers remained quite motionless upon the table. Dr. Fu Manchu’s eyes were closed.

“Your remarks impress me,” he said softly, sibilantly. “I feel that you are indispensable to my plans. By all means let us talk terms. The matter is urgent. . . .”

Mark Hepburn tried, and tried in vain, to sleep. The image of a woman haunted him. He had checked her up as far as possible. He thought that he had her record fairly complete.

She was the widow of a United States naval officer. Her husband had been killed in the Philippines three years before. There was one child of the marriage—a boy. In fact, the credentials with which she had come to Abbot Donegal were authentic in every way. A thousand times, day and night, he had found himself in an imaginary world sweeter than reality—looking into those deep blue eyes. He found it impossible to believe that this woman would stoop to anything criminal. He would not entertain the idea despite damning facts against her.

He wanted to hear evidence for the defence, and he was fully prepared to take it seriously. In all his investigations he hoped yet feared to come across her. He wondered if at last he had fallen in love—and with a worthless woman. Her flight on that night from the Tower of the Holy Thorn, the fact that she had been endeavouring to smuggle away the incriminating manuscript which explained the collapse of Abbot Donegal; these things required explanation. Yet the official record of Moya Eileen Adair, as far as he had traced it, indicated that she was a young gentlewoman of unblemished character.

She came from County Wicklow in Ireland; her father, Commander Breon, was still serving with the British navy. She had met her late husband during the visit of an American fleet to Bermuda, where she had been staying with relatives. He was of Irish descent; he, too, was a man of the sea, and they had been married before the American fleet sailed. All this Mark Hepburn had learned in the space of a few days, employing those wonderful resources at his disposal Now, tossing wearily on his bed, he challenged himself. Had he been justified in instructing more than twenty agents, in expending nearly a thousand dollars in radio and cable messages, to secure this information?

The fate of the country was kept spinning in the air by those who juggled with lives. Sane men prayed that the Constitution should stand foursquare; others believed that its remodelling as preached by Dr. Prescott would form the foundations of a new Utopia. Others, more mad, saw in the dictatorship of Harvey Bragg a Golden Age for all. . . . And the Abbot of Holy Thorn held a choir of seven million voices in check awaiting the baton of his rhetoric.

Bribery and corruption gnawed rat-like into the very foundations of the State; murder, insolent, stalked the city streets. . . And he, Mark Hepburn, expended his energies tracing the history of one woman. As he lay tossing upon his pillow the whole-hearted enthusiasm of Sir Denis Nayland Smith became a reproach.

Then suddenly, he sprang upright in bed, repeater in hand.

The door of his room had been opened very quietly. . . .

“Hands up!” he rasped. “Quick!”

“Not so loud, Hepburn, not so loud.”

It was Nayland Smith.

“Sir Denis!”

Smith was crossing the room in his direction.

“I don’t want to arouse Fey,” the incisive but guarded tones continued. “He has had a trying day. But it’s our job, Hepburn. Don’t make any noise; just slip along with me to my room. . . . Bring the gun.”

In silence, pyjama-clad, barefooted, Hepburn went along the corridor, turning right just before reaching the vestibule. In the room occupied by Nayland Smith the atmosphere was perceptibly cooler. The windows were wide open; heavy curtains were drawn widely apart; a prospect of a million lights gleamed far below; the muted roar of New York’s ceaseless traffic rose like rumbling of distant thunder.

“Close the door.”

Mark Hepburn closed the door behind him as he entered.

‘You will notice,” Nayland Smith continued, “that I have not been smoking for some time, although I have been wide awake. I was afraid of the glow from my pipe.”

“Why?”

“For this reason, Hepburn. Our brilliant enemy has become a slave to routine. It is now almost a habit with him to test his death-agents upon someone else, and if the result is satisfactory to try them on me . . .”

“I’m not too clear about what you mean——”

“I mean that unless I am greatly mistaken, I am about to be subjected to an attempt upon my life by Dr. Fu Manchu!”

“What! But you are forty storeys up from the street!”

“We shall see. You may remember that I deduced the arrival of certain weapons in the Doctor’s armoury from circumstances connected with the death of Richet. . .”

“I remember. But a long night’s work was wasted.”

“Part of our trade,” rapped Nayland Smith dryly. “You will notice, Hepburn—there is ample reflected light—two trunks upon the top of a chest of drawers set against the wall on your left. Climb up and hide yourself behind the trunks—I have placed a chair for the purpose. Your job is to watch the windows but not to be seen——”

“Good God!” Hepburn whispered, and clutched Smith’s arm.

“What is it?”

“There’s someone in your bed!”

“There’s no one in my bed, Hepburn, nor is there any time to waste. This job is life or death. Get to your post.”

Mark Hepburn rallied his resources: that shock of discovering the apparent presence of someone in the bed had shaken him. But now he was icily cool again, cool as Nayland Smith. He climbed on to the chest of drawers, curled up there behind the trunks, although space was limited, in such a manner that he had a view of the windows while remaining invisible from anyone in the room. This achieved:

“Where are you, Sir Denis?” he asked, speaking in a low voice.

“Also entrenched, Hepburn. Do nothing until I give the word. And now listen. . . .”

Mark Hepburn began to listen. Clearly he sensed that the menace came from the windows, although its nature was a mystery to him. He heard the hooting of taxis, the eerie wail which denotes that the Fire Department is out, the concerted whine of motor engines innumerable. Then, more intimately, these sounds becoming a background, he heard something else. . . .

It was a very faint noise but a very curious one; almost it might have been translated as the impact of some night bird, or of a bat, against the stone face of the building. . . .

He listened intently, aware of the fact that his heartbeats had accelerated. He allowed his glance to wander for a moment in quest of Nayland Smith. Presently, accustomed now to the peculiar light of the room, he detected him. He was crouching on a glass-topped bureau, set just right of the window, holding what Hepburn took to be a sawn-off shot-gun in his hand.

Then again Hepburn directed the whole of his attention to the windows.

Clearly outlined against a sullen sky he could see one of New York’s tallest buildings. Only three of its many windows showed any light; one at the very top, just beneath the cupola, and two more in the dome itself which crowned the tall, slender structure. Tensed as he was, listening, waiting, for what was to come, the thought flashed through his mind: Who lived in those high, lonely rooms—who was awake there at this hour?

Another curious light was visible from where he lay—a red glow somewhere away to the left towards the river; a constantly changing light of which he could see only the outer halo. Then a moving blur appeared far below, and a rumbling sound told him that a train was passing. . . .

Suddenly, unexpectedly, a sharp silhouette obscured much of this dim nocturne. . . .

Something out of that exotic background belonging to the man who, alone, shared this vigil to-night, had crept up between the distant twinkling lights and Mark Hepburn’s view.

Vaguely he realized that the phenomenon was due to the fact that someone, miraculously, had climbed the face of the building, or part of it, and now, as he saw, was supporting himself upon the ledge. There was a moment of tense silence. It was followed by activity on the part of the invader perched perilously outside. A light, yellow-muffled, shone into the room, its searching ray questing around, to rest finally for a moment upon the bed.

Mark Hepburn held his breath; almost, he betrayed his presence.

The appearance of the disordered bed suggested that a sleeper, sheets drawn up right over his head, lay there!

“Dr. Fu Manchu has become a slave of routine”—Nayland Smith’s words echoed in Hepburn’s mind. “It is almost a habit with him to test his death-agents upon someone else, and if the result is satisfactory to try them on me.”

The shadowy silhouette perched upon the window ledge projected some kind of slender telescopic rod into the room. It stretched out towards the bed. . . . Upon it depended what looked like a square box. The rod was withdrawn. The visitor accomplished this with a minimum of noise. Hepburn, his ears attuned for the welcome word of command, watched. An invisible line was wound in, tautened, and jerked.

Suddenly came a loud and insistent hissing, and:

“Shoot!” snapped the voice of Nayland Smith. “Shoot that man, Hepburn!”

in

The shadowy shape at the window had not moved from that constrained, crouching attitude—two enormous hands, which appeared to be black, rested on the window ledge—when Mark Hepburn fired—once, twice. . . . The sinister silhouette disappeared; that strange hissing continued; the muted roar of New York carried on.

Yet, automatic dropped beside him, fist clenched, he listened so intently, so breathlessly, that he heard it. . . .

A dull thud in some courtyard far below.

“Don’t move, Hepburn,” came Nayland Smith’s crisp command. “Don’t stir until I give the word!”

An indeterminable odour became perceptible—chemical, nauseating. . . .

“Sir Denis!”

It was the voice of Fey.

“Don’t come in, Fey!” cried Nayland Smith. “Don’t open the door!”

“Very good, sir.”

Only a very keen observer would have recognized the note of emotion in Fey’s almost toneless voice.

The hissing noise continued.

“This is terrible!” Hepburn exclaimed. “Sir Denis! What has happened?”

The hissing ceased: Hepburn had identified it now.

“There’s a switch on your right,” came swiftly. “See if you can reach it, but stay where you are.”

Hepburn, altering his position, reached out, found the switch, and depressed it. Lights sprang up. He turned—and saw Nayland Smith poised on top of the bureau. The strange weapon which vaguely he had seen in the darkness proved to be a large syringe fitted with a long nozzle.

The air was heavy with a sickly sweet smell suggesting at once iodine and ether.

He looked towards the bed . . . and would have sworn that a figure lay under the coverlet—a sheet drawn up over its face! On the pillow and beside the place where the sleeper’s head seemed to lie rested a small wooden box no more than half the size of those made to contain cigars. One of the narrow sides—that which faced him—was open.

There seemed to be a number of large black spots upon the pillow. . . .

“It’s possible,” said Nayland Smith, staring across the room, “that I missed the more active. I doubt it. But we must be careful.”

Above the muted midnight boom of New York, sounds of disturbance, far below, became audible.

“I’m glad you didn’t miss our man, Hepburn!” rapped Nayland Smith, dropping on to the carpeted floor.

“I have been trained to shoot straight,” Mark Hepburn replied monotonously.

Nayland Smith nodded.

“He deserved all that came to him. I faked the bed when I heard his approach. . . . Jump into a suit and rejoin me in the sitting-room. We shall be wanted down there at any moment. . . .”

Three minutes later they both stood staring at a row of black insects laid upon a sheet of white paper. The reek of iodine and ether was creeping in from the adjoining bedroom. Fey, at a side table, prepared whiskies imperturbably. He was correctly dressed except for two trifling irregularities: his collar was that of a pyjama jacket, and he wore bedroom slippers.

“This is your province, Hepburn,” said Nayland Smith. “These things are outside my experience. But you will note that they are quite dead, with their legs curled up. The preparation I used in the syringe is a simple formula by my old friend Petrie: he found it useful in Egypt . . . . Thank you, Fey.”

Mark Hepburn studied the dead insects through a hand-lens. Shrunken up as they were by the merciless spray which had destroyed them, upon their dense black bodies he clearly saw vivid scarlet spots—”Scarlet spots”—the last words spoken by James Richet!

“What are they, Hepburn?”

“I’m not sure. They belong to the genus Latrodectus. The malmignatte of Italy is a species, and the American Black Widow spider; but these are larger. Their bite is probably deadly”

“Their bite is certainly deadly!” rapped Nayland Smith. “An attack by two or more evidently results in death within three minutes—also a characteristic vivid scarlet rash. You know, now, what was in the cardboard box which James Richet opened in the taxi-cab! No doubt he had orders to open it at the moment that he reached the hotel. One of the Doctor’s jests. I take it they are tropical?”

“Beyond doubt.”

“Once exposed to the frosty air, and their deadly work done, they would die. You know, now, why I provided myself with that”—he pointed to the syringe. “I have met other servants of Fu Manchu to whom a stone-faced building was a grand staircase.”

“Good God!” Mark Hepburn said hoarsely. “This man is a fiend—a sadistic madman——”

“Or a genius, Hepburn! If you will glance at the receptacle which our late visitor deposited on my pillow, you will notice that it is made from a common cigar box. One side lifts shut-terwise: there is a small spring. It was controlled, you see, by this length of fine twine, one end of which still rests on the window ledge. This hook on top was intended to enable the Doctor’s servant to lift it into the room on the end of the tele-scopic rod. The box is lightly lined with hay. You may safely examine it. I have satisfied myself that there is nothing alive inside. . . .”

“This man is the most awful creature who has ever appeared in American history,” said Hepburn. “The situation was tough enough, anyway. Where does he get these horrors? He must have agents all over the world.”

Nayland Smith began to walk up and down, twitching at the lobe of his ear.

“Undoubtedly he has. In my experience I have never felt called upon to step more warily. Also, I begin to think that my powers are failing me.”

“What do you mean?”

“For years, Hepburn, for many years, a palpable fact has escaped me. There is a certain very old Chinaman whose records I have come across in all parts of the world; in London, in Liverpool, in Shanghai, in Port Said, Rangoon and Calcutta. Only now, when he is in New York (and God knows how he got here!), have I realized that this dirty old barkeeper is Dr. Fu Manchu’s chief of staff!”

Mark Hepburn stared hard at the speaker, and then:

“This accounts for all the men at work in Chinatown,” he said slowly. “The man you mean is Sam Pak?”

“Sam Pak—none other,” snapped Nayland Smith. “And the truth respecting this ancient reprobate”—he indicated the writing-table—”reached me in its entirety only a few hours ago. If you could see him you would understand my amazement. He is incredibly old, and—so much for my knowledge of the East—I had always set him down as one step above the mendicant class. Yet, in the days of the empress, he was governor of a great province; in fact, he was Dr. Fu Manchu’s political senior! He was one of the first Chinamen to graduate at Cambridge, and he holds a science degree of Heidelberg.”

“Yet in your knowledge of him he has worked in slums in Chinatown—been a barkeeper?”

“It might occur in Russia to-morrow, Hepburn There are princes, grand dukes—I am not speaking of gigolos or soi-disant noblemen—spread about the world who, the right man giving the word, would work as scavengers, if called upon, to restore the Tsars.”

“That’s true enough.”

“And so, you see, we have got to find this aged Chinaman. I suspect that he has brought with him an arsenal of these unpleasant weapons which the doctor employs so successfully—Hullo! There’s the phone. We are wanted to identify the climber. . . .”

Chapter 15

THE SCARLET BRIDES (concluded)

Old Sam Pak was performing his nightly rounds of Base 3. Two Chinese boys were in attendance.

Up above, political warfare raged; the newspapers gave prominence to the Washington situation in preference to love, murder, or divorce. Dr. Orwin Prescott was reported to be “resting up before the battle.” Harvey Bragg was well in the news. Other aspirants to political eminence might be found elsewhere: “Bluebeard of the Backwoods” was front-page stuff. America was beginning to take Harvey Bragg seriously.

But in the mysterious silence of Base 3, old Sam Pak held absolute sway. Chinatown can keep its secrets. Only by exercise of a special sense, which comes to life after years of experience in the ways of the Orient, may a Westerner know when something strange is afoot. Sidelong glances;

sudden silences; furtive departures as the intruder enters. Police officers in Mott Street area had been reporting such trivial occurrences recently. Those responsible for diagnosing Asiatic symptom had deduced the arrival in New York of a Chinese big-shot.

Their diagnosis was correct. By this time every Chinaman from coast to coast knew that one of the Council of Seven controlling the Si-Fan, most dreaded secret society in the East, had entered America.

Sam Pak pursued his rounds. The place was a cunning maze of passages and stairs; a Chinese rabbit warren. One narrow passage, below the level of the room of the seven-eyed goddess, had a row of six highly-painted coffins ranged along its wall. They lay on their sides. Lids had been removed and plate glass substituted. This ghastly tunnel was vile with the smell of ancient rottenness.

One of Sam Pak’s attendant Chinamen switched on a light. The old mandarin, who had known nearly a century of vicissitudes, carried a great bunch of keys. In his progress he had tried door after door. He now tested the small traps set in the sides of the six coffins. In the sudden glare, insidious nocturnal things moved behind glass. . . .

There was a big iron door in the wall; it possessed three locks, all of which proved to be fastened. Here at once was part of that strange arsenal which Nayland Smith suspected to have been imported , and a secret sally-port the existence of which police headquarters would have given much to know about. It communicated with an old subterranean passage which led to the East River. . . .

On a floor above, Sam Pak opened a grille and looked into a neatly appointed bedroom. Dr. Orwin Prescott lay there sleeping. His face was very white.

A dim whirring sound broke the underground silence. Sam Pak handed the bunch of keys to one of the boys and shuffled slowly upstairs to the temple of the green-eyed goddess. It was in semi-darkness; the only light came through the coloured silk curtain draped before one of the stone cubicles.

Sam Pak crossed, drew the curtain aside, and spoke in Chinese:

“I am here, Master.”

“You grow old, my friend,” the cold, imperious tones of Dr. Fu Manchu replied. “You keep me waiting. I regret that you have refused to accept my offer to arrest your descent to the tomb.”

“I prefer to join my ancestors, marquis, when the call reaches me. I fear your wisdom. While I live I am with you body and soul in our great aims. When my hour comes I shall be glad to die.”

Silence fell. Old Sam Pak, withered hands tucked in wide sleeves, stooping, waited. . . .

“I will hear your own report on the matter which I entrusted to you.”

“You know already, Master, that the man, Peter Carlo, failed. I cannot say what evidence he left behind. But your orders regarding the other, Blondie Hahn, were carried out. He brought the man Carlo to Wu King’s Bar, and I interviewed them in the private room. I instructed Carlo, and he set out. I then paid Hahn his price. It was a waste of good money, but I obey. Ah Fu and Chung Chow did the rest . . . there are now only three Scarlet Brides left to us. . . .”

It was an hour after dawn when Nayland Smith and Mark Hepburn stood looking down at two stone slabs upon which two bodies lay.

One of the departed in life had been a small but very muscular Italian with uncommonly large, powerful hands. He presented a spectacle, owing to his many injuries, which must have revolted all but the toughest. There was a sound of dripping water.

“You have prepared your report, Doctor?” said Nayland Smith, addressing a plump, red-faced person who was smiling amiably at the exhibits as though he loved them.

“Certainly, Mr. Smith,” the police doctor returned cheerily. “It is quite clear that Number One, here (I call him Number One because he was brought in an hour ahead of the other), died as the result of a fall from a great height——”

“Very great height,” rapped Nayland Smith. “Fortieth floor of the Regal Tower.”

“So I understand. Remarkable. He has two bullet wounds:

one in his right hand and one in his shoulder. These would not have caused death, of course. It was the fall which killed him—quite naturally. I believe he was wearing black silk gloves. An electric torch and a telescopic rod of very bright metal were found near the body.”

Nayland Smith turned to a police officer who stood at his elbow.

“I am told, Inspector, that you have now checked up on this man’s history: there is no doubt about his identity?”

“None at all,” drawled the inspector, who was chewing gum. “He’s Peter Carlo, known as ‘The Fly’—one of the most expert upper-storey men in New York. He could have climbed the outside of the Statue of Liberty if there’d been anything worth stealing at the top. He always wore a black silk mask and silk gloves. The rod was to reach into rooms he couldn’t actually enter. He was so clever he could lift a lady’s ring from a dressing-table fifteen feet away!”

“I don’t doubt it,” muttered Mark Hepburn. “So much for Peter Carlo. And now . . .”

He turned to the second slab.

Upon it lay the body of a huge blond man of Teutonic type. His hands were so swollen that two glittering diamonds which adorned them had become deeply embedded in the puffy fingers. Sodden garments clung to his great frame. Scarlet spots were discernible on both of the hairy hands, and there was a scarlet discolouration on his throat. The glare of his china-blue eyes set in that bloated caricature of what had been a truculently strong face afforded a sight even more dreadful than that of the shattered body of Peter Carlo.

“Brought it from the river just north of Manhattan Bridge ten minutes before you arrived,” explained Inspector McGrew, chewing industriously. “May be no connection, but I thought you’d like to see him.”

He glanced around, meeting a curiously piercing glance from Federal Agent Smith as he did so. Federal Agent Smith had steely eyes set in a sun-browned face framed, now, in the fur collar of his topcoat; a disconcerting person, in Inspector McGrew’s opinion.

“Now, here,” explained the smiling police surgeon, “we have a really mysterious case! Although his body was hauled out of East River, he was not drowned——”

“Why do you say so?” Smith demanded.

“It’s obvious.” The surgeon became enthusiastic and, stepping forward, laid a finger on the bloated, discoloured skin. “Note the vivid scarlet urticarial rash which characterizes the oedema. This man died from some toxic agency: he was thrown into the river. A post-mortem examination will tell us more, but of this much I am sure. And I understand, Inspector”—glancing over his shoulder—”that he, also, is well known to the police?”

“Well known to the police!” echoed Inspector McGrew, “he’s well known all over New York. This is Blondie Hahn, one of the big shots of the old days. He was booking agent for ‘most all the gunmen that remain in town. These times, I guess he had a monopoly. He ran a downtown restaurant, and although we knew his game, he had strong political protection.”

“You are prepared to make your report, Doctor?” said Smith rapidly. “I examined Carlo shortly after he was found. I presume we can now search the person and garments of Hahn.”

“That’s been done already,” Inspector McGrew replied. “The stuff is on the table inside.”

The grey-blue eyes of Federal Agent Smith glared out from the haggard brown mask of his face. Inspector McGrew was a hard man, but he found himself transfixed by that icy stare.

“Those were not my orders!”

“It had been done before the Federal instructions came through.”

“I want to know by whose authority!” The speaker’s piercing glance never left McGrew’s face. “I won’t be interfered with in this way. You are dealing, Inspector, not with the operations of a common, successful crook, but with something bigger, vastly bigger than you even imagine. Any orders you receive from me must be carried out to the letter.”

“I’m sorry,” said the inspector, an expression he had not used for many years, unless possibly to his wife; “but we didn’t know you were interested in Hahn, and the boys just went through with the routine.”

“Show me these things.”

Inspector McGrew opened a door, and Nayland Smith walked through to an inner room, followed by Hepburn and the inspector. In the doorway he turned, and addressing a grim-looking man in oilskins:

“I understand,” he said, “that you were in charge of the boat which recovered the body. I shall want to see you later.”

On a large, plain, pine table two sets of exhibits were displayed. The first consisted of a nearly empty packet of Lucky Strike cigarettes, a lighter, a black silk mask, black silk gloves, a quill tooth-pick, three one-dollar bills, and an eight-inch metal baton—which contained fifteen feet of telescopic rods. Smith examined these, the sole possessions found upon Fly Carlo, quickly but carefully. He had seen them already.

“You understand,” McGrew explained, “Hahn had only just been brought in—our routine was interrupted.”

“Forget your ordinary routine,” came rapidly. “From now on your routine is my routine.”

Federal Officer Smith transferred his attention to the second set of exhibits. These were more numerous than interesting. There was a very formidable magazine pistol of German manufacture; a small pear-shaped object easily identified as a hand grenade; a gold cigar-case decorated with a crest; a body-belt, the pockets of which had been emptied of their contents: ten twenty-dollar gold pieces; an aluminium lighter, two silk handkerchiefs; a diamond pin; a bunch of keys; a packet of chewing gum; and a large shagreen wallet, the contents of which had been removed. These were: a number of letters, and a photograph sodden by immersion. There was, lastly, a limp carton which had once contained playing cards, and two thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills.

“Where was the diamond pin?” snapped Nayland Smith.

“He always wore it in his coat like a badge,” Inspector McGrew replied.

“Where were the dollar bills?”

“Right in the card-holder?”

“Can you think of any reason,” Smith asked “why a man should carry money in a card-holder?”

“No,” the inspector admitted; “I can’t.”

“Assuming that this money had just been sent to him, can you think of any reason why it should be sent in such a way?”

“No.”

Inspector McGrew shook his head blankly, staring in a fascinated way at the speaker.

“Yet the card-holder,” Nayland Smith continued, “is the solution of the mystery of Blondie Hahn’s death.” He turned abruptly—he seemed to move on springs—the man’s nervous tension was electrical. “I want all these exhibits to go with me in the car.”

He rested his hand on Mark Hepburn’s shoulder. Hepburn looked very pale in the grey light.

“Note the two thousand dollars in the card case,” he said in a low voice. “There was something else in there as well. Dr. Fu Manchu always settles his debts . . . sometimes with interest. . . .”

Chapter 16

“BLUEBEARD”

Moya Adair closed her eyes as those green eyes opened. The man behind the table spoke, in that imperious, high-pitched voice.

“I accept your explanation,” he said. “None of us is infallible.”

Mrs. Adair raised her lashes and tried to sustain the speaker’s regard, but failed, turning her glance aside.

The face of Dr. Fu Manchu sometimes reminded her of a devil mask which hung upon the wall of her father’s study in Ireland.

“You serve me admirably. I regret that your service is one of fear. I prefer enthusiasm. You are a beautiful woman; for this reason I have employed you. Men are creatures of wax which white fingers can mould to their will—to my will. For always, Moya Adair, your will must be my will—or, we shall part. . . .”

The blue eyes were turned swiftly in his direction, and then swiftly away again. Mrs. Adair was perfectly dressed, perfectly groomed and apparently perfectly composed. This awful Chinaman who had taken command of her life held in his grasp all that made life dear to her. Her gloved hand rested motionless upon the chair-arm, but she turned her head aside and bit her lip.

The air of the small, quiet room was heavy with a smell of stale incense.

“I am an old man,” the compelling voice continued; “older than your imagination would permit you to believe.” Those jade-green eyes were closed again—the speaker seemed to be thinking aloud. “I have been worshipped, I have been scorned;

I have been flattered, mocked, betrayed, treated as a charlatan—as a criminal. There are warrants for my arrest in three European countries. Yet, always I have been selfless.” He paused. He was so still, so seemingly impassive, that he might have been a carven image. . . .

“My crimes, so termed, have been merely the removal from my path of those who obstructed me. Always I have dreamed of a sane world, yet men have called me mad; of a world in which war should be impossible, disease eliminated, overpopulation checked, labour found for all willing hands—a world of peace. Save only three, I have found no human soul, of my own race or another, to work wholly for that goal. And now my most implacable enemy is upon me. . . .”

Suddenly the green eyes opened. Long, slender yellow hands with incredibly pointed nails were torn from the sleeves of the yellow robe. Dr. Fu Manchu stood upright, raising those evilly beautiful hands above him. A note of exaltation came into his voice. Mrs. Adair clutched the arms of the chair in which she sat. Never before had her eventful life brought her in touch with inspired fanaticism.

“Gods of my fathers”—pitched so high that strange voice laid a queer stress on sibilants—”masters of the world! Are all my dreams to end in a prison cell, in the death of a common felon?”

For a while he stood upright, arms upraised, then dropped back again into his chair and concealed his hands in the sleeves of his robe.

Moya Adair strove for composure. This man terrified her as no man in her experience ever had had power to do. Instinctively she had realized the dreadful crimes that marked his life. He was coldly remorseless. Now, shaken emotionally by this glimpse of the hidden Fu Manchu, she wondered if she had become subjected to an inspired madman. Or had this eerie master of her destiny achieved a philosophy beyond the reach of her intellectual powers?

When the chinaman spoke again his harsh voice was perfectly cool.

“In the United States I have found a crude, but efficient, organization ready to my hand. Prohibition attracted to this country the trained law-breakers of the world. They had no purpose but that of personal gain. The sanity of President Roosevelt has terminated some of these promising careers. Many spiders are missing, but the webs can be mended. You see, Moya Adair”—the green eyes were fixed upon her, glittering, hypnotically—”although women can never under stand, were not meant to understand—it is to women that men always look for understanding.”

Now she was unable to withdraw her gaze. He had taken control other—she knew herself helpless. There was magic in those long green eyes; their power was terrible. But something there was also—something she had not looked for— which reconciled her to this control.

“I do not trust you—no woman is to be trusted in a world of men. Yet because I am a man too, and very lonely in this my last battle to crush what the West calls civilization . . . I will admit you one step further into my plans—I have means of watching those who profess to serve me. I know where I can place my trust. . . .”

Mrs. Adair experienced a sensation as though the speaker’s eyes had usurped the whole of the small room. She was submerged in a green lake, magnetic, thrilling, absorbing. The strange voice reached her from far away: she was resigned to the thraldom.

“There is no crime except the crime of disobedience to my will. My conception of life transcends the laws of all men living to-day. When I achieve my ambition, those who stand beside me will share my mastery of the world. Of the demagogues battling for power in this troubled country I have selected one as my own. . . .”

Moya Adair emerged from the green lake. Dr. Fu Manchu had closed his eyes. He sat like a craven image of a dead god behind the lacquered table.

“I am sending you,” the guttural, imperious voice continued, “to Harvey Bragg.” You will act in accordance with instructions.”

In the large Park Avenue apartment of Emmanuel Dumas, Harvey Bragg was holding one of those receptions which at once scandalized and fascinated his millions of followers when they read about them in the daily newspapers. These orgiastic entertainments which sometimes resembled a burlesque of a Neronian banquet and sometimes a parody of a Hollywood cabaret scene, had marked his triumphal progress from the state which he represented right up to New York.

“Bluebeard of the Backwoods”—as some political writer had dubbed him—Bragg had interested, amused, scandalized and horrified the inhabitants of the South and of the Middle West, and now was preparing to show himself a second Cyrus, master of modern Babylon. New York was the bright orange upon which the greedy eyes were set. New York he would squeeze dry.

Lola Dumas’ somewhat equivocal place in his affairs merely served to add glamour to the man’s strange reputation. Now, entertaining in her father’s home, he demonstrated himself to be that which he believed himself to be—an up-to-date emperor whose wishes transcended all laws.

Lola had been twice married and twice divorced. After each of these divorces she had reverted to her family name, of which she was inordinately proud. Emmanuel Dumas, who had made a colossal fortune in the boom and lost most of it in the slump, claimed, without warranty which any man could recognize, to be descended from the brilliant quadroon who created the Three Musketeers. If a picturesque personality and a shock of frizzy white hair had been acceptable as evidence, then any jury must have granted his claim.

A moral laxity, notable even during the regime of Prohibition, had characterized his scandalous life. In later years, when most of his Wall Street contemporaries had been washed up, the continued prosperity of Emmanuel Dumas became a mystery insoluble. The prurient ascribed it to the association between his beautiful daughter and the flamboyant but eccentric politician who threatened to become the Mussolini of the United States.

The room in which the reception was being held was decorated with a valuable collection of original drawings by Maurice Leioir, representing episodes in the novels of Alexandre Dumas. Rapiers, pistols, muskets adorned the walls. Here was a suit of armour which had once belonged to Louis XIII; there a red hat in a glass case, which, according to an inscription, had been worn by that king’s subtle minister, the Cardinal de Richelieu. There were powder boxes, mirrors and jewels, once the property of Anne of Austria. These his torical objects, and many others, arrested the glance in every direction.

Lola Dumas wore an emerald-green robe, or rest gown, its gauzy texture scarcely more than veiling her slender body. She was surrounded by a group of enthusiastic journalists. Her father was attired in a sort of velvet smock tied with a loose black bow at his neck. He, also, held court.

As a prominent supporter, and frequently the host, of Harvey Bragg, he had entered upon a new term of notoriety. These two, father and daughter, by virtue of their beauty alone—for Emmanuel Dumas was a strikingly handsome man—must have focussed interest in almost any gathering.

The room was packed from end to end. Prominent society people, who once would have shunned the Dumas’ apartment, might be seen in groups admiring the strange ornaments, studying the paintings; eager to attract the attention of this singular man once taboo, but now bathed in a blaze of limelight.

Politicians of all shades of opinion were represented.

The air was heavy with tobacco smoke; the buzz of chatter simian; champagne flowed almost as freely as water from the fountains of Versailles. Many notable people came and went unnoticed from this omnium-gatherum, for the dazzling personalities of the hostess and her father outshone them all. One would have thought that no man and few women could have diverted attention from the glittering pair; yet when, unheralded, Harvey Bragg came striding into the room, instantly the Dumas were forgotten.

All eyes turned in Bragg’s direction. Sascha lamps appeared from leather cases in which they had lain ready; a platoon of cameras came into action; notebooks were hastily opened.

Bluebeard Bragg was certainly an arresting figure. His nick-name was double-edged, Bragg’s marital record alone would have explained it; the man’s intense swarthiness equally might have accounted for the “bluebeard”. Slightly above medium height, he was built like an acrobat. The span of his shoulders was enormous: his waist measurement would have pleased many women. Withal, he had that enormous development of thigh and the muscular shapely calves seen in male members of the Russian Ballet. He had , too, the light, springy walk of a boxer; and his truculent, black-brown face, lighted by clear hazel eyes that danced with humour, was crowned by a profusion of straight, gleaming, black hair. Closely though he was shaved—for Harvey Bragg was meticulous in his person—his jaw and chin showed blue through the powder.

“Folks!” he cried—his voice resembled that of a ship’s officer bellowing orders through a gale—”I’m real sorry to be late, but Mr. and Miss Dumas will have been taking good care of you, I guess. To tell you the truth, folks, I had a bad hangover . . .”

This admission was greeted by laughter from his followers.

“I’ve just got up, that’s the truth. Knew I was expected to see people; jumped in the bath, shaved and here I am!”

There came a dazzling flash of light. The cameras had secured a record, in characteristic pose and costume, of this ex-lord of the backwoods who aimed at the White House.

He wore a sky-blue bathrobe, and apart from a pair of red slippers, apparently nothing else. But he was Harvey Bragg— Bluebeard; the man who threatened the Constitution, the coming Hitler of the United States. His ugliness—for despite his power and the athletic lines of his figure the man was ugly—dominated that gathering. His circus showman’s voice shouted down all opposition. No normal personality could live near him. He was Harvey Bragg. He was “It.” He was the omnipresent potential Dictator of America.

Among the group of reporters hanging on Bragg’s words was one strange to the others; a newcomer representing New York’s smartest weekly. He was tall, taciturn, and slightly built. He had thick, untidy hair, greying over the temples, a stubbly black beard and moustache, and wore spectacles. His wide-brimmed black hat and caped coat spoke of Greenwich Village.

His deep-set eyes had missed nothing, and nobody, of importance in the room. He had made few notes. Now he was watching Bluebeard intently.

“Boys and girls!”—arms raised, Harvey Bragg gave his benediction to everyone present—”I know what you all want to hear. You want to hear what I’m going to say to Orwin Prescott at Carnegie Hall.”

He lowered his arms in acknowledgement of the excited buzz followed by silence which greeted this remark.

“I’m going to say just one thing. And this goes, boys”—he included with a sweeping gesture of his left hand the whole of the newspaper men present—”with you as well as with everybody else. I’m going to say just this: Our country, which we all love, is unhappy. We have seen hard times—but we’ve battled through. We’ve got sand. We’re not dead yet by a long shot. No, sir! But we’re alive to the dangers ahead. Are you peddling junk for the Abbot of Holy Thorn or are you selling goods of your own?”

Loud applause followed this, led by Dumas pere et fille.

“I’m not saying, folks, that Abbot Donegal’s stuff is all backfire. I’m saying that second-hand promises are bad debts. I want to hear of anything that Orwin Prescott has promised which Orwin Prescott has done. I don’t promise things. I do things. No decent citizen ever reported for work to a depot of the League of Good Americans who didn’t get a job!”

Again he was interrupted by loud applause. . . .

“The man we’re all looking for is the man who does things. Very well. Seconds out! The fight starts! On my right:

Donegal—Prescott. On my left: Harvey Bragg! America for every man and every man for America!”

Cheers and a deafening clapping of hands rewarded the speaker. Harvey Bragg stood, arms upraised forensically, dominating that gathering excited by his crude oratory. At which moment, even as Sascha lights flashed and cameras clicked:

“A lady to see you, Mr. Bragg,” came a discreet whisper.

Harvey Bragg lowered his arms, reluctantly relinquishing that heroic pose, and glanced aside. His confidential secretary, Salvaletti, stood at his elbow. There was an interchange of glances. Reporters surged around them.

“Urgent?” Harvey Bragg whispered.

“Number 12.”

Bragg started, but recovered himself.

“Easy-looking?”

“A beauty.”

“Excuse me, folks!” Bragg cried, his tremendous voice audible above the excitement, “I’ll be right back in two minutes.”

Of those who actually overheard this whispered conversation, Lola Dumas was one. She bit her lip, turned, and crossed to a senator from the South who was no friend of Harvey Bragg’s. The other was the new reporter. He followed Lola Dumas and presently engaged her in conversation.

More wine was uncorked. Newspaper men always welcomed an assignment to the Dumas’ apartment. . . .

Rather more than five minutes had elapsed when Harvey Bragg came back. He was holding the hand of a very pretty young woman whose smart frock did justice to a perfect figure, and whose little French hat displayed mahogany curls to their best advantage.

“Folks!” he roared. “I want you all to know my new secretary.” His roving glances sought and found Lola Dumas: he smiled wickedly. “What this little girl doesn’t know about the political situation not even Harvey Bragg can tell her. . . .”

Although one calling might not have suspected the fact, the whole of the Regal Tower, most expensive and fashionable part of the Regal-Athenian Hotel, was held by police officers and federal agents. Those visitors who applied for accommodation in this section of the hotel were informed that it was full; those who had been in occupation had very courteously been moved elsewhere on the plea of urgent alterations.

From porters at the door in the courtyard to the clerks in the reception desk, the liftman and the bell-boys, there was no man whose uniform did not disguise a detective.

Elaborate precautions had been taken to ensure the privacy of incoming and outgoing telephone calls. No general headquarters ever had been more closely guarded. Armageddon was being waged, but few appreciated the fact. In the past Wellington had crushed Bonaparte’s ambition to control Europe, but the great Corsican fought at Waterloo with a blunted sword. Foch and his powerful allies had thrown back Marshal von Hindenburg and the finest military machine in history since the retreat from Moscow broke the Grand Army of Napoleon. But now Nayland Smith, backed by the govern ment of the United States, fought, not for the salvage of the Constitution, not for the peace of the country, but for the future of the world. And the opposing forces were commanded by a mad genius. . . .

Dressed in an old tweed suit, pipe clenched between his teeth, he paced up and down the sitting-room. His powers were all that a field-marshal could have demanded. His chief of staff, Mark Hepburn, was one such as he would have selected. But. . . .

Someone had unlocked the door of the apartment.

Fey appeared in the vestibule as if by magic, his right hand in his coat pocket. Nayland Smith stepped smartly to the left, taking up a position from which he could see the entrance. A tall, pale, bearded man came in, wearing a caped coat and a wide-brimmed black hat. . . .

“Hepburn!” cried Smith, and hurried forward to meet him. “Thank heavens you’re back safe. What news?”

Captain Mark Hepburn, U.S.M.C., a parody of his normal self, smiled wryly. His pallor, his greying temples, were artificial, but the beard and moustache were carefully tended natural products, although at the moment chemically improved. The character he was assuming was one which he might be called upon to maintain for a considerable time, in accordance with plan.

“Just left the Bragg reception at the Dumas apartment,” he said, removing his glasses and staring rather haggardly at Nayland Smith. “There isn’t much to report except that Bragg’s confidential secretary, Salvaletti, is pretty obviously the link with Fu Manchu.”

“Then Bragg is doubly covered,” said Nayland Smith grimly. “Lola Dumas is almost certainly one of Dr. Fu Manchu’s agents.”

“Yes.” Mark Hepburn dropped wearily into an armchair. “But there’s some friction in that quarter. A woman was announced just before I left, and Bragg went out to interview her. I managed to pick up some scraps of the conversation between Salvaletti and Bragg, but from the way Lola Dumas watched Bragg, I gathered that their relations were becoming strained.”

“Describe Salvaletti,” said Nayland Smith succinctly.

Mark Hepburn half closed his eyes. Smith watched him. There was something odd in Hepburn’s manner.

“Above medium height, pale, stooping. Light-blue eyes, dark, lank hair, a soft voice and a sickly smile.”

“Seen him before?”

“Never! He’s a new one on me.”

“Probably indigenous to the American underworld,” Smith murmured; “therefore I should not know him. You are sure it was a woman who was announced?”

“Positive. Harvey Bragg brought her into the room and displayed her to the company as his new secretary. It’s about this woman I want to talk to you. I want your advice. I don’t know what to do. It was Mrs. Adair. . . . who escaped, thanks to my negligence, from the Tower of the Holy Thorn. . . .”

Chapter 17

THE ABBOT’S MOVE

In the gothic dome where most of the life of the Memory Man was passed, lights were extinguished. A red spark marking the tip of a burning Egyptian cigarette glowed in the darkness.

There was a short silence, and then:

“Report,” directed the familiar, hated voice, “from Numbers covering Nayland Smith.”

“Three have been received since I relayed. Shall I repeat them in detail or summarize their contents?”

“Summarize.”

“There is no certain evidence that he has left his base during the last twelve hours. A report from Number 44 suggests that he may have visited the police mortuary. This report is unconfirmed. Two Numbers and eight operatives, with two Z-cars, covering Centre Street. Federal Agent Hepburn not reporting to have moved out from the Regal Tower. This is a summary of the three reports.”

Darkness still prevailed.

“The latest report regarding Abbot Donegal.”

“Received thirty minutes after that last relayed. A man answering to the abbot’s description reported as hiring a car at Elmira. Believed to have arrived there from the West by American Airlines. Posing as Englishman. Wears single eyeglass and carries golfing kit. . . .”

In the tower study, so oddly corresponding in point of elevation with Nayland Smith’s headquarters, but which bore an atmosphere of stale incense whereas the apartment high above the Regal-Athenian Hotel was laden with fumes of broad-cut smoking mixture, Dr. Fu Manchu sat behind the lacquer table. There was no one else in the room.

The life of one who aspires to empire—though thousands may await his commands—is a wan and lonely life. Solitude is the mother of inspiration. The Chinaman, these reports from the Memory Man received, sat in his high, carven chair, eyes closed. He was speaking as though to one standing near him. On the little polished switchboard two spots of light glowed; green, and amber.

“Dispatch a party in a Z-car,” he directed, his voice unemotional but the gutturals very marked. “Explore all farms, roadhouses and hotels along the route which I have indicated. Abbot Donegal is reported as travelling incognito. He may be posing as an English tourist. If found, he is not to be molested, but he must be detained. Instruct the Number in charge to send in reports from point to point. This is a personal order from the President.”

A slender yellow hand with long, pointed nails reached out. The two lights disappeared. Dr. Fu Manchu opened his eyes:

their greeness was dimmed. He raised the lid of a silver box which stood upon the table and from it took a small, exquisitely made opium-smoking outfit. He lighted the tiny lamp and inserted a gold bodkin into a container holding the black gum which is bom of the white poppy. He had not slept for forty-eight hours. . . .

Almost at the same moment, in a room at the top of the Regal Tower, Mark Hepbum spoke on the telephone. He had had all calls put through to his own room in order that Nayland Smith might not be disturbed; for, at last, Smith was sleeping.

“This Englishman who left Airlines at Elmira,” he said in his dry, monotonous voice, “sounds to me like the man we’re looking for. The fact that he wears plus fours and a monocle doesn’t count, nor the fact that he is travelling with a golf bag. I have learned that Abbot Donegal used a single eye-glass before he took to spectacles. He could probably get along with it quite well except for reading. Also, he’s a golfer. The English accent means nothing. Abbot Donegal is a trained orator. Check up on all roadhouses and hotels along possible routes which he might follow if, as you suspect, he left by road from Elmira. Take a radio car so we keep track of you. Report from point to point. If he is definitely identified take no action until you have my instructions. We have contrived to silence the newspapers about his disappearance. But he is probably coming to New York to take Prescott’s place at Carnegie Hall—ifPrescott fails to arrive. This would ruin our plans. . . . All right—good-bye.”

He hung up the receiver.

In the vestibule of a small country hotel two men sat over their coffee before a crackling log fire. Outside, a storm raged. The howling of the wind could be heard in the chimney, and whenever the main door was opened a veil of sleet might be seen in the light shining out from inside. It was a wild night.

The men seated before the fire were an odd couple. One, of slight but wiry build, clean-shaven and fresh coloured, lean-faced, his hair greying, wore a tweed suit with plus fours, thick woollen stockings and brown brogues. A monocle glittered in the firelight as he bent to refill his pipe. His companion, a clergyman equally lean of feature, watched him, blinking his eyes in the way of one shortsighted. A close observer might have noted a physical but not a spiritual resemblance.

“I mean to say,” said the man with the monocle, stuffing tobacco into the bowl of his briar, “it’s a bad time to see America. I agree; but I couldn’t help myself, if you see what I mean. It had to be now or never sort of thing. People have been awfully nice——” he paused to strike a match—”I am the silly ass; nobody else to blame. Thanks to you, I know it would be stupid to push on to-night.”

“I am told,” said the priest, his gentle voice a contrast to that of the other speaker, “that Colonel Challoner lives some twenty miles from here. For my own part I have no choice.”

“What!” The man with the monocle, in the act of lighting his pipe, paused, looking up. “You’re pushing on?”

“Duty demands.”

“Oh, I see, sir. A sick call, I take it?”

The clergyman watched him silently for a few moments.

“A sick call—yes. . . .”

The outer door opened, admitting a blast of icy air. Three men came in, the last to enter closing the door behind him. They were useful-looking men, thick set and hard.

“In luck at last!” one of them exclaimed.

All three were watching the man with the monocle. One, who was evidently the leader of the party, square-jawed and truculent, raised his hand as if to silence the others, and stepped forward. As he did so the proprietor of the hotel appeared through an inner doorway. The man paused, glanced at him.

“Find some Scotch,” he ordered—”real Scotch. Not here— inside, some place. Me and these boys have business to talk over.”

The proprietor, a taciturn New Englander, nodded and disappeared. The speaker, not removing his hat, stood staring down at the man with the eye-glass. His companions were looking in the same direction. The focus of attention, pipe between his teeth, gazed at the three in blank astonishment.

“Don’t want to intrude——” the leader gave a cursory nod to the clergyman—”real sorry to interrupt; but I must ask you——” he placed a compelling hand on the shoulder of the wearer of the monocle—”to step inside for just a minute. Got a couple o’ questions.”

“What the deuce d’you mean?”

“I’m a government agent, and I’m on urgent business. Just a couple o’questions.”

“I never heard such balderdash in my life.” The other declared. He turned to the clergyman. “Did you?”

“It will probably save trouble in the long run if you assist the officer.”

“Right-oh. I’m obliged for the tip. Very funny and odd. But still. . . .”

Pipe firmly clenched between his teeth, he walked out followed by the leader of the party, the other two members of which bought up the rear. They found themselves in a small back hall from which arose a stair communicating with upper floors. On a table stood a bottle of whisky, glasses and a pitcher of ice water.

“No need to go farther,” said the agent; “we’re all set here.” He stared hard at the man in plus fours. “Listen, Abbot: why the fancy dress?”

“What d’you mean, Abbot?” was the angry reply. “My name’s not Abbot, and if it were you’d have a damned cheek to address me in that way!”

“Cut the funny lines. They ain’t funny. I’m here on business. What’s the name that goes with the eye-window?”

“I’m tempted,” said the man addressed, speaking with a cold anger which his amiably vacant manner would not have led one to anticipate, “to tell you to go to hell.” He focussed an icy stare in turn upon each of the three grim faces. “You’ve stepped off with the wrong foot, my friends.”

He plunged to an inside pocket. Instantly three steel barrels covered him. He ignored them, handing a British passport to the leader of the party. There was a minute of ominous silence, during which the man scrutinized the passport and the photograph, comparing the latter with its subject. At last:

“Boys!”—he turned to his satellites—”we’re up the wrong gum tree. We’ve got hold of Captain the Honourable George Fosdyke-Fosdyke of the Grenadier Guards! Schultz, jump to the phone. Notify Base and ask for President’s instructions. . .”

Some ten minutes later the Honourable George Fosdyke-Fosdyke found himself in sole possession of the little vestibule. The three federal officers had gone. He had had a glimpse through the driving sleet of a powerful car drawn up before the door. The amiable clergyman had gone. He was alone, mystified, irritated.

“Well, I’m damned!” he said.

At which moment, and while through the howling of the storm the purr of the departing car might still be heard, came the roar of a second even more powerful engine. Again the door was thrown open, and two men came in. Fosdyke-Fosdyke turned and faced them.

“O.K. this time, Chief!” said one, exhibiting a row of glittering teeth.

The other nodded and stepped forward.

“Good evening, Dom Patrick Donegal,” he said, and pulled inside a dripping leather overcoat to exhibit a gold badge. “A nice run you’ve given us!”

“Here! I say!” exclaimed Fosdyke-Fosdyke. “This damn joke is getting stale!”

And in a dilapidated but roadworthy Ford the amiable priest was driving furiously through the storm in the direction of New York: the Abbot of Holy Thorn was one stage further on his self-imposed journey.

Chapter 18

MRS. ADAIR REAPPEARS

Moya Adair stepped out of the elevator, crossed the marble lobby of the luxurious apartment house and came out on to Park Avenue. She was muffled up in her mink coat, the little Basque beret which she wore in rough weather crushed tightly upon mahogany-red curls. A high, fiercely cold wind had temporarily driven the clouds away, and a frosty moon looked down from a glittering sky. Moya inhaled delightedly the ice-cold air from the Avenue. It was clean and wholesome in contrast to the smoke-laden atmosphere of the Dumas’ apartment.

Her new assignment terrified her. For some reason known only to the President, that awful Chinaman who dominated her life, she had been chosen to supplant Lola Dumas. And she feared the enmity of Lola Dumas second only to that of the President. It was the yellow streak, more marked in her than in her father, which made her terrible; Moya, who had met her several times, had often thought of Lola as a beautiful, evil priestess of Voodoo—a dabbler in strange rites.

She began to walk briskly in the direction of a nearby hotel where, as Miss Eileen Breon, accommodation had been provided for her by the organization to which unwillingly she belonged. She felt as though she had escaped from an ever-present danger.

Harvey Bragg, potential Dictator of America, had accepted her appearance in the spirit in which sultans had formerly welcomed the present of a Circassian slave girl. And she had nowhere to turn for help—unless to the President. Oddly enough, she trusted that majestic but evil man.

The newspapers, in which politics occupied so much space, were nevertheless giving prominence to the mysterious death of James Richet. In her heart of hearts Moya Adair believed that James Richet had been executed by the President’s orders. The power of the sinister Chinaman ws terrifying; yet although he held a life dearer than her own in his hands, Moya’s service was not wholly one of fear. He had never called upon her to do anything which her philosophy told her to be despicable. Sometimes in her dreams she thought that he was Satan, fallen son of the morning, but in her very soul she knew that his word was inviolable; that execrable though his deeds appeared to Western eyes, paradoxically he might be trusted to give measure for measure.

Her first instructions in regard to Bragg had related to the forthcoming debate at Carnegie Hall. She had given him certain typed notes, with many of which he had quarrelled furiously. The odd fact had dawned upon her during this first interview that Bragg had never met the President!

“I’ll play this bunch of underground stiffs just as long as their funds last out,” he had declared. “But you can tell your ‘President’ that what I need is money, not his orders!”

Moya pointed out that directions received in the past had invariably led to success. Bragg, becoming more and more deeply intrigued, had tried to cross-examine. Failing, he had changed his tactics and made coarsely violent love to her. . . .

She raised her face, as she hurried along, to the healing purity of the moonlight. Salvaletti tactfully had terminated that first hateful interview; but she shrank from Salvaletti as she instinctively shrank from snakes. Since then, the scene had been re-enacted—many times.

She had reached her hotel and was just turning into the doorway when a hand touched her shoulder. . . .

It had come—and, almost, it was welcome!

Since that snowy night outside the Tower of the Holy Thorn, hourly she had expected arrest. She glanced swiftly aside.

A tall, bearded man who wore glasses, a black hat and a caped topcoat stood at her elbow.

“Live here, Mrs. Adair?” he asked drily.

A stream of traffic released at that moment by a changing light almost drowned her reply, in so low a voice did she speak.

“Yes. Who are you, and what do you want?”

Yet even as she spoke she knew that she had heard that monotonous voice before. Under the shadow of his hat brim the man’s eyes glistened through the spectacles.

“I want to step inside and have a word with you.”

“But I don’t know you.”

The man pulled the caped coat aside and she saw the glitter of a gold badge. Yes, she had been right—a federal officer! It was finished: she was in the hands of the law, free of that awful President, but. . .

The lobby of the expensively discreet apartment hotel was deserted, for the hour was late. But as they sat down facing each other across a small table, Moya Adair had entirely recovered her composure. She had learned in these last years that she could not afford to be a woman; she blessed the heritage of courage and common sense which was hers. It had saved her from madness, from suicide; from even worse than suicide.

And now the federal agent removed his black hat. She knew him and, in the moment of recognition, wondered why she was glad.

She smiled into the bearded face—and Moya was not ignorant of the fact that her smile was enchanting.

“Am I to consider myself under arrest?” she asked. “Because, if so, I don’t expect to have the same luck as last time.”

Mark Hepburn removed his black-rimmed spectacles and stared at her steadily. She remembered his deep-set eyes— remembered them as dreamy eyes, the eyes of a poet. Now, they were cold. Her brave flippancy had awakened the Quaker ancestors, those restless Puritan spirits who watched eternally over Mark Hepburn’s soul. This was the traditional attitude of a hardened adventuress. When he replied, his voice sounded very harsh.

“Technically, it’s my duty to arrest you, Mrs. Adair; but we’re not so trammelled by red tape as the police.” He was watching her firm, beautifully modelled lips and trying to solve the mystery of how she could give her kisses to Harvey Bragg. “I have been waiting ever since that night at the Tower for a chat with you.”

She made no reply.

“An associate of yours on Abbot Donegal’s staff was murdered recently, right outside the Regal Hotel. You may have heard of it?”

Moya Adair nodded.

“Yes; but why do you say he was murdered?”

“Because I know who murdered him and so do you: Dr. Fu Manchu.”

He laid stress on the name, staring into Moya’s eyes. But with those words he had enabled her to speak the truth, unafraid. That he referred to the President she divined; but to all connected with the organization the President’s name was unknown, except that on two occasions she had heard him referred to as “the Marquis.”

“To the best of my knowledge,” she replied quietly, “I have never met anyone called Dr. Fu Manchu.”

Mark Hepburn, who had obtained Nyaland Smith’s consent to handle this matter in his own way, realized that he had undertaken a task beyond his powers. This woman knew that she was fighting for her freedom—and he could not torture her. He was silent for a while, watching her, then:

“I should hate to think of you,” he said, “undergoing a police interrogation, Mrs. Adair. But you must know as well as I know that there’s a plot afoot to obtain control of this country. You are in on it: it’s my business to be. I can guarantee your safety; you can quit the country if you like. I know where you come from in County Wicklow; I know where your father is at the present time. . . .”

Moya Adair’s eyes opened fully for a moment and then quite closed. This man was honest, straight as a die: he offered her freedom, the chance to live her own life again . . . and she could not, dared not, accept what he offered!

“You have no place in murder gangs. You belong in another sphere. I want you to go back to it. I want you to be on the right side, not the wrong. Trust me, and you won’t regret it, but try any tricks and you will leave me no alternative.”

He ceased speaking, watching Moya’s face. She was looking away from him with an unseeing gaze. But he knew because of his sensitively sympathetic character that she understood and was battling with some problem outside his knowledge. The half-lighted lobby was very quiet, so that when a man who had been seated in a chair at the farther end, unsuspected, crossed to the elevator, Mark Hepburn turned sharply, glancing in his direction. Mrs. Adair remained abstracted. At the end of a long silence: “I am going to trust you,” she said, and looked at him steadily, “because I know I can. I am glad we have met—for after all there may be a way. Will you believe me if I swear to carry out what I am going to suggest. . .?”

Two minutes later, the man who had gone up in the elevator was speaking on the telephone in his apartment.

“Miss Eileen Breon talking in the lobby with a bearded man wearing spectacles and a black caped topcoat. Time 2.55 a.m. Report from Number 49.”

Chapter 19

THE CHINESE CATACOMBS

Orwin Prescott opened his eyes and stared about the small bedroom—at two glass-topped tables, white enamelled walls, at a green-shaded lamp set near an armchair in which a nurse was seated; a very beautiful nurse whose dark eyes were fixed upon him intently.

He did not speak immediately, but lay there watching her and thinking.

Something had happened—at Carnegie Hall. The memory was not clear-cut; but something had happened in the course of his debate with Harvey Bragg. Had over-study, over-anxiety, resulted in a nervous breakdown? This was clearly a clinic in which he found himself.