President Fu Manchu

“All clear, sir,” said the fireman.

Mr. Schmidt produced a bunch of keys, fumbled for a while, finally selected one, and not without difficulty opened the baize-covered door. He turned.

“I may say here and now,” he remarked, “that I have never been in the dome: I have never known it to be opened during the time I have acted for the Stratton Estates. There are rooms up there, I know, which were formally occupied by the late Mr. Jerome Stratton. . . .” He shrugged his shoulders. “Of course, he was very eccentric. As there was no proper means of escape in the event of fire, they were closed some years ago. I’ll lead the way. I have a torch. There are no lights.”

He went in, shining the ray of his torch ahead. The man from Midtown Electric followed. Mr. Englebert paused at the threshold; and to the fireman:

“You have your orders,” he snapped.

“Sure.”

Nayland Smith, his facial disguise that which he employed for the Salvation Army officer, his dress that of a business man, followed Mark Hepburn—representing Midtown Electric—into the darkness illuminated only by Mr. Schmidt’s torch. Hepburn supplemented it by the light of another.

They were in a curious, octagonal room in which, facing south, were three windows. There were indications that furniture at some time had stood against the walls. Now the room was bare.

“I guess we’ll push right on to the top,” said Hepburn.

Mr. Schmidt studied the rough plan which he carried.

“The door is on this side, I think,” he said vaguely. “One of the late Mr. Stratton’s eccentricities.”

He walked to a point directly opposite the central window, stood fumbling there awhile, and then inserted a key in a lock and opened the hitherto invisible door.

“This way”

They went up an uncarpeted staircase at the top of which another door was opened. They entered a second octagonal room appreciably smaller than that which they had just quitted, but also destitute of any scrap of furniture; there was an empty alcove on one side.

“You see,” said Schmidt, flashing his light about, “there’s a balcony to this room, outside the french windows there. . . .”

“I see,” muttered Nayland Smith, staring keenly about him.

“From that gallery,” said Mark Hepburn in his monotonous voice, “it is possible I could see the cable to the flagstaff.”

“The window,” Schmidt replied, “appears to be bolted only. I think you can get out there without any difficulty.

Nayland Smith turned suddenly to the speaker.

“There is still another floor above?”

Mark Hepburn had shot back a bolt and opened one of the heavy windows.

“Yes, so I understand. A small domed room immediately under the flagstaff. The door, I believe”—he hesitated—”is directly facing the windows, again. Let us see if I can open it.”

He crossed as Hepburn stepped out on to the gallery—that gallery which Professor Morgenstahl had paced so often in the misery of his captivity. . . .

“Here we are!” Schmidt cried triumphantly.

“I see,” said Nayland Smith, regarding the newly-opened door. “I should be obliged, while we complete our inspection, if you would step down and tell the fireman on duty that he is not to leave without my orders.”

“Certainly, Mr. Englebert; then I’ll come right back.”

Mr. Schmidt crossed and might be heard descending the stair.

As he disappeared:

“Hepburn!” Nayland Smith called urgently.

Hepburn came in from the balcony.

“This place has been hurriedly stripped—and only a matter of hours ago! But, all the same, our last hope is the top floor!”

He led the way, shining light ahead. It was a short stair— and the door above was open. Small, domed, and surrounded by curious amber paned Gothic windows which did not appear to communicate with the outer air, it was stripped— empty!

“We are right under the flagstaff,” said Hepburn quite tone-lessly. “He’s been too clever for us. I was marked on my first visit.”

Nayland Smith’s hands fell so that the ray from his torch shone down upon the floor at his feet.

“He wins again!” he said slowly. “That baize door has been covered all day. There’s another way in—and another way out: the cunning, cunning devil.” And now, his diction changed as that dauntless spirit recovered from the check:

“Come on, Hepburn, downstairs again!” he snapped energetically.

But in the apartment below, with its bedroom alcove and tiny bathroom, formerly the quarters of the eccentric millionaire who had lived in semi-seclusion here, Nayland Smith stared about him in something like desperation.

“We have clear evidence,” he said, “that this room certainly was occupied forty-eight hours ago. We are not defeated yet, Hepburn.”

“I am anxious to study the view from the balcony,” Hepburn replied.

“I know why you are anxious.”

Undeterred by the note of raillery perceptible in Nayland Smith’s voice, Mark Hepburn stepped out on to the iron-railed balcony: Smith followed.

“Where does the boy live, Hepburn?”

“I am trying to identify it. Wait a moment—I have seen these windows lighted from our own apartment. So first let’s locate the Regal-Athenian.”

“Easily done,” rapped Nayland Smith, and pointed, “There’s the Regal Tower, half-right.”

“Then the penthouse lies somewhere west of where we stand. It must, because I know it isn’t visible from our windows.”

“That’s a pity,” said Nayland Smith drily.

“I’m not thinking the way you believe, Smith, at all. I’m trying to work out a totally different idea. It seems to me. . . .”

The sound which checked his words was a very slight sound, yet clearly audible up there where the Juggernaut hymn of New York was diminished to a humming croon, the song of a million fireflies dancing far below.

Nayland Smith turned as though propelled by a spring.

The open french window had been closed and bolted. Visible in the eerie light of a clouded moon, Dr. Fu Manchu stood inside watching them!

He wore a heavy coat with an astrakhan collar, an astrakhan cap upon his head. His only visible protection was the thickness of the glass. . . .

“Hepburn!” Nayland Smith reached for his automatic. “Don’t look into his eyes!”

Those strange eyes glittered like emeralds through the panes of the window.

“A shot would be wasted, Sir Denis!” The cold, precise voice reached them out there upon the balcony as though no glass intervened. “The panes are bulletproof—an improvement of my own upon the excellent device invented by an Englishman.”

Nayland Smith’s finger faltered on the trigger. He had never known Dr. Fu Manchu to tell a lie. But this was a crisis in the Doctor’s affairs. He took a step back and fired obliquely.

The bullet ricocheted as from armour plate, whistling out into space! Dr. Fu Manchu did not stir a muscle.

“My God!” (and it sounded like a groan) came from Mark Hepburn.

“You can hear me clearly through the ventilators above the window,” the Asiatic voice continued. “I regret that I should have given you cause, Sir Denis, to doubt my word.”

Hepburn turned aside; he was trying desperately to think coolly. He stared downward from the balcony. . . .

“You are one of the few men whom I have encountered in a long life,” Dr. Fu Manchu continued, “of sufficient strength of character to look me in the eyes. For this I respect you. I know by what self-abnegation you have achieved this control, and I regret the necessity which you have thrust upon me. Our association, if at times tedious, has never been dishonourable.”

He turned aside, placing a small globular lamp upon the bare floor of the room: within it a bright light sprang up. He took a step back towards the window.

“I am not prepared to suffer any human hindrance in this hour of destiny. I have chosen Paul Salvaletti to rule at the White House. Here, in the United States, I shall set up my empire. Time and time again you have checked me—but this time, Sir Denis, you arrive too late. You are correct in your surmise that there is another means of entrance to these apartments, formerly occupied by Professor Morgenstahl (whose name will be familiar to you) and myself.”

“Smith,” Hepburn whispered—”there’s one chance . . .”

But Nayland Smith did not turn; he was watching Dr. Fu Manchu. The superhuman Chinaman was winding what appeared to be a watch. He placed it on the floor beside the lamp, turned, and spoke:

“I bid you good-bye, Sir Denis; and—I speak with sincerity—not without regret. Your powers of pure reasoning are limited: your gifts of intuition are remarkable. In this respect I place you among the seven first-class brains of your race. Captain Hepburn has excellent qualities. He is a man I should be glad to have in my service. However, he has chosen otherwise. The small apparatus which I have placed upon the floor (a hobby of the late Lord Southery, a talented engineer whom I believe you knew) contains a power which, expanding from so small a centre, will, I am convinced, astound you. I have timed it to explode in one hundred and twenty seconds. Its explosion will entirely obliterate the dome of the Stratton Building. I must leave you.”

He turned, and in the glare of the globular light upon the floor crossed to the door and disappeared.

Nayland Smith, fists clenched, glared in through the bullet-proof glass.

“Hepburn,” he said, “I have been blind and mad. Forgive me.”

“Smith! Smith!” Hepburn grasped his arm. “I have been trying to tell you . . . ! You know what we’re supposed to be here for?”

“The lightning conductor. What the hell does it matter now!”

“It matters everything. Look!”

Hepburn pointed downwards. Nayland Smith stared in the direction indicated.

The cable of a lightning conductor attached from point to point passed down immediately beside the balcony to a dim parapet below . . .

“God help us!” Smith whispered, “will it bear a man’s weight?”

Chapter 34

“THE SEVEN”

“The history of America,” said the Abbot of Holy Thorn, “has acquired several surprising Chapters since our last meeting, Sir Denis.”

Nayland Smith, standing at the window of the abbot’s high-set study staring out at a sun-bathed prospect, turned slightly and nodded. Every detail of his former visit had recurred in his memory. And at this hour, while the fate of the United States hung in the balance, he was really no nearer to success than on the night when first he had entered this room! His briar was fuming like a furnace. Abbot Donegal lighted another cigarette. . . .

The explosion at the Stratton Building in New York was already ancient history. Amid the feverish excitement now sweeping the country, a piece of news must be sensational indeed to survive for longer than forty-eight hours.

Fragments of the dome had fallen at almost incredible distances from the scene of the explosion. The huge building had rocked upon its foundations, great gaps appearing in the masonry. The firemen, faced with a number of problems unique in their experience, had worked like demons. The total loss was difficult to compute, but, miraculously, there had been few serious casualties.

Their descent of the dome by means of the lightning conductor was a thing to haunt a man’s dreams, but Smith and Hepburn had accomplished it. Then had come that race along the narrow parapet to the window of the office occupied by the police party: finally, a wild dash down the stairs—for the elevator could not accommodate all. . . .

The mystery of the origin of the explosion had not been publicly explained to this day.

“Those amazing financial resources controlled by Salvaletti,” said the abbot, “have enabled him to make heavy inroads. He has stolen many of my converts: the Brotherhood of National Equality has suffered. My poor friend Orwin Prescott, as you know, has set out upon a world cruise. This most damnable campaign, this secret poisoning, unlike anything the world has known since the days of the Borgias, has wrecked that fine career. The other victims are countless: I doubt, Sir Denis, if even you know their number.”

“On several occasions,” Smith replied grimly, “I have narrowly escaped being added to their number. You also, I need not remind you. Your references on the radio last night to certain secret stirrings in the Asiatic colonies throughout the States created a profound sensation. It resulted in my presence here to-day. . . .” He rested his hands on the table, looking into the upraised eyes of the abbot. “Only because you have been silent have you remained immune so long.”

That silence had to be broken,” said the priest sternly.

“I should have preferred that you awaited the word from me,” rapped Nayland Smith, standing upright and beginning to pace the floor. “I have insufficient men at my disposal for the work of protection they are called upon to do. Washington, you know as well as I, is an armed camp. The country is in a state of feverish unrest, unparalleled even in war time. Big names, now, are deserting to the enemy!”

“I am painfully aware of the fact, Sir Denis,” the abbot replied sadly. “But I am informed that the circumstance under which some of these desertions took place have been peculiar.”

He stared in an odd way at Nayland Smith.

“Your information is correct! Cruel forms of coercion have been employed in many instances. And the purpose of my visit is this”—he paused before the desk at which the abbot was seated. “You intimated that you intended to touch upon this phase of the campaign in your next address on Wednesday night. You implied that other revelations were to follow. As a result of those words, Dom Patrick Donegal, your life at this moment is in grave danger. I ask you as man to man: How much do you know? What do you intend to say?”

The abbot, his chin resting on an upraised hand, stared unseeingly before him. He resembled the figure of some medieval monk who out of the reluctant ether sought to conjure up the Great Secret. Nayland Smith watched him silently.

He had real respect for Patrick Donegal, and despite the slightness of their acquaintance something resembling friendship. His sincerity, if he had ever doubted it, he doubted no longer: he was deeply read, fearless, unshakable in his faith. And that the abbot had sources of information denied to the Department of Justice Nayland Smith knew quite well.

“I know,” said the abbot, at last, speaking very slowly and with a studious distinctness, “the character of the man who, remorselessly and over many murdered bodies, has driven Paul Salvaletti forward to the place which he holds. I do not know his name. He is a member of a very old Chinese family, and a man of great culture. He controls, or at least he has a voice in the councils of a secret society based in Tibet, but represented in all parts of the world where Eastern nationals are to be found.”

“Do you know the name of this society?” Nayland Smith asked.

“I do not. Our missionaries in the East, who sometimes refer to it as ‘The Seven,’ regard it as the power of Satan manifested in evil-minded men. The Mafia in Italy was for generations a thorn in the side of the Church. An old friend of mine working in Japan tells me that the Society of the Black Dragon exercises a firmer hold over the imagination of the people than any religion has ever secured. But . . . ‘The Seven’. . .” He paused and glanced up.

Nayland Smith nodded.

“Their wealth is incalculable, I am told. Men in high places wielding great social and political influence, are among the members. And all their resources have been rallied to support this attack among the Constitution of the United States. You see, Sir Denis”—he smiled—”my inquiries have made great headway!”

“They have!” rapped Nayland Smith, and again paced the floor.

The Intelligence Department of Abbot Donegal’s Church went up a notch higher. Never before this hour had he realized that the Rock of St. Peter was behind him in his fight against the powers of Dr. Fu Manchu.

“Satan in person is on earth,” said the priest. His face bore the rapt look of the mystic—his voice rose upon a note of inspiration. “His works are manifest. Ours are the humble hands chosen to cast him down!”

Abruptly his expression changed; he became again the practical man of the world.

“We are together in this,” he said, smiling—”Federal Agent 56! Now I am prepared to listen to your advice: I do not undertake to accept it.”

Nayland Smith stared out of the window. Far away to the right, through crystal-clear air, he could catch a glimpse of a wide river. He twitched at the lobe of his ear and turned.

“I never waste advice,” he said rapidly. “You have set your course; I am powerless to alter it. But if, as you say, we work together, there are certain things upon which I must insist.”

He rested his hands on the desk; steely eyes pierced into guarded recesses of the abbot’s mind.

“I am responsible for your personal safety. You must help me. Your life from now onward is dedicated to our common cause. I shall make certain arrangements for your protection;

the conditions will be onerous . . . but you must accept them. I will add to your knowledge of this cast conspiracy. You alone, can stem the tide. I will give you names. Upon the result our final success depends.”

“Success or failure in human affairs invariably hangs upon a thread,” the abbot replied. “The engagement of Paul Salvaletti and Lola Dumas has been given publicity greater than any royal wedding in the Old World ever obtained in America. In this the satanic genius who aims to secure control of the United States proves himself human—for it is human to err.”

“I see!” snapped Nayland Smith; his eyes glittered with repressed excitement. “You have information touching the private life of Salvaletti?”

“Information, Sir Denis, which my conscience demands I should make public. . . .”

Chapter 35

THE LEAGUE OF GOOD AMERICANS

“It is essential, my friend, to our success, even at this hour,” said Dr. Fu Manchu, “indeed essential to our safety, that we silence this pestilential priest.”

The room in which he sat appeared to contain all those appointments which had characterized his former study at the top of the Stratton Building. The exotic tang of incense was in the air, but windows opened on to a veranda helped to sweeten the atmosphere. Beyond a patch of lawn, terminated by glass outbuildings, a natural barrier of woods rose steeply to a high skyline. The trees, at the call of Spring, were veiling themselves in transparent green garments, later magically to be transformed into the gorgeous vestments of Summer. The Doctor’s ever-changing headquarters possessed the virtue of variety.

From the point of view of the forces controlled by Nayland Smith, he had completely disappeared following the explosion at the Stratton Building. The cave of the seven-eyed goddess had given up none of its secrets. Sam Pak, the much sought, remained invisible. A state-to-state search had failed to produce evidence to show that Dr. Fu Manchu was still in the country.

Only by his deeds was his presence made manifest.

Salvaletti was the idol of an enormous public. His forthcoming marriage to Lola Dumas promised to be a social event of international importance. An almost frenzied campaign on the part of those saner elements who recognized that the League of Good Americans was no more than a golden bubble, was handicapped at every turn. Men once hopeless and homeless who find themselves in profitable employment are not disposed to listen to criticisms of their employees. A policy of silence had been determined upon as a result of many anxious conferences in Washington. It was deemed unwise to give publicity to anything pointing to the existence of an Asiatic conspiracy behind the league. Substantial evidence in support of such a charge must first be obtained, and despite the feverish activity of thousands of agents all over the country, such evidence was still lacking. The finances of the league could not be challenged; they stood well with the Treasury:

there were no evasions. Yet, as Sir Denis had proved to a group of financial experts, the League of Good Americans, at a rough estimate, must be losing two million dollars a week!

How were these losses made good?

He knew. But the explanation was so seemingly fantastic that he dared not advance it before these hard-headed business men whose imaginations had been neglected during the years that they concentrated upon solid facts.

Then, out of the blue, had come the Voice of the Holy Thorn. It had disturbed the country, keyed up to almost hysterical tension, as nothing else could have done. Long-awaited, the authoritative voice of the abbot had spoken at last. Millions of those who had awaited his call had anticipated that despite his known friendship for the old regime he would advocate acceptance of the new.

That Paul Salvaletti’s programme amounted to something uncommonly like dictatorship Salvaletti had been at no pains to disguise. His policy of the readjustment of wealth, a policy which no honest man in the country professed to understand, nevertheless enjoyed the cordial support of all those who were benefited by it. The agricultural areas were becoming more and more thickly dotted with league farms. Their produce was collected and disposed of by league distributors: there were league stores in many towns. And this was no more than the skeleton of a monumental scheme which ultimately would give the league control of the key industries of the country.

Salvaletti had realized some of the promises of Harvey Bragg—promises which had been regarded as chimerical. . . .

Where a ray of sunlight touched his intricately wrinkled face, old Sam Pak crouched upon a stool just inside the windows, his mummy-like face grotesque against the green background of the woods.

“What has this priest learned, Master, which others had not learned before? Dr. Orwin Prescott knew of our arrival in the country. . . .”

“His source of information was traced—and removed. . . . Orwin Prescott served his purpose.”

“True.”

No man could have said Sam Pak’s eyes were open or closed as the shrivelled head was turned in the direction of that majestic figure behind the table.

“Enemy Number One has been unable to obtain evidence which would justify his revealing the truth to the country.” Dr. Fu Manchu seemed to be thinking aloud. “He has hindered us, harried us, but our great work has carried on and is nearing its triumphant conclusion. Should disaster come now—it would be his gods over ours. For this reason I fear the priest.”

“The wise man fears only that which he knows,” crooned old Sam Pak, “since against the unknown there can be no defence.”

Dr. Fu Manchu, long ivory hands motionless upon the table before him, studied the wizened face.

“The priest has sources of information denied to the Secret Service,” he said softly. “He has a following second only to our own. Salvaletti, whom I have tended as the gardener tends a delicate lily, must be guarded night and day.”

“It is so, Marquis. He has a bodyguard five times as strong as that which formerly surrounded Harvey Bragg.”

Silence fell for some moments. Dr. Fu Manchu, from his seat behind the lacquer table, seemed to be watching the woodland prospect through half-closed eyes.

Some reports indicate that he evades his guards.” Fu Manchu spoke almost in a whisper. “These reports the woman, Lola Dumas, has confirmed. My Chicago agents are ignorant and obtuse. I await an explanation of these clandestine journeys.”

Sam Pak slowly nodded his wrinkled head.

“I have taken sharp measures, Master, with the Number responsible. He was the Japanese physician, Shoshima.”

“He was?”

“He honourably committed hara-kiri last night. . . .”

Silence fell again between these invisible weavers who wrought a strange pattern upon the loom of American history. This little farmstead in which, unsuspected, Dr. Fu Manchu pursued his strange studies, and from which he issued his momentous orders, stood remote from the nearest main road upon property belonging to an ardent supporter of the League of Good Americans. He was unaware of the identity of his tenant, having placed the premises at the disposal of the league in all good faith.

Dr. Fu Manchu sat motionless in silence, his gaze fixed upon the distant woods. Sam Pak resembled an image: no man could have sworn that he lived. A squirrel ran up a branch of a tree which almost overhung the balcony, seemed to peer into the room, sprang lightly to a higher branch, and disappeared. The evensong of the birds proclaimed the coming of dusk. Nothing else stirred.

“I shall move to Base 6, Chicago,?” came the guttural voice at last. “The professor will accompany me; his memory holds all our secrets. It is essential that I be present in person on Saturday night.”

“The plane is ready, Marquis, but it will be necessary for you to drive through New York to reach it.”

“I shall leave in an hour, my friend. On my journey to Base 6 I may pay my respects to the Abbot Donegal,” Dr. Fu Manchu spoke very softly. “Salvaletti’s address on Saturday means the allegiance of those elements of the Middle West hitherto faithful to the old order. We must silence the priest. . . .”

Chapter 36

THE HUMAN EQUATION

Mark Hepburn could not keep still: impatience and anxiety conspired to deny him repose. He stood up from the seat in Central Park overlooking the pond and began to walk in the direction of the Scholar’s Gate.

Smith had started at dawn by air to reach the Abbot Donegal, whose veiled statements relative to the man and the movement attempting to remodel the Constitution of the country had electrified millions of hearers from coast to coast. A consciousness of defeat was beginning to overwhelm Hepburn. No charge, unless it could be substantiated to the hilt, could check the headlong progress of Paul Salvaletti to the White House. . . .

And now, for the first time in their friendship, Moya Adair had failed to keep an appointment. Deep in his heart Hepburn was terrified. Lieutenant Johnson had traced Robbie’s Long Island playground, but Moya had begged that Mark would never again have the boy covered.

She had been subjected to interrogation on the subject by the President! Apparently her replies had satisfied him—but she was not sure.

And now, although a note in her own hand had been conveyed to him by Mary Goff, Moya was not here.

If he should be responsible for any tragedy occurring in her life he knew that he could never forgive himself. And always their meetings took place under the shadow of the dreadful, impending harm. He walked on until he could see the gate;

but Moya was not visible. His restlessness grew by leaps and bounds. He turned and began to retrace his steps.

He had nearly reached the familiar seat which had become a landmark in his life when he saw her approaching from the opposite direction. He wanted to shout aloud, so great was his joy and relief. He began to hurry forward.

To his astonishment Moya, who must have seen him, did not hasten her step. She continued to stroll along looking about her as though he had not existed. His heart, which had leaped gladly at sight of her, leaped again, but painfully. What did it mean? What should he do? And now she was so near that he could clearly see her face . . . and he saw that she was very pale.

An almost imperceptible movement of her head, a quick lowering other lashes, conveyed the message:

“Don’t speak to me!”

His brow moist with perspiration, he passed her, looking straight ahead. Very faintly the words reached him:

“There’s someone following. Keep him in sight.”

Mark Hepburn walked on to where the path forked. A short thick-set man passed him at the bend but did not pay any attention to him. Hepbum carried on for some ten or twelve paces, then dodged through some bushes, skirted a boulder and began to retrace his steps.

The man who was covering Moya was now some twenty yards ahead. Hepburn kept him in view, and presently he bore right, following a path which skirted the pond. In the distance Moya Adair became visible.

A book resting on her knee, she was watching a group of children at play.

The man passed her, making no sign. And in due course Hepbum approached. As he did so, Moya bent down over her book. He went on, keeping the man in sight right to the gate of the park. When he saw him cross towards the plaza, Mark Hepburn returned.

Moya looked up. She was still very pale; her expression was troubled.

“Has he gone?” she asked rather wearily.

“Yes, he has left the park.”

“He has gone to make his report.” She closed her book and sighed as Mark Hepburn sat down beside her. “I seem to be under suspicion. I think the movements of everybody in the organization are checked from time to time. There has been some tremendous upset. Probably you know what it is? Frankly—I don’t. But it has resulted in an enormous amount of mechanical work being piled up on my shoulders. I receive hundreds of messages, apparently quite meaningless, which I have to take down in shorthand and repeat if called upon.”

“To whom do you repeat them, Moya?”

“To someone with a German accent. I have no idea of his identity.” Her gloved fingers played nervously with the book. “Then there is the Salvaletti-Dumas wedding. Old Emmanuel Dumas and myself have been made responsible for all arrangements. Lola, as you know, is with Salvaletti. It’s terribly hard work. Of course, it’s sheer propaganda and we have plenty of assistance. Nothing is being neglected which might help Salvaletti forward to the Presidency.”

“The murder of Harvey Bragg was a step in that direction,” said Hepburn grimly; “but——”

He checked his words. A party operating under his direction had located Dr. Fu Manchu and the man known as Sam Pak in a farmhouse in Connecticut! Even now it was being surrounded. Lieutenant Johnson was in charge. . . .

Moya did not answer at once; she sat staring straight before her for a while and then:

“That may be true,” she replied in a very quiet voice. “I give you my word that I don’t know if it is true or not. And I’m sure you realize”—she turned to him, and he looked into her beautiful troubled eyes—”that if I had known I should not have admitted it.”

He watched her for a while in silence.

“Yes, I do,” he said at last, in his unmusical, monotonous voice. “You play the game, even though you play it for the most evil man in the world.”

“The President!” Moya forced a wan smile. “I sometimes think he is above good or evil—he thinks on a plane which we simply can’t understand. Has that ever occurred to you, Mark?”

“Yes.” Mark Hepburn nodded. “It’s Nayland Smith’s idea, too. It simply means that he’s doubly dangerous to the peace of the world. You are such a dead straight little soul, Moya, that I can’t tell you what I have learned about the man you call the President. It’s a compliment to you, because I think if you were asked what I had said, you would feel called upon to answer truthfully.”

Moya glanced at him, then looked aside.

“Yes, she replied slowly, “I suppose I should. But”—she clenched her hands—”quite honestly, I don’t care very much to-day who gets control of the country. In the end, all forms of government are much alike, I believe. I am frightfully, desperately worried about Robbie.”

“What’s the matter, Moya?”

Hepburn bent to her. She continued to look aside: there were tears on her lashes.

“He’s very ill.”

“My dear!” In the most natural way in the world his arm was around her shoulders; he held her to him. “Why didn’t you tell me at first? What’s wrong? Who is attending him?”

“Dr. Burnett. It’s diphtheria! He contracted it on his last visit to the garden. I have heard, since, there’s a slight epidemic over there.”

“But diphtheria, in capable hands——”

“Something seems to have gone wrong. I want another opinion. I must hurry back now.”

Mark Hepburn cursed himself for an obtuse fool, for Moya knew that he was a doctor of medicine.

“Let me see him!” he said eagerly. “I know that sounds egotistical; I mean, I’m a very ordinary physician. But at least I have a deep interest in the case.”

“I wanted you to see him,” Moya answered simply. “Really, that was why I came to-day. I only learned last night what was the matter. . . .”

Nayland Smith hurried down from the plane and ran across the floodlighted dusk of the flying ground to a waiting car. The door banged; the car moved off. To the other occupant:

“Who is it?” he snapped.

“Johnson.”

“Ah Johnson, a recruit from the navy, I believe, as Hepburn is a recruit from the army? I have been notified that Dr. Fu Manchu and the man Sam Pak have been traced to a farmhouse in Connecticut. The latest news?”

“Dr. Fu Manchu left by road a few minutes ago, before I and my party could intercept him.”

“Damnation!” Nayland Smith drove his right fist into the palm of his left hand. “Too late—always too late!”

“He was heading for New York. Every possible point en route is watched. I returned by air to meet you.”

“However disguised,” said Smith, “his height alone makes his a conspicuous figure. Tell me where to drop you. Keep in touch with Regal.”

A police car preceded them on the lonely road and another brought up the rear. But a third car, showing no lights and travelling at sixty-five to seventy, passed.

A torrent of machine-gun bullets rained upon them! A violent explosion not five yards behind told of a wasted bomb!

The murder party roared away ahead—a Z-car, with Rolls engines built for two hundred miles per hour. . . .

The heavy windows had splintered in several places—but not one bullet had penetrated!

Johnson sprang out on to the roadside as they pulled up.

“Everything right in front?”

“O.K., sir.”

Men were running to them from the leading car and jumping out of that which followed, when, leaning from the open door:

“Back to your places!” Nayland Smith shouted. “We stop for nothing. . . .”

In the covered car park of the Regal-Athenian Smith alighted and ran in. The door was still swinging when Wyatt, a government man, came out from the reception office.

“I have a message from Captain Hepburn,” he said.

Nayland Smith, already on his way to the elevator, paused, turned.

“What is it?”

“He does not expect to be here at the time arranged, but asks you to wait until he calls you.”

Upstairs, in their now familiar quarters, Fey prepared a whisky.

“What’s detaining Captain Hepburn?” Nayland Smith demanded. “Do you know?”

“I don’t, sir, but I think it’s something to do with the lady.”

“Mrs. Adair?”

“Yes, sir. Mary Goff—a very excellent woman who has called here before—brought a note for Captain Hepburn this morning, just after you left, sir. Captain Hepburn has been out all day, but he returned an hour ago, collected up some things from his laboratory, and went out again.”

Nayland Smith set down his glass and irritably began to load his pipe.

This was a strange departure from routine. Smith did not understand. Admittedly he was ahead of time, but he had counted upon finding Hepburn here. In such an hour of crisis as this, the absence of his chief of staff was more than perturbing. Every minute, every second, had its value. Dr. Fu Manchu had thwarted them at point after point. Despite their sleepless activity that cold, inexorable genius was carrying his plans to fruition. . . .

The phone bell rang. Fey answered. A moment he listened, then, looking up:

“Captain Hepburn, sir,” he said.

in

How is he, Dr. Burnett?”

Moya’s voice was breathlessly anxious—her eyes were tragic. Dr. Burnett, a young man with charming manners and a fashionable practice, shook his head, frowning thoughtfully.

“There’s really nothing to worry about, Mrs. Adair,” he replied. “Nevertheless I am not entirely satisfied.”

Moya turned as Mark Hepburn came into the sitting-room. His intractable hair was more than normally untidy. He was acutely conscious of the danger of the situation, for he knew now that his presence would be reported by those mysterious watchers whose eyes missed nothing. He had made a plan, however. If Moya should be in peril, he would declare himself as a Federal agent who had forced his way in to interrogate her.

“Dr. Burnett,” said Moya, “this is”—for the fraction of a second she hesitated—”Dr. Purcell, an old friend. You don’t mind if he sees Robbie?”

Dr. Burnett bowed somewhat frigidly.

“Not at all,” he replied; “in fact, I was about to suggest another opinion—purely in the interests of your peace of mind, Mrs. Adair. I had thought of Dr. Detmold.”

Dr. Detmold had the reputation of being the best consulting physician in New York, and Mark Hepburn, as honest with himself as with others, experienced a moment of embarrassment. But finally:

“The boy’s asleep,” said Dr. Burnett, “and I am anxious not to arouse him. But if you will come this way, Dr.—er—Purcell, I shall be glad to hear your views.”

In the dimly-lighted bedroom, Nurse Goff sat beside the sleeping Robbie; her appearance indicated, correctly, that she had known no sleep for the past twenty-four hours. She looked up with a gleam of welcome in her tired, shrewd eyes as Hepburn entered.

He beckoned her across to the open window, and there in a whisper:

“He looks very white, nurse. How is his pulse?”

“He’s failing sir! The poor bairn is dying under my eyes. He’s choking—he can swallow nothing! How can we keep him alive?”

Mark Hepburn crossed to the bed. Gently he felt the angle of the boy’s jaw: the glands were much enlarged. Slight though his touch had been, Robbie awoke. His big eyes were glassy. There was no recognition in them.

“Water,” he whispered. “Froat. . .so sore!”

“Poor bonnie lad,” murmured Mary Goff. “He’s crying for water, and every time he tries to swallow it I expect him to suffocate. Oh, what will we do! He’s going to die!”

Hepburn, who had hastily collected from the Regal those indispensable implements of his trade, a stethoscope, a thermometer and a laryngeal mirror, began to examine the little patient. It was a difficult examination, but at last it was completed. . . .

Although painfully aware of her danger, he hadn’t the heart to deter Moya when, her face a mask of sorrow, she crossed to the boy’s bed. He beckoned to Dr. Burnett, and outside in the sitting-room:

“I fear the larynx is affected,” he said; “I am not equipped for a proper examination in this light. But what is your opinion?”

“My opinion is, Dr. Purcell, that the woman Goff, although she is a trained nurse, has a sentimental attachment to the patient and is unduly alarming Mrs. Adair. The action of the antitoxin, admittedly, has been delayed, but if normal measures are strictly carried out I can see no cause for alarm.” Mark Hepburn ran his fingers through his untidy hair. “I wish I could share your optimism,” he said. “Do you know Dr. Detmold’s number? I should like to speak to him.”

IV

“The human equation—forever incalculable,” muttered Nayland Smith.

He hung up the telephone and crossing, stared out of the window.

The night had a million eyes: New York’s lights were twinkling. . . Admittedly the situation was difficult; he put himself mentally in Hepburn’s place and Hepburn had asked only to be allowed to remain until the famous consultant arrived.

Nayland Smith stared at the decapitated trunk of the Stratton Building. There were lighted rooms on the lower floors, but the upper were in darkness. The great explosion at the summit had wrought such havoc that even now it was possible the entire building would be condemned. That explosion had been the personal handiwork of Dr. Fu Manchu!

Their escape from the catastrophe prepared for them fell nearly within the province of miracles. Yet to this very hour Dr. Fu Manchu remained at large, his wonderful brain weaving schemes beyond the imagination of normal men. . . .

Could anything, short of the destruction of that apparently indestructible life, prevent the triumph of Paul Salvaletti? The Americans began frankly to assume the dimensions of a Fascist! movement, with the dazzling personality of Salvaletti at its head. On Wednesday next, at eight o’clock (if he lived), Abbot Donegal would tell the country the truth. What would the reaction be?

Dr. Fu Manchu was buying the United States with gold!

Once, in Nayland Smith’s presence, he had said:

“Gold! I could drown mankind in gold!”

That secret, to the discovery of which so many alchemists had devoted their lives, was held by the Chinese Doctor. Smith had known for a long time that gigantic operations in gold were being carried on. Indeed, although few had even suspected, it was these secret operations which had created the financial chaos from which every nation of the world suffered to this day.

To-night the end seemed to him inevitable. There, alone, staring out at the lights of New York, Nayland Smith fought a great fight.

Could he hope to check this superman who fought with weapons not available to others; who had the experience of unimaginable years ; who wielded forces which no other man had ever controlled? There was one certain way, and one only:

that which Dr. Fu Manchu himself doubtless would have chosen.

The death of Paul Salvaletti would bring this mighty structure crashing to the earth. . . .

But, even though the fate of the country, perhaps of the Western world, hung in the scales, assassination was not a weapon which Nayland Smith could employ.

There was perhaps another way: the destruction of Dr. Fu Manchu. That subtle control removed, the gigantic but fragile machine would be lost; a rudderless ship in a hurricane.

A bell rang. Fey came in and crossed to the telephone.

“Lieutenant Johnson, sir.”

Nayland Smith took up the receiver.

“Hullo, Johnson.”

“Touch and go again!” came Johnson’s voice on a note of excitement. “Dr. Fu Manchu was recognized by one of our patrols, but his car developed tremendous speed, and our men couldn’t follow. They called through to the next point. The car was intercepted. It was empty—except for the driver! We’ve got the driver.”

“Anything more?”

“Yes: a report that two men were seen to change cars in Greenwich. Descriptions tally. Second car sighted just over the line. But description now passed on to all patrols. Speaking from Times Building.”

“Standby I’ll join you.”

Nayland Smith hung up.

“Fey!” he shouted.

Fey reappeared silently.

“Captain Hepburn is at the second address under the name ofAdair in the notebook on the telephone table. We have no number for this address. If I want him you will send a messenger.”

“Very good, sir.”

“I shall keep in touch. I am going out now.”

“As you are, sir?”

“Yes,” Nayland Smith smiled grimly. “My attempted change of residence was a fiasco, and I don’t propose to give further amusement to the enemy by wearing funny disguises.”

Chapter 37

THE GREAT PHYSICIAN

“I have called Dr. Detmold,” said Mark Hepbum, “and have told him to bring——” he hesitated—”the necessary remedies.”

Moya clutched him convulsively. For the first time in their strange friendship he found her in his arms.

“Does that mean—” she was watching him with an expression which he was never to forget—”that——”

“Don’t worry, Moya—my dear. It will be all right. But I’m glad I came.”

“Mark,” she whispered, “I never realized until now how I wanted—someone I could count on.”

Mark Hepburn stroked her hair—as many times he had longed to do.

“You know you can count on me?”

“Yes—I know I can.”

Hepburn tried to conquer the drumming in his ears, which was caused by the acceleration of his heart. When he spoke, his voice was even more toneless than normally.

“I’m not a very wonderful bargain, Moya; but when all these troubles are past—because it isn’t fair to ask you now . . .”

Moya raise her eyes to his: they were bright with stifled tears. But in them he read that which made further, inelo-quent words needless.

All the submerged poetry in his complex character expressed itself in that first ecstatic kiss. It was a passionate statement. As he released Moya he knew, deep in his buried self, that he had found his mate.

“Moya, darling.”

Her head rested on his shoulder. . . .

“Mark, dear, messages from this apartment are tapped.” She said. “It’s quite possible that your conversation with Dr. Detmold will be reported elsewhere.”

“It doesn’t matter. If your—employers catch me here, I shall declare myself and put you all under arrest.”

Moya gently freed herself and stepped away as Dr. Burnett joined them.

“In certain respects” said Burnett, “the patient’s condition, admittedly, is not favourable. My dear Mrs. Adair”—he patted her shoulder—”he is in very good hands. Dr. Detmold is coming?”

“Yes,” Hepbum replied.

“I am sure he will endorse my opinion. The symptoms are not inconsistent with the treatment which I have been following.”

Mark Hepburn entirely agreed. Robbie’s survival of the treatment was due to a splendid constitution.

“If you will excuse me for a moment,” he muttered, “I should like to look at the patient.”

In the silence of the sick room he bent over Robbie. There was agony now in the eyes of Nurse Goff. The boy had had a choking fit in which he had narrowly escaped suffocation. He was terribly exhausted. His fluttery pulse was alarming. Walking on tiptoe, Hepburn crossed to the open window, beckoning Nurse Goff to follow him.

There he held a whispered consultation. Presently the door opened and Dr. Burnett came in with Moya; the reassuring tone of his voice died away as he entered the room. He looked in a startled manner at his patient.

A change for the worse, which must have been apparent even to a layman, had taken place. Dr. Burnett crossed to the bed. There came a sound of three dull blows on the outer door, as if someone had struck it with a clenched hand. . . .

“Dr. Detmold!” Moya whispered brokenly, and ran out.

The two men were bending anxiously over the little sufferer when a suppressed cry from the vestibule, a sound of movement, bought Hepburn upright. He turned at the moment that a tall figure entered the bedroom.

It was that of a man in a long black overcoat having an astrakhan collar, who wore an astrakhan cap of a Russian pattern. Mark Hepburn’s heart seemed to miss a beat—as he found himself transfixed by the glance of the green eyes of Dr. Fu Manchu!

For a moment only he was called upon to sustain it. The situation found him dumbfounded. Dr. Fu Manchu removed his cap and, throwing it upon a chair, turned to Dr. Burnett.

“Are you attending the patient?”

He spoke in a low voice, sibilant but imperative.

“I am. May I ask who you are, sir?”

Dr. Burnett glanced at a leather case which the speaker had placed upon the floor. Ignoring the inquiry, Dr. Fu Manchu bent over Robbie for a moment, then stood upright, and turned as Moya came in.

“Why was I not notified earlier?” he demanded harshly.

Moya clutched at her throat; she was fighting back hysteria.

“How could I know, President,” she whispered, “that——”

“True,” Dr. Fu Manchu nodded. “I have been much preoccupied. Perhaps I am unjust. I should have prohibited the boy’s last visit. I was aware that there was diphtheria in that neighbourhood.”

Something in his unmoving regard seemed to steady Moya.

“Your only crime is that you are a woman,” said Dr. Fu Manchu quietly. “Even to the last you have done your duty by me. I must do mine. I guaranteed your boy’s safety. I have never failed to redeem my word. From small failures great catastrophes grow.”

“And I must protest,” Dr. Burnett interposed, speaking indignantly but in a low voice. “At any moment we are expecting Dr. Detmold.

“Detmold is a dabbler,” said Dr. Fu Manchu contemptuously, and crossing to the bed he seated himself in a chair, staring down intently at Robbie. “I have cancelled those instructions.”

“This is preposterous,” Burnett exclaimed. “I order you to leave my patient.”

Dr. Fu Manchu moved a gaunt yellow hand in a fan-like movement over Robbie’s forehead, then, stooping, parted his lips with the second finger and the thumb of his left hand, and bent yet lower.

“When did you administer the antitoxin?” he demanded.

Dr. Burnett clenched his teeth, but did not reply.

“I asked a question.”

The green eyes became suddenly fixed upon Dr. Burnett, and Dr. Burnett replied:

“At eleven o’clock last night.”

“Eight hours too late. The diphtheritic membrane has invaded the larynx.”

“I am dispersing it.”

Moya’s hands closed convulsively upon Mark Hepburn’s arm.

“God help me!” she whispered. “What am I to do?”

Her words had reached the ears of Dr. Fu Manchu.

“You are to have courage,” he replied, “and to wait in the sitting-room with Mary Goff until I call you. Please go.”

For one moment Moya glanced at Hepburn. Then Nurse Goff, her face haggard with anxiety, put an arm around her and the two women went out. Dr. Fu Manchu stood up.

“Surgical interference is unavoidable,” he said.

“I disagree!” Burnett in his indigation lost control, raising his voice unduly. “Until I have conferred with Dr. Detmold I forbid you to interfere with the patient in any way. Even if you are qualified to do so—which I doubt—I refuse to permit it.”

Dr. Burnett found himself transfixed by a glance which seemed to penetrate to his subconscious mind. He became aware of an abysmal incompetence which he had successfully concealed even from himself throughout a prosperous career. He had never experienced an identical sensation in the whole of his life.

“Leave us,” said the guttural voice. “Captain Hepburn will assist me.”

As Dr. Burnett, moving like an automaton, went out of the room, the fact crashed in upon Hepburn that Dr. Fu Manchu had addressed him by his proper name and rank!

And, as if he had read his thoughts:

“My presence here to-night,” said Dr. Fu Manchu, “is due to your telephone message to Sir Denis Nayland Smith. It was intercepted and relayed to me on my journey. To this I am indebted for avoiding a number of patrols whose positions you described. Be good enough to open the case which you will find upon the carpet at your feet. Disconnect the table lamp and plug in the coil of white flex.”

Automatically, Mark Hepburn obeyed the order. Dr. Fu Manchu took up a mask to which a lamp was attached.

“We shall operate through the cricoid cartilage,” he said.

“But——”

“I must request you to accept my decisions. I could force them upon you but I prefer to appeal to your intelligence.”

He moved his hands again over the boy’s face; and slowly, feverish bright eyes opened, staring upward.

Something resembling a tortured grin appeared upon Robbie’s lips.

“Hello . . . Yellow Uncle,” came a faint, gasping whisper. “I’s glad . . . you come . . .”

He choked, became contorted, but his eyes remained open, fixed upon those other strange eyes which looked down upon him. Gradually the convulsion passed.

“You are sleepy.” Fu Manchu’s voice was a crooning murmur. The boy’s long lashes began to flicker. “You are sleepy . . .” His lids drooped. “You are very sleepy . . .” Robbie’s eyes became quite closed. “You are fast asleep.”

“A general anaesthetic?” Hepburn asked hoarsely.

“I never employ anaesthetics in surgery,” the guttural voice replied. “They decrease the natural resistance of the patient.”

Nayland Smith, seated in the bullet-proof car, a sheaf of forms and other papers upon his knee, looked up at Johnson, who stood outside the open door.

“What are we to make of it, Johnson? An impasse! Here is the mysterious message received by Fey half an hour after I left: a request from Hepburn that under no circumstances should we look for evidence at the apartment he had visited, as someone lay there critically ill. No hint regarding his own movement, but the cryptic statement: ‘Keep in touch with Fey and have no fear about my personal safety. I make myself responsible for Dr. Fu Manchu!”

“Fey is sure it was Hepburn who called him,” said Johnson. . . .

“But that was early last night,” snapped Smith; “it is now 3.15 in the morning! And except for the fact that our latest reports enabled us to draw a ring on the map of Manhattan, where are we? Dr. Fu Manchu is almost certainly inside that ring. But since we cannot possibly barricade the most fashionable area of New York, how are we to find him?”

“It’s deadlock sure enough,” Johnson agreed. “One thing’s certain: Hepburn hasn’t come out since he went in! A mouse couldn’t have got out of that building. There are lights in the top apartment. . . .”

And even as these words were being spoken, Mark Hepburn, in a darkened room, was watching the greatest menace to social order the world has^ known since Attila the Hun overran Europe, and wondering if Nayland Smith would respect his request.

He had witnessed a feat of surgery unique in his experience. Those long yellow fingers seemed to hold magic in their tips. Smith’s assurance became superfluous. Dr. Fu Manchu, the supreme physician, was also the master surgeon. He was, as Hepburn believed (for Nayland Smith’s computation he found himself unable to accept), a man of over seventy years of age. Yet with unfailing touch, exquisite dexterity, he had carried out an operation in a way which Hepburn’s training told him to be wrong. It had proved to be right. Dr. Fu Manchu had performed a surgical miracle —under hypnosis!

But it had left the little patient in a dangerously weak condition.

The night wore on, and with every hour of anxiety, Moya came nearer and nearer to collapse. Except for the ceaseless, hoarse voice of New York the sick room was silent.

That strange, supercilious gesture of Fu Manchu before he began the operation was one Hepburn could never forget; it had a sort of ironic grandeur.

“Call your headquarters,” the Chinese Doctor had directed, “at the Regal Tower. Ensure us against interference. Allay any doubts respecting your own safety: I shall require you here. Conceal the fact that I am present, but accept responsibility for handing me over to the law. I give you—personally— my parole. Instruct the exchange that no calls are to be put through to-night. . . .”

Nurse Goff was on duty again, although it was amazing how the weary woman kept awake. She sat by the open window, her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes fixed not upon the deathly face of Robbie, but on the gaunt profile of the man who bent over him. Moya was past tears; she stood just inside the open door, supported by Hepburn.

For five hours Dr. Fu Manchu had sat beside the bed. Some of the restorative measures which he had adopted were those that any surgeon would have used; others were unfamiliar to Hepburn, who could not even guess what was contained in the phials which he opened. Once, in the first crisis, Fu Manchu had harshly directed him to charge a hypodermic syringe. Then, bending over the boy and resting his hands upon his head, he had waved him aside. Now, as Hepburn’s training told him, the second, grand crisis, was approaching.

Moya had not spoken for more than an hour. Her lips were parched, her eyes burning: she quivered as he held her against him.

A new day drew near, and Hepburn, watching saw (and read the portent) beads of moisture appearing upon the high yellow brow of Dr. Fu Manchu. At four o’clock, that zero hour at which so many frightened souls have crossed the threshold to take their first hesitant steps upon the path beyond, Robbie opened his eyes, tried to grin at the intent face so near to his own, then closed them again.

It came to Mark Hepburn as a conviction that that lonely little spirit had wandered beyond recall even by the greatest physician in the world, who sat motionless at his bedside. . . .

Chapter 38

WESTWARD

Dim grey light was touching the most lofty buildings, so that they seemed to emerge from sleeping New York like phantoms of lost Nineveh; later would come the high-flung spears of those temples of Mammon. As Bliicher might have remarked, “What a city to loot!”

Nayland Smith rang a bell beside a glazed door with iron scrollwork. Park Avenue is never wholly deserted day or night, but at this hour its fashionable life was at lowest ebb, and every possible precaution had been taken to avoid attracting the attention of belated passers-by. It was necessary to ring the bell more than once before the door was opened.

A sleepy night porter, his hair tousled, confronted them. Nayland Smith stepped forward, but the man, an angry gleam coming into his eyes, barred the way. He was big and powerfully built.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded. “Top floor,” rapped Nayland Smith. “Don’t argue.” The man had a glimpse of a gold badge, and over the speaker’s shoulder saw that he was covered by an automatic held by Lieutenant Johnson.

“What’s the fuss?” he growled. “I’m not arguing.” But actually, although he was only a very small cog in the wheel, he knew that the occupants of the penthouse apartment at the top of the building were closely protected. He had secured his appointment through the League of Good Americans, and he had had orders from the officers of the league, identifiable by their badges, scrupulously to note and report anyone who visited the apartment.

In silence he operated the elevator. At the top:

“Go down again,” Nayland Smith ordered, “and report to the officer in charge in the vestibule.”

As the elevator disappeared he looked about him: they were a party of four. Anxiety for Hepburn’s safety had driven him to make this move. Belatedly he had remembered a letter once received from Orwin Prescott—and in Prescott’s handwriting. He remembered that Hepburn quite recently had succumbed to that uncanny control which Dr. Fu Manchu possessed the power to exercise. . . . Hepburn’s message to Fey might be no more than an emanation from that powerful, evil will!

“Be ready for anything,” he warned sternly, “but make no move without orders from me.”

He pressed the bell.

A moment of almost complete silence followed. He had been prepared to wait, perhaps to force the door. He was about to ring a second time when the door opened.

Mark Hepburn faced him!

Amazement, relief, doubt, alternately ruled Nayland Smith’s mind. The situation was beyond analysis. He fixed a penetrating stare on Hepburn’s haggard face: his hair was dishevelled, his expression wild, and with a queer note almost of resentment in his tone:

“Smith!” he exclaimed.

Nayland Smith nodded and stepped in, signalling to his party to remain outside.

Crossing a small vestibule, he found himself in a charmingly appointed sitting-room, essentially and peculiarly feminine in character. It was empty.

“I’m sorry about all this seeming mystery,” said Hepburn in a low voice; “and I understand your anxiety. But when you know the facts you will agree, I think, there was no other way”

“You undertook a certain responsibility,” Nayland Smith said grimly, “in a message to Fey—”

“Not so loud, Smith! I stand by it . . . . It’s hard to explain”— he hesitated, his deep-set eyes watching Nayland Smith— “but with all his crimes, after to-night—I’m sorry. Moya— Mrs. Adair—collapsed when she heard the news—”

“What, that the boy is dead?”

“No—that he will live!”

“I am glad to hear it. Largely as a result of your discovery of the Connecticut farm,” said Nayland Smith, continuing intently to watch Hepburn, “we have narrowed down our search to an area surrounding this building,. Your long, inexplicable absence following that message to Fey has checked us. I should be glad, Hepburn, if you would inform me where you believe Fu Manchu to be—”

The door opened, and Dr. Fu Manchu came in.

Smith’s hand plunged to his automatic, but Fu Manchu, frowning slightly, shook his head, His usually brilliant eyes were dully filmed. He wore a black suit and beneath his coat a curious black woollen garment with a high collar. In some strange way he resembled a renegade priest who had abandoned Christianity in favour of devil worship.

“Melodrama is uncalled for, Sir Denis,” he said, his guttural voice expressing no emotion whatever. “We are not in Hollywood. I shall be at your service in a moment.” He turned to Hepburn. “My written instructions are on the table beside the bed: you will find there also the name of the physician I have selected to take charge of the case. He is a Jew practising in the Ghetto; a man of integrity, with a sound knowledge of his profession. I do not imply, Sir Denis, that he is in the class of our mutual friend, Dr. Petrie (to whom I beg you to convey my regards), but he is the best physician in New York. I desire, Captain Hepburn, to be arrested by Sir Denis Nayland Smith, who has a prior claim. Will you be good enough to hand me over to him?”

Hepburn spoke hoarsely.

“Yes. . . . Smith, this is your prisoner.”

Fu Manchu bowed slightly. He took up a leather case which at the moment of entering he had placed upon the carpet beside him.

“I desire you, Captain Hepburn,” he said, “to call Dr. Goldberg immediately, and to remain with the patient until he arrives. . . .”

All but imperturbable as he had trained himself to be, Nayland Smith at this moment almost lost contact with reality. At the eleventh hour, with counsels of desperation becoming attractive, Fate rather than his own wit had delivered this man into his hands. Swiftly he glanced at Hepburn and read in the haggard face mingled emotions of which he himself was conscious. He had never dreamed that triumph achieved after years of striving could be such a dead-sea fruit.

The dimmed green eyes were fixed upon him, but there was nothing hypnotic in their regard; rather they held an ironical question. He stepped aside, indicating with his hand the vestibule in which the three men waited.

“Precede me, Dr. Fu Manchu.”

Fu Manchu, carrying the case, walked with his cat-like tread out into the vestibule, three keen glances fixed upon him, three barrels covering his every movement.

“Ring for the elevator,” rapped Nayland Smith.

One of the men went out through the front door, which had been left open.

Dr. Fu Manchu set his case upon the floor beside a chair.

“I assume, Sir Denis,” he said, his voice very sibilant, “I am permitted to take my coat and my cap?”

He opened a panelled cupboard and looked inside. Momentarily the opened door concealed him as a heavy black topcoat with an astrakhan collar was thrown out on to the back of the chair. Ensued an interval of not more than five seconds . . . then Nayland Smith sprang forward.

The leather case stood beside the chair, the black coat was draped across it; but the cupboard was empty!

Dr. Fu Manchu had disappeared.

“I am growing old, Hepburn,” said Nayland Smith. “It is high time I retired.”

Mark Hepburn, studying the crisp greying hair, bronzed features and clear eyes of the speaker, laughed shortly.

“No doubt Dr. Fu Manchu wishes you would,” he said.

“Yet he fooled me with a paltry vanishing-cabinet trick, an illusion which was old when the late Harry Houdini was young! Definitely, Hepburn, my ideas have become fixed. I simply cannot get used to the fact that New York City is a former stronghold of the most highly organized and highly paid underworld group which Western civilization so far has produced. That penthouse apartment, as we know now, was once occupied by Barney Flynn, the last of the big men of boot-legging days. The ingenious door in the hat cupboard was his private exit, opening into another building—a corresponding apartment which he also rented.”

“Moya didn’t know,” said Hepburn.

“I grant you that. Nor was the apartment one of her own choosing. But she remembers (although in her disturbed state at the time she accepted the fact) that Fu Manchu appeared in the vestibule—although no one had opened the door! Had I realized that he had given you his parole, I might have foreseen an attempt to escape.”

“Why?”

Nayland Smith turned to Hepburn; a faint smile crossed his lean features.

“He insisted that you should formally hand him over to me. You did so—and he promptly disappeared! Dr. Fu Manchu is a man of his word, Hepburn. . . .” He was silent awhile, then:

“I am sorry for Mrs. Adair,” he added, “and granting the circumstances, I think she has played fair. I hope the boy is out of danger.”

Hepburn sat, pensive, looking down from the plane window at a darkling map of the agrarian Middle West.

“According to all I have ever learned,” he said presently, “that boy should be dead. Even now, I can’t believe that any human power could have saved him. But he’s alive! And there’s every chance he will recover and be none the worse. You know, Smith”—he turned, his deep-set, ingenuous eyes fixed upon his companion—”that’s a miracle. . . . I saw surgery there, in that room, that I’ll swear there isn’t another man living could have performed. That incompetent fool, Burnett, had lost the life of his patient: Dr. Fu Manchu conjured it back again.”

He paused, watching the grim profile of Nayland Smith.

Dr. Fu Manchu had successfully slipped out of New York. But the police and Federal agents urged to feverish activity by emergency orders from Washington, had made one discovery: Fu Manchu was headed West.

Outside higher police commands and the Secret Service, the intensive scrutiny of all travellers on Western highways by road or rail was a mystery to be discussed by those who came in contact with it for many years afterwards. Air liners received Federal orders to alight at points not scheduled; private planes were forced down for identification; a rumour spread across half the country that foreign invasion was imminent.

Despite Nayland Smith’s endeavours, a garbled version of the facts had found currency in certain quarters; Abbot Donegal’s words had given colour to rumours. There had been riots in Asiatic sections: in one instance a lynching had been narrowly averted. The phantom of the Yellow Peril upreared its ugly head. But day by day, almost hour by hour, more and more adherents flocked to the standard of Paul Salvaletti;

who represented, had they but known, the only real Yellow Peril to which the United States ever had been exposed.

“I’m still inclined to believe,” Mark Hepburn said, “that I’m right about the object of the Doctor’s journey. He’s heading for Chicago. On Saturday night Salvaletti addresses a meeting on the result of which rests the final tipping of the scales.”

Nayland Smith twitched the lobe of his left ear.

“The Tower of the Holy Thorn is not far off his route,” he replied; “and Dom Patrick addresses the whole of the United States to-night! The situation is serious enough to justify the Doctor’s taking personal charge of operations to check the voice of the abbot. . . .”

That the priest’s vast audience even at this eleventh hour could split the Salvaletti camp was an admissible fact. Even now it was thought that the former Chief Executive would be returned to office; but the league faction would make that office uneasy.

“Salvaletti’s magnificent showmanship,” said Smith, “The sentimental appeal in his pending marriage, are the work of a master producer. The last act shows a brilliant adventurer assuming control of the United States! It is not impossible, nor without precedent. Napoleon Bonaparte, Mussolini, Kemal have played the part before. No, Hepburn! I doubt if Fu Manchu will passively permit Abbot Donegal to steal the limelight. . . .”

chapteb 39 THE VOICE FROM THE TOWER

all approaches to the Tower of the Holy Thorn would have reminded a veteran of an occupied town in war time. They were held up four times by armed guards. . . .

When at last the headlamps of the road monster which had been waiting at the flood-lit flying ground shone upon the bronze door, so that that thorn-crowned Head seemed to come to meet them in the darkness, Nayland Smith sprang out.

“Is Garstin there?” Hepbum called.

A man came forward.

“Captain Hepburn?”

“Yes. Anything to report?”

“All clear, Captain. It would need a regiment with machine-guns to get through!”

Mark Hepbum stared upward. The tower was in darkness right to the top; the staff which dealt with the abbot’s enormous mail had left. But from its crest light beaconed as from a pharos.

And as Mark Hepburn stood there looking up, Nayland Smith entered the study of Dom Patrick Donegal.

“Thank God I see you safe!” he said, and shot out a nervous brown hand.

Patrick Donegal grasped it, and stood for a moment staring into the eyes of the man who had burst into his room.

“Thank God indeed. You see before you a chastened man, Sir Denis.” The abbot’s ascetic features as well as his rich brogue told that he spoke from his heart. “Once I resented your peremptory orders. I have changed my mind; I know that they were meant for my protection and for the good of my country. You see”—he pointed—”the broadcasting corporation has equipped me with a microphone. To-night I speak in the safety of my own study.”

“You have followed my instructions closely?”

Nayland Smith was watching the priest with almost feverish intentness.

“In every particular. You may take it”—he smiled—”that I have not been poisoned or tampered with in any way! My address for to-night I wrote with my own hand at that desk. None other has touched it.”

“You have included the facts which I gave you—and the figures?”

“Everything! And I am happy to have you with me, Sir Denis; it gives me an added sense of security. At any moment now, the radio announcer will be here. I trust that you will stay?”

Nayland Smith did not reply. He was listening—listening keenly to a distant sound. Although he was barely aware of the fact, his gaze was set upon a reproduction of Carpaccio’s St. Jerome which hung upon the plastered wall above a crowded bookcase.

And now the abbot was listening, too. Dim cries came from far below; shouted orders. . . .

A drone of aeroplane propellers drew rapidly nearer. Smith crossed to the window. A searchlight was sweeping the sky. A moment he watched, then turned, acted—and his actions were extraordinary.

Seizing the abbot bodily he hurled him in the direction of the door! Then, leaping forward, he threw the door open, extending a muscular arm, and dragged him out. On the landing, Dom Patrick staggered; Smith grasped his shoulder.

“Down!” he shouted, “down the stairs!”

But now the priest had appreciated the urgency of the case. Temporarily shaken by this swift danger, as a man of courage he quickly recovered himself. On the landing below:

“Lie flat!” cried Smith, “we must trust to luck!”

The noise of an aeroplane engine grew so loud that one could only assume the pilot deliberately to be steering for the tower. Came a volley of rifle fire. . . .

They were prone on the marble-paved floor when a deafening explosion shook the Tower of the Holy Thorn as an earthquake might have shaken it. Excited cries followed, crashing of fallen debris; an acrid smell reached their nostrils: the drone of propellers died away.

Abbot Donegal rose to his knees.

“Wait!” cried Smith breathlessly. “Not yet!”

The air was pervaded by a smell resembling iodine, he distrusted it, and stood there staring upward towards the top landing. The crown of the elevator shaft opposite the abbot’s door was wrecked. He could detect no sign of fire. The abbot, head bowed, gave silent thanks.

“Smith!” came huskily, “Smith!”

An increasing clatter of footsteps arose from the stairs below, and presently, pale, breathless, Mark Hepburn appeared.

“All right, Hepburn!” said Nayland Smith. “No casualties!”

Hepburn leaned heavily against a handrail for a moment;

he had outrun them all.

“Thank God for that!” he panted. “It was an aerial torpedo—we saw them launch it!”

“The plane?”

“Will almost certainly be driven down.”

“What d’you make of this queer smell?”

Mark Hepburn sniffed suspiciously, and then:

“Oxygen,” he replied. “Liquid ozone electrically discharged, maybe. For some reason” (he continued to breathe heavily) “the Doctor wanted to avoid fire. . . .”

Cautiously they mounted the stairs and looked into the dark wreckage which had been Dom Patrick’s study. There were great holes in the roof through which one could see the stars, and two entire walls of the room had disappeared. All lights had gone out. Nayland Smith stared as a hand touched his shoulder.

He turned. Abbot Donegal stood beside him, pointing.

“Look!” he said.

One corner of the study remained unscathed by the explosion. In it stood the microphone installed that day, and from the plaster wall above, St. Jerome looked down undisturbed. . . .

“A sign, Sir Denis! God in His wisdom has ordained that I speak to-night!”

Lola Dumas lay curled up on a cushioned settee; she wore a rest gown and slippers, but no stockings. And in the dimly lighted room the curves of her slender, creamy legs created highlights too startling in their contrast against the blue velvet to have pleased a portrait painter. Stacks of crumpled newspapers lay upon the carpet beside her. Her elbows buried in the cushions, chin resting in cupped hands, her sombre eyes speculative, almost menacing.

On the front page of the journal which crowned the litter a large photograph of Lola appeared. It appeared in nearly all the others as well. She was the most talked-about woman in the United States. Drawings of the dresses to be worn by her bridesmaids had already been published in the fashion papers. It was to be a Louis XIII wedding: twenty tiny pages dressed as Black Musketeers, with Lola herself wearing the famous diamond broach upon the recovery of which Dumas’ greatest romance is based. An archbishop would perform the ceremony, and not less than two bishops would be present. A cardinal would have been more decorative; but since the rites of the Church of Rome had been denied to Lola following her first divorce, she had necessarily abjured that faith.

Moya Adair in the Park Avenue apartment, assisted by extra typists called in for the occasion, had sent out thousands of polite refusals to more or less important people who had applied for seats in the church. None was left.

Lola was to be married from her father’s Park Avenue home. Five hundred invitations had been accepted for the reception; the Moonray Room of the Regal-Athenian had been rented, together with the services of New York’s smartest band.

So keen was the interest which the magnetic rise of Paul Salvaletti had created throughout the world that despite the disturbed state of Europe, war and the rumours of war, special commissioners were being sent to New York by many prominent European newspapers to report the Savaletti-Dumas wedding. In fact this wedding would be the master stroke of the master schemer, setting the seal of an international benediction upon the future President. Love always demands the front page.

But in the sombre eyes of Lola Dumas there was no happiness. She lived for what she called “love” and without admiration must die. In fact, after her second divorce, the circumstances of which had not reflected creditably upon her, she had proclaimed that she intended to renounce the vanities of the world and take the veil. Perhaps fortunately for her, she had failed to find any suitable convent prepared to accept her as a novice.

There came a discreet rap on the door.

“Come in,” Lola called, her voice neither soft nor caressing.

She sat upright, slender jewelled fingers clutching the cushions as Marie, her maid, came in;.

“Well?”

Marie pursed her lips, shrugged and nodded vigorously.

“You are sure?”

“Yes, madame. He is there again! And to-night I have found the number of the apartment—it is Number 36.”

Lola swung her slippered feet to the floor and clenching and unclenching her hands began to walk up and down. In the semi-darkness she all but upset a small table upon which a radio was standing. Marie, fearing one of the brainstorms for which Lola was notorious, stood just outside the door, watching fearfully. Of course, Lola argued, Paul’s mysterious absences (which since they had been in Chicago had become so frequent) might be due to orders from the President. But if this were so, why was she not in Paul’s confidence?

It was unlikely, too, for on many occasions before, and again to-night, he had slipped away from his bodyguard and had gone alone to this place. To-night, indeed, it was more than ever strange: the Abbot Donegal was broadcasting, and almost certainly his address would take the form of an attack.

Any man who admired her inspired Lola’s friendship, but Paul Salvaletti had been the only real passion of her life. There were many who thought that she had been Harvey Bragg’s mistress. It was not so; a circumstance for which Harvey Bragg deserved no blame. Given a knowledge of all the facts, his harshest critic must have admitted that Harvey had done his best. Always it had been Paul, right from the first hour of the meeting. She recognized him; had known what he was destined to become. Her other duties, many of them exacting and tedious, which the President compelled her to undertake, she had undertaken gladly with this goal in view.

The intrusion of the woman Adair had terrified her, followed as it had been by her own transfer to nurse’s duties. (which she understood) in Chinatown. She hated the thought of this Titan blonde’s close association with Paul. Mrs. Adair was cultured, too, the widow of a naval officer, a woman of good family . . . . and always the plans of the President were impenetrable.

Abruptly, long varnished nails pressed into her palms; she pulled up in that wildcat walk right in front of the radio.

“What’s the time, Marie?” she demanded harshly.

“It is after eight o’clock, madame.”

“Fool! Why didn’t you tell me!”

Lola dropped down on to one knee; she tuned in the instrument. Nothing occurred but a dim buzzing. She knelt there manipulating the control, but could get no result. She looked up.

“If this thing has gone wrong,” she said viciously, “I’ll murder somebody in this hotel.”

Suddenly came a voice.

“This is a National Broadcast . . . .” Formalities followed, and then: “I must apologize for the delay. It was caused by an accident to the special microphone, but this has been adjusted. You are now about to hear Dom Patrick Donegal, speaking from the Tower of the Holy Thorn.”

Lola Dumas threw herself back upon the settee, curling her slim body up, serpentine, among the cushions. She was striving with all her will to regain composure. The beautiful voice of the priest helped to calm her; she hated it so intensely, for in her heart of hearts Lola knew that the Abbot of Holy Thorn was a finer orator than Paul Salvaletti. Then her attention was arrested:

“A torpedo of unusual design,” the abbot was saying coldly, “fired from an aeroplane, wrecked my study and delayed this broadcast. I am now going to tell you, and I ask you to listen with particular attention, by whom that torpedo was fired into my study.”

With the judgment of a practised speaker he paused for a moment after this sensational statement. Hourly, Lola had expected an attempt to be made to silence the abbot. It had been made—and failed! She began to listen intently. This man, this damnable priest, was going to wreck their fortunes!

When he resumed, Patrick Donegal with that unfailing art in which Cicero had been his master, struck another note:

“There are many of you I know, who, day after weary day, have returned from a tireless and honourable quest of work, to look into the sad eyes of a woman, to try to deafen your ears to that most dreadful of all cries coming from a child’s lips: ‘I am hungry.’ The League of Good Americans, formerly associated with the name of Harvey Bragg, has—I don’t deny the fact—remedied much of this. There are hundreds of thousands, it may be millions, of men, women and children in this country who to-day have won that need of happiness which every human being strives to earn, through the good offices of the league. But I am going to ask you to consider a few figures—figures are more eloquent than words.”

In three minutes or less, the abbot proved (using Nayland Smith’s statistics) that over the period with which he dealt, alone, some twenty million dollars had been expended in the country through various activities of the league which, even admitting the possibility of anonymous donations from wealthy supporters, could not have come out of national funds!

“You may say, and justly so: This is good: it means that unearned wealth is coming into the United States. I ask you to pause—to think . . . Is there such a thing as unearned wealth? Even a heritage carries its responsibilities. What are the responsibilities you are incurring by your acceptance of these mysterious benefits? I will tell you:

“You are being bought with alien money!” the abbot cried, “you are becoming slaves of a cruel master. You are being gagged with gold. The league and all its pretensions is a chimera, a hollow mockery, a travesty of administration. You are selling your country. Your hardships are being exploited in the interests of an alien financial genius who plans to control the United States. And do you know the nationality of that man? He is a Chinaman!”

Lola’s jewelled fingers were twitching nervously upon the cushions, her big eyes were very widely opened. Marie, uninvited, had taken a seat upon a chair just inside the door. This was the most damning attack which anyone had delivered: its horrible consequences outsped the imagination. . . .

“Who is this man who to-night attempted to murder me in my own room? This callous assassin, this ravisher of a nation’s liberty? By the mercy of God my life was spared that I might speak, that I might tell you. He is an international criminal sought by the police of the civilized world; a criminal whose evil deeds dwarf those of any home-grown racketeer. His name will be known to many who listen: it is Dr. Fu Manchu. My friends, Dr. Fu Manchu is in America—Dr. Fu Manchu to-night attempted my assassination—Dr. Fu Manchu is the presiding genius of the League of Good Americans!”

A moment he paused, then:

“This is the invisible President whom you are being bribed to send to the White House!” he said in a low, tense voice, “not in his own person but in the person of his servant, his creature, his slave—Paul Salvaletti! Paul Salvaletti who stands upon the bloody corpse of Harvey Bragg . . . for I am going to tell you something else which you do not know: Harvey Bragg was assassinated to make way for Paul Salvaletti.”

Even in the silence of that room where Lola Dumas crouched among the cushions it was possible to imagine the sensation which from coast to coast those words had created.

“The wedding of the man Salvaletti promises to be an international event, a thing for which distinguished people are assembling. I say it would be an offence for which this country would never be forgiven,” he thundered, “to permit that sacrilegious marriage to take place! I say this for three reasons: first, that Paul Salvaletti is merely the shadow of his Chinese master; second, that Paul Salvaletti is an unfrocked priest; and third, that he is already married.”

Lola Dumas sprang to the floor and stood rigidly upright.

“He married an Italian girl—she was just sixteen— Marianna Savini, in a London registry office on March the 25th, 1929. She accompanied him secretly when he came to the United States; she has been with him ever since—she is with him now. . . .”

Ill

“It was a good shot,” said Captain Kingswell, “although at such close range that row of lighted windows offered a fine target. But it isn’t the gunner, it’s the pilot I want to meet. The way he dipped to the tower was pretty work.”

“Very pretty,” said Nayland Smith. “As I happened to be inside the tower, I fully appreciated its excellence. You were chasing this plane, I gather?”

Captain Kingswell, one of many army aviators on duty that night, nodded affirmatively.

“I should have caught him! It was the manoeuvre by the tower that tricked me. You see, I hadn’t expected it.”

The big armoured car sped through the night, its headlights whitening roads and hedges.

“It is certain that they were driven down?”

“Lieutenant Olson, who was covering me on the left, reports he forced the ship down near the river somewhere above Tonawanda.”

“Is there any place around there,” Mark Hepburn asked slowly, “where they might have landed?”

“I may as well say,” the pilot replied, smiling, “it’s a section I don’t pretend to be familiar with. Landing at night is always touch and go, even if the territory is familiar. It’s only halfway safe on a proper flying ground. Hullo! There’s Gillingham!”

The headlights picked up a distant figure, arms outstretched, wearing army air uniform. This was an agricultural district where folks were early abed; the country roads were deserted. As the car pulled up the aviator ran to the door:

“What news, Gillingham,” cried Captain Kingswell.

“We’re shorthanded to surround the area where they crashed,” replied Gillingham, a young fresh-faced man, immensely excited; “at least, it’s ten to one they crashed. But I’ve done my best, and search parties are working right down to the river-bank.”

“How far to the river?” jerked Nayland Smith.

“As the crow flies, from this spot a half mile.”

Smith jumped out, followed by Hepburn. A crescent moon swam in a starry sky. Directly above their heads as they stood beside the car outflung branches of two elms, one on either side of the narrow, straight road, met and embraced, to form a deep stripe of shadow.

“This is the frontier?”

“Yes, the opposite bank’s in Canada.”

Through the silence, from somewhere far off, came a sound like that of a ceaseless moan; at times, carried by a light breeze, it rose weirdly on the night, as though long-dead gods of the Red man, returning, lamented the conquest of the white.

Nayland Smith, his eyes bright in the ray of the headlamp, turned to Hepburn questioningly.

“The rapids,” said Mark. “The wind’s that way”

As the breeze died, the mournful sound faded into a sad whisper. . . .

“Hullo!” Smith muttered, “what are those lights moving over there?”

“One of our search parties,” Gilligham replied. “We expect to locate the wreck pretty soon. . . .”

But half an hour had elapsed before the mystery plane was found. It lay at one end of a long, ploughed field: the undercarriage had been damaged, but the screw, wings and fuselage remained intact. Again the work of a clever pilot was made manifest. There was no sign of the occupants.

“This is a Japanese ship,” said Captain Kingswell, on a note of astonishment. “Surely can’t have crossed right to here in the air? Must have been reassembled somewhere. Looks like it carried four of a crew: a pilot, a reserve (maybe he was the gunner) and two others.”

He had climbed up and was now inside.

“Here’s a queer torpedo outfit,” he cried, “with three reserve tubes. This is a fighting ship.” He was prowling around enthusiastically, torch in hand. “We’ll overhaul every inch of it. There may be very interesting evidence.”

“The evidence I’m looking for,” rapped Nayland Smith irritably, “is evidence to show which way the occupants went. But all these footprints”—he flashed his torch upon the ground— “have made it impossible to trace.”

He turned and stared towards where a red glow in the sky marked a distant town. Away to the east, half masked by trees, he could see outbuildings of what he took to be a farm.

“Tracks over here, mister!” came a hail from the northern end of the meadow. “Not made by the search party!”

Nayland Smith, his repressed excitement communicating itself to Hepburn, set out at a run.

The man who had made the discovery was shining a light down upon the ground. He was a small, stout, red-faced man wearing a very narrow brimmed hat with a very high crown.

“Looks like the tracks of three men,” he said: “two walkin’ ahead an’ one followin’ along.”

“Three men,” muttered Nayland Smith; Let me see . . .”

He examined the tracks, and:

“I must congratulate you,” he said, addressing their discoverer. “Your powers of observation are excellent.”

“That’s all right, mister. In these per’lous times a man has to keep his eyes skinned—’specially me; I’m deputy sheriff around here: Jabez Siskin—Sheriff Siskin they call me.”

“Glad to have you with us, Sheriff. My name is Smith— Federal agent.”

Two sets of imprints there were which admittedly seemed to march side by side. The spacing indicated long strides; the depth of the impressions, considerable weight. The third track, although made by a substantial-sized shoe, was lighter;

there was no evidence to show that the one who had made it had crossed the meadow at the same time as the other two.

“Move on!” snapped Nayland Smith. “Follow the tracks but don’t disturb them.”

From point to point the same conditions arose which had led the local officer to assume that the third traveller had been following the other two; that is, his lighter tracks were impressed upon the heavier ones. But never did either of the heavier tracks encroach upon another. Two men had been walking abreast followed by a third; at what interval it was impossible to determine.

Right to a five-barred gate the tracks led, and there Deputy Sheriff Siskin paused, pointing triumphantly.

The gate was open.

Nayland Smith stepped through on to a narrow wheel-rutted lane.

“Where does this lane lead to?” he inquired.

“To Farmer Clutterbuck’s,” Sheriff Siskin replied; “this is all part of his land. The league bought it back for him. The farm lays on the right. The river’s beyond.”

“Come on!”

It was a long, a tedious and a winding way, but at last they stood before the farm. Clutterbuck’s Farm was an example of the work of those days when men built their own homesteads untrammelled by architectural laws, but built them well and truly: a rambling building over which some vine that threatened at any moment to burst into flower climbed lovingly above a porch jutting out from the western front.

Their advent had not been unnoticed. A fiery red head was protruded from an upper window above and to the right of the porch, preceded by the barrel of a shotgun, and:

“What in hell now?” a gruff voice inquired.

“It’s me, Clutterbuck,” Deputy Sheriff Siskin replied, “with Federals here, an’ the army an’ ev’rything!”

When Farmer Clutterbuck opened his front door he appeared in gum boots. He wore a topcoat apparently made of rabbit skin over a woollen nightshirt, and his temper corresponded to his fiery hair. He was a big, bearded, choleric character.

“Listen!” he shouted—”It’s you I’m talkin’ to, Sheriff! I’ve had more’n enough o’ this for one night. Money ain’t ev’rything when a man has to buy a new boat.”

“But listen, Clutterbuck——”

Nayland Smith stepped forward.

“Mr. Clutterbuck,” he said—”I gather that this is your name—we are government officers. We regret disturbing you, but we have our duty to perform.”

“A boat’s a boat, an’ money ain’t ev’rything.”

“So you have already assured us. Explain what you mean.”

Farmer Clutterbuck found himself to be strangely subdued by the cold authority of the speaker’s voice.

“Well, it’s this way,” he said. (Two windows above were opened, and two heads peered out.) “I’m a league man, see? This is a league farm. Can’t alter that, can I? An’ I’m roused up to-night when I’m fast asleep—that’s enough to annoy a man, ain’t it? I think the war’s started. Around these parts we all figure on it. I take my gun an’ I look out o’ the window. What do I see? Listen to me, Sheriff—what do I see?”

“Forget the sheriff,” said Nayland Smith irritably; “address you remarks to me. What did you see?”

“Oh, well! all right. I see three men standin’ right here outside—right here where we stand now. One’s old, with white whiskers an’ white hair; another one, some kind of a coloured man, I couldn’t just see prop’ly; but the third one—him that’s lookin’ up” he paused—”well . . .”

“Well?” rapped Nayland Smith.

“He’s very tall, see? As tall as me, I guess; an’ he wears a coat with a fur collar an’ his eyes—listen to this, Sheriff—his eyes ain’t brown, an’ his eyes ain’t blue, an’ they ain’t grey:

they’re green!”

“Quick, man!” Nayland Smith cried. “What happened. What did he want.”

“He wants my motor-boat.”

“Did he get it?”

“Listen, mister! I told you I’m a league man, didn’t I? Well, this is a league official, see? Shows me his badge. He buys the boat. I didn’t have no choice, anyway—but I’d been nuts to say no to the price. Trouble is, now I got no boat; an’ money ain’t ev’rything when a man loses his boat!”

“Fu Manchu knows the game’s up. They had a radio in the plane!” said Smith to Hepburn in a low tone vibrant with excitement.

“Then God help Salvaletti!”

“Amen. We know he has agents in Chicago. But by heaven we must move, Hepburn: the Doctor is making for Canada!”

At roughly about this time, those who had listened to Patrick Donegal and who now were listening to radio topics received a further shock. . . .

“Tragic news has just come to hand from Chicago,” they heard. “A woman known as Mrs. Valetti occupied Apartment 36 in the Doric Building on Lakeside. She was a beautiful brunette, and almost her only caller was a man believed to be her husband who frequently visited there. About 8.30 this evening, Miss Lola Dumas, whose marriage to Paul Salvaletti has been arranged to take place next month, came to the apartment. She had never been there before. She failed to get any reply to her ringing but was horrified to hear a woman’s scream. At her urgent request the door was opened by the resident manager, and a dreadful discovery was made.

“Mrs. Valetti and the man lay side by side upon the day-bed in the sitting-room. On the woman’s arms and on the man’s neck there were a number of blood-red spots. They were both dead, and a window was wide open. Miss Dumas collapsed on recognizing the man as her fiance, Paul Salvaletti. She is alleged to have uttered the words, ‘The Scarlet Bride’—which the police engaged on the case believe to relate to the dead woman. But Miss Dumas to whom the sympathy of the entire country goes out in this hour of her unimaginable sorrow, is critically ill and cannot be questioned.

“The crisis which this tragedy will create in political circles it would be impossible to exaggerate. . . .”

Chapter 40

“THUNDER OF WATERS”

“They’re just landing!” cried the man in the bows of the Customs launch—“at the old Indian Ferry.”

“Guess those Canadian bums showed ‘emselves,” growled another voice. “We had ‘em trapped, if they’d gone ashore where they planned.”

Nayland Smith, standing up and peering through night-glasses, saw a tall, dark figure on the rock-cut steps. It was unmistakable. It was Fu Manchu! He saw him beckon to the second passenger on the little motor-boat; and the other, a man whose hair shone like silver in the moonlight, joined him on the steps. A third remained in the boat at the wheel . Dr. Fu Manchu, arms folded, stood for a moment looking out across the river. He did not seem to be watching the approaching Customs craft so swiftly bearing down upon him, but rather to be studying the shadowed American bank, the frontier of the United States.

It came to Nayland Smith, as they drew nearer and nearer to the motionless figure, that Dr. Fu Manchu was bidding a silent farewell to the empire he had so nearly won. . . .

Just as words of command trembled on Smith’s lips Fu Manchu spoke to the occupant of the boat, turned, and with his white-haired companion strode up the steps—steps hewn by the Red man in days before any white traveller had seen or heard “The Thunder of Waters.”

The motor-boat spluttered into sudden life and set off down-stream.

“Stop that man!” rapped Nayland Smith.

Dr. Fu Manchu and the other already were lost in the shadow.

“Heave to—Federal orders!” roared a loud voice.

Farmer Clutterbuck’s motor-boat was kept on its course.

“Shall we let him have it?

“Yes—but head for the steps.”

Three shots came almost together. Raising the glasses again, Nayland Smith had a glimpse of a form crouching low over the wheel . . . then a bluff which protected the Indian Ferry obscured the boat from sight. As they swung in to the steps:

“What was that move?” somebody inquired. “I guess we missed him anyway.”

But Nayland Smith was already running up the steps. He found himself in a narrow gorge on one side completely overhung by tangled branches. He flashed a light ahead. Three Federal agents came clattering up behind him.

“What I’m wondering,” said one, “is, where’s Captain Hepburn.”

Nayland Smith wondered also. Hepburn, in another launch, had been put ashore higher up on the Canadian bank, armed with Smith’s personal card upon which a message had been scribbled. . . .

Dr. Fu Manchu and his companion seemed to have disappeared.

But now, heralded by a roar of propellers, Captain Kingswell came swooping down out of the night, and the first Very light burst directly overhead! Nayland Smith paused, raised his glasses and stared upward. Kingswell, flying very low, circled, dipped, and headed down river.

“He’s seen them!” snapped Smith.

Came a dim shouting . . . Hepburn was heading in their direction. A second light broke.

“By God!” Nayland Smith cried savagely, “are we all blind? Look at Kingswell’s signals. They have rejoined the motor-boat at some place below!”

Two more army planes flew into view. . . .

“Back to the launch!” Smith shouted.

But when at last they set out again, the bat-like manoeuvres of the aviators and the points at which they threw out their flares indicated that the cunning quarry had a long start. It seemed to Nayland Smith, crouched in the bows, staring ahead, that time, elastic, had stretched out to infinity. Then he sighted the motor-boat. Kingswell, above, was flying just ahead of it. He threw out a light.

In the glare, while it prevailed, a grim scene was shown. The man at the wheel (probably the same who had piloted the plane) lay over it, if not dead, unconscious; and the silver-haired passenger was locked in a fierce struggle with Dr. Fu Manchu!

Professor Morgenstahl’s hour had come! In the stress of that last fight for freedom the Doctor’s control, for a matter of seconds only, had relaxed. But in those seconds Morgenstahl had acted. . . .

“This is where we check out!” came a cry. “Hard over, Jim!” Absorbed in the drama being played before him—a drama the real significance of which he could only guess—Nayland Smith had remained deaf to the deepening roar of the river. Suddenly the launch rolled and swung about. “What’s this?” he shouted, turning. “Twenty lengths more and we’d be in the rapids!” The rapids!

He craned his head, looking astern. Somewhere, far back, a light broke. Three planes were flying low over the river . . . and now to his ears came the awesome song of Niagara, “The Thunder of Waters.”

An icy hand seemed to touch Nayland Smith’s heart. . . . Dr. Fu Manchu had been caught in the rapids; no human power nor his own superlative genius could prevent his being carried over the great falls! The man who had dared to remodel nature’s forces had been claimed at last by the gods he had outraged.

The End