The Drums of Fu Manchu

He stood up and switched on the light, and I saw that his pipe was between his teeth. Even before he spoke his grim expression told me all there was to know.

“Have you seen him?”

He nodded.

“What was his attitude?”

“His attitude, you will be able to judge for yourself when you see him on Silver Heels tomorrow. He has gone so far, has risen so high, that I fear he believes himself to be immortal!”

“Megalomania?”

“Hardly that perhaps, but he sets himself above counsel. He admitted reluctantly that he had received the Si-Fan notices—two at least. He merely shrugged his shoulders when I suggested that a third had come to hand.”

He was walking up and down the room now tugging at the lobe of his left ear.

“If Adion is to be saved, he must be saved against himself. If I had the power, Kerrigan, I would kidnap him and transport him from Venice tonight!”

“I count upon you. Colonel,” said Nayland Smith as the chief of police rose to go. “My friend and I will be present on Silver Heels tomorrow. I must have an opportunity of inspecting Mr. Brownlow Wilton’s guests and of seeing in which of them Rudolf Adion is interested.”

When we were alone:

“Have the police obtained any clue?” I asked.

Smith shook his head irritably.

“Very rarely indeed does the doctor leave clues. And this is a major move in his game. I don’t know if Monaghani is marked down, but Adion admits that he is. We have yet to see if Monaghani arrives. But for tonight, I suppose my work is done. Have you any plans?”

“No.”

“I wish I could find Ardatha for you,” he said softly, and went out. “Good night.”

As the door closed and I heard him walking along to his room I dropped down on to a settee and lighted a cigarette. How I wished that J could find her! I had never supposed love to come in this fashion. Quite easily I could count the minutes—had often done so—that I had been in Ardatha’s company. Collectively they amounted to less than an hour. Yet of all the women I had known, she was the one to whom my thoughts persistently turned.

I tried to tell myself that this was an obsession born of the mys tery in which I had met her—an infatuation which would pass—but always the effort failed. No, she haunted me. I knew every expression of her piquant face, every intonation of her voice; I heard her talking to me a thousand times during the day—I dreamed of her, I suspected, throughout the night.

That Nayland Smith was tired I could not doubt, I was tired myself. Yet, although it was long past midnight, any idea of sleep I knew to be out of the question. Outside, divided from the window only by a narrow quay, the Grand Canal lapped its ancient walls. Occasionally, anomalous motorboats passed; at other times I heard the drip of an oar as some ghostly gondola crept upon its way. Once the creaking of a boat, as a belated guest returned to the hotel, reminded me—terrifyingly—of the cellars under the Monks’ Arms where I had so nearly come to an end.

I rang for a waiter and ordered a drink to be brought to my room;

then, extinguishing the lights of the sitting room, I went along the corridor intending to turn in.

However, when my drink arrived and I had lighted another cigarette, I was overcome with recklessness. Crossing to the window I threw open the shutters and looked down upon the oily glittering waters of the canal.

Venice! The picture city, painted in blood and passion. In some way it seemed fitting that Fu Manchu should descend upon Venice;

fitting, too, that Ardatha should be there. The moon had disappeared; mysterious lights danced far away upon the water, beckoning me back to the days of the doges.

From my window I looked down upon a shadowy courtyard, a corner of the platform upon which the hotel (itself an old palace) was built. It could be approached from the steps which led up to the main door, but so far as I could make out in the darkness it formed a sort of cul-de-sac. My window ledge was no more than four feet from the stone paving.

And now, in the shadows, I detected someone moving . . .

I drew back. My hand flew to a pocket in which, always, since I had met Dr Fu Manchu, an automatic rested. Then a voice spoke—a soft voice:

“Please help me up. I must talk to you.”

It was Ardatha!

Ardatha

She sat in a deep, cushioned divan, a Renaissance reproduction, watching me with a half smile.

“You look frightened,” she said. “Do I frighten you?” “No, Ardatha, it isn’t that you frighten me, although I admit your appearance was somewhat of a shock.”

She wore a simple frock and a coat having a fur-trimmed collar, which I recognized as that which I had seen in the car near Hyde Park corner. She had a scarf tied over her hair, and I thought that her eyes were mocking me.

“I am mad to have done this,” she went on,”and now I am wondering—”

I tried to conquer a thumping heart, to speak normally. “You are wondering if I am worth it,” I suggested, and forced myself to move in her direction.

Frankly, I was terrified as I never could have believed myself to be terrified of a woman. My own wild longing had awakened some sort of response in Ardatha! I had called to her and she had come! But as the lover of a girl so complex and mysterious I had little faith in Bart Kerrigan.

Tonight it was my part to claim her—or to lose her forever. Her eyes as well as her words told me that the choice was mine.

I offered her a cigarette and lighted it, then sat down beside her. My impulse was to grab her—hold her—never let her go again. But I took a firm grip upon these primitive urges, and then:

“I saw you at Victoria,” she said.

“What! How could you have seen me?”

“I have eyes and I can see with them.”

She lay back among the cushions, and turning, smiled up at me.

“I had no idea you had seen me.”

“That is why I am here tonight.” Suddenly, seriously: “You must go back! I tell you, you must go back. I came here tonight to tell you this.”

“Is that all you came for, Ardatha?”

“Yes. Do not suppose it means what you are thinking. I like you very much, but do not make the mistake of believing that I love easily”

She spoke with a quiet imperiousness of manner which checked me. My emotions pulled me in various directions. In the first place, this beautiful girl of the amethyst eyes, who, whatever she did, whatever she said, allured, maddened me, was a criminal. In the second place, unless the glance of those eyes be wildly misleading, she wanted me to make love to her. But in the third place, although she said her nocturnal visit had been prompted by friendship, what was her real motive? I clasped my knees tightly and stared aside at her.

“I am glad you are a man who thinks,” she said softly,”for between us there is much to think about.”

“There is only one thing I am thinking about—that I want you. You are never out of my mind. Day and night I am unhappy because I know you are involved in a conspiracy of horror and murder in which you, the real you, have no part. If I thought lightly of you and merely desired you, then as you say I should not have thought. I should have my arms around you now, kissing you, as I want to kiss you. But you see, Ardatha, you mean a lot more than that. Although I know so little about you, yet—”

“Ssh!”

Swiftly she grasped my arm—-and I seized her hand and held it. But the warning had been urgent, and I listened.

We both sat silent for a while. My gaze was set upon a strange ring which she wore. The clasp of her fingers gave me a thrill which passionate kisses of another woman could never have aroused.

Somewhere out there in the shadows I had detected the sound of a dull thud—of soft footsteps.

Releasing Ardatha’s hand, I would have sprung up, but:

“Don’t look out!” she whispered. “No! No! Don’t look out!”

I hesitated. She held me tightly.

“Why?”

“Because it is just possible—I may have been followed. Please, don’t look out!”

I heard the sound of a distant voice out over the canal; splashing of water . . . nothing more. I turned to Ardatha. There was no need for words.

She slipped almost imperceptibly into my arms, and raised her lips . . .

Nayland Smith’s Room

For a long time after Ardatha had gone—I don’t know how long a time—I knelt there by my open window staring out over the canal. She had trusted herself to me. How could I detain her—how could I regard her as a criminal? Indeed I wondered if ever I should be able so to regard her again.

The fear now burning in my brain was fear solely for her safety.

Always I had found it painful to imagine her in association with the remorseless murder group controlled by Dr Fu Manchu, but now that idea was agony. I dared not imagine what would happen if her visit to me should be discovered, if the double part which she played came to the knowledge of the Chinese doctor . . . and I could not forget that queer sound down by the waterside, those soft footsteps.

Ardatha suspected that she might have been followed. Perhaps her suspicions were well founded!

I stared out intently into misty darkness. I listened but could hear nothing save the lapping of water. From where had she come—to where had she gone? I knew little more about her than I had ever known, except that she was anxious to save me from some dreadful fate which obviously she believed to be pending.

One thing I had learned: Ardatha was of mixed Oriental and European blood. On her father’s side she descended from generations of Eastern rulers; petty chieftains from a Western standpoint, but potentates in their own land. Her murderous hatred of dictatorships was understandable. Practically the whole of her family had been wiped out by General Quinto’s airmen . . .

Silence!—and in the silence another idea was bom. The watcher in the night perhaps had a double purpose. Satisfied that I was fully preoccupied, he might have given some signal which meant that Nayland Smith was alone!

Most ghastly idea of all—this may have been the real purpose ofArdatha’s visit!

I tried in retrospect to analyse every expression in the amethyst eyes; and I found it hard, in fact impossible, to believe treachery to be hidden there. I thought of her parting kiss. My heart even now beat faster when I recalled it. Surely it could not have been a Judas kiss?

No sound could I detect anywhere about me. The Grand Canal was deserted, the moon partly veiled; but my thoughts had me restlessly uneasy. I must make sure that Nayland Smith was safe.

Quietly opening my door I walked along and switched up the light in the sitting room.

It presented exactly the same appearance as when I had left it. I moved on to Smith’s closed door. I listened intently but could hear nothing. However, he was a deep, silent sleeper, and I was not satisfied. Very gently I moved the handle. The door was unlocked. Inch by inch I opened it, until at last, having made hardly any sound, I could creep in.

The room was in darkness, save for a dim reflection through the slats of the shutters. Yet I was afraid to switch on the light, for I had no wish to disturb him. I crept slowly forward in the direction of the bed, and my eyes growing accustomed to the semidarkness, by the time that I reached it a startling fact had become evident:

The bed was empty! It had never been slept in!

I switched on the bedside lamp and stared about me distractedly.

He had not undressed!

I crossed to the shuttered window. The shutters were not fastened but just lightly closed. I pushed them open and stared out. I could see across to the landing stage. The ledge was not more than four feet above the pavement, as was the case in my own room. Why, I asked myself desperately, had he of all men, he, marked down as Enemy Number One by Dr Fu Manchu, exposed himself to such a risk?

And where was he?

I pressed the night porter’s bell, crossed to the sitting room and threw the door open. In less than a minute, I suppose, the porter appeared.

“Can you tell me,” I asked,”if Sir Denis Nayland Smith has gone out tonight?”

“No sir, he has not gone out.”

The man looked surprised—in fact, startled.

“But I suppose he could have gone out without being seen?”

“No sir. After midnight, except on special occasions, the door is locked. I open it for anyone returning late.”

“And do you remain in the lobby?”

“Yes sir.”

“Did anyone return late tonight?”

“No sir. There are few people in the hotel at the moment and all were in before eleven o’clock.”

“When you came on duty?”

“When I came on duty, yes sir.”

“You mean that it is quite impossible for Sir Denis to have gone out without your seeing him?”

“Quite impossible, sir.”

Although his room exhibited no evidence whatever of a struggle, one explanation, a ghastly one, alone presented itself to my mind.

He had been overcome, carried out by way of the window and so to the landing stage! Those movements in the night were explained. My lovely companion’s coolness under circumstances calculated to terrify a normal girl assumed a different aspect . . .

My friend, the best friend I should ever have, had been fighting for his life while I clung to the lips of Ardatha!

Venice Claims A Victim

A police officer was an almost unendurably long time in reaching the hotel. When at last he arrived, a captain of Carabinieri, he brought two detectives with him. His English was defective but fortunately for me one of the men spoke it well.

When I had made the facts clear and a search of the room had taken place:

“I fear, sir,” said the English-speaking detective,”that your suspicions are confirmed. I am satisfied that your friend did not leave by the front door of the hotel. As he evidently did not go to bed, however, there is a possibility is there not, that he left of his own free will?”

“Yes.” I grasped gladly at this straw. “There is! Why had I not thought of that?”

There was a brief conference in Italian between the three, and then:

“It has been suggested,” the detective went on,”that if Sir Denis Nayland Smith, for whom a bodyguard had been arranged by order of Colonel Correnti, had decided to go out for any reason, he would probably have awakened you.”

“I was not asleep,” I said shortly.

Where did my duty lie? Should I confess that Ardatha had been with me?

“It makes it all the more strange. You were perhaps reading or writing?”

“No. I was thinking and staring out of the window.”

“Did you hear any suspicious sounds?”

“Yes. What I took to be footsteps and a faint scuffling. But I heard no more.”

“It is all the more curious,” the man went on,”because we have two officers on duty, one in a gondola moored near the steps, and the other at the back of the hotel. Before coming here I personally interviewed both these officers and neither had seen anything suspicious.”

The mystery grew deeper.

“My own room was lighted,” I said. “Are my windows visible from the point of view of the man in the gondola?”

“We will go and see.”

We moved along to my room. My feelings as I looked at the divan upon which Ardatha had lain in my arms I find myself unable to describe . . . One of the detectives glanced out of the window and reported that owing to the wall of that little courtyard to which I have referred, this window would be outside the viewpoint of the man in the gondola.

“But the window of Sir Denis7 room—this he could see.”

Another idea came.

“The sitting room!”

“It is possible. Let us look.”

We looked—and solely because, I suppose, no one had attached any importance to the sitting room, it now immediately became evident that one shutter was open.

It had not been open when I had parted from Smith that night!

“You see!” exclaimed the detective,”here is the story: He was overcome, perhaps drugged, in his room, carried in here and lowered out through that window!”

“But”—I was thinking now of Ardatha—”how could the kidnappers have got him away without attracting the notice of one of your men?”

Another consultation took place. All three were becoming wildly excited.

“I must explain”—a half-dressed and bewildered manager had joined us—”that passing under the window of your own room, Mr. Kerrigan, it is possible—there is a gate there—to reach the bridge over the Rio Banieli—the small canal.”

“But you say”—I turned to the detective—”that you had a man on duty at the rear of the hotel?”

“True, but here is dense shadow at this hour of the night. It would be possible—just possible—for one to reach and cross that bridge unnoticed.”

In my mind I was reconstructing the tragedy of the night. I saw Nayland Smith, drugged, helpless, being carried (probably on the shoulder of one of Dr Fu Manchu’s Thugs) right below my window as I lay there intoxicated by the beauty of Ardatha. I felt myself choked with rage and mortification.

“But it is simply incredible,” I cried,”that such a crime can be committed here in Venice! We must find Sir Denis! We must find him!”

“It is understood, sir, that we must find him. This is very bad for the Venice police, because you are under our special protection. The chief has been notified and will shortly be here. It is a tragedy—yes:

I regret it deeply.”

Overcome by a sense of the futility of it all, the hopelessness of outwitting that criminal genius who played with human lives as a chess player with pieces, I turned and walked back to the sitting room. I stared dumbly at the open window through which my poor friend had disappeared, probably forever.

The police left the suite, in deference, I think, to my evident sorrow, and I found myself alone.

The girl to whom I had lost my heart, my reason was a modern Delilah. Her part had been to lull my suspicions, to detain me there—if need be with kisses—while the dreadful master of the Si-Fan removed an enemy from his path.

My thoughts tortured me—I clenched my teeth; I felt my brain reeling. In every way that a man could fail, I had failed. I had succumbed to the wiles of a professional vampire and had given over my friend to death.

There were perhaps issues greater than my personal sorrow. The life of Rudolf Adion hung upon a hair. Nayland Smith was gone!

Venice, the city of the doges, had claimed one more victim.

Dawn was creeping gloriously over the city when the first, the only clue, came to hand.

A Carabinieri patrol returning at four o’clock was subjected, in common with all others who had been on duty that night, to a close examination. He remembered (a fact which normally he would not have reported) that a girl, smartly dressed and wearing a scarf over her hair, had hurried past him at a point not far from the hotel. He had paid little attention to her, except that he remem bered she was pretty, but his description of her dress strongly suggested Ardatha!

Twenty yards behind and, as he recalled, seeming deliberately to keep in the shadow, he had noticed a man: an Englishman, he was confident, tall, wearing a tweed suit and a soft-brimmed hat.

The time, as nearly as I could judge, would have corresponded to that at which I had parted from Ardatha . . .

The detective’s theory had been the right one. Something had drawn Smith’s attention to the presence of the girl. He had not been kidnapped—he had watched and followed her. To where? What had become of him?

That sense of guilt which weighed heavily upon me became heavier than ever. I was indeed directly responsible for whatever had befallen my friend.

I was already at police headquarters when this report came in. The man was sent for and through an interpreter I questioned him. Since I knew the two people concerned more intimately than anyone present his answers to my questions removed any possibility of doubt.

The girl described was Ardatha. Nayland Smith had been following her!

Even at this stage, frantic as I was with anxiety about Smith, almost automatically I compromised with my conscience when Colonel Correnti asked me:

“Do you think this girl is someone known to Sir Denis?”

“Possibly,” I replied. “He may have thought he recognized an accomplice of Doctor Fu Manchu.”

When I left police headquarters to walk back to the hotel, Venice was bathed in its morning glory. But I moved through the streets and across the canals of that fairy city in a state of such utter dejection that any I passed surely pitied me.

Of Smith’s plans in regard to the luncheon party on Silver Heels I had very little idea, but I had been fully prepared to go with him. I was anxious to see Rudolf Adion in person. It seemed to me to be pointless to go alone. What he had hoped to learn I could not imagine. James Brownlow Wilton, the New York newspaper magnet, would seem to have no place in this tangled skein. It was a baffling situation and I was hopelessly worn out.

I tried to snatch a few hours’ sleep, but found sleep to be impossible. Sir George Herbert called at ten o’clock, an old young man with foreign office stamped indelibly upon him. His expression was

grave.

“This is a great blow, Mr. Kerrigan,” he said. “I can see how it has affected you. To me, it is disastrous. These threats to Rudolf Adion, who is here incognito, as you know, are backed by an organization which does not threaten lightly. General Quinto has been assassinated—why not Rudolf Adion?”

“I agree. But I know nothing of Smith’s plans to protect him.”

“Nor do I!” He made a gesture of despair. “It had been arranged for him to go on board Mr. Wilton’s yacht during today’s luncheon, but what he hoped to accomplish I have no idea.”

“Nor I.”

I spoke the words groaningly, dropped on to a chair and stared I suppose rather wildly at Sir George.

“The Italian authorities are sparing no effort. Their responsibility is great, for more than the reputation of the chief of police is at stake. If any news should reach me I will advise you immediately, Mr. Kerrigan. I think you would be wise to rest.”

A Woman Drops A Rose

The human constitution is a wonderfully adjusted instrument. I had no hope, indeed no intention, of sleeping. Venice, awakened, lived gaily about me. Yet, after partially undressing, within five minutes of Sir George’s departure I was fast asleep.

I was awakened by Colonel Correnti. Those reflected rays through my shutters which I had not closed told me the truth.

It was sunset, I had slept for many hours.

“What news?”

Instantly I was wide awake, a cloak or sorrow already draped about me.

He shook his head.

“None, I fear.”

“The luncheon party on the yacht took place, I suppose? Sir Denis feared that some attempt might be made there.”

“Rudolf Adion was present, yes. He is known on these occasions as Major Baden. My men report that nothing of an unusual nature took place. The dictator is safely back at the Palazzo da Rosa where he will be joined tomorrow by Pietro Monaghani. There is no evidence of any plot.” He shrugged his shoulders. “What can I do? Officially, I am not supposed to know that the chancellor is here. Of Sir Denis no trace can be found. What can I do?”

His perplexity was no greater than mine. What, indeed, could any of us do?

I forced myself to eat a hasty meal. The solicitude of the management merely irritated me. I found myself constantly looking aside, constantly listening, for I could not believe it possible for a man so well known as Nayland Smith to vanish like a mirage.

Of Ardatha I dared not think bat all.

To remain there inert was impossible. I could do nothing useful, for I had no plan, but at least I could move, walk the streets, search the cafes, stare up at the windows. With no better object than this in view, I set out.

Before St Mark’s I pulled up abruptly. The magic of sunset was draping the facade in wonderful purple shadows. I was torn between two courses. If I lost myself in this vain hunt through the streets of Venice, I might be absent when news came. In a state of indecision I stood there before the doors of that ornate, ancient church. What news could come? News that Smith was dead!

From these ideas I must run away, must keep moving. Indeed I found myself incapable of remaining still, and now a reasonable objective occurred to me. Since Rudolph Adion was staying at the Palazzo da Rosa this certainly would be the focus of Dr Fu Manchu’s attention. Actually, of course I was seeking some excuse for action, something to distract my mind from the ghastly contemplation of Nayland Smith’s fate.

I hurried back to the hotel and learned from the hall porter that no message had been received for me. Thereupon I walked out and chartered a motorboat.

A gondola was too slow for my humor.

“Go along the Grand Canal,” I directed, “and show me the Palazzo da Rosa.”

We set out, and I endeavored to compose myself and to submit without undue irritation to the informative remarks of the man who drove the motorboat. He wished to take me to the Rialto Bridge, to the villa where Richard Wagner had died, to the Palace of Gabriel d’Annunzio; but finally, with a great air of mystery, slowing his craft:

“Yonder,” he said, “where I am pointing, is the Palazzo da Rosa. It is here, sir, that Signer Monaghani, himself, stays sometimes when he is in Venice. Also it is whispered, but I do not know, that the great Adion is there.”

“Stop awhile.”

Dusk had fallen and light streamed from nearly all the windows of the palace. I observed much movement about the water gate, many gondolas crowded against the painted posts, there was a stir and bustle which told of some sort of entertainment taking place.

A closed motorboat, painted black, and apparently empty, passed almost silently between us and the steps.

“The police!”

We moved on . . .

Two seagoing yachts were at anchor, and out on the lagoon we met a freshening breeze. One of the yachts belonged to an English peer, the other. Silver Heels, was Brownlow Wilton’s beautiful white cruiser, built on the lines of an ocean greyhound. All seemed to be quiet on board, and I wondered if the celebrated American was being entertained at the Palazzo da Rosa.

“Where to now, sir?”

“Anywhere you like,” I answered wearily.

The man seemed to understand my mood. I believe he thought I was a dejected lover whose mistress had deserted him. Indeed, he was not far wrong.

We turned into a side canal where there were ancient windows, walls and trellises draped in clematis and passion flower, a spot, as I saw at a glance, perpetuated by many painters. In the dusk it had a ghostly beauty. Here the motorboat seemed a desecration, and I wished that I had chartered a gondola. Even as the thought crossed my mind, one of those swan-like crafts, carrying the bearings of some noble family, and propelled by a splendidly uniformed gondolier, swung silently around a comer, heralded only by the curious cry of the man at the oar.

My fellow checked his engine.

“From the Palazzo da Rosa!” he said and gazed back fascinatedly.

Idly, for I was not really interested, I turned and stared back also. There was but one passenger in the gondola . . .

It was Rudolf Adion!

“Stop!” I ordered sharply as the man was about to restart his engine. “I want to watch.”

For I had seen something else.

On the balcony of a crumbling old mansion, once no doubt the home of a merchant prince but now falling into ruin, a woman was standing. Some trick of reflected light from across the canal made her features clearly visible. She wore a gaily-colored showl which left one arm and shoulder bare.

She was leaning on the rail of the balcony, staring down at the passing gondola—and as I watched, eagerly, almost breathlessly, I saw that the gondolier had checked his graceful boat with that easy, sweeping movement which is quite beyond the power of an amateur oarsman. Rudolph Adion was standing up, his eyes raised. As I watched, the woman dropped a rose to which, I was almost sure, a note was attached!

Adion caught it deftly, kissed his fingers to the beauty on the balcony and resumed his seat. As the gondola swung on and was lost in deep shadows of a tall, old palace beyond:

“Ah!” sighed the motor launch driver—and he also kissed his fingers to the balcony—”a tryst—how beautiful!”

She who had made the assignation had disappeared. But there was no possibility of mistake. She was the woman I had seen with Ardatha—the woman whom Nayland Smith had described as “a corpse moving among the living—a harbinger of death!” The chief of police hung up the telephone.

“Major Baden is in his private apartments,” he said, “engaged on important official business. He has given orders that he is not to be disturbed. And so”—he shrugged his shoulders—”what can I do?”

I confess I was growing weary of those oft-repeated words.

“But I assure you,” I cried excitedly, “that he is not in his private apartments! At least he was not there a quarter of an hour ago!”

“That is possible, Mr. Kerrigan. I have said that some of the great men who visit Venice incognito have sometimes other affairs than affairs of State. But since, in the first place, I am not supposed to know that Rudolf Adion is at the Palazzo at all what steps can I take? I have one of my best officers on duty there and this is his report. What more can I do?”

“Nothing!” I groaned!

“In regard to protecting this minister, nothing, I fear. But the other matter—yes! This woman whom you describe is known to be an accomplice of these people who seek the life of Rudolf Adion?”

“She is.”

“Then we shall set out to find her, Mr. Kerrigan! I shall be ready in five minutes.”

Complete darkness had come when we reached the canal in which I had passed the dictator, but the light of a quarter moon painted Venice with silver. I travelled now in one of those sinister-looking black boats to which my attention had been drawn earlier.

“There is the balcony,” I said, “directly over us.”

Colonel Correnti looked up and then stared at me quite blankly.

“I find it very difficult to believe, Mr. Kerrigan,” he said. “Do not misunderstand me—I am not doubting your word. I am only doubting if you have selected the right balcony.”

“There is no doubt about it,” I said irritably.

“Then the matter is certainly very strange.”

He glanced at the two plain-clothes police officers who accompanied us. I had met them before, one, Stocco, was he who spoke good English.

“Why?”

“Because this is the back of the old Palazzo Mori. It is the property of the Mori family, but as you see it is in a state of dilapidation. It has not been occupied, I assure you, for many, many years. I know for a fact that it is unfurnished.”

“This does not interest me,” I replied, now getting angry. “What I have stated is fact. Great issues are at stake, and I suggest that we obtain a key and search this place.”

He turned with a despairing gesture to his subordinates.

“Where are the keys of the Palazzo Mori?”

There was a consultation, in which the man who drove the motor launch took part.

“The Mori family, alas, is ruined,” said Correnti, “and its remaining members are spread all over the world. I do not know where. The keys of the palazzo are with the lawyer Borgese, and it would be difficult, I fear, to find him tonight.”

“Also a waste of time,” I replied, for I knew what Nayland Smith would have done in the circumstances. “From the balustrade of the steps there to that lower iron balcony is an easy matter for an active man. We are all active men, I take it? Even from here one can see that the latchet of the window is broken. Here is our way in. Why do we hesitate?”

The chief of police seemed to have doubts, but recognizing, I suppose, what a terrible responsibility rested upon his shoulders, finally, although reluctantly, he consented.

The police boat was drawn up beside the steps, and I, first in my eagerness, clambered on to the roof of the cabin, from there sprang to the decaying stonework of the balustrade and climbed to the top. Balancing somewhat hazardously and reaching up, I found that I could just grasp the ornamental ironwork which I had pointed out.

“Give me a lift,” I directed Stocco, who stood beside me.

He did so. The boat rocked, but he succeeded in lifting me high enough to enable me to release my left hand and to grasp the upper railing. The rest was easy.

Colonel Correnti, as Stocco in turn was hoisted up beside me, cried out some order.

“We are to go,” said the detective, “down to the main door, open it if possible and admit the chief.”

I put my shoulder to the broken lattice, and it burst open immediately. Out of silvery moonlight I stepped into complete darkness. My companion produced a flashlamp.

I found myself in a room which at some time had been a bedroom. It was quite denuded of furniture, but here and there remained fragments of mouldy tapestry. And on the once-polished floor I detected marks to show where an old-fashioned four-poster bed had rested.

“Let us hope the doors are not locked,” said Stocco.

However, this one at least was not.

“Upstairs first!” I said eagerly, as we stepped out on to the landing.

Looking over a heavily carved handrail, in the light of the flash-lamp directed downwards I saw the sweep of a marble staircase lost in Gothic gloom. A great shadowy hall lay below, with ghostly pillars amid which our slightest movement echoed eerily. There was a damp musty smell in the place which I found unpleasantly tomb-like. But we paused here for scarcely a moment. We went hurrying upstairs, our footsteps rattling uncannily upon marble steps. Here for a moment we hesitated on a higher landing, flashing the light of the lamp about.

“This is the room,” I said, and indicated a closed door.

Stocco tried the handle; the door opened. Right ahead of me across the room beyond I saw a half-opened lattice. A moment later I was on the balcony from which the mysterious woman had dropped a rose to Rudolf Adion.

“This is where she stood!”

The detective shone a light all about us. The room was choicely paneled in some light wood and possessed what had once been a painted ceiling, now no more than a series of damp blotches where minute fungus grew.

“Shine the light down here,” I ordered excitedly. On the heavy dust of a parquet floor were slight but unmistakable marks of high-heeled shoes!

“God’s mercy, you were right!” Stocco exclaimed. Yes, I was right. This house was a tomb. Rudolph Adion had made an appointment with a creature of another world, a zombie, a human corpse brought to life! And here indeed was a fitting abode for such a creature!

No doubt the place was partly responsible, but as I stood there staring at my companion, and remembered how Nayland Smith had been smuggled out of life by the master magician called Dr Fu Manchu, I was prepared to believe that a dead woman moved among the living.

Palazzo Mori

We admitted the chief of police by the main door. It was heavily bolted but not locked. He was at least as nonplussed as I when the marks of little heels were pointed out to him in the room above.

“This,” he said, “is supernatural.”

Although disposed to agree with him I was determined to leave no stone unturned in my efforts to solve the mystery. Discounting her sorcerous origin for the moment and therefore her magical powers, how had Dr Fu Manchu’s accomplice got into this place, and how had she got out?

“Merely supernormal perhaps,” I suggested. “Everything has an explanation, after all.” I was trying desperately to restore my own self- confidence. “You know the history of these old buildings better than I do. Have you any explanation to offer of how a person could enter and leave the Palazzo Mori as undoubtedly someone entered and left it tonight?”

“I have no explanation to offer, Mr. Kerrigan,” said Colonel Correnti. His expression was almost pathetic. “None whatever.”

The second detective began to speak urgently and rapidly, and as a result:

“This officer tells me,” the colonel continued, “that at one time, but very, very long ago, there was an entrance to this old palace from the other side of the canal—I mean the Rio Mori, from which we entered.”

“I don’t think I follow you.”

“A passage—they were not uncommon in old days—under the Rio Mori, which of course is quite shallow. It seems that the boathouse of the family was on the opposite bank in those days, and for the convenience of the gondoliers this passage was made. It has been blocked up for at least a century.”

“That hardly seems to help us!”

“No, not at all. I think I know the place—an old stone shed.”

He spoke rapidly to his subordinate who replied with equal rapidity. “It was used, I am told, as a store by a house decorator for a time but is now empty again. No, my friend, this is useless. We must seek elsewhere for the solution of our mystery.”

Of our search of the old palace it is unnecessary that I give any account. It yielded nothing. Apart from those footprints in the upper room there was no evidence whatever to show that anyone had entered the building for many years. Certainly below the grand salon, where patches on the walls from which paintings had been removed, pathetically told of decayed grandeur, there were locked rooms.

To these we were unable to gain access, and it seemed pointless to attempt it. Examination of the locks clearly indicated that they had not been recently used. At this stage of the search I had given up hope.

We returned to police headquarters. There was no news. I turned aside to hide my despair. An officer who had remained in constant touch with the detectives in the Palazzo da Rosa reported that “Major Baden” had joined the guests for half an hour and had then excused himself on the grounds of urgent business, and had retired again to his own apartment.

“You see?” Colonel Correnti shrugged his shoulders. “We can do nothing.”

I tried to control my voice when I spoke:

“Do you really understand what is at stake? An ex-commissioner of Scotland Yard has been kidnapped, probably murdered. He is one of the highest officials of the British Secret Service. The most prominent figure in European politics, and I do not except Pietro Monaghani, is, beyond any shadow of doubt, in deadly peril. Are you sure, Colonel, that every available man is straining himself to the utmost, that every possible place has been searched, every suspect interrogated?”

“I assure you, Mr. Kerrigan, that every available man in Venice is either searching or watching tonight. I can do no more . . .”

I think during the next hour I must have plumbed the uttermost deeps of despair. I wandered about the gay streets of Venice like a ghost at a banquet, staring at lighted windows, into the faces of the passers-by until I began to feel that I was attracting public attention.

I returned to the hotel, went to my room and sat down on that settee where Ardatha had bewitched me with kisses.

How I cursed every moment of that stolen happiness! No contempt I had ever known for a fellow being could approach that which I had for myself. I conjured up a picture of Nayland Smith;

almost in my state of distraction I seemed to hear his voice. He was trying to tell me something, trying to direct me, to awaken in my dull brain some spark of enlightenment.

Had our cases been reversed what would he have done?

This idea seemed to give me a new coolness. Yes! what would he have done? I sat there, head buried in my hands, striving to think calmly.

That the dark woman had entered and left that ruined palace was a fact. Whoever or whatever she might be, of her presence there we had unassailable evidence. Our search had revealed no explanation of the mystery. But there were doors we had failed to open.

This would not have been Nayland Smith’s way!

He would never have been satisfied to leave the Palazzo Mori until those lower rooms had been examined. Nor would he have been content with the assertion of the chief of police that the ancient passage under the canal was blocked . . .

I sprang up.

This was the line of inquiry which Smith would have followed! I was sure of it. This should be my objective. A disheveled figure (I had not been undressed for thirty-six hours), once more I set out.

The ancient house of the gondoliers was easy to locate. It was solidly built of stone with three windows on the land side and a heavy padlocked door at the end. The narrow lane by which one approached it was dark and deserted. I had brought an electric torch, and I shot a beam through one of the broken windows. It showed a quantity of litter: fragments of wall paper, mortar boards and numerous empty paint cans. I inspected the padlock.

This bore evidence of use: it had recently been oiled!

But it was fast.

Greatly excited, I returned to the broken window and looked in again. The litter had not been disturbed, I could have sworn, for a considerable time—yet the door had recently been used.

My excitement grew. I thought that from some place, in this world or beyond, Nayland Smith had succeeded in inspiring me with something of his old genius for investigation. A great task lay to my hand. I determined to do it well.

I studied the padlock. I had no means of picking it, nor indeed any knowledge of that art. To crash a pane in one of the windows would have been useless, for they were of a kind not made to open, and the panes were too narrow to allow entrance had the glass been entirely removed. I walked around to the other side. Here was evidence of a landing stage long demolished. There were three windows and a walled-up door. Inspection was carried out from a narrow ledge which overhung the canal. Baffled again, I was about to return—when I heard footsteps coming down the lane!

I stayed where I was. Directly opposite, the narrow canal glittering between, rose a wall of the deserted Palazzo Mori. I could see that stone balustrade up which I had scrambled, the iron balcony to which I had clung. Nearer and nearer the footsteps approached, and now I heard a woman’s voice:

“Wait, just a moment! . . . I have the key.”

It was a soothing, caressing voice, and I longed for a glimpse of the speaker, but dared not move.

I heard the rattling of the padlock, opening of the door.

“Please wait! Not yet! We may be seen!”

Light suddenly illuminated the interior of the building. I crouched low, my heart beating fast, and cautiously from one corner of a window, peered in.

What I saw made my heart beat faster. It strengthened my resolution to do what Nayland Smith would have done . . .

Rudolf Adion, wearing a half mask, and a cloak over his evening dress, stood hands clasped behind him, watching a woman who knelt in a corner of the floor!

His eyes were ardent; he tore the mask off—and I saw a man enslaved. The woman wore a loose fur wrap, her arms resembled dull ivory. She was slender, almost serpentine, jet-black hair lay close to her shapely head. And as I looked and recognized her, she stood upright.

A trap had been opened, a section of floor with its impedimenta of pots and litter had been slid aside! She turned—and for the first time I saw her eyes.

Her eyes—long, narrow, dark-lashed eyes—were emerald green! I had thought that there were no eyes in the world like these except the eyes of Dr Fu Manchu.

She made a gesture of triumph. She smiled as perhaps long ago Calypso smiled.

“Be patient! This is the only way—come!”

The words reached me clearly through the broken window. Pulling her wrap over her bare shoulders, she beckoned and began to descend steps below the trap. I saw that she carried a flashlamp.

Rudolf Adion obeyed. The light below shone up into his dark, eager face as he stooped to follow.

And then came darkness.

The Zombie

Rudolf Adion, dictator of a great European nation, was going to his death!

I thought rapidly, trying to envisage the situation from what I believed would have been Nayland Smith’s point of view.

Probably I could reach police headquarters in ten minutes. A call box was of no avail, owing to my ignorance of the language, so that this meant ten minutes wasted. Before the police arrived, Adion might have disappeared as Nayland Smith had disappeared. That the passage led to the Palazzo Mori I had good reason to suppose. But unless it had been planned to assassinate the chancellor in that deserted building and hide his body, where were they going?

My experience of the methods of the Si-Fan inclined me to believe that Adion would be given a final opportunity to accept the Council’s orders. My decision was soon made. I would follow; and when I had found out where the woman was leading the dictator, return and bring a party large enough to surround the place.

The door I knew to be unfastened. I groped my way to where a dim oblong light indicated the position of the trap. I saw stone steps. I descended cautiously. The place in which I found myself had a foul reek; the filthy water of the Rio Mori dripped through its roof in places. It was an ancient stone passage, slimy and repellent. A vague moving light at the further end was that of the flashlamp carried by the woman.

Adion’s infatuation had blinded him to his danger. But putting myself in his place and substituting Ardatha for the woman of death, I knew that I, too, would have followed to the very gates of hell.

Fixing my eyes on that guiding light, I proceeded. The light disappeared, but I discovered ascending steps. A spear in the darkness led me up to a door ajar. I heard a voice and recognized it. It was the voice of Adion.

“Where are you leading me, Mona Lisa?”

In the exquisite face of this ghoul who hunted human souls for Dr Fu Manchu he had discovered a resemblance to that famous painting. The resemblance was not perceptible to me . . .

Along an arched cellar, silhouettes against the light of the moving lamp which cast grotesque shadows, I saw the pair ahead: the slender figure of the woman, the cloaked form of the doomed man. There was a great squat pillar in this forgotten crypt and I crept behind it until they had come to the top of the open stair and vanished into a Gothic archway.

Complete darkness had come when I crept forward and followed, feeling my way to the foot of the stair.

The sound of footsteps ceased. I stood stockstill. I heard the woman’s laughter, low-pitched, haunting. It ended abruptly. There came thickly muttered words in a man’s voice. He had her in his arms . . . Then the footsteps continued.

A key was placed in a lock and I heard the creaking of a door. It echoed, phantomesque, as though in a cavern; it warned me of what I should find. I waited until those sounds, mockingly repeated by the ghosts of the place, grew faint. Advancing, I found myself in the tomblike entrance hall of the Palazzo Mori.

The light carried by the woman was now a mere speck. However, using extreme caution, I followed it. As I crossed that haunted place, the shades of men trapped, poisoned, murdered there, seemed to move around me in a satanic dance. Tortured spirits of mediaeval Venice formed up at my back, barring the road to safety. Yet I pressed on, for I knew that the great outer door was open, that even if my way through the foul tunnel be cut off, here was another sally port although it meant a plunge into the Grand Canal.

The light faded out entirely, but a hollow ringing of footsteps assured me that I had further to go. One of those doors which the police party had found closed, was open! (The ancient lock had been wedged. It was fitted with a new, hidden lock.) And beyond that door Rudolf Adion went to destruction.

Down five steps I groped, and knew that I was below water level again.

Far along a tunnel similar to that which led under the Rio Mori, I saw the two figures. The man’s arm was around the woman; his head was close to hers. I knew that I could never be detected in the darkness of this ancient catacomb unless my own movements betrayed me; and when the silhouettes became blurred and then disappeared altogether I divined the presence of ascending steps at the end of the passage.

One fact of importance I noted: this damp and noisome burrow ran parallel to the Grand Canal. I must be a long way from my starting point.

And now it had grown so black that I had no alternative but to use my torch. I used it cautiously shining its ray directly before my feet. The floor was clammily repulsive, but I proceeded until I reached the steps. I switched off the torch.

A streak of light told me that a door had been left ajar at the top.

Gently I pushed it open and found myself in an empty wine cellar. One unshaded electric light swung from the vaulted roof. An open stone stair of four steps led up to an arch.

I questioned the wisdom of further advance. But I fear the spirit of Nayland Smith deserted me, that hereditary madness ruled my next move, for I crept up, found a massive, nail-studded door open, and peered out into a carpeted passage!

Emerging from that subterranean chill, the change of atmosphere was remarkable. Rudolf Adion’s voice reached me. He spoke happily, passionately. Then the speaker’s tone rose to a high note—a cry . . . and ceased abruptly!

They had him—it was all over! Inspired by a furious indignation, I stole forward and peered around the edge of a half-opened door into a room beyond. It was a small room having parquet flooring of a peculiar pattern: a plain border of black wood some three feet wide, the center designed to represent a lotus in bloom. Its walls were panelled, and the place appeared to be empty until, venturing unwisely to protrude my head, I saw watching me with a cold smile the woman of death!

* * *

I suppose she was exceptionally beautiful, this creature who, according to Nayland Smith, should long since have been dust; but the aura surrounding her, my knowledge, now definite, of her murderous work, combined to make her a thing of horror.

She had discarded her wrap; it was draped over her arm. I saw a slenderly perfect figure, small delicately chiseled features. Hers was a beauty so imperious that it awakened a memory which presently came fully to life. She might have posed for that portrait of Queen Nefertiti found in the tomb of Tutankhamen. An Arab necklace of crudely stamped gold heightened the resemblance. I was to learn later of others who had detected this.

But it was her eyes, fixed immovably upon me, which awakened ancient superstitions. The strange word zombie throbbed in my brain; for those eyes, green as emeralds, were long and narrow, their gaze was hard to sustain . . . and they were like the eyes of Dr Fu Manchu!

“Well”—she spoke calmly—”who are you, and why have you followed me?”

Conscious of my disheveled condition, of the fact that I had no backing, I hesitated.

“I followed you,” I said at last, “because it was my duty to follow you.”

“Your duty—why?”

She stood there, removed from me by the length of the room, and the regard of those strange, narrowed eyes never left my face.

“Because you had someone with you.”

“You are wrong; I am alone.”

I watched her, this suave, evil beauty. And for the first time I became aware of a heavy perfume resembling that of hawthorn.

“Where has he gone?”

“To whom do you refer?”

“To Rudolf Adion.”

She laughed. I saw her teeth gleam and thought of a vampire. It was the laugh I had heard down there in the cellars, deep, taunting.

“You dream, my friend—whoever you are—you dream.”

“You know quite well who I am.”

“Oh!” she raised delicate eyebrows mockingly. “You are famous then?”

What should I do? My instinct was to turn and run for it. Something told me that if I did so, I should be trapped.

“If you were advised by me you would go back. You trespass in someone’s house—I do not advise you to be found here.”

“You advise me to go back?”

“Yes. It is kind of me.”

And now although common sense whispered that to go would mean ambush in that echoing tomb which was the Palazzo Mori, I was sorely tempted to chance it. There was something wildly disturbing in this woman’s presence, in the steady glance of her luminous eyes. In short, I was afraid of her—afraid of the silent house about me, of the noisome passages below—of all the bloodthirsty pageant of mediaeval Venice to which her sheath frock, her ivory shoulders, seemed inevitably to belong.

But I wondered why she temporized, why she stood there watching me with that mocking smile. Although I could hear no sound surely it must be a matter of merely raising her voice to summon assistance.

Forcing down this insidious fear which threatened to betray me, I rapidly calculated my chances.

The room was no more than twelve feet long. I could be upon her in three bounds. Better still—why had I forgotten it? I suppose because she was a woman . . .

In a flash I had her covered with my automatic.

She did not stir. There was something uncanny in her coolness, something which again reminded me of the dreadful Dr Fu Manchu. Her lips alone quivered in that slight, contemptuous smile.

“Don’t move your hands!” I said, and the urgency of my case put real menace into the words. “I know this is a desperate game—you know it too. Step forward. I will return as you suggest, but you will go ahead of me.”

“And suppose I refuse to step forward?”

“I shall come and fetch you!”

Still there was no sound save that of our low-pitched voices, nothing to indicate the presence of another human being.

“You would be mad to attempt such a thing. My advice was sincere. You dare not shoot me unless also you propose to commit suicide, and I warn you that one step in my direction will mean your death.”

I watched her intently—although now an attack from the rear was what I feared, having good reason to remember the efficiency of Fu Manchu’s Thugs. Perhaps one of them was creeping up behind me. Yet I dared not glance aside.

“Go back! I shall not warn you again.”

Whereupon, realizing that now or never I must force the issue, I leapt forward . . . That heavy odor of hawthorn became suddenly acute—overpowering—and stifling a scream, I knew too late what had happened.

The woman stood upon the black border, where I, too, had been standing. The whole of the center of the floor was simply an inverted “star trap.”

It opened silently as I stepped upon it, and I fell from life into a sickly void of hawthorn blossom and oblivion . . .

Ancient Tortures

“Glad to see that you are feeling yourself again, Kerrigan.”

I stared about me in stupefaction. This of course was a grotesque dream induced by the drug which had made me unconscious—the drug which smelled like hawthorn blossom. For (a curious fact which even at this moment I appreciated) my memories were sharp-cut, up to the very instant of my fall through that trap in the lotus floor. I knew that I had dropped into some place impregnated with poison gas of an unfamiliar kind. Now came this singularly vivid dream . . .

A dungeon with a low, arched roof: the only light that which came through a barred window in one of the stone walls; and in this place I sat upon a massive chair attached to the paved floor. My hands and arms were free, but my ankles were chained to the front legs of the chair by means of gyves evidently of great age and also of great strength. On my left was a squat pillar some four feet in diameter, and in the shadows behind it I discerned a number of strange and terrifying implements: braziers, tongs and other equipment of a torture chamber.

Almost directly facing me and close beside the barred window, attached to a similar chair, sat Nayland Smith!

This dream my conscious mind told me must be due to thoughts I had been thinking at the moment that unconsciousness came. I had imagined Smith in the power of the Chinese doctor; I had seemed to feel all about me uneasy spirits of men who had suffered and had died in those old palaces which lie along the Grand Canal.

There came a low moaning sound, which rose and fell—rose and fell—and faded away . . .

“I know you think you are dreaming, Kerrigan!” Smith’s voice had lost none of its snap. “I thought so myself, until I found it impossible to wake up. But I assure you we are both here and both awake.”

Tentatively I tried to move the chair. Stooping, I touched the iron bands about my ankles. Then I stared wanly across at my fellow captive . . . I knew I was awake.

“Thank God you’re alive. Smith!”

“Alive, as you say, but not, I fear, for long!”

He laughed. It was not a mirthful laugh. The sound of our voices in that horrible musty place was muted, toneless, as the voices of those who speak in a crypt. I had never seen Smith otherwise than well groomed, but now, growing accustomed to the gloom, I saw that there was stubble on his chin. His hair was of that crisp, wavy sort which never seems to be disordered. But this growth of beard deepened the shadows beneath his cheekbones, and the quick gleam of his small even teeth as he laughed seemed to accentuate the haggardness of his appearance.

“I left in rather a hurry, Kerrigan; I forgot my pipe. It’s been damnable here, waiting for . . . whatever he intends to do to me. You will find that the chains are long enough to enable you to reach that recess on your right, where, very courteously, the designer of this apartment has placed certain toilet facilities for the use of one confined here during any considerable time. I am similarly equipped. A Thug of hideous aspect, whom I recognize as an old servant of Doctor Fu Manchu, has waited upon me excellently.”

He indicated the remains of a meal on a ledge in the niche beside him.

“Knowing the doctor’s penchant for experiments in toxicology, frankly, my appetite has not been good.”

I stood up and moved cautiously forward, dragging the chains behind me.

“No, no!” Smith smiled grimly. “It is well thought out, Kerrigan. We cannot get within six feet of one another.”

I stood there at the full length of my tether watching him where he sat.

“What I was about to ask is: do you happen to have any cigarettes?”

I clapped a hand to my pocket. My automatic, my clasp knife, these were gone—but not my cigarettes!

“Yes, the case is full.”

“Do you mind tossing one across to me? I have a lighter.”

I did as he suggested, and he lighted a cigarette. Returning to the immovable chair I followed his example; and as I drew the smoke between my lips I asked myself the question: Am I sane? Is it a fact that I and Nayland Smith are confined in a cell belonging to the Middle Ages?

That gruesome moaning arose again—and died away.

“What is it, Smith?”

“I don’t know. I have been wondering for some time.”

“You don’t think it’s some wretched—”

“It isn’t a human sound, Kerrigan. It seems to be growing louder. . . However—how did you fall into this?”

I told him—and I was perfectly frank. I told him of Ardatha’s visit, of the sounds which I had heard out on the canal side, of all that had followed right to the time that I had fallen into the trap prepared for me.

“There would seem to be a point, Kerrigan, where courage becomes folly.”

I laughed.

“What of yourself, Smith? I have yet to learn how you come to be here.”

“Oddly enough, our stories are not dissimilar. As you know, I did not turn in when you left me, but I put out the lights and stared from the window. The room was not ideal in view of the peril in which I knew myself to be. But I noted with gratitude a moored gondola in which a stout policeman was seated, apparently watching my window. It occurred to me that the sitting-room windows were equally accessible and, quietly, for I assumed you had gone to bed, I went in to look.

“I found that one was wide open and as I moved across to close it, I heard voices in your room. My first instinct was to dash in, but I waited for a moment because I detected a woman’s voice. Then I realized what had happened. Ardatha had paid you a secret visit!

“Knowing your sentiments about this girl, I was by no means easy in my mind. However, I determined not to disturb you or to bring you into the matter in any way. But here was a chance not to be missed.

“Dropping out of the sitting-room window (which the man in the gondola could not see) I tripped and fell. The sound of my fall must have attracted your attention. I discovered a half-gate which shut me off from the courtyard directly below your room. I tried it very gently. It was not locked. Knowing that Ardatha must have approached from the other end, I crept past your window and concealed myself in a patch of shadow near the small bridge which crosses the canal at that point.

“When Ardatha came out (I recognized her from your description) I followed; and my experiences from this point are uncommonly like your own. She entered the old stone storehouse facing the Palazzo Mori; and I, too, performed that clammy journey through the tunnels. I lost her at the top of the steps leading out of the wine cellar. But having learned all I hoped to learn I was about to return when something prompted me to look into the room with the lotus floor.”

He paused.

“Now, I want to make it quite clear, Kerrigan: I have no evidence to show that Ardatha suspected she was being followed. The presence of the woman whom I found in that room may have been accidental, but as I looked in I saw her . . .”

“You saw whom?”

“The zombie!”

“Good God!”

“My theories regarding her identity were confirmed. I had been right. Failing the presence of Doctor Fu Manchu in the case, she could only be a spirit, a creature of another world. For myself, I had seen her consigned to a horrible death. But woman or spirit, I knew now that she had to be silenced. I sprang forward to seize her—”

“I know!” I groaned.

“At that moment, Kerrigan, my usefulness to the world ended.”

He stared down at the smoke arising from the tip of his cigarette.

“You say you recognized her. Who is she?”

“She is Doctor Fu Manchu’s daughter.”

“What!”

“Unchanged from the first moment I set eyes upon her. She is a living miracle, a corpse moving among the living. But—here we are! And frankly, I confess here we deserve to be!”

He paused for a moment as if listening—perhaps for that awe some moaning. But I could detect no sound save a faint drip-drip of water.

“Of course you realize, Smith,” I said in a dull voice, “that Rudolf Adion is in the hands of Doctor Fu Manchu?”

“I realize it fully. I may add that I doubt if he is alive.”

Why I should have felt so about one who was something of a storm centre in Europe I cannot say, but momentarily forgetting my own peril I was chilled by the thought that Rudolf Adion no longer lived, that the power which swayed a nation had ceased to be. We were silent for a long time, sitting there smoking and staring vacantly at each other. At last:

“As I see it,” said Nayland Smith, “we have just one chance.”

“What is that?”

“Ardatha!”

“Why do you think so?”

“Now that I know her Oriental origin, which all along I had suspected, I think if she learns that you are here she will try to save you.”

I shook my head.

“Even if you are right I doubt if she would have the power . . . and I am sorry to say that I believe her to be utterly evil.”

“Let us pray that she is not. She risked perhaps more than you understand to save you once before. If she fails to try again . . .”

That unendurable moaning arose, as if to tell us that Ardatha would fail—that all would fail.

* * *

I don’t know how long I had been sitting there in hopeless dejection when I heard a slow, soft footstep approaching. I glanced across at Nayland Smith. His face was set, expressionless.

A rattling of keys came, and the heavy door swung open. At the same moment a light set somewhere behind that squat pillar sprang up, and I saw as I had suspected a fully equipped torture chamber. Nocturnal insects rustled to cover.

Dr Fu Manchu came in . . .

He wore a plain yellow robe having long sleeves, and upon his feet I saw thick-soled slippers. His phenomenal skull was hidden by a mandarin’s cap, perhaps that which I had found in a hut on the Essex marshes.

I am unable to record my emotions at this moment, for I cannot recall that I had any. When on a previous occasion I had found myself in the power of the Chinese doctor, I had been fortified by the knowledge that Nayland Smith was free, that there was a chance of his coming to my aid. Now we were fellow captives. I was numbly resigned to whatever was to be.

Seated on Dr Fu Manchu’s left shoulder I saw a tiny, wizened marmoset. I thought that it peered at me inquisitively. Fu Manchu crossed nearly to the centre of the cell—he had a queer, catlike gait. There, standing midway between us, he looked long and searchingly, first at Nayland Smith and then at me. I tried to sustain the gaze of his half-closed eyes. I was mortified when I found that I could not do it.

“So you have decided to join me. Sir Denis?” He spoke softly and raising one hand caressed the marmoset. “At last the Si-Fan is to enjoy the benefit of your great ability.”

Nayland Smith said nothing. He watched and listened.

“Later I shall make arrangements for your transport to my temporary headquarters. I shall employ you to save civilization from the madmen who seek to ruin it.”

The meaning of these strange words was not entirely clear to me, but I noted, and drew my own conclusions, that Dr Fu Manchu seemed to have forgotten my presence.

“Tonight, a man who threatens the peace of the world will make a far-reaching decision. To me his life or death are matters of no importance, but I am determined that there shall be peace; the assumption of the West that older races can benefit by your ridiculous culture must be corrected. Your culture!”

His voice sank contemptuously on a guttural note.

“What has it done? What have your aeroplanes—those toys of a childish people—accomplished? Beyond bringing every man’s home into the firing line—nothing! Napoleon had no bombers, no high explosives, nor any other of your modern boons. He conquered a great part of Europe without them. Poor infants, who transfer your prayers from angels to aeroplanes!”

He ceased for a moment and the silence was uncanny. From my point of view in the low wooden chair, Dr Fu Manchu appeared abnormally tall. He possessed a physical repose which was terrifying, because in some way it made more manifest the volcanic activity of his brain. He was like a pylon supporting a blinding light.

The silence was broken by shrill chattering from the marmoset. With a tiny hand it patted the cheek of its master.

Dr Fu Manchu glanced aside at the wizened little creature.

“You have met my marmoset before. Sir Denis, and I think I have mentioned that he is of great age. I shall not tell you his age since you might be tempted to doubt my word, which I could not tolerate.” There was mockery in his voice. “My earliest experiments in arresting senility were carried out on my faithful Peko. As you see, they were successful.”

He removed the marmoset from his shoulder and couched it in a yellow fold covering his left arm. Nayland Smith’s face remained completely expressionless. I counted the paces between the chair in which I sat and the spot upon which Dr Fu Manchu stood.

He was just beyond my reach.

“You have genius. Sir Denis, but it is marred by a streak of that bulldog breed of which the British are so proud. In striving to bolster up the ridiculous pretensions of those who misdirect the West, you have inevitably found yourself opposed to me. Consider what it is that you would preserve, what contentment it has brought in its train. Look around at the happy homes of Europe and America, the laborers singing in your vineyards, the peace and prosperity which your ‘progress’ has showered on mankind.”

His voice rose. I detected a note of repressed but feverish excitement.

“But no matter. There will be ample time in future to direct your philosophy into more suitable channels. I will gratify your natural curiosity regarding my presence in the world, which continues even after my unpleasant experience at Niagara Falls . . .”

Nayland Smith’s hands closed tightly.

“You recovered the body of that brilliant maniac. Professor Morgenstahl, I understand, and also the wreckage of the motorboat. One of my most devoted servants was driving the boat. He was not killed as you supposed and his body lost. He was temporarily stunned in the struggle with Morgenstahl—whom I overcame, however. He recovered in time to deal with the emergency. He succeeded in running the boat against a rock near the head of a rapid. In this he was aided by a Very light contributed by an airman flying over us. This fellow of mine—a sea Dyak—is a magnificent surf swimmer. Carrying a line he swam from point to point and finally reached the Canadian shore.”

Dr Fu Manchu stroked the marmoset reflectively.

“Unaided by this line and the strength of my servant, I doubt if I could have crossed to the bank. The crossing seriously exhausted me—and the boat became dislodged no more than a few seconds after I had taken the plunge . . , ,

Nayland Smith neither spoke nor moved. His hands remained clenched, his face expressionless.

“You have observed,” Fu Manchu continued, “that my daughter is again acting in my interests. She is unaware, however, of her former identity: Fah lo Suee is dead. I have reincarnated her as Korean!, an Oriental dancer whose popularity is useful. This is her punishment . . .”

The marmoset uttered a whistling sound. It was uncannily derisive.

“Later you will experience this form of amnesia, yourself. The ordeal by fire to which I once submitted Korean! in your presence was salutary but the furnace contained no fuel. It was one which I had prepared for you, Sir Denis. I had designed it as a gateway to your new life in China.”

Mentally I seemed to remain numb. Some of the Chinese doctor’s statements I failed to follow. Others were all too horribly clear. At times there came a note almost of exultation, severely repressed but perceptible, into the speaker’s voice. He had the majesty which belongs to great genius, or, and there was a new horror in the afterthought, to insanity. He was perhaps a brilliant madman!

“I am satisfied to observe,” he continued, “that my new aesthetic, a preparation of crataegus, the common hawthorn, serves its purpose so admirably. Anaesthesia is immediate and complete. There are no distressing after-symptoms. I foresee that it will supplant my mimosa mixture with which, Sir Denis, you have been familiar in the past.”

Slowly he extended a gaunt hand in the direction of the torture room:

“Medieval devices designed to stimulate reluctant memories.”

He stepped aside and took up a pair of long-handled tongs.

“Forceps used to tear sinews.”

He spoke softly, then dropped those instruments of agony. The clang of their fall made my soul sick.

“Primitive and clumsy. China has done better. No doubt you recall the Seven Gates? However, these forms of questions are no longer necessary. I can learn all that I wish to know by the mere exercise of that neglected implement, the human will. I recently discovered in this way that Ardatha—hitherto a staunch ally—is not to be trusted where Mr. Kerrigan is concerned.”

I ceased to breathe as he spoke those words . . .

“Accordingly I have taken steps to ensure her noninterference . . . You are silent, Sir Denis?”

“Why should I speak?”‘ Smith’s voice was flatly unemotional. “I allowed myself to fall into a trap which a schoolboy would have distrusted. I have nothing to say.”

“You refer to the lotus floor no doubt? Yes, ingenious in its way. That room with others giving access to the cellars and dungeons had been walled up for several generations. I recently had them reopened, but confess I did not foresee it would be for the accommodation of so distinguished a guest. In a dungeon adjoining this I came across two skeletons those of a man and a woman. Irregularities in certain of the small bones suggested that they had not died happily—”

He turned as if to go.

“I look forward to further conversation in the future, Sir Denis, but now I must leave you. A matter of the gravest urgency demands my attention.”

As he moved towards the door the marmoset sprang from his arm to his shoulder, and turning its tiny head, gibed at us . . . The light went out . . . I heard the key turned in the lock—I heard those padding, catlike steps receding in the stone-paved passage . . .

I was drenched in perspiration.

The Tongs

The silence which followed Dr Fu Manchu’s departure was broken by that awful moaning as of some lost soul who had died horribly in one of the dungeons. It rose and fell, rose and fell . . . and faded away.

“Kerrigan!” Smith snapped, and I admired the vigour of his manner. “Was the wind rising out there?”

“Yes, in gusts . . . What do you think he meant about”

“The wind was from the sea?”

“Yes. Oh my God! Is she alive?”

Again that awful moaning arose—and now to it was added a ghostly metallic clanking.

“What ever is it, Smith?”

“I have been wondering for some time . . . Yes, she’s alive, Kerrigan, but we can’t count on her! . . . Now that you tell me a breeze has risen, I know what it is. There’s a window or a ventilator outside in the passage. What we hear is wind howling through a narrow opening.”

“But that awful clanking!”

“Irritatingly significant.”

“Why?”

“It was not there before the doctor’s visit! It means that he has left the key in the lock with the other keys attached to it. The draught of air—I can feel it blowing on the top of my head now through these bars—is swinging the attached keys to and fro.”

Across the darkened cell he watched me.

“Among those keys, Kerrigan, in all probability, are the keys to our manacles!”

I thought for some time. A tumult had arisen in my brain.

“Surely he was never guilty of carelessness. Why should he have left the key?”

“According to my experience”—Smith stared down at his wrist watch—”the yellow-faced horror who attends to my requirements is due in about five minutes. The key was left in the lock for his convenience no doubt. And although Ardatha is alive—oh! I have learned to read Fu Manchu’s hidden meanings—she will not come to our aid tonight. Someone else is alive also!”

“Adion!”

“But I fear that his hours are numbered.”

He stood up on the seat of the massive chair and stared out through the bars. Over his shoulder:

“I have carefully examined this passage no less than six times,” he said. “It is no more than three feet wide. The end from which a current of air blows is invisible from here. But that is where the ventilator must be situated. The light is away to my right, the direction from which visitors always approach.”

He stepped down and stood staring at me. His eyes were feverishly bright.

“I was wondering,” he mused. “Could you toss me another cigarette?”

He lighted it, and apparently unconscious of the length of chain attached to his ankles, began to pace up and down the narrow compass of floor allowed to him, drawing on the cigarette with the vigor of a pipe smoker, so that clouds issued from his lips.

Hope began to dawn in my hitherto hopeless mind.

“Oh for the brain of a Houdini!” he murmured. “The problem is this, Kerrigan: The keys are hanging less than a foot below this grating behind me, but two feet wide of it. If you will glance at the position of the door you will see that I am right. It is clearly impossible for me to reach them. By no possible contortion could I get within a foot of the keyhole from which they are hanging. You follow me?”

“Perfectly”

“Very well. What is urgently required—for my jailer will almost certainly take the keys away—is an idea, namely, how to reach those keys and detach them from the lock. There must be a way!”

Following a long silence interrupted only by the clanking of Nayland Smith’s leg irons, periodical moaning of the wind through that unseen opening and the chink of the pendant keys:

“It is not only how to reach them,” I said, “but how to turn the lock in order to detach them.”

“I agree. Yet there must be a way.”

He stood still—in fact, seemed almost to become rigid. I saw where his gaze was set.

The sinew-tearing pincers to which Dr Fu Manchu had drawn our attention lay not at the spot from which he had taken them up, but beside the pillar . . .

“Smith!” I whispered, “can you reach them?”

With never a word or glance he walked forward to the extreme limit of the chain, went down upon his hands and crept forward with a stoat-like movement. Fully extended, his right hand outstretched to the utmost, he was six inches short of his objective!

Even as I heard him utter a sound like a groan:

“Comeback, Smith!”

My voice shook ridiculously. He got back onto his feet turned and looked at me.

Although robbed of my automatic, my clasp knife and anything else resembling a lethal weapon, a small piece of string no more than a foot long which I had carefully untied from some package recently received and, a habit, had neatly looped and placed in my pocket proved still to be there. I held it up triumphantly.

Nayland Smith’s expression changed.

“May I inquire what earthly use you can suggest for a piece of string?”

“Tie one end to the handle of that metal pitcher on the ledge beside you, then crawl forward again and toss the pitcher into the open arms of the tongs. You can draw them across the floor.”

For a moment Smith’s stare was disconcerting, and then:

“Top marks, Kerrigan,” he said quietly. “Toss the string across . . .

Many attempts he made which were unsuccessful, but at last he lodged the pitcher between the iron arms of the pincers. Breathlessly I watched him as he began to pull . . . The pitcher toppled forward: the pincers did not move. “We are done,” he panted. “It isn’t going to work!” And at that moment—as though they had been treading on my heart—I heard footsteps approaching.

Korêani

Those soft footsteps halted outside the door. There followed a provocative rattle of keys, the sound of a lock being turned; then the door opened, light sprang up . . .

Dr Fu Manchu’s daughter came in.

She was dressed as I remembered her in the room with the lotus floor. Her frock was a sheath, clinging to her lithe figure as perfectly as scales to a fish. She wore no jewelry save the Arab necklace. As she entered the cell and looked about her I grasped the fact immediately that she was looking not for me, but for Nayland Smith.

When her long, narrow eyes met my glance their expression conveyed no more than the slightest interest; but as, turning aside, she looked at Smith I saw them open widely. There was a new light in their depths. I thought that they glittered like emeralds.

She stood there watching him. There was something yearning in her expression, yet something almost hopeless. I remembered Dr Fu Manchu’s words. I believed that this woman was struggling to revive a buried memory.

“So you are going to join us,” she said.

Fu Manchu had used a similar expression. There was some mystery here which no doubt Smith would explain, for the devil doctor had said also, “Fah lo Suee is dead. I have reincarnated her as Korean! . . .”

The spoken English of Korean! was less perfect than that of Ardatha, but she had a medium note in her voice, a soft caressing note, which to my ears sounded menacing as the purr of one of the great cats—a puma or tigress.

There was no reply.

“I am glad—but please tell me something.”

“What do you want me to tell you?” Nayland Smith’s tones were coldly indifferent. “Of what interest can my life or death be to you?”

She moved more closely to his side, always watching him.

“There is something I must know. Do you remember me?”

“Perfectly”

“Where did we meet?”

Smith and I had stood up with that automatic courtesy which prompts a man when a woman enters a room. And now she was so near to him that easily he could have grasped her. Watching his grim face into which a new expression had come, I wondered what he contemplated.

“It was a long time ago,” he replied quietly.

“But how could it be so long ago? If I remember you how can I have forgotten our meeting?”

“Perhaps you have forgotten your name?”

“That is stupid! My name is Korean!.”

“No, no.” He smiled and shook his head. “Your real name I never knew, but the name given to you in childhood, the name by which I did know you, was Fah lo Suee.”

She drew down her brows in an effort of recollection.

“Fah lo Suee,” she murmured. “But this is a silly name. It means a perfume, a sweet scent. It is childish!”

“You were a child when it was given to you.”

“Ah!” She smiled—and her smile was so alluring that I knew how this woman must have played upon the emotions of those she had lured into the net of Dr Fu Manchu. “You have known me a long time? I thought so, but I cannot remember your name.”

For Korean! I had no existence. She had forgotten my presence. I meant no more to her than one of the dreadful furnishings of the place.

“My name has always been Nayland Smith. How long it will remain so I don’t know.”

“What does a name matter when one belongs to the Si-Fan?”

“I don’t want to forget as you have forgotten—Korean!.”

“What have I forgotten?”

“You have forgotten Nayland Smith. Even now you do not recognize my name.”

Again she frowned in that puzzled way and took a step nearer to the speaker.

“Perhaps you mean something which I do not understand.

Why are you afraid to forget? Has your life been so happy?”

“Perhaps,” said Smith, “I don’t want to forget you as you have forgotten me.”

He extended his hands; she was standing directly before him. And as I watched, unable to believe what I saw, he unfastened the gold necklace, held it for a moment, and then dropped it into his pocket!

“Why do you do that?” She was very close to him now. “Do you think it will help you to remember?”

“Perhaps. May I keep it?”

“It is nothing—I give it to you.” Her voice, every line of her swaying body, was an invitation. “It is the Takbir, the Moslem prayer. It means there is no god but God.”

“That is why I thank you for it, Korêani.”

A long time she waited, watching him—watching him. But he did not stir. She moved slowly away.

“I must go. No one must find me here. But I had to come!” Still she hesitated. “I am glad I came.”

“I am glad you came.”

She turned, flashed a glance at me, and stepped to the open door. There she paused and glanced back over her shoulder.

“Soon we shall meet again.”

She went out, closed the door and extinguished the light. I heard a jingle of keys, then the sound of her footsteps as she went along the passage.

“For God’s sake. Smith,” I said in a low voice,”what has come over you?”

He raised a warning finger.

* * *

As I watched uncomprehendingly, Nayland Smith held up the gold necklace. It was primitive bazaar work, tiny coins hanging from gold chains, each stamped with an Arab letter. I saw that it was secured by means of a ring and a clumsy gold hook. Quickly but coolly he removed the string from the handle of the pitcher and tied it to the ring.

Now I grasped the purpose of that strange episode which in its enactment had staggered me. Once more he dropped onto the stone floor and crept forward until he could throw the hook of the necklace into the angle of the pincers. Twice he failed to anchor the hook;

the third time he succeeded.

Gently he drew the heavy iron implement towards him—until he could grasp it in his

“Kerrigan, if I never worked fast in my life before I must work fast now!”

His eyes shone feverishly. He rattled out the words in a series of staccato syllables. In a trice he was onto the chair and straining through the iron bars, the heavy instrument designed to tear human tendons held firmly in his hand. By the tenseness of his attitude, his quick, short breathing, I knew how difficult he found his task.

“Can you reach it, Smith?”

That mournful howling arose, followed by a faint metallic rattling . . . The rattling ceased.

“Yes, I have touched them! But getting the key out is the difficulty-More rattling followed. I clenched my hands, held my breath.

Smith now extended his left arm through the bars. Stooping down, he began slowly to withdraw his right. I was afraid to speak, until with more confidence he pulled the iron pincers back into the cell—and I saw that they gripped a bunch of keys!

He stepped down, dropped keys and forceps on the floor, and closing his eyes, sat still for a moment . . .

“Splendid!” I said. “One mistake would have been fatal.”

“I know!” He looked up. “It was a hell of a strain, Kerrigan. But what helped me was—she had forgotten to lock the door. The key slipped out quite easily!”

That short interval over, he was coolly efficient again.

Picking up the bunch, he examined each key closely, presently selected one and tried it on the lock of the band encircling his left ankle.

“Wrong!”

He tried another. I heard a dull grating sound.

“Right!”

In a moment his legs were free.

“Quick, Kerrigan! Come right forward. I will slide them across the floor to you. The one I have separated fits my leg iron; it probably fits yours.”

In a moment I had the bunch in my hand. Fifteen seconds later I, too, was free.

“Now the keys! Be quick!”

I tossed them back. He caught them, stood upon the chair, looked out through the iron grating . . . and threw them onto the floor of the passage!

“Smith! Smith!” I whispered.

He jumped down and turned to face me.

“What?”

“We were free! Why have you thrown the keys back?”

Silently he pointed to the door.

I stared. There was no keyhole!

“Even if we had the key it would be useless to us. There is no means of opening this door from the inside! We must wait. Tuck your feet and the manacles well under your chair. I shall do the same. Soon the yellow jailer will be here. If he crosses first to you I will spring on his back. If he comes to me you attack him.”

“He may cry out.”

Smith smiled grimly. He picked up the iron forceps.

“Will you have them, or shall I? It’s a fifty-fifty chance.”

“Keep them, Smith; you will get an opportunity in any event.”

And scarcely had we disposed ourselves in a manner to suggest that the leg irons were still in place, when I heard quick footsteps approaching along the passage.

“Good! he’s here. Remember the routine, Kerrigan.”

There was a pause outside the door and I heard muttering. Then came a jangle as the man stooped to pick up the keys. Their having fallen from the lock clearly had made him suspicious. When presently he opened the door and stepped in he glanced from side to side, doubt written upon one of the most villainous faces I had ever beheld.

He wore a shirt with an open collar, grey flannel trousers, and those sort of corded sandals which are rarely seen in Europe. By reason of his build, his glossy black hair and the cast of his features, I knew him for one of Dr Fu Manchu’s Thugs. Indeed, as I looked, I saw the brand of Kali on his forehead. His yellow face was scarred in such a way that one eye remained permanently closed, and the effect of the wound which reached the upper lip was to produce a perpetual leer.

His doubts were not easily allayed, for he stood staring about him for some time, his poise giving me the impression of a boxer on tiptoes. He had replaced the key in the door with the pendant bunch and now going out again, he returned with a tray upon which was something under a cover, a bowl of fruit and a pitcher. For yet another long moment before he crossed towards Nayland Smith he hesitated and glanced aside at me.

Then, walking over to the alcove, he was about to set the tray upon the ledge when I sprang.

I caught him at a disadvantage, collared his legs and threw him forward, head first. The tray and its contents crashed to the floor. But even as he fell I recognized the type of character with whom I had to deal.

He twisted sideways, took the fall on his left shoulder, and lashing out with his feet, kicked my legs from under me! It was a marvelous trick, perfectly executed. I fell half on top of him, but reached for a hold as I did so.

It was unnecessary . . .

As the Thug forced his trunk upward on powerful arms Smith brought the forceps down upon the glossy skull! Against this second attack the yellow man had no defense. There was a sickening thud. He dropped flat on his face and lay still.

Behind The Arras

“We are safe for an hour,” snapped Smith. “Come on!”

“Some sort of weapon would be a good idea,” I said, bruised and still breathless from my fall.

“Quite useless! Brains, not brawn, alone can save us now.”

As we stepped out into the passage came that ghastly moaning and a draught of cold air. It tricked me into a momentary panic, but Nayland Smith turned and examined a narrow grille set near the top of the end of the passage; for here was a cul-de-sac.

“There’s an air shaft above that,” he said. “Judging from the look of this place, we are down below water level. The fact that the actual ventilator above evidently faces towards the sea conveys nothing.”

The passage was about thirty feet long. A bulkhead light was roughly attached to one of the stone walls. It was reflection from this which had shone through the iron bars of our prison. We hurried along. There were other doors with similar grilles on one side, doubtless indicating the presence of more cells. At the end was a heavy door, but it was open.

“Caution,” said Smith.

A flight of stone steps confronted us. We mounted them, I close behind Smith. I saw ahead a continuation of the passage which we had just left, but one wall was wood paneled. This passage also was lighted by one dun lamp.

Creeping to the end, we found similar corridors opening right and left.

Speaking very close to my ear:

“Let’s try right,” Smith whispered.

We stole softly along. Here, again, there was one dim light to guide us, but we passed it without finding any way out of the place. We came to a second door which proved to be unlocked. Very cautiously Nayland Smith pushed it open.

We were in a maze . . . beyond stretched yet another passage! But peering ahead I observed a difference.

The floor was thickly carpeted with felt. There was no lamp, but points of light shone upon the ancient stonework of one wall, apparently coming from apertures in the panels which formed the other. Only by a grasp of his hand did Smith enjoin special caution as we pushed forward to a point where two of these openings appeared close together.

We looked through.

I recognized a remarkable fact. That rough and ancient woodwork which extended along the whole of the right-hand wall was no more than a framework or stretcher upon which tapestry was supported.

We were in a passage behind the arras of a large apartment.

Something seemed to obscure my vision. Presently I realized what it was: At certain points the tapestry had been cut away and replaced by gauze, painted on the outside, so that to those in the room the opening would be invisible.

I saw a chamber furnished with all the splendor of old Venice, but it was decaying splendor. The carved chairs richly upholstered in royal purple were damaged and faded; a mosaic-topped table was cracked; the patterned floor was filmed with ancient dust. Tapestry (through one section of which I peered) covered all the walls. Upon it were depicted scenes from the maritime history of the Queen of the Adriatic. But it was moldy with age.

Four magnificent wrought-iron candelabra, each supporting six red candles, gave light, and a fine Persian carpet was spread before a sort of dais upon which was set a carven ebony chair resembling a throne. Dr Fu Manchu, yellow robed, the mandarin’s cap upon his head, sat there—his long ivory hands gripping the arms of the chair, his face immobile, his eyes like polished jade.

Standing before him, one foot resting on the dais, was a defiant figure: a man wearing evening dress, a man whose straight black hair and black moustache, his pose, must have revealed his identity to almost anyone in the civilized world.

It was Rudolf Adion!

* * *

There had been silence as we had crept along the felt-padded floor behind the tapestry; a false step would have betrayed us. This silence remained unbroken, but the clash of those two imperious characters stirred my spirit as no rhetoric could have stirred me—and my conception of the destiny of the world became changed . . .

Then Adion spoke. He spoke in German. Although my Italian is negligible I have a fair knowledge of German. Therefore, I could follow the conversation.

“I have been tricked, trapped, drugged!” The suppressed violence in the orator’s voice startled me. “I find myself here—I realize now that I am not dreaming—and I have listened (patiently, I think) to perhaps the most preposterous statements which any man has ever made. I have one thing to say, and one only: Instantly77—he beat a clenched fist into his palm—”I demand to be set free! Instantly! And I warn you—I will not temporize—that for this outrage you shall suffer!”

He glanced about him swiftly, and as his face which I had always thought to lack natural beauty was turned in my direction, something in those blazing eyes, in the defiant set of his chin, won an admiration which I believed I could never have felt for him.

But Dr Fu Manchu did not move. He might have been not a man, but a graven image. Then he spoke in German. I had not heard that language spoken so perfectly otherwise than by a native of Germany.

“Excellency is naturally annoyed. I have sought a personal interview for one reason only. I could have removed you from office and from life without so much formality. I wished to see you, to talk to you. I believe that as one used to giving but not to receiving orders, the instructions of the Council of Seven of the Si-Fan might have seemed to be unacceptable.”

“Inacceptable?” Rudolf Adion bent forward threateningly. “Inacceptable! You fool! The Si-Fan! I have had more than enough of this nonsense! My time is too valuable to be wasted upon Chinese conjurers. Let this farce end or I shall be reduced to the extremity of a personal attack.”

Fists clenched, nostrils dilated, he seemed about to spring upon that impassive figure enthroned in the ebony chair. Knowing from my own experience what he must be suffering at this moment, of humiliation, ignorance of his whereabouts, a bewilderment complete as that which belongs to an evil dream, I thought that Rudolf Adion was a very splendid figure.

And in that moment I understood why a great, intellectual nation had accepted him as its leader. Whatever his failings, this man was fearless.

But Dr Fu Manchu never stirred. The twenty-four red candles burned steadily. There was no breath of air in that decaying, deadly room. And the gaze of those still eyes checked the chancellor.

“Dictators”—the guttural voice compassed that Germanic word perfectly—”hitherto have served their appointed purpose. Their schemes of expansion I have been called upon to check. The Si-Fan has intervened in Abyssinia. We are now turning our attention to Morocco and Syria. China, my China, can take care of herself. She will always absorb the fools who intrude upon her surface as the pitcher plant absorbs flies. To some small extent I have forwarded this process.”

And Rudolf Adion remained silent.

“I opened the floodgates of the Yellow River”—that note of exultation, of fanaticism, came now into the strange voice. “I called upon those elemental spirits in whom you do not believe to aid me. The children of China do not desire war. They are content to live on their peaceful rivers, in their rice fields, in those white valleys where the opium poppy grows. They are content to die . . . The people of your country do not desire war. “

And Adion still remained silent, enthralled against his will . . .

“My agents inform me that a great majority desires peace. There are no more than twelve men living today who can cause war. You are one of them. Your ideals cross mine. You would dispense with Christ, with Mohammed, with Buddha, with Moses. But not one of these ancient trees shall be destroyed. They have a purpose: they are of use—to me. You have been ordered by the Council of Seven not to meet Pietro Monaghani—yet you are here!”

Some spiritual battle the dictator was fighting—a battle which I had fought and lost against the power in those wonderful, evil eyes . . .

“I forbid this meeting. I speak for the Council of which I am the president. A European conflict would be inimical to my plans. If any radical change take place in the world’s map, my own draughtsmen will make it.”

Adion had won that inner conflict. In one bound he was upon the dais, looking down quiveringly upon the seated figure.

“I give you the time in which I can count ten! We are man to man. You are mad and I am sane. But I warn you—I am the stronger.”

I was so tensed up, so fired to action, that I suppose some movement on my part warned Nayland Smith, for he set a sudden grip upon my wrist which made me wince: it brought me to my senses. I think I had contemplated tearing a way through the tapestry to take my place beside Rudolf Adion.

“From several loopholes,” Dr Fu Manchu continued, his voice now soft and sibilant, “you are covered by my servants. I have explained to you patiently and at some length that I could have brought about your assassination twenty times within the past three months. Because I recognize in your character much which is admirable I have adopted those means which have brought us face to face. You have received the final notice of the Council; you have one hour in which to choose. Leave Venice tonight within that hour and I guarantee your safety. Refuse, and the world will know you no more . . .

The Lotus Floor

Nayland Smith was urging me back in the direction we had come. Having passed the door which we softly opened and closed:

“Why this way?” I whispered.

“You heard Fu Manchu’s words. He was covered by his servants from several loopholes—”

“Probably a lie—he has nerves of steel”

“That he has nerves of steel, I agree, Kerrigan, but I have never known him to lie. No, this is our way.”

We groped back along those dimly lighted passages until we came to the point at which of two ways we had selected that to the right. We now tried the left. And dimly in the darkness, for there was no light here, I saw a flight of wooden steps. Smith leading, we mounted to the top. Another door was there on the landing and it was ajar. Light shone through the opening.

“I expect this is the way my jailer came,” whispered Smith.

Beyond, as we gently pushed the door open, was a narrow lobby. Complete silence reigned . . . But at the very moment of our entrance this silence was interrupted.

Unmistakable sounds of approaching footsteps came from beyond a curtained opening. The footsteps ceased. There came a faint shuffling, and then—unmistakably again—the sound of someone retreating.

“Run for it!” Smith snapped, “or we are trapped!”

Dashing blindly across, I pulled up sharply on the threshold of a room. It was, I think, a horribly familiar perfume which checked me—that of hawthorn blossom! I clutched at Nayland Smith, staring, staring at what I saw . . .

It was the room with the lotus floor!

We had entered it from the other side, and at that door through which I had stepped into oblivion, Ardatha stood, her eyes widely open, her face pale!

“Mercy of God!” she said, “but how did you get here? Don’t move. Stay where you are.”

No word came from Nayland Smith. For a moment I could hear his hard breathing, then:

“Go round it, Kerrigan,” he said. “Stick to the black border. Don’t be afraid, Ardatha, you had nothing to do with this.”

As I reached the other side of the room and stood beside her:

“Ardatha!” I threw my arm about her shoulders. “Come with me! I can’t bear it!”

“No!” She freed herself, her face remained very pale. “Not yet!”

“Go ahead, Kerrigan.” Smith was making his way around the room. “Leave Ardatha to me; she’s in safe hands.”

With one last look into the amethyst eyes, I hurried on—but at the top of the steps which led to the wine cellar paused, stepped back and:

“It’s unnecessary to go the whole way,” I said. “The door of the Palazzo Mori is not locked. For God’s sake, don’t linger, Smith.”

He was standing looking down at her; she made no attempt to retreat . . .

My flashlamp had gone the way of my automatic, but a box of matches for some obscure reason had been left in my pocket. With the aid of these I groped my way through to that noisome passage which led to the old palace. Along I went, moving very slowly and working my way match by match. I wondered why Smith delayed, what he had in mind. Some quibble of conscience, I thought, for clearly it was his duty to arrest Ardatha.

My plan was to learn if the exit by way of the water were still practicable. I knew it must be very late, and I wondered if it would be possible to attract the attention of a passing gondolier. Otherwise we should have to swim for it.

The door remained unfastened as the police had left it Outside the wind howled through a dark night. The surface of the Grand Canal was like a miniature ocean. I could see no sign of any craft.

I confess that that second tunnel which led under the canal presented terrors from which I shrank.

Propping the great door open so that some dim light penetrated to the tomb-like hall, I began to retrace my steps. Approaching me, a ghostly figure, I saw Nayland Smith groping his way by the aid of a tiny torch—none other than his lighter!

He was alone . . .

As we stood together on the steps, buffeted by that keen breeze, and still at the mercy of the enemy should we be attacked from the rear:

“Smith,” I said, for the thought was uppermost in my mind, “what became of her?”

“She had a second set of keys—God knows where she had found them—and was on her way to release us . . . I hadn’t the heart to arrest her.”

We stood there in the stormy night for three, four, five minutes, but no sort of craft was abroad.

“Nothing else to it,” snapped Smith. “We must go through the tunnel. To delay longer would be madness.”

“But the door at this end may be locked!”

“It is—but I have the key”

“You got it from Ardatha?”

“Yes.”

“What of the padlock at the other end?”

“That is unfastened.”

“Which means—someone is expected to go out tonight?”

“Exactly. I leave the identity of that someone to your imagination.”

We groped across the clammy echoing hall. With the key Ardatha had given him, Smith opened the door to that last gruesome tunnel. He locked it behind him.

“That was stipulated,” he explained drily. “It also protects us from the rear.”

We hurried as fast as we could through the fetid passage and up the steps at the end. The trap was open.

As we came out into that black and narrow lane which led to freedom:

“You must be worn to death, Smith,” I said.

“I confess to a certain weariness, Kerrigan. But since frankly I had accepted the fact that I must lose my identity and be transported to some point selected by Doctor Fu Manchu to carry out the duties of another life, this freedom is glorious! But remember: Rudolf Adion!”

“He had an hour—”

“We have less . . . if we are to save him.”

In The Palazzo Brioni

Colonel Correnti sprang up like a man who sees a ghost. Even the diplomatic poise of Sir George Herbert had deserted him. These were the small hours of the morning, but police headquarters hummed with the feverish activity of a hive disturbed.

“The good God be praised!” Correnti cried, and the points of his grey moustache seemed to quiver. “It is Sir Denis Nayland Smith and Mr. Kerrigan!”

“Glad to see you, Smith,” said Sir George drily.

“Quick!” Smith looked from face to face. “The latest news of Adion?”

The chief of police dropped back into his chair and extended his palms eloquently.

“Tragedy!”

“What? Tell me quickly!”

“He disappeared from the suite allotted to him at the palace—it has a private exit—some time during the night. No one can say when. It was certainly a love tryst—for Mr. Kerrigan saw the appointment made. But, he has not returned!”

“He will never return,” said Nayland Smith grimly, “if we waste a moment. I want a party—at least twenty men.”

“You know where he is?” Sir George Herbert was the speaker.

The chief of police sprang up, his eyes mad with excitement.

“I know where he was\”

“But where? Tell me!”

“In a room in the Palazzo Brioni—”

“But Palazzo Brioni belongs to Mr. Brownlow Wilton, the American!”

“No matter. Rudolf Adion was there less than half an hour ago.”

As the necessary men were assembled Smith began to issue rapid orders. One party under a Carabinieri captain hurried off to the old stone boathouse. A second party proceeded to the water gate of the Palazzo Mori, a third covered both palaces from the land side. Ourselves, with the main party and the chief of police, set out for the Palazzo Brioni.

It was not clear to me how Smith had determined that this was the scene of our recent horrible adventure, but:

“I counted my paces as I went—and returned—along the passage,” he explained. “There is no shadow of doubt. The room in which we saw Doctor Fu Manchu and Rudolf Adion is in the Palazzo Brioni . . .

Against that keen breeze which shrieked eerily along the Grand Canal, the black police launch headed for the palace. As we slowed up against the water steps, no light showed anywhere; the great door was closed. Persistent ringing and knocking, however, presently resulted in a light springing up in the hallway.

When at last, preceded by the shooting of several bolts, the door opened, I saw a half-clad and very frightened manservant staring out.

“I represent the police,” said Nayland Smith rapidly. “I must speak immediately to Mr. James Brownlow Wilton. Be good enough to inform him.”

We all crowded into the hallway, a beautiful old place in which I had glimpses of fine pictures, statuary and furniture, every item of which I recognized to be museum pieces. The man, pulling his dressing gown about him, stared pathetically from face to face.

“But, please, I don’t understand,” he said. He was Italian, but spoke fair English. “What is this? What has happened?”

In that dimly lighted hall as we stood about him, wind howling at the open door, I could well believe that his bewilderment was not assumed.

“First, who are you?” Smith demanded.

“I am the butler here, sir. My name is Paulo.”

“Mr. Wilton is your employer?”

“Yes sir.”

“Where is he?”

“He left tonight, sir.”

“What! Left for where?”

“For his yacht Silver Heels in the lagoon.”

“But what of his guests?”

“They have all gone too.”

“You mean that the house is empty?”

“Except for myself and the staff, sir, yes.”

One of the party said urgently to the chief of police:

“Silver Heels has sailed.”

“Silver Heels must be overtaken!” snapped Smith. “Send someone to make the necessary arrangements. I leave it to you. But I must be one of the party.”

A man, following rapid instructions from Colonel Correnti, went doubling off.

Turning again to the frightened butler:

“How long have you worked here?”

“Only for two weeks, sir. I was engaged by Mr. Wilton’s secretary. But I have worked here before for others who have leased the palace.”

“Lead the way to the tapestry room lighted by four iron candelabra.”

The man stared in almost a horrified manner.

“That room, sir, is part of what is called the Old Palace. It has long been locked up. I have no key.”

“Nor to the room with the lotus floor?”

Nayland Smith was watching him keenly, his unshaven face very grim.

“The room with the lotus floor!” Paulo’s expression grew even more wild. “I have heard of it, sir, but it is also part of the Old Palace. I have never seen it. Those rooms have a very unpleasant reputation, you understand. No one would lease the palace if they knew of them. The doors have not been unlocked for twenty years.”

“Then one must be broken down. Do you know where they are?”

“I know of two.”

“Go ahead.”

As Paulo turned to obey I heard a sound of distant voices.

“What is that?” snapped Smith.

“Some of the other servants, sir, who have been aroused!” Smith glanced at Colonel Correnti.

“Have this looked into. Colonel,” he said. “You, Paulo, lead on.”

Our party was broken up again. Smith, myself, the chief of police, Detective Stocco and two Carabinieri following the butler. He led us to a doorway set in an arched recess. A magnificent cabinet—a rare piece of violet lacquer—stood in front of the arch.

“Behind here, sir, is one of the doors, but I have no key to open it.”

“Get this thing out of the way.”

In a few minutes the men had set the cabinet aside. Smith stepped forward and examined an ancient iron lock. He was soon satisfied. He turned and shook his head.

“This is not the door in use. You say you know of another?”

“Yes sir, if you will come this way.”

Aside to me:

“The fellow is honest,” Smith muttered. “This is a very deep plot.” He glanced at his wrist watch as we crossed a deserted dining room. “Our chance of saving Adion grows less and less, but there is someone else in danger.”

“Who is that?”

“James Brownlow Wilton! He is notorious throughout the United States for his Nazi sympathies. The full extent of this scheme is only just beginning to dawn upon me, Kerrigan.”

In a room overluxuriously furnished as a study, Paulo opened a satinwood door inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl to reveal an empty cupboard.

“At the back of this cupboard, sir,” he said, “you see there are very ancient panels. I have always understood it is an entrance to the Old Palace . . .”

* * *

“This door has been used recently. . . It has a new lock!” Smith’s eyes glittered feverishly.

“I don’t think so, sir. Mr. Wilton used the room, and I am sure he did not know of the door. I have always been careful to avoid mentioning to tenants who came anything about those locked rooms.”

“Carbines!” Smith cried on a high note of excitement. “Those two men forward. Blow the lock out. The fate of a nation hangs on it!”

The sound of muffled shots reverberated insanely in that lavishly furnished study. I heard cries—racing footsteps. The other police party dashed to join us . . . The lock was shattered, the door flung open.

“Follow me, Kerrigan!”

Nayland Smith, shining a ray of light ahead, stepped into the dark cavity. I went next, Colonel Correnti close at my heels.

“You see, Kerrigan! You see!”

Descending four stone steps we found ourselves in one of those narrow passages which surrounded the rooms of the Old Palace. I took a rapid bearing.

“This way, Smith, I think!”

“You’re right!” he cried. “Ah! what’s this?”

A door was thrown open, we crowded in, and flashlamps flooded the tapestry room in which I had seen Rudolf Adion confronting Dr Fu Manchu!

The red candles in the candelabra were extinguished, and in the light of our lamps I saw that the tapestry was so decayed as to be in places dropping from the wall. The ebony chair on the dais was there, but save for the extinguished candles, one of which Smith examined, there was nothing to show that this sinister apartment had been occupied for a generation.

During the next hour we explored some of the strangest rooms I had ever entered. We even penetrated to the cellar below the lotus floor. The place still reeked of hawthorn, but that unknown gas was no longer present in anesthetic quantity. A net was hung below the trap . . .

We had a glimpse in those evil catacombs of the Venice in which men had disappeared never to be heard of again.

But not a soul did we find anywhere!

None of the other police parties had anything to report. Rudolf Adion, whose slightest words disturbed Europe, had vanished as completely as in the days of the doges when prominent citizens of Venice had vanished!

It was a fact so amazing that I found it hard to accept. No member of that household had ever entered these locked rooms and cellars. All that I had heard, all that I had seen there might have been figments of a dream! Saving the presence and the evidence of Nayland Smith I should have been tempted to suppose it so.

Yet again, like an evil cloud out of which lightning strikes destruction, Dr Fu Manchu had gone with the breeze, to leave no trace behind!

And Ardatha?

Silver Heels

“Are you ready, Kerrigan?”

Nayland Smith burst into my room at the hotel. A bath and a badly needed shave had renewed the man. He lived on his nerves. To me he was a constant source of amazement.

“Yes, Smith, I’m ready. Is there any more news?”

He dropped down on the side of my bed and began to fill his pipe. Wind howled through the shutters, and this was the darkest hour of the night.

“Silver Heels has answered the radio and is waiting for us.”

“What do you think it all means. Smith? To me it still seems like a dream that you and I were confined there in that vile place. Granting Paulo’s statement to be true, that Brownlow Wilton and his guests had left before my arrival, it’s still incredible. That scene between Fu Manchu and Rudolf Adion . . . Now at this moment I cannot believe it ever happened!”

“Think,” snapped Smith. “The Palazzo Brioni was leased on behalf of Brownlow Wilton by his secretary and a staff assembled. Neither the secretary, one assumes, nor Brownlow Wilton, had the remotest idea of the history of the place. It contained a series of rooms belonging to what is known apparently as the Old Palace which, for good reasons, were shut off—never entered.”

“So far, I agree.”

His pipe satisfactorily filled, Nayland Smith struck a match. While he lighted the tobacco, he continued:

“Only one member of the household, Paulo, the butler who has served there before, knows anything about those hidden rooms. Very well. A genius of evil who does know about them, seizes this opportunity. Wilton, who has upheld to his peril the Nazi banner in the United States, is in a position to entertain Rudolf Adion. Fu Manchu knows that Rudolf Adion is coming incognito to Venice. An invitation to a luncheon party on the millionaire’s yacht is arranged. There are servants of Fu Manchu on board.”

He paused, pushed down the smoldering tobacco with his thumb and lighted a second match.

“At that party, Rudolf Adion meets the woman known as Korean!. He is attracted. She makes it her business to see that he shall be attracted; and of this art, Kerrigan, she is a past mistress. She promises him an appointment, but stresses the danger and difficulty in order to prepare Adion for the journey through those filthy passages . . . No doubt she posed as an unhappily married woman.”

“It’s logical enough.”

“Adion, now enslaved, slips away from the Palazzo da Rosa and goes to the spot at which she has promised to confirm their meeting. In the interval she has consulted Doctor Fu Manchu and the nature of Adion’s reception has been arranged. Luckily, you saw the message delivered. Adion keeps the appointment. . . We know what happened.”

His pipe now well alight, he began to walk across and across the floor.

“But, Smith,” I said, watching him fascinatedly, for his succinct summing up of the facts revealed again the clarity of his mind, “you mean that Brownlow Wilton has been ignorant of this from first to last?”

He paused for a moment, surrounding himself with clouds of smoke, and then:

“Hard to believe, I agree,” he snapped, “but at the moment there is no other solution. Wilton, as you probably know, is an eccentric and a chronic invalid—in fact a dying man. Although he entertains lavishly, he often secludes himself from his guests. We have found out that his decision to leave for Villefranche was made suddenly, but the party was a small one. Two, I think, we have identified.”

I nodded.

There was little doubt that Ardatha had been one of Brownlow Wilton’s guests, according to the account of a police officer who had been on board. His description of the only other female member of the party made it clear that this was Korêani. Paulo’s account of the women tallied.

“It had been most cunningly arranged,” Smith went on, speaking rapidly and resuming his restless promenade. “No doubt Brownlow Wilton met them under circumstances which prompted the invitation. After all, they are both charming women!”

“You think they flew from Paris and joined the yacht party?”

“Undoubtedly. They were under Si-Fan orders, but Brownlow Wilton did not know it. Where he met them no doubt we shall learn. But the facts are obvious, I think.”

“They cannot possibly have sailed in Silver Heels?”

“No—evidently Doctor Fu Manchu had other plans for them and for himself. But I know, in my very bones I know, that Wilton is in danger. He may even be running away from that danger now . . .”

The Adriatic was behaving badly from the point of view of a naval cutter, when presently we cleared the land and set out to overtake Silver Heels. I thought that the chief of police was not easy as our small craft rolled and pitched in a moderately heavy sea.

However, the storm was subsiding, and a coy moon began to peek through breaking clouds. For my own part I welcomed the storm, for neither the flashes of lightning nor rumbling of distant thunder were out of keeping with my mood.

Unknown to most of its inhabitants, Venice tonight was being combed for one of Europe’s outstanding figures. Reserves of police had been called in from neighboring towns. No representative of a great power was in his bed.

Rudolf Adion had been smuggled out of life.

I think that high-speed dash through angry seas in some way calmed my spirit. Lightning flashed again, and:

“There she is!” came the hail of a lookout.

But from where we sat in the cabin, all of us, I suppose, had seen Silver Heels, bathed in that sudden radiance, a fairy ship, riding a sea bewitched, a white and beautiful thing.

A ladder was down when we drew alongside, but it was no easy matter to get aboard. At last, however, our party assembled on deck. We were received by Brownlow Wilton and the captain of the yacht.

My first glimpse of Brownlow Wilton provoked a vague memory to which I found myself unable to give definite shape.

He wore a beret and a blue rainproof overcoat with the collar turned up, a wizened little man as I saw him in the deck lights, with the sallow complexion of a southerner, peering at us through black-rimmed spectacles.

The captain, whose name was Farazan, had all the appearance of a Portuguese. He, too, was a sallow type; he wore oilskins. The astonishment of the American owner was manifest in his manner and in his eyes, magnified by the lenses of his spectacles.

“Although it is a very great pleasure to have you gentlemen aboard,” he said in a weak, piping voice, “it is also a great surprise. I don’t pretend that I have got the hang of it, but you are very welcome. Let’s all step down to the saloon.”

We descended to a spacious saloon to find a lighted table and a black-browed steward in attendance. I saw a cold buffet, the necks of wine bottles peeping from an ice bucket.

“I thought,” said Wilton, peeling off his coat and his beret, “that on a night like this and at this hour, you might probably be feeling peckish. Just make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen. I was hauled out of bed myself by the radio message, and I guess a snack won’t do any of us any harm.”

Silver Heels was riding the swell with an easy and soothing movement, but the chief of police stared at the cold fare as a doomed man might stare at the black cap.

“I think, perhaps,” he said, “that a brandy and soda might do me good.”

The attendant steward quietly executed the order, and Brownlow Wilton, seated at the head of the table, dispensed an eager hospitality.

“It was all unexpected,” he explained. “But I feel like a snack myself and I guess all of us could do no better than reinforce.”

He had simple charm, I thought, this man who directed a great chain of newspapers and controlled the United States’ biggest armament works. I had expected nothing so seemingly ingenuous. His reputation, his palace on the Grand Canal, his sea-going yacht, had prepared me, I confess, to meet someone quite different. Only in respect to his state of health did he conform to my expectations. He was a sick man. Despite his protestations, he ate nothing and merely sipped some beverage which looked like barley water.

“A little early in the morning,” said Nayland Smith, “for Kerrigan and myself”—when the efficient but saturnine steward proffered refreshments.

He glanced at me smilingly, but I read in his glance that he meant me to refuse.

“I turned in directly we sailed,” said Wilton; “and when a man has just fallen asleep and then is called up suddenly, I always find it takes him a little while to readjust his poise. But now. Sir Denis Nayland Smith”—he peered across the table in his short-sighted way—”I can ask you a question: What is this all about?”

Nayland Smith glanced around the saloon, in shadow save for that lighted table at which we were seated.

“It is rather difficult,” he replied, “to explain. But, to begin: where are your guests?”

“My guests!” Brownlow Wilton’s magnified eyes opened widely. “I have no guests, sir.”

“What!”

“Those I had staying on board—there were four only—returned by the late express to Paris. I was unexpectedly compelled to break up the party. I am alone with my crew.”

The storm was dying away over the sea, but distant rumbles of thunder reached us from time to time.

“I understand,” said Nayland Smith, “that your four guests were Count and Countess Boratov, Mr. van Dee and Miss Murano.”

“That’s correct.”

Wilton looked surprised.

“Who is Mr. van Dee?”

“A well-known Philadelphia businessman. We have been friends for years.”

“I see. And Miss Murano?”

“A schoolmate of Countess Boratov, very attractive and young. She has lived much in Africa where her family have met with serious misfortune. She has unusually beautiful titian hair.”

I grew hotly unhappy, for I knew that he was describing Ardatha!

“And where did you make this lady’s acquaintance?”

“In London four weeks back.”

“Through the Boratovs I suppose?”

“Surely. I asked her to join us here (she was with the countess in London) and she consented.”

“How long have you known the Boratovs, Mr. Wilton?”

Brownlow Wilton’s sallow face grew lined and stern. As he glanced at Colonel Correnti, that elfin memory peeped out, and then eluded me again. Silver Heels rolled uneasily. Dimly, I heard thunder.

“I appreciate the fact, gentlemen, that you are acting with full authority; but not knowing why I have been favored with your company, perhaps I may ask in what way my friends are of interest?”

“No doubt I have been over-brusque, Mr. Wilton,” said Smith. “But your own future is at stake. A crime which may change the history of Europe was committed at the Palazzo Brioni earlier tonight—”

“What’s that?”

Brownlow Wilton bent forward over the table.

“I have no time for details now. I merely ask for your cooperation. Where did you meet the Boratovs?”

“When they visited America, in the fall of last year.”

“Could you describe the countess?”

“A very lovely woman, sir.” A note of unmistakable admiration had entered the speaker’s high-pitched voice. “Tall, slender, with fascinating eyes: they are brilliantly green—”

Nayland Smith nodded grimly.

“And the count?”

“A distinguished Russian aristocrat, once in the Imperial Guard.”

“And they all left by the Paris express, you say?”

“All of them, yes.”

“You remained alone for some time then at the palace?”

“No sir. We dined here on board. News from England had come which meant I had to get back. Captain Farazan got busy. He secured the necessary clearance papers and we sailed immediately. My guests made the train and are now on their way to Paris.”

Nayland Smith stared hard at James Brownlow Wilton, and then:

“Excuse me,” came a discreet voice.

The steward (his name was Lopez), who had gone out, stood now at Wilton’s elbow, extending a message on a salver. Wilton took it, nodded his apologies, and read the message. The saturnine Lopez went out again.

“Ah!—a personal matter, gentlemen—of no importance.”

But his expression belied his words. Nayland Smith’s face offered me a perplexing study. As Wilton crumpled the scrap of paper in his hand:

“May I ask,” said Smith, “if you used the small study in Palazzo Brioni? I refer to the one distinguished by a very beautiful figure of the Virgin.”

Brownlow Wilton stared hard through his powerful spectacles. I thought he was striving for composure.

“I looked after all my correspondence there, sir. I have always been attracted to that room.”

“Were you aware, or did the agent who negotiated the deal inform you, that there is a disused wing which has been locked for years?”

“I never heard that. This is news to me.”

“I understand that you have a secretary who takes care of most of these details. I am told that he put Silver Heels into commission in Monaco and also came over to Venice to arrange a suitable household for your arrival. What is this gentleman’s name?”

“You mean Hemsley? He has been with me for years. I sent him ahead to London. I am due back there myself, but I want to put the yacht into dry dock before I go. There’s something radically wrong with her engines.”

“He engaged the present crew, I believe?”

“He did—and by and large, very efficient they are.”

“Have any of them worked for you before?”

“Not one. Hemsley believes in a clean slate. The same applies to the staff in Venice. Never saw one of them in my life before.”

Silver Heels (Continued)

Silver Heels rode the swell uneasily. The chief of police continued to look unhappy. He glanced at me from time to time. I could hear the tramping of feet on the deck above, and I knew that the police were going about their work inspecting the papers of the crew. Peering into the shadows at the darkened end of the saloon, I had a momentary impression that someone had been standing there . . . and had disappeared.

The creaking of the ship in a silence which had fallen became to my ears a sinister sound. Nayland Smith’s eyes were fixed intently upon the face of the American owner. For some reason I was glad when he spoke:

“You entertained Rudolf Adion to lunch on board?”

“I did. I had introductions to him from Pietro Monaghani with whom I am well acquainted.”

“I suggest that Rudolf Adion was much attracted by the countess?”

Brownlow Wilton smiled uneasily, then leaning forward selected a cigar from a box which lay upon the table. As he tore the label:

“Maybe you’re right,” he replied, “and I am not blaming him. But he is a man who makes no attempt to hide his feelings.”

“Herr Adion returned after luncheon to the Palazzo da Rosa?”

“Yes—and I won’t say I was sorry.”

“Did you go ashore to the palace during the afternoon?”

“No, I stayed on board, but most of the party went ashore. They had odd jobs to do, you understand, before leaving for Paris.”

“Did you see them off?”

“No sir. They said good-bye on the yacht and went ashore in the launch. You see, I’m not as active as I used to be. I had a conference with the chief engineer. I wanted to find out if she could make Villefranche under her own steam.”

“So that was the last you saw of your guests?”

“It was. But we are all meeting again in London in three days.”

Again that uncomfortable silence fell, and then:

“You are quite sure, Mr. Wilton, that your reason for breaking up the party was purely engine trouble? I mean you have not, by any chance, received a notice from the Si-Fan?”

At those words, Wilton’s face changed completely. He laid down the cigar which he had just lighted, and the effect was as though he had discarded a mask. His large, dark eyes, magnified by spectacles, gleamed almost feverishly as he glared at Nayland Smith.

“How can you know that?” he asked and clutched the edge of the table. “How can you know that?”

“It may be my business to know, Mr. Wilton.”

“I had two! I got a third while Adion was on board. Yes, I admit it. I was running away. Now you have the truth.”

Nayland Smith nodded.

“I thought as much. You control a great American newspaper, Mr. Wilton. Its sympathies are rather pointedly with Adion and Monaghani. Am I right?”

“Maybe you are.”

“Also, may I suggest that your armament works do a large trade with the governments represented by these gentlemen?”

“You seem to know a lot, sir. But, as you say, maybe it’s your business.”

“How long does the third notice give you?”

“Until noon tomorrow.”

“What are you to do?”

“I was ordered to come here to Venice.” His glance now as he looked about him was that of a hunted man. “And I was ordered to give that lunch on board to Adion. Now I am told to beat it as fast as I can get away. This whole journey has been in obedience to those orders. I will admit it: I am a badly frightened man. I once spent some years in the Orient, and I know enough about the Si-Fan to have done what I have done.”

Nayland Smith looked hard at me.

“You are noting these facts, no doubt, Kerrigan? You see how Mr. Wilton has been used for a dreadful purpose, a purpose which I fear has succeeded.”

For some time past, faintly I had heard the crackling of radio, and now came hurrying footsteps. A police officer ran in carrying a message which he handed to the chief.

Colonel Correnti adjusted a powerful monocle and read it. Then he looked up, his hitherto pale face flushed with excitement.

“It is from headquarters,” he exclaimed . . . “A body has been found in the canal!”

“What!”

Smith sprang to his feet.

“They cannot be certain but they think—”

“Merciful heaven! This is terrible! What does it mean?”

Wilton, also, had stood up and was staring at the colonel’s pale face.

“It means, Mr. Wilton,” snapped Smith, “that something intended to avert war has happened tonight which, instead, may lead to it.”

“Why should we be silent,” the colonel cried, “about that which the world must know tomorrow! Mr. Wilton, a terrible thing has happened in Venice. Rudolf Adion, a short time after he left this yacht, disappeared completely!”

“What do you say?”

Wilton dropped back into his chair.

“Those are the facts,” said Nayland Smith sternly. “You were used to bring together Adion and the woman known to you as Countess Boratov under circumstances which would enable them to meet again secretly. This meeting took place—you have heard the result.”

“But there may be a mistake! I find myself quite unable to believe it!”

* * *

“Catch him, Kerrigan—he has collapsed!”

Just as he stepped out onto the deck, we both saw Wilton stagger and clutch blindly for support . . . I caught him as he fell. In the deck light his face appeared ghastly.

“This murderous farce”—he spoke in a mere whisper—”has taken more out of me than I realized. Now I know why it was planned, the thing that has happened—I guess I’m through!”

Colonel Correnti was already on board the cutter, although it had proved no simple task to transfer his portly form from the moving ladder. I could see him staring up through a cabin window. We had all planned to return immediately, leaving the crew to bring Silver Heels back to port with two police on board.

Now I realized that our plans would have to be changed.

“My cabin is just forward,” Brownlow Wilton muttered. “If I may lean on you I think I can make it.”

Smith and I took him forward to his cabin. It was commodious, with up-to-date equipment, and having laid him on the bed:

“My small medical knowledge does not entitle me to prescribe,” said Nayland Smith, “but would some stimulant—”

Lopez, the steward, appeared in the doorway. Behind him I saw the Carabinieri uniforms of the two men detailed to remain on board. In light shining out of the cabin, I disliked the steward’s appearance more than ever.

“If you will leave Mr. Wilton to me, gentlemen,” he said, “I think I can take care of him.”

Brownlow Wilton’s face was now contorted; he appeared to be in agony.

“What is it?” I asked aside.

“Angina pectoris, sir. The excitement. I am afraid he is in for another attack. There are some tablets . . .”

“Good God! don’t you travel with a doctor?”

“No sir. Mr. Wilton has a regular physician in Venice, but I don’t think he felt any symptoms of an attack until this present moment.”

Nayland Smith was staring down at the sick man, and somehow from his expression I deduced what he was thinking. Dr Fu Manchu, he had told me on one occasion, could reproduce the symptoms of nearly every disease known to medical science . . .

“I will take no drugs—”

The sick man had forced himself upright—Smith sprang forward to assist him.

“Is this wise, Mr. Wilton?”

“Be so good as to give me your arm—as far as that chair. Lopez! I have found that a small glass of old Bourbon whisky never does any harm at these times. If you abstemious gentlemen would join me, why that would hasten the cure!”

His pluck was so admirable that to refuse would have been churlish. Lopez went to find the old Bourbon and Nayland Smith, going out on deck, hailed the cutter.

“Head for port! Don’t delay. I am remaining on board. Silver Heels will put about and follow . . .”

At the small cabin table I presently found myself seated, the invalid on my left and Nayland Smith, too restless to relax, leaning against an elaborate washbowl with which the room was equipped. Behind me Lopez poured out the drinks.

“Pardon,” Smith muttered, and turning, began to wash his hands. “Grimy from the journey.”

When he turned to take the glass which Lopez handed to him, I had a glimpse of Smith’s face in the mirror which positively startled me. His eyes shone like steel; his jaws were clenched. Almost, I doubted my senses—for as he fronted us again he was smiling!

Lopez withdrew quietly, leaving the cabin door open. I could hear the cutter moving off. There were shouted orders, and now I detected vibration. Silver Heels was being put about.

“To the future, gentlemen!”

Brownlow Wilton raised his glass, when:

“Good God! Look! Doctor Fu Manchu!”

Nayland Smith snapped out the words and glared across the cabin!

Brownlow Wilton, setting his glass unsteadily on the table (I had not touched mine), shot up from his chair with astounding agility and we both stared at the open door. I was up, too.

The deck outside was empty!

I turned with a feeling of dismay to Smith. He was draining his glass. He set it down.

“Forgive me, Mr. Wilton”—he spoke with a nervousness I had never before detected in him—”that bogey is beginning to haunt me! It was only the shadow of a cloud.”

“Well”—Wilton’s high voice quavered—”you certainly startled me—although I don’t know whom you thought you saw.”

“Forget it, Mr. Wilton. I’m afraid the strain is telling. But that whisky has done me good. Finish your drink, Kerrigan. Perhaps I might rest awhile, if there’s an available cabin?”

“Why certainly!” Brownlow Wilton pressed a bell. “Your very good health, gentlemen!”

He drank his Bourbon like a man who needed it, and as Lopez came in silently I finished mine.

“Lopez—show Sir Denis Nayland Smith and Mr. Kerrigan to cabin A. It is at your disposal, gentlemen. We have an hour’s sailing ahead of . . .”

I glanced swiftly at Smith. The shock of his strange outcry had provoked another spasm of Wilton’s dread ailment. His features were convulsed. He lay back limply in his chair!

“All right, sir!” said Lopez as I stooped and raised the frail body. “If he lies down I hope he will recover—”

I laid the sick man on his bed. His eyes were staring past me at Lopez. He tried to speak—but not a word came.

“Here’s your next patient, Kerrigan,” Nayland Smith spoke thickly . . . he was swaying!

I ran to him.

“This way sir.”

Lopez remained imperturbable. As I clutched Smith’s arm and the steward led us along the deck, I cannot even attempt to depict my frame of mind . . .

What ailed Nayland Smith?

Lightning flickered far away over the sea; thunder sounded like rolling drums . . . The police cutter was already out of sight. Silver Heels swung slowly about.

As Smith reeled along the deserted deck:

“Take your cue from me!” he whispered in my ear. “When I lie on the bed drop down beside me in a chair—anywhere—but as near as you can! Begin to stagger . . .”

The steward opened a door and illuminated a commodious cabin, similar to that occupied- by Brownlow Wilton.

“In here, sir.”

“Always . . . poor sailor, I fear,” Smith muttered thickly. “Lie down awhile . . .”

I assisted him on to one of the two beds, while Lopez removed the coverlet. He lay there with closed eyes, seeming to be trying to speak. An armchair stood near by, and distrusting my acting I slumped suddenly into it. I had ceased trying to think, but trusted Nayland Smith, for he could see where I was blind.

As the steward solicitously removed the coverlet from the neighboring bed and spread it over me:

“Sorry . . . whacked!” I muttered and closed my eyes.

The steward went out and shut the cabin door.

“Don’t speak—don’t move!” It was a mere murmur. “Roll over so that you face me, and wait.”

I rolled over on my side and lay still. Now I could see Smith clearly. His eyes, though half closed, were questing about the cabin, particularly watching the door and the two ports which gave upon the deck. Over the creaking and groaning of the ship I heard those distant drums. Something told me to lie still—that we were being watched.

“Speak softly” said Nayland Smith; “the man Lopez has gone to report. Do you realize what has happened?”

“Not in the least.”

“We have fallen into a trap!”

“What!”

“Lie still. Someone else is probably watching us . . . I foresaw the danger but still walked into it. I suppose I had no right to bring you with me.”

“I don’t even know what you mean.”

The maneuver of turning the ship about had been clumsily accomplished, and I realized that we were now headed back for Venice. There was less creaking and groaning and the sound of thunder drums grew fainter.

“I suspect Fu Manchu’s plan to be that we shall never return.”

“Good heavens!”

“Ssh! Quiet! Someone at the porthole.”

I lay perfectly still; so did Nayland Smith. Only by the prompting of that extra sense which comes to us in hours of danger did I realize that someone was indeed peering into the cabin. My brain, tired by a whirl of grotesque experiences, obstinately refused to deal with this new problem. Why should we both be overcome? And what were we waiting for?”

“All clear again,” Smith reported in a low voice. “Even if the door is locked, which I doubt, those deck ports are wide enough to enable us to get out.”

“But Smith, what do you suspect?”

“It isn’t a suspicion, Kerrigan; it’s a fact. This yacht is in the hands of servants of Doctor Fu Manchu from the commander downwards.”

“Good God! Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“But Wilton . . .”

“In Europe our concern is concentrated upon kings and dictators, but Wilton in the United States wields almost as much power as, shall we say, Goebbels in Germany. His political sympathies are well known, his interests widespread.”

“But Wilton is a dying man.”

“I think you would be nearer the mark, Kerrigan, if you said ‘Wilton is a dead man’!”

* * *

Only the sound of the propellers broke the silence now. I knew instinctively that Nayland Smith was thinking hard, and presently:

“Can you hear me, Kerrigan?” he asked in a low voice. “I dare not speak louder.”

“Yes.”

Those words “Wilton is a dead man” haunted me. I wondered what he meant.

“We should probably be well-advised to make a dash for it; grab those life belts and jump over the side. But there’s a fairly heavy swell and I don’t entirely fancy the prospect.”

“I don’t fancy it at all!”

“Perhaps we can afford to wait until we are rather nearer land. Our great risk at the moment is that they discover we are not insensible.”

“Insensible! But why should we be insensible?”

Of all the strange and horrible memories which I have of this battle to prevent Dr Fu Manchu from readjusting the balance of world power, there is none more strange, I think than this muttered interlude, lying there in the cabin of Silver Heels.

“For the simple reason,” the quiet, low voice continued, “that the drinks we shared with Wilton were drugged. Bourbon whisky was insisted upon for that reason: its marked flavor evidently conceals whatever drug was in it.”

“But, Smith—”

“I switched them, Kerrigan, having created a brief distraction! My own, if you remember, I apparently drained at a draught. It went into the washbowl at my elbow.”

“But mine?”

“There was no alternative in the time at my disposal. Wilton had yours—you had Wilton’s.”

“Good God! Do you mean you think he is lying dead there in his cabin?”

“Ssh! Remember we are through if they once suspect us. I mean that he is dead, yes—but not lying in his cabin . . .”

He lay silent for a while, and I divined the fact that he was listening. I listened also, puzzling my brain at the same time for a clue to the meaning of his words. Then:

“I am wondering why the two police have not—”

My sentence was cut short. I heard a sudden scuffling of feet, a wild cry—and then came silence again, except that very far away I detected a dull rumbling of thunder.

“Smith! Good God, can we do nothing!”

“The murderous swine! It’s too late! I was playing for time—trying to make a plan”—there was an agony of remorse in his low-pitched voice. “Hello!”

The lights went out!

“Now we can move,” snapped Smith, and as he spoke the engines ceased to move. Silver Heels lay rolling idly on the swell.

“This is where we jump to it! Quick, Kerrigan! Have your gun handy!”

I rolled off the bed and made for the door. I was nearer to it than Smith.

“Damnation!” I exclaimed.

The door was locked!

“I didn’t note them do it.”

Dimly I could see Smith trying one of the big rectangular ports which opened onto the starboard deck.

“Hullo! This is more serious than I thought! These are locked, too!”

We stood there for a moment listening to increasing sounds about us.

“They’re getting the launch away,” I muttered, for I had noted that the yacht carried a motor launch. “What does that mean?”

“It means they’re going to sink Silver Heels—with ourselves on board!”

Silver Heels (Concluded)

“Listen, Kerrigan, listen!”

To the sound of voices, running feet, creaking of davits and wheezy turning of chocks, a suggestive silence had succeeded, broken only by the cracking and groaning of the ship’s fabric. If Nayland Smith’s conclusions were true, and he was rarely wrong, we were trapped like rats, and like rats must drown.

I listened intently.

“You hear it, Kerrigan?”

“Yes. It’s in some adjoining cabin.”

It was a moaning sound; but unlike that which had horrified me in the cellars of Palazzo Brioni, this certainly was human. Even as I listened and wondered what I heard, Nayland Smith had a wardrobe door open. The wardrobe was empty, but in the dim light I saw that he had his ear pressed to the woodwork.

“It’s behind here!” he said. “We daren’t use a torch yet. Noise we must risk. The ship’s noises may drown it, but this boarding has to be stripped. Hello!”

As I joined him I saw that there was a ventilator at the back of the wardrobe.

“No time and no means to unscrew it,” he muttered, and I saw that he had succeeded in wedging his fingers between two of the bars. “Let’s hope it doesn’t make too much row!”

He wrenched it bodily from the light wood in which it was set. Speaking very close to the gap thus created:

“Anyone there?” he called softly.

A stifled muttering responded.

“Come on, Kerrigan! This is our only chance!”

So far as I could make out, every living soul on board, other than ourselves or whoever might be in the next cabin, had joined the launch. We attacked that job like demons, stripping three-ply woodwork from the back of the wardrobe. Every crack of the shattered fragments sounded in my ears like the shot of a pistol. We made a considerable gap—and no one hindered us.

“If anybody comes in,” snapped Smith, “shoot him down.”

There was a second partition behind, and now that stifled cry reached us more urgently.

“Stand behind me,” said Smith.

He flashed a momentary beam upon this new obstacle.

“Matchboarding,” I muttered. “These rooms once communicated.”

Not awaiting his reply, I hurled myself against it.

I crashed through into a small cabin, as fitful moonlight from a porthole told me. On the floor the two men of the Carabinieri day bound—bandages tied over their mouths! One was struggling furiously; the other lay still.

“This one first.”

Quickly we released the struggling man. He spoke a little English and the situation was soon explained. He had been struck down from behind as he patrolled the deck, and had recovered consciousness to find himself bound in the cabin. His opposite number, when we released him in turn, proved to be insensible, but alive.

“Now,” snapped Smith. “Yes or no . . .”

The cabin was locked.

“This is awful!” I groaned. “But we could blow the lock out.”

“Yes—fortunately we’re armed, for these men’s carbines have gone. But wait—”

He sprang to the porthole, worked feverishly for a few seconds and then:

“A different fitting,” he gasped. “I have it open!”

I climbed through onto the deck . . . and the key was in the cabin door. We were on the starboard side of Silver Heels; the launch lay at the port ladder. And from the ladder-head at this moment sounds of disturbance arose. Facing us a small lifeboat hung at the davits; forward, just abaft the bridge, an alleyway connected the two decks.

“Do you know anything about boats?” Smith snapped.

“Not much.”

“Do you?” to the police officer.

“Yes sir. I was at sea before I joined the Carabinieri.”

“Right! Kerrigan, steal through that alleyway and watch what is going on. You”—to the ex-seaman—”lend a hand with your friend.”

They began to haul the insensible man across the deck. I turned and crept along the alleyway. Soon I had a view of the ladder-head. The portside was in shadow, relieved only by the light of a solitary hurricane lantern.

One man stood there. He was tapping his foot impatiently upon the deck and watching a door which I thought led to the engine room. It was Lopez. Heralded by a rattling of feet on iron rungs, a man wearing dungarees burst into view.

“You have set it?”

“Yes.”

“Down quickly!—not a moment to waste!”

“But Doctor Chang! Where is the doctor? I have not seen him.”

“His orders were to join the launch immediately she was swung out.”

“Doctor Chang is not on board,” came a voice from the foot of the ladder.

“How long have we?”

“Three minutes.”

Silver Heels, her wheel abandoned, creaked and groaned: it became difficult to hear the speakers.

“I shall not sacrifice myself for the doctor!” Lopez spoke furiously. “Already he has taxed my patience . . . Hoy!”—he hailed—”Doctor!”

“Doctor Chang!”

Other voices joined in the cry.

But Dr Chang—whoever Dr Chang may have been—did not appear.

At the head of the ladder the man in dungarees hesitated, looking back over his shoulder, whereupon:

“Down, I say!” cried Lopez, a note of cold authority in his voice. “Who is in charge here? Always the doctor was mad. If he wishes to be destroyed who cares? There is not a moment to spare! Everyone for himself!”

* * *

Nayland Smith and the police officer had succeeded in lowering away the ship’s boat with the insensible Carabinieri on board, for when I got back to the starboard rail it was already riding an oil swell, fended off by the man in uniform. Smith, bathed in perspiration as I could see, was watching for my return.

“Well?”

“They’ve gone. The ship will blow up in two minutes! But Wilton—”

“Come on! The ladder is down.”

“But—”

“There are no ‘buts.’ Come on!”

Although I have said that the swell was subsiding, boarding that boat was no easy matter. We accomplished it, however, so that I am in a position to testify to the fact that some prayers are answered.

As dimly we heard the launch racing away from Silver Heels, we began furiously to pull around the stern of the vessel. We rowed as though our lives depended upon our efforts.

And this indeed was the case.

I was too excited at the time, too exhausted, to be competent to say now how far from Silver Heels we lay when it happened . . . but the effect was as though a volcano had belched up from the sea.

A shattering explosion came—and the graceful yacht seemed to split in the middle. Minor explosions followed. Flames roared up as if to lick the clouds.

Her end, I think, was a matter of minutes . . .

I can hear myself now as that deafening explosion came, and Silver Heels disappeared below the waves, creating a maelstrom which wildly rocked the boat:

“Smith! I don’t understand! . . . Why did we desert Brownlow Wilton? He died a terrible death, and we—”

“He deserved it. God knows how or when the real Wilton died! The staff engaged in Venice had never seen Wilton. It was a plot to trap Adion. The man who died on Silver Heels was a double, a servant of Doctor Fu Manchu!”

“Good heavens, Smith! A memory has come back!”

“Dictators have no monopoly of doubles. Doctor Fu Manchu employs them with notable success.”

“Those fellows were crying out for someone called Doctor Chang, who was missing—”

“Wilton’s impersonator, no doubt! I suspected a Mongolian streak. He lay drugged—by his own hand! I saw it all in the mirror, Kerrigan, hence my remarkable behavior! The man, Lopez, was directing; he is senior to the other in the Si-Fan. But ‘doctor’ is significant. Probably Doctor Chang, apart from his resemblance to Brownlow Wilton, is a poison specialist—”

“I know he is, Smith—I know it! He is the man who came to your rooms and fixed the Green Death to the telephone!”

“Poor devil! You mean he was the man . . .”

The Man In The Park

The wheels seemed to turn very swiftly in those strange days and nights during which I found myself beside Nayland Smith in his battle to hold the world safe from Dr Fu Manchu.

Throughout the week that followed our escape from Silver Heels so many things happened that I find it difficult to select a point from which to carry on my story since I realize that this story, almost against my will, from the first has wound itself insidiously about the figure of Ardatha.

First had come what Smith called “the great hush-up.”

Since Rudolf Adion’s double had been reviewing troops at the time when the real Adion had been at Palazzo da Rosa it was impossible for his government to divulge the fact that he had died (or disappeared) in Venice. When it became necessary to admit his death to a public which had looked up to him as to a god, they were told that he had died in his bed. The double, Rudolf Adion No. I, ceased to exist. It was done adroitly: the newspapers were muzzled. Patriotic physicians issued fictitious bulletins, then the final news for which a breathless Europe waited.

Mourning millions filed past a guarded dummy lying in state . . .

Next came the retirement from public life of the ruler of Turkey, “a bloodless victory for Fu Manchu” was Nayland Smith’s comment. (Pietro Monaghani, I should mention had failed to keep the appointment with Adion in Venice. He had accepted the orders of the Si-Fan.)

When an astonishing fact became undeniable—the fact that Fu Manchu with all his people, including Ardatha, had vanished from Venice as though they had never entered the City of the Lagoons, I remember that I advocated a secret departure to some base unsuspected by the Chinese doctor. “Will you never realize, Kerrigan,” Nayland Smith had said, “that from the point of view of the organization controlled by Fu Manchu, there is no such thing as a secret base. He knew that Adion was going to be in Venice before the combined intelligence services of Europe knew it. He brought a crew of highly trained criminal specialists to deal with the situation and dispersed them into thin air when their work was done, as a conjurer vanishes a bowl of goldfish. And think of the pack of cutthroats who left Silver Heels in the murder launch. The explosion was heard for miles—we were picked up ten minutes later; but what of the launch? It hasn’t been traced to this day, nor anybody on board!”

And so on one never-to-be-forgotten evening I found myself back at my flat in Bayswater Road.

I stared from my window across the park as dusk gathered and pedestrians moved in the direction of the gates. I had not seen Nayland Smith since the forenoon. At this time, frankly, I was terrified whenever he was out of my sight. That he continued to live while the awful hand of Fu Manchu was extended against him became every hour a miracle more worshipful.

Presently the behavior of a man who had just reached the gate nearly opposite my window began to intrigue me.

He was a tall, rather shabby-looking man, bearded and bespectacled. His wide-brimmed hat suggested a colonial visitor, and he walked with a stoop, leaning heavily upon an ash stick. Under one arm he carried a bulky portfolio. He was accompanied by a park-keeper and a policeman who assisted his every step. But it was something else which had arrested my attention.

He was staring up intently at my window!

Now as I drew the curtain aside and peered out, he raised his stick and lowered it, pointing to the front door!

That he was directing me to go down and admit him was an unmistakable fact, for I saw during a halt in the traffic that he was being shepherded across. I delayed only long enough to slip an automatic into my pocket and then went out and began to descend.

Mrs. Merton, my daily help, had gone, for I was not dining at home. As the flat below remained unoccupied and my upstairs neighbor was away, I confess that my steps to the front door were not unfearful. But I knew that this growing dread of the demoniac Dr Fu Manchu was something I must combat with all my strength. Fear was his weapon.

I threw the door open and stood looking out at the man who waited there.

With a terse nod to his two supporters, he stepped in.

“Shut the door,” he snapped.

It was Nayland Smith!

* * *

“Smith,” I said reproachfully,”you promised you would never go about alone!”

“I was not alone!”

He removed the wide-brimmed hat, the glasses, and straightened bent shoulders.

“I cannot complete the transformation in the best stage tradition,” he said, with a grim smile. “False whiskers, if they are to sustain close scrutiny must be attached with some care.”

“But Smith, I don’t understand!”

“My dramatic appearance, Kerrigan, is easily explained. I was in a flying squad car with Gallaho. Nearly at the top of Sloane Street, just before one reaches Knightsbridge, there is a narrow turning on the right. Out of this at the very moment that we were about to pass, a lorry shot—I use the word advisedly—for the acceleration pointed to an amazing engine. It struck the bonnet of our car, turned us completely around. We capsized—and before the lorry driver could check his mad career, it resulted in the destruction of a taxicab, and, I fear, of the taximan!”

“But, Smith, do you mean—”

That it was deliberate? Of course!” The pipe and pouch came from the pocket of his shabby coat. “Gallaho was knocked out, and I am afraid our driver was badly injured. As you see”—he indicated the side of his skull—”I did not escape entirely.”

I saw a jagged gash which was still bleeding.

“Some iodine, Smith?”

“Later. A scratch.”

“What happened then? How do you come to be here?”

“What happened was this: In spite of my disguise I had been recognized. This was a planned attempt to recover something which I had in my possession! In the tremendous disturbance which followed I climbed out of the window of the overturned car and lost myself in the crowd which began to collect. The casualties were receiving attention. My business was to slip away.”

He paused, stuffing tobacco into the briar bowl and staring at me, familiar grey eyes in that unfamiliar bearded face leaving an odd impression.

“I always carry the badge of a king’s messenger.” He pulled back the lapel of his coat and I saw the silver greyhound. “It ensures prompt official assistance in an emergency without long explanations. I grabbed a constable, told him to come along, and made straight across the park. Here I roped in a parkkeeper. Even so, I kept as much as possible to open spaces and checked up on anybody walking in the same direction.”

He stared through the window across to the darkening park.

“What should you have done if I had not been looking out or if I had not replied?”

“I should have been compelled to ring the bell, meaning delay—which I feared. But I knew you would be at home for I had promised to communicate.”

As I crossed to the dining room for refreshments he dropped into an armchair and began to light his pipe. The big portfolio he set upon the floor beside him. On my return:

“The full facts of the Venice plot are now to hand,” he said bitterly. “Our pursuit of Silver Heels may or may not have been foreseen, but in any event it is certain that they meant to destroy the vessel.”

“Why?”

“The story of engine trouble had been circulated. She was as you know, a Diesel engine ship. By the simple device of blowing her up at sea, everybody on board having first slipped away on the motor launch, the death of James Brownlow Wilton would be satisfactorily explained. I think we may take it for granted that the launch did not make for land. I am postulating, though I may never be able to prove it, some other craft in the neighborhood by which they were picked up.”

“But . . . James Brownlow Wilton?”

“I have the facts—all of them, but the details are unimportant, Kerrigan. James Brownlow Wilton travelled by the Blue Train from London to Monte Carlo to join the yacht—I mean the real James Brownlow Wilton. At some time during the night (the French police think at Avignon) he was smuggled off the train. His double took his place . . .”

“It’s too appalling to think about!”

“His retiring habits made the job a comparatively easy one. He avoided—refused to see—those to whom the real Wilton was well known, and joining the yacht, sailed for Venice. The same procedure was followed there. Rudolf Adion was dealt with, and saving our presence, the death of the millionaire at sea would have concluded the episode.”

“That conclusion has been generally accepted, Smith. The newspapers are full of it.”

“I know. Those who are aware of the real facts have been instructed to remain silent . . . as in the case of Rudolf Adion.”

“Good God! What a ghastly farce!”

He took the glass I handed to to him, and holding it up to the light, stared through it as though inspiration might reside in the bubbles.

“A farce indeed! But any government such as the Adion government, which consistently hoodwinks the public, must be prepared to face such an emergency. One must admit that they have faced it well. General Diesler, Adion’s successor, acted with promptitude and vision. The figure lying in state was in the true tradition of Cesare Borgia. The bulletins of the medical men were worthy of Machiavelli. And now, today, an empty shell has reverently been set in place, and a monument will be raised above it!”

My phone rang.

“Careful, Kerrigan!” snapped Smith. “Remember that Doctor Fu Manchu employs mimics. Don’t say I’m here unless you are absolutely sure to whom you are speaking. But it may be news of poor Gallaho.”

I picked up the receiver.

“Hello,” came a typically English voice. “Is that Mr. Bart Kerrigan’s flat?”

“Yes.”

“I have been told by Sir Denis Nayland Smith’s man that Sir Denis may be with you. This is Egerton of the Foreign Office speaking I turned to Smith, and without uttering the words, framed with my lips: “Egerton, P.O.!”

Close to my ear Smith whispered:

“Say you will communicate with me if he will give you Fey’s number.”

“If you will give me Fey’s number,” I said (wondering what Fey’s number might be), “I will endeavor to communicate with Sir Denis.”

“Seven six nine four,” came the reply.

“Seven six nine four,” I mouthed.

Nayland Smith took up the receiver.

“That you, Egerton? Yes . . . precautions are necessary I am afraid. We have had an unexpected scoop today. Be good enough to mention to no one that I am here . . . Yes . . . What’s that? . . .”

He seemed to grow rigid. The grey eyes in that bearded face shone feverishly as he listened. Only once he interpolated a query:

“The mob killed him, you say? Is that certain?”

He listened again, nodding grimly. And at last:

“We knew he had had the notices,” he said in a dull voice, “but he was even more obstinate than Adion. In fact I am disposed to believe, Egerton, that he distrusted me. You know I was refused admission to the country?”

I heard the voice of the unseen Egerton talking for a while longer, and then:

“You may count upon me. I will communicate at once,” said Smith and hung up the receiver.

He turned, and his expression warned me: Dr Fu Manchu had scored again.

“Yes,” he nodded, “the work of the Si-Fan carries on.”

“What has happened, Smith?”

“Something even more spectacular,” he replied bitterly, “than the published facts relating to Rudolf Adion. The newspapers and news bulletins will have it tonight. All the world must know, for this is something which cannot be suppressed, nor edited. Standing on a black- draped balcony before no less than two hundred thousand people. General Diesler was delivering a funeral oration over the draped shell which does not contain the body of Rudolf Adion. He said, so Egerton informs me: “We have all suffered an irreparable loss. There is a fiendish enemy, by you unsuspected, an enemy in our very midst. . , Those, roughly, were his words . . .”

“Well, what happened?”

“They were his last words, Kerrigan.”

“What!”

“He stopped, clutched at his breast and fell. The sound of a distant, a very distant report, was heard. He had been shot through the heart.”

“But, Smith, on such an occasion every place within range would have been emptied, held by the police or the military!”

“Every place within range—I agree, Kerrigan—that is, within ordinary range. This shot was fired from the top of the cathedral spire—thirty-five hundred yards away!”

“I don’t understand!”

“A body of police who happened to be marching through the cathedral close by heard the report from the top of the steeple. They rushed in and caught a man who was hurrying down those hundreds of steps. It was none other than Baron Trenck, the millionaire publisher, ruined and exiled by Adion, but acknowledged to be one of the three finest big-game shots in Europe!”

“But, Smith—”

“The rifle which he carried was fitted with telescopic sights . . . and a Jasper vacuum charger!”

“Good God!”

“You see, the doctor has already made use of that valuable invention, thanks to the work of his daughter, Korêani! In spite of the efforts of the police who endeavored to escort the baron under arrest, fanatical Adionites”—he paused for a moment—”I gather that he was practically torn to pieces.”

* * *

“I am now going to make a curious request, Kerrigan.”

“What is it?”

Let me confess that I had not yet recovered from the shock of that dreadful news.

“I am going to ask you to look out of the window while I select a hiding place somewhere in your rooms for this portfolio!”

“A hiding place?”

“Let me explain. It was to recover this portfolio which I was taking to Scotland Yard that that mad attack was made upon me in Sloane Street. A flying squad car will be here in a few minutes—I authorized the constable to phone for one—in which I propose to leave.”

“And I to come with you.”

“Not at all!”

“What!”

“Another attempt, although probably not of the same character, is to be expected. I shall be well guarded. Your presence could not save me. But this time the attempt might succeed. Therefore, I am going to hide this valuable thing in your rooms.”

“Why hide it?”

“Because if you knew where to find it, Fu Manchu might discover a means of forcing you to tell him!”

“But why leave it here at all?”

“For a very good reason. Be so kind as to do as I ask, Kerrigan.”

I stared out of the window, thinking into what a mad maze my footsteps had blundered since that first evening when Nayland Smith had rung my bell. I could hear him walking about in an adjoining room, and then he returned. I saw a police car pull up at the door. The bell rang.

“I shall be in good hands until I see you again,” snapped Smith. “Later I will communicate when I have made arrangements for the safe transfer of the portfolio to a spot where I propose to place its contents before a committee which I must assemble for the purpose.”

“But what is it. Smith?”

“Forgive me, Kerrigan, but I don’t want to tell you. You will know in good time. One thing only I ask—and you will serve me best by doing exactly as I direct. Don’t leave your flat tonight until you hear from me, and distrust visitors as I distrust every inch of my route from here to Scotland Yard!”

When he was gone (and I went down to the front door to satisfy myself that the car really belonged to the flying squad) I sat at my desk for some time endeavoring to get my notes in order, to transfer to paper something of the recent amazing developments in this campaign of the Si-Fan against dictatorship. It was a story hard to believe, harder to tell; yet one that someday must be told, and one well worth the telling.

A phone call interrupted me. It was from Scotland Yard, and I knew the speaker: Chief Inspector Leighton of the special branch. News of Gallaho. He had escaped with cuts and contusions. The doctors despaired of the life of the driver; and among other casualties great and small occasioned by the apparently insane behavior of the truckman, was that of this person himself. His neck had been broken in the collision.

“He was some kind of Asiatic,” said Inspector Leighton. “Sir Denis may be able to recognize him. The firm to whom the lorry belonged know nothing of the matter . . .”

I was still thinking over his words when again my phone rang. I took up the receiver.

“Hello!”

“Yes,” said a voice, “is that Bart Kerrigan?”

The speaker was Ardatha!

My Doorbell Rings

By dint of a mighty effort I replied calmly:

“Yes, Ardatha. How did you find my number? It isn’t in the book.”

“You should know now”—how I loved her quaint accent—”that private numbers mean nothing to the people I belong to.”

There was a moment of almost timorous hesitancy.

“I hate to hear you say that, Ardatha. I am desperately unhappy about you. Thank God you called me! Why did you call me?”

“Because I had to.”

“What do you mean?”

“I cannot possibly speak to you long from here. I must see you tonight. This is urgent!”

I continued the effort to control my voice, to bid my thumping heart behave normally.

“Yes, Ardatha, you must know I am longing to see you. But—”

“But what?”

“I cannot go out tonight.”

“I do not ask you to go out tonight. I will come to you.”

“Oh, my dear, it’s wonderful! But every time you take such risks for my sake—”

“This is a risk I must take, or there will be no you, no Nayland Smith!”

“When shall I expect you?”

“In five minutes. But, listen. I know the house where you live. You cannot believe how well I know it! Fasten open the catch of the front door, so that I do not have to wait out in the street. I will come up and ring your bell. Please do not look out of the window or do anything to show that you expect anyone. Will you promise?”

“Of course.”

Silence.

I hung up the receiver as a man in a daze. Ardatha was real after all. Nayland Smith was wiser than I, for always he had acted as her counsel when in my despair I had condemned her as a Delilah.

Then, as if to banish the wild happiness with which my spirit was intoxicated, came a logical thought . . .

That mysterious portfolio—so valuable that Smith had been afraid to take it with him even in a flying squad car! It was here . . . The Si-Fan knew. Ardatha was coming to find it!

My hand on the door, I paused, chilled, doubting, questioning.

Were my instincts betraying me? I could not recall that I had ever proved myself easily glamoured by that which was worthless. If the soul of Ardatha be not a brave and a splendid soul but a hollow, mocking thing, I told myself, then the years of my maturity have been wasted. I am indeed no philosopher.

In any event, now was the acid test. For if she came with a hidden purpose I should learn it. And whatever the wrench—it would be the finish.

For the rest I had nothing to fear unless I were overpowered and the flat ransacked. There was no information which I could give, even under torture, for I did not know where Nayland Smith had concealed the portfolio.

I went downstairs. The lights were on in the little glass arcade which led to the porch. I opened the door and fixed the catch so that a push from outside would give access; then, in that frame of mind which every man in such circumstances has shown, I returned to my flat.

The interval, though short, seemed interminable . . .

My doorbell rang. I walked from the study along the short passage. I was trying to frame words with which I should greet Ardatha, trying to school myself to control hot impulses, and yet not to seem too cold.

I opened the door . . . and there on the landing, wearing a French cape and a black soft-brimmed hat, stood Dr Fu Manchu!

Always I Am Just

When I say that horror, disillusionment, abject misery robbed me of speech, movement, almost of thought, I do not exaggerate the facts. My beliefs, my philosophy, my world, crumbled around me.

“Mr. Kerrigan”—my dreadful visitor spoke softly—”do not hesitate to accept any order I may give.”

His right elbow rested upon his hip, his long yellow fingers held an object which resembled a silver fountain pen. I wrenched my glance away from those baleful eyes and stared at this thing.

“Death in the form of disintegration I hold in my hand,” he continued. “Step back. I will follow you.”

The little silver tube he pointed in my direction. I walked slowly along to the study. I heard Dr Fu Manchu close the front door and follow me in. I stood in front of the table, and turning, faced him. I avoided his eyes, but watched the long silver object which he held in his hand.

I despised myself completely. This man—I judged him to be not less than seventy years of age—held no weapon other than a small tube, yet had me cowed. I was afraid to attack him, afraid to defend myself—for behind this thing which he held I saw all the deadly armament of his genius.

But my weakness of spirit was not due entirely to cowardice, to fear of the dreadful Chinese doctor. It was due in great part to sudden recognition of the frightful duplicity of Ardatha! She, she whom I longed to worship, she had tricked me into opening my door to this awful being!

“Do not misjudge Ardatha.”

Those words had something of the effect of a flash of lightning. In the first place, they answered my unspoken thought (which alone was terrifying), and in the second place, they brought hope to a mind filled with black despair.

“Tonight,” that strange impressive voice continued, “Ardatha lives, or Ardatha dies. One of my purposes is to be present at your interview, for I know that this interview is to take place.”

Love of a woman goes deep in a man as I learnt at that moment; for, clutching this slender thread of promise—a thread strengthened by Nayland Smith’s assurance that Dr Fu Manchu never lied—I found a new strength and a new courage. I raised my eyes.

“Make no fatal mistake, Mr. Kerrigan,” he said coldly, precisely. “You are weighing your weight against mine, youth against age. But consider this device which I hold in my hand. From a thing which once demanded heavy cables and arc lamps, it is now, as you see”—always pointing in my direction—”a small tube. I dislike that which is cumbersome. The apparatus with which I project those visible and audible images of which you have had experience can be contained in a suitcase. There are no masts, no busy engine rooms, no dynamos.”

I watched him but did not move.

“This is Ericksen’s Ray, in its infancy at the so-called death of its inventor, Doctor Sven Ericksen—rather before your time, I think—but now, perfected. Allow me to demonstrate its powers.”

He pointed the thing, which I now decided resembled a hypodermic syringe, towards a vase which Mrs. Merton had filled that morning with flowers.

“Do you value that vase, Mr. Kerrigan?”

“Not particularly. Why?”

“Because I propose to use it as a demonstration. Watch.”

He appeared to press a button at the end of the silver tube. There was no sound, no light, but where the vase of flowers had been there appeared a momentary cloud, a patch of darkness. I became aware of an acrid smell . . .

Vase and flowers had disappeared!

“Ericksen is a genius. You will observe that I say ‘is.’ For although dead to the world, he lives—to work for me. You will realize now why I said that I held death in my hands. Ardatha is coming to see you. She loves you: and when any of my women becomes thus infatuated with one who does not belong to me, I deal with her as I see fit. If she has betrayed me she shall die . . . Stand still! If she merely loves which is fallible but human, I may spare her. I am come in person, Mr. Kerrigan, not for this purpose alone, but for that of recovering from you the letter of instruction signed by every member of the Council of Seven, which Sir Denis Nayland Smith—I have always recognized his qualities—secured this afternoon from a house in Surrey.”

I did not speak; I continued to watch the tube.

“Love so transforms a woman that even my powers of plumbing human nature may be defeated. I am uncertain how low Ardatha has fallen in disloyalty to the Si-Fan where you have been concerned. I shall learn this tonight. But first, where is the document?”

I glanced into the brilliant green eyes and quickly glanced aside.

“I don’t know.”

He was silent. That deadly tube remained pointed directly at my breast.

“No. I recognize the truth. He brought it here but left without it. He has concealed it. He was afraid that my agents would intercept him on the way. He was afraid of you. No matter. Answer me. He left it here?”

I stared dazedly at the tube. The hand of Dr Fu Manchu might have been carved of ivory: it was motionless.

“Look at me—answer!”

I raised my eyes. Dr Fu Manchu spoke softly.

“He left it. I thought so. I shall find it.”

My doorbell rang.

“This is Ardatha.” The voice became guttural, a voice of doom. “You have a fine mushrabiyeh screen here, Mr. Kerrigan, which I believe you brought from Arabia when you went there on behalf of your newspaper last autumn. I shall stand behind this screen, and you will admit Ardatha. She has been followed; she is covered. Any attempt to leave the building would be futile. Do not dare to warn her of my presence. Bring her into this room and let her say what she has come to say. I shall be listening. Upon her words rest life or death. Always I am just.”

Fists clenched, bathed in clammy perspiration, I turned and walked to the door.

“No word, no hint of warning—or I shall not spare you!”

I opened the door. Ardatha stood on the landing.

“My dear!” I exclaimed.

God knows how I looked, how wild my eyes must have been, but she crept into my extended arms as into a haven.

“Darling! I cannot bear it any longer! I had to come to save you!” I thought that our embrace would never end, except in death.

The Mushrabiyeh Screen

Ardatha, perhaps with the very next word which she uttered, was about to betray herself to the master of the Si-Fan!

My inclination was to take her up and race downstairs to the street. But Fu Manchu’s servants were watching; he had said so, and he never lied. On the other hand, few human brains could hold a secret long from those blazing green eyes. If I tried to warn her, if I failed to return, I was convinced deep within me that it would be the end of us. I thought of that gleaming tube like a hypodermic syringe of which Dr Fu Manchu had said:

“I hold death in my hand.”

No, I must return to the study must allow Ardatha to say what she was there to say—and abide by the consequences.

Her manner was strangely disturbed: I had felt her trembling during those bitter-sweet moments when I had held her in my arms. Remembering her composure on the occasion of that secret visit in Venice, I knew that tonight marked some crisis in her affairs—in mine—perhaps in the history of the world.

I led her towards the study. At the doorway she looked up at me. I tried to tell her silently with my eyes (but knew how hopelessly I failed) that behind the mushrabiyeh screen Dr Fu Manchu was hidden.

“Sit down, dear, and let me get you a drink.”

I forced myself to speak casually, but:

“No, no, please don’t go!” she said. “I want nothing. I had to see you, but I have only a few moments in which to tell you—oh, so many things! Please listen.” The amethyst eyes were wide open as she raised them to me. “Every second is of value. Just stay where you are and listen!”

Looking down at her, I stood there. She wore a very simple frock and her adorable creamy arms were bare. The red gleam of her wind-blown hair filled me with an insane longing to plunge my fingers in its living waves. I watched her. I tried to tell her . . .

“Although the affair of Venice was successful in its main purpose,” she went on swiftly, “it failed in some other ways. High officials of the French police know that James Brownlow Wilton was stolen away from the Blue Train, that it was not James Brownlow Wilton who died on the yacht. Sir Denis—yes?—he knows all about it too. And Baron Trenck, who silenced General Diesler, he was not given safe protection . . . All these things are charged against the president.”

She spoke those words with awe—the president! And watching her, watching her intently, I tried to say without moving my lips:

“The president is here!”

But as a telepathist I found myself a failure, for she continued:

“I betray no Si-Fan secrets in what I tell you, because I tell you only what you know already. I am one of them—and all the wrong I have ever done has been to try to save you. Because I am a woman I cannot help myself. But now what I am here to say to you—and when I have said it I must go—is this: A new president is to be elected!”

“What!”

“By him all the power of the Si-Fan—you cannot even guess what that power is—will be turned upon Sir Denis and—you.”

She clasped her hands and stood up.

“Please, please! if you value my happiness a little bit I beseech you from my soul, when that notice comes, make him obey it! Force him to obey it! Imprison him if you like!—for I tell you, if you fail in this, nothing, nothing on earth can save him—nor you! Come to the door with me, but no further. I must go.”

“But not yet, Ardatha!”

Dr Fu Manchu stepped from behind the screen.

It was a situation so appalling that it seemed to dull my sensibilities. Such a weakling and traitor did I stand in my own regard that I would have welcomed complete oblivion.

Ardatha drew back from that tall cloaked figure—back and back—until she came to the wall behind her; and there, arms outstretched, she stood. The color was draining from her cheeks, her expression was one of utter despair.

“Look at me, Ardatha”—Dr Fu Manchu spoke softly.

As she raised her eyes to the majestic evil of his face I thought of a hare and a cobra.

“I am satisfied”—his voice was little more than a whisper—”that your motives have been as you say, but I can no longer employ you in my personal service. Mr. Kerrigan”—it was a harsh command. He raised the Ericksen tube—”be good enough to look out of your window and to report to me what you see.”

Without hesitation I obeyed, stepping forward to the window so that Dr Fu Manchu stood behind me.

“Draw the curtain aside.”

I did so. Immediately I recognized the fact that the house was invested by the forces of the Si-Fan!

Two men over by the closed park gate unmistakably were watching the windows. Two others lingered in conversation near the door below. A big car was drawn up on the comer, and another pair were engaged in peering under the bonnet.

“Be good enough, Mr. Kerrigan, to raise your hand. The signal will be understood.”

Automatically, I was about to obey . . . when a number of strange things happened.

A car coming from the direction of Marble Arch swung out sharply against oncoming traffic. It was pulled up by a skilful driver almost directly at my door. Another, approaching from the opposite direction, stopped with a great shrieking of brakes almost at the park gate. A third, which apparently had been following the first, checked dead on the comer of Porchester Terrace.

In a matter of seconds twelve or fifteen men were disgorged into Bayswater Road . . . Without a moment’s hesitation they hurled themselves upon the loiterers!

My heart leapt madly. It was the flying squad!

One warning came; and one only—a weird, minor, wailing cry—but I knew that it was meant for Dr Fu Manchu. Its effect was immediate. From behind me he spoke in a changed voice, harsh, gutteral:

“What has occurred? Answer.”

“The police, I think. Three cars.”

“Stay where you are. Don’t stir. Ardatha—with me.”

I stood still, fists clenched, watching the melee below.

“Bart! Bart!” Ardatha cried my name despairingly.

“Be silent! Precede me.”

I heard them hurrying along the passage. But he had said “Don’t stir,” and I did not stir. I made no move until the opening and closing of the door told me that they were gone. Then I sprang around.

Footsteps were bounding up the stairs. I could hear excited voices—and an amazing, an all but unbelievable fact dawned upon me:

Dr Fu Manchu was trapped!

Pursuing A Shadow

“Kerrigan! Kerrigan!”

Nayland Smith was banging on the door.

I ran to open it. He sprang in, his eyes gleaming excitedly. He had removed the synthetic beard but still wore his shabby suit. Beside him was Inspector Gallaho, head bandaged beneath a soft hat which took the place of his usual tight-fitting bowler. Four or five plainclothes police came crowding up behind.

“Where is he?”

“Gone! He went at the moment that I heard you on the stair!”

“What!”

“That’s not possible,” growled Gallaho, staring at me in a questioning way. “No one passed us, that I’ll swear.”

“Lights on that upper stair!” snapped Smith. “Stay where you are, Gallaho—you men, also.”

He examined me intently.

“I know what you’re thinking. Smith,” I said, “but I am quite myself. Ardatha and Fu Manchu were here two minutes ago. He held me up with a thing which disintegrates whatever it touches.”

“Ericksen’s Ray?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Good God! But it’s a cumbersome affair!”