The Shadow of Fu Manchu

“I worked with the Resistance.” Camille spoke faintly. “In Grenoble.”

Dr. Fu Manchu returned to his seat behind the long table.

“Again, accept my congratulations. You speak perfect English.”

“My mother was English.”

Camille sank down on the divan. She was terrified, but her brain remained cool. One thing was clear. During that hiatus which had cost her so many sleepless nights, she must have been here. How had she got here? And why, except in a dream, had she completely forgotten all that happened?

Above all, what had happened? . . .

Camille clutched the cushions convulsively.

A quivering, metallic sound, like that of a distant sistrum, stirred the silence.

The crystal was coming to life. A radiance as of moonlight glowed and grew within it. For a moment it seemed cloudy, resembling a huge opal. Then the clouds dispersed, and a face materialized.

Camille thought, at first, that it was the living face of the Egyptian whose mummied head stood on the table, so yellow and wrinkled were its lineaments. But it soon declared itself as that of a very old Chinese.

“I have the report. Excellency.”

The voice was clear, but seemed to come from a long way off.

“Repeat it.”

Dr. Fu Manchu was watching the face in the crystal. A sudden urge to run flamed up in Camille’s mind. She glanced swiftly right and left, and then:

“Remain where you are,” came a harsh command. “There are no means of leaving this room without my permission. Continue, Huan Tsung.”

“Nayland Smith and Dr. Craig are in the restaurant. Contact is impossible. There is an F.B.I, bodyguard at the doors. All my incoming messages are overheard. Therefore this was sent to me in the Shan dialect.”

There came a momentary silence, in which Camille realized that she was not witnessing a supernatural phenomenon, but some hitherto unknown form of television; and then:

“I have one hour,” said Dr. Fu Manchu, “in which to make the first move.”

The face in the crystal faded slowly, like a mirage. The moonlight died away. As Dr. Fu Manchu turned his intolerable regard upon her again, Camille stood up.

“I want to know,” she said, “why I have been trapped into coming here. Perhaps you think you can force me to betray Dr. Craig’s secrets to you?”

“Were you not prepared to betray them to the British government?” he asked softly.

“Perhaps I was. But from a motive you could never understand. In the hope of preserving the peace of the world—if that is possible.”

“Do you regard Great Britain as holding a monopoly in peaceful intentions? Do you suppose that Dr. Craig would welcome the knowledge that you worked with him only to betray him?”

Camille tried to meet the gaze of those half-closed eyes. “I—I— did not think of it as betrayal. Only as a duty; a duty for which I must be prepared to sacrifice—everything.”

“Such as the respect of Dr. Craig—or possibly something more precious.’’

Camille lowered her eyes and dropped back on the divan. Dr. Fu Manchu stood up and walked towards her. He carried a small volume.

“I will never reveal one of Dr. Craig’s secrets to you,” she said on a note of desperation.

“My dear Miss Navarre—you have already revealed them all, or all that you knew at the time. Let you and me be sensible. Communist criminals aspire to rule man by fear. Nations no longer have the right to choose their rulers. As a result, the market is glutted with politicians, but statesmen are in short supply. Man wants nothing but happiness. What Russian yearns to spread the disease from which he himself is suffering?”

He stood right before her now.

“You see this book? It is a complete list of the megalomaniacs who are threatening the world with a third, and final, war. Power-drunk fools. They could all, quite easily, be assembled in this room. The unhappy peoples they claim to speak for are only the fuel to be thrown into the furnace of their mad lust. Advance guards of these ignorant ruffians already knock at the door—and one man holds in his hands a weapon which may decide the issue.’

“You mean—Dr. Craig?”

“I referred to him—yes.”

Camille, with desperate courage, stood up and faced Fu Manchu.

“And you think I would put that weapon into your hands—even if I could? I should prefer to die—and leave the law to deal with you!”

But Dr. Fu Manchu remained unmoved.

“One who hopes to save civilization cannot afford to respect the law. You are that rare freak of the gods, a personable woman with a brain. Yet, womanlike, you permit emotion to rule you. Why do you wear those pieces of plain glass?”

He fully opened his strange eyes, raised one long-nailed hand, and pointed at her.

Camille ceased to possess any individual existence. She found herself in that trancelike condition which had made her dreams so terrible.

“Take them off.”

Automatically she obeyed. Something within rose in fierce, angry revolt. But Camille herself was helpless.

“Shake your hair down.”

She released her wonderful hair. It cascaded, a fiery torrent, onto her shoulders. Mechanically Camille arranged it with her fingers.

“Kneel.”

She knelt at Fu Manchu’s feet.

“Bow your head . . . Sleep.”

She bowed her head, a beautiful, submissive slave awaiting punishment.

Dr. Fu Manchu struck a silver bell which hung on a table beside the divan. Camille did not hear its sweet, lingering note. She was lost in a silent world from which only one sound could recall her— the voice of Fu Manchu.

* * *

A man entered through the archway. He never even glanced at the motionless, kneeling figure. He bowed, briefly but respectfully, to Fu Manchu. He was short, dark, and thickset, with a Teutonic skull. He wore a long, white-linen coat, like that of a surgeon. Dr. Fu Manchu crossed and seated himself at the table. “Koenig—tonight you will go to the Huston Building. The duplicate key you made after Miss Navarre’s last visit opens the private door and also that of the elevator to the thirty-second floor. On the thirty-second floor there is another elevator. The key opens this also. Any questions?”

“No.”

“It will take you to the thirty-sixth, where you will enter the office of Dr. Craig. The laboratory adjoins the office. The communicating door is locked. A man called Regan will be on duty in the laboratory. He must be induced to come out. Any questions?”

“No.”

“M’goyna will be with you—if this alarms you, say so. Very well. Regan must be overpowered and taken back to the laboratory. M’goyna will then remain there with him. You will make it clear to Regan that should M’goyna be found there, he, Regan, will be strangled. Regan must speak on intercommunication should Dr. Craig call him. Any questions?

“No.”

Dr. Fu Manchu clapped his hands sharply.

“M’goyna!”

The embroidered curtain which partly concealed a recess in the wall was drawn aside. A gigantic figure appeared. The shoulders of an Atlas, long arms, grotesquely large hands, and a face so scarred as to be incomparable with anything human. A red tarboosh crowned these dreadful features, and the figure wore white Arab dress, a scarlet sash, and Turkish slippers.

Slowly M’goyna came forward. Every movement was unnatural, like that of an automaton. The huge hands hung limp, insensate— the hands of a gorilla. Like a gorilla, too, he coughed hollowly as he entered.

Koenig clenched his fists, but stood still. Camille remained kneeling. M’goyna crossed to the long table and came to rest there facing Dr. Fu Manchu, who addressed him in Turkish.

“Change to street clothes. You go with Koenig to the Huston Building.”

“With Koenig to the Huston Building,” M’goyna intoned in a rasping voice.

“You will be shown a man. You must seize him.”

“Shown a man. I seize him.”

“You must not kill him.”

M’goyna slowly revealed irregular, fanglike teeth and then closed his lips again. He coughed.

“Must not kill him.”

“You are under Koenig’s orders. Salute Koenig.”

M’goyna touched his brow, his mouth, and his breast and inclined his head.

“You will do as he tells you. At ten o’clock I shall come for you. Repeat the time.”

“Ten o’clock—you come for me?”

“At ten o’clock.” Dr. Fu Manchu turned to Koenig and spoke one word in English. “Proceed.”

Morris Craig’s office was empty. Night had dropped a velvet curtain outside the windows, irregularly embroidered with a black pattern where the darkened building opposite challenged a moonless sky.

Only the tubular desk lamp was alight, as Craig had left it.

So still was the place that when the elevator came up and stopped at the lobby, its nearly silent ascent made quite a disturbance. Then no movement was audible for fully a minute—when the office door opened inch by inch, and Koenig looked in. Satisfied with what he saw, he entered and crossed straight to Camille’s room. This he inspected by the light of a flashlamp.

Noiseless in rubber soles, he moved to the laboratory door and shone a light onto the steps leading up to it. He examined the safe and went across to the long windows, staring out onto the terrace.

Then, turning his head, he spoke softly.

“M’goyna—”

M’goyna lumbered in. He wore brown overalls and a workman’s cap. That huge frame, the undersized skull, were terrible portents. He stood just inside the door, motionless, a parody of Humanity.

“Close the door.”

M’goyna did so, and resumed his pose.

“The man will come out from there.” Koenig pointed towards the laboratory. “Seize him.”

M’goyna nodded his small head.

“Choke him enough but not too much—and then carry him back. You understand me?”

“Yes. Must not kill him.”

“Hide here, between the couch and the steps. When he comes out, do as I have ordered. Remember—you must not kill him.”

M’goyna nodded, and coughed.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

Koenig switched off the desk lamp. Now it was possible to see that the night curtain beyond the windows was studded with jewels twinkling in a cloudless heaven. Koenig shone the light of his lamp onto a recess between the leather-covered couch and the three steps.

“Here. Crouch down.”

M’goyna walked across as if motivated by hidden levers and squatted there.

Koenig switched his lamp off. He paused for a moment to get accustomed to the darkness, then went up the three steps and beat upon the door with clenched fists.

“Regan!” he shouted. “Regan . . . Regan! . . .”

He ran down and threw himself onto the couch beside which M’goyna waited.

Followed an interval of several seconds—ten—twenty—thirty.

Then came a faint sound. The steel door was opened. Green light poured out, such a light as divers see below the surface of the ocean;

rays giving no true illumination. The office became vibrant with unseen force.

Regan stood at the top of the steps, peering down.

“Dr. Craig! Are you there?”

He began to descend, picking his way.

And, as his foot touched the bottom step M’goyna hurled himself upon him, snarling like a wild animal.

“My God!”

The words were choked out of Regan. They faded into a gurgle, into nothing.

“Not too much! Remember’.”

M’goyna grunted. One huge hand clasping Regan’s throat, he lifted him with his free arm and carried him, like a bundle, up the steps.

Koenig followed.

The door remained open. Green light permeated the office filled with pulsations of invisible power. Then Koenig reappeared.

“You understand—he must answer calls. If Dr. Craig, or anyone else, comes in . . . you have your orders.”

He closed the door behind him, so that silence, falling again, became a thing notable, almost audible. He stood still for a moment, taking his bearings, then crossed and switched up the desk lamp.

Noiselessly he went out.

The elevator descended.

Chapter XII

“Wake!”

Camille opened her eyes, rose from her knees, and although her limbs felt heavy, cramped, sprang upright. She stared wildly at Dr. Fu Manchu, lifting one hand to her disarranged hair.

“What—what am I doing here?”

“You are kneeling to me as if I were the Buddha.”

A wave of true terror swept over her. Almost, for the first time, she lost control.

“You . . . Oh, my God! What happened to me?”

She retreated from the tall, yellow-robed figure, back and back until her calves came in contact with the divan. Dr. Fu Manchu watched her.

“Compose yourself. Your chastity is safe with me. I wished to see you without your disguise.”

“There was—someone else here—a dreadful man . . .”

“M’goyna? You were conscious of his presence? That is informative. I regret that I cannot give you an opportunity to examine M’goyna. As a fellow scientist, you would be interested. M’goyna carried my first invitation to you, although I thought you had forgotten.”

“I had forgotten,” Camille whispered. She was trembling.

“He can climb like an ape. He climbed from the fire ladders along the coping of the Huston Building in order to present my compliments. You spoke of ‘a dreadful man.’ But M’goyna is not a man. In Haiti he would be called a zombie. He illustrates the possibilities of vivisection. His frame is that of a Turkish criminal executed for strangling women. I recovered the body before rigor mortis had set in.”

“You are trying to frighten me. Why?”

“Truth never frightened the scientific mind. M’goyna was created in my Cairo laboratory. I supplied him with an elementary brain—a trifle superior to that of a seal. Little more than a receiving set for my orders. He remains imperfect, however. I have been unable to rid my semi-human of that curious cough. Some day I must try again.”

And, as the cold, supercilious voice continued, Camille began to regain her composure; for Dr. Fu Manchu had been unable wholly to conceal a note of triumph. He was a dangerous genius, probably a madman, but he was not immune from every human frailty . . . He was proud of his own fantastic achievements.

She dropped down onto the settee as he crossed, moving with that lithe, feline tread, and resumed his place behind the black table. When he spoke again he seemed to be thinking aloud . . .

“There are only a certain number of nature’s secrets which man is permitted to learn. A number sufficient for his own destruction.”

A high, wailing sound came from somewhere beyond the room. It rose, and fell, rose, and fell—and died away. But for Camille it was almost the last straw.

Clasping her hands, she sprang up, threatened now by hysteria.

“My God! What was it?”

Dr. Fu Manchu rested his chin on interlaced fingers.

“It was Bast—my pet cheetah. She thinks I have forgotten her supper. These hunting cats are so voracious.”

“I don’t believe you . . . It sounded like . . .”

“My dear Miss Navarre, I resent the implication. Sir Denis Nayland Smith would assure you that lying is not one of my vices.”

Delicately he took a pinch of snuff from a silver box. Camille sat down again, struggling to recover her lost poise. She forced herself to meet his fixed regard.

“What is it you want? Why do you look at me like that?”

“I am admiring your beautiful courage. To destroy that which is beautiful is an evil thing.” He stood up. “You wish for the peace of the world. You have said so. You fear cruelty. You flinched when you heard the cry of a cheetah. You have known cruelty— for there is no cruelty like the cruelty of war. If your wish was sincere, only I can hope to bring it true. Will you work with me, or against me?”

“How can I believe—”

“In Dr. Fu Manchu? In an international criminal? No—perhaps it is asking too much, in the time at my disposal—and the very minutes grow precious.” He opened his eyes widely. “Stand up, Camille Navarre. What is your real name?”

And Camille became swept again at command of the master hypnotist into that grey and dreadful half-world where there was no one but Dr. Fu Manchu.

“Camille Mirabeau,” she answered mechanically—and stood up. “Navarre was the name by which I was known to the Maquis.”

The green eyes were very close to hers.

“Why were you employed by Britain?”

“Because of my success in smuggling Air Force personnel out of the German zone. And because I speak several languages and have had science training.”

“Were you ever married?”

“No.”

“How many lovers have you had?”

“One.”

“How long did this affair last?”

“For three months. Until he was killed by the Gestapo.”

“Have you ceased to regret?”

“Yes.”

“Does Morris Craig attract you?”

“Yes.”

“He will be your next lover. You understand?”

“I understand.”

“You will make him take you away from the Huston Building not later than half past nine. He must not return to his office tonight. You understand?”

“I understand.”

“Does he find you attractive?”

“Yes.”

The insistent voice was beating on her brain like a hammer. But she was powerless to check its beats, powerless to resist its promptings; compelled to answer—truthfully. Her brain, her heart, lay on Dr. Fu Manchu’s merciless dissecting table.

“Has he expressed admiration?”

“Yes.”

“In what way?”

“He has asked me not to wear glasses, and not to brush my hair back as I do.”

“And you love him?”

Camille’s proud spirit rose strong in revolt. She remained silent.

“You love him?”

It was useless. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Tonight you will seduce him with your hair. The rest I shall leave to Morris Craig. I will give you your instructions before you leave. Sleep . . .”

There came an agonized interval, in which Camille lay helpless in invisible chains, and then the Voice again.

“I have forgotten all that happened since I left my office in the Huston Building. Repeat.”

“I have forgotten all that happened since I left my office in the Huston Building.”

“When I return I shall remember only what I have to do at nine-fifteen—nine-fifteen by the office clock.”

“When I return I shall remember only what I have to do at nine-fifteen, by the office clock.”

“At nine-thirty Dr. Fu Manchu will call me: repeat the time.”

“Nine-thirty.”

“The fate of the world rests in my hands.”

Camille raised her arms, clutched her head. She moaned . . . “Oh! . . . I . . . cannot bear this—”

“Repeat my words.”

“The fate . . . of the world . . . rests . . . in . . . my hands . . .”

Chapter XIII

Morris Craig came back, “under convoy” from Nayland Smith’s “quiet restaurant.” Standing before the private door:

“Your restaurant was certainly quiet,” he said. “But the check was a loud, sad cry. Come up if you like. Smith. But I have a demon night ahead of me. I must be through by tomorrow. Thanks for a truly edible dinner. Most acceptable to my British constitution. The wine was an answer to this pagan’s prayer.”

Nayland Smith gave him a long, steely-hard look.

“Have I succeeded in making it quite clear to you, Craig, that the danger is now, tonight, and for the next twenty-four hours?”

“Septically clear. Already I have symptoms of indigestion. But if I work on into the grey dawn I’m going to get the job finished, because I am bidden to spend the week-end with the big chief in the caves and jungles of Connecticut.”

Nayland Smith, a lean figure in a well-worn tweed suit, for he had left his topcoat in the car, hesitated for a moment; then he grasped Craig firmly by the arm.

“I won’t make myself a nuisance,” he said. “But I want to see you right back on the job before I leave you. The fact is—I have a queer, uneasy feeling tonight. We must neglect no precaution.”

And so they went up to the office together, and found it just as they had left it. Craig hung up hat and coat, grinning at Smith, who was lighting his pipe.

“Don’t mind me. Carry on as if you were in your own abode. I’ll carry on as if I were in mine.”

He crossed to unlock the safe, when:

“Wait a minute,” came sharply. “I’m going to make myself a nuisance after all.”

Craig turned. “How come?”

“The duplicate key is in my topcoat! You will have to let me out.”

“Blessings and peace,” murmured Craig. “But I promise not to go beyond the street door. There will thus be no excuse for my being escorted upstairs again. Before we start, better let Regan know I’m back.”

He called the laboratory, and waited.

“H’m. Silence. He surely can’t have gone to sleep . . . Try again.”

And now came Regan’s voice, oddly strained.

“Laboratory . . . Regan here.”

“That’s all right, Regan. Just wanted to say I’m back. Everything in order?”

“Yes . . . everything.”

Craig glanced at Nayland Smith

“Sounded very cross, didn’t he?”

“Don’t wonder. Is he expected to work all night too?

“No. Shaw relieves him at twelve o’clock.”

“Come on, then. I won’t detain you any longer.”

They went out.

That faint sound made by the elevator had just died away, when there came the muffled thud of two shots . . . The laboratory door was flung open—and Regan hurled himself down the steps. He held an automatic in his hand, as he raced towards the lobby.

“Dr. Craig! . . . Help! . . . Dr. Craig’.”

Making a series of bounds incredible in a creature ordinarily so slow and clumsy of movement, M’goyna followed. His teeth were exposed like the fangs of a wild animal. He uttered a snarl of rage.

Regan twisted around and fired again.

Instant upon the crack of his shot, M’goyna dashed the weapon from Regan’s grasp and swept him into a bear hug. Power of speech was crushed out of his body. He gave one gasping, despairing cry, and was silent. M’goyna lifted him onto a huge shoulder and carried him back up the steps.

Only a groan came from the laboratory when the semiman ran down again to recover Regan’s pistol.

He coughed as he reclosed the steel door . . .

The office remained empty for another two minutes. Then Craig returned, swinging his keys on their chain. He went straight to the safe, paused—and stood sniffing. He had detected a faint but unaccountable smell. He glanced all about him, until suddenly the boyish smile replaced a puzzled frown.

“Smith’s pipe!” he muttered.

Dismissing the matter lightly, as he always brushed aside—or tried to brush aside—anything which interfered with the job in hand, he had soon unlocked the safe and set up his materials. He was so deeply absorbed in his work that when Camille came in, he failed to notice even her presence.

She stood in the open doorway for a moment, staring vaguely about the office. Then she looked down at her handbag, and finally up at the clock above the desk. But not until she began to cross to her own room did Craig know she was there.

He spun around in a flash.

“Shades of evenin’! Don’t play bogey man with me. My nerves are not what they were in my misspent youth.”

Camille did not smile. She glanced at him and then, again, at the clock. She was not wearing her black-rimmed glasses, but her hair was tightly pinned back as usual. Craig wondered if something had disturbed her.

“I—I am sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. How’s Professor What’s-his-name? Full of beans and ballyhoo?”

“I—really don’t know.”

She moved away in the direction of her open door. Her manner was so strange that he could no longer ignore it. Insomnia, he knew, could play havoc with the nervous system. And Camille was behaving like one walking in her sleep. But when he spoke he retained the light note.

“What’s the prescription—Palm Beach, or a round trip in the Queen Elizabeth?”

Camille paused, but didn’t look back.

“I’m afraid—I have forgotten,” she replied.

She went into her room.

Craig scratched his chin, looking at her closed door. Certainly something was quite wrong. Could he have offended her? Was she laboring under a sense of grievance? Or was she really ill?

He took out a crushed packet of cigarettes from his hip pocket, smoothed one into roughly cylindrical form and lighted it; all the while staring at that closed door.

Very slowly, resuming his glasses, he returned to his work. But an image of Camille, wide-eyed, distrait, persistently intruded. He recalled that she had been in such a mood once before, and that he had made her go home. On the former occasion, too, she had been out but gave no account of where she had gone.

Something resembling a physical chill crept around his heart.

There was a man in her life. And he must have let her down . . .

Craig picked up a scribbling block and wrote a note in pencil. He was surprised, and angry, to find how shaky his hand had become. He must know the truth. But he would give her time. With a little tact, perhaps Camille could be induced to tell him.

He had never kissed her fingers, much less her lips, yet the thought of her in another man’s arms drove him mad. He remembered that he had recently considered her place in the scheme of things, and had decided to dismiss such considerations until his work was completed.

Now he was almost afraid to press the button which would call her.

But he did.

He was back at his drawing board when he heard her come in. She moved so quietly that he sensed, rather than knew, when she stood behind him. He tore off the top sheet and held it over his shoulder.

“Just type this out for me, d’you mind? It’s a note for Regan. He can’t read my writing.”

“Of course. Dr. Craig.”

Her soft voice soothed him, as always. How he loved it! He had just a peep of her delicate fingers as she took the page.

Then she was gone again.

Craig crushed out his cigarette in an ash-tray and sat staring at the complicated formula pinned to his drawing board. Of course, it probably meant something—something very important. It might even mean, as Nayland Smith seemed to think, a new era in the troubled history of man.

But why should he care what it meant if he must loose Camille?

He could hear her machine tapping . . .

Very soon, her door opened, and Camille came out. She carried a typed page and duplicates. The pencilled note was clipped to them. Craig didn’t look up when she laid them beside the drawing board, and Camille turned to go. At the same moment, she glanced up at the clock.

Nine-fifteen . . .

Could Morris Craig have seen, he would have witnessed an eerie thing.

Camille’s vacant expression became effaced; instantly, magically. She clenched her hands, fixing her eyes upward, upon the clock. For a moment she stood so, as if transfixed, as if listening intently. She symbolized vital awareness.

She relaxed, and, looking down, rested her left hand on the desk beside Craig. She spoke slowly.

“I am sorry—if I have made any mistakes. Please tell me if this is correct.”

Craig, who was not wearing his glasses, glanced over the typed page. He was trying desperately to think of some excuse to detain her.

“There was one word,” the musical voice continued.

Camille raised her hands, and deliberately released her hair so that it swept down, a fiery, a molten torrent, brushing Craig’s cheek as he pretended to read the message.

“Oh! Forgive me!”

She was bending over him when Craig twisted about and looked up into her eyes. Meeting his glance, she straightened and began to rearrange her hair.

He stood up.

“No—don’t! Don’t bother to do that.”

He spoke breathlessly.

Camille, hands still lifted, paused, watching him. They were very close.

“But—”

“Your hair is—so wonderful.” He clasped her wrists to restrain her. “It’s a crime to hide it.”

“I am glad you think so,” she said rather tremulously.

He was holding her hands now. “Camille—would you think me a really fearful cad if I told you you are completely lovely?”

His heart seemed to falter when he saw that tiny curl of Camille’s lip—like the stirring of a rose petal, he thought of it—heralding a smile. It was a new smile, a smile he had never seen before. She raised her lashes and looked into his eyes . . .

When he released her: “Camille,” he whispered, “How very lovely you are!”

“Morris!”

He kissed her again.

“You darling! I suppose I have been waiting for this moment ever since you first walked into the office.”

“Have you?”

This was a different woman he held in his arms—a woman who had disguised herself; this was the hidden, the secret Camille, seductive, wildly desirable—and his!

“Yes. Did you know?”

“Perhaps I did,” she whispered.

Presently she disengaged herself and stood back, smiling provocatively.

“Camille—”

“Shall I take the message to Mr. Regan?”

Morris Craig inhaled deeply, and turned away. He was delirious with happiness, knew it, yet (such is the scientific mind) resented it. Camille had swept solid earth from beneath his feet. He was in the grip of a power which he couldn’t analyze, a power not reducible to equations, inexpressible in a diagram. He had, perhaps, probed the secret of perpetual motion, exalting himself to a throne not far below the knees of the gods—but he had met a goddess in whose slender hands he was a thing of clay.

“D’you know,” he said, glancing aside at her, “I think it might be a good idea if you did.”

She detached the top copy of the note and walked across to the laboratory steps.

“Will you open the door for me?”

Craig pulled out the bunch of keys and went to join her where she stood—one foot on the first step, her frock defining the lines of her slim body, reflected light touching rich waves of her hair to an incredible glory. Over her shoulder she watched him.

The keys rattled as he dropped the chain . . .

“Morris—please!”

He took the paper from her hand and tore it up.

“Never mind. Work is out of the question, now.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!”

“You adorable little witch, you’re not sorry at all! I thought I was a hard-boiled scientific egg until I met you.”

“I’m afraid,” said Camille, demurely, and her soft voice reminded him again of the notes of a harp, “I have spoiled your plans for the evening.”

“To the devil with plans! This is a night of nights. Let’s follow it through.”

He put his arm around her waist and dragged her from the steps.

“Very well, Morris. Whatever you say.”

“I say we’re young only once.” He pulled her close. “At least, so far as we know. So I say let’s be young together.”

He gave her a kiss which lasted almost too long . . .

“Morris!”

“I could positively eat you alive!”

“But—your work—”

“Work is for slaves. Love is for free men. Where shall we go?”

“Anywhere you like, if you really mean it. But—”

“It doesn’t matter. There are lots of spots. I feel that I want somewhere different, some place where I can get used to the idea that you—that there is a you, and that I have found you . . . I’m talkin’ rot! Better let Regan know he’s in sole charge again.”

His keys still hung down on the chain as he had dropped them. He swung the bunch into his hand and crossed toward the steel door. At the foot of the steps, he hesitated. No need to go in. It would be difficult to prevent Regan from drawing inferences. Shrewd fellow, Regan. Craig returned to his desk and called the laboratory.

As if from far away a reply came:

“Regan here.”

Craig cleared his throat guiltily.

“Listen, Regan. I shan’t be staying late tonight after all.” (He felt like a criminal.) “Pushing off. Anything I should attend to before Shaw comes on duty?”

There was a silent interval. Camille was standing behind Craig, clutching her head, staring at him in a dazed way . . .

“Can you hear, Regan? I say, do you want to see me before I leave?”

Then came the halting words. “No . . . Doctor . . . there’s nothing. . . to see you about . . .”

Craig thought the sentence was punctured by a stifled cough.

A moment later he had Camille in his arms again.

“Camille—I realize that I have never been really alive before.”

But she was pressing her hands frantically against him, straining back, wild-eyed, trying to break away from his caresses. He released her. She stared up at the clock then back to Craig.

“My God! Morris! . . . Dr. Craig—”

“What is it, Camille? What is it?”

He stepped forward, but she shrank away.

“I don’t know. I’m frightened. When—when did I come in? What have I been doing?”

His deep concern, the intense sincerity of his manner, seemed to reach her. When, gently, he held her and looked into her eyes, she lowered her head until it lay upon his shoulder, intoxicating him with the fragrance of her hair.

“Camille,” he whispered, tenderly. (He could feel her heart beating.) “Tell me—what is it?”

“I don’t know—I don’t know what has happened. Please— please take care of me.”

“Do you mean you have made a mistake? It was an impulse? You are sorry for it?”

“Sorry for what?” she murmured against his shoulder.

“For letting me make love to you.”

“No—I’m not sorry if—if I did that.”

He kissed her hair, very lightly, just brushing it with his lips.

“Darling! Whatever came over you? What frightened you?”

Camille looked up at him under her long lashes.

“I don’t know.” She lowered her eyes. “How long have I been here?”

“How long? What in heaven’s name d’you mean, Camille? Are you terribly unhappy? I don’t understand at all.”

“No. I am not unhappy—but—everything is so strange.”

“Strange? In what way?”

The phone rang in Camille’s office. She started—stepped back, a sudden, alert look in her eyes.

“Don’t trouble, Camille. I’ll answer.”

“No, no. It’s quite all right.”

Camille crossed to her room, and took up the phone. She knew it to be unavoidable that she should do this, but had no idea why. Some ten seconds later she had returned to the half-world controlled by the voice of Dr. Fu Manchu . . .

When she came out of her room again, she was smiling radiantly.

“It is the message I have waited for so long—to tell me that my

mother, who was desperately ill, is no longer in danger.”

Even as he took her in his arms, Craig was thinking that there seemed to be an epidemic of sick mothers, but he dismissed the thought as cynical and unworthy. And when she gave him her lips he forgot everything else. Her distrait manner was explained. The world was full of roses.

They were ready to set out before he fully came to his senses. Camille had combed her hair in a way which did justice to its beauty. She looked, as she was, an extremely attractive woman.

He stood in the lobby, his arm around her waist, preparing to open the elevator door, when sanity returned. Perhaps it was the sight of his keys which brought this about.

“By gad!” he exclaimed. “I have got it badly! Can you imagine—I was pushing off, and leaving the detail of the transmuter valve pinned to the board on my desk!”

He turned and ran back.

Chapter XIV

Somewhere in Chinatown a girl was singing.

Chinese vocalism is not everybody’s box of candy, but the singer had at least one enthusiastic listener. She sang in an apartment adjoining the shop of Huan Tsung, and the good looking shopman, who called himself Lao Tai, wrote at speed, in a kind of shorthand, all that she sang. From time to time he put a page of this writing into the little cupboard behind him and pressed a button.

The F.B.I, man on duty in a room across the street caught fragments of this wailing as they were carried to him on a slight breeze, and wondered how anyone who had ever heard Bing Crosby could endure such stuff.

But upstairs, in the quiet, silk-lined room, old Huan Tsung scanned page after page, destroying each one in the charcoal fire, and presently the globe beside his couch awoke to life and the face of Dr. Fu Manchu challenged him from its mysterious depths.

“The latest report to hand. Excellency.”

“Repeat it.”

Huan Tsung leaned back against cushions and closed his wrinkled eyelids.

“I have installed the ‘bazaar’ system. My house is watched and my telephone is tapped. Therefore, news is brought to Mat Cha and she sings the news to Lao Tai.”

“Spare me these details. The report.”

“Reprimand noted. Dr. Craig and Camille Navarre left the Huston Building, according to Excellency’s plan, at nine thirty-seven. One of the two detectives posted at the private entrance followed them. The other remains. No report yet to hand as to where Craig and the woman have gone.”

“Nayland Smith?”

“Nothing later than former report. Raymond Harkness still acting as liaison officer in this area.”

The widely opened green eyes were not focussed upon Huan Tsung. A physician might have suspected the pinpoint pupils to indicate that Dr. Fu Manchu had been seeking inspiration in the black smoke. But presently he spoke, incisive, masterful as ever.

“Mount a diversion at four minutes to ten o’clock. Note the time. My entrance must be masked. Whoever is on duty—remove. But no assassinations. I may be there for an hour or more. Cover my retirement. My security is your charge. Proceed.”

Light in the crystal died.

* * *

At a few minutes before ten o’clock, a man was standing at a bus stop twenty paces from the private entrance to the Huston laboratory. No bus that had pulled up there during the past hour had seemed to be the bus he was waiting for; and now he waited alone. An uncanny quietude descends upon these office areas after dusk. During the day they remind one of some vast anthill. Big-business ants, conscious of their fat dividends, neat little secretary ants, conscious of their slim ankles, run to and fro, to and fro, in the restless, formless, meaningless dance of Manhattan.

Smart cabs and dowdy cabs, gay young cabs and sad old cabs, trucks, cars, busses, bicycles, pile themselves up in tidal waves behind that impassable barrier, the red light. And over in front of the suspended torrent scurry the big ants and the little ants. But at night, red and green lights become formalities. The ants have retired from the stage, but the lights shine on. Perhaps to guide phantom ants, shades of former Manhattan dancers now resting.

So that when a boy peddling a delivery bike came out of a street beside the Huston Building, it is possible that the driver of a covered truck proceeding at speed along the avenue failed to note the light.

However this may have been, he collided with the boy, who was hurled from his bicycle. The truckman pulled up with an ear-torturing screech of brakes. The boy—apparently unhurt—jumped to his feet and put up a barrage of abuse embellished with some of the most staggering invective which the man waiting for a bus had ever heard.

The truckman, a tough-looking bruiser, jumped from his seat, lifted the blasphemous but justly indignant youth by the collar of his jacket, and proceeded to punish him brutally.

This was too much for the man waiting for a bus. He ran to the rescue. The boy, now, was howling curses in a voice audible for several blocks. Spectators appeared—as they do—from nowhere. In a matter of seconds the rescuer, the rescued, and the attacker were hemmed in by an excited group.

And at just this moment, two figures alighted from the rear of the temporarily deserted truck, walked quietly to the private door of the Huston Building, opened it, and went in. Later, Raymond Harkness would have something to say to the man waiting for a bus—whose name was Detective Officer Beaker.

Huan Tsung had mounted a diversion . . .

The telephone in Camille’s room was buzzing persistently—had been buzzing for a long time.

Craig had left the desk light burning; but most of the office lay in shadow, so that when someone switched on a flashlamp in the lobby, a widening, fading blade of light swept across the parquet floor. Then the door was fully opened.

Koenig stepped in, looking cautiously about him. He carried a heavy leather case, which he set down by the safe.

And, as he stood upright again, a tall figure, draped in a black topcoat, the fur collar turned up, came in silently and joined him. Dr. Fu Manchu wore the tinted Hoffmeyer glasses, gloves, and carried a black hat. He looked in the direction of that persistent buzzing.

“Miss Navarre’s office,” said Koenig uneasily.

Dr. Fu Manchu indicated the safe, merely extending a gloved hand. Koenig nodded, knelt, and opened the leather case. Taking out a bunch of keys, he busied himself with the lock, working by the light of his flashlamp. Presently he paused. He turned.

“Combination has been changed!”

The tall figure standing behind him remained motionless. The buzzing in Camille’s room ceased.

“You came prepared for such a possibility?”

“Yes—but it may take a long time now.”

“You have nearly two hours. But no more.”

The clock over Craig’s desk struck its single note . . . ten o’clock.

Dr. Fu Manchu crossed and walked up the three steps. He beat upon the steel door.

“M’goyna!”

The door swung open. M’goyna’s huge frame showed silhouetted against a quivering green background. Dr. Fu Manchu entered the laboratory.

* * *

At half-past eleven, the man waiting for a bus was relieved by another detective. The avenue, now, was as completely deserted as any Manhattan avenue ever can be.

“Hello, Holland,” he said. “You’re welcome to this job! Like being the doorman of a vacant night club.”

“What are we supposed to be doing. Beaker, anyway?”

“Search me! Stop anybody going in, I suppose. We had orders to tail Dr. Craig if ever he came out, and Stoddart went after him two hours ago when he took his secretary off to make whoopee. A redhead straight from heaven.”

“Nothing else happened?”

“Bit of a scrap about ten o’clock. Big heel driving a truck knocked a boy off his bike. Nothing else . . . Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

Holland lighted a cigarette, looking left and right along the avenue and wondering what had originally attracted him to police work. Beaker was making for a subway station and Holland followed the retreating figure with his eyes for several blocks. He settled down to a monotony broken only by an occasional bus halting at the nearby stop. The night was unseasonably warm.

At a quarter to twelve, a remarkable incident occurred.

It had been preceded by another curious occurrence, invisible to Holland, however. A red light had been flashed several times from the high parapet of the Huston Building, immediately outside Craig’s office . . .

Bearing down upon Holland at speed from the other end of the block, he saw a hatless young man in evening dress, who screamed as he ran!

“You won’t get me! You devils! You won’t get me!”

In spite of the emptiness of the streets, these outcries had had some effect. Two men were following, but maintaining a discreet distance from the screaming man. Keeping up that extraordinary pace, he drew nearer and nearer to Holland.

“Out of my way! They’re after me!”

Holland sized up the situation. The runner was of medium build, dark, and not bad-looking in a Latin fashion. Clearly Holland decided, he’s drunk, and a guy in that state is doubly strong. But I guess I’ll have to hold him. He may do damage.

An experienced manhandler, Holland stepped forward. But the runner kept on running.

“Out of my way!” he screamed. “I’ll kill you if you try to stop me!”

Holland stooped for a tackle, saw the gleam of a weapon, and side-stepped in a flash.

“They won’t get me!” yelled the demented man, and went racing around the comer.

Had the missing Sam been present, he would have recognized the lunatic as that Jed Laurillard who had once talked to him in a bar. In fact, this disciple had been given a particularly difficult assignment, one certain to land him in jail, as a chance to redeem his former mistake. He had, furthermore, been given a shot of hashish to lend color to the performance.

Holland clapped a whistle to his lips, and blew a shrill blast. Drawing his own automatic, he went tearing around the comer after the still screaming madman . . .

During a general mix-up which took place there, a big sedan drew in before the private door of the Huston Building, and three men came out and entered it. One of them carried a heavy roll of office carpet on his shoulder.

Huan Tsung had successfully covered the retirement of Dr. Fu Manchu.

When Martin Shaw stepped from a taxi, paid the driver, and saw the yellow cab driven away, he unbuttoned his topcoat to find his key. Someone was walking rapidly towards him; the only figure in sight. It was midnight.

Holland, whilst still some distance away, recognized the chief technician, and moderated his pace. The screaming alcoholic had just been removed in charge of two patrolmen, and would, no doubt, receive his appropriate medicine in the morning. By the time Holland reached the door, Shaw had already gone in, and was on his way up.

Shaw half expected that Dr. Craig would be still at work, and even when he didn’t see him at his desk, was prepared to find him in the laboratory. Then he noted that the drawing board was missing and the safe unlocked. Evidently, Craig had gone.

Whoever took the next (four-to-eight) duty usually slept on a couch in the office. But Regan seemed to have made no preparations.

Shaw went up the three steps and unlocked the steel door.

“Here we are, Regan!” he called in his breezy way. “Get to hell out of it,man!”

There was no reply. Everything seemed to be in order. But where was Regan?

Then, pinned to the logbook lying on a glass-topped table, Shaw saw a sheet of ruled paper. He crossed and bent over it.

A message, written shakily in Regan’s hand, appeared there. It said:

Mr. Shaw—

Had a slight accident. Compelled to go for medical treatment. Don’t be alarmed. Will report at 4 a.m. for duty.

J. J. Regan

“Slight accident?” Shaw muttered.

He looked keenly about him. What could have happened? There was nothing wrong with any of the experimental plant. He quickly satisfied himself on that score. So unlike Regan not to have timed the message. He wondered how long he had been gone. The last entry in the log (almost illegible) was timed eleven-fifteen.

He was hanging his coat up when he noticed the bloodstains.

They were very few—specks on white woodwork. But, stooping, he came to the conclusion that others had been wiped from the tiled floor below.

Regan, then, must have cut himself in some way, been unable to staunch the bleeding, and gone to find a surgeon. Shaw decided that he had better notify Dr. Craig. The laboratory phone was an extension from the secretary’s office. He reopened the door, went down the steps, and dialled from Camille’s room.

There was no answer to his call.

Shaw growled, but accepted the fact philosophically. He would repeat the call later. He went back to his working-bench in the laboratory and was soon absorbed in adjusting an intricate piece of mechanism in course of construction there. He walked in an atmosphere vibrant with a force new to science. His large hands were delicate as those of a violinist . . .

He called Craig’s number again at one o’clock, but there was no reply. He tried Regan’s, with a similar result. Perhaps the injury was more serious than Regan had supposed. He might have been detained for hospital treatment.

Shaw tried both numbers again at two and then at three o’clock. No answers.

He began to feel seriously worried about Regan; nor could he entirely understand the absence of Craig. He knew how determined Craig had been to complete the valve detail that night, he knew he was spending the week-end away; and he felt sure that Morris Craig wasn’t the man to waste precious hours in night spots.

In this, Shaw misjudged Craig—for once. At almost exactly three o’clock, that is, whilst Shaw was vainly calling his number, Morris Craig leaned on a small table, feasting his eyes on Camille, who sat facing him.

“Say you are happy,” he whispered.

That she was happy, that this new wonderland was real and not a mirage, seemed to him, at the moment, the only thing that mattered— the one possible excuse for his otherwise inexcusable behavior.

Camille smiled, and then lowered her eyes. She knew that she had been dancing—dancing for hours, it seemed to her. Even now, a band played softly, somewhere on the other side of a discreetly dim floor. Yes—she was happy. She was in love with Morris, and they were together. But how could she surrender herself to all that such an evening should mean, when she had no idea how she came to be there?

She knew that she had set out to keep an appointment made for her by Mrs. Frobisher. Had she kept it? Apart from a vague recollection of talking to Morris in the office—of some sudden terror—the rest of the night remained a blank up to the moment when she had found herself here, in his arms, dancing . . .

“Yes—I am happy, Morris, very happy. But I think I must go home now.”

It was nearly half past three when they left.

In the little lobby of her apartment house, between swing doors and the house door, Craig held her so long that she thought he would never let her go. Every time she went to put her key in the lock, he pulled her back and held her again. At last:

“I shall be here for you at nine in the morning,7 he said.

“All right. Good night, Morris.”

She opened the door, and was gone. He watched her, through glass panels, as she hurried upstairs. Then he went out, crossed the street, and waited to see a light spring up in her room. When one did, he still waited—and waited.

At last she came to the window, pulled a drape aside, and waved him good night.

He had dismissed the taxi. He wanted to walk, to be alone with this night, to relive every hour of the wonder that had come into his life with Camille’s first kiss.

When, at Central Park West, he decided to walk across the Park, two tired and bored detectives who had been keeping the pair in sight ever since they had left the night club, exhaled selfpitying sighs . . .

Chapter XV

At ten past four, Martin Shaw dialled Regan’s number. No reply. Then he tried Craig’s. No reply. Following a momentary hesitation, he called police headquarters.

He had no more than begun to explain what had happened when he heard the clang of the elevator door as someone slammed it shut. Laying the phone down on Camille’s desk, he ran out into Craig’s office. He arrived just as Nayland Smith burst in.

“Sir Denis! What’s this?”

Nayland Smith was darting urgent glances right and left.

“Where’s Regan?” he rapped.

“Hasn’t shown up—”

“What!”

“Had an accident some time before I returned. Left a note.”

Nayland Smith’s challenging stare was almost frightening.

“You mean the place was empty when you arrived at twelve?”

“Just that.”

“And you did nothing about it?”

“Why should I?” Shaw demanded. “But when he didn’t appear at four o’clock, it was different. I have police headquarters on the line right now “

“Tell them I’m here. Then hang up.”

Shaw, upon whom this visitor had swept as a typhoon, went back and did so.

“I know,” a voice replied. “We’re on the job. Stand by.”

When Shaw rejoined him:

“Your handyman, Sam, was got away by a ruse,” said Smith. “He wisely called the police, too—from Philadelphia. I came straight along. Someone wanted this place vacated tonight—and Craig played right into the enemy’s hands—”

“But where is the Doctor? I have been calling him—”

“You’d be surprised!” Smith snapped savagely. “At the present moment, he’s wandering about Central Park, moon-struck! One of two men looking after him got to a phone ten minutes ago.”

Shaw looked thunderstruck.

“Has he gone mad?”

“Yes. He’s in love. Show me this note left by Regan.”

He went racing up the steps. Shaw had left the laboratory door open.

“There—on the table.”

Nayland Smith bent over Regan’s strange message. He turned.

“Sure it’s his writing?”

“Looks like it—allowing for a shaky hand. He’d evidently cut himself. See—there are specks of blood here.” Shaw pointed. “And I think blood has been wiped from the floor just below.”

Nayland Smith pulled at the lobe of his ear. His brown face looked drawn, weary, but his eyes shone like steel. The green twilight of this place, the eerie throbbing which seemed to penetrate his frame, he disliked, but knew he must ignore. A moment he stood so, then turned and ran back to the phone. He called police headquarters, gave particulars of what had happened, and:

“Check all night taxis,” he directed rapidly, “operating in this area. All clinics and hospitals in the neighborhood. Recall Detectives Beaker and Holland, on duty at the door here between eight and four. Order them to report to Raymond Harkness.”

He hung up, called another number, and presently got Harkness.

“I’m afraid we lose, Harkness,” he said. “I’m at the Huston Building. Something very serious has occurred tonight. I fear the worst. The two men posted below must have tripped up, somewhere. They will report to you. Make each take oath and swear he never left the door for a moment. Then call me. I shall be here . . .”

In the throbbing laboratory, Martin Shaw was making entries in the log. He looked up as Nayland Smith came in.

“Of course,” he said, “I can see something has happened to poor Regan. But it’s not clear to me that there’s anything else to it.”

“Not clear?” rapped Smith. “Why should a man who generally hangs around the place at all hours—Sam—receive a faked call to get him to Philadelphia? Is it a mere coincidence that Regan deserts his post the same night? For some time before twelve o’clock—we don’t know for how long—no one was on duty here.”

“There’s an entry in the book timed eleven-fifteen.”

“Very shaky one. Still leaving a gap of forty-five minutes.”

“If you mean some foreign agent got in, how did he get in?”

“He probably had a duplicate key, as I have. The F.B.I, got mine from the locksmith who made the originals. Couldn’t someone else have done the same thing? Or borrowed, and copied, an existing key?”

“But nothing has been disturbed. There’s no evidence that anyone has been here.”

“There wouldn’t be!” said Smith grimly. “Dangerous criminals leave no clues. The visitor I suspect would only want a short time to examine the plant—and to borrow Craig’s figure of the transmuter valve—”

“That would mean opening the safe.”

“Exactly what we have to do—open the safe.”

“No one but Dr. Craig has a key—or knows the combination.”

“There are other methods,” said Nayland Smith drily. “I am now going out to examine the safe.”

He proceeded to do so, and made a thorough job of it. Shaw came down and joined him.

“Nothing to show it’s been tampered with,” Smith muttered . . . “Hullo! who comes?”

He had detected that faint sound made by the private elevator. He turned to face the lobby; so did Shaw.

The elevator ascended, stopped. A door banged. And Morris Craig ran in.

“Smith!” he exclaimed—and both men saw that he was deathly pale. “What’s this? What has happened? I was brought here by two detectives—”

“Serves you right!” rapped Nayland Smith. “Don’t talk. Act. Be good enough to open this safe.”

“But”

“Open it.”

Craig, his hand none too steady, pulled out his keys, twirled the dial, and opened the safe. Nayland Smith and Martin Shaw bent over his shoulders.

They saw a number of papers, and Craig’s large drawing board.

But there was nothing on the board! A moment of silence followed—ominous silence.

Then Nayland Smith faced Craig.

“I don’t know,” he said, and spoke with unusual deliberation, “what lunacy led you to desert your job tonight. But I am anxious to learn”—he pointed—”what has become of the vital drawing and the notes, upon which you were working.”

Morris Craig forced a smile. It was an elder brother of the one he usually employed. Some vast, inexpressible relief apparently had brought peace to his troubled mind.

“If that’s all,” he replied, “the answer’s easy. I had a horrible idea that—something had happened—to Camille.”

Nayland Smith exchanged a glance with Shaw.

“Ignoring the Venusburg music for a moment”—the words were rapped out in his usual staccato manner—”where is the diagram?”

Morris Craig smiled again—and the junior smile was back on duty. He removed his topcoat, stripped his jacket off, and groped up under his shirt. From this cache he produced a large, folded sheet of paper and another, smaller sheet—the one decorated with a formula like a Picasso painting.

“In spite of admittedly high temperature at time of departure, I remembered that I was leaving town in the morning. I decided to take the job with me. If”—he glanced from face to face—”you suspect some attempt on the safe, all the burglar found was—Old Mother Hubbard. I carry peace to Falling Waters.”

Chapter XVI

The library at Falling Waters was a pleasant room. It was panelled in English oak imported by Stella Frobisher. An open staircase led up to a landing which led, in turn, to rooms beyond. There were recessed bookcases. French windows gave upon a paved terrace overlooking an Italian garden. Sets of Dickens, Thackeray, Punch, and Country Life bulked large on the shelves.

There was a handsome walnut desk, upon which a telephone stood, backed by a screen of stamped Spanish leather. Leather-covered armchairs and settees invited meditation. The eye was attracted (or repelled) by fine old sporting prints. Good Chinese rugs were spread on a well-waxed floor.

Conspicuous above a bookcase, and so unlike Stella’s taste, one saw a large, glazed cabinet containing a colored plan of the grounds surrounding Falling Waters. It seemed so out of place.

On occasional tables, new novels invited dipping. Silver caskets and jade caskets and cloisonne caskets contained cigarettes to suit every palate. There were discreet ornaments. A good reproduction of Queen Nefertiti’s beautiful, commercialized head above a set of Balzac, in French, which no member of this household could read. A bust of Shakespeare. A copy of the Discus Thrower apparently engaged in throwing his discus at a bust by Epstein on the other side of the library.

A pleasant room, as sunshine poured in to bring its lifeless beauties to life, to regild rich bindings, on this morning following those strange occurrences in the Huston research laboratory.

Michael Frobisher was seated at the walnut desk, the phone to his ear. Stein, his butler-chauffeur, stood at his elbow. Michael Frobisher was never wholly at ease in his own home. He remained acutely conscious of the culture with which Stella had surrounded him. This morning, his unrest was pathetic.

‘“But this thing’s just incredible! . . . What d’you say? You’re certain of your facts, Craig? Regan never left a note like that before? . . . What d’you mean, he hasn’t come back? He must be in some clinic . . . The police say he isn’t? To hell with the police! I don’t want police in the Huston laboratory . . . You did a wise thing there, but I guess it was an accident . . . Bring the notes and drawing right down here. For God’s sake, bring ‘em right down here! How do we know somebody hasn’t explored the plant? Listen! how do we know?”

He himself listened awhile, and then:

“To hell with Nayland Smith!” he growled. “Huston Electric doesn’t spend half a million dollars to tip the beans into his pocket. He’s a British agent. He’ll sell us out! Are you crazy? . . . He may be backed by Washington. What’s good that comes to us from Washington, anyway?”

He listened again, and suddenly:

“Had it occurred to you,” he asked on a note of tension, “that Regan could be the British agent? He joined us from Vickers . . .”

When at last he hung up:

“Is there anything you want me to do?” Stein asked.

Stein was a man who, seated, would have looked like a big man, for he had a thick neck, deep chest, and powerful shoulders. But, standing, he resembled Gog, or Magog, guardian deities of London’s Guildhall; a heavy, squat figure, with heavy, squat features. Stein wore his reddish hair cut close as a Prussian officer’s. He had a crushed appearance, as though someone had sat on his head.

Frobisher spun around. “Did you get it?”

“Yes. It is serious.” (Stein furthermore had a heavy, squat accent.) “But not so serious as if they have found the detail of the trans-muter.”

“What are you talking about?” Frobisher stood up. “There’s enough in the lab to give away the whole principle to an expert.”

That grey undertone beneath his florid coloring was marked.

“This may be true—”

“And Regan’s disappeared!”

“I gathered so.”

“Then—hell!”

“You are too soon alarmed,” said Stein coolly. “Let us wait until we have all the facts.”

“How’11 we ever have all the facts?” Frobisher demanded. “What are the facts about things that happen right here? Who walks around this house at night like a ghost? Who combed my desk papers? Who opened my safe? And who out of hell went through your room the other evening while you were asleep? Tell me who, and then tell me whyI”

But before Stein had time to answer these reasonable inquiries, Stella Frobisher fluttered into the library. She wore a Hollywood pinafore over her frock, her hands were buried in gauntlet gloves, and she carried a pair of large scissors. Her blond hair was dressed as immaculately as that of a movie star just rescued from a sinking ship.

“I know I look a fright, dear,” she assured Frobisher. “I have been out in the garden, cutting early spring flowers.”

She emphasized “cutting” as if her more usual method was to knock their heads off with a niblick.

“Allow me to bring these in for you, madame,” said Stein.

His respectful manner was in odd contrast to that with which he addressed Frobisher.

“Thank you, Stein. Lucille has the basket on the back porch.”

She did not mention the fact that Lucille had also cut the flowers.

“Very good, madame.”

As Stein walked towards the door:

“Oh, Stein—there will be seven to luncheon. Dr. and Mrs. Pardoe are coming.”

Stein bowed and went out.

“Who’s the old man?” growled Frobisher, opening a box of cigars which lay on the desk.

“Professor Hoffmeyer. Isn’t it splendid that I got him to come?”

“Don’t know till I see him.”

“He’s simply wonderful. He will amaze you, Mike.”

“Don’t care for amazement at mealtimes.”

“You will fall completely under his spell, dear,” Stella declared, and went fluttering out again. “I must go and assemble my flowers.”

At about this time, Morris Craig was putting a suitcase into the back of his car. As he locked the boot he looked up.

“You know, Smith,” he said, “I’m profoundly conscious of the gravity of this thing—but I begin to feel like a ticket-of-leave man.

There’s a car packed with police on the other side of the street. Do they track me to Falling Waters?”

“They do!” Nayland Smith replied. “As I understand it, you are now going to pick up Miss Navarre?”

“That is the program.” Craig smiled rather unhappily. “I feel a bit cheap leaving Shaw alone, in the circumstances. But—”

“Shaw won’t be alone” Smith rapped irritably. “I think—or, rather, fear—the danger at the laboratory is past. But, to make sure, two carefully selected men will be on duty in your office day and night until you return. Plus two outside.”

“Why not Sam? He’s back.”

“You will need Sam to lend a hand with this radio burglar alarm you tell me about”

“J shall?”

“You will. I can see you’re dying to push off. So—push! I trust you have a happy week-end.”

And when Craig turned into West Seventy-fifth Street, the first thing that really claimed his attention was the presence of a car which had followed him all the way. The second was a figure standing before the door of an apartment house—a door he could never forget.

This figure wore spectacles, a light fawn topcoat, a cerise muffler, and a slate-grey hat with the brim turned up not at the back, but in front . . .

“Morning, boss,” said Sam, opening the door. “Happen to have—”

“I have nothing but a stem demand. It’s this: What the devil are you doing here7.”

“Well”—Sam shook his head solemnly—”it’s like this. Seems you’re carrying valuables, and Sir Denis, he thinks—”

“He thinks what?”

“He thinks somebody ought to come along—see? Just in case.”

Craig stepped out.

“Tell me: Are you employed by Huston Electric or by Nayland Smith?”

Sam tipped his hat further back. He chewed thoughtfully.

“It’s kind of complicated. Doctor. Sir Denis has it figured I’m doing my best for Huston’s if I come along and lend a hand. He figures there may be trouble up there. And you never know.”

Visions of a morning drive alone with Camille vanished.

“All right,” said Craig resignedly “Sit at the back.”

In a very short time he had hurried in. But it was a long time before he came out.

Camille looked flushed, but delightfully pretty, when she arrived at Falling Waters. Her hair was tastefully dressed, and she carried the black-rimmed glasses in her hand. Stella was there to greet her guests.

“My dear Miss Navarre! It’s so nice to have you here at last! Dr. Craig, you have kept her in hiding too long.”

“Not my fault, Mrs. Frobisher. She’s a self-effacing type.” Then, as Frobisher appeared: “Hail, chief! Grim work at—”

Frobisher pointed covertly to Stella, making vigorous negative signs with his head. “Glad to see you, Craig,” he rumbled, shaking hands with both arrivals.

“You have a charming house, Mrs. Frobisher,” said Camille. “It was sweet of you to ask me to come.”

“I’m so glad you like it!” Stella replied. “Because you must have seen such lovely homes in France and in England.”

“Yes,” Camille smiled sadly. “Some of them were lovely.”

“But let me take you along to your room. This is your first visit, but I do hope it will be the first of many.”

She led Camille away, leaving Frobisher and Craig standing in the lobby—panelled in Spanish mahogany from the old Cunard liner, Mauretania. And at that moment Frobisher’s eye rested upon Sam, engaged in taking Craig’s suitcase from the boot, whilst Stein stood by.

“What’s that half-wit doing down here?” Frobisher inquired politely.

“D’you mean Sam? Oh, he’s going to—er—lend me a hand overhauling your burglar system.”

“Probably make a good job of it, between you,” Frobisher commented drily. “When you’ve combed your hair, Craig, come along to my study. We have a lot to talk about. Where’s the plan?”

Craig tapped his chest. He was in a mood of high exaltation.

“On our person, good sir. Only over our dead body could caitiffs win to the treasure.”

And in a room all daintily chintz, with delicate water colors and lots of daffodils, Camille was looking out of an opened window, at an old English garden, and wondering if her happiness could last.

Stein tapped at the door, placed Camille’s bag inside, and retired.

“Don’t bother to unpack, my dear,” said Stella. “Flora, my maid, is superlative.”

Camille turned to her, impulsively.

“You are very kind, Mrs. Frobisher. And it was so good of you to make that appointment for me with Professor Hoffmeyer,”

“With Professor Hoffmeyer? Oh! my dear! Did I, really? Of course”—seeing Camille’s strange expression—”I must have done. It’s queer and it’s absurd, but, do you know, I’m addicted to the oddest lapses of memory.”

“You are7” Camille exclaimed; then, as it sounded so rude, she added, “I mean lam, too.”

“You are?” Stella exclaimed in turn, and seized both her hands. “Oh, my dear, I’m so glad! I mean, I know I sound silly, and a bit horrid. What I wanted to say was, it’s such a relief to meet somebody else who suffers in that way. Someone who has no possible reason for going funny in the head. But tell me—what did you think of him?”

Camille looked earnestly into the childish but kindly eyes.

“I must tell you, Mrs. Frobisher—impossible though it sounds— that I have no recollection whatever of going there!”

“My dear!” Stella squeezed her hands encouragingly. “I quite understand. Whatever do you suppose is the matter with us?”

“I’m afraid I can’t even imagine.”

“Could it be some new kind of epidemic?”

Camille’s heart was beating rapidly, her expression was introspective; for she was, as Dr. Fu Manchu had told her (but she had forgotten), a personable woman with a brain.

“I don’t know. Suppose we compare notes—”

Michael Frobisher’s study, the window of which offered a prospect of such woodland as Fenimore Cooper wrote about, was eminently that of a man of business. The books were reference books, the desk had nothing on it but a phone, a blotting-pad, pen, ink, a lamp, an almanac, and a photograph of Stella. The safe was built into the wall. No unnecessary litter.

“There’s the safe I told you about,” he was saying. “There’s the key—and the combination is right here.” He touched his rugged forehead. “Yet—I found the damned thing wide open! My papers”—he pulled out a drawer—”were sorted like a teller sorts checks. I know. I always have my papers in order. Then—somebody goes through my butler’s room.” He banged his big fist on the desk. “And not a bolt drawn, not a window opened!”

“Passing strange,” Craig murmured. He glanced at the folded diagram. “Hardly seems worthwhile to lock it up.”

Michael Frobisher stared at the end of his half-smoked cigar, twirling it between strong fingers.

“There’s been nothing since I installed the alarm system. But I don’t trust anybody. I want you to test it. Meanwhile”—he laid his hand on the paper—”how long will it take you to finish this thing?”

“Speaking optimistically, two hours.”

“You mean, in two hours it will be possible to say we’re finished?”

“Hardly. Shaw has to make the valves. Wonderful fellow, Shaw. Then we have to test the brute in action. When that bright day dawns, it may be the right time to say we’re finished!”

Frobisher put his cigar back in his hard mouth, and stared at Craig.

“You’re a funny guy,” he said. “It took a man like me to know you had the brains of an Einstein. I might have regretted the investment if Martin Shaw hadn’t backed you—and Regan. I’m doubtful of Regan—now. But he knows the game. Then—you’ve shown me things.”

“A privilege, Mr. Frobisher.”

Frobisher stood up.

“Don’t go all Oxford on me. Listen. When this detail here is finished, you say we shall be in a position to tap a source of inexhaustible energy which completely tops atomic power?”

“I say so firmly. Whether we can control the monster depends entirely upon—that.”

“The transmuter valve?”

“Exactly. It’s only a small gadget. Shaw could make all three of ‘em in a few hours. But if it works, Mr. Frobisher, and I know it will, we shall have at our command a force, cheaply obtained, which could (a) blow our world to bits, or (b) enable us to dispense with costly things like coal, oil, enormous atomic plants, and the like, forever. I am beginning to see tremendous possibilities.”

“Fine.”

Michael Frobisher was staring out of the window. His heavy face was transfigured. He, too, the man of commerce, the opportunist, could see those tremendous possibilities. No doubt he saw possibilities which had never crossed the purely scientific mind of Morris Craig.

“So,” said Craig, picking up the diagram and the notes, “I propose that I retire to my cubicle and busy myself until cocktails are served. Agreed?”

“Agreed. Remember—not a word to Mrs. F.”

When Craig left the study, Frobisher stood there for a long time, staring out of the window.

* * *

But Morris Craig’s route to his “cubicle” had been beset by an obstacle—Mrs. F. As he crossed the library towards the stair, she came in by another door. She glanced at the folded diagram.

“My dear Dr. Craig! Surely you haven’t come here to work?”

Craig pulled up, and smiled. Stella had always liked his smile; it was so English.

“Afraid, yes. But not for too long, I hope. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll nip up and get going right away.”

“But it’s too bad. How soon will you be ready to nip down again?”

“Just give me the tip when the bar opens.”

“Of course I will. But, you know, I have been talking to Camille. She is truly a dear girl. I don’t mean expensive. I mean charming.”

Craig’s attention was claimed, magically, by his hostess’s words.

“So glad you think so. She certainly is—brilliant.”

Stella Frobisher smiled her hereditary smile. She was quite without sex malice, and she had discovered a close link to bind her to Camille.

“Why don’t you. forget work? Why don’t you two scientific people go for a walk in the sunshine? After all, that’s what you’re here for.”

And Morris Craig was sorely tempted. Yes, that was what he was here for. But—

“You see, Mrs. Frobisher,” he said, “I rather jibbed the toil last night. Camille—er—Miss Navarre, has been working like a pack-mule for weeks past. Tends to neglect her fodder. So I asked her to step out for a plate of diet and a bottle of vintage “

“That was so like you. Dr. Craig.”

“Yes—I’m like that. We sort of banished dull care for an hour or two, and as a matter of fact, carried on pretty late. The chief is anxious about the job. He has more or less given me a deadline. I’m only making up for lost time. And so, please excuse me. Sound the trumpets, beat the drum when cocktails are served.”

He grinned boyishly and went upstairs. Stella went to look for Camille. She had discovered, in this young product of the Old World, something that the New World had been unable to give her. Stella Frobisher was often desperately lonely. She had never loved her husband passionately. Passion had passed her by.

In the study, Michael Frobisher had been talking on the phone. He had just hung up when Stein came in.

“Listen,” he said. “What’s this man, Sam, doing here?”

Stein’s heavy features registered nothing.

“I don’t know.”

“Talk to him. Find out. I trust nobody. 1 never employed that moron. Somebody has split us wide open. It isn’t just a leak. Somebody was in the Huston Building last night that had no right to be there. This man was supposed to be in Philadelphia. Who knows he was in Philadelphia? Check him up. Stein. It’s vital.”

“I can try to do. But his talk is so foolish I cannot believe he means it. He walks into my room, just now, and asks if I happen to have an old razor blade.”

“What for?”

“He says, to scrape his pipe bowl.”

Michael Frobisher glared ferociously.

“Ask him to have a drink. Give him plenty. Then talk to him.”

“I can try it.”

“Go and try it.”

Stein stolidly departed on this errand. There were those who could have warned him that it was a useless one.

Upstairs, in his room, Morris Craig had taken from his bag ink, pencils, brushes, and all the other implements of a craftsman’s craft. He had borrowed a large blotting-pad from the library to do service in lieu of a drawing board.

Stella and Camille had gone out into the garden.

The sim was shining.

And over this seemingly peaceful scene there hung a menace, an invisible cloud. The fate of nations was suspended on a hair above their heads. Of all those in Falling Waters that morning, probably Michael Frobisher was the most deeply disturbed. He paced up and down the restricted floor space of his study, black brows drawn together over a deep wrinkle, his eyes haunted.

When Stein came in without knocking, Frobisher jumped around like a stag at bay. He collected himself.

“Well—what now?”

Stein, expressionless, offered a card on a salver. He spoke tonelessly.

“Sir Denis Nay land Smith is here.”

Chapter XVII

“I can tell you, broadly, what happened last night,” said Nayland Smith. “It was an attempt to steal the final plans assumed to be locked in Craig’s safe.”

“I guessed as much,” Michael Frobisher replied.

Under drawn brows, he was studying the restless figure pacing to and fro in his study, fouling the air with fumes from a briar pipe which, apparently, Smith had neglected to clean since the day he bought it. Frobisher secretly resented this appropriation of his own parade ground, but recognized that he was powerless to do anything about it.

“The safe was opened.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Quite!” Smith rapped, glancing aside at Frobisher. “It was the work of an expert. Dr. Fu Manchu employs none but experts.”

“Dr. Fu Manchu! Then it wasn’t—”

Smith pulled up right in front of Frobisher, as he sat there behind his desk.

“Well—go on. Whom did you suspect?”

Frobisher twisted a half-smoked cigar between his lips.

“Come to think,1 don’t know.”

“But you do know that when a project with such vast implications nears maturity, big interests become involved. Agents of several governments are watching every move in your dangerous game. And there’s another agent who represents no government, but who acts for a powerful and well organized group.”

“Are you talking about Vickers?” Frobisher growled.

“No. Absurd! This isn’t a commercial group. It’s an organization controlled by Dr. Fu Manchu. In all probability, Dr Fu Manchu was in Craig’s office last night.”

“But—”

“The only other possibility is that the attempt was made by a Soviet spy. Have you reason to suspect any member of your staff?”

“I doubt that any Russian has access to the office.”

“Why a Russian?” Nayland Smith asked. “Men of influence and good standing in other countries have worked for Communism. It offers glittering prizes. Why not a citizen of the United States?”

Frobisher watched him covertly. “True enough.”

“Put me clear on one point. Because a false move, now, might be fatal. You have employed no private investigator?”

“No, sir. Don’t trust my affairs to strangers.”

“Where are Craig’s original plans?”

Michael Frobisher glanced up uneasily.

“In my New York bank.”

In this, Michael Frobisher was slightly misinformed. His wife, presenting an order typed on Huston Electric notepaper and apparently signed by her husband, had withdrawn the plans two days before, on her way from an appointment with Professor Hoffmeyer.

“Complete blueprints—where?”

“Right here in the house.”

“Were they in the safe that was opened the other night?”

“No, sir—they were not.”

“Whoever inspected the plant in the laboratory would be a trained observer. Would it, in your opinion, be possible to reconstruct the equipment after such an examination?”

Michael Frobisher frowned darkly.

“I want you to know that I’m not a physicist,” he answered. “I’m not even an engineer. I’m a man of business. But in my opinion, no—it wouldn’t. He would have had to dismantle it. Craig and Shaw report it hadn’t been touched. Then, without the transmuter, that plant is plain dynamite.”

Nayland Smith crossed and stared out at the woods beyond the window.

“I understand that this instrument—whatever it may be—is already under construction. Only certain valves are lacking. Craig will probably complete his work today. Mr. Frobisher”—he turned, and his glance was hard—”your estate is a lonely one.”

Frobisher’s uneasiness grew. He stood up.

“You think I shouldn’t have had Craig out here, with that work?”

“I think,” said Smith, “that whilst it would be fairly easy to protect the Huston laboratory, now that we know what we’re up against, this house surrounded by sixty acres, largely woodland, is a colt of a different color. By tonight, there will be inflammable material here. Do you realize that if Fu Manchu—or the Kremlin— first sets up a full-scale Craig plant, Fu Manchu—or the Kremlin— will be master of the world?”

“You’re sure, dead sure, that they’re both out to get it?”

Frobisher’s voice was more than usually hoarse.

“I have said so. One of the two has a flying start. I want to see your radar alarm system and I want to inspect your armory. I’m returning to New York. Two inquiries should have given results. One leading to the hideout of Dr. Fu Manchu, the other to the identity of the Soviet agent.”

Camille and Stella Frobisher came in from the garden.

“You know,” Stella was saying, “I believe we have discovered something.”

“All we seem to have discovered,” Camille replied, “is that there are strange gaps in your memory, and strange gaps in mine. The trouble in your case seems to have begun after you consulted Professor Hoffmeyer about your nerves.”

“Yes, dear, it did. You see,1 had been so worried about Mike. I thought he was working too hard. In his way, dear, he’s rather a treasure. Dr. Pardoe, who is a neighbor of ours, suggested, almost playfully, that I consult the professor.”

“And your nerves improved?”

“Enormously. I began to sleep again. But these queer lapses came on. I told him. He reassured me. I’m not at all certain, dear, that we have discovered anything after all. Your lapses began before you had ever seen him.”

“Yes.” Camille was thinking hard. “The trouble doesn’t seem to be with the professor’s treatment, after all. Quite apart from which, I have no idea if I ever consulted him at all.”

“No, dear—I quite understand.” Stella squeezed her hand, sympathetically. “You have no idea how completely I understand.”

They were crossing the library, together, when there came a sudden, tremendous storm of barking. It swept in upon the peace of Falling Waters, a hurricane of sound.

“Whatever is it?” Camille whispered.

As if in answer to her question, Sam entered through open French windows. He had removed his topcoat, his cerise scarf, and his slate-grey hat. He wore the sort of checked suit for which otherwise innocent men have been lynched. He grinned happily at Camille.

“Morning, lady.”

“Good morning, Sam. I didn’t expect to see you.”

“Pleasant surprise, eh? Same with me.” The barking continued; became a tornado. “There’s a guy outside says he’s brought some dogs.”

“Oh!” Stella’s face lighted up. “Now we shall be safe! How splendid. Have they sent all the dogs?”

“Sounds to me like they sent all they had.”

“And a kennelman?”

Stella hadn’t the slightest idea who Sam was, but she accepted his striking presence without hesitation.

“Sure. He’s a busy guy, too.”

“I must go and see them at once!” She put her arm around Camille. “Do come with me, dear!”

Camille smiled at Sam.

“I should love to.”

“The guy is down there by the barbed-wire entanglements.” Sam stood in the window, pointing. “You can’t miss him. He’s right beside a truckload of maybe a couple hundred dogs.”

Camille and Stella hurried out, Stella almost dancing with excitement.

Their voices—particularly Stella’s—were still audible even above the barrage of barking, when Nayland Smith and Michael Frobisher came into the library.

“You have a fair assortment of sporting guns and an automatic or two,” Smith was saying. “But you’re low on ammunition.’

“Do you expect a siege?”

“Not exactly. But I expect developments.”

Nayland Smith crossed to the glazed cabinet and stood before it, pulling at the lobe of his ear. Then he tilted his head sideways, listening.

“Dogs,” he rapped. “Why all the dogs?”

Frobisher met his glance almost apologetically.

“It’s Mrs. F.’s idea. I do try to keep all this bother from her, but she seems to have got onto it. She ordered a damned pack of these German police dogs from some place. There’s a collection of kennels down there like a Kaffir village. She’s had men at work for a week fixing barbed wire. Falling Waters is a prison camp!”

“Not a bad idea. I have known dogs to succeed where men and machines failed. But, tell me”—he pointed to the cabinet—”how does this thing work?”

“Well—it’s simple enough in principle. How it works I don’t know. Ground plan of the property. Anyone moving around, when it’s connected up, marks his trail on the scoreboard.”

“I see.”

“I’m having Craig overhaul it, when he has time. If you’ll step into my study again for just a minute, I’ll get the chart of the layout, which will make the thing more clear.”

Nayland Smith glanced at his wrist-watch.

“I can give you just ten minutes, Mr. Frobisher.”

They returned to Frobisher’s study.

Sunshine poured into the empty library. A beautiful Italian casket, silver studded with semi-precious stones, glowed as though lighted by inner fires, or become transparent. The pure lines of the Discus Thrower were sharply emphasized. Barking receded as the pack was removed to the “Kaffir village” erected at Mrs. Frobisher’s command.

Then Michael Frobisher came back. Crossing to the desk, he sat down and unlocked a drawer. He took out a chart in a folder, a chart which indicated points of contact surrounding the house as well as free zones. He pressed a bell button and waited, glancing about him.

Stein came in and Frobisher turned.

“Take this to Sir Denis in the study. Tell him I’ll be right along in two minutes.”

Stein nodded and went out with the folder.

Frobisher dialed a number, and presently:

“Yes—Frobisher,” he said nervously. “Sir Denis Nayland Smith is here . . . They’re onto us . . . Looks like all that money has been poured down the sewers . . . Huston Electric doesn’t have a chance.

He became silent, listening intently to someone on the other end of the line. His eyes kept darting right and left, furtively. Then: “Got ‘em all here, back of the drawer in this desk,” he said, evidently in reply to a question . . . “That’s none too easy . . . Yes, I’ll have it in my hands by tonight, but . . . All right, give me the times.’

Frobisher pulled an envelope from a rack and picked up a pencil.

“It mayn’t be possible,” he said, writing rapidly. “Remember that . . . Nayland Smith is only one danger—”

He broke off. “Have to hang up. Call you later.”

Stein, standing in the arched opening, was urgently pointing in the direction of the study. Frobisher nodded irritably and passed him on his way to rejoin Nayland Smith.

And, as Stein in turn retired, Sam stepped out from behind that Spanish screen which formed so artistic a background for the big walnut desk.

Without waste of time, he opened the drawer which Frobisher had just closed.

Chewing industriously, he studied the scribbled lines. Apparently they conveyed little or nothing to his mind for he was about to replace the envelope, and no doubt to explore further, when a dull, heavy voice spoke right behind him.

“Put up your hands. I have been watching you.”

Stein had re-entered quite silently, and now had Sam covered by an automatic!

Sam dropped the envelope, and slowly raised his hands.

“Listen!—happen to have a postage stamp? That’s what I was looking for.”

Stein’s reply was to step closer and run his hands expertly over Sam’s person. Having relieved him of a heavy revolver and a flash-lamp, he raised his voice to a hoarse shout:

“Mr. Frobisher! Dr. Craig!”

“Listen. Wait a minute—”

There came the sound of a door thrown open. Michael Frobisher and Nayland Smith ran in. Frobisher’s florid coloring changed a half tone.

“What’s this. Stein? What goes on?”

“This man searches your desk, Mr. Frobisher. I catch him doing it.”

As he spoke, he glanced significantly down at the envelope which Sam had dropped. Nayland Smith saw a look of consternation cross Frobisher’s face, as he stooped, snatched it up, and slipped it into his pocket. But there was plenty of thunder in his voice when he spoke.

“I thought so! I thought so right along!”

“Suppose,” rapped Smith, “we get the facts.”

“The facts are plain! This man”—he pointed a quivering finger at Sam—”was going through my private papers! You took that gun off him?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s he doing armed in my house?” Frobisher roared.

“Part of the mystery is solved, anyway—”

A rataplan of footsteps on the stair heralded Morris Craig, in shirt-sleeves, and carrying his reading glasses. He came bounding down.

“Did I hear someone bawling my number?” he pulled up, considered the group, then stared from face to face. “What the devil’s all this?”

Michael Frobisher turned now empurpled features in his direction.

“It’s what I suspected, Craig. I told you I didn’t like the looks of him. There stands the man who broke into the Huston office last night! There stands the man who broke into this house last week. Caught red-handed!”

Sam had dropped his hands, and now, ignoring Stein, he faced his accuser.

“Listen! Wait a minute! I needed a postage stamp. Any harm needing a postage stamp? I just pull a drawer open, just kind of casual, and look in the first thing I see there—”

Craig brushed his forelock back and stared very hard.

“But, I say, Sam—seriously—can you explain this?”

“Sure. I am explaining it!”

Nayland Smith had become silent, but now:

“Does the envelope happen to contain stamps, Mr. Frobisher?” he jerked.

“No, sir.” Michael Frobisher glared at him. “It doesn’t. That inquiry is beside the point. As I understand you represent law and order in this house, I’m sorry—but will you arrange for the arrest of that man.”

His accusing finger was directed again at Sam.

“I mean to say,” Craig broke in, “I may have missed something. But this certainly seems to me—”

“It’s just plain silly,” said Sam. “People getting so het up.”

Came another rush, of lighter footsteps. Camille and Mrs. Frobisher ran in. They halted, thunderstruck by what they saw.

“Whatever is going on?” Stella demanded.

“Sam!” Camille whispered—and crossing to his side, laid her hand on his shoulder. “What has happened?”

Sam stopped chewing, and patted the encouraging hand. His upraised spectacles were eloquent.

“Thanks for the inquiry,” he said. “I’m in trouble.”

“You are!” Frobisher assured him. “Sir Denis! This is either a common thief or a foreign spy. In either case, I want him jailed.”

Nayland Smith, glancing from Sam to Frobisher, snapped his fingers irritably.

“It is absurd,” said Camille in a quiet voice.

“Listen!” Sam patted her hand again and turned to Smith. “I’m sorry. I took chances. The pot’s on the boil, and I thought maybe Mr. Frobisher, even right now, might be thinking more about Huston Electric than about bigger things. I guess I was wrong. But acted for the best.”

Michael Frobisher made a choking sound, like that of a faulty radiator.

“You see, Mr. Frobisher,” said Nayland Smith, “whatever their faults, your police department is very thorough. James Sampson, an operative of the F.B.I., whom you know as Sam, was placed in the Huston research laboratory by his chief, Raymond Harkness, a long time before I was called in. I regret that this has occurred. But he is working entirely in your interests . . .”

Chapter XVIII

Luncheon at Falling Waters was not an unqualified success. Both in the physical and psychical sense, a shadow overhung the feast.

Promise of the morning had not been fulfilled. Young spring shrank away before returning winter; clouds drew a dull curtain over the happy landscape, blotting out gay skies. And with the arrival of Professor Hoffmeyer, a spiritual chill touched at least two of the company.

Camille experienced terror when the stooped figure appeared. His old-fashioned morning coat, his tinted glasses and black gloves, the ebony stick, rang a loud note of alarm within. But the moment he spoke, her terror left her.

“So this,” said the professor in his guttural German-English, “is the little patient who comes to see me not—ha?”

Camille felt helpless. She could think of nothing to say, for she didn’t know if she had ever seen him before.

“Never mind. Some other time. I shall send you no account.”

Michael Frobisher hated the man on sight. His nerves had remained badly on edge since the incident with Sam. He gave the professor a grip of his powerful fingers calculated to hurt.

“Ach! not so hard! not so hard! These”—Hoffmeyer raised gloved hands—”and these”—touching the dark glasses—”and this”—tapping his ebony stick on the floor—”are proofs that in war men become beasts. I ask you to remember that nails were torn from fingers, and eyes exposed to white heat, in some of those Nazi concentration camps. These things, Mr. Frobisher, could be again . . . While we may, let us be gentle.”

Dr. Pardoe treated the professor in a detached way, avoiding technical topics, and rather conveying that he doubted his ability. But not so Mrs. Pardoe. She unbent to the celebrated consultant in a highly gracious manner. A tall, square woman, who always wore black, the sad and sandy Pardoe was not for her first love. There had been two former husbands. Nobody knew why. There was something ominous about the angular frame. She resembled a draped gallows . . .

Professor Hoffmeyer addressed much of his conversation to Craig; and Mrs. Pardoe hung on his every word.

“You are that Morris Craig,” he said, during luncheon, “who reads a paper on the direction of neutrons, at Oxford, two years ago—ha?”

“The same. Professor. Amazing memory. I am that identical egg in the old shell. Rather stupid paper. Learned better since.”

“Modesty is a poor cloak for a man of genius to wear. Discard it, Dr. Craig. It would make me very happy to believe that your work shall be for the good of humanity. This world of ours is spinning— spinning on, to disaster. We are a ship which nears the rocks, with fools at the prow and fanatics at the helm.”

“But is there no way to prevent such a disaster?” Mrs. Pardoe asked, in a voice which seemed to come from a condemned cell.

“But most certainly. There could be a committee of men of high intelligence. To serve this committee would be a group of the first scientific brains in the world—such as that of Dr. Craig.” For some reason, Camille shuddered at those words. “These would have power to enforce their decisions. If some political maniac threatens to use violence, he will be warned. If he neglects this warning-Professor Hoffmeyer helped himself to more fried oysters offered by Stein.

“You believe, then, there’ll be another war?” grumbled Frobisher.

“How, otherwise, shall enslavement to Communism be avoided—ha?”

“Unless I misunderstood you,” Dr. Pardoe interjected sandily, “your concept of good government approaches very closely to that of an intelligent Communist.”

“An intelligent Communist is an impossibility. We have only to separate the rogues from the fools. Yes, Mr. Frobisher, there is danger of another war—from the same quarter as before. Those subhumans of the German General Staff who escaped justice. Those fellows with the traditions of the stockyard and the mentalities of adding machines. Those ghouls in uniform smell blood again. The Kremlin is feeding them meat.”

“You mean,” Camille asked softly, “that the Soviet Government is employing German ex-officers to prepare another war?”

The secret agent within was stirring. She wondered why this man knew.

“But of course. You are of France, and France has a long memory. Very well. Let France remember. If it shall come another war, those ignorant buffoons will destroy all, including themselves. This would not matter much if selected communities could be immunized. For almost complete destruction of human life on the planet is now a scientific possibility. It is also desirable. But indiscriminate slaughter—no. The new race must start better equipped than Noah.”

When, luncheon over, the professor refused coffee and prepared to take his leave, there was no one present upon whom, in one way or another, he had failed to impress his singular personality. Stella Frobisher flutteringly begged a brief consultation before he left, and was granted one. Mrs. Pardoe made an appointment for the following Friday.

“There is nothing the matter with you,” Professor Hoffmeyer told her, “which your husband cannot cure. But come if you so want. You all eat too much. See to it that you permit not here prohibitions, rationings, coupons. Communism knows no boxing laws. Communism strikes at the stomach, first. To this you could never stand up.”

A car, in charge of a saturnine chauffeur who had declined to lunch in the kitchen, declined a drink, and spent his leisure wandering about the property, awaited him. As the professor was driven away, drops of rain began to patter on the terrace.

* * *

Night crept unnoticed upon Falling Waters.

Rain descended steadily, and a slight, easterly wind stole, eerie, through the trees. Stella did not merely ask, she extended an invitation to Dr. and Mrs. Pardoe to remain to dinner. But Mrs. Pardoe, already enveloped in a cloak like a velvet pall, reminded her husband that a patient was expected at eight-thirty. Stella saw them off.

“Oh, I’m so nervous. It’s getting so dark. I shan’t feel really safe until everything is bolted and barred . . .”

Coming out of her room, later, having changed to a dinner frock so simple that it must have been made in Paris, Camille almost ran into Sam on the corridor.

“Gee, Miss Navarre! You look like something wonderful!”

“That’s very sweet of you, Sam! I had a dreadful shock—yes, truly—when you were discovered today.”

“Sure. Shock to me! Ham performance. Must try to make up for it.”

“Sam—you don’t mind if I still call you Sam?’

“Love it. Sounds better your way.”

“Now I know what you are really doing here,1 can talk to you— well, sensibly. Dr. Craig thinks, and so,1 know, does Sir Denis, that we haven’t only to deal with this dreadful Fu Manchu.” She paused for a moment after speaking the name. “That there is a Soviet agent watching us, too. Have you any ideas about him?”

Sam nodded. He had given up chewing and abandoned his spectacles. Presumably they had been part of a disguise.

“Working on it right now—and I think we’re getting some place.”

“Oh! I’m so glad.”

“Sure. I got a nose for foreign agents. Smell ‘em a mile off.”

“Really?”

“Sure.” He grinned happily. “You look a hundred per cent Caesar. Excuse my bad spelling!”

He went off along the corridor.

When Camille came down, she found Michael Frobisher busily bolting and barring the French windows.

“Mrs. F.’s got the jumps tonight,” he explained. “I have to fix all the catches, myself, to reassure her. Just making the rounds.” He gave Camille an admiring smile. “Hope all today’s hokum, and the alarm back at the office, hasn’t upset you?”

“It’s kind of you, Mr. Frobisher, but although, naturally,1 am disturbed about it, all the same I am most happy to be here.”

“Good girl. Craig has finished his job, and the new diagram and notes are in my safe. That’s where they stay. They are the property of Huston Electric, and the property of nobody else!”

As he went out, Morris Craig came downstairs, slim and boyish in his tuxedo. Without a word, he took Camille in his arms.

“Darling! I thought we were never going to be alone again!”

When he released her:

“Are you sure, Morris?” she whispered.

“Sure? Sure of what?”

“Sure that you really meant all you said last night?”

He answered her silently, and at great length.

“Camille! I only wish—”

“Yes?”

“Camille”—he lingered over her name—”I adore you. But I wish you weren’t going to stay here tonight—”

“What? Whatever do you mean?”

She leaned back from him. Her eyes suddenly seemed to become of a darker shade of blue.

“I mean that, at last, it has dawned on this defective brain of mine that I have done something which may upset the world again—that other people know about it—that almost anything may happen.”

“But Morris—surely nothing can happen here?”

“Can’t it? Why is old Frobisher in such a panic? Why all the dogs and the burglar alarms? The devil of it is, we don’t know our enemies. There might be a Russian spy hiding out there in the shrubbery. There might be a British agent—not that that would bother me—somewhere in this very house.”

“Yes,” said Camille quietly. “I suppose there might be.”

“Above all,” Craig went on presently, “there’s this really frightful menace—Dr. Fu Manchu. Smith is more scared of him than of all the others rolled into a bundle.”

“So am I . . . Listen for a moment, Morris. Sometimes I think I have seen him in a dream. Oh! It sounds ridiculous, and I can’t quite explain what I mean. But I have a vague impression of a tall, gaunt figure in a yellow robe, with most wonderful hands, long finger-nails, and”—she paused momentarily—”most dreadful eyes. Something, today, brought the impression back to my mind—just as Professor Hoffmeyer came in.”

Craig gently stroked her hair. He knew it would be a penal offense to disarrange it.

“Don’t get jumpy again, darling. I gather that, in one of your fey moods, you wandered the highways and byways of Manhattan last night instead of keeping your date with the professor. But, certainly, the old lad is a rather alarming personality—although he bears no resemblance to your yellow-robed mandarin. I’m sorry for him, and, of course, his Germanic discourse simply sparkles. But—”

“I didn’t mean that the professor reminded me of the man I had dreamed about. It was—something different.”

“Whatever it was, forget it.” He held her very close; he whispered in her ear: “Camille! The moment we get back to New York, will you marry me?”

But Camille shrank away. The dark eyes looked startled—almost panic-stricken.

“Morris! Morris! No! No!”

He dropped his arms, stared at her. He felt that he had grown pale.

“No? Do you mean it?”

“I mean—oh, Morris,1 don’t quite know what I mean! Perhaps— that you startled me.”

“How did I startle you?” he asked on a level, calm note.

“You—know so little about me.”

“I know enough to know I love you.”

“I should be very, very happy for us to go on—as we are. But, marriage—”

“What’s wrong with marriage?”

Camille turned aside. A shaded lamp transformed her hair, where it swept down over her neck, to a torrent of molten copper. Craig put his hands hesitantly on her shoulders, and turned her about. He looked steadily into her eyes.

“Camille—you’re not trying to tell me, by any chance, that you’re married already?”

“A door banged upstairs. Stella’s voice was heard.

“And do make quite sure, Stein—quite sure—that there isn’t a window open.” She appeared at the stairhead. “Even with everything locked, and the dogs loose,1 know I shall never sleep a wink.” She saw Camille below. “Shall you, dear?”

“I’m not at all sure that I shall,” Camille smiled. “Except that I can see no reason why anything should happen tonight more than any other.”

“I must really get Stein to draw those curtains,” Stella declared. “I keep on imagining eyes looking in out of the darkness. And now, for goodness sake, let’s all have a drink.”

Stein had wheeled in trays of refreshments some time earlier, but had been called away by Mrs. Frobisher in order to bolt a trap leading to a loft over the house.

“May I help?” Camille asked.

And presently they were surrounding the mobile buffet.

Michael Frobisher joined them.

“If you take my advice, my dear,” he said to Stella, “you and Miss Navarre will have a good stiff one each after dinner, and turn in early. Think no more about it. Agree with me, Craig?”

Morris Craig stopped looking at Camille long enough to reply:

“Quite. But, if I may say so, somebody should more or less hang about to keep an eye on this thing.” He indicated the cabinet above the bookcase. “I have looked over the works and pass same as okay. By the way, Mrs. Frobisher, will the wolf pack be at large tonight?”

“Of course!” Stella assured him. “1 have given explicit instructions to the man. Such a gentle character.”

“I was wondering,” Craig went on, “if the dogs mightn’t set the gadget going?”

“Oh,1 don’t think so. They have a track of their own. Right around the place—if you see what I mean.”

“Yes. I have observed the same—from without. Certain hounds of threatening aspect were roaming around within.”

“If you remember the layout I showed you,” said Frobisher, “showed Nayland Smith, too, there are three gates which would register here”—he crossed and rested a finger on the plan—”if they were opened. Whoever opened one would have Mrs. F.’s dogs on him,1 guess. But the dogs can’t reach the house.”

“Most blessed dispensation,” Craig murmured to him, “AIthough I confess the brutes are rather a comfort, with Dr. Fu Manchu and a set of thugs, plus the Soviet agent assisted by sundry moujiks and other comrades, lined up outside.”

Camille was watching Craig in an almost pleading way. Frobisher took his arm, and growled in his ear:

“We’ll split up into watches when the women turn in. As you say, somebody ought to be on the lookout right along tonight. Stein can stand watch until twelve. Then I’ll take over—”

“No,” said Craig firmly, and caught Camille’s glance. “I am a party to this disorder, and I’m going to do my bit. After all, I’m accustomed to late hours . . .”

* * *

Manhattan danced on, perhaps a slightly more hectic dance, for this was Saturday night, and Saturday night is Broadway night. Rain, although still falling farther north, had ceased in the city. But a tent of sepia cloud stretched over New York, so that eternal fires, burning before the altars of those gods whose temples line the Street of a Million Lights, cast their glow up onto this sepia canopy and it was cast down again, as if rejected.

Two bored police officers smoked and played crap in Morris Craig’s office on top of the Huston Building. And behind the steel door, in an atmosphere vibrant with repressed energy, Martin Shaw worked calmly, and skillfully, to complete the instrument known as a transmuter. The gods of Broadway were false gods. The god enshrined behind the steel door was a god of power.

But the two policemen went on playing craps.

Chinatown was busy, also. Country innocents gaped at the Chinese facades, the Chinese signs, and felt that they were seeing sights worth coming to Babylon-on-Hudson to see. Town innocents, impressing their girls friends, ate Chinese food in the restaurants and pretended to know as much about it as Walter Winchell knows about everything.

Mat Cha had just ceased to sing in an apartment near the shop of Huan Tsung. Lao Tai had put his last message in the little cupboard.

And upstairs, Huan Tsung reclined against cushions, his eyes closed. The head of Dr. Fu Manchu looked out from the crystal. It might have reminded an Egyptologist of the majestic, embalmed head of Seti, that Pharaoh whose body lies in a Cairo museum.

“To destroy the plant alone is useless, Huan Tsung,” came in coldly sibilant words. “I have dealt with this. Otherwise, I should not have risked a personal visit to the laboratory. I sprayed the essential elements with F.S05. The action is deferred. No—it is necessary also to destroy the inventor—or to transfer him to other employment.”

“This may be difficult,” murmured Huan Tsung. “Time is the enemy of human perfection. Excellency.”

“We shall see. Craig’s original drawings were obtained for me by Mrs. Frobisher. Only two blueprints of the transmuter exist. One is in the hands of the chief technician, who is working from it. The other is with a complete set in possession of Michael Frobisher. Drawings of the valves alone remain to be accounted for.”

“But Excellency informs me that they, too, are finished.”

“They are finished. Give me the latest reports. I will then give you final instructions.”

“I shall summarize. Excellency’s personal possessions have been removed from the Woolton Building as ordered. They are already shipped. Raymond Harkness has posted federal agents at all points covering Falling Waters—except one; the path through the woods from the highway remains open. Lao Tai will proceed to this point at the time selected. But the dogs—”

“I have provided for the dogs. Continue.”

“Provision noted. It is believed but not confirmed that the Kremlin, recognizing the actual plant no longer to be available, hopes to obtain the set of blueprints and the final drawings from Falling Waters before it is too late.”

“Upon what does this belief rest?”

“Upon the fact. Excellency, that Sokolov has ordered his car to be ready at ten o’clock tonight—and is taking a bodyguard.”

So long a silence followed that Huan Tsung raised his wrinkled lids and looked at the crystal.

The eyes of Dr. Fu Manchu were filmed over, a phenomenon with which Huan Tsung was familiar. The brilliant brain encased in that high, massive skull, was concentrated on a problem. When the film cleared, a decision would have been made. And, as he watched, in a flash the long, narrow eyes became emerald-bright.

“Use the Russian party as a diversion, Huan Tsung. No contact must be made. Koenig has acquainted himself with the zones controlled by the alarm system, and M’goyna is already placed and fully instructed. Mrs. Frobisher has her instructions, also. Use all your resources. This is an emergency. At any moment, now, Nay land Smith will have the evidence he is seeking. Win or lose, I must leave New York before daybreak. Proceed . . .”

Chapter XIX

Morris Craig sat smoking in a deep leathern armchair. The darkened library seemed almost uncannily silent. Rain had ceased. But dimly he could hear water dripping on the terrace outside.

It was at about this moment that the two crap players in his office were jerked violently out of their complacent boredom.

Three muffled crashes in the laboratory brought them swiftly to their feet. There came a loud cry—a cry of terror. Another crash. The steel door burst open, and Martin Shaw, white as a dead man, tottered down the steps!

They ran to him. He collapsed on the sofa, feebly waving them away. A series of rending, tearing sounds was followed by a cloud of nearly vaporous dust which came pouring out of the laboratory in grey waves.

“Stand back!”

“We must close the door!”

One of the men raced up, and managed to close the door. He came down again, suffocating, fighting for breath. A crash louder than any before shook the office.

“What is it?” gasped the choking man. “Is there going to be an explosion? For God’s sake”—he clutched his throat—”what’s happening?”

“Disintegration,” muttered Shaw wildly. “Disintegration. The plant is crumbling to . . . powder.”

Pandemonium in the Huston Building. Fruits of long labor falling from the branches. A god of power reduced to a god of clay. But not a sound to disturb the silence of Falling Waters; a silence awesome, a silence in which many mysteries lay hidden. Yet it was at least conducive to thought.

And Morris Craig had many things to think about He would have more before the night ended.

In the first place, he couldn’t understand why Michael Frobisher had been so damnably terse when he had insisted on standing the twelve to four watch. At four, Sam was taking over. Sam had backed him up in this arrangement. Craig had had one or two things to say, privately, to Sam, concerning the deception practiced on him; and would have others to mention to Nayland Smith, when he saw Smith again. But Sam, personally, was a sound enough egg.

So Morris Craig mused, in the silent library.

What was that?

He stood up, and remained standing, motionless, intent.

Dimly he had heard, or thought he had heard, the sound of a hollow cough.

He experienced that impression, common to all or most of us, that an identical incident had happened to him before. But when— where?

There was no repetition of the cough—no sound; yet a sense of furtive movement. Guiding himself by a sparing use of a flashlamp, he crossed to the foot of the stair. He shone a beam upward.

“Is that you, Camille?” he called softly

There was no reply. Craig returned to his chair . . .

What was old Frobisher up to, exactly? Why had he so completely lost his balance about the envelope business? Of course, Stein had dramatized it absurdly. Queer fish, Stein. Not a fellow he, personally, could ever take to. Barbarous accent. Clearly, it had forced Nayland Smith’s hand. But what had Smith’s idea been? Was there someone in the household he didn’t trust? . . . Probably Stein.

No doubt the true explanation lay in the fact that Frobisher, having sunk well over half a million dollars in his invention, now saw it slipping through his fingers. It might not be the sort of thing to trust to development by a commercial corporation, but still—rough luck for Frobisher . . .

Then Craig was up again

This time, that hollow cough seemed to come from the front of the house.

He dropped his cigarette and went over to the arched opening which gave access to Frobisher’s study, and, beyond, to the cedar-wood dining room. He directed a light along a dark passage. It was empty. He crossed the library again and opened a door on the other side. There was no one there.

Was he imagining things?

This frame of mind was entirely due to the existence of a shadowy horror known as Dr. Fu Manchu. He didn’t give a hoot for the Soviet agent, whom- or whatever he might be. Nobody took those fellows seriously. The British agent he discounted entirely. If there had been one, Smith would have known him.

The idea of watching in the dark had been Sam’s. As an F.B.I. operative, he had carried the point. Naturally enough, he wanted to get his man. It was a ghostly game, nevertheless. That drip-drip-drip of water outside was getting on Craig’s nerves.

Incidentally, where was Sam? Unlikely that he had turned in.

But, above all, where was Camille? There had been no chance to make it definite; but he had read the message in her eyes as she went upstairs with Stella Frobisher to mean, “I shall come down again.”

Frobisher had retired shortly after the women. “I’m going to sleep—and the hell with it all!”

A faint rustling sound on the stairs—and Craig was up as if on springs.

The ray of his lamp shone on Camille, a dressing gown worn over a night robe that he didn’t permit himself to look at. Her bare ankles gleamed like ivory.

“Camille!—darling! At last!”

He trembled as he took her in his arms. She was so softly alluring. He released her and led her to the deep leathern settee, forcing a light note, as he extinguished the lamp.

“Forgive the blackout. Captain’s orders.”

“I know,” she whispered.

He found her hand in his, and kissed her fingers silently. Then, as a mask for his excited emotions:

“I have a bone to pick with you,” he said in his most flippant manner. “What did you mean by turning down my offer to make an honest woman of you? Explain this to me, briefly, and in well-chosen words.”

Camille crept closer to him in the dark.

“I mean to explain.” Her soft voice was unsteady. “I came to explain to you—now.”

He longed to put his arms around her. But some queer sense of restraint checked him.

“I’m waiting, darling.”

“You may not know—I don’t believe you do, even yet— that for a long time, ever so long”—how he loved the Gallic intonations which came when she was deeply moved!—”your work has been watched. At least, you know now, when it is finished, that they will—stick at nothing.”

“Who are ‘they’? You mean the Kremlin and Dr. Fu Manchu?”

“Yes. These are the only two you have to be afraid of . . . But there is also a—British agent.”

“Doubtful about that, myself. How d’you know there’s a British agent?”

“Because I am the British agent.”

There were some tense moments, during which neither spoke. It might almost have seemed that neither breathed. They sat there, side by side, in darkness, each wondering what the other was thinking. Drip-drip-drip went the rainwater . . . Then Craig directed the light of his lamp onto Camille’s face. She turned swiftly away, raised her hands:

“Don’t! Don’t!”

“Camille!” Craig switched the light off . . . “Good God!”

“Don’t look at me!” Camille went on. “I don’t want you to see me! I had made up my mind to tell you tonight, and I am going to be quite honest about it. I didn’t think, and I don’t think now, that the work I undertook was wrong. Although, of course, when I started, I had never met you.”

Craig said nothing . . .

“If I have been disloyal to anyone, it is to Mr. Frobisher. For you must realize, Morris, the dreadful use which could be made of such a thing. You must realize that it might wreck the world. No government could be blind to that.”

Subtly, in the darkness, Morris Craig had drawn nearer. Now, suddenly, he had his arm around her shoulders.

“No, Morris! Don’t! Don’t! Not until I have told you everything.” He felt her grow suddenly rigid. “What was that?”

It was the sound of a hollow cough, in the distance.

Craig sprang up.

“I don’t know. But I have heard it before. Is it inside the house, or out?”

Switching on the lamp, he ran in turn to each of the doors, and stood listening. But Falling Waters remained still. Then he directed the light onto Camille—and away again, quickly. In a moment he was beside her.

“Morris!”

“Let me say something,,

“But, Morris, do you truly understand that I have been reporting your work, step by step, to the best of my ability? Because I never quite understood it. I have been spying on you, all through . . . At last, I couldn’t bear it any longer. When Sir Denis came on the scene, 1 thought I was justified in asking for my release . . .”

Morris’s kiss silenced her. She clung to him, trembling. Her heart fluttered like a captive bird released, and at last:

“You see now, Morris, why I felt it was well enough for us to be— lovers. But how could I marry you, when—”

“You were milking my brains?” he whispered in her ear. But it was a gay whisper. “You little redheaded devil! This gives me another bone to pick with Smith. Why didn’t he tell me?”

“I was afraid he would! Then I remembered he couldn’t . . . Morris! I shall be all bruises! There are traditions in the Secret Service.”

At which moment, amid a subdued buzzing sound like that of a fly trapped in a glass, the cabinet over the bookcase came to life!

Camille grasped Craig’s hand as he leapt upright, and clung to it obstinately. A rectangle in the library darkness, every detail of the grounds surrounding Falling Waters showed as if touched with phosphorescence.

“We’re off!” Craig muttered. “Look!”

A shadow moved slowly across the chart.

“That’s the back porch!” Camille whispered. “Someone right outside.”

“Don’t panic, darling. Wait.”

The faint shadow moved on to where a door was marked. It stopped. The buzzing ceased. The chart faded.

“Someone came into the kitchen!”

“Run back and hide on the stair.”

“But—”

“Please do as I say, Camille.”

Camille released his hand, and he stood, automatic ready, facing that doorway which led to the back premises.

He saw nothing. But he was aware that the door had been opened. Then:

“Don’t shoot me, Craig,” rapped a familiar voice, “and don’t make a sound.”

A flashlamp momentarily lighted the library. Nayland Smith stood there watching him—hatless, the fur collar of his old trench coat turned up about his ears. Then Smith’s gaze flickered for a second. There came a faint rustling from the direction of the stairs— and silence.

Sam appeared just behind Smith. The lamp was switched off.

“Smith!—How did you get in?”

“Not so loud. I have been standing by outside for some time.”

“I let him in, doc,” Sam explained.

“There’s some kind of thing slinking around out there,” Nayland Smith went on, an odd note in his voice, “which isn’t human—”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Just that. It isn’t a baboon, and it isn’t a man. Normally, I should form a party and hunt it down. I have a strong suspicion it is some specimen out of Fu Manchu’s museum of horrors. But”—Craig, dimly, could hear Smith moving in the dark—”just shine a light onto this.”

Craig snapped his lamp up. Nayland Smith stood right beside him, holding out an enlargement of a snapshot. Sam stood at Smith’s elbow. Upstairs, a door closed softly.

The picture was that of a stout, bearded man crowned with a mane of white hair; he had small, round, inquisitive eyes.

“Lights out,” Smith directed. “I waited at police headquarters for that to arrive. Recognize him?”

“Never saw him in my life.”

“Correct. Following his release from a Nazi prison camp, he disappeared. I think I know where he went. But it’s of no immediate importance. That is the once celebrated Viennese psychiatrist, Doctor Carl Hoffmeyer!”

“What do you say?”

“Smart, ain’t it?” Sam murmured.

“The man New York knew as Professor Hoffmeyer was Dr. Fu ManchuV

“Good God! But he was here today!”

“I know. A great commander must be prepared to take all the risks he imposes on others.”

“But he speaks English with a heavy German accent! And—”

“Dr. Fu Manchu speaks every civilized language with perfect facility—with or without an accent! Lacking this evidence, I could do nothing. But I made one big mistake—”

“We all made it,” said Sam. “You’re no more to blame than the rest.”

“Thanks,” rapped Smith. “But the blame is mine. I had the Hoffmeyer clinic covered, and I thought he was trapped.”

“Well?” Craig asked eagerly

“He didn’t go back there!”

“Listen!” Sam broke in again. “We had three good men on his tail, but he tricked ‘em!”

There was something increasingly eerie about this conversation in the dark.

“The clinic remains untouched,” Nayland Smith continued. “But Fu Manchu’s private quarters, which patients never saw, have been stripped. Police raided hours ago.”

“Then where has he gone?”

“I don’t know.” Nayland Smith’s voice had a groan in it.

“But all that remains for him to do, in order to complete his work, is here, in this house!”

“Shouldn’t we rouse up Frobisher?” Craig asked excitedly

“No. There are certain things—I don’t want Mr. Frobisher to know yet.”

“Such as, for instance?”

“Such as—this is going to hit you where it hurts—that your entire plant in the Huston laboratory was destroyed tonight—”

“What!”

“Quiet, man!” Nayland Smith grasped Craig’s arm in the darkness. “I warned you it would hurt. The Fire Department has the job in hand. It isn’t their proper province. The thing is just crumbling away, breaking like chocolate. Last report to reach the radio car, that huge telescope affair—I don’t know it’s name—has crashed onto the floor.”

“But, Smith! . . .”

“I know. It’s bad.”

“Thank heaven! My original plans are safe in a New York City bank vault!”

Silence fell again, broken only by a dry cough from Sam, until:

“They are not,” Nayland Smith said evenly. “They were taken out two days ago.”

“Taken out? By whom?”

“In person, by Mrs. Frobisher. In fact, by Dr. Fu Manchu. Frobisher doesn’t know—but the only records of your invention which remain, Craig, are the blueprints hidden somewhere in this house!”

“They were in back of the desk there,” Sam mumbled. “But they’ve vanished.”

“You’re not suggesting”—Craig heard the note of horrified incredulity in his own voice—”that Mrs. Frobisher—”

“Mrs. Frobisher,” said Nayland Smith, “is as innocent in this matter as Miss Navarre. But—we are dealing with Dr. Fu Manchu!”

“Why are we staying in the dark? What happens next?”

“What happens next I don’t know. We are staying in the dark because a man called Dimitri Sokolov, a Soviet official in whom Ray Harkness is interested, has a crew of armed thugs down by the lower gate . . . Sokolov seems to be expecting someone.”

Chapter XX

In the stillness which followed, Morris Craig tried, despairfully, to get used to the idea that the product of months, many weary months, of unremitting labor, had been wiped out . . . How? By whom? He felt stunned. Could it be that Shaw, in a moment of madness, had attempted a test?

“Is poor old Shaw—-” he began.

“Shaw is safe,” Smith interrupted. “But badly shaken. He has no idea what occurred. Quite unable to account for it—as I am unable to account for what’s going on here. I’m not referring to the presence of someone, or some thing, stalking just outside the area controlled by the alarms, but to a thing that isn’t stalking.”

“What?” Sam asked.

“The pack of dogs! Listen. Not a sound—but the drip of water. What has become of the dogs?”

“Gee!” Sam muttered. “I keep thinking how dead quiet everything is outside, and kind of wondering why I expect it to be different. Funny I never came to it there was no dogs!”

They all stood motionless for a few moments. That ceaseless drip-drip-drip alone broke the silence of Falling Waters—a haunting signature tune.

“Where is this kennelman quartered?” Nayland Smith asked jerkily.

He was unable to hide the fact that his nerves were strung to concert-violin pitch.

“Middle gate-cottage,” came promptly from Sam. “I’ll go call him. Name of Kelly. I can get the extension from out here.”

“Speak quietly,” Smith warned. “Order him to loose the dogs.”

Sam’s flashlamp operated for a moment. It cast fantastic moving shadows on the library walls, showed Nayland Smith gaunt, tense; painted Craig’s pale face as a mask of tragedy. Then—Sam was gone.

Craig could hear Nayland Smith moving, restless, in darkness. Obscurely Sam’s mumbling reached them. He had left the communicating doors open . . . Then, before words which might have relieved the tension came to either, the alarm cabinet glowed into greenish-blue life, muted buzzing began.

“What’s this?”

A shadow moved across the plan. It was followed by a second shadow.

“Someone crossing the tennis court!” Craig’s voice sounded hushed, unfamiliar. “Running!”

“Someone hot on his heels!”

“Into the rose garden now!”

“Second shadow gaining! First shadow doubling back!”

“That’s the path through the apple orchard. Leads to a stile on the lane—”

“But,” said Nayland Smith, “if my memory serves me, the dog track crosses before the stile?”

“Yes. One of the gates in the wire is there.”

And, as Craig spoke, came a remote baying.

The dogs were out.

“Listen.” Sam had joined them . . . “Say! What’s this?”

“Action!” rapped Smith. “Was Kelly awake?”

“Sure. But listen. Mrs. Frobisher called him some time tonight, and ordered him to see the dogs weren’t loosed! Can you beat it? But wait a minute. Mr. Frobisher gives him the same order half an hour earlier! . . . Oh, hell! Did you hear that?”

“He’s through the gate,” said Nayland Smith . . .

The first shadow showed on the chart at a point where a gate in the wire was marked. The second shadow moved swiftly back. A dim blur swept along the track. Baying increased in volume . . . A shot—a second. And then came a frenzied scream, all the more appalling because muted by distance.

“Merciful God!” Craig whispered. “The dogs have got him!

Nayland Smith already had the french windows open. A sting of damp, cold air pierced the library. There came another, faint scream. Baying merged into a dreadful growling . . .

“Lights!” Smith cried. “Where’s the man. Stein?”

As Sam switched the lights up. Stein was revealed standing in the arched opening which led to Michael Frobisher’s study. He was fully dressed, and chalky white.

“Here I am, sir.”

A sound of faraway shouting became audible. Stella Frobisher ran out onto the stairhead, a robe thrown over her nightdress.

“Please—oh, please tell me what has happened? That ghastly screaming! And where is Mike?”

She had begun to come down, when Camille appeared behind her. Camille had changed and wore a tweed suit.

“Mrs. Frobisher!” Craig looked up. “Isn’t the chief in his room?”

“No, he isn’t!”

Camille’s arm was around Stella’s shoulders now.

“Don’t go down, Mrs. Frobisher. Let’s go back. I think it would be better if you dressed.”

She spoke calmly. Camille had lived through other crises.

“Miss Navarre!” Nayland Smith called sharply.

“Yes, Sir Denis?”

“Go with Mrs. Frobisher to her room, and both of you stay there with the door locked. Understand?”

Camille hesitated for a moment, then: “Yes, Sir Denis,” she answered. “Please come along, Mrs. Frobisher.”

“But I want to know where Mike is—”

Her voice faded away, as Camille very gently steered her back to her room.

Nayland Smith faced Stein.

“Mr. Frobisher is not in his study?”

“No, sir.”

“How do you know?”

“I do not retire tonight. I am anxious. Just now, I am in there to look.”

“Was the window open?”

Stein’s crushed features became blank.

“Was the window open?” Nayland Smith repeated harshly.

“Yes. I closed it.”

“Come on, Craig! Sampson—follow!”

“Okay,chief.”

Craig and Nayland Smith ran out, Sam behind them.

Stein stood by the opening, and listened. Somewhere out in the misty night, an automatic spat angrily. There was a dim background of barking dogs, shouting men. He turned, in swift decision, and went back through that doorway which led to the kitchen quarters.

He took up the phone there, dialled a number, waited, and then began to speak rapidly—but not in English. He spoke in a language which evidently enlarged his vocabulary. His pallid features twitched as he poured out a torrent of passionate words . . .

Something hard was jammed into the ribs of his stocky body.

“Drop that phone, Feodor Stenovicz. I have a gun in your back and your family history in my pocket. Too late to tip off Sokolov. He’s in the bag. Put your hands right behind you. No, not up— behind!”

Stein dropped the receiver and put his hands back. There was sweat on his low forehead. Steel cuffs were snapped over his wrists.

“Now that’s settled, we can get together.”

Stein turned—and looked into the barrel of a heavy-calibre revolver which Sam favored. Sam’s grinning face was somewhere behind it, in a red cloud.

“Suppose,” Sam suggested, “we step into your room and sample some more of the boss’s bourbon? What you gave me this morning tasted good.”

They had gone when Camille came running along the corridor to the stairhead. And there was no one in the library.

“Please stay where you are.” she called back. “I will find out.”

A muffled cry came from Stella Frobisher: “Open the door! I can’t stay here’.”

Camille raced downstairs, wilfully deaf to a wild beating on wood panels.

“Let me 01^!”

But Camille ran on to the open windows.

“Morris! Morris! Where are you?”

She stood there clutching the wet frame, peering into chilly darkness. Cries reached her—the vicious yap of a revolver —the barking of dogs.

“Morris!”

She ran out onto the terrace. A long way off she could see moving lights.

Camille had already disappeared when Sam entered the library, having locked Stein in the wine cellar. Switching on his flash, he began hurrying in the direction of that distant melee.

* * *

The library remained empty for some time. With the exception of Stein, all the servants slept out. So that despairing calls of “Unlock the door, Mike! Mike!” won no response. And presently they ceased.

Then, subdued voices and a shuffling of feet on wet gravel heralded the entrance of an ominous cortege. Upon an extemporized stretcher carried by a half-dressed gardener and Kelly, the grizzled kennelman, Michael Frobisher was brought in. Sam came first, to hold the windows wide and to allow of its entrance. Nayland Smith followed. There were other men outside, but they remained there.

“Get a doctor,” Smith directed. “He’s in a bad way.”

They lifted Frobisher onto the settee. He still wore his dinner clothes, but they were torn to tatters. His face and his hands were bloody, his complexion was greyish-purple. He groaned and opened his eyes when they laid him down. But he seemed to be no more than semi-conscious, and almost immediately relapsed.

Kelly went out again, with the empty stretcher. A murmur of voices met him.

“I know Dr. Pardoe’s number,” said the gardener, a youthful veteran whose frightened blond hair had never lain down since the Normandy landing. “Shall I call him?”

His voice quavered.

“Yes,” rapped Smith. “Tell him it’s urgent.”

As the man hurried away to the phone in the back premises:

“Nothing on him?” Sam asked.

“Not a thing! Yet he was alone—with the dogs. God help him! I believe he was running for his life. Perhaps from that monstrosity I had a glimpse of when I first arrived.”

“That’s when he lost the plans!” said Sam excitedly. “He must have broken away from—whatever it was, and tried to cross the track. Lord knows what was after him, but I guess he was crazy with fright. Anyway, he figured the dogs were locked up—”

“When, in fact, they were right on top of him! Failing Kelly’s arrival, I could have done nothing. Rouse somebody up. Get hot water, lint, iodine. Rush.”

As Sam ran to obey, Raymond Harkness stepped in through the open window. He wore a blue rainproof, a striped muffler, and a brown hat. He was peeling off a pair of light suede gloves. He looked like an accountant who had called to advise winding up the company.

“It’s not clear to me. Sir Denis, just what happened out there tonight—I mean what happened to Frobisher.”

“You can see what happened to him!” said Smith drily.

“Yes—but how? Sokolov was waiting to meet him, but he never got there—”

“Somebody else met him first!”

“Sokolov’s thugs made the mistake of opening fire on our party.” Harkness put his gloves in his pockets.

“Otherwise I’m not sure we should have had anything on Sokolov—”

The wounded man groaned, momentarily opened his eyes, clenched his injured hands. He had heard the sound of someone beating on a door, heard Stella’s moaning cry:

“Let me out! Mike!”

“Don’t,” Frobisher whispered . . . “allow her . . . to see me.”

As if galvanized, Nayland Smith turned, exchanged a glance with Harkness, and went racing upstairs.

“Mrs. Frobisher!” he called. “Mrs. Frobisher—where are you?”

“I’m hereV came pitifully.

Smith found the locked door. The key was in the lock! He turned it, and threw the door open.

Stella Frobisher, on the verge of nervous collapse, crouched on a chair, just inside.

“Mrs. Frobisher! What does this mean?”

“She—Camille—locked me in! Oh, for heaven’s sake, tell me: What has happened?”

“Hang on to yourself, Mrs. Frobisher. It’s bad, but might be worse. Please stay where you are for a few minutes longer. Then I am going to ask you to lend us a hand. Will you promise? It’s for the good of everybody.”

“Oh, must I? If you say so, I suppose—”

“Just for another five minutes.”

Smith ran out again, and down to the library. His face was drawn, haggard. In the battle to save Frobisher from the dogs, with the added distraction of a fracas between F.B.I, men and Sokolov’s bodyguard at the lower gate, he had lost sight of Craig! Camille he had never seen, had never suspected that she would leave Mrs. Frobisher’s room. Standing at the foot of the stair:

“Harkness,” he said. “Send out a general alert. Dr. Fu Manchu not only has the plans. He has Camille Navarre and the inventor, also . . .”

* * *

The police car raced towards New York, casting a sword of light far ahead. Against its white glare, the driver and a man beside him, his outline distorted by the radio headpiece, were silhouettes which reminded Nayland Smith of figures of two Egyptian effigies. The glass partition cut them off completely from those in the rear. It was a special control car, normally sacred to the deputy commissioner . . .

“We know many things when it’s too late,” Nayland Smith answered. “I knew, when I got back tonight, that Michael Frobisher was an agent of the Soviet, knew the Kremlin had backed those experiments. I knew Sokolov was waiting for him.

His crisp voice trailed off into silence.

Visibility in the rear was poor. So dense had the fog become, created by Smith’s pipe, that Harkness experienced a certain difficulty in breathing. Motorcycle patrolmen passed and repassed, examining occupants of all vehicles on the road.

“That broken-down truck wasn’t reported earlier,” Harkness went on, “because it stood so far away from any gate to Falling Waters. What’s more, it hadn’t been there long.”

“But the path through the woods has been there since Indian times,” Smith rapped. “And the truck was drawn up right at the point where it reaches a highway. How did your team come to overlook such an approach?”

“I don’t know,” Harkness admitted. “It seems Frobisher didn’t think it likely to be used, either. It doesn’t figure in the alarm plan.”

“But it figured in Fu Manchu’s plan! We don’t know—and we’re never likely to know—the strength of the party operating from that truck. But those who actually approached the house stuck closely to neutral zones! His visit today—a piece of dazzling audacity—wasn’t wasted.”

Traffic was sparse at that hour. Points far ahead had been notified. Even now, hope was not lost that the truck might be intercepted. Both men were thinking about this. Nayland Smith first put doubt into words.

“A side road, Harkness,” he said suddenly. “Another car waiting. Huan Tsung is the doctor’s chief of staff—or used to be, formerly. He’s a first-class tactician. One of the finest soldiers of the old regime.”

“I wish we could pin something on him.”

“I doubt if you ever will. He has courage and cunning second only to those of his distinguished chief.”

“There’s that impudent young liar who sits in the shop, too. And I have reports of a pretty girl of similar type who’s been seen around there.”

“Probably Huan Tsung’s children.

“His children’.” Even the gently spoken Harkness was surprised into vehemence. “But—how old is he?”

“Nearing eighty-five, I should judge. But the fecundity of a Chinese aristocrat is proverbial . . . Hullo! what’s this?”

The radio operator had buzzed to come through.

“Yes?” said Harkness.

“Headquarters, sir. I think it may be important.”

“What is it?” Nayland Smith asked rapidly

“Well, sir, it comes from a point on the East River. A young officer from a ship tied up there seems to have been saying good night to a girl, by some deserted building. They heard tapping from inside a metal pipe on the wall, right where they stood. He spotted it was Morse—”

“Yes, yes—the message?”

“The message—it’s just reached headquarters—says:’]. ]. Regan here. Call police . . .’ There’s a party setting out right now—”

“Regan? Regan? Recall them!” snapped Smith. “Quickly!”

Startled, the man gave the order, and then looked back. “Well, sir?”

“The place to be covered, but by men who know their job. Anyone who comes out to be kept in view. Anyone going in to be allowed to do so. No suspicion must be aroused.”

The second order was given.

“Anything more?”

“No.” Nayland Smith was staring right ahead along the beam of light. “I am trying to imagine, Harkness, how many times the poor devil may have tapped out that message . . .”

Chapter XXI

Camille’s impressions of the sortie from the house were brief, but terrifying.

That tragedy, swift, mysterious, had swept down on Falling Waters, she had known even before she ran from her room to prevent Stella Frobisher going downstairs. The arrival of Nayland Smith had struck a note of urgency absent before. Up to this moment, she had counted her confession to Morris the supreme ordeal which she must brave that night.

But, when she returned upstairs (and she knew Sir Denis had seen her), apprehension grew. She had dressed quickly. She realized that something was going to happen. Just what, she didn’t know.

Then she heard someone running across the rose garden which her window overlooked. She laid down the cigarette she was smoking, went and looked out. She saw nothing. But it was a dark night. She wondered if it would be wise to report the occurrence. But before decision was reached had come that awful cry— shots—the baying of dogs.

Stella Frobisher, evidently wide awake, had come out of her room. Camille had heard her hurrying along the corridor, had run out after her . . .

It had been difficult, inducing Stella to return. Camille had succeeded, at last.

But to remain locked in, whilst Morris was exposed to some mysterious but very real peril—this was a trial to which Camille was unable to submit. It was alien to all her instincts.

She felt mean for locking Stella into her own apartment, but common sense told her that Mrs. Frobisher could be only a nuisance in an emergency.

Then had come that stumbling rush in cold, clammy darkness towards the spot where, instinctively, she knew Morris to be—in danger. Whilst still a long way off, she had seen that horrifying mix-up of dogs and men. Morris was there.

Almost unconsciously she had cried his name: “Morris! Morris!”

By means of what miracle Morris heard her voice above the tumult Camille would never know—unless her heart told her; for a second disturbance had broken out not far away: shots, shouting.

But he did.

He turned. Camille saw someone else, probably the kennelman, joining in the melee. Perhaps she was outlined against lights from the house; but Morris saw her, began to run towards her. He seemed to be shouting. His behavior was wild.

Something—it felt like a damp, evil-smelling towel—was dropped suddenly over her head . . .

And now?

Now she lay on a heap of coarse canvas piled up in a corner of what seemed to be a large, and was unmistakably a dilapidated, warehouse: difficult to assess its extent for the reason that the only light was that of a storm-lamp which stood on the roughly paved floor close to where Camille lay.

Another piece of this evidently abundant sacking had been draped over one side of the lantern, so that no light at all reached a great part of the place. There was a smell of dampness and decay with an overtone which might have been tea. It was very still, except that at the moment when she became conscious of her surroundings, Camille thought she had heard the deep, warning note of a steamer’s whistle.

The impression was correct. The S.S. Campus Rex had just pulled out from a neighboring berth, bound for the River Plate. Her third officer was wishing he knew the result of his message to the police and wishing he could have spent one more night with his girl friend . . .

A scuffling sound brought Camille to her feet at a bound.

There were rats around her in the darkness!

She had physical courage such as, perhaps, few women possess. But the presence of rats had always set her heart beating faster. They terrified her.

Swaying slightly, she became aware of a nausea not due merely to fright. There was an unpleasant taste on her palate. A sickly sweet odor lingered, too, in her disordered hair. Of course, she might have expected it. The towel, or whatever had been thrown over her head, must have been saturated with an anaesthetic.

She stood quite still for a moment, trying to conquer her weakness. The scuffling sound had ceased. In fact, she could detect no sound whatever, so that it might have been some extra sense which prompted her to turn swiftly.

Half in the light from the storm-lamp and half in shadow a tall man stood watching her.

Camille stifled a cry almost uttered, and was silent.

The man who stood there wore a long, loose coat with a deep astrakhan collar. A round cap, of Russian type, and of the same close black fur, was on his head. His arms were folded, but the fingers of his left hand remained visible. They were yellow, slender fingers, prolonged by pointed fingernails meticulously manicured.

His features, lean, ascetic, and unmistakably Chinese, were wholly dominated by his eyes. In the lantern light they gleamed like green jade.

“Your sense of hearing is acute,” he said, his harsh voice subdued. “I thought I moved quite noiselessly.”

And, as he spoke, Camille knew that this was the man who had haunted her dreams.

“Who are you?” She spoke huskily. “What am I doing here?”

“You asked me a similar question not long ago. But you have forgotten.”

“I have never seen you in my life before—as you are now. But I know you! You are Dr. Fu Manchu!”

“Your data are inaccurate. But your inference is correct. What are you doing here, you say? You are suffering the inconvenience of one who interferes with my plans. I regret the crude measures used by Koenig to prevent this interference. But his promptitude saved the situation.”

“Where is Dr. Craig?” Camille demanded breathlessly “What have you done to him?”

He watched her through narrowed eyes and unfolded his clasped arms before he replied:

“I am glad your first, your only, concern is for Dr. Craig.”

“Why?”

“Presently, you shall know.”

And something in that expression, “You shall know,” brought sudden revelation to Camille.

“You are the man who called himself Professor Hoffmeyer!”

“I congratulate you. I had imagined my German-English to be above reproach. I begin to wonder if you cannot be of use to me. As Professor Hoffmeyer, I have been observing the life of Manhattan. I have seen that Manhattan is Babylon reborn—that Manhattan, failing a spiritual revolution, must fall as Babylon fell.”

“Where is Dr. Craig?” Camille repeated, mechanically, desperately. “Why have I been brought here7”

“Because there was no other place to which they could bring you. It surprises me, I confess, that a woman of such keen perceptions failed to leam the fact that Michael Frobisher was a Communist.”

“A Communist? Mr. Frobisher? Oh, no—he is a Socialist—”

“Socialism is Communism’s timid sister. Michael Frobisher is an active agent of the Soviet Union. Before his marriage, he spent many years in Moscow. Dr. Craig’s invention was financed by the Kremlin. Had Frobisher secured it for them, he was promised a post which would have made him virtual dictator of the United States.”

Even in her desolation, despair, this astounding fact penetrated to Camille’s mind.

“Then he was clever,” she murmured.

“Communism is clever. It is indeed clever to force the world’s workers to toil and sweat in order that their masters may live in oriental luxury.”

“Why do you tell me all this? Why do you talk to me, torture me, but never answer my question?”

“Because, even now, at this eleventh hour, I hope to convert you. You heard me, as Professor Hoffmeyer (the professor, himself, is at work in one of our research centers), outline a design for world harmony. To the perfecting of this design I have given the labor of a long life.”

He paused. A soft, weird cry came from somewhere near. Its effect upon Camille was to shatter her returning composure. To her it portended a threat of death. Had Nayland Smith heard it, he would have recognized the peculiar call of a dacoit, one of that fraternity of Burmese brigands over whom Dr. Fu Manchu exercised a control hitherto unexplained.

“What was it?”

Camille breathed, rather than spoke, the words.

“A warning. Do not allow it to disturb you. My plans are complete. But my time is limited. You are anxious concerning Dr. Craig. I, too, am anxious. For this reason alone I have talked to you so long. I hope you can induce him to accept the truth. You may succeed where I have failed.”

He turned and walked away. Camille heard the creak of an opening door.

* * *

The warning which Camille had construed as a message of evil omen had been prompted by something occurring on the nearby river front.

To any place, the wide world over, where men go down to the sea in ships, night brings no repose. So that, even at this hour, Manhattan danced on. Winches squealed. Anchor chains rattled. Sea boots clattered along decks. Lights moved hither and thither. Hoarse orders were shouted. Tugboats churned the muddy river. And the outgoing tide sang its eternal song of the ocean, from which it had come, to which it returned.

But no one had time to pay attention to a drunken sailor who came reeling along past deserted dock buildings, blacked-out warehouses, stumbling often, rebuking himself in an alcoholic monotone. He steadied up every once in a while against a friendly doorway, a lamp standard, or a stout pipe.

One such pipe seemed to give him particular satisfaction. Perhaps because it ran down the wall of a building marked for demolition upon the doors of which might still be read the words:

“Shen Yan Tea Company.”

This pipe he positively embraced, and, embracing it, sank ungracefully to the sidewalk, and apparently fell asleep.

A few minutes later he had established contact with Regan. He, too, was a Morse expert.

“Yes. John Regan here. Huston Electric. Who are you?”

“Brandt. Police officer. Where are you?”

“Old strong room. Basement. Don’t know what building.”

“Shout. I may hear you.”

“Dumb.”

This message shook Brandt.

“How come?”

“Injection. Attacked in lab Friday night. Get me out.”

“Starving?”

“No. But food and water finished.”

“Any movement overhead right now?”

“Yes. Someone up there.”

“Hang on. Help coming.”

The drunken sailor woke up suddenly. He began to strike matches and to try to light a cigarette. He remained seated beside the pipe. These matches attracted the attention of a patrolman (who had been waiting for this signal) and who now appeared from somewhere, and approached, swinging his club.

But the matches had also attracted the attention of another, highly skilled observer. So that, as the police officer hauled the drunk to his feet and led him off, the call of a dacoit was heard in the empty warehouse.

“This was formerly the office of a firm of importers known as the Shen Yan Tea Company,” said Dr. Fu Manchu. “An old friend of mine had an interest in that business.”

Morris Craig swallowed—with difficulty. He had by no means recovered from the strangling grip of those unseen fingers. He would have liked to massage his bruised throat. But his wrists were secured by metal clamps to the arms of his chair, a remarkable piece of furniture, evidently of great age; it had a curious, domed canopy which at some time might have been gilded. He was helpless, mad with anxiety about Camille, but undaunted.

“Strange coincidence,” he replied huskily. “No doubt this attractive and comfortable rest-chair has quite a history, too?”

“A long one. Dr. Craig. I came across it in Seville. It dates from the days of the Spanish Inquisition, when it was known as the Chair of Conversion. I regret that of all those treasured possessions formerly in the Woolton Building, this one must be left behind.”

“Seems a great pity. Cozy little piece.”

Fu Manchu stood watching him, his long narrow eyes nearly closed, his expression indecipherable. There was that about the tall, fur-capped figure which radiated power. Craig’s nonchalance in the presence of this formidable and wholly unpredictable man demanded an immense nervous effort.

“It may be no more than a national trait. Dr. Craig, but your imperturbable facade reminds me of Sir Denis.”

“You flatter me.”

“You may not know, but it will interest you to learn, that your capture, some hours ago, was largely an accident.”

“Clearly not my lucky day.”

“I doubt if the opportunity would have arisen but for the unforeseen appearance of Miss Navarre. In running to join her, you ran, almost literally, into the arms of two of my servants who were concerned only in retiring undetected.”

“Practically left the poor fellows no choice?”

“Therefore they brought you along with them.”

‘“Friendly thought.”

Dr. Fu Manchu turned slowly and crossed the office. Like the adjoining warehouse, it was lighted only by a partly draped lantern which stood on a box beside the Spanish chair. The floor, in which were many yawning gaps, was littered with rubbish. Aboarded-up window probably overlooked a passage, for there was no sound to suggest that a thoroughfare lay beyond.

Directly facing Craig, a long, high desk was built against the cracked and blackened wall. In this wall were two other windows, level with the top of the desk, and closed by sliding shutters. And on the desk Craig saw a metal-bound teak chest.

Very deliberately Dr. Fu Manchu lifted this chest, came back, and set it on the box beside the lantern. His nearness produced a tingling nervous tension, as if a hidden cobra had reared its threatening hood.

“Amongst those curious possessions to which I referred,” he continued in his cold, conversational manner (he was unlocking the chest), “is the mummied head of Queen Taia known to the Egyptians as the ‘witch queen.’ Her skull posesses uncommon characteristics. And certain experiments I am carrying out with it would interest you.”

“Not a doubt of it. My mother gave me a mummy’s head to play with when I was only four.”

“The crystal sets we use in our system of private communication also accompany me to headquarters. This”—he opened the chest— “which I borrowed from there, must never leave my personal possession until I return it.”

Morris Craig’s hands—for only his wrists were constrained— became slowly clenched. Here, he felt, came the final test; this might well be the end.

What he expected to happen, what he expected to see, he could not have put into words. What he did see was an exquisitely fashioned model of just such an equipment as that which had been destroyed in the Huston Building!

The top, front, and sides of the chest were hinged, so that the miniature plant, mounted on its polished teak-base, lay fully open to inspection. Wonder reduced Morris Craig to an awed silence. Apart from the fact that there were certain differences (differences which had instantly inflamed his scientific curiosity), to have constructed this model must have called for the labor of months, perhaps of years.

“I don’t understand.” His voice sounded unfamiliar to him.

“I don’t understand at all!”

“Only because,” came in cold, incisive tones, “you remain obsessed with the idea that you invented, this method of harnessing primeval energy. The model before you was made by a Buddhist monk, in Burma. I had been to inspect it at the time that I first encountered Sir Denis Nayland Smith. Detailed formulae for its employment are in my possession. You, again, after a lapse of years, have solved this problem. My congratulations. Such men were meant to reshape the world—not to destroy it.”

Dr. Fu Manchu began to reclose the chest.

“I don’t understand,” Craig repeated. “If the principle was known to you, as well as the method of applying it—and I can’t dispute that it was—”

“Why did I permit you to complete your experiments? The explanation is simple. I wanted to know if you could complete them. On my arrival, the main plant had already been set up in the Huston laboratory. 1 was anxious to learn if the final problem would baffle you. It did not. Such a man is a man to watch.”

Dr. Fu Manchu locked the teak chest.

“Then it was you who destroyed my work?”

“I had no choice. Dr. Craig. Your work was destined for the use of the Kremlin. I have also your original plans, and every formula. The only blueprints existing I secured tonight. One danger, only, remains.”

“What’s that?”

“Yourself.”

And the word was spoken in a voice which made it a sentence of death.

Dr. Fu Manchu carried the chest across the littered room, and opened what looked like a deep cupboard. He placed the chest inside, and turned again to Craig.

“You will have noted that I am dressed for travel. Dr. Craig. My time is limited. Otherwise, I should employ less mediaeval methods to incline your mind to reason. You seem to have failed to recognize me as Professor Hoffmeyer, but a committee such as I spoke of when we met already exists. It is called the Council of Seven. In our service we have some of the best brains of every continent. We have wealth. We are not criminals. We are idealists—”

A second of those wailing cries, the first of which had terrified Camille, checked his words. Craig started.

“I may delay no longer. You have it in your power, while you live, to destroy all our plans. Therefore, Dr. Craig—I speak with sincere regret—either you must consent to place your undoubted genius at my disposal—or you must die.”

“The choice is made.”

“I trust not, yet.”

Dr. Fu Manchu opened one of the sliding shutters over the long desk. It disclosed an iron grille through which crept a glimmer of light.

“Miss Navarre!” There was no slightest change of tone, of inflection, in his strange voice. “You were anxious about Dr. Craig. Here he is—perfectly well, as you may judge for yourself.”

And Morris Craig saw Camille’s pale face, her eyes wide with terror, her hair disordered, staring at him through the bars!

A torrent of words, frenzied, scathing, useless words, flooded his brain. But he choked them back—rejected them; and when he spoke, in a whisper, he said simply:

“Camille!”

“When we move”—Nayland Smith’s expression was very grim—”we must be sure the net has no holes in it. We have Regan’s evidence that there are people in that building. We know who put Regan there. So we know what to expect. Is our cordon wide enough?”

“Hard to make it wider,” Harkness assured him. “But these old places are honeycombs. There are sixty men on the job. I have sent for the keys of all the adjoining buildings.”

“We daren’t wait!” Smith said savagely. “Fu Manchu has destroyed the last possibility of Craig’s invention being used— except Craig . . . We daren’t wait.”

“Report coming through,” said Harkness.

The report was one which might have meant next to nothing. A cry had been heard, more than once, in the neighborhood of the closely covered building, which at first hearing had been mistaken for the cry of a cat. Repeated, however, doubt had arisen on this point.

“That settles the matter!” rapped Smith. “It was the call of one of his Burmese bodyguard! Fu Manchu is there.”

* * *

“There was a pleasant simplicity,” Dr. Fu Manchu was saying, “in the character of the unknown designer of this chair. I fear I must start its elementary mechanism. The device bears some resemblance to a type of orange-squeezer used in this country.”

He stood behind Craig for a moment; and Craig became aware of a regular, ticking sound, of vibrations in the framework of the chair:

he clenched his teeth.

“I am going to ask Miss Navarre to add her powers of persuasion to mine. If you prefer to live—in her company—to devote yourself to the most worthy task of all, the salvation of men from slavery or from destruction, I welcome you—gladly. You are a man of honor. Your word is enough. It is a bond neither you nor I could ever break. Do you accept these terms?”

“Suppose I don’t?”

Morris Craig had grown desperately white.

“I should lock the control, which, you may have noted, lies under your right hand: an embossed gold crown. I should prefer to leave it free. You have only to depress it, and the descent will be arrested. Choose—quickly.”

“Whichever you please. The result will be the same.”

“Words worthy of Molotov! The time for evasion is past. I offer you life—a life of usefulness. I await your promise that, if you accept, you will press the control. Your doing so will mean, on the word of an English gentleman, that you agree to join the Council of Seven. Quickly. Speak!”

“I give you my word”—Morris Craig’s eyes were closed; he spoke all but tonelessly—”that if I press the control it will mean that I accept your offer.”

Dr. Fu Manchu crossed to the door behind which he had placed the teak chest. As he passed the grilled window:

“The issue. Miss Navarre,” he said, “rests with you.”

He went out, closing the door.

“No! No! Come back!” Camille clutched the iron bars, shook them frantically. “Come back! . . . No! No! Merciful God! stop him! Morris! Agree! Agree to anything! I—I can’t bear it . . .”

The domed canopy, its gilding barely touched by upcast lantern light, was descending slowly.

“Don’t look at me. I shall—weaken—if you look at me . . .”

“Weaken Morris, darling, listen to me! Dr. Fu Manchu is a madman’. There can be no obligation to a madman . . . I tell you he’s mad! Press the control! Do it! Do it!”

The canopy continued to descend, moving in tiny jerks which corresponded to audible ticks of some hidden clockwork mechanism. It was evidently controlled by counterweights, for Craig found the chair to be immovably heavy.

He closed his eyes. He couldn’t endure the sight of Camille’s chalk-white, frenzied face staring at him through those bars. A parade of heretics who had rejected conversion passed before him in the darkness, attired in the silk and velvet, the rags and tatters, of Old Seville. Their heads lolled on their shoulders. Their skulls were crushed.

“Morris! Have you no pity for me? Is this your love . . .”

He must think. “A bond neither you nor I could ever break.” Those had been the words. That had been the bargain. If he chose life. Dr. Fu Manchu would claim his services.

“Camille, my dearest, you have faced worse things than this—”

“I tell you he is mad!”

“Unfortunately, 1 think he’s particularly sane. I even think, in a way he has the right idea.”

Tick-tick . . . Tick-tick . . . Tick-tick. In fractions of an inch, the canopy crept lower.

“I shall lose my reason! 0 God in heaven, hear me!”

Camille dropped to her knees, hands clasped in passionate supplication. Kneeling, she could no longer see Morris. But, soon, she must look again.

Meaningless incidents from the past, childish memories, trivial things, submerged dreams of a future that was never to be; Morris’s closed eyes; the open, dreadful eyes of Dr. Fu Manchu: all these images moved, in a mocking dance, through her prayers . . .

A whistle skirled—a long way off. It was answered by another, nearer.

Camille sprang up, clutched the bars.

The canopy almost touched Morris’s head. His eyes remained closed.

She began to scream wildly:

“Help! Help’. Be quick! Oh, be quick!” She clenched her hand so tightly that her nails bit into the palms, and spoke again, a low, quivering whisper: “Morris! He may be right, as you think. Morris! for my sake, believe it. There is—just time.”

Craig’s hand twitched, where it rested over the gilded crown of life which meant . . . He did not open his eyes.

There came a wild tide of rushing footsteps, a charivari of shouting, crash of axes on woodwork . . .

“This way! This—way!”

Camille’s attempted cry was only a strangled murmur. She supported herself by clinging with all but nerveless ringers to the grille.

“Alight in here!” came a breathless shout.

The blade of an axe split through woodwork covering the only exterior window in the office. A second blow—a third. The planking was wrenched away. Outside lay a stone-paved passage crowded with men.

“Good God! Look! Here’s Dr. Craig, sir!”

“Be quick!” Camille murmured, and fought to check insane laughter which bubbled to her lips. “Under his hand . . . that knob . . . press it . . .”

Nayland Smith, his dark complexion oddly blanched, forced his way through. The canopy just touched the top of Craig’s head. A wave of strength, sanity, the last, swept over Camille.

“Sir Denis! That—gold crown—on the arm of the chair . . . Press it.”

Nayland Smith glanced swiftly towards the grille, then sprang to the chair, groped for and found a crown-shaped knob under Craig’s listless fingers, and pressed it, pressed it madly.

The clockwork sound ceased. He dropped to one knee.

“Craig! Craig!”

Beads of sweat trickled from a limp forelock down an ivory face’ but there was no reply.

Morris Craig had fainted.

* * *

“This is the way she pointed, but maybe it didn’t mean anything.” Sam had joined the party. “Gee! Those two must have gone through hell!”

“Fortunately,” said Nayland Smith, “they have youth on their side. But the ordeal was—ghastly. It is characteristic of Fu Manchu’s unusual sense of humor that the canopy is made so that it cannot descend any further. Craig was in no danger! Hullo! what’s this?”

They had reached the foot of a short flight of stone steps, the entrance to which Craig had mistaken for a deep cupboard. Harkness was in front, with two men. Two more followed. All carried flashlamps.

An empty passage, concrete-floored, extended to left and to right.

“Take a party left, Harkness. I’ll take the right.”

Ten paces brought Smith to a metal door in the wall. He pulled up. Retreating footsteps, the sound of which echoed hollowly, as in a vault, indicated that the other party had found nothing of interest so far.

“Job for a safebreaker,” Sam grumbled. “If this is the way he went, he’ll get a long start.”

“Quiet!” rapped Nayland Smith. “Listen.”

He beat a syncopated tattoo on the metal with his knuckles. Harkness’s party had apparently turned in somewhere. Their footsteps were no more than faintly audible.

Answering knocks came from the other side of the door!

“Regan!” Sam exclaimed.

Smith nodded. “This is what he called the strong room. Quiet again.”

He rapped a message—listened to the reply; then turned.

“This scent is stale,” he said shortly. “Regan states nobody has passed this way tonight.”

“We must get Mr. Regan out, right now.” Sam spoke urgently. “You, back there, O’Leary, report upstairs there’s an iron door to be softened. Poor devil! Guess he’s dumb for life!”

“Not at all,” Nayland Smith assured him. “The effect wears off after a few days—so I was recently informed by my old friend. Dr. Fu Manchu.”

He spoke bitterly—a note of defeat in the crisp voice. What had he accomplished? He could not even claim credit for saving the blueprints from Soviet hands. Some servant of Fu Manchu’s had secured them before the dogs attacked Frobisher—

“Sir Denis!” came a distant, excited hail. “This way! I think we have him!”

Nayland Smith led the run back to where Harkness and two men stood before another closed door near the end of a passage which formed an L with that from which they had started.

“I think it’s an old furnace room. And I saw a light in there!”

“Don’t waste time! Down with it!”

Two of the party carried axes. And they went to work with a will. The door was double-bolted on the inside, but it collapsed under their united onslaughts. A cavity yawned in which the rays of Nayland Smith’s lamp picked out an old-fashioned, soot-begrimed boiler, half buried in mounds of coal ash.

“Be careful!” he warned. “We are dealing with no ordinary criminal. Stand by for anything.”

They entered cautiously.

The place proved to have unexpected ramifications. It was merely part of what had been an extensive cellarage system. They groped in its darkness, shedding light into every conceivable spot where a fugitive might lie. But they found nothing. A sense of futility crept down upon all, when a cry came: “Another door here! I heard someone moving behind it!”

Over the debris and coal dust of years, they ran to join the man who had shouted. He stood in what had evidently been a coal bunker, before a narrow, grimy door.

“It’s locked.”

Keen axes and willing hands soon cleared the obstacle.

A long, sloping passage lay beyond. Up its slope, as the door crashed open, swept a current of cold, damp air. And, halfway down, a retreating figure showed, a grotesque silhouette against reflected light from his dancing flashlamp.

It was the figure of a tall man, wearing a long coat and what looked like a close-fitting cap.

“By God!” Smith shouted, “Dr. Fu Manchu! This leads to the river—”

He broke off.

Sam had hurled himself into the passage, firing the moment he crossed the threshold of the shattered door! The crash of his heavy revolver created an echo like a thunderstorm. Nayland Smith, following hard behind, saw the figure stumble, pause—run on.

“Cease fire there!” he shouted angrily.

But Sam’s blood was up. He either failed to hear the order, or willfully ignored it. He fired again—then, rapidly, a third time.

The tall figure stopped suddenly, dropped the flashlamp, and crumpled to the damp floor.

“You fool!” Nayland Smith’s words came as a groan. “This was no end for the greatest brain in the world!”

He forced his way past Sam, stooped, and turned the fur-capped head. As he did so, the fallen man writhed, coughed, and was still.

Nayland Smith looked into a face scarcely human, scarred, a parody of humanity—a face he had never seen before—the face of M’goyna . . .

He stood up very slowly. The dark, sloping passage behind him seemed to be embossed with staring eyes.

“Outmanoeuvred!” he said. “Fu Manchu played for time. This poor devil was the last of his rearguards. He has slipped through our fingers!”

Chapter XXII

Ten days later, Nayland Smith gave a small dinner party at his hotel to celebrate the engagement of Camille Mirabeau (Navarre) to Dr. Morris Craig. When the other guests had left, these three went to Smith’s suite, and having settled down:

“Of course,” said Smith, in reply to a question from Camille, “the newspapers are never permitted to print really important news! It might frighten somebody.”

“Quite a lot has leaked out, though,” Craig amended. “The cops gave it away. Poor old Regan has been pestered since I resigned. But although he can chatter quite acidly again, he won’t chatter to reporters.”

“How’s Frobisher?”

“Rotten. He’ll recover all right, but carry a crop of scars.”

“Does his wife know the truth?”

“Couldn’t say What do you think, Camille?”

Camille, lovely in her new-found happiness and a Paris frock, shrugged white shoulders.

“Stella Frobisher is like a cork,” she said. “I think she can stay afloat in the heaviest weather. But I don’t know her well enough to tell you if she suspects the truth.”

“The most astounding thing which the newspapers haven’t reported,” Nayland Smith remarked after an interval, “concerns the body of that ape man—almost certainly the creature of which I had a glimpse at Falling Waters. He’s been examined by all the big doctors. And they are unanimous on one point.”

“What is that?” Camille asked.

“They say the revolver bullets didn’t kill him.”

“What?” Craig exclaimed.

“They state, positively, that he had been dead many years before the shooting!”

And Camille (such was the strange power of Dr. Fu Manchu) simply shook her red head and murmured. “But that is impossible.”

Yes—that was impossible. It was also impossible, no doubt, that Dr. Fu Manchu had visited New York, and perhaps, as a result of his visit, given a few more years of uneasy peace to a world coquetting with war. And so, Manhattan danced on . . .

“Our two Russian acquaintances”—Nayland Smith rapped out the words venomously—”have been quietly deported. But what I really wanted to show you was this.”

From the pocket of his dinner jacket he took a long, narrow envelope. It had come by air mail and was stamped “Cairo.” It was addressed to him at his New York hotel. He passed it to Camille.

“Read it together. There was an enclosure.”

And so, Craig bending over Camille’s shoulder, his cheek against her glowing hair, they read the letter, handwritten in copperplate script:

Sir Denis—

It was a serious disappointment to be compelled to leave New York without seeing you again. I regret, too, that M’goyna, one of my finer products, had to be sacrificed to my safety. But a little time was necessary to enable me to reach the boat which awaited me. I left by another exit. I greet Dr. Craig. He is a genius and a brave man. But his keen sense of honor is my loss. Will you, on my behalf, advise him to devote his great talents to non-destructive purposes? His future experiments will be watched with interest. I enclose a wedding present for his bride.

There was no signature.

Camille and Morris Craig raised their eyes, together. On his extended palm Nayland Smith was holding out a large emerald. And as Camille, uttering a long, wondering sigh, took the gem between her fingers, Nayland Smith reached for his dilapidated pouch and began, reflectively, to load his blackened briar.

The End