by Sax Rohmer
“I’m sorry,” said the inspector, an expression he had not used for many years, unless possibly to his wife; “but we didn’t know you were interested in Hahn, and the boys just went through with the routine.”
“Show me these things.”
Inspector McGrew opened a door, and Nayland Smith walked through to an inner room, followed by Hepburn and the inspector. In the doorway he turned, and addressing a grim-looking man in oilskins:
“I understand,” he said, “that you were in charge of the boat which recovered the body. I shall want to see you later.”
On a large, plain, pine table two sets of exhibits were displayed. The first consisted of a nearly empty packet of Lucky Strike cigarettes, a lighter, a black silk mask, black silk gloves, a quill tooth-pick, three one-dollar bills, and an eight-inch metal baton — which contained fifteen feet of telescopic rods. Smith examined these, the sole possessions found on Fly Carlo, quickly but carefully. He had seen them already.
“You understand,” McGrew explained, “Hahn had only just been brought in — our ordinary routine was interrupted.”
“Forget your ordinary routine,” came rapidly. “From now on your routine is my routine.”
Federal Officer Smith transferred his attention to the second set of exhibits. These were more numerous than interesting. There was a very formidable magazine pistol of German manufacture; a small pear-shaped object easily identified as a hand grenade; a gold cigar-case decorated with a crest; a body-belt, the pockets of which had been emptied of their contents: ten twenty-dollar gold pieces; an aluminium lighter; two silk handkerchiefs; a diamond pin; a bunch of keys; a packet of chewing gum; and a large shagreen wallet, the contents of which had been removed. These were: a number of letters, and a photograph soddened by immersion. There was, lastly, a limp carton which had once contained playing cards, and two thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills.
“Where was the diamond pin?” snapped Nayland Smith.
“He always wore it in his coat like a badge,” Inspector McGrew replied.
“Where were the dollar bills?”
“Right in the card-holder.”
“Can you think of any reason,” Smith asked, “why a man should carry money in a card-holder?”
“No,” the inspector admitted; “I can’t.”
“Assuming that this money had just been sent to him, can you think of any reason why it should be sent in such a way?”
“No.” Inspector McGrew shook his head blankly, staring in a fascinated way at the speaker.
“Yet the card-holder,” Nayland Smith continued, “is the solution of the mystery of Blondie Hahn’s death.” He turned abruptly — he seemed to move on springs — the man’s nervous tension was electrical. “I want all these exhibits to go with me in the car.”
He rested his hand on Mark Hepburn’s shoulder. Hepburn looked very pale in the gray light.
“Note the two thousand dollars in the card case,” he said in a low voice. “There was something else in there as well. Dr. Fu-Manchu always settles his debts… sometimes with interest…”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN. “BLUEBEARD”
Moya Adair closed her eyes as those green eyes opened. The man behind the table spoke, in that imperious, high-pitched voice.
“I accept your explanation,” he said. “None of us is infallible.”
Mrs. Adair raised her lashes and tried to sustain the speaker’s regard, but failed, turning her glance aside.
The face of Dr. Fu-Manchu sometimes reminded her of a devil mask which hung upon the wall of her father’s study in Ireland.
“You serve me admirably. I regret that your service is one of fear. I prefer enthusiasm. You are a beautiful woman; for this reason I have employed you. Men are creatures of wax which white fingers can mold to their will — to my will. For always, Moya Adair, your will must be my will — or, we shall part…”
The blue eyes were turned swiftly in his direction; and then swiftly away again. Mrs. Adair was perfectly dressed, perfectly groomed and apparently perfectly composed. But her composure was a brave pretense. This awful Chinaman who had taken command of her life held in his grasp all that made life dear to her. Her gloved hand rested motionless upon the chair-arm, but she turned her head aside and bit her lip.
The air of the small, quiet room was heavy with a smell of stale incense.
“I am an old man,” the compelling voice continued; “older than your imagination would permit you to believe.” Those jade-green eyes were closed again — the speaker seemed to be thinking aloud. “I have been worshiped, I have been scorned; I have been flattered, mocked, betrayed, treated as a charlatan — as a criminal. There are warrants for my arrest in three European countries. Yet, always, I have been selfless.” He paused. He was so still, so seemingly impassive, that he might have been a carven image…
“My crimes, so termed have been merely the removal from my path of those who obstructed me. Always I have dreamed of a sane world, yet men have called me mad; of a world in which war should be impossible, disease eliminated, overpopulation checked, labor found for all willing hands — a world of peace. Save only three, I have found no human soul, of my own race or another, to work wholly for that goal. And now my most implacable enemy is upon me…”
Suddenly the green eyes opened. Long, slender yellow hands with incredibly pointed nails were torn from the sleeves of the yellow robe. Dr. Fu-Manchu stood upright, raising those evilly beautiful hands above him. A note of exaltation came into his voice. Mrs. Adair clutched the arms of the chair in which she sat. Never before had her eventful life brought her in touch with inspired fanaticism.
“Gods of my fathers” — pitched so high that strange voice laid a queer stress on sibilants— “masters of the world! Are all my dreams to end in a prison cell, in the death of a common felon?”
For a while he stood upright, arms upraised, then dropped back again into his chair and concealed his hands in the sleeves of his robe.
Moya Adair strove for composure. This man terrified her as no man in her experience ever had had power to do. Instinctively she had realized the dreadful crimes that marked his life. He was coldly remorseless. Now, shaken emotionally by this glimpse of the hidden Fu-Manchu, she wondered if she had become subjected to an inspired madman. Or had this eerie master of her destiny achieved a philosophy beyond the reach of her intellectual powers?
When the Chinaman spoke again his harsh voice was perfectly cool.
“In the United States I have found a crude, but efficient, organization ready to my hand. Prohibition attracted to this country the trained law-breakers of the world. They had no purpose but that of personal gain. The sanity of President Roosevelt has terminated some of these promising careers. Many spiders are missing but the webs can be mended. You see, Moya Adair” — the green eyes were fixed upon her, glitteringly, hypnotically— “although women can never understand, were not meant to understand — it is to women that men always look for understanding.”
Now she was unable to withdraw her gaze. He had taken control of her — she knew herself helpless. There was magic in those long green eyes; their power was terrible. But something there was also — something she had not looked for — which reconciled her to this control.
“I do not trust you — no woman is to be trusted in a world of men. Yet because I am a man too, and very lonely in this my last battle to crush what the West calls civilization… I will admit you one step further into my plans — I have means of watching those who profess to serve me. I know where I can place my trust…
Mrs. Adair experienced a sensation as though the speaker’s eyes had usurped the whole of the small room. She was submerged in a green lake, magnetic, thrilling, absorbing. The strange voice reached her from far away: she was resigned to the thraldom.
“There is no crime except the crime of disobedience to my will. My conception of life transcends the laws of all men living today. When I achieve my ambition, those who stand beside me will share my mas
tery of the world. Of the demagogues battling for power in this troubled country I have selected one as my own…”
Moya Adair emerged from the green lake. Dr. Fu-Manchu had closed his eyes. He sat like a carven image of a dead god behind the lacquered table.
“I am sending you,” the guttural, imperious voice continued, “to Harvey Bragg. You will act in accordance with instructions.”
* * * *
In the large Park Avenue apartment of Emmanuel Dumas, Harvey Bragg was holding one of those receptions which at once scandalized and fascinated his millions of followers when they read about them in the daily newspapers. These orgiastic entertainments, which sometimes resembled a burlesque of a Neronian banquet and sometimes a parody of a Hollywood cabaret scene, had marked his triumphal progress from the state which he represented right up to New York.
“Bluebeard of the Backwoods” — as some political writer had dubbed him — Bragg had interested, amused, scandalized and horrified the inhabitants of the South and of the Middle West, and now was preparing to show himself a second Cyrus, master of the modern Babylon. New York was the bright orange upon which his greedy eyes were set. New York he would squeeze dry.
Lola Dumas’ somewhat equivocal place in his affairs merely served to add glamor to the man’s strange reputation. Now, entertaining in her father’s home, he demonstrated himself to be that which he believed himself to be — an up-to-date emperor whose wishes transcended all laws.
Lola had been twice married and twice divorced. After each of these divorces she had reverted to her family name, of which she was inordinately proud. Emmanuel Dumas, who had made a colossal fortune in the boom and lost most of it in the slump, claimed, without warranty which any man could recognize, to be descended from the brilliant quadroon who created the Three Musketeers. If a picturesque personality and a shock of frizzy white hair had been acceptable as evidence, then any jury must have granted his claim.
A moral laxity, notable even during the régime of Prohibition, had characterized his scandalous life. In later years when most of his Wall Street contemporaries had been washed up, the continued prosperity of Emmanuel Dumas became a mystery insoluble. The prurient ascribed it to the association between his beautiful daughter and the flamboyant but electric politician who threatened to become the Mussolini of the United States.
The room in which the reception was being held was decorated with a valuable collection of original drawings by Maurice Leloir, representing episodes in the novels of Alexandre Dumas. Rapiers, pistols, muskets adorned the walls. Here was a suit of armor which had once belonged to Louis XIII; there a red hat in a glass case, which according to an inscription; had been worn by that king’s subtle minister, the Cardinal de Richelieu. There were powder boxes, mirrors and jewels, once the property of Anne of Austria. These historical objects, and many others, arrested the glance in every direction.
Lola Dumas wore an emerald-green robe, or rest gown, its gauzy texture scarcely more than veiling her slender body. She was surrounded by a group of enthusiastic journalists. Her father was attired in a sort of velvet smock tied with a loose black bow at his neck. He, also, held court.
As a prominent supporter, and frequently the host, of Harvey Bragg, he had entered upon a new term of notoriety. These two, father and daughter, by virtue of their beauty alone — for Emmanuel Dumas was a strikingly handsome man — must have focused interest in almost any gathering.
The room was packed from end to end. Prominent society people, who once would have shunned the Dumas apartment, might be seen in groups admiring the strange ornaments, studying the paintings; eager to attract the attention of this singular man once taboo, but now bathed in a blaze of limelight.
Politicians of all shades of opinion were represented.
The air was heavy with tobacco smoke; the buzz of chatter simian; champagne flowed almost as freely as water from the fountains of Versailles. Many notable people came and went unnoticed from this omnium gatherum, for the dazzling personalities of the hostess and her father outshone them all. One would have thought that no man and few women could have diverted attention from the glittering pair; yet when, unheralded, Harvey Bragg came striding into the room, instantly the Dumases were forgotten.
All eyes were turned in Bragg’s direction. Sascha lamps appeared from leather cases in which they had lain ready; a platoon of cameras came into action; notebooks were hastily opened.
Bluebeard Bragg was certainly an arresting figure. His nickname was double-edged. Bragg’s marital record alone would have explained it; the man’s intense swarthiness equally might have accounted for the “bluebeard.” Slightly above medium height, he was built like an acrobat. The span of his shoulders was enormous: his waist measurement would have pleased many women. Withal, he had that enormous development of thigh and the muscular shapely calves seen in male members of the Russian Ballet. He had, too, the light, springy walk of a boxer; and his truculent, black-browed face, lighted by clear hazel eyes that danced with humor, was crowned by a profusion of straight, gleaming, black hair. Closely though he was shaved — for Harvey Bragg was meticulous in his person — his jaw and chin showed blue through the powder.
“Folks!” he cried — his voice resembled that of a ship’s officer bellowing orders through a gale “I’m real sorry to be late, but Mr. and Miss Dumas will have been taking good care of you, I guess. To tell you the truth, folks, I had a bad hangover…”
This admission was greeted by laughter from his followers.
“I’ve just got up, that’s the truth. Knew I was expected to see people; jumped in the bath, shaved, and here I am!”
There came a dazzling flash of light. The cameras had secured a record, in characteristic pose and costume, of this ex-lord of the backwoods who aimed at the White House.
He wore a sky-blue bathrobe, and apart from a pair of red slippers, apparently nothing else. But he was Harvey Bragg — Bluebeard; the man who threatened the Constitution, the coming Hitler of the United States. His ugliness — for despite his power and the athletic lines of his figure the man was ugly — dominated that gathering. His circus showman’s voice shouted down all opposition. No normal personality could live near him. He was Harvey Bragg. He was “It.” He was the omnipresent potential Dictator of America.
Among the group of reporters hanging on Bragg’s words was one strange to the others; a newcomer, representing New York’s smartest weekly. He was tall, taciturn, and slightly built. He had thick, untidy hair, graying over the temples, a stubbly black beard and moustache, and wore spectacles. His wide-brimmed black hat and caped coat spoke of Greenwich Village.
His deep-set eyes had missed nothing, and nobody, of importance in the room. He had made few notes. Now he was watching Bluebeard intently.
“Boys and girls!” — arms raised, Harvey Bragg gave his benediction to everyone present— “I know what you all want to hear. You want to hear what I’m going to say to Orwin Prescott at Carnegie Hall.”
He lowered his arms in acknowledgement of the excited buzz followed by silence which greeted this remark.
“I’m going to say just one thing. And this goes, boys” — he included with a sweeping gesture of his left hand the whole of the newspaper men present— “with you as well as with everybody else. I’m going to say just this: Our country, which we all love, is unhappy. We have seen hard times — but we’ve battled through. We’ve got sand. We’re not dead yet by a long shot. No, sir! But we’re alive to the dangers ahead. And I want to ask you, Dr. Orwin Prescott, just this: Are you peddling junk for the Abbot of Holy Thorn or are you selling goods of your own?”
Loud applause followed this, led by Dumas père et fille.
“I’m not saying, folks, that Abbot Donegal’s stuff is all backfire. I’m saying that second-hand promises are bad debts. I want to hear of anything that Orwin Prescott has promised which Orwin Prescott has done. I don’t promise things. I do things. No decent citizen ever reported for work to a depot of the League of Good
Americans who didn’t get a job!” Again he was interrupted by loud applause…
“The man we’re all looking for is the man who does things. Very well. Seconds out! The fight starts! On my right: Donegal — Prescott. On my left: Harvey Bragg! America for every man and every man for America!”
Cheers and a deafening clapping of hands rewarded the speaker. Harvey Bragg stood, arms upraised forensically, dominating that gathering excited by his crude oratory. At which moment, even as Sascha lights flashed and cameras clicked:
“A lady to see you, Mr. Bragg,” came a discreet whisper.
Harvey Bragg lowered his arms, reluctantly relinquishing that heroic pose, and glanced aside. His confidential secretary, Salvaletti, stood at his elbow. There was an interchange of glances. Reporters surged around them.
“Urgent?” Harvey Bragg whispered.
“Number 12.”
Bragg started, but recovered himself. “Easy-looking?”
“A beauty.”
“Excuse me, folks!” Bragg cried, his tremendous voice audible above the excitement, “I’ll be right back in two minutes.”
Of those who actually overheard this whispered conversation, Lola Dumas was one. She bit her lip, turned, and crossed to a senator from the South who was no friend of Harvey Bragg’s. The other was the new reporter. He followed Lola Dumas and presently engaged her in conversation.
More wine was uncorked. Newspaper men always welcomed an assignment to the Dumases’ apartment…
Rather more than five minutes had elapsed when Harvey Bragg came back. He was holding the hand of a very pretty woman whose smart frock did justice to a perfect figure, and whose little French hat displayed mahogany curls to their best advantage.