by Sax Rohmer
“Be ready for anything,” he warned sternly, “but make no move without orders from me.”
He pressed the bell.
A moment of almost complete silence followed. He had been prepared to wait, perhaps to force the door. He was about to ring a second time when the door opened.
Mark Hepburn faced him!
Amazement, relief, doubt, alternately ruled Nayland Smith’s mind. The situation was beyond analysis. He fixed a penetrating stare on Hepburn’s haggard face: his hair was disheveled, his expression wild, and with a queer note almost of resentment in his tone:
“Smith!” he exclaimed.
Nayland Smith nodded and stepped in, signaling to his party to remain outside.
Crossing a small vestibule, he found himself in a charmingly appointed sitting-room, essentially and peculiarly feminine in character. It was empty.
“I’m sorry about all this seeming mystery,” said Hepburn in a low voice; “and I understand your anxiety. But when you know the facts you will agree, I think, there was no other way.”
“You undertook a certain responsibility,” Nayland Smith said grimly, “in a message to Fey—”
“Not so loud, Smith! I stand by it… It’s hard to explain” — he hesitated, his deep-set eyes watching Nayland Smith— “but with all his crimes, after tonight — I’m sorry. Moya — Mrs. Adair — collapsed when she heard the news—”
“What, that the boy was dead?”
“No — that he will live!”
“I am glad to hear it. Largely as a result of your discovery of the Connecticut farm,” said Nayland Smith, continuing intently to watch Hepburn, “we have narrowed down our search to an area surrounding this building. Your long, inexplicable absence following that message to Fey has checked us. I should be glad, Hepburn, if you would inform me where you believe Fu-Manchu to be—”
The door opened, and Dr. Fu-Manchu came in.
Smith’s hand plunged to his automatic, but Fu-Manchu, frowning slightly, shook his head. His usually brilliant eyes were dully filmed. He wore a black suit and beneath his coat a curious black woolen garment with a high collar. In some strange way he resembled a renegade priest who had abandoned Christianity in favor of devil worship.
“Melodrama is uncalled for, Sir Denis,” he said, his guttural voice expressing no emotion whatever. “We are not in Hollywood. I shall be at your service in a moment.” He turned to Hepburn. “My written instructions are on the table beside the bed: you will find there also the name of the physician I have selected to take charge of the case. He is a Jew practicing in the Ghetto; a man of integrity, with a sound knowledge of his profession. I do not imply, Sir Denis, that he is in a class of our mutual friend, Dr. Petrie (to whom I beg you to convey my regards), but he is the best physician in New York. I desire, Captain Hepburn, to be arrested by Sir Denis Nayland Smith, who has a prior claim. Will you be good enough to hand me over to him?”
Hepburn spoke hoarsely.
“Yes… Smith, this is your prisoner.”
Fu-Manchu bowed slightly. He took up a leather case which at the moment of entering he had placed upon the carpet beside him.
“I desire you, Captain Hepburn,” he said, “to call Dr. Goldberg immediately, and to remain with the patient until he arrives…”
All but imperturbable as he had trained himself to be, Nayland Smith at this moment almost lost contact with reality. At the eleventh hour, with counsels of desperation becoming attractive, Fate rather than his own wit had delivered this man into his hands. Swiftly he glanced at Hepburn and read in the haggard face mingled emotions of which he himself was conscious. He had never dreamed that triumph achieved after years of striving could be such dead-sea fruit. The dimmed green eyes were fixed upon him, but there was nothing hypnotic in their regard; rather they held an ironical question. He stepped aside, indicating with his hand the vestibule in which the three men waited.
“Precede me, Dr. Fu-Manchu.”
Fu-Manchu, carrying the case, walked with his cat-like tread out into the vestibule, three keen glances fixed upon him, three barrels covering his every movement.
“Ring for the elevator,” rapped Nayland Smith.
One of the men went out through the front door, which had been left open.
Dr. Fu-Manchu set his case upon the floor beside a chair.
“I assume, Sir Denis,” he said, his voice very sibilant, “I am permitted to take my coat and my cap?”
He opened a paneled cupboard and looked inside. Momentarily the opened door concealed him as a heavy black topcoat with an astrakhan collar was thrown out on to the back of the chair. Ensued an interval of not more than five seconds… then Nayland Smith sprang forward.
The leather case stood beside the chair, the black coat was draped across it; but the cupboard was empty!
Dr. Fu-Manchu had disappeared.
* * * *
“I am growing old, Hepburn,” said Nayland Smith. “It is high time I retired.”
Mark Hepburn studying the crisp graying hair, bronzed features and clear eyes of the speaker, laughed shortly.
“No doubt Dr. Fu-Manchu wishes you would,” he said.
“Yet he fooled me with a paltry vanishing cabinet trick, an illusion which was old when the late Harry Houdini was young! Definitely, Hepburn, my ideas have become fixed. I simply cannot get used to the fact that New York City is a former stronghold of the most highly organized and highly paid underworld group which Western civilization so far has produced. That penthouse apartment, as we know now, was once occupied by Barney Flynn, the last of the big men of bootlegging days. The ingenious door in the hat cupboard was his private exit, opening into another building — a corresponding apartment which he also rented.”
“Moya didn’t know,” said Hepburn.
“I grant you that. Nor was the apartment one of her own choosing. But she remembers (although in her disturbed state at the time she accepted the fact) that Fu-Manchu appeared in the vestibule — although no one had opened the door! Had I realized that he had given you his parole. I might have foreseen an attempt to escape.”
“Why?”
Nayland Smith turned to Hepburn; a faint smile crossed his lean features. “He insisted that you should formally hand him over to me. You did so — and he promptly disappeared! Dr. Fu-Manchu is a man of his word, Hepburn… He was silent awhile, then: “I am sorry for Mrs. Adair,” he added, “and granting the circumstances, I think she has played fair. I hope the boy is out of danger.”
Hepburn sat, pensive, looking down from the plane window at a darkling map of the agrarian Middle West.
“According to all I have ever learned,” he said presently, “that boy should be dead. Even now, I can’t believe that any human power could have saved him. But he’s alive! and there’s every chance he will recover and be none the worse. You know, Smith” — he turned, his deep-set, ingenuous eyes fixed upon his companion— “that’s a miracle… I saw surgery there, in that room, that I’ll swear there isn’t another man living could have performed. That incompetent fool, Burnett, had lost the life of his patient: Dr. Fu-Manchu conjured it back again.”
He paused, watching the grim profile of Nayland Smith.
Dr. Fu-Manchu had successfully slipped out of New York. But police and Federal agents, urged to feverish activity by emergency orders from Washington, had made one discovery: Fu-Manchu was headed west.
Outside higher police commands and the Secret Service, the intensive scrutiny of all travelers on western highways by road or rail was a mystery to be discussed by those who came in contact with it for many years afterwards. Air liners received Federal orders to alight at points not scheduled; private planes were forced down for identification; a rumor spread across half the country that a foreign invasion was imminent.
Despite Nayland Smith’s endeavors, a garbled version of the facts had found currency in certain quarters; Abbot Donegal’s words had given color to rumors. There had been riots in Asiatic sections: in one instan
ce a lynching had narrowly been averted. The phantom of the Yellow Peril up-reared its ugly head. But day by day, almost hour by hour, more and more adherents flocked to the standard of Paul Salvaletti; who represented, had they but known, the only real Yellow Peril to which the United States ever had been exposed.
“I’m still inclined to believe,” Mark Hepburn said, “that I’m right about the object of the Doctor’s journey. He’s heading for Chicago. On Saturday night Salvaletti addresses a meeting on the result of which rests the final tipping of the scales.”
Nayland Smith twitched the lobe of his left ear.
“The Tower of the Holy Thorn is not far off his route,” he replied; “and Dom Patrick addresses the whole of the United States tonight! The situation is serious enough to justify the Doctor’s taking personal charge of operations to check the voice of the abbot…”
That the priest’s vast audience even at this eleventh hour could split the Salvaletti camp was an admissable fact. Even now it was thought that the former Chief Executive would be returned to office; but the league faction would make that office uneasy.
“Salvaletti’s magnificent showmanship,” said Smith, “the sentimental appeal in his pending marriage, are the work of a master producer. The last act shows a brilliant adventurer assuming control of the United States! It is not impossible, nor without precedent. Napoleon Bonaparte, Mussolini, Kemal have played the part before. No, Hepburn! I doubt if Fu-Manchu will passively permit Abbot Donegal to steal the limelight…”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE. THE VOICE FROM THE TOWER
All approaches to the Tower of the Holy Thorn would have reminded a veteran of an occupied town in war time. They were held up four times by armed guards…
When at last the headlamps of the road monster which had been waitiing at the flood-lit flying ground shone upon the bronze door, so that that thorn-crowned Head seemed to come to meet them in the darkness, Nayland Smith sprang out.
“Is Garstin there?” Hepburn called.
A man came forward.
“Captain Hepburn?”
“Yes. Anything to report?”
“All clear, Captain. It would need a regiment with machine-guns to get through!”
Mark Hepburn stared upward. The tower was in darkness right to the top; the staff which dealt with the abbot’s enormous mail had left. But from its crest, light beaconed as from a pharos.
And as Mark Hepburn stood there looking up, Nayland Smith entered the study of Dom Patrick Donegal.
“Thank God I see you safe!” he said, and shot out a nervous brown hand.
Patrick Donegal grasped it, and stood for a moment staring into the eyes of the man who had burst into his room.
“Thank God indeed. You see before you a chastened man, Sir Denis.” The abbot’s ascetic features as well as his rich brogue told that he spoke from his heart. “Once I resented your peremptory orders. I have changed my mind; I know that they were meant for my protection and for the good of my country. You see” — he pointed— “the broadcasting corporation has equipped me with a microphone. Tonight I speak in the safety of my own study.”
“You have followed my instructions closely?”
Nayland Smith was watching the priest with almost feverish intentness.
“In every particular. You may take it” — he smiled— “that I have not been poisoned or tampered with in any way! My address for tonight I wrote with my own hand at that desk. None other has touched it.”
“You have included the facts which I gave you — and the figures?”
“Everything! And I am happy to have you with me, Sir Denis; it gives me an added sense of security. At any moment now, the radio announcer will be here. I trust that you will stay?”
Nayland Smith did not reply. He was listening — listening keenly to a distant sound. Although he was barely aware of the fact, his gaze was set upon a reproduction of Carpaccio’s St. Jerome which hung upon the plastered wall above a crowded bookcase.
And now the abbot was listening, too. Dim cries came from far below; shouted orders…
A drone of aeroplane propellers drew rapidly nearer. Smith crossed to the window. A searchlight was sweeping the sky. A moment he watched, then turned, acted — and his actions were extraordinary.
Seizing the abbot bodily, he hurled him in the direction of the door! Then, leaping forward, he threw the door open, extended a muscular arm, and dragged him out. On the landing, Dom Patrick staggered; Smith grasped his shoulder.
“Down!” he shouted, “down the stairs!”
But now the priest had appreciated the urgency of the case. Temporarily shaken by this swift danger, as a man of courage he quickly recovered himself. On the landing below:
“Lie flat!” cried Smith, “we must trust to luck!”
The noise of an aeroplane engine grew so loud that one could only assume the pilot deliberately to be steering for the tower. Came a volley of rifle fire…
They were prone on the marble-paved floor when a deafening explosion shook the Tower of the Holy Thorn as an earthquake might have shaken it. Excited cries followed, crashing of fallen debris; an acrid smell reached their nostrils: the drone of propellors died away.
Abbot Donegal rose to his knees.
“Wait!” cried Smith breathlessly. “Not yet!”
The air was pervaded by a smell resembling iodine. He distrusted it, and stood there staring upward towards the top landing. The crown of the elevator shaft opposite the abbot’s door was wrecked. He could detect no sign of fire. The abbot, head bowed, gave silent thanks.
“Smith!” came huskily, “Smith!”
An increasing clatter of footsteps arose from the stairs below, and presently, pale, breathless, Mark Hepburn appeared.
“All right, Hepburn!” said Nayland Smith. “No casualties!”
Hepburn leaned heavily against a handrail for a moment; he had outrun them all.
“Thank God for that!” he panted. “It was an aerial torpedo — we saw them launch it!”
“The plane?”
“Will almost certainly be driven down.”
“What d’you make of this queer smell?” Mark Hepburn sniffed suspiciously, and then:
“Oxygen,” he replied. “Liquid ozone electrically discharged, maybe. For some reason” (he continued to breathe heavily) “the Doctor wanted to avoid fire…”
Cautiously they mounted the stairs and looked into the dark wreckage which had been Dom Patrick’s study. There were great holes in the roof through which one could see the stars, and two entire walls of the room had disappeared. All lights had gone out. Nayland Smith started as a hand touched his shoulder.
He turned. Abbot Donegal stood beside him, pointing.
“Look!” he said.
One corner of the study remained unscathed by the explosion. In it stood the microphone installed that day, and from the plaster wall above, St. Jerome looked down undisturbed.
“A sign, Sir Denis! God in His wisdom has ordained that I speak tonight!”
* * * *
Lola Dumas lay curled up on a cushioned settee; she wore a rest gown and slippers, but no stockings. And in the dimly lighted room the curves of her slender, creamy legs created highlights too startling in their contrast against the blue velvet to have pleased a portrait painter. Stacks of crumpled newspapers lay upon the carpet beside her. Her elbows buried in the cushions, chin resting in cupped hands, Lola stared across the darkened room, her somber eyes speculative, almost menacing…
On the front page of the journal which crowned the litter a large photograph of Lola appeared. It appeared in nearly all the others as well. She was the most talked-about woman in the United States. Drawings of the dresses to be worn by her bridesmaids had already been published in the fashion papers. It was to be a Louis XIII wedding: twenty tiny pages dressed as Black Musketeers, with Lola herself wearing the famous diamond brooch upon the recovery of which Dumas’ greatest romance is based. An archbishop would perform the ceremony, and not less than tw
o bishops would be present. A cardinal would have been more decorative; but since the rites of the Church of Rome had been denied to Lola following her first divorce, she had necessarily abjured that faith.
Moya Adair in the Park Avenue apartment, assisted by extra typists called in for the occasion, had sent out thousands of polite refusals to more or less important people who had applied for seats in the church. None was left.
Lola was to be married from her father’s Park Avenue home. Five hundred invitations had been accepted for the reception; the Moonray Room of the Regal-Athenian had been rented, together with the services of New York’s smartest band.
So keen was the interest which the magnetic rise of Paul Salvaletti had created throughout the world that despite the disturbed state of Europe, war and the rumors of war, special commissioners were being sent to New York by many prominent European newspapers to report the Salvaletti-Dumas wedding. In fact this wedding would be the master stroke of the master schemer, setting the seal of an international benediction upon the future President. Love always demands the front page.
But in the somber eyes of Lola Dumas there was no happiness. She lived for what she called “love” and without admiration must die. In fact, after her second divorce, the circumstances of which had not reflected creditably upon her, she had proclaimed that she intended to renounce the vanities of the world and take the veil. Perhaps fortunately for her, she had failed to find any suitable convent prepared to accept her as a novice.
There came a discreet rap on the door.
“Come in,” Lola called, her voice neither soft nor caressing.
She sat upright, slender jeweled fingers clutching the cushions as Marie, her maid, came in.
“Well?”
Marie pursed her lips, shrugged and nodded vigorously.
“You are sure?”
“Yes, madame. He is there again! And tonight I have found the number of the apartment — it is Number 36.”
Lola swung her slippered feet to the floor and clenching and unclenching her hands began to walk up and down. In the semi-darkness she all but upset a small table upon which a radio was standing. Marie, fearing one of the brainstorms for which Lola was notorious, stood just outside the door, watching fearfully. Of course, Lola argued, Paul’s mysterious absences (which since they had been in Chicago had become so frequent) might be due to orders from the President. But if this were so, why was she not in Paul’s confidence?