by Sax Rohmer
Frobisher shook his head. “There’s plenty to suspect if news of what’s going on up here has leaked out. Suppose you’re dead right—and I’m backing you to be—what’ll this thing mean to Huston Electric?”
“Grateful thanks of the scientific world.”
“Damn the scientific world! I’m thinking of Huston’s.”
Morris Craig, his mind wandering in immeasurable space, his spirit climbing the ladder of the stars toward higher and more remote secrets of a mysterious universe, answered vaguely.
“No idea. Can’t see at the moment how it could be usefully applied.”
“What are you talking about?” Michael Frobisher was quite his old roaring self again. “This job has cost half of a million dollars already. Are you telling me we get nothing back? Are we all bughouse around here?”
A door across the office opened, and a man came in, a short, thick-set man, slightly bandy, who walked with a rolling gait as if on the deck of a ship in dirty weather. He wore overalls, spectacles, and an eye-shade. He came in without any ceremony and approached Craig. The forbidding figure of Michael Frobisher disturbed him not at all.
“Say—have you got a bit of string?” he inquired.
“I have not got a bit of string. I have a small piece of gum, or two one-cent stamps. Would they do?”
The intruder chewed thoughtfully. “Guess not. Miss Navarre’s typewriter’s jammed up in there. But I got it figured a bit of string about so long”—he illustrated—”would fix things.”
“Sorry, Sam, but I am devoid of string.”
Sam chewed awhile, and then turned away.
“Guess I’ll have to go look some other place.”
As he went out:
“Listen,” Frobisher said. “What does that moron do for his wages?”
“Sam?” Craig answered, smiling. “Oh, sort of handyman. Mostly helps Regan and Shaw in the laboratory.”
“Be a big help to anybody, I’d say. What I’m driving at is this: We have to be mighty careful about who gets in here. There’s been a bad leak. Somebody knows more than he ought to know.”
Morris Craig, slowly, was getting back to that prosaic earth on which normal, flat-footed men spend their lives. It was beginning to dawn upon him that Michael Frobisher was badly frightened.
“I can’t account for it. Shaw and Regan are beyond suspicion. So, I hope, am I. Miss Navarre came to us with the highest credentials. In any case, she could do little harm. But, of course, it’s absurd to suspect her.”
“What about the half-wit who just went out?”
“Knows nothing about the work. Apart from which, his refs are first-class, including one from the Fire Department.”
“Looks like he’d been in a fire.” Frobisher dropped a cone of cigar ash. “But facts are facts. Let me bring you up to date—but not a word to Mrs. F. You know how nervous she is. Some guy got into Falling Waters last Tuesday night and went through my papers with a fine-tooth comb!”
“You mean it?”
Craig’s drawl had vanished. His eyes were very keen.
“I mean it. Nothing was taken—not a thing. But that’s not all. I’d had more than a suspicion for quite a while someone was snooping around. So I laid for him, without saying a word to Mrs. F., and one night I saw him —”
“What did he look like?”
“Yellow.”
“Indian?”
“No, sir. Some kind of Oriental. Then, only today, right in my own club, I caught another Asiatic watching me! It’s a fact. Dr. Pardoe can confirm it. Now—what I’m asking is this: If it’s what we’re doing in the laboratory there that somebody’s after, why am I followed around, and not you?”
“The answer is a discreet silence.”
“Also I’d be glad to learn who this somebody is. I could think up plenty who’d like to know. But no one of ‘em would be an Asiatic.”
Morris Craig brushed his hair back with his hand.
“You’re getting me jumpy, too,” he declared, although his eager, juvenile smile belied the words. “This thing wants looking into.”
“It’s going to be looked into,” Frobisher grimly assured him. “When you come up to Falling Waters you’ll see I’m standing for no more monkey tricks around there, anyway.” He stood up, glancing at the big clock over Craig’s desk. “I’m picking up Mrs. F. at the Ritz. Don’t have to be late. Expect you and Miss Navarre, lunch on Saturday.”
Chapter II
Mrs. F., as it happened, was thoroughly enjoying herself. She lay naked, face downward, on a padded couch, whilst a white-clad nurse ran an apparatus which buzzed like a giant hornet from the back of her fluffy skull right down her spine and up again. This treatment made her purr like a contented kitten. It had been preceded by a terrific mauling at the hands of another, muscular, attendant, in the course of which Mrs. F. had been all but hanged, drawn, quartered, and, finally, stood on her head.
An aromatic bath completed the treatment. Mrs. F. was wrapped in a loose fleecy garment, stretched upon a couch in a small apartment decorated with Pompeian frescoes, and given an Egyptian cigarette and a cup of orange-scented China tea.
She lay there in delicious languor, when the draperies were drawn aside and Professor Hoffmeyer, the celebrated Viennese psychiatrist who conducted the establishment, entered gravely. She turned her head and smiled up at him.
“How do you do. Professor?”
He did not reply at once, but stood there looking at her. Even through the dark glasses he always wore, his regard never failed to make her shudder. But it was a pleasurable shudder.
Professor Hoffmeyer presented an impressive figure. His sufferings in Nazi prison camps had left indelible marks. The dark glasses protected eyes seared by merciless lights. The silk gloves which he never removed concealed hands from which the fingernails had been extracted. He stooped much, leaning upon a heavy ebony cane.
Now he advanced almost noiselessly and took Mrs. Frobisher’s left wrist between a delicate thumb and forefinger, slightly inclining his head.
“It is not how do I do, dear lady,” he said in Germanic gutturals, “but how do you do.”
Mrs. Frobisher looked up at the massive brow bent over her, and tried, not for the first time, to puzzle out the true color of the scanty hair which crowned it. She almost decided that it was colorless; entirely neutral.
Professor Hoffmeyer stood upright, or as nearly upright as she had ever seen him stand, and nodded.
“You shall come to see me on Wednesday, at three o’clock. Not for the treatment, no, but for the consultation. If some other engagement you have, cancel it. At three o’clock on Wednesday.”
He bowed slightly and went out.
Professor Hoffmeyer ruled his wealthy clientele with a rod of iron. His reputation was enormous. His fees were phenomenal.
He proceeded, now, across a luxurious central salon where other patients waited, well-preserved women, some of them apparently out of the deep-freeze. He nodded to a chosen few as he passed, and entered an office marked “Private.” Closing the door, he pulled out a drawer in the businesslike desk—and a bookcase filled with advanced medical works, largely German, swung open bodily.
The professor went into the opening. As the bookcase swung back into place, the drawer in the desk closed again.
Professor Hoffmeyer would see no more patients today.
The room in which the professor found himself was a study. But its appointments were far from conventional. It contained some very valuable old lacquer and was richly carpeted. The lighting (it had no visible windows) was subdued, and the peculiar characteristic of the place was its silence.
Open bookcases were filled with volumes, some of them bound manuscripts, many of great age and all of great rarity. They were in many languages, including Greek, Chinese, and Arabic.
Beside a cushioned divan stood an inlaid stool equipped with several opium pipes in a rack, gum, lamp, and bodkins.
A long, carved table of time-blackened oak
served as a desk. A high-backed chair was set behind it. A faded volume lay open on the table, as well as a closely written manuscript. There were several other books there, and a number of curious objects difficult to identify in the dim light.
The professor approached a painted screen placed before a recess and disappeared behind it. Not a sound broke the silence of the room until he returned.
He had removed the gloves and dark glasses, and for the black coat worn by Professor Hoffmeyer had substituted a yellow house robe. The eyes which the glasses had concealed were long, narrow, and emerald-green. The uncovered hands had pointed fingernails. This gaunt, upright, Chinese ascetic was taller by inches than Professor Hoffmeyer.
And his face might have inspired a painter seeking a model for the Fallen Angel.
This not because it was so evil but because of a majestic and remorseless power which it possessed—a power which resided in the eyes. They were not the eyes of a normal man, moved by the desires, the impulses shared in some part by us all. They were the eyes of one who has shaken off those inhibitions common to humanity, who is undisturbed by either love or hate, untouched by fear, unmoved by compassion.
Few such men occur in the long history of civilization, and none who has not helped to change it.
The impassive figure crossed, with a silent, catlike step, to the long table, and became seated there.
One of the curious objects on the table sprang to life, as if touched by sudden moonlight. It was a crystal globe resting on a metal base. Dimly at first, the outlines of a face materialized in the crystal, and then grew clear. They became the features of an old Chinese, white-moustached, wrinkled, benign.
“You called me, Doctor?”
The voice, though distant, was clear. A crinkled smile played over the parchment face in the crystal.
“You have all the reports?”
The second voice was harsh, at points sibilant, but charged with imperious authority. It bore no resemblance to that of Professor Hoffmeyer.
“The last is timed six-fifteen. Shall I give you a summary?”
“Proceed, Huan Tsung. I am listening.”
And Huan Tsung, speaking in his quiet room above a shop in Pell Street, a room in which messages were received mysteriously, by day and by night, from all over Manhattan, closed his wise old eyes and opened the pages of an infallible memory.
This man whose ancestors had been cultured noblemen when most of ours were living in caves, spoke calmly across a system of communication as yet unheard of by Western science . . .
“Excellency will wish to know that our Burmese agent was recognized by Nayland Smith in the grillroom and followed by two F.B.I, operatives. I gave instructions that he be transferred elsewhere. He reports that he has arrived safely. His notes of the conversation at the next table are before me.” They contain nothing new. Shall I relate them?”
“No. I shall interview the woman personally. Proceed.”
“Nayland Smith visited the deputy commissioner and has been alone with him more than two hours. Nature of conversation unknown. The Greek covering his movements was intercepted and questioned, but had nothing to disclose. He is clumsy, and I have had him removed.”
“You did well Huan Tsung. Such bunglers breed danger.”
“Mai Cha, delivering Chinese vase sent by club secretary for repair, attired herself in the black garment she carries and gained a gallery above the library where Michael Frobisher talked with a medical friend. She reports that Frobisher has had sight of our agent at Palling Waters. Therefore I have transferred this agent. Mai Cha retired, successfully, with price of repairs.”
“Commend Mai Cha.”
“I have done so, Excellency. She is on headquarters duty tonight. Excellency can commend her himself.”
“The most recent movements of Frobisher, Nayland Smith, and Dr. Craig.”
“Frobisher awaits his wife at the Ritz-Carlton. Nayland Smith is covered, but no later report has reached me. Dr. Craig is in his office.”
“Frobisher has made no other contacts?”
“None, Excellency. The stream flows calmly. It is the hour for repose, when the wise man reflects.”
“Wait and watch, Huan Tsung. I must think swiftly.”
“Always I watch—and it is unavoidable that I wait until I am called away.”
Moonlight in the crystal faded out, and with it the wrinkled features of the Mandarin Huan Tsung.
Complete silence claimed the dimly lighted room. The wearer of the yellow robe remained motionless for a long time. Then, he stood up and crossed to the divan, upon which he stretched his gaunt body. He struck a silver bell which hung in a frame beside the rack of opium pipes. The bell emitted a high, sweet note.
Whilst the voice of the bell still lingered, drowsily, on the air, draperies in a narrow, arched opening were drawn aside, and a Chinese girl came in.
She wore national costume. She was very graceful, and her large, dark eyes resembled the eyes of a doe. She knelt and touched the carpet with her forehead.
“You have done well, Mai Cha. I am pleased with you.” The girl rose, but stood, head lowered and hands clasped, before the reclining figure. A flush crept over her dusky cheeks. “Prepare the jade pipe. I seek inspiration.” Mai Cha began quietly to light the little lamp on the stool.
* * *
Although no report had reached old Huan Tsung, nevertheless Nayland Smith had left police headquarters.
He was fully alive to the fact that every move he had made since entering New York City had been noted, that he never stirred far without a shadow.
This did not disturb him. Nayland Smith was used to it.
But he didn’t wish his trackers to find out where he was going from Centre Street—until he had got there.
He favored, in cold weather, a fur-collared topcoat of military cut, which was almost as distinctive as his briar pipe. He had a dozen or more police officers paraded for his inspection, and selected one nearly enough of his own build, clean-shaven and brown-skinned. His name was Moreno, and he was of Italian descent.
This officer was given clear instructions, and the driver who had brought Nayland Smith to headquarters received his orders, also.
When a man wearing a light rainproof and a dark-blue felt hat (property of Detective Officer Moreno) left by a side entrance, walked along to Lafayette Street, and presently picked up a taxi, no one paid any attention to him. But, in order to make quite sure, Nayland Smith gave the address, Waldorf-Astoria, got out at that hotel, walked through to the Park Avenue entrance, and proceeded to his real destination on foot.
He was satisfied that he had no shadow.
* * *
The office was empty, as Camille Navarre came out of her room and crossed to the long desk set before the windows. One end had been equipped for business purposes. There was a leather-covered chair and beside it a dictaphone. A cylinder remained on the machine, for Craig had been dictating when he was called to the laboratory. At the other end stood a draughtsman’s stool and a quantity of pens, pencils, brushes, pans of colored ink, and similar paraphernalia. They lay beside a propped-up drawing board, illuminated by a tubular lamp.
Camille placed several typed letters on the desk, and then stood there studying the unfinished diagram pinned to the board.
She possessed a quiet composure which rarely deserted her. As Craig had once remarked, she was so restful about the place. Her plain suit did not unduly stress a slim figure, and her hair was swept back flatly to a knot at the nape of her neck. She wore black-rimmed glasses, and looked in every respect the perfect secretary for a scientist.
A slight sound, the click of a lock, betrayed the fact that Craig was about to come out. Camille returned to her room.
She had just gone in when the door of the laboratory opened, and Craig walked down the three steps. A man in a white coat, holding a pair of oddly shaped goggles in his hand, stood at the top. He showed outlined against greenish light. With the opening of the door, a curiou
s vibration had become perceptible, a thing which might be sensed, rather than heard.
“In short, Doctor,” he was saying, “we can focus, but we can’t control the volume.”
Craig spoke over his shoulder.
“When we can do both, Regan, we’ll give an audition to the pundits that will turn their wool white.”
Regan, a capable-looking technician, grey-haired and having a finely shaped mathematical head, smiled as he stepped back through the doorway.
“I doubt if Mr. Frobisher will want any ‘auditions,”“ he said drily.
As the door was closed, the vibrant sound ceased.
Craig stood for a moment studying the illuminated diagram as Camille had done. He lighted a cigarette, and then noticed the letters on his desk. He dropped into the chair, switching up a reading lamp, and put on his glasses.
A moment later he was afoot again, as the office door burst open and a man came in rapidly—closely followed by Sam.
“Wait a minute! “Sam was upset. “Listen. Wait a minute!”
Craig dropped his glasses on the desk, stared, and then advanced impulsively, hand outstretched.
“Nayland Smith! By all that’s holy—Nayland Smith!” They exchanged grips, smiling happily. “Why, I thought you were in Ispahan, or Yucatan, or somewhere.”
“Nearly right the first time. But it was Teheran. Flew from there three days ago. More urgent business here.”
“Wait a minute,” Sam muttered, his eye-shade thrust right to the back of his head.
Craig turned to him.
“It’s all right, Sam. This is an old friend.”
“Oh, is that so?”
“Yes—and I don’t believe he has a bit of string.”
Sam stared truculently from face to face, chewing in an ominous way, and then went out.
“Sit down. Smith. This is a great, glad surprise. But why the whirlwind business? And”—staring—”what the devil are you up to?”
Nayland Smith had walked straight across to the long windows which occupied nearly the whole of the west wall. He was examining a narrow terrace outside bordered by an ornamental parapet. He looked beyond, to where the hundred eyes of a towering building shone in the dusk. He turned.