by Sax Rohmer
Regan nodded unhumorously, and going up the steps, unlocked the laboratory door. Eerie vibrations invaded the office. His figure showed outlined for a moment against green light. Then the door was closed as he went in.
“I want to know,” rapped Nayland Smith, “when you will be finished.”
“Tonight.”
“Sure?”
“Perfectly sure.”
“I thought as much. Even allowing an hour for dinner?” Craig brushed his hair back, staring.
“I’m stopping for no dinner.”
Nayland Smith smiled again.
“Craig, I begin to agree with Dr. Fu Manchu, who informed me that you are what he described as ‘touched with genius.’ I don’t want you to confirm his diagnosis by dying young. I have booked a table at a quiet restaurant. Until you are dragged away from that desk, your abstraction is deplorable. And there are many important things I want to tell you.”
“Won’t they keep?”
“No. And by the way, I miss the invaluable Sam.”
“The said Invaluable has twenty-four hours’ leave. His mother is ill in Philadelphia. Result, that for the first time in days I can go out for a drink without being tailed by a shadow in a peaked cap!”
“Oh!” rapped Smith, and gave Craig a steely glance. “Sorry to hear it.”
The laboratory yawned again, and Shaw stepped out. He stood at the top of the steps for a moment, looking down. The chief technician had the heavy frame of an open-air man who has come indoors, a mass of unruly blond hair, and a merry eye. “Just off, Shaw?” Craig called. “You don’t know my masterful friend, Sir Denis Nayland Smith? On my right, Masterful Smith; on my left, Martin Shaw.”
Shaw came down and shook hands.
“Free man until midnight,” he said. “Then back to the bloody Juggernaut that lives in there!” He turned to Craig. “If you had that valve detail ready tonight, I believe I could fit up the transmuter in time for tests on, say, Monday.”
“Do you?” Craig replied, and grinned like a schoolboy. “Has no thought crossed the massive brain to file a will before that date?”
Shaw nodded. “It has. Doctor. Rests with you. But if we can keep the cork in when we really fill the bottle, well—”
He went out, giving an imitation of a man under heavy fire. As the office door closed:
“Our convoy awaits!” said Nayland Smith. “Let’s move.”
“Stop ordering me about,” Craig exclaimed in mock severity. “Oh, I give up the unequal contest.”
He called the laboratory.
“Reganhere.”
“I regret to state, Regan, that I am being forcibly removed to some restaurant to dine—”
“Good thing, too.”
“Repeat.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Oh, Well, I shall be back at nine. Want to see me before I go?”
“No, Doctor. Enjoy your dinner.”
Craig carried his drawing board, and his notes, across to the safe. When they were locked away, he glanced towards the door of Camille’s room.
“She’s out,” said Smith drily. “I passed her as I came in.”
* * *
They were already speeding along in a police car, two F.B.I, men following in another, when Camille faced Dr. Fu Manchu across the bizarre study.
“You have been here before,” the harsh voice had said. And, in a moment of cold horror, which seemed to check her heartbeats, Camille knew this to be true. Her dream had haunted her so persistently that she had spoken to Morris, warned him to change the safe combination, for in her wastebasket she had found those fragments of a tom-up note. And although she had spent hours trying to piece the fragments together, and had failed, she knew that the paper on which the note was written came from the Huston Electric office.
Now—the man, the inscrutable, dreadful face of the man, every detail surrounding him, told her that the dream had been no dream, but a memory recaptured in sleep.
She had come to the appointment with Professor Hoffmeyer wearing her dark-rimmed glasses. At this moment the incongruity of her appearance in such an environment struck her forcibly.
One angle of the room was occupied by shelves filled with volumes, some of them large and faded leather bindings. Then came the lacquer panel. This, she knew, masked an opening through which she had entered. Beyond it a curtain partly concealed a recess. There was an arched doorway in which a silk shaded lantern hung.
A cushioned divan rose like an island in a sea of rugs. There were two strangely shaped mediaeval chairs.
A long black table bore books, open manuscripts, jars which apparently contained specimens of some kind, and a mummied head mounted on a wooden base. The dim light of a green lamp just outlined a crystal globe eclipsed in shadow.
And behind the table, hands with attenuated nails crossed under his chin, was the Man . . .
“Please sit down.”
His half-closed eyes glanced sideways in the direction of the divan. He did not stir, otherwise.
Camille, fighting a desperate battle for calmness, for sanity, remained standing. She stared challengingly at the motionless figure. Her throat was dry, but when she spoke, her soft voice did not betray her.
“I came to consult Professor Hoffmeyer. Who are you?”
He remained immobile. When he replied, Camille could not see that the thin lips moved.
“I am accustomed to asking questions. Miss Navarre, not to answering them. But I must make a concession in the case of a fellow scientist—and one whose courage I respect. I am known as Dr. Fu Manchu.”
“Dr. Fu Manchu!” she whispered.
“I believe you have been warned against me. I regret that, like the straying husbands, I should be so misunderstood, that the world should think badly of me.”
“But what are you doing here? If Mrs. Frobisher knew—”
“If Mrs. Frobisher knew what? That Professor Hoffmeyer is Dr. Fu Manchu, or that Camille Navarre is employed by the intelligence service of an alien government? To which eventuality do you refer?”
“What do you say? What are you suggesting?”
“I suggest nothing. I ask a question. Mrs. Frobisher made the appointment for tonight because I told her to do so—”
“You meant—that Mrs. Frobisher knows—?”
“Mrs. Frobisher does not know anything. Few women do. But I believe that her husband might react unfavorably if he knew you to be an agent of Great Britain.”
Camille’s heart was throbbing wildly, but she had been trained to face the worst.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it is true.” Slowly Dr. Fu Manchu stood up. “Your employers are within their rights in seeking to learn the nature of those experiments being carried out in the Huston laboratory. We live in a dangerous age. I admire them for their ingenious removal to a better post of Dr. Craig’s former assistant, and for providing you with the necessary credentials to take her place.”
He was walking around the comer of the long, narrow table, and coming nearer. He had a catlike step.
“My credentials are my own.”
“Indeed. And where did you acquire them?”
“Is that your business?”
Fear (the tall, yellow-robed figure was very close now) made her defiant.
“And where did you acquire them?” he repeated in a low, sibilant tone.
“I graduated at the Sorbonne.”
“I congratulate you. These are details I had no time to gather at our former interview. And did you carry out intelligence work during the war?”
“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 h
er 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.