by Sax Rohmer
Mark Hepburn’s square chin protruded from the upturned collar of his coat; his deep-set eyes never faltered in their regard.
“That can come later if necessary,” he said; “but first—”
“But first, I shall freeze to death,” said the girl indignantly.
“But first, what have you got in that satchel?”
“Private papers of Abbot Donegal’s. I am working on them at home.”
“In that case, give them to me.”
“I won’t! You have no right whatever to interfere with me. I have asked you to get in touch with the abbot.”
Without relaxing his grip on his prisoner, Hepburn suddenly snatched the satchel, pulling the loop down over her little gloved hand and thrusting the satchel under his arm.
“I don’t want to be harsh,” he said, “but my job at the moment is more important than yours. This will be returned to you in an hour or less. Lieutenant Johnson will drive you home.”
He began to lead her towards the spot where he knew the Secret Service cars were parked. He had determined to raise a minor hell with the said Lieutenant Johnson for omitting to post a man at this point, for as chief of staff to Federal Agent 56 he was personally responsible. He was by no means sure of himself. The girl embraced by his arm was the first really disturbing element which had ever crashed into his Puritan life; she was too lovely to be real: the teaching of long-ago ancestors prompted that she was an instrument of the devil.
Reluctantly she submitted; for ten, twelve, fifteen paces. Then suddenly resisted, dragging at his arm.
“Please, please, for God’s sake, listen to me!”
He pulled up. They were alone in that blinding blizzard, although ten or twelve men were posted at points around the Tower of the Holy Thorn. A freak of the storm cast an awning of snow from the lighted windows down to the spot upon which they stood, and in that dim reflected light Mark Hepburn saw the bewitching face uplifted to him.
She was smiling; this Mrs. Adair who belonged to Abbot Donegal’s staff; a tremulous, pathetic smile, a smile which in happier hours had been one of exquisite but surely innocent coquetry. Now it told of bravely hidden tears.
Despite all this stoicism, Mark Hepburn’s heart pulsed more rapidly. Some men, he thought, many, maybe, had worshiped those lips, dreamed of that beckoning smile… perhaps lost everything for it.
This woman was a revelation; to Mark Hepburn, a discovery. He was suspicious of the Irish. For this reason he had never wholly believed in the sincerity of Patrick Donegal. And Mrs. Adair was enveloped in that mystical halo which haunts yet protects the Celts. He did not believe in this mysticism, but he was not immune from its insidious charm. He hated hurting her; he found himself thinking of her as a beautiful, helpless moth torn by the wind from some green dell where fairies still hid in the bushes and the four-leaved shamrock grew.
He felt suddenly glad about, and not ashamed of, “Green Lilies.” Mrs. Adair, for one magical moment, had enabled him to recapture that long-lost mood. It was very odd, out there in the blizzard, with his racial distrust of pretty women and of all that belonged to Rome…
It was this last thought—Rome—that steadied him. Here was some black plot against the Constitution…
“I don’t ask you, I entreat you to give me my papers and let me go my own way. I promise, faithfully, if you will tell me where to find you, that I will see you tomorrow and explain anything you want to know.”
Hepburn did not look at her. His Quaker ancestors rallied around him. He squared his grim jaw.
“Lieutenant Johnson will drive you home,” he said coldly, “and will bring you your satchel immediately I am satisfied that its contents are what you say they are.”
* * *
In the amber-lighted room, where the man with that wonderful mathematical brow sat at work upon the bust of a sinister Chinaman, one of the seven telephones buzzed. He laid down the modeling tool with which he had been working and took up the instrument. He listened.
“This is Number 12,” said a woman’s voice, “speaking from Base 8. In accordance with orders I managed to escape from the Tower of the Holy Thorn. Unfortunately I was captured by a federal agent—name unknown—at the moment that I reached the ground. I was taken under escort of a Lieutenant Johnson towards an address which I invented at random. A Z-car was covering me. Heavy snow gave me a chance. I managed to spring out and get to the Z-car. I regret that the federal agent secured the satchel containing the manuscript. There’s nothing more to report. Standing by here awaiting orders.”
The sculptor replaced the receiver and resumed his task. Twice again he was interrupted, listening to a report from California and to another from New York. He made no notes. He never replied. He merely went on with his seemingly endless task; for he was eternally smearing out the work which he had done, now an ear, now a curve of the brow, and patiently remodeling.
A bell rang, the light went out, and in the darkness that unforgettable, guttural voice spoke:
“Give me the latest report of Harvey Bragg’s reception at the Hollywood Bowl.”
“Last report received,” the Teutonic voice replied, and a cigarette glowed in the darkness, “one hour and seventeen minutes ago. Pacific Coast time: twelve minutes after ten. Audience of twenty thousand people, as earlier reported. Harvey Bragg’s slogan, ‘America for every man—every man for America’ was received without enthusiasm. His assurance, hitherto substantiated, that any reputable citizen who is destitute has only to apply to his office to secure immediate employment, went well. Report of end of speech not yet to hand. No other news from Hollywood Bowl. Report sent in by Number 49.”
A moment of silence followed, silence so complete that the crackling of burning tobacco in an Egyptian cigarette might have been heard.
“The report of Number 12,” said the guttural voice, “is overdue.”
“I received a report from Number 12—” he glanced at an electric clock upon the table—“at 2.05 a.m.”
Whereupon, word for word, this man of phenomenal memory repeated the message received from Base 8 exactly as it had been delivered.
A dim bell rang and the room became lighted again. The sculptor picked up a modeling tool.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE SPECIAL TRAIN
The special train bored its way through mists of snow.
“They won’t attempt to wreck us, Hepburn!” Federal Officer 56 smiled grimly and tapped the satchel which had belonged to Mrs. Adair. “This is our safeguard. But there may be an attempt of some other kind.”
In the solitary car Smith sat facing Hepburn. Seven of the party which had taken command of the Tower of the Holy Thorn were distributed in chairs about them. Some smoked and were silent; others talked; others again neither smoked nor talked, but glanced furtively in the direction of Captain Hepburn and his mysterious superior.
“You have done a first-class job, Hepburn” said Smith. “I tricked the man Richet (who is some kind of half-caste) into an admission that this”—he tapped the satchel—“was material supplied by Dr. Prescott.”
“I ordered Richet’s arrest before I left.”
“Good man.”
The train roared through the night and Smith leaned forward, resting his hand upon Hepburn’s shoulder.
“The enemy knows that Dr. Prescott has found out the truth! How Dr. Prescott found out we have got to learn. Clearly he is a brilliant man. I’m afraid, Hepburn—I am afraid—”
He gripped Hepburn’s shoulder and his grip was like that of a vise.
“You have read this thing… and the part which is in Father Donegal’s handwriting tells the story. How he was prevented from broadcasting that story I begin to suspect. Note this particularly, Hepburn: I observed that Dom Patrick, when looking over the typescript brought in by James Richet, moistened the tip of his thumb in turning over the pages. A habit. The point seems significant?”
“Not to me,” Hepburn confessed, staring rather haggardly at the speaker.
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br /> “Ah! think it over,” said Smith; then: “I know why you are downcast. You lost the woman—but you got what we were really looking for. Here’s the story of an outside organization aiming to secure control of the country. Don’t worry about Mrs. Adair; it’s only a question of time. We’ll get her.”
Mark Hepburn turned his head aside.
The contents of the satchel had proved to be the completed text of Abbot Donegal’s address, the last five pages in the Father’s untidy manuscript. But those last five pages revealed a plot which, if carried out, would place the United States under the domination of some shadowy being, unnamed, who apparently controlled inexhaustible supplies not only of capital but of men!
Following this revelation, his new chief, “Federal Officer 56,” had given him his entire confidence. He had suspected, but now he knew, that a world drama was being fought out in the United States. A simple soul at heart, he was temporarily dazzled by recognition of the fact that he had been appointed chief of staff in an international crisis to Sir Denis Nayland Smith, Ex-Commissioner of Scotland Yard, created a baronet for his services not only to the British Empire but to the world.
And in a moment of weakness he had let the woman go who might be a link, an irreplaceable link, between their task and this thing which aimed to place the United States under alien domination!
In that hour of disillusionment he felt a double traitor; for this man, Nayland Smith, was so dead straight…
An atmosphere of impending harm hovered over the party. Mark Hepburn was not alone in having seen the venomous blizzard spitting snow unto that bronze Face. Among the seven who accompanied them were members of the ancient faith upheld sturdily by the hand of Abbot Donegal; and these, particularly—touched, he told himself, by medieval superstition—doubted and wondered as they were blindly carried through the stormy night. They were ignorant of what underlay it all, and ignorance breeds fear. They knew that they were merely a bodyguard for Captain Hepburn and Federal Officer 56.
Suddenly, appallingly, brakes were applied, all but throwing the nine men out of their chairs. Nayland Smith came to his feet at a bound, clutching the side of the car.
“Hepburn!” he cried, “go forward with two men. This train can slow down but it must not stop!”
Mark Hepburn ran forward along the car, touching two of the seven on their shoulders as he passed. They followed him out. A flare spluttered through snowy mist, clearly visible from the off-side windows.
“Switch off the lights!” The order came in a high-pitched, irritable voice.
A trainman appeared and the car was plunged in darkness.
A second flare broke through the veil of snow. Federal Officer 56 was crouching by a window looking out, and now:
“Do you see!” he cried, and grabbed the arm of a man who was peering out beside him. “Do you see!”
As the train regained momentum, presumably under the urge of Hepburn, a group of men armed with machine-guns became clearly visible beside the tracks.
The special was whirling through the night again when Hepburn came back. He was smiling his slow smile. Federal Agent 56 turned and stood up.
“This train won’t stop,” said Hepburn, “until we make Cleveland.”
CHAPTER SIX
AT WEAVER’S FARM
“What’s this?” muttered Nayland Smith hoarsely. The car was pulled up. They were in sight of the woods skirting Weaver’s Farm. Night had fallen, and although the violence of the storm had abated there was a great eerie darkness over the snow-covered landscape.
Parties of men carrying torches and hurricane lanterns moved like shadows through the trees!
Smith sprang out on to a faintly discernible track, Mark Hepburn close behind him. They began to run towards the woods, and presently a man who peered about among the silvered bushes turned.
“What has happened?” Smith demanded breathlessly.
The man, whose bearing suggested military training, hesitated, holding a hurricane lamp aloft and staring hard at the speaker. But something in Smith’s authoritative manner brought a change of expression.
“We are federal agents,” said Mark Hepburn. “What’s going on here?”
“Dr. Orwin Prescott has disappeared!”
Nayland Smith clutched Hepburn’s shoulder: Mark could feel how his fingers quivered.
“My God, Hepburn,” he whispered, “we are too late!”
Clenching his fists, he turned and began to race back to the car. Mark Hepburn exchanged a few words with the man to whom they had spoken and then doubled after Nayland Smith.
They had been compelled by the violence of the blizzard to proceed by rail to Buffalo; the military plane had been forced down by heavy snow twenty miles from the landing place selected. At Buffalo they had had further bad news from Lieutenant Johnson.
Crowning the daring getaway of Mrs. Adair, James Richet, whose arrest had been ordered by Mark Hepburn, had vanished…
And now they were plowing a way along the drive which led up to Weaver’s Farm, a white frame house with green shutters, sitting far back from the road! A survival of Colonial New England, it had stood there, outpost of the white man’s progress in days when the red man still hunted the woods and lakes, trading beads for venison and maple sugar. Successive generations had modernized it so that today it was a twentieth-century home equipped from cellar to garret with every possible domestic convenience.
The door was wide open; and in the vestibule, with its old prints and atmosphere of culture, a tall, singularly thin man stood on the mat talking to a little white-haired old lady. He held a very wide-brimmed hat in his hand and constantly stamped snow from his boots. His face was gloomily officious. Members of the domestic staff might dimly be seen peering down from an upper landing. Unrest, fear, reigned in this normally peaceful household.
The white-haired lady started nervously as Mark Hepburn stepped forward.
“I am Captain Hepburn,” he said. “I think you are expecting me. Is this Miss Lakin?”
“I am glad you are here, Captain Hepburn,” said the little lady, with a frightened smile. She held out a small, plump, but delicate hand. “I am Elsie Frayne, Sarah Lakin’s friend and companion.”
“I am afraid,” Hepburn replied, “we come too late. This is Federal Officer Smith. We have met with every kind of obstacle on our way.”
“Miss Frayne,” rapped Smith in his staccato fashion, “I must put a call through immediately. Where is the telephone?”
Miss Frayne, suddenly quite at ease with these strange invaders out of the night, smiled wanly.
“I regret to say, Mr. Smith, that our telephone was cut off some hours ago.”
“Ah!” murmured Smith, and began tugging at the lobe of his left ear, a habit which Hepburn had come to recognize as evidence of intense concentration. “That explains a lot.” He stared about him, his disturbing glance finally focusing upon the face of the thin man.
“Who are you?” he snapped abruptly.
“I’m Deputy Sheriff Black,” was the prompt but gloomy answer. “I have had orders to protect Weaver’s Farm.”
“I know it. They were my orders—and a pretty mess you’ve made of it.”
The local officer bristled indignantly. He resented the irritable peremptory manners of this “G” man; in fact Deputy Sheriff Black had never been in favor of Federal interference with county matters.
“A man can only do his duty, Mr. Smith,” he answered angrily, “and I have done mine. Dr. Prescott slipped out some time after dusk this evening. Nobody saw him go. Nobody knows why he went or where he went. I may add that although I may be responsible, there are federal men on this job as well, and not one of them knows any more than I know.”
“Where is Miss Lakin?”
“Out with a search party down at the lake.”
“Sarah has such courage,” murmured Miss Frayne. “I wouldn’t go outside the house tonight for anything in the world.”
Mark Hepburn turned to her.
“Is there any indication,” he asked, “that Dr. Prescott went that way?”
“Mr. Walsh, a federal agent who arrived here two hours ago, discovered tracks leading in the direction of the lake.”
“John Walsh is our man,” said Hepburn, turning to Smith. “Do you want to make any inquiries here, or shall we head for the lake?”
Nayland Smith was staring abstractedly at Miss Frayne, and now:
“At what time, exactly,” he asked, “was your telephone disconnected?”
“At five minutes after three,” Deputy Sheriff Black’s somber tones interpolated. “There are men at work now trying to trace the break.”
“Who last saw Dr. Prescott?”
“Sarah,” Miss Frayne replied—“that is, so far as we know.”
“Where was he and what was he doing?”
“He was in the library writing letters.”
“Were these letters posted?”
“No, Mr. Smith, they are still on the desk.”
“Was it dark at this time?”
“Yes. Dr. Prescott—he is Miss Lakin’s cousin, you know—had lighted the reading lamp, so Sarah told me.”
“It was alight when I arrived,” growled Deputy Sheriff Black.
“When did you arrive?” Smith asked.
“Twenty minutes after it was suspected Dr. Prescott had left the house.”
“Where were you prior to that time?”
“Out in the road. I had been taking reports from the men on duty.”
“Has anyone touched those letters since they were written?”
“No one, Mr. Smith,” the gentle voice of Miss Frayne replied.
Nayland Smith turned to Deputy Sheriff Black.
“See that no one enters the library,” he snapped, “until I return. I want to look over the room in which Dr. Prescott slept.”
Deputy Sheriff Black nodded tersely and crossed the vestibule.
But even as Nayland Smith turned towards the stair, a deep feminine voice came out of the night beyond the entrance doors, which had not been closed. The remorseless wind was threatening to rise again, howling wanly through the woods like a phantom wolf pack. Flakes of fine snow fluttered in.