by Sax Rohmer
That efficient officer grasped it but did not relax his hold. “Okay,” he said in a low voice, like that of one soothing a child. “I’ve got it. Safe enough with me. Come along.”
Smith was led to the car by Dr. Malcolm and a low-browed, grey-uniformed chauffeur, who had the face and the physique of a gorilla. Dr. Malcolm took the wheel; the chauffeur got in beside Smith.
And, as the car moved away and excited voices faded, Smith’s brain seemed to become a phonograph which remorselessly repeated the words:
“Dr. Scott Malcolm … Circle Seven—0-3-0-0… Dr. Scott Malcolm… Circle Seven… 0-3-0-0…
“Dr. Scott Malcolm… Circle Seven—”
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was on the following morning that Morris Craig arrived ahead of time to find Camille already there. He was just stripping his jacket off when he saw her at the door of her room.
“Hullo!” he called. “Why the wild enthusiasm for toil?”
She was immaculate as always, but he thought she looked pale. She did not wear her glasses.
“I couldn’t sleep, Dr. Craig. When daylight broke at last I was glad to come. And there’s always plenty to do.”
“True. But I don’t like the insomnia.” He walked across to her. “You and I need a rest. When the job’s finished, we’re both going to have one. Shall I tell you something? I’m at it early myself because I mean to finish by Friday night so that we both have a carefree week-end.”
He patted her shoulder and turned away. Pulling out a key-ring, he went over to the big safe.
“Dr. Craig.”
“Yes?” He glanced back.
“I suppose you will think it is none of my business, but I feel”—she hesitated—“there are… dangers.”
Craig faced her. The boyish gaiety became disturbed.
“What sort of dangers?”
Camille met his glance gravely, and he thought her eyes were glorious.
“You have invented something which many people—people capable of any outrage—want to steal from you. And sometimes I think you are very careless.”
“In what way?”
“Well”—she lowered her eyes, for Craig’s regard was becoming ardent—“I know Sir Denis Nayland Smith’s reputation. I expect he came here to tell you the same thing.”
“So what?”
“There are precautions which you neglect.”
“Tell me one.”
“The safe combination is one. Do you ever change it?”
Craig smiled. “No,” he confessed. “Why should I? Nobody else knows it.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Sam might have picked it up—so might you. But why worry?”
“I may be foolish. But even if only Sam and I knew it, in your place I should change it, Dr. Craig.”
Craig stared. His expression conveyed nothing definite, but it embarrassed her.
“Not suggesting that Sam—”
“Of course not! I’m only suggesting that, for all our sakes, nobody but yourself should know that combination.”
Craig brushed his hair back and began to grope in a pocket for cigarettes.
“Point begins to dawn, vaguely,” he said. “Rather cloudy morning, but promise of a bright day. You mean that if something should be pinched therefrom, it must be clear that neither you nor Sam could possibly have known how to open the safe?”
“Yes,” said Camille, “I suppose that is what I mean.”
Craig stood there watching her door for some time after she had gone in and closed it. Then, he crossed, slowly, to the safe.
He had come to the conclusion that Camille was as clever as she was beautiful. He could not know that she had forced herself to this decision to warn him only after many sleepless hours.
Having arranged his work to his satisfaction, Craig took up the phone and dialled a number. When he got through:
“Please connect me with Sir Denis Nayland Smith,” he said.
There was an interval, and then the girl at the hotel switchboard reported, “There’s no reply from his apartment.”
“Oh—well, would you give him a message to call Dr. Morris Craig when he comes in.”
As he hung up he was thinking that Smith was early afoot. He had seen nothing of him since they had dined together, and was burning with anxiety on his behalf. The delicate instrument which Craig called a transmuter had already gone into construction. Shaw was working on a blueprint in the laboratory. It remained only for Craig to complete three details, and for tests to discover whether his plant could control the power he had invoked.
In view of what failure might mean, he had determined to insist that the entire equipment be moved, secretly, to a selected and guarded site in the open country for the carrying out of these tests.
He was beginning to realize that the transmuter might burst under the enormous load of energy it was designed to distribute. If it did, not only the Huston Building but also a great part of neighboring Manhattan could be dispersed like that lump of steel he had used in a demonstration for Nayland Smith.
Craig, in fact, was victim of an odd feeling of unrest. He continued to discount Smith’s more dramatic warnings, and this in spite of the murderous attempt on Moreno, but he was unsure of the future. The feathered dart he had sent to Professor White at Harvard for examination, but so far had had no report.
He pressed a button, then sat on a corner of the desk, swinging one leg, as Sam came in, chewing industriously. “Morning, boss.”
“Good morning, Sam. What time do you turn up here as a rule?”
“Well”—Sam shook his head thoughtfully—“I’m mostly around by eight, on account of Mr. Shaw or Mr. Regan come off night watch then. I might easy be wanted—see?”
“Yes, I see. Reason I ask is I thought I saw you tailing me as I came along. If this impression was chimerical, correct me. But it isn’t the first time I have had it.”
Sam’s eyes, behind his spectacles, betrayed childish wonder.
“Me tail you, Doctor! Listen. Wait a minute—”
“I am listening, and I am prepared to wait a minute. But I want an answer.”
“Well”—Sam pulled his eye-shade lower—“sometimes it happens maybe I’m on an errand same time you happen to be going my way.”
“Enough! I understand. You are my Old Man of the Sea, kindly supplied by Nayland Smith. If Mr. Frobisher knew how you wasted time you owe to Huston Electric, he’d fire you. But I’ll have it out with Smith, when I see him.”
A curious expression crossed Sam’s face as Craig spoke, but was gone so quickly that, turning away, he didn’t detect it. As Sam went out, Craig stood studying the detail on the drawing board, but found himself unable to conquer that spirit of unrest, an unhealthy sense of impending harm, which had descended upon him. Particularly, he was troubled by forebodings about Smith. And although Morris Craig would have rejected such a theory with scientific scorn, it is nevertheless possible that these were telepathic…
* * *
Less than nine hours before, police headquarters had become a Vesuvius.
Nayland Smith’s wallet had been handed in by the frightened patrolman to whom he had passed it. He had given a detailed description of the man posing as “Dr. Malcolm.” It was recognized, at Centre Street, to correspond to that of the bogus doctor who had saved the life of Officer Moreno!
Wires had hummed all night. The deputy commissioner had been called at his home. So had the district attorney. All cars in the suspected area were radioed. Senior police officers took charge of operations. What had been regarded, in certain quarters, as an outbreak of hysteria in the F.B.I. suddenly crystallized into a present menace when the news broke that a celebrated London consultant had been swept off the map of Manhattan.
From the time that “Dr. Malcolm” had left with his supposed patient, nothing more was known of his movements. His identity remained a mystery. Feverish activity prevailed. But not a solitary clue came in.
An internatio
nally famous criminal investigator had been spirited away under the very eyes of the police—and no one knew where to look for him!
But Manhattan danced on…
* * *
Craig’s uneasiness grew greater as the day grew older. It began seriously to interfere with concentration. His lunch consisted of a club sandwich and a bottle of beer sent up from the restaurant on the main floor, below. The nearer that Shaw’s work came to completion in the laboratory, the further Craig seemed to be from contributing those final elements which would give it life. The more feverishly he toiled the less he accomplished.
Early in the afternoon he spoke to the manager of Nayland Smith’s hotel.
He learned that Smith had gone out the evening before, at what exact time the manager didn’t know. He had not returned nor communicated. There had been many callers, and a quantity of messages, mail, and cables awaited him. The manager could give no further information.
Craig wondered if he should call police headquarters, but hesitated to make himself a nuisance. After all, the nature of Smith’s business in New York would sufficiently account for long absences. But Craig recalled, unhappily, something he had said on the night they dined together: “I fear that he” (Dr. Fu-Manchu) “has decided that I must die. What are my chances?”
He tried again to tackle his work, but found the problems which it presented so bewildering that he was not resentful, rather grateful, when Michael Frobisher burst into the office.
“Hullo, Mr. Frobisher!”
Craig swung around and faced his chief, who had dropped into one of the armchairs.
“Hello, Craig. Thought I’d just look in. Don’t expect to be in town again this week. Picking up Mrs. F., who’s having a treatment, and driving right out. How’s the big job shaping?”
Frobisher pulled a cigar from his breast pocket, and Craig noted that his hand was unsteady. The florid coloring had undertones of grey. Sudden recognition came to him that Frobisher was either a sick man or a haunted one.
“Fairly bright,” he replied in his most airy manner. “Time you saw the setup in the lab again.”
“Yes—I must.”
But Craig knew that he would avoid the visit, if possible. The throbbing monster which had its being in the laboratory frightened Michael Frobisher, a fact of which Craig was aware.
“Getting quite a big boy now.”
Frobisher snipped off the end of his cigar. “What are the prospects of finishing by week-end?”
“Fair to medium. Mental functions disturbed by grave misgivings.”
Frobisher glanced up sharply. His eyes, under drawn black brows, reminded Craig, for some reason, of smouldering fires in two deep caves.
“What misgivings?” he growled, and snapped up his lighter, which had a flame like a burning oil well.
Craig, facing Frobisher, dropped the stub of a cigarette and began to grope behind him for a packet which he had put somewhere on the desk.
“I’m a sort of modern Frankenstein,” he explained. “Hadn’t grasped it before, but see it now. In there”—he waved towards the laboratory door—“is a pup of a thing which, full grown, could eat up New York City at one gulp. This brute frightens me.”
“Forget it.” Frobisher lighted his cigar.
“Imposs. The thought hangs on like a bulldog. How this beast can be tamed to perform domestic duties escapes me at the moment. Like training a Bengal tiger to rock baby’s cradle. Then, there’s something else.”
“Such as what?”
“My love child, the horror begotten in that laboratory, is coveted by the governments of the United States, of England, and of Russia.”
Michael Frobisher stood up. His craggy brows struggled to meet over a deep vertical wrinkle.
“Who says so?”
“I say so. Agents of all those governments are watching every move we make here.”
“I knew there was a leak! Do you know those agents?”
“Sir Denis Nayland Smith has arrived from London.”
“Who in hell is Sir Denis Nayland Smith?”
“An old friend of mine. Formerly a commissioner of Scotland Yard. But I don’t know the Washington agent and I don’t know the Soviet agent. I only know they’re here.”
“Oh!” said Michael Frobisher, and sat down again. “Any more troubles?”
“Yes.” Craig found his cigarettes and lighted one. “Dr. Fu-Manchu.”
Silence fell between them like a curtain. Craig had turned again to the desk. He swung back now, and glanced at Frobisher. His expression was complicated. But fear was in it. He looked up at Craig.
“You’re sure there is such a person?”
“Yes—moderately sure.”
For some reason this assurance seemed to bring relief to Frobisher. A moment later an explanation came.
“Then I’m not crazy—as that damned Pardoe thinks! Those Asiatic snoopers really exist. They seem to have quit tailing me around town, but queer things happen out at Falling Waters. Whoever went through my papers one night a way back must have been working with inside help—”
“But I thought you told me that some yellow character—”
“He was outside. Saw him from my dressing-room window. No locks broken. Then, only last night, my private safe was opened!”
“What’s that?”
“Plain fact. I was awake. Sleep badly. Guess I interrupted him. But the door of the safe was wide open when I got down!”
“See anybody?”
“Not a one. Nothing taken. Doors and windows secure. Craig”—Frobisher’s deep voice faltered—“I was beginning to wonder—”
“If you walked in your sleep? Did these things yourself?”
“Well—”
“Quite understand, and sympathize.”
Michael Frobisher executed a shaking movement with his head, rather like that of a big dog who has something in his ear.
“Listen—but not a word to Mrs. F. I have had a gadget fixed up to record any movement around the house, and show just where it’s coming from. I want you to look it over this week-end.”
“Delightful prospect. I am the gadget king. And this brings me to my main misgiving. You may recall the bother we had fitting up the plant in the lab?”
“Don’t be funny! Didn’t we import workmen from Europe to make it in sections—”
“We did. And I have been my own draughtsman.”
“Then send ’em home again and assemble the sections ourselves?”
“‘Ourselves’ relating to Shaw, Regan and me? I fall to recall any instance when you put your Herculean but dignified shoulder to the wheel. Still, you were highly encouragin’. Yes—well—to be brief, we shall have to do likewise once more.”
“What’s that?”
“I cannot be responsible for tests carried out in the heart of New York City. Some of my experiments already are slightly alarming. But when I’m all set to tap the juice in quantities, I want to be where I can do no harm.” Craig was warming to his subject; the enthusiasm of the specialist fired his eyes. “You see, the energy lies in successive strata—like the skins of an onion. And you know what the middle of a raw onion’s like!”
The tip of Frobisher’s cigar glowed ominously.
“Conveying what?” he growled through closed lips.
“Conveying that a site must be picked for an experimental station. Somewhere in wide-open spaces, far from the madding crowd. Little by little and bit by bit we shall transfer our monster there.”
“You told me you needed some high place.”
“There are high places other than the top of the Huston Building. I wish to avoid repeating, in the Huston Building, the story of the Tower of Babel. It would be spectacular, but unpopular.”
Michael Frobisher got up, crossed, removed the cigar from his lips, and stood right in front of Craig.
“Listen. You’re not getting cold feet, are you?”
Craig smiled, that slightly mischievous, schoolboy smile which was so irresis
tibly charming.
“Yes,” he said. “I am. What are you going to do about it?”
Michael Frobisher turned and picked up his hat, which he had dropped on the floor beside his chair.
“If you say so, I’ll have to get busy.” He glanced at his wrist watch. “Give me all the facts on Saturday.”
When Frobisher opened the office door, he stood looking to right and left of the lobby for a moment before he went out.
Craig scratched his chin reflectively. What, exactly, was going on at Falling Waters? He felt peculiarly disinclined to work, considered ringing for Camille, not because he required her attendance, but for the pure pleasure of looking at her, then resolutely put on his glasses and settled down before the problem symbolized by that unfinished diagram.
He was destined, however, to be interrupted again.
The office door behind him opened very quietly, and Mrs. Frobisher peeped in. Craig remained unaware of her presence.
“Do I intrude?” she asked coyly.
Craig, conscious of shirt-sleeves, took off his glasses, jumped from the stool, and turned.
“Why—Mrs. Frobisher!” He swept back the drooping forelock. “I say—excuse my exposed laundry.”
Stella Frobisher extended her hand graciously. She didn’t offer it; she extended it. She was an Englishwoman and her pattern of life appeared to be modelled upon customs embalmed in old volumes of Punch. Her hair had been blond, and would always remain so. She had canary-like manners. She fluttered.
“I was waiting until Mike had gone. He mustn’t know I have been here.”
Craig pulled a chair forward, and Stella Frobisher’s high heels clicked like castanets on the parquet as she crossed and sat down. She was correctly dressed in full mink uniform and wore a bird of paradise for a hat.
“Highly compromising. When did your heart first awaken to my charms?” said Craig as he put his coat on.
He had learned that airy badinage was the only possible kind of conversation with Mrs. Frobisher, who was some years younger than her husband and liked to think he had many rivals.
“Oh, you do say the queerest things!” Stella’s reputation for vivacity rested largely upon her habit of stressing words at random. “I have been having a treatment at Professor Hoffmeyer’s.”