President Fu-Manchu (2 page)

It opened so suddenly that one might have supposed the opener to have been waiting inside for this purpose; a short, elegant young man, almost feminine in the nicety of his attire.

The new arrival stepped in and quickly shut out the storm, closing the bronze door behind him. In a little lobby communicating with a large square room equipped as an up-to-date office, but at this late hour deserted, he stood staring at the person who had admitted him.

A churchlike lamp, hung from a bracket on the wall, now cast its golden light upon the face of the man wearing the leather coat. He had removed his hat, revealing a head of crisp, graying hair. His features were angular to the point of gauntness, and his eyes had the penetrating quality of armored steel, while his complexion seemed strangely out of keeping with the climate, being sun-baked to a sort of coffee color.

“Are you James Richet?” he snapped.

The elegant young man inclined his glossy head.

“At your service.”

“Lead me to Abbot Donegal. I am expected.”

Richet perceptibly hesitated; whereupon, plunging his hand with an irritable, nervous movement into some pocket beneath the leather topcoat, the visitor produced a card and handed it to Richet. One glance he gave at it, bowed again in a manner that was almost Oriental and indicated the open gate of an elevator.

A few moments later:

“Federal Agent 56,” Richet announced in his silky tones.

The visitor entered a softly lighted study, the view from its windows indicating that it was situated at the very top of the tall tower. From a chair beside a book-laden desk the sole occupant of the room—who had apparently been staring out at the wintry prospect far below—stood up, turned. Mr. Richet, making his queer bow, retired and closed the door.

Federal Agent 56 unceremoniously cast his wet topcoat upon the floor, dropping his hat on top of it. He was now revealed as a tall, lean man, dressed in a tweed suit which had seen long service. He advanced with outstretched hand to meet the occupant of the study—a slightly built priest, with the keen, ascetic features sometimes met with in men from the south of Ireland and thick, graying hair; a man normally actuated by a healthy sense of humor, but tonight with an oddly haunted expression in his clear eyes.

“Thank God, Father, I see you well.”

“Thank God, indeed.” He glanced at the card which Richet had laid upon his desk even as he grasped the extended hand. “I am naturally prepared for interference with my work, but this thing…”

The newcomer, still holding the priest’s hand, stared fixedly, searchingly, into his eyes.

“You don’t know it all,” he said rapidly.

“This imprisonment—”

“A necessity, believe me. I have covered seven hundred miles by air since you broke off in the middle of your radio address this evening.”

He turned abruptly and began to pace up and down that book-lined room with its sacred pictures and ornaments, these seeming strangely at variance with the large and orderly office below. Pulling a very charred briar pipe from the pocket of his tweed jacket he began to load it from a pouch at least as venerable as the pipe. The Abbot Donegal dropped back into his chair, running his fingers through his hair, and:

“There is one favor I would ask,” he said, “before we proceed any further. It is difficult to talk to an anonymous man.”

He stared down at the card upon his desk. This card bore the printed words:

F
EDERAL
A
GENT
56

but across the bottom right-hand corner was the signature of the President of the United States.

Federal Agent 56 smiled, a quick, revealing smile which lifted a burden of years from the man.

“I agree,” he snapped in his rapid, staccato fashion. “Smith is a not uncommon name. Suppose we say Smith.”

The rising blizzard began to howl round the tower as though many wailing demons clamored for admittance. A veil of snow swept across uncurtained windows, dimming distant lights. Dom Patrick Donegal lighted a cigarette; his hands were not entirely steady.

“If you know what really happened to me tonight, Mr. Smith,” he said, his rich, orator’s voice lowered almost to a murmur, “for heaven’s sake tell me. I have been deluged with telephone messages and telegrams, but in accordance with your instructions—or” (he glanced at the restlessly promenading figure) “should I say orders—I have answered none of them.”

Smith, pipe alight, paused, staring down at the priest.

“You were brought straight back after your collapse?”

“I was. They would have taken me home, but mysterious instructions from Washington resulted in my being brought here. I came to my senses in the small bedroom which adjoins this study.”

“Your last memory being?”

“Of standing before the microphone, my notes in my hand.”

“Quite,” said Smith, beginning to walk up and down again. “Your words, as I recollect them, were: ‘But if the Constitution is to be preserved, if even a hollow shell of Liberty is to remain to us, there is one evil in this country which must be eradicated, torn up by its evil roots, utterly destroyed…’ Then came silence, a confusion of voices, and an announcement that you had been seized with sudden illness. Does your memory, Father, go as far as these words?”

“Not quite,” the priest answered wearily, resting his head upon his hand and making a palpable effort to concentrate. “I began to lose my grip of the situation some time earlier in the address. I experienced most singular sensations. I could not co-ordinate my ideas, and the studio in which I was speaking alternately contracted and enlarged. At one moment the ceiling appeared to become black and to be descending upon me. At another, I thought that I stood in the base of an immeasurably lofty tower.” His voice grew in power as he spoke, his Irish brogue became more pronounced. “Following these dreadful sensations came an overpowering numbness of mind and body. I remember no more.”

“Who attended you?” snapped Smith.

“My own physician, Dr. Reilly.”

“No one but Dr. Reilly, your secretary, Mr. Richet, and I suppose the driver of the car in which you returned, came up here?”

“No one, Mr. Smith. Such, I am given to understand, were the explicit and authoritative orders given a few minutes after the occurrence.”

Smith stopped on the other side of the desk, staring down at the abbot.

“Your manuscript has not been recovered?” he asked slowly.

“I regret to say, no. Definitely, it was left behind in the studio.”

“On the contrary,” snapped Smith angrily, “definitely it was not! The place has been searched from wall to wall by those who know their business. No, Father Abbot, your manuscript is not there. I must know what it contained—and from what source this missing information came to you.”

The ever-rising wind in its fury shook the Tower of the Holy Thorn, shrieking angrily round that lofty room in which two men faced a problem destined in its outcome to affect the whole nation. The priest, a rapid, heavy smoker, lighted another cigarette.

“I cannot make it out,” he said—and now a natural habit of authority began to assert itself in his voice—“I cannot make out why you attach such importance to my notes for this speech, nor why my sudden illness, naturally disturbing to myself, should result in this sensational Federal action. Really, my friend”—he leaned back in his chair, staring up at the tanned, eager face of his visitor—“in effect, I am a prisoner here. This, I may say, is intolerable. I await your explanation, Mr. Smith.”

Smith bent forward, resting nervous brown hands on the priest’s desk and staring intently into those upturned, observant eyes.

“What was the nature of the warning you were about to give to the nation?” he demanded. “What is this evil growth which must be uprooted and destroyed?”

These words produced a marked change in the bearing of the Abbot Donegal. They seemed to bring recognition of something he would willingly have forgotten. Again he ran his fingers through his hair, now almost distractedly.

“God help me,” he said in a very low voice, “I don’t know!”

He suddenly stood up; his glance was wild.

“I cannot remember. My mind is a complete blank upon this subject—upon everything relating to it. I think some lesion must have occurred in my brain. Dr. Reilly, although reticent, holds, I believe, the same opinion.”

“Nothing of the kind,” snapped Smith; “but that manuscript has to be found! There’s life or death in it.”

He ceased speaking abruptly and seemed to be listening to the voice of the storm. Then, ignoring the priest, he suddenly sprang across the room and threw the door wide open.

Mr. Richet stood bowing on the threshold.

I
n an apartment having a curiously pointed ceiling (one might have imagined it to be situated in the crest of a minaret) a strange figure was seated at a long, narrow table. Light, amber light, came through four near-Gothic windows set so high that only a giant could have looked out of them. The man, whose age might have been anything from sixty to seventy—he had a luxurious growth of snow-white hair—was heavily built, wearing a dilapidated woolen dressing-gown; and his long sensitive fingers were nicotine-stained, since he continuously smoked Egyptian cigarettes. An open tin of these stood near his hand, and he lighted one from the stump of another—smoking, smoking, incessantly smoking. Upon the table before him were seven telephones, one or other of them almost always in action. When two purred into life simultaneously, the smoker would place one to his right ear, the other to his left. He never replied to incoming messages, nor did he make notes.

In the brief intervals he pursued what one might have supposed to be his real calling. Upon a large wooden pedestal was set a block of modeling clay, and beside the pedestal lay implements of the modeler’s art. This singular old man, the amazing frontal development of his splendid skull indicating great mathematical powers, worked patiently upon a life-sized head of an imposing but sinister Chinaman.

In one of those rare intervals he was working delicately upon the high, imperious nose of the clay head, when a muffled bell sounded and the amber light disappeared from the four Gothic windows, plunging the room into complete darkness.

For a moment there was no sound; the tip of a burning cigarette glowed in the darkness. Then a voice spoke, an unforgettable voice, by which gutturals were oddly stressed but every word was given its precise syllabic value.

“Have you a later report,” said this voice, “from Base 8?”

The man at the long table replied, speaking with German intonations.

“The man known as Federal Agent 56 arrived at broadcasting station twenty minutes after midnight. Police still searching there. Report just to hand from Number 38 states that this agent, accompanied by Captain Mark Hepburn, U.S. Army Medical Corps, assigned to Detached Officers List, and a party of nine men arrived Tower of the Holy Thorn at twelve thirty-two, relieving federals already on duty. Agent 56 last reported in conference with Abbot Donegal. The whole area closely covered. No further news in this report.”

“The Number responsible for the manuscript?”

“Has not yet reported.”

“The last report from Numbers covering Weaver’s Farm?”

“Received at 11.07. Dr. Orwin Prescott is still in retirement there. No change has been made in his plans regarding the debate at Carnegie Hall. This report from Number 35.”

The muffled bell rang. Amber light appeared again in the windows; and the sculptor returned lovingly to his task of modeling a Chinaman’s head.

I
n Dom Patrick Donegal’s study at the top of the Tower of the Holy Thorn, James Richet faced Federal Officer 56. Some of his silky suavity seemed to have, deserted him.

“I quite understand your—unexpected—appearance, Mr. Richet,” said Smith, staring coldly at the secretary. “You have greatly assisted us. Let me check what you have told me. You believe (the abbot unfortunately having no memory of the episode) that certain material for the latter part of his address was provided early on Saturday morning during a private interview in this room between the Father and Dr. Orwin Prescott?”