President Fu-Manchu (28 page)

His impulse—to arouse Smith, to have the building surrounded—left him. Those wonderful eyes demanded all his attention…

He found himself busy in the laboratory—of course he was still dreaming—preparing a strange prescription. It was contrary to all tradition, a thing outside his experience. But he prepared it with meticulous care—for it was indispensable to the life of Nayland Smith…

At last it was ready. Now, he must charge a hypodermic syringe with it—an intravenous injection. It was vital that he should not awake Smith…

Syringe in hand, he crept along the corridor to the second door. He listened. There was no sound.

Very quietly, he opened the door and went in.

Nayland Smith lay motionless in bed, his lean brown hands outside the coverlet. The conditions were ideal, it seemed to Mark Hepburn in his dream. Stealthily he stole across the room. He could not hope to complete the injection without arousing Smith, but at least he could give him some of the charge.

Lightly he raised the sleeve of his pyjama jacket. Smith did not stir. He pressed the needle point firmly home…

* * *

Mark Hepburn felt himself seized from behind, jerked back and hurled upon the floor by unseen hands!

He fell heavily, striking his head upon the carpet. The syringe dropped from his fingers, and as Nayland Smith sprang upright in bed the predominant idea in Hepburn’s mind was that he had failed; and so Smith must die.

He twisted over, rose to his knees… and looked up into the barrel of a revolver held by Fey.

“Hepburn!” came sharply in Nayland Smith’s inimitable voice. “What the devil’s this?”

He sprang out of bed.

Fey, barefooted and wearing pyjamas, looked somewhat disheveled in the glare of light as Nayland Smith switched on lamps; spiritually he was unruffled.

“It’s a mystery, sir,” he replied, while Hepburn, slowly rising to his feet and clutching his head, endeavored to regain composure. “It was the tinkling of the bottles that woke me.”

“The bottles?”

Mark Hepburn dropped down into a chair.

“I was in the laboratory,” he explained dully. “Frankly, I don’t know, now, what I was doing there.”

Nayland Smith, seated on the side of the bed, was staring at him keenly.

“I got up and watched,” Fey continued, “keeping very quiet. And I saw Captain Hepburn carefully measuring out drugs. Then I saw him looking about as if he’d lost something, and then I saw him go to the window and stare out. He stayed there for a long time.”

“In which direction was he staring?” snapped Nayland Smith.

Hepburn groaned, continuing to clutch his head. The memory of some strange, awful episode already was slipping from his mind.

“I thought, at a window down to the right and below, sir. And as he stood there so long, I slipped into the sitting-room and looked out from there.” He paused and cleared his throat. “I was still looking when I heard Captain Hepburn come out. I shouldn’t have behaved as I did, sir, but I had seen Captain Hepburn’s eyes…”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, sir, it might have been that he was walking in his sleep! And so, when I heard him coming, I ducked into a corner and watched him go by. I followed him right to your door. He opened it very quietly. I was close behind him when he crossed to the bed—”

Now, suddenly, in a stifled voice:

“The syringe!” Hepburn cried, “the syringe! My God! Did I
touch
you?”

He sprang up wildly, his glance questing about the floor.

“Is this what you mean, Hepburn?” Nayland Smith asked. He picked up a
fountain pen, at
the same time glancing down at his left arm. “My impression is that you jabbed the nib into me!”

Mark Hepburn stared at the fountain pen, fists clenched. It was a new one bought only that day; his old one had been smashed during operations in the Chinatown raid. So far as he could remember he had never filled it. The facts, the incredible facts, were coming back to him… He had prepared a mixture: of what it was composed he hadn’t at this moment the slightest idea. But he had imagined or had dreamed that he charged a hypodermic syringe with it. He must have charged the fountain pen, for he had no hypodermic syringe in his possession!

Nayland Smith’s penetrating regard never left the troubled face, and then:

“Was I dreaming,” Hepburn groaned, “or was I hypnotized? By heaven! I remember—I went to the window and saw his eyes!
He
was watching me.”

“Who was watching you?” Smith asked quietly.

“I don’t know who it was, sir,” Fey interrupted with an apologetic cough, “but he had one of the most dreadful faces I have ever seen in my life. The moonlight was shining on him. I saw his green eyes.”

“What!”

Nayland Smith sprang to his feet. From out of his varied experience an explanation of the strange incident, phantomesque, arose. He stared hard again at Mark Hepburn.

“Dr. Fu-Manchu is the most accomplished hypnotist alive,” he said harshly. “During those few moments that you watched him from the window above Wu King’s he must have established partial control.” He pulled on a dressing-gown which lay across the foot of the bed. “Quick, Fey, get Wyatt! He’s on duty in the lobby.”

Fey ran out.

Nayland Smith turned, threw up the window and craned forward. Over his shoulder:

“Which way, Hepburn?” he snapped.

Mark Hepburn, slowly recovering control of his normal self, leaned on the sill and pointed.

“The wing on the right, third window from the end, two floors below this.”

“There’s no one there, and the room is dark.” The wail which tells that the Fire Department is out, a solo rarely absent from New York’s symphony, rose, ghostly, through the night. “I have had an unpleasantly narrow escape. Beyond doubt you were acting under hypnotic direction. Fey’s evidence confirms it. A daring move! The Doctor must be desperate.” He glanced down at the fountain pen which lay upon a little table. “I wonder what you charged it with,” he murmured meditatively. “Dr. Fu-Manchu assumed too much in thinking you had hypodermic syringes in your possession. You obeyed his instructions—but charged the fountain pen; thus probably saving my life.”

It was only a few moments later that Wyatt, the government agent in charge below, found the night manager and accompanied by two detectives was borne up to the thirty-eighth floor of the hotel wing in which the suspected room was located.

“I can tell you there’s no one there, Mr. Wyatt,” the manager said, twirling a large key around his fore-finger. “It was vacated this morning by a Mr. Eckstein, a dark man; possibly Jewish. There’s only one curious point about it—”

“What’s that?” Wyatt asked.

“He took the door key away…” Mr. Dougherty smiled grimly; his Tipperary brogue was very marked. “Unfortunately, it often happens. But in this case there may have been some ulterior motive.”

The bedroom, when they entered, was deserted; the two beds were ready for occupation by incoming guests. Neither here nor in the bathroom was there evidence pointing to a recent intruder…

The detectives were still prowling around and Nayland Smith on the fortieth floor of the tower was issuing telephone instructions when a tall man, muffled in a fur topcoat—a man who wore glasses and a wide-brimmed black hat—stepped into an elevator on the thirtieth floor and was taken down to street level…

“No one is to leave the building,” rapped Nayland Smith, “until I get down. Don’t concentrate on the tower; post men at every elevator and every exit.”

Wyatt, the night manager, and the two detectives stepped out of the elevator at the end of the huge main foyer. The tall man in the fur coat was striding along its carpeted center aisle. The place was only partially lighted at that late hour. There was a buzz of vacuum cleaners. He descended marble steps to the lower foyer. A night porter glanced up at him, curiously, as he passed his desk.

A man came hurrying along an arcade lined by flower shops, jewelers’ shops and other features of a luxury bazaar, but actually contained within the great hotel, and presently appeared immediately facing the elevator by which Wyatt and his party had descended. Seeing them he hurried across, and:

“No one is to leave the building!” he cried. “Post men at all elevators and all entrances.”

The tall visitor passed through the swing doors and descended the steps to the sidewalk. A Lotus cab which had been standing near by drew up; opening the door, he entered. The cab moved off. It was actually turning the Park Avenue corner when detectives, running from the westerly end of the building, reached the main entrance and went clattering up the steps. One, who seemed to be in charge, ran across to the night porter. Federal Agent Wyatt was racing along the foyer towards them.

“Who’s gone out,” the detective demanded, “in the last five minutes? Anybody?”

But even as the startled man began to answer, the Lotus cab was speeding along almost deserted streets, and Dr. Fu-Manchu, lying back in the corner, relaxed after a dangerous and mentally intense effort which he had every reason to believe would result in the removal of Enemy Number One. Nayland Smith’s activities were beginning seriously to interfere with his own. The abandonment of the Chinatown base was an inconvenience, and reports received from those responsible for covering the Stratton Building suggested that further intrusion might be looked for…

G
ray morning light was creeping into the sitting-room.

“Last night’s attempt,” said Nayland Smith (he wore a dressing-gown over pyjamas), “is not uncharacteristic of the Doctor’s methods.”

“Poor consolation for me,” Hepburn replied, speaking from the depths of an armchair in which, similarly attired, he was curled up.

“Don’t let us worry unduly,” said Nayland Smith. “I have known others to suffer from the insidious influence of Fu-Manchu; indeed, I have suffered myself. Physical fear has no meaning for the Doctor. Undoubtedly he was here in person, here in the enemy’s headquarters. He walked out under the very noses of the police officers I had dispatched to intercept him. He is a great man, Hepburn.”

“He is.”

“There is no evidence that you were drugged in any way last night, but we cannot be sure, for the Doctor’s methods are subtle. That he influenced your brain while you were sleeping is beyond dispute. The dream of the interminable labyrinth, the conviction that my life depended upon your escape—all this was prompted by the will of Fu-Manchu. You were dreaming, although even now you doubt it, when you thought you awoke. He only made one mistake, Hepburn. He postulated a hypodermic syringe which was not in your possession!”

“But I loaded a fountain pen with some pretty deadly drugs which now it is impossible to identify.”

“You carried out your hypodermic instructions to the best of your ability. The power of Fu-Manchu’s mind is an awful thing. However, by an accident, a pure accident, or an oversight, he failed—thank God! Let us review the position!”

Mark Hepburn reached out for a cigarette; his face was haggard, unshaven.

“We are beginning to harass the enemy.” Nayland Smith, pipe fuming furiously, paced up and down the carpet. “That there is a staircase below Wu King’s with some unknown exit on the street is certain. At any moment I expect a report that the men have broken in there. Its construction has been carried out from the point that I call the water-gate; hence Finney’s ignorance of its existence. Once we have reached it, with the equipment at our disposal we can break through. It doesn’t matter how many iron doors obstruct us. The entrance from the sewers we have been unable to trace. But penetration to the Chinatown base is only a question of time.”

He puffed furiously, but his overworked pipe had gone out. He laid it in an ash-tray and continued to walk up and down. Mark Hepburn, laboring under a load of undeserved guilt, watched him fascinatedly.

“What Mrs. Adair knows which would be of value to us is problematical. According to Lieutenant Johnson’s report, it would seem to be perfectly feasible to obtain possession of the boy, Robbie, during one of his visits to Long Island.”

“The owner of the house and his family are at the coast,” Mark Hepburn said monotonously. “He is, as you will have noted, a co-director with the late Harvey Bragg of the Lotus Transport Corporation.”

“I had noted it,” Smith said dryly; “but he may nevertheless be innocent of any knowledge of the existence of Dr. Fu-Manchu. That’s the devilish part of it, Hepburn. The other points are: (a) Can Mrs. Adair afford us any material assistance; (b) Is it safe to attempt it?”

“The Negro chauffeur,” Hepburn replied, “may have orders, for all we know to the contrary, to shoot the boy in the event of any such attempt. Frankly, I don’t feel justified.”

“Assuming we succeeded…”

“Her complicity would be fairly evident—she would suffer?”

Nayland Smith paused in his promenade and, turning, stared at Hepburn.

“Unless we kidnapped
her
at the same time,” he snapped.

Mark Hepburn stood up suddenly, dropping his recently lighted cigarette in a tray.