President Fu-Manchu (30 page)

These iron doors made him savage. At the present moment he was recalling a recent conversation with the government agent, Hepburn; he remembered boasting that no such door could be fitted in the Chinatown area without his becoming aware of the fact. It was a bitter pill, for here were four!

He reflected with satisfaction, however, that no man knows everything. At least he could congratulate himself upon the finding of this secret staircase. Between the eastern end of Wu-King’s premises and the western end of that adjoining, measurements had shown a space unaccounted for. Operating from inside Wu King’s, floor boards had been torn up and a thick party wall brought to light. Through this Finney had caused a way to be broken; and they had found themselves on the first stair below street level.

That was good work! He resettled his hard hat upon his hard head and lighted a cigarette…

Nevertheless, from the time that operations had commenced in early morning, up to the moment when the fourth door succumbed, many weary hours of toil had been spent by the party under Inspector Finney. He was up on the street wondering what all this secret subterranean building really meant when:

“We’re through!” came a cry, hollow, from the acrid depths.

A minute later he stood on the lowest step, directing the ray of his torch upon oily, dirty-looking water.

“I guess that’s tidal level,” a voice said, “but sometime these steps went deeper.”

Inspector Finney flashed his light across the unwholesome-looking waters of the well. At the further end he saw a square opening two to three feet above the surface.

“There is or was another iron door,” he growled, “but it’s open. I wonder what’s on the other side.”

He was short and stocky himself. He turned to one of the men who had been working on the forcing of the doors.

“What’s your height, Ruskin?” he asked.

“Six one-and-a-quarter, Inspector.”

“You swim well, don’t you?”

“Not so bad.”

“If the stone steps carry on down below water level,” Finney explained, “you won’t have to swim. I figure you could keep your feet, hold a torch above your head and see what’s beyond there. What do you say?”

“I’ll try it.”

Ruskin partly stripped for the endeavor and then, a torch held in his right hand, he began, feeling his way with care, to descend the stone steps. The group on the landing watched in silence. The water, on top of which all sorts of fragments floated, was just up to Ruskin’s shoulders when he announced:

“I’m on the level now.”

“Go easy,” Finney warned. “If you lose foothold strike up to the surface and swim back.”

Ruskin did not reply: he walked on, the torch held above his head. He passed under the square opening and stood there for a moment, then:

“Good God!” he screamed.

His torch disappeared—he had dropped it. There was a wild splashing and churning. Finney cast hat and coat aside and went plunging down the steps, another man behind him.

“Show those lights!” he shouted to the men who still remained upon the landing.

In the rays of the torches Ruskin’s face showed above the surface. Finney grabbed him, and presently he was hauled up the steps. He lay there pointing down, shaken and gasping…

“There’s a great wide space of water back there,” he panted—“and there’s some awful thing lives in it—a monster! I saw its eyes shining!”

The temple of the seven-eyed goddess had been flooded by Sam Pak, but the head of its presiding diety remained just above the surface…

M
r. Schmidt, representing the Stratton Estates, stepped out of the elevator on the top floor of the Stratton Budding. Two men followed. One, wearing overalls and having a leather bag carried on a strap across his left shoulder, represented Midtown Electric. Mr. Schmidt recognized him as one of the pair who had been on the job before. The other, a tall, lean man wearing glasses and a brusque military moustache, came from the Falcon Imperial Insurance Corporation, which carried the fire risk of the Stratton Building.

A man in the uniform of the Fire Department, who was seated on a chair before a green baize-covered door, stood up as the party came out of the elevator.

“It was really unnecessary, Mr. Englebert,” said Schmidt, addressing the gray-moustached man, “to notify the Fire Department; The door which you see was formerly boarded up so that no door showed. The Fire Department has stripped it, in accordance, I suppose, with your instructions, and has seen fit to post a guard over it throughout the whole of the day. Quite unnecessary!”

Mr. Englebert nodded.

“My directors carry a heavy responsibility on this building, Mr. Schmidt,” he replied, “and in view of the phenomenal electric storms recently experienced in the Midwest, we must assure ourselves of the efficiency of the lightning conductors.”

“That’s all agreed, Mr. Englebert. I have the keys of the staircase to the flagstaff, but you must have put us to quite some trouble.”

Few of the hundreds of windows in the great building showed any light. The office workers engaged by firms occupying premises in the Stratton Building had departed for home. Only a few late toilers remained at their desks. In the three streets which embayed the tall structure, there was nothing to indicate that a cordon had been thrown around the building. Mr. Schmidt himself, who, indeed; was perfectly innocent of any complicity apart from the duties which he owed to the League of Good Americans, remained to this moment unaware of the fact that an office opening on the top floor, the staff of which had left at six o’clock, was now packed with police.

“All clear, sir,” said the fireman.

Mr. Schmidt produced a bunch of keys, fumbled for a while, finally selected one, and not without difficulty opened the baize-covered door. He turned.

“I may say here and now,” he remarked, “that I have never been in the dome: I have never known it to be opened during the time I have acted for the Stratton Estates. There are rooms up there, I know, which were formerly occupied by the late Mr. Jerome Stratton…” He shrugged his shoulders. “Of course, he was very eccentric. As there was no proper means of escape in the event of fire, they were closed some years ago. I’ll lead the way. I have a torch. There are no lights.”

He went in, shining the ray of his torch ahead. The man from Midtown Electric followed. Mr. Englebert paused at the threshold; and to the fireman:

“You have your orders,” he snapped.

“Sure.”

Nayland Smith, his facial disguise that which he employed for the Salvation Army officer, his dress that of a business man, followed Mark Hepburn—representing Midtown Electric—into the darkness illuminated only by Mr. Schmidt’s torch. Hepburn supplemented it by the light of another.

They were in a curious, octagonal room in which, facing south, were three windows. There were indications that furniture at some time had stood against the walls. Now the room was bare.

“I guess we’ll push right on to the top,” said Hepburn.

Mr. Schmidt studied a rough plan which he carried.

“The door is on this side, I think,” he said vaguely. “One of the late Mr. Stratton’s eccentricities.”

He walked to a point directly opposite the central window, stood fumbling there awhile, and then inserted a key in a lock and opened the hitherto invisible door.

“This way.”

They went up an uncarpeted staircase at the top of which another door was opened. They entered a second octagonal room appreciably smaller than that which they had just quitted, but also destitute of any scrap of furniture; there was an empty alcove on one side.

“You see,” said Schmidt, flashing his light about, “there’s a balcony to this room, outside the french windows there…”

“I see,” muttered Nayland Smith, staring keenly about him.

“From that gallery,” said Mark Hepburn in his monotonous voice, “it is possible I could see the cable to the flagstaff.”

“The window,” Schmidt replied, “appears to be bolted only. I think you can get out there without any difficulty.”

Nayland Smith turned suddenly to the speaker.

“There is still another floor above?”

Mark Hepburn had shot back a bolt and opened one of the heavy windows.

“Yes, so I understand. A small domed room immediately under the flagstaff. The door, I believe”—he hesitated—“is directly facing the windows, again. Let us see if I can open it.”

He crossed as Hepburn stepped out on to the gallery—that gallery which Professor Morgenstahl had paced so often in the misery of his captivity…

“Here we are!” Schmidt cried triumphantly.

“I see,” said Nayland Smith, regarding the newly opened door. “I should be obliged, while we complete our inspection, if you would step down and tell the fireman on duty that he is not to leave without my orders.”

“Certainly, Mr. Englebert; then I’ll come right back.”

Mr. Schmidt crossed and might be heard descending the stair.

As he disappeared:

“Hepburn!” Nayland Smith called urgently.

Hepburn came in from the balcony.

“This place has been hurriedly stripped—and only a matter of hours ago! But, all the same, our last hope is the top floor.”

He led the way, shining light ahead. It was a short stair—and the door above was open. Hepburn at his heels, he burst into the room. Small, domed, and surrounded by curious amber-paned Gothic windows which did not appear to communicate with the outer air, it was stripped—empty!

“We are right under the flagstaff,” said Hepburn quite tonelessly. “He’s been too clever for us. I was marked on my first visit.”

Nayland Smith’s hands fell so that the ray from his torch shone down upon the floor at his feet.

“He wins again!” he said slowly. “That baize door has been covered all day. There’s another way in—and another way out: the cunning, cunning devil.” And now, his diction changed as that dauntless spirit recovered from the check: “Come on, Hepburn, downstairs again!” he snapped energetically.

But in the apartment below, with its bedroom alcove and tiny bathroom, formerly the quarters of the eccentric millionaire who had lived in semi-seclusion here, Nayland Smith stared about him in something like desperation.

“We have clear evidence,” he said, “that this room certainly was occupied forty-eight hours ago. We are not defeated yet, Hepburn.”

“I am anxious to study the view from the balcony,” Hepburn replied.

“I know why you are anxious.”

Undeterred by the note of raillery perceptible in Nayland Smith’s voice, Mark Hepburn stepped out on to the iron-railed balcony: Smith followed.

“Where does the boy live, Hepburn?”

“I am trying to identify it. Wait a moment—I have seen these windows lighted from our own apartment. So first let’s locate the Regal-Athenian.”

“Easily done,” rapped Nayland Smith, and pointed. “There’s the Regal Tower, half-right.”

“Then the penthouse lies somewhere west of where we stand. It must, because I know it isn’t visible from our windows.”

“That’s a pity,” said Nayland Smith dryly.

“I’m not thinking the way you believe, Smith, at all. I’m trying to work out a totally different idea. It seems to me…”

The sound which checked his words was a very slight sound, yet clearly audible up there where the Juggernaut hymn of New York was diminished to a humming croon, the song of a million fireflies dancing far below.

Nayland Smith turned as though propelled by a spring. The open french window had been closed and bolted.

Visible in the eerie light of a clouded moon, Dr. Fu-Manchu stood inside watching them!

He wore a heavy coat with an astrakhan collar, an astrakhan cap upon his head. His only visible protection was the thickness of the glass…

“Hepburn!” Nayland Smith reached for his automatic. “
Don’t look into his eyes!”

Those strange eyes glittered like emeralds through the panes of the window.

“A shot would be wasted, Sir Denis!” The cold, precise voice reached them out there upon the balcony as though no glass intervened. “The panes are bulletproof—an improvement of my own upon an excellent device invented by an Englishman.”

Nayland Smith’s finger faltered on the trigger. He had never known Dr. Fu-Manchu to tell a lie. But this was a crisis in the Doctor’s affairs. He took a step back and fired obliquely.

The bullet ricocheted as from armor plate, whistling out into space! Dr. Fu-Manchu did not stir a muscle.

“My God!” (and it sounded like a groan) came from Mark Hepburn.

“You can hear me clearly through the ventilators above the window,” the Asiatic voice continued. “I regret that I should have given you cause, Sir Denis, to doubt my word.”

Hepburn turned aside; he was trying desperately to think coolly. He stared downward from the balcony…

“You are one of the few men whom I have encountered in a long life,” Dr. Fu-Manchu continued, “of sufficient strength of character to look me in the eyes. For this I respect you. I know by what self-abnegation you have achieved this control, and I regret the necessity which you have thrust upon me. Our association, if at times tedious, has never been dishonorable.”