President Fu-Manchu (34 page)

For a moment only he was called upon to sustain it. The situation found him dumbfounded. Dr. Fu-Manchu removing his cap and, throwing it upon a chair, turned to Dr. Burnett.

“Are you attending the patient?”

He spoke in a low voice, sibilant but imperative.

“I am. May I ask who you are, sir?”

Dr. Burnett glanced at a leather case which the speaker had placed upon the floor. Ignoring the inquiry, Dr. Fu-Manchu bent over Robbie for a moment, then stood upright, and turned as Moya came in.

“Why was I not notified earlier?” he demanded harshly.

Moya clutched at her throat; she was fighting back hysteria.

“How could I know, President,” she whispered, “that—”

“True,” Dr. Fu-Manchu nodded. “I have been much preoccupied. Perhaps I am unjust. I should have prohibited the boy’s last visit. I was aware that there was diphtheria in that neighborhood.”

Something in his unmoving regard seemed to steady Moya.

“Your only crime is that you are a woman,” said Dr. Fu-Manchu quietly. “Even to the last you have done your duty by me. I must do mine. I guaranteed your boy’s safety. I have never failed to redeem my word. From small failures great catastrophes grow.”

“And I must protest,” Dr. Burnett interposed, speaking indignantly but in a low voice. “At any moment we are expecting Dr. Detmold.”

“Detmold is a dabbler,” said Dr. Fu-Manchu contemptuously, and crossing to the bed he seated himself in a chair, staring down intently at Robbie. “I have canceled those instructions.”

“This is preposterous,” Burnett exclaimed. “I order you to leave my patient.”

Dr. Fu-Manchu moved a gaunt yellow hand in a fan-like movement over Robbie’s forehead, then, stooping, parted his lips with the second finger and the thumb of his left hand, and bent yet lower.

“When did you administer the antitoxin?” he demanded.

Dr. Burnett clenched his teeth, but did not reply.

“I asked a question.”

The green eyes became suddenly fixed upon Dr. Burnett, and Dr. Burnett replied:

“At eleven o’clock last night.”

“Eight hours too late. The diphtheritic membrane has invaded the larynx.”

“I am dispersing it.”

Moya’s hands closed convulsively upon Mark Hepburn’s arm.

“God help me!” she whispered. “What am I to do?”

Her words had reached the ears of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

“You are to have courage,” he replied, “and to wait in the sitting-room with Mary Goff until I call you. Please go.”

For one moment Moya glanced at Hepburn. Then Nurse Goff, her face haggard with anxiety, put an arm around her and the two women went out. Dr. Fu-Manchu stood up.

“Surgical interference is unavoidable,” he said.

“I disagree!” Burnett in his indignation lost control, raising his voice unduly. “Until I have conferred with Dr. Detmold I forbid you to interfere with the patient in any way. Even if you are qualified to do so—which I doubt—I refuse to permit it.”

Dr. Burnett found himself transfixed by a glance which seemed to penetrate to his subconscious mind. He became aware of an abysmal incompetence which he had successfully concealed even from himself throughout a prosperous career. He had never experienced an identical sensation in the whole of his life.

“Leave us,” said the guttural voice. “Captain Hepburn will assist me.”

As Dr. Burnett, moving like an automaton, went out of the room, the fact crashed in upon Hepburn that Dr. Fu-Manchu had addressed him by his proper name and rank!

And, as if he had read his thoughts:

“My presence here tonight,” said Dr. Fu-Manchu, “is due to your telephone message to Sir Denis Nayland Smith. It was intercepted and relayed to me on my journey. To this I am indebted for avoiding a number of patrols whose positions you described. Be good enough to open the case which you will find upon the carpet at your feet. Disconnect the table lamp and plug in the coil of white flex.”

Automatically, Mark Hepburn obeyed the order. Dr. Fu-Manchu took up a mask to which a lamp was attached.

“We shall operate through the cricoid cartilage,” he said

“But—”

“I must request you to accept my decisions. I could force them upon you but I prefer to appeal to your intelligence.”

He moved his hands again over the boy’s face; and slowly, feverish bright eyes opened, staring upwards.

Something resembling a tortured grin appeared upon Robbie’s lips. “Hello… Yellow Uncle,” came a faint, gasping whisper. “I’s glad…you come…”

He choked, became contorted, but his eyes remained open, fixed upon those other strange eyes which looked down upon him. Gradually the convulsion passed.

“You are sleepy.” Fu-Manchu’s voice was a crooning murmur. The boy’s long lashes began to flicker. “You are sleepy…” His lids drooped. “You are very sleepy…” Robbie’s eyes became quite closed. “You are fast asleep.”

“A general anesthetic?” Hepburn asked hoarsely.

“I never employ anesthetics in surgery,” the guttural voice replied. “They decrease the natural resistance of the patient.”

* * *

Nayland Smith, seated in the bullet-proof car, a sheaf of forms and other papers upon his knee, looked up at Johnson, who stood outside the open door.

“What are we to make of it, Johnson? An impasse! Here is the mysterious message received by Fey half an hour after I left: a request from Hepburn that under no circumstances should we look for evidence at the apartment he had visited, as someone lay there critically ill. No hint regarding his own movement, but the cryptic statement: ‘Keep in touch with Fey and have no fear about my personal safety.
I make myself responsible for Dr. Fu-Manchu!
’”

“Fey is sure it was Hepburn who called him,” said Johnson…

“But that was early last night,” snapped Smith; “it is now 3.15 in the morning! And except for the fact that our latest reports enabled us to draw a ring on the map of Manhattan, where are we? Dr. Fu-Manchu is almost certainly inside that ring. But since we cannot possibly barricade the most fashionable area of New York, how are we to find him?”

“It’s a deadlock sure enough,” Johnson agreed. “One thing’s certain: Hepburn hasn’t come out since he went in! A mouse couldn’t have got out of that building. There are lights in the top apartment…”

And even as these words were being spoken, Mark Hepburn, in a darkened room, was watching the greatest menace to social order the world has known since Attila the Hun overran Europe, and wondering if Nayland Smith would respect his request.

He had witnessed a feat of surgery unique in his experience. Those long yellow fingers seemed to hold magic in their tips. Smith’s assurance became superfluous. Dr. Fu-Manchu, the supreme physician, was also the master surgeon. He was, as Hepburn believed (for Nayland Smith’s computation he found himself unable to accept), a man of over seventy years of age. Yet with unfailing touch, exquisite dexterity, he had carried out an operation in a way which Hepburn’s training told him to be wrong. It had proved to be right. Dr. Fu-Manchu had performed a surgical miracle—under hypnosis!

But it had left the little patient in a dangerously weak condition.

The night wore on, and with every hour of anxiety, Moya came nearer and nearer to collapse. Except for the ceaseless, hoarse voice of New York, the sick room was silent.

That strange, supercilious gesture of Fu-Manchu before he began the operation was one Hepburn could never forget; it had a sort of ironic grandeur.

“Call your headquarters,” the Chinese Doctor had directed, “at the Regal Tower. Ensure us against interference. Allay any doubts respecting your own safety: I shall require you here. Conceal the fact that I am present, but accept responsibility for handing me over to the law; I give you—personally—my parole. Instruct the exchange that no calls are to be put through tonight…”

Nurse Goff was on duty again, although it was amazing how the weary woman kept awake. She sat by the open window, her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes fixed not upon the deathly face of Robbie, but on the gaunt profile of the man who bent over him. Moya was past tears; she stood just inside the open door, supported by Hepburn.

For five hours Dr. Fu-Manchu had sat beside the bed. Some of the restorative measures which he had adopted were those that any surgeon would have used; others were unfamiliar to Hepburn, who could not even guess what was contained in the phials which he opened. Once, in the first crisis, Fu-Manchu had harshly directed him to charge a hypodermic syringe. Then, bending over the boy and resting his hands upon his head, he had waved him aside. Now, as Hepburn’s training told him, the second, the grand crisis, was approaching.

Moya had not spoken for more than an hour. Her ups were parched, her eyes burning: she quivered as he held her against him.

A new day drew near, and Hepburn, watching saw (and read the portent) beads of moisture appearing upon the high yellow brow of Dr. Fu-Manchu. At four o’clock, that zero hour at which so many frightened souls have crossed the threshold to take their first hesitant steps upon the path beyond, Robbie opened his eyes, tried to grin at the intent face so near to his own, then closed them again.

It came to Mark Hepburn as a conviction that that lonely little spirit had wandered beyond recall even by the greatest physician in the world, who sat motionless at his bedside…

D
im gray light was touching the most lofty buildings, so that they seemed to emerge from sleeping New York like phantoms of lost Nineveh; later would come the high-flung spears of sunrise to break golden upon the towers of those temples of Mammon. As Blücher might have remarked, “What a city to loot!”

Nayland Smith rang a bell beside a glazed door with iron scrollwork. Park Avenue is never wholly deserted day or night, but at this hour its fashionable life was at lowest ebb, and every possible precaution had been taken to avoid attracting the attention of belated passers-by. It was necessary to ring the bell more than once before the door was opened.

A sleepy night porter, his hair tousled, confronted them. Nayland Smith stepped forward, but the man, an angry gleam coming into his eyes, barred the way. He was big and powerfully built.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.

“Top floor,” rapped Nayland Smith. “Don’t argue.”

The man had a glimpse of a gold badge, and over the speaker’s shoulder saw that he was covered by an automatic held by Lieutenant Johnson.

“What’s the fuss?” he growled. “I’m not arguing.”

But actually, although he was only a very small cog in the wheel, he knew that the occupants of the penthouse apartment at the top of the building were closely protected. He had secured his appointment through the League of Good Americans, and he had had orders from the officers of the league, identifiable by their badges, scrupulously to note and report anyone who visited that apartment.

In silence he operated the elevator. At the top:

“Go down again,” Nayland Smith ordered, “and report to the officer in charge in the vestibule.”

As the elevator disappeared he looked about him: they were a party of four. Anxiety for Hepburn’s safety had driven him to make this move. Belatedly he had remembered a letter once received from Orwin Prescott—and in Prescott’s handwriting. It had been written automatically, under hypnotic direction. He remembered that Hepburn quite recently had succumbed to that uncanny control which Dr. Fu-Manchu possessed the power to exercise… Hepburn’s message to Fey might be no more than an emanation from that powerful, evil will!

“Be ready for anything,” he warned sternly, “but make no move without orders from me.”

He pressed the bell.

A moment of almost complete silence followed. He had been prepared to wait, perhaps to force the door. He was about to ring a second time when the door opened.

Mark Hepburn faced him!

Amazement, relief, doubt, alternately ruled Nayland Smith’s mind. The situation was beyond analysis. He fixed a penetrating stare on Hepburn’s haggard face: his hair was disheveled, his expression wild, and with a queer note almost of resentment in his tone:

“Smith!” he exclaimed.

Nayland Smith nodded and stepped in, signaling to his party to remain outside.

Crossing a small vestibule, he found himself in a charmingly appointed sitting-room, essentially and peculiarly feminine in character. It was empty.

“I’m sorry about all this seeming mystery,” said Hepburn in a low voice; “and I understand your anxiety. But when you know the facts you will agree, I think, there was no other way.”

“You undertook a certain responsibility,” Nayland Smith said grimly, “in a message to Fey—”

“Not so loud, Smith! I stand by it… It’s hard to explain”—he hesitated, his deep-set eyes watching Nayland Smith—“but with all his crimes, after tonight—I’m sorry. Moya—Mrs. Adair—collapsed when she heard the news—”

“What, that the boy was dead?”

“No—that he will live!”

“I am glad to hear it. Largely as a result of your discovery of the Connecticut farm,” said Nayland Smith, continuing intently to watch Hepburn, “we have narrowed down our search to an area surrounding this building. Your long, inexplicable absence following that message to Fey has checked us. I should be glad, Hepburn, if you would inform me where you believe Fu-Manchu to be—”