President Fu-Manchu (7 page)

Gregory glanced the speaker over and nodded. “That’s right,” he replied. “What can I do for you?”

“I am looking,” the harsh voice continued, “for a defaulter, a wayward brother who has fallen into sin. I saw him not five minutes ago, but lost him on the corner of Pell Street. As you were coming from that direction it is possible that you passed him.”

“What’s he like to look at?”

“He is a small man wearing a gray topcoat and a black soft hat. It is not our intention to charge him with his offense, but it is my duty to endeavor to overtake him.”

“He passed me less than two minutes ago,” Gregory replied sharply. “What’s he listed for?”

“Converting money to his own uses; but no soul is beyond redemption.”

The harsh, gloomy voice held that queer note of exaltation which Inspector Gregory had heard so often without being able to determine whether it indicated genuine piety or affection.

“I’ll step back with you,” he said tersely. “I know the corner he went round, and I know who lives in every house on that street. We’d better hurry!”

He turned and hurried back against the biting wind, the tall Salvation Army official striding along beside him silently. They came to the corner on which Wu King’s Bar was situated—the resort which Gregory had so recently visited; turning around it, they were temporarily sheltered from the icy blast.

“He may have gone into Wu’s,” said Gregory, as they looked along a deserted street, at one or two points of which lights shone out on the rain-drenched sidewalk. “Just stay here, and I’ll check up.”

He pushed open the door of the restaurant. To the nostrils of the Salvation Army official who stood outside was wafted a breath of that characteristic odor which belongs to every Chinatown in the world. In less than a minute the detective was out again.

“Not been in Wu’s,” he reported. “He must have gone in somewhere farther along, otherwise there wouldn’t be any object in going that way; unless he’s out for a walk. There’s no other joint open back there. Do you know of any connections he has in this quarter?”

“Probably many,” the harsh voice replied, and there was sadness in the tone. “He’s attached to our Chinatown branch. I’m obliged to you but will trouble you no further, except to ask that if ever you see this man, you will detain him.”

Gregory nodded, turned, and started off.

“No trouble,” he said. “Hope you find the guy.”

The Salvation Army official walked to the end of the street, gloomily scrutinizing closed doors to right and left, seeming to note the names over the shops, the numbers, the Chinese signs. Then turning to the right again at the end of the block, he walked on through the rain for a considerable distance and finally entered an elevated railroad station…

Salvation Army delegates from all over the United States were assembled in New York that week, and a group of the senior officials had been accommodated at the Regal-Athenian Hotel. Therefore, no one in the vast marble-pillared lobby of that palatial establishment was surprised to see the tall and gloomy captain walk in. No confrère was visible in the public rooms through which he passed: the last had retired fully an hour earlier. Entering a tower elevator:

“Thirty-three,” he announced gloomily.

He stepped out on the thirty-third floor, where two deputies from neighboring states were sharing an apartment. He did not go to their apartment, however. He opened a door at the end of the long carpeted corridor and began to mount a stair. He met no one on his way, but at the fortieth floor he opened a door and peered out into another deserted carpeted corridor…

Captain Mark Hepburn, pacing restlessly from room to room of the suite at the top of the tower, sometimes looking out of the window at rain-drenched New York below him, sometimes listening to the whine of the elevator, and sometimes exchanging glances with the equally restless Fey, Nayland Smith’s man, who also wandered disconsolately about, suddenly paused in the little vestibule. He had heard quick footsteps.

A moment later the door opened, and a gloomy Salvation Army captain entered.

“Thank God! Sir Denis,” said Hepburn and tried to repress the emotion he felt. “I was getting really worried.”

The Salvation Army captain removed his cap, his spectacles, and, very gingerly, his gray moustache, revealing the gaunt, eager features of Nayland Smith.

“Thanks, Hepburn,” he snapped. “I am sorry to have bothered you. But I was right.”

“What!”

Fey appeared silently, his stoic face a mask.

“A whisky and soda, sir?” he suggested.

“Thanks, Fey; a stiff one.”

A triumphant light danced in Smith’s steely eyes, and:

“It looks as though you had some news,” said Hepburn.

“I have.” Nayland Smith extracted pipe and pouch from the pocket of his uniform jacket. “My guess was right—a pure guess, Hepburn, no more; but I was right. Can you imagine whom I saw down there in Chinatown tonight?”

“Not—”

“No—my luck didn’t go as far as that. But just as I was turning out of Mott Street, right in the light from a restaurant, I saw our friend James Richet—Abbot Donegal’s ex-secretary!”

“Richet?”

“Exactly; one of the key men. Luck was with me. Then, suddenly it turned. Of all the unimaginable things, Hepburn… a
real
Salvation Army officer came up to me! Following a brief conversation he challenged me to establish my identity, and I was forced to do so.”

He pulled back the top of his tunic, revealing, the gold badge of a federal agent.

“A clumsy business, Hepburn. But what could I do? In the meantime, I had lost my man. I met a detective officer as I went racing around the corner. He was unmistakable. I know a policeman, to whatever country he belongs, a quarter of a mile away. He had passed my man and he did his best. I have memorized all the possible places into which he may have gone. But one thing is established, Hepburn—Dr. Fu-Manchu has a Chinatown base…”

J
ames Richet, known to the organization of which he was a member as Number 38, stepped through a doorway—the fifth he had counted—and knew he must be below sea level. This door immediately closed behind him.

He found himself in a lobby with stone-faced walls. A silk-shaded lantern hung from an iron bracket. Immediately facing him was another arched doorway, curtained. Above the curtain-rod glowed a dim semi-circle of light. This place smelled like a joss house. The only other item of furniture was a narrow cushioned divan, and upon this, a very old Chinaman was squatting. He wore a garment resembling a blue smock; he crouched forward on the divan, his veinous, clawlike hands resting upon his knees. He was a man of incalculable age: an intricate network of wrinkles mapped the whole of his face. His eyes were mere slits in the yellow skin. He might have been a chryselephantine statue, wrought by the cunning hand of a Chinese master.

A movement ever so slight of the bowed head indicated to Richet that the man on the divan was looking at him. He raised the left lapel of his topcoat. A small badge, apparently made of gold and ivory, not unlike one of the chips used at the Monte Carlo gaming tables, was revealed. It bore the number 38.

“James Richet,” he said.

One of the talon hands moved back to the wall—and, in some place beyond a bell rang, dimly. A clawish finger indicated the curtained doorway. James Richet crossed the lobby, drew the curtain aside and entered.

The night out of which he had come was wet and icily cold, but the moisture which he wiped now from his forehead was not entirely due to the rain. He had removed his hat and stood looking about him. This was a rectangular apartment, also stone-faced; the floor was of polished stone upon which several rugs were spread. There were seven doors, two in each of the long walls, two in that ahead of him, and the one by which he had entered. Above each of them, on an iron bracket, a lantern was hung, shaded with amber silk. All the openings were draped, and the drapery of each was of a different color. There were cushioned seats all around the walls, set between the seven openings.

There was no other furniture except a huge square block of black granite, set in the center of the stone floor and supporting a grotesque figure which only an ultra-modern sculptor could have produced: a goddess possessing seven green eyes, so that one of her eyes watched each of the openings. There was the same perfume in the place as of stale incense, but nevertheless unlike the more characteristic odor of Chinatown. The place was silent, very silent. In contrast to the bitter weather prevailing up above, it seemed to be tropically hot. There was no one visible.

Richet looked about him uneasily. Then, as if the proximity even of the mummy-like Chinaman in the lobby afforded some sense of human companionship, he sat down just right of the opening by which he had entered placing his black hat upon the cushions beside him.

He tried to think. This place was a miracle of cunning—Chinese cunning. As one descended from the secret street door (and this, alone, was difficult to find) a second, masked door gave access to a considerable room. There was no other visible exit from this room. He realized that a police raid would almost certainly end there. Yet there were three more hidden doors—probably steel—and three short flights of stone steps before one reached this temple of the seven-eyed goddess. These doors had been opened from beyond as he had descended.

No sound came from the lobby. Richet slightly changed his position. A green eye seemed to be watching him. But it proved to be impossible to escape the regard of one of those seven eyes; and, viewed from any point, the grotesque idol displayed some feminine line, some strange semblance of distorted womanhood…

James Richet was a qualified attorney, and had practiced for several years in Los Angeles. The yellow streak in his pedigree—his maternal grandmother had been a Kanaka—formed a check to his social ambition. Perhaps it was an operative factor in his selection of an easier and more direct path to wealth than the legitimate practice of his profession had offered him. He had become the legal adviser of one of the big beer barons. Later, the underworlds of Chicago and New York held no secrets from him…

The silence of this strange stone cellar was very oppressive; he avoided looking at the evil figure which dominated it…

His former chiefs, one after another, had been piled up on the rocks of the new administration. Then a fresh tide had come in his affairs, at a time when he began seriously to wonder if Federal inquiries would become focused upon himself. Some new control had seized upon the broken group of which he was a surviving unit. A highly paid post was found for him as legal adviser and secretary to Abbot Donegal. He was notified that special duties would be allotted from time to time. But in spite of all his cunning—for he was more cunning than clever—he had not up to the present moment succeeded in learning the political aims of the person or persons who, as he had realized for a long time, now controlled the vast underworld network which extended from coast to coast of the United States.

Of his former associates he had seen nothing during the time that he was attached to Abbot Donegal’s staff at the Shrine of the Holy Thorn. Copies of the abbot’s colossal mailing list he had supplied to an address in New York City; advanced drafts of all sermons and lectures; and a precis of a certain class of correspondence.

Personal contact between himself and his real employer was made through the medium of Lola Dumas. His last urgent instructions, which had led to the breakdown of Abbot Donegal during a broadcast lecture, had been given to him by Lola… that provocative study in slender curves, creamy skin and ebony-black hair; somber almond-shaped eyes (deep, dark lakes in which a man’s soul was drowned); petulant, scornful lips… Lola.

Lola! She was supremely desirable, but maddeningly elusive. Together, what could they not do? She knew so many things that he burned to learn; but all that he had gathered from her was that they belonged to an organization governed by a board of seven…

Hot though the place was, he shuddered. Seven! This hell-inspired figure which always watched him had
seven
eyes!

From time to time Lola would appear in the nearby town without warning, occupying the best suite in the best hotel, and would summon him to meet her. It was Lola Dumas, on the first day that he had taken up his duties, who had brought him his badge. He had smiled. Later he had ceased to smile. Up to the time that he had fled from the Shrine of the Holy Thorn he had never learned how many other agents of the “Seven” were attached to the staff of the abbot. Two only he had met: Mrs. Adair, and a man who acted as night watchman. Now, shepherded from point to point in accordance with typed instructions headed: “In the event of failure” and received by him on the morning before the fateful broadcast, he was in New York; at last in the headquarters of his mysterious chief!

Something in the atmosphere of this place seemed to shake him. He wondered—and became conscious of nervous perspiration—if his slight deviation from the route laid down in his instructions had escaped notice…