President Fu-Manchu (8 page)

One of the colored curtains was swept aside, and he saw Lola Dumas facing him from the end of the temple of the seven-eyed goddess.

M
ark Hepburn sat at the desk by the telephone, making notes of many incoming calls, issuing instructions in some cases. Nayland Smith, at the big table by the window, worked on material which seemed to demand frequent reference to one of two large maps pinned on the wall before him. Hepburn lighted numberless cigarettes. Nayland Smith was partially hidden behind a screen of pipe smoke.

Despite the lateness of the hour, Fey, the taciturn, might be heard moving about in the kitchenette.

The doorbell rang.

Smith turned in his chair. Hepburn stood up. As Fey crossed the sitting-room to reach the vestibule:

“Remember orders, Fey!” Smith rapped.

Fey’s Sioux-like, leathern features exhibited no expression whatever. He extended a large palm in which a small automatic rested.

“Very good, sir.”

He opened the door. Outside stood a man in Regal-Athenian uniform and another who wore a peaked cap.

“He’s all right,” said the man in uniform. “He is a Western Union messenger…”

When the door was closed again and Fey had returned to his cramped quarters, Nayland Smith read the letter which the man had delivered. He studied, it carefully, a second and a third time; then handed it to Hepburn.

“Any comments?”

Mark Hepburn took the letter and read:

Weaver’s Farm,

Winton, Conn.

Dear Sir Denis:

Something so strange has occurred that I feel you should know at once.
(
I regret to say that my telephone is again out of order.
)
A man called upon me early this evening who gave the name of Julian Sankey. Before this, he made me promise to tell no one but you what he had to say. He implied that he had information that would enable us to locate Orwin. He was a smallish, dark man, with very spruce lank black hair and the slyly ingratiating manners of an Argentine gigolo. A voice like velvet.

I gave my promise, which seemed to satisfy him, and he then told me that he was a reluctant member of an organization which planned to make Harvey Bragg dictator. He conveyed the idea that he knew the inside of this organization and that he was prepared, on terms, and with guaranteed government protection, to place all his knowledge at our disposal. He assured me that Orwin was a prisoner in New York, and that his
(
Sankey’s
)
safety being assured by you, he would indicate the exact spot. I have an address to which to write, and it is evidently urgent. I shall be in New York tomorrow and will call upon you, if I may, at four o’clock.

What do you think we should do?

Very sincerely yours
,

Sarah Lakin.

Mark Hepburn laid the letter down upon the table.

“The description,” he said dryly, “would fit James Richet as well as any man I know.”

Nayland Smith, watching him, smiled triumphantly.

“I am glad to hear you say so,” he declared. “You order this man’s arrest; he disappears. He is out to save his skin—”

“It may be.”

“If it is Richet, then Richet would be a valuable card to hold. It’s infuriating, Hepburn, to think that I missed grabbing the fellow tonight! My next regret is that our fair correspondent omits the address at which we can communicate with this Julian Sankey. Does any other point in the letter strike you?”

“Yes,” said Hepburn slowly. “It’s undated. But my own sister, who is an honor graduate, rarely dates her letters. The other thing is the telephone.”

“The telephone is the all-important thing.”

Mark Hepburn turned and met the fixed gaze of Nayland Smith’s eyes. He nodded.

“I don’t like the disconnected telephone, Hepburn. I know the master schemer who is up against us…! I am wondering if this information will ever come to hand…”

* * *

A man who wore a plain yellow robe, in the loose sleeves of which his hands were concealed, sat at a large lacquered table in a small room. Some quality in the sound which penetrated through three windows, all of them slightly opened, suggested that this room was situated at a great height above a sleepless city.

Two of the walls were almost entirely occupied by bookcases; the lacquer table was set in the angle formed by these books, and upon it, in addition to neatly arranged documents, were a number of queer-looking instruments and appliances.

Also, there was a porcelain bowl in which a carved pipe with a tiny bowl rested.

The room was very hot and the air laden with a peculiar aromatic smell. The man in the yellow robe lay back in a carved, padded chair; a black cap resembling a biretta crowned his massive skull. His immobile face resembled one of those ancient masterpieces of ivory mellowed in years of incense; a carving of Gautama Buddha—by one who disbelieved his doctrine. The eyes in this remarkable face had been closed; now, suddenly, they opened. They were green as burnished jade under moonlight.

The man in the yellow robe put on a pair of tinted spectacles and studied a square, illuminated screen which was one of the several unusual appointments of the table… Upon this screen, in miniature, appeared a moving picture of the subterranean room where the seven-eyed goddess sat eternally watching. James Richet was talking to Lola Dumas.

The profound student of humanity seated at the lacquer table was cruelly just. He wished to study this man who, after doing good work, had seen fit to leave his ordered route and to visit the cousin of Orwin Prescott. Steps had been taken to check any possible consequences. But the fate of the one who had made these measures necessary hung now in the balance.

They stood close together, and although their figures appeared distant, but not so perhaps through the lenses of the glasses worn by the Chinaman, their voices sounded quite normal, as though they were speaking in the room in which he sat.

“Lola, I have the game in my hand.” Richet threw his left arm around the woman’s shoulders and drew her to him. “Don’t pretend. We’re in this thing together.”

Lola Dumas’ lithe body bent backwards as he strove to reach her lips.

“You are quite mad,” she said breathlessly. “Because I was amused once, why should you think I am a fool?” She twisted, bent, and broke free, turning and facing him, her dark eyes blazing. “I can play, but when I work, I quit play. You are dreaming, my dear, if you think you can ever get control.”

“But I tell you I have the game in my hand.” The man, fists clenched, spoke tensely, passionately. “It is for you to say the word. Why should a newcomer, a stranger, take charge when you and I—”

“You young fool! Do you want to die so young?”

“I tell you, Lola,
I’m
not the fool. I know Kern Adler, the big New York lawyer, is in this. And what I say goes with Kern. I know ‘Blondie’ Hahn is. And Blondie stands for all the useful boys still at large. I know how to handle Blondie. We’re old friends. I have all the Donegal material. No one knows the inside of the Brotherhood of National Equality as I know it. What’s more—I know where to go for backing, and I don’t need Bragg! Lola…”

A slender ivory hand, the fingernails long, pointed and highly burnished, moved across the lacquered table in that distant high room.

Six of the seven lights over curtained openings went out.

“What’s this?” muttered Richet. “What do we do now?”

He was inspired by his own vehemence; he felt capable of facing Satan in person.

“Go into the lighted alcove,” said the woman coldly. “The President is ready to interview you.”

Richet paused, fists still half clenched, stepped towards the light, then glanced back. Lola Durmas had gone. She was lost in the incense-haunted darkness… but one green eye of the goddess watched him out of the shadows. He moved forward, swept the curtain aside and found himself in a small, square stone cell, possessing no furniture whatever. The curtain fell back into place with a faint swishing sound. He looked about him, his recent confidence beginning to wane. Then a voice spoke—a high-pitched, guttural voice.

“James Richet, I am displeased with you.”

Richet looked right, left, above and below. Then:

“Who is speaking?” he demanded angrily. “These stage illusions are not impressive. Was I to blame for what happened? I wish to see you, speak to you face to face.”

“An unwise wish, James Richet. Only Numbers one to twelve have that privilege.”

Richet’s brow was covered with nervous perspiration.

“I want a square deal,” he said, striving to be masterful.

“You shall have a square deal,” the implacable, guttural voice replied. “You will be given sealed orders by the Number in charge of Base 3. See that you carry out his instructions
to the letter
…”

* * *

Mark Hepburn sprang up in bed.

“All right, Hepburn!”—it was Nayland Smith’s voice. “Sorry to awake you, but there’s a job for us.”

The light had been switched on, and Hepburn stared somewhat dazedly at the speaker, then glanced down at his watch. The hour was 3.15 a.m. But Nayland Smith was fully dressed. Now wide awake:

“What is it?” Hepburn asked, impressed by his companion’s grim expression and beginning also to dress hastily.

“I don’t know—yet. I was called five minutes ago—I had not turned in—by the night messenger. A taxi—perhaps a coincidence, but it happens to be a Lotus taxi—pulled up at the main entrance. The passenger asked the man to step into the lobby and inquire for me—”

“In what name?”

“The title was curiously accurate, Hepburn. It was typed on a slip of paper. The man was told to ask for Federal Agent Ex-Assistant Commissioner Sir Denis Nayland Smith, O.B.E.!”

Hepburn was now roughly dressed. He turned, staring:

“But to everybody except myself and Fey you are plain Mr. Smith!”

“Exactly. That is why I see the hand of Dr. Fu-Manchu, who has a ghastly sense of humor, in this. The man pretended to obey his orders, I gather, but he had not gone three paces when something happened. Let’s hurry down. The man is there… so is his passenger.”

The night manager and a house detective were talking to Fey by the open door of the apartment.

“Queerest thing that ever happened in my experience, gentlemen,” said the manager. “I only hope it isn’t a false alarm. The string of titles means nothing to me. But you are Mr. Smith and I know you are a Federal agent. This way. The elevator is waiting. If you will follow me I will take you by a shorter route.”

Down they went to the street level. Led by the manager they hurried along a service passage, crossed a wide corridor, two empty offices, and came out at the far end of the vast pillared and carpeted main foyer. Except for robot-like workers vacuum cleaning, it was deserted and in semi-darkness. A lofty, shadow-haunted place. Light shone from the open door of the night manager’s room…

A man who wore a topcoat over pyjamas was examining a still figure stretched on a sofa. There were three other men in the room, one of them the taxi driver.

Nayland Smith shot a searching glance at the latter’s pale, horrified face, as, cap on the back of his head, he stared over the doctor’s shoulder, and then, pushing his way forward he too looked once, and:

“Good God!” he muttered. “Hepburn”—Mark Hepburn was beside him—“what is it? Have you ever met with anything like it?”

There was a momentary silence, grotesquely disturbed by the hum of a distant vacuum cleaner.

The prostrate man, whose torso had been stripped by the resident physician probably in a vain attempt to restore cardiac action, exhibited on his face and neck a number of vivid scarlet spots. They were about an eighth of an inch in diameter and on the dull white skin resembled drops of blood…

“Never.”

Mark Hepburn’s voice was husky. The doctor looked up. He was a heavily built, Teutonic type, his shrewd eyes magnified by powerful spectacles.

“If you are a brother practitioner,” he said, “you are welcome. This case is outside my experience.”

“When did he actually die?” rapped Nayland Smith.

“He was already dead when I arrived—although I worked over him for ten minutes or more—”

“The scarlet spots!” blurted the taxi driver in a frightened voice—“That’s what he called out. ‘The scarlet spots’—and then he was down on the sidewalk rolling about and screaming!”

Mark Hepburn glanced at Nayland Smith.

“You were right,” he said; “we shall never get that information.”

The dead man was James Richet, ex-secretary to Abbot Donegal!