The Shadow of Fu-Manchu (9 page)

But over two hours had elapsed—two lost hours!

Sleep was going to be difficult. She had an urge for coffee but knew that it was the wrong thing in the circumstances. She went into the kitchenette and cut herself two sandwiches. She ate them standing there while she warmed some milk. This, and a little fruit, made up her supper.

When she had prepared the bed, and undressed, she still felt wide awake but had no inclination to read. Switching the lights off, she stood at the window looking down into the street. A number of darkened cars were parked on both sides, and while she stood there several taxis passed. There were few pedestrians.

All these things she noted in a subconscious way. They had no particular interest for her. She was trying all the time to recapture those lost hours. Never in her life before had such a thing happened to her. It was appalling…

At last, something taking place in the street below dragged her wandering mind back to the present, the actual.

A big man—abnormally big—stood almost opposite. He appeared to be looking up at her window. Something to his appearance, his hulking, apelike pose, struck a chord of memory, sharp, terrifying, but shapeless, unresolved.

Camille watched him. His presence might have nothing to do with her. He could be looking at some other window. But she felt sure he was looking at hers.

When, as she watched, he moved away, loose-armed and shambling, she stepped to the end of the bay and followed his ungainly figure with her eyes. From here, she could just see Central Park, and at the corner the man paused—seemed to be looking back.

Camille stole across her darkened room to the lobby, and bolted and chained the door.

A wave of unaccountable terror had swept over her.

Why?

She had never, to her knowledge, seen the man before. He was a dangerous-looking type, but her scanty possessions were unlikely to interest a housebreaker. Nevertheless, she dreaded the dark hours ahead and knew that hope of sleep had become even more remote.

Lowering the Venetian blinds, she switched up her bedside lamp and toyed with a phial of sleeping tablets. She had known many restless nights of late, but dreaded becoming a drug addict. Finally, shrugging her shoulders, she swallowed one, got into bed, and sipped the rest of the warm milk.

She did not recall turning the light out. But, just as she was dozing off, a sound of heavy, but curiously furtive, footsteps on the stair aroused her. There was no elevator.

The sound died away—if she had really heard and not imagined it.

Sleep crept upon her unnoticed…

She dreamed that she stood in a dimly lighted, thickly carpeted room. It was peculiarly silent, and there was a sickly-sweet smell in the air, a smell which she seemed to recognize yet couldn’t identify. She was conscious of one impulse only. To escape from this silent room.

But a man wearing a yellow robe sat behind a long, narrow table, watching her. And the regard of his glittering green eyes held her as if chained to the spot upon which she stood. He seemed to be draining her of all vitality, all power of resistance. She thought of the shell of a fly upon which a spider has feasted.

She knew in her dream, but couldn’t remember a word that had passed, that this state of inertia was due to a pitiless cross-examination to which she had been subjected.

The examination was over, and now she was repeating orders already given. She knew herself powerless to disobey them.

“On the stroke of ten. Repeat the time.”

“On the stroke of ten.”

“Repeat what you have to write.”

“The safe combination used by Dr. Craig.”

“When are you to await a call in your apartment?”

“At eleven o’clock.”

“Who will call you?”

“
You
will call me…”

She was exhausted, at the end of endurance. The dim, Oriental room swam about her. The green eyes grew larger—dominated that yellow, passionless face—merged—became a still sea in which she was drowning.

Camille heard herself shriek as she fought her way back to consciousness. She sprang up, choked with the horror of her dreams; then:

“Did it really happen?” she moaned. “Oh, God! What did I do last night?”

Grey light was just beginning to outline the slats of the Venetian blinds.

Manhattan was waking to a new day.

N
ayland Smith crossed and threw his door open as the bell buzzed.

“Come in, Harkness.”

There was an irritable note in his voice. This was his third day in New York, and he had made no progress worthy of record. Yet every hour counted.

They shook hands. Raymond Harkness was a highly improbable F.B.I. operative but a highly efficient one. His large hazel eyes were ingenuous, almost childish in expression, and he had a gentle voice which he rarely raised. Of less than medium height, as he stood there peeling a glove off delicate-looking fingers he might have been guessed a physician, or even a surgeon, but never a detective.

“Any news?” rapped Smith, dropping restlessly into an armchair and pointing to its twin.

“Yes.” Harkness sat down, first placing his topcoat and hat neatly on a divan. “I think there is.”

“Good. Let’s have it.”

Smith pushed a box of cigarettes across the table and began to charge his foul briar.

“Well”—Harkness lighted a cigarette—“Mrs. Frobisher had an appointment at three o’clock this afternoon with Professor Hoffmeyer, the Viennese psychiatrist who runs a business on the top floor of the Woolton Building.”

“How did you know?”

“I’m having Falling Waters carefully covered. I want to find out who was responsible for the burglary there last week. Stein, the chauffeur-butler, drove Mrs. Frobisher into town, in their big Cadillac. When she had gone in, Stein’s behaviour was just a bit curious.”

“What did he do?”

“He parked the car, left his uniform cap inside, put on a light topcoat and soft hat, and walked around to a bar on East Forty-eighth.”

“What’s curious about that?”

“Maybe not a lot. But when he got to the bar, he met another man who was evidently waiting for him. One of our boys who has ears like a desert rat was soon on a nearby stool.”

“Hear anything?”

“Plenty. But it wasn’t in English.”

“Oh!” Nayland Smith lighted his pipe. “What was the lingo?”

“My man was counted out. He reports he doesn’t know.”

“Useful!”

“No, it isn’t, Sir Denis. But Scarron—that’s his name—had a bright thought when the party broke up. He didn’t tail Stein. Knew he was going back to his car. He tailed Number Two.”

“Good work. Where did the bird settle?”

And when Harkness, very quietly, told him, Nayland Smith suddenly stood up.

“Got something there, Harkness,” he rapped. “The job at Falling Waters may have been Soviet-inspired, and not, as I supposed, a reconnaissance by Dr. Fu-Manchu. What’s Stein’s background?”

“Man at work, right now, on it.”

“Good. What about details of the bogus doctor who saved Moreno’s life? To hand, yet?”

“Yes.” Harkness took out a notebook and unhurriedly turned the pages. “It’s a composite picture built up on the testimony of several witnesses. Here we are.” He laid his cigarette carefully on the edge of an ash-tray. “Tall; well-built. Pale, clear-cut features. Slight black moustache, heavy brows; dark, piercing eyes.”

“H’m,” Smith muttered. “Typical villain of melodrama. Did he carry a riding whip?”

“Not reported!” Harkness smiled, returning the notebook to his pocket. “But there’s one other item. Not so definite—but something I wish you could look into personally. It’s your special province.”

Nayland Smith, who had worn tracks in more carpets than any man in England, was pacing the room, now, followed by a wraith of tobacco smoke.

“Go ahead.”

Harkness dusted ash into a tray and leaned back in his chair.

“For sometime before your arrival,” he said, “but acting on your advice that Dr. Fu-Manchu was probably in New York, we have been checking up on possible contacts in the Asiatic quarter.”

“Maybe none. Fu-Manchu’s organization isn’t primarily Chinese, or even Oriental. He’s head of a group known as the Council of Seven. They have affiliations in every walk of society and in every country, as I believe. The Communists aren’t the only plotters with far-flung cells.”

“That may be so,” Harkness went on patiently, “but as a matter of routine I had the possibility looked into. Broadly, we drew blank. But there’s one old gentleman, highly respected in the Chinatown area, who seems to be a bit of a mystery.”

“What’s his name?”

“Huan Tsung.”

“What does he look like?”

“He is tall, I am told, for a Chinese, but old and frail. I’ve never seen him personally.”

“What!” Nayland Smith pulled up and stared. “Don’t follow. Myth?”

“Oh, he exists. But he’s hard to get at. Some sort of invalid, I believe. Easy enough to see him officially, but I don’t want to do that. He has tremendous influence of some kind amongst the Asiatic population.”

Nayland Smith tugged at the lobe of his ear reflectively. “This aged, invisible character intrigues me,” he said. “How long has he lived in New York?”

“According to police records, for many years.”

“But his remarkable habits suggest that he might be absent for a long time without his absence being noticed?”

“That’s true,” Harkness admitted.

“For instance, you are really sure he’s there now?”

“Practically certain. I have learned in the last few days, since I came up from Washington to meet you, that he has been seen going for a late drive—around eleven at night—in an old Ford which is kept in a shed not far from his shop.”

“Where does he go?”

“I have no information. I have ordered an inquiry on that point. You see”—he spoke with added earnestness—“I have it on reliable grounds that Huan Tsung is in the game against us. I don’t know where he stands. But—”

“You want me to try to look him over?” Nayland Smith broke in. “I might recognize this hermit! I agree with you.”

He began to walk about again in his restless way. His pipe had gone out, but he didn’t appear to notice it.

“I could make the necessary arrangements, Sir Denis. You might try tonight, if you have no other plans.”

“I have no other plans. At any hour, at any moment, Craig may complete his hell machine. In that hour, the enemy will strike—and I don’t know where to look for the blow, how to cover up against it. Tell me”—Smith shot a swift glance at Harkness—“does Huan Tsung ever drive out at night
more than once?
”

Harkness frowned thoughtfully. “I should have to check on that. But may I suggest that, tonight—”

“No. Leave it to me. I’m tired of going around like an escorted tourist. I want my hands free. Leave it to me.”

* * *

When Nayland Smith left police headquarters that night and set out to pick up Harkness, he might have been anything from a ship’s carpenter to a bosun’s mate ashore. His demands on the Bureau’s fancy wardrobe had been simple, and no item of his make-up could fairly be described as a disguise.

Upon this, a sea-going walk, dirty hands, and a weird, nasal accent which was one of his many accomplishments, Nayland Smith relied, as he had relied on former occasions.

He had started early, for he had it in mind to prospect the shop of Huan Tsung before joining Harkness at the agreed spot—a point from which that establishment could conveniently be kept in view.

Whilst still some distance from Chinatown proper, he found himself wondering if these streets were always so empty at this comparatively early hour. He saw parked vehicles, and some traffic, but few pedestrians.

The lights of the restaurant quarter were visible ahead, when this quietude was violently disturbed.

A woman screamed—the scream of deadly terror.

As if this had been a reveille, figures, hitherto unseen, began to materialize out of nowhere, and all of them running in the same direction. Nayland Smith ran, too.

A group of perhaps a dozen people, of various colors, surrounded a woman hysterically explaining that she had been knocked down and her handbag snatched by a man who sprang upon her from behind.

As Smith reached the outskirts of the group, pressing forward to get a glimpse of the woman’s face, someone clapped a hand on his back and seemed to be trying to muscle past. His behavior was so violent that Smith turned savagely—at which moment he felt an acute stab in his neck as if a pin had been thrust in.

“Damn you!” he snapped. “What in hell are you up to?”

These words were the last he spoke.

Strong fingers were clasped over his mouth; a sinewy arm jerked his head back—and the stinging in his neck continued!

Nayland Smith believed (he was not in a condition to observe accurately) that the assaulted woman was giving particulars to a patrolman, that the group of onlookers was dispersing.

Making a sudden effort, he bent, twisted, and threw off his attacker.

Turning, fists clenched, he faced a tall man dimly seen in the darkness, for the scuffle had taken place at a badly lighted point. He registered a medium right on this man’s chin and was about to follow it up when the man closed with him. He made no attempt to use his fists, he just threw himself upon Smith and twined powerful arms around his body, at the same time crying out: