by Sax Rohmer
Craig turned to him.
“It’s all right, Sam. This is an old friend.”
“Oh, is that so?”
“Yes — and I don’t believe he has a bit of string.”
Sam stared truculently from face to face, chewing in an ominous way, and then went out.
“Sit down, Smith. This is a great, glad surprise. But why the whirlwind business? And” — staring— “what the devil are you up to?”
Nayland Smith had walked straight across to the long windows which occupied nearly the whole of the west wall. He was examining a narrow terrace outside bordered by an ornamental parapet. He looked beyond, to where the hundred eyes of a towering building shone in the dusk. He turned.
“Anybody else got access to this floor?”
“Only the staff. Why?”
“What do you mean when you say the staff?”
“I mean the staff! Am I on the witness stand? Well, if you must know, the research staff consists of myself; Martin Shaw, my chief assistant, a Columbia graduate; John Regan, second technician, who came to me from Vickers; and Miss Navarre, my secretary. She also has scientific training. Except for Sam, the handyman, and Mr. Frobisher, nobody else has access to the laboratory. Do I make myself clear to your honor?”
Nayland Smith was staring towards the steel door and tugging at the lobe of his left ear, a mannerism which denoted intense concentration, and one with which Craig was familiar.
“You don’t take proper precautions,” he snapped. “I got in without any difficulty.”
Morris Craig became vaguely conscious of danger. He recalled vividly the nervous but repressed excitement of Michael Frobisher. He could not ignore the tension now exhibited by Nayland Smith.
“Why these precautions, Smith? What have we to be afraid of?”
Smith swung around on him. His eyes were hard.
“Listen, Craig — we’ve known one another since you were at Oxford. There’s no need to mince words. I don’t know what you’re working on up here — but I’m going to ask you to tell me. I know something else, though. Unless I have made the biggest mistake of my life, one of the few first-class brains in the world today has got you spotted.”
“But, Smith, you’re telling me nothing—”
“Haven’t time. I baited a little trap as I came up. I’m going down to spring it.”
“Spring it?”
“Exactly. Excuse me.”
Smith moved to the door.
“The elevator man will be off duty—”
“He won’t. I ordered him to stand by.”
Nayland Smith went out as rapidly as he had come in.
Craig stood for a moment staring at the door which Smith had just closed. He had an awareness of some menace impending, creeping down upon him; a storm cloud. He scratched his chin reflectively and returned to the letters. He signed them, and pressed a button.
Camille Navarre entered quietly and came over to the desk. Craig took off his glasses and looked up — but Camille’s eyes were fixed on the letters.
“Ah, Miss Navarre — here we are.” He returned them to her. “And there’s rather a long one, bit of a teaser, on this thing.” He pointed to the dictaphone. “Mind removing same and listening in to my rambling rot?”
Camille stooped and took the cylinder off the machine. “Your dictation is very clear, Dr. Craig.”
She spoke with a faint accent; more of intonation than pronunciation. It was a low-pitched, caressing voice. Craig never tired of it.
“Sweet words of flattery. I sound to myself like a half-strangled parrot. The way you construe is simply wizard.”
Camille smiled. She had beautifully moulded, rather scornful lips.
“Thank you. But it isn’t difficult.”
She put the cylinder in its box and turned to go.
“By the way, you have an invitation from the boss. He bids you to Falling Waters for the week-end.”
Camille paused, but didn’t turn. If Craig could have seen her face, its expression might have puzzled him.
“Really?” she said. “That is sweet of Mr. Frobisher.”
“Can you come? I’m going, too, so I’ll drive you out.”
“That would be very kind of you. Yes, I should love to come.”
She turned, now, and her smile was radiant.
“Splendid. We’ll hit the trail early. No office on Saturday.”
There was happiness in Craig’s tone, and in his glance. Camille drooped her eyes and moved away.
“Er—” he added, “is the typewriter in commission again?”
“Yes,” Camille’s lip twitched. “I managed to get it right.”
“With a bit of string?”
“No.” She laughed softly. “With a hairpin!”
As she went out, Craig returned to his drawing board. But he found it hard to concentrate. He kept thinking about that funny little moue peculiar to Camille, part of her. Whenever she was going to smile, one corner of her upper lip seemed to curl slightly like a rose petal. And he wondered if her eyes were really so beautiful, or if the lenses magnified them.
The office door burst open, and Nayland Smith came in again like a hot wind from the desert. He had discarded the rainproof in which he had first appeared, and now carried a fur-collared coat.
“Missed him, Craig,” he rapped. “Slipped through my fingers — the swine!”
Craig turned half around, resting one shirt-sleeved elbow on a corner of the board.
“Of course,” he said, “if you’re training for the Olympic Games, or what-have-you, let me draw your attention to the wide-open spaces of Central Park. I work here — or try to.”
He was silenced by the look in Nayland Smith’s eyes. He stood up.
“Smith! — what is it?”
“Murder!” Nayland Smith rapped out the word like a rifle shot. “I have just sent a man to his death, Craig!”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“No more than I say.”
It came to Morris Craig as a revelation that something had happened to crush, if only temporarily, the indomitable spirit he knew so well. He walked over and laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Smith. Forgive my silly levity. What’s happened?”
Nayland Smith’s face looked haggard, worn, as he returned Craig’s earnest stare.
“I have been shadowed, Craig, ever since I reached New York. I left police headquarters a while ago, wearing a borrowed hat and topcoat. A man slightly resembling me had orders to come to the Huston Building in the car I have been using all day, wearing my own hat, and my own topcoat.”
“Well?”
“He obeyed his orders. The driver, who is above suspicion, noticed nothing whatever unusual on the way. There was no evidence to suggest that they were being followed. I had assumed that they would be — and had laid my plans accordingly. I went down to see the tracker fall into my trap—”
“Go on, Smith! For God’s sake, what happened?”
“This!”
Nayland Smith carefully removed a small, pointed object from its wrappings and laid it on the desk. Craig was about to pick it up, when:
“Don’t touch it!” came sharply. “That is, except by the feathered end. Primitive, Craig, but deadly — and silent. Get your laboratory to analyze the stuff on the tip of the dart. Curari is too commonplace for the man who inspired this thing.”
“Smith! I’m appalled. What are you telling me?”
“It was flicked, or perhaps blown from a tube, into Moreno’s face through the open window of the car. It stuck in his chin, and he pulled it out. But when the car got here, he was quite insensible, and—”
“You mean he’s dead?”
“I had him rushed straight to hospital.”
“They’ll want this for analysis.”
“There was another. The first must have missed.”
Nayland Smith dropped limply into a chair, facing Craig.
He pulled out his blackened
briar and began to load it from an elderly pouch.
“Let’s face the facts, Craig. I must make it clear to you that a mysterious Eastern epidemic is creeping west. I’m not in Manhattan for my health. I’m here to try to head it off.” He stuffed the pouch back into his pocket and lighted his pipe.
“I’m all attention, Smith. But for heaven’s sake, what devil are you up against?”
“Listen. No less than six prominent members of the Soviet government have either died suddenly or just disappeared — within the past few months.”
“One of those purges? Very popular with dictators.”
“A purge right enough. But not carried out by Kremlin orders. Josef Stalin is being guarded as even he was never guarded before.”
Craig began groping behind him for the elusive packet of cigarettes.
“What’s afoot, Smith? Is this anything to do with the news from London?”
“You mean the disappearance of two of the Socialist Cabinet? Undoubtedly. They have gone the same way.”
“The same way?” Craig’s search was rewarded. He lighted a cigarette. “What way?”
Nayland Smith took the fuming pipe from between his teeth, and fixed a steady look on Craig.
“Dr. Fu-Manchu’s way!”
“Dr. Fu-Manchu! But — I—”
The door of Camille’s room opened, and Camille came out. She held some typewritten sheets in her hand. There was much shadow at that side of the office, for only the desk lights were on, so that as the two men turned and looked towards her, it was difficult to read her expression.
But she paused at sight of them, standing quite still.
“Oh, excuse me, Dr. Craig! I thought you were alone.”
“It’s all right,” said Craig. “Don’t — er — go, Miss Navarre. This is my friend, Sir Denis Nayland Smith. My new secretary, Smith — Miss Navarre.”
Nayland Smith stared for a moment, then bowed, and walked to the window.
“What is it, Miss Navarre?” Craig asked.
“It’s only that last cylinder, Dr. Craig. I wanted to make sure I had it right. I will wait until you are disengaged.”
But Nayland Smith was looking out into the jewelled darkness, and seeing nothing of a towering building which rose like a lighted teocalli against the skyline. He saw, instead, a panelled grillroom where an attractive red-haired girl sat at a table with a man. He saw the dark-faced spy lunching alone near by.
The girl in the grillroom had not worn her hair pinned back in that prim way, nor had she worn glasses.
Nevertheless, the girl in the grillroom and Miss Navarre were one and the same!
CHAPTER THREE
In a little shop sandwiched in between more imposing Chinese establishments, a good-looking young Oriental sat behind the narrow counter writing by the light of a paper-shaded lamp. The place was a mere box, and he was entirely surrounded by mysterious sealed jars, packets of joss sticks wrapped up in pakapu papers, bronze bowls with perforated wooden lids, boxes of tea, boxes of snuff, bead necklaces, and other completely discordant items of an evidently varied stock. The shop smelled of incense.
A bell tinkled as the door was opened. A big man came in, so big that he seemed a crowd. He looked and was dressed like some kind of workman.
The young Oriental regarded him impassively.
“Mr. Huan Tsung?” the man asked.
“Mr. Huan Tsung not home. How many time you come before?”
“Seven.”
The young man nodded. “Give me the message.”
From one pocket inside his checked jacket the caller produced an envelope and passed it across the counter. It was acknowledged by another nod, dropped on a ledge, and the big messenger went out. The young Chinaman went on writing.
A minute or so later, a point of light glowed below the counter, where it would have remained invisible to a customer had one been in the shop.
The envelope was placed in a tiny cupboard and a stud was pressed. The light under the counter vanished, and the immobile shopman went on writing. He wrote with a brush, using India ink, in the beautiful, difficult idiograms of classic Chinese.
Upstairs, in a room the walls of which were decorated with panels of painted silk, old Huan Tsung sat on a divan. He resembled the traditional portrait of Confucius. From a cupboard at his elbow corresponding to that in the shop below, he took out the message, read it and dropped message and envelope into a brazier of burning charcoal.
He replaced the mouthpiece of a long-stemmed pipe between his wrinkled lips.
On a low-set red lacquer stool beside the divan was a crystal globe, similar in appearance to that upon the long, narrow table in the study adjoining Professor Hoffmeyer’s office.
Nothing occurred for some time. Huan Tsung smoked contentedly, reflection from the brazier lending a demoniac quality to his benign features.
Then the crystal globe came to life, like a minor moon emerging from a cloud. Within it materialized a gaunt, wonderful face, the brow of a philosopher, green, fanatical eyes in which slumbered the fires of an imperious will.
Below, in the shop, but inaudible in the silk-walled room above, a phone buzzed. The patient writer laid his brush aside, took up the instrument, and listened. He replaced it, scribbled a few pencilled lines, put the paper in the cupboard, and pressed the button.
Huan Tsung, with a movement of his hand, removed the message. He glanced at it — and dropped the sheet into the brazier. The face in the globe had fully materialized. Compelling eyes looked into his own. Huan Tsung spoke.
“You called me, Doctor?”
“No doubt you have later reports.”
“The last one, Excellency, just to hand, is timed 7.26 p.m. Nayland Smith left Centre Street at seven twenty-three. Our agent, following, carried out the operation successfully.”
“Successfully!” A note of anger became audible in the sibilant tones. “I may misunderstand you. What method was used?”
“B.W. 63, of which I have a little left, and the feathered darts. I instructed Sha Mu, who is expert, and he succeeded at the second attempt. He passed the police car undetected and retired in safety. Nayland Smith was taken, without being removed from the car, to the Rockefeller Institute.”
Huan Tsung’s eyes were closed. His features wore a mask of complacency. There was a brief silence.
“Open your eyes!” Huan Tsung did so, and shrank. “They think Professor Lowe may save him. They are wrong. Your action was ill considered. Await instructions to establish contact.”
“Excellency’s order noted.”
“Summarize any other reports.”
“There are few of importance. The Emir Omar Khan died in Teheran this morning.”
“That is well. Nayland Smith’s visit to Teheran was wasted. Instruct Teheran.”
“Excellency’s order noted. There is no later report from Moscow and none from London.”
Silence fell. The green eyes in the crystal mirror grew clouded, filmed over in an almost pathological way. The cloud passed. They blazed again like emeralds.
“You have destroyed that which might have been of use to us. Furthermore, you have aroused a nest of wasps. Our task was hard enough. You make it harder. A disappearance — yes. I had planned one. But this clumsy assassination—”
“I thought I had done well.”
“A legitimate thought is the child of wisdom and experience. Thoughts, like children, may be bastards.”
Light faded from the crystal. Old Huan Tsung smoked, considering the problem of human fallibility.
* * * *
“This is stupendous!” Nayland Smith whispered.
With Morris Craig, he stood under a dome which occupied one end of the Huston laboratory. It was opaque but contained four small openings. Set in it, rather as in an observatory, was an instrument closely resembling a huge telescope, except that it appeared to be composed of some dull black metal and had no lens.
Through the four openings, Nayland Smith could see the star
s.
Like Craig, he wore green-tinted goggles.
That part of the instrument where, in a real telescope, the eye-piece would be, rested directly over a solid table topped with a six-inch-thick sheet of a grey mineral substance. A massive portcullis of the same material enclosed the whole. It had just been raised. An acrid smell filled the air.
“Some of the Manhattan rock below us is radioactive,” Craig had explained. “So, in a certain degree, are the buildings. Until I found that out, I got no results.”
Complex machinery mounted on a concrete platform, machinery which emitted a sort of radiance and created vibrations which seemed to penetrate one’s spine, had been disconnected by Regan from its powerful motors.
In a dazzling, crackling flash, Nayland Smith had seen a lump of solid steel not melt, but disperse, disintegrate, vanish! A pinch of greyish powder alone remained.
“Keep the goggles on for a minute,” said Craig. “Of course, you understand that this is merely a model plant. I might explain that the final problem, which I think I have solved, is the transmuter.”
“Nice word,” snapped Smith. “What does it mean?”
“Well — it’s more than somewhat difficult to define. Sort of ring-a-ring of neutrons, pocket full of plutrons. It’s a method of controlling and directing the enormous power generated here.”
Nayland Smith was silent for a moment He was dazed by the thing he had seen, appalled by its implications.
“If I understand you, Craig,” he said rapidly, “this device enables you to tap the great belt of ultraviolet rays which, you tell me, encloses the earth’s atmosphere a hundred miles above the ionosphere — whatever that is.”
“Roughly speaking — yes. The term, ultraviolet, is merely one of convenience. Like marmalade for a preparation containing no oranges.”
“So far, so good. Now tell me — when your transmuter is completed, what can you do with this thing?”
“Well” — Craig removed his goggles and brushed his hair back— “I could probably prevent any kind of projectile, or plane, from entering the earth’s atmosphere over a controlled area. That is, if I could direct my power upward and outward.”
“Neutralizing the potential of atomic warfare?”
“I suppose it would.”
