by Sax Rohmer
Coming out of her room, later, having changed to a dinner frock so simple that it must have been made in Paris, Camille almost ran into Sam on the corridor.
“Gee, Miss Navarre! You look like something wonderful!”
“That’s very sweet of you, Sam! I had a dreadful shock — yes, truly — when you were discovered today.”
“Sure. Shock to me! Ham performance. Must try to make up for it.”
“Sam — you don’t mind if I still call you Sam?”
“Love it. Sounds better your way.”
“Now I know what you are really doing here, I can talk to you — well, sensibly. Dr. Craig thinks, and so, I know, does Sir Denis, that we haven’t only to deal with this dreadful Fu-Manchu.” She paused for a moment after speaking the name. “That there is a Soviet agent watching us, too. Have you any ideas about him?”
Sam nodded. He had given up chewing and abandoned his spectacles. Presumably they had been part of a disguise.
“Working on it right now — and I think we’re getting some place.”
“Oh! I’m so glad.”
“Sure. I got a nose for foreign agents. Smell ’em a mile off.”
“Really?”
“Sure.” He grinned happily. “You look a hundred per cent Caesar. Excuse my bad spelling!”
He went off along the corridor.
When Camille came down, she found Michael Frobisher busily bolting and barring the French windows.
“Mrs. F.’s got the jumps tonight,” he explained. “I have to fix all the catches myself, to reassure her. Just making the rounds.” He gave Camille an admiring smile. “Hope all today’s hokum, and the alarm back at the office, hasn’t upset you?”
“It’s kind of you, Mr. Frobisher, but although, naturally, I am disturbed about it, all the same I am most happy to be here.”
“Good girl. Craig has finished his job, and the new diagram and notes are in my safe. That’s where they stay. They are the property of Huston Electric, and the property of nobody else!”
As he went out, Morris Craig came downstairs, slim and boyish in his tuxedo. Without a word, he took Camille in his arms.
“Darling! I thought we were never going to be alone again!” When he released her:
“Are you sure, Morris?” she whispered.
“Sure? Sure of what?”
“Sure that you really meant all you said last night?”
He answered her silently, and at great length.
“Camille! I only wish—”
“Yes?”
“Camille” — he lingered over her name— “I adore you… But I wish you weren’t going to stay here tonight—”
“What? Whatever do you mean?”
She leaned back from him. Her eyes suddenly seemed to become a darker shade of blue.
“I mean that, at last, it has dawned on this defective brain of mine that I have done something which may upset the world again — that other people know about it — that almost anything may happen.”
“But Morris — surely nothing can happen here?”
“Can’t it? Why is old Frobisher in such a panic? Why all the dogs and the burglar alarms? The devil of it is, we don’t know our enemies. There might be a Russian spy hiding but there in the shrubbery. There might be a British agent — not that that would bother me — somewhere in this very house.”
“Yes,” said Camille quietly. “I suppose there might be.”
“Above all,” Craig went on presently, “there’s this really frightful menace — Dr. Fu-Manchu. Smith is more scared of him than of all the others rolled into a bundle.”
“So am I… Listen for a moment, Morris. Sometimes I think I have seen him in a dream. Oh! It sounds ridiculous, and I can’t quite explain what I mean. But I have a vague impression of a tall, gaunt figure in a yellow robe, with most wonderful hands, long fingernails, and” — she paused momentarily— “most dreadful eyes. Something, today, brought the impression back to my mind — just as Professor Hoffmeyer came in.”
Craig gently stroked her hair. He knew it would be a penal offense to disarrange it.
“Don’t get jumpy again, darling. I gather that, in one of your fey moods, you wandered the highways and byways of Manhattan last night instead of keeping your date with the professor. But, certainly, the old lad is a rather alarming personality — although he beats no resemblance to your yellow-robed mandarin. I’m sorry for him, and, of course, his Germanic discourse simply sparkles. But—”
“I didn’t mean that the professor reminded me of the man I had dreamed about. It was — something different.”
“Whatever it was, forget it.” He held her very close; he whispered in her ear: “Camille! The moment we get back to New York, will you marry me?”
But Camille shrank away. The dark eyes looked startled — almost panic-stricken.
“Morris! Morris! No! No!”
He dropped his arms, stared at her. He felt that he had grown pale.
“No? Do you mean it?”
“I mean — oh, Morris, I don’t quite know what I mean! Perhaps — that you startled me.”
“How did I startle you?” he asked on a level, calm note.
“You — know so little about me.”
“I know enough to know I love you.”
“I should be very, very happy for us to go on — as we are. But, marriage—”
“What’s wrong with marriage?”
Camille turned aside. A shaded lamp transformed her hair, where it swept down over her neck, to a torrent of molten copper. Craig put his hands hesitantly on her shoulders, and turned her about. He looked steadily into her eyes.
“Camille — you’re not trying to tell me, by any chance, that you’re married already?”
A door banged upstairs. Stella’s voice was heard.
“And do make quite sure, Stein — quite sure — that there isn’t a window open.” She appeared at the stairhead. “Even with everything locked, and the dogs loose, I know I shall never sleep a wink.” She saw Camille below. “Shall you, dear?”
“I’m not at all sure that I shall,” Camille smiled. “Except that I can see no reason why anything should happen tonight more than any other.”
“I must really get Stein to draw those curtains,” Stella declared. “I keep on imagining eyes looking in out of the darkness. And now, for goodness’ sake, let’s all have a drink.”
Stein had wheeled in trays of refreshments some time earlier, but had been called away by Mrs. Frobisher in order to bolt a trap leading to a loft over the house.
“May I help?” Camille asked.
And presently they were surrounding the mobile buffet. Michael Frobisher joined them.
“If you take my advice, my dear,” he said to Stella, “you and Miss Navarre will have a good stiff one each after dinner, and turn in early. Think no more about it. Agree with me, Craig?”
Morris Craig stopped looking at Camille long enough to reply:
“Quite. But, if I may say so, somebody should more or less hang about to keep an eye on this thing.” He indicated the cabinet above the bookcase. “I have looked over the works and pass same as okay. By the way, Mrs. Frobisher, will the wolf pack be at large tonight?”
“Of course!” Stella assured him. “I have given explicit instructions to the man. Such a gentle character.”
“I was wondering,” Craig went on, “if the dogs mightn’t set the gadget going?”
“Oh, I don’t think so. They have a track of their own. Right around the place — if you see what I mean.”
“Yes. I have observed the same — from without. Certain hounds of threatening aspect were roaming around within.”
“If you remember the layout I showed you,” said Frobisher, “showed Nayland Smith, too, there are three gates which would register here” — he crossed and rested a finger on the plan— “if they were opened. Whoever opened one would have Mrs. F.’s dogs on him, I guess. But the dogs can’t reach the house.”
“Most bles
sed dispensation,” Craig murmured to him. “Although I confess the brutes are rather a comfort, with Dr. Fu-Manchu and a set of thugs, plus the Soviet agent assisted by sundry moujiks and other comrades, lined up outside.”
Camille was watching Craig in an almost pleading way. Frobisher took his arm, and growled in his ear:
“We’ll split up into watches when the women turn in. As you say, somebody ought to be on the lookout right along tonight. Stein can stand watch until twelve. Then I’ll take over—”
“No,” said Craig firmly, and caught Camille’s glance. “I am a party to this disorder, and I’m going to do my bit. After all, I’m accustomed to late hours…”
* * * *
Manhattan danced on, perhaps a slightly more hectic dance, for this was Saturday night, and Saturday night is Broadway night. Rain, although still falling farther north, had ceased in the city. But a tent of sepia cloud stretched over New York, so that eternal fires, burning before the altars of those gods whose temples line the Street of a Million Lights, cast their glow up onto this sepia canopy; and it was cast down again, as if rejected.
Two bored police officers smoked and played craps in Morris Craig’s office on top of the Huston Building. And behind the steel door, in an atmosphere vibrant with repressed energy, Martin Shaw worked calmly and skillfully, to complete the instalment known as a transmuter. The gods of Broadway were false gods. The god enshrined behind the steel door was a god of power.
But the two policemen went on playing craps.
Chinatown was busy, also. Country innocents gaped at the Chinese façades, the Chinese signs, and felt that they were seeing sights worth coming to Babylon-on-Hudson to see. Town innocents, impressing their girl friends, ate Chinese food in the restaurants and pretended to know as much about it as Walter Winchell knows about everything.
Mai Cha had just ceased to sing in an apartment near the shop of Huan Tsung. Lao Tai had put his last message in the little cupboard.
And upstairs, Huan Tsung reclined against cushions, his eyes closed. The head of Dr. Fu-Manchu looked out from the crystal. It might have reminded an Egyptologist of the majestic, embalmed head of Seti, that Pharaoh whose body lies in a Cairo museum.
“To destroy the plant alone is useless, Huan Tsung,” came in coldly sibilant words. “I have dealt with this. Otherwise, I should not have risked a personal visit to the laboratory. I sprayed the essential elements with FSO5. The action is deferred. No — it is necessary also to destroy the inventor — or to transfer him to other employment.”
“This may be difficult,” murmured Huan Tsung. “Time is the enemy of human perfection, Excellency.”
“We shall see. Craig’s original drawings were obtained for me by Mrs. Frobisher. Only two blueprints of the transmuter exist. One is in the hands of the chief technician, who is working from it. The other is with a complete set in possession of Michael Frobisher. Drawings of the valves alone remain to be accounted for.”
“But Excellency informs me that they, too, are finished.”
“They are finished. Give me the latest reports. I will then give you final instructions.”
“I shall summarize. Excellency’s personal possessions have been removed from the Woolton Building as ordered. They are already shipped. Raymond Harkness has posted federal agents at all points covering Falling Waters — except one; the path through the woods from the highway remains open. Lao Tai will proceed to this point at the time selected. But the dogs—”
“I have provided for the dogs. Continue.”
“Provision noted. It is believed but not confirmed that the Kremlin, recognizing the actual plant no longer to be available, hopes to obtain the set of blueprints and the final drawings from Falling Waters before it is too late.”
“Upon what does this ‘belief’ rest?”
“Upon the fact, Excellency, that Sokolov has ordered his car to be ready at ten o’clock tonight — and is taking a bodyguard.”
So long a silence followed that Huan Tsung raised his wrinkled lids and looked at the crystal.
The eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu were filmed over, a phenomenon with which Huan Tsung was familiar. The brilliant brain encased in that high, massive skull, was concentrated on a problem. When the film cleared, a decision would have been made. And, as he watched, in a flash the long, narrow eyes became emerald-bright.
“Use the Russian party as a diversion, Huan Tsung. No contact must be made. Koenig has acquainted himself with the zones controlled by the alarm system, and M’goyna is already placed and fully instructed. Mrs. Frobisher has her instructions, also. Use all your resources. This is an emergency. At any moment, now, Nayland Smith will have the evidence he is seeking. Win or lose, I must leave New York before daybreak. Proceed…”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Morris Craig sat smoking in a deep leathern armchair. The darkened library seemed almost uncannily silent. Rain had ceased. But dimly he could hear water dripping on the terrace outside.
It was at about this moment that the two crap players in his office were jerked violently out of their complacent boredom.
Three muffled crashes in the laboratory brought them swiftly to their feet. There came a loud cry — a cry of terror. Another crash. The steel door burst open, and Martin Shaw, white as a dead man, tottered down the steps!
They ran to him. He collapsed on the sofa, feebly waving them away. A series of rending, tearing sounds was followed by a cloud of nearly vaporous dust which came pouring out of the laboratory in grey waves.
“Stand back!”
“We must close the door!”
One of the men raced up, and managed to close the door. He came down again, suffocating, fighting for breath. A crash louder than any before shook the office.
“What is it?” gasped the choking man. “Is there going to be an explosion? For God’s sake” — he clutched his throat— “what’s happening?”
“Disintegration,” muttered Shaw wildly. “Disintegration. The plant is crumbling to… powder.”
Pandemonium in the Huston Building. Fruits of long labor falling from the branches. A god of power reduced to a god of clay. But not a sound to disturb the silence of Falling Waters; a silence awesome, a silence in which many mysteries lay hidden. Yet it was at least conducive to thought.
And Morris Craig had many things to think about. He would have more before the night ended.
In the first place, he couldn’t understand why Michael Frobisher had been so damnably terse when he had insisted on standing the twelve to four watch. At four, Sam was taking over. Sam had backed him up in this arrangement. Craig had had one or two things to say, privately, to Sam, concerning the deception practiced on him; and would have others to mention to Nayland Smith, when he saw Smith again. But Sam, personally, was a sound enough egg.
So Morris Craig mused, in the silent library.
What was that?
He stood up, and remained standing, motionless, intent.
Dimly he had heard, or thought he had heard, the sound of a hollow cough.
He experienced that impression, common to all or most of us, that an identical incident had happened to him before. But when — where?
There was no repetition of the cough — no sound; yet a sense of furtive movement. Guiding himself by a sparing use of a flashlamp, he crossed to the foot of the stair. He shone a beam upward.
“Is that you, Camille?” he called softly.
There was no reply. Craig returned to his chair…
What was old Frobisher up to, exactly? Why had he so completely lost his balance about the envelope business? Of course, Stein had dramatized it absurdly. Queer fish, Stein. Not a fellow he, personally, could ever take to. Barbarous accent. Clearly, it had forced Nayland Smith’s hand. But what had Smith’s idea been? Was there someone in the household he didn’t trust?… Probably Stein.
No doubt the true explanation lay in the fact that Frobisher, having sunk well over half a million dollars in his invention, now saw it slipping throu
gh his fingers. It might not be the sort of thing to trust to development by a commercial corporation, but still — rough luck for Frobisher…
Then Craig was up again.
This time, that hollow cough seemed to come from the front of the house.
He dropped his cigarette and went over to the arched opening which gave access to Frobisher’s study, and, beyond, to the cedarwood dining room. He directed a light along a dark passage. It was empty. He crossed the library again and opened a door on the other side. There was no one there.
Was he imagining things?
This frame of mind was entirely due to the existence of a shadowy horror known as Dr. Fu-Manchu. He didn’t give a hoot for the Soviet agent, whom- or whatever he might be. Nobody took those fellows seriously. The British agent he discounted entirely. If there had been one, Smith would have known him.
The idea of watching in the dark had been Sam’s. As an F.B.I. operative, he had carried the point. Naturally enough, he wanted to get his man. It was a ghostly game, nevertheless. That drip-drip-drip of water outside was getting on Craig’s nerves.
Incidentally, where was Sam? Unlikely that he had turned in.
But above all, where was Camille? There had been no chance to make it definite; but he had read the message in her eyes as she went upstairs with Stella Frobisher to mean, “I shall come down again.”
Frobisher had retired shortly after the women. “I’m going to sleep — and the hell with it all!”
A faint rustling sound on the stairs — and Craig was up as if on springs.
The ray of his lamp shone on Camille, a dressing gown worn over a night robe that he didn’t permit himself to look at. Her bare ankles gleamed like ivory.
“Camille! — darling! At last!”
He trembled as he took her in his arms. She was so softly alluring. He released her and led her to the deep leathern settee, forcing a light note, as he extinguished the lamp.
“Forgive the blackout. Captain’s orders.”
“I know,” she whispered.
He found her hand in his, and kissed her fingers silently. Then, as a mask for his excited emotions:
