by Sax Rohmer
“I have a bone to pick with you,” he said in his most flippant manner. “What did you mean by turning down my offer to make an honest woman of you? Explain this to me, briefly, and in well chosen words.”
Camille crept closer to him in the dark.
“I mean to explain.” Her soft voice was unsteady. “I came to explain to you — now.”
He longed to put his arms around her. But some queer sense of restraint checked him.
“I’m waiting, darling.”
“You may not know — I don’t believe you do, even yet — that for a long time, ever so long” — how he loved the Gallic intonations which came when she was deeply moved!— “your work has been watched. At least, you know now, when it is finished, that they will stick at nothing.”
“Who are ‘they’? You mean the Kremlin and Dr. Fu-Manchu?”
“Yes. These are the only two you have to be afraid of… But there is also a — British agent.”
“Doubtful about that, myself. How d’you know there’s a British agent?”
“Because I am the British agent.”
There were some tense moments, during which neither spoke. It might almost have seemed that neither breathed. They sat there, side by side, in darkness, each wondering what the other was thinking. Drip-drip-drip went the rainwater… Then Craig directed the light of his lamp onto Camille’s face. She turned swiftly away, raised her hands:
“Don’t! Don’t!”
“Camille!” Craig switched the light off. “Good God!”
“Don’t look at me!” Camille went on. “I don’t want you to see me! I had made up my mind to tell you tonight, and I am going to be quite honest about it. I didn’t think, and I don’t think now, that the work I undertook was wrong. Although, of course, when I started, I had never met you.”
Craig said nothing.
“If I have been disloyal to anyone, it is to Mr. Frobisher. For you must realize, Morris, the dreadful use which could be made of such a thing. You must realize that it might wreck the world. No government could be blind to that.”
Subtly, in the darkness, Morris Craig had drawn nearer. Now, suddenly, he had his arm around her shoulders.
“No, Morris! Don’t! Don’t! Not until I have told you everything.” He felt her grow suddenly rigid. “What was that?”
It was the sound of a hollow cough, in the distance.
Craig sprang up.
“I don’t know. But I have heard it before. Is it inside the house, or out?”
Switching on the lamp, he ran in turn to each of the doors, and stood listening. But Falling Waters remained still. Then he directed the light onto Camille — and away again, quickly. In a moment he was beside her.
“Morris!”
“Let me say something—”
“But, Morris, do you truly understand that I have been reporting your work, step by step, to the best of my ability? Because I never quite understood it. I have been spying on you, all through… At last, I couldn’t bear it any longer. When Sir Denis came on the scene, I thought I was justified in asking for my release…”
Morris’s kiss silenced her. She clung to him, trembling. Her heart fluttered like a captive bird released, and at last:
“You see now, Morris, why I felt it was well enough for us to be — lovers. But how could I marry you, when—”
“You were milking my brains?” he whispered in her ear. But it was a gay whisper. “You little redheaded devil! This gives me another bone to pick with Smith. Why didn’t he tell me?”
“I was afraid he would! Then I remembered he couldn’t… Morris! I shall be all bruises! There are traditions in the Secret Service.”
At which moment, amid a subdued buzzing sound like that of a fly trapped in a glass, the cabinet over the bookcase came to life!
Camille grasped Craig’s hand as he leapt upright, and clung to it obstinately. A rectangle in the library darkness, every detail of the grounds surrounding Falling Waters showed as if touched with phosphorescence.
“We’re off!” Craig muttered. “Look!”
A shadow moved slowly across the chart.
“That’s the back porch!” Camille whispered. “Someone right outside.”
“Don’t panic, darling. Wait.”
The faint shadow moved on to where a door was marked. It stopped. The buzzing ceased. The chart faded.
“Someone came into the kitchen!”
“Run back and hide on the stair.”
“But—”
“Please do as I say, Camille.”
Camille released his hand, and he stood, automatic ready, facing that doorway which led to the back premises.
He saw nothing. But he was aware that the door had been opened. Then:
“Don’t shoot me, Craig,” rapped a familiar voice, “and don’t make a sound.” A flashlamp momentarily lighted the library. Nayland Smith stood there watching him — hatless, the fur collar of his old trench coat turned up about his ears. Then Smith’s gaze flickered for a second. There came a faint rustling from the direction of the stairs — and silence.
Sam appeared just behind Smith. The lamp was switched off.
“Smith! — How did you get in?”
“Not so loud. I have been standing by outside for some time.”
“I let him in, doc,” Sam explained.
“There’s some kind of thing slinking around out there,” Nayland Smith went on, an odd note in his voice, “which isn’t human—”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Just that. It isn’t a baboon, and it isn’t a man. Normally, I should form a party and hunt it down. I have a strong suspicion it is some specimen out of Fu-Manchu’s museum of horrors. But” — Craig, dimly, could hear Smith moving in the dark— “just shine a light onto this.”
Craig snapped his lamp up. Nayland Smith stood right beside him, holding out an enlargement of a snapshot. Sam stood at Smith’s elbow. Upstairs, a door closed softly.
The picture was that of a stout, bearded man crowned with a mane of white hair; he had small, round, inquisitive eyes.
“Lights out,” Smith directed. “I waited at police headquarters for that to arrive. Recognize him?”
“Never saw him in my life.”
“Correct. Following his release from a Nazi prison camp, he disappeared. I think I know where he went. But it’s of no immediate importance. That is the once celebrated Viennese psychiatrist, Doctor Carl Hoffmeyer!”
“What do you say?”
“Smart, ain’t it?” Sam murmured.
“The man New York knew as Professor Hoffmeyer was Dr. Fu-Manchu!”
“Good God! But he was here today!”
“I know. A great commander must be prepared to take all the risks he imposes on others.”
“But he speaks English with a heavy German accent! And—”
“Dr. Fu-Manchu speaks every civilized language with perfect facility — with or without an accent! Lacking this evidence, I could do nothing. But I made one big mistake—”
“We all made it,” said Sam. “You’re no more to blame than the rest.”
“Thanks,” rapped Smith. “But the blame is mine. I had the Hoffmeyer clinic covered, and I thought he was trapped.”
“Well?” Craig asked eagerly.
“He didn’t go back there!”
“Listen!” Sam broke in again. “We had three good men on his tail, but he tricked ’em!”
There was something increasingly eerie about this conversation in the dark.
“The clinic remains untouched,” Nayland Smith continued. “But Fu-Manchu’s private quarters, which patients never saw, have been stripped. Police raided hours ago.”
“Then where has he gone?”
“I don’t know.” Nayland Smith’s voice had a groan in it. “But all that remains for him to do, in order to complete his work, is here, in this house!”
“Shouldn’t we rouse up Frobisher?” Craig asked excitedly.
“No. There are certa
in things I don’t want Mr. Frobisher to know yet.”
“Such as, for instance?”
“Such as — this is going to hit you where it hurts — that your entire plant in the Huston laboratory was destroyed tonight—”
“What!”
“Quiet, man!” Nayland Smith grasped Craig’s arm in the darkness. “I warned you it would hurt. The Fire Department has the job in hand. It isn’t their proper province. The thing is just crumbling away, breaking like chocolate. Last report to reach the radio car, that huge telescope affair — I don’t know its name — has crashed onto the floor.”
“But, Smith!…”
“I know. It’s bad.”
“Thank heaven! My original plans are safe in a New York City bank vault!”
Silence fell again, broken only by a dry cough from Sam, until:
“They are not,” Nayland Smith said evenly. “They were taken out two days ago.”
“Taken out? By whom?”
“In person, by Mrs. Frobisher. In fact, by Dr. Fu-Manchu. Frobisher doesn’t know — but the only records of your invention which remain, Craig, are the blueprints hidden somewhere in this house!”
“They were in back of the desk there,” Sam mumbled. “But they’ve vanished.”
“You’re not suggesting” — Craig heard the note of horrified incredulity in his own voice— “that Mrs. Frobisher—”
“Mrs. Frobisher,” said Nayland Smith, “is as innocent in this matter as Miss Navarre. But — we are dealing with Dr. Fu-Manchu!”
“Why are we staying in the dark? What happens next?”
“What happens next I don’t know. We are staying in the dark because a man called Dimitri Sokolov, a Soviet official in whom Ray Harkness is interested, has a crew of armed thugs down by the lower gate… Sokolov seems to be expecting someone.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
In the stillness which followed, Morris Craig tried, despairfully, to get used to the idea that the product of months, many weary months, of unremitting labor, had been wiped out… How? By whom? He felt stunned. Could it be that Shaw, in a moment of madness, had attempted a test?
“Is poor old Shaw—” he began.
“Shaw is safe,” Smith interrupted. “But badly shaken. He has no idea what occurred. Quite unable to account for it — as I am unable to account for what’s going on here. I’m not referring to the presence of someone, or some thing, stalking just outside the area controlled by the alarms, but to a thing that isn’t stalking.”
“What?” Sam asked.
“The pack of dogs! Listen. Not a sound — but the drip of water. What has become of the dogs?”
“Gee!” Sam muttered. “I keep thinking how dead quiet everything is outside, and kind of wondering why I expect it to be different. Funny I never came to it there was no dogs!”
They all stood motionless for a few moments. That ceaseless drip-drip-drip alone broke the silence of Falling Waters — a haunting signature tune.
“Where is this kennelman quartered?” Nayland Smith asked jerkily.
He was unable to hide the fact that his nerves were strung to concert-violin pitch.
“Middle gate-cottage,” came promptly from Sam. “I’ll go call him. Name of Kelly. I can get the extension from out here.”
“Speak quietly,” Smith warned. “Order him to loose the dogs.”
Sam’s flashlamp operated for a moment. It cast fantastic moving shadows on the library walls, showed Nayland Smith gaunt, tense; painted Craig’s pale face as a mask of tragedy. Then — Sam was gone.
Craig could hear Nayland Smith moving, restless, in darkness. Obscurely Sam’s mumbling reached them. He had left the communicating doors open. Then, before words which might have relieved the tension came to either, the alarm cabinet glowed into greenish-blue life; muted buzzing began. “What’s this?”
A shadow moved across the plan. It was followed by a second shadow.
“Someone crossing the tennis court!” Craig’s voice sounded hushed, unfamiliar. “Running!”
“Someone hot on his heels!”
“Into the rose garden now!”
“Second shadow gaining! First shadow doubling back!”
“That’s the path through the apple orchard. Leads to a stile on the lane—”
“But,” said Nayland Smith, “if my memory serves me, the dog track crosses before the stile?”
“Yes. One of the gates in the wire is there.”
And, as Craig spoke, came a remote baying.
The dogs were out.
“Listen.” Sam had joined them. “Say! What’s this?”
“Action!” rapped Smith. “Was Kelly awake?”
“Sure. But listen. Mrs. Frobisher called him some time tonight, and ordered him to see the dogs weren’t loosed! Can you beat it? But wait a minute. Mr. Frobisher gives him the same order half an hour earlier!… Oh, hell! Did you hear that?”
“He’s through the gate,” said Nayland Smith.
The first shadow showed on the chart at a point where a gate in the wire was marked. The second shadow moved swiftly back. A dim blur swept along the track. Baying increased in volume… A shot — a second. And then came a frenzied scream, all the more appalling because muted by distance.
“Merciful God!” Craig whispered. “The dogs have got him!” Nayland Smith already had the french windows open. A sting of damp, cold air pierced the library. There came another, faint scream. Baying merged into a dreadful growling…
“Lights!” Smith cried. “Where’s the man, Stein?”
As Sam switched the lights up, Stein was revealed standing in the arched opening which led to Michael Frobisher’s study. He was fully dressed, and chalky white.
“Here I am, sir.”
A sound of faraway shouting became audible. Stella Frobisher ran out onto the stairhead, a robe thrown over her nightdress.
“Please — oh, please tell me what has happened? That ghastly screaming! And where is Mike?”
She had begun to come down, when Camille appeared behind her. Camille had changed and wore a tweed suit.
“Mrs. Frobisher!” Craig looked up. “Isn’t the chief in his room?”
“No, he isn’t!”
Camille’s arm was around Stella’s shoulders now.
“Don’t go down, Mrs. Frobisher. Let’s go back. I think it would be better if you dressed.”
She spoke calmly. Camille had lived through other crises.
“Miss Navarre!” Nayland Smith called sharply.
“Yes, Sir Denis?”
“Go with Mrs. Frobisher to her room, and both of you stay there with the door locked. Understand?”
Camille hesitated for a moment, then: “Yes, Sir Denis,” she answered. “Please come along, Mrs. Frobisher.”
“But I want to know where Mike is—”
Her voice faded away, as Camille very gently steered her back to her room.
Nayland Smith faced Stein.
“Mr. Frobisher is not in his study?”
“No, sir.”
“How do you know?”
“I do not retire tonight. I am anxious. Just now, I am in there to look.”
“Was the window open?”
Stein’s crushed features became blank.
“Was the window open?” Nayland Smith repeated harshly.
“Yes. I closed it.”
“Come on, Craig! Sampson — follow!”
“Okay, chief.”
Craig and Nayland Smith ran out, Sam behind them.
Stein stood by the opening, and listened. Somewhere out in the misty night, an automatic spat angrily. There was a dim background of barking dogs, shouting men. He turned, in swift decision, and went back through that doorway which led to the kitchen quarters.
He took up the phone there, dialled a number, waited, and then began to speak rapidly — but not in English. He spoke in a language which evidently enlarged his vocabulary. His pallid features twitched as he poured out a torrent of passionate words…
/> Something hard was jammed into the ribs of his stocky body.
“Drop that phone, Feodor Stenovicz. I have a gun in your back and your family history in my pocket. Too late to tip off Sokolov. He’s in the bag. Put your hands right behind you. No, not up — behind!”
Stein dropped the receiver and put his hands back. There was sweat on his low forehead. Steel cuffs were snapped over his wrists.
“Now that’s settled, we can get together.”
Stein turned — and looked into the barrel of a heavy-calibre revolver which Sam favored. Sam’s grinning face was somewhere behind it, in a red cloud.
“Suppose,” Sam suggested, “we step into your room and sample some more of the boss’s bourbon? What you gave me this morning tasted good.”
They had gone when Camille came running along the corridor to the stairhead. And there was no one in the library.
“Please stay where you are,” she called back. “I will find out.”
A muffled cry came from Stella Frobisher: “Open the door! I can’t stay here!”
Camille raced downstairs, wilfully deaf to a wild beating on wood panels.
“Let me out!”
But Camille ran on to the open windows.
“Morris! Morris! Where are you?”
She stood there clutching the wet frame, peering into chilly darkness. Cries reached her — the vicious yap of a revolver — the barking of dogs.
“Morris!”
She ran out onto the terrace. A long way off she could see moving lights.
Camille had already disappeared when Sam entered the library, having locked Stein in the wine cellar. Switching on his flash, he began hurrying in the direction of that distant melee.
* * * *
The library remained empty for some time. With the exception of Stein, all the servants slept out. So that despairing calls of “Unlock the door, Mike! Mike!” won no response. And presently they ceased.
Then, subdued voices and a shuffling of feet on wet gravel heralded the entrance of an ominous cortege. Upon an extemporized stretcher carried by a half-dressed gardener and Kelly, the grizzled kennelman, Michael Frobisher was brought in. Sam came first, to hold the windows wide and to allow of its entrance. Nayland Smith followed. There were other men outside, but they remained there.
