by Sax Rohmer
“Of course—but time is precious. You are marked as the next victim!”
“As to that,” said the Colonel, turning, and his features were set in a coldly dangerous mask, “we shall see.”
He served us, drained his own glass and set it down. “How—was it done?”
“Details must wait; but no doubt you recall the Snapping Fingers deaths in Port au Prince?”
“The Snapping Fingers! You don’t tell me that James—”
“Unfortunately, yes. He went to Mrs. Mendel Hammett’s, undoubtedly believing that he would be safe there—”
“We both had reason to fear for our lives. There had been numerous attempts.”
“So I gather.”
“But this horror—here, in New York!”
“Unless I am quite wrong, here in this hotel! First, where is your baggage?”
“In the bedroom. I will show you.”
As we followed Kennard Wood, Smith began sniffing suspiciously. I, too, sought traces of the vilely carnal odour which evidently betokened the presence of the thing called the Snapping Fingers. I could detect nothing. In the bedroom, Smith stood quite still for a moment, looking around. It was an ordinary, if luxurious, hotel bedroom. The bed was turned down and folded pyjamas were laid out; a travelling clock and some books were on a side table: a suitcase stood on a rack against one wall. Smith stepped into the bathroom. Toilet articles were disposed on a dressing-table and on glass shelves.
He turned to Kennard Wood: the Colonel had paled under his tan.
“Who brought up the baggage?”
“The hotel porter.”
“Were you here when he arrived?”
“As a matter of fact, no: I was at the desk below, asking for messages.”
“And who unpacked and set it out?”
“The valet. I was in my apartment. The man knows my ways; I have stayed at the Prado several times. If I understood what it is that you apprehended, Smith, I might be able to help. But we are on the fifteenth floor of a modern New York hotel, not in Haiti!”
“Harsh to remind you, Wood, but poor Longton was in his own quarters in the home of Mrs. Mendel Hammett. Forgive me if I seem to take liberties, but I must examine your gear closely.” As Kennard Wood moved forward: “Be good enough to touch nothing!”
Whilst the stricken Colonel and I stood by, inert, watching, Nayland Smith made a rapid but efficient examination of every foot of the apartment. Frequently he sniffed. High above the supper crowds, above the fashionable activities of Park Avenue, I thought that we were isolated, alone as though Fate had cast us together on an uninhabited island. Indeed, a man may be as hopelessly alone, as far from human aid, in the midst of a million fellows as one in the heart of the Sahara. The death-mark of Fu-Manchu was set upon Kennard Wood’s door; he knew.
“I have found absolutely nothing,” said Smith at last, “if I except these remnants of some kind of wrapping, which, however, you may be able to identify.”
He displayed what looked like a tattered piece of grease-proof paper.
“No.” Kennard Wood shook his head. “Nothing of mine was wrapped in that. Possibly a relic of some former occupant.”
“Possibly,” Smith murmured, and set the fragment aside. “Now for the acid test. I warn you, Wood, that I am submitting you to an ordeal of which I know nothing. But its outcome may be the solution to the mystery of the Snapping Fingers; an explanation of Longton’s death.”
“Give me my orders.”
“I must add that nothing may be attempted. Possibly the agents of Fu-Manchu responsible for your dismissal know that you are not alone. Both windows are open: the attack may come from either of them. In order to steel you for what may be a nerve-racking task, let me say that I believe that Longton was mistaken for yourself—”
“And died in my place?”
“I may be wrong, but I think so. Did you ever stay at Mrs. Mendel Hammett’s?”
“Yes.”
“Then I am right! But they know, now. The material in the portfolio contained new facts?”
“New facts! Smith, there’s a conspiracy aimed against this government which has no parallel in history!”
“I know,” said Smith quietly. “That is why Longton died, why so many have died; why I am here. Now, Wood. I am going to ask you to lie down on the bed, and then I am going to turn out every light in the apartment. This thing always strikes in the dark.”
“Very well.”
Kennard Wood threw himself on to the coverlet, taking an automatic from his pocket as he did so.
“No shooting!” snapped Smith. “Yours is the harder, the passive part. Is it agreed?”
“As you say!”
“Just here by the door, Kerrigan. Do nothing without the word from me.”
He moved. I heard several clicks. The whole place was plunged in darkness. Then came Smith’s voice:
“Steady, everybody. Be ready for anything.”
In the sudden darkness and complete silence, the buzz of that sleepless hive which is New York rising from far below, I became aware of a sense of impending peril which, as I knew at that moment, I had experienced before. Agents of Dr. Fu-Manchu were near. Even had I been uninformed of the fact I should have known it; every nerve in my body proclaimed it, was a herald announcing, psychically, the approach of some lethal thing.
Quite distinctly, from no more than a stride away, came a faint clicking sound.
“My God!” breathed Kennard Wood, “it’s here!”
“The Snapping Fingers!” whispered Smith. “Stand fast.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
NAYLAND SMITH FIRES TWICE
The sudden knowledge that here, in the darkness of the room, some nocturnal creature which drained one’s blood was already questing victims, imposed a test upon my nerves which I found hard to meet. Kennard Wood breathed rapidly.
True, I shared the horror and the peril. But recalling that story told by the house detective, his strange account of something which might have been the “phantom hound of Peel”, I had a stiff struggle with my imagination. Since Smith had examined almost every foot of the apartment, it was not admissible that such a creature could be hiding there; but I remembered that windows were open and I visualized a giant vampire bat at this very moment entering stealthily; a hybrid horror created in the laboratories of Dr. Fu-Manchu. The suspense of those tense moments was almost unendurable.
A repetition of the snapping sounded very distinctly—on this occasion, I thought, from near the bed. A third time I heard it.
“It’s utterly uncanny!” muttered Kennard Wood. “What is it. Smith? What is it?”
“Ssh!” Smith warned. “Don’t stir.”
Twice again in quick succession it came—snap! snap!
“Now!” cried Smith—“we shall know!”
He was standing near the door, and as he cried out he turned up all the lights.
What I had expected to see it is impossible to state—some ghoul of medieval demonology I believe. What I actually saw was Kennard Wood crouching on the bed automatic in hand, staring, wild-eyed, about him, and Smith beside me looking right and left in ever growing amazement.
Nothing whatever was visible to account for the sounds!
“It’s supernatural!” groaned the Colonel. “We all heard it.”
“Nothing touched you in the dark?” Smith asked.
“Nothing.”
“You, Kerrigan?”
“Nothing at all.”
“Yet it’s here!” Smith cried angrily. “It’s here!”
Crossing the room, he jerked the draperies aside and stared out. I could see twinkling lights and a rectangular patch of starry sky. The windows were wide open. He turned, tugging at the lobe of his left ear.
“Defeated,” he said quietly. “Get your kit together quickly. Wood: we will lend a hand. Must have you out of this!”
Kennard Wood went eagerly to work, and as we gathered up his belongings and hastily stacked them in the suitcase
, I could hear the hum of traffic rising from Park Avenue. When finally we opened the door and deposited case, topcoats, and other gear out in the corridor, Sergeant Doherty came doubling up.
“All’s well,” I said. “The Colonel is changing his quarters.”
Smith, last to leave, switched off the lights inside and brought the key.
“Get all this stuff downstairs. Sergeant,” he said. “Colonel Kennard Wood will be coming with us. I will give the management instructions about this apartment in a moment.”
But as we moved towards the elevator his preoccupied manner was so marked that I was on the point of saying something about it when:
“Kerrigan,” he snapped, and pulled up dead. “Did you observe a flower vase in the bedroom?”
“Yes, I believe there was a vase of flowers.”
“The management,” Kennard Wood explained wearily, “decorate the apartments of incoming guests in this way.” Without another word, Smith turned and began to run back. “Smith,” I cried, and followed. “What is it?”
“A bad show for Nayland Smith!” he replied. “I examined everything else, but I did not examine the flowers!”
“But surely—”
“Slipshod methods are fatal”—he was unlocking the door—“in dealing with Dr. Fu-Manchu.”
Throwing the door open, he stood still for a moment.
“Quiet! Listen!”
I almost held my breath. But all that came to me out of the dark and ominous apartment was the subdued roar of Park Avenue rising from below.
He switched the lights up, and I followed him through the sitting-room into the bedroom. We both looked at a round table set between the windows. Here had stood a glass flower vase.
“Good God!” Smith shouted. “It’s gone!”
For my own part I was so dazed by this inexplicable incident that I began seriously to wonder if the Haitian Negroes had been right, if the Snapping Fingers were pure Voodoo. If, in short, we were faced with supernormal phenomena.
Smith’s reaction was strictly positive.
Running forward, he dropped down on his knees and scrutinized the carpet under the round table.
“Water spilled here!” he reported.
Springing up, he stepped to one of the windows and craned out. He appeared to be looking down into the Avenue. Then, twisting sideways, I saw him staring upward, and suddenly:
“Hang on to me, Kerrigan!” he cried.
Frantically, I leapt forward and grasped him. I thought that violent vertigo threatened his precarious balance. But before I could speak and at the moment that I gripped him, he leaned right out and raised his arm. I saw the flash of his pistol in the moonlight.
He fired twice, upward and to the left.
Hot on the second shot came a high, thin scream which seemed to grow swiftly nearer and then to fade away into silence. From far below there arose a muted uproar; cries; a cessation of the immediate traffic hum: a shrill whistle…
We rushed out no more than a few moments after the police had dragged something on to the sidewalk. They were holding back a crowd of morbid onlookers, many in evening dress. Inspector Hawk elbowed a way in for us. A heavy truck was drawn up nearby and the driver, an Italian, was excitedly explaining to a stolid policeman that he had had not a chance to pull up.
“I tella you he falla from the sky!” he was shouting.
We stood hushed, looking down at what had been a small, brown-skinned man.
“As I thought,” said Smith. “One of the Doctor’s devils.”
And as he spoke, and I turned away—for the spectacle was horrifying—a suspicion crossed my mind that here lay the origin of the strange story told by the house detective. The dead brown man wore a kind of jersey almost of the same hue as his skin, and trousers of similar colouring; his footgear consisted of rope sandals. But the outstanding characteristic was his disproportionately long arms: he had the arms of a baboon. One broad tyre of the truck had crushed him as he fell right in front of the moving vehicle.
“He was dead when he landed, Inspector,” said the patrolman to Hawk. “Must have come a long way down. He had some kind of satchel hung over his shoulder and it was filled with glass or something. The front tyre just ground it all to powder…”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
PADDED FOOTSTEPS
“Kennard Wood is safe—for the time being.”
Smith faced me in our sitting-room. He was smoking at top speed. Wood was asleep in an apartment near by, a man worn out. Rorke remained on duty in the lobby but would be relieved at four o’clock.
“Now that Wood has got in touch with you,” I said, “the mischief is done—from Fu-Manchu’s point of view. Probably he will leave him alone.”
“I agree. In this case, Fu-Manchu has failed. Wood has much to tell me, but he is too desperately tired for further exertion tonight. By the same token, we have failed, too.”
“How? It’s true that poor Longton died a horrible death; but you saved Kennard Wood.”
“And when I shot the Negrito I lost the only clue to the Snapping Fingers! Yes, it was one of the Doctor’s pygmies, whether from the Andamans or Sumatra I cannot say. You have had some experience of these little devils, Kerrigan. Undoubtedly he slipped in tonight amongst the crowd. The man Pannel, the house detective, evidently had a glimpse of him, but these creatures move like shadows and go as swiftly on all fours as upright.”
“But why did he come?”
“He brought the Snapping Fingers! Then he slipped out of the window and crouched somewhere outside to await the end. Anywhere an ape can climb a Negrito can climb. When I saw him he was swarming up an apparently smooth wall from ledge to ledge, making for the roof. He would have come down the fire ladders.”
“He carried a satchel—”
“To accommodate whatever causes the Snapping Fingers. When Wood was dead it was the pygmy’s job to remove the evidence. He saw that plans had miscarried and so made sure that no trace of the attempt should remain. The thing—whatever it is—was in that flower vase! I failed there, badly.”
I was silent for a while, watching him pacing up and down.
“The—characteristic smell was missing,” I said.
Smith turned and stared at me.
“The characteristic smell is present not before, but after the feast,” he replied. “Now I am going to bed. This delay is madly irritating, and I know just how you feel about it; but we have to meet the government representatives in the morning, and there is no escape. Kennard Wood is on the spot, and Barton is returning with the people from Washington. Take my advice and turn in.”
It was sound advice and, having bade Smith good night, I tried to act upon it.
But I found that sleep was not for me. The quiet which comes upon New York only in the very late small hours had fallen now. Dawn was not far away. The hive-like humming of this sleepless city was at its lowest ebb. Yet I could not rest. A score of problems bombarded my mind. Where was Ardatha? How were these strange journeys of the Chinese Doctor accomplished? Should we be able to keep the marmoset alive until an opportunity arose to trade with the greatest enemy of white civilization? Would Fu-Manchu restore Ardatha? Where was his New York base, from which he had operated against Longton and Kennard Wood? What caused the Snapping Fingers?
Groaning, I switched on the lights, got up and reached for my dressing-gown. As chronicler of the expedition, my work was badly in arrears: better to arrange my notes than to lie torturing myself with unanswerable queries.
A chilling wave of loneliness swept down upon me. I had to tell myself that I was really in New York, for in some way I seemed to have become removed from it, raised high above into a rarefied but sinister atmosphere; cut off from my fellow men. Although a hotel bedroom is not inspiring, I discovered inspiration of sorts, as a working journalist, in the litter of notes and a portable typewriter standing under a desk lamp. Yes, I must work.
The suite was very silent.
Thoughts of Ardatha haunted
me. Her image, as I had glimpsed her in the blue dress, in the foyer below, persistently intruded between me and my purpose. Her eyes, seen even in that swift regard, had seemed to mirror a shadowy fear.
My thoughts took a new turn.
What was the nature of the gruesome experiments upon which Dr. Fu-Manchu had been engaged in that deserted Limehouse warehouse? What new secret did he try to wrest from a normally unreadable future? That he had exposed himself to tremendous stresses was a fact manifest in his weakened condition. I endeavoured to visualize that laboratory beside the Thames; the violet lamp; to recall words spoken.
The ghastly horror of the Snapping Fingers was never far from my thoughts, and I was asking myself if the violet lamp might be associated in some way with that agent of death, when a sudden stir in the lobby brought me to my feet.
“Who’s there?” I heard dimly. “Don’t try any funny business!”
Something had aroused Sergeant Rorke.
The room allotted to me was the last but one at the north end of the suite. Sir Lionel’s was actually the last and there was a communicating door. Smith slept at the southern end. I set out to inquire, switching up the sitting-room lights as I went through.
Rorke had the front door open and was peering to right and left along the corridor outside, at that hour only partially lighted. Hearing my footsteps, he turned swiftly.
“Oh, it’s you!” he said, and his manner was jumpy.
Once more he peered sharply to left and right, then came in and closed the door. He began to chew.
“What rouses you, Mr. Kerrigan?” he asked (he was a present-tense addict). “Hope it isn’t me singing out.”
“No, I was awake. Did you hear something?”
“Well”—he resumed his seat—“I’m on duty here now quite a while, and this job is kind of monotonous. Maybe I doze off, but certainly I think I hear something—right outside the door.”
“What like?”
“Now, that’s not so easy. No, sir. It might be a shuffle, like somebody steals along quietly, or it might be somebody fumbles with the door.”
“It didn’t sound like—snapping fingers?”
