by Sax Rohmer
There was a silence of several moments.
“This can mean only one of two things,” came sibilantly. “He is there, disguised, or he is in Federal hands and Enemy Number One may triumph at the last moment.”
Old Sam Pak emitted a sound resembling the hiss of a snake.
“Even I begin to doubt if our gods are with us,” the high, precise voice of Fu Manchu continued. “What of my boasted powers, of those agents which I alone know how to employ? What of the thousands of servants at my command throughout the world? That Nayland Smith has snapped at my heels—may now at any moment bark outside my door. This brings down my pride like a house of cards. Gods of my fathers”—his voice sank lower and lower—”is it written that I am to fail in the end?”
“Quote not from Moslem fallacies,” old Sam Pak wheezed. “Your long contact with the Arabs, Marquis, is responsible for such words.”
“Few living men could have sustained the baleful glare of those jade-green eyes now fully opened. But Sam Pak, unmoved by their hypnotism, continued:
“I, too, have some of the wisdom, although only a part of yours. The story of your life is traced by your own hand. This you know: fatalism is folly. I, the nameless, speak because I am near to you and am fearless in your service.”
Dr. Fu Manchu stood up; his bony but delicate fingers selected certain objects on the table.
“Without you, my friend,” he said softly, “I should indeed be alone in this my last battle, which threatens to become my Waterloo. Let us proceed”—he moved cat-like around the end of the long table—” to the supreme experiment. Failure means entire reconstruction of our plans.”
“A wise man can build a high tower upon a foundation of failures,” crooned old Sam Pak.
Dr. Fu Manchu, silent-footed, went out into the room haunted by the seven-eyed goddess; crossed it, descended stairs, old Sam Pak following. They passed along the corridor of the six coffins and came to the dungeon where Herman Grosset lay upon a teak bench. The straps had been removed—he seemed to be sleeping peacefully.
One of Sam Pak’s Chinamen was on guard. He bowed and withdrew as Dr. Fu Manchu entered. Old Sam Pak crouched beside the recumbent body, his ear pressed to his hairy chest. Awhile he stayed so, and then looked up, nodding.
Dr. Fu Manchu bent over the sleeping man, gazing down intently at the inert muscular body. He signalled to Sam Pak, and the old Chinaman, exhibiting an ape-like strength, dragged Grosset’s tousled head aside. With a small needle syringe Dr. Fu Manchu made an injection. He laid the syringe aside and watched the motionless patient. Nearly two minutes elapsed. . . . Then, with an atomizer, Dr. Fu Manchu projected a spray first up the right and then up the left nostril of the unconscious man.
Ten seconds later Grosset suddenly sat upright, gazing wildly ahead. His gaze was caught and held by green compelling eyes, only inches removed from his own. His muscular hands clutched both sides of the bench; he stayed rigid in that pose.
“You understand”—the strange voice was pitched very low:
“The word of command is ‘Asia’.”
“I understand,” Grosset replied. “No man shall stop me.”
“The word,” Fu Manchu intoned monotonously, “is Asia.”
“Asia,” Grosset echoed.
“Until you hear that word”—the voice seemed to come from the depths of a green lake—”forget, forget all that you have to do.”
“Asia.”
“Sleep and forget. But remember that the word is Asia.” Herman Grosset sank back and immediately became plunged in deep sleep.
Dr. Fu Manchu turned to Sam Pak. “The rest is with you, my friend,” he said.
Chapter 21
CARNEGIE HALL
harvey bragg turned round in the chair set before the carved writing-table in the study of the Dumas’ apartment. He was dressed for the meeting destined to take its place in American history. Above the table, in a niche and dominating the room, was a reproduction of the celebrated statue of Bussy d’Ambois. The table itself was an antique piece of great value, once the property of Cardinal Mazarin.
“Listen, Baby, I want to get this right.” Harvey Bragg stood up. “I’m all set, but I’m playing a part, and I’m not used to playing any part but the part of Harvey Bragg. Bring me into the party, Eileen. Nobody knows better than you. Lola is a hard case. But I guess you’re a regular kid.”
Moya Adair, seated at the end of the table, raised her eyes to the speaker.
“What do you want to know?” she asked.
“I want to know”—Bragg came a step nearer, rested his hands on the table, and bent down—”I want to know if I’m being played for a sucker; because if I am, God help the man who figures to put that stuff over on me! I’ve had dough to burn for long enough—some I could check up and some from this invisible guy, the President. Looks to me like the President’s investment is a total loss . . . and I never met a rich guy who went around looking for bum stock. This crazy shareholder is starting to try to run the business for me. Listen, Eileen: I’ll step where I’m told, if I know where I’m stepping.”
There was a momentary silence broken only by the dim hum of traffic in Park Avenue below.
“You would be a fool,” said Moya calmly, “to quarrel with a man who believed in you so implicitly that he is prepared to finance you to the extent of so many million dollars. His object is to make you President of the United Sates. He has selected me to be your secretary because he believes that I have the necessary capacity for the work. I can tell you no more. He is a man of enormous influence and he wishes to remain anonymous. I can’t see that you have any cause for quarrel with him.”
Harvey Bragg bent lower, peering into the alluring face.
“I’ve learned up a lot of cues,” he said; “cues you have given me. Seems I have to become an actor. And”—he banged his open hand upon the table—”I don’t know even at this minute that Orwin Prescott is going to be there!”
“Orwin Prescott will be there!”
“It’s big fun, isn’t it”—now his face was but inches removed from Moya’s—”to know that my secretary is wised up on the latest moves and that I’m a pawn in the game. There’s another thing, Eileen. Maybe you know what’s become of Herman Grosset? He checked in on nowhere more than an hour back, and I never move out without Herman.”
He grasped Moya’s shoulders. She turned her head aside.
“You’re maybe wiser than you look, pretty. You know where I stand. No President can baulk me now. We’ve started wrong. Let’s forget it. Look at me. I want to tell you something——”
Came a discreet rap on the study door.
“Hell!” growled Harvey Bragg. He released Moya, stood upright and turned:
“Come in.”
The door opened, and Salvaletti entered, smiling but apologetic.
“Well!” Bragg challenged.
“It’s time we left for Carnegie Hall.”
Salvaletti spoke in a light, silvery voice.
“Where’s Herman? I want to see him.”
Salvaletti slightly inclined his head.
“You have naturally been anxious; so have I. But he is here.”
“What!”
“He arrived only a few minutes ago. His explanation of his absence is somewhat. . .” He shrugged.
“What! On the booze, on a night like this?”
“I don’t suggest it. But, anyway, he is perfectly all right now.”
“Ask him to step right in here,” roared Harvey Bragg, his voice booming around the study. “I want a few words with Herman.
“Cutting it rather fine. But if you insist . . .”
“I do insist.”
He cursed under his breath as Salvaletti went out, turned, and stared angrily at Moya Adair; her calm aloofness maddened him.
“Something blasted funny going on,” he growled. “And I guess, Miss Breon, you know all about it.”
“I know no more than you know, Mr. Bragg. I can only ask you in your
own interests to remember——”
“The coaching! Sure I’ll remember it. I’m in up to the eyebrows. But after to-night, I climb out!”
The door was thrown open, and Herman Grosset burst in. His eyes were wild as he looked from face to face.
“Harvey”‘ he said hoarsely, “I’m real sorry. You won’t believe me, but I’ve been dead sober all day. I guess it must be blood pressure, or maybe incipient insanity. It’s in the family isn’t it, Harvey? Listen”—he met the angry glare: “Don’t talk yet—give me a word. I got a funny phone message more than an hour back. I thought it needed investigation. But hell burn me! That’s all I can remember about it!”
“What do you mean?” growled Harvey Brag.
“I mean I don’t know what happened from the time I got that message which I can’t remember—up to five minutes ago, when I found myself sitting on a chair down in the vestibule feeling darn sleepy and wondering where in hell I’d been.”
“You’re a drunken sot!” Harvey Bragg bawled. “That’s what you are—a drunken sot. You’ve been soused all afternoon. And this is the damn-fool story you think you can pull on me. Get out to the cars; we’re late already.”
“I don’t like your words,” said Herman Grosset truculently. “They ain’t just, and they ain’t right.”
“Right or wrong—get out!” yelled Harvey Bragg. “Get on with your job. I have to get on with mine. . . .”
Two minutes later a trio of powerful cars roared down Park Avenue bound for Carnegie Hall. In the first were four armed bodyguards; in the second Harvey Bragg and Salvaletti; in the third, three more guards and Herman Grosset.
“Bluebeard” was well protected.
In Nayland Smith’s temporary office in Carnegie Hall silence , vibrant with unspoken thoughts, had fallen.
Maurice Norbert had just ceased speaking. He stood looking smilingly from face to face. Nayland Smith, seated on the edge of the desk, lean brown hands clutching one upraised knee, watched him unflinchingly. Sarah Lakin’s steady grave eyes were fixed upon him also.
Senator Lockly, one of Orwin Prescott’s most fervent supporters, had joined the party, and his red, good-humoured face now registered bewilderment and doubt. Nayland Smith broke the silence.
“Your explanation, Mr. Norbeert,” he replied, “presents certain curious features into which at the moment we have no opportunity to inquire. We are to understand that Dr. Prescott communicated with you roughly at the same time that he communicated with Miss Lakin, and gave you certain instructions which you carried out. These necessitated your meeting a car at an agreed point and being driven to an unknown destination, where you found Dr. Prescott receiving medical attention under the care of a physician whom you did not meet?”
“Exactly.”
Maurice Norbert continued to smile.
“You had been instructed to take a suit-case and other items, and we are to understand that Dr. Prescott has come to some arrangement with those responsible for his disappearance whereby he will be present here, to-night?”
“Exactly,” Maurice Norbert repeated.
Sarah Lakin continued fixedly to watch Norbert, but she did not speak. Senator Lockly cleared his throat, and:
“I don’t understand,” he declared, “why, having found him, you left him. It seems to me there’s no guarantee even now that he will arrive.”
“One of the curious features,” rapped Nayland Smith, standing up and beginning to pace the floor, “to which I referred. . . .” He turned suddenly, facing Norbert. “I don’t entirely understand your place in this matter, Mr. Norbert.
And I believe”—glancing aside—” that Miss Lakin shares my doubts.”
“I do,” Sarah Lakin replied in her deep, calm voice.
“Forgive me”—Norbert bowed to the speaker—”but in this hour of crisis we are naturally overwrought, every one of us. It isn’t personal, it’s national. These facts will wear a different complexion to-morrow. But accept my assurance, everybody, that Dr. Prescott will be here.” He glanced at his wrist-watch, “in fact, I must go down to meet him. I beg that you will do as I have asked. Senator, will you join me. He has requested that we shall be with him on the platform.”
Senator Lockly looked rather helplessly from Sarah Lakin to Nayland Smith, and then followed Norbet out of the office. As the door shut behind them:
“How long employed by Dr. Prescott?” rapped Nayland Smith.
“Maurice Norbert,” Sarah Lakin replied, “has been in my cousin’s service for rather more than a year.”
“Hepburn has been checking up on him. It has proved difficult, but we expect all the details to-morrow.”
At which moment the door was thrown open again, and the Abbot of Holy Thorn, wearing the dress of a simple priest stepped into the office!
The bearded face of Mark Hepburn might have been glimpsed over his left shoulder. Nayland Smith sprang forward.
“Dom Patrick Donegal!” he cried, “Thank God I see you here —and safe!”
Mark Hepburn came in and closed the door.
“My experiences, Mr. Smith,” the abbot replied calmly, “on my journey to the city, have convinced me that I have incurred certain dangers.” He smiled and gripped the outstretched hand. “But I think I warned you that I am a prisoner hard to hold. It is my plain duty in this crisis, since I am denied the use of the air, to be here in person.”
“One of our patrol cars” said Hepburn drily, “picked up the abbot twenty minutes ago and brought him here under escort. I may add . . . that the escort was necessary.”
“That is quite true,” the priest admitted. “A very tough-looking party in a Cadillac had been following me for several miles. But”—he ceased to smile and assumed by a spiritual gesture the r61e of his Church—”I have achieved my purpose. If I am to consider myself technically under arrest I must nevertheless insist, Mr. Smith, upon one thing. . . . Failing the appearance of my friend Orwin Prescott, I shall confront Harvey Bragg to-night.”
A sound resembling an approaching storm made itself audible. Mark Hepburn nodded to Nayland Smith and went out. Sarah Lakin stood up, her grave calm ruffled at last. Smith stepped to the doorway and stared along the corridor.
The sound grew louder—it was the cheering of thousands of voices. Dimly the strains of a military band were heard. Mark Hepburn came running back.
“Dr. Prescott is on the platform!” he cried, completely lifted out of himself by the excitement of the moment. “Harvey Bragg has just arrived. . . .”
in
The classic debate which the Moving Finger was writing into American history took place in an atmosphere of tension unequalled in the memory of anyone present. After the event there were many who recalled significant features: as, for instance, that Harvey Bragg used notes, his custom being to speak extemporaneously (if in the mood, for many hours). Also, that he frequently glanced in the direction of his secretary, Salvaletti, who seemed at times to be prompting him.
Hidden from the audience, Dom Patrick Donegal looked on at the worldly duel. And, helpless now to intervene, he realized, as everyone in that vast gathering realized, that Dr. Orwin Prescott was a beaten man.
As oratory, his performance was perhaps the finest in his career; his beautiful voice, his scholarship, put to shame the coarse bellowing and lamentable historical ignorance of his opponent. But in almost every sentence he played into the hands of Harvey Bragg: he fell into traps that a child could have avoided. With dignity, assurance, perfect elocution, he made statements which even the kindest critic must have branded as those of a fool.
At times it seemed that he was conscious of this. More than once he raised his hand to his forehead as if to collect his thoughts, and especially it was noticed that points raised in response to the apparent promptings of Salvaletti resulted in disaster for Dr. Orwin Prescott.
His keenest supporters lost heart. It appeared long before the debate was ended that Harvey Bragg offered the country prosperity. Dr. Prescott had no
thing to offer but beautifully phrased sentences.
And the greatest orator in the United States, the Abbot of Holy Thorn, dumbly listened—looked on! While his friend Orwin Prescott, with every word that he uttered, broke down the fine reputation which laboriously and honourably he had built up.
It was the triumph of “Bluebeard.”
IV
In that book-lined room high above New York, where sometimes incense was burned, Dr. Fu Manchu sat behind the lacquered table.
The debate at Carnegie Hall was being broadcast from coast to coast. Robed in yellow, his mandarin’s cap upon his head, he sat listening. Reflected light from the green-shaded table-lamp enhanced his uncanny resemblance to the Pharaoh Seti I: for the eyes of Dr. Fu Manchu were closed as he listened.
His hands, stretched out upon the table before him, had remained quite motionless as Orwin Prescott became involved more deeply in the net cunningly spread for him by Harvey Bragg. Only at times, when the latter hesitated, fumbled for words, would the long pointed nails tap lightly upon the polished surface.
On three occasions during this memorable debate an amber point came to life on the switchboard.
Without in any way allowing his attention to be distracted, Dr. Fu Manchu listened to reports from the man of miraculous memory. These all related to Numbers detailed to intercept Abbot Donegal. The third and last induced a slight tapping of long nails upon the lacquered surface. It was a report to the effect that a government patrol had rescued the abbot (picked up at last within a few miles of New York) from a Z-car which had been tracking him. . . .
The meeting concluded with wildly unrestrained cheers for Harvey Bragg. In that one hour he had advanced many marches nearer to the White House. Politically he had obliterated the only really formidable opponent who remained in the field. Except for the silent Abbot of Holy Thorn, the future of the United States now lay between the old regime and Harvey Bragg.
Deafening cheers were still ringing throughout Carnegie Hall when Dr. Fu Manchu disconnected. Silence fell in that small book-lined room distant from the scene of conflict. Bony fingers opened the silver box: Fu Manchu sought the inspiration of opium. . . .
