President Fu Manchu f-8

by Sax Rohmer

  Blind panic seized him. He began to run along tunnel after tunnel, turning right, turning left, crying out madly. His exertions reduced the fraction of candle almost to disappearing point. He ran on. In some way it came to him that the life of Nayland Smith was at stake. He must gain the upper air or disaster would come, not to Nayland Smith alone, but to all humanity. The candle now a tenuous disc, became crushed between his trembling fingers. . . .

  It was at this moment that he awoke.

  The apartment was very still. Save for the immutable voice of the city-which-never-sleeps, there was no sound.

  Hepburn groped for his slippers. There were no cigarettes in the room. He decided to go into the sitting-room for a smoke and a drink. That ghastly dream of endless tunnels had shaken him.

  The night was crystal clear; a nearly full moon poured its cold luminance into the rooms. Without turning on any of the lights—for he was anxious to avoid wakening Nayland Smith, a hair-trigger sleeper—he found his way to the sitting-room. There were cigarettes on the table by the telephone. He found one, but he had no means of lighting it.

  As he paused, looking around, he saw through an open door the moon-bathed room beyond. It was the room which he had fitted up as a temporary laboratory; from its window he could just see the roof of the hotel where Moya Adair lived. He remembered that he had left matches there. He went in, crossed and stared out of the window.

  His original intention was forgotten. He stood there, tense, watching. . . .

  From a window of an out-jutting wing of the Regal-Athenian, one floor below and not twenty yards away, Dr. Fu Manchu was looking up at him!

  Some primitive instinct warned him to reject the chimera—for that the man in person could be present he was not prepared to believe. This was a continuation, a part, of his uncanny dream. He was not awake. Brilliant green eyes gleamed in the moonlight like polished jade. He watched fascinatedly.

  His impulse—to arouse Smith, to have the building surrounded—left him. Those wonderful eyes demanded all his attention. . . .

  He found himself busy in the laboratory—of course he was still dreaming—preparing a strange prescription. It was contrary to all tradition, a thing outside his experience. But he prepared it with meticulous care—for it was indispensable to the life of Nayland Smith. . . .

  At last it was ready. Now, he must charge a hypodermic syringe with it—an intravenous injection. It was vital that he should not awake Smith . . . .

  Syringe in hand, he crept along the corridor to the second door. He listened. There was no sound.

  Very quietly, he opened the door and went in.

  Nayland Smith lay motionless in bed, his lean brown hands outside the coverlet. The conditions were ideal, it seemed to Mark Hepburn in his dream. Stealthily he stole across the room. He could not hope to complete the injection without arousing Smith, but at least he could give him some of the charge.

  Lightly he raised the sleeve of his pyjama jacket. Smith did not stir. He pressed the needle point firmly home. . . .

  Mark Hepburn felt himself seized from behind, jerked back and hurled upon the floor by unseen hands!

  He fell heavily, striking his head upon the carpet. The syringe dropped from his fingers, and as Nayland Smith sprang upright in bed the predominant idea in Hepburn’s mind was that he had failed; and so Smith must die.

  He twisted over, rose to his knees. . . . and looked up into the barrel of a revolver held by Fey.

  “Hepburn!” came sharply in Nayland Smith’s inimitable voice. “What the devil’s this?”

  He sprang out of bed.

  Fey, barefooted and wearing pyjamas, looked somewhat dishevelled in the glare of light as Nayland Smith switched on lamps: spiritually he was unruffled.

  “It’s a mystery, sir,” he replied, while Hepburn slowly rising to his feet and clutching his head, endeavoured to regain composure. “It was the tinkling of the bottles that woke me.”

  “The bottles?”

  Mark Hepburn dropped down into a chair.

  “I was in the laboratory,” he explained dully. “Frankly, I don’t know what I was doing there.”

  Nayland Smith, seated on the side of the bed, was staring at him keenly.

  “I got up and watched.” Fey continued, “keeping very quiet. And I saw Captain Hepburn carefully measuring out drugs.

  Then I saw him looking about as if he’d lost something, and then I saw him go to the window and stare out. He stayed there for a long time.”

  “In which direction was he staring?” snapped Nayland Smith.

  Hepburn groaned, continuing to clutch his head. The memory of some strange, awful episode already was slipping from his mind.

  “I thought, at a window down to the right and below, sir. And as he stood there so long, I slipped into the sitting-room and looked out from there.” He paused and cleared his throat. “I was still looking when I heard Captain Hepburn come out. I shouldn’t have behaved as I did, sir, but I had seen Captain Hepburn’s eyes. . . .”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, sir, it might have been that he was walking in his sleep! And so, when I heard him coming, I ducked into a corner and watched him go by. I followed him right to your door. He opened it very quietly. I was close behind him when he crossed to the bed——”

  Now, suddenly, in a stifled voice:

  “The syringe!” Hepburn cried, “the syringe! My God! Did I touch you?”

  He sprang up wildly, his glance questing about the floor.

  “Is this what you mean, Hepburn?” Nayland Smith asked. He picked up a fountain pen, at the same time glancing down at his left arm. “My impression is that you jabbed the nib into me!”

  Mark Hepburn stared at the fountain pen, fists clenched. It was a new one bought only that day, his old one had been smashed during operations in the Chinatown raid. So far as he could remember he had never filled it. The facts, the incredible facts, were coming back to him. . . . He had prepared a mixture: of what it was composed he hadn’t at this moment the slightest idea. But he had imagined or had dreamed that he charged a hypodermic syringe with it. He must have charged the fountain pen, for he had no hypodermic syringe in his possession!

  Nayland Smith’s penetrating regard never left the troubled face, and then: “Was I dreaming,” Hepburn groaned, “or was I hypnotized? By heaven! I remember—I went to the window and saw his eyes! He was watching me.”

  “Who was watching you?” Smith asked quietly.

  “I don’t know who it was, sir,” Fey interrupted with an apologetic cough, “but he had one of the most dreadful faces I have ever seen in my life. The moonlight was shining on him. I saw his green eyes.”

  “What!”

  Nayland Smith sprang to his feet. From out of his varied experience an explanation of the strange incident, phan-tomesque, arose. He stared hard again at Mark Hepburn.

  “Dr. Fu Manchu is the most accomplished hypnotist alive,” he said harshly. “During those few moments that you watched him from the window above Wu King’s he must have established partial control.” He pulled on a dressing-gown which lay across the foot of the bed. “Quick, Fey, get Wyatt! He’s on duty in the lobby.”

  Fey ran out.

  Nayland Smith turned, threw up the window and craned forward. Over his shoulder:

  “Which way, Hepburn?” he snapped.

  Mark Hepburn, slowly recovering control of his normal self, leaned on the sill and pointed.

  “The wing on the right, third window from the end, two floors below this.”

  “There’s no one there, and the room is dark.” The wail which tells that the Fire Department is out, a solo rarely absent from New York’s symphony, rose, ghostly, through the night. “I have had an unpleasant narrow escape. Beyond doubt you were acting under hypnotic direction. Fey’s evidence confirms it. A daring move! The Doctor must be desperate.” He glanced down at the fountain pen which lay upon a little table. “I wonder what you charged it with,” he murmured medi
tatively. “Dr. Fu Manchu assumed too much in thinking you had hypodermic syringes in your possession. You obeyed his instructions—but charged the fountain pen; thus probably saving my life.”

  It was only a few moments later that Wyatt, the government agent in charge below, found the night manager and accompanied by two detectives was borne up to the thirty-eighth floor of the hotel wing in which the suspected room was located.

  “I can tell you there’s no one there, Mr. Wyatt,” the manager said, twirling a large key around his fore-finger. “It was vacated this morning by a Mr. Eckstein, a dark man, possibly Jewish. There’s only one curious point about it——”

  “What’s that?” Wyatt asked.

  “He took the door key away. . . .” Mr. Dougherty smiled grimly; his Tipperary brogue was very marked. “Unfortunately, it often happens. But in this case there may have been some ulterior motive.”

  The bedroom, when they entered, was deserted; the two beds were ready for occupation by incoming guests. Neither here nor in the bathroom was there evidence pointing to a recent intruder. . . .

  The detectives were still prowling around and Nayland Smith on the fortieth floor of the tower was issuing telephone instructions when a tall man, muffled in a fur topcoat—a man who wore glasses and a wide-brimmed black hat—stepped into an elevator on the thirtieth floor and was taken down to street level. . . .

  “No one is to leave this building,” rapped Nayland Smith, until I get down. Don’t concentrate on the tower; post men at every elevator and every exit.”

  Wyatt, the night manager, and the two detectives stepped out of the elevator at the end of the huge main foyer. The tall man in the fur coat was striding along its carpeted centre aisle. The place was only partially lighted at that late hour. There was a buzz of vacuum cleaners. He descended marble steps to the lower foyer. A night porter glanced up at him, curiously, as he passed his desk.

  A man came hurrying along an arcade lined by flower shops, jewellers’ shops and other features of a luxury bazaar, but actually contained within the great hotel, and presently appeared immediately facing the elevator by which Wyatt and his party had descended. Seeing them he hurried across, and:

  “No one is to leave the building!” he cried. “Post men at all elevators and all entrances.”

  The tall visitor passed through the swing doors and descended the steps to the sidewalk. A Lotus cab which had been standing near by drew up; opening the door, he entered. The cab moved off. It was actually turning the Park Avenue corner when detectives, running from the westerly end of the building, reached the main entrance and went clattering up the steps. One, who seemed to be in charge, ran across to the night porter. Federal Agent Wyatt was racing along the foyer towards them.

  “Who’s gone out,” the detective demanded, “in the last five minutes? Anybody?”

  But even as the startled man began to answer, the Lotus cab was speeding along almost deserted streets, and Dr. Fu Manchu, lying back in the corner, relaxed after a dangerous and mentally intense effort which he had every reason to believe would result in the removal of Enemy Number One. Nayland Smith’s activities were beginning seriously to interfere with his own. The abandonment of the Chinatown base was an inconvenience, and reports received from those responsible for covering the Stratton Building suggested that further intrusion might be looked for. . . .

  Chapter 30

  PLAN OF ATTACK

  Grey morning light was creeping into the sitting-room.

  “Last night’s attempt,” said Nayland Smith (he wore a dressing-gown over pyjamas), “is not uncharacteristic of the Doctor’s methods.”

  “Poor consolation for me,” Hepburn replied, speaking from the depths of an armchair in which, similarly attired, he was curled up.

  “Don’t let us worry unduly,” said Nayland Smith. “I have known others to suffer from the insidious influence of Fu Manchu; indeed, I have suffered myself. Physical fear has no meaning for the Doctor. Undoubtedly he was here in person, here in the enemy’s headquarters. He walked out under the very noses of the police officers I had dispatched to intercept him. He is a great man, Hepburn.”

  “He is.”

  “There is no evidence that you were drugged in any way last night, but we cannot be sure, for the Doctor’s methods are subtle. That he influenced your brain while you were sleeping is beyond dispute. The dream of the interminable labyrinth, the conviction that my life depended upon your escape—all this was prompted by the will ofFu Manchu. You were dreaming, although even now you doubt it, when you thought you awoke. He only made one mistake, Hepburn. He postulated a hypodermic syringe which was not in your possession!”

  “But I loaded a fountain pen with some pretty deadly drugs which now it is impossible to identify.”

  “You carried out your hypnotic instructions to the best of your ability. The power of Fu Manchu’s mind is an awful thing. However, by an accident, a pure accident, or an oversight, he failed—thank God! Let us review the position.”

  Mark Hepburn reached out for a cigarette; his face was haggard, unshaven.

  “We are beginning to harass the enemy.” Nayland Smith, pipe fuming furiously, paced up and down the carpet. “That there is a staircase below Wu King’s with some unknown exit on the street is certain. At any moment I expect a report that the men have broken in there. It’s construction has been carried out from the point that I call the water-gate; hence Finney’s ignorance of its existence. Once we have reached it, with the equipment at our disposal we can break through. It doesn’t matter how many iron doors obstruct us. The entrance from the sewers we have been unable to trace. But penetration to the Chinatown base is only a question of time.”

  He puffed furiously, but his overworked pipe had gone out. He laid it in an ash-tray and continued to walk up and down. Mark Hepburn, labouring under a load of undeserved guilt, watched him fascinatedly.

  “What Mrs. Adair knows which would be of value to us is problematical. According to Lieutenant Johnson’s report, it would seem to be perfectly feasible to obtain possession of the boy, Robbie, during one of his visits to Long Island.”

  “The owner of the house and his family are at the coast,” Mark Hepburn said monotonously. “He is, as you will have noted, a co-director with the late Harvey Bragg of the Lotus Transport Corporation.”

  “I had noted it,” Smith said drily; “but he may nevertheless be innocent of any knowledge of the existence of Dr. Fu Manchu. That’s the devilish part of it, Hepburn. The other points are: (a) Can Mrs. Adair afford us any material assistance; (b) Is it safe to attempt it?”

  “The negro chauffeur,” Hepburn replied, “may have orders, for all we know to the contrary, to shoot the boy in the event of any such attempt. Frankly, I don’t feel justified.”

  “Assuming we succeeded. . . .”

  “Her complicity would be fairly evident—she would suffer?”

  Nayland Smith paused in his promenade and, turning, stared at Hepburn.

  “Unless we kidnapped her at the same time,” he snapped.

  Mark Hepburn stood up suddenly, dropping his recently lighted cigarette in a tray.

  “By heavens, Smith,” he said excitedly, “that may be the solution!”

  “It’s worth thinking about, but it would require a very careful plan. I am disposed at the moment—without imperilling the lives of Mrs. Adair and her son—to concentrate upon the Stratton Building. Your experience there was definitely illuminating.”

  He crossed to the big desk above which the maps were pinned, and looked down at a number of clay fragments which lay there.

  “I feel disposed, Hepburn—if necessary with the backing of the Fire Department—to pursue your enquiry into the flaw in the lightning conductors. An examination could be arranged after office workers had left. But I think it would be unwise to give any warning to this Mr. Schmidt whom you have mentioned, of our intention. Do you agree with me?”

  “Yes,” Hepburn replied slowly; “that is what I had plan
ned myself. But, Smith. . . .”

  Smith turned and regarded him.

  “Do you realize how I feel? In the first place you know—I haven’t disguised it—that I am becoming really fond of Moya Adair. That’s bad enough—she’s one of the enemy. In the second place, it seems that I am such a poor weakling that this hellish Chinaman can use me as an instrument to bring about your murder! How can you ever trust me again?”

  Nayland Smith stepped up to him, grasped both his shoulders and stared into his eyes.

  “I would trust you, Hepburn,” he said slowly, “as I would trust few men. You are human—so am I. Don’t let the hypnotic episode disturb your self-respect. There is no man living immune from this particular power possessed by Dr. Fu Manchu. There’s only one thing: Should you ever meet him again—avoid his eyes.”

  “Thank you,” said Mark Hepburn; “it’s kind of you to take it that way.”

  Smith grasped the outstretched hand, clapped Hepburn on the shoulder and resumed his restless promenade.

  “In short,” he continued, “we are beginning to make a certain amount of headway. But the campaign, as time goes on, grows more and more hectic. In my opinion our lives, as risks, are uninsurable. And I am seriously worried about the Abbot of Holy Thorn.

  “In what way?”

  “His life is not worth—that!”

  He snapped his fingers.

  “No.” Mark Hepburn nodded, selecting a fresh cigarette and staring rather haggardly out of the window across the roofs of a grey New York. “He is not a man one can gag indefinitely. Dr. Fu Manchu must know it.”

  “Knowing it,” snapped Nayland Smith, “I fear that he will act. If we had a clear case, I should be disposed to act first. The thing is so cunningly devised that our lines of attack are limited. Excluding an unknown inner group surrounding the mandarin, in my opinion not another soul working for the League of Good Americans has the remotest idea of the ultimate object of that League, or of the sources of its revenues! All the reports—and I have read hundreds—point in the same direction. Many thousands of previously workless men have been given employment. Glance at the map.” He pointed. “Every red flag means a Fu Manchu advance! They are working honourably at the tasks alloted to them. But every one, when the hour comes, will cry out with the same voice: every one, north, south, east and west, is a unit in the vast army which, unknowingly, is building up the domination of this country by Dr. Fu Manchu, through his chosen nominee——”