by Sax Rohmer
“Thank you,” growled Barton. “You may join the War Office and also go to the devil, with my compliments.”
Through chinks in the blinds early spears of dawn were piercing, cold and grey in contrast with the lamplight.
Tour compliments might prove to be an admirable introduction. But to continue. You, ahead of them all, even ahead of the Si-Fan and Dr. Fu Manchu, got on to the track of the family to whom these clues belong. You traced them by generations. And you ultimately obtained, from the last bearer of the name, certain objects known as The Stewart Luck”; amongst them, Christophe’s chart showing where the bullion lies. I do not inquire how you managed this.”
“It isn’t necessary,” Barton blazed. “I have my own methods. Buried history must be torn remorselessly from its hiding-place and set in the light of day. Once I have established facts, I allow nothing to stand in my way.”
“You are not enlightening me,” said Smith drily. “My experiences with you in Khorassan, in Egypt, and elsewhere had already convinced me of this. Your latest discovery from the Portuguese of da Cunha (you see I did not entirely waste my time in the British Museum) added enormously to your knowledge—“
Sir Lionel appeared to be about to burst into speech. But he restrained himself: he seemed to be bewildered. Smith paused, pulled out a note-case and from it extracted a piece of paper. Switching on the green-shaded lamp on the desk, he read aloud: “Da Cunha says that there is ‘a great and lofty cave in which a fleet might lie hid, save that the way in from the sea, although both deep and wide and high, is below the tide, so that none but a mighty swimmer could compass the passage9. . . . He adds that the one and only entrance from the land has been blocked, but he goes on. Tailing possession of Christophe’s chart no man can hope to reach the treasure9.”
Sir Lionel Barton was standing quite still, staring at Smith as one amazed.
“That quotation from a rare Portuguese MS. in the Manuscript Room,” said Smith, placing the fragment in his case, the case in his pocket, and turning to look at Barton, “you copied. The curator told me that you had borrowed the MS. Since the collection is closed to the public at present you abused your privileges, and were vandal enough to make some pencil marks on the parchment. I said, you will remember, that I was unable find you there. I did not say that I failed to find your tracks.”
Barton did not speak, nor did I, and: “It was knowing what you had discovered,” Smith continued, “which spurred my wild dash to find you. The bother in the Caribbean is explained. There is a plot to bottle up the American Navy. Fu Manchu has played a big card.”
“You are sure it is Fu Manchu?”
“Yes, Barton. He has a secret base in or near Haiti, and he has a new kind of submarine. No one but you—until tonight—knew of this other entrance to the cave. It is shown in that chart which was stolen from you by agents of Fu Manchu.”
“Suppose it is!” cried Barton; “what I should like you to tell me, if you can, is how, if Fu Manchu is using this place as a base, he gets in and out. You don’t suppose he swims? Granting that small submarines can pass through under water, small submarines can’t carry all the gear needed for a young dockyard!”
“That point is one to which I have given some attention,” said Smith. “It suggests that *the one and only entrance from the land’ referred to by da Cunha is not the entrance shown in the chart—“
“You mean there are two?”
“Quite possibly.”
“Then why should these Si-Fan devils go to such lengths to get hold of my chart?”
“Surely that is obvious. They feared an attack from this unknown point. They knew that the Intelligence services of two countries were making intensive inquiries; for whilst that “great and lofty cave’ remains undiscovered it is a menace to us and to the Unites States.”
“It’s to the United States,” said Barton, “that I am offering my services. My own country, as usual, has turned me down.”
“Nevertheless,” rapped Smith, “it is to your own country that you are offering your services. Listen. You retired from the Army with the rank of Major, I believe. Very well, you’re Lieutenant-Colonel.”
“What!” shouted Barton.
“I’ve bought you from the War Office. You’re mine, body and soul. You’re Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Lionel Barton, and you lead the expedition because I shall be in comparatively unfamiliar territory. But remember, you act under my orders.”
“I prefer to act independently.”
“You’ve been gazetted Lieutenant-Colonel and you’re under the orders of the War Office. There’s a Clipper leaves for the United States on Monday from Lisbon. I have peculiar powers. Be good enough to regard me as your commanding officer. Here are your papers.”
CHAPTER XI
THE HOSTAGE
I drew the blinds and stared down at Bayswater Road, dismal in the light of a wet, grey dawn. Sleep was out of the question. Two men stood talking over by the Park gate—the gate at which Ardatha had reappeared in my life. Although I heard no one enter the room behind me, a hand was placed on my shoulder. I started, turned, and looked into the lean, sunbaked face of Nay-land Smith.
“It’s rough on you, Kerrigan,” he said quietly. “Really you need rest. I know what you were thinking. But don’t despair. Gallaho has set a watch on every known point of departure.”
“Do you expect any result?”
He watched me for a moment, compassionately, and then: “No,” he replied, “she is probably already on her way to America.”
I stifled a groan.
“What I cannot understand,” I said, “is how these Journeys are managed. Fu Manchu seems to travel with a considerable company and to travel fast. He was prepared to include Barton and myself in the party. How is it done. Smith?”
“I don’t know! I have puzzled over that very thing more times than enough. He returned from the West Indies ahead of me; yet no liner carried him and no known plane. Granting, it is true, that he commands tremendous financial resources, in war time no private yacht and certainly no private plane could go far unchallenged. I don’t know. It is just another of those mysteries which surround Dr. Fu Manchu.”
“hose two men are watching the house. Smith—“
“It’s their job: Scotland Yard! We shall have a bodyguard up to the moment that we leave Croydon by air for Lisbon. This scheme to isolate the United States Navy is a major move in some dark game. It has a flaw, and Barton has found it!”
“But they have the chart—“
“Apart from the fact that he has copied the chart, Barton has an encyclopaedic memory—hence Fu Manchu’s anxiety to make sure of him.”
London was not awake: it came to me that Nayland Smith and I alone were alive to a peril greater than any which had ever threatened the world. In the silence, for not even the milkmen were abroad yet, I could hear Barton breathing regularly in the spare room—that hardened old campaigner could have slept on Judgement Day.
My phone bell rang.
“What’s this?” muttered Smith.
I opened the communicating door and went into the writing-room. I took up the receiver.
“Hullo,” I said, “Who wants me?”
“Are you Paddington 54321?”
“Yes.”
“Call from Zennor . . . . You’re through, miss.”
My heart began to beat wildly as I glanced towards the open door where Nayland Smith, haggard in grey light, stood watching.
“Is that you?” asked a nervous voice.
I suppose my eyes told Smith; he withdrew and quietly closed the door.
“Ardatha! My dear, my dear! This is too wonderful! Where are you?”
“I am in Cornwall. I have risked ever so much to speak to you before we go; and we are going in an hour—“
“But Ardatha!”
“Please listen. Time is so short for me. Hassan told me what happened. I knew your name and found your number in the book. It was my only chance to know if you were alive.
I thank the good God that you are, because, you see, I am so alone and unhappy, and you—I like to believe that I have forgotten, now, because otherwise I should be ashamed to think about you so much!”
“Ardatha!”
“We shall be in New York on Thursday. I know that Nayland Smith is following us. If I am still there when you arrive I will try to speak to you again. There is one thing that might save me—you understand?—a queer, a silly little thing, but—“
“Yes, yes, Ardatha! What is it? Tell me!”
“I risked capture by the police to try to catch Peko—Dr. Fu Manchu’s marmoset. That was when . . . we met. This strange pet, he is very old, is more dear to his master than any living thing. Try to find out . . . . ”
Silence: I was disconnected!
Frantically I called the exchange; but all the consolation I received from the night operator was: “Zennor’s rung off, sir.”
“Smith!” I shouted and burst into the dining-room.
Nayland Smith was standing staring out of the window. He turned and faced me.
“Yes,” he said coolly; “it was Ardatha. Where is she and what had she to say?”
Rapidly, perhaps feverishly, I told him; and then: “The marmoset!” I cried. “Barton caught it! What did he do with it?”
“Do with it!” came Sir Lionel’s great voice, and appeared at the other end of the room, his mane of hair dishevelled. “What did it do with me” After the blasted thing—it’s all of a thousand years old, and I know livestock ~ had bitten me twice last night, I locked it in the wardrobe. This morning—“
He raised a bloodstained finger, there was a shrill angry whistle, and a tiny monkey, a silver grey thing no larger than a starling, shot through the doorway behind him, paused, chattered wickedly, and sprang from the buffet onto a high cornice!
“There’s your marmoset,” cried Barton. “I should have strangled him if I hadn’t known Chinese character! I said, Kerrigan, there might be a way. This is the way—there’s your hostage!”
CHAPTER XII
THE SNAPPING FINGERS
“The unaccountable absence of Kennard Wood,” said Nayland Smith, staring out of the window, “is most disturbing. These apartments, Kerrigan, have been the scene of strange happenings. It was from here that I opposed Dr. Fu Manchu when he tried ~ and nearly succeeded—in his plan to force a puppet President upon the United States.”
I stood beside him looking out over the roofs of New York from this eagle’s nest on the fortieth floor of the Regal Athenian Hotel.
A pearly moon regarded us from a cloudless sky, a moon set amidst a million stars which twinkled above a Walt Disney city. One tall tower dominated the foreground of the composition. It rose, jewelled with lights, from the frosty line of an intervening roof up to the pharos which crowned it. The river showed as a smudge of silver far below: an approaching train was a fiery dragon winding in and out of mysterious gullies.
In that diamond-clear air I could hear the sound of the locomotive; I could hear a motor horn, the hoarse whistle of some big ship heading out for the open sea. Lights glittered everywhere, from starry heavens down to frostily-sparkling buildings and the moving headlamps of restless traffic.
“Bit of a contrast to London,” I said.
“Yes.” Smith pronounced the word with unusual slowness. “The fog of war has not dimmed the light of New York. But you and I know who is reponsible for those rumours, and those missing men in the Caribbean; and although, according to your account, the Doctor is a sick man, we dare not under-estimate potentialities. Even now—he may be here.”
As always, the mere suspicion that the dreadful Chinese scientist might be near induced a sense, purely nervous, no doubt, of sudden chill. We had been delayed unexpectedly at Lisbon and again later; it was possible that Fu Manchu was approaching New York. If Ardatha’s words had been true, he was already here.
Ardatha! She had promised to try to see me again. I continued to stare out at the myriad twinkling points. From any one of that constellation of windows Ardatha might be looking as I looked from this.
“I am getting seriously worried about Kennard Wood,” said Smith suddenly. “According to his last message from Havana, he and his assistant, Longton, were leaving by air. They are long overdue: I don’t understand it.”
Colonel Kennard Wood, of the United States Secret Service, bad been left in charge of the Caribbean inquiry when Smith had hurriedly returned to England. We had been expecting him all day. In fact. Barton had been compelled to go to Washington that morning in Smith’s stead owing to the importance of the anticipated interview.
There were times when I felt as one who dreams, when, seeing a double newspaper headline, “British capture Benghazi,” I asked myself what I was doing here at an hour when England and her allies grappled with a world menace. It was Smith who always supplied the answer: “An even greater menace, one which threatens the entire white race, is closing around the American continent.”
The phone buzzed.
Smith turned quickly and crossed to the instrument.
“Yes—speaking . . . . What?”
The tone in which he rapped out the last word brought me about. His eyes glittered metallically and I saw—those prominent jaw muscles betrayed the fact—that his teeth were clenched.
“Good God! You are sure? Yes . . . at once.”
He banged the receiver back and stared at me, suddenly haggard.
“Smith! what has happened?”
“Longton—poor Longton has gone!”
“What!”
“They have just brought his body in from the river. Inspector Hawk of the Homicide Bureau recognized him, in spite of—“
“In spite of what?”
“Of his condition, Kerrigan!” He dashed a fist wildly into his other palm. *Tu Manchu is here—of that we may be sure; for no one but Fu Manchu could have brought the horror of the Snapping Fingers to New York.”
“The Snapping Fingers?”
But he was already running towards the door.
“Explain on the way. Come on!”
Seated in a chair in the lobby, the chair tipped back so that he could rest his feet on the ledge above a radiator, was a short, thick-set man whose clean-shaven red face, close-cropped dark hair, and bright eyes had at first sight reminded me of my old friend Chief Inspector Gallaho of Scotland Yard. As Smith came charging out the man righted his chair, sprang up, and began spluttering. Following Smith’s example, I hurriedly put on my topcoat. An unpleasant regurgitating sound drew my attention to the man on guard.
“Say, mister,” he said, “what’s the big hurry?” He began to chew, for in this respect, also, he resembled Gallaho, except that Gallaho’s chewing was imaginary. “Nearly made me swallow my gum—”
“Listen,” Smith broke in: “I’m going out. There may easily be an attempt to get into this apartment tonight—“
“Say—I’m here.”
“I want to make sure,” said Smith, “that you don’t stay here. These are your instructions. Having made sure that all the ‘windows are secure—“
“What, on the fortieth?”
“As you say, on the fortieth. Having made sure of this, patrol every room in the suite, including the bathrooms, at intervals of fifteen minutes. If you find anything alive—except, of course, the monkey in a cage in Sir Lionel’s room—kill it. This applies to a fly or a cockroach.Do I make myself clear?”
“Sure, it’s clear enough, chief—”
“Do it. If in doubt call Headquarters. I count upon you, Sergeant Rorke.”
Throwing the door open, he ran to the elevator and I followed.
* * *
“Smith!” I said, as we were whirled in a police car through kaleidoscopic streets, “what has happened to Longton—and what did you mean by the Snapping Fingers?”
“I meant a signal of death, Kerrigan. Poor Longton—whom you don’t know and will never know, now— may have heard it.”
“I saw how the news af
fected you.Is it—something very horrible?”
Propped in a comer of the racing car, he began to load his pipe. “Very horrible, Kerrigan. Some foul things have come out of the East, but this thing belongs to the West Indies. Of course, it may have a Negro origin. But at one time it assumed the size of an epidemic.”
“In what way? I don’t understand.”
“Nor do I. It remains a mystery to me scientists. But it began, as far back as I can make out, in the Canal Zone. A young coloured man, employed on one of the locks, was found in his quarters one morning, bled white.”
“Bled white?”
“Almost literally.” He lighted the charred briar. “He was dead, apparently from exhaustion. There were queerly discoloured areas on his skin; but there was practically no blood in his body—“
“No blood?” I cried over the noise of the motor and the Broadway traffic. “What do you mean?”
“He had been reduced to a sort of human veal,, Something had drained all the blood from his veins.”
“Good heavens! But were there no traces—no bloodstains?”
“Nothing. He was the first of many. Then, unaccountably, the terror of the Zone disappeared.”
“Vampire bats?”
“This was suspected; but some of the victims ~ and they were not all coloured—had been found, in rooms to which a bat could not have gained access.”
“Was human agency at work?”
“No. Conditions, in certain cases, ruled it out.”
“But the Snapping Fingers?”
“This clue came later. It was first reported when the epidemic struck Haiti; that is, just before I arrived there. A young American, whose name escapes me—but he had been sent from Washington in connection with the reports of unknown submarines in the Caribbean—died in just the same way.”
“Significant!”
“Very! But there were singular features in this case. It occurred at a hotel in Port au Prince.One odd fact was that a heavy Service pistol, fully charged, was found beside him.”
“Where was—the body?”
“In bed. But the mosquito net was raised as though he had been on the point of getting up. Here occurred the first reference to Snapping Fingers. It seems that he opened the door at about eleven o’clock at night and asked another resident who happened to be passing if he had snapped his fingers.”
