“Decent lunch, Merrick? Don’t think too well of the catering at these University clubs, myself.”
“The lunch was all right. But I didn’t like the waiter.”
Nayland Smith laid his pen down. “Why not? Did he upset your soup?”
Brian grinned, but not happily. “No. He listened to everything I said to my father!”
“Hullo!” Sir Denis stood up quickly. “So the Reds have agents in the best clubs! I warned you, Merrick. What were you talking about?”
“Well—I tried to keep my father off the topic of Dr. Hessian’s invention. But, of course, he never seemed to suspect that a club servant might be a spy.”
“No. I see the difficulty. You’re pretty sure the man was listening?”
“Dead sure!”
Nayland Smith began to walk about in his restless way.
“The climax is so near. And we have two enemies, not one: the Reds and the Si-Fan! It’s a formidable combination, Merrick. I’m backed by two governments, but I doubt if my double backing’s as good as Dr. Fu Manchu’s! We have worked like beavers to keep Hessian’s presence here a secret. We have failed.”
Brian thought for a minute. “It seems to me that it wasn’t to be expected we could do that, Sir Denis. As I see it, all we have to do is to make sure he’s safe. And on that point I have something to say.”
Nayland Smith checked in his promenade, darted one of his swift glances at Brian.
“What is it?” he snapped.
“Just this. Sometimes, when I’ve been alone here, I have heard someone being admitted through the penthouse door. I’m sure of it. And I hear all sorts of footsteps above. If this suite is supposed to be a sort of guard-room, and we’re responsible for Dr. Hessian’s safety, shouldn’t we be advised of who is being allowed to go up?”
Nayland Smith knocked out his pipe, then produced the old pouch.
He began to stuff tobacco into the cracked briar bowl.
“Point a good one,” he snapped. “We are responsible. But the F.B.I, operative attached to Hessian has authority to admit visitors whose identity we don’t know. I’m not disputing his integrity. Fact remains, responsibility is ours. I’ll see to this, Merrick. You’re right.”
Sir Denis lighted his pipe and walked out.
But, when he had gone, Brian remained uncomfortably ill at ease. Up to the time of their arrival at the Babylon-Lido, Nayland Smith had seemed to be so firmly in charge of operations. Now, something was lacking.
Had his phenomenal success in smuggling the German scientist
through the Iron Curtain, in getting him from Cairo to New York, induced Sir Denis to relax—too soon? It didn’t seem to fit in with the man’s dynamic character. Surely, now was the crucial hour—in fact, he had said so. What was wrong?
In his very bones, Brian had a foreboding that something pended which he didn’t understand. He was conscious of a longing to talk it all over with some reliable and sympathetic friend, someone he could trust.
Lola was both reliable and sympathetic . . . But he was bound to secrecy!
Brian walked about for some time in an unhappy frame of mind; smoked countless cigarettes. Once, hearing faint footsteps in the corridor, which seemed to pause at the far end, he crossed the lobby and quietly opened the door; looked out.
He was just in time to see the door to the penthouse stair closing!
“Damn!” he muttered—for he had caught not even a glimpse of the person who had gone in.
Listening intently, he detected the unmistakable click of a key being turned in a lock.
This irritated him unreasonably. His job, so far as he could see, remained that of an attendant; a sort of paid companion for Nayland Smith. Plots and counter-plots involving the security of the United States seethed around him, but he had no part to play.
Never once had he entered the penthouse since Dr. Hessian had taken up residence there; nor once set eyes upon him from the time of their arrival to the present moment.
It was a humiliating position—or so it seemed to him, now.
The phone on the big desk buzzed.
“Hullo!” he called.
“Oh, Brian, I’m so glad I caught you!” … Lola’. “When do you expect to be free? I can be in the Paris Bar around cocktail time. Any hope?”
“Where are you now, Lola?”
“At Michel’s. But for mercy’s sake don’t call me back, here! I’ll wait downstairs until seven, Brian. Do try!”
And she hung up.
Brian glanced at his watch. Five o’clock. Then he stood quite still, listening. French windows opened on a balcony were partly open… . and he could hear voices from above. Someone was talking on the terrace of the penthouse.
He opened the windows fully, but silently, and stepped out.
A strange voice, alternately guttural and sibilant, spoke slowly, with impressive pauses. Something in this voice touched a chord of memory, but so faintly that no idea of the speaker’s identity was conjured up. It bore a vague resemblance to the rarely-heard speech of Dr. Hessian. But
the language was neither German nor English. It was a language which Brian knew he had never heard before.
There were occasional replies; monosyllables in the same tongue.
Once, Brian was almost sure, the name “Nayland Smith” was introduced into the otherwise unintelligible jargon. But he knew he might be mistaken, for if it had in fact been that name, it was so mispronounced as to be barely recognizable.
The conversation ended abruptly. He heard a shuffle of footsteps, and knew that the speakers had gone in. …
*
“You made it, Brian!” Lola stood up to greet him as he hurried into the Paris Bar. “I nearly gave up hope. This is my second cocktail! Did the Big Chief have a heart, after all?”
Brian dropped into a chair facing her. He longed to have her in his arms; but this was not the time. And he felt oddly dispirited.
“When at last he came in, I told him about one or two queer things that had happened, and he said boredom was getting on my nerves and ordered me to forget the job and play a while.”
He looked up at a waiter who had just appeared and ordered two more cocktails.
Lola checked him. “Not another for me, Brian. I’ll finish on this one.”
Brian didn’t argue. He knew Lola. And when the waiter went off: “Surely you’re through for the day, Lola?” he asked.
“Yes.” She was watching him, smiling. “But I like to stay sober all the same. What were these queer things that happened, Brian?”
“Oh!” He lighted a cigarette. Lola already was smoking. “We seem to have some curious neighbours up above us in the penthouse. I overheard somebody talking in a queer sort of jargon and mentioned it to Sir Denis.”
“He probably said that representatives of United Nations lived there?”
“No. He didn’t say that.” Brian tried to draw a cloak of secrecy about himself, but wasn’t quite successful. “For a man on a dangerous mission—or so I understand—he brushed it off very lightly. Between ourselves, there are times when I wonder if Sir Denis is really up to his old form.”
“Please, Brian!” Lola smiled her one-sided smile. “Don’t talk Oxford.
After all, you’re still an American.”
Brian grinned almost happily. Lola’s impudent criticism of his occasional traces of English idiom and speech, far from annoying, delighted him. It proved her interest, or so he argued. His cocktail arrived; he sampled it.
“Maybe I mean he’s getting too old for his job.”
Lola frowned thoughtfully, twirling her glass between sensitive fingers.
“As I haven’t met him I can’t judge, Brian. But there’s just one thing I’d like to know. The first time you saw him in Cairo did you think he had changed?”
Brian considered the question; decided that no harm could be done by telling Lola the facts.
“That makes me think, Lola. The first time I saw him in Cairo was under very pec
uliar circumstances. It’s quite a story.”
And he outlined the incident which had led him to take refuge on the roof of a house overlooking that of Shertf Mohammed, and told her what he had seen from there… .
“There was no mistake about it, dear. The way he gripped his pipe, the trick of twitching the lobe of his ear. I knew I was looking at Nayland Smith.
“How excited you must have been! And after that?”
Now well in his stride, and delighted to have Lola for an audience, Brian related how he had demanded an interview with the Sherif and what had happened there.
“So you didn’t see him,” Lola murmured. “When did you see him again?”
Brian gave her an account of Sir Denis’s secret entrance to his hotel apartment, and equally secret exit.
“Was it then, Brian, when you actually talked to him, that you began to wonder if he had outlived what you call ‘his old form’?”
“Not exactly right then, Lola——”
Brian paused, finished his cocktail. He had thought of something; and the thing, though perhaps trivial, had staggered him, chiefly because he had never thought of it before.
“Then when, dear?”
“Later, I guess. But—when Sir Denis came to see me he had a strip of surgical plaster on the bridge of his nose.”
“Had he been in a fight?”
Lola asked the question jokingly. But her grey eyes weren’t smiling.
“He’d had one hell of a time getting out of the hands of the Reds. But that’s not the point. Something which he didn’t tell me must have happened right there in Cairo. Because, when I saw him pacing around that room, and I saw him clearly, there was no plaster on his nose!”
*
One of the hourly reports ordered by Dr. Fu Manchu was just coming in. That solitary spark of green light glowed in the darkness… .
“Brian Merrick’s complete ignorance of Operation Zero confirmed.”
“He has served his purpose, and could be dispensed with.
Henceforward he becomes a possible source of danger. . . . Where is he now?”
“In the Sunset Room.”
“He is covered?”
“Closely, Excellency”
“What Federal operatives are on duty there?”
“Two F.B.I, agents.”
The green light disappeared. And, invisible in the darkness, Dr. Fu Manchu laughed… .
*
In the popular but expensive Sunset Room high up in the Babylon-Lido, with its celebrated dance band and star-spangled floor show, Brian found himself transported to Paradise. With Lola in his arms, wearing an alluring dance frock, he was lost to the world, lifted above all its petty troubles—a man rapturously in love.
His frustrations, doubts and fears had dispersed like mist under the morning sun.
“Are you happy, dearest?” he whispered.
“Very happy, Brian.”
He was silent for a long time, living in a dream.
“I often wonder, Lola, in your wanderings about the world, if you ever met someone else who meant more to you than I do.”
“There’s no one who means more to me than you, Brian. But, like you, dear, I have a job to do. We’re both young enough to enjoy ourselves without spoiling it by getting serious, yet awhile.”
Brian drew a long breath, made fragrant by the perfume of her hair.
“You mean you’d rather stay with Michel than cut it out to marry me?”
Lola sighed. “I told you once before, Brian dear, that early marriages, so popular in our country, are often failures.”
“But not always.”
“Brian, we’re happy! Maybe we’ll never capture this wonderful thing again. Please don’t get serious—tonight!”
He swallowed, but found enough discretion to respect her wishes, to surrender himself to the spirit of the dance. As always, Lola was elusive—and all the more maddeningly desirable. He was silent for some time, until:
“There’s a man standing over by the door,” he said, “who seems to be watching us. Do you know him?” “Which one do you
mean, Brian?” “The tall, dark fellow just lighting a cigarette.” Lola laughed. “No, I don’t know him, Brian. But I’m willing to bet he’s the house detective!”
Chapter 12
Brian returned to the suite earlier than he had intended. Lola had been paged just before the star entertainer appeared, and returned, looking very wretched, to tell him that Madame Michel had taken up residence in the Babylon-Lido that night and would remain until her forthcoming dress show there took place. Madame insisted upon an immediate conference in her apartment. …
He found Nayland Smith at the desk reading what looked like an official document, and smoking as usual, like a factory chimney. The suite was luxuriously furnished, in Babylon-Lido style, and a tall, painted Italian screen enclosed the desk, so that the limited space around it had the quality of a fog. Sir Denis looked up when Brian came in.
“Hullo, Merrick! A rumour reaches me that you were seen in the Sunset Room with a very pretty girl. Don’t apologize! You have had a dull time, I know. Glad you can find agreeable company.”
“Thanks, Dir Denis—though I can’t imagine who told you.”
Nayland Smith smiled. But, again, it wasn’t the happy smile which Brian remembered—a smile which had seemed to sweep the years aside and reveal an eager boy.
“One of the F.B.I, men detailed to keep an eye on you!”
“On me7 Why?”
Sir Denis tossed the typescript aside; stood up.
“Merrick, we’re marked men!” The smile vanished. His face became grim. “If Fu Manchu could trap either of us it would give him a lever with Washington—that he’d know how to use. I have warned you before. Trust nobody—not even a taxi driver you may pick up outside the hotel.”
“But——” A hot protest burned on Brian’s tongue, for he detected an implication that Lola was suspect; checked the words. “You suggest that this man would try to hold us?”
“And could succeed, Merrick. Remember how long I was held! He has not only the Si-Fan behind him, but the Reds as well!” He began to pace up and down. “Dr. Fu Manchu has little time left. Tomorrow night Dr.
Hessian has agreed to give a demonstration!”
“Tomorrow night!”
“A committee formed by your father, and approved by the President,
will be here. Not one word of this must leak out. Their visit is a top secret… . And Fu Manchu would stop at nothing to prevent it!”
*
Sleep didn’t come easily to Brian that night. Between uneasy dozes, he found himself trying to figure out if Lola really had been called to attend upon “Madame”, or if she was avoiding being left alone with him, and trying to convince himself that Dr. Hessian’s invention was not a mirage, the dream of a mad scientist, but all that Nayland Smith believed it to be.
He drove himself near to a mental frenzy.
That Sir Denis deliberately kept him in the dark concerning certain vital facts of the business was beyond dispute. Why? Didn’t he trust him?
Crowning mystery—which he had never been able to fathom—for what possible reason had he been employed? Those qualifications stipulated in The Times advertisement, all of which he possessed, had never been called upon. For all that had happened to date, almost anybody, graduate or coal miner, athlete or cripple, would have done as well!
He switched on the bedside lamp, saw that the time was 2 a.m., and got up to get a drink. He didn’t want whisky; he was really thirsty; and there was beer in the icebox. He made his way to the kitchenette and opened a can.
As he poured out the cold beer, he wondered if Nayland Smith had gone to sleep, and, carrying the glass in his hand, walked bare-footed to Sir Denis’s door to find out.
His door was open—and even in the dim light Brian could see that the bed was unoccupied. There was no light in the living-room.
He stood for a moment, hesitating. Then went out t
o the lobby.
The door of the suite was unlocked!
In view of what Nayland Smith had told him earlier that night, and of Sir Denis’s insistence that the door must always be locked and bolted at night, this was more than puzzling….
“We’re marked men! IfFu Manchu could trap either of us——”
He remembered the very words.
What was he to think?
Brian knew that he had dozed more than once, but if there had been any struggle it couldn’t have failed to arouse him.
And while he stood there in a state of hopeless indecision a sound came which confirmed all his fears. It came from the penthouse.
A pistol shot! … A second … a third! Then—a muffled explosion, which shook the apartment!
Brian ran back to the living-room, spilling beer as he went.
He switched the light on, set the glass down and crossed to the penthouse phone… . Before his hand touched it the instrument began to buzz!
As he took it up: “That you, Merrick?” came Nayland Smith’s snappy voice.
“Yes. What’s happened? Shall I come up?”
“No. Stay where you are. Dr. Hessian called me an hour ago. He had decided upon a test experiment. It was successful. Probably have most of the residents of the Babylon-Lido phoning like mad! Turn in. All’s well.”
And Sir Denis hung up.
Brian wondered if he should obey orders and lock the outer door; decided against it, and went back to bed… .
*
He woke early in the morning, vaguely aware of disturbed dreams in which Nayland Smith had become transformed into a sort of prehistoric monster about to devour him and had then vanished in a cloud of smoke.
Wondering why he felt so jaded, he gave an order for coffee and went into the bathroom. If Sir Denis had returned or not he didn’t know, and for some reason didn’t care. There was no sound in the suite. He was finishing up with an ice-cold shower when the waiter came into the living-room.
Brian called out, “Leave my coffee in there, waiter.”
“All ready.” But the man lingered, drew nearer to the open bathroom door… . “Explosion upstairs last night, I hear. Did it wake you?”
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