by Sax Rohmer
The truckman, a tough-looking bruiser, jumped from his seat, lifted the blasphemous but justly indignant youth by the collar of his jacket and proceeded to punish him brutally.
This was too much for the man waiting for a bus. He ran to the rescue. The boy, now, was howling curses in a voice audible for several blocks. Spectators appeared—as they do—from nowhere. In a matter of seconds the rescuer, the rescued, and the attacker were hemmed in by an excited group.
And at just this moment two figures alighted from the rear of the temporarily deserted truck, walked quietly to the private door of the Huston Building, opened it, and went in. Later, Raymond Harkness would have something to say to the man waiting for a bus—whose name was Detective Officer Beaker.
Huan Tsung had mounted a diversion…
The telephone in Camille’s room was buzzing persistently—had been buzzing for a long time.
Craig had left the desk-light burning; but most of the office lay in shadow, so that when someone switched on a flashlamp in the lobby, a widening, fading blade of light swept across the parquet floor. Then the door was fully opened.
Koenig stepped in, looking cautiously about him. He carried a heavy leather case, which he set down by the safe.
And, as he stood upright again, a tall figure, draped in a black topcoat, the fur collar turned up, came in silently and joined him. Dr. Fu-Manchu wore the tinted Hoffmeyer glasses, gloves, and carried a black hat. He looked in the direction of that persistent buzzing.
“Miss Navarre’s office,” said Koenig uneasily.
Dr. Fu-Manchu indicated the safe, merely extending a gloved hand. Koenig nodded, knelt, and opened the leather case. Taking out a bunch of keys, he busied himself with the lock, working by the light of his flashlamp. Presently he paused. He turned.
“Combination has been changed!”
The tall figure standing behind him remained motionless. The buzzing in Camille’s room ceased.
“You came prepared for such a possibility?”
“Yes—but it may take a long time now.”
“You have nearly two hours. But no more.”
The clock over Craig’s desk struck its single note… ten o’clock.
Dr. Fu-Manchu crossed and walked up the three steps. He beat upon the steel door.
“M’goyna!”
The door swung open. M’goyna’s huge frame showed silhouetted against a quivering green background.
Dr. Fu-Manchu entered the laboratory.
* * *
At half-past eleven, the man waiting for a bus was relieved by another detective. The avenue, now, was as completely deserted as any Manhattan avenue ever can be.
“Hello, Holland,” he said. “You’re welcome to this job! Like being the doorman of a vacant night club.”
“What are we supposed to be doing, Beaker, anyway?”
“Search me! Stop anybody going in, I suppose. We had orders to tail Dr. Craig if ever he came out, and Stoddart went after him two hours ago when he took his secretary off to make whoopee. A redhead straight from heaven.”
“Nothing else happened?”
“Bit of a scrap about ten o’clock. Big heel driving a truck knocked a boy off his bike. Nothing else… Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
Holland lighted a cigarette, looking left and right along the avenue and wondering what had originally attracted him to police work. Beaker was making for a subway station and Holland followed the retreating figure with his eyes for several blocks. He settled down to a monotony broken only by an occasional bus halting at the nearby stop. The night was unseasonably warm.
At a quarter to twelve, a remarkable incident occurred.
It had been preceded by another curious occurrence, invisible to Holland, however. A red light had been flashed several times from the high parapet of the Huston Building, immediately outside Craig’s office…
Bearing down upon Holland at speed from the other end of the block, he saw a hatless young man in evening dress, who screamed as he ran!
“You won’t get me! You devils! You won’t get me!”
In spite of the emptiness of the streets, these outcries had had some effect. Two men were following, but maintaining a discreet distance from the screaming man. Keeping up that extraordinary pace, he drew nearer and nearer to Holland.
“Out of my way! They’re after me!”
Holland sized up the situation. The runner was of medium build, dark, and not bad-looking in a Latin fashion. Clearly, Holland decided, he’s drunk, and a guy in that state is doubly strong. But I guess I’ll have to hold him. He may do damage.
An experienced manhandler, Holland stepped forward. But the runner kept on running.
“Out of my way!” he screamed. “I’ll kill you if you try to stop me!”
Holland stooped for a tackle, saw the gleam of a weapon, and side-stepped in a flash.
“They won’t get me!” yelled the demented man, and went racing around the corner.
Had the missing Sam been present, he would have recognized the lunatic as that Jed Laurillard who had once talked to him in a bar. In fact, this disciple had been given a particularly difficult assignment, one certain to land him in jail, as a chance to redeem his former mistake. He had, furthermore, been given a shot of hashish to lend color to the performance.
Holland clapped a whistle to his lips, and blew a shrill blast. Drawing his own automatic, he went tearing around the corner after the still screaming madman…
During a general mix-up which took place there, a big sedan drew in before the private door of the Huston Building, and three men came out and entered it. One of them carried a heavy roll of office carpet on his shoulder.
Huan Tsung had successfully covered the retirement of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
* * *
When Martin Shaw stepped from a taxi, paid the driver, and saw the yellow cab driven away, he unbuttoned his topcoat to find his key. Someone was walking rapidly towards him; the only figure in sight. It was midnight.
Holland, whilst still some distance away, recognized the chief technician, and moderated his pace. The screaming alcoholic had just been removed in charge of two patrolmen, and would, no doubt, receive his appropriate medicine in the morning. By the time Holland reached the door, Shaw had already gone in, and was on his way up.
Shaw half expected that Dr. Craig would be still at work, and even when he didn’t see him at his desk, was prepared to find him in the laboratory. Then he noted that the drawing board was missing and the safe unlocked. Evidently, Craig had gone.
Whoever took the next (four-to-eight) duty usually slept on a couch in the office. But Regan seemed to have made no preparations.
Shaw went up the three steps and unlocked the steel door. “Here we are, Regan!” he called in his breezy way. “Get to hell out of it, man!”
There was no reply. Everything seemed to be in order. But where was Regan?
Then, pinned to the logbook lying on a glass-topped table, Shaw saw a sheet of ruled paper. He crossed, and bent over it. A message, written shakily in Regan’s hand, appeared there. It said:
Mr. Shaw—
Had a slight accident. Compelled to go for medical treatment. Don’t be alarmed. Will report at 4 a.m. for duty.
J. J. Regan
* * *
“Slight accident?” Shaw muttered.
He looked keenly about him. What could have happened? There was nothing wrong with any of the experimental plant. He quickly satisfied himself on that score. So unlike Regan not to have timed the message. He wondered how long he had been gone. The last entry in the log (almost illegible) was timed eleven-fifteen.
He was hanging his coat up when he noticed the bloodstains.
They were very few—specks on white woodwork. But, stooping, he came to the conclusion that others had been wiped from the tiled floor below.
Regan, then, must have cut himself in some way, been unable to staunch the bleeding, and gone to find a surgeon. Shaw decided that he had be
tter notify Dr. Craig. The laboratory phone was an extension from the secretary’s office. He reopened the door, went down the steps, and dialled from Camille’s room.
There was no answer to his call.
Shaw growled, but accepted the fact philosophically. He would repeat the call later. He went back to his working-bench in the laboratory and was soon absorbed in adjusting an intricate piece of mechanism in course of construction there. He walked in an atmosphere vibrant with a force new to science. His large hands were delicate as those of a violinist.
He called Craig’s number again at one o’clock, but there was no reply. He tried Regan’s, with a similar result. Perhaps the injury was more serious than Regan had supposed. He might have been detained for hospital treatment.
Shaw tried both numbers again at two and then at three o’clock. No answers.
He began to feel seriously worried about Regan; nor could he entirely understand the absence of Craig. He knew how determined Craig had been to complete the valve detail that night, he knew he was spending the week-end away; and he felt sure that Morris Craig wasn’t the man to waste precious hours in night spots.
In this, Shaw misjudged Craig—for once. At almost exactly three o’clock, that is, whilst Shaw was vainly calling his number, Morris Craig leaned on a small table, feasting his eyes on Camille, who sat facing him.
“Say you are happy,” he whispered.
That she was happy, that this new wonderland was real and not a mirage, seemed to him, at the moment, the only thing that mattered—the one possible excuse for his otherwise inexcusable behavior.
Camille smiled, and then lowered her eyes. She knew that she had been dancing—dancing for hours, it seemed to her. Even now, a band played softly, somewhere on the other side of a discreetly dim floor. Yes—she was happy. She was in love with Morris, and they were together. But how could she surrender herself to all that such an evening should mean, when she had no idea how she came to be there?
She knew that she had set out to keep an appointment made for her by Mrs. Frobisher. Had she kept it? Apart from a vague recollection of talking to Morris in the office—of some sudden terror—the rest of the night remained a blank up to the moment when she had found herself here, in his arms, dancing…
“Yes—I am happy, Morris, very happy. But I think I must go home now.”
It was nearly half past three when they left.
In the little lobby of her apartment house, between swing doors and the house door, Craig held her so long that she thought he would never let her go. Every time she went to put her key in the lock, he pulled her back and held her again. At last:
“I shall be here for you at nine in the morning,” he said.
“All right. Good night, Morris.”
She opened the door, and was gone. He watched her, through glass panels, as she hurried upstairs. Then he went out, crossed the street, and waited to see a light spring up in her room. When one did, he still waited—and waited.
At last she came to the window, pulled a drape aside, and waved him good night.
He had dismissed the taxi. He wanted to walk, to be alone with this night, to relive every hour of the wonder that had come into his life with Camille’s first kiss.
When, at Central Park West, he decided to walk across the park, two tired and bored detectives who had been keeping the pair in sight ever since they had left the night club, exhaled self-pitying sighs…
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
At ten past four, Martin Shaw dialled Regan’s number. No reply. Then he tried Craig’s. No reply. Following a momentary hesitation, he called police headquarters.
He had no more than begun to explain what had happened when he heard the clang of the elevator door as someone slammed it shut. Laying the phone down on Camille’s desk, he ran out into Craig’s office. He arrived just as Nayland Smith burst in.
“Sir Denis! What’s this?”
Nayland Smith was darting urgent glances right and left.
“Where’s Regan?” he rapped.
“Hasn’t shown up.”
“What!”
“Had an accident some time before I returned. Left a note.”
Nayland Smith’s challenging stare was almost frightening. “You mean the place was empty when you arrived at twelve?”
“Just that.”
“And you did nothing about it?”
“Why should I?” Shaw demanded. “But when he didn’t appear at four o’clock, it was different. I have police headquarters on the line right now—”
“Tell them I’m here. Then hang up.”
Shaw, upon whom this visitor had swept as a typhoon, went back and did so.
“I know,” a voice replied. “We’re on the job. Stand by.” When Shaw rejoined him:
“Your handyman, Sam, was got away by a ruse,” said Smith. “He wisely called the police, too—from Philadelphia. I came straight along. Someone wanted this place vacated tonight—and Craig played right into the enemy’s hands.”
“But where is the doctor? I have been calling him—”
“You’d be surprised!” Smith snapped savagely. “At the present moment, he’s wandering about Central Park, moonstruck! One of two men looking after him got to a phone ten minutes ago.”
Shaw looked thunderstruck.
“Has he gone mad?”
“Yes. He’s in love. Show me this note left by Regan.”
He went racing up the steps. Shaw had left the laboratory door open.
“There—on the table.”
Nayland Smith bent over Regan’s strange message. He turned.
“Sure it’s his writing?”
“Looks like it—allowing for a shaky hand. He’d evidently cut himself. See—there are specks of blood here.” Shaw pointed. “And I think blood has been wiped from the floor just below.”
Nayland Smith pulled at the lobe of his ear. His brown face looked drawn, weary, but his eyes shone like steel. The green twilight of this place, the eerie throbbing which seemed to penetrate his frame, he disliked, but knew he must ignore. A moment he stood so, then turned and ran back to the phone. He called police headquarters, gave particulars of what had happened, and:
“Check all night taxis,” he directed rapidly, “operating in this area. All clinics and hospitals in the neighborhood. Recall Detectives Beaker and Holland, on duty at the door here between eight and four. Order them to report to Raymond Harkness.”
He hung up, called another number, and presently got Harkness.
“I’m afraid we lose, Harkness,” he said. “I’m at the Huston Building. Something very serious has occurred tonight. I fear the worst. The two men posted below must have tripped up, somewhere. They will report to you. Make each take oath and swear he never left the door for a moment. Then call me. I shall be here…”
In the throbbing laboratory, Martin Shaw was making entries in the log. He looked up as Nayland Smith came in.
“Of course,” he said, “I can see something has happened to poor Regan. But it’s not clear to me that there’s anything else to it.”
“Not clear?” rapped Smith. “Why should a man who generally hangs around the place at all hours—Sam—receive a faked call to get him to Philadelphia? Is it a mere coincidence that Regan deserts his post the same night? For some time before twelve o’clock—we don’t know for how long—no one was on duty here.”
“There’s an entry in the book timed eleven-fifteen.”
“Very shaky one. Still leaving a gap of forty-five minutes.”
“If you mean some foreign agent got in, how did he get in?”
“He probably had a duplicate key, as I have. The F.B.I. got mine from the locksmith who made the originals. Couldn’t someone else have done the same thing? Or borrowed, and copied, an existing key?”
“But nothing has been disturbed. There’s no evidence that anyone has been here.”
“There wouldn’t be!” said Smith grimly. “Dangerous criminals leave no clues. The visitor I suspect would
only want a short time to examine the plant and to borrow Craig’s figure of the transmuter valve—”
“That would mean opening the safe.”
“Exactly what we have to do—open the safe.”
“No one but Dr. Craig has a key—or knows the combination.”
“There are other methods,” said Nayland Smith drily. “I am now going out to examine the safe.”
He proceeded to do so, and made a thorough job of it. Shaw came down and joined him.
“Nothing to show it’s been tampered with,” Smith muttered. “Hullo! who comes?”
He had detected that faint sound made by the private elevator. He turned to face the lobby; so did Shaw.
The elevator ascended, stopped. A door banged. And Morris Craig ran in.
“Smith!” he exclaimed—and both men saw that he was deathly pale. “What’s this? What has happened? I was brought here by two detectives—”
“Serves you right!” rapped Nayland Smith. “Don’t talk. Act. Be good enough to open this safe.”
“But—”
“Open it.”
Craig, his hand none too steady, pulled out his keys, twirled the dial, and opened the safe. Nayland Smith and Martin Shaw bent over his shoulders.
They saw a number of papers, and Craig’s large drawing board.
But there was nothing on the board!
A moment of silence followed—ominous silence.
Then Nayland Smith faced Craig.
“I don’t know,” he said, and spoke with unusual deliberation, “what lunacy led you to desert your job tonight. But I am anxious to learn”—he pointed—“what has become of the vital drawing and the notes, upon which you were working.”
Morris Craig forced a smile. It was an elder brother of the one he usually employed. Some vast, inexpressible relief apparently had brought peace to his troubled mind.
“If that’s all,” he replied, “the answer’s easy. I had a horrible idea that something had happened to Camille.”
Nayland Smith exchanged a glance with Shaw.
“Ignoring the Venusberg music for a moment”—the words were rapped out in his usual staccato manner—”where is the diagram?”
Morris Craig smiled again—and the junior smile was back on duty. He removed his topcoat, stripped his jacket off, and groped up under his shirt. From this cache he produced a large, folded sheet of paper and another, smaller sheet—the one decorated with a formula like a Picasso painting.
