by Sax Rohmer
“So this,” said the professor in his guttural German-English, “is the little patient who comes to see me not—ha?”
Camille felt helpless. She could think of nothing to say, for she didn’t know if she had ever seen him before.
“Never mind. Some other time. I shall send you no account.”
Michael Frobisher hated the man on sight. His nerves had remained badly on edge since the incident with Sam. He gave the professor a grip of his powerful fingers calculated to hurt.
“Ach! Not so hard! Not so hard! These”—Hoffmeyer raised gloved hands—“and these”—touching the dark glasses—“and this”—tapping his ebony stick on the floor—“are proofs that in war men become beasts. I ask you to remember that nails were torn from fingers, and eyes exposed to white heat, in some of those Nazi concentration camps. These things, Mr. Frobisher, could be again… While we may, let us be gentle.”
Dr. Pardoe treated the professor in a detached way, avoiding technical topics, and rather conveying that he doubted his ability. But not so Mrs. Pardoe. She unbent to the celebrated consultant in a highly gracious manner. A tall, square woman, who always wore black, the sad and sandy Pardoe was not her first love. There had been two former husbands. Nobody knew why. There was something ominous about the angular frame. She resembled a draped gallows…
Professor Hoffmeyer addressed much of his conversation to Craig; and Mrs. Pardoe hung on his every word.
“You are that Morris Craig,” he said, during luncheon, “who reads a paper on the direction of neutrons, at Oxford, two years ago—ha?”
“The same, Professor. Amazing memory. I am that identical egg in the old shell. Rather stupid paper. Learned better since.”
“Modesty is a poor cloak for a man of genius to wear. Discard it, Dr. Craig. It would make me very happy to believe that your work shall be for the good of humanity. This world of ours is spinning—spinning on, to disaster. We are a ship which nears the rocks, with fools at the prow and fanatics at the helm.”
“But is there no way to prevent such a disaster?” Mrs. Pardoe asked, in a voice which seemed to come from a condemned cell.
“But most certainly. There could be a committee of men of high intelligence. To serve this committee would be a group of the first scientific brains in the world—such as that of Dr. Craig.” For some reason, Camille shuddered at those words. “These would have power to enforce their decisions. If some political maniac threatens to use violence, he will be warned. If he neglects this warning—”
Professor Hoffmeyer helped himself to more fried oysters offered by Stein.
“You believe, then, there’ll be another war?” grumbled Frobisher.
“How, otherwise, shall enslavement to Communism be avoided—ha?”
“Unless I misunderstood you,” Dr. Pardoe interjected sandily, “your concept of good government approaches very closely to that of an intelligent Communist.”
“An intelligent Communist is an impossibility. We have only to separate the rogues from the fools. Yes, Mr. Frobisher, there is danger of another war—from the same quarter as before. Those subhumans of the German General Staff who escaped justice. Those fellows with the traditions of the stockyard and the mentalities of adding machines. Those ghouls in uniform smell blood again. The Kremlin is feeding them meat.”
“You mean,” Camille asked softly, “that the Soviet government is employing German ex-officers to prepare another war?”
The secret agent within was stirring. She wondered why this man knew.
“But of course. You are of France, and France has a long memory. Very well. Let France remember. If it shall come another war, those ignorant buffoons will destroy all, including themselves. This would not matter much if selected communities could be immunized. For almost complete destruction of human life on the planet is now a scientific possibility. It is also desirable. But indiscriminate slaughter—no. The new race must start better equipped than Noah.”
When, luncheon over, the professor refused coffee and prepared to take his leave, there was no one present upon whom, in one way or another, he had failed to impress his singular personality. Stella Frobisher flutteringly begged a brief consultation before he left, and was granted one. Mrs. Pardoe made an appointment for the following Friday.
“There is nothing the matter with you,” Professor Hoffmeyer told her, “which your husband cannot cure. But come if you so want. You all eat too much. See to it that you permit not here prohibitions, rationings, coupons. Communism knows no boxing laws. Communism strikes at the stomach first. To this you could never stand up.”
A car, in charge of a saturnine chauffeur who had declined to lunch in the kitchen, declined a drink, and spent his leisure wandering about the property, awaited him. As the professor was driven away, drops of rain began to patter on the terrace.
* * *
Night crept unnoticed upon Falling Waters.
Rain descended steadily, and a slight, easterly wind stole, eerie, through the trees. Stella did not merely ask, she extended an invitation to Dr. and Mrs. Pardoe to remain to dinner. But Mrs. Pardoe, already enveloped in a cloak like a velvet pall, reminded her husband that a patient was expected at eight-thirty. Stella saw them off.
“Oh, I’m so nervous. It’s getting so dark. I shan’t feel really safe until everything is bolted and barred…”
Coming out of her room, later, having changed to a dinner frock so simple that it must have been made in Paris, Camille almost ran into Sam on the corridor.
“Gee, Miss Navarre! You look like something wonderful!”
“That’s very sweet of you, Sam! I had a dreadful shock—yes, truly—when you were discovered today.”
“Sure. Shock to me! Ham performance. Must try to make up for it.”
“Sam—you don’t mind if I still call you Sam?”
“Love it. Sounds better your way.”
“Now I know what you are really doing here, I can talk to you—well, sensibly. Dr. Craig thinks, and so, I know, does Sir Denis, that we haven’t only to deal with this dreadful Fu-Manchu.” She paused for a moment after speaking the name. “That there is a Soviet agent watching us, too. Have you any ideas about him?”
Sam nodded. He had given up chewing and abandoned his spectacles. Presumably they had been part of a disguise.
“Working on it right now—and I think we’re getting some place.”
“Oh! I’m so glad.”
“Sure. I got a nose for foreign agents. Smell ’em a mile off.”
“Really?”
“Sure.” He grinned happily. “You look a hundred per cent Caesar. Excuse my bad spelling!”
He went off along the corridor.
When Camille came down, she found Michael Frobisher busily bolting and barring the French windows.
“Mrs. F.’s got the jumps tonight,” he explained. “I have to fix all the catches myself, to reassure her. Just making the rounds.” He gave Camille an admiring smile. “Hope all today’s hokum, and the alarm back at the office, hasn’t upset you?”
“It’s kind of you, Mr. Frobisher, but although, naturally, I am disturbed about it, all the same I am most happy to be here.”
“Good girl. Craig has finished his job, and the new diagram and notes are in my safe. That’s where they stay. They are the property of Huston Electric, and the property of nobody else!”
As he went out, Morris Craig came downstairs, slim and boyish in his tuxedo. Without a word, he took Camille in his arms.
“Darling! I thought we were never going to be alone again!” When he released her:
“Are you sure, Morris?” she whispered.
“Sure? Sure of what?”
“Sure that you really meant all you said last night?”
He answered her silently, and at great length.
“Camille! I only wish—”
“Yes?”
“Camille”—he lingered over her name—“I adore you… But I wish you weren’t going to stay here tonight—”<
br />
“What? Whatever do you mean?”
She leaned back from him. Her eyes suddenly seemed to become a darker shade of blue.
“I mean that, at last, it has dawned on this defective brain of mine that I have done something which may upset the world again—that other people know about it—that almost anything may happen.”
“But Morris—surely nothing can happen here?”
“Can’t it? Why is old Frobisher in such a panic? Why all the dogs and the burglar alarms? The devil of it is, we don’t know our enemies. There might be a Russian spy hiding but there in the shrubbery. There might be a British agent—not that that would bother me—somewhere in this very house.”
“Yes,” said Camille quietly. “I suppose there might be.”
“Above all,” Craig went on presently, “there’s this really frightful menace—Dr. Fu-Manchu. Smith is more scared of him than of all the others rolled into a bundle.”
“So am I… Listen for a moment, Morris. Sometimes I think I have seen him in a dream. Oh! It sounds ridiculous, and I can’t quite explain what I mean. But I have a vague impression of a tall, gaunt figure in a yellow robe, with most wonderful hands, long fingernails, and”—she paused momentarily—“most dreadful eyes. Something, today, brought the impression back to my mind—just as Professor Hoffmeyer came in.”
Craig gently stroked her hair. He knew it would be a penal offense to disarrange it.
“Don’t get jumpy again, darling. I gather that, in one of your fey moods, you wandered the highways and byways of Manhattan last night instead of keeping your date with the professor. But, certainly, the old lad is a rather alarming personality—although he beats no resemblance to your yellow-robed mandarin. I’m sorry for him, and, of course, his Germanic discourse simply sparkles. But—”
“I didn’t mean that the professor reminded me of the man I had dreamed about. It was—something different.”
“Whatever it was, forget it.” He held her very close; he whispered in her ear: “Camille! The moment we get back to New York, will you marry me?”
But Camille shrank away. The dark eyes looked startled—almost panic-stricken.
“Morris! Morris! No! No!”
He dropped his arms, stared at her. He felt that he had grown pale.
“No? Do you mean it?”
“I mean—oh, Morris, I don’t quite know what I mean! Perhaps—that you startled me.”
“How did I startle you?” he asked on a level, calm note.
“You—know so little about me.”
“I know enough to know I love you.”
“I should be very, very happy for us to go on—as we are. But, marriage—”
“What’s wrong with marriage?”
Camille turned aside. A shaded lamp transformed her hair, where it swept down over her neck, to a torrent of molten copper. Craig put his hands hesitantly on her shoulders, and turned her about. He looked steadily into her eyes.
“Camille—you’re not trying to tell me, by any chance, that you’re married already?”
A door banged upstairs. Stella’s voice was heard.
“And do make quite sure, Stein—quite sure—that there isn’t a window open.” She appeared at the stairhead. “Even with everything locked, and the dogs loose, I know I shall never sleep a wink.” She saw Camille below. “Shall you, dear?”
“I’m not at all sure that I shall,” Camille smiled. “Except that I can see no reason why anything should happen tonight more than any other.”
“I must really get Stein to draw those curtains,” Stella declared. “I keep on imagining eyes looking in out of the darkness. And now, for goodness’ sake, let’s all have a drink.”
Stein had wheeled in trays of refreshments some time earlier, but had been called away by Mrs. Frobisher in order to bolt a trap leading to a loft over the house.
“May I help?” Camille asked.
And presently they were surrounding the mobile buffet. Michael Frobisher joined them.
“If you take my advice, my dear,” he said to Stella, “you and Miss Navarre will have a good stiff one each after dinner, and turn in early. Think no more about it. Agree with me, Craig?”
Morris Craig stopped looking at Camille long enough to reply:
“Quite. But, if I may say so, somebody should more or less hang about to keep an eye on this thing.” He indicated the cabinet above the bookcase. “I have looked over the works and pass same as okay. By the way, Mrs. Frobisher, will the wolf pack be at large tonight?”
“Of course!” Stella assured him. “I have given explicit instructions to the man. Such a gentle character.”
“I was wondering,” Craig went on, “if the dogs mightn’t set the gadget going?”
“Oh, I don’t think so. They have a track of their own. Right around the place—if you see what I mean.”
“Yes. I have observed the same—from without. Certain hounds of threatening aspect were roaming around within.”
“If you remember the layout I showed you,” said Frobisher, “showed Nayland Smith, too, there are three gates which would register here”—he crossed and rested a finger on the plan—“if they were opened. Whoever opened one would have Mrs. F.’s dogs on him, I guess. But the dogs can’t reach the house.”
“Most blessed dispensation,” Craig murmured to him. “Although I confess the brutes are rather a comfort, with Dr. Fu-Manchu and a set of thugs, plus the Soviet agent assisted by sundry moujiks and other comrades, lined up outside.”
Camille was watching Craig in an almost pleading way. Frobisher took his arm, and growled in his ear:
“We’ll split up into watches when the women turn in. As you say, somebody ought to be on the lookout right along tonight. Stein can stand watch until twelve. Then I’ll take over—”
“No,” said Craig firmly, and caught Camille’s glance. “I am a party to this disorder, and I’m going to do my bit. After all, I’m accustomed to late hours…”
* * *
Manhattan danced on, perhaps a slightly more hectic dance, for this was Saturday night, and Saturday night is Broadway night. Rain, although still falling farther north, had ceased in the city. But a tent of sepia cloud stretched over New York, so that eternal fires, burning before the altars of those gods whose temples line the Street of a Million Lights, cast their glow up onto this sepia canopy; and it was cast down again, as if rejected.
Two bored police officers smoked and played craps in Morris Craig’s office on top of the Huston Building. And behind the steel door, in an atmosphere vibrant with repressed energy, Martin Shaw worked calmly and skillfully, to complete the instalment known as a transmuter. The gods of Broadway were false gods. The god enshrined behind the steel door was a god of power.
But the two policemen went on playing craps.
Chinatown was busy, also. Country innocents gaped at the Chinese façades, the Chinese signs, and felt that they were seeing sights worth coming to Babylon-on-Hudson to see. Town innocents, impressing their girl friends, ate Chinese food in the restaurants and pretended to know as much about it as Walter Winchell knows about everything.
Mai Cha had just ceased to sing in an apartment near the shop of Huan Tsung. Lao Tai had put his last message in the little cupboard.
And upstairs, Huan Tsung reclined against cushions, his eyes closed. The head of Dr. Fu-Manchu looked out from the crystal. It might have reminded an Egyptologist of the majestic, embalmed head of Seti, that Pharaoh whose body lies in a Cairo museum.
“To destroy the plant alone is useless, Huan Tsung,” came in coldly sibilant words. “I have dealt with this. Otherwise, I should not have risked a personal visit to the laboratory. I sprayed the essential elements with FSO5. The action is deferred. No—it is necessary also to destroy the inventor—or to transfer him to other employment.”
“This may be difficult,” murmured Huan Tsung. “Time is the enemy of human perfection, Excellency.”
“We shall see. Craig’s original drawings w
ere obtained for me by Mrs. Frobisher. Only two blueprints of the transmuter exist. One is in the hands of the chief technician, who is working from it. The other is with a complete set in possession of Michael Frobisher. Drawings of the valves alone remain to be accounted for.”
“But Excellency informs me that they, too, are finished.”
“They are finished. Give me the latest reports. I will then give you final instructions.”
“I shall summarize. Excellency’s personal possessions have been removed from the Woolton Building as ordered. They are already shipped. Raymond Harkness has posted federal agents at all points covering Falling Waters—except one; the path through the woods from the highway remains open. Lao Tai will proceed to this point at the time selected. But the dogs—”
“I have provided for the dogs. Continue.”
“Provision noted. It is believed but not confirmed that the Kremlin, recognizing the actual plant no longer to be available, hopes to obtain the set of blueprints and the final drawings from Falling Waters before it is too late.”
“Upon what does this ‘belief’ rest?”
“Upon the fact, Excellency, that Sokolov has ordered his car to be ready at ten o’clock tonight—and is taking a bodyguard.”
So long a silence followed that Huan Tsung raised his wrinkled lids and looked at the crystal.
The eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu were filmed over, a phenomenon with which Huan Tsung was familiar. The brilliant brain encased in that high, massive skull, was concentrated on a problem. When the film cleared, a decision would have been made. And, as he watched, in a flash the long, narrow eyes became emerald-bright.
“Use the Russian party as a diversion, Huan Tsung. No contact must be made. Koenig has acquainted himself with the zones controlled by the alarm system, and M’goyna is already placed and fully instructed. Mrs. Frobisher has her instructions, also. Use all your resources. This is an emergency. At any moment, now, Nayland Smith will have the evidence he is seeking. Win or lose, I must leave New York before daybreak. Proceed…”
