The Shadow of Fu-Manchu Page 4

  He replaced the mouthpiece of a long-stemmed pipe between his wrinkled lips.

  On a low-set red lacquer stool beside the divan was a crystal globe, similar in appearance to that upon the long, narrow table in the study adjoining Professor Hoffmeyer’s office.

  Nothing occurred for some time. Huan Tsung smoked contentedly, reflection from the brazier lending a demoniac quality to his benign features.

  Then the crystal globe came to life, like a minor moon emerging from a cloud. Within it materialized a gaunt, wonderful face, the brow of a philosopher, green, fanatical eyes in which slumbered the fires of an imperious will.

  Below, in the shop, but inaudible in the silk-walled room above, a phone buzzed. The patient writer laid his brush aside, took up the instrument, and listened. He replaced it, scribbled a few pencilled lines, put the paper in the cupboard, and pressed the button.

  Huan Tsung, with a movement of his hand, removed the message. He glanced at it—and dropped the sheet into the brazier. The face in the globe had fully materialized. Compelling eyes looked into his own. Huan Tsung spoke.

  “You called me, Doctor?”

  “No doubt you have later reports.”

  “The last one, Excellency, just to hand, is timed 7.26 p.m. Nayland Smith left Centre Street at seven twenty-three. Our agent, following, carried out the operation successfully.”

  “Successfully!” A note of anger became audible in the sibilant tones. “I may misunderstand you. What method was used?”

  “B.W. 63, of which I have a little left, and the feathered darts. I instructed Sha Mu, who is expert, and he succeeded at the second attempt. He passed the police car undetected and retired in safety. Nayland Smith was taken, without being removed from the car, to the Rockefeller Institute.”

  Huan Tsung’s eyes were closed. His features wore a mask of complacency. There was a brief silence.

  “Open your eyes!” Huan Tsung did so, and shrank. “They think Professor Lowe may save him. They are wrong. Your action was ill considered. Await instructions to establish contact.”

  “Excellency’s order noted.”

  “Summarize any other reports.”

  “There are few of importance. The Emir Omar Khan died in Teheran this morning.”

  “That is well. Nayland Smith’s visit to Teheran was wasted. Instruct Teheran.”

  “Excellency’s order noted. There is no later report from Moscow and none from London.”

  Silence fell. The green eyes in the crystal mirror grew clouded, filmed over in an almost pathological way. The cloud passed. They blazed again like emeralds.

  “You have destroyed that which might have been of use to us. Furthermore, you have aroused a nest of wasps. Our task was hard enough. You make it harder. A disappearance—yes. I had planned one. But this clumsy assassination—”

  “I thought I had done well.”

  “A legitimate thought is the child of wisdom and experience. Thoughts, like children, may be bastards.”

  Light faded from the crystal. Old Huan Tsung smoked, considering the problem of human fallibility.

  * * *

  “This is stupendous!” Nayland Smith whispered.

  With Morris Craig, he stood under a dome which occupied one end of the Huston laboratory. It was opaque but contained four small openings. Set in it, rather as in an observatory, was an instrument closely resembling a huge telescope, except that it appeared to be composed of some dull black metal and had no lens.

  Through the four openings, Nayland Smith could see the stars.

  Like Craig, he wore green-tinted goggles.

  That part of the instrument where, in a real telescope, the eye-piece would be, rested directly over a solid table topped with a six-inch-thick sheet of a grey mineral substance. A massive portcullis of the same material enclosed the whole. It had just been raised. An acrid smell filled the air.

  “Some of the Manhattan rock below us is radioactive,” Craig had explained. “So, in a certain degree, are the buildings. Until I found that out, I got no results.”

  Complex machinery mounted on a concrete platform, machinery which emitted a sort of radiance and created vibrations which seemed to penetrate one’s spine, had been disconnected by Regan from its powerful motors.

  In a dazzling, crackling flash, Nayland Smith had seen a lump of solid steel not melt, but disperse, disintegrate, vanish! A pinch of greyish powder alone remained.

  “Keep the goggles on for a minute,” said Craig. “Of course, you understand that this is merely a model plant. I might explain that the final problem, which I think I have solved, is the transmuter.”

  “Nice word,” snapped Smith. “What does it mean?”

  “Well—it’s more than somewhat difficult to define. Sort of ring-a-ring of neutrons, pocket full of plutrons. It’s a method of controlling and directing the enormous power generated here.”

  Nayland Smith was silent for a moment He was dazed by the thing he had seen, appalled by its implications.

  “If I understand you, Craig,” he said rapidly, “this device enables you to tap the great belt of ultraviolet rays which, you tell me, encloses the earth’s atmosphere a hundred miles above the ionosphere—whatever that is.”

  “Roughly speaking—yes. The term, ultraviolet, is merely one of convenience. Like marmalade for a preparation containing no oranges.”

  “So far, so good. Now tell me—when your transmuter is completed, what can you do with this thing?”

  “Well”—Craig removed his goggles and brushed his hair back—“I could probably prevent any kind of projectile, or plane, from entering the earth’s atmosphere over a controlled area. That is, if I could direct my power upward and outward.”

  “Neutralizing the potential of atomic warfare?”

  “I suppose it would.”

  “What about directed downward and inward?” rapped Smith.

  “Well”—Craig smiled modestly—“that’s all I can do at the moment. And you have seen one result.”

  Nayland Smith snatched the goggles from his eyes.

  “Do you realize what this means?”

  “Clearly. What?”

  “It means that you’re a focus of interest for God knows how many trained agents. I know now why New York has become a hotbed of spies. You don’t appreciate your own danger.”

  Morris Craig began to feel bewildered.

  “Do try to be lucid, Smith. What danger? Why should I be in danger?”

  Nayland Smith’s expression grew almost savage. “Was I in danger today? Then tell me what became of Dr. Sven Helsen—inventor of the Helsen lamp?”

  “That’s easy. I don’t know.”

  “And of Professor Chiozza, in his stratoplane, in which he went up to pass out of the earth’s atmosphere?”

  “Probably passed out of same—and stayed out.”

  “Not a bit of it. Dr. Fu-Manchu destroys obstacles as we destroy flies. But he collects specialized brains as some men collect rare postage stamps. How do you get in and out of this place at night when the corporation offices are closed?”

  “By special elevator from the thirty-second. There’s a private door on the street, used by Mr. Frobisher, and a small elevator to his office on the thirty-second. Research staff have master keys. All secure?”

  “From ordinary intruders. But this thing is a hundred times bigger than I even suspected. If ever a man played with fire without knowing it, you are that man. Russia, I know, has an agent here.”

  “Present the moujik. I yearn to greet this comrade.”

  “I can’t. I haven’t spotted him yet. But I have reason to believe our own land of hope and glory is onto you as well.”

  Craig, in the act of opening the laboratory door, paused. He turned slowly.

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “I mean that London can’t afford to let this thing fall into the hands of Moscow—nor can Washington. And none of ’em would like Dr. Fu-Manchu to get it.”

  “Dr. Fu-Manchu? I
imagined it to be a mere name to frighten children. If a real person, I thought he died long ago.”

  “You were wrong, Craig. He is here—in New York! He is like the phoenix. He arises from his own ashes.”

  A sense of unreality, not unmixed with foreboding, touched Morris Craig. He visualized vividly the fate of the man mistaken for Nayland Smith. But when he spoke, it was with deliberate flippancy.

  “Describe this cremated character, so that if I meet him I can cut him dead.”

  But Nayland Smith shook his head impatiently.

  “I pray you never do meet him, Craig.”

  * * *

  Camille Navarre, seated in her room, had just put a call through. She watched the closed door all the time she was speaking.

  “Yes… Nine-nine here… It has been impossible to call you before. Listen, please. I may have to hang up suddenly. Sir Denis Nayland Smith is in the laboratory. What are my instructions?”

  She listened awhile, anxiously watching the door.

  “I understand… the design for the Transmuter is practically completed… Of course… I know the urgency… But it is terribly intricate… No—I have quite failed to identify the agent.”

  For some moments she listened again, tensely.

  “Sir Denis must have told Dr. Craig… I heard the name Fu-Manchu spoken here not an hour ago… Yes. But this is important: I am to go to Falling Waters for the week-end. What are my instructions?”

  The door opened suddenly, and Sam came lurching in. Camille’s face betrayed not the slightest change of expression. But she altered her tone.

  “Thanks, dear,” she said lightly. “I must hang up now. It was sweet of you to call me.”

  She replaced the receiver and smiled up at Sam.

  “Happen to have a pair o’ nail scissors, lady?” Sam inquired.

  “Not with me, I’m afraid. What do you want them for?”

  “Stubbed my toe back there, and broke the nail. See how I’m limpin’?”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.” Camille’s caressing voice conveyed real sympathy. “But I think there are some sharp scissors in Dr. Craig’s desk. They might do.”

  “Sure. Let’s go look.”

  They crossed the empty office outside, now largely claimed by shadows except where the desk lights dispersed them. Camille discovered the scissors, which Sam examined without enthusiasm but finally carried away and promised to return.

  Camille lingered until the door had closed behind him, placing two newly typed letters on the desk. Then she took off her glasses and laid them beside the letters. Her ears alert for any warning sound from the laboratory, she bent over the diagram pinned to the board. She made rapid, pencilled notes, glancing down at them and back at the diagram.

  She was about to add something more, when that familiar click of a lock warned her that someone was about to come out of the laboratory. Closing her notebook, she walked quickly back to her room.

  Her door closed just as Nayland Smith and Craig came down the three steps.

  “Does it begin to dawn on your mind, Craig, why the intelligence services of all the great powers are keenly interested in you?”

  Morris Craig nodded.

  “Which is bad enough,” he said. “But the devil who tried to murder you today is a bigger danger than any.”

  “My dear Craig, he didn’t try to murder me. If the man who did had been caught, he would never have heard of Dr. Fu-Manchu.”

  “You mean he’d have said so?”

  “I mean it would be true. Imagine a linguist who speaks any of the civilized languages, and a score of dialects, with perfect ease; an adept in many sciences; one with the brains of three men of genius. Such a master doesn’t risk his neck in the hands of underlings. No. We have to deal with a detached intellect, with a personality scarcely human.”

  Nayland Smith fell silent—and Craig knew that he was thinking about Moreno, the man who had suffered in his place.

  “Suppose, Smith,” he said, “you give your problems a rest for a while and dine with me tonight?”

  “I shall be glad, Craig. Let it be at my hotel. Join me there in, say, an hour from now. But let me point out it isn’t my problem. It’s yours! When you leave, get the man, Sam, to have a taxi waiting—and keep him with you. I take it he hasn’t gone?”

  “No. He’s somewhere about. We’re night birds here. But what good is Sam?”

  “He’s a witness. You’re safe provided you’re not alone.”

  “Safe from what?”

  “Abduction! Being smuggled out by the mysterious subway which has swallowed up other men of use to Fu-Manchu.”

  “Where do they go? What use can he have for them?”

  “I don’t know where they go,” rapped Nayland Smith, “but I suspect. As for their use—the use that the ant has for the aphides. Except that Dr. Fu-Manchu milks their brains.” Unnoticed by either, the door of Camille’s room had been slowly and silently opening for some time.

  “You’re beginning to get me really jumpy, Smith. You don’t intend to go out alone?”

  Nayland Smith shook his head grimly, putting on the topcoat which had brought disaster to poor Moreno.

  “I have a bodyguard waiting below—a thing I never dreamed I’d stoop to! But Dr. Fu-Manchu doesn’t want my brains. He wants my life!”

  “For heaven’s sake, be careful, Smith. The elevator man goes off at seven o’clock. I’ll see you down to the street.”

  “Save yourself the trouble. You have work to do. I know the way. Lend me your master key. Whoever stays here on duty can do the same for you. And remember—stick by Sam until you get to my hotel.”

  The door of Camille’s room began to close.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  And that night Manhattan danced on, merrily.

  Restaurants were crowded with diners, later to proceed to equally crowded theatres, dance halls, bars. Broadway, a fantasy invented long ago by H.G. Wells, but one he never expected to come true, roared and glittered and threw up to the skies an angry glare visible for miles—as of Rome burning.

  Whilst on top of a building taller than the towers of those early seekers, the priests of Bel, a modern wizard from Merton College, Oxford, trapped and sought to tame the savage powers which hold our tiny world in thrall. His spells were mathematical formulae, his magic circle rested on steel and concrete. Absorbed in contemplation of the purely scientific facets of his task, only now did it begin to creep upon his consciousness—an evil phantom, chilling, terrifying—that under his hand lay means whereby the city of New York might be reduced to “one with Nineveh and Tyre.”

  “But directed downward and inward?” Nayland Smith had asked. Morris Craig realized, in this moment of cold lucidity, that directed downward and outward, the secret plant so lovingly and secretly assembled in the Huston laboratory might well obliterate, utterly, a great part of Manhattan.

  Manhattan danced on.

  Craig studied his nearly finished diagram with new doubt—almost with distaste. In the blind race for domination, many governments, including, according to Nayland Smith, that of Great Britain, watched every step of his experiments. And Dr. Fu-Manchu was watching.

  The Huston Electric Corporation was not to be left in undisputed possession of this new source of power.

  Assuming that these unknown watchers failed to solve the secret, and that Washington didn’t intervene, what did Michael Frobisher intend to do with it?

  For that matter, what did he, Morris Craig, intend to do with it?

  He had to admit to himself that he had never, from the moment of inspiration which had led to these results right up to this present hour, given a thought to possible applications of the monstrous force he had harnessed.

  Brushing back that obstinate forelock, he dismissed these ideas which were non-productive, merely disturbing, and sat down to read two letters which Camille Navarre had left to be signed. He possessed the capacity, indispensable to success in research, of banishing any train of thought not d
irectly concerned with the problem before him.

  But, even as he picked up the typed pages, another diversion intruded.

  A pair of black-rimmed glasses lay on the desk. He knew they were Camille’s, and he was surprised that she had not missed them.

  He had often wondered what defect marred those beautiful eyes, and so he removed his own glasses and put hers on. Craig’s sight was good, and he aided it during prolonged work merely to combat a slight astigmatism of the left eye. His lenses magnified only very slightly.

  But—Camille’s didn’t magnify at all!

  He satisfied himself that they were, in fact, nothing but plain glass, before laying them down.

  Having signed the letters, he pressed a button.

  Camille entered composedly and crossed to the desk.

  “It was so stupid of me, Dr. Craig,” she said, “but I must have left my glasses here when I brought the letters in.”

  Craig looked up at her. Yes, she had glorious eyes. He thought they were very deep blue, but they seemed to change in sympathy with her thoughts or emotions. Their evasive color reminded him of the Mediterranean on a day when high clouds scudded across the sky.

  She met his glance for a moment and then turned aside, taking up the typed pages and the black-rimmed glasses.

  “That last cylinder was rather scratchy, and there are one or two words I’m uncertain about.”

  But Craig continued to look at her.

  “Why wear those things at all?” he inquired. “You wouldn’t miss ’em.”

  “What do you mean, Dr. Craig?”

  “Well—they’re plain glass, aren’t they? Why wear two bits of windowpane—in such perfectly lovely optics?”

  Camille hesitated. She had not been prepared for his making this discovery, and her heart was beating very fast.

  “Really, I suppose it must seem strange. I know they don’t magnify. But, somehow, they help me to concentrate.”

  “Avoid concentration,” Craig advised earnestly. “I greatly prefer you when you’re relaxin’. I have looked over the letter—”