The Shadow of Fu-Manchu E-Book

Sax Rohmer

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 311

Beschreibung

Dr Morris Craig's transmuter weapon is so effective that whoever holds it wields power over every nation in the world, and so Dr. Fu-Manchu is desperate to gain control of it. Helped - or hindered - by his startlingly beautiful secretary, Camille Navarre, and Sir Denis Nayland Smith, Dr. Craig must prevent his weapon from falling into the hands of the Devil Doctor...

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Praise for The Shadows of Fu-Manchu

Also by Sax Rohmer

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Appreciating Dr. Fu-Manchu

Also Available from Titan Books

“Insidious fun from out of the past. Evil as always, Fu-Manchu reviles as well as thrills us.”—Joe Lansdale, recipient of the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award

“Without Fu-Manchu we wouldn’t have Dr. No, Doctor Doom or Dr. Evil. Sax Rohmer created the first truly great evil mastermind. Devious, inventive, complex, and fascinating. These novels inspired a century of great thrillers!”—Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of Assassin’s Code and Patient Zero

“The true king of the pulp mystery is Sax Rohmer—and the shining ruby in his crown is without a doubt his Fu-Manchu stories.”—James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author of The Devil Colony

“Fu-Manchu remains the definitive diabolical mastermind of the 20th century. Though the arch-villain is ‘the Yellow Peril incarnate,’ Rohmer shows an interest in other cultures and allows his protagonist a complex set of motivations and a code of honor which often make him seem a better man than his Western antagonists. At their best, these books are very superior pulp fiction… at their worst, they’re still gruesomely readable.” —Kim Newman, award-winning author of Anno Dracula

“Sax Rohmer is one of the great thriller writers of all time! Rohmer created in Fu-Manchu the model for the super-villains of James Bond, and his hero Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie are worthy stand-ins for Holmes and Watson… though Fu-Manchu makes Professor Moriarty seem an under-achiever.”—Max Allan Collins, New York Times bestselling author of The Road to Perdition

“I grew up reading Sax Rohmer’s Fu-Manchu novels, in cheap paperback editions with appropriately lurid covers. They completely entranced me with their vision of a world constantly simmering with intrigue and wildly overheated ambitions. Even without all the exotic detail supplied by Rohmer’s imagination, I knew full well that world wasn’t the same as the one I lived in… For that alone, I’m grateful for all the hours I spent chasing around with Nayland Smith and his stalwart associates, though really my heart was always on their intimidating opponent’s side.” —K. W. Jeter, acclaimed author of Infernal Devices

“A sterling example of the classic adventure story, full of excitement and intrigue. Fu-Manchu is up there with Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, and Zorro—or more precisely with Professor Moriarty, Captain Nemo, Darth Vader, and Lex Luthor—in the imaginations of generations of readers and moviegoers.”—Charles Ardai, award-winning novelist and founder of Hard Case Crime

“I love Fu-Manchu, the way you can only love the really GREAT villains. Though I read these books years ago he is still with me, living somewhere deep down in my guts, between Professor Moriarty and Dracula, plotting some wonderfully hideous revenge against an unsuspecting mankind.” —Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy

“Fu-Manchu is one of the great villains in pop culture history, insidious and brilliant. Discover him if you dare!”—Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling co-author of Baltimore: The Plague Ships

“Exquisitely detailed… At times, it’s like reading a stage play… [Sax Rohmer] is a colorful storyteller. It was quite easy to be reading away and suddenly realize that I’d been reading for an hour or more without even noticing. It’s like being taken back to the cold and fog of London streets.”—Entertainment Affairs

“Acknowledged classics of pulp fiction… the bottom line is Fu-Manchu, despite all the huffing and puffing about sinister Oriental wiles and so on, always comes off as the coolest, baddest dude on the block. Today’s supergenius villains owe a huge debt to Sax Rohmer and his fiendish creation.”—Comic Book Resources

“Undeniably entertaining and fun to read… It’s pure pulp entertainment—awesome, and hilarious and wrong. Read it.” —Shadowlocked

“The perfect read to get your adrenalin going and root for the good guys to conquer a menace that is almost supremely evil. This is a wild ride read and I recommend it highly.”—Vic’s Media Room

THE COMPLETE FU-MANCHU SERIES BY SAX ROHMER

Available now from Titan Books:

THE MYSTERY OF DR. FU-MANCHU

THE RETURN OF DR. FU-MANCHU

THE HAND OF FU-MANCHU

THE DAUGHTER OF FU-MANCHU

THE MASK OF FU-MANCHU

THE BRIDE OF FU-MANCHU

THE TRAIL OF FU-MANCHU

PRESIDENT FU-MANCHU

THE DRUMS OF FU-MANCHU

THE ISLAND OF FU-MANCHU

Coming soon from Titan Books:

RE-ENTER: FU-MANCHU

EMPEROR FU-MANCHU

THE WRATH OF FU-MANCHU

THE SHADOW OF FU-MANCHU

Print edition ISBN: 9780857686138

E-book edition ISBN: 9780857686794

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First published as a novel in the UK by Barrie & Jenkins, 1949

First published as a novel in the US by Doubleday, Doran, 1948

First Titan Books edition: March 2015

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

The Authors Guild and the Society of Authors assert the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Copyright © 2015 The Authors Guild and the Society of Authors

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Frontispiece illustration by C. C. Beall, from Colliers magazine, May 8, 1948. Special Thanks to Dr. Lawrence Knapp for the illustration as it appeared on “The Page of Fu Manchu,” http://njedge.net/~knapp/FuFrames.htm.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

The outline of a face materialized in the crystal. They became the features of an old Chinese. “You called me, Doctor?” The voice though distant was clear.

CHAPTER ONE

“Who’s the redhead,” snapped Nayland Smith, “lunching with that embassy attaché?”

“Which table?”

“Half-right. Where I’m looking.”

Harkness, who had been briefed by Washington to meet the dynamic visitor, was already experiencing nerve strain. Sir Denis Nayland Smith, ex-chief of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard, spoke in a Bren-gun manner, thought and moved so swiftly that his society, if stimulating, was exhausting.

Turning, when about to light a cigar, Harkness presently discovered the diplomat’s table. The grill was fashionable for lunch, and full. But he knew the attaché by sight. He turned back again, dropping a match in a tray.

“Don’t know. Never seen her before.”

“Haven’t you? I have!”

“Sorry, Sir Denis. Is she important?”

“A woman who looks like that is always important. Yes, I know her. But I haven’t quite placed her.”

Nayland Smith refilled his coffee cup, glanced reluctantly at a briar pipe which appeared to have been rescued from a blast furnace, and then put it back in his pocket. He selected a cigarette.

“You don’t think she’s a Russian?” Harkness suggested.

“I know she isn’t.”

Smith surveyed the crowded, panelled room. It buzzed like an aviary. Businessmen predominated. Deals of one sort or another hung in the smoke-laden air. Nearly all these men were talking about how to make money. And nearly all the women were talking about how to spend it.

But not the graceful girl with that glowing hair. He wondered what she was talking about. Her companion appeared to be absorbed, either in what she was saying or in the way she said it.

And while Nayland Smith studied many faces, Harkness studied Nayland Smith.

He had met him only once before, and the years had silvered his hair more than ever, but done nothing to disturb its crisp virility. The lean brown face might be a trifle more lined. It was a grim face, a face which hid a secret, until Nayland Smith smiled. His smile told the secret.

He spoke suddenly.

“Strange to reflect,” he said, “that these people, wrapped up, air tight, in their own trifling affairs, like cigarettes in cellophane, are sitting on top of a smouldering volcano.”

“You really think so?”

“I know it. Why has a certain power sent all its star agents to the United States? What are they trying to find out?”

“Secret of the atom bomb?”

“Rot! There’s no secret about it. You know that as well as I do. Once a weapon of war is given publicity, it loses its usefulness. I gain nothing by having a rock in my boxing glove if the other fellow has one too. No. It’s something else.”

“England seems to be pretty busy?”

“England has lost two cabinet ministers, mysteriously, in the past few months.” All the time Smith’s glance had been straying in the direction of a certain party, and suddenly: “Right!” he rapped. “Thought I was. Now I’m sure! This is my lucky day.”

“Sure of what?” Harkness was startled.

“Man at the next table. Our diplomatic acquaintance and his charming friend are being covered.”

Harkness craned around again…

“You mean the sallow man?”

“Sallow? He’s Burmese! They’re not all Communists, you know.”

Harkness stared at his cigar, as if seeking to concentrate. “You’re more than several steps beyond me. No doubt your information is a way ahead of mine. But, quite honestly, I don’t understand.”

Nayland Smith met the glance of Harkness’s frank hazel eyes, and nodded sympathetically.

“My fault I think aloud. Bad habit. There’s hardly time to explain, now. Look! They’re going! Have the redhead covered. Detail another man to keep the Burmese scout in sight. Report to me, here. Suite 1236.”

The auburn-haired girl was walking towards the exit. She wore a plain suit and a simple hat. Her companion followed. As Harkness retired speedily, Nayland Smith dropped something which made it necessary for him to stoop when the attaché passed near his table.

Coming out onto Forty-sixth Street, Harkness exchanged a word with a man who was talking to a hotel porter. The man nodded and moved away.

Manhattan danced on. Well-fed males returned to their offices to consider further projects for making more dollars. Females headed for the glamorous shops on New York’s Street-Called-Straight: Fifth Avenue, the great bazaar of the New World. Beauty specialists awaited them. Designers of Paris hats. Suave young ladies to display wondrous robes. Suave young gentlemen to seduce with glittering trinkets.

In certain capitals of the Old World, men and women looked, haggard-eyed, into empty shops and returned to empty larders.

Manhattan danced on.

Nayland Smith, watching a car move from the front of the hotel, closely followed by another, prayed that Manhattan’s dance might not be a danse macabre.

When presently he stepped into a black sedan parked further along the street, in charge of a chauffeur who looked like a policeman (possibly because he was one), and had been driven a few blocks:

“Have we got a tail?” Smith snapped.

“Yes, sir,” the driver reported. “Three cars behind us right now. Small delivery truck.”

“Stop at the next drugstore. I’ll check it.”

When he got out and walked into the drugstore the following truck passed, and then pulled in higher up.

Nayland Smith came out again and resumed the journey. Two more blocks passed:

“Right behind us,” the driver reported laconically.

Smith took up a phone installed in the sedan and gave brief directions. So that long before he had reached his destination the truck was still following the sedan, but two traffic police were following the truck. He had been no more than a few minutes in the deputy commissioner’s office on Centre Street before a police sergeant came in with the wanted details.

The man had been pulled up on a technical offense and invited, firmly, to produce evidence of his identity. Smith glanced over the report.

“H’m. American citizen. Born in Athens.” He looked up. “You’re checking this story that he was taking the truck to be repaired?”

“Sure. Can’t find anything wrong with it. Very powerful engine for such a light outfit.”

“Would be,” said Smith drily. “File all his contacts. He mustn’t know. You have to find out who really employs him.”

He spent a long time with the deputy commissioner, and gathered much useful data. He was in New York at the request of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and had been given almost autocratic powers by Washington. When, finally, he left, he had two names pencilled in his notebook.

They were: Michael Frobisher, and Dr. Morris Craig, of the Huston Research Laboratory.

* * *

Michael Frobisher, seated in an alcove in the library of his club, was clearly ill at ease. A big-boned, fleshy man, Frobisher had a powerful physique, with a fighting jaw, heavy brows—coal-black in contrast to nearly white hair—and deep-set eyes which seemed to act independently of what Michael Frobisher happened to be doing. There were only two other members in the library, but Frobisher’s eyes, although he was apparently reading a newspaper, moved rapidly, as his glance switched from face to face in that oddly furtive manner.

Overhanging part of the room, one of the finest of its kind in the city, was a gallery giving access to more books ranged on shelves above. A club servant appeared in the gallery, moving very quietly—and Frobisher’s glance shot upward like an anxious searchlight.

It was recalled to sea level by a voice.

“Hello, Frobisher! How’s your wife getting along?”

Frobisher’s florid face momentarily lost color. Then, looking up from where he sat in a deep, leather armchair, he saw that a third member had come in—Dr. Pardoe.

“Hello, Pardoe!” He had himself in hand again: the deep tone was normal. “Quite startled me.”

“So I saw.” Pardoe gave him a professional glance, and sat on the arm of a chair near Frobisher’s. “Been overdoing it a bit, haven’t you?”

“Oh, I don’t say that, Doctor. Certainly been kept pretty busy. Thanks for the inquiry about Stella. She’s greatly improved since she began the treatments you recommended.”

“Good.” Dr. Pardoe smiled—a dry smile: he was a sandy, dry man. “I’m not sure the professor isn’t a quack, but he seems to be successful with certain types of neuroses.”

“I assure you Stella is a hundred per cent improved.”

“H’m. You might try him yourself.”

“What are you talking about?” Frobisher growled. “There’s nothing the matter with me.”

“Isn’t there?” The medical man looked him over coolly. “There will be if you don’t watch your diet.” Pardoe was a vegetarian. “Why, your heart missed a beat when I spoke to you.”

Frobisher held himself tightly in hand. His wife’s physician always got on his nerves. But, all the same, he wasn’t standing for any nonsense.

“Let me tell you something.” His deep voice, although subdued, rumbled around the now empty library. “This isn’t nerves. It’s cold feet. An organization like the Huston Electric has got rivals. And rivals can get dangerous if they’re worsted. Someone’s tracking me around. Someone broke into Falling Waters one night last week. Went through my papers. I’ve seen the man. I’d know him again. I was followed right here to the club today. That isn’t nerves, Doctor. And it isn’t eating too much red meat!”

“Hm.” Irritating habit of Pardoe’s, that introductory cough. “I don’t dispute the fact of the burglary—”

“Thanks a lot. And let me remind you: Stella doesn’t know, and doesn’t have to know.”

“Oh, I see. Then the attempt is known only—”

“Is known to my butler, Stein, and to me. It’s not an illusion. I’m still sane, if I did have beefsteak at lunch!”

The physician raised his sandy brows.

“I don’t doubt it, Frobisher. But had it occurred to you that your later impression of being followed—not an uncommon symptom—may derive from this single, concrete fact?”

Frobisher didn’t reply, and Dr. Pardoe, who had been looking down at the carpet, now looked suddenly at Frobisher.

His gaze was fixed upward again. He was watching the gallery. He spoke in a whisper.

“Pardoe! Look where I’m looking. Is that a club member?”

Dr. Pardoe did as Frobisher requested. He saw a slight, black-clad figure in the gallery. The man had just replaced a vase on a shelf. Only the back of his head and shoulders could be seen. He moved away, his features still invisible.

“Not a member known to me, personally, Frobisher. But there are always new members, and guest members—”

But Frobisher was up, had bounded from his chair. Already, he was crossing the library.

“That’s some kind of Asiatic. I saw his face!” Regardless of the rule, Silence, he shouted. “And I’m going to have a word with him!”

Dr. Pardoe shook his head, took up a medical journal which he had dropped on the chair, and made his way out.

He was already going down the steps when Michael Frobisher faced the club secretary, who had been sent for.

“May I ask,” he growled, “since when Chinese have been admitted to membership?”

“You surprise me, Mr. Frobisher.”

The secretary, a young-old man with a bald head and a Harvard accent, could be very patriarchal.

“Do I?”

“You do. Your complaint is before me. I have a note here. If you wish it to go before the committee, merely say the word. I can only assure you that not only have we no Asiatic members, honorary or otherwise, but no visitor such as you describe has been in the club. Furthermore, Mr. Frobisher, I am assured by the assistant librarian, who was last in the library gallery, that no one has been up there since.”

Frobisher jumped to his feet.

“Get Dr. Pardoe!” he directed. “He was with me. Get Dr. Pardoe.”

But Dr. Pardoe had left the club.

* * *

The research laboratory of the Huston Electric Corporation was on the thirty-sixth, and top floor of the Huston Building. Dr. Craig’s office adjoined the laboratory proper, which he could enter up three steps leading to a steel door. This door was always kept locked.

Morris Craig, slight, clean-shaven, and very agile, a man in his early thirties, had discarded his coat, and worked in shirt-sleeves before a drawing desk. His dark-brown hair, which he wore rather long, was disposed to be rebellious, a forelock sometimes falling forward, so that brushing it back with his hand had become a mannerism.

He had just paused for this purpose, leaning away as if to get a long perspective of his work and at the same time fumbling for a packet of cigarettes, when the office door was thrown open and someone came in behind him.

So absorbed was Craig that he paid no attention at first, until the heavy breathing of whoever had come in prompted him to turn suddenly.

“Mr. Frobisher!”

Craig, who wore glasses when drawing or reading, but not otherwise, now removed them and jumped from his stool.

“It’s all right, Craig.” Frobisher raised his hand in protest “Sit down.”

“But if I may say so, you look uncommon fishy.”

His way of speech had a quality peculiarly English, and he had a tendency to drawl. Nothing in his manner suggested that Morris Craig was one of the most brilliant physicists Oxford University had ever turned out. He retrieved the elusive cigarettes and lighted one.

Michael Frobisher remained where he had dropped down, on a chair just inside the door. But he was regaining color. Now he pulled a cigar from the breast pocket of his tweed jacket.

“The blasted doctors tell me I eat too much and smoke too much,” he remarked. His voice always reminded Craig of old port. “But I wouldn’t want to live if I couldn’t do as I liked.”

“Come to that in a minute,” growled Frobisher. “First—what news of the big job?”

“Getting hot. I think the end’s in sight.”

“Fine. I want to talk to you about it.” He snipped the end of his cigar. “How’s the new secretary making out?”

“A-I. Knows all the answers. Miss Lewis was a sad loss, but Miss Navarre is a glad find.”

“Well—she’s got a Paris degree, and had two years with Professor Jennings. Suits me if she suits you.”

Craig’s boyishly youthful face lighted up.

“Suits me to nine points of decimals. Works like a pack-mule. She ought to get out of town this week-end.”

“Bring her along up to Falling Waters. Few days of fresh air do her no harm.”

“No.” Craig seemed to be hesitating. He returned to his desk. “But I shouldn’t quit this job until it’s finished.”

He resumed his glasses and studied the remarkable diagram pinned to the drawing board. He seemed to be checking certain details with a mass of symbols and figures on a large ruled sheet beside the board.

“Of course,” he murmured abstractedly, “I might easily finish at any time now.”

The wonder of the thing he was doing, a sort of awe that he, the humble student of nature’s secrets, should have been granted power to do it, claimed his mind. Here were mighty forces, hitherto no more than suspected, which controlled the world. Here, written in the indelible ink of mathematics, lay a description of the means whereby those forces might be harnessed.

He forgot Frobisher.

And Frobisher, lighting his cigar, began to pace the office floor, often glancing at the absorbed figure. Suddenly Craig turned, removing his glasses.

“Are you bothered about the cost of these experiments, Mr. Frobisher?”

Frobisher pulled up, staring.

“Cost? To hell with the cost! That’s not worrying me. I don’t know a lot about the scientific side, but I know a commercial proposition when I see one.” He dropped down into an armchair. “What I don’t know is this.” He leaned forward, his heavy brows lowered: “Why is somebody tracking me around?”

“Tracking you around?”

“That’s what I said. I’m being tailed around. I was followed to my club today. Followed here. There’s somebody watching my home up in Connecticut. Who is he? What does he want?”

Morris Craig stood up and leaned back against the desk.

Behind him a deep violet sky made a back-cloth for silhouettes of buildings higher than the Huston. Some of the windows were coming to life, forming a glittering regalia, like jewels laid on velvet.

Dusk was falling over Manhattan.

“Astoundin’ state of affairs,” Craig declared—but his smile was quite disarming. “Tell me more. Anyone you suspect?”

Frobisher shook his head. “There’s plenty to suspect if news of what’s going on up here has leaked out. Suppose you’re dead right—and I’m backing you to be—what’ll this thing mean to Huston Electric?”

“Grateful thanks of the scientific world.”

“Damn the scientific world! I’m thinking of Huston’s.”

Morris Craig, his mind wandering in immeasurable space, his spirit climbing the ladder of the stars toward higher and more remote secrets of a mysterious universe, answered vaguely.

“No idea. Can’t see at the moment how it could be usefully applied.”

“What are you talking about?” Michael Frobisher was quite his old roaring self again. “This job has cost half of a million dollars already. Are you telling me we get nothing back? Are we all bughouse around here?”

A door across the office opened, and a man came in, a short, thickset man, slightly bandy, who walked with a rolling gait as if on the deck of a ship in dirty weather. He wore overalls, spectacles, and an eye-shade. He came in without any ceremony and approached Craig. The forbidding figure of Michael Frobisher disturbed him not at all.

“Say—have you got a bit of string?” he inquired.

“I have not got a bit of string. I have a small piece of gum, or two one-cent stamps. Would they do?”

The intruder chewed thoughtfully. “Guess not. Miss Navarre’s typewriter’s jammed up in there. But I got it figured a bit of string about so long”—he illustrated—“would fix things.”

“Sorry, Sam, but l am devoid of string.”

Sam chewed awhile, and then turned away.

“Guess I’ll have to go look some other place.”

As he went out:

“Listen,” Frobisher said. “What does that moron do for his wages?”

“Sam?” Craig answered, smiling. “Oh, sort of handyman. Mostly helps Regan and Shaw in the laboratory.”

“Be a big help to anybody, I’d say. What I’m driving at is this: We have to be mighty careful about who gets in here. There’s been a bad leak. Somebody knows more than he ought to know.”

Morris Craig, slowly, was getting back to that prosaic earth on which normal, flat-footed men spend their lives. It was beginning to dawn upon him that Michael Frobisher was badly frightened.

“I can’t account for it. Shaw and Regan are beyond suspicion. So, I hope, am I. Miss Navarre came to us with the highest credentials. In any case, she could do little harm. But, of course, it’s absurd to suspect her.”

“What about the half-wit who just went out?”

“Knows nothing about the work. Apart from which, his refs are first-class, including one from the Fire Department.”

“Looks like he’d been in a fire.” Frobisher dropped a cone of cigar ash. “But facts are facts. Let me bring you up to date—but not a word to Mrs. F. You know how nervous she is. Some guy got into Falling Waters last Tuesday night and went through my papers with a fine-tooth comb!”

“You mean it?”

Craig’s drawl had vanished. His eyes were very keen.

“I mean it. Nothing was taken—not a thing. But that’s not all. I’d had more than a suspicion for quite a while someone was snooping around. So I laid for him, without saying a word to Mrs. F., and one night I saw him—”

“What did he look like?”

“Yellow.”

“Indian?”

“No, sir. Some kind of Oriental. Then, only today, right in my own club, I caught another Asiatic watching me! It’s a fact. Dr. Pardoe can confirm it. Now—what I’m asking is this: If it’s what we’re doing in the laboratory there that somebody’s after, why am I followed around, and not you?”

The answer is a discreet silence.

“Also I’d be glad to learn who this somebody is. I could think up plenty who’d like to know. But no one of ’em would be an Asiatic.”

Morris Craig brushed his hair back with his hand.

“You’re getting me jumpy, too,” he declared, although his eager, juvenile smile belied the words. “This thing wants looking into.”

“It’s going to be looked into,” Frobisher grimly assured him. “When you come up to Falling Waters you’ll see I’m standing for no more monkey tricks around there, anyway.” He stood up, glancing at the big clock over Craig’s desk. “I’m picking up Mrs. F. at the Ritz. Don’t want to be late. Expect you and Miss Navarre, lunch on Saturday.”

CHAPTER TWO

Mrs. F., as it happened, was thoroughly enjoying herself. She lay naked, face downward, on a padded couch, whilst a white-clad nurse ran an apparatus which buzzed like a giant hornet from the back of her fluffy skull right down her spine and up again. This treatment made her purr like a contented kitten. It had been preceded by a terrific mauling at the hands of another, muscular attendant, in the course of which Mrs. F. had been all but hanged, drawn, quartered, and, finally, stood on her head.

An aromatic bath completed the treatment. Mrs. F. was wrapped in a loose fleecy garment, stretched upon a couch in a small apartment decorated with Pompeian frescoes, and given an Egyptian cigarette and a cup of orange-scented China tea.

She lay there in delicious languor, when the draperies were drawn aside and Professor Hoffmeyer, the celebrated Viennese psychiatrist who conducted the establishment, entered gravely. She turned her head and smiled up at him.

“How do you do, Professor?”

He did not reply at once, but stood there looking at her. Even through the dark glasses he always wore, his regard never failed to make her shudder. But it was a pleasurable shudder.

Professor Hoffmeyer presented an impressive figure. His sufferings in Nazi prison camps had left indelible marks. The dark glasses protected eyes seared by merciless lights. The silk gloves which he never removed concealed hands from which the fingernails had been extracted. He stooped much, leaning upon a heavy ebony cane.

Now he advanced almost noiselessly and took Mrs. Frobisher’s left wrist between a delicate thumb and forefinger, slightly inclining his head.

“It is not how do I do, dear lady,” he said in Germanic gutturals, “but how do you do.”

Mrs. Frobisher looked up at the massive brow bent over her, and tried, not for the first time, to puzzle out the true color of the scanty hair which crowned it She almost decided that it was colorless; entirely neutral.

Professor Hoffmeyer stood upright or as nearly upright as she had ever seen him stand, and nodded.

“You shall come to see me on Wednesday, at three o’clock. Not for the treatment, no, but for the consultation. If some other engagement you have, cancel it. At three o’clock on Wednesday.”

He bowed slightly and went out.

Professor Hoffmeyer ruled his wealthy clientele with a rod of iron. His reputation was enormous. His fees were phenomenal.

He proceeded, now, across a luxurious central salon where other patients waited, well-preserved women, some of them apparently out of the deep-freeze. He nodded to a chosen few as he passed, and entered an office marked “Private.” Closing the door, he pulled out a drawer in the businesslike desk—and a bookcase filled with advanced medical works, largely German, swung open bodily.

The professor went into the opening. As the bookcase swung back into place, the drawer in the desk closed again.

Professor Hoffmeyer would see no more patients today.

The room in which the professor found himself was a study. But its appointments were far from conventional. It contained some very valuable old lacquer and was richly carpeted. The lighting (it had no visible windows) was subdued, and the peculiar characteristic of the place was its silence.

Open bookcases were filled with volumes, some of them bound manuscripts, many of great age and all of great rarity. They were in many languages, including Greek, Chinese, and Arabic.

Beside a cushioned divan stood an inlaid stool equipped with several opium pipes in a rack, gum, lamp, and bodkins.

A long, carved table of time-blackened oak served as a desk. A high-backed chair was set behind it. A faded volume lay open on the table, as well as a closely written manuscript. There were several other books there, and a number of curious objects difficult to identify in the dim light.

The professor approached a painted screen placed before a recess and disappeared behind it. Not a sound broke the silence of the room until he returned.

He had removed the gloves and dark glasses, and for the black coat worn by Professor Hoffmeyer had substituted a yellow house robe. The eyes which the glasses had concealed were long, narrow, and emerald-green. The uncovered hands had pointed fingernails. This gaunt, upright, Chinese ascetic was taller by inches than Professor Hoffmeyer.

And his face might have inspired a painter seeking a model for the Fallen Angel.

This not because it was so evil but because of a majestic and remorseless power which it possessed—a power which resided in the eyes. They were not the eyes of a normal man, moved by the desires, the impulses shared in some part by us all. They were the eyes of one who has shaken off those inhibitions common to humanity, who is undisturbed by either love or hate, untouched by fear, unmoved by compassion.

Few such men occur in the long history of civilization, and none who has not helped to change it.

The impassive figure crossed, with a silent, catlike step, to the long table, and became seated there.

One of the curious objects on the table sprang to life, as if touched by sudden moonlight. It was a crystal globe resting on a metal base. Dimly at first, the outlines of a face materialized in the crystal, and then grew clear. They became the features of an old Chinese, white-moustached, wrinkled, benign.

“You called me, Doctor?”

The voice, though distant, was clear. A crinkled smile played over the parchment face in the crystal.

“You have all the reports?”

The second voice was harsh, at points sibilant, but charged with imperious authority. It bore no resemblance to that of Professor Hoffmeyer.

“The last is timed six-fifteen. Shall I give you a summary?”

“Proceed, Huan Tsung. I am listening.”

And Huan Tsung, speaking in his quiet room above a shop in Pell Street, a room in which messages were received mysteriously, by day and by night, from all over Manhattan, closed his wise old eyes and opened the pages of an infallible memory.

This man whose ancestors had been cultured noblemen when most of ours were living in caves, spoke calmly across a system of communication as yet unheard of by Western science…

“Excellency will wish to know that our Burmese agent was recognized by Nayland Smith in the grillroom and followed by two F.B.I. operatives. I gave instructions that he be transferred elsewhere. He reports that he has arrived safely. His notes of the conversation at the next table are before me. They contain nothing new. Shall I relate them?”

“No. I shall interview the woman personally. Proceed.”

“Nayland Smith visited the deputy commissioner and has been alone with him more than two hours. Nature of conversation unknown. The Greek covering his movements was intercepted and questioned, but had nothing to disclose. He is clumsy, and I have had him removed.”

“You did well, Huan Tsung. Such bunglers breed danger.”

“Mai Cha, delivering Chinese vase sent by club secretary for repair, attired herself in the black garment she carries and gained a gallery above the library where Michael Frobisher talked with a medical friend. She reports that Frobisher has had sight of our agent at Falling Waters. Therefore I have transferred this agent. Mai Cha retired, successfully, with price of repairs.”

“Commend Mai Cha.”

“I have done so, Excellency. She is on headquarters duty tonight. Excellency can commend her himself.”

“The most recent movements of Frobisher, Nayland Smith, and Dr. Craig.”

“Frobisher awaits his wife at the Ritz-Carlton. Nayland Smith is covered, but no later report has reached me. Dr. Craig is in his office.”

“Frobisher has made no other contacts?”

“None, Excellency. The stream flows calmly. It is the hour for repose, when the wise man reflects.”

“Wait and watch, Huan Tsung. I must think swiftly.”

“Always I watch—and it is unavoidable that I wait until I am called away.”

Moonlight in the crystal faded out, and with it the wrinkled features of the Mandarin Huan Tsung.

Complete silence claimed the dimly lighted room. The wearer of the yellow robe remained motionless for a long time. Then, he stood up and crossed to the divan, upon which he stretched his gaunt body. He struck a silver bell which hung in a frame beside the rack of opium pipes. The bell emitted a high, sweet note.

Whilst the voice of the bell still lingered, drowsily, on the air, draperies in a narrow, arched opening were drawn aside, and a Chinese girl came in.

She wore national costume. She was very graceful, and her large, dark eyes resembled the eyes of a doe. She knelt and touched the carpet with her forehead.

“You have done well, Mai Cha. I am pleased with you.”

The girl rose, but stood, head lowered and hands clasped, before the reclining figure. A flush crept over her dusky cheeks.

“Prepare the jade pipe. I seek inspiration.”

Mai Cha began quietly to light the little lamp on the stool.

* * *

Although no report had reached old Huan Tsung, nevertheless Nayland Smith had left police headquarters.

He was fully alive to the fact that every move he had made since entering New York City had been noted, that he never stirred far without a shadow.

This did not disturb him. Nayland Smith was used to it.

But he didn’t wish his trackers to find out where he was going from Centre Street—until he had got there.

He favored, in cold weather, a fur-collared topcoat of military cut, which was almost as distinctive as his briar pipe. He had a dozen or more police officers paraded for his inspection, and selected one nearly enough of his own build, clean-shaven and brown-skinned. His name was Moreno, and he was of Italian descent.

This officer was given clear instructions, and the driver who had brought Nayland Smith to headquarters received his orders, also.