President Fu Manchu

In this idea he thought he saw a solution of the mental confusion in his mind. He was fascinated by the darkly beautiful face framed in the white nurse’s cap. Vaguely, he knew that he had seen the nurse before. He moved slowly, and found to his delight that there seemed to be nothing physically wrong with him. Then he spoke:

“Nurse——” his voice was full, authoritative; he recognized that in brain and body he was unimpaired by whatever had happened—”this is very bewildering. Please tell me where I am.”

The nurse stood up and walked to the bed: she was very slender, her movements were graceful.

“You are in the Park House Clinic, Dr. Prescott, and I am happy to say entirely your old self again.”

He watched her full lips, sensitive with sympathy.

“I collapsed during the debate?”

She shook her head smilingly.

“What a strange idea, Doctor. But I can understand that that would be upon your mind. Surely you remember walking out from Weaver’s Farm, your cousin’s home? There was snow on the ground, and you slipped and fell; you were unconscious for a long time. They brought you here. You are under the care of Dr. Sigmund. But all’s well, you see.”

“I feel as well as I ever did in my life.”

“You are as well.”

She sat down beside the bed and rested a cool hand on his forehead. Her dark eyes when she bent towards him he thought extraordinarily beautiful.

And now Orwin Prescott sat up. There was vigour in his movements.

“Still I don’t understand. I assure you I recall whole passages of the debate at Carnegie Hall! I can remember Bragg’s triumph, my own ineptitude, my inability to counter his crude thrusts. . .”

“You were dreaming, Doctor; naturally the debate has been on your mind. Don’t overtire yourself.”

Gently she compelled him to lie down again.

“Then what really occurred?” he challenged.

The nurse smiled again soothingly.

“Nothing has occurred yet: except that we have got you in splendid form for the debate to-night.”

“What!”

“The debate at Carnegie Hall takes place tonight, and after a talk with your secretary, Mr. Norbert, who is waiting outside, I am quite sure you will be ready for it.”

Orwin Prescott stared at the speaker fixedly. A new, a dreadful idea, had presented itself to him, and:

“Do you assure me,” he said—”I beg you will be frank—that the debate has not taken place?”

“I give you my word,” she answered, meeting his glance with absolute candour. “There is no mystery about it all except that you have had a vivid dream of the thing upon which your brain has been centred for so long.”

“Then I have been here——?”

“Ever since the accident, Doctor.” She stood up, crossed, and pressed a bell. “I am sending for Mr. Norbert,” she explained. “He is naturally anxious to see you.”

But whole phases of the debate seemed to ring in Prescott’s ears! He saw himself, he saw Bragg, he saw the vast audience as though a talking picture were being performed inside his brain!

The door opened, and Norbert came in; dark, perfectly groomed. The neat black moustache suggested a British army officer. He came forward with outstretched hand.

“Dr. Prescott!” he exclaimed, “this is fine.” He turned to the nurse. “Nurse Arlen, I must congratulate you. Dr. Sigmund, I know, is delighted.”

“Perhaps, Norbert,” said Prescott, “now that you are here we can get this straight. There are many points which are quite dark to me. It is all but incredible that I could have lain here——”

“Forget all that, Doctor,” Norbert urged, “for the moment. I am told that you are fit to talk shop, and so there is one thing upon which to concentrate—to-night’s debate.”

“It really is to-night?”

“I understand your bewilderment—but it really is to-night. Imagine our anxiety! It means the biggest check in Bragg’s headlong career to the White House. I am going to refresh your memory with all our notes up to the date of the accident at Weaver’s Farm. I had left you, you recall, to go to Washington. I have added some later points. Do you feel up to business?”

He turned to the nurse. “Nurse Arlen, you are sure it will not tire him?”

“Dr. Sigmund is confident that it will complete his cure.”

Orwin Prescott’s glance lingered on the beautiful dark face. Then, again sitting up, he turned to Maurice Norbert. He was conscious of growing enthusiasm, of an intense ardour for his great task.

“Perhaps one day I shall understand,” he said, “but at the moment——”

Norbert opened his portfolio.

In a small, square, stone-faced room deep in the Chinese Catacombs, old Sam Pak crouched upon a settee placed against a wall. One would have thought, watching the bent motionless figure, that it was that of an embalmed Chinaman. There was little furniture in the room: a long narrow table, with a chair set behind it; upon the table appointments suggesting a medical consultant; upon the floor, two rugs. The arched doorway was closed by scarlet tapestry drapings.

Now these were drawn aside. A tall figure entered, a man who wore a black overcoat with heavy astrakhan collar, and an astrakhan cap upon his head; also, he wore spectacles. As he entered, and he entered quite silently, Sam Pak stood up as if electrified, bowing very low in the Chinese manner. The tall man walked to the chair behind the table and seated himself.

He removed his spectacles. The wonderful lined face which had reminded so many observers of that ofSeti I was revealed in its yellow mastery. Dr. Fu Manchu spoke.

“Be seated,” he said.

Sam Pak resumed his seat.

“You guarantee,” the harsh, guttural voice continued— those brilliant green eyes were fixed inflexibly upon the ancient Chinaman, “the appearance of Dr. Orwin Prescott tonight?”

“You have my word, Marquis.”

Three drops of the tincture must be administered ten minutes before he leaves.”

“It shall be administered.”

“Already, my friend, we are suffering at the hands of the bunglers we are compelled to employ. The pestilential priest Patrick Donegal has slipped through all our nets. Nor is it certain that he is not in the hands of Enemy Number One.”

The ancient head of Sam Pak was slowly nodded.

“The appearance of the Abbot at Carnegie Hall,” Dr. Fu Manchu continued, “might be fatal to my plans. Yet”—removing heavy gloves he laid two long bony hands upon the table before him—”I remain in uncertainty.”

“In war, Master, there is always an element of uncertainty.”

“Uncertainty is part of the imperfect plan,” Fu Manchu replied sibilantly. “Only the fool is uncertain. But the odds are heavy, my friend. Produce to me the man Herman Grosset, whom you have chosen for to-night’s great task.”

Sam Pak moved slightly, pressing a bell. The curtain was drawn aside, and a Chinese boy appeared. A few words of rapid instructions and he went out, dropping the curtain behind him.

There was silence in the queer room. Dr. Fu Manchu, eyes half closed, leaned back in his chair. Sam Pak resembled a mummy set upright in ghastly raillery by some lightminded excavator. Then came vigorous footsteps, the curtains were switched aside, and a man strode in.

Above medium height, of tremendously powerful build, dark faced and formidable, Herman Grosset was a man with whom no one would willingly pick a quarrel. He looked about him challengingly, meeting the gaze of those half-closed green eyes with apparent indifference and merely glancing at old Sam Pak. He stepped to the table, staring down at Dr. Fu Manchu.

His movements, his complete sang-froid, something, too, in the dark-brown face, might have reminded a close observer of Harvey Bragg; and indeed, Grosset was a half-brother of the potential dictator of the United States.

“So you are the President?” he said—and his gruff voice held a note of amused self-assurance. “I’m sure glad to meet you, President. There’s some saying about Tools step in . . .’ I don’t know if it applies to me, but it’s kind of funny that you’ve stayed in the background with Harvey, but asked me to step right into the office.”

“The circumstances under which you stepped into the office,” came coldly, sibilantly, “are such that if you displease me, you will find it difficult to step out again.”

“Oh! I’m supposed to be impressed by the closed auto and the secret journey?” Grosset laughed and banged his fist on the table. “Look!”

With a lightning movement he snatched an automatic from his pocket and covered Dr. Fu Manchu.

“I take big risks because I know how to protect myself. While you’re for Harvey, I’m for you. If I thought you’d dare to cross him, you’d start out for your Chinese paradise this very minute. Harvey is going to be President. Harvey is going to be Dictator. Nothing else can set the country to rights. I wouldn’t hesitate——” he tapped the gun barrel on the table, watching out of the corner of his eye the old Chinaman on the settee— “I wouldn’t hesitate to shoot down any man living that got in his way. When he made me boss of his bodyguard he did the right thing.”

Dr. Fu Manchu’s long yellow hands with their cruelly pointed nails remained quite motionless. He did not stir a muscle;

his eyes were mere green slits in the yellow mask. Then:

“No one doubts your loyalty to Harvey Bragg,” he said softly; “That point is not in dispute. It is known that you love him.”

“I’d die for him.”

The automatic disappeared into the pocket from which it had been taken. Two men stripped to the waist entered so silently that even the movement of the curtain was not audible. They sprang from behind like twin panthers upon Grosset.

“Hell!” he roared, “what’s this game!”

He bent his powerful body forward, striving to throw one of his assailants across his shoulder, but realized that he was gripped in a stranglehold.

“You damned yellow double-crosser.” he groaned, as his right arm was twisted back to breaking-point.

From behind, an expanding gag was slipped into his gaping mouth. He gurgled, groaned, tried to kick, then collapsed as the pressure of fingers made itself felt, agonizingly, upon his eyeballs. . . .

He had not even seen his assailants when straps were buckled about his legs, and his arms lashed behind him.

Throughout, Dr. Fu Manchu never stirred. But when the man, his eyes fixed in frenzied hate upon the Chinese doctor, was carried, uttering inarticulate sounds, from the room, and the curtain fell behind his bearers:

“It is good, my friend,” Fu Manchu said gutturally, addressing the mummy-like figure on the settee, “that you succeeded in bringing me a few expert servants.”

“It was well done,” old Sam Pak muttered.

“To-night,” the precise tones continued, “we put our fortunes to the test. The woman Adair, to whom I have entrusted the tuition of Harvey Bragg, is one I can rely upon; I hold her in my hand. But the man himself, in his bloated arrogance, may fail us. I fear for little else.” His eyes became closed; he was thinking aloud. “If Enemy Number One has Abbot Donegal, all approaches to Carnegie Hall must be held against them. This I can arrange. We have little else to fear.”

From the material upon the table he delicately charged a hypodermic syringe with a pale-green fluid. Sam Pak watched him with misty eyes, and Dr. Fu Manchu stood up.

“It is unfortunate,” he said, but there was a note of scientific enthusiasm in the guttural voice, “that my first important experiment in the use of this interesting drug should involve in success or failure such high issues. Come, my friend; I desire you to be present. . . .”

Across the silent temple of the seven-eyed goddess they went: Fu Manchu with his cat-like walk; old Sam Pak shuffling behind. The place was silent and empty. They descended a stone stair, traversed the corridor lined with six painted coffins, and passed the steel door beyond which a secret passage led to East River.

In a small, cell-like room, lighted by a pendant lamp, Herman Grosset lay strapped to a fixed teak bench. The immobile Chinamen had just completed their task as Dr. Fu Manchu entered, and:

“Go!” he commanded in Chinese.

The men bowed and went out; their muscular bodies were dewy with perspiration. Grosset’s skin also gleamed wetly. He had been stripped to the waist; his eyes were starting from his head.

“Remove the gag, my friend,” Dr. Fu Manchu directed.

Old Sam Pak stepped forward, bent over Grosset, and with a sudden, amazingly agile movement, wrenched the man’s mouth open and plucked out the expanding gag. Grosset turned his head aside and spat disgustedly; then:

“Dirty yellow thugs!” he whispered: he was panting. “You’ve been bought over! Maybe you think”—his powerful chest expanded hugely—”that if you get Harvey, Orwin Prescott has a chance! I’m telling you this: If any harm comes to Harvey, there’ll never be a Dictator in the United States.”

“We do not doubt,” said Dr. Fu Manchu/’your love for Harvey Bragg.”

“No need to doubt it! Looks like I’m dying for him right here and now. I want to tell you this: He’s the biggest man this country has known for a whole generation and more. Think that over. I say it.”

“You would not consider changing your opinion?”

“I knew it!” Grosset was recovering vigour. “Saw it coming. Listen, you saffron-faced horror! You couldn’t buy me for all the gold in Washington. I’ve lived for Harvey right along . . . I’ll die for Harvey”

“Admirable sentiments,” Dr. Fu Manchu muttered, and bent over the strapped figure, hypodermic syringe in hand.

“What are you going to do to me?” Grosset shrieked, a sudden note of horror in his voice. “What are you going to do to me? Oh, you filthy yellow swine! If only my hands were free!”

“I’m going to kill you, my friend. I have no future place for you in my plans.”

“Well, do it with a gun,” the man groaned, “or even a knife if you like. But that thing——”

He uttered a wild, despairing shriek as the needle point was plunged into his flesh. Veins like blue whipcords sprang up on his forehead, on his powerful arms, as he fought to evade the needle point. All was in vain: he groaned and, in the excess of his mental agony, became still.

Dr. Fu Manchu handed the syringe to the old mandarin, who unemotionally had watched the operation. He stooped and applied his ear to the diaphragm of the unconscious man. Then, standing upright, he nodded.

“The second injection two hours before we want him.” He looked down at the powerful body strapped to the bench. “You have killed many men in defence of your idol, Grosset,” he murmured, apostrophizing the insensible figure. “Seven I have checked, and there are others. You shall end your career in a killing that is really worth while. . . .”

in

Carnegie Hall was packed to saturation point. It was an even bigger audience than Fritz Kreisler could have commanded; an audience equally keen with anticipation, equally tense. The headlong advance made by Harvey Bragg—once regarded as a petty local potentate by serious politicians, now recognized as a national force—had awakened the country to the fact that dictatorship, until latterly a subject for laughter, might, incredible though it seemed, be imminent.

The League of Good Americans reputedly numbered fifteen million members upon its roll. That many thousands of the homeless and hopeless had been given employment by Harvey Bragg was an undisputed fact. The counter measures of the old administration, dramatically drastic, had apparently done little to check a growing feverish enthusiasm awakened throughout the country by “Bluebeard.”

An ever-expanding section of the public regarded him as a saviour; another and saner element recognised that he was a menace to the Constitution. Dr. Orwin Prescott, scholarly, sincere, had succeeded in driving a wedge between two conflicting bodies—and the gap was widening.

That Orwin Prescott advocated a sane administration, every sensible citizen appreciated. His avowed object was to split the Bragg camp; but there were those who maintained, although he had definitely denied the charge, that secretly he aimed at nomination to the Presidency.

There was a rumour abroad that he would declare himself to-night.

Among the more thoughtful elements he undoubtedly had a large following, and if the weight of the Abbot of Holy Thorn at the eleventh hour should be thrown into the scales, it was obvious to students of the situation that the forces of Orwin Prescott would become as formidable as those of Harvey Bragg.

In the course of the last few hectic months other contestants had been wiped off the political map. Republican voters, recanting their vows of 1932, had rallied to Orwin Prescott. Agriculture stood solid for the old administration, although Ohio had a big Bragg faction. The ghost of a conservative third party had been exercised by Abbot Donegal, a close friend of Prescott.

There was a certain studious mystery about Dr. Orwin Prescott which appealed to a large intellectual class. His periodical retirements from public life, a certain aura of secret studies which surrounded him, and the recent silence of Abbot Donegal, had been interpreted as a piece of strategy, the importance of which might at any moment become manifest. One would have had to search far back in American history for a parallel of the almost hysterical excitement which dominated this packed assembly.

The huge building was entirely in the hands of police and federal agents. Hidden patrols covered the route from the Dumas’ apartment on Park Avenue right to the door of the hall by which Harvey Bragg would enter. Up to an hour before the meeting was timed to open, no one knew where Prescott was, or even if he were in the city. The audience, which numbered over three thousand, had been admitted to their seats, every man and woman closely scrutinized by hawk-eyed police officers. The buzz of that human beehive was something all but incredible.

A military band played patriotic music, many numbers being sung in unison by three thousand voices. Suspense was intense; excitement electrical.

Nayland Smith, in an office cut off from the emotional vibrations of that vast gathering, was in constant touch with police headquarters, and with Fey, who sat at the telephone at the top of the Regal Tower. Mark Hepburn, bearded and bespectacled, ranged the building from floor to floor, reporting at intervals in the office which Nayland Smith had made his temporary base.

Outside, limelight turned night into day, and a team of cameramen awaited the arrival of distinguished members of the audience. Thousands who had been disappointed in obtaining admittance thronged the sidewalks; the corner of 57th Street was impassable. Patrolmen, mounted and on foot, kept a way open for arriving cars.

Hepburn walked into the office just as Nayland Smith replaced the telephone. Smith turned, sprang up.

Sarah Lakin, seated in a rest-chair on the other side of the big desk, flashed an earnest query into the bespectacled eyes. Mark Hepburn shook his head and removed his spectacles.

“Almost certainly,” he said in his dry, unemotional way, “Abbot Donegal is not in the hall, so far.”

Nayland Smith began to walk up and down the room tugging at the lobe of his ear, then:

“And there is no news from the Mott Street area. I am beginning to wonder—I am beginning to doubt.”

“I have deferred to your views, Sir Denis,” came the grave voice of Miss Lakin, “but I have never disguised my own opinion. In assuming on the strength of a letter, admittedly in his own hand, that Orwin will be here to-night, I think you have taken a false step.”

“Maurice Norbert’s telephone message this morning seemed to me to justify the steps we have taken.” said Hepburn drily.

“I must agree with you there, Captain Hepburn,” Miss Lakin admitted; “but I cannot understand why Mr. Norbert failed to visit me or to visit you. It is true that Orwin has a custom of hiding from the eyes of the Press whenever an important engagement is near, but hitherto I have been in his confidence.” She stood up. “I know, Sir Denis, that you have done everything which any man could do to trace his whereabouts. But I am afraid.” She locked her long, sensitive fingers together. “Somehow, I am very afraid.”

A sound of muffled cheering penetrated to the office.

“See who that is, Hepburn,” snapped Nayland Smith.

Hepburn ran out. Miss Lakin stared into the grim, brown face of the man pacing up and down the floor. Suddenly he stopped in front of her and rested his hand upon her shoulder.

“You may be right and I may be wrong,” he said rapidly. “Nevertheless, I believe that Orwin Prescott will be here tonight.”

Mark Hepburn returned.

“The Mayor of New York,” he reported laconically. “The big names are beginning to arrive.” He glanced at his wrist-watch. “Plenty of time yet.”

“In any event,” said Nayland Smith, “we have neglected no possible measure. There is only one thing to do—wait.”

Chapter 20

THE CHINESE CATACOMBS (concluded)

Orwin Prescott dressed himself with more than his usual care. Maurice Norbert had brought his evening clothes and his dressing-case, and in a perfectly appointed bathroom which adjoined the white bedroom, Prescott had bathed, shaved, and then arrayed himself for the great occasion.

The absence of windows in these apartments had been explained by Nurse Arlen. This was a special rest room, usually employed in cases of over-tired nerves and regarded as suitable by Dr. Sigmund, in view of the ordeal which so soon his patient must face. The doctor he had not seen in person;

quite satisfied with his progress, the physician—called to a distant patient—had left him in the care of Nurse Arlen. Orwin Prescott would have been quite prepared to remain in her care for a long time. Although he more than suspected the existence of a yellow streak in Nurse Arlen’s blood, she was the most fascinating creature with whom he had personally come in contact.

He knew that he was forming an infatuation for this graceful nurse, whose soothing voice had run through all the troubled dreams which had preceded his complete recovery. And now, as he stood looking at himself in the glass, he thought that he had never appeared more keenly capable in the whole of his public life. He studied his fine, almost ascetic features. He was pale, but his pallor added character to the curt, grey military moustache and emphasized the strength of dark eyebrows. His grey hair was brushed immaculately.

The situation he had well in hand. Certainly there were remarkable properties in the prescriptions of Dr. Sigmund. His mental clarity he recognized to be super-normal. He had memorized every fact and every figure prepared for him by Norbert! He seemed to have a sort of pre-vision of all that would happen; his consciousness marched a step ahead of the clock. He knew that to-night no debater in the United States could conquer him. He had nothing to fear from the crude rhetoric of Harvey Bragg.

Satisfied with his appearance, delighted with the issue of this misadventure which might well have wrecked his career, he rang the bell as arranged, and Maurice Norbert came in. He, too, was in evening dress and presented a very smart figure.

“I have arranged, Doctor,” he said, “for the car to be ready in twenty minutes. I will set out now to prepare our friends for your arrival, and to see that you are not disturbed in any way until the debate is over. I have never seen you look more fit for the fray”

“Thanks to your selection of a remarkable physician, Norbert, I have never felt more fit.”

“It’s good to hear you say so. I’ll go ahead now; you start in twenty minutes. I will collect the brushes and odds and ends to-morrow. I thought it best to arrange for a car with drawn blinds. The last thing we want is an ovation on the street which might hold you up. You’ll be driven right to the entrance, where I shall be waiting for you.”

Less than two minutes after Norbert’s departure, Nurse Arlen came in.

“I was almost afraid,” said Orwin Prescott, “that I was not to see you again before I left.”

She stood just by the door, one hand resting on a slender hip, watching him with those long, narrow, dark eyes.

“How could you think I would let so interesting a patient leave without wishing him every good fortune for to-night?”

“Your wishes mean a lot to me. I shall never forget the kindness I have experienced here.”

The woman’s dark eyes closed for a moment, and when they reopened, their expression had subtly changed.

“That is kind of you,” she said. “For my own part I have obeyed orders.”

She seated herself beside him on the settee and accepted a cigarette he offered from the full case which Norbert had thoughtfully brought along. Vaguely he was conscious of tension.

“I hope to see you again,” he said, lighting her cigarette. “Is that too much to hope?”

“No,” she replied laughingly; “there is no reason why I shouldn’t see you again, Doctor. But”—she hesitated, glanced at him quickly, and then looked aside—”I have practically given up social life. You would find me very dull company.”

“Why should you have given up social life?” Orwin Prescott spoke earnestly. “You are young, you are beautiful. Surely all the world is before you.”

“Yes,” said Nurse Arlen, “in one sense it is. Perhaps some day I may have a chance to try to explain to you. But now . . .” She stood up. “I have one more duty before you leave for Carnegie Hall—physician’s orders.”

She crossed to a glass-topped table and, from a little phial which stood there, carefully measured out some drops of a colourless liquid into a graduated glass. She filled it with water from a pitcher and handed it to Orwin Prescott.

“I now perform my last duty,” she said. “You are discharged as cured.”

She smiled. It was the smile which had haunted his dreams: a full-lipped, caressing smile which he knew he could never forget. He took the glass from her and drained its contents. The liquid was quite tasteless.

Almost immediately, magically, he became aware of a great exhilaration. His mental powers, already keen, were stimulated to a point where it seemed that his heel was set upon the world as on a footstool; that all common clay formed but stepping-stones to a goal undreamed of by any man before him. It was a kind of intoxication never hitherto experienced in his well-ordered life. How long it lasted he was unable to judge, or what of it was real, and what chimerical.

He thought that, carried out of himself, he seized the siren woman in his arms, that almost she surrendered but finally resisted. . . .

Then, sharply, as lightning splits the atmosphere, came sudden and absolute sobriety.

Orwin Prescott stared at Nurse Arlen. She stood a pace away watching him intently.

“That was a heady draught,” he said, and his tones were apologetic.

“Perhaps my hand shook,” Nurse Arlen replied; her caressing voice was not quite steady. “I think it is time for you to go, Dr. Prescott. Let me show you the way.”

He presently found himself in a small elevator, which Nurse Arlen operated. Stepping out at the end of a narrow corridor, and a door being opened, he entered a covered courtyard where a Cadillac was waiting. The chauffeur, who wore driving-glasses, was yellow skinned—he might have been an Asiatic. He held the door open.

“Good night,” said Orwin Prescott, one foot on the step.

He held Nurse Arlen’s hand, looking, half afraid, into her dark eyes.

“Good night,” she replied—”good luck!”

The windows were shaded. A moment after the door was closed the big car moved off.

Dr. Fu Manchu sat in the stone-faced room behind that narrow table whose appointments suggested those of a medical consultant. His long yellow fingers with their pointed nails rested motionless upon the table-top. His eyes were closed. The curtain which draped the opening was drawn aside, and Sam Pak entered: “Sam Pak”—a name which concealed another once honoured in China.

Dr. Fu Manchu did not open his eyes.

“Orwin Prescott is on his way to Carnegie Hall, Master,” the old man reported, speaking in Chinese, but not in the Chinese which those of the London police who knew him and who knew something of Eastern languages were accustomed to hear. “The woman did her work, but not too well. I fear there were four and not three drops in the final draught.”

“She is a broken reed.” The sibilant voice was clearly audible, although the thin-lipped mouth appeared scarcely to move. “She was recommended in high quarters, but her sex vibrations render her dangerous. She is amorous, and she has compassion: it is the negroid stain. Her amours do not concern me. If men are her toys, she must play; but the fibre and reality of her womanhood must belong to me. If she betrays me, she shall taste the lingering kiss of death. . . . For this reason I removed her from Harvey Bragg in the crisis, and substituted the woman Adair. You are uncertain respecting the drops?”

The jade-green eyes opened, and a compelling stare fixed itself upon the withered face of Sam Pak.

“I was watching—her hand was not steady; he became intoxicated. By this I judged.”

“If she has failed me, she shall suffer.” The guttural voice was very harsh. “The latest report regarding this pestilential priest?”

“Number 25, in charge of Z-cars covering Carnegie Hall, reports that the Abbot Donegal has not entered the building.”

There was a silence of several moments.

“This can mean only one of two things,” came sibilantly. “He is there, disguised, or he is in Federal hands and Enemy Number One may triumph at the last moment.”

Old Sam Pak emitted a sound resembling the hiss of a snake.

“Even I begin to doubt if our gods are with us,” the high, precise voice of Fu Manchu continued. “What of my boasted powers, of those agents which I alone know how to employ? What of the thousands of servants at my command throughout the world? That Nayland Smith has snapped at my heels—may now at any moment bark outside my door. This brings down my pride like a house of cards. Gods of my fathers”—his voice sank lower and lower—”is it written that I am to fail in the end?”

“Quote not from Moslem fallacies,” old Sam Pak wheezed. “Your long contact with the Arabs, Marquis, is responsible for such words.”

“Few living men could have sustained the baleful glare of those jade-green eyes now fully opened. But Sam Pak, unmoved by their hypnotism, continued:

“I, too, have some of the wisdom, although only a part of yours. The story of your life is traced by your own hand. This you know: fatalism is folly. I, the nameless, speak because I am near to you and am fearless in your service.”

Dr. Fu Manchu stood up; his bony but delicate fingers selected certain objects on the table.

“Without you, my friend,” he said softly, “I should indeed be alone in this my last battle, which threatens to become my Waterloo. Let us proceed”—he moved cat-like around the end of the long table—” to the supreme experiment. Failure means entire reconstruction of our plans.”

“A wise man can build a high tower upon a foundation of failures,” crooned old Sam Pak.

Dr. Fu Manchu, silent-footed, went out into the room haunted by the seven-eyed goddess; crossed it, descended stairs, old Sam Pak following. They passed along the corridor of the six coffins and came to the dungeon where Herman Grosset lay upon a teak bench. The straps had been removed—he seemed to be sleeping peacefully.

One of Sam Pak’s Chinamen was on guard. He bowed and withdrew as Dr. Fu Manchu entered. Old Sam Pak crouched beside the recumbent body, his ear pressed to his hairy chest. Awhile he stayed so, and then looked up, nodding.

Dr. Fu Manchu bent over the sleeping man, gazing down intently at the inert muscular body. He signalled to Sam Pak, and the old Chinaman, exhibiting an ape-like strength, dragged Grosset’s tousled head aside. With a small needle syringe Dr. Fu Manchu made an injection. He laid the syringe aside and watched the motionless patient. Nearly two minutes elapsed. . . . Then, with an atomizer, Dr. Fu Manchu projected a spray first up the right and then up the left nostril of the unconscious man.

Ten seconds later Grosset suddenly sat upright, gazing wildly ahead. His gaze was caught and held by green compelling eyes, only inches removed from his own. His muscular hands clutched both sides of the bench; he stayed rigid in that pose.

“You understand”—the strange voice was pitched very low:

“The word of command is ‘Asia’.”

“I understand,” Grosset replied. “No man shall stop me.”

“The word,” Fu Manchu intoned monotonously, “is Asia.”

“Asia,” Grosset echoed.

“Until you hear that word”—the voice seemed to come from the depths of a green lake—”forget, forget all that you have to do.”

“Asia.”

“Sleep and forget. But remember that the word is Asia.” Herman Grosset sank back and immediately became plunged in deep sleep.

Dr. Fu Manchu turned to Sam Pak. “The rest is with you, my friend,” he said.

Chapter 21

CARNEGIE HALL

harvey bragg turned round in the chair set before the carved writing-table in the study of the Dumas’ apartment. He was dressed for the meeting destined to take its place in American history. Above the table, in a niche and dominating the room, was a reproduction of the celebrated statue of Bussy d’Ambois. The table itself was an antique piece of great value, once the property of Cardinal Mazarin.

“Listen, Baby, I want to get this right.” Harvey Bragg stood up. “I’m all set, but I’m playing a part, and I’m not used to playing any part but the part of Harvey Bragg. Bring me into the party, Eileen. Nobody knows better than you. Lola is a hard case. But I guess you’re a regular kid.”

Moya Adair, seated at the end of the table, raised her eyes to the speaker.

“What do you want to know?” she asked.

“I want to know”—Bragg came a step nearer, rested his hands on the table, and bent down—”I want to know if I’m being played for a sucker; because if I am, God help the man who figures to put that stuff over on me! I’ve had dough to burn for long enough—some I could check up and some from this invisible guy, the President. Looks to me like the President’s investment is a total loss . . . and I never met a rich guy who went around looking for bum stock. This crazy shareholder is starting to try to run the business for me. Listen, Eileen: I’ll step where I’m told, if I know where I’m stepping.”

There was a momentary silence broken only by the dim hum of traffic in Park Avenue below.

“You would be a fool,” said Moya calmly, “to quarrel with a man who believed in you so implicitly that he is prepared to finance you to the extent of so many million dollars. His object is to make you President of the United Sates. He has selected me to be your secretary because he believes that I have the necessary capacity for the work. I can tell you no more. He is a man of enormous influence and he wishes to remain anonymous. I can’t see that you have any cause for quarrel with him.”

Harvey Bragg bent lower, peering into the alluring face.

“I’ve learned up a lot of cues,” he said; “cues you have given me. Seems I have to become an actor. And”—he banged his open hand upon the table—”I don’t know even at this minute that Orwin Prescott is going to be there!”

“Orwin Prescott will be there!”

“It’s big fun, isn’t it”—now his face was but inches removed from Moya’s—”to know that my secretary is wised up on the latest moves and that I’m a pawn in the game. There’s another thing, Eileen. Maybe you know what’s become of Herman Grosset? He checked in on nowhere more than an hour back, and I never move out without Herman.”

He grasped Moya’s shoulders. She turned her head aside.

“You’re maybe wiser than you look, pretty. You know where I stand. No President can baulk me now. We’ve started wrong. Let’s forget it. Look at me. I want to tell you something——”

Came a discreet rap on the study door.

“Hell!” growled Harvey Bragg. He released Moya, stood upright and turned:

“Come in.”

The door opened, and Salvaletti entered, smiling but apologetic.

“Well!” Bragg challenged.

“It’s time we left for Carnegie Hall.”

Salvaletti spoke in a light, silvery voice.

“Where’s Herman? I want to see him.”

Salvaletti slightly inclined his head.

“You have naturally been anxious; so have I. But he is here.”

“What!”

“He arrived only a few minutes ago. His explanation of his absence is somewhat. . .” He shrugged.

“What! On the booze, on a night like this?”

“I don’t suggest it. But, anyway, he is perfectly all right now.”

“Ask him to step right in here,” roared Harvey Bragg, his voice booming around the study. “I want a few words with Herman.

“Cutting it rather fine. But if you insist . . .”

“I do insist.”

He cursed under his breath as Salvaletti went out, turned, and stared angrily at Moya Adair; her calm aloofness maddened him.

“Something blasted funny going on,” he growled. “And I guess, Miss Breon, you know all about it.”

“I know no more than you know, Mr. Bragg. I can only ask you in your own interests to remember——”

“The coaching! Sure I’ll remember it. I’m in up to the eyebrows. But after to-night, I climb out!”

The door was thrown open, and Herman Grosset burst in. His eyes were wild as he looked from face to face.

“Harvey”‘ he said hoarsely, “I’m real sorry. You won’t believe me, but I’ve been dead sober all day. I guess it must be blood pressure, or maybe incipient insanity. It’s in the family isn’t it, Harvey? Listen”—he met the angry glare: “Don’t talk yet—give me a word. I got a funny phone message more than an hour back. I thought it needed investigation. But hell burn me! That’s all I can remember about it!”

“What do you mean?” growled Harvey Brag.

“I mean I don’t know what happened from the time I got that message which I can’t remember—up to five minutes ago, when I found myself sitting on a chair down in the vestibule feeling darn sleepy and wondering where in hell I’d been.”

“You’re a drunken sot!” Harvey Bragg bawled. “That’s what you are—a drunken sot. You’ve been soused all afternoon. And this is the damn-fool story you think you can pull on me. Get out to the cars; we’re late already.”

“I don’t like your words,” said Herman Grosset truculently. “They ain’t just, and they ain’t right.”

“Right or wrong—get out!” yelled Harvey Bragg. “Get on with your job. I have to get on with mine. . . .”

Two minutes later a trio of powerful cars roared down Park Avenue bound for Carnegie Hall. In the first were four armed bodyguards; in the second Harvey Bragg and Salvaletti; in the third, three more guards and Herman Grosset.

“Bluebeard” was well protected.

In Nayland Smith’s temporary office in Carnegie Hall silence , vibrant with unspoken thoughts, had fallen.

Maurice Norbert had just ceased speaking. He stood looking smilingly from face to face. Nayland Smith, seated on the edge of the desk, lean brown hands clutching one upraised knee, watched him unflinchingly. Sarah Lakin’s steady grave eyes were fixed upon him also.

Senator Lockly, one of Orwin Prescott’s most fervent supporters, had joined the party, and his red, good-humoured face now registered bewilderment and doubt. Nayland Smith broke the silence.

“Your explanation, Mr. Norbeert,” he replied, “presents certain curious features into which at the moment we have no opportunity to inquire. We are to understand that Dr. Prescott communicated with you roughly at the same time that he communicated with Miss Lakin, and gave you certain instructions which you carried out. These necessitated your meeting a car at an agreed point and being driven to an unknown destination, where you found Dr. Prescott receiving medical attention under the care of a physician whom you did not meet?”

“Exactly.”

Maurice Norbert continued to smile.

“You had been instructed to take a suit-case and other items, and we are to understand that Dr. Prescott has come to some arrangement with those responsible for his disappearance whereby he will be present here, to-night?”

“Exactly,” Maurice Norbert repeated.

Sarah Lakin continued fixedly to watch Norbert, but she did not speak. Senator Lockly cleared his throat, and:

“I don’t understand,” he declared, “why, having found him, you left him. It seems to me there’s no guarantee even now that he will arrive.”

“One of the curious features,” rapped Nayland Smith, standing up and beginning to pace the floor, “to which I referred. . . .” He turned suddenly, facing Norbert. “I don’t entirely understand your place in this matter, Mr. Norbert.

And I believe”—glancing aside—” that Miss Lakin shares my doubts.”

“I do,” Sarah Lakin replied in her deep, calm voice.

“Forgive me”—Norbert bowed to the speaker—”but in this hour of crisis we are naturally overwrought, every one of us. It isn’t personal, it’s national. These facts will wear a different complexion to-morrow. But accept my assurance, everybody, that Dr. Prescott will be here.” He glanced at his wrist-watch, “in fact, I must go down to meet him. I beg that you will do as I have asked. Senator, will you join me. He has requested that we shall be with him on the platform.”

Senator Lockly looked rather helplessly from Sarah Lakin to Nayland Smith, and then followed Norbet out of the office. As the door shut behind them:

“How long employed by Dr. Prescott?” rapped Nayland Smith.

“Maurice Norbert,” Sarah Lakin replied, “has been in my cousin’s service for rather more than a year.”

“Hepburn has been checking up on him. It has proved difficult, but we expect all the details to-morrow.”

At which moment the door was thrown open again, and the Abbot of Holy Thorn, wearing the dress of a simple priest stepped into the office!

The bearded face of Mark Hepburn might have been glimpsed over his left shoulder. Nayland Smith sprang forward.

“Dom Patrick Donegal!” he cried, “Thank God I see you here —and safe!”

Mark Hepburn came in and closed the door.

“My experiences, Mr. Smith,” the abbot replied calmly, “on my journey to the city, have convinced me that I have incurred certain dangers.” He smiled and gripped the outstretched hand. “But I think I warned you that I am a prisoner hard to hold. It is my plain duty in this crisis, since I am denied the use of the air, to be here in person.”

“One of our patrol cars” said Hepburn drily, “picked up the abbot twenty minutes ago and brought him here under escort. I may add . . . that the escort was necessary.”

“That is quite true,” the priest admitted. “A very tough-looking party in a Cadillac had been following me for several miles. But”—he ceased to smile and assumed by a spiritual gesture the r61e of his Church—”I have achieved my purpose. If I am to consider myself technically under arrest I must nevertheless insist, Mr. Smith, upon one thing. . . . Failing the appearance of my friend Orwin Prescott, I shall confront Harvey Bragg to-night.”

A sound resembling an approaching storm made itself audible. Mark Hepburn nodded to Nayland Smith and went out. Sarah Lakin stood up, her grave calm ruffled at last. Smith stepped to the doorway and stared along the corridor.

The sound grew louder—it was the cheering of thousands of voices. Dimly the strains of a military band were heard. Mark Hepburn came running back.

“Dr. Prescott is on the platform!” he cried, completely lifted out of himself by the excitement of the moment. “Harvey Bragg has just arrived. . . .”

in

The classic debate which the Moving Finger was writing into American history took place in an atmosphere of tension unequalled in the memory of anyone present. After the event there were many who recalled significant features: as, for instance, that Harvey Bragg used notes, his custom being to speak extemporaneously (if in the mood, for many hours). Also, that he frequently glanced in the direction of his secretary, Salvaletti, who seemed at times to be prompting him.

Hidden from the audience, Dom Patrick Donegal looked on at the worldly duel. And, helpless now to intervene, he realized, as everyone in that vast gathering realized, that Dr. Orwin Prescott was a beaten man.

As oratory, his performance was perhaps the finest in his career; his beautiful voice, his scholarship, put to shame the coarse bellowing and lamentable historical ignorance of his opponent. But in almost every sentence he played into the hands of Harvey Bragg: he fell into traps that a child could have avoided. With dignity, assurance, perfect elocution, he made statements which even the kindest critic must have branded as those of a fool.

At times it seemed that he was conscious of this. More than once he raised his hand to his forehead as if to collect his thoughts, and especially it was noticed that points raised in response to the apparent promptings of Salvaletti resulted in disaster for Dr. Orwin Prescott.

His keenest supporters lost heart. It appeared long before the debate was ended that Harvey Bragg offered the country prosperity. Dr. Prescott had nothing to offer but beautifully phrased sentences.

And the greatest orator in the United States, the Abbot of Holy Thorn, dumbly listened—looked on! While his friend Orwin Prescott, with every word that he uttered, broke down the fine reputation which laboriously and honourably he had built up.

It was the triumph of “Bluebeard.”

IV

In that book-lined room high above New York, where sometimes incense was burned, Dr. Fu Manchu sat behind the lacquered table.

The debate at Carnegie Hall was being broadcast from coast to coast. Robed in yellow, his mandarin’s cap upon his head, he sat listening. Reflected light from the green-shaded table-lamp enhanced his uncanny resemblance to the Pharaoh Seti I: for the eyes of Dr. Fu Manchu were closed as he listened.

His hands, stretched out upon the table before him, had remained quite motionless as Orwin Prescott became involved more deeply in the net cunningly spread for him by Harvey Bragg. Only at times, when the latter hesitated, fumbled for words, would the long pointed nails tap lightly upon the polished surface.

On three occasions during this memorable debate an amber point came to life on the switchboard.

Without in any way allowing his attention to be distracted, Dr. Fu Manchu listened to reports from the man of miraculous memory. These all related to Numbers detailed to intercept Abbot Donegal. The third and last induced a slight tapping of long nails upon the lacquered surface. It was a report to the effect that a government patrol had rescued the abbot (picked up at last within a few miles of New York) from a Z-car which had been tracking him. . . .

The meeting concluded with wildly unrestrained cheers for Harvey Bragg. In that one hour he had advanced many marches nearer to the White House. Politically he had obliterated the only really formidable opponent who remained in the field. Except for the silent Abbot of Holy Thorn, the future of the United States now lay between the old regime and Harvey Bragg.

Deafening cheers were still ringing throughout Carnegie Hall when Dr. Fu Manchu disconnected. Silence fell in that small book-lined room distant from the scene of conflict. Bony fingers opened the silver box: Fu Manchu sought the inspiration of opium. . . .

Orwin Prescott, bewildered, even now not understanding that he had wiped himself off the political map, that he was committed to fatal statements that he could never recall, dropped down into an armchair in Nayland Smith’s office, closed his eyes and buried his face in his hands.

Sarah Lakin crossed and sat beside him. Senator Lockly had disappeared. Nayland Smith glanced at Mark Hepburn, and they went out together. In the corridor:

“Where is Abbot Donegal?” said Nayland Smith.

“In care of Lieutenant Johnson,” Hepburn answered drily. “Johnson won’t make a second mistake. Abbot Donegal stays until he has your permission to leave.”

“Orwin Prescott was either drugged or hypnotized, or both,” rapped Nayland Smith. “It’s the most damnably cunning thing Fu Manchu has ever done. With one stroke tonight, he has put the game into Harvey Bragg’s hands.”

“I know.” Mark Hepburn ran his fingers through his dishevelled hair. “It was pathetic to listen to, and impossible to watch. Abbot Donegal was just quivering. Sir Denis! This man is a magician! I begin to despair.”

Nayland Smith suddenly grabbed his arm as they walked along the corridor.

“Don’t despair,” he snapped, “yet! There’s more to come.”

They had begun to descend to the floor below when Harvey Bragg, flushed with triumph, already tasting the sweets of dictatorship, the cheers of that vast gathering echoing in his ears, came out into a small lobby packed with privileged visitors and newspapermen.

His bodyguard, as tough a bunch as any man had ever collected in the United States, followed him in. Paul Salvaletti walked beside him.

“Folks!” Bragg cried, “I know just how you feel.” He struck his favourite pose, arms raised. “You’re all breathing the air of a new and better America. . . . That’s just how I feel! Another obstacle to national happiness is swept away. Folks! There’s no plan but my plan. At last we are getting near to the first ideal form of government America has ever known.”

“Which any country has ever known,” said Salvaletti, his clear, musical voice audible above the uproar. “American, Africa, Europe—or Asia.”

As he spoke the word Asia, Herman Grosset, hitherto flushed with excitement, suddenly became deathly pale. His eyes glared, foam appeared at the corners of his mouth. With that lightning movement which no man of the bodyguard could equal, he snatched an automatic from his pocket, sprang forward and shot Harvey Bragg twice through the heart. . . .

There was a moment of dazed silence; a sound resembling a moan. Then the faithful bodyguard, one second too late, almost literally made a sieve with their bullets of Herman Grosset.

He died before the man he had assassinated. Riddled with lead, he crashed to the floor of the lobby as Harvey Bragg collapsed in the arms of Salvaletti.

“Herman! My God! Herman!” were Bragg’s dying words.

Chapter 22

MOYAADAIR’S SECRET

“I am uncertain, Hepburn,” rapped Nayland Smith, pacing up and down the sitting-room. “I cannot read sense into the crossword puzzle.”

“Nor can I,” said Mark Hepburn.

Smith stared out at the never familiar prospect. The day was crystal clear; the distant Statue of Liberty visible in sharp detail. Some strange quality in the crisp atmosphere seemed to have drawn it inland, so that it appeared like a miniature of itself. Towering buildings had crept nearer: a wide section of New York City seemed to be looking in at the window.

“That Orwin Prescott should suffer a nervous collapse and entirely lose his memory was something for which I was not unprepared. His deplorable exhibition at Carnegie Hall was the result of some kind of post-hypnotic suggestion, a form of attack of which Dr. Fu Manchu is a master.”

Mark Hepburn lighted a cigarette.

“There was a time,” he said slowly, “when I thought that the powers which you attributed to this man must be exaggerated. I think now that all you said was an understatement. Sir Denis! He’s more than the greatest physician in the world—he’s a magician.”

“Cut the ‘Sir Denis,’“ came crisply; “I was born plain Smith. It’s time you remembered it.”

Mark Hepburn smiled—a rare event in those days: it was the self-conscious smile of a nervous schoolboy—life had never changed it.

“I am glad to hear you say that,” he declared awkwardly— “Smith, because I’m proud to know that we are friends. Maybe that sounds silly, but I mean it.”

“I appreciate it.”

“I can understand,” Hepburn went on, “after what you have told me, that it might be possible—although it’s quite outside my own medical experience—to drug a man in some way and impose certain instructions upon him to be carried out later. I mean I can believe that this is what happened to Orwin Prescott. It’s a tough story, but your experience can provide parallels. Mine can’t. We are dealing with a man who seems to be a century ahead of modem knowledge.”

“Dismiss Prescott,” said Nayland Smith curtly; “he’s out of the political arena. But he’s in good hands now, and I hope to heaven he recovers from whatever ordeal he has passed through. I am disappointed about the escape of the man Norbert. That was bad staff work, Hepburn, for which I take my full share of responsibility.”

“We’ll get him yet,” said Hepburn harshly, “if we comb every state for him. His getaway had been cunningly planned. I have checked it all up. Nobody is to blame. This thing goes back a year or more. Dr. Fu Manchu must have been working, through agents, long before he arrived in person.”

“I know it,” rapped Nayland Smith; “I have known it for some time past. But what I don’t know and cannot work out is this: Where does the death of Harvey Bragg fit into the Doctor’s plans?”

He fixed a penetrating stare upon Hepburn and almost automatically began to load his pipe. . . .

“The man Herman Gorsset was a drunken ruffian; his only redeeming virtue seems to have been his attachment to his half-brother. He was a killer, as your records show. Such a man is like an Alsatian dog—his savagery may be turned upon his master. I wonder . . .” He dropped his pouch back into the pocket of his dressing-gown and lighted a match. . . . “I wonder? . . .”

“So do I,” said Mark Hepburn monotonously; “I have been wondering ever since it happened. That this damnable Chinaman was running Harvey Bragg is a fact beyond doubt. It isn’t conceivable that Bragg’s death should form any part of his plan. If he wanted to turn a blustering demagogue into a hero, he has succeeded. Why”—he paused . . . “Smith! He lay in state right here in New York City! Now his embalmed body is being taken back to his home town. He’s a bigger man dead than alive. Fifty per cent of uninformed American opinion today thinks that the greatest statesman since Lincoln has been snatched away in the hour of need.”

“That’s true.” Nayland Smith blew a puff of smoke into the air. “As I said a while ago, I cannot read sense into the crossword puzzle. I am tempted to believe that the Doctor’s plans have been thwarted.”

He began to walk up and down again restlessly.

“Salvaletti’s broadcast oration,” said Hepburn monotonously, “was quite in the classic manner. In fact it was brilliant, although I don’t see its purpose. It has made Harvey Bragg a national martyr.”

“Salvaletti is going South by special train,” jerked Nayland Smith, “with the embalmed body. There will be emotional scenes at every stop. Have we details regarding this man?”

“They should be to hand any moment now. All we know, so far, is that he’s of Italian origin, was trained for the priesthood, left Italy at the age of twenty-three, and became a United States citizen five years ago. He’s been with Bragg since early 1934.”

“I listened to him, Hepburn. Utterly out of sympathy as I am with the subject of his eloquence, I must confess that I never heard a more moving speech.”

“No—it was wonderful. But now—er—Smith, I am worried about this projected expedition of yours.”

Nayland Smith paused in his promenade and stared, pipe gripped between his teeth, at Mark Hepburn.

“No more worried than I am regarding yours, Hepburn. You know what Kipling says about a rag and bone and a hank of hair . . .”

“That’s hardly fair, Smith. I quite frankly admitted to you that I’m interested in Mrs. Adair. There’s something very strange about a woman like that being in the camp of Dr. Fu Manchu.”

Nayland Smith paused in front of him, reached out and grasped his shoulder.

“Don’t think I’m cynical, Hepburn,” he said—”we have all been through the fires—but, be very careful!”

“I just want time to size her up. I think she’s better than she seems. I admit I’m soft where she’s concerned, but maybe she’s straight after all. Give her a chance. We don’t know everything.”

“I leave her to you, Hepburn. All I say is: be careful. I’d gamble half of the little I possess to see into the mind of Dr. Fu Manchu at this moment! Is he as baffled as I am?”

He resumed his promenade.

“However . . . we have a heavy day before us. Learn all you can from the woman. I am devoting the whole of my attention to Fu Manchu’s Chinatown base.”

“I am beginning to think,” said Hepburn, with his almost painful honesty, “that this Chinatown base is a myth.”

“Don’t be too sure,” rapped Nayland Smith. “Certainly I saw the late secretary of the Abbot Donegal disappear into a turning not far from Wu King’s Bar. Significant, to say the least. I have spent hours, in various disguises, exploring that area and right to the water fronts on either side of it.”

“I worry myself silly whenever you delay at——”

“My own Chinatown base?” Nayland Smith suggested.

He burst out laughing—and his laughter seemed to lift a load of care from his spirits. . . .

“You should congratulate me, Hepburn. In the character of a hard-drinking deck-hand sacked by the Cunard and trying to dodge the immigration authorities until I find a berth, I have made a marked success with my landlady, Mrs. Mulrooney of Orchard Street! I have every vice from hashish to rum, and I begin to suspect she loves me!”

“What about the rag and bone and a hank of hair?” Hepburn asked impishly.

Nayland Smith stared for a moment, and then laughed even more heartily.

“A hit to you,” he admitted; “but frankly, I feel that my inquiries are not futile. The Richet clue admittedly has led nowhere; but my East River investigations are beginning to bear fruit.”

He ceased laughing. His lean brown face grew suddenly grim.

“Think of the recovery by the river police of the body of the man Blondie Hahn.”

“Well?”

“All the facts suggested to me that he did not die on the water front or even very near to it. I maybe wrong, Hepburn . . . but I think I have found Dr. Fu Manchu’s water-gate!”

“What!”

“We shall see. The arrival in New York this morning of the Chinese general, Li Wu Chang, has greatly intrigued me. I have always suspected Li Wu Chang of being one of the Seven.”

“Who are the Seven?”

“Nayland Smith snapped his fingers.

“Impossible to go into that now. I have much to do to-day if our plans are to run smoothly to-night. Your post is in Chinatown. We both have plenty to employ us in the interval. Should I miss you, the latest details will be on the desk”—he pointed—”and Fey will be here in constant touch. . . .”

Mark Hepburn, from his seat overlooking the pond in Central Park, watched the path from the Scholar’s Gate. Presently he saw Moya Adair approaching.

It was a perfect winter’s day; the air was like wine, visibility was remarkable. Because his heart leapt his dour training reproached him. He had abandoned the cape, property of an eccentric artist friend, and now his bearded chin stuck out from an upturned fur collar.

On the woman’s side this meeting was a move in a fight for freedom. But Mark Hepburn, starkly honest, knew that on his side it was a lover’s meeting. It was unfair to Nayland Smith that this important investigation, which might lead to control of a bridge to the enemy’s stronghold, should have been left in his hands. Moreover, it was torture to himself. . .

He loved the ease of her walk, the high carriage of her head. There was pedigree in every graceful line. Her existence in this gang ofsuperthugs, who now apparently controlled the whole of the American underworld, was a mystery which baulked his imagination.

She smiled as he stood up to meet her. He allowed the mad idea that they were avowed lovers—that he had a right to take her in his arms and kiss her—to dazzle his brain for one delirious moment. Actually, he said:

“You are very punctual, Mrs. Adair.”

She sat down beside him. Her composure, real or assumed, was baffling. There was a short silence, an uneasy one on Mark Hepburn’s side; then:

“I suppose,” he said, “the death of Harvey Bragg means a change of plan?”

Moya shook her head.

“For me, no,” she replied. “I am continuing my work at Park Avenue. The League of Good Americans is to go on, and Paul Salvaletti has taken charge.”

She spoke impersonally, a little wearily.

“But you must regret the death of Harvey Bragg?”

“As a Christian, I do, for I cannot think that he was fit to die. As a man”—she paused for a moment, staring up at the cold, blue sky—”if he had lived, I don’t know what I should have done. You see”—she turned to Hepburn—”I had no choice: I had to go to him. But my life there was hell.”

Mark Hepburn looked away. He was afraid of her eyes. Nayland Smith’s injunction, “Be very careful,” seemed to ring in his ears.

“Why did you have to go to him?” he asked.

“Well—although I know how hard this must be for you to understand—Harvey Bragg, although he never knew it, was little more than a cog in a wheel. I am another cog in the same wheel.” She smiled, but not happily. “He never really controlled the League of Good Americans, nor the many other organizations of which he was the nominal head.”

“Then who does control them?” he questioned harshly.

“When I say that I don’t know, I am literally speaking the truth. But there’s someone far bigger than Harvey Bragg working behind the scenes. Please believe that I dare not tell you any more now.”

Hepburn clenched his fists, plunged deep in the pockets of his topcoat.

“Was Harvey Bragg’s murder in accordance with the”—he hesitated—”revolutions of this wheel?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that it is not to be allowed to interfere with the carrying on of the objects of the league.”

“What are these objects?”

Moya Adair paused for a moment.

“I think, but I am not sure, to introduce a new form of government into the United States. Truly”—she stood up—”it is impossible for me to tell you any more. Mr. Purcell, you made a bargain with me, and our time is very short. When you understand more about my position you will see how hard it is to answer some of your questions.”

Mark Hepburn stood up also, and nodded. His middle name (his mother’s) was Purcell, and as Purcell he had introduced himself to Mrs. Adair.

“Which way do we go?”

“This way,” said Moya, and side by side they walked in the direction of the Sherman equestrian statue. Hepburn was silent, sometimes glancing aside at his equally silent companion. She made no attempt to break this silence until they had passed the end of the bridle path, when:

“Shall we want a taxi?” Hepburn asked.

“Yes, but not a Lotus.”

“Why?”

They came out through Scholar’s Gate.

“I have my reasons. Look! This one will do.”

As the taxi moved off to a Park Avenue address of which he made a careful mental note:

“I understand,” said Hepburn drily, “that Harvey Bragg was a director of the Lotus Transport Corporation?”

“He was.”

The immensity of the scheme was beginning to dawn upon him. Vehicles belonging to the Lotus Corporation, of one kind or another, ranged practically over the States. All employees belonged to the League of Good Americans: so much he knew. Assuming that they could be used, if necessary, as spies, what a network lay here at command of the master mind! As the countless possibilities presented themselves he turned and stared at Moya Adair. She was watching him earnestly.

“When we arrive at the apartment to which we are going,” she said, “I shall have to ask you to play the part of an old friend. Do you mind?”

Mark Hepburn clenched his teeth. Moya’s gloved hand rested listlessly upon the seat beside him. He grasped and held it for a moment.

“I sincerely wish I were,” he replied.

She smiled; and he thought that her smile, although passionless, was almost affectionate.

“Thank you. I mean, we must address each other by our Christian names. So you have my permission to call me Moya. What am I to call you?”

Suddenly that alluring coquetry which had delighted and then repelled him at the Tower of the Holy Thorn made her eyes dance. A little dimple appeared at the left comer other mouth.

“Mark.”

“Thank you,” said Moya. “I think very soon you will find yourself christened ‘Uncle’ Mark.”

in

Dr. Fu Manchu pressed a button on his table, and in a domed room where the Memory Man, as a result of many hours of patient toil, had nearly completed another of those majestic clay heads, the making of which alone relieved the tedium of his life, the amber light went out.

“Give me the latest report,” came a curt, guttural order, “from the Number in charge of Mott Street patrol.”

“To hand at 3.10 p.m. Report as follows: Strength of government agents and police in this area doubled since noon. Access to entrances one and two impossible. A government agent, heavily guarded and so far unidentified, in charge. Indications point to a raid pending. This report from Number 41.”

Amber light prevailed again in the Gothic room, and the sculptor, Egyptian cigarette in mouth, proceeded to accentuate the gibbous brow of his subject.

Dr. Fu Manchu, who had produced this change of light by the pressure of a button, sat for a while with closed eyes. The next steps in his campaign had been successfully taken. The next step was by far the most difficult. The atmosphere of that strange study must have been unbreathable by an average man. A greying pencil of smoke arose from an incense burner set upon one corner of the table. Dr. Fu Manchu had his own methods of inducing mental stimulation. Presently he touched a switch, and two points of light appeared. A moment he waited, and then:

“Attend carefully to the orders I am about to give,” he directed: he spoke in Chinese.

“A plot is brewing to set the dogs upon us, my friend. Listen with great care. No one is to enter or to leave Base 3 until further instructions are received from me. Doors leading to street entrances are to remain locked. Our visitors to-night will enter by the river-gate. Their safety rests with you. All are important; some are distinguished. I shall keep you informed. . . .”

IV

“That is the reason . . . Mark (I must get used to calling you Mark while you are here), why I am so helpless.”

Through uncurtained french windows Mark Hepburn looked out from the penthouse apartment on to a roof garden. The vegetation of the rock plants was scanty at this season; a little fountain was frozen over. But he could imagine that in spring and summer this was a very pleasant spot. In the frosty sunlight a small, curly-haired boy was romping with a nurse, a capable-looking woman nearing middle age. Her habitual expression Hepburn assumed to be grim, but now she was laughing gaily as she played with her little charge.

Her gaiety was nor forced—that of a dutiful employee; it radiated real happiness. With the aid of a pile of cushions set beside the wall the small boy was making strenuous endeavours to stand on his head. His flushed face, every time that he collapsed and looked up at her, reduced the nurse to helpless laughter. He gave it up after a while and sat there grinning.

“God bless us, bairn, you’ll bring all the blood to your daft little head if you keep on,” she exclaimed, speaking with a marked Scottish accent.

“Is there blood in my head, Goofy?” the boy inquired, wide eyed. “I fought it on’y came up to here”—he indicated his throat.

“Where d’you think it comes from when your nose bleeds?”

“Never fought of that, Goofy.”

Mark Hepburn, watching the mop of red-brown curls ruffled by the breeze, the clear blue eyes, the formation of the child’s mouth, the roundness of his chin, experienced an unfamiliar sensation of weakness compounded of pity and of swift, intense affection. He turned his head slowly, looking at Moya Adair.

Her lips trembled, but her eyes were happy as she smiled up at him and waited.

“There’s no need for me to ask.” He said. His harsh voice seemed to have softened slightly. He was recalling the details of Mrs. Adair’s record which he had been at such pains to secure. “I should have remembered.”

“Yes.” She nodded. “My big son. He’s just four. . . .”

When, presently, Mark Hepburn met Robbie Adair, the boy registered approval save in regard to Hepburn’s budding beard. He was a healthy frank young ruffian and took no pains to disguise his distastes. He had a disarmingly cheerful grin.

“I like you, Uncle Mark, all ‘cept your whiskers,” was his summary.

This dislike of beards, so expressed, produced a shocked protest from Nurse Goff and led to further inquiries by Moya, frowning, although her eyes danced with laughter. Interrogation brought to light the fact that Robbie associated beards and untidy hair with a peculiar form of insanity.

“There’s someone I know, up there,” he explained, pointing vaguely apparently towards heaven; “his hair blows about in the wind all in a mess like yours. And he’s got funny whiskers too. He makes heads. He holds ‘em up and then he smashes ‘em. So you see, Uncle Mark, he is mad.”

Robbie grinned.

“Whatever are you talking about, Robbie?” Moya, kneeling on a cushion, threw her arm around the boy’s shoulders and glanced up at Mark Hepburn. “Do you know what he means?”

Mark shook his head slowly, looking into the beautiful eyes upraised to his, so like, yet so wonderfully different from, the eyes of the boy. He became aware of the fact that he was utterly happy; a kind of happiness he had never known before. And down upon this unlawful joy (for why should he be happy in the midst of stress, conflict, murder, black hypocrisy) he clapped the icy hand of a Puritan conscience. Nurse Goff had gone into the apartment, leaving the three together.

Some change in Hepburn’s expression made Moya turn aside. She pressed her cheek against Robbie’s curly head.

“We don’t know what you mean, dear,” she said. “Won’t you tell us?

“I mean,” said Robbie stoutly, turning and staring into her face from a distance of not more than an inch away. “there’s a man who is a man; he has whiskers: and he lives up there!”

“Where exactly do you mean, Robbie?”

She glanced aside at Mark Hepburn. He was watching her intently.

The boy pointed.

“On the very top of that tall tower.”

Mark Hepbum stared in the direction which Robbie indicated. The building in question was the Stratton Tower, one of New York’s very high buildings, and the same which formed a feature of the landscape as viewed from the apartment he shared with Nayland Smith. He continued to stare in that direction, endeavouring to capture some memory which the sight of the oblisk-like structure topped by a pointed dome sharply outlined against that cold, blue sky, stirred in his mind.

He stood up, walked to the wall surrounding the roof garden and took his bearings. He realized that he stood at a level much below that of the fortieth floor of the Regal Tower, but in point of distance much nearer to the building the boy indicated.

“He always comes out at night. On’y sometimes I’s asleep and don’t see him.”

It was the word “night,” which gave Hepburn the clue, captured a furtive memory—a memory of three lighted windows at the top of the Stratton Tower which he had seen and speculated about on the night when, with Nayland Smith, he had waited for the coming of Fly Carlo.

He turned and stared at Robbie with new interest.

“You say he makes heads, young fellow?”

“Yes. I see him up there, making ‘em.”

“At night?”

“Not always.”

“And then you say he smashes them?”

“Yes, he always smashes ‘em”

“How does he smash them, dear?” Moya asked, glancing up at the earnest face of Mark Hepburn.

According to the boy’s graphic description, this notable madman hurled them down on to the dome below, where they were shattered into fragments.

Hepburn, conquered again by the picture of the charming mother kneeling with one arm round Robbie’s shoulders, stooped and succumbed to the temptation of once again ruffling the boy’s curly head.

“You seem to have quite a lot of fun up here, Robbie!” he said.

Later, in the cosy sitting-room delicately feminine in its every appointment, Mark Hepburn sat looking at Moya Adair. She smiled almost timidly.

“I suppose,” she said, “it’s hard for you to understand, but——”

The door opened, and a curly head was thrust into the room, followed by a grin.

“Don’t go, Uncle Mark,” Robbie cried, “till I say good-bye.”

He disappeared. Mark Hepburn, watching Moya as with mock severity she signalled the boy to run away, wondered if there was anything more beautiful in nature than a young and lovely mother.

“I am glad,” he said, and his monotonous voice in some queer way sounded different, “that you have this great interest in your life.”

“My only interest,” she replied simply. “I go on for him. Otherwise”—she shook her head—”I should not be here now.”

“Still I don’t understand why you serve this man you call the President.”

“Yet the explanation is very simple. Although the guards are not visible, both entrances to this building are watched night and day. Whenever Robbie goes out with his nurse he is covered until they return. He is never allowed to walk on the streets, but is driven to the garden of a house on Long Island. That is his only playground except the one on the roof outside.”

“I suppose I am dense,” said Mark Hepbum, “but I don’t understand!”

“This apartment belongs to the President, although he rarely visits it. Mary Goff is my own servant; she has been in my service since the boy was born. Otherwise—I have no one. For two months Robbie disappeared——”

“He was kidnapped?”

“Yes, he was kidnapped. That was before all this began. Then the President sent for me. I was naturally distracted; I think I should very soon have died. He made me an offer which, I think, any mother would have accepted. I accepted without hesitation. I am allowed to come here, even to bring friends, while I carry out the duties allotted to me. If I failed”—she bit her lip—”I should never see Robbie again.”

“But after all,” Mark Hepburn exclaimed hotly, “there’s a law in the land!”

“You don’t know the President.” Moya replied. “I do. No law could save my boy if he determined to spirit him away. You’ve promised, and you will keep your promise? You won’t attempt to do anything about Robbie without my consent?”

Mark Hepburn watched her silently for a while, and then:

“No,” he replied; “but it’s a very unpleasant situation. I have exposed you to a dreadful danger. . . . You mean”—he hesitated—”that my visit here to-day will be reported to the President?”

“Certainly, but Robbie is allowed visitors if they are old friends. You seem to know enough of my history to pass for an old friend, I think?”

“Yes,” said Mark Hepburn; “you may regard me as an old friend. . . .”

VI

In the room where the Memory Man worked patiently upon his stange piece of modelling, a distant bell rang and the amber light went out.

“Give me the latest report,” came the hated, dominating voice, “of the Number in charge of party covering Base 3.”

“A report to hand,” came an immediate reply in those terse Teutonic tones, “timed 5.15. Police have been further reinforced. Chinese approaching the areas one, two and three have been interrogated. Government agent in charge not yet identified. Several detectives and federal agents have been in Wu King’s Bar since noon. Report ends. From Number 41.”

Following a silent interval, during which, in the darkness, the Memory Man lighted a fresh Egyptian cigarette from the stump of the old one: “The latest report,” the voice directed, “from Number covering Eileen Breon.”

“Report to hand timed 4.35. A man, bearded, wearing glasses and driving coat with a fur collar, age estimated at thirty-five, arrived in her company at the apartment at 3.29. He remained for an hour; covered on leaving. He proceeded on foot to Grand Central. Operatives covering lost his track in the crowd. Report ends. This is from Number 39.”

“Most unsatisfactory. Give me the latest report from the Regal-Athenian.”

“Only one to hand, timed 5.10 p.m. Owing to long non-appearances of Federal Agents Hepburn and Smith, Number suggests——”

“Suggestions are not reports,” the gutteral voice said harshly. “What’s this man’s number?”

Following a further brief silence:

“Make the connections, “ the harsh voice directed. “You are free for four hours.”

Amber light prevailed again. The sculptor, brushing back his mane of white hair with a tragic gesture, adjusted the dictaphone attachment which during his hours of rest took the place of his phenomenal memory. No message came through during the time that he gathered up lovingly the implements of his art, sole solace of the prisoner’s life.

Carrying the half-completed clay model, he crossed to the hidden door, opened it, and descended to that untidy apartment which, with the balcony outside, made up his world. He threw wide the french windows and went out.

A setting sun in a cloudless sky fashioned strange red lights and purple shadows upon unimaginable buildings, streaked the distant waters almost reluctantly with a phantom, carmine brush, and painted New York City in aspects new even to the weary eyes of the man who had looked down upon it so often.

Setting the clay upon the table, he returned and took a photographic printing-frame from its place in the window. Removing the print, he immersed it in a glass tray. As the tones grew deeper, it presented itself as an enlargement of that tiny coloured head—the model which eternally he sought to reproduce.

VII

Mark Hepbum, fully alive to the fact that he had been covered from the moment when he had left the apartment where Moya Adair’s small son lived—a prisoner—experienced an almost savage delight in throwing his pursuers off the track in the great railway station.

He had detected them—there were two—by the time that he descended the steps. He knew that Moya’s happiness, perhaps the life of Robbie, depended upon his maintaining the character of a family friend. Whatever happened, he must not be identified as a federal agent.

Furthermore, at any cost he must combat a growing fear, almost superstitious, of the powers of Dr. Fu Manchu; even a minor triumph over the agents of that sinister, invisible being would help to banish an inferiority complex which threatened to claim him. He succeeded in throwing off his pursuers, very ordinary underworld toughs, without great difficulty.

A covered lorry was waiting at a spot appointed. In it, he donned blue overalls and presently entered a service door of the Regal-Athenian, a peaked cap pulled down over his eyes and carrying a crate upon his shoulders.

The death of Blondie Hahn, demi-god of the underworld, and of Fly Carlo, notorious cat-burglar, had been swamped as news by the assassination of Harvey Bragg. In the railway station, on every news-stand that he had passed, the name Bragg flashed out at him. The man’s death had created a greater sensation than his life. Thousands had lined up along the route of his funeral train to pay homage to Harvey Bragg.

Mark Hepburn abandoned the problem of how this atrocity fitted into the schemes of that perverted genius who aimed to secure control of the country. He was keyed up to ultimate tension, insanely happy because he had read kindness in the eyes ofMoyaAdair; guiltily conscious of the fact that perhaps he had not performed his duty to the government, indeed, did not know where it lay. But now, as Fey, stoic-faced, opened the door of the apartment, he found himself to be doubly eager for the great attempt planned by Nayland Smith to trap some, at least, of these remorseless plotters—it might be even the great chief—in their subterranean lair.

Chapter 23

FU MANCHU’S WATER-GATE

“Shut off,” snapped Nayland Smith. “Drift on the current.”

The purr of the engine ceased.

A million lights looked down through frosty air upon them, lights which from river level seemed to tower up to the vault of the sky. Upon the shores were patches of red light, blue light, and green, reflected upon slowly moving water. Restless lights, like fireflies, darted, mingled, and reappeared again upon the bridges. The lights of a ferry boat crossed smoothly astern: lights of every colour, static and febrile, fairy lights high up in the sky, elfin lights, Jack-o’-lanterns, low down upon the sullen tide. Hugging the shore, the motor launch, silent, drifted in an ebony belt protected from a million remorseless eyes. In the shadows below a city of light they crept onward to their destination.

“I understand”—Nayland Smith’s voice came through the darkness from the bows—”that a fourth man has been reported?”

“Correct, Chief,” Police Captain Corrigan replied. “He was checked in and reported by flash two minutes ago.”

Staccato, warning blasts of tugs, sustained notes of big ships, complemented that pattern painted by the lights: the ceaseless voice of the city framed it. The wind had dropped to a mere easterly breeze; nevertheless it was an intensely cold night.

“There’s a ladderway,” said Corrigan, “with a trap opening on the dock above.”

“And the property belongs to the South Coast Trade Line: . . .”

“That’s correct.”

The late Harvey Bragg, as Nayland Smith had been at pains to learn, had held a controlling interest in the South Coast Trade Line. . . .

“Here we are,” a voice announced.

“No engine,” Nayland Smith directed. “Ease her in; there’s plenty of hold.”

The lights of Manhattan were lost in that dusky waterway. Sirens spoke harshly, and a ferry returning from the Brooklyn shore threw amber gleams upon the oily water. A tugboat passed very close to them; her passage set the launch dancing. All lights had been doused when that of an electric torch speared the darkness.

A wooden platform became visible. From it a ladder arose and disappeared into shadow above. The tidal water whispered and lapped eerily as they rode the swell created by the back wash of the tugboat.

“Quiet now!” Nayland Smith spoke urgently. “Lift the spar up and get it across the rail. How many men, Corrigan?”

“Forty-two, Chief.”

“I can’t see a soul.”

“Good work by me!”

Nayland Smith rested his hand upon the shoulder of the man in the bows and mounted to the wooden platform. Another tugboat went by as Corrigan joined him. Her starboard light transformed the launch party below into a crew of demons and gleamed evilly on the barrel of a gun which Corrigan carried.

“It was the same two men who brought the fourth passenger?” Smith asked.

“Can’t confirm that until we check up with Eastman, who’s in charge above. But the other three were brought down by a pair of Chinks, and one of the Chinks rang a bell—which I guess I can locate: I was watching through binoculars. How many times he rang—except it was more than once—is another story.”

“I know how many times he rang, Corrigan. Seven times. . . . Find the bell.”

“Got my hand on it!”

The spar, raised upon the shoulders of the launch party, now rested on the rail of the platform. Slowly, quietly it was moved forward. Corrigan snapped his fingers as a signal when it all but touched the door.

“We don’t know which way it opens,” he whispered— “always supposing it does open.”

The spar separated the two men.

“That doesn’t matter. Ring seven times.”

Police Captain Corrigan raised his hand to a sunken bell-push and pressed it seven times. Almost immediately the door opened. Beyond was cavernous darkness.

“Go to it, boys!” Corrigan shouted.

Lustily the spar was plunged through the opening. Nayland Smith and Corrigan shot rays of light into the black gap. Somewhere above a whistle blew. There came a rush of hurrying footsteps upon planking, a subdued uproar of excitement.

“Come on, Corrigan!” snapped Nayland Smith.

Corrigan leaped over the spar and followed his leader into black darkness now partly dispersed by the light of two torches. It was a brick tunnel in which they found themselves, illimitable so far as the power of the lights was concerned. Corrigan paused, turned, and:

“This way, boys!” he shouted.

The patter of feet echoed eerily in that narrow passage. Vaguely, against reflection from the river, the spar could be seen jammed across the doorway. Nayland Smith’s light was already far ahead.

“Wait for me, Chief!” Corrigan yelled urgently.

The officer in charge of the hidden party which secretly had been assembled for many hours appeared, a silhouette against a background of shimmering water, leading his men as Corrigan sprang along the tunnel behind Nayland Smith.

Five paces Corrigan had taken when Nayland Smith turned.

“Wait for the men, Corrigan,” he cried, his snappy instructions echoing weirdly.

Corrigan paused, turned, and looking back. A line of figures, ant-like, streamed in from the river opening. Then:

“My God! what’s this?” Corrigan groaned.

Something, something which created a shattering crash, had blotted out the scene. Corrigan turned his light back. Nayland Smith was running to join him.

An iron door, resembling a sluice-gate, had been dropped between them and the river. . . . They were cut off!

Chapter 24

SEIGE OF CHINATOWN

The temple of the seven-eyed goddess was illuminated by light which shone out from its surrounding alcoves. Since each of these was draped by a curtain of different colour, the effect was very curious. These curtains were slightly drawn aside so that from the point occupied by the seven-eyed idol it would have become apparent that many cells were occupied.

There were shadowy movements depicted upon the curtains. At the sound of a gong these movements ceased.

The brazen note was still humming around the vault-like place when Dr. Fu Manchu came in. He wore his yellow robe, and a mandarin’s cap was set upon his high skull. He took his seat at a table near the pedestal of the carved figure. He glanced at some notes which lay there.

“Greeting,” he said gutturally.

A confused murmur of voices from his hidden audience responded.

“I may speak in English,” he continued, his precise voice giving its exact value to every syllable which he uttered, “for I am informed that this language is common to all of us present to-night. Those of the Seven not here in person are represented by their accredited nominees, approved by the council. But in accordance with our custom whereby only one of all the Seven shall know the other six, it has been necessary, owing to the presence of such nominees, to hold this meeting in the manner arranged.”

A murmur which might have been one of assent greeted his words.

“I have succeeded in placing the chief executive we have selected in a position from which no human agency can throw him down. You may take it for granted that he will enjoy the support of the League of Good Americans. The voice of the priest, Patrick Donegal, I have not yet contrived wholly to control. . . . Because of a protective robe which seems to cover him, I regard this priest as the challenge of Rome to our older and deeper philosophy. . . .

“Suitable measures will be taken when the poppy is in flower. There is much more which I wish to say, but it must be temporarily postponed, since I have arranged that we shall all hear our chosen executive speak to-night. He is addressing a critical audience in the assembly hall in which Harvey Bragg formerly ruled as king. This is his second public address since Bragg was removed. It will convince you more completely than any words of mine could do of the wisdom of our selection. I beg for silence: you are now listening to a coast-to-coast broadcast.”

So closely had Dr. Fu Manchu timed his words that the announcer had ceased speaking when radio contact was made.

Tremendous uproar rose to an hysterical peak, and then slowly subsided. Paul Salvaletti began to speak a speech destined both by virtue of beauty, phrasing and the perfect oratory of the man to find a permanent place in American forensic literature.

Salvaletti, to be known from that hour as “Silver Tongue,” was, as befitted a selection of Dr. Fu Manchu, probably one of the four greatest orators in the world. Trained by the Oratorian fathers and then perfected in a famous dramatic academy of Europe, he spoke seven languages with facility, and he learned the subtle art of mass control as understood by the Eastern adepts in the Tiberan monastery of Rache Churan. For two years, efficiently but unobtrusively, he had laboured in silence as confidential secretary to Harvey Bragg. He had the absolute confidence of Harvey Bragg. He had a more intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the League of Good Americans, of the Lotus Transport Corporation, and of the other enterprises which had formed the substantial background of the demagogue, than any man living. He understood human nature, but had the enormous advantage over Bragg of a profound culture. He could speak to the South in the language of the South; he could speak to the world in the language of Cicero.

He began, with perfect art, to deliver this modern version of Mark Antony’s oration over the body of Caesar. . . .

“What in hell’s this?” growled Police Captain Corrigan. “We’re jammed!”

The light of his torch and that of Nayland Smith’s became concentrated upon the iron door which had fallen behind them. Dimly, very dimly, they could hear the voices of the party outside.

“Hadn’t counted on this,” muttered Nayland Smith. “But we mustn’t get bothered—we must think.”

“Looks to me, Chief,” said the police officer, “as if the seven rings work automatically, and that after an interval this second door comes down—like as not to make sure that a big party isn’t bullying in.”

“Something in that Corrigan,” Nayland Smith rapped. “Outstanding point is—we are cut off.”

“I know it.”

They stood still, listening. Shouted orders from somebody who had taken charge became dimly audible. Words reached their ears as mere murmurs. The iron door was not only heavy but fitted perfectly in its grooves.

“Can you hear a sound like water, Chief?” Corrigan said in a low voice.

“Yes.”

The ray from Nayland Smith’s torch searched the floor, the walls, as far ahead as it could reach, revealing nothing but an apparently endless brick tunnel.

“I kind of fancy,” Corrigan went on, “that I’ve heard there used to be a brook or a stream hereabouts in the old days, and that it was switched into a sewer. You can hear running water?”

“I can,” said Nayland Smith.

“I guess we’re beside it or over it. Used to run from some place near Columbus Park where there was a pond. . . .”

“We have to suppose,” said Nayland Smith quietly, “that so far everything is in order——”

“Except that we’re trapped!”

“I mean, if, as you suggest, the river door opens mechanically and this outer door falls at an agreed interval, we shall be quite safe in pushing ahead.”

“I should feel safer with forty men behind me.”

“So should I. The proper routine would be in all probability to re-close the river door, ring the bell seven times, and continue in this way until the whole party was inside.”

“Sounds reasonable—but how do we do it? . . . Hullo! Look at this!”

Corrigan directed the light of his torch downwards; his hand shook with excitement. Discord of shouting voices grew louder. A crack appeared at the bottom of the iron door. Slowly, it was being raised!

“The opening of the outer door drops it automatically in half a minute or less,” said Nayland Smith. “Normally it is raised when the door is closed. They must have moved the spar. Contact has been established which raises it again.”

“I’m waiting,” Corrigan replied grimly, his gaze fixed upon the slowly moving door. “I’m not built like an eel. When I can get out I’ll be the first to cheer. . . .”

In the streets of Chinatown a cordon had been drawn around the suspected area. During the course of the day a census had been taken of the inhabitants in the section indicated by Nayland Smith; outgoings and incomings, all had been accounted for. Most of those interrogated were Chinese, and the Chinaman is a law-respecting citizen. Almost any other would have openly resented the siege conditions to which the inhabitants of this section of New York City found themselves subjected on this occasion.

Mark Hepburn with a guard of three men directed operations. He was feverishly anxious, as his deep-set eyes indicated to everyone he approached. His duty was to make sure that none of the invisible members of Dr. Fu Manchu’s organization should escape by the street exits which the vigilance of government men and police engaged upon the inquiry had failed to detect. The importance of his duty was great enough to enable him to force into the background the problem of Moya Adair. Apart from his personal interest, she formed an invaluable link, if only he could succeed in reconciling his conscience with his duty, his own interests with those of the State.

The night had grown bitterly cold; high winds had blown themselves away across the Atlantic; the air had that champagne quality which redoubles a man’s vigour.

Many streets were barricaded; a sort of curfew had been imposed upon part of Chinatown. Every householder had been made responsible for the members of his household. Restaurants and cafes were scrutinized from cellar to roof, particularly Wu King’s Bar. Residents returning to the barricaded area were requested to establish their identity before being admitted. Visitors who did not reside there were escorted to their destinations and carefully checked up.

Mark Hepburn had tackled the situation with his usual efficiency. Pretence had been cast aside. All Chinatown knew that the section was being combed for one of the big shots of the underworld.

And all Chinatown remained in suspense; for now the news had spread through those mysterious channels which defy Occidental detection that other members of the Council of the Seven of the Si-Fan were in the city. The dreaded Black Dragon Society of Japan was no more than an offshoot of the Si-Fan, which embraced in its invisible tentacles practically the whole of the coloured races of the world. No dweller east of Suez or west of it to Istanbul would have gambled a dollar on the life of a man marked down by the Si-Fan.

in

In the cave of the seven-eyed goddess Dr. Fu Manchu sat, eyes closed, long, ivory hands extended upon the table before him, listening to the silver tones of that distant speaker, to the rising excitement of the audience which he addressed; an audience representing but a fraction of that which from coast to coast hung upon his words—words destined to play a strange part in the history of the country. The other listeners, invisible in queer cells which surrounded the central apartment, were equally silent, motionless.

In the seventh of these, that which communicated with a series of iron doors protecting the place from the street above, old Sam Pak crouched mummy-like upon a settee listening with others to that wonderful, inspiring voice speaking in a southern state.

A very faint buzz directly above his head resulted in slitlike eyes being opened in the death mask. Sam Pak turned, glanced up. A tiny disc of blue light showed. Slowly he nodded his shrivelled head and watched this blue light. Two, three, four minutes elapsed—and the blue light still prevailed. Where upon that man of vast knowledge and experience acted. There was something strange here.

The appearance of the blue light was in order, for a seventh representative even now was expected by way of the river-gate. The blue light indicated that the river-gate had been opened by one of the two men on duty who knew its secret. Its persistence indicated that the river-gate had not been re-closed; and this was phenomenal.

But even as Sam Pak stood up and began silently to shuffle in the direction of the door, the blue light flickered, dimmed, flickered again and finally went out.

Something definitely was wrong!

A lesser man would have alarmed the council, but Sam Pak was a great man. Quietly he opened the iron door and ascended the stairs beyond. He opened a second door and mounted higher, switching on lights. Half-way along a stone-faced corridor, stone-paved, he paused beneath a pendant lamp. Reaching up he pulled this pendant.

It dropped, lever fashion, and a section of the seemingly solid wall some five feet high and three feet wide dropped backward like a drawbridge. So perfectly was it fitted, so solid its construction, that he would have been a clever detective indeed who could have found it when it was closed.

Sam Pak, stooping, went into the dark opening. An eerie lapping of moving water had become audible at the moment that the secret door had dropped back. There was a dank, unwholesome smell. He reached for, and found, an iron rail;

then from beneath his blue robe he produced a torch and shone its ray ahead.

He stood on a gallery above a deep sewer, an inspection-gallery accessible to, and sometime used by, the sanitary authorities of the city. Into this a way had been struck from the secret warren below Chinatown and another way out at the farther end by the river bank.

He moved slowly along, a crouched, eerie figure in a whispering, evil place.

At a point where the oily waters disappeared beneath an arch, the gallery seemingly ended, and before a stone wall he paused.

His ancient, clawlike hands manipulated some piece of mechanism, and a small box came to light, a box in which a kind of telephone stood. Sam Pak raised the instrument; he listened.

“Chee, chee, chee!” he hissed.

He hung up the telephone, re-closed the box in which it was hidden and began to return along the iron gallery, moving now with extraordinary rapidity for a man of his years. The unexpected, but not the unforeseen, had happened.

The enemy had forced the water-gate.

IV

At the corner of Doyers Street a crowd had gathered beyond the barricade. Those who wished to pass were referred by the police officer on duty to another point, which necessitated a detour. A tall, bearded man, his coat collar turned up and his hat brim pulled down, stood beside a big car, the windows of which were bullet-proof, lurking in shadow and studying the group beyond the barricade. A messenger from local police headquarters made his way to his side.

“Captain Hepburn?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“We seem to have lost contact with the party operating under Federal Officer Smith down on East River.”

“No news?”

“Not a thing.”

Mark Hepburn experienced a sudden, great dread. The perils of the river-gate, although a large party had been assembled, were unknown—unknown as the resources of the formidable group which Nayland Smith sought to break up. His quick imagination presented a moving picture of things which might have happened. Johnson was perfectly capable of taking charge of routine here on the street; indeed, Johnson had done most of the work, Hepburn merely supervising and taking reports. On the other hand, a dash to the waterfront would be technically to desert his post. He turned to the man beside him.

“Go personally,” he directed in his monotonous way; “take a launch if you can’t make it on shore. Then hurry right back to me to report just what you have seen.”

“All right, Captain.”

The man set out.

Mark Hepburn entered the bullet-proof car and gave brief directions to the driver.

Outside Wu King’s Bar the car stopped. Mark Hepburn went in, followed by the three men who had accompanied him. The place was almost wholly patronized by Asiatics, except when squads of sightseers were brought there, Wu King’s being one of the show places in Chinatown tours.

A buzz of conversation subsided curiously as the party entered. Following Hepburn’s lead they walked through the restaurant to the bar at the farther end, glancing keenly at the groups of men and women occupying the tables set in cubicles. Behind the bar Wu King, oily and genial, presided in person, his sly eyes twinkling in a fat, pock-marked face.

“Ah, gen’I’men,” he said, rubbing his hands and speaking with an accent which weirdly combined that of the Bowery and Shanghai, “you want some good beer, eh?”

Everyone in the place except Wu King spoke now in a lowered voice; this serpentine hissing created a sinister atmosphere.

“Yes,” said Hepburn, “some beer and some news.”

“Anything Wu King know, Wu King glad to tell.” He pumped up four glasses of creamy lager. “Just say what biting you and Wu King put right, if know enough, which probably not.”

Mark Hepburn paid for the beer and nodded to his companions. Leaning against the bar they all directed their attention toward the groups in the little cubicles. There was another room upstairs, and according to the local police, still another above that where fan-tan and other illegal amusements sometimes took place.

“You seem to be pretty busy?” Hepburn said.

“Yes,” The Chinaman revealed a row of perfect but discoloured teeth. “Plenty busy. Customers complain funny business outside. You gen’I’men know all about it I guess?”

“My friends here may know. What I want is copy.”

“Oh sure! You a newspaperman?”

“You’ve got it, Wu. I guess you know most of your customers?”

“Know ‘em all, mister. All velly old friend. Some plenty money, some go tick, but all velly good friend. Chinaman good friend to each other, or else”—he shrugged his shoulders— “What become of Chinaman?”

“That’s true enough. But I’m out for a story.” He turned, fixing deep-set eyes upon the fat face of the proprietor. “I’m told that one of the Seven is in town. Is that right, Wu?”

Less experienced than Nayland Smith in the ways of the Orient, he looked for some change of expression in the pock-pitted face—and looked in vain. Wu King’s immobile features registered nothing whatever.

“The Seven?” he said innocently. “What seven’s that, mister?”

“I’ll say I’m glad to get out,” said Corrigan as, assisted by willing helpers, he crawled under the partly raised door. “I don’t like the looks of that tunnel.”

From out of the echoing hollow under the dock came a shouted order:

“Silence!”

A buzz of excited words ceased. The men crowded into the narrow space between the two doors—the outer one partly jammed open by the spar—became silent.

“That’s Eastman,” said Corrigan. “Let’s see what’s new.”

Outside in a Dantesque scene peopled by moving shadows:

“Launch just been signalled from the bridge,” the invisible Eastman explained. “Are you held up there?”

“We were,” Corrigan replied shortly. He turned to Nayland Smith. “What now?”

Nayland Smith, a parody of his normal self, wearing a shabby suit and a linen cap which had once been white pulled down over one eye, stood silent behind the speaker. He was tugging at the lobe of his left ear.

“A change of plan,” he rapped. “This is something I had not foreseen. Get all the men under cover again, Corrigan, and run the launch out of sight downstream. Pick two good men to remain with us. Jump to it.”

“D’you hear that, Eastman?” Corrigan shouted. “Everybody under cover, just like when we first came up. The launch to clear the dock, lay up and wait for signals. Get busy.” He turned to two men who stood near to the spot where the spar projected into the partly open doorway. “You two,” he said, “stand by. Everybody else up the ladder.”

An ordered scuffling followed; three men tumbled into the launch and the others, some of whom had been crowded into the narrow space between the two doors, hurried up the ladder to the deck of the dock above. The launch went out astern, a phantom craft against the myriad lights reflected in the water, and disappeared from view.

“I want a small wedge fixed in that door; a clasp-knife would do, or anything that will bear pressure.”

Smith ran inside, flashing the light of his torch ahead, and springing over the spar which crossed the tunnel. The iron door beyond was about two-thirds raised.

“All ready, Chief,” came a voice. “I’ve got the door jammed.”

“Good. Now Corrigan, join us. You two men get inside but hang on to the door.”

There came further scuffling. The men, two black silhouettes, crossed the narrow opening.

“Are you ready?” rapped Nayland Smith.

“All ready, Chief.”

“Pull. Now, Corrigan, we have to get the spar inside.”

Pulling simultaneously, the thing was done and the spar laid down against one wall of the tunnel.

“Now,” Nayland Smith directed breathlessly, “ease the door to. Don’t let it bang if you can help it.”

Slowly the door, propelled by a powerful spring, closed, almost dragging the two men with it; and as it closed, that second door which resembled a sluicegate rose, inch by inch. At last:

“Can’t hang on any longer, Captain,” one of the men reported; “we shall get our hands jammed.”

“Let go,” Smith ordered.

The door snapped to; there was a slight grinding sound as its edge came in contact with the obstacle which had been placed there to hold it. Nayland Smith flashed his light upward. . . .

Less than two inches of the drop-gate showed in the slot in the ceiling of the tunnel.

The exact working of this cunning mechanism was not clear, and the place in which they stood afforded no cover whatever.

“I get your idea,” said Corrigan, “but short of shooting ‘em down, we haven’t a chance.”

“No shooting without orders.”

“I guess they’ll see the door’s phony, anyway,” said one of the men.

“Once they’re under the dock, Eastman will drop on ‘em,” Corrigan replied. “Get your guns out, boys. The moment that door comes open, the order is ‘stick ‘em up.’“ ,

There was a moment of silence broken only by river sounds audible through the narrow opening made by the wedge.

“Just check up,” said Corrigan. “I’m thinking, Chief, maybe the machinery won’t work unless the door is tight closed. There’s just time to see if we can haul it open. Go to it, boys!”

“I can just get a hold,” came hoarsely.

“Pull—not far—just to see if she moves.”

Another interval and then:

“Sure, we could haul it open right enough.”

“Then stand by,” rapped Nayland Smith; “haul if there’s any hitch.”

Up above, Eastman, peering through a gap in a row of barrels, saw the little motor craft stealing downstream, sometimes bathed in light, sometimes lost in darkness. One of the two Chinamen on board squatted in the bows, looking out sharply ahead, as the other drove the engine. A dim figure was seated astern; mist hovered over the water.

“This is some damned conjuring trick,” Eastman muttered.

The man in the stern, as moving lights from a passing steamboat momentarily had revealed, wore black oilskins and a gleaming sou’wester beneath the brim of which his features were entirely hidden. His dress was identical with that of the other four who had preceded him as passengers in the launch!

The concealed party on the dock watched breathlessly as the little craft, rolling on an oily swell, was turned into the narrow opening all but invisible from mid-river and brought to the ladderway. The manoeuvre was performed smoothly;

the man in the bows grasping the rail, extending one hand to the passenger in the stern. The engine had been shut off as they took the bend, and all lights doused.

Stepping cautiously, the passenger came forward and was assisted on to the ladder. There was an exchange of whispered words, indistinguishable to the men above. But Eastman, who had watched a previous arrival through binoculars from a police boat, guessed that the Chinaman who had been in the bows was leading the way. . . .

Inside, in utter darkness, four men waited tensely. Faintly to their ears came the sound of footsteps on the ladder.

“Stand by,” said Corrigan in a low voice; “cover ‘em.”

The door opened—whether automatically or because it was pulled by the two men on duty was not at the moment apparent.

“Hands up!” rapped Nayland Smith.

He shot the ray of a torch fully into the face of the man who entered; a meaningless Mongolian face, which ever under these circumstances exhibited no change of expression whatever. The man raised his hands above his head. The figure immediately behind him clad in gleaming black made a similar movement.

From outside came a muffled shout, a clatter of footsteps— the sound of a splash in the river, and:

“Get that man!” Eastman was heard shouting. “He went in off the stern of the boat!”

Answering shouts responded, scurrying movements.

“Search the blackbird, Waygood,” Corrigan directed. “You— search the Chink.”

The man addressed as Waygood roughly snatched the sou’wester from the head of the traveller and peeled back his oilskin at the same moment that the other roughly overhauled the immobile Chinaman.

Nayland Smith stared eagerly into the face revealed. Recognition of an astounding fact had come to him. By one of those divine incidents which so rarely rallied to his aid, he had selected for this attempt on Fu Manchu’s underground quarters a night when influential supporters of the movement were meeting in conference!

He had hoped to see the stoical features of General Li Wu Chang—but he was disappointed.

He saw a face Oriental in character, but rather of the Near then of the Far East; a proud, olive-skinned face with flashing dark eyes and supercilious lips. But the man was unknown to him.

The Chinaman was relieved of an automatic and a wicked-looking knife. The other was apparently unarmed, but a curious fact came to light when his oilskins were slipped off. Beneath them he wore a black robe, with a cowl!

Eastman burst in at the door.

“We’ve lost the second Chink,” he reported. “I guess he swims like a shark. He must have swum under water for a long time, unless he knocked himself out! Anyway, there’s no trace of him. And there’s a sea mist coming up.”

“Bad luck,” snapped Nayland Smith, “but keep a sharp look-out,” Turning to Corrigan: “Have this Chinaman taken outside,” he directed. “I have some questions to put to the other.”

A few moments later he stood before the dignified Oriental upon whose face Corrigan directed the light of a torch.

“Do you know the Chinaman, Corrigan?”

“No; but Finney, down on Mott Street, will know him when he sees him. He knows every Chink in the town.”

Nayland Smith fixed his penetrating regard upon the features of the Egyptian: that the man was an Egyptian he had now determined.

“What is your name?” he demanded.

“By what authority do you ask?”

The man, who retained a remarkable composure, spoke easily, in perfect English and with a cultured voice.

“I am a government agent. What is your name?”

“Judging from the treatment received by my Chinese acquaintance,” the Egyptian replied, “I have nothing but a man-handling to gain by silence. My name is Ahmed Fayume. Would you care to see my passport?”

“Hand it to Police Captain Corrigan.”

The Egyptian, from beneath the curious robe which he wore, produced a passport which he handed to Corrigan, who glared at him in that intimidating manner cultivated by the police and opened the document savagely as though he hated it.

“When did you arrive in New York?”

“Last night by the lie de France.”

“And you are staying at. . .”

“The Grosvenor-Grand.”

“What is your business in the States?”

“I am on a visit to Washington.”

“Are you a diplomat?”

“I am attached to the personal suite of King Fuad of Egypt.”

“That’s right,” growled Corrigan, looking up from the passport. “Something funny about this.”

His expression became puzzled.

“Perhaps, Mr. Fayume,” said Nayland Smith crisply, “you can explain what you are doing here to-night in the company of two suspected men.”

The Egyptian smiled slightly.

“Naturally I was unaware that they are suspected men,” he replied. “When the Egyptian consulate put me in touch with them, I was under the impression that I was being taken to a unique house of entertainment where hashish and other amusements were provided.”

“Indeed! But why the fancy dress?”

“The black domino?” The Egyptian continued to smile. “This was provided by my guides, as visitors to the establishment to which I refer do not invariably wish to be recognized.”

Nayland Smith continued to stare into the large velvety eyes of the speaker, and then:

“Your story requires investigation, Mr. Fayume,” he said drily. “In the meantime, I must ask you to regard yourself as under arrest. Will you be good enough to empty your pockets?”

Ahmed Fayume shrugged his shoulders resignedly and obeyed the order.

“I fear,” he said calmly, “that you are creating an international incident. . . .”

VI

A report received out on the street as the party left Wu King’s Bar, from the man whom Hepburn had dispatched to East River, was reassuring. The water-gate referred to by Nayland Smith had actually been discovered; two arrests had been made: operations on that front were proceeding in accordance with plan.

The life of Chinatown within the barricaded area carried on much along its usual lines. The stoicism of the Asiatics, like the fatalism of the Arab, makes for acceptance of things as they are. From a dry-goods store, when a customer entered or emerged, came mingled odours of joss stick and bombay duck; attractively lighted restaurants seemed to be well patronized; lobsters, crayfish and other crustacean delicacies dear to the Chinese palate were displayed in green herbal settings. John Chinaman blandly minded his own business, so that there seemed to be something quite grotesque about the guarded barrier at the end of the street.

Mark Hepburn was badly worried. Nayland Smith’s unique experience had enabled him to postulate the existence of a Chinatown headquarters and of a river-gate. Right in this, it seemed improbable that he was wrong in his theory that there were exits and entrances somewhere on the streets surrounding this particular block.

He turned to Detective Inspector Finney, who silently walked beside him.

“You tell me there’s nothing secret about Chinatown any more,” he said slowly; “if that’s true, there’s a bad muddle here.”

Inspector Finney, a short, thick-set man with a red, square-jawed face, wearing rainproofs and a hard black hat, turned and stared at Hepburn.

“There’s no more iron doors,” he declared defiantly. “An iron door couldn’t get unloaded and set up without I knew about it. There used to be gambling joints and opium dens, but since the new regulations they’ve all moved over there— not so strict. All my boys can’t be deaf and blind. When we get the word, we’ll check up the block. If any strangers have arrived they’ll have to show their birthmarks.”

Mark Hepburn, inside one of the barriers beyond which stood a group of curious onlookers, pulled up sharply, and turning to Finney:

“There’s just one part of this area,” he said, “which I haven’t explored—the roofs.” He turned to one of a group behind him, and: “You’re in charge, Johnson,” he added. “I don’t expect to be long.”

Ten minutes later, followed by Inspector Finney and two men, Hepburn climbed the fire ladders at the back of a warehouse building which seemed to be deserted. No light showed from any of the windows. When at last they stepped upon the leads:

“Stick to the shadow,” said Hepburn sharply. “There’s a high point at the end of the block from which we might be seen.”

“Sure,” Finney replied; “that’s the building where Wu King’s Bar is located. He goes three floors up—the rest is a Chinese apartment house. I checked up on every apartment six o’clock this evening, and there’s a man on the street entrance. Outside of this block we’re overlooked plenty any way.”

“There are lights in the top story of the Wu King building. Maybe you recall who lives there?”

“Wu King and his wife live up there,” came the voice of one of the men, hidden in the shadows behind him. “He owns the whole building but rents part of it out. He’s one of the wealthiest Chinks around here.”

Mark Hepburn was becoming feverishly restless. He experienced an intense urge for action. These vague, rather aimless investigations failed to engross his mind. Even now, with the countless lights of the city around him, the curiously altered values of street noises rising to his ears, the taunting mystery which lay somewhere below, he found his thoughts, and not for the first time that night, leading him into a dream world inhabited by Moya Adair.

He wondered what she was doing at that moment—what duties had been imposed upon her by the sinister President. She had told him next to nothing. For all he knew to the contrary, her slavery might take her to the mysterious Chinatown base, that unimaginable den which in grotesque forms sometimes haunted his sleep. The awful idea presented itself that if Nayland Smith’s raid should prove successful, Moya might be one of the prisoners!

A damp grey mist borne upon a fickle breeze was creeping insidiously through the streets of Chinatown.

“Is there any way of obtaining a glimpse of that apartment?” he asked.

“We could step right up and ring the bell,” Finney answered. “Otherwise, not so easy. Looks to me as if the ladders from that point join up with the lower roof beyond the dip. And I don’t know if we can get from this one down to the other.”

“Stay in the shadows as much as possible,” Hepburn directed.

He set out towards the upstanding storey of Wu King’s building, which like a squat tower dominated the flat surface of the leads.

VII

“There’s something wrong here,” said Nayland Smith.

From the iron gallery upon which he stood he shone the light of his torch down upon slowly moving evil-smelling water.

“We’ve got into one of the main sewers,” said Corrigan:

“that’s what’s wrong. From the time it’s taken us to make it I should say we’re way up on Second; outside the suspected area, anyway.”

He turned, looking back. It was an eerie spectacle. Moving lights dotted the tunnel—the torches of the raiding party. Sometimes out of whispering shadows a face would emerge smudgily as a straying beam impinged upon it. There were muffled voices and the rattle of feet on iron treads.

“Suppose we try back,” came a muffled cry. “We might go on this way all night.”

“Turn back,” snapped Nayland Smith irritably. “This place is suffocating and we’re obviously on the wrong track.”

“There’s a catch somewhere,” Corrigan agreed. “All we can do is sit around the rat hole and wait for the rat to come out.”

This was by no means what Nayland Smith had planned. He was savagely disappointed. Indeed the failure of his ambitious scheme would have left a sense of humiliation had it not been for the arrests made on the East River. Here at least was confirmation of his theory that the door under the dock belonging to the South Coast Trade Line undoubtedly was used by the group surrounding Dr. Fu Manchu.

It was infuriating to realize, as he had realized at the moment of the arrest of the Egyptian , that in all probability a meeting of the Council of Seven was actually taking place to-night!

The cowled robe was particularly significant. There were reasons why those summoned to be present did not wish to divulge their identity to the others: this was obvious. Ahmed Fayume was one of the Seven—a director of the Si-Fan. But it was improbable, owing to the man’s diplomatic credentials, that they would ever succeed in convicting him of any offence against the government of the United States.

From experience he knew that all attempts to interrogate the Chinese prisoner must fail. He took it for granted that the captive was a servant of Fu Manchu: that such an admission could ever be forced from his lips was wildly improbable. The other Chinaman had escaped; by now, had probably given the alarm. . . .

Corrigan’s words offered the only consolation. He recognized that it would be impracticable to sustain the siege of an area of Chinatown long enough to make it effective. He had been right, but he had failed. There was only one glimmer of hope. And suddenly he felt glad that the other Chinaman had escaped.

If, and he had little doubt upon the point, notable conspirators were present to-night, the raid on the secret water-gate might result in a desperate bid for freedom above!

But he was very silent as he brought up the rear of the party with Corrigan, groping back along the noisome tunnel. At points, vague booming noises echoed from above, the sound made by the heavy traffic. Always there was the echoing whisper of water. At a point where a lower inspection gallery crossed beneath that which they were following, he paused.

“Where do you estimate we stand, Corrigan?” he snapped.

“I should say about under Bayard and East Broadway. It’s a guess—but I don’t think I’m far out.”

“Detail men to watch this junction.”

VIII

“Stand on the foot of the ladder, Finney,” Hepburn directed.

The detective inspector gingerly took his place.

“Now, you,” indicating another man, “stand underneath and hold the rungs; and you,” to a third, “hang on to the side so that it doesn’t topple over. All set?”

The ladder, a short one, had been discovered in the warehouse yard and brought up on to the roof. Now, held by the three men, it perilously overhung a yawning gap, a gulley at the bottom of which, seen through a curtain of mist, were lights moving and stationary. Human voices distorted by the fog, muted sounds of movement were audible; but the characteristic hooting of taxicabs was missing, for this was one of the barricaded streets: the entrance to Wu King’s Bar lay immediately beneath.

“All ready, Captain.”

Mark Hepburn cautiously began to climb the ladder.

He moved in the shadow of the top storey of Wu King’s apartment house. It was a dizzy proceeding: at the cold, starry sky which seemed to beckon to him from the right of the building he could not trust himself to look, nor downward into the misty chasm of the street. Rung by rung he mounted—his objective that lighted window still some six feet above. Upward he climbed.

And, presently, standing two rungs from the top, he could rest his hands upon the ledge and look into the room to which this window belonged.

He saw a sight so strange that at first he could not fathom its significance. . . .

An oddly appointed sitting-room was visible, its character and the character of the lamps striking a definite Oriental note. Brightly coloured rugs were strewn upon the floor, and he saw that there were divans against two of the walls. The predominant colour scheme of illumination seemed to be purple, so that he found great difficulty in making out what was taking place at the farther end.

A window there was widely opened, and two Chinamen seemed to be engaged in hauling upon a line. This in itself was singular, but the third and only other figure in the room struck an ultimate note of the bizarre.

It was that of a man wearing a black cowled robe. The cowl entirely covered his face, but was provided with two eyeholes, so that save for the colour of his dress he resembled one of the Misericordia Brethren!

He was standing quite still just behind the Chinamen, who, as Mark Hepburn watched, hauled in at the open window an equipment resembling a bosun’s chair. Even now the significance of what was going on had not fully penetrated to his mind. The cowled man, clutching his robe about his legs and assisted by one of the Chinamen, took his place in the chair. Again they began hauling.

The black figure disappeared through the window. . . .

Now the truth burst upon him. Nayland Smith’s raid of the water-gate had succeeded. . . . This was an emergency exit from the surrounded block!

How many had gone before? How many were yet to come? It was clear enough. A ropeway had been thrown across the street to some tall building on the opposite side, and above the very heads of the patrolling police the wanted men were being wound across to safety!

He moved his foot, urgent to descend. It was not too late to locate that other building. . . .

Then he paused.

As the two Chinamen bore upon the line, from a curtained opening left of the room another figure entered.

It was that of a tall man wearing a yellow robe; a man whose majestic features conveyed a sense of such power that Hepburn’s movement was arrested. Tightly clutching the ledge, he watched—watched that high shouldered, imposing figure standing motionless in the curtained entrance. Perhaps his regard became so intense as to communicate a sense of his presence to the majestic newcomer.

Slowly the massive head was turned. Hepburn, through the glass of the window, met the regard of a pair of vivid green eyes which seemed to be looking directly into his own. . . . Never in his life had he seen such eyes. If, under the circumstances, he was actually visible from inside the room he could not be sure:

but of one face, one astounding fact, he was certain:

This was Dr. Fu Manchu!

Chapter 25

SIEGE OF CHINATOWN (concluded)

Mark Hepburn, keyed up by the immensity of the moment, ventured to the very top of the swaying ladder. He clutched a hook on one side of the window, placed there for the convenience of window-cleaners, and crashed his right heel through a pane of glass.

Stooping, he thrust his automatic through the opening, and: “Hands up, Fu Manchu!” he shouted, his voice rising from syllable to syllable upon notes of excitement.

The sea mist continued its insidious invasion of the streets below. One by one it blotted out the lights below. A voice spoke from the leads at the foot of the ladder:

“Go easy, Captain: we can’t catch you if you fall!”

Hepbum scarcely heeded the cry: his entire interest was focussed upon the uncanny being who stood in the curtained opening. The two men straining on the rope were wonderfully trained servants; for at the glass crash and harsh words of command they had not started, had not turned, but had continued to perform mechanically the duty allotted to them!

Slowly, the perturbing regard of those green eyes never wavering, the tall Chinaman raised his hands. If he could not see the speaker, he could see the barrel of the automatic. From below:

“Bear left!” came urgently “We can’t hold the ladder.”

During one irrevocable moment Hepburn tore his attention away. In that moment the room became plunged in darkness!

Clutching at the hook he fired in the direction of the curtained doorway. . . and the flash showed it to be empty. Further shots would be wasted. He craned downward.

“Pass the word there’s a ropeway across the street. This damnable fog has helped them. Have the house opposite covered and searched.”

Now came shouted orders, sounds of running, muffled cries from the police below. . . .

“Arrest everyone in Wu King’s. Search the place from roof to cellar.”

He fired again in the direction of the distant window, aiming over the heads of the Chinamen. Craning forward, he heard scurrying footsteps; then came silence. Perilously, but aided by a high exaltation which had come to him in the moment when he knew that he actually stood in the presence of the all but fabulous Dr. Fu Manchu, he found his foothold on the ladder and descended to the roof. Finney, one arm thrown out, hauled him back from the parapet upon which the ladder was poised, and:

“What’s up there, Captain?” he demanded hoarsely. “I feel glued down here to the ladder.”

“A getaway across the street. Get busy. We must hurry.”

But already, delegating to a competent junior the matter of Wu King’s and of those inside it, Lieutenant Johnson had entered the building indicated.

It consisted of a dry-goods store which had been closed half an hour before, and of apartments above. (Investigations were to prove that the landlord was none other than Wu King.) Employing those methods peculiar to the police responsible for the good conduct of Chinatown, entrance was forced to every apartment and every room right to the top. Here a hitch occurred.

On the top storey was a lodge of the Hip Sing Tong. No key was forthcoming, and the door defied united attack.

As a precautionary measure every man, woman and child found in the building had been arrested. Laden police wagons were taking them to the Tombs when Hepburn came racing up to the landing. The work of the demolition of the door of the Tong temple had commenced. It was proving a tough job when a cry came:

“Make way there!”

A grim-faced policeman appeared from below, holding an elderly Chinaman by the scruff of the neck.

“He’s got the key,” he explained laconically.

A moment later the door was thrown open. Light was searched for and found, and the garishly decorated place revealed.

It was permeated by a curious odour of stale incense wafted in their direction by a draught from a window overhanging the street. Tackle lay upon the floor; a pulley had been rigged to one of the beams which crossed the ceiling. It was to this spot that escape had been made from the top story of Wu King’s building.

The Tong temple was empty from wall to wall. . . .

Chapter 26

THE SILVER BOX

In his tower study Dr. Fu Manchu spoke softly. Two points of light glowed upon the switchboard on the table.

“It was well done, my friend, but the rest is merely a question of time. Base 3 must be vacated. It is regrettable that the representative from Egypt should have been arrested, but steps have been taken to ensure his release. Of Wu Chang’s silence we are certain; other representatives are safe. You are short of helpers, therefore many splendid specimens must be sacrificed. But make good your own escape, leaving nothing behind that might act as a clue for the enemy,”

“I hear, Master,” the voice of old Sam Pak replied as though he stood in the room. “I shall see to these matters.”

“Instinct is greater than wit” the guttural voice of Dr. Fu Manchu continued. “By instinct Enemy Number One has smelled us out. I hear you hiss, my friend. We shall see. I have a plan.”

“Do you desire, Marquis, that the way be made easy?”

“Such is my wish. Give them this hollow triumph: it will blind their eyes. Base 3 is of no further service: move in this matter, my friend.”

Long fingers manipulated switches. Two lights became extinguished, but another appeared upon the board.

“Report,” Dr. Fu Manchu directed, “of Number covering Base 3.”

“Report to hand,” the Teutonic tones of the Memory Man replied, “timed 11.36. Wu King’s Bar was raided at 11.05 and everyone on the premises, including Wu King and members of his family, arrested by police. Emergency exit is also in their hands; many other arrests—some forty in all. The barricades have been raised, and everything is normal except that the area is being heavily patrolled. Government agent in charge of operations to-night identified as Captain Mark Hepburn, U.S.M.C. Captain Hepburn has left the area—covered. Report ends. From Number 37.”

There was a moment of silence; the long fingers resting upon the lacquered table were so still that they might have been wrought of smoked ivory.

“Report,” the voice directed, “of Number responsible for protection of representatives.”

“Report of Protection Bureau to hand,” the Memory Man replied, “timed 11.50. All are safely returned to their hotels or places of residence, with the exception of Egyptian representative. He was arrested at Entrance 4 together with one Wu Chang who was in his company. This arrest was the subject of an earlier report.”

“Latest report of Number covering Exit 4.”

“To hand, time 11.38. The raiding party believed to be in charge of Police Captain Corrigan has withdrawn, leaving men estimated at seven to nine covering the point. Report ends. This from Number 49.”

“Prepare coast-to-coast reports. I shall require you to relay them in the order received, in one hour.”

Amber light prevailed again in the domed room where the man of miraculous memory worked upon his endless task of fashioning that majestic Chinese head. And at the moment that the light reappeared, the long bony fingers of Dr. Fu Manchu reached out to the silver box. Raising the lid, he extracted the delicate equipment for opium smoking which this receptacle contained.

“What’s the idea, Hepburn?” rapped Nayland Smith. The New York Times propped up against a coffee-pot, he was sitting at a frugal breakfast as Hepburn came into the sitting-room. Save for a suggestion of shadows beneath his keen eyes, there was little in that bronzed face to show the state of sustained nervous tension in which Nayland Smith had been during the past forty-eight hours. Automatically filling his pipe, he stared at Hepburn.

The moustache and beard had vanished. Mark Hepburn was again his clean-shaven self. He smiled in his almost apologetic way.

“Wasn’t it your friend Kipling who said that women and elephants never forget?” he asked. “I guess he might have included Dr. Fu Manchu. Anyway, I was shot at twice last night!”

Nayland Smith nodded.

“You’re right,” he said rapidly; “I had forgotten momentarily that he saw you at the window. Yes, the bearded newspaperman must disappear.”

Fey entered from the kitchenette bearing silver-covered dishes upon a tray; an appetizing odour accompanied him. Fey’s behaviour was that of a well-trained servant in a peaceful English home.

“I am making fresh coffee, sir,” he said to Hepburn. “It will be ready in a moment.”

He uncovered the dishes and withdrew.

“I am rapidly coming to the conclusion,” said Nayland Smith while Hepburn explored under the covers, “that we have outstayed our welcome under the covers, “that we have outstayed our welcome here. It’s only a question of time for one or both of us to be caught either going out or coming in.”

Hepburn did not reply. Nayland Smith struck a match, lighted his pipe and continued:

“So far we have been immoderately lucky, although both of us have had narrow squeaks. But we know that this place is covered night and day. It would be wise, I think, if we made other arrangements.”

“I am disposed to agree with you,” said Mark Hepburn slowly.

“The papers”—Nayland Smith indicated a score of loose sheets upon the carpet beside him—”are reticent about our abortive raid. A washout, Hepburn! Impossible to hold either of the prisoners. We have no evidence against them.”

“I know it.”

Fey entered with coffee and then withdrew to his tiny sanctum.

“It is merely a question of time,” Smith went on, unconsciously echoing the words of Dr. Fu Manchu, “for us to find this Chinese rabbit warren. I attended the line-up this morning but it’s a waste of breath to interrogate a Chinaman. This fact undoubtedly accounts for the survival of torture in their own country. Wu King, as I anticipated, fell back on the story of Tong warfare. Centre Street is beginning to regard me as a tiresome fanatic. Yet”—he brought his palm sharply down upon the table—”I was right about the Chinatown base. It’s there, but by the time we find it it will be deserted. An impasse, Hepbum, and our next move in doubt.”

He pointed to the newspaper propped up against the coffeepot.

“I begin to see the hand of Fu Manchu everywhere. Although I wore glasses and my clerical dress (upon which you have complimented me) I nearly came to grief on the corner right outside here this morning.”

“What happened?”

“A heavy lorry, ignoring signals, drove at me hell-for-leather! Only the skill of my driver saved me. The man said his brakes had failed. . . . The lorry belonged to the Lotus Corporation.”

“But Smith—”

“We must expect it. Our enemy is a man of genius. Our small subterfuges probably amuse him! Consider what’s at stake! Have you glanced at the Abyssinian situation, for instance? Dr. Fu Manchu’s triumph here would mean the end of Italy’s ambition.”

“You think so?”

Hepbum looked up sharply.

“I know it,” Nayland Smith returned. “The map of the world is going to be altered, Hepburn, unless we can check what is going on in this country. Have you given due thought to the fact that almost overnight Paul Salvaletti has become a national figure?”

“Yes; I can’t fit him into the picture.”

“There is one very curious point. . . .”

“To what do you refer?”

“Lola Dumas is with Salvaletti. She is frequently in the news with him.”

“Is that so strange? She has always been associated with the League of Good Americans.”

“The League of Good Americans is merely another name for Dr. Fu Manchu,” rapped Nayland Smith, standing up and beginning to pace the floor. “It is a point of very great interest: it implies that Dr. Fu Manchu is backing Salvaletti; in other words, that Salvaletti is not an opportunist who has sprung into the breach——”

“Good heavens!” Hepburn laid down his fork, “the breach was prepared for him?”

“Exactly”

“Is it possible?”

“The pattern begins to become apparent. We have been looking too closely at one small piece of it. I have read the report upon Salvaletti. Even now it is far from complete but it would appear that his training throughout has tended inevitably in one direction. Thank heaven that Abbot Donegal is safe. I have said it before, I say it again: that priest’s life is valuable. He may yet be called upon to stem the tide. Look at the papers. . . .”

In his restless promenade he stirred the loose sheets with his foot.

“The grave problems facing the Old World are allotted but little space. The nervous collapse (as such it is accepted) of Orwin Prescott merely occurs as a brief bulletin from Weaver’s Farm. The several murders which have decorated the Doctor’s visit to the United States are falling into the background. Even our Chinatown raid is granted scanty honours. No, Harvey Bragg, the Martyr, continues to dominate the news—his name now coupled with that of Paul Salvaletti. And—a significant fact, as I have said—Lola Dumas is creeping in.”

There was a short silence interrupted only by the buzzing of the telephone, the subdued voice of Fey answering in an adjoining room. Evidently none of the messages was of sufficient importance to demand the presence of Nayland Smith or Hepburn. But Fey would be making careful notes. Smith, staring out of the window, saw that all traces of fog had disappeared; that icily clear visibility which sometimes characterizes New York City in the winter months was prevailing.

“Are you looking at the Stratton Building, Smith?” Hepburn asked.

“Yes,” snapped Smith. “Why?”

“You remember what I told you about the strange man who lives up there at the top—as reported by Robbie Adair?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps—I admit maybe because it is associated with Mrs. Adair, I am very curious about this man. I put inquiries in hand late last night and I have a report this morning. There’s rather a queer thing about the Stratton Building.”

“What is it?”

Nayland Smith turned and looked at Hepbum.

“This—so far as the report goes; it’s by no means complete:

The whole of the building is occupied by offices of concerns in which the late Harvey Bragg was interested.”

“What!”

“The New York headquarters of the League of Good Americans is there; the head offices of the Lotus Transport Corporation; even the South Coast Trade Line has an office in the building.”

Nayland Smith came forward, resting his hands upon the table; bending down, he stared keenly into Mark Hepburn’s eyes.

“This is interesting,” he said slowly.

“I think so. It’s odd, to say the least. Therefore I arranged early this morning to inspect the lightning conductors—by courtesy of the Midtown Electric Corporation. I may discover nothing, but at least it will give me access to a number of the rooms in the building.”

“You interest me keenly,” said Nayland Smith, returning to the window and staring up at the Stratton Building. “The League of Good Americans, eh? You must realize, Hepburn, that the great plot doesn’t end with the control of the United States. It embraces Australia, the Philippines, and ultimately Canada! Middle Western farmers, crippled by mortgages, are being subsidized by the league and sent to Alaska, where unconsciously they are establishing a nucleus of Fu Manchu’s future domination!”

“In heaven’s name where does all the money come from?”

“From the Si-Fan, the oldest and most powerful secret society in the world. If the truth about the League of Good Americans—’America for every man and every man for America’—reached the public, I shudder to think what the reaction would be! But to return to personal matters—What are your plans in regard to Mrs. Adair?”

“I have none.” Mark Hepburn spoke slowly, his usual voice sounding even more monotonous than usual. “I have told you everything I know about her, Smith. And I think you will agree that the situation is one of great danger.”

“It is—for both. I assume that you are leaving it to Mrs. Adair to communicate with you?”

“I must.”

Nayland Smith stared hard for a moment, and then:

“She may be a trump card, Hepburn,” he said, “but frankly, I don’t know how to play her.”

in

“Saw my funny man last night, Goofy,” said Robbie Adair, laying down his porridge spoon and staring up wide-eyed at Nurse Goff. “Funny man who makes heads.”

“I believe he’s just a dream of yours, child,” Nurse Goff declared. “/ have never seen him.”

But Robbie was very earnest on the point, and was not to be checked. According to his account, the mysterious madman who hurled models of human heads from his lofty studio had appeared on the previous night. Robbie had awakened very late; he knew it had been very late “ ‘cause of the way the sky had looked.” He had gone to the window and had seen the man hurl a plaster head far out over the dome.

“I never heard such a silly tale in my life,” Nurse Goff declared. “God bless the child—he’s dreaming!”

“Not dweaming,” Robbie declared stoutly. “Please can I have some jam? Is Mum coming to-day?”

“I don’t know, dear; I hope so.”

“Are we going to the garden?”

“If it’s fine, Robbie.”

Robbie dealt with bread and jam for some time, and then:

“Will Uncle Mark be there?” he inquired.

“I don’t think so, dear.”

“Why not? I like Uncle Mark—all ‘cept his whiskers. I like Yellow Uncle, too, but he never comes.”

Nurse Goff suppressed a shudder. The man whom the boy had christened “Yellow Uncle” terrified her as her dour Scottish nature had never been terrified before. His existence in the life of Mrs. Adair, whom she respected as well as liked, was a mystery beyond her understanding. Rare, though his visits were, that he was Mrs. Adair’s protector she took for granted. But how Mrs. Adair, beautiful and delicately nurtured, ever could have begun this association with the dreadful Chinaman was something which Mary Goff simply could not understand. The affection of Robbie for this sinister being was to her mind even a greater problem.

“Give me an auto on my birfday,” Robbie added reminis-cently; ‘Yellow Uncle did.”

“Gave you an auto, Robbie. God bless the boy! I don’t know where you get these words. . . .”

When, an hour later, his “auto” packed behind in the big Rolls driven by Joe, the cheerful Negro chauffeur, lonely little Robbie accompanied by Nurse Goff set out for his Long Island playground, a “protection” party in a Z-car was following.

Far in the rear, keeping the Z-car in sight, a government car in charge of Lietenant Johnson brought up the rear of the queer procession.

Chapter 27

THE STRATTON BUILDING

Mark Hepburn, in blue overalls and wearing a peaked cap, crept out from a window on to a dizzy parapet. Two men similarly attired followed him. One was an operative of Midtown Electric, the firm which had installed the lighting conductors;

the other was a federal agent. They were on the forty-seventh floor of the Stratton Building. The leaded dome swept up above them; below the New York hive buzzed ceaselessly.

“This way,” said Hepburn, and headed along the parapet.

He constantly looked down into a deep gutter which formed their path until at a point commanding an oblique view of the gulley which was Park Avenue, he pulled up sharply.

Storm clouds were gathering and sweeping over the city. To look upward was to derive an impression that the towering building swayed like a ship. Mark Hepburn was looking downward. He expressed an exclamation of satisfaction.

Fragments of clay littered the gutter; on some of the larger pieces might be seen the imprint of a modeller’s work. The madman of the Stratton Building was no myth, but an actuality!

Hepburn glanced up for a moment. The effect of the racing clouds above the tower of the building was to make him dizzy. He felt himself lurching and closed his eyes quickly; but he had seen what he wanted to see.

Above the slope of the leaded dome was an iron gallery upon which two windows opened. . . . .

“Steady-oh, Captain!” said the government man, seeing him sway. “It’s taken a long time to get up, but it wouldn’t take long to fall down.”

Hepburn, the moment of nausea past, stared again at the fragments at his feet.

“All right,” he replied; “I was never a mountaineer.”

He knelt down and examined the pieces of hard clay with keen curiosity. They surely formed part of a modelled head, possibly of more than one modelled head; but no one of them was big enough to give any indication of the character of the finished work. Over the shoulder:

“Gather all these pieces together,” he directed, “and bring them away.”

The man from the electric firm watched the two agents in respectful silence.

“Ha! What’s this?” Hepburn exclaimed.

He had come upon a wired frame to which portions of crumbling clay still adhered. But what had provoked his words when he picked the thing up had been the presence upon the wooden frame, fixed by two drawing pins, of what resembled a tiny coloured miniature of a human face, framed around with white paper.

He detached this curious object from the wood and examined it more closely. Raising the mount he stared for a long time at that which lay beneath.

It was a three-cent Daniel Webster stamp, dated 1932, gummed upside down upon a piece of cardboard, then framed by the paper in which a pear-shaped opening had been cut. The effect, when the frame was dropped over the stamp, was singular to a degree. It produced a hideous Chinese face!

Mark Hepburn took out his notecase and carefully placed this queer discovery in it. As he returned the case to his pocket a memory came of hypnotic green eyes staring into his own—a memory of the unforgettable features of Dr. Fu Manchu as he had seen them through the broken window on the night of the Chinatown raid. . . .

Yes, the fact was unmistakable: inverted and framed in this way, the Daniel Webster stamp presented a caricature, but a recognizable caricature, of Dr. Fu Manchu!

A problem for Nayland Smith’s consideration: no more false moves must be made. But here was a building occupied, so far as he knew, entirely by persons associated directly, or indirectly, with the activities of the League of Good Americans. At the top it seemed a madman resided; a madman who modelled clay heads, and who apparently had possessed and thrown away this queer miniature. Definitely there was a link here which must be tested, but tested cautiously.

Thus far he had every reason to believe that his investigation had been carried out without arousing suspicion. He had penetrated to a number of offices on many floors, craning out of windows in his quest of the supposed flaw in the lightning conductors. He had observed nothing abnormal anywhere, and had been civilly treated by a Mr. Schmidt in the office on the street floor, to whom, with his two companions, he had first applied. It remained to be seen if any obstruction would be offered to his penetrating the mysterious apartment which crowned the dome.

Five minutes later he climbed through the window into a room used apparently as a store by the firm leasing this suite of offices on the forty-seventh. He could not restrain a sigh of relief, as, quitting the swaying parapet, he reached the security of a rubber laid floor. Mr. Schmidt, representing the owners of the building, waited there as Hepburn’s companions in turn climbed in through the low window.

“Everything seems to be in order up to this floor,” said Hepburn. “How do we get to the top of the dome? The fault must be there.”

Mr. Schmidt stared hard for a moment.

There’s no way up,” he replied curtly. The elevators don’t go beyond this floor. There’s a staircase to the flagstaff, but the door’s been boarded up. Orders of the Fire Department, I guess. There’s nothing up there; it’s just ornamental.”

“Then how do I carry out the inspection? It will cost plenty to rig ladders. Cheaper to break through to the staircase, wouldn’t it be?”

“That doesn’t rest with me,” Mr. Schmidt replied hastily; “I shall have to ask you to give me time to consult directors on the point.”

Mark Hepburn surreptitiously nudged the representative of Midtown Electric, and:

“When can you let us know, Mr. Schmidt?” the electrician inquired. “We have to make a report.”

“I’ll call you in the morning,” Mr Schmidt replied.

Mark Hepburn experienced an inward glow of satisfaction. Apart from the testimony of Robbie Adair, he himself had seen lighted windows above the dome of the Stratton Building—and to-day they had found conclusive evidence to show that the rooms were occupied!

Chapter 28

PAUL SALVALETTI

Lola Dumas, concealed behind a partly-drawn curtain, looked down upon the crowded terraces. Palm trees were silhouetted against an evening sky; there was a distant prospect of steel-blue sea. The crowds below were so dense that she thought of a pot of caviare. Here was humanity, seemingly redundant, but pulsing with life so vigorous that its vibrations reached her on that high balcony.

They were cheering and shouting, and through all the excited uproar, like an oboe motif in an orchestral score, rose the name of Salvaletti.

Salvaletti!

This was merely the beginning of a triumphal progress which unavoidably should lead to the White House. Lola Dumas clutched the curtain nervously, her delicate fingers, on which she wore too many jewels, quivering with the tension of the moment. And they were still shouting and calling for Salvaletti when at the faint sound of an opening door Lola turned sharply.

Paul Salvaletti had entered the room.

Adulation, long awaited success had transformed the man into a god. His pale face was lighted up, inspired; the dark eyes reminded her of hot velvet. His habitual stoop was tonight discarded. He stood upright, commanding, triumphant. She looked now not upon the secretary of the late Harvey Bragg, but upon Caesar.

“Paul!” She took a step forward. “This is triumph. Nothing can stop you.”

“Nothing,” he replied; and even in speaking that one word the music of his voice thrilled her. “Nothing!”

“Salvaletti for the South!” A cry rose above the uproar below.

A wild outburst of cheering followed. Then came a series of concerted calls:

“Salvaletti! Salvaletti!”

The man plucked out of complete obscurity to be thrust upon a cloudy pinnacle, smiled.

“Lola,” he said, “this was worth waiting for!”

She moved towards him, her graceful bare arms extended, and with a low cry of almost savage delight he clasped her. The world was at his feet—fame, riches, beauty. In silence he held her while, more and more insistent, the demand rose up from the terraces:

“Salvaletti! Salvaletti! America for every man. Every man for America!”

The phone bell rang.

“Answer, Lola,” Salvaletti directed. “I shall speak to no one to-night but to you.”

Lola Dumas glanced at him sharply. The heady wine of success had somewhat intoxicated him. He spoke with an arrogance the very existence of which hitherto he had successfully concealed. She crossed the room and took up the telephone.

A moment she listened; her attitude grew tense; and, ever increasing in volume, the cry “Salvaletti!” swelled up from below. Lola placed the receiver on the table and turned.

“The President,” she said.

Those two words wrought a swift change in Salvaletti.

“What!” he whispered.

For a second he hesitated, then crossing with his characteristic catlike tread, he took up the phone.

“Paul Salvaletti here.”

“I am watching you closely,” came the imperious, guttural voice. “At this stage, you must not make one mistake. Listen now to my orders. Go out upon the balcony of the room in which you stand. Do not speak, but acknowledge the people. Then bring Lola Dumas out on to the balcony, that all may see her. Move in this matter.”

The line was disconnected.

For three, five, ten seconds, as he hung up, Salvaletti’s sensitive nostrils remained distended. He had heard the crack of the whip, had resented it.

“What?” Lola asked.

“An order,” Salvaletti replied, smiling composedly, “which I must obey.”

He crossed, drew the curtains widely apart, and stepped out to the balcony. A roar of excited voices acclaimed him, and for a while he stood there, a pale, impressive figure in the moonlight. He bowed, raised his hand and, turning, beckoned to Lola Dumas.

“You are to join me,” he said. “Please come.”

He drew her on to the balcony beside him; and the woman associated for so long with Harvey Bragg, founder of the League of Good Americans, potential saviour of his country, received an almost hysterical ovation. . . .

Back in the room, the curtains drawn, Lola Dumas sank down on a cushioned settee, beckoning to Salvaletti with her eyes and with her lips. He stood beside her looking down.

“Paul,” she said, “did the President give those orders?”

“He did.”

“You see, Paul,” she said very softly, “he has chosen for you. Are you content?”

Chapter 29

GREEN MIRAGE

Mark Hepburn awoke; sat up. He found himself to be clammy with nervous perspiration, and the dream which had occasioned it was still vivid in his mind. It was this:

He had found himself in an apparently interminable tunnel (which he could trace to Nayland Smnith’s account of the attempt to explore the East River water-gate). For a period which seemed to span many hours he walked along this tunnel. His only light was a fragment of thick, wax candle, resembling an altar candle. There were twists and turns in the tunnel, and always in his dream he had hoped to see daylight beyond. Always he had been disappointed.

Some great expediency drove him on. At all costs he must reach the end of this subterranean passage. A stake greater than his life was at hazard. And now, gaping blackly, cross-ways appeared in the tunnel; it became a labyrinth. Every passage revealed by the flickering light of the candle resembled another. In desperation he plunged into one which opened on his right. It proved to be interminable. An opening offered on the left. He entered it. Another endless tunnel stretched before him.

The candle was burning very low; his fingers were covered with hot grease. Unless he could win freedom before that fragment of wick and wax gave up the ghost and plunged him into darkness, he ws doomed to wander forever, a lost soul, in this place deep below the world of living men. . . .

Blind panic seized him. He began to run along tunnel after tunnel, turning right, turning left, crying out madly. His exertions reduced the fraction of candle almost to disappearing point. He ran on. In some way it came to him that the life of Nayland Smith was at stake. He must gain the upper air or disaster would come, not to Nayland Smith alone, but to all humanity. The candle now a tenuous disc, became crushed between his trembling fingers. . . .

It was at this moment that he awoke.

The apartment was very still. Save for the immutable voice of the city-which-never-sleeps, there was no sound.

Hepburn groped for his slippers. There were no cigarettes in the room. He decided to go into the sitting-room for a smoke and a drink. That ghastly dream of endless tunnels had shaken him.

The night was crystal clear; a nearly full moon poured its cold luminance into the rooms. Without turning on any of the lights—for he was anxious to avoid wakening Nayland Smith, a hair-trigger sleeper—he found his way to the sitting-room. There were cigarettes on the table by the telephone. He found one, but he had no means of lighting it.

As he paused, looking around, he saw through an open door the moon-bathed room beyond. It was the room which he had fitted up as a temporary laboratory; from its window he could just see the roof of the hotel where Moya Adair lived. He remembered that he had left matches there. He went in, crossed and stared out of the window.

His original intention was forgotten. He stood there, tense, watching. . . .

From a window of an out-jutting wing of the Regal-Athenian, one floor below and not twenty yards away, Dr. Fu Manchu was looking up at him!

Some primitive instinct warned him to reject the chimera—for that the man in person could be present he was not prepared to believe. This was a continuation, a part, of his uncanny dream. He was not awake. Brilliant green eyes gleamed in the moonlight like polished jade. He watched fascinatedly.

His impulse—to arouse Smith, to have the building surrounded—left him. Those wonderful eyes demanded all his attention. . . .

He found himself busy in the laboratory—of course he was still dreaming—preparing a strange prescription. It was contrary to all tradition, a thing outside his experience. But he prepared it with meticulous care—for it was indispensable to the life of Nayland Smith. . . .

At last it was ready. Now, he must charge a hypodermic syringe with it—an intravenous injection. It was vital that he should not awake Smith . . . .

Syringe in hand, he crept along the corridor to the second door. He listened. There was no sound.

Very quietly, he opened the door and went in.

Nayland Smith lay motionless in bed, his lean brown hands outside the coverlet. The conditions were ideal, it seemed to Mark Hepburn in his dream. Stealthily he stole across the room. He could not hope to complete the injection without arousing Smith, but at least he could give him some of the charge.

Lightly he raised the sleeve of his pyjama jacket. Smith did not stir. He pressed the needle point firmly home. . . .

Mark Hepburn felt himself seized from behind, jerked back and hurled upon the floor by unseen hands!

He fell heavily, striking his head upon the carpet. The syringe dropped from his fingers, and as Nayland Smith sprang upright in bed the predominant idea in Hepburn’s mind was that he had failed; and so Smith must die.

He twisted over, rose to his knees. . . . and looked up into the barrel of a revolver held by Fey.

“Hepburn!” came sharply in Nayland Smith’s inimitable voice. “What the devil’s this?”

He sprang out of bed.

Fey, barefooted and wearing pyjamas, looked somewhat dishevelled in the glare of light as Nayland Smith switched on lamps: spiritually he was unruffled.

“It’s a mystery, sir,” he replied, while Hepburn slowly rising to his feet and clutching his head, endeavoured to regain composure. “It was the tinkling of the bottles that woke me.”

“The bottles?”

Mark Hepburn dropped down into a chair.

“I was in the laboratory,” he explained dully. “Frankly, I don’t know what I was doing there.”

Nayland Smith, seated on the side of the bed, was staring at him keenly.

“I got up and watched.” Fey continued, “keeping very quiet. And I saw Captain Hepburn carefully measuring out drugs.

Then I saw him looking about as if he’d lost something, and then I saw him go to the window and stare out. He stayed there for a long time.”

“In which direction was he staring?” snapped Nayland Smith.

Hepburn groaned, continuing to clutch his head. The memory of some strange, awful episode already was slipping from his mind.

“I thought, at a window down to the right and below, sir. And as he stood there so long, I slipped into the sitting-room and looked out from there.” He paused and cleared his throat. “I was still looking when I heard Captain Hepburn come out. I shouldn’t have behaved as I did, sir, but I had seen Captain Hepburn’s eyes. . . .”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, sir, it might have been that he was walking in his sleep! And so, when I heard him coming, I ducked into a corner and watched him go by. I followed him right to your door. He opened it very quietly. I was close behind him when he crossed to the bed——”

Now, suddenly, in a stifled voice:

“The syringe!” Hepburn cried, “the syringe! My God! Did I touch you?”

He sprang up wildly, his glance questing about the floor.

“Is this what you mean, Hepburn?” Nayland Smith asked. He picked up a fountain pen, at the same time glancing down at his left arm. “My impression is that you jabbed the nib into me!”

Mark Hepburn stared at the fountain pen, fists clenched. It was a new one bought only that day, his old one had been smashed during operations in the Chinatown raid. So far as he could remember he had never filled it. The facts, the incredible facts, were coming back to him. . . . He had prepared a mixture: of what it was composed he hadn’t at this moment the slightest idea. But he had imagined or had dreamed that he charged a hypodermic syringe with it. He must have charged the fountain pen, for he had no hypodermic syringe in his possession!

Nayland Smith’s penetrating regard never left the troubled face, and then: “Was I dreaming,” Hepburn groaned, “or was I hypnotized? By heaven! I remember—I went to the window and saw his eyes! He was watching me.”

“Who was watching you?” Smith asked quietly.

“I don’t know who it was, sir,” Fey interrupted with an apologetic cough, “but he had one of the most dreadful faces I have ever seen in my life. The moonlight was shining on him. I saw his green eyes.”

“What!”

Nayland Smith sprang to his feet. From out of his varied experience an explanation of the strange incident, phan-tomesque, arose. He stared hard again at Mark Hepburn.

“Dr. Fu Manchu is the most accomplished hypnotist alive,” he said harshly. “During those few moments that you watched him from the window above Wu King’s he must have established partial control.” He pulled on a dressing-gown which lay across the foot of the bed. “Quick, Fey, get Wyatt! He’s on duty in the lobby.”

Fey ran out.

Nayland Smith turned, threw up the window and craned forward. Over his shoulder:

“Which way, Hepburn?” he snapped.

Mark Hepburn, slowly recovering control of his normal self, leaned on the sill and pointed.

“The wing on the right, third window from the end, two floors below this.”

“There’s no one there, and the room is dark.” The wail which tells that the Fire Department is out, a solo rarely absent from New York’s symphony, rose, ghostly, through the night. “I have had an unpleasant narrow escape. Beyond doubt you were acting under hypnotic direction. Fey’s evidence confirms it. A daring move! The Doctor must be desperate.” He glanced down at the fountain pen which lay upon a little table. “I wonder what you charged it with,” he murmured meditatively. “Dr. Fu Manchu assumed too much in thinking you had hypodermic syringes in your possession. You obeyed his instructions—but charged the fountain pen; thus probably saving my life.”

It was only a few moments later that Wyatt, the government agent in charge below, found the night manager and accompanied by two detectives was borne up to the thirty-eighth floor of the hotel wing in which the suspected room was located.

“I can tell you there’s no one there, Mr. Wyatt,” the manager said, twirling a large key around his fore-finger. “It was vacated this morning by a Mr. Eckstein, a dark man, possibly Jewish. There’s only one curious point about it——”

“What’s that?” Wyatt asked.

“He took the door key away. . . .” Mr. Dougherty smiled grimly; his Tipperary brogue was very marked. “Unfortunately, it often happens. But in this case there may have been some ulterior motive.”

The bedroom, when they entered, was deserted; the two beds were ready for occupation by incoming guests. Neither here nor in the bathroom was there evidence pointing to a recent intruder. . . .

The detectives were still prowling around and Nayland Smith on the fortieth floor of the tower was issuing telephone instructions when a tall man, muffled in a fur topcoat—a man who wore glasses and a wide-brimmed black hat—stepped into an elevator on the thirtieth floor and was taken down to street level. . . .

“No one is to leave this building,” rapped Nayland Smith, until I get down. Don’t concentrate on the tower; post men at every elevator and every exit.”

Wyatt, the night manager, and the two detectives stepped out of the elevator at the end of the huge main foyer. The tall man in the fur coat was striding along its carpeted centre aisle. The place was only partially lighted at that late hour. There was a buzz of vacuum cleaners. He descended marble steps to the lower foyer. A night porter glanced up at him, curiously, as he passed his desk.

A man came hurrying along an arcade lined by flower shops, jewellers’ shops and other features of a luxury bazaar, but actually contained within the great hotel, and presently appeared immediately facing the elevator by which Wyatt and his party had descended. Seeing them he hurried across, and:

“No one is to leave the building!” he cried. “Post men at all elevators and all entrances.”

The tall visitor passed through the swing doors and descended the steps to the sidewalk. A Lotus cab which had been standing near by drew up; opening the door, he entered. The cab moved off. It was actually turning the Park Avenue corner when detectives, running from the westerly end of the building, reached the main entrance and went clattering up the steps. One, who seemed to be in charge, ran across to the night porter. Federal Agent Wyatt was racing along the foyer towards them.

“Who’s gone out,” the detective demanded, “in the last five minutes? Anybody?”

But even as the startled man began to answer, the Lotus cab was speeding along almost deserted streets, and Dr. Fu Manchu, lying back in the corner, relaxed after a dangerous and mentally intense effort which he had every reason to believe would result in the removal of Enemy Number One. Nayland Smith’s activities were beginning seriously to interfere with his own. The abandonment of the Chinatown base was an inconvenience, and reports received from those responsible for covering the Stratton Building suggested that further intrusion might be looked for. . . .

Chapter 30

PLAN OF ATTACK

Grey morning light was creeping into the sitting-room.

“Last night’s attempt,” said Nayland Smith (he wore a dressing-gown over pyjamas), “is not uncharacteristic of the Doctor’s methods.”

“Poor consolation for me,” Hepburn replied, speaking from the depths of an armchair in which, similarly attired, he was curled up.

“Don’t let us worry unduly,” said Nayland Smith. “I have known others to suffer from the insidious influence of Fu Manchu; indeed, I have suffered myself. Physical fear has no meaning for the Doctor. Undoubtedly he was here in person, here in the enemy’s headquarters. He walked out under the very noses of the police officers I had dispatched to intercept him. He is a great man, Hepburn.”

“He is.”

“There is no evidence that you were drugged in any way last night, but we cannot be sure, for the Doctor’s methods are subtle. That he influenced your brain while you were sleeping is beyond dispute. The dream of the interminable labyrinth, the conviction that my life depended upon your escape—all this was prompted by the will ofFu Manchu. You were dreaming, although even now you doubt it, when you thought you awoke. He only made one mistake, Hepburn. He postulated a hypodermic syringe which was not in your possession!”

“But I loaded a fountain pen with some pretty deadly drugs which now it is impossible to identify.”

“You carried out your hypnotic instructions to the best of your ability. The power of Fu Manchu’s mind is an awful thing. However, by an accident, a pure accident, or an oversight, he failed—thank God! Let us review the position.”

Mark Hepburn reached out for a cigarette; his face was haggard, unshaven.

“We are beginning to harass the enemy.” Nayland Smith, pipe fuming furiously, paced up and down the carpet. “That there is a staircase below Wu King’s with some unknown exit on the street is certain. At any moment I expect a report that the men have broken in there. It’s construction has been carried out from the point that I call the water-gate; hence Finney’s ignorance of its existence. Once we have reached it, with the equipment at our disposal we can break through. It doesn’t matter how many iron doors obstruct us. The entrance from the sewers we have been unable to trace. But penetration to the Chinatown base is only a question of time.”

He puffed furiously, but his overworked pipe had gone out. He laid it in an ash-tray and continued to walk up and down. Mark Hepburn, labouring under a load of undeserved guilt, watched him fascinatedly.

“What Mrs. Adair knows which would be of value to us is problematical. According to Lieutenant Johnson’s report, it would seem to be perfectly feasible to obtain possession of the boy, Robbie, during one of his visits to Long Island.”

“The owner of the house and his family are at the coast,” Mark Hepburn said monotonously. “He is, as you will have noted, a co-director with the late Harvey Bragg of the Lotus Transport Corporation.”

“I had noted it,” Smith said drily; “but he may nevertheless be innocent of any knowledge of the existence of Dr. Fu Manchu. That’s the devilish part of it, Hepburn. The other points are: (a) Can Mrs. Adair afford us any material assistance; (b) Is it safe to attempt it?”

“The negro chauffeur,” Hepburn replied, “may have orders, for all we know to the contrary, to shoot the boy in the event of any such attempt. Frankly, I don’t feel justified.”

“Assuming we succeeded. . . .”

“Her complicity would be fairly evident—she would suffer?”

Nayland Smith paused in his promenade and, turning, stared at Hepburn.

“Unless we kidnapped her at the same time,” he snapped.

Mark Hepburn stood up suddenly, dropping his recently lighted cigarette in a tray.

“By heavens, Smith,” he said excitedly, “that may be the solution!”

“It’s worth thinking about, but it would require a very careful plan. I am disposed at the moment—without imperilling the lives of Mrs. Adair and her son—to concentrate upon the Stratton Building. Your experience there was definitely illuminating.”

He crossed to the big desk above which the maps were pinned, and looked down at a number of clay fragments which lay there.

“I feel disposed, Hepburn—if necessary with the backing of the Fire Department—to pursue your enquiry into the flaw in the lightning conductors. An examination could be arranged after office workers had left. But I think it would be unwise to give any warning to this Mr. Schmidt whom you have mentioned, of our intention. Do you agree with me?”

“Yes,” Hepburn replied slowly; “that is what I had planned myself. But, Smith. . . .”

Smith turned and regarded him.

“Do you realize how I feel? In the first place you know—I haven’t disguised it—that I am becoming really fond of Moya Adair. That’s bad enough—she’s one of the enemy. In the second place, it seems that I am such a poor weakling that this hellish Chinaman can use me as an instrument to bring about your murder! How can you ever trust me again?”

Nayland Smith stepped up to him, grasped both his shoulders and stared into his eyes.

“I would trust you, Hepburn,” he said slowly, “as I would trust few men. You are human—so am I. Don’t let the hypnotic episode disturb your self-respect. There is no man living immune from this particular power possessed by Dr. Fu Manchu. There’s only one thing: Should you ever meet him again—avoid his eyes.”

“Thank you,” said Mark Hepburn; “it’s kind of you to take it that way.”

Smith grasped the outstretched hand, clapped Hepburn on the shoulder and resumed his restless promenade.

“In short,” he continued, “we are beginning to make a certain amount of headway. But the campaign, as time goes on, grows more and more hectic. In my opinion our lives, as risks, are uninsurable. And I am seriously worried about the Abbot of Holy Thorn.

“In what way?”

“His life is not worth—that!”

He snapped his fingers.

“No.” Mark Hepburn nodded, selecting a fresh cigarette and staring rather haggardly out of the window across the roofs of a grey New York. “He is not a man one can gag indefinitely. Dr. Fu Manchu must know it.”

“Knowing it,” snapped Nayland Smith, “I fear that he will act. If we had a clear case, I should be disposed to act first. The thing is so cunningly devised that our lines of attack are limited. Excluding an unknown inner group surrounding the mandarin, in my opinion not another soul working for the League of Good Americans has the remotest idea of the ultimate object of that League, or of the sources of its revenues! All the reports—and I have read hundreds—point in the same direction. Many thousands of previously workless men have been given employment. Glance at the map.” He pointed. “Every red flag means a Fu Manchu advance! They are working honourably at the tasks alloted to them. But every one, when the hour comes, will cry out with the same voice: every one, north, south, east and west, is a unit in the vast army which, unknowingly, is building up the domination of this country by Dr. Fu Manchu, through his chosen nominee——”

“Salvaletti!”

“Salvaletti; it seems at last to become apparent. It is clear that this man has been trained for years for his task. I even begin to guess why Lola Dumas is being associated with him. In another fortnight, perhaps in a week, the following of Paul Salvaletti will be greater than that of Harvey Bragg ever was. Nothing can stop him, Hepburn, nothing short of a revelation— not a statement, but a revelation, of the real facts. . . .”

“Who can give it? Who would be listened to?”

Nayland Smith paused over by the door, turned, staring at the shadowy figure in the armchair.

“The Abbot of Holy Thorn,” he replied. “But at the risk of his life. . . .”

Chapter 31

PROFESSOR MORGENSTAHL

The memory man worked industriously on his clay model. Pinned to the base of the wooden frame was a photographic enlargement of the three-cent stamp with the white paper mask. He was engrossed in his task. The clay head was assuming a grotesque semblance of the features of Dr. Fu Manchu—a vicious caricature of that splendid, evil face.

Incoming messages indicated a feverish change of plan in regard to the New York area. The names Nayland Smith and Captain Hepbum figured frequently. These two apparently were in charge of counter-operations. Reports from agents in the South, identifiable only by their numbers, spoke of the triumphant progress of the man Salvaletti. Occasional reports fi-om far up in Alaska indicated that the movement there was proceeding smoothly. The only discordant note came from the Middle West, where Abbot Donegal, a mere name to the Memory Man, seemed to be a focus of interest for many agents.

It all meant less than nothing to the prisoner who had memorized every message received since the first hour of his captivity. Sometimes, in the misery of this slavery which had been imposed upon him, he remembered happier days in Germany; remembered how at his club he had been challenged to read a page of the Berlin Tageblatt, and then to recite its contents from memory; how, without difficulty, he had succeeded and won his wager. But those were the days before his exile. He knew now how happy they had been. In the interval he had died. He was a living dead man. . . . Busily, with delicate fingers, he modelled the clay. His faith in a just God remained unshaken.

Without warning the door by which he gained access to his private quarters opened. Wearing a dark coat with an astrakhan collar, an astrakhan cap upon his head, a tall man came in. The sculptor ceased to toil and sat motionless— staring at the living face of Dr. Fu Manchu, which so long he had sought to reproduce in clay!

“Good morning, Professor Morgenstahl!”

Dr. Fu Manchu spoke in German. Except that he overstretched the gutturals, he spoke that language perfectly. Professor Morgenstahl, the mathematical genius who had upset every previous conviction respecting the relative distances of the planets, who had mapped space, who had proved that lunar eclipses were not produced by the shadow of the earth, and who now was subjugated to the dreadful task of a one-man telephone exchange, did not stir. His great brain was a file, the only file, of all the messages received at that secret headquarters from the whole of the United States. Motionless, he continued to stare at the man who wore the astrakhan cap.

That hour of which he had dreamed had come at last! He was face to face with his oppressor. . . .

Vividly before his eyes those last scenes arose: his expulsion from Germany almost penniless, for his great intellect which had won world-wide recognition had earned him little money; the journey to the United States, where no man had identified him as the famous author of “Interstellar Cycles,” nor had he sought to make himself known. He could even remember his own death—for certainly he had been dead—in a cheap lodging in Brooklyn; his reawakening in the room below (with this man, the devil incarnate, standing over him!); his enslavement, his misery.

Yes, living or dead—for sometimes he thought that he was a discarnate spirit—he must at least perform this one good deed: the dreadful Chinaman must die.

“No doubt you weary of your duties, Professor” the guttural voice continued. “But better things are to come. A change of plan is necessitated. Other quarters have been found for you, with similar facilities.”

Professor Morgenstahl, sitting behind the heavy table with its complicated mechanism, recognized that he must temporize.

“My books,” he said, “my apparatus——”

“Have been removed. Your new quarters are prepared for you. Be good enough to follow me.”

Slowly, Professor Morgenstahl stood up, watched by unflinching green eyes. He moved around the corner of the table, where the nearly completed model stood. He was estimating the weight of that tall, gaunt figure; and to ounces, his estimate was correct. But in the moment when, clear of the heavy table, he was preparing to strangle with his bare hands this yellow-faced horror who had rescued him from the grave, only to plunge him into a living hell, the watching eyes seemed to grow larger; inch by inch they increased—they merged—they became a green lake; he forgot his murderous intent. He lost identity. . . .

Chapter 32

BELOW WU KING’S

“Lay off there,” shouted Inspector Finney.

The roar of the oxy-acetylene blowpipe ceased. They were working on the third door below Wu King’s premises, from a tunnelled staircase of the existence of which Wu King blandly denied all knowledge. Turning upwards:

“What’s new?” Finney shouted.

“We’ve got the street door open!”

Leaving the men with the blowpipe, Finney ran up. The air was stifling, laden with acrid fumes. An immensely heavy door, an iron framework to the outer side of which the appearance of a wall had been given by cementing half-bricks into the hollow of the frame, stood open. A group of men sweating from their toils examined it. Outside, on the street, two patrolmen were moving on the curious sightseers.

“So that was the game,” Finney murmured.

“No wonder we couldn’t find it,” said one of the men, throwing back a clammy lock of hair from his damp forehead. It looks like a brick wall and it sounds like a brick wall!”

“It would,” Finney commented drily: “it is a brick wall, except it opens. Easy to guess now how they got it fixed. They did their building from the other end, wherever the other end is. Now just where do we stand?”

He stepped out on to the street, looking right and left. The masked door occupied the back of a recess between one end of Wu King’s premises and the beginning of a Chinese cigar merchant’s. Its ostensible reason was to accommodate a manhole in the sidewalk. The manhole was authentic: it communicated with an electric main—Inspector Finney knew the spot well enough. Tilting back his hard black hat, he stared with a strange expression at the gaping opening where he had been accustomed for many years to see a brick wall.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” he muttered.

“This lets Wu out, I guess,” said one of the men. “If we didn’t know the darned thing was here, he can claim he didn’t.”

“He’ll do it,” Finney replied. “And he’ll probably get by with it. . . . There must be a bell some place: we traced the cable.”

“We found it. Forced it out blowing through the iron. The brickwork’s made to look kind of old, and there were posters stuck to it. I guess the push was under the posters; that’s how it looks.”

Inspector Finney went inside again, first glancing sharply right and left at the expressionless faces of a number of Chinamen who, from a respectful distance, were watching operations. There was an elaborate lock to this ingenious door, electrically controlled—but where from, remained to be discovered. . . .

Ten minutes later the third door was forced, and Inspector Finney found himself in a rectangular saloon curiously appointed but showing evidence of long neglect. The place, now, smelled like an iron foundry.

“This looks like an old dope joint to me,” said one of the party, “but it’s plain it hasn’t been used for a long while.”

“Strip all the walls,” Finney ordered; “we’re not through yet.”

A scene of whole-hearted wrecking followed upon which the Fire Department could not have improved. Nevertheless, nearly an hour had elapsed before a cunningly hidden fourth door was discovered.

“Go to work, boys,” said Finney.

The sweating workers got busy, bringing down the blowpipe and rigging it for further operations. Finney stared spec-ulatively at a patch of scarred wall. He did not know, indeed never learned, that beyond that very piece of wall upon which his gaze was fixed a spiral staircase led from a point below to the top floor of Wu King’s building. Since only by measurements and never by sounding could the shaft in which it ran be discovered, it was not unnatural that Inspector Finney should concentrate the whole of his attention upon the fourth iron door recently discovered.

These iron doors made him savage. At the present moment he was recalling a recent conversation with the government agent Hepburn; he remembered boasting that no such door could be fitted in the Chinatown area without his becoming aware of the fact. It was a bitter pill, for here were four!

He reflected with satisfaction, however, that no man knows everything. At least he could congratulate himself upon the finding of this secret staircase. Between the eastern end of Wu King’s premises and the western end of that adjoining, measurements had shown a space unaccounted for. Operating from inside Wu King’s, floor boards had been torn up and a thick party wall brought to light. Through this Finney had caused a way to be broken; and they had found themselves on the first stair below street level.

That was good work! He resettled his hard hat upon his hard head and lighted a cigarette. . . .

Nevertheless, from the time that operations had commenced in early morning, up to the moment when the fourth door succumbed, many weary hours of toil had been spent by the party under Inspector Finney. He was up on the street wondering what all this secret subterranean building really meant when:

“We’re through!” came a cry, hollow, from the acrid depths.

A minute later he stood on the lowest step, directing the ray of his torch upon oily, dirty-looking water.

“I guess that’s tidal level,” a voice said, “but sometimes these steps went deeper.”

Inspector Finney flashed his light across the unwholesome-looking waters of the well. At the further end he saw a square opening two to three feet above the surface.

“There is or was another iron door,” he growled, “but it’s open. I wonder what’s on the other side.”

He was short and stocky himself. He turned to one of the men who had been working on the forcing of the doors.

“What’s your height, Ruskin?” he asked.

“Six one-and-a-quarter, Inspector.”

“You swim well, don’t you?”

“Not so bad.”

“If the stone steps carry on down below water level,” Finney explained, “you won’t have to swim. I figure you could keep your feet, hold a torch above your head and see what’s beyond there. What do you say?”

“I’ll try it.”

Ruskin partly stripped for the endeavour and then, torch held in his right hand, he began, feeling his way with care, to descend the stone steps. The water, on top of which all sorts of fragments floated, ws just up to Ruskin’s shoulders when he announced:

“I’m on the level now.”

“Go easy,” Finney warned. “If you loose foothold strike up to the surface and swim back.”

Ruskin did not reply: he walked on, the torch held above his head. He passed under the square opening and stood there for a moment, then:

“Good God!” he screamed.

His torch disappeared—he had dropped it. There was a wild splashing and churning. Finney cast hat and coat aside and went plunging down the steps, another man behind him.

“Show those lights!” he shouted to the men who still remained upon the landing.

In the rays of the torches Ruskin’s face showed above the surface. Finney grabbed him, and presently he was hauled up the steps. He lay there pointing down, shaking and gasping. . . .

“There’s a great wide space of water back there,” he panted—”and there’s some awful thing lives in it—a monster! I saw its eyes shining!”

The temple of the seven-eyed goddess had been flooded by Sam Pak, but the head of its presiding deity remained just above the surface. . . .

Chapter 33

THE BALCONY

Mr. Schmidt, representing the Stratton Estates, stepped out of the elevator on the top floor of the Stratton Building. Two men followed. One, wearing overalls and having a leather bag carried on a strap across his left shoulder, represented Midtown Electric. Mr. Schmidt recognized him as one of the pair who had been on the job before. The other, a tall, lean man wearing glasses and a brusque military moustache, came from the Falcon Imperial Insurance Corporation, which carried the fire risk of the Stratton Building.

A man in the uniform of the Fire Department, who was seated on a chair before a green baize-covered door, stood up as the party came out of the elevator.

It was really unnecessary, Mr. Englebert,” said Schmidt, addressing the grey-moustached man, “to notify the Fire Department. The door which you see was formerly boarded up so that no door showed. The Fire Department has stripped it, in accordance, I suppose, with your instructions, and has seen fit to post a guard over it throughout the whole of the day. Quite unnecessary!”

Mr. Englebert nodded.

“My directors carry a heavy responsibility on this building, Mr. Schmidt,” he replied, “and in view of the phenomenal electric storms recently experienced in the Midwest, we must assure ourselves of the efficiency of the lightning conductors.”

“That’s all agreed, Mr. Englebert. I have the keys of the staircase to the flagstaff, but you must have put us to quite some trouble.”

Few of the hundreds of windows in the great building showed any light. The office workers engaged by firms occupying premises in the Stratton Building had departed for home. Only a few late toilers remained at their desks. In the three streets which embayed the tall structure, there was nothing to indicate that a cordon had been thrown around the building. Mr. Schmidt himself, who, indeed, was perfectly innocent of any complicity apart from the duties which he owed to the League of Good Americans, remained to this moment unaware of the fact that an office opening on the top floor, the staff of which had left at six o’clock, was now packed with police.