“Why?”
Nayland Smith turned to Hepburn; a faint smile crossed his lean features.
“He insisted that you should formally hand him over to me. You did so—and he promptly disappeared! Dr. Fu Manchu is a man of his word, Hepburn. . . .” He was silent awhile, then:
“I am sorry for Mrs. Adair,” he added, “and granting the circumstances, I think she has played fair. I hope the boy is out of danger.”
Hepburn sat, pensive, looking down from the plane window at a darkling map of the agrarian Middle West.
“According to all I have ever learned,” he said presently, “that boy should be dead. Even now, I can’t believe that any human power could have saved him. But he’s alive! And there’s every chance he will recover and be none the worse. You know, Smith”—he turned, his deep-set, ingenuous eyes fixed upon his companion—”that’s a miracle. . . . I saw surgery there, in that room, that I’ll swear there isn’t another man living could have performed. That incompetent fool, Burnett, had lost the life of his patient: Dr. Fu Manchu conjured it back again.”
He paused, watching the grim profile of Nayland Smith.
Dr. Fu Manchu had successfully slipped out of New York. But the police and Federal agents urged to feverish activity by emergency orders from Washington, had made one discovery: Fu Manchu was headed West.
Outside higher police commands and the Secret Service, the intensive scrutiny of all travellers on Western highways by road or rail was a mystery to be discussed by those who came in contact with it for many years afterwards. Air liners received Federal orders to alight at points not scheduled; private planes were forced down for identification; a rumour spread across half the country that foreign invasion was imminent.
Despite Nayland Smith’s endeavours, a garbled version of the facts had found currency in certain quarters; Abbot Donegal’s words had given colour to rumours. There had been riots in Asiatic sections: in one instance a lynching had been narrowly averted. The phantom of the Yellow Peril upreared its ugly head. But day by day, almost hour by hour, more and more adherents flocked to the standard of Paul Salvaletti;
who represented, had they but known, the only real Yellow Peril to which the United States ever had been exposed.
“I’m still inclined to believe,” Mark Hepburn said, “that I’m right about the object of the Doctor’s journey. He’s heading for Chicago. On Saturday night Salvaletti addresses a meeting on the result of which rests the final tipping of the scales.”
Nayland Smith twitched the lobe of his left ear.
“The Tower of the Holy Thorn is not far off his route,” he replied; “and Dom Patrick addresses the whole of the United States to-night! The situation is serious enough to justify the Doctor’s taking personal charge of operations to check the voice of the abbot. . . .”
That the priest’s vast audience even at this eleventh hour could split the Salvaletti camp was an admissible fact. Even now it was thought that the former Chief Executive would be returned to office; but the league faction would make that office uneasy.
“Salvaletti’s magnificent showmanship,” said Smith, “The sentimental appeal in his pending marriage, are the work of a master producer. The last act shows a brilliant adventurer assuming control of the United States! It is not impossible, nor without precedent. Napoleon Bonaparte, Mussolini, Kemal have played the part before. No, Hepburn! I doubt if Fu Manchu will passively permit Abbot Donegal to steal the limelight. . . .”
chapteb 39 THE VOICE FROM THE TOWER
all approaches to the Tower of the Holy Thorn would have reminded a veteran of an occupied town in war time. They were held up four times by armed guards. . . .
When at last the headlamps of the road monster which had been waiting at the flood-lit flying ground shone upon the bronze door, so that that thorn-crowned Head seemed to come to meet them in the darkness, Nayland Smith sprang out.
“Is Garstin there?” Hepbum called.
A man came forward.
“Captain Hepburn?”
“Yes. Anything to report?”
“All clear, Captain. It would need a regiment with machine-guns to get through!”
Mark Hepbum stared upward. The tower was in darkness right to the top; the staff which dealt with the abbot’s enormous mail had left. But from its crest light beaconed as from a pharos.
And as Mark Hepburn stood there looking up, Nayland Smith entered the study of Dom Patrick Donegal.
“Thank God I see you safe!” he said, and shot out a nervous brown hand.
Patrick Donegal grasped it, and stood for a moment staring into the eyes of the man who had burst into his room.
“Thank God indeed. You see before you a chastened man, Sir Denis.” The abbot’s ascetic features as well as his rich brogue told that he spoke from his heart. “Once I resented your peremptory orders. I have changed my mind; I know that they were meant for my protection and for the good of my country. You see”—he pointed—”the broadcasting corporation has equipped me with a microphone. To-night I speak in the safety of my own study.”
“You have followed my instructions closely?”
Nayland Smith was watching the priest with almost feverish intentness.
“In every particular. You may take it”—he smiled—”that I have not been poisoned or tampered with in any way! My address for to-night I wrote with my own hand at that desk. None other has touched it.”
“You have included the facts which I gave you—and the figures?”
“Everything! And I am happy to have you with me, Sir Denis; it gives me an added sense of security. At any moment now, the radio announcer will be here. I trust that you will stay?”
Nayland Smith did not reply. He was listening—listening keenly to a distant sound. Although he was barely aware of the fact, his gaze was set upon a reproduction of Carpaccio’s St. Jerome which hung upon the plastered wall above a crowded bookcase.
And now the abbot was listening, too. Dim cries came from far below; shouted orders. . . .
A drone of aeroplane propellers drew rapidly nearer. Smith crossed to the window. A searchlight was sweeping the sky. A moment he watched, then turned, acted—and his actions were extraordinary.
Seizing the abbot bodily he hurled him in the direction of the door! Then, leaping forward, he threw the door open, extending a muscular arm, and dragged him out. On the landing, Dom Patrick staggered; Smith grasped his shoulder.
“Down!” he shouted, “down the stairs!”
But now the priest had appreciated the urgency of the case. Temporarily shaken by this swift danger, as a man of courage he quickly recovered himself. On the landing below:
“Lie flat!” cried Smith, “we must trust to luck!”
The noise of an aeroplane engine grew so loud that one could only assume the pilot deliberately to be steering for the tower. Came a volley of rifle fire. . . .
They were prone on the marble-paved floor when a deafening explosion shook the Tower of the Holy Thorn as an earthquake might have shaken it. Excited cries followed, crashing of fallen debris; an acrid smell reached their nostrils: the drone of propellers died away.
Abbot Donegal rose to his knees.
“Wait!” cried Smith breathlessly. “Not yet!”
The air was pervaded by a smell resembling iodine, he distrusted it, and stood there staring upward towards the top landing. The crown of the elevator shaft opposite the abbot’s door was wrecked. He could detect no sign of fire. The abbot, head bowed, gave silent thanks.
“Smith!” came huskily, “Smith!”
An increasing clatter of footsteps arose from the stairs below, and presently, pale, breathless, Mark Hepburn appeared.
“All right, Hepburn!” said Nayland Smith. “No casualties!”
Hepburn leaned heavily against a handrail for a moment;
he had outrun them all.
“Thank God for that!” he panted. “It was an aerial torpedo—we saw them launch it!”