“Is it necessary, Sir Denis, for me to introduce myself?”
“Quite unnecessary, Dr. Fu Manchu! But it is strangely unlike you to show your hand so early in the game. You are outside familiar territory. So am I. But this time, Doctor, by God we shall break you.”
“I trust not, Sir Denis; so much is at stake: the fate of this nation, perhaps of the world—and there are bunglers who fail to appreciate my purpose. Dr. Orwin Prescott, for instance, has been very ill-advised.”
Nayland Smith turned his head towards the door, nodding significantly to Mark Hepburn; some trick of the shaded lights made his lean, tanned face look very drawn , very tired.
“Since you have a certain manuscript in your possession, I assume it to be only a question of time for you to learn why the voice of the Holy Thorn became suddenly silent. In the Father’s interests and in the interests of Dr. Prescott, I advise you to consider carefully your next step, Sir Denis——”
Nayland Smith’s heart pulsed a fraction faster—Orwin Prescott was not dead!
“The abbot’s eloquence is difficult to restrain-and I respect courage. But some day I may cry, in the words of your English King—Henry the Second, was it not?—’Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest . . .’ My cry would be answered—nor should I feel called upon to walk, a barefooted penitent, to pray at the Father Abbot’s tomb beside his Tower of the Holy Thorn.”
Nayland Smith made no reply. He sat there, motionless, listening.
“We enter upon the last phase, Sir Denis . . .”
The guttural voice ceased.
Smith replaced the receiver, sprang up, turned.
“That was a cut-in on the line,” he snapped. “Quick, Hepbum! The nearest phone in the neighbourhood: Check up that call if you can.”
“Right.” Mark Hepburn, his jaw grimly squared, buttoned up his coat.
Sarah Lakin watched Nayland Smith fascinatedly.
“Hell-for-leather, Hepburn! At any cost you must get through to Abbot Donegal to-night. Dr. Fu Manchu warns only once. . . .”
Chapter 7
SLEEPLESS UNDERWORLD
Mark Hepburn replaced a tiny phial of a very rare re-agent on a shelf above his head and, turning, stooped and peered through a microscope at something resembling a fragment of gummy paper. For a while he studied this object and then stood upright, stretching his white-clad arms—he wore an overall—and yawning wearily. The small room in which he worked was fitted up as a laboratory. Save for a remote booming noise as of distant thunder, it was silent.
Hepburn lighted a cigarette and stared out of the closed window. The boom as of distant thunder was explained: it was caused by the ceaseless traffic in miles of busy streets.
Below him spread a night prospect of a large area of New York City. Half-right, framed by the window, the tallest building in the world reared its dizzy head to flying storm clouds. Here was a splash of red light; there, a blur of green. A train moved along its track far away to the left. Thousands of windows made illuminated geometrical patterns in the darkness. To-night there was a damp mist, so that the flambeau upheld by the distant Statue of Liberty was not visible.
A slight sound in the little laboratory on the fortieth floor of the Regal-Athenian Tower brought Hepbum around in a flash.
He found himself looking into the dark, eager face of Nayland Smith.
“Good Lord, Sir Denis! You move like a cat——”
“I used my key. . . .”
“You startled me.”
“Have you got it, Hepburn—have you got it?”
“Yes.”
“What?” Nayland Smith’s lean face, framed in the upturned fur collar of his topcoat, lighted enthusiastically. “First-class job. What is it?”
“I don’t know what it is—that is to say I don’t know from what source it’s obtained. But it’s a concoction used by certain tribes on the Upper Amazon, and I happened to remember that the Academy of Medicine had a specimen and borrowed it. The preparation on the MS., the envelopes and the stamps gives identical reaction. A lot of study has been devoted to this stuff, which has remarkable properties. But nobody has yet succeeded in tracing it to its origin.”
“It is called kaapiT
“It is.”
“I might have known!” snapped Nayland Smith. “He has used it before with notable results. But I must congratulate you. Hepburn: imagination is so rarely allied with exact scientific knowledge.”
He peeled off the heavy topcoat and tossed it on a chair. Hepburn stared and smiled in his slow fashion.
Nayland Smith was dressed in police uniform!
“I was followed to headquarters,” said Smith, detecting the smile. “I can assure you I was not followed back. I left my cap (which didn’t fit me) in the police car. Bought the coat—quite useful in this weather—at a big store with several entrances, and returned here in a taxicab.”
Mark Hepburn leaned back on a glass-topped table which formed one of the appointments of the extemporized laboratory, staring in an abstracted way at Federal Officer 56.
“They must know you are here,” he said, in his slow dry way.
“Undoubtedly! They know I am here. But it is to their advantage to see that I don’t remain here.”
Hepbum stared a while longer and then nodded.
“You think they would come right out into the open like that?”
Nayland Smith shot out his left arm, gripping the speaker’s shoulder.
“Listen. You can hardly have forgotten the machine-gun party on the track when an attempt was made to hold up the special train? This evening I went out by a private entrance kindly placed at my disposal by the management. As I passed the corner of Forty-eighth Street, a car packed with gunmen was close behind me!”
“What!”
“The taxicab in which I was driving belonged to a group known as the Lotus Cabs. . . .”
“I know it. One of the biggest corporations of its kind in the States.”
“It may be nothing to do with them, Hepburn. But the driver was in the pay of the other side.”
“You are sure?”
“I am quite sure. I opened the door, which is in front of the Lotus Cabs, as you may remember, and crouched down beside the wheel. I said to the man: ‘Drive like the devil! I am a federal agent and traffic rules don’t apply at the moment.’“
“What did he do?”
“He pretended to obey but deliberately tried to stall me! In a jam, the gunmen close behind, I jumped out, wriggled clear of the pack, cut through to Sixth Avenue and chartered another cab.”
He paused and drew a long breath. Pulling out the time-worn tobacco-pouch he began to load his briar.
“This ink-shop of yours is somewhat oppressive,” he said. “Let’s go into the sitting-room.”
He walked out to a larger room adjoining, Hepburn following. Over his shoulder:
“Both you and I have got to disappear!” he snapped.
As he spoke he turned, pipe and pouch in hand. Hepburn met the glance of piercing steely eyes and knew that Nayland Smith did not speak lightly.
“The biggest prize which any man ever played for is at stake—the control of the United States of America. To his existing organization—the extent of which even I can only surmise—Dr. Fu Manchu has added the most highly efficient underworld which civilization has yet produced.”
Nayland Smith, his pipe charged, automatically made to drop the pouch back into his coat pocket, was hampered by the uniform, and tossed the pouch irritably on to a chair. He took a box of matches from the marble mantelpiece and lighted his briar. Surrounded now by clouds of smoke he turned, staring at Hepburn.
“You are rounding up your Public Enemies,” he went on, in his snappy, staccato fashion; “but the groups which they controlled remain in existence. Those underground murder gangs are still operative, only awaiting the hand of a master. That master is here . . . and he has assumed control. Our lives Hepburn”—he snapped his fingers—”are not worth that! But let us review the position.