“No.”
“Callers?”
“No one called.”
“Boring for you, Merrick. Relax for a couple of hours. I’ll take over. Cut downstairs and try a champagne cocktail in the Paris Bar. They used to be good when I was here before. Then dine in the Silver Grill. I shall know where to find you if you’re wanted.”
“Thanks, Sir Denis. I’ll take your advice.”
He looked at his watch, surprised to find how the afternoon had passed, how late it was. He spruced up and went downstairs. Although he wasn’t familiar with the Babylon-Lido he had no difficulty in finding the Paris Bar. It was equipped in Montmartre style, with coloured advertisements for French drinks on the walls, and framed Lautrec reproductions. There were red and white check cloths on the little tables, French waiters and a French bartender.
The bar was already well patronized, but he saw no one he knew. He sat down at a vacant table and ordered a champagne cocktail. He supposed he should be grateful to find himself back in his native land, but all the same a voice within kept asking, “Why New York? Why couldn’t it be London?” When his drink came and he had sampled it and lighted a cigarette he began to feel better. He recalled what someone had told him once, that Secret Service routine can be as dull as banking.
This thought consoled him, and he had just ordered a second cocktail when soft hands were pressed over his eyes from behind and a soft voice said, “Guess, Brian! Who is it?”
He grasped the slender hands, twisted in his chair . . . and found himself looking up into eyes which smiled while they seemed to mock him.
“Lola!” He almost failed to recognize his own voice, “Lola! But—but—you ought to be in London!”
Lola freed her hands, came around and sat down in the chair facing him. “You mean I shouldn’t be in New York?”
“My dear!” Brian partly recovered from the glad shock, wondered about the way his heart was thumping. “Your being here is the answer to a prayer. It’s impossible but true.”
“Did you get my radiogram?”
“I did. But did you get my reply?”
Lola shook her head. A waiter was standing beside her. Brian ordered two champagne cocktails. As the waiter moved away:
“How could I?” Lola asked him. “I had to leave London an hour after I sent my message to you in Cairo. Madame had booked me for a flight leaving the same afternoon. I told you, Brian, we should meet again before long.”
Brian’s eyes devoured her. Lola, as always, was perfectly dressed, with that deceptive simplicity which only much money can buy. He was so overpowered by her appeal—her sudden presence—that he became almost tongue-tied.
“It will be sent on?”
“Of course. Everything that comes will be air-mailed to me here.”
“You are staying here—in the Babylon-Lido?”
“I am! Madame believes in Michel representatives being seen in smart places.”
“Lola—it’s a miracle!”
Lola, watching him, smiled that odd smile which at once irritated and infatuated him. “There are men even today, Brian, who can perform miracles.”
Her words were puzzling; but as the waiter brought the cocktails, he forgot them, clinked glasses, and was glad to be alive.
“You didn’t know I was here, Lola?”
“How could I? I saw you as I came in.”
“Are you free for dinner?”
“Of course, Brian dear, I only just arrived. . . .”
* * *
Dr. Fu Manchu sat in a small room which apparently had no windows. A single bright light shone down on to a large-scale plan pinned to a board, so that sometimes a shadow of his head or hand would appear on the plan as he bent forward to study it. The room was profoundly silent.
The plan represented a number of suites of apartments, some adjoining one another, but roughly half of them separated from the others by a wide corridor. An elevator door and a descending stair were marked opening off a square landing;
an ascending stair appeared at the other end of the corridor.
It was a plan of the top floor of a wing of the Babylon-Lido.
Of the three suites shown on the east side of the corridor that in the centre was marked 420B. 420A was on the north of it and 420C on the south. There were four smaller apartments on the west side, numbered from 421 to 424.
Dr. Fu Manchu took a pinch of snuff from a silver box, then turned his shadowed face towards a cabinet which stood near. He pressed a switch.
“Connect 420A.”
An interval, and then a man’s voice speaking English with a pronounced accent: “Four-twentyA.”
“You are unpacked and established?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Your transmitter is well concealed?”
“Yes, Master.”
“You may not be wanted tonight, but remain in the hotel.”
A faint click and the order: “Connect 420C.”
There was an almost instant answer in such bad English as to be nearly unintelligible.
“Speak in your own language. You are ready?”
The reply came in a Burmese dialect: “I am ready, Master.”
“Remain where you are until further orders.”
The four apartments on the west side were connected one after another; orders given and accepted in a variety of tongues. Dr. Fu Manchu was a phenomenal linguist. At last he was satisfied, leaning back in his chair and hissing softly between his teeth.
Suite 420B, occupied by Sir Denis Nayland Smith, was entirely surrounded by agents of Fu Manchu!
* * *
While Brian, having booked a table, waited for Lola to join him in the Silver Grill, his reflections took an odd turn. There was a queer similarity between this meeting with Lola in New York and his meeting with Zoe in Cairo. They might have been planned by a producer too lazy to alter the routine. Brian laughed silently, and wondered why so grotesque an idea had occurred to him as he saw Lola coming.
She had changed into an unpretentious but charming dinner dress. It might have—and had—been designed expressly to set off her particular type of beauty. She looked radiant and attracted the tribute of many frowns from the women present.
When they had ordered their dinner, and Lola had selected the right Bordeaux to go with it:
“I’m simply dying to hear what you’re doing in Manhattan, Brian,” she declared. “I thought your mysterious affairs were connected with the East, not the West.”
“So did I,” Brian admitted, then stopped.
How much was he entitled to tell Lola? She knew some of the facts, already, but only as little as he had known, himself, up to the time of his leaving London.
“New York was the last place in which I expected to find myself.” Lola delicately nibbled an olive. “You were the last person I expected to meet.”
Brian went through the pangs of an inward struggle. He longed to confide in somebody. He was made that way. And if he couldn’t trust Lola, in whom could he put his trust? After all, she knew already that he was employed by Nayland Smith, and even if he told her all he knew of Sir Denis’s plans it didn’t add up to much. For he recognized, with a return of his sense of frustration, that he had been kept in the dark all along. He imposed only one condition upon himself: he must say nothing about either Hessian or Dr. Fu Manchu.
“If I could make you understand, Lola, how mad I was to learn that we were coming to New York when where I wanted to be was London you’d know how I longed to be with you again. To find you right here made me think I had Aladdin’s lamp in my pocket and didn’t know it!”
“I was just as delighted to see you, Brian. Your last letter— the one you left for me—made me rather sad. Perhaps you were just mad at having to leave so suddenly. But it was a very chilly letter, Brian!”
Brian’s sense of guilt dried up speech for a moment. Then he forced a grin, reached across and squeezed Lola’s hand.