“I am the butler here, sir. My name is Paulo.”
“Mr. Wilton is your employer?”
“Yes sir.”
“Where is he?”
“He left tonight, sir.”
“What! Left for where?”
“For his yacht Silver Heels in the lagoon.”
“But what of his guests?”
“They have all gone too.”
“You mean that the house is empty?”
“Except for myself and the staff, sir, yes.”
One of the party said urgently to the chief of police:
“Silver Heels has sailed.”
“Silver Heels must be overtaken!” snapped Smith. “Send someone to make the necessary arrangements. I leave it to you. But I must be one of the party.”
A man, following rapid instructions from Colonel Correnti, went doubling off.
Turning again to the frightened butler:
“How long have you worked here?”
“Only for two weeks, sir. I was engaged by Mr. Wilton’s secretary. But I have worked here before for others who have leased the palace.”
“Lead the way to the tapestry room lighted by four iron candelabra.”
The man stared in almost a horrified manner.
“That room, sir, is part of what is called the Old Palace. It has long been locked up. I have no key.”
“Nor to the room with the lotus floor?”
Nayland Smith was watching him keenly, his unshaven face very grim.
“The room with the lotus floor!” Paulo’s expression grew even more wild. “I have heard of it, sir, but it is also part of the Old Palace. I have never seen it. Those rooms have a very unpleasant reputation, you understand. No one would lease the palace if they knew of them. The doors have not been unlocked for twenty years.”
“Then one must be broken down. Do you know where they are?”
“I know of two.”
“Go ahead.”
As Paulo turned to obey I heard a sound of distant voices.
“What is that?” snapped Smith.
“Some of the other servants, sir, who have been aroused!” Smith glanced at Colonel Correnti.
“Have this looked into. Colonel,” he said. “You, Paulo, lead on.”
Our party was broken up again. Smith, myself, the chief of police, Detective Stocco and two Carabinieri following the butler. He led us to a doorway set in an arched recess. A magnificent cabinet—a rare piece of violet lacquer—stood in front of the arch.
“Behind here, sir, is one of the doors, but I have no key to open it.”
“Get this thing out of the way.”
In a few minutes the men had set the cabinet aside. Smith stepped forward and examined an ancient iron lock. He was soon satisfied. He turned and shook his head.
“This is not the door in use. You say you know of another?”
“Yes sir, if you will come this way.”
Aside to me:
“The fellow is honest,” Smith muttered. “This is a very deep plot.” He glanced at his wrist watch as we crossed a deserted dining room. “Our chance of saving Adion grows less and less, but there is someone else in danger.”
“Who is that?”
“James Brownlow Wilton! He is notorious throughout the United States for his Nazi sympathies. The full extent of this scheme is only just beginning to dawn upon me, Kerrigan.”
In a room overluxuriously furnished as a study, Paulo opened a satinwood door inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl to reveal an empty cupboard.
“At the back of this cupboard, sir,” he said, “you see there are very ancient panels. I have always understood it is an entrance to the Old Palace . . .”
* * *
“This door has been used recently. . . It has a new lock!” Smith’s eyes glittered feverishly.
“I don’t think so, sir. Mr. Wilton used the room, and I am sure he did not know of the door. I have always been careful to avoid mentioning to tenants who came anything about those locked rooms.”
“Carbines!” Smith cried on a high note of excitement. “Those two men forward. Blow the lock out. The fate of a nation hangs on it!”
The sound of muffled shots reverberated insanely in that lavishly furnished study. I heard cries—racing footsteps. The other police party dashed to join us . . . The lock was shattered, the door flung open.
“Follow me, Kerrigan!”
Nayland Smith, shining a ray of light ahead, stepped into the dark cavity. I went next, Colonel Correnti close at my heels.
“You see, Kerrigan! You see!”
Descending four stone steps we found ourselves in one of those narrow passages which surrounded the rooms of the Old Palace. I took a rapid bearing.
“This way, Smith, I think!”
“You’re right!” he cried. “Ah! what’s this?”
A door was thrown open, we crowded in, and flashlamps flooded the tapestry room in which I had seen Rudolf Adion confronting Dr Fu Manchu!
The red candles in the candelabra were extinguished, and in the light of our lamps I saw that the tapestry was so decayed as to be in places dropping from the wall. The ebony chair on the dais was there, but save for the extinguished candles, one of which Smith examined, there was nothing to show that this sinister apartment had been occupied for a generation.
During the next hour we explored some of the strangest rooms I had ever entered. We even penetrated to the cellar below the lotus floor. The place still reeked of hawthorn, but that unknown gas was no longer present in anesthetic quantity. A net was hung below the trap . . .
We had a glimpse in those evil catacombs of the Venice in which men had disappeared never to be heard of again.
But not a soul did we find anywhere!
None of the other police parties had anything to report. Rudolf Adion, whose slightest words disturbed Europe, had vanished as completely as in the days of the doges when prominent citizens of Venice had vanished!
It was a fact so amazing that I found it hard to accept. No member of that household had ever entered these locked rooms and cellars. All that I had heard, all that I had seen there might have been figments of a dream! Saving the presence and the evidence of Nayland Smith I should have been tempted to suppose it so.
Yet again, like an evil cloud out of which lightning strikes destruction, Dr Fu Manchu had gone with the breeze, to leave no trace behind!
And Ardatha?
Silver Heels
“Are you ready, Kerrigan?”
Nayland Smith burst into my room at the hotel. A bath and a badly needed shave had renewed the man. He lived on his nerves. To me he was a constant source of amazement.
“Yes, Smith, I’m ready. Is there any more news?”
He dropped down on the side of my bed and began to fill his pipe. Wind howled through the shutters, and this was the darkest hour of the night.
“Silver Heels has answered the radio and is waiting for us.”
“What do you think it all means. Smith? To me it still seems like a dream that you and I were confined there in that vile place. Granting Paulo’s statement to be true, that Brownlow Wilton and his guests had left before my arrival, it’s still incredible. That scene between Fu Manchu and Rudolf Adion . . . Now at this moment I cannot believe it ever happened!”
“Think,” snapped Smith. “The Palazzo Brioni was leased on behalf of Brownlow Wilton by his secretary and a staff assembled. Neither the secretary, one assumes, nor Brownlow Wilton, had the remotest idea of the history of the place. It contained a series of rooms belonging to what is known apparently as the Old Palace which, for good reasons, were shut off—never entered.”
“So far, I agree.”
His pipe satisfactorily filled, Nayland Smith struck a match. While he lighted the tobacco, he continued:
“Only one member of the household, Paulo, the butler who has served there before, knows anything about those hidden rooms. Very well. A genius of evil who does know about them, seizes this opportunity. Wilton, who has upheld to his peril the Nazi banner in the United States, is in a position to entertain Rudolf Adion. Fu Manchu knows that Rudolf Adion is coming incognito to Venice. An invitation to a luncheon party on the millionaire’s yacht is arranged. There are servants of Fu Manchu on board.”