“Anyone there?” he called softly.
A stifled muttering responded.
“Come on, Kerrigan! This is our only chance!”
So far as I could make out, every living soul on board, other than ourselves or whoever might be in the next cabin, had joined the launch. We attacked that job like demons, stripping three-ply woodwork from the back of the wardrobe. Every crack of the shattered fragments sounded in my ears like the shot of a pistol. We made a considerable gap—and no one hindered us.
“If anybody comes in,” snapped Smith, “shoot him down.”
There was a second partition behind, and now that stifled cry reached us more urgently.
“Stand behind me,” said Smith.
He flashed a momentary beam upon this new obstacle.
“Matchboarding,” I muttered. “These rooms once communicated.”
Not awaiting his reply, I hurled myself against it.
I crashed through into a small cabin, as fitful moonlight from a porthole told me. On the floor the two men of the Carabinieri day bound—bandages tied over their mouths! One was struggling furiously; the other lay still.
“This one first.”
Quickly we released the struggling man. He spoke a little English and the situation was soon explained. He had been struck down from behind as he patrolled the deck, and had recovered consciousness to find himself bound in the cabin. His opposite number, when we released him in turn, proved to be insensible, but alive.
“Now,” snapped Smith. “Yes or no . . .”
The cabin was locked.
“This is awful!” I groaned. “But we could blow the lock out.”
“Yes—fortunately we’re armed, for these men’s carbines have gone. But wait—”
He sprang to the porthole, worked feverishly for a few seconds and then:
“A different fitting,” he gasped. “I have it open!”
I climbed through onto the deck . . . and the key was in the cabin door. We were on the starboard side of Silver Heels; the launch lay at the port ladder. And from the ladder-head at this moment sounds of disturbance arose. Facing us a small lifeboat hung at the davits; forward, just abaft the bridge, an alleyway connected the two decks.
“Do you know anything about boats?” Smith snapped.
“Not much.”
“Do you?” to the police officer.
“Yes sir. I was at sea before I joined the Carabinieri.”
“Right! Kerrigan, steal through that alleyway and watch what is going on. You”—to the ex-seaman—”lend a hand with your friend.”
They began to haul the insensible man across the deck. I turned and crept along the alleyway. Soon I had a view of the ladder-head. The portside was in shadow, relieved only by the light of a solitary hurricane lantern.
One man stood there. He was tapping his foot impatiently upon the deck and watching a door which I thought led to the engine room. It was Lopez. Heralded by a rattling of feet on iron rungs, a man wearing dungarees burst into view.
“You have set it?”
“Yes.”
“Down quickly!—not a moment to waste!”
“But Doctor Chang! Where is the doctor? I have not seen him.”
“His orders were to join the launch immediately she was swung out.”
“Doctor Chang is not on board,” came a voice from the foot of the ladder.
“How long have we?”
“Three minutes.”
Silver Heels, her wheel abandoned, creaked and groaned: it became difficult to hear the speakers.
“I shall not sacrifice myself for the doctor!” Lopez spoke furiously. “Already he has taxed my patience . . . Hoy!”—he hailed—”Doctor!”
“Doctor Chang!”
Other voices joined in the cry.
But Dr Chang—whoever Dr Chang may have been—did not appear.
At the head of the ladder the man in dungarees hesitated, looking back over his shoulder, whereupon:
“Down, I say!” cried Lopez, a note of cold authority in his voice. “Who is in charge here? Always the doctor was mad. If he wishes to be destroyed who cares? There is not a moment to spare! Everyone for himself!”
* * *
Nayland Smith and the police officer had succeeded in lowering away the ship’s boat with the insensible Carabinieri on board, for when I got back to the starboard rail it was already riding an oil swell, fended off by the man in uniform. Smith, bathed in perspiration as I could see, was watching for my return.
“Well?”
“They’ve gone. The ship will blow up in two minutes! But Wilton—”
“Come on! The ladder is down.”
“But—”
“There are no ‘buts.’ Come on!”
Although I have said that the swell was subsiding, boarding that boat was no easy matter. We accomplished it, however, so that I am in a position to testify to the fact that some prayers are answered.
As dimly we heard the launch racing away from Silver Heels, we began furiously to pull around the stern of the vessel. We rowed as though our lives depended upon our efforts.
And this indeed was the case.
I was too excited at the time, too exhausted, to be competent to say now how far from Silver Heels we lay when it happened . . . but the effect was as though a volcano had belched up from the sea.
A shattering explosion came—and the graceful yacht seemed to split in the middle. Minor explosions followed. Flames roared up as if to lick the clouds.
Her end, I think, was a matter of minutes . . .
I can hear myself now as that deafening explosion came, and Silver Heels disappeared below the waves, creating a maelstrom which wildly rocked the boat:
“Smith! I don’t understand! . . . Why did we desert Brownlow Wilton? He died a terrible death, and we—”
“He deserved it. God knows how or when the real Wilton died! The staff engaged in Venice had never seen Wilton. It was a plot to trap Adion. The man who died on Silver Heels was a double, a servant of Doctor Fu Manchu!”
“Good heavens, Smith! A memory has come back!”
“Dictators have no monopoly of doubles. Doctor Fu Manchu employs them with notable success.”
“Those fellows were crying out for someone called Doctor Chang, who was missing—”
“Wilton’s impersonator, no doubt! I suspected a Mongolian streak. He lay drugged—by his own hand! I saw it all in the mirror, Kerrigan, hence my remarkable behavior! The man, Lopez, was directing; he is senior to the other in the Si-Fan. But ‘doctor’ is significant. Probably Doctor Chang, apart from his resemblance to Brownlow Wilton, is a poison specialist—”
“I know he is, Smith—I know it! He is the man who came to your rooms and fixed the Green Death to the telephone!”
“Poor devil! You mean he was the man . . .”
The Man In The Park
The wheels seemed to turn very swiftly in those strange days and nights during which I found myself beside Nayland Smith in his battle to hold the world safe from Dr Fu Manchu.
Throughout the week that followed our escape from Silver Heels so many things happened that I find it difficult to select a point from which to carry on my story since I realize that this story, almost against my will, from the first has wound itself insidiously about the figure of Ardatha.
First had come what Smith called “the great hush-up.”
Since Rudolf Adion’s double had been reviewing troops at the time when the real Adion had been at Palazzo da Rosa it was impossible for his government to divulge the fact that he had died (or disappeared) in Venice. When it became necessary to admit his death to a public which had looked up to him as to a god, they were told that he had died in his bed. The double, Rudolf Adion No. I, ceased to exist. It was done adroitly: the newspapers were muzzled. Patriotic physicians issued fictitious bulletins, then the final news for which a breathless Europe waited.