Camille’s heart was throbbing wildly, but she had been trained to face the worst.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it is true.” Slowly Dr. Fu Manchu stood up. “Your employers are within their rights in seeking to learn the nature of those experiments being carried out in the Huston laboratory. We live in a dangerous age. I admire them for their ingenious removal to a better post of Dr. Craig’s former assistant, and for providing you with the necessary credentials to take her place.”
He was walking around the comer of the long, narrow table, and coming nearer. He had a catlike step.
“My credentials are my own.”
“Indeed. And where did you acquire them?”
“Is that your business?”
Fear (the tall, yellow-robed figure was very close now) made her defiant.
“And where did you acquire them?” he repeated in a low, sibilant tone.
“I graduated at the Sorbonne.”
“I congratulate you. These are details I had no time to gather at our former interview. And did you carry out intelligence work during the war?”
“I worked with the Resistance.” Camille spoke faintly. “In Grenoble.”
Dr. Fu Manchu returned to his seat behind the long table.
“Again, accept my congratulations. You speak perfect English.”
“My mother was English.”
Camille sank down on the divan. She was terrified, but her brain remained cool. One thing was clear. During that hiatus which had cost her so many sleepless nights, she must have been here. How had she got here? And why, except in a dream, had she completely forgotten all that happened?
Above all, what had happened? . . .
Camille clutched the cushions convulsively.
A quivering, metallic sound, like that of a distant sistrum, stirred the silence.
The crystal was coming to life. A radiance as of moonlight glowed and grew within it. For a moment it seemed cloudy, resembling a huge opal. Then the clouds dispersed, and a face materialized.
Camille thought, at first, that it was the living face of the Egyptian whose mummied head stood on the table, so yellow and wrinkled were its lineaments. But it soon declared itself as that of a very old Chinese.
“I have the report. Excellency.”
The voice was clear, but seemed to come from a long way off.
“Repeat it.”
Dr. Fu Manchu was watching the face in the crystal. A sudden urge to run flamed up in Camille’s mind. She glanced swiftly right and left, and then:
“Remain where you are,” came a harsh command. “There are no means of leaving this room without my permission. Continue, Huan Tsung.”
“Nayland Smith and Dr. Craig are in the restaurant. Contact is impossible. There is an F.B.I, bodyguard at the doors. All my incoming messages are overheard. Therefore this was sent to me in the Shan dialect.”
There came a momentary silence, in which Camille realized that she was not witnessing a supernatural phenomenon, but some hitherto unknown form of television; and then:
“I have one hour,” said Dr. Fu Manchu, “in which to make the first move.”
The face in the crystal faded slowly, like a mirage. The moonlight died away. As Dr. Fu Manchu turned his intolerable regard upon her again, Camille stood up.
“I want to know,” she said, “why I have been trapped into coming here. Perhaps you think you can force me to betray Dr. Craig’s secrets to you?”
“Were you not prepared to betray them to the British government?” he asked softly.
“Perhaps I was. But from a motive you could never understand. In the hope of preserving the peace of the world—if that is possible.”
“Do you regard Great Britain as holding a monopoly in peaceful intentions? Do you suppose that Dr. Craig would welcome the knowledge that you worked with him only to betray him?”
Camille tried to meet the gaze of those half-closed eyes. “I—I— did not think of it as betrayal. Only as a duty; a duty for which I must be prepared to sacrifice—everything.”
“Such as the respect of Dr. Craig—or possibly something more precious.’’
Camille lowered her eyes and dropped back on the divan. Dr. Fu Manchu stood up and walked towards her. He carried a small volume.
“I will never reveal one of Dr. Craig’s secrets to you,” she said on a note of desperation.
“My dear Miss Navarre—you have already revealed them all, or all that you knew at the time. Let you and me be sensible. Communist criminals aspire to rule man by fear. Nations no longer have the right to choose their rulers. As a result, the market is glutted with politicians, but statesmen are in short supply. Man wants nothing but happiness. What Russian yearns to spread the disease from which he himself is suffering?”
He stood right before her now.
“You see this book? It is a complete list of the megalomaniacs who are threatening the world with a third, and final, war. Power-drunk fools. They could all, quite easily, be assembled in this room. The unhappy peoples they claim to speak for are only the fuel to be thrown into the furnace of their mad lust. Advance guards of these ignorant ruffians already knock at the door—and one man holds in his hands a weapon which may decide the issue.’
“You mean—Dr. Craig?”
“I referred to him—yes.”
Camille, with desperate courage, stood up and faced Fu Manchu.
“And you think I would put that weapon into your hands—even if I could? I should prefer to die—and leave the law to deal with you!”
But Dr. Fu Manchu remained unmoved.
“One who hopes to save civilization cannot afford to respect the law. You are that rare freak of the gods, a personable woman with a brain. Yet, womanlike, you permit emotion to rule you. Why do you wear those pieces of plain glass?”
He fully opened his strange eyes, raised one long-nailed hand, and pointed at her.
Camille ceased to possess any individual existence. She found herself in that trancelike condition which had made her dreams so terrible.
“Take them off.”
Automatically she obeyed. Something within rose in fierce, angry revolt. But Camille herself was helpless.
“Shake your hair down.”
She released her wonderful hair. It cascaded, a fiery torrent, onto her shoulders. Mechanically Camille arranged it with her fingers.
“Kneel.”
She knelt at Fu Manchu’s feet.
“Bow your head . . . Sleep.”
She bowed her head, a beautiful, submissive slave awaiting punishment.
Dr. Fu Manchu struck a silver bell which hung on a table beside the divan. Camille did not hear its sweet, lingering note. She was lost in a silent world from which only one sound could recall her— the voice of Fu Manchu.
* * *
A man entered through the archway. He never even glanced at the motionless, kneeling figure. He bowed, briefly but respectfully, to Fu Manchu. He was short, dark, and thickset, with a Teutonic skull. He wore a long, white-linen coat, like that of a surgeon. Dr. Fu Manchu crossed and seated himself at the table. “Koenig—tonight you will go to the Huston Building. The duplicate key you made after Miss Navarre’s last visit opens the private door and also that of the elevator to the thirty-second floor. On the thirty-second floor there is another elevator. The key opens this also. Any questions?”
“No.”
“It will take you to the thirty-sixth, where you will enter the office of Dr. Craig. The laboratory adjoins the office. The communicating door is locked. A man called Regan will be on duty in the laboratory. He must be induced to come out. Any questions?”
“No.”