The secret agent within was stirring. She wondered why this man knew.
“But of course. You are of France, and France has a long memory. Very well. Let France remember. If it shall come another war, those ignorant buffoons will destroy all, including themselves. This would not matter much if selected communities could be immunized. For almost complete destruction of human life on the planet is now a scientific possibility. It is also desirable. But indiscriminate slaughter—no. The new race must start better equipped than Noah.”
When, luncheon over, the professor refused coffee and prepared to take his leave, there was no one present upon whom, in one way or another, he had failed to impress his singular personality. Stella Frobisher flutteringly begged a brief consultation before he left, and was granted one. Mrs. Pardoe made an appointment for the following Friday.
“There is nothing the matter with you,” Professor Hoffmeyer told her, “which your husband cannot cure. But come if you so want. You all eat too much. See to it that you permit not here prohibitions, rationings, coupons. Communism knows no boxing laws. Communism strikes at the stomach, first. To this you could never stand up.”
A car, in charge of a saturnine chauffeur who had declined to lunch in the kitchen, declined a drink, and spent his leisure wandering about the property, awaited him. As the professor was driven away, drops of rain began to patter on the terrace.
* * *
Night crept unnoticed upon Falling Waters.
Rain descended steadily, and a slight, easterly wind stole, eerie, through the trees. Stella did not merely ask, she extended an invitation to Dr. and Mrs. Pardoe to remain to dinner. But Mrs. Pardoe, already enveloped in a cloak like a velvet pall, reminded her husband that a patient was expected at eight-thirty. Stella saw them off.
“Oh, I’m so nervous. It’s getting so dark. I shan’t feel really safe until everything is bolted and barred . . .”
Coming out of her room, later, having changed to a dinner frock so simple that it must have been made in Paris, Camille almost ran into Sam on the corridor.
“Gee, Miss Navarre! You look like something wonderful!”
“That’s very sweet of you, Sam! I had a dreadful shock—yes, truly—when you were discovered today.”
“Sure. Shock to me! Ham performance. Must try to make up for it.”
“Sam—you don’t mind if I still call you Sam?’
“Love it. Sounds better your way.”
“Now I know what you are really doing here,1 can talk to you— well, sensibly. Dr. Craig thinks, and so,1 know, does Sir Denis, that we haven’t only to deal with this dreadful Fu Manchu.” She paused for a moment after speaking the name. “That there is a Soviet agent watching us, too. Have you any ideas about him?”
Sam nodded. He had given up chewing and abandoned his spectacles. Presumably they had been part of a disguise.
“Working on it right now—and I think we’re getting some place.”
“Oh! I’m so glad.”
“Sure. I got a nose for foreign agents. Smell ‘em a mile off.”
“Really?”
“Sure.” He grinned happily. “You look a hundred per cent Caesar. Excuse my bad spelling!”
He went off along the corridor.
When Camille came down, she found Michael Frobisher busily bolting and barring the French windows.
“Mrs. F.’s got the jumps tonight,” he explained. “I have to fix all the catches, myself, to reassure her. Just making the rounds.” He gave Camille an admiring smile. “Hope all today’s hokum, and the alarm back at the office, hasn’t upset you?”
“It’s kind of you, Mr. Frobisher, but although, naturally,1 am disturbed about it, all the same I am most happy to be here.”
“Good girl. Craig has finished his job, and the new diagram and notes are in my safe. That’s where they stay. They are the property of Huston Electric, and the property of nobody else!”
As he went out, Morris Craig came downstairs, slim and boyish in his tuxedo. Without a word, he took Camille in his arms.
“Darling! I thought we were never going to be alone again!”
When he released her:
“Are you sure, Morris?” she whispered.
“Sure? Sure of what?”
“Sure that you really meant all you said last night?”
He answered her silently, and at great length.
“Camille! I only wish—”
“Yes?”
“Camille”—he lingered over her name—”I adore you. But I wish you weren’t going to stay here tonight—”
“What? Whatever do you mean?”
She leaned back from him. Her eyes suddenly seemed to become of a darker shade of blue.
“I mean that, at last, it has dawned on this defective brain of mine that I have done something which may upset the world again—that other people know about it—that almost anything may happen.”
“But Morris—surely nothing can happen here?”
“Can’t it? Why is old Frobisher in such a panic? Why all the dogs and the burglar alarms? The devil of it is, we don’t know our enemies. There might be a Russian spy hiding out there in the shrubbery. There might be a British agent—not that that would bother me—somewhere in this very house.”
“Yes,” said Camille quietly. “I suppose there might be.”
“Above all,” Craig went on presently, “there’s this really frightful menace—Dr. Fu Manchu. Smith is more scared of him than of all the others rolled into a bundle.”
“So am I . . . Listen for a moment, Morris. Sometimes I think I have seen him in a dream. Oh! It sounds ridiculous, and I can’t quite explain what I mean. But I have a vague impression of a tall, gaunt figure in a yellow robe, with most wonderful hands, long finger-nails, and”—she paused momentarily—”most dreadful eyes. Something, today, brought the impression back to my mind—just as Professor Hoffmeyer came in.”
Craig gently stroked her hair. He knew it would be a penal offense to disarrange it.
“Don’t get jumpy again, darling. I gather that, in one of your fey moods, you wandered the highways and byways of Manhattan last night instead of keeping your date with the professor. But, certainly, the old lad is a rather alarming personality—although he bears no resemblance to your yellow-robed mandarin. I’m sorry for him, and, of course, his Germanic discourse simply sparkles. But—”
“I didn’t mean that the professor reminded me of the man I had dreamed about. It was—something different.”
“Whatever it was, forget it.” He held her very close; he whispered in her ear: “Camille! The moment we get back to New York, will you marry me?”
But Camille shrank away. The dark eyes looked startled—almost panic-stricken.
“Morris! Morris! No! No!”
He dropped his arms, stared at her. He felt that he had grown pale.
“No? Do you mean it?”
“I mean—oh, Morris,1 don’t quite know what I mean! Perhaps— that you startled me.”
“How did I startle you?” he asked on a level, calm note.
“You—know so little about me.”
“I know enough to know I love you.”
“I should be very, very happy for us to go on—as we are. But, marriage—”
“What’s wrong with marriage?”
Camille turned aside. A shaded lamp transformed her hair, where it swept down over her neck, to a torrent of molten copper. Craig put his hands hesitantly on her shoulders, and turned her about. He looked steadily into her eyes.
“Camille—you’re not trying to tell me, by any chance, that you’re married already?”
“A door banged upstairs. Stella’s voice was heard.
“And do make quite sure, Stein—quite sure—that there isn’t a window open.” She appeared at the stairhead. “Even with everything locked, and the dogs loose,1 know I shall never sleep a wink.” She saw Camille below. “Shall you, dear?”