“I’m not at all sure that I shall,” Camille smiled. “Except that I can see no reason why anything should happen tonight more than any other.”
“I must really get Stein to draw those curtains,” Stella declared. “I keep on imagining eyes looking in out of the darkness. And now, for goodness sake, let’s all have a drink.”
Stein had wheeled in trays of refreshments some time earlier, but had been called away by Mrs. Frobisher in order to bolt a trap leading to a loft over the house.
“May I help?” Camille asked.
And presently they were surrounding the mobile buffet.
Michael Frobisher joined them.
“If you take my advice, my dear,” he said to Stella, “you and Miss Navarre will have a good stiff one each after dinner, and turn in early. Think no more about it. Agree with me, Craig?”
Morris Craig stopped looking at Camille long enough to reply:
“Quite. But, if I may say so, somebody should more or less hang about to keep an eye on this thing.” He indicated the cabinet above the bookcase. “I have looked over the works and pass same as okay. By the way, Mrs. Frobisher, will the wolf pack be at large tonight?”
“Of course!” Stella assured him. “1 have given explicit instructions to the man. Such a gentle character.”
“I was wondering,” Craig went on, “if the dogs mightn’t set the gadget going?”
“Oh,1 don’t think so. They have a track of their own. Right around the place—if you see what I mean.”
“Yes. I have observed the same—from without. Certain hounds of threatening aspect were roaming around within.”
“If you remember the layout I showed you,” said Frobisher, “showed Nayland Smith, too, there are three gates which would register here”—he crossed and rested a finger on the plan—”if they were opened. Whoever opened one would have Mrs. F.’s dogs on him,1 guess. But the dogs can’t reach the house.”
“Most blessed dispensation,” Craig murmured to him, “AIthough I confess the brutes are rather a comfort, with Dr. Fu Manchu and a set of thugs, plus the Soviet agent assisted by sundry moujiks and other comrades, lined up outside.”
Camille was watching Craig in an almost pleading way. Frobisher took his arm, and growled in his ear:
“We’ll split up into watches when the women turn in. As you say, somebody ought to be on the lookout right along tonight. Stein can stand watch until twelve. Then I’ll take over—”
“No,” said Craig firmly, and caught Camille’s glance. “I am a party to this disorder, and I’m going to do my bit. After all, I’m accustomed to late hours . . .”
* * *
Manhattan danced on, perhaps a slightly more hectic dance, for this was Saturday night, and Saturday night is Broadway night. Rain, although still falling farther north, had ceased in the city. But a tent of sepia cloud stretched over New York, so that eternal fires, burning before the altars of those gods whose temples line the Street of a Million Lights, cast their glow up onto this sepia canopy and it was cast down again, as if rejected.
Two bored police officers smoked and played crap in Morris Craig’s office on top of the Huston Building. And behind the steel door, in an atmosphere vibrant with repressed energy, Martin Shaw worked calmly, and skillfully, to complete the instrument known as a transmuter. The gods of Broadway were false gods. The god enshrined behind the steel door was a god of power.
But the two policemen went on playing craps.
Chinatown was busy, also. Country innocents gaped at the Chinese facades, the Chinese signs, and felt that they were seeing sights worth coming to Babylon-on-Hudson to see. Town innocents, impressing their girls friends, ate Chinese food in the restaurants and pretended to know as much about it as Walter Winchell knows about everything.
Mat Cha had just ceased to sing in an apartment near the shop of Huan Tsung. Lao Tai had put his last message in the little cupboard.
And upstairs, Huan Tsung reclined against cushions, his eyes closed. The head of Dr. Fu Manchu looked out from the crystal. It might have reminded an Egyptologist of the majestic, embalmed head of Seti, that Pharaoh whose body lies in a Cairo museum.
“To destroy the plant alone is useless, Huan Tsung,” came in coldly sibilant words. “I have dealt with this. Otherwise, I should not have risked a personal visit to the laboratory. I sprayed the essential elements with F.S05. The action is deferred. No—it is necessary also to destroy the inventor—or to transfer him to other employment.”
“This may be difficult,” murmured Huan Tsung. “Time is the enemy of human perfection. Excellency.”
“We shall see. Craig’s original drawings were obtained for me by Mrs. Frobisher. Only two blueprints of the transmuter exist. One is in the hands of the chief technician, who is working from it. The other is with a complete set in possession of Michael Frobisher. Drawings of the valves alone remain to be accounted for.”
“But Excellency informs me that they, too, are finished.”
“They are finished. Give me the latest reports. I will then give you final instructions.”
“I shall summarize. Excellency’s personal possessions have been removed from the Woolton Building as ordered. They are already shipped. Raymond Harkness has posted federal agents at all points covering Falling Waters—except one; the path through the woods from the highway remains open. Lao Tai will proceed to this point at the time selected. But the dogs—”
“I have provided for the dogs. Continue.”
“Provision noted. It is believed but not confirmed that the Kremlin, recognizing the actual plant no longer to be available, hopes to obtain the set of blueprints and the final drawings from Falling Waters before it is too late.”
“Upon what does this belief rest?”
“Upon the fact. Excellency, that Sokolov has ordered his car to be ready at ten o’clock tonight—and is taking a bodyguard.”
So long a silence followed that Huan Tsung raised his wrinkled lids and looked at the crystal.
The eyes of Dr. Fu Manchu were filmed over, a phenomenon with which Huan Tsung was familiar. The brilliant brain encased in that high, massive skull, was concentrated on a problem. When the film cleared, a decision would have been made. And, as he watched, in a flash the long, narrow eyes became emerald-bright.
“Use the Russian party as a diversion, Huan Tsung. No contact must be made. Koenig has acquainted himself with the zones controlled by the alarm system, and M’goyna is already placed and fully instructed. Mrs. Frobisher has her instructions, also. Use all your resources. This is an emergency. At any moment, now, Nay land Smith will have the evidence he is seeking. Win or lose, I must leave New York before daybreak. Proceed . . .”
Chapter XIX
Morris Craig sat smoking in a deep leathern armchair. The darkened library seemed almost uncannily silent. Rain had ceased. But dimly he could hear water dripping on the terrace outside.
It was at about this moment that the two crap players in his office were jerked violently out of their complacent boredom.
Three muffled crashes in the laboratory brought them swiftly to their feet. There came a loud cry—a cry of terror. Another crash. The steel door burst open, and Martin Shaw, white as a dead man, tottered down the steps!