Morris’s kiss silenced her. She clung to him, trembling. Her heart fluttered like a captive bird released, and at last:
“You see now, Morris, why I felt it was well enough for us to be— lovers. But how could I marry you, when—”
“You were milking my brains?” he whispered in her ear. But it was a gay whisper. “You little redheaded devil! This gives me another bone to pick with Smith. Why didn’t he tell me?”
“I was afraid he would! Then I remembered he couldn’t . . . Morris! I shall be all bruises! There are traditions in the Secret Service.”
At which moment, amid a subdued buzzing sound like that of a fly trapped in a glass, the cabinet over the bookcase came to life!
Camille grasped Craig’s hand as he leapt upright, and clung to it obstinately. A rectangle in the library darkness, every detail of the grounds surrounding Falling Waters showed as if touched with phosphorescence.
“We’re off!” Craig muttered. “Look!”
A shadow moved slowly across the chart.
“That’s the back porch!” Camille whispered. “Someone right outside.”
“Don’t panic, darling. Wait.”
The faint shadow moved on to where a door was marked. It stopped. The buzzing ceased. The chart faded.
“Someone came into the kitchen!”
“Run back and hide on the stair.”
“But—”
“Please do as I say, Camille.”
Camille released his hand, and he stood, automatic ready, facing that doorway which led to the back premises.
He saw nothing. But he was aware that the door had been opened. Then:
“Don’t shoot me, Craig,” rapped a familiar voice, “and don’t make a sound.”
A flashlamp momentarily lighted the library. Nayland Smith stood there watching him—hatless, the fur collar of his old trench coat turned up about his ears. Then Smith’s gaze flickered for a second. There came a faint rustling from the direction of the stairs— and silence.
Sam appeared just behind Smith. The lamp was switched off.
“Smith!—How did you get in?”
“Not so loud. I have been standing by outside for some time.”
“I let him in, doc,” Sam explained.
“There’s some kind of thing slinking around out there,” Nayland Smith went on, an odd note in his voice, “which isn’t human—”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Just that. It isn’t a baboon, and it isn’t a man. Normally, I should form a party and hunt it down. I have a strong suspicion it is some specimen out of Fu Manchu’s museum of horrors. But”—Craig, dimly, could hear Smith moving in the dark—”just shine a light onto this.”
Craig snapped his lamp up. Nayland Smith stood right beside him, holding out an enlargement of a snapshot. Sam stood at Smith’s elbow. Upstairs, a door closed softly.
The picture was that of a stout, bearded man crowned with a mane of white hair; he had small, round, inquisitive eyes.
“Lights out,” Smith directed. “I waited at police headquarters for that to arrive. Recognize him?”
“Never saw him in my life.”
“Correct. Following his release from a Nazi prison camp, he disappeared. I think I know where he went. But it’s of no immediate importance. That is the once celebrated Viennese psychiatrist, Doctor Carl Hoffmeyer!”
“What do you say?”
“Smart, ain’t it?” Sam murmured.
“The man New York knew as Professor Hoffmeyer was Dr. Fu ManchuV
“Good God! But he was here today!”
“I know. A great commander must be prepared to take all the risks he imposes on others.”
“But he speaks English with a heavy German accent! And—”
“Dr. Fu Manchu speaks every civilized language with perfect facility—with or without an accent! Lacking this evidence, I could do nothing. But I made one big mistake—”
“We all made it,” said Sam. “You’re no more to blame than the rest.”
“Thanks,” rapped Smith. “But the blame is mine. I had the Hoffmeyer clinic covered, and I thought he was trapped.”
“Well?” Craig asked eagerly
“He didn’t go back there!”
“Listen!” Sam broke in again. “We had three good men on his tail, but he tricked ‘em!”
There was something increasingly eerie about this conversation in the dark.
“The clinic remains untouched,” Nayland Smith continued. “But Fu Manchu’s private quarters, which patients never saw, have been stripped. Police raided hours ago.”
“Then where has he gone?”
“I don’t know.” Nayland Smith’s voice had a groan in it.
“But all that remains for him to do, in order to complete his work, is here, in this house!”
“Shouldn’t we rouse up Frobisher?” Craig asked excitedly
“No. There are certain things—I don’t want Mr. Frobisher to know yet.”
“Such as, for instance?”
“Such as—this is going to hit you where it hurts—that your entire plant in the Huston laboratory was destroyed tonight—”
“What!”
“Quiet, man!” Nayland Smith grasped Craig’s arm in the darkness. “I warned you it would hurt. The Fire Department has the job in hand. It isn’t their proper province. The thing is just crumbling away, breaking like chocolate. Last report to reach the radio car, that huge telescope affair—I don’t know it’s name—has crashed onto the floor.”
“But, Smith! . . .”
“I know. It’s bad.”
“Thank heaven! My original plans are safe in a New York City bank vault!”
Silence fell again, broken only by a dry cough from Sam, unticlass="underline"
“They are not,” Nayland Smith said evenly. “They were taken out two days ago.”
“Taken out? By whom?”
“In person, by Mrs. Frobisher. In fact, by Dr. Fu Manchu. Frobisher doesn’t know—but the only records of your invention which remain, Craig, are the blueprints hidden somewhere in this house!”
“They were in back of the desk there,” Sam mumbled. “But they’ve vanished.”
“You’re not suggesting”—Craig heard the note of horrified incredulity in his own voice—”that Mrs. Frobisher—”
“Mrs. Frobisher,” said Nayland Smith, “is as innocent in this matter as Miss Navarre. But—we are dealing with Dr. Fu Manchu!”
“Why are we staying in the dark? What happens next?”
“What happens next I don’t know. We are staying in the dark because a man called Dimitri Sokolov, a Soviet official in whom Ray Harkness is interested, has a crew of armed thugs down by the lower gate . . . Sokolov seems to be expecting someone.”
Chapter XX
In the stillness which followed, Morris Craig tried, despairfully, to get used to the idea that the product of months, many weary months, of unremitting labor, had been wiped out . . . How? By whom? He felt stunned. Could it be that Shaw, in a moment of madness, had attempted a test?
“Is poor old Shaw—-” he began.
“Shaw is safe,” Smith interrupted. “But badly shaken. He has no idea what occurred. Quite unable to account for it—as I am unable to account for what’s going on here. I’m not referring to the presence of someone, or some thing, stalking just outside the area controlled by the alarms, but to a thing that isn’t stalking.”
“What?” Sam asked.
“The pack of dogs! Listen. Not a sound—but the drip of water. What has become of the dogs?”
“Gee!” Sam muttered. “I keep thinking how dead quiet everything is outside, and kind of wondering why I expect it to be different. Funny I never came to it there was no dogs!”