“With a bit of string?”
“No.” She laughed softly “With a hairpin!”
As she went out, Craig returned to his drawing board. But he found it hard to concentrate. He kept thinking about that funny little moue peculiar to Camille, part of her. Whenever she was going to smile, one comer of her upper lip seemed to curl slightly like a rose petal. And he wondered if her eyes were really so beautiful, or if the lenses magnified them.
The office door burst open, and Nayland Smith came in again like a hot wind from the desert. He had discarded the rainproof in which he had first appeared, and now carried a fur-collared coat.
“Missed him, Craig,” he rapped. “Slipped through my fingers— the swine!”
Craig turned half around, resting one shirt-sleeved elbow on a comer of the board.
“Of course,” he said, “if you’re training for the Olympic Games, or what-have-you, let me draw your attention to the wide-open spaces of Central Park. I work here—or try to.”
He was silenced by the look in Nayland Smith’s eyes. He stood up.
“Smith!—what is it?”
“Murder!” Nayland Smith rapped out the word like a rifle shot. “I have just sent a man to his death, Craig!”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“No more than I say.”
It came to Morris Craig as a revelation that something had happened to crush, if only temporarily, the indomitable spirit he knew so well. He walked over and laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Smith. Forgive my silly levity. What’s happened?”
Nayland Smith’s face looked haggard, worn, as he returned Craig’s earnest stare.
“I have been shadowed, Craig, ever since I reached New York. I left police headquarters a while ago, wearing a borrowed hat and topcoat. A man slightly resembling me had orders to come to the Huston Building in the car I have been using all day, wearing my own hat, and my own topcoat.”
“Well?”
“He obeyed his orders. The driver, who is above suspicion, noticed nothing whatever unusual on the way. There was no evidence to suggest that they were being followed. I had assumed that they would be—and had laid my plans accordingly. I went down to see the tracker fall into my trap—”
“Go on, Smith! For God’s sake, what happened?”
“This!”
Nayland Smith carefully removed a small, pointed object from its wrappings and laid it on the desk. Craig was about to pick it up, when:
“Don’t touch it!” came sharply. “That is, except by the feathered end. Primitive, Craig, but deadly—and silent. Get your laboratory to analyze the stuff on the tip of the dart.
Curari is too commonplace for the man who inspired this thing.”
“Smith! I’m appalled. What are you telling me?”
“It was flicked, or perhaps blown from a tube, into Moreno’s face through the open window of the car. It stuck in his chin, and he pulled it out. But when the car got here, he was quite insensible, and—”
“You mean he’s dead?”
“I had him rushed straight to hospital.”
“They’ll want this for analysis.”
“There was another. The first must have missed.”
Nayland Smith dropped limply into a chair, facing Craig. He pulled out his blackened briar and began to load it from an elderly pouch.
“Let’s face the facts, Craig. I must make it clear to you that a mysterious Eastern epidemic is creeping West. I’m not in Manhattan for my health. I’m here to try to head it off.”
He stuffed the pouch back into his pocket and lighted his pipe.
“I’m all attention, Smith. But for heaven’s sake, what devil are you up against?”
“Listen. No less than six prominent members of the Soviet Government have either died suddenly or just disappeared—within the past few months.”
“One of those purges? Very popular with dictators.”
“A purge right enough. But not carried out by Kremlin orders. Josef Stalin is being guarded as even he was never guarded before.”
Craig began groping behind him for the elusive packet of cigarettes.
“What’s afoot, Smith? Is this anything to do with the news from London?”
“You mean the disappearance of two of the Socialist Cabinet? Undoubtedly. They have gone the same way.”
“The same way?” Craig’s search was rewarded. He lighted a cigarette. “What way?”
Nayland Smith took the fuming pipe from between his teeth, and fixed a steady look on Craig.
“Dr. Fu Manchu’s way!”
“Dr. Fu Manchu! But—”
The door of Camille’s room opened, and Camille came out. She held some typewritten sheets in her hand. There was much shadow at that side of the office, for only the desk lights were on, so that as the two men turned and looked towards her, it was difficult to read her expression.
But she paused at sight of them, standing quite still.
“Oh, excuse me, Dr. Craig! I thought you were alone.”
“It’s all right,” said Craig. “Don’t—er—go, Miss Navarre. This is my friend, Sir Denis Nayland Smith. My new secretary, Smith— Miss Navarre.”
Nayland Smith stared for a moment, then bowed, and walked to the window.
“What is it, Miss Navarre?” Craig asked.
“It’s only that last cylinder, Dr. Craig. I wanted to make sure I had it right. I will wait until you are disengaged.”
But Nayland Smith was looking out into the jewelled darkness, and seeing nothing of a towering building which rose like a lighted teocalli against the skyline. He saw, instead, a panelled grillroom where an attractive red-haired girl sat at a table with a man. He saw the dark-faced spy lunching alone near by.
The girl in the grillroom had not worn her hair pinned back in that prim way, nor had she worn glasses.
Nevertheless, the girl in the grillroom and Miss Navarre were one and the same!
Chapter III
In a little shop sandwiched in between more imposing Chinese establishments, a good-looking young Oriental sat behind the narrow counter writing by the light of a paper-shaded lamp. The place was a mere box, and he was entirely surrounded by mysterious sealed jars, packets of joss sticks wrapped up in pakapu papers, bronze bowls with perforated wooden lids, boxes of tea, boxes of snuff, bead necklaces, and other completely discordant items of an evidently varied stock. The shop smelled of incense.
A bell tinkled as the door was opened. A big man came in, so big that he seemed a crowd. He looked and was dressed like some kind of workman.
The young Oriental regarded him impassively.
“Mr. Huan Tsung?” the man asked.
“Mr. Huan Tsung not home. How many time you come before?”
“Seven.”
The young man nodded. “Give me the message.”
From some pocket inside his checked jacket the caller produced an envelope and passed it across the counter. It was acknowledged by another nod, dropped on a ledge, and the big messenger went out. The young Chinaman went on writing.
A minute or so later, a point of light glowed below the counter, where it would have remained invisible to a customer had one been in the shop.
The envelope was placed in a tiny cupboard and a stud was pressed. The light under the counter vanished, and the immobile shopman went on writing. He wrote with a brush, using India ink, in the beautiful, difficult idiograms of classic Chinese.
Upstairs, in a room the walls of which were decorated with panels of painted silk, old Huan Tsung sat on a divan. He resembled the traditional portrait of Confucius. From a cupboard at his elbow corresponding to that in the shop below, he took out the message, read it, and dropped message and envelope into a brazier of burning charcoal.