The Shadow of Fu-Manchu (25 page)

I
n 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!”

They all stood motionless for a few moments. That ceaseless drip-drip-drip alone broke the silence of Falling Waters—a haunting signature tune.

“Where is this kennelman quartered?” Nayland Smith asked jerkily.

He was unable to hide the fact that his nerves were strung to concert-violin pitch.

“Middle gate-cottage,” came promptly from Sam. “I’ll go call him. Name of Kelly. I can get the extension from out here.”

“Speak quietly,” Smith warned. “Order him to loose the dogs.”

Sam’s flashlamp operated for a moment. It cast fantastic moving shadows on the library walls, showed Nayland Smith gaunt, tense; painted Craig’s pale face as a mask of tragedy. Then—Sam was gone.

Craig could hear Nayland Smith moving, restless, in darkness. Obscurely Sam’s mumbling reached them. He had left the communicating doors open. Then, before words which might have relieved the tension came to either, the alarm cabinet glowed into greenish-blue life; muted buzzing began. “What’s this?”

A shadow moved across the plan. It was followed by a second shadow.

“Someone crossing the tennis court!” Craig’s voice sounded hushed, unfamiliar. “Running!”

“Someone hot on his heels!”

“Into the rose garden now!”

“Second shadow gaining! First shadow doubling back!”

“That’s the path through the apple orchard. Leads to a stile on the lane—”

“But,” said Nayland Smith, “if my memory serves me, the dog track crosses before the stile?”

“Yes. One of the gates in the wire is there.”

And, as Craig spoke, came a remote baying.

The dogs were out.

“Listen.” Sam had joined them. “Say! What’s this?”

“Action!” rapped Smith. “Was Kelly awake?”

“Sure. But listen.
Mrs. Frobisher
called him some time tonight, and ordered him to see the dogs
weren’t loosed!
Can you beat it? But wait a minute.
Mr.
Frobisher gives him the same order half an hour earlier!… Oh, hell! Did you hear that?”

“He’s through the gate,” said Nayland Smith.

The first shadow showed on the chart at a point where a gate in the wire was marked. The second shadow moved swiftly back. A dim blur swept along the track. Baying increased in volume… A shot—a second. And then came a frenzied scream, all the more appalling because muted by distance.

“Merciful God!” Craig whispered. “The dogs have got him!” Nayland Smith already had the french windows open. A sting of damp, cold air pierced the library. There came another, faint scream. Baying merged into a dreadful growling…

“Lights!” Smith cried. “Where’s the man, Stein?”

As Sam switched the lights up, Stein was revealed standing in the arched opening which led to Michael Frobisher’s study. He was fully dressed, and chalky white.

“Here I am, sir.”

A sound of faraway shouting became audible. Stella Frobisher ran out onto the stairhead, a robe thrown over her nightdress.

“
Please
—oh,
please
tell me what has
happened?
That
ghastly
screaming! And
where
is Mike?”

She had begun to come down, when Camille appeared behind her. Camille had changed and wore a tweed suit.

“Mrs. Frobisher!” Craig looked up. “Isn’t the chief in his room?”

“No, he
isn’t!
”

Camille’s arm was around Stella’s shoulders now.

“Don’t go down, Mrs. Frobisher. Let’s go back. I think it would be better if you dressed.”

She spoke calmly. Camille had lived through other crises.

“Miss Navarre!” Nayland Smith called sharply.

“Yes, Sir Denis?”

“Go with Mrs. Frobisher to her room, and both of you stay there with the door locked. Understand?”

Camille hesitated for a moment, then: “Yes, Sir Denis,” she answered. “Please come along, Mrs. Frobisher.”

“But I want to
know
where Mike is—”

Her voice faded away, as Camille very gently steered her back to her room.

Nayland Smith faced Stein.

“Mr. Frobisher is not in his study?”

“No, sir.”

“How do you know?”

“I do not retire tonight. I am anxious. Just now, I am in there to look.”

“Was the window open?”

Stein’s crushed features became blank.

“Was the window open?” Nayland Smith repeated harshly.

“Yes. I closed it.”

“Come on, Craig! Sampson—follow!”

“Okay, chief.”

Craig and Nayland Smith ran out, Sam behind them.

Stein stood by the opening, and listened. Somewhere out in the misty night, an automatic spat angrily. There was a dim background of barking dogs, shouting men. He turned, in swift decision, and went back through that doorway which led to the kitchen quarters.

He took up the phone there, dialled a number, waited, and then began to speak rapidly—but not in English. He spoke in a language which evidently enlarged his vocabulary. His pallid features twitched as he poured out a torrent of passionate words…

Something hard was jammed into the ribs of his stocky body.

“Drop that phone, Feodor Stenovicz. I have a gun in your back and your family history in my pocket. Too late to tip off Sokolov. He’s in the bag. Put your hands right behind you. No, not
up
—behind!”

Stein dropped the receiver and put his hands back. There was sweat on his low forehead. Steel cuffs were snapped over his wrists.

“Now that’s settled, we can get together.”

Stein turned—and looked into the barrel of a heavy-calibre revolver which Sam favored. Sam’s grinning face was somewhere behind it, in a red cloud.

“Suppose,” Sam suggested, “we step into your room and sample some more of the boss’s bourbon? What you gave me this morning tasted good.”

They had gone when Camille came running along the corridor to the stairhead. And there was no one in the library.

“Please stay where you are,” she called back. “I will find out.”

A muffled cry came from Stella Frobisher: “Open the
door!
I can’t stay
here!
”

Camille raced downstairs, wilfully deaf to a wild beating on wood panels.

“Let me
out!
”

But Camille ran on to the open windows.

“Morris! Morris! Where are you?”

She stood there clutching the wet frame, peering into chilly darkness. Cries reached her—the vicious yap of a revolver—the barking of dogs.

“Morris!”

She ran out onto the terrace. A long way off she could see moving lights.

Camille had already disappeared when Sam entered the library, having locked Stein in the wine cellar. Switching on his flash, he began hurrying in the direction of that distant melee.

* * *

The library remained empty for some time. With the exception of Stein, all the servants slept out. So that despairing calls of “Unlock the door, Mike! Mike!” won no response. And presently they ceased.

Then, subdued voices and a shuffling of feet on wet gravel heralded the entrance of an ominous cortege. Upon an extemporized stretcher carried by a half-dressed gardener and Kelly, the grizzled kennelman, Michael Frobisher was brought in. Sam came first, to hold the windows wide and to allow of its entrance. Nayland Smith followed. There were other men outside, but they remained there.

“Get a doctor,” Smith directed. “He’s in a bad way.”

They lifted Frobisher onto the settee. He still wore his dinner clothes, but they were torn to tatters. His face and his hands were bloody, his complexion was greyish-purple. He groaned and opened his eyes when they laid him down. But he seemed to be no more than semi-conscious, and almost immediately relapsed.

Kelly went out again, with the empty stretcher. A murmur of voices met him.

“I know Dr. Pardoe’s number,” said the gardener, a youthful veteran whose frightened blond hair had never lain down since the Normandy landing. “Shall I call him?”

His voice quavered.

“Yes,” rapped Smith. “Tell him it’s urgent.”

As the man hurried away to the phone in the back premises:

“Nothing on him?” Sam asked.

“Not a thing! Yet he was alone with the dogs, God help him! I believe he was running for his life. Perhaps from that monstrosity I had a glimpse of when I first arrived.”

“That’s when he lost the plans!” said Sam excitedly. “He must have broken away from—whatever it was, and tried to cross the track. Lord knows what was after him, but I guess he was crazy with fright. Anyway, he figured the dogs were locked up—”

“When, in fact, they were right on top of him! Failing Kelly’s arrival, I could have done nothing. Rouse somebody up. Get hot water, lint, iodine. Rush.”

As Sam ran to obey, Raymond Harkness stepped in through the open window. He wore a blue rainproof, a striped muffler, and a brown hat. He was peeling off a pair of light suede gloves. He looked like an accountant who had called to advise winding up the company.

“It’s not clear to me, Sir Denis, just what happened out there tonight—I mean what happened to Frobisher.”

“You can see what happened to him!” said Smith drily.

“Yes—but how? Sokolov was waiting to meet him, but he never got there—”

“Somebody else met him first!”

“Sokolov’s thugs made the mistake of opening fire on our party.” Harkness put his gloves in his pockets. “Otherwise, I’m not sure we should have had anything on Sokolov.”

The wounded man groaned, momentarily opened his eyes, clenched his injured hands. He had heard the sound of someone beating on a door, heard Stella’s moaning cry:

“Let me out! Mike!”

“Don’t…” Frobisher whispered, “allow her… to see me.”

As if galvanized, Nayland Smith turned, exchanged a glance with Harkness, and went racing upstairs.

“Mrs. Frobisher!” he called. “Mrs. Frobisher—where are you?”

“I’m
here
!” came pitifully.

Smith found the locked door. The key was in the lock! He turned it, and threw the door open.

Stella Frobisher, on the verge of nervous collapse, crouched on a chair, just inside.

“Mrs. Frobisher! What does this mean?”

“She—Camille
—locked
me in! Oh, for
heaven’s
sake,
tell
me:
What
has happened?”

“Hang on to yourself, Mrs. Frobisher. It’s bad, but might be worse. Please stay where you are for a few minutes longer. Then I am going to ask you to lend us a hand. Will you promise? It’s for the good of everybody.”

“Oh,
must
I? If
you
say so, I suppose—”

“Just for another five minutes.”

Smith ran out again, and down to the library. His face was drawn, haggard. In the battle to save Frobisher from the dogs, with the added distraction of a fracas between F.B.I. men and Sokolov’s bodyguard at the lower gate, he had lost sight of Craig! Camille he had never seen, had never suspected that she would leave Mrs. Frobisher’s room. Standing at the foot of the stair:

“Harkness,” he said. “Send out a general alert. Dr. Fu-Manchu not only has the plans. He has Camille Navarre and the inventor, also…”

* * *

The police car raced towards New York, casting a sword of light far ahead. Against its white glare, the driver and a man beside him, his outline distorted by the radio headpiece, were silhouettes which reminded Nayland Smith of figures of two Egyptian effigies. The glass partition cut them off completely from those in the rear. It was a special control car, normally sacred to the deputy commissioner…

“We know many things when it’s too late,” Nayland Smith answered. “I knew, when I got back tonight, that Michael Frobisher was an agent of the Soviet, knew the Kremlin had backed those experiments. I knew Sokolov was waiting for him.”

His crisp voice trailed off into silence.

Visibility in the rear was poor. So dense had the fog become, created by Smith’s pipe, that Harkness experienced a certain difficulty in breathing. Motorcycle patrolmen passed and re-passed, examining occupants of all vehicles on the road.

“That broken-down truck wasn’t reported earlier,” Harkness went on, “because it stood so far away from any gate to Falling Waters. What’s more, it hadn’t been there long.”

“But the path through the woods has been there since Indian times,” Smith rapped. “And the truck was drawn up right at the point where it reaches a highway. How did your team come to overlook such an approach?”

“I don’t know,” Harkness admitted. “It seems Frobisher didn’t think it likely to be used, either. It doesn’t figure in the alarm plan.”

“But it figured in Fu-Manchu’s plan! We don’t know—and we’re never likely to know—the strength of the party operating from that truck. But those who actually approached the house stuck closely to neutral zones! His visit today—a piece of dazzling audacity—wasn’t wasted.”

Traffic was sparse at that hour. Points far ahead had been notified. Even now, hope was not lost that the truck might be intercepted. Both men were thinking about this. Nayland Smith first put doubt into words.

“A side road, Harkness,” he said suddenly. “Another car waiting. Huan Tsung is the doctor’s chief of staff—or used to be, formerly. He’s a first-class tactician. One of the finest soldiers of the old regime.”