The Shadow of Fu-Manchu (6 page)

“You mean he’d have said so?”

“I mean it would be true. Imagine a linguist who speaks any of the civilized languages, and a score of dialects, with perfect ease; an adept in many sciences; one with the brains of three men of genius. Such a master doesn’t risk his neck in the hands of underlings. No. We have to deal with a detached intellect, with a personality scarcely human.”

Nayland Smith fell silent—and Craig knew that he was thinking about Moreno, the man who had suffered in his place.

“Suppose, Smith,” he said, “you give your problems a rest for a while and dine with me tonight?”

“I shall be glad, Craig. Let it be at my hotel. Join me there in, say, an hour from now. But let me point out it isn’t
my
problem. It’s yours! When you leave, get the man, Sam, to have a taxi waiting—and keep him with you. I take it he hasn’t gone?”

“No. He’s somewhere about. We’re night birds here. But what good is Sam?”

“He’s a
witness.
You’re safe provided you’re not alone.”

“Safe from what?”

“Abduction! Being smuggled out by the mysterious subway which has swallowed up other men of use to Fu-Manchu.”

“Where do they go? What use can he have for them?”

“I don’t know where they go,” rapped Nayland Smith, “but I suspect. As for their use—the use that the ant has for the aphides. Except that Dr. Fu-Manchu milks their
brains.
” Unnoticed by either, the door of Camille’s room had been slowly and silently opening for some time.

“You’re beginning to get me really jumpy, Smith. You don’t intend to go out alone?”

Nayland Smith shook his head grimly, putting on the topcoat which had brought disaster to poor Moreno.

“I have a bodyguard waiting below—a thing I never dreamed
I’d
stoop to! But Dr. Fu-Manchu doesn’t want
my
brains. He wants my life!”

“For heaven’s sake, be careful, Smith. The elevator man goes off at seven o’clock. I’ll see you down to the street.”

“Save yourself the trouble. You have work to do. I know the way. Lend me your master key. Whoever stays here on duty can do the same for you. And remember—stick by Sam until you get to my hotel.”

The door of Camille’s room began to close.

A
nd that night Manhattan danced on, merrily.

Restaurants were crowded with diners, later to proceed to equally crowded theatres, dance halls, bars. Broadway, a fantasy invented long ago by H.G. Wells, but one he never expected to come true, roared and glittered and threw up to the skies an angry glare visible for miles—as of Rome burning.

Whilst on top of a building taller than the towers of those early seekers, the priests of Bel, a modern wizard from Merton College, Oxford, trapped and sought to tame the savage powers which hold our tiny world in thrall. His spells were mathematical formulae, his magic circle rested on steel and concrete. Absorbed in contemplation of the purely scientific facets of his task, only now did it begin to creep upon his consciousness—an evil phantom, chilling, terrifying—that under his hand lay means whereby the city of New York might be reduced to “one with Nineveh and Tyre.”

“But directed downward and inward?” Nayland Smith had asked. Morris Craig realized, in this moment of cold lucidity, that directed downward and
outward
, the secret plant so lovingly and secretly assembled in the Huston laboratory might well obliterate, utterly, a great part of Manhattan.

Manhattan danced on.

Craig studied his nearly finished diagram with new doubt—almost with distaste. In the blind race for domination, many governments, including, according to Nayland Smith, that of Great Britain, watched every step of his experiments. And Dr. Fu-Manchu was watching.

The Huston Electric Corporation was not to be left in undisputed possession of this new source of power.

Assuming that these unknown watchers failed to solve the secret, and that Washington didn’t intervene, what did Michael Frobisher intend to do with it?

For that matter, what did he, Morris Craig, intend to do with it?

He had to admit to himself that he had never, from the moment of inspiration which had led to these results right up to this present hour, given a thought to possible applications of the monstrous force he had harnessed.

Brushing back that obstinate forelock, he dismissed these ideas which were non-productive, merely disturbing, and sat down to read two letters which Camille Navarre had left to be signed. He possessed the capacity, indispensable to success in research, of banishing any train of thought not directly concerned with the problem before him.

But, even as he picked up the typed pages, another diversion intruded.

A pair of black-rimmed glasses lay on the desk. He knew they were Camille’s, and he was surprised that she had not missed them.

He had often wondered what defect marred those beautiful eyes, and so he removed his own glasses and put hers on. Craig’s sight was good, and he aided it during prolonged work merely to combat a slight astigmatism of the left eye. His lenses magnified only very slightly.

But—Camille’s didn’t magnify at all!

He satisfied himself that they were, in fact, nothing but plain glass, before laying them down.

Having signed the letters, he pressed a button.

Camille entered composedly and crossed to the desk.

“It was so stupid of me, Dr. Craig,” she said, “but I must have left my glasses here when I brought the letters in.”

Craig looked up at her. Yes, she had glorious eyes. He thought they were very deep blue, but they seemed to change in sympathy with her thoughts or emotions. Their evasive color reminded him of the Mediterranean on a day when high clouds scudded across the sky.

She met his glance for a moment and then turned aside, taking up the typed pages and the black-rimmed glasses.

“That last cylinder was rather scratchy, and there are one or two words I’m uncertain about.”

But Craig continued to look at her.

“Why wear those things at all?” he inquired. “You wouldn’t miss ’em.”

“What do you mean, Dr. Craig?”

“Well—they’re plain glass, aren’t they? Why wear two bits of windowpane—in such perfectly lovely optics?”

Camille hesitated. She had not been prepared for his making this discovery, and her heart was beating very fast.

“Really, I suppose it must seem strange. I know they don’t magnify. But, somehow, they help me to concentrate.”

“Avoid concentration,” Craig advised earnestly. “I greatly prefer you when you’re relaxin’. I have looked over the letter—”

“I did my best with it.”

“Your best is perfection. Exactly what I said, and stickily technical.” He looked up at her with frank admiration. “Your scientific equipment is A-I wizard. Full marks for the Sorbonne.”

Camille veiled her eyes. She had long lashes which Craig felt sure were an act of God and not of Elizabeth Arden.

But all she said was, “Thank you, Dr. Craig,” spoken in a tone oddly constrained.

Carrying the signed letters and her glasses, she moved away. Craig turned and looked after the trim figure.

“Slip out now,” he advised, “for a plate of wholesome fodder. You stick it too closely. So long as you can give me an hour from ten onward, all’s well in a beautiful world.”

“Perhaps I may go out—although I’m really not hungry.” She went into her room and closed the door. For a long time she sat there, the useless glasses in her hand, staring straight before her… He was so kind, so delicately sympathetic. He almost apologized when he had to give orders, masking them under that affected form of speech which led many people to think him light-minded, but which had never deceived Camille.

Of course, he was brilliantly clever. One day the people of the world would wake up to find a new genius come among them.

He was so clever that she found it hard to believe he had really accepted her explanation. She had done her best on the urge of the moment, but it was only postponing the evil hour. Camille had never, before that day, met Sir Denis Nayland Smith, but his reputation made discovery certain. And he would tell Morris—

Or would he?

* * *

Meanwhile, Craig was tidying up prior to going out to join Nayland Smith. He arranged pencils, bowls of ink, and like impedimenta in some sort of order. The board to which the plan was pinned he lifted from its place and carried across the office. Before a large safe he set it down, pulled out a key-ring, manipulated the dial, and unlocked the safe. He placed the plan inside and relocked the steel door.

This done, he returned to his desk and pressed a button on the switchboard.

“Laboratory,” said a tired voice. “Regan speaking.”

“I’m cutting out for some dinner, Regan. Anything you want to see me about before I go?”

“Nothing, Doctor.”

“Right. Back around ten.”

He stood up—then remained standing, for a moment, quite still, and listening.

The sound of a short, harsh cough, more like that of a dog who has swallowed a fragment of bone than of a human being, had reached his ears.

Crossing, he opened the office door and looked out. The landing was empty.

“Sam!” he called.

Sam appeared from somewhere, chewing industriously.

“Yes, boss?”

“Did you cough?”

“Me? No, sir. Why?”

“Thought I heard someone coughing. Stand by. I want you to come along with me in a minute.”

He returned, took his jacket from a hook and put it on; then draped his topcoat over his arm. He was just reaching for his hat, when he remembered something. Dropping the coat over the back of a chair, he crossed to the door of Camille’s room, rapped, and opened.

She looked up in a startled way, glancing at the glasses beside her.

“Sorry—er—Miss Navarre, but may I borrow your key? Lent mine to Nayland Smith.”

Camille’s eyes appeared to Craig to change color, but that faint twitch of the lip which heralded a smile reassured him. “Certainly, Dr. Craig.”

She pulled a ring out of her handbag and began to detach the key which opened both elevators and the street door. Craig watched her deft white fingers, noting with approval that she did not go in for the kind of nail varnish which suggests that its wearer has been disembowelling a pig.

And as he watched, the meaning of Camille’s repressed smile suddenly came to him.

“I say!” he exclaimed. “Just a minute. Pause. Give me time to reflect.”

Camille looked up.

“Yes, Dr. Craig?”

“How are you going to cut out for eats, as recommended, if I pinch your key?”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter a little bit.”

“Doesn’t matter? It matters horribly. I’m not going to leave you locked up here in the ogre’s tower with no means of escape. I firmly repeat—pause. I will borrow Regan’s key.”

“But—”

“There are no buts. I want you to nip out for a speck of nourishment like a good girl.”

He waved his hand and was gone.

Camille sat looking towards the door for fully a minute after it had closed.

* * *

“It may be best,” said Nayland Smith, “if we dine in the restaurant here. I expect calls, too.”

“Must say I’ll breathe more freely,” Craig admitted. “I never expected to slink around New York as if crossing enemy territory. What news of Moreno?”

Smith knocked ash from his pipe with unusual care.

“Poor devil,” he said softly.

“Like that is it?”

Smith nodded. “I went there after leaving you. His wife had been sent for. Nice kid, little more than a child. Only married six months. Maddison Lowe is probably the ace man in his province, but he’s beaten this time.”

“Have they identified the stuff used?”

“No. It’s nothing on the order of curari. And there are no tetanus symptoms. He’s just completely unconscious, and slowly dying. I suppose I should feel indebted to Dr. Fu-Manchu. It’s evidently a painless death.”

“Good God, Smith! You make me shudder. What kind of man is this?”

“A genius, Craig. He is above ordinary emotions. Men and women are just pieces on the board. Any that become useless, or obstructive, he removes. It’s quite logical.”

“It may be. But it isn’t human.”

“You are not the first to doubt if Dr. Fu-Manchu is human, in the generally accepted sense of the word. Certainly he has long outlived man’s normal span. He claims to have mastered the secret of prolonging life.”

“Do you believe it?”

“I can’t doubt it. He was elderly from all accounts when I first set eyes on him, in a Burmese forest. He nearly did for me, then—using the same method—as he has done for poor Moreno, now. And that was more years ago than I care to count.”

“Good heavens! How old is he?”

“God knows. Come on. Let’s get some dinner. We have a lot to talk about.”

As they entered the restaurant, to be greeted by a maître d’hôtel who knew Nayland Smith, Craig saw the steely eyes turning swiftly right and left. With the ease of one who has been a target for criminals all over the world, Smith was analyzing every face in the room.

“That table by the wall,” he rapped, pointing.

“I am so sorry, Sir Denis. That table is reserved.”