President Fu-Manchu (27 page)

Hepburn, the moment of nausea past, stared again at the fragments at his feet.

“All right,” he replied; “I was never a mountaineer.”

He knelt down and examined the pieces of hard clay with keen curiosity. They surely formed part of a modeled head, possibly of more than one modeled head; but not one of them was big enough to give any indication of the character of the finished work. Over his shoulder:

“Gather all these pieces together,” he directed, “and bring them away.”

The man from the electric firm watched the two agents in respectful silence.

“Ha! what’s this?” Hepburn exclaimed.

He had come upon a wired frame to which portions of crumbling clay still adhered. But what had provoked his words when he picked the thing up had been the presence upon the wooden frame, fixed by two drawing pins, of what resembled a tiny colored miniature of a human face, framed around with white paper.

He detached this curious object from the wood and examined it more closely. Raising the mount he stared for a long time at that which lay beneath.

It was a three-cent Daniel Webster stamp, dated 1932, gummed upside down upon a piece of cardboard, then framed by the paper in which a pear-shaped opening had been cut. The effect, when the frame was dropped over the stamp, was singular to a degree. It produced a hideous Chinese face!

Mark Hepburn took out his notecase and carefully placed this queer discovery in it. As he returned the case to his pocket a memory came of hypnotic green eyes staring into his own—a memory of the unforgettable features of Dr. Fu-Manchu as he had seen them through the broken window on the night of the Chinatown raid…

Yes, the fact was unmistakable: inverted and framed in this way, the Daniel Webster stamp presented a caricature, but a recognizable caricature, of Dr. Fu-Manchu!

A problem for Nayland Smith’s consideration: no more false moves must be made. But here was a building occupied, so far as he knew, entirely by persons associated directly, or indirectly, with the activities of the League of Good Americans. At the top it seemed a madman resided; a madman who modeled clay heads, and who apparently had possessed and thrown away this queer miniature. Definitely there was a link here which must be tested, but tested cautiously.

Thus far he had every reason to believe that his investigation had been carried out without arousing suspicion. He had penetrated to a number of offices on many floors, craning out of windows in his quest of the supposed flaw in the lightning conductors. He had observed nothing abnormal anywhere, and had been civilly treated by a Mr. Schmidt in an office on the street floor, to whom, with his two companions, he had first applied. It remained to be seen if any obstruction would be offered to his penetrating the mysterious apartment which crowned the dome.

Five minutes later he climbed through the window into a room used apparently as a store by the firm leasing this suite of offices on the forty-seventh. He could not restrain a sigh of relief as, quitting the swaying parapet, he reached the security of a rubber laid floor. Mr. Schmidt, representing the owners of the building, waited there as Hepburn’s companions in turn climbed in through the low window.

“Everything seems to be in order up to this floor,” said Hepburn. “How do we get to the top of the dome? The fault must be there.”

Mr. Schmidt stared hard for a moment.

“There’s no way up,” he replied curtly. “The elevators don’t go beyond this floor. There’s a staircase to the flagstaff, but the door’s been boarded up. Orders of the Fire Department, I guess. There’s nothing up there; it’s just ornamental.”

“Then how do I carry out the inspection? It will cost plenty to rig ladders. Cheaper to break through to the staircase, wouldn’t it be?”

“That doesn’t rest with me,” Mr. Schmidt replied hastily; “I shall have to ask you to give me time to consult directors on the point.”

Mark Hepburn surreptitiously nudged the representative of Midtown Electric, and:

“When can you let us know, Mr. Schmidt?” the electrician inquired. “We have to make a report.”

“I’ll call you in the morning,” Mr. Schmidt replied.

Mark Hepburn experienced an inward glow of satisfaction. Apart from the testimony of Robbie Adair, he himself had seen lighted windows above the dome of the Stratton Building—and today they had found conclusive evidence to show that the rooms were occupied!

L
ola Dumas, concealed behind a partly-drawn curtain, looked down upon the crowded terraces. Palm trees were silhouetted against an evening sky; there was a distant prospect of steel-blue sea. The crowds below were so dense that she thought of a pot of caviare. Here was humanity, seemingly redundant, but pulsing with life so vigorous that its vibrations reached her on that high balcony.

They were cheering and shouting, and through all the excited uproar, like an oboe motif in an orchestral score, rose the name of Salvaletti.

Salvaletti!

This was merely the beginning of a triumphal progress which unavoidably should lead to the White House. Lola Dumas clutched the curtain nervously, her delicate fingers, on which she wore too many jewels, quivering with the tension of the moment. And they were still shouting and calling for Salvaletti when at the faint sound of an opening door Lola turned sharply.

Paul Salvaletti had entered the room.

Adulation, long-awaited success had transformed the man into a god. His paled face was lighted up, inspired; the dark eyes reminded her of hot velvet. His habitual stoop was tonight discarded. He stood upright, commanding, triumphant. She looked now not upon the secretary of the late Harvey Bragg, but upon Caesar.

“Paul!” She took a step forward. “This is triumph. Nothing can stop you.”

“Nothing,” he replied; and even in speaking that one word the music of his voice thrilled her. “Nothing!”

“Salvaletti for the South!” A cry rose above the uproar below.

A wild outburst of cheering followed. Then came a series of concerted calls:

“Salvaletti! Salvaletti!”

The man plucked out of complete obscurity to be thrust upon a cloudy pinnacle, smiled.

“Lola,” he said, “this was worth waiting for!” She moved towards him, her graceful bare arms extended, and with a low cry of almost savage delight he clasped her. The world was at his feet—fame, riches, beauty. In silence he held her while, more and more insistent, the demand rose up from the terraces:

“Salvaletti! Salvaletti! America for every man. Every man for America!”

The phone bell rang.

“Answer, Lola,” Salvaletti directed. “I shall speak to no one tonight but to you.”

Lola Dumas glanced at him sharply. The heady wine of success had somewhat intoxicated him. He spoke with an arrogance the very existence of which hitherto he had successfully concealed. She crossed the room and took up the telephone.

A moment she listened; her attitude grew tense; and, ever increasing in volume, the cry “Salvaletti!” swelled up from below. Lola placed the receiver on the table and turned.

“The President,” she said.

Those two words wrought a swift change in Salvaletti.

“What!” he whispered.

For a second he hesitated, then, crossing with his characteristic cat-like tread, he took up the phone.

“Paul Salvaletti here.”

“I am watching you closely,” came the imperious, guttural voice. “At this stage, you must not make one mistake. Listen now to my orders. Go out upon the balcony of the room in which you stand. Do not speak, but acknowledge the people. Then bring Lola Dumas out on to the balcony, that all may see her. Move in this matter.”

The line was disconnected.

For three, five, ten seconds, as he hung up, Salvaletti’s sensitive nostrils remained distended. He had heard the crack of the whip, had resented it.

“What?” Lola asked.

“An order,” Salvaletti replied, smiling composedly, “which I must obey.”

He crossed, drew the curtains widely apart, and stepped out to the balcony. A roar of excited voices acclaimed him, and for a while he stood there, a pale, impressive figure in the moonlight. He bowed, raised his hand and, turning, beckoned to Lola Dumas.

“You are to join me,” he said. “Please come.”

He drew her on to the balcony beside him; and the woman associated for so long with Harvey Bragg, founder of the League of Good Americans, potential savior of his country, received an almost hysterical ovation…

Back in the room, the curtains drawn, Lola Dumas sank down on a cushioned settee, beckoning to Salvaletti with her eyes and with her lips. He stood beside her looking down.

“Paul,” she said, “did the President give those orders?”

“He did.”

“You see, Paul,” she said very softly, “he has chosen for you. Are you content?”

M
ark Hepburn awoke; sat up. He found himself to be clammy with nervous perspiration, and the dream which had occasioned it was still vivid in his mind. It was this:

He had found himself in an apparently interminable tunnel (which he could trace to Nayland Smith’s account of the attempt to explore the East River water-gate). For a period which seemed to span many hours he walked along this tunnel. His only light was a fragment of thick, wax candle, resembling an altar candle. There were twists and turns in the tunnel, and always in his dream he had hoped to see daylight beyond. Always he had been disappointed.

Some great expediency drove him on. At all costs he must reach the end of this subterranean passage. A stake greater than his life was at hazard. And now, gaping blackly, cross-ways appeared in the tunnel; it became a labyrinth. Every passage revealed by the flickering light of the candle resembled another. In desperation he plunged into one which opened on his right. It proved to be interminable. An opening offered on the left. He entered it. Another endless tunnel stretched before him.

The candle was burning very low; his fingers were covered with hot grease. Unless he could win freedom before that fragment of wick and wax gave up the ghost and plunged him into darkness, he was doomed to wander forever, a lost soul, in this place deep below the world of living men…

Blind panic seized him. He began to run along tunnel after tunnel, turning right, turning left, crying out madly. His exertions reduced the fraction of candle almost to disappearing point. He ran on. In some way it came to him that the life of Nayland Smith was at stake. He must gain the upper air or disaster would come, not to Nayland Smith alone, but to all humanity. The candle, now a tenuous disk, became crushed between his trembling fingers…

It was at this moment that he awoke.

The apartment was very still. Save for the immutable voice of the city-which-never-sleeps, there was no sound.

Hepburn groped for his slippers. There were no cigarettes in the room. He decided to go into the sitting-room for a smoke and a drink. That ghastly dream of endless tunnels had shaken him.

The night was crystal clear; a nearly full moon poured its cold luminance into the rooms. Without turning on any of the lights—for he was anxious to avoid wakening Nayland Smith, a hair-trigger sleeper—he found his way to the sitting-room. There were cigarettes on the table by the telephone. He found one, but he had no means of lighting it.

As he paused, looking around, he saw through an open door the moon-bathed room beyond. It was the room which he had fitted up as a temporary laboratory; from its window he could just see the roof of the hotel where Moya Adair lived. He remembered that he had left matches there. He went in, crossed and stared out of the window.

His original intention was forgotten. He stood there, tense, watching…

From a window of an out-jutting wing of the Regal-Athenian, one floor below and not twenty yards away, Dr. Fu-Manchu was looking up at him!

Some primitive instinct warned him to reject the chimera—for that the man in person could be present he was not prepared to believe. This was a continuation, a part, of his uncanny dream. He was not awake. Brilliant green eyes gleamed in the moonlight like polished jade. He watched fascinatedly.