The Shadow of Fu-Manchu (2 page)

“You really think so?”

“I know it. Why has a certain power sent all its star agents to the United States? What are they trying to find out?”

“Secret of the atom bomb?”

“Rot! There’s no secret about it. You know that as well as I do. Once a weapon of war is given publicity, it loses its usefulness. I gain nothing by having a rock in my boxing glove if the other fellow has one too. No. It’s something else.”

“England seems to be pretty busy?”

“England has lost two cabinet ministers, mysteriously, in the past few months.” All the time Smith’s glance had been straying in the direction of a certain party, and suddenly: “Right!” he rapped. “Thought I was. Now I’m sure! This is my lucky day.”

“Sure of what?” Harkness was startled.

“Man at the next table. Our diplomatic acquaintance and his charming friend are being covered.”

Harkness craned around again…

“You mean the sallow man?”

“Sallow? He’s Burmese! They’re not
all
Communists, you know.”

Harkness stared at his cigar, as if seeking to concentrate. “You’re more than several steps beyond me. No doubt your information is a way ahead of mine. But, quite honestly, I don’t understand.”

Nayland Smith met the glance of Harkness’s frank hazel eyes, and nodded sympathetically.

“My fault I think aloud. Bad habit. There’s hardly time to explain, now. Look! They’re going! Have the redhead covered. Detail another man to keep the Burmese scout in sight. Report to me, here. Suite 1236.”

The auburn-haired girl was walking towards the exit. She wore a plain suit and a simple hat. Her companion followed. As Harkness retired speedily, Nayland Smith dropped something which made it necessary for him to stoop when the attaché passed near his table.

Coming out onto Forty-sixth Street, Harkness exchanged a word with a man who was talking to a hotel porter. The man nodded and moved away.

Manhattan danced on. Well-fed males returned to their offices to consider further projects for making more dollars. Females headed for the glamorous shops on New York’s Street-Called-Straight: Fifth Avenue, the great bazaar of the New World. Beauty specialists awaited them. Designers of Paris hats. Suave young ladies to display wondrous robes. Suave young gentlemen to seduce with glittering trinkets.

In certain capitals of the Old World, men and women looked, haggard-eyed, into empty shops and returned to empty larders.

Manhattan danced on.

Nayland Smith, watching a car move from the front of the hotel, closely followed by another, prayed that Manhattan’s dance might not be a
danse macabre.

When presently he stepped into a black sedan parked further along the street, in charge of a chauffeur who looked like a policeman (possibly because he was one), and had been driven a few blocks:

“Have we got a tail?” Smith snapped.

“Yes, sir,” the driver reported. “Three cars behind us right now. Small delivery truck.”

“Stop at the next drugstore. I’ll check it.”

When he got out and walked into the drugstore the following truck passed, and then pulled in higher up.

Nayland Smith came out again and resumed the journey. Two more blocks passed:

“Right behind us,” the driver reported laconically.

Smith took up a phone installed in the sedan and gave brief directions. So that long before he had reached his destination the truck was still following the sedan, but two traffic police were following the truck. He had been no more than a few minutes in the deputy commissioner’s office on Centre Street before a police sergeant came in with the wanted details.

The man had been pulled up on a technical offense and invited, firmly, to produce evidence of his identity. Smith glanced over the report.

“H’m. American citizen. Born in Athens.” He looked up. “You’re checking this story that he was taking the truck to be repaired?”

“Sure. Can’t find anything wrong with it. Very powerful engine for such a light outfit.”

“Would be,” said Smith drily. “File all his contacts. He mustn’t know. You have to find out who really employs him.”

He spent a long time with the deputy commissioner, and gathered much useful data. He was in New York at the request of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and had been given almost autocratic powers by Washington. When, finally, he left, he had two names pencilled in his notebook.

They were: Michael Frobisher, and Dr. Morris Craig, of the Huston Research Laboratory.

* * *

Michael Frobisher, seated in an alcove in the library of his club, was clearly ill at ease. A big-boned, fleshy man, Frobisher had a powerful physique, with a fighting jaw, heavy brows—coal-black in contrast to nearly white hair—and deep-set eyes which seemed to act independently of what Michael Frobisher happened to be doing. There were only two other members in the library, but Frobisher’s eyes, although he was apparently reading a newspaper, moved rapidly, as his glance switched from face to face in that oddly furtive manner.

Overhanging part of the room, one of the finest of its kind in the city, was a gallery giving access to more books ranged on shelves above. A club servant appeared in the gallery, moving very quietly—and Frobisher’s glance shot upward like an anxious searchlight.

It was recalled to sea level by a voice.

“Hello, Frobisher! How’s your wife getting along?”

Frobisher’s florid face momentarily lost color. Then, looking up from where he sat in a deep, leather armchair, he saw that a third member had come in—Dr. Pardoe.

“Hello, Pardoe!” He had himself in hand again: the deep tone was normal. “Quite startled me.”

“So I saw.” Pardoe gave him a professional glance, and sat on the arm of a chair near Frobisher’s. “Been overdoing it a bit, haven’t you?”

“Oh, I don’t say that, Doctor. Certainly been kept pretty busy. Thanks for the inquiry about Stella. She’s greatly improved since she began the treatments you recommended.”

“Good.” Dr. Pardoe smiled—a dry smile: he was a sandy, dry man. “I’m not sure the professor isn’t a quack, but he seems to be successful with certain types of neuroses.”

“I assure you Stella is a hundred per cent improved.”

“H’m. You might try him yourself.”

“What are you talking about?” Frobisher growled. “There’s nothing the matter with me.”

“Isn’t there?” The medical man looked him over coolly. “There will be if you don’t watch your diet.” Pardoe was a vegetarian. “Why, your heart missed a beat when I spoke to you.”

Frobisher held himself tightly in hand. His wife’s physician always got on his nerves. But, all the same, he wasn’t standing for any nonsense.

“Let me tell you something.” His deep voice, although subdued, rumbled around the now empty library. “This isn’t nerves. It’s cold feet. An organization like the Huston Electric has got rivals. And rivals can get dangerous if they’re worsted. Someone’s tracking me around. Someone broke into Falling Waters one night last week. Went through my papers. I’ve seen the man. I’d know him again. I was followed right here to the club today. That isn’t nerves, Doctor. And it isn’t eating too much red meat!”

“Hm.” Irritating habit of Pardoe’s, that introductory cough. “I don’t dispute the fact of the burglary—”

“Thanks a lot. And let me remind you: Stella doesn’t know, and doesn’t have to know.”

“Oh, I see. Then the attempt is known only—”

“Is known to my butler, Stein, and to me. It’s not an illusion. I’m still sane, if I did have beefsteak at lunch!”

The physician raised his sandy brows.

“I don’t doubt it, Frobisher. But had it occurred to you that your later impression of being followed—not an uncommon symptom—may derive from this single, concrete fact?”

Frobisher didn’t reply, and Dr. Pardoe, who had been looking down at the carpet, now looked suddenly at Frobisher.

His gaze was fixed upward again. He was watching the gallery. He spoke in a whisper.

“Pardoe! Look where I’m looking. Is that a club member?”

Dr. Pardoe did as Frobisher requested. He saw a slight, black-clad figure in the gallery. The man had just replaced a vase on a shelf. Only the back of his head and shoulders could be seen. He moved away, his features still invisible.

“Not a member known to me, personally, Frobisher. But there are always new members, and guest members—”

But Frobisher was up, had bounded from his chair. Already, he was crossing the library.

“That’s some kind of Asiatic. I saw his face!” Regardless of the rule, Silence, he shouted. “And I’m going to have a word with him!”

Dr. Pardoe shook his head, took up a medical journal which he had dropped on the chair, and made his way out.

He was already going down the steps when Michael Frobisher faced the club secretary, who had been sent for.

“May I ask,” he growled, “since when Chinese have been admitted to membership?”

“You surprise me, Mr. Frobisher.”

The secretary, a young-old man with a bald head and a Harvard accent, could be very patriarchal.

“Do I?”

“You do. Your complaint is before me. I have a note here. If you wish it to go before the committee, merely say the word. I can only assure you that not only have we no Asiatic members, honorary or otherwise, but no visitor such as you describe has been in the club. Furthermore, Mr. Frobisher, I am assured by the assistant librarian, who was last in the library gallery, that no one has been up there since.”

Frobisher jumped to his feet.

“Get Dr. Pardoe!” he directed. “He was with me. Get Dr. Pardoe.”

But Dr. Pardoe had left the club.

* * *

The research laboratory of the Huston Electric Corporation was on the thirty-sixth, and top floor of the Huston Building. Dr. Craig’s office adjoined the laboratory proper, which he could enter up three steps leading to a steel door. This door was always kept locked.

Morris Craig, slight, clean-shaven, and very agile, a man in his early thirties, had discarded his coat, and worked in shirt-sleeves before a drawing desk. His dark-brown hair, which he wore rather long, was disposed to be rebellious, a forelock sometimes falling forward, so that brushing it back with his hand had become a mannerism.

He had just paused for this purpose, leaning away as if to get a long perspective of his work and at the same time fumbling for a packet of cigarettes, when the office door was thrown open and someone came in behind him.

So absorbed was Craig that he paid no attention at first, until the heavy breathing of whoever had come in prompted him to turn suddenly.

“Mr. Frobisher!”

Craig, who wore glasses when drawing or reading, but not otherwise, now removed them and jumped from his stool.

“It’s all right, Craig.” Frobisher raised his hand in protest “Sit down.”

“But if I may say so, you look uncommon fishy.”

His way of speech had a quality peculiarly English, and he had a tendency to drawl. Nothing in his manner suggested that Morris Craig was one of the most brilliant physicists Oxford University had ever turned out. He retrieved the elusive cigarettes and lighted one.

Michael Frobisher remained where he had dropped down, on a chair just inside the door. But he was regaining color. Now he pulled a cigar from the breast pocket of his tweed jacket.

“The blasted doctors tell me I eat too much and smoke too much,” he remarked. His voice always reminded Craig of old port. “But I wouldn’t want to live if I couldn’t do as I liked.”

“Come to that in a minute,” growled Frobisher. “First—what news of the big job?”

“Getting hot. I think the end’s in sight.”

“Fine. I want to talk to you about it.” He snipped the end of his cigar. “How’s the new secretary making out?”

“A-I. Knows all the answers. Miss Lewis was a sad loss, but Miss Navarre is a glad find.”

“Well—she’s got a Paris degree, and had two years with Professor Jennings. Suits me if she suits you.”

Craig’s boyishly youthful face lighted up.

“Suits me to nine points of decimals. Works like a pack-mule. She ought to get out of town this week-end.”

“Bring her along up to Falling Waters. Few days of fresh air do her no harm.”

“No.” Craig seemed to be hesitating. He returned to his desk. “But I shouldn’t quit this job until it’s finished.”

He resumed his glasses and studied the remarkable diagram pinned to the drawing board. He seemed to be checking certain details with a mass of symbols and figures on a large ruled sheet beside the board.

“Of course,” he murmured abstractedly, “I might easily finish at any time now.”

The wonder of the thing he was doing, a sort of awe that he, the humble student of nature’s secrets, should have been granted power to do it, claimed his mind. Here were mighty forces, hitherto no more than suspected, which controlled the world. Here, written in the indelible ink of mathematics, lay a description of the means whereby those forces might be harnessed.

He forgot Frobisher.

And Frobisher, lighting his cigar, began to pace the office floor, often glancing at the absorbed figure. Suddenly Craig turned, removing his glasses.

“Are you bothered about the cost of these experiments, Mr. Frobisher?”

Frobisher pulled up, staring.

“Cost? To hell with the cost! That’s not worrying me. I don’t know a lot about the scientific side, but I know a commercial proposition when I see one.” He dropped down into an armchair. “What I don’t know is this.” He leaned forward, his heavy brows lowered: “Why is somebody tracking me around?”

“Tracking you around?”

“That’s what I said. I’m being tailed around. I was followed to my club today. Followed here. There’s somebody watching my home up in Connecticut. Who is he? What does he want?”

Morris Craig stood up and leaned back against the desk.

Behind him a deep violet sky made a back-cloth for silhouettes of buildings higher than the Huston. Some of the windows were coming to life, forming a glittering regalia, like jewels laid on velvet.

Dusk was falling over Manhattan.

“Astoundin’ state of affairs,” Craig declared—but his smile was quite disarming. “Tell me more. Anyone you suspect?”