The Shadow of Fu-Manchu (5 page)

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!

I
n 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 one 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.

He replaced the mouthpiece of a long-stemmed pipe between his wrinkled lips.

On a low-set red lacquer stool beside the divan was a crystal globe, similar in appearance to that upon the long, narrow table in the study adjoining Professor Hoffmeyer’s office.

Nothing occurred for some time. Huan Tsung smoked contentedly, reflection from the brazier lending a demoniac quality to his benign features.

Then the crystal globe came to life, like a minor moon emerging from a cloud. Within it materialized a gaunt, wonderful face, the brow of a philosopher, green, fanatical eyes in which slumbered the fires of an imperious will.

Below, in the shop, but inaudible in the silk-walled room above, a phone buzzed. The patient writer laid his brush aside, took up the instrument, and listened. He replaced it, scribbled a few pencilled lines, put the paper in the cupboard, and pressed the button.

Huan Tsung, with a movement of his hand, removed the message. He glanced at it—and dropped the sheet into the brazier. The face in the globe had fully materialized. Compelling eyes looked into his own. Huan Tsung spoke.

“You called me, Doctor?”

“No doubt you have later reports.”

“The last one, Excellency, just to hand, is timed 7.26 p.m. Nayland Smith left Centre Street at seven twenty-three. Our agent, following, carried out the operation successfully.”

“Successfully!” A note of anger became audible in the sibilant tones. “I may misunderstand you. What method was used?”

“B.W. 63, of which I have a little left, and the feathered darts. I instructed Sha Mu, who is expert, and he succeeded at the second attempt. He passed the police car undetected and retired in safety. Nayland Smith was taken, without being removed from the car, to the Rockefeller Institute.”

Huan Tsung’s eyes were closed. His features wore a mask of complacency. There was a brief silence.

“Open your eyes!” Huan Tsung did so, and shrank. “They think Professor Lowe may save him. They are wrong. Your action was ill considered. Await instructions to establish contact.”

“Excellency’s order noted.”

“Summarize any other reports.”

“There are few of importance. The Emir Omar Khan died in Teheran this morning.”

“That is well. Nayland Smith’s visit to Teheran was wasted. Instruct Teheran.”

“Excellency’s order noted. There is no later report from Moscow and none from London.”

Silence fell. The green eyes in the crystal mirror grew clouded, filmed over in an almost pathological way. The cloud passed. They blazed again like emeralds.

“You have destroyed that which might have been of use to us. Furthermore, you have aroused a nest of wasps. Our task was hard enough. You make it harder. A disappearance—yes. I had planned one. But this clumsy assassination—”

“I thought I had done well.”

“A legitimate thought is the child of wisdom and experience. Thoughts, like children, may be bastards.”

Light faded from the crystal. Old Huan Tsung smoked, considering the problem of human fallibility.

* * *

“This is stupendous!” Nayland Smith whispered.

With Morris Craig, he stood under a dome which occupied one end of the Huston laboratory. It was opaque but contained four small openings. Set in it, rather as in an observatory, was an instrument closely resembling a huge telescope, except that it appeared to be composed of some dull black metal and had no lens.

Through the four openings, Nayland Smith could see the stars.

Like Craig, he wore green-tinted goggles.

That part of the instrument where, in a real telescope, the eye-piece would be, rested directly over a solid table topped with a six-inch-thick sheet of a grey mineral substance. A massive portcullis of the same material enclosed the whole. It had just been raised. An acrid smell filled the air.

“Some of the Manhattan rock below us is radioactive,” Craig had explained. “So, in a certain degree, are the buildings. Until I found that out, I got no results.”

Complex machinery mounted on a concrete platform, machinery which emitted a sort of radiance and created vibrations which seemed to penetrate one’s spine, had been disconnected by Regan from its powerful motors.

In a dazzling, crackling flash, Nayland Smith had seen a lump of solid steel not melt, but disperse, disintegrate, vanish! A pinch of greyish powder alone remained.

“Keep the goggles on for a minute,” said Craig. “Of course, you understand that this is merely a model plant. I might explain that the final problem, which I think I have solved, is the transmuter.”

“Nice word,” snapped Smith. “What does it mean?”

“Well—it’s more than somewhat difficult to define. Sort of ring-a-ring of neutrons, pocket full of plutrons. It’s a method of controlling and directing the enormous power generated here.”

Nayland Smith was silent for a moment He was dazed by the thing he had seen, appalled by its implications.

“If I understand you, Craig,” he said rapidly, “this device enables you to tap the great belt of ultraviolet rays which, you tell me, encloses the earth’s atmosphere a hundred miles above the ionosphere—whatever that is.”

“Roughly speaking—yes. The term, ultraviolet, is merely one of convenience. Like marmalade for a preparation containing no oranges.”

“So far, so good. Now tell me—when your transmuter is completed, what can you
do
with this thing?”

“Well”—Craig removed his goggles and brushed his hair back—“I could probably prevent any kind of projectile, or plane, from entering the earth’s atmosphere over a controlled area. That is, if I could direct my power upward and outward.”

“Neutralizing the potential of atomic warfare?”

“I suppose it would.”

“What about directed downward and inward?” rapped Smith.

“Well”—Craig smiled modestly—“that’s all I
can
do at the moment. And you have seen one result.”

Nayland Smith snatched the goggles from his eyes.

“Do you realize what this means?”

“Clearly. What?”

“It means that you’re a focus of interest for God knows how many trained agents. I know now why New York has become a hotbed of spies. You don’t appreciate your own danger.”

Morris Craig began to feel bewildered.

“Do try to be lucid, Smith.
What
danger? Why should
I
be in danger?”

Nayland Smith’s expression grew almost savage. “Was
I
in danger today? Then tell me what became of Dr. Sven Helsen—inventor of the Helsen lamp?”

“That’s easy. I don’t know.”

“And of Professor Chiozza, in his stratoplane, in which he went up to pass out of the earth’s atmosphere?”

“Probably passed out of same—and stayed out.”

“Not a bit of it. Dr. Fu-Manchu
destroys
obstacles as we destroy flies. But he
collects
specialized brains as some men collect rare postage stamps. How do you get in and out of this place at night when the corporation offices are closed?”

“By special elevator from the thirty-second. There’s a private door on the street, used by Mr. Frobisher, and a small elevator to his office on the thirty-second. Research staff have master keys. All secure?”

“From ordinary intruders. But this thing is a hundred times bigger than I even suspected. If ever a man played with fire without knowing it, you are that man. Russia, I know, has an agent here.”

“Present the moujik. I yearn to greet this comrade.”

“I can’t. I haven’t spotted him yet. But I have reason to believe our own land of hope and glory is onto you as well.”

Craig, in the act of opening the laboratory door, paused. He turned slowly.

“What on earth do you mean?”

“I mean that London can’t afford to let this thing fall into the hands of Moscow—nor can Washington. And none of ’em would like Dr. Fu-Manchu to get it.”

“Dr. Fu-Manchu? I imagined it to be a mere name to frighten children. If a real person, I thought he died long ago.”

“You were wrong, Craig. He is here—in New York! He is like the phoenix. He arises from his own ashes.”

A sense of unreality, not unmixed with foreboding, touched Morris Craig. He visualized vividly the fate of the man mistaken for Nayland Smith. But when he spoke, it was with deliberate flippancy.

“Describe this cremated character, so that if I meet him I can cut him dead.”

But Nayland Smith shook his head impatiently.

“I pray you never do meet him, Craig.”

* * *

Camille Navarre, seated in her room, had just put a call through. She watched the closed door all the time she was speaking.

“Yes… Nine-nine here… It has been impossible to call you before. Listen, please. I may have to hang up suddenly. Sir Denis Nayland Smith is in the laboratory. What are my instructions?”

She listened awhile, anxiously watching the door.

“I understand… the design for the Transmuter is practically completed… Of course… I know the urgency… But it is terribly intricate… No—I have quite failed to identify the agent.”

For some moments she listened again, tensely.

“Sir Denis must have told Dr. Craig… I heard the name Fu-Manchu spoken here not an hour ago… Yes. But this is important: I am to go to Falling Waters for the week-end. What are my instructions?”

The door opened suddenly, and Sam came lurching in. Camille’s face betrayed not the slightest change of expression. But she altered her tone.

“Thanks, dear,” she said lightly. “I must hang up now. It was sweet of you to call me.”

She replaced the receiver and smiled up at Sam.

“Happen to have a pair o’ nail scissors, lady?” Sam inquired.

“Not with me, I’m afraid. What do you want them for?”

“Stubbed my toe back there, and broke the nail. See how I’m limpin’?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Camille’s caressing voice conveyed real sympathy. “But I think there are some sharp scissors in Dr. Craig’s desk. They might do.”

“Sure. Let’s go look.”

They crossed the empty office outside, now largely claimed by shadows except where the desk lights dispersed them. Camille discovered the scissors, which Sam examined without enthusiasm but finally carried away and promised to return.

Camille lingered until the door had closed behind him, placing two newly typed letters on the desk. Then she took off her glasses and laid them beside the letters. Her ears alert for any warning sound from the laboratory, she bent over the diagram pinned to the board. She made rapid, pencilled notes, glancing down at them and back at the diagram.

She was about to add something more, when that familiar click of a lock warned her that someone was about to come out of the laboratory. Closing her notebook, she walked quickly back to her room.

Her door closed just as Nayland Smith and Craig came down the three steps.

“Does it begin to dawn on your mind, Craig, why the intelligence services of all the great powers are keenly interested in you?”

Morris Craig nodded.

“Which is bad enough,” he said. “But the devil who tried to murder you today is a bigger danger than any.”

“My dear Craig,
he
didn’t try to murder me. If the man who did had been caught, he would never have heard of Dr. Fu-Manchu.”