He looked in bewilderment from face to face. Nayland Smith stared at Miss Lakin, smiled grimly and walked into a long, low library, a book-lined room with a great log fire burning at one end of it. The receiver of a telephone which stood upon a table near the fire was detached from the rest.
Someone closed the outer door, and a sudden silence came in that cosy room where the logs cracked. Sarah Lakin stood at the threshold, watching with calm, grave eyes. Mark Hepbum stared in over her shoulder.
“Yes,” snapped Smith; “who is speaking?”
There was a momentary silence.
“Is it necessary, Sir Denis, for me to introduce myself?”
“Quite unnecessary, Dr. Fu Manchu! But it is strangely unlike you to show your hand so early in the game. You are outside familiar territory. So am I. But this time, Doctor, by God we shall break you.”
“I trust not, Sir Denis; so much is at stake: the fate of this nation, perhaps of the world—and there are bunglers who fail to appreciate my purpose. Dr. Orwin Prescott, for instance, has been very ill-advised.”
Nayland Smith turned his head towards the door, nodding significantly to Mark Hepburn; some trick of the shaded lights made his lean, tanned face look very drawn , very tired.
“Since you have a certain manuscript in your possession, I assume it to be only a question of time for you to learn why the voice of the Holy Thorn became suddenly silent. In the Father’s interests and in the interests of Dr. Prescott, I advise you to consider carefully your next step, Sir Denis——”
Nayland Smith’s heart pulsed a fraction faster—Orwin Prescott was not dead!
“The abbot’s eloquence is difficult to restrain-and I respect courage. But some day I may cry, in the words of your English King—Henry the Second, was it not?—’Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest . . .’ My cry would be answered—nor should I feel called upon to walk, a barefooted penitent, to pray at the Father Abbot’s tomb beside his Tower of the Holy Thorn.”
Nayland Smith made no reply. He sat there, motionless, listening.
“We enter upon the last phase, Sir Denis . . .”
The guttural voice ceased.
Smith replaced the receiver, sprang up, turned.
“That was a cut-in on the line,” he snapped. “Quick, Hepbum! The nearest phone in the neighbourhood: Check up that call if you can.”
“Right.” Mark Hepburn, his jaw grimly squared, buttoned up his coat.
Sarah Lakin watched Nayland Smith fascinatedly.
“Hell-for-leather, Hepburn! At any cost you
Chapter 7
SLEEPLESS UNDERWORLD
Mark Hepburn replaced a tiny phial of a very rare re-agent on a shelf above his head and, turning, stooped and peered through a microscope at something resembling a fragment of gummy paper. For a while he studied this object and then stood upright, stretching his white-clad arms—he wore an overall—and yawning wearily. The small room in which he worked was fitted up as a laboratory. Save for a remote booming noise as of distant thunder, it was silent.
Hepburn lighted a cigarette and stared out of the closed window. The boom as of distant thunder was explained: it was caused by the ceaseless traffic in miles of busy streets.
Below him spread a night prospect of a large area of New York City. Half-right, framed by the window, the tallest building in the world reared its dizzy head to flying storm clouds. Here was a splash of red light; there, a blur of green. A train moved along its track far away to the left. Thousands of windows made illuminated geometrical patterns in the darkness. To-night there was a damp mist, so that the flambeau upheld by the distant Statue of Liberty was not visible.
A slight sound in the little laboratory on the fortieth floor of the Regal-Athenian Tower brought Hepbum around in a flash.
He found himself looking into the dark, eager face of Nayland Smith.
“Good Lord, Sir Denis! You move like a cat——”
“I used my key. . . .”
“You startled me.”
“Have you got it, Hepburn—have you got it?”
“Yes.”
“What?” Nayland Smith’s lean face, framed in the upturned fur collar of his topcoat, lighted enthusiastically. “First-class job. What is it?”
“I don’t know what it is—that is to say I don’t know from what source it’s obtained. But it’s a concoction used by certain tribes on the Upper Amazon, and I happened to remember that the Academy of Medicine had a specimen and borrowed it. The preparation on the MS., the envelopes and the stamps gives identical reaction. A lot of study has been devoted to this stuff, which has remarkable properties. But nobody has yet succeeded in tracing it to its origin.”
“It is called
“It is.”
“I might have known!” snapped Nayland Smith. “He has used it before with notable results. But I must
