“I am all but certain! New York, and not Washington, would be Dr. Fu Manchu’s selection as a base. He has been operating here, through chosen agents, for some months past. Others are flocking to him. I had news from Scotland Yard only this morning of one formidable old ruffian who has slipped though their nets for the twentieth time and is believed to be here. And Prescott will have been brought to the Doctor’s headquarters. God knows what ordeal faces him—what choice he will be called upon to make! It is possible even that he may be given no choice!”
Nayland Smith clenched his fists and shook them desperately in the direction of the myriad of dancing lights of New York City.
“Look!” he cried. “Do you see? The mist has lifted. There is the Statue of Liberty! Do you realize, Hepburn”—he turned, a man all but imperturbable moved now by the immensity of his task—”do you realize what that figure will become if we fail?”
The wild light died from his eyes. He replaced his pipe and audibly gripped the stem between his small, even white teeth.
“We are not going to fail, Sir Denis,” Hepburn replied in dry unmusical tones.
“Thank you,” snapped Nayland Smith, and gripped his shoulder. “Dr. Fu Manchu being a Chinaman, in which quarter of the city should you think it most unlikely he would establish a base?”
“Chinatown.”
Nayland Smith laughed gleefully.
“That is exactly how
In a small room, amber lighted through high windows, a man worked patiently upon a clay model of a Chinese head. A distant bell sounded, and the room became plunged in darkness. Only the glowing end of a cigarette showed through this darkness. A high-pitched guttural voice spoke.
“Give me the latest report from the number responsible for covering Federal Officer 56 in New York.”
“Only one other report to hand,” the modeller replied immediately; “received at eight forty-five. Federal Officer 56 is occupying an apartment in the Regal-Athenian Tower. Federal Officer Captain Mark Hepburn is also located there, and engaged upon chemical experiments. A few minutes after eight o’clock, Federal Officer 56 left by a service door and engaged one of the Lotus cabs. The driver notified the Number covering Lexington exits. A protection car was instructed, but 56 gave them the slip on the corner of Forty-eighth and reached Centre Street at eight thirty-five. Report concluded as follows: ‘Presume he is still at police headquarters as no notification that he has left is to hand.’“
Following a few moments of silence:
“Inform me,” the guttural voice continued, “directly any report is received from Number 38, now proceeding from Cleveland to New York City”
The distant bell rang again and amber light prevailed once more in the small, domed room. The white-haired intellectual sculptor blinked slightly as though this sudden illumination hurt his eyes. Then, taking up tortoise-shell rimmed spectacles which he had laid down at the moment that the light had become extinguished, he dropped the stump of an Egyptian cigarette in an ash tray, having ignited another from the burning end. Taking up a modelling tool he returned to his eternal task.
Chapter 8
THE BLACK HAT
A lotus cab, conspicuous by reason of its cream body-work and pink line, drew up at the corner of Mulberry and Bayard Streets. The passenger got out; a small man/very graceful of movement, dark, sleek, wearing a grey waterproof overcoat and a soft black hat. He stood for a moment beside the driver as he paid his fare, glancing back along the route they had followed.
His fare paid, he crossed Pell Street and began to walk east.
The driver turned his cab, but then made a detour, crossing Mott Street. He pulled up before Wu King’s Bar and went in. He came out again inside three minutes and drove away.
Meanwhile, the man in the black hat continued to walk east. A trickle of rain was falling, and a bleak wind searched the Chinese quarter. He increased his pace. Bright lights shone out from stores and restaurants, but the inclement weather had driven the Asiatic population under cover. In those pedestrians who passed him in the drizzle the man in the black hat seemed to take no interest whatever. He walked on with an easy, swinging stride as one confident that no harm would come to him in Chinatown.
When he passed an open door, to his nostrils came a whiff of that queer commingling of incense and spice which distinguishes the quarter. The Chinaman is a law-abiding citizen. His laws may be different from those of the Western world, but to his own codes he conforms religiously. Only a country cousin on a sight-seeing expedition could have detected anything mysterious about the streets through which the man in the black hat hurried. Even Deputy Inspector Gregory of the branch accountable for the good behaviour of Chinatown had observed nothing mysterious in his patrol of the public resorts and private byways.
Except for a curious hush when he had stopped in at Wu King’s Bar for a chat with the genial proprietor and a look around for a certain Celestial there was nothing in the slightest degree suspicious in the behaviour of the people of the Asiatic quarter. This impression of a hush which had fallen at the moment of his entrance he had been unable to confirm— it might have been imaginary. In any event Wu King’s was the headquarters of the Hip Sing Tong, and if it meant anything it probably meant a brewing disturbance between rival Chinese societies.
He was still considering the impression which this hush, real or imaginary, had made upon his mind when, turning a corner, he all but bumped into the man with the black hat.
The black hat was lowered against the keen wind: the detective, wind behind him, was walking very upright. Then, in a flash, the black-hatted man had gone. Momentarily the idea crossed the detective’s mind that he had not seen the man’s face—it might have been the face of a Chinaman, and he was anxious to meet a certain Chinaman.
He turned for a moment, looking back.
The man in the black hat had disappeared.
It was a particularly foul night, and Gregory had more than carried out his instructions. He trudged on through
