Dr. Fu Manchu and the other already were lost in the shadow.
“Heave to—Federal orders!” roared a loud voice.
Farmer Clutterbuck’s motor-boat was kept on its course.
“Shall we let him have it?
“Yes—but head for the steps.”
Three shots came almost together. Raising the glasses again, Nayland Smith had a glimpse of a form crouching low over the wheel . . . then a bluff which protected the Indian Ferry obscured the boat from sight. As they swung in to the steps:
“What was that move?” somebody inquired. “I guess we missed him anyway.”
But Nayland Smith was already running up the steps. He found himself in a narrow gorge on one side completely overhung by tangled branches. He flashed a light ahead. Three Federal agents came clattering up behind him.
“What I’m wondering,” said one, “is, where’s Captain Hepburn.”
Nayland Smith wondered also. Hepburn, in another launch, had been put ashore higher up on the Canadian bank, armed with Smith’s personal card upon which a message had been scribbled. . . .
Dr. Fu Manchu and his companion seemed to have disappeared.
But now, heralded by a roar of propellers, Captain Kingswell came swooping down out of the night, and the first Very light burst directly overhead! Nayland Smith paused, raised his glasses and stared upward. Kingswell, flying very low, circled, dipped, and headed down river.
“He’s seen them!” snapped Smith.
Came a dim shouting . . . Hepburn was heading in their direction. A second light broke.
“By God!” Nayland Smith cried savagely, “are we all blind? Look at Kingswell’s signals. They have rejoined the motor-boat at some place below!”
Two more army planes flew into view. . . .
“Back to the launch!” Smith shouted.
But when at last they set out again, the bat-like manoeuvres of the aviators and the points at which they threw out their flares indicated that the cunning quarry had a long start. It seemed to Nayland Smith, crouched in the bows, staring ahead, that time, elastic, had stretched out to infinity. Then he sighted the motor-boat. Kingswell, above, was flying just ahead of it. He threw out a light.
In the glare, while it prevailed, a grim scene was shown. The man at the wheel (probably the same who had piloted the plane) lay over it, if not dead, unconscious; and the silver-haired passenger was locked in a fierce struggle with Dr. Fu Manchu!
Professor Morgenstahl’s hour had come! In the stress of that last fight for freedom the Doctor’s control, for a matter of seconds only, had relaxed. But in those seconds Morgenstahl had acted. . . .
“This is where we check out!” came a cry. “Hard over, Jim!” Absorbed in the drama being played before him—a drama the real significance of which he could only guess—Nayland Smith had remained deaf to the deepening roar of the river. Suddenly the launch rolled and swung about. “What’s this?” he shouted, turning. “Twenty lengths more and we’d be in the rapids!” The rapids!
He craned his head, looking astern. Somewhere, far back, a light broke. Three planes were flying low over the river . . . and now to his ears came the awesome song of Niagara, “The Thunder of Waters.”
An icy hand seemed to touch Nayland Smith’s heart. . . . Dr. Fu Manchu had been caught in the rapids; no human power nor his own superlative genius could prevent his being carried over the great falls! The man who had dared to remodel nature’s forces had been claimed at last by the gods he had outraged.
The End
