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 some 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 were 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 lense.
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
“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
Nayland Smith snatched the goggles from his eyes.
“Do you realize what this means?”
“Clearly. What?”
