James Richet was a qualified attorney, and had practised for several years in Los Angeles. The yellow streak in his pedigree—his maternal grandmother had been a Kanaka— formed a check to his social ambition. Perhaps it was an operative factor in his selection of an easier and more direct path to wealth than the legitimate practice of his profession had offered him. He had become the legal adviser to one of the big beer barons. Later, the underworlds of Chicago and New York held no secrets from him. . . .
The silence of this strange stone cellar was very oppressive;
he avoided looking at the evil figure which dominated it. . . .
His former chiefs, one after another, had been piled up on the rocks of the new administration. Then a fresh tide had come in his affairs, at a time when he began seriously to worry if Federal inquiries would become focussed upon himself. Some new control had seized upon the broken group of which he was a surviving unit. A highly paid post was found for him as legal adviser and secretary to Abbot Donegal. He was notified that special duties would be allotted from time to time. But in spite of all his cunning—for he was more cunning than clever—he had not up to the present moment succeeded in learning the political aims of the person or persons who, as he had realized for a long time, now controlled the vast underworld network which extended from coast to coast of the United States.
Of his former associates he had seen nothing during the time that he was attached to Abbot Donegal’s staff at the Shrine of the Holy Thorn. Copies of the abbot’s colossal mailing list he had supplied to an address in New York City;
advance drafts of all sermons and lectures; and a precis of a certain class of correspondence.
Personal contact between himself and his real employer was made through the medium of Lola Dumas. His last urgent instructions, which had led to the breakdown of Abbot Donegal during a broadcast lecture, had been given to him by Lola . . . . that provocative study in slender curves, creamy skin and ebony-black hair, sombre almond- shaped eyes (deep, dark lakes in which a man’s soul was drowned); petulant scornful lips . . . Lola.
Lola! She was supremely desirable, but maddeningly elusive. Together, what could they not do? She knew so many things that he burned to learn; but all that he had gathered from her was that they belonged to an organization governed by a board of seven. . . .
Hot though the place was, he shuddered. Seven! This hell-inspired figure which always watched him had
From time to time Lola would appear in the nearby town without warning, occupying the best suite in the best hotel and would summon him to meet her. It was Lola Dumas, on the first day that he had taken up his duties, who had brought him his badge. He had smiled. Later he had ceased to smile. Up to the time that he had fled from the Shrine of the Holy Thorn he had never learned how many other agents of the “Seven” were attached to the staff of the abbot. Two only he had met: Mrs. Adair, and a man who acted as night watchman. Now, shepherded from point to point in accordance with typed instructions headed: “In the event of failure” and received by him on the morning before the fateful broadcast, he was in New York; at last in the headquarters of his mysterious chief!
Something in the atmosphere of this place seemed to shake him. He wondered—and became conscious of nervous perspiration—if his slight deviation from the route laid down in his instructions had escaped notice. . . .
One of the coloured curtains was swept aside and he saw Lola Dumas facing him from the end of the temple of the seven-eyed goddess.
Chapter 10
JAMES RICHET
Mark Hepburn sat at the desk by the telephone, making notes of many incoming calls, issuing instructions in some cases. Nayland Smith, at the big table by the window, worked on material which seemed to demand frequent reference to one of two large maps pinned on the wall before him. Hepburn lighted numberless cigarettes. Nayland Smith was partially hidden behind a screen of pipe smoke.
Despite the lateness of the hour, Fey, the taciturn, might be heard moving about in the kitchenette.
The doorbell rang.
Smith turned in his chair. Hepburn stood up.
As Fey crossed the sitting-room to reach the vestibule:
“Remember orders, Fey!” Smith rapped.
Fey’s Sioux-like, leathern features exhibited no expression whatever. He extended a large palm in which a small automatic rested.
“Very good, sir.”
He opened the door. Outside stood a man in Regal-Athenian uniform and another who wore a peaked cap.
“He’s all right,” said the man in uniform. “He is a Western Union messenger. . . .”
When the door was closed again and Fey had returned to his cramped quarters, Nayland Smith read the letter which the man had delivered. He studied it carefully, a second and a third time; then handed it to Hepburn.
“Any comments?”
Mark Hepburn took the letter and read:
WEAVER’S FARM WINTON, CONN.
DEAR SIR DENIS:
Something so strange has occurred that I feel you should know at once. (I regret to say that my telephone is again out of order.) A man called upon me early this evening who gave the name of Julian Sankey. Before this, he made me promise to tell no one but you what he had to say. He implied that he had information that would enable us to locate Orwin. He was a smallish, dark man, with very spruce lank black hair and the slyly ingratiating manners of an Argentine gigolo. A voice like velvet.
I gave my promise, which seemed to satisfy him, and he then told me that he was a reluctant member of an organization which planned to make Harvey Bragg dictator. He conveyed the idea that he knew the inside of this
