which had once contained playing cards, and two thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills.
“Where was the diamond pin?” snapped Nayland Smith.
“He always wore it in his coat like a badge,” Inspector McGrew replied.
“Where were the dollar bills?”
“Right in the card-holder?”
“Can you think of any reason,” Smith asked “why a man should carry money in a card-holder?”
“No,” the inspector admitted; “I can’t.”
“Assuming that this money had just been sent to him, can you think of any reason why it should be sent in such a way?”
“No.”
Inspector McGrew shook his head blankly, staring in a fascinated way at the speaker.
“Yet the card-holder,” Nayland Smith continued, “is the solution of the mystery of Blondie Hahn’s death.” He turned abruptly—he seemed to move on springs—the man’s nervous tension was electrical. “I want all these exhibits to go with me in the car.”
He rested his hand on Mark Hepburn’s shoulder. Hepburn looked very pale in the grey light.
“Note the two thousand dollars in the card case,” he said in a low voice. “There was something else in there as well. Dr. Fu Manchu always settles his debts . . . sometimes with interest. . . .”
Chapter 16
“BLUEBEARD”
Moya Adair closed her eyes as those green eyes opened. The man behind the table spoke, in that imperious, high-pitched voice.
“I accept your explanation,” he said. “None of us is infallible.”
Mrs. Adair raised her lashes and tried to sustain the speaker’s regard, but failed, turning her glance aside.
The face of Dr. Fu Manchu sometimes reminded her of a devil mask which hung upon the wall of her father’s study in Ireland.
“You serve me admirably. I regret that your service is one of fear. I prefer enthusiasm. You are a beautiful woman; for this reason I have employed you. Men are creatures of wax which white fingers can mould to their will—to my will. For always, Moya Adair,
The blue eyes were turned swiftly in his direction, and then swiftly away again. Mrs. Adair was perfectly dressed, perfectly groomed and apparently perfectly composed. This awful Chinaman who had taken command of her life held in his grasp all that made life dear to her. Her gloved hand rested motionless upon the chair-arm, but she turned her head aside and bit her lip.
The air of the small, quiet room was heavy with a smell of stale incense.
“I am an old man,” the compelling voice continued; “older than your imagination would permit you to believe.” Those jade-green eyes were closed again—the speaker seemed to be thinking aloud. “I have been worshipped, I have been scorned;
I have been flattered, mocked, betrayed, treated as a charlatan—as a criminal. There are warrants for my arrest in three European countries. Yet, always I have been selfless.” He paused. He was so still, so seemingly impassive, that he might have been a carven image. . . .
“My crimes, so termed, have been merely the removal from my path of those who obstructed me. Always I have dreamed of a sane world, yet men have called me mad; of a world in which war should be impossible, disease eliminated, overpopulation checked, labour found for all willing hands—a world of peace. Save only three, I have found no human soul, of my own race or another, to work wholly for that goal. And now my most implacable enemy is upon me. . . .”
Suddenly the green eyes opened. Long, slender yellow hands with incredibly pointed nails were torn from the sleeves of the yellow robe. Dr. Fu Manchu stood upright, raising those evilly beautiful hands above him. A note of exaltation came into his voice. Mrs. Adair clutched the arms of the chair in which she sat. Never before had her eventful life brought her in touch with inspired fanaticism.
“Gods of my fathers”—pitched so high that strange voice laid a queer stress on sibilants—”masters of the world! Are all my dreams to end in a prison cell, in the death of a common felon?”
For a while he stood upright, arms upraised, then dropped back again into his chair and concealed his hands in the sleeves of his robe.
Moya Adair strove for composure. This man terrified her as no man in her experience ever had had power to do. Instinctively she had realized the dreadful crimes that marked his life. He was coldly remorseless. Now, shaken emotionally by this glimpse of the hidden Fu Manchu, she wondered if she had become subjected to an inspired madman. Or had this eerie master of her destiny achieved a philosophy beyond the reach of her intellectual powers?
When the chinaman spoke again his harsh voice was perfectly cool.
“In the United States I have found a crude, but efficient, organization ready to my hand. Prohibition attracted to this country the trained law-breakers of the world. They had no purpose but that of personal gain. The sanity of President Roosevelt has terminated some of these promising careers. Many spiders are missing, but the webs can be mended. You see, Moya Adair”—the green eyes were fixed upon her, glittering, hypnotically—”although women can never under stand, were not meant to understand—it is to women that men always look for understanding.”
Now she was unable to withdraw her gaze. He had taken control other—she knew herself helpless. There was magic in those long green eyes; their power was terrible. But something there was also—something she had not looked for— which reconciled her to this control.
