“Your wishes mean a lot to me. I shall never forget the kindness I have experienced here.”
The woman’s dark eyes closed for a moment, and when they reopened, their expression had subtly changed.
“That is kind of you,” she said. “For my own part I have obeyed orders.”
She seated herself beside him on the settee and accepted a cigarette he offered from the full case which Norbert had thoughtfully brought along. Vaguely he was conscious of tension.
“I hope to see you again,” he said, lighting her cigarette. “Is that too much to hope?”
“No,” she replied laughingly; “there is no reason why I shouldn’t see you again, Doctor. But”—she hesitated, glanced at him quickly, and then looked aside—”I have practically given up social life. You would find me very dull company.”
“Why should you have given up social life?” Orwin Prescott spoke earnestly. “You are young, you are beautiful. Surely all the world is before you.”
“Yes,” said Nurse Arlen, “in one sense it is. Perhaps some day I may have a chance to try to explain to you. But now . . .” She stood up. “I have one more duty before you leave for Carnegie Hall—physician’s orders.”
She crossed to a glass-topped table and, from a little phial which stood there, carefully measured out some drops of a colourless liquid into a graduated glass. She filled it with water from a pitcher and handed it to Orwin Prescott.
“I now perform my last duty,” she said. “You are discharged as cured.”
She smiled. It was the smile which had haunted his dreams: a full-lipped, caressing smile which he knew he could never forget. He took the glass from her and drained its contents. The liquid was quite tasteless.
Almost immediately, magically, he became aware of a great exhilaration. His mental powers, already keen, were stimulated to a point where it seemed that his heel was set upon the world as on a footstool; that all common clay formed but stepping-stones to a goal undreamed of by any man before him. It was a kind of intoxication never hitherto experienced in his well-ordered life. How long it lasted he was unable to judge, or what of it was real, and what chimerical.
He thought that, carried out of himself, he seized the siren woman in his arms, that almost she surrendered but finally resisted. . . .
Then, sharply, as lightning splits the atmosphere, came sudden and absolute sobriety.
Orwin Prescott stared at Nurse Arlen. She stood a pace away watching him intently.
“That was a heady draught,” he said, and his tones were apologetic.
“Perhaps my hand shook,” Nurse Arlen replied; her caressing voice was not quite steady. “I think it is time for you to go, Dr. Prescott. Let me show you the way.”
He presently found himself in a small elevator, which Nurse Arlen operated. Stepping out at the end of a narrow corridor, and a door being opened, he entered a covered courtyard where a Cadillac was waiting. The chauffeur, who wore driving-glasses, was yellow skinned—he might have been an Asiatic. He held the door open.
“Good night,” said Orwin Prescott, one foot on the step.
He held Nurse Arlen’s hand, looking, half afraid, into her dark eyes.
“Good night,” she replied—”good luck!”
The windows were shaded. A moment after the door was closed the big car moved off.
Dr. Fu Manchu sat in the stone-faced room behind that narrow table whose appointments suggested those of a medical consultant. His long yellow fingers with their pointed nails rested motionless upon the table-top. His eyes were closed. The curtain which draped the opening was drawn aside, and Sam Pak entered: “Sam Pak”—a name which concealed another once honoured in China.
Dr. Fu Manchu did not open his eyes.
“Orwin Prescott is on his way to Carnegie Hall, Master,” the old man reported, speaking in Chinese, but not in the Chinese which those of the London police who knew him and who knew something of Eastern languages were accustomed to hear. “The woman did her work, but not too well. I fear there were four and not three drops in the final draught.”
“She is a broken reed.” The sibilant voice was clearly audible, although the thin-lipped mouth appeared scarcely to move. “She was recommended in high quarters, but her sex vibrations render her dangerous. She is amorous, and she has compassion: it is the negroid stain. Her amours do not concern me. If men are her toys, she must play; but the fibre and reality of her womanhood must belong to
The jade-green eyes opened, and a compelling stare fixed itself upon the withered face of Sam Pak.
“I was watching—her hand was not steady; he became intoxicated. By this I judged.”
“If she has failed me, she shall suffer.” The guttural voice was very harsh. “The latest report regarding this pestilential priest?”
“Number 25, in charge of Z-cars covering Carnegie Hall, reports that the Abbot Donegal has not entered the building.”
There was a silence of several moments.
“This can mean only one of two things,” came sibilantly. “He is there, disguised, or he is in Federal hands and Enemy Number One may triumph at the last moment.”
Old Sam Pak emitted a sound resembling the hiss of a snake.
“Even I begin to doubt if our gods are with us,” the high, precise voice of Fu Manchu continued. “What of my boasted powers, of those agents which I alone know how to employ? What of the thousands of servants at my
