Amber light prevailed again. The sculptor, brushing back his mane of white hair with a tragic gesture, adjusted the dictaphone attachment which during his hours of rest took the place of his phenomenal memory. No message came through during the time that he gathered up lovingly the implements of his art, sole solace of the prisoner’s life.
Carrying the half-completed clay model, he crossed to the hidden door, opened it, and descended to that untidy apartment which, with the balcony outside, made up his world. He threw wide the french windows and went out.
A setting sun in a cloudless sky fashioned strange red lights and purple shadows upon unimaginable buildings, streaked the distant waters almost reluctantly with a phantom, carmine brush, and painted New York City in aspects new even to the weary eyes of the man who had looked down upon it so often.
Setting the clay upon the table, he returned and took a photographic printing-frame from its place in the window. Removing the print, he immersed it in a glass tray. As the tones grew deeper, it presented itself as an enlargement of that tiny coloured head—the model which eternally he sought to reproduce.
VII
Mark Hepbum, fully alive to the fact that he had been covered from the moment when he had left the apartment where Moya Adair’s small son lived—a prisoner—experienced an almost savage delight in throwing his pursuers off the track in the great railway station.
He had detected them—there were two—by the time that he descended the steps. He knew that Moya’s happiness, perhaps the life of Robbie, depended upon his maintaining the character of a family friend. Whatever happened, he must not be identified as a federal agent.
Furthermore, at any cost he must combat a growing fear, almost superstitious, of the powers of Dr. Fu Manchu; even a minor triumph over the agents of that sinister, invisible being would help to banish an inferiority complex which threatened to claim him. He succeeded in throwing off his pursuers, very ordinary underworld toughs, without great difficulty.
A covered lorry was waiting at a spot appointed. In it, he donned blue overalls and presently entered a service door of the Regal-Athenian, a peaked cap pulled down over his eyes and carrying a crate upon his shoulders.
The death of Blondie Hahn, demi-god of the underworld, and of Fly Carlo, notorious cat-burglar, had been swamped as news by the assassination of Harvey Bragg. In the railway station, on every news-stand that he had passed, the name Bragg flashed out at him. The man’s death had created a greater sensation than his life. Thousands had lined up along the route of his funeral train to pay homage to Harvey Bragg.
Mark Hepburn abandoned the problem of how this atrocity fitted into the schemes of that perverted genius who aimed to secure control of the country. He was keyed up to ultimate tension, insanely happy because he had read kindness in the eyes ofMoyaAdair; guiltily conscious of the fact that perhaps he had not performed his duty to the government, indeed, did not know where it lay. But now, as Fey, stoic-faced, opened the door of the apartment, he found himself to be doubly eager for the great attempt planned by Nayland Smith to trap some, at least, of these remorseless plotters—it might be even the great chief—in their subterranean lair.
Chapter 23
FU MANCHU’S WATER-GATE
“Shut off,” snapped Nayland Smith. “Drift on the current.”
The purr of the engine ceased.
A million lights looked down through frosty air upon them, lights which from river level seemed to tower up to the vault of the sky. Upon the shores were patches of red light, blue light, and green, reflected upon slowly moving water. Restless lights, like fireflies, darted, mingled, and reappeared again upon the bridges. The lights of a ferry boat crossed smoothly astern: lights of every colour, static and febrile, fairy lights high up in the sky, elfin lights, Jack-o’-lanterns, low down upon the sullen tide. Hugging the shore, the motor launch, silent, drifted in an ebony belt protected from a million remorseless eyes. In the shadows below a city of light they crept onward to their destination.
“I understand”—Nayland Smith’s voice came through the darkness from the bows—”that a fourth man has been reported?”
“Correct, Chief,” Police Captain Corrigan replied. “He was checked in and reported by flash two minutes ago.”
Staccato, warning blasts of tugs, sustained notes of big ships, complemented that pattern painted by the lights: the ceaseless voice of the city framed it. The wind had dropped to a mere easterly breeze; nevertheless it was an intensely cold night.
“There’s a ladderway,” said Corrigan, “with a trap opening on the dock above.”
“And the property belongs to the South Coast Trade Line: . . .”
“That’s correct.”
The late Harvey Bragg, as Nayland Smith had been at pains to learn, had held a controlling interest in the South Coast Trade Line. . . .
“Here we are,” a voice announced.
“No engine,” Nayland Smith directed. “Ease her in; there’s plenty of hold.”
The lights of Manhattan were lost in that dusky waterway. Sirens spoke harshly, and a ferry returning from the Brooklyn shore threw amber gleams upon the oily water. A tugboat passed very close to them; her passage set the launch dancing. All lights had been doused when that of an electric torch speared the darkness.
A wooden platform became visible. From it a ladder arose and disappeared into shadow above. The tidal water whispered and lapped eerily as they rode the swell created by the back wash of the tugboat.
“Quiet now!” Nayland Smith spoke urgently. “Lift the spar up and get it across the rail. How many men, Corrigan?”
“Forty-two, Chief.”
“I can’t see a soul.”
