President Fu Manchu

“Thank you,” said Mark Hepburn; “it’s kind of you to take it that way.”

Smith grasped the outstretched hand, clapped Hepburn on the shoulder and resumed his restless promenade.

“In short,” he continued, “we are beginning to make a certain amount of headway. But the campaign, as time goes on, grows more and more hectic. In my opinion our lives, as risks, are uninsurable. And I am seriously worried about the Abbot of Holy Thorn.

“In what way?”

“His life is not worth—that!”

He snapped his fingers.

“No.” Mark Hepburn nodded, selecting a fresh cigarette and staring rather haggardly out of the window across the roofs of a grey New York. “He is not a man one can gag indefinitely. Dr. Fu Manchu must know it.”

“Knowing it,” snapped Nayland Smith, “I fear that he will act. If we had a clear case, I should be disposed to act first. The thing is so cunningly devised that our lines of attack are limited. Excluding an unknown inner group surrounding the mandarin, in my opinion not another soul working for the League of Good Americans has the remotest idea of the ultimate object of that League, or of the sources of its revenues! All the reports—and I have read hundreds—point in the same direction. Many thousands of previously workless men have been given employment. Glance at the map.” He pointed. “Every red flag means a Fu Manchu advance! They are working honourably at the tasks alloted to them. But every one, when the hour comes, will cry out with the same voice: every one, north, south, east and west, is a unit in the vast army which, unknowingly, is building up the domination of this country by Dr. Fu Manchu, through his chosen nominee——”

“Salvaletti!”

“Salvaletti; it seems at last to become apparent. It is clear that this man has been trained for years for his task. I even begin to guess why Lola Dumas is being associated with him. In another fortnight, perhaps in a week, the following of Paul Salvaletti will be greater than that of Harvey Bragg ever was. Nothing can stop him, Hepburn, nothing short of a revelation— not a statement, but a revelation, of the real facts. . . .”

“Who can give it? Who would be listened to?”

Nayland Smith paused over by the door, turned, staring at the shadowy figure in the armchair.

“The Abbot of Holy Thorn,” he replied. “But at the risk of his life. . . .”

Chapter 31

PROFESSOR MORGENSTAHL

The memory man worked industriously on his clay model. Pinned to the base of the wooden frame was a photographic enlargement of the three-cent stamp with the white paper mask. He was engrossed in his task. The clay head was assuming a grotesque semblance of the features of Dr. Fu Manchu—a vicious caricature of that splendid, evil face.

Incoming messages indicated a feverish change of plan in regard to the New York area. The names Nayland Smith and Captain Hepbum figured frequently. These two apparently were in charge of counter-operations. Reports from agents in the South, identifiable only by their numbers, spoke of the triumphant progress of the man Salvaletti. Occasional reports fi-om far up in Alaska indicated that the movement there was proceeding smoothly. The only discordant note came from the Middle West, where Abbot Donegal, a mere name to the Memory Man, seemed to be a focus of interest for many agents.

It all meant less than nothing to the prisoner who had memorized every message received since the first hour of his captivity. Sometimes, in the misery of this slavery which had been imposed upon him, he remembered happier days in Germany; remembered how at his club he had been challenged to read a page of the Berlin Tageblatt, and then to recite its contents from memory; how, without difficulty, he had succeeded and won his wager. But those were the days before his exile. He knew now how happy they had been. In the interval he had died. He was a living dead man. . . . Busily, with delicate fingers, he modelled the clay. His faith in a just God remained unshaken.

Without warning the door by which he gained access to his private quarters opened. Wearing a dark coat with an astrakhan collar, an astrakhan cap upon his head, a tall man came in. The sculptor ceased to toil and sat motionless— staring at the living face of Dr. Fu Manchu, which so long he had sought to reproduce in clay!

“Good morning, Professor Morgenstahl!”

Dr. Fu Manchu spoke in German. Except that he overstretched the gutturals, he spoke that language perfectly. Professor Morgenstahl, the mathematical genius who had upset every previous conviction respecting the relative distances of the planets, who had mapped space, who had proved that lunar eclipses were not produced by the shadow of the earth, and who now was subjugated to the dreadful task of a one-man telephone exchange, did not stir. His great brain was a file, the only file, of all the messages received at that secret headquarters from the whole of the United States. Motionless, he continued to stare at the man who wore the astrakhan cap.

That hour of which he had dreamed had come at last! He was face to face with his oppressor. . . .

Vividly before his eyes those last scenes arose: his expulsion from Germany almost penniless, for his great intellect which had won world-wide recognition had earned him little money; the journey to the United States, where no man had identified him as the famous author of “Interstellar Cycles,” nor had he sought to make himself known. He could even remember his own death—for certainly he had been dead—in a cheap lodging in Brooklyn; his reawakening in the room below (with this man, the devil incarnate, standing over him!); his enslavement, his misery.

Yes, living or dead—for sometimes he thought that he was a discarnate spirit—he must at least perform this one good deed: the dreadful Chinaman must die.

“No doubt you weary of your duties, Professor” the guttural voice continued. “But better things are to come. A change of plan is necessitated. Other quarters have been found for you, with similar facilities.”

Professor Morgenstahl, sitting behind the heavy table with its complicated mechanism, recognized that he must temporize.

“My books,” he said, “my apparatus——”