was young! Definitely, Hepburn, my ideas have become fixed. I simply cannot get used to the fact that New York City is a former stronghold of the most highly organized and highly paid underworld group which Western civilization so far has produced. That penthouse apartment, as we know now, was once occupied by Barney Flynn, the last of the big men of boot-legging days. The ingenious door in the hat cupboard was his private exit, opening into another building—a corresponding apartment which he also rented.”
“Moya didn’t know,” said Hepburn.
“I grant you that. Nor was the apartment one of her own choosing. But she remembers (although in her disturbed state at the time she accepted the fact) that Fu Manchu appeared in the vestibule—although no one had opened the door! Had I realized that he had given you his parole, I might have foreseen an attempt to escape.”
“Why?”
Nayland Smith turned to Hepburn; a faint smile crossed his lean features.
“He insisted that you should formally hand him over to me. You did so—and he promptly disappeared! Dr. Fu Manchu is a man of his word, Hepburn. . . .” He was silent awhile, then:
“I am sorry for Mrs. Adair,” he added, “and granting the circumstances, I think she has played fair. I hope the boy is out of danger.”
Hepburn sat, pensive, looking down from the plane window at a darkling map of the agrarian Middle West.
“According to all I have ever learned,” he said presently, “that boy should be dead. Even now, I can’t believe that any human power could have saved him. But he’s alive! And there’s every chance he will recover and be none the worse. You know, Smith”—he turned, his deep-set, ingenuous eyes fixed upon his companion—”that’s a miracle. . . . I saw surgery there, in that room, that I’ll swear there isn’t another man living could have performed. That incompetent fool, Burnett, had lost the life of his patient: Dr. Fu Manchu conjured it back again.”
He paused, watching the grim profile of Nayland Smith.
Dr. Fu Manchu had successfully slipped out of New York. But the police and Federal agents urged to feverish activity by emergency orders from Washington, had made one discovery: Fu Manchu was headed West.
Outside higher police commands and the Secret Service, the intensive scrutiny of all travellers on Western highways by road or rail was a mystery to be discussed by those who came in contact with it for many years afterwards. Air liners received Federal orders to alight at points not scheduled; private planes were forced down for identification; a rumour spread across half the country that foreign invasion was imminent.
Despite Nayland Smith’s endeavours, a garbled version of the facts had found currency in certain quarters; Abbot Donegal’s words had given colour to rumours. There had been riots in Asiatic sections: in one instance a lynching had been narrowly averted. The phantom of the Yellow Peril upreared its ugly head. But day by day, almost hour by hour, more and more adherents flocked to the standard of Paul Salvaletti;
who represented, had they but known, the only real Yellow Peril to which the United States ever had been exposed.
“I’m still inclined to believe,” Mark Hepburn said, “that I’m right about the object of the Doctor’s journey. He’s heading for Chicago. On Saturday night Salvaletti addresses a meeting on the result of which rests the final tipping of the scales.”
Nayland Smith twitched the lobe of his left ear.
“The Tower of the Holy Thorn is not far
That the priest’s vast audience even at this eleventh hour could split the Salvaletti camp was an admissible fact. Even now it was thought that the former Chief Executive would be returned to office; but the league faction would make that office uneasy.
“Salvaletti’s magnificent showmanship,” said Smith, “The sentimental appeal in his pending marriage, are the work of a master producer. The last act shows a brilliant adventurer assuming control of the United States! It is not impossible, nor without precedent. Napoleon Bonaparte, Mussolini, Kemal have played the part before. No, Hepburn! I doubt if Fu Manchu will passively permit Abbot Donegal to steal the limelight. . . .”
chapteb 39 THE VOICE FROM THE TOWER
all approaches to the Tower of the Holy Thorn would have reminded a veteran of an occupied town in war time. They were held up four times by armed guards. . . .
When at last the headlamps of the road monster which had been waiting at the flood-lit flying ground shone upon the bronze door, so that that thorn-crowned Head seemed to come to meet them in the darkness, Nayland Smith sprang out.
“Is Garstin there?” Hepbum called.
A man came forward.
“Captain Hepburn?”
“Yes. Anything to report?”
“All clear, Captain. It would need a regiment with machine-guns to get through!”
Mark Hepbum stared upward. The tower was in darkness right to the top; the staff which dealt with the abbot’s enormous mail had left. But from its crest light beaconed as from a pharos.
And as Mark Hepburn stood there looking up, Nayland Smith entered the study of Dom Patrick Donegal.
“Thank God I see you safe!” he said, and shot out a nervous brown hand.
Patrick Donegal grasped it, and stood for a moment staring into the eyes of the man who had burst into his room.
“Thank God indeed. You see before you a chastened man, Sir Denis.” The abbot’s ascetic features as well as his rich brogue told that he spoke from his heart. “Once I resented your peremptory orders. I have changed my
