African dances which, for my part, I regard as definitely unpleasant, but judging from the rapt silence of a now invisible audience I may have been in the minority. She moved languorously along the edge of the arcade where the supper tables were set, until at last she was directly beneath us. There for a moment she paused, raised her eyes, and: “Yes!” she said.
The deep-toned, slightly hoarse voice was clearly audible above the throb of the music, and into that one word Flammario had injected triumph—and a barbaric hatred. As she continued her dance, proceeding now towards the entrance through which she had made her appearance. Smith bent to my ear.
“She has found him! The woman wins. There is not a moment to waste if we are to get there ahead of Fu Manchu’s thugs. Now to establish contact.”
To a frenzied crescendo the dancer finished. She stood for a moment arms upraised and then stepped back into the shadow behind the limelight. Smith and I were up, tense, ready for action. But the almost complete darkness remained unbroken, and as we waited Flammario re-appeared, wearing a silk wrap. She acknowledged the applause of her audience. Again she retired, and as the lights sprang up, instinctively I stared in the direction of the end supper table.
The two yellow men had gone.
“Good God!” snapped Smith, “it’s going to be touch and go. Somehow, Kerrigan, they have got hold of the information!”
He had started back towards the bar when he was intercepted by a strange figure entering. It was that of a hunchback negro, emaciated as with long illness, his small, cunning eyes so deeply set in his skull as to be almost invisible.
“Mr. Kerrigan, please?”
He looked from face to face.
“Yes,” snapped Smith, “this is Mr. Kerrigan. What do you want?”
“Follow, if you please. Hurry.”
We required no stimulus, but followed the stooping figure. As we came into the bar I saw that the attendant had the flap raised at the further end. We hurried through a doorway beyond: the door was closed behind us. Down a flight of stairs we ran and along a corridor not too well lighted. At the end I saw Flammario. She wore a long sable cloak and as we hurried forward I realized that she stood at the door of a small but luxuriously furnished dressing-room.
“Quick!” she cried. Her eyes were gleaming madly. “You are ready to start?”
“Yes. This is Sir Denis Nayland Smith. You have found Cabot?”
“I told you I had found him. I tell you now we must hurry.”
“Two agents of the Si-Fan were here a few moments ago,” said Smith rapidly. “Did you see them?”
She shrugged impatiently and the fur fell away from one bare shoulder. She snatched it back into place.
“I have to dance again in half an hour,” she explained simply. “Of course I saw them.” She stepped forward, forcing a way between Smith and myself. “Paulo!” she cried.
I turned and looked along the empty passage. The hunchback negro had disappeared.
“Do you think they have got the information?” Jerked Smith. “There is no time to think,” cried Flammario. “I tell you we must act. My car is outside. I know the way.”
“A police car would be faster,” said Smith on an even note. “One is waiting.”
Flammario was already running along the passage. “Any damn car you like!” she shouted, “but hurry? I have only half an hour and I want to see him killed. Hurry! I show you where he is—and the girl is with him.”
CHAPTER XXIII
THE CLUE OF THE RING
Police Captain Jacob Beecher was waiting beside a Police Department car not three paces from the side entrance to The Passion Fruit Tree.
“All set,” he said, as we ran out. “Where to?”
“Listen, Big Jake,” cried Flammario hoarsely, “this is my night and I give the orders.”
Even in this side-turning to which moonlight did not penetrate I could see the flash of her eyes.
“I am listening,” growled.Beecher.
“This is a gentleman’s agreement and I have two gentlemen with me. You and your boys just cover us. Leave the rest to me and my friends.”
“But where in hell are we going?” growled Beecher. “Tell me and I’ll make arrangements.”
“We are going right to Santurce, and we are moving fast. Do you know the home that used to belong to Weisman, the engineer they fired from the Canal service—eh?”
“Sure I know it.”
“That is where we go.”
“It was hired to somebody else.”
“Somebody else we are looking for.”
Then, Nayland Smith and a police driver in front and I and Flammario at the back, we set out through a velvety tropical darkness sharply cut off where a brilliant moon splashed it into silver patches. Santurce, as a residential suburb, I had deliberately overlooked in my recent quest for the shop of Zazima, so that soon, leaving more familiar parts of Colon behind, I found myself upon strange ground Flammario clutched my arm, pressed her head against my shoulder and poured out a torrent of words.
“It is Paulo who finds him. Paulo can find anyone or anything in the Canal Zone. But Paulo is of the Si-Fan. You understand—eh?”
“Yes. I expected it.”
“Although he would do anything for me, he is terrified of them. Why does he run away tonight? Where do those two thugs go? What do you think?”
“I think he gave them the information.”
“
With a sincerity which was not assumed, I replied: “Given half a chance, I absolutely undertake to do so.”
Flammario’s heavily painted lips were pressed to my left ear.
On the corner of a street in which there were detached villas, each surrounded by its own garden, a big black saloon car was drawn up with no lights on. We passed it and swung into a street beyond.
A moment later we too pulled up. I had now quite lost my bearings. White-fronted houses with their shuttered windows, young palms shooting slender masts out of banks of foliage, made a restful picture in the tropical moonlight, a picture bearing no relation to the facts which had brought us there. As we scrambled out, Flammario ahead of all, a police officer detached himself from the shadows of a high wall.
“Squad all ready,” he reported. ‘“What orders?”
“Do nothing until we are in,” Smith replied rapidly, “and keep well out of sight. The signal will be a blast on my police whistle—or shooting. The men are standing by?”
“In the big saloon, back there. Captain Beecher worked fast. Making for their posts right now.”
Flammario already was running ahead.
“One thing is important,” said Smith insistently. “Grab anyone that comes out.”
We overtook Flammario racing up a tree-shaded path towards a green-shuttered house from which no lights shone.
“How do we get in?” she panted. “Have you figured that out?”
“I have figured it out,” Smith replied, and I observed for the first time that he was carrying a handbag.
The front of the house was bathed in moonlight, but dense shrubbery grew up to it on the left and here I saw a porched door. We pulled up, watching and listening.
“Listen,” said Flammario. “This house is planned by an architect with a one-track mind. He does most of the building around here. Can you count on the police? Because when we break in, if I know Lou he will run for it.”
