Sam appeared from somewhere, chewing industriously.
“Yes, boss?”
“Did you cough?”
“Me? No, sir. Why?”
“Thought I heard someone coughing. Stand by. I want you to come along with me in a minute.”
He returned took his jacket from a hook and put it on: then draped his topcoat over his arm. He was just reaching for his hat, when he remembered something. Dropping the coat over the back of a chair, he crossed to the door of Camille’s room, rapped, and opened.
She looked up in a startled way, glancing at the glasses beside her.
“Sorry—er—Miss Navarre, but may I borrow your key? Lent mine to Nayland Smith.”
Camille’s eyes appeared to Craig to change color, but that faint twitch of the lip which heralded a smile reassured him.
“Certainly, Dr. Craig.”
She pulled a ring out of her handbag and began to detach the key which opened both elevators and the street door. Craig watched her deft white fingers, noting with approval that she did not go in for the kind of nail varnish which suggests that its wearer has been disembowelling a pig.
And as he watched, the meaning of Camille’s repressed smile suddenly came to him.
“I say!” he exclaimed. “Just a minute. Pause. Give me time to reflect.”
Camille looked up.
“Yes. Dr. Craig?”
“How are you going to cut out for eats, as recommended, if I pinch your key?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter a little bit.”
“Doesn’t matter? It matters horribly. I’m not going to leave you locked up here in the ogre’s tower with no means of escape. I firmly repeat—pause. I will borrow Regan’s key.”
“But—”
“There are no buts. I want you to nip out for a speck of nourishment, like a good girl.”
He waved his hand and was gone
Camille sat looking towards the door for fully a minute after it had closed.
* * *
“It may be best,” said Nayland Smith, “if we dine in the restaurant here. I expect calls, too.”
“Must say I’ll breathe more freely,” Craig admitted. “I never expected to slink around New York as if crossing enemy territory. What news of Moreno?”
Smith knocked ash from his pipe with unusual care.
“Poor devil,” he said softly.
“Like that, is it?”
Smith nodded. “I went there after leaving you. His wife had been sent for. Nice kid, little more than a child. Only married six months. Maddison Lowe is probably the ace man in his province, but he’s beaten this time.”
“Have they identified the stuff used?”
“No. It’s nothing on the order of
“Good God, Smith! You make me shudder. What kind of man is this?”
“A genius, Craig. He is above ordinary emotions. Men and women are just pieces on the board. Any that become useless, or obstructive, he removes. It’s quite logical.”
“It may be. But it isn’t human.”
“You are not the first to doubt if Dr. Fu Manchu is human, in the generally accepted sense of the word. Certainly he has long outlived man’s normal span. He claims to have mastered the secret of prolonging life.”
“Do you believe it?”
“I can’t doubt it. He was elderly from all accounts when I first set eyes on him, in a Burmese forest. He nearly did for me, then—using the same method—as he has done for poor Moreno, now. And that was more years ago than I care to count.”
“Good heavens! How old is he?”
“God knows. Come on. Let’s get some dinner. We have a lot to talk about.”
As they entered the restaurant, to be greeted by a maitre d’hotel who knew Nayland Smith, Craig saw the steely eyes turning swiftly right and left. With the ease of one who has been a target for criminals all over the world, Smith was analyzing every face in the room.
“That table by the wall,” he rapped, pointing.
“I am so sorry, Sir Denis. That table is reserved.”
“Reserve another, and say you made a mistake.”
A ten-dollar bill went far to clinch the matter. There was some running about by waiters, whispering and side glances, to which Nayland Smith paid no attention. As he and Craig sat down:
“You note,” he explained tersely, “I can see the entrance from here. Adjoining table occupied. People harmless . . .”
Whilst Morris Craig attacked a honeydew melon, Smith covertly watched him. and then:
“Highly attractive girl, that secretary of yours,” he jerked casually.
Craig looked up.
“Quite agree. Highly competent, too.”
“Remarkable hair.”
“Ah, you noticed it! Pity she hides it like that.”
“Hides her eyes, too,” said Smith drily.
But Craig did not reply. He had been tempted to do so, and then had changed his mind. Instead he studied a wine list which a waiter had just handed to him. As he ordered a bottle of Chateau Margaux, he was thinking, “Has Camille gone out? Where has she gone? Is she doing herself well?” Yes, Camille had remarkable hair, and her eyes— For some obscure reason he found himself wondering who could have coughed in the office just before he left, and wondering, too, in view of the fact that, failing Sam, it was quite unaccountable, why he had dismissed the incident so lightly.
“The devil of it is, Craig,” Nayland Smith was saying, “that Fu Manchu, who has come dangerously near to upsetting the order of things more than once, is no common criminal.”
“Evidently”
“He doesn’t work for personal gain. He’s a sort of cranky idealist. I said tonight that I prayed you might never meet him. The prayer was a sincere one. The force which Dr. Fu Manchu can project is as dangerous, in its way, as that which you have trapped in your laboratory. Five minutes in his company would convince you that you stood in the presence of a phenomenal character.”
“I’m prepared to believe you. But I don’t understand how such a modern Cesare Borgia can wander around New York and escape the police!”
Nayland Smith leaned across the table and fixed his steady gaze on Craig.
“Dr. Fu Manchu,” he said deliberately, “will never be arrested by any ordinary policeman. In my opinion, the plant on top of the Huston Building should be smashed to smithereens.” His speech became rapid, rattling. “It’s scientific lunatics like you who make life perilous. Agents of three governments are watching you. I may manage the agents—but I won’t make myself responsible for Dr. Fu Manchu.”
* * *
Could Morris Craig have seen the face of the Chinese doctor at that moment, he might better have appreciated Nayland Smith’s warning.
In his silk-lined apartment in Pell Street, old Huan Tsung was contemplating the crystal as a Tibetan devotee contemplates the Grand Lama. Mirrored within it was that wonderful face, dominated by the blazing green eyes.
“I am served,” came sibilantly in Chinese, “by fools and knaves. We, of the Seven, are pledged to save the world from destruction by imbeciles. It seems that we are children, and blind ourselves.”
Huan Tsung did not speak. The cold voice continued.
