“Camille—I realize that I have never been really alive before.”
But she was pressing her hands frantically against him, straining back, wild-eyed, trying to break away from his caresses. He released her. She stared up at the clock then back to Craig.
“My God! Morris! . . . Dr. Craig—”
“What is it, Camille? What is it?”
He stepped forward, but she shrank away.
“I don’t know. I’m frightened. When—when did I come in? What have I been doing?”
His deep concern, the intense sincerity of his manner, seemed to reach her. When, gently, he held her and looked into her eyes, she lowered her head until it lay upon his shoulder, intoxicating him with the fragrance of her hair.
“Camille,” he whispered, tenderly. (He could feel her heart beating.) “Tell me—what is it?”
“I don’t know—I don’t know what has happened. Please— please take care of me.”
“Do you mean you have made a mistake? It was an impulse? You are sorry for it?”
“Sorry for what?” she murmured against his shoulder.
“For letting me make love to you.”
“No—I’m not sorry if—if I did that.”
He kissed her hair, very lightly, just brushing it with his lips.
“Darling! Whatever came over you? What frightened you?”
Camille looked up at him under her long lashes.
“I don’t know.” She lowered her eyes. “How long have I been here?”
“How long? What in heaven’s name d’you mean, Camille? Are you terribly unhappy? I don’t understand at all.”
“No. I am not unhappy—but—everything is so strange.”
“Strange? In what way?”
The phone rang in Camille’s office. She started—stepped back, a sudden, alert look in her eyes.
“Don’t trouble, Camille. I’ll answer.”
“No, no. It’s quite all right.”
Camille crossed to her room, and took up the phone. She knew it to be unavoidable that she should do this, but had no idea why. Some ten seconds later she had returned to the half-world controlled by the voice of Dr. Fu Manchu . . .
When she came out of her room again, she was smiling radiantly.
“It is the message I have waited for so long—to tell me that my
mother, who was desperately ill, is no longer in danger.”
Even as he took her in his arms, Craig was thinking that there seemed to be an epidemic of sick mothers, but he dismissed the thought as cynical and unworthy. And when she gave him her lips he forgot everything else. Her distrait manner was explained. The world was full of roses.
They were ready to set out before he fully came to his senses. Camille had combed her hair in a way which did justice to its beauty. She looked, as she was, an extremely attractive woman.
He stood in the lobby, his arm around her waist, preparing to open the elevator door, when sanity returned. Perhaps it was the sight of his keys which brought this about.
“By gad!” he exclaimed. “I
He turned and ran back.
Chapter XIV
Somewhere in Chinatown a girl was singing.
Chinese vocalism is not everybody’s box of candy, but the singer had at least one enthusiastic listener. She sang in an apartment adjoining the shop of Huan Tsung, and the good looking shopman, who called himself Lao Tai, wrote at speed, in a kind of shorthand, all that she sang. From time to time he put a page of this writing into the little cupboard behind him and pressed a button.
The F.B.I, man on duty in a room across the street caught fragments of this wailing as they were carried to him on a slight breeze, and wondered how anyone who had ever heard Bing Crosby could endure such stuff.
But upstairs, in the quiet, silk-lined room, old Huan Tsung scanned page after page, destroying each one in the charcoal fire, and presently the globe beside his couch awoke to life and the face of Dr. Fu Manchu challenged him from its mysterious depths.
“The latest report to hand. Excellency.”
“Repeat it.”
Huan Tsung leaned back against cushions and closed his wrinkled eyelids.
“I have installed the ‘bazaar’ system. My house is watched and my telephone is tapped. Therefore, news is brought to Mat Cha and she sings the news to Lao Tai.”
“Spare me these details. The report.”
“Reprimand noted. Dr. Craig and Camille Navarre left the Huston Building, according to Excellency’s plan, at nine thirty-seven. One of the two detectives posted at the private entrance followed them. The other remains. No report yet to hand as to where Craig and the woman have gone.”
“Nayland Smith?”
“Nothing later than former report. Raymond Harkness still acting as liaison officer in this area.”
The widely opened green eyes were not focussed upon Huan Tsung. A physician might have suspected the pinpoint pupils to indicate that Dr. Fu Manchu had been seeking inspiration in the black smoke. But presently he spoke, incisive, masterful as ever.
“Mount a diversion at four minutes to ten o’clock. Note the time. My entrance must be masked. Whoever is on duty—remove. But no assassinations. I may be there for an hour or more. Cover my retirement. My security is your charge. Proceed.”
Light in the crystal died.
* * *
At a few minutes before ten o’clock, a man was standing at a bus stop twenty paces from the private entrance to the Huston laboratory. No bus that had pulled up there during the past hour had seemed to be the bus he was waiting for; and now he waited alone. An uncanny quietude descends upon these office areas after dusk. During the day they remind one of some vast anthill. Big-business ants, conscious of their fat dividends, neat little secretary ants, conscious of their slim ankles, run to and fro, to and fro, in the restless, formless, meaningless dance of Manhattan.
Smart cabs and dowdy cabs, gay young cabs and sad old cabs, trucks, cars, busses, bicycles, pile themselves up in tidal waves behind that impassable barrier, the red light. And over in front of the suspended torrent scurry the big ants and the little ants. But at night, red and green lights become formalities. The ants have retired from the stage, but the lights shine on. Perhaps to guide phantom ants, shades of former Manhattan dancers now resting.
So that when a boy peddling a delivery bike came out of a street beside the Huston Building, it is possible that the driver of a covered truck proceeding at speed along the avenue failed to note the light.
However this may have been, he collided with the boy, who was hurled from his bicycle. The truckman pulled up with an ear-torturing screech of brakes. The boy—apparently unhurt—jumped to his feet and put up a barrage of abuse embellished with some of the most staggering invective which the man waiting for a bus had ever heard.
The truckman, a tough-looking bruiser, jumped from his seat, lifted the blasphemous but justly indignant youth by the collar of his jacket, and proceeded to punish him brutally.
This was too much for the man waiting for a bus. He ran to the rescue. The boy, now, was howling curses in a voice audible for several blocks. Spectators appeared—as they do—from nowhere. In a matter of seconds the rescuer, the rescued, and the attacker were hemmed in by an excited group.
And at just this moment, two figures alighted from the rear of the temporarily deserted truck, walked quietly to the private door of the Huston Building, opened it, and went in. Later, Raymond Harkness would have something to say to the man waiting for a bus—whose name was Detective Officer Beaker.
