The Shadow of Fu Manchu

“But nothing has been disturbed. There’s no evidence that anyone has been here.”

“There wouldn’t be!” said Smith grimly. “Dangerous criminals leave no clues. The visitor I suspect would only want a short time to examine the plant—and to borrow Craig’s figure of the transmuter valve—”

“That would mean opening the safe.”

“Exactly what we have to do—open the safe.”

“No one but Dr. Craig has a key—or knows the combination.”

“There are other methods,” said Nayland Smith drily. “I am now going out to examine the safe.”

He proceeded to do so, and made a thorough job of it. Shaw came down and joined him.

“Nothing to show it’s been tampered with,” Smith muttered . . . “Hullo! who comes?”

He had detected that faint sound made by the private elevator. He turned to face the lobby; so did Shaw.

The elevator ascended, stopped. A door banged. And Morris Craig ran in.

“Smith!” he exclaimed—and both men saw that he was deathly pale. “What’s this? What has happened? I was brought here by two detectives—”

“Serves you right!” rapped Nayland Smith. “Don’t talk. Act. Be good enough to open this safe.”

“But”

“Open it.”

Craig, his hand none too steady, pulled out his keys, twirled the dial, and opened the safe. Nayland Smith and Martin Shaw bent over his shoulders.

They saw a number of papers, and Craig’s large drawing board.

But there was nothing on the board! A moment of silence followed—ominous silence.

Then Nayland Smith faced Craig.

“I don’t know,” he said, and spoke with unusual deliberation, “what lunacy led you to desert your job tonight. But I am anxious to learn”—he pointed—”what has become of the vital drawing and the notes, upon which you were working.”

Morris Craig forced a smile. It was an elder brother of the one he usually employed. Some vast, inexpressible relief apparently had brought peace to his troubled mind.

“If that’s all,” he replied, “the answer’s easy. I had a horrible idea that—something had happened—to Camille.”

Nayland Smith exchanged a glance with Shaw.

“Ignoring the Venusburg music for a moment”—the words were rapped out in his usual staccato manner —”where is the diagram?”

Morris Craig smiled again—and the junior smile was back on duty. He removed his topcoat, stripped his jacket off, and groped up under his shirt. From this cache he produced a large, folded sheet of paper and another, smaller sheet—the one decorated with a formula like a Picasso painting.

“In spite of admittedly high temperature at time of departure, I remembered that I was leaving town in the morning. I decided to take the job with me. If”—he glanced from face to face—”you suspect some attempt on the safe, all the burglar found was—Old Mother Hubbard. I carry peace to Falling Waters.”

Chapter XVI

The library at Falling Waters was a pleasant room. It was panelled in English oak imported by Stella Frobisher. An open staircase led up to a landing which led, in turn, to rooms beyond. There were recessed bookcases. French windows gave upon a paved terrace overlooking an Italian garden. Sets of Dickens, Thackeray, Punch, and Country Life bulked large on the shelves.

There was a handsome walnut desk, upon which a telephone stood, backed by a screen of stamped Spanish leather. Leather-covered armchairs and settees invited meditation. The eye was attracted (or repelled) by fine old sporting prints. Good Chinese rugs were spread on a well-waxed floor.

Conspicuous above a bookcase, and so unlike Stella’s taste, one saw a large, glazed cabinet containing a colored plan of the grounds surrounding Falling Waters. It seemed so out of place.

On occasional tables, new novels invited dipping. Silver caskets and jade caskets and cloisonne caskets contained cigarettes to suit every palate. There were discreet ornaments. A good reproduction of Queen Nefertiti’s beautiful, commercialized head above a set of Balzac, in French, which no member of this household could read. A bust of Shakespeare. A copy of the Discus Thrower apparently engaged in throwing his discus at a bust by Epstein on the other side of the library.

A pleasant room, as sunshine poured in to bring its lifeless beauties to life, to regild rich bindings, on this morning following those strange occurrences in the Huston research laboratory.

Michael Frobisher was seated at the walnut desk, the phone to his ear. Stein, his butler-chauffeur, stood at his elbow. Michael Frobisher was never wholly at ease in his own home. He remained acutely conscious of the culture with which Stella had surrounded him. This morning, his unrest was pathetic.

‘“But this thing’s just incredible! . . . What d’you say? You’re certain of your facts, Craig? Regan never left a note like that before? . . . What d’you mean, he hasn’t come back? He must be in some clinic . . . The police say he isn’t? To hell with the police! I don’t want police in the Huston laboratory . . . You did a wise thing there, but I guess it was an accident . . . Bring the notes and drawing right down here. For God’s sake, bring ‘em right down here! How do we know somebody hasn’t explored the plant? Listen! how do we know?”

He himself listened awhile, and then:

“To hell with Nayland Smith!” he growled. “Huston Electric doesn’t spend half a million dollars to tip the beans into his pocket. He’s a British agent. He’ll sell us out! Are you crazy? . . . He may be backed by Washington. What’s good that comes to us from Washington, anyway?”

He listened again, and suddenly:

“Had it occurred to you,” he asked on a note of tension, “that Regan could be the British agent? He joined us from Vickers . . .”

When at last he hung up:

“Is there anything you want me to do?” Stein asked.

Stein was a man who, seated, would have looked like a big man, for he had a thick neck, deep chest, and powerful shoulders. But, standing, he resembled Gog, or Magog, guardian deities of London’s Guildhall; a heavy, squat figure, with heavy, squat features. Stein wore his reddish hair cut close as a Prussian officer’s. He had a crushed appearance, as though someone had sat on his head.

Frobisher spun around. “Did you get it?”

“Yes. It is serious.” (Stein furthermore had a heavy, squat accent.) “But not so serious as if they have found the detail of the trans-muter.”

“What are you talking about?” Frobisher stood up. “There’s enough in the lab to give away the whole principle to an expert.”

That grey undertone beneath his florid coloring was marked.

“This may be true—”

“And Regan’s disappeared!”

“I gathered so.”

“Then—hell!”

“You are too soon alarmed,” said Stein coolly. “Let us wait until we have all the facts.”

“How’11 we ever have all the facts?” Frobisher demanded. “What are the facts about things that happen right here? Who walks around this house at night like a ghost? Who combed my desk papers? Who opened my safe? And who out of hell went through your room the other evening while you were asleep? Tell me who, and then tell me whyI”

But before Stein had time to answer these reasonable inquiries, Stella Frobisher fluttered into the library. She wore a Hollywood pinafore over her frock, her hands were buried in gauntlet gloves, and she carried a pair of large scissors. Her blond hair was dressed as immaculately as that of a movie star just rescued from a sinking ship.

“I know I look a fright, dear,” she assured Frobisher. “I have been out in the garden, cutting early spring flowers.”

She emphasized “cutting” as if her more usual method was to knock their heads off with a niblick.