those bars. A parade of heretics who had rejected conversion passed before him in the darkness, attired in the silk and velvet, the rags and tatters, of Old Seville. Their heads lolled on their shoulders. Their skulls were crushed.
“Morris! Have you no pity for me? Is this your love . . .”
He must
“Camille, my dearest, you have faced worse things than this—”
“I tell you he is mad!”
“Unfortunately, 1 think he’s particularly sane. I even think, in a way he has the right idea.”
“I shall lose my reason! 0 God in heaven, hear me!”
Camille dropped to her knees, hands clasped in passionate supplication. Kneeling, she could no longer see Morris. But, soon, she must look again.
Meaningless incidents from the past, childish memories, trivial things, submerged dreams of a future that was never to be; Morris’s closed eyes; the open, dreadful eyes of Dr. Fu Manchu: all these images moved, in a mocking dance, through her prayers . . .
A whistle skirled—a long way off. It was answered by another, nearer.
Camille sprang up, clutched the bars.
The canopy almost touched Morris’s head. His eyes remained closed.
She began to scream wildly:
“
Craig’s hand twitched, where it rested over the gilded crown of life which meant . . . He did not open his eyes.
There came a wild tide of rushing footsteps, a charivari of shouting, crash of axes on woodwork . . .
“This way! This—way!”
Camille’s attempted cry was only a strangled murmur. She supported herself by clinging with all but nerveless ringers to the grille.
“Alight in here!” came a breathless shout.
The blade of an axe split through woodwork covering the only exterior window in the office. A second blow—a third. The planking was wrenched away. Outside lay a stone-paved passage crowded with men.
“Good God! Look! Here’s Dr. Craig, sir!”
“Be quick!” Camille murmured, and fought to check insane laughter which bubbled to her lips. “Under his hand . . . that knob . . .
Nayland Smith, his dark complexion oddly blanched, forced his way through. The canopy just touched the top of Craig’s head. A wave of strength, sanity, the last, swept over Camille.
“Sir Denis! That—gold crown—on the arm of the chair . . . Press it.”
Nayland Smith glanced swiftly towards the grille, then sprang to the chair, groped for and found a crown- shaped knob under Craig’s listless fingers, and pressed it, pressed it madly.
The clockwork sound ceased. He dropped to one knee.
“Craig! Craig!”
Beads of sweat trickled from a limp forelock down an ivory face’ but there was no reply.
Morris Craig had fainted.
* * *
“This is the way she pointed, but maybe it didn’t mean anything.” Sam had joined the party. “Gee! Those two must have gone through hell!”
“Fortunately,” said Nayland Smith, “they have youth on their side. But the ordeal was—ghastly. It is characteristic of Fu Manchu’s unusual sense of humor that the canopy is made so that it cannot descend any further. Craig was in no danger! Hullo! what’s this?”
They had reached the foot of a short flight of stone steps, the entrance to which Craig had mistaken for a deep cupboard. Harkness was in front, with two men. Two more followed. All carried flashlamps.
An empty passage, concrete-floored, extended to left and to right.
“Take a party left, Harkness. I’ll take the right.”
Ten paces brought Smith to a metal door in the wall. He pulled up. Retreating footsteps, the sound of which echoed hollowly, as in a vault, indicated that the other party had found nothing of interest so far.
“Job for a safebreaker,” Sam grumbled. “If this is the way he went, he’ll get a long start.”
“Quiet!” rapped Nayland Smith. “Listen.”
He beat a syncopated tattoo on the metal with his knuckles. Harkness’s party had apparently turned in somewhere. Their footsteps were no more than faintly audible.
Answering knocks came from the other side of the door!
“Regan!” Sam exclaimed.
Smith nodded. “This is what he called the strong room. Quiet again.”
He rapped a message—listened to the reply; then turned.
“This scent is stale,” he said shortly. “Regan states nobody has passed this way tonight.”
“We must get Mr. Regan out, right now.” Sam spoke urgently. “You, back there, O’Leary, report upstairs there’s an iron door to be softened. Poor devil! Guess he’s dumb for life!”
“Not at all,” Nayland Smith assured him. “The effect wears off after a few days—so I was recently informed by my old friend. Dr. Fu Manchu.”
He spoke bitterly—a note of defeat in the crisp voice. What had he accomplished? He could not even claim credit for saving the blueprints from Soviet hands. Some servant of Fu Manchu’s had secured them before the dogs attacked Frobisher—
“Sir Denis!” came a distant, excited hail. “This way! I think we have him!”
Nayland Smith led the run back to where Harkness and two men stood before another closed door near the end of a passage which formed an L with that from which they had started.
“I think it’s an old furnace room. And I saw a light in there!”
“Don’t waste time! Down with it!”
Two of the party carried axes. And they went to work with a will. The door was double-bolted on the inside, but it collapsed under their united onslaughts. A cavity yawned in which the rays of Nayland Smith’s lamp picked out an old-fashioned, soot-begrimed boiler, half buried in mounds of coal ash.
“Be careful!” he warned. “We are dealing with no ordinary criminal. Stand by for anything.”
They entered cautiously.
The place proved to have unexpected ramifications. It was merely part of what had been an extensive cellarage system. They groped in its darkness, shedding light into every conceivable spot where a fugitive might lie. But they found nothing. A sense of futility crept down upon all, when a cry came: “Another door here! I heard someone moving behind it!”
Over the debris and coal dust of years, they ran to join the man who had shouted. He stood in what had evidently been a coal bunker, before a narrow, grimy door.
“It’s locked.”
Keen axes and willing hands soon cleared the obstacle.
A long, sloping passage lay beyond. Up its slope, as the door crashed open, swept a current of cold, damp air. And, halfway down, a retreating figure showed, a grotesque silhouette against reflected light from his dancing flashlamp.
It was the figure of a tall man, wearing a long coat and what looked like a close-fitting cap.
“By God!” Smith shouted, “Dr. Fu Manchu! This leads to the river—”
He broke off.
Sam had hurled himself into the passage, firing the moment he crossed the threshold of the shattered door! The crash of his heavy revolver created an echo like a thunderstorm. Nayland Smith, following hard behind, saw the
