President Fu-Manchu (18 page)

“Thanks to your selection of a remarkable physician, Norbert, I have never felt more fit.”

“It’s good to hear you say so. I’ll go ahead now; you start in twenty minutes. I will collect the brushes and odds and ends tomorrow. I thought it best to arrange for a car with drawn blinds. The last thing we want is an ovation on the street which might hold you up. You’ll be driven right to the entrance, where I shall be waiting for you.”

Less than two minutes after Norbert’s departure, Nurse Arlen came in.

“I was almost afraid,” said Orwin Prescott, “that I was not to see you again before I left.”

She stood just by the door, one hand resting on a slender hip, watching him with those long, narrow, dark eyes.

“How could you think I would let so interesting a patient leave without wishing him every good fortune for tonight?”

“Your wishes mean a lot to me. I shall never forget the kindness I have experienced here.”

The woman’s dark eyes closed for a moment, and when they reopened, their expression had subtly changed.

“That is kind of you,” she said. “For my own part I have only obeyed orders.”

She seated herself beside him on the settee and accepted a cigarette he offered from the full case which Norbert had thoughtfully brought along. Vaguely he was conscious of tension.

“I hope to see you again,” he said, lighting her cigarette. “Is that too much to hope?”

“No,” she replied laughingly; “there is no reason why I shouldn’t see you again, Doctor. But”—she hesitated, glanced at him quickly, and then looked aside—“I have practically given up social life. You would find me very dull company.”

“Why should you have given up social life?” Orwin Prescott spoke earnestly. “You are young, you are beautiful. Surely all the world is before you.”

“Yes,” said Nurse Arlen, “in one sense it is. Perhaps some day I may have a chance to try to explain to you. But now…” She stood up. “I have one more duty before you leave for Carnegie Hall—physician’s orders.”

She crossed to the glass-topped table and, from a little phial which stood there, carefully measured out some drops of a colorless liquid into a graduated glass. She filled it with water from a pitcher and handed it to Orwin Prescott.

“I now perform my last duty,” she said. “You are discharged as cured.”

She smiled. It was the smile which had haunted his dreams: a full-lipped, caressing smile which he knew he could never forget. He took the glass from her hand and drained its contents. The liquid was quite tasteless.

Almost immediately, magically, he became aware of a great exhilaration. His mental powers, already keen, were stimulated to a point where it seemed that his heel was set upon the world as on a footstool; that all common clay formed but stepping-stones to a goal undreamed of by any man before him. It was a kind of intoxication never hitherto experienced in his well-ordered life. How long it lasted he was unable to judge, or what of it was real, and what chimerical.

He thought that, carried out of himself, he seized the siren woman in his arms; that almost she surrendered but finally resisted…

Then, sharply, as lightning splits the atmosphere, came sudden and absolute sobriety.

Orwin Prescott stared at Nurse Arlen. She stood a pace away watching him intently.

“That was a heady draft,” he said, and his tones were apologetic.

“Perhaps my hand shook,” Nurse Arlen replied; her caressing voice was not quite steady. “I think it is time for you to go, Dr. Prescott. Let me show you the way.”

He presently found himself in a small elevator which Nurse Arlen operated. Stepping out at the end of a narrow corridor, and a door being opened, he entered a covered courtyard where a Cadillac was waiting. The chauffeur, who wore driving-glasses, was yellow-skinned—he might have been an Asiatic. He held the door open.

“Good night,” said Orwin Prescott, one foot on the step. He held Nurse Arlen’s hand, looking, half afraid, into her dark eyes.

“Goodnight,” she replied—“good luck!”

The windows were shaded. A moment after the door was closed the big car moved off.

* * *

Dr. Fu-Manchu sat in the stone-faced room behind that narrow table whose appointments suggested those of a medical consultant. His long yellow fingers with their pointed nails rested motionless upon the table-top. His eyes were closed. The curtain which draped the opening was drawn aside, and Sam Pak entered: “Sam Pak”—a name which concealed another once honored in China.

Dr. Fu-Manchu did not open his eyes.

“Orwin Prescott is on his way to Carnegie Hall, Master,” the old man reported, speaking in Chinese, but not in the Chinese which those of the London police who knew him and who knew something of Eastern languages were accustomed to hear. “The woman did her work, but not too well. I fear there were four and not three drops in the final draft.”

“She is a broken reed.” The sibilant voice was clearly audible, although the thin-lipped mouth appeared scarcely to move. “She was recommended in high quarters, but her sex vibrations render her dangerous. She is amorous, and she has compassion: it is the negroid strain. Her amours do not concern me. If men are her toys, she must play; but the fibre and reality of her womanhood must belong to
me
. If she betrays me, she shall taste the lingering kiss of death… For this reason I removed her from Harvey Bragg in the crisis, and substituted the woman Adair. You are uncertain respecting the drops?”

The jade-green eyes opened, and a compelling stare fixed itself upon the withered face of Sam Pak.

“I was watching—her hand was not steady; he became intoxicated. By this I judged.”

“If she has failed me, she shall suffer.” The guttural voice was very harsh. “The latest report regarding this pestilential priest?”

“Number 25, in charge of Z-cars covering Carnegie Hall, reports that the Abbot Donegal has not entered the building.”

There was a silence of several moments.

“This can mean only one of two things,” came sibilantly. “He is there, disguised, or he is in Federal hands and Enemy Number One may triumph at the last moment.”

Old Sam Pak emitted a sound resembling the hiss of a snake.

“Even I begin to doubt if our gods are with us,” the high, precise voice of Fu-Manchu continued. “What of my boasted powers, of those agents which I alone know how to employ? What of the thousands of servants at my command throughout the world? That Nayland Smith has snapped at my heels—may now at any moment bark outside my door. This brings down my pride like a house of cards. Gods of my fathers”—his voice sank lower and lower—“is it written that I am to fail in the end?”

“Quote not from Moslem fallacies,” old Sam Pak wheezed. “Your long contact with the Arabs, Marquis, is responsible for such words.”

Few living men could have sustained the baleful glare of those jade-green eyes now fully opened. But Sam Pak, unmoved by their hypnotism, continued:

“I, too, have some of the wisdom, although only a part of yours. The story of your life is traced by your own hand. This you know: fatalism is folly. I, the nameless, speak because I am near to you and, loving you, am fearless in your service.”

Dr. Fu-Manchu stood up; his bony but delicate fingers selected certain objects on the table.

“Without you, my friend,” he said softly, “I should indeed be alone in this my last battle, which threatens to become my Waterloo. Let us proceed”—he moved, cat-like around the end of the long table—“to the supreme experiment. Failure means entire reconstruction of our plans.”

“A wise man can build a high tower upon a foundation of failures,” crooned old Sam Pak.

Dr. Fu-Manchu, silent-footed, went out into the room haunted by the seven-eyed goddess; crossed it, descended stairs, old Sam Pak following. They passed along the corridor of the six coffins and came to the dungeon where Herman Grosset lay upon a teak bench. The straps had been removed—he seemed to be sleeping peacefully.

One of Sam Pak’s Chinamen was on guard. He bowed and withdrew as Dr. Fu-Manchu entered. Old Sam Pak crouched beside the recumbent body, his ear pressed to his hairy chest. Awhile he stayed so, and then looked up, nodding.

Dr. Fu-Manchu bent over the sleeping man, gazing down intently at the inert muscular body. He signaled to Sam Pak, and the old Chinaman, exhibiting an ape-like strength, dragged Grosset’s tousled head aside. With a small needle syringe Dr. Fu-Manchu made an injection. He laid the syringe aside and watched the motionless patient. Nearly two minutes elapsed… Then, with an atomizer, Dr. Fu-Manchu projected a spray first up the right and then up the left nostril of the unconscious man.

Ten seconds later Grosset suddenly sat upright, gazing wildly ahead. His gaze was caught and held by green compelling eyes, only inches removed from his own. His muscular hands clutched the sides of the bench; he stayed rigid in that pose.

“You understand”—the strange voice was pitched very low: “The word of command is ‘Asia.’”

“I understand,” Grosset replied. “No man shall stop me.”

“The word,” Fu-Manchu intoned monotonously, “is ‘Asia.’”

“Asia,” Grosset echoed.

“Until you hear that word”—the voice seemed to come from the depths of a green lake—“forget, forget all that you have to do.”

“I have forgotten.”

“But remember… remember, when you hear the word ‘Asia’…”

“Asia.”

“Sleep and forget. But remember that the word is ‘
Asia
’.”

Herman Grosset sank back and immediately became plunged in deep sleep. Dr. Fu-Manchu turned to Sam Pak.

“The rest is with you, my friend,” he said.

H
arvey Bragg turned round in the chair set before the carved writing-table in the study of the Dumases’ apartment. He was dressed for the meeting, destined to take its place in American history. Above the table, in a niche and dominating the room, was a reproduction of the celebrated statue of Bussy d’Ambois. The table itself was an antique piece of great value, once the property of Cardinal Mazarin.

“Listen, Baby, I want to get this right.” Harvey Bragg stood up. “I’m all set, but I’m playing a part, and I’m not used to playing any part but the part of Harvey Bragg. Bring me into the party, Eileen. Nobody knows better than you. Lola is a hard case, but I guess you’re a regular kid.”

Moya Adair, seated at the end of the table, raised her eyes to the speaker.

“What do you want to know?” she asked.

“I want to know”—Bragg came a step nearer, rested his hands on the table, and bent down—“I want to know if I’m being played for a sucker; because if I am, God help the man who figures to put that stuff over on me! I’ve had dough to burn for long enough—some I could check up and some from this invisible guy, the President. Looks to me like the President’s investment is a total loss… and I never met a rich guy who went around looking for bum stock. This crazy shareholder is starting to try to run my business for me. Listen, Eileen: I’ll step where I’m told, if I know where I’m stepping.”

There was a momentary silence broken only by the dim hum of traffic in Park Avenue below.

“You would be a fool,” said Moya calmly, “to quarrel with a man who believed in you so implicitly that he is prepared to finance you to the extent of many million dollars. His object is to make you President of the United States. He has selected me to be your secretary because he believes that I have the necessary capacity for the work. I can tell you no more. He is a man of enormous influence and he wishes to remain anonymous. I can’t see that you have any cause for quarrel with him.”

Harvey Bragg bent lower, peering into the alluring face.

“I’ve learned up a lot of cues,” he said; “cues you have given me. Seems I have to become an actor. And”—he banged his open hand upon the table—“I don’t know even at this minute that Orwin Prescott is going to be there!”

“Orwin Prescott will be there.”

“It’s big fun, isn’t it”—now his face was but inches removed from Moya’s—“to know that my secretary is wised up on the latest moves and that I’m a pawn in the game? There’s another thing, Eileen. Maybe you know what’s become of Herman Grosset? He checked in on nowhere more than an hour back, and I never move out without Herman.”

He grasped Moya’s shoulders. She turned her head aside.

“You’re maybe wiser than you look, pretty. You know where I stand. No President can baulk me now. We’ve started wrong. Let’s forget it. Look at me. I want to tell you something—”

Came a discreet rap on the study door.

“Hell!” growled Harvey Bragg. He released Moya, stood upright and turned:

“Come in.”

The door opened, and Salvaletti entered, smiling but apologetic.

“Well!” Bragg challenged.

“It’s time we left for Carnegie Hall.”

Salvaletti spoke in a light, silvery voice.

“Where’s Herman? I want to see him.”

Salvaletti slightly inclined his head.

“You have naturally been anxious; so have I. But he is here.”

“What!”

“He arrived only a few minutes ago. His explanation of his absence is somewhat…” He shrugged.