Re-enter Fu-Manchu (14 page)

“The trouble about democracy,” Senator Merrick growled, “is that it speaks with too many voices all at the same time.”

“It’s no good flying off the handle, General,” Nayland Smith snapped, “because Dr. Hessian refuses to see you until his plans are complete. I warned you of this before you left Washington, so don’t blame
me.
He’s a genius, and he’s been through hell. He doesn’t give a damn for you or anybody else. He cursed me in German when I told him you were coming. Luckily, I don’t know much German.”

“But when,” General Rawlins demanded, “will these plans of his be complete?”

“So far as I can make out, within the next two days.”

“When he’ll graciously consent to see us?”

“His proposal is this: as soon as he’s ready to give a demonstration, he will receive a committee of responsible officers, scientists, and policymakers, to be selected by Senator Merrick, acting for the President. To me this seems fair and reasonable.”

“And the President will agree with you,” Senator Merrick declared. “World tension is reaching a peak, and I can assure you of the President’s keen concern. Well. Have I your permission, Sir Denis, to take my son to lunch?”

* * *

Out of darkness complete except for one point of green light that might have been the eye of some nocturnal animal, Fu Manchu’s voice spoke:

“It is certain that Brian Merrick, Junior, is ignorant of my purpose?”

A dull, mechanical voice replied: “There is no evidence to the contrary.”

“You have not answered my question.”

“His behavior gives cause for confidence, Excellency.”

“Explain your meaning.”

“He lunched at Senator Merrick’s club.”

“He was closely covered?”

“It was difficult. But an agent of the Order waited upon their table. He was, of course, very attentive.”

“Their conversation?”

“Chiefly concerned Sir Denis Nayland Smith.”

“It was satisfactory?”

“Entirely.”

“And after lunch?”

“Brian Merrick, Junior, saw his father off. The Senator was joined by the two Air Force officers who had lunched with Sir Denis at the Babylon-Lido.”

“Retain all contacts. Report hourly.”

The Si-Fan was watching…

* * *

When Brian returned to the suite in the Babylon-Lido, he was in a queer frame of mind. Sir Denis sat writing. Looking up, he nodded.

“Good lunch, Merrick? Don’t think too well of the catering at these university clubs, myself.”

“The lunch was all right. But I didn’t like the waiter.”

Nayland Smith laid his pen down. “Why not? Did he upset your soup?”

Brian grinned, but not happily. “No. He listened to everything I said to my father.”

“Well!” Sir Denis stood up quickly. “So the Reds have agents in the best clubs! I warned you, Merrick. What were you talking about?”

“Well, I tried to keep my father off the topic of Dr. Hessian’s invention. But of course he never suspected that a club servant might be a spy.”’

“No. I see the difficulty. You’re pretty sure the man was listening?”

“Dead sure.”

Nayland Smith began to walk about in his restless way. “The climax is so near. And we have two enemies, not one—the Reds and the Si-Fan. It’s a formidable combination, Merrick. I’m backed by two governments, but I doubt if my double backing’s as good as Dr. Fu Manchu’s. We’ve worked like beavers to keep Hessian’s presence here a secret. We have failed.”

Brian thought for a minute. “It seems to me that it wasn’t to be expected we could do that, Sir Denis. As I see it, all we have to do is make sure he’s safe. And on that point I have something to say.”

Nayland Smith darted one of his swift glances at Brian.

“What is it?” he snapped.

“Sometimes when I’ve been alone here, I’ve heard someone being admitted through the penthouse door. And I hear all sorts of footsteps overhead. If this suite is supposed to be a sort of guardroom, and we’re responsible for Dr. Hessian’s safety, shouldn’t we be advised of who is being allowed to go up?”

Nayland Smith knocked out his pipe, then produced the old pouch. He began to stuff tobacco into the cracked brier bowl.

“A good point,” he said. “We are responsible. But the FBI operative attached to Hessian has authority to admit visitors whose identity we don’t know. I’m not disputing his integrity. Fact remains, responsibility is ours. I’ll see to this, Merrick. You’re right.” Sir Denis lighted his pipe and walked out.

But when he had gone, Brian remained uncomfortably ill at ease. Up to the time of their arrival at the Babylon-Lido, Nayland Smith had seemed to be firmly in charge of operations. Now something was lacking.

Had his phenomenal success in smuggling the German scientist through the Iron Curtain, in getting him from Cairo to New York, induced Sir Denis to relax too soon? It didn’t seem to fit in with the man’s dynamic character. Surely, now was the crucial hour—in fact, he had said so. What was wrong?

In his very bones, Brian had a foreboding that something was pending that he didn’t understand. He was conscious of a longing to talk it all over with some reliable and sympathetic friend, someone he could trust.

Lola was both reliable and sympathetic… but he was bound to secrecy.

Brian walked about for some time in an unhappy frame of mind; he smoked countless cigarettes. Once, hearing faint footsteps that seemed to pause at the far end of the corridor, he crossed the foyer and quietly opened the door.

He was just in time to see the door to the penthouse stairs closing.

“Damn!” he muttered. He had caught not even a glimpse of the person who had gone in.

Listening intently, he detected the unmistakable click of a key being turned in a lock.

This irritated him unreasonably. His job, so far as he could see, remained that of an attendant, a sort of paid companion for Nayland Smith. Plots and counterplots involving the security of the United States seethed around, him, but he had no part to play. Never once had he entered the penthouse since Dr. Hessian had taken up residence there, nor had he set eyes upon him from the time of their arrival to the present moment.

The phone on the big desk rang.

“Hullo!” he called.

“Oh, Brian, I’m so glad I caught you!” It was Lola “When do you expect to be free? I can be in the Paris Bar around cocktail time. Any hope?”

“Where are you now, Lola?”

“At Michel’s. But for mercy’s sake, don’t call me back here. I’ll wait downstairs until seven, Brian. Do try.”

And she hung up.

Brian glanced at his watch. Five o’clock. Then he stood quite still, listening. French windows that opened on a balcony were partly open, and he could hear, voices from above. Someone was talking on the terrace of the penthouse.

He opened the windows fully and stepped out.

A strange voice, alternately guttural and sibilant, spoke slowly, with impressive pauses. Something in the voices touched a chord of memory, but so faintly that no idea of the speaker’s identity was conjured up. It bore a vague resemblance to the rarely heard speech of Dr. Hessian, but the language was neither German nor English. It was a language that Brian knew he had never heard before.

There were occasional replies, monosyllables in the same tongue.

Once, Brian was almost sure, the name Nayland Smith was introduced into the otherwise unintelligible jargon. But he knew he might be mistaken, for if it had in fact been that name, it was so mispronounced as to be barely recognizable.

The conversation ended abruptly. He heard a shuffle of footsteps, and knew that the speakers had gone in.

“You made it, Brian!” Lola stood up to greet him as he hurried into the Paris Bar. “I nearly gave up hope. I’m on my second drink. Did the Big Chief have a heart, after all?”

Brian dropped into a chair facing her. He longed to have her in his arms, but this was not the time. And he felt oddly dispirited.

“When he finally came in, I told him about one or two queer things that had happened, and he said boredom was getting on my nerves and ordered me to forget the job and play a while.”

He looked up at a waiter who had just appeared and ordered two more Martinis.

Lola checked him. “No more for me, Brian. I’ll finish on this one.”

Brian didn’t argue, but when the waiter went off he asked, “Surely you’re through work for the day, Lola?”

“Yes.” She was watching him, smiling. “But I like to stay sober all the same. What were these queer things that happened, Brian?”

“Oh!” He lighted a cigarette. “We seem to have some curious neighbors up above us in the penthouse. I overheard somebody talking a queer sort of jargon, and I mentioned it to Sir Denis.”

“He probably said that some United Nations representatives lived there?”

“No. He didn’t say that.” Brian tried to draw a cloak of secrecy about himself, but wasn’t quite, successful. “For a man on a dangerous mission—or so I understand—he brushed it off very lightly. Between ourselves, there are times when I wonder if Sir Denis is really up to his old form.”

“Please, Brian!” Lola smiled her one-sided smile. “Don’t talk Oxford. After all, you’re still an American.”

Brian grinned almost happily. Lola’s impudent criticism of his occasional traces of English idiom and speech, far from annoying, delighted him. It proved her interest, or so he argued. His drink arrived; he sampled it.

“Maybe I mean he’s getting too old for his job.”

Lola frowned thoughtfully, twirling her glass between sensitive fingers.

“As I haven’t met him, I can’t judge, Brian. But there’s just one thing I’d like to know: the first time you saw him in Cairo, did you think he had changed?”

Brian considered the question. “The first time I saw him was from a rooftop, and he looked the same as ever then. But later—”

“From a
rooftop
! What on earth were you doing on a roof? And where was Nayland Smith?”

Brian outlined the incident that had led him to take refuge on the roof of a house overlooking that of the Sherîf Mohammed, and told her what he had seen from there.

“There was no mistake about it, dear. The way he gripped his pipe, the trick of twitching the lobe of his ear. I knew I was looking at Nayland Smith.”

“How excited you must have been! And after that?”

Brian told her how Nayland Smith had been hiding in the house of the Sherîf Mohammed until he could make contact with the Embassy. It was a fine story, and now that Sir Denis was safe in New York there could be no harm in telling it. He told her how he had demanded an interview with the Sherîf.

“When did you see Nayland Smith again?” Lola asked.

Brian gave her an account of Sir Denis’ secret entrance to his hotel apartment, and equally secret exit.

“Was it then, Brian, when you actually talked to him, that you began to wonder if he had outlived what you call ‘his old form’?”

“Not exactly right then, Lola.”

Brian paused and drained his glass. He had thought of something; and the thing, though perhaps trivial, had staggered him, chiefly because he had never thought of it before.

“Then when, dear?”

“Later, I guess. But—when Sir Denis came to see me he had a strip of surgical plaster on the bridge of his nose.”

“Had he been in a fight?” Lola asked the question jokingly, but her gray eyes weren’t smiling.

“He’d had one hell of a time getting out of the hands of the Reds. But that’s not the point. Something that he didn’t tell me must have happened right there in Cairo. Because, when I saw him pacing around that room, and I saw him clearly, there was no plaster on his nose!”

One of the hourly reports ordered by Dr. Fu Manchu was just coming in. That solitary spark of green light glowed in the darkness.

“Brian Merrick’s complete ignorance of Operation Zero confirmed.”

“He has served his purpose, and could, be dispensed with. Henceforward he becomes a possible source of danger. Where is he now?”

“In the Sunset Room.”

“He is covered?”

“Closely, Excellency.”

“What federal operatives are on duty there?”

“Two FBI agents.”

The green light disappeared. And, invisible in the darkness, Dr. Fu Manchu laughed.

* * *

In the popular but expensive Sunset Room, high up in the Babylon-Lido, with its celebrated dance band and star-spangled floor show, Brian found himself transported to paradise. With Lola in his arms, he was lost to the world, lifted above all its petty troubles—a man rapturously in love. His frustrations, doubts, and fears had dispersed like mist-under the morning sun.

“Are you happy, dearest?” he whispered.

“Very happy, Brian.”

He was silent for a long time, living in a dream.

“I often wonder, Lola, in your wanderings about the world, if you ever met someone else who meant more to you than I do.”

“There’s no one who means more to me than you, Brian. But, like you, dear, I have a job to do. We’re both young enough to enjoy ourselves without spoiling it by getting serious for a while yet.”

Brian drew a long breath, made fragrant by the perfume of her hair. “You mean you’d rather stay with Michel than marry me?”

Lola sighed. “I reminded you once before, Brian dear, that early marriages often don’t work out.”

“But not always.”

“Brian, we’re happy! Maybe we’ll never capture this wonderful thing again.
Please
don’t get serious and spoil it all—not tonight.”

He swallowed, but found enough discretion to respect her wishes. As always, Lola was elusive—and so all the more maddeningly desirable.

He was silent for some time, and then he said, “There’s a man standing over by the door. See him? He seems to be watching us.”

“Which one do you mean, Brian?”

“The tall, dark fellow just lighting a cigarette.”

Lola laughed. “No friend of mine. Maybe he’s the house detective!”