Sax Rohmer - The Shadow of Fu Manchu

Shadows of Fu Manchu

by Sax Rohmer

Chapter I

“Who’s the redhead,” snapped Nay-land Smith, “lunching with that embassy attaché?”

“Which table?”

“Half-right. Where I’m looking.”

Harkness, who had been briefed by Washington to meet the dynamic visitor, was already experiencing nerve strain. Sir Denis Nayland Smith, ex-chief of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard, spoke in a Bren-gun manner, thought and moved so swiftly that his society, if stimulating, was exhausting.

Turning, when about to light a cigar, Harkness presently discovered the diplomat’s table. The grill was fashionable for lunch, and full. But he knew the attaché by sight. He turned back again, dropping a match in a tray.

“Don’t know. Never seen her before.”

“Haven’t you? I have!”

“Sorry, Sir Denis. Is she important?”

“A woman who looks like that is always important. Yes, I know her. But I haven’t quite placed her.”

Nayland Smith refilled his coffee cup, glanced reluctantly at a briar pipe which appeared to have been rescued from a blast furnace, and then put it back in his pocket. He selected a cigarette.

“You don’t think she’s a Russian?” Harkness suggested.

“I know she isn’t.”

Smith surveyed the crowded, panelled room. It buzzed like an aviary. Businessmen predominated. Deals of one sort or another hung in the smoke-laden air. Nearly all these men were talking about how to make money. And nearly all the women were talking about how to spend it.

But not the graceful girl with that glowing hair. He wondered what she was talking about. Her companion appeared to be absorbed, either in what she was saying or in the way she said it.

And while Nay-land Smith studied many faces, Harkness studied Nayland Smith.

He had met him only once before, and the years had silvered his hair more than ever, but done nothing to disturb its crisp virility. The lean, brown face might be a trifle more lined. It was a grim face, a face which hid a secret, until Nayland Smith smiled. His smile told the secret.

He spoke suddenly.

“Strange to reflect,” he said, “that these people, wrapped up, air tight, in their own trifling affairs, like cigarettes in cellophane, are sitting on top of a smouldering volcano.”

“You really think so?”

“I know it. Why has a certain power sent all its star agents to the United States? What are they trying to find out?”

“Secret of the atom bomb?”

“Rot! There’s no secret about it. You know that as well as I do. Once a weapon of war is given publicity, it loses its usefulness. I gain nothing by having a rock in my boxing-glove if the other fellow has one too. No. It’s something else.”

“England seems to be pretty busy?”

“England has lost two cabinet ministers, mysteriously, in the past few months.” All the time Smith’s glance had been straying in the direction of a certain party, and suddenly: “Right!” he rapped. “Thought I was. Now I’m sure! This is my lucky day.”

“Sure of what?” Harkness was startled.

“Man at the next table. Our diplomatic acquaintance and his charming friend are being covered.”

Harkness craned around again.

“You mean the sallow man?”

“Sallow? He’s Burmese! They’re not all Communists, you know.”

Harkness stared at his cigar, as if seeking to concentrate.

“You’re more than several steps beyond me. No doubt your information is away ahead of mine. But, quite honestly, I don’t understand.”

Nayland Smith met the glance of Harkness’s frank hazel eyes, and nodded sympathetically.

“My fault. I think aloud. Bad habit. There’s hardly time to explain, now. Look! They’re going! Have the redhead covered.

Detail another man to keep the Burmese scout in sight. Report to me, here. Suite 1236.”

The auburn-haired girl was walking towards the exit. She wore a plain suit and a simple hat. Her companion followed. As Harkness retired speedily, Nayland Smith dropped something which made it necessary for him to stoop when the attaché passed near his table.

Coming out onto Forty-sixth Street, Harkness exchanged a word with a man who was talking to a hotel porter. The man nodded and moved away.

Manhattan danced on. Well-fed males returned to their offices to consider further projects for making more dollars. Females headed for the glamorous shops on New York’s Street-Called-Straight: Fifth Avenue, the great bazaar of the New World. Beauty specialists awaited them. Designers of Paris hats. Suave young ladies to display wondrous robes. Suave young gentlemen to seduce with glittering trinkets.

In certain capitals of the Old World, men and women looked, haggard-eyed, into empty shops and returned to empty larders.

Manhattan danced on.

Nayland Smith, watching a car move from the front of the hotel, closely followed by another, prayed that Manhattan’s dance might not be a danse macabre.

When presently he stepped into a black sedan parked further along the street, in charge of a chauffeur who looked like a policeman (possibly because he was one), and had been driven a few blocks:

“Have we got a tail?” Smith snapped.

“Yes, sir,” the driver reported. “Three cars behind us right now. Small delivery truck.”

“Stop at the next drugstore. I’ll check it.”

When he got out and walked into the drugstore the following truck passed, and then pulled in higher up.

Nayland Smith came out again and resumed the journey. Two more blocks passed:

“Right behind us,” the driver reported laconically.

Smith took up a phone installed in the sedan and gave brief directions. So that long before he had reached his destination the truck was still following the sedan, but two traffic police were following the truck. He had been no more than a few minutes in the deputy commissioner’s office on Centre Street before a police sergeant came in with the wanted details.

The man had been pulled up on a technical offense and invited, firmly, to produce evidence of his identity. Smith glanced over the report.

“H’m. American citizen. Born in Athens.” He looked up. “You’re checking this story that he was taking the truck to be repaired?”

“Sure. Can’t find anything wrong with it. Very powerful engine for such a light outfit.”

“Would be,” said Smith drily “File all his contacts. He mustn’t know. You have to find out who really employs him.”

He spent a long time with the deputy commissioner, and gathered much useful data. He was in New York at the request of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and had been given almost autocratic powers by Washington. When, finally, he left, he had two names pencilled in his notebook.

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