Her first instructions in regard to Bragg had related to the forthcoming debate at Carnegie Hall. She had given him certain typed notes, with many of which he had quarrelled furiously. The odd fact had dawned upon her during this first interview that Bragg had never met the President!
“I’ll play this bunch of underground stiffs just as long as their funds last out,” he had declared. “But you can tell your ‘President’ that what I need is money, not his orders!”
Moya pointed out that directions received in the past had invariably led to success. Bragg, becoming more and more deeply intrigued, had tried to cross-examine. Failing, he had changed his tactics and made coarsely violent love to her. . . .
She raised her face, as she hurried along, to the healing purity of the moonlight. Salvaletti tactfully had terminated that first hateful interview; but she shrank from Salvaletti as she instinctively shrank from snakes. Since then, the scene had been re-enacted—many times.
She had reached her hotel and was just turning into the doorway when a hand touched her shoulder. . . .
It had come—and, almost, it was welcome!
Since that snowy night outside the Tower of the Holy Thorn, hourly she had expected arrest. She glanced swiftly aside.
A tall, bearded man who wore glasses, a black hat and a caped topcoat stood at her elbow.
“Live here, Mrs. Adair?” he asked drily.
A stream of traffic released at that moment by a changing light almost drowned her reply, in so low a voice did she speak.
“Yes. Who are you, and what do you want?”
Yet even as she spoke she knew that she had heard that monotonous voice before. Under the shadow of his hat brim the man’s eyes glistened through the spectacles.
“I want to step inside and have a word with you.”
“But I don’t know you.”
The man pulled the caped coat aside and she saw the glitter of a gold badge. Yes, she had been right—a federal officer! It was finished: she was in the hands of the law, free of that awful President, but. . .
The lobby of the expensively discreet apartment hotel was deserted, for the hour was late. But as they sat down facing each other across a small table, Moya Adair had entirely recovered her composure. She had learned in these last years that she could not afford to be a woman; she blessed the heritage of courage and common sense which was hers. It had saved her from madness, from suicide; from even worse than suicide.
And now the federal agent removed his black hat. She knew him and, in the moment of recognition, wondered why she was glad.
She smiled into the bearded face—and Moya was not ignorant of the fact that her smile was enchanting.
“Am I to consider myself under arrest?” she asked. “Because, if so, I don’t expect to have the same luck as last time.”
Mark Hepburn removed his black-rimmed spectacles and stared at her steadily. She remembered his deep-set eyes— remembered them as dreamy eyes, the eyes of a poet. Now, they were cold. Her brave flippancy had awakened the Quaker ancestors, those restless Puritan spirits who watched eternally over Mark Hepburn’s soul. This was the traditional attitude of a hardened adventuress. When he replied, his voice sounded very harsh.
“Technically, it’s my duty to arrest you, Mrs. Adair; but we’re not so trammelled by red tape as the police.” He was watching her firm, beautifully modelled lips and trying to solve the mystery of how she could give her kisses to Harvey Bragg. “I have been waiting ever since that night at the Tower for a chat with you.”
She made no reply.
“An associate of yours on Abbot Donegal’s staff was murdered recently, right outside the Regal Hotel. You may have heard of it?”
Moya Adair nodded.
“Yes; but why do you say he was murdered?”
“Because I know who murdered him and so do you: Dr. Fu Manchu.”
He laid stress on the name, staring into Moya’s eyes. But with those words he had enabled her to speak the truth, unafraid. That he referred to the President she divined; but to all connected with the organization the President’s name was unknown, except that on two occasions she had heard him referred to as “the Marquis.”
“To the best of my knowledge,” she replied quietly, “I have never met anyone called Dr. Fu Manchu.”
Mark Hepburn, who had obtained Nyaland Smith’s consent to handle this matter in his own way, realized that he had undertaken a task beyond his powers. This woman knew that she was fighting for her freedom—and he could not torture her. He was silent for a while, watching her, then:
“I should hate to think of you,” he said, “undergoing a police interrogation, Mrs. Adair. But you must know as well as I know that there’s a plot afoot to obtain control of this country. You are in on it: it’s my business to be. I can guarantee your safety; you can quit the country if you like. I know where you come from in County Wicklow; I know where your father is at the present time. . . .”
Moya Adair’s eyes opened fully for a moment and then quite closed. This man was honest, straight as a die: he offered her freedom, the chance to live her own life again . . . and she could not, dared not, accept what he offered!
“You have no place in murder gangs. You belong in another sphere. I want you to go back to it. I want you to be on the right side, not the wrong. Trust me, and you won’t regret it, but try any tricks and you will leave me no alternative.”
He ceased speaking, watching Moya’s face. She was looking away from him with an unseeing gaze. But he knew because of his sensitively sympathetic character that she understood and was battling with some problem outside his knowledge. The half-lighted lobby was very quiet, so that when a man who had been seated in a chair at the farther end, unsuspected, crossed to the elevator, Mark Hepburn turned sharply, glancing in his direction. Mrs. Adair remained abstracted. At the end of a long silence: “I am going to trust you,” she said, and looked at him steadily, “because I know I can. I am glad we have met—for after all there may be a way. Will you believe me if I swear to carry out what I am going to suggest. . .?”
Two minutes later, the man who had gone up in the elevator was speaking on the telephone in his apartment.
“Miss Eileen Breon talking in the lobby with a bearded man wearing spectacles and a black caped topcoat. Time 2.55 a.m. Report from Number 49.”
Chapter 19
THE CHINESE CATACOMBS
Orwin Prescott opened his eyes and stared about the small bedroom—at two glass-topped tables, white enamelled walls, at a green-shaded lamp set near an armchair in which a nurse was seated; a very beautiful nurse whose dark eyes were fixed upon him intently.
He did not speak immediately, but lay there watching her and thinking.
Something had happened—at Carnegie Hall. The memory was not clear-cut; but something had happened in the course of his debate with Harvey Bragg. Had over-study, over-anxiety, resulted in a nervous breakdown? This was clearly a clinic in which he found himself.
In this idea he thought he saw a solution of the mental confusion in his mind. He was fascinated by the darkly beautiful face framed in the white nurse’s cap. Vaguely, he knew that he had seen the nurse before. He moved slowly, and found to his delight that there seemed to be nothing physically wrong with him. Then he spoke:
“Nurse——” his voice was full, authoritative; he recognized that in brain and body he was unimpaired by whatever had happened—”this is very bewildering. Please tell me where I am.”
The nurse stood up and walked to the bed: she was very slender, her movements were graceful.