“I take big risks because I know how to protect myself. While you’re for Harvey, I’m for you. If I thought you’d dare to cross him, you’d start out for your Chinese paradise this very minute. Harvey is going to be President. Harvey is going to be Dictator. Nothing else can set the country to rights. I wouldn’t hesitate——” he tapped the gun barrel on the table, watching out of the corner of his eye the old Chinaman on the settee— “I wouldn’t hesitate to shoot down any man living that got in his way. When he made me boss of his bodyguard he did the right thing.”
Dr. Fu Manchu’s long yellow hands with their cruelly pointed nails remained quite motionless. He did not stir a muscle;
his eyes were mere green slits in the yellow mask. Then:
“No one doubts your loyalty to Harvey Bragg,” he said softly; “That point is not in dispute. It is known that you love him.”
“I’d die for him.”
The automatic disappeared into the pocket from which it had been taken. Two men stripped to the waist entered so silently that even the movement of the curtain was not audible. They sprang from behind like twin panthers upon Grosset.
“Hell!” he roared, “what’s this game!”
He bent his powerful body forward, striving to throw one of his assailants across his shoulder, but realized that he was gripped in a stranglehold.
“You damned yellow double-crosser.” he groaned, as his right arm was twisted back to breaking-point.
From behind, an expanding gag was slipped into his gaping mouth. He gurgled, groaned, tried to kick, then collapsed as the pressure of fingers made itself felt, agonizingly, upon his eyeballs. . . .
He had not even seen his assailants when straps were buckled about his legs, and his arms lashed behind him.
Throughout, Dr. Fu Manchu never stirred. But when the man, his eyes fixed in frenzied hate upon the Chinese doctor, was carried, uttering inarticulate sounds, from the room, and the curtain fell behind his bearers:
“It is good, my friend,” Fu Manchu said gutturally, addressing the mummy-like figure on the settee, “that you succeeded in bringing me a few expert servants.”
“It was well done,” old Sam Pak muttered.
“To-night,” the precise tones continued, “we put our fortunes to the test. The woman Adair, to whom I have entrusted the tuition of Harvey Bragg, is one I can rely upon; I hold her in my hand. But the man himself, in his bloated arrogance, may fail us. I fear for little else.” His eyes became closed; he was thinking aloud. “If Enemy Number One has Abbot Donegal, all approaches to Carnegie Hall must be held against them. This I can arrange. We have little else to fear.”
From the material upon the table he delicately charged a hypodermic syringe with a pale-green fluid. Sam Pak watched him with misty eyes, and Dr. Fu Manchu stood up.
“It is unfortunate,” he said, but there was a note of scientific enthusiasm in the guttural voice, “that my first important experiment in the use of this interesting drug should involve in success or failure such high issues. Come, my friend; I desire you to be present. . . .”
Across the silent temple of the seven-eyed goddess they went: Fu Manchu with his cat-like walk; old Sam Pak shuffling behind. The place was silent and empty. They descended a stone stair, traversed the corridor lined with six painted coffins, and passed the steel door beyond which a secret passage led to East River.
In a small, cell-like room, lighted by a pendant lamp, Herman Grosset lay strapped to a fixed teak bench. The immobile Chinamen had just completed their task as Dr. Fu Manchu entered, and:
“Go!” he commanded in Chinese.
The men bowed and went out; their muscular bodies were dewy with perspiration. Grosset’s skin also gleamed wetly. He had been stripped to the waist; his eyes were starting from his head.
“Remove the gag, my friend,” Dr. Fu Manchu directed.
Old Sam Pak stepped forward, bent over Grosset, and with a sudden, amazingly agile movement, wrenched the man’s mouth open and plucked out the expanding gag. Grosset turned his head aside and spat disgustedly; then:
“Dirty yellow thugs!” he whispered: he was panting. “You’ve been bought over! Maybe you think”—his powerful chest expanded hugely—”that if you get Harvey, Orwin Prescott has a chance! I’m telling you this: If any harm comes to Harvey, there’ll never be a Dictator in the United States.”
“We do not doubt,” said Dr. Fu Manchu/’your love for Harvey Bragg.”
“No need to doubt it! Looks like I’m dying for him right here and now. I want to tell you this: He’s the biggest man this country has known for a whole generation and more. Think that over. I say it.”
“You would not consider changing your opinion?”
“I knew it!” Grosset was recovering vigour. “Saw it coming. Listen, you saffron-faced horror! You couldn’t buy me for all the gold in Washington. I’ve lived for Harvey right along . . . I’ll die for Harvey”
“Admirable sentiments,” Dr. Fu Manchu muttered, and bent over the strapped figure, hypodermic syringe in hand.
“What are you going to do to me?” Grosset shrieked, a sudden note of horror in his voice. “What are you going to do to me? Oh, you filthy yellow swine! If only my hands were free!”
“I’m going to kill you, my friend. I have no future place for you in my plans.”
“Well, do it with a gun,” the man groaned, “or even a knife if you like. But that thing——”
He uttered a wild, despairing shriek as the needle point was plunged into his flesh. Veins like blue whipcords sprang up on his forehead, on his powerful arms, as he fought to evade the needle point. All was in vain: he groaned and, in the excess of his mental agony, became still.
Dr. Fu Manchu handed the syringe to the old mandarin, who unemotionally had watched the operation. He stooped and applied his ear to the diaphragm of the unconscious man. Then, standing upright, he nodded.
“The second injection two hours before we want him.” He looked down at the powerful body strapped to the bench. “You have killed many men in defence of your idol, Grosset,” he murmured, apostrophizing the insensible figure. “Seven I have checked, and there are others. You shall end your career in a killing that is really worth while. . . .”
in
Carnegie Hall was packed to saturation point. It was an even bigger audience than Fritz Kreisler could have commanded; an audience equally keen with anticipation, equally tense. The headlong advance made by Harvey Bragg—once regarded as a petty local potentate by serious politicians, now recognized as a national force—had awakened the country to the fact that dictatorship, until latterly a subject for laughter, might, incredible though it seemed, be imminent.
The League of Good Americans reputedly numbered fifteen million members upon its roll. That many thousands of the homeless and hopeless had been given employment by Harvey Bragg was an undisputed fact. The counter measures of the old administration, dramatically drastic, had apparently done little to check a growing feverish enthusiasm awakened throughout the country by “Bluebeard.”
An ever-expanding section of the public regarded him as a saviour; another and saner element recognised that he was a menace to the Constitution. Dr. Orwin Prescott, scholarly, sincere, had succeeded in driving a wedge between two conflicting bodies—and the gap was widening.
That Orwin Prescott advocated a sane administration, every sensible citizen appreciated. His avowed object was to split the Bragg camp; but there were those who maintained, although he had definitely denied the charge, that secretly he aimed at nomination to the Presidency.
There was a rumour abroad that he would declare himself to-night.
Among the more thoughtful elements he undoubtedly had a large following, and if the weight of the Abbot of Holy Thorn at the eleventh hour should be thrown into the scales, it was obvious to students of the situation that the forces of Orwin Prescott would become as formidable as those of Harvey Bragg.