But what with frustrated hopes and new fears, such a cloak of misery had descended upon me that I could not think consistently. There was movement all about; the issuing of rapid orders; men hurrying away. And presently, reaching me as if from a distance, came Smith’s words: “Take care of Flammario. After all, she has done her best for us. Return straight to the hotel.”
A hand touched my arm. I looked into brilliant amber eyes.
“Drive me back, please,” said Flammario, “or I shall be late for my show.”
Of what she said to me on the way back, this red-handed murderess, I recollect not one word. I know that her arms were about me. I presume it was a normal gesture employed whenever she found herself alone in a man’s company. I think, just before we reached the side entrance to The Passion Fruit Tree, that she kissed me on the lips, that I started back. She laughed huskily. I would have left her at the door, but: “You have lost your girl friend,” she said; “you must want a drink.” I think in her half-savage way she was trying to be sympathetic. “Go through there to the bar. If you wait, I have drink with you.”
As she ran towards her dressing-room, I opened the back door to the bar. It was true that suddenly, and only at that moment, did I realize how badly I needed a stiff brandy and soda. The barman turned swiftly, but recognizing me, allowed me to pass.
There was no one in the bar; and he had just placed my drink before me when the lights went out.
Morbid curiosity induced me to walk out on to the balcony. A subdued, excited hum of conversation rose from below: evidently there had been other arrivals. Then, to the muted strains of the unseen band. Flammario entered.
She stood there picked up by the lime and slowly began to dance—her lips set in the eternal, voluptuous smile of the African dancers of all time, the smile which lives forever upon the painted walls of Ancient Egypt.
CHAPTER XXV
A GREEN HAND
“Smith?” I said, “He’s not dying.”
“Thank God, no.”
He and I stood looking down at Sir Lionel Barton where he lay livid, his breathing scarcely perceptible. I turned to a man wearing a white jacket who stood at the front of the bed.
“You are sure, doctor?” Andrews nodded and his smile was reassuring.
“He’s had an emetic and I’ve washed him out with permanganate of potassium,” he replied. “Also, I’ve poured coffee down his throat—very strong. Fortunately he has a constitution like a bullock. Oh, he’ll be all right. I have given him a shot of atropine. We’ll have him round before long.”
“But how,” I said, looking about from face to face, “did this happen? What of the police officer on duty outside?”
“Went the same way!” repliedDr. Andrews; “but not for the same reason; nor is he responding so well.”
“How do you account for that?”
“You see”—the doctor took up a tumbler from a side-table—”this contains whisky, and also (I have tested it) a big shot of opium. In other words. Sir Lionel Barton has swallowed a narcotic and I have thoroughly washed him out. But the sergeant of police smoked a drugged cigarette.”
“What!”
“Yes,” snapped Smith. “I have the remains of the packet: they are all drugged.”
“But surely he could taste it?”
“No.” The physician shook his head. “Indian hemp was used in this case, and the brand of cigarette was of a character which”—he shrugged his shoulders—”would disguise almost anything.”
“But where could the man have obtained these cigarettes?”
“Don’t ask me, Kerrigan,” said Smith wearily. “As well ask why Barton, alone in these apartments, permitted someone to drug his whisky.”
“But was he alone here when you returned?”
“He was found alone. I was recalled from police headquarters, and from there I phoned you. They had discovered the police sergeant unconscious in the corridor. Naturally the management came in here, and found Barton.”
“Where was he?”
“In an armchair in the sitting-room, completely unconscious, with that glass beside him.”
“And?”
“Yes!We have lost our hostage, Kerrigan. The marmoset has gone.”
“But, Smith!” I cried, desperately, “it doesn’t seem humanly possible!”
“Anything is possible when one is dealing with Dr. Fu Manchu. The fact which we have to face is that it has happened. Two men, fully capable of taking care of themselves, fully on the alert, are drugged. Someone, unseen by anybody in the hotel, gains access to these rooms, removes the cage containing the marmoset and lowers it out of the sitting-room window, which I found open, to someone else waiting in the garden below. At that late hour the garden would be deserted. In short, the rest of the matter is simple.”
“Thank God, old Barton has survived,” I said. “But heaven help us all—we are fighting a phantom . . . . Ardatha!”
Smith leaned across the bed on which the unconscious man lay and grasped my shoulder.
“Fu Manchu has recovered her. It may be an odd thing to say, when speaking of the greatest power for evil living in the world today, but for my part I would rather think of her with the Doctor than with—”
“Lou Cabot? Yes, I agree.”
“In taking no part in your conversation, gentlemen,” said Dr. Andrews, “I am actuated by a very simple motive. I don’t know what you are talking about. That there is or was someone called Dr. Fu Manchu I seem to have heard, certainly. In what way he is associated with my two patients I do not know. But regarding Lou Cabot—I presume you refer to the proprietor of The Passion Fruit Tree—you touch upon familiar territory. I have had the doubtful honour of attending this man on more than one occasion.”
“You will attend him no more,” said Smith.
“What is that?”
“He’s dead,” I began.
Smith flashed a silent, urgent message to me, and: “He died tonight, doctor, up at Santurce,” he explained, “under mysterious circumstances.”
“Good riddance!” murmuredDr. Andrews. “A more cunning villain never contrived to plant himself in the Canal Zone. The fellow was an agent for some foreign government. Doctors must not tell, but I heard strange things when he was delirious on one occasion.”
“Foreign government,” murmured Smith, staring shrewdly at the speaker. “Perhaps a foreign power, doctor, but not a government—yet.”
* * *
Several hours elapsed before Barton became capable of coherent speech. The man drugged with hashish cigarettes was causing Dr. Andrews some anxiety. Lying back in an armchair, visibly pale in spite of a sun-tan on a naturally florid skin, Barton stared at us. It was dawn, and to me a wretched one.
No clue, not even the most slender, as to the whereabouts of Ardatha had been picked up. Flammario had forced a confession from the hunchback Paulo. The agents of the Si-Fan had intercepted him as he had returned with the news for which she was seeking. In this way, by less than twenty minutes, the Si-Fan ‘ had anticipated our visit to the villa occupied by Lou Cabot, the circumstances of whose death the authorities had agreed to hush up in the interest of the vastly more important inquiry being carried out by Nayland Smith.
“I must be getting old,” said Barton weakly. “At any rate, I feel damned sick. Definitely, I refuse to drink any more coffee.”
“Very well,” said Smith, “but whisky is taboo until tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow! It’s tomorrow already,” growled Barton. His blue eyes were rapidly regaining their normal fire. “Naturally you want to know how I came to make such an infernal ass of myself. Well, I can’t tell you.”