“You know, Sir Denis,” said Alan Sterling, sitting upright, “you are like a tonic to me. I am keen enough about my own job, which happens to be botany; but if I may say so, for an ex-Assistant Commissioner of Metropolitan Police to select a residence right in Whitehall—next door, as it were, to Scotland Yard—indicates an even greater keenness.”
Nayland Smith glanced swiftly at the speaker. He knew the tension under which Sterling was labouring; how good it was to distract his mind from those torturing queries:—Where is she? Is she alive, or dead?
“You are quite right,” he replied, quietly. “I have been through the sort of fires which are burning you now Sterling, and I have always found that work was the best ointment for the burns. It was fate, I suppose, that made me an officer of Indian police. The gods—whoever the gods may be—had selected me as an opponent for——”
“Dr. Fu Manchu,” said Sterling.
He brushed his hair back from his forehead: it was a gesture of distraction, almost of despair. Nayland Smith crossed to the buffet and from a tobacco jar which stood there, began to load his briar.
“Dr. Fu Manchu. Yes. I know I have failed, Sterling, because the man still lives. But he has failed, too; because, thank God I have succeeded in checking him, step by step.”
“I know you have, Sir Denis. No other man in the world could have done what you have done.”
“That’s open to question.” Nayland Smith stuffed broad cut mixture into the cracked bowl; “but the point is that if I can’t throw him—I can hold him.” He struck a match. “He’s here, Sterling. He’s here, in London.”
Alan Sterling clenched his fists and Nayland Smith watched him, as he lighted his pipe. Passivity threatened Sterling, that Eastern resignation with which Smith was all too familiar. It must be combated: he must revivify the man;
awaken the fiery spirit which he had good reason to know burned in him.
“Let’s review the facts,” he went on, briskly, his pipe now well alight. He began to walk up and down the Persian carpet. “You will find, Sterling, that they are not as unfavourable as they seem. To arrange them in some sort of order: (a)” —he raised a lean forefinger—”Dr. Fu Manchu, hunted by the police of Europe, succeeds in reaching England disguised as Professor Ambrose. You and I know that he is an illusionist unrivalled since the death of the late Harry Houdini. Very well; (6)”—he raised his second finger—”Fleurette Petrie, incidentally, your fiancee, was smuggled off the Oxfordshire by means of some trick which we may never solve, and taken to Nice: (c)”—he raised his third finger—”doubtless in that state of trance which Dr. Fu Manchu is able to induce, she travelled from Nice to London as the ‘Sleeping Venus’ of Professor Ambrose, and duly arrived at the house on the North Side of the Common.”
“She is dead,” Sterling groaned. “They have killed her.”
“I emphatically deny that she is dead,” snapped Nayland Smith. “Definitely, she was not dead last night,”
“What do you mean, Sir Denis?”
A pathetic light of hope had sprung into the haggard eyes of Sterling.
“A dead girl—foully murdered—her spirit silently appealing to a stolid London policeman.”
“But the appeal was not silent. Ireland heard the cry for help.”
“Exactly—therefore the girl was not dead.”
Alan Sterling, his hands clutching his knees, watched the speaker as, of old, supplicants might have watched the Cumsen Oracle.
“It’s an old move of the master schemer; I recognize it. Whilst he holds Fleurette, he holds the winning card. His own safety is bound up in hers. Don’t you see that? Let us proceed to (d).” He held up his little finger: “Pietro Ambrose is either a dupe or an accomplice of Fu Manchu—it doesn’t matter much one way or the other. But the desertion of his entire household is significant. We have the evidence of PC. Ireland—an excellent officer—that no car approached or left the house prior to the time of our arrival. Consider this fact. It has extraordinary significance.”
“I am trying to think,” Sterling murmured.
“Keep on trying, and see if your thoughts run parallel with mine. Look at the blasted fog!”—he jerked his arm towards the window. “There’s going to be another blanket to-night. Have you grasped what I mean?”
“Not entirely.”
“They can’t have taken her far, Sterling. Ireland and his opposite number have been on that point all night and all day”
“My God!” Sterling sprang up, his eyes shining. “You’re right, Sir Denis. I see what you mean.”
“Dr. Fu Manchu, for the second time in his career, is on the run. You don’t know, Sterling, but I have clipped his wings pretty severely. I have cut him off from many of his associates. I am getting very near to the heart of the mystery. He is financially embarrassed. He’s a hunted man. Fleurette is his last hope. Don’t imagine for one moment that she is dead. Dead— she would be useless; alive, she’s a triumph for the doctor.”
A muffled bell rang. Nayland Smith crossed to a side table and took up a telephone.
“Yes,” he said; “put him through to me, please.”
He turned around to Sterling.
“Police constable Waterlow,” he said, “on duty outside Professor Ambrose’s house. Hello!—yes?” He spoke into the mouthpiece. “Here . . .”
Police constable Waterlow proved to be speaking from a call-box somewhere in Brixton.
“After P.O. Ireland relieved me, sir, and I went off duty, I began thinking. I don’t know if I should have reported it—my orders were a bit vague-like. But talking it over with the missis, I came to the conclusion that you ought to know, sir. Divisional-inspector Watford gave me permission to speak to you, and gave me your number.”
“Carry on, Constable. I’m all attention.”
Well, sir, the inspector didn’t seem to think there was anything in it. But he said that you might like to know. There was a funeral next door to Professor Ambrose’s house this after
noon——
“What!”
From a ground-floor flat, sir, in the next house. I can’t tell you much about it, because I don’t know. But it was a Miss Demuras—has been living there for about a month, I understand. I never thought of mentioning it to Ireland when he took over from me, but my missis says, ‘This is a murder case, and here’s a funeral next door: ring up the inspector.’ I did it, and he said he had instructions to put me straight through to you.”
“Who was in charge of the funeral, Constable?”
Alan Sterling sprang to his feet; fists clenched, quivering, he stood watching Nayland Smith at the telephone.
“The London Necropolis Company, sir.”
“At what time did it take place?”
“At four o’clock this afternoon.”
“Were there any followers?”
“Only one, sir. A foreign gentleman.”
“You don’t know who was attending the patient?”
“Yes, sir; as it happens, I do. A Dr. Norton, who lives on South Side. He was my own doctor, sir, when I lived in Clapham.”
“Thanks, Constable. I wish you had reported this earlier. But it’s not your fault.”
Nayland Smith turned to Sterling.
“Don’t look like that,” he pleaded. “It may mean nothing or it may be a red herring. But whilst I pick up one or two things that I want in the other room, get Gallaho at Scotland Yard, and ask him to join us here with a fast car.”
CHAPTER
6
DR. NORTON’S PATIENT