Читать книгу President Fu Manchu - Arthur Henry Ward - Страница 6
ОглавлениеCHAPTER FOUR
MRS. ADAIR
Mark Hepburn drove back through a rising blizzard. The powers of his newly accredited chief, known to him simply as “Federal Agent 56,” were peculiarly impressive.
Arrangements—“by order of Federal Agent 56”—had been made without a hitch. These had included sidetracking the Twentieth Century Limited and the dispatch of an army plane from Dayton to meet the special train.
Dimly he realized that issues greater than the fate of the Presidency were involved. This strange, imperious man, with his irritable, snappy manner, did not come under the jurisdiction of the U. S. Department of Justice; he was not even an American citizen. Yet he was highly empowered by the government. In some way the thing was international. Also, Hepburn liked and respected Federal Agent 56.
And the affection of Mark Hepburn was a thing hard to win. Three generations of Quaker ancestors form a stiff background; and not even a poetic strain which Mark had inherited from a half-Celtic mother could enable him to forget it. His only rebellion—a slender volume of verse in university days, Green Lilies—he had lived to repent. Medicine had called him (he was by nature a healer); then army work, with its promise of fresh fields; and now, the Secret Service, where in this crisis he knew he could be of use.
For in the bitter campaign to secure control of the country there had been more than one case of poisoning; and toxicology was Mark Hepburn’s special province. Furthermore, his military experience made him valuable.
Around the Tower of the Holy Thorn the blizzard wrapped itself like a shroud. Only the windows at the very top showed any light. The tortured bronze door remained closed.
Stayton stepped forward out of a white mist as Hepburn sprang from his car.
“Anything to report, Stayton? I have only ten minutes.”
“Not a soul has come out, Captain, and there doesn’t seem to be anybody about in the neighborhood.”
“Good enough. You will be relieved at daylight. Make your own arrangements.”
Hepburn moved off into the storm.
Something in the wild howling of the wind, some message reaching him perhaps from those lighted windows at the top of the tower, seemed to be prompting his subconscious mind. He had done his job beyond reproach. Nevertheless, all was not well.
One foot on the running board of the car, he paused, staring up to where that high light glimmered through snow. He turned back and walked in the direction of the tower. Almost immediately he was challenged by a watchful agent, was recognized, and passed on. He found himself beside a wall of the building remote from the bronze door. Here there was no exit and he went unchallenged. He stood still, staring about him, his fur coat collar turned up about his ears, the wind frolicking with his untidy wet black hair.
A slight sound came, only just audible above the shrieking of the blizzard, the opening of a window.... He crouched close against the wall.
“All clear. Good luck ...”
James Richet!
Then someone dropped, falling lightly in the snow almost beside him. The window closed. Hepburn reached out a long, sinewy arm, grabbed and held his captive ... and found himself looking down into the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen!
His prisoner was a girl, little above medium height, but slender, so that she appeared much taller. She was muffled up in a mink coat as a protection against that fierce wind; a Basque beret was crushed down upon curls which reminded him of polished mahogany. A leather satchel hung from one wrist, and she was so terrified that Hepburn could feel her heart beating as he held her in his bearlike grip.
He realized that he was staring dumbly into those uplifted deep-blue eyes, that he was wondering if he had ever seen such long, curling lashes ... when duty, duty—that slogan of Quaker ancestors—called to him sharply. He slightly relaxed his hold, but offered no chance of escape.
“I see,” he said, and his dry, rather toneless voice revealed no emotion whatever. “This is interesting. Who are you and where are you going?”
His tones were coldly remorseless. His arm was like a band of steel. Rebellion died and fear grew in the captive. Now she was trembling. But he was forced to admire her courage, for when she replied she looked at him unflinchingly.
“My name is Adair—Mrs. Adair—and I belong to the staff of the Abbot Donegal. I have been working late, and although I know that there’s some absurd order for no one to leave, I simply must go. It’s ridiculous, and I won’t submit to it. I insist upon being allowed to go home.”
“Where is your home?”
“That can be no possible business of yours!” flared the prisoner, her eyes now flashing furiously. “If you like, call the abbot. He will vouch for what I say.”
Mark Hepburn’s square chin protruded from the upturned collar of his coat; his deep-set eyes never faltered in their regard.
“That can come later if necessary,” he said, “but first——”
“But first, I shall freeze to death,” said the girl indignantly.
“But first, what have you got in that satchel?”
“Private papers of Abbot Donegal’s. I am working on them at home.”
“In that case, give them to me.”
“I won’t! You have no right whatever to interfere with me. I have asked you to get in touch with the abbot.”
Without relaxing his grip on his prisoner, Hepburn suddenly snatched the satchel, pulling the loop down over her little gloved hand and thrusting the satchel under his arm.
“I don’t want to be harsh,” he said, “but my job at the moment is more important than yours. This will be returned to you in an hour or less. Lieutenant Johnson will drive you home.”
He began to lead her towards the spot where he knew the Secret Service cars were parked. He had determined to raise a minor hell with the said Lieutenant Johnson for omitting to post a man at this point, for as chief of staff to Federal Agent 56 he was personally responsible. He was by no means sure of himself. The girl embraced by his arm was the first really disturbing element which had ever crashed into his Puritan life; she was too lovely to be real: the teaching of long-ago ancestors prompted that she was an instrument of the devil.
Reluctantly she submitted; for ten, twelve, fifteen paces. Then suddenly resisted, dragging at his arm.
“Please, please, for God’s sake, listen to me!”
He pulled up. They were alone in that blinding blizzard, although ten or twelve men were posted at points around the Tower of the Holy Thorn. A freak of the storm cast an awning of snow from the lighted windows down to the spot upon which they stood, and in that dim reflected light Mark Hepburn saw the bewitching face uplifted to him.
She was smiling, this Mrs. Adair who belonged to Abbot Donegal’s staff; a tremulous, pathetic smile, a smile which in happier hours had been one of exquisite but surely innocent coquetry. Now it told of bravely hidden tears.
Despite all his stoicism, Mark Hepburn’s heart pulsed more rapidly. Some men, he thought, many, maybe, had worshiped those lips, dreamed of that beckoning smile ... perhaps lost everything for it.
This woman was a revelation; to Mark Hepburn, a discovery. He was suspicious of the Irish. For this reason he had never wholly believed in the sincerity of Patrick Donegal. And Mrs. Adair was enveloped in that mystical halo which haunts yet protects the Celts. He did not believe in this mysticism, but he was not immune from its insidious charm. He hated hurting her; he found himself thinking of her as a beautiful, helpless moth torn by the wind from some green dell where fairies still hid in the bushes and the four-leaved shamrock grew.
He felt suddenly glad about, and not ashamed of, Green Lilies. Mrs. Adair, for one magical moment, had enabled him to recapture that long-lost mood. It was very odd, out there in the blizzard, with his racial distrust of pretty women and of all that belonged to Rome....
It was this last thought—Rome—that steadied him. Here was some black plot against the Constitution. ...
“I don’t ask you, I entreat you to give me my papers and let me go my own way. I promise, faithfully, if you will tell me where to find you, that I will see you tomorrow and explain anything you want to know.”
Hepburn did not look at her. His Quaker ancestors rallied around him. He squared his grim jaw.
“Lieutenant Johnson will drive you home,” he said coldly, “and will bring you your satchel immediately I am satisfied that its contents are what you say they are.”
2
In the amber lighted room where the man with that wonderful mathematical brow sat at work upon the bust of a sinister Chinaman, one of the seven telephones buzzed. He laid down the modeling tool with which he had been working and took up the instrument. He listened.
“This is Number 12,” said a woman’s voice, “speaking from Base 8. In accordance with orders I managed to escape from the Tower of the Holy Thorn. Unfortunately I was captured by a federal agent—name unknown—at the moment that I reached the ground. I was taken under escort of a Lieutenant Johnson towards an address which I invented at random. A Z-car was covering me. Heavy snow gave me a chance. I managed to spring out and get to the Z-car. I regret that the federal agent secured the satchel containing the manuscript. There’s nothing more to report. Standing by here awaiting orders.”
The sculptor replaced the receiver and resumed his task. Twice again he was interrupted, listening to a report from California and to another from New York. He made no notes. He never replied. He merely went on with his seemingly endless task; for he was eternally smearing out the work which he had done, now an ear, now a curve of the brow, and patiently remodeling.
A bell rang, the light went out, and in the darkness that unforgettable, guttural voice spoke:
“Give me the latest report of Harvey Bragg’s reception at the Hollywood Bowl.”
“Last report received,” the Teutonic voice replied, and a cigarette glowed in the darkness, “one hour and seventeen minutes ago. Pacific Coast time: twelve minutes after ten. Audience of twenty thousand people, as earlier reported. Harvey Bragg’s slogan, ‘America for every man—every man for America’ was received without enthusiasm. His assurance, hitherto substantiated, that any reputable citizen who is destitute has only to apply to his office to secure immediate employment, went well. Report of end of speech not yet to hand. No other news from Hollywood Bowl. Report sent in by Number 49.”
A moment of silence followed, silence so complete that the crackling of burning tobacco in an Egyptian cigarette might have been heard.
“The report of Number 12,” said the guttural voice, “is overdue.”
“I received a report from Number 12—” he glanced at an electric clock upon the table—“at 2.05 A.M.”
Whereupon, word for word, this man of phenomenal memory repeated the message received from Base 8 exactly as it had been delivered.
A dim bell rang and the room became lighted again. The sculptor picked up a modeling tool.
