Читать книгу President Fu Manchu - Arthur Henry Ward - Страница 7

Table of Contents

The special train bored its way through mists of snow.

“They won’t attempt to wreck us, Hepburn!” Federal Officer 56 smiled grimly and tapped the satchel which had belonged to Mrs. Adair. “This is our safeguard. But there may be an attempt of some other kind.”

In the solitary car Smith sat facing Hepburn. Seven of the party which had taken command of the Tower of the Holy Thorn were distributed in chairs about them. Some smoked and were silent; others talked; others again neither smoked nor talked, but glanced furtively in the direction of Captain Hepburn and his mysterious superior.

“You have done a first-class job, Hepburn,” said Smith. “I tricked the man Richet (who is some kind of half-caste) into an admission that this—” he tapped the satchel—“was material supplied by Dr. Prescott.”

“I ordered Richet’s arrest before I left.”

“Good man.”

The train roared through the night and Smith leaned forward, resting his hand upon Hepburn’s shoulder.

“The enemy knows that Dr. Prescott has found out the truth! How Dr. Prescott found out we have got to learn. Clearly he is a brilliant man. I’m afraid, Hepburn—I am afraid——”

He gripped Hepburn’s shoulder and his grip was like that of a vise.

“You have read this thing ... and the part which is in Father Donegal’s handwriting tells the story. How he was prevented from broadcasting that story I begin to suspect. Note this particularly, Hepburn: I observed that Dom Patrick, when looking over the typescript brought in by James Richet, moistened the tip of his thumb in turning over the pages. A habit. The point seems significant?”

“Not to me,” Hepburn confessed, staring rather haggardly at the speaker.

“Ah! Think it over,” said Smith; then: “I know why you are downcast. You lost the woman—but you got what we were really looking for. Here’s the story of an outside organization aiming to secure control of the country. Don’t worry about Mrs. Adair. It’s only a question of time. We’ll get her.”

Mark Hepburn turned his head aside.

The contents of the satchel had proved to be the completed text of Abbot Donegal’s address, the last five pages in the Father’s untidy manuscript. But those last five pages revealed a plot which, if carried out, would place the United States under the domination of some shadowy being, unnamed, who apparently controlled inexhaustible supplies not only of capital but of men!

Following this revelation, his new chief, “Federal Officer 56,” had given him his entire confidence. He had suspected, but now he knew, that a world drama was being fought out in the United States. A simple soul at heart, he was temporarily dazzled by recognition of the fact that he had been appointed chief of staff in an international crisis to Sir Denis Nayland Smith, Ex-Commissioner of Scotland Yard, created a baronet for his services not only to the British Empire but to the world.

And in a moment of weakness he had let the woman go who might be a link, an irreplaceable link, between their task and this thing which aimed to place the United States under alien domination!

In that hour of disillusionment he felt a double traitor; for this man, Nayland Smith, was so dead straight....

An atmosphere of impending harm hovered over the party. Mark Hepburn was not alone in having seen the venomous blizzard spitting snow unto that bronze Face. Among the seven who accompanied them were members of the ancient faith upheld sturdily by the hand of Abbot Donegal; and these, particularly—touched, he told himself, by medieval superstition—doubted and wondered as they were blindly carried through the stormy night. They were ignorant of what underlay it all, and ignorance breeds fear. They knew that they were merely a bodyguard for Captain Hepburn and Federal Officer 56.

Suddenly, appallingly, brakes were applied, all but throwing the nine men out of their chairs. Nayland Smith came to his feet at a bound, clutching the side of the car.

“Hepburn!” he cried, “go forward with two men. This train can slow down but it must not stop!”

Mark Hepburn ran forward along the car, touching two of the seven on their shoulders as he passed. They followed him out. A flare spluttered through snowy mist, clearly visible from the off-side windows.

“Switch off the lights!”

The order came in a high-pitched, irritable voice.

A trainman appeared and the car was plunged in darkness. A second flare broke through the veil of snow. Federal Officer 56 was crouching by a window looking out, and now:

“Do you see!” he cried, and grabbed the arm of a man who was peering out beside him. “Do you see!”

As the train regained momentum, presumably under the urge of Hepburn, a group of men armed with machine guns became clearly visible beside the tracks.

The special was whirling through the night again when Hepburn came back. He was smiling his slow smile. Federal Agent 56 turned and stood up.

“This train won’t stop,” said Hepburn, “until we make Cleveland.”