Puzzled and impatient, Don Winslow paced up and down the large,
luxuriously furnished room. He liked to plan his moves in advance.
Instead, ever since he had met Lotus in the dining room of the Empire,
he had been facing one unexpected situation after another, in
bewildering succession.
Whether Suzette, the French Secret Service operative, had any definite
plans he could not tell. As for Lotus, he wanted another talk with her
out of range from any concealed dictaphone.
A soft _click_ of a latch behind caused him to whirl. There stood the
girl herself, laughing, her back against the innocent-looking panel
through which she must have entered.
“Excuse me, please!” she cried, coming swiftly toward him. “But your
expression was so funny—as if I had stuck a pin into you. These hidden
panels and underground corridors make you nervous, don’t they,
Commander?”
At Don’s warning, “Sh-h-h!” Lotus shook her head.
“It’s all right, if we speak very low,” she reassured him. “I
disconnected the dictaphone at the other end. Besides, there’s no one
trying to listen now. Cho-San has other fish to fry just at this
moment.”
“What’s that?” Don asked quickly. “A moment before you came in a buzzer
sounded and he acted as if it were a fire alarm!”
“It was a sort of alarm,” the girl replied, seating herself in one of
the deep arm chairs. “Dr. Skell got a telephone message from the garage.
It seems that two of our city agents caught someone snooping about the
place, and wanted to know what to do with him. Not that it matters much,
but Cho-San will probably want to look him over.”
* * * * *
It mattered a great deal to Red Pennington, however, that he had let
himself be caught by such a simple trick. As he sat now in the back of a
strange car, under the muzzle of a thug’s pistol he understood only too
well what had happened.
His captors, doubtless in the employ of Scorpia, had simply threatened
or bribed his own taxi driver to clear out. The two cars looked much
alike in the dark, and Red had been too unsuspecting to notice the
difference, until a gun poked him in the face. As he sat there fuming at
his own stupidity, the second plug-ugly came back from across the
street.
“I phoned de house an’ asked wot ta do wid him,” the fellow reported.
“De guy I talked to said ta leave him in de garage tied up, and turn off
de lights.” “Okay!” grunted the second mobster. “I guess the big shots
wanna give him the once-over. If he’s one of them Navy Intelligence
ducks they’ll prob’ly bump him off, or burn him in their Chinese torture
room. Anyhow, it ain’t none of our business.... Come on, you punk! Git
out an’ put your hands behind you!”
The last words were addressed to Red, and emphasized by a wicked jab of
the pistol barrel that raised a welt along the young officer’s jaw.
Pretending to be frightened speechless. Red obeyed, but his brain was
working at top speed to figure out a break.
At the first touch of the gangster’s rope, Red’s crossed wrists flew
apart. Sweeping up, his hands caught his enemy by the head. With a
powerful forward heave he hurled the thug’s body over his shoulder, then
whirled to grapple the second man.
A pistol barked, its bullet grazing Red’s arm. The next instant he had
wrenched the weapon away by a swift jiu-jitsu trick, sending its owner
reeling with a right hook.
“Now we’ll see who’s runnin’ this party!” he growled. “Hands up or
I’ll—”