The Shadow of Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer Page A

Tower of Babel. It would be spectacular, but unpopular.”
    Michael Frobisher got up, crossed, removed the cigar from his lips, and stood right in front of Craig.
    “Listen. You’re not getting cold feet, are you?”
    Craig smiled, that slightly mischievous, schoolboy smile which was so irresistibly charming.
    “Yes,” he said. “I am. What are you going to do about it?”
    Michael Frobisher turned and picked up his hat, which he had dropped on the floor beside his chair.
    “If
you
say so, I’ll have to get busy.” He glanced at his wrist watch. “Give me all the facts on Saturday.”
    When Frobisher opened the office door, he stood looking to right and left of the lobby for a moment before he went out.
    Craig scratched his chin reflectively. What, exactly, was going on at Falling Waters? He felt peculiarly disinclined to work, considered ringing for Camille, not because he required her attendance, but for the pure pleasure of looking at her, then resolutely put on his glasses and settled down before the problem symbolized by that unfinished diagram.
    He was destined, however, to be interrupted again.
    The office door behind him opened very quietly, and Mrs. Frobisher peeped in. Craig remained unaware of her presence.
    “Do I intrude?” she asked coyly.
    Craig, conscious of shirt-sleeves, took off his glasses, jumped from the stool, and turned.
    “Why—Mrs. Frobisher!” He swept back the drooping forelock. “I say—excuse my exposed laundry.”
    Stella Frobisher extended her hand graciously. She didn’t offer it; she extended it. She was an Englishwoman and her pattern of life appeared to be modelled upon customs embalmed in old volumes of
Punch.
Her hair had been blond, and would always remain so. She had canary-like manners. She fluttered.
    “I was waiting until Mike had gone. He mustn’t
know
I have been here.”
    Craig pulled a chair forward, and Stella Frobisher’s high heels clicked like castanets on the parquet as she crossed and sat down. She was correctly dressed in full mink uniform and wore a bird of paradise for a hat.
    “Highly compromising. When did your heart first awaken to my charms?” said Craig as he put his coat on.
    He had learned that airy badinage was the only possible kind of conversation with Mrs. Frobisher, who was some years younger than her husband and liked to think he had many rivals.
    “Oh, you
do
say the queerest things!” Stella’s reputation for vivacity rested largely upon her habit of stressing words at random. “I have been having a
treatment
at Professor Hoffmeyer’s.”
    “Am I acquainted with the lad?”
    “Oh,
everybody
knows him. He’s
simply
too wonderful. He has made a
new
woman of me.”
    “Yes. You look quite new.”
    “Oh, now you think I’m being silly, Dr. Craig. But truly my
nerves
had quite gone. You see there’s something
very
queer going on.”
    “Queer goings on, eh?” Craig murmured, hunting for his cigarettes.
    “
Most
peculiar. I know you’re
laughing
at me. But truly I’m terrified. There have been the
most
uncanny people prowling about Falling Waters recently.” She accepted a cigarette and Craig lighted it for her. “I simply
dare
not
speak
to Mike about it. You know how nervous he is. But I have ordered a
pack
of Alsatians from Wanamaker’s or
somewhere
and insisted that they
must
be ferocious.”
    “A pack, you say?”
    “A pack,” Stella repeated firmly. “I don’t know how many
dogs
there are in a pack, but I
suppose
fifty-two.”
    “Expect the pack this week-end?”
    “I
hope
so. Of course, I have engaged a
special
man to look after them.”
    “Of course. Lion tamer, or some such character.”
    “I have had barbed
wire
installed and I shall
loose
the dogs at night.”
    “Sounds uncommonly attractive. Lovers’ paradise.”
    “I wanted to
warn
you, because now I must be
off
… If I’m late at the Ritz, Mike will think I’ve been
up
to something.”
    Craig escorted her down to the street and was rewarded with