President Fu-Manchu Read Free Page A

private interview in this room between the Father and Dr. Orwin Prescott?”
    “I believe so, although I was not actually present.”
    There was something furtive in Richet’s manner; a nervous tremor in his voice.
    “Dr. Prescott, as a candidate for the Presidency, no doubt had political reasons for not divulging these facts himself.” Smith turned to Abbot Donegal. “It has always been your custom, Father, to prepare your sermons and speeches in this room, the material being looked up by Mr. Richet?”
    “That is so.”
    “The situation becomes plainer.” He turned to Richet. “I think we may assume,” he went on, “that the latter part of the address, the part which was never delivered, was in Dom Patrick’s own handwriting. You yourself, I understand, typed out the earlier pages.”
    “I did. I have shown you a duplicate.”
    “Quite,” snapped Smith; “the final paragraph ends with the words ‘torn up by its evil roots, utterly destroyed.’”
    “There was no more. The abbot informed me that he intended to finish the notes later. In fact, he did so. For when I accompanied him to the broadcasting station he said that his notes were complete.”
    “And after his—seizure?”
    “I returned almost immediately to the studio. But the manuscript was not on the desk.”
    “Thank you. That is perfectly clear. We need detain you no longer.”
    The secretary, whose forehead glistened with nervous perspiration, went out, closing the door silently behind him. Abbot Donegal looked up almost pathetically at Smith.
    “I never thought,” said he, “I should live to find myself so helpless. Can you imagine that I remember nothing whatever of Dr. Prescott’s calling upon me? Except for that vague, awful moment when I faced the microphone and realized that my mental powers were deserting me, I have no recollection of anything that happened for some forty-eight hours before! Yet it seems that Prescott was here and that he gave me vital information. What can it have been? Great heavens”—he stood up, agitatedly—“
what
can it have been? Do you really believe that I am a victim, not of a failure in my health, but of an attempt to suppress this information?”
    “Not an attempt, Father,” snapped Smith, “a success! You are lucky to be alive!”
    “But who can have done this thing, and how did he do it?”
    “The first question I can answer; the second I might answer if I could recover the missing manuscript. Probably it’s destroyed. We have a thousand-to-one chance. We are indebted to a phone call, which fortunately came through direct to you, for knowledge of Dr. Prescott’s whereabouts.”
    “Why do you say ‘which fortunately came through’? You surely have no doubts about Richet?”
    “How long with you,” snapped Smith.
    “Nearly a year.”
    “Nationality?”
    “American.”
    “I mean pedigree.”
    “That I cannot tell you.”
    “There’s color somewhere. I can’t place its exact shade. But one thing is clear: Dr. Prescott is in great danger. So are you.”
    The abbot arrested Smith’s restless promenade, laying a hand upon his shoulder.
    “There is only one other candidate in the running for dictatorship, Mr. Smith—Harvey Bragg. Yet I find it hard to believe that he… You are not accusing
Harvey Bragg
?”
    “Harvey Bragg!” Smith laughed shortly. “Popularly known as Bluebeard, I believe? My dear Dom Patrick, Harvey Bragg is a small pawn in a big game.”
    “Yet—he may be President, or Dictator.”
    Smith turned, staring in his piercing way into the priest’s eyes.
    “He almost certainly
will
be Dictator!”
    Only the mad howling of the blizzard disturbed a silence which fell upon those words—“He almost certainly
will
be Dictator.”
    Then the priest whose burning rhetoric, like that of Peter the Hermit, had roused a nation, found voice; he spoke in very low tones:
    “Why do you say he certainly will be Dictator?”
    “I said
almost
certainly. His war-cry ‘America