For weapons, both the Navy officers selected regulation Enfield rifles, which could be used as terrible clubs in hand-to-hand fighting. Mercedes, still insistent on going along, was fitted out with a bulletproof vest under her light topcoat. Her weapons consisted of a pair of automatics, one loaded with tear gas cartridges. The three of them were the last to pass Michael Splendor’s swift inspection.
At his own signal, the veteran was lifted pickaback to the shoulders of a powerful deputy, and carried at the head of his fifty men to the cars waiting outside. With a few low spoken words, the deputies jammed into the vehicles. Doors slammed, starters whirred, and the raiding party was on its way, speeding through the foggy streets.
Twenty minutes later, the leading car braked to a stop in front of Cho-San’s darkened shop. As the others lined up behind it, the crippled but dauntless leader headed the silent rush of fighting men across the street.
At the shop door Don and Red caught up with him. The knob turned easily at the young Commander’s touch. An instant later ten flashlight beams picked out the small figure of Suzette, waiting in the center of the room.
“Thank Heaven you are arrive, Messieurs!” the girl exclaimed. “The little Lotus still lives, and they have just brought in Count Borg. Follow me quickly if you would save them!”
Deep under the fortresslike mansion of Cho-San, a huge room had been hollowed out of the native earth and rock. Across one end of it stretched a platform, equipped with lights to produce every sort of stage effect. The room’s main floor space was filled with regular theater seats enough to accommodate two hundred persons.
At present more than half of the seats were occupied. Men and women of all nationalities sat conversing in twenty different tongues and dialects. As if to add drama to the scene, each appeared in his native costume, however outlandish it happened to be. There were dark men from India, Morocco, and the South Sea Islands; black men from Africa, and yellow men from the Far East. Mingled with these were fair-skinned women from North and South America and from the glittering capitals of Europe—a strangely varied and colorful assembly!
Yet for all their differences of age, sex and race, these people had one trait in common. It was an expression of reckless cruelty, like a brand burned deep into their very souls.
There was nothing strange about that, of course, for these were the key men and women of Scorpia, the chief spies and agents of a world-wide crime club. Success for them meant always disaster for civilized nations—revolutions, wars, and bloody conquests, from which the Scorpion’s brood could pick their illegal wealth.