W
e raised the poor victim and turned him over on his back. I dropped upon my knees, and with unsteady fingers began to strike a match. A slight breeze was arising and sighing gently through the elms, but, screened by my hands, the flame of the match took life. It illuminated wanly the sun-baked face of Nayland Smith, his eyes gleaming with unnatural brightness. I bent forward, and the dying light of the match touched that other face.
"Oh, God!" whispered Smith.
A faint puff of wind extinguished the match.
In all my surgical experience I had never met with anything quite so horrible. Forsyth's livid face was streaked with tiny streams of blood, which proceeded from a series of irregular wounds. One group of these clustered upon his left temple, another beneath his right eye, and others extended from thechin down to the throat. They were black, almost like tattoo marks, and the entire injured surface was bloated indescribably. His fists were clenched; he was quite rigid.
Smith's piercing eyes were set upon me eloquently as I knelt on the path and made my examination—an examination which that first glimpse when Forsyth came staggering out from the trees had rendered useless—a mere matter of form.
"He's quite dead, Smith," I said huskily. "It's—unnatural—it—"
Smith began beating his fist into his left palm and taking little, short, nervous strides up and down beside the dead man. I could hear a car skirling along the high-road, but I remained there on my knees staring dully at the disfigured bloody face which but a matter of minutes since had been that of a clean-looking British seaman. I found myself contrasting his neat, squarely trimmed moustache with the bloated face above it, and counting the little drops of blood which trembled upon its edge. There were footsteps approaching. I arose. The footsteps quickened, and I turned as a constable ran up.
"What's this?" he demanded gruffly, and stood with his fists clenched, looking from Smith to me and down at that which lay between us. Then his hand flew to his breast; there was a silvern gleam and—
"Drop that whistle!" snapped Smith, and struck it from the man's hand. "Where's your lantern? Don't ask questions!"
The constable started back and was evidently debating upon his chances with the two of us, when my friend pulled a letter from his pocket and thrust it under the man's nose.
"Read that!" he directed harshly, "and then listen to my orders."
There was something in his voice which changed the officer's opinion of the situation. He directedthe light of his lantern upon the open letter, and seemed to be stricken with wonder.
"If you have any doubt," continued Smith—"you may not be familiar with the Commissioner's signature—you have only to ring up Scotland Yard from Dr. Petrie's house, to which we shall now return to disperse it." He pointed to Forsyth. "Help us to carry him there. We must not be seen; this must be hushed up. You understand? It must not get into the Press—"
The man saluted respectfully, and the three of us addressed ourselves to the mournful task. By slow stages we bore the dead man to the edge of the common, carried him across the road and into my house, without exciting attention even on the part of those vagrants who nightly slept out in the neighbourhood.
We laid our burden upon the surgery table.
"You will want to make an examination, Petrie," said Smith in his decisive way, "and the officer here might 'phone for the ambulance. I have some investigations to make also. I must have the pocket lamp."
He raced upstairs to his room, and an instant later came running down again. The front door banged.
"The telephone is in the hall," I said to the constable.
"Thank you, sir."
He went out of the surgery as I switched on the lamp over the table and began to examine the marks upon Forsyth's skin. These, as I have said, were in groups and nearly all in the form of elongated punctures; a fairly deep incision with a pear-shaped and superficial scratch beneath it. One of the tiny wounds had penetrated the right eye.
The symptoms, or those which I had been enabled to observe as Forsyth had first staggered into view from among the elms, were most puzzling. Clearlyenough the muscles of articulation and the respiratory muscles had been affected; and now the livid face, dotted over with tiny wounds (they were also on the throat), set me mentally groping for a clue to the manner of his death.
No clue presented itself; and my detailed examination of the body availed me nothing. The grey herald of dawn was come when the police arrived with the ambulance and took Forsyth away.
I was just taking my cap from the rack when Nayland Smith returned.
"Smith!" I cried, "have you found anything?"
He stood there in the grey light of the hall-way tugging at the lobe of his left ear.
The bronzed face looked very gaunt, I thought, and his eyes were bright with that febrile glitter which once I had disliked, but which I had learned from experience to be due to tremendous nervous excitement. At such times he could act with icy coolness, and his mental faculties seemed temporarily to acquire an abnormal keenness. He made no direct reply, but—
"Have you any milk?" he jerked abruptly.
So wholly unexpected was the question that for a moment I failed to grasp it. Then—
"Milk!" I began.
"Exactly, Petrie! If you can find me some milk, I shall be obliged."
I turned to descend to the kitchen, when—
"The remains of the turbot from dinner, Petrie, would also be welcome, and I think I should like a trowel."
I stopped at the stairhead and faced him.
"I cannot suppose that you are joking, Smith," I said, "but—"
He laughed dryly.
"Forgive me, old man," he replied. "I was so preoccupied with my own train of thought that it never occurred to me how absurd my request musthave sounded. I will explain my singular tastes later; at the moment, hustle is the watchword."
Evidently he was in earnest, and I ran downstairs accordingly, returning with a garden trowel, a plate of cold fish, and a glass of milk.
"Thanks, Petrie," said Smith. "If you would put the milk in a jug—"
I was past wondering, so I simply went and fetched a jug, into which he poured the milk. Then, with the trowel in his pocket, the plate of cold turbot in one hand and the milk-jug in the other, he made for the door. He had it open, when another idea evidently occurred to him.
"I'll trouble you for the pistol, Petrie."
I handed him the pistol without a word.
"Don't assume that I want to mystify you," he added, "but the presence of any one else might jeopardize my plan. I don't expect to be long."
The cold light of dawn flooded the hall-way momentarily; then the door closed again and I went upstairs to my study, watching Nayland Smith as he strode across the common in the early morning mist. He was making for the Nine Elms, but I lost sight of him before he reached them.
I sat there for some time, watching for the first glow of sunrise. A policeman tramped past the house, and, a while later, a belated reveller in evening clothes. That sense of unreality assailed me again. Out there in the grey mist a man who was vested with powers which rendered him a law unto himself, who had the British Government behind him in all that he might choose to do, who had been summoned from Rangoon to London on singular and dangerous business, was employing himself with a plate of cold turbot, a jug of milk, and a trowel!
Away to the right, and just barely visible, a tramcar stopped by the common, then proceeded on its way, coming in a westerly direction. Its lights twinkled yellowly through the greyness, butI was less concerned with the approaching car than with the solitary traveller who had descended from it.
As the car went rocking by below me I strained my eyes in an endeavour more clearly to discern the figure, which, leaving the high-road, had struck-out across the common. It was that of a woman, who seemingly carried a bulky bag or parcel.
One must be a gross materialist to doubt that there are latent powers in man which man, in modern times, neglects or knows not how to develop. I became suddenly conscious of a burning curiosity respecting this lonely traveller who travelled at an hour so strange. With no definite plan in mind, I went downstairs, took a cap from the rack and walked briskly out of the house and across the common in a direction which I thought would enable me to head off the woman.
I had slightly miscalculated the distance, as Fate would have it, and with a patch of gorse effectually screening my approach, I came upon her, kneeling on the damp grass and unfastening the bundle which had attracted my attention. I stopped and watched her.
She was dressed in bedraggled fashion in rusty black, wore a common black straw hat and a thick veil; but it seemed to me that the dexterous hands at work untying the bundle were slim and white, and I perceived a pair of hideous cotton gloves lying on the turf beside her. As she threw open the wrappings and lifted out something that looked like a small shrimping-net, I stepped around the bush, crossed silently the intervening patch of grass and stood beside her.
A faint breath of perfume reached me—of a perfume which, like the secret incense of Ancient Egypt, seemed to assail my soul. The glamour of the Orient was in that subtle essence, and I only knew one woman who used it. I bent over the kneeling figure.
"Good morning," I said; "can I assist you in any way?"
She came to her feet like a startled deer, and flung away from me with the lithe movement of some Eastern dancing-girl.
Now came the sun, and its heralding rays struck sparks from the jewels upon the white fingers of this woman who wore the garments of a mendicant. My heart gave a great leap. It was with difficulty that I controlled my voice.
"There is no cause for alarm," I added.
She stood watching me; even through the coarse veil I could see how her eyes glittered. I stooped and picked up the net.
"Oh!" The whispered word was scarcely audible; but it was enough. I doubted no longer.
"This is a net for bird-snaring," I said. "What strange bird are you seeking,Kâramanèh?"
With a passionate gesture Kâramanèh snatched off the veil, and with it the ugly black hat. The cloud of wonderful intractable hair came rumpling about her face, and her glorious eyes blazed out upon me. How beautiful they were, with the dark beauty of an Egyptian night; how often had they looked into mine in dreams!
To labour against a ceaseless yearning for a woman whom one knows, upon evidence that none but a fool might reject, to be worthless—evil; is there any torture to which the soul of man is subject, more pitiless? Yet this was my lot, for what past sins assigned to me I was unable to conjecture; and this was the woman, this lovely slave of a monster, this creature of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
"I suppose you will declare that you do not know me!" I said harshly.
Her lips trembled, but she made no reply.
"It is very convenient to forget, sometimes," I ran on bitterly, then checked myself, for I knew that my words were prompted by a feckless desireto hear her defence, by a fool's hope that it might be an acceptable one. I looked again at the net contrivance in my hand; it had a strong spring fitted to it and a line attached. Quite obviously it was intended for snaring. "What were you about to do?" I demanded sharply; but in my heart, poor fool that I was, I found admiration for the exquisite arch of Kâramanèh's lips, and reproach because they were so tremulous.
She spoke then.
"Dr. Petrie—"
"Well?"
"You seem to be—angry with me, not so much because—of what I do, as because I do not remember you. Yet—"
"Kindly do not revert to the matter," I interrupted. "You have chosen, very conveniently, to forget that once we were friends. Please yourself; but answer my question."
She clasped her hands with a sort of wild abandon.
"Why do you treat me so?" she cried. She had the most fascinating accent imaginable. "Throw me into prison, kill me if you like for what I have done!" She stamped her foot. "For what I have done! But do not torture me, try to drive me mad with your reproaches—that I forget you! I tell you—again I tell you—that until you came one night, last week, to rescue some one from"—(there was the old trick of hesitating before the name of Fu-Manchu)—"fromhim, I had never, never seen you!"
The dark eyes looked into mine, afire with a positive hunger for belief—or so I was sorely tempted to suppose. But the facts were against her.
"Such a declaration is worthless," I said, as coldly as I could. "You are a traitress; you betray those who are mad enough to trust you—"
"I am no traitress!" she blazed at me. Her eyes were magnificent.
"This is mere nonsense. You think that it will pay you better to serve Fu-Manchu than to remain true to your friends. Your 'slavery'—for I take it you are posing as a slave again—is evidently not very harsh. You serve Fu-Manchu, lure men to their destruction, and in return he loads you with jewels, lavishes gifts—"
"Ah! so!"
She sprang forward, raising flaming eyes to mine; her lips were slightly parted. With that wild abandon which betrayed the desert blood in her veins, she wrenched open the neck of her bodice and slipped a soft shoulder free of the garment. She twisted around, so that the white skin was but inches removed from me.
"These are some of the gifts that he lavishes upon me!"
I clenched my teeth. Insane thoughts flooded my mind. For that creamy skin was wealed with the marks of the lash!
She turned, quickly rearranging her dress, and watching me the while. I could not trust myself to speak for a moment, then—
"If I am a stranger to you, as you claim, why do you give me your confidence?" I asked.
"I have known you long enough to trust you!" she said simply, and turned her head aside.
"Then why do you serve this inhuman monster?"
She snapped her fingers oddly, and looked up at me from under her lashes. "Why do you question me if you think that everything I say is a lie?"
It was a lesson in logic—from a woman! I changed the subject.
"Tell me what you came here to do," I demanded.
She pointed to the net in my hands.
"To catch birds; you have said so yourself."
"What bird?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
And now a memory was born within my brain:it was that of the cry of the nighthawk which had harbingered the death of Forsyth! The net was a large and strong one; could it be that some horrible fowl of the air—some creature unknown to Western naturalists—had been released upon the common last night? I thought of the marks upon Forsyth's face and throat; I thought of the profound knowledge of obscure and dreadful things possessed by the Chinaman.
The wrapping in which the net had been lay at my feet. I stooped and took out from it a wicker basket. Kâramanèh stood watching me and biting her lip, but she made no move to check me. I opened the basket. It contained a large phial, the contents of which possessed a pungent and peculiar smell.
I was utterly mystified.
"You will have to accompany me to my house," I said sternly.
Kâramanèh upturned her great eyes to mine. They were wide with fear. She was on the point of speaking when I extended my hand to grasp her. At that, the look of fear was gone and one of rebellion held its place. Ere I had time to realize her purpose, she flung back from me with that wild grace which I had met with in no other woman, turned—and ran!
Fatuously, net and basket in hand, I stood looking after her. The idea of pursuit came to me certainly; but I doubted if I could outrun her. For Kâramanèh ran, not like a girl used to town or even country life, but with the lightness and swiftness of a gazelle; ran like the daughter of the desert that she was.
Some two hundred yards she went, stopped, and looked back. It would seem that the sheer joy of physical effort had aroused the devil in her, the devil that must lie latent in every woman with eyes like the eyes of Kâramanèh.
In the ever-brightening sunlight I could see the lithe figure swaying; no rags imaginable could mask its beauty. I could see the red lips and gleaming teeth. Then—and it was music good to hear, despite its taunt—she laughed defiantly, turned, and ran again!
I resigned myself to defeat; I blush to add, gladly! Some evidences of a world awakening were perceptible about me now. Feathered choirs hailed the new day joyously. Carrying the mysterious contrivance which I had captured from the enemy, I set out in the direction of my house, my mind very busy with conjectures respecting the link between this bird-snare and the cry like that of a nighthawk which we had heard at the moment of Forsyth's death.
The path that I had chosen led me around the border of the Mound Pond—a small pool having an islet in the centre. Lying at the margin of the pond I was amazed to see the plate and jug which Nayland Smith had borrowed recently.
Dropping my burden, I walked down to the edge of the water. I was filled with a sudden apprehension. Then, as I bent to pick up the now empty jug, came a hail:
"All right, Petrie! Shall join you in a moment!"
I started up, looked to right and left; but, although the voice had been that of Nayland Smith, no sign could I discern of his presence!
"Smith!" I cried. "Smith!"
"Coming!"
Seriously doubting my senses, I looked in the direction from which the voice had seemed to proceed—and there was Nayland Smith.
He stood on the islet in the centre of the pond, and, as I perceived him, he walked down into the shallow water and waded across to me!
"Good heavens!" I began.
One of his rare laughs interrupted me.
"You must think me mad this morning, Petrie!" he said. "But I have made several discoveries. Do you know what that islet in the pond really is?"
"Merely an islet, I suppose."
"Nothing of the kind; it is a burial mound, Petrie! It marks the site of one of the Plague Pits where victims were buried during the Great Plague of London. You will observe that although you have seen it every morning for some years, it remains for a British Commissioner lately resident in Burma to acquaint you with its history! Hullo!"—the laughter was gone from his eyes, and they were steely hard again—"what the blazes have we here?"
He picked up the net. "What! A bird-trap!"
"Exactly!" I said.
Smith turned his searching gaze upon me. "Where did you find it, Petrie?"
"I did not exactly find it," I replied; and I related to him the circumstances of my meeting with Kâramanèh.
He directed that cold stare upon me throughout the narrative, and when, with some embarrassment, I had told him of the girl's escape—
"Petrie," he said succinctly, "you are an imbecile!"
I flushed with anger, for not even from Nayland Smith, whom I esteemed above all other men, could I accept such words uttered as he had uttered them. We glared at one another.
"Kâramanèh," he continued coldly, "is a beautiful toy, I grant you; but so is a cobra. Neither is suitable for playful purposes."
"Smith!" I cried hotly, "drop that! Adopt another tone or I cannot listen to you!"
"Youmustlisten," he said, squaring his lean jaw truculently. "You are playing, not only with a pretty girl who is the favourite of a Chinese Nero, but withmy life! And I object, Petrie, on purely personal grounds!"
I felt my anger oozing from me; for this wasstrictly just. I had nothing to say and Smith continued:
"Youknowthat she is utterly false, yet a glance or two from those dark eyes of hers can make a fool of you! A woman made a fool of me once, but I learned my lesson; you have failed to learn yours. If you are determined to go to pieces on the rock that broke up Adam, do so! But don't involve me in the wreck, Petrie, for that might mean a yellow emperor of the world, and you know it!"
"Your words are unnecessarily brutal, Smith," I said, feeling very crestfallen, "but there—perhaps I fully deserve them all."
"Youdo!" he assured me, but he relaxed immediately. "A murderous attempt is made upon my life, resulting in the death of a perfectly innocent man in no way concerned. Along you come and let an accomplice, perhaps a participant, escape, merely because she has a red mouth, or black lashes, or whatever it is that fascinates you so hopelessly!"
He opened the wicker basket, sniffing at the contents.
"Ah!" he snapped, "do you recognize this odour?"
"Certainly."
"Then you have some idea respecting Kâramanèh's quarry?"
"Nothing of the kind!"
Smith shrugged his shoulders.
"Come along, Petrie," he said, linking his arm in mine.
We proceeded. Many questions there were that I wanted to put to him, but one above all.
"Smith," I said, "what, in Heaven's name, were you doing on the mound? Digging something up?"
"No," he replied, smiling dryly, "burying something!"
D
usk found Nayland Smith and me at the top bedroom window. We knew, now that poor Forsyth's body had been properly examined, that he had died from poisoning. Smith, declaring that I did not deserve his confidence, had refused to confide in me his theory of the origin of the peculiar marks upon the body.
"On the soft ground under the trees," he said, "I found his tracks right up to the point where—something happened. There were no other fresh tracks for several yards around. He was attacked as he stood close to the trunk of one of the elms. Six or seven feet away I found some other tracks, very much like this."
He marked a series of dots upon the blotting-pad, for this conversation took place during the afternoon.
"Claws!" I cried. "That eerie call! like the call of a nighthawk—is it some unknown species of—flying thing?"
"We shall see, shortly; possibly to-night," was his reply. "Since, probably owing to the absence of any moon, a mistake was made"—his jaw hardened at the thought of poor Forsyth—"another attempt along the same lines will almost certainly follow—you know Fu-Manchu's system?"
So in the darkness, expectant, we sat watching the group of nine elms. To-night the moon was come, raising her Aladdin's lamp up to the star world and summoning magic shadows into being. By midnight the high-road showed deserted, the common was a place of mystery; and save for the periodical passage of an electric car, in blazing modernity, this was a fit enough stage for an eerie drama.
No notice of the tragedy had appeared in print; Nayland Smith was vested with powers to silence the Press. No detectives, no special constables, were posted. My friend was of opinion that the publicity which had been given to the deeds of Dr. Fu-Manchu in the past, together with the sometimes clumsy co-operation of the police, had contributed not a little to the Chinaman's success.
"There is only one thing to fear," he jerked suddenly; "he may not be ready for another attempt to-night."
"Why?"
"Since he has only been in England for a short time, his menagerie of venomous things may be a limited one at present."
Earlier in the evening there had been a brief but violent thunderstorm, with a tropical downpour of rain, and now clouds were scudding across the blue of the sky. Through a temporary rift in the veiling the crescent of the moon looked down upon us. It had a greenish tint, and it set me thinking of the filmed, green eyes of Fu-Manchu.
The cloud passed and a lake of silver spread out to the edge of the coppice; where it terminated at a shadow bank.
"There it is, Petrie!" hissed Nayland Smith.
A lambent light was born in the darkness; it rose slowly, unsteadily, to a great height, and died.
"It's under the trees, Smith!"
But he was already making for the door. Over his shoulder:
"Bring the pistol, Petrie!" he cried; "I have another. Give me at least twenty yards' start or no attempt may be made. But the instant I'm under the trees, join me."
Out of the house we ran, and over on to the common, which latterly had been a pageant-ground for phantom warring. The light did not appear again; and as Smith plunged off toward the trees, I wondered if heknew what uncanny thing was hidden there. I more than suspected that he had solved the mystery.
His instructions to keep well in the rear I understood. Fu-Manchu, or the creature of Fu-Manchu, would attempt nothing in the presence of a witness. But we knew full well that the instrument of death which was hidden in the elm coppice could do its ghastly work and leave no clue, could slay and vanish. For had not Forsyth come to a dreadful end while Smith and I were within twenty yards of him?
Not a breeze stirred, as Smith, ahead of me—for I had slowed my pace—came up level with the first tree. The moon sailed clear of the straggling cloud wisps which alone told of the recent storm; and I noted that an irregular patch of light lay silvern on the moist ground under the elms where otherwise lay shadow.
He passed on, slowly. I began to run again. Black against the silvern patch, I saw him emerge—and look up.
"Be careful, Smith!" I cried—and I was racing under the trees to join him.
Uttering a loud cry, he leaped—away from the pool of light.
"Stand back, Petrie!" he screamed. "Back! farther!"
He charged into me, shoulder lowered, and sent me reeling!
Mixed up with his excited cry I had heard a loud splintering and sweeping of branches overhead; and now as we staggered into the shadows it seemed that one of the elms was reaching down to touch us! So, at least, the phenomenon presented itself to my mind in that fleeting moment while Smith, uttering his warning cry, was hurling me back.
Then the truth became apparent.
With an appalling crash, a huge bough fell from above. One piercing awful shriek there was, acrackling of broken branches, and a choking groan....
The crack of Smith's pistol close beside me completed my confusion of mind.
"Missed!" he yelled. "Shoot it, Petrie! On your left! For God's sake don't miss it!"
I turned. A lithe black shape was streaking past me. I fired—once—twice. Another frightful cry made yet more hideous the nocturne.
Nayland Smith was directing the ray of a pocket torch upon the fallen bough.
"Have you killed it, Petrie?" he cried.
"Yes, yes!"
I stood beside him, looking down. From the tangle of leaves and twigs an evil yellow face looked up at us. The features were contorted with agony, but the malignant eyes, wherein light was dying, regarded us with inflexible hatred. The man was pinned beneath the heavy bough; his back was broken; and, as we watched, he expired, frothing slightly at the mouth, and quitted his tenement of clay leaving those glassy eyes set hideously upon us.
"The pagan gods fight upon our side," said Smith strangely. "Elms have a dangerous habit of shedding boughs in still weather—particularly after a storm. Pan, god of the woods, with this one has performed Justice's work of retribution."
"I don't understand. Where was this man—?"
"Up the tree, lying along the bough which fell, Petrie! That is why he left no footmarks. Last night no doubt he made his escape by swinging from bough to bough, ape-fashion, and descending to the ground somewhere at the other side of the coppice."
He glanced at me.
"You are wondering, perhaps," he suggested, "what caused the mysterious light? I could have told you this morning, but I fear I was in a bad temper, Petrie. It's very simple; a length of tape soaked in spirit or something of the kind, and sheltered from the view of any one watching from your windows, behind the trunk of the tree; then, the end ignited, lowered, still behind the tree, to the ground. The operator swinging it around, the flame ascended, of course. I found the unburned fragment of the tape used last night, a few yards from here."
I was peering down at Fu-Manchu's servant, the hideous yellow man who lay dead in a bower of elm leaves.
"He has some kind of leather bag beside him," I began.
"Exactly!" rapped Smith. "In that he carried his dangerous instrument of death; from that he released it!"
"Released what?"
"What your fascinating friend came to recapture this morning."
"Don't taunt me, Smith!" I said bitterly. "Is it some species of bird?"
"You saw the marks on Forsyth's body, and I told you of those which I had traced upon the ground here. They were caused byclaws, Petrie!"
"Claws! I thought so! Butwhatclaws?"
"The claws of a poisonous thing. I recaptured the one used last night, killed it—against my will—and buried it on the mound. I was afraid to throw it in the pond, lest some juvenile fisherman should pull it out and sustain a scratch. I don't know how long the claws would remain venomous."
"You are treating me like a child, Smith," I said, slowly. "No doubt I am hopelessly obtuse, but perhaps you will tell me what this Chinaman carried in a leather bag and released upon Forsyth. It was something which you recaptured, apparently with the aid of a plate of cold turbot and a jug of milk. It was something, also, which Kâramanèh had been sent to recapture with the aid—"
I stopped.
"Go on," said Nayland Smith, turning the rayto the left; "what did she have in the basket?"
"Valerian," I replied mechanically.
The ray rested upon the lithe creature that I had shot down.
It was a black cat!
"A cat will go through fire and water for valerian," said Smith; "but I got first innings this morning with fish and milk! I had recognized the imprints under the trees for those of a cat, and I knew that if a cat had been released here it would still be hiding in the neighbourhood, probably in the bushes. I finally located a cat, sure enough, and came for bait! I laid my trap, for the animal was too frightened to be approachable, and then shot it; I had to. That yellow fiend used the light as a decoy. The branch which killed him jutted out over the path at a spot where an opening in the foliage above allowed some moon rays to penetrate. Directly the victim stood beneath, the Chinaman uttered his bird-cry; the one below looked up, and the cat, previously held silent and helpless in the leather sack, was dropped accurately upon his head!"
"But—" I was growing confused.
Smith stooped lower.
"The cat's claws are sheathed now," he said; "but if you could examine them you would find that they are coated with a shining black substance. Only Fu-Manchu knows what that substance is, Petrie; but you and I know what it can do!"
I
don't blame you!" rapped Nayland Smith. "Suppose we say, then, a thousand pounds if you show us the present hiding-place of Fu-Manchu, the payment to be in no way subject to whether we profit by your information or not?"
Abel Slattin shrugged his shoulders, racially, and returned to the armchair which he had just quitted. He reseated himself, placing his hat and cane upon my writing-table.
"A little agreement in black and white?" he suggested smoothly.
Smith raised himself up out of the white cane chair, and, bending forward over a corner of the table, scribbled busily upon a sheet of notepaper with my fountain-pen.
The while he did so, I covertly studied our visitor. He lay back in the armchair, his heavy eyelids lowered deceptively. He was a thought overdressed—a big man, dark-haired and well-groomed, who toyed with a monocle most unsuitable to his type. During the preceding conversation, I had been vaguely surprised to note Mr. Abel Slattin's marked American accent.
Sometimes, when Slattin moved, a big diamond which he wore upon the third finger of his right hand glittered magnificently. There was a sort of bluish tint underlying the dusky skin, noticeable even in his hands but proclaiming itself significantly in his puffy face and especially under the eyes. I diagnosed a labouring valve somewhere in the heart system.
Nayland Smith's pen scratched on. My glance strayed from our Semitic caller to his cane, lying upon the red leather before me. It was of most unusual workmanship, apparently Indian, beingmade of some kind of dark brown, mottled wood, bearing a marked resemblance to a snake's skin; and the top of the cane was carved in conformity, to represent the head of what I took to be a puff-adder, fragments of stone, or beads, being inserted to represent the eyes, and the whole thing being finished with an artistic realism almost startling.
When Smith had tossed the written page to Slattin, and he, having read it with an appearance of carelessness, had folded it neatly and placed it in his pocket, I said:
"You have a curio here?"
Our visitor, whose dark eyes revealed all the satisfaction which, by his manner, he sought to conceal, nodded and took up the cane in his hand.
"It comes from Australia, doctor," he replied; "it's aboriginal work, and was given to me by a client. You thought it was Indian? Everybody does. It's my mascot."
"Really?"
"It is indeed. Its former owner ascribed magical powers to it! In fact, I believe he thought that it was one of those staffs mentioned in biblical history—"
"Aaron's rod?" suggested Smith, glancing at the cane.
"Something of the sort," said Slattin, standing up and again preparing to depart.
"You will 'phone us, then?" asked my friend.
"You will hear from me to-morrow," was the reply.
Smith returned to the cane armchair, and Slattin, bowing to both of us, made his way to the door as I rang for the girl to show him out.
"Considering the importance of his proposal," I began, as the door closed, "you hardly received our visitor with cordiality."
"I hate to have any relations with him," answered my friend; "but we must not be squeamish respectingour instruments in dealing with Dr. Fu-Manchu. Slattin has a rotten reputation—even for a private inquiry agent. He is little better than a blackmailer—"
"How do you know?"
"Because I called on our friend Weymouth at the Yard yesterday and looked up the man's record."
"Whatever for?"
"I knew that he was concerning himself, for some reason, in the case. Beyond doubt he has established some sort of communication with the Chinese group; I am only wondering—"
"You don't mean—"
"Yes—I do, Petrie! I tell you he is unscrupulous enough to stoop even to that."
No doubt Slattin knew that this gaunt, eager-eyed Burmese commissioner was vested with ultimate authority in his quest of the mighty Chinaman who represented things unutterable, whose potentialities for evil were boundless as his genius, who personified a secret danger, the extent and nature of which none of us truly understood. And, learning of these things, with unerring Semitic instinct he had sought an opening in this glittering Rialto. But there weretwobidders!
"You think he may have sunk so low as to become a creature of Fu-Manchu?" I asked, aghast.
"Exactly! If it paid him well I do not doubt that he would serve that master as readily as any other. His record is about as black as it well could be. Slattin is, of course, an assumed name; he was known as Lieutenant Pepley when he belonged to the New York Police, and he was kicked out of the service for complicity in an unsavoury Chinatown case."
"Chinatown!"
"Yes, Petrie, it made me wonder, too; and we must not forget that he is undeniably a clever scoundrel."
"Shall you keep any appointment which he may suggest?"
"Undoubtedly. But I shall not wait until to-morrow."
"What!"
"I propose to pay a little informal visit to Mr. Abel Slattin to-night."
"At his office?"
"No; at his private residence. If, as I more than suspect, his object is to draw us into some trap, he will probably report his favourable progress to his employer to-night!"
"Then we should have followed him!"
Nayland Smith stood up and divested himself of the old shooting-jacket.
"Hehasbeen followed, Petrie," he replied, with one of his rare smiles. "Two C.I.D. men have been watching the house all night!"
This was entirely characteristic of my friend's farseeing methods.
"By the way," I said, "you saw Eltham this morning. He will soon be convalescent. Where, in Heaven's name, can he—"
"Don't be alarmed on his behalf, Petrie," interrupted Smith. "His life is no longer in danger."
I stared, stupidly.
"No longer in danger!"
"He received, some time yesterday, a letter, written in Chinese, upon Chinese paper, and enclosed in an ordinary business envelope, having a typewritten address and bearing a London postmark."
"Well?"
"As nearly as I can render the message in English it reads: 'Although, because you are a brave man, you would not betray your correspondent in China, he has been discovered. He was a mandarin, and as I cannot write the name of a traitor, I may not name him. He was executed four days ago. I salute you and pray for your speedy recovery.—Fu-Manchu.'"
"Fu-Manchu! But it is almost certainly a trap."
"On the contrary, Petrie, Fu-Manchu would not have written in Chinese unless he were sincere; and, to clear all doubt, I received a cable this morning reporting that the Mandarin Yen-Sun-Yat was assassinated in his own garden, in Nan-Yang, one day last week."
T
ogether we marched down the slope of the quiet, suburban avenue; to take pause before a small, detached house displaying the hatchet boards of the estate agent. Here we found unkempt laurel bushes, and acacias run riot, from which arboreal tangle protruded the notice: "To be Let or Sold."
Smith, with an alert glance to right and left, pushed open the wooden gate and drew me in upon the gravel path. Darkness mantled all; for the nearest street lamp was fully twenty yards beyond.
From the miniature jungle bordering the path, a soft whistle sounded.
"Is that Carter?" called Smith sharply.
A shadowy figure uprose, and vaguely I made it out for that of a man in the unobtrusive blue serge which is the undress uniform of the Force.
"Well?" rapped my companion.
"Mr. Slattin returned ten minutes ago, sir," reported the constable. "He came in a cab which he dismissed—"
"He has not left again?"
"A few minutes after his return," the man continued, "another cab came up, and a lady alighted."
"A lady!"
"The same, sir, that has called upon him before."
"Smith!" I whispered, plucking at his arm—"isit—?"
He half turned, nodding his head; and my heart began to throb foolishly. For now the manner of Slattin's campaign suddenly was revealed to me. In our operations against the Chinese murder-group two years before, we had had an ally in the enemy's camp—Kâramanèh, the beautiful slave, whose presence in those happenings of the past had coloured the sometimes sordid drama with the opulence of old Arabia; who had seemed a fitting figure for the romances of Bagdad during the Caliphate—Kâramanèh, whom I had thought sincere, whose inscrutable Eastern soul I had presumed, fatuously, to have laid bare and analysed.
Now once again she was plying her old trade of go-between; professing to reveal the secrets of Dr. Fu-Manchu, and all the time—I could not doubt it—inveigling men into the net of this awful fisher.
Yesterday, I had been her dupe; yesterday, I had rejoiced in my captivity. To-day, I was not the favoured one; to-day I had not been selected recipient of her confidences—confidences sweet, seductive, deadly: but Abel Slattin, a plausible rogue, who, in justice, should be immured in Sing Sing, was chosen out, was enslaved by those lovely mysterious eyes, was taking to his soul the lies which fell from those perfect lips, triumphant in a conquest that must end in his undoing; deeming, poor fool, that for love of him this pearl of the Orient was about to betray her master, to resign herself a prize to the victor!
Companioned by these bitter reflections, I had lost the remainder of the conversation between Nayland Smith and the police officer; now, casting off the succubus memory which threatened to obsess me, I put forth a giant mental effort to purge my mind of this uncleanness, and became again an active participant in the campaign against the Master—the director of all things noxious.
Our plans being evidently complete, Smith seizedmy arm, and I found myself again out upon the avenue. He led me across the road and into the gate of a house almost opposite. From the fact that two upper windows were illuminated, I adduced that the servants were retiring; the other windows were in darkness, except for one on the ground floor to the extreme left of the building, through the lowered venetian blinds whereof streaks of light shone out.
"Slattin's study!" whispered Smith. "He does not anticipate surveillance, and you will note that the window is wide open!"
With that my friend crossed the strip of lawn, and, careless of the fact that his silhouette must have been visible to any one passing the gate, climbed carefully up the artificial rockery intervening, and crouched upon the window-ledge peering into the room.
A moment I hesitated, fearful that if I followed I should stumble or dislodge some of the lava blocks of which the rockery was composed.
Then I heard that which summoned me to the attempt, whatever the cost.
Through the open window came the sound of a musical voice—a voice possessing a haunting accent, possessing a quality which struck upon my heart and set it quivering as though it were a gong hung in my bosom.
Kâramanèh was speaking.
Upon hands and knees, heedless of damage to my garments, I crawled up beside Smith. One of the laths was slightly displaced and over this my friend was peering in. Crouching close beside him, I peered in also.
I saw the study of a business man, with its files, neatly arranged works of reference, roll-top desk, and Milner safe. Before the desk, in a revolving chair, sat Slattin. He sat half-turned towards the window, leaning back and smiling; so that I couldnote the gold crown which preserved the lower left molar. In an armchair by the window, close, very close, and sitting with her back to me, was Kâramanèh!
She, who, in my dreams, I always saw, was ever seeing, in an Eastern dress, with gold bands about her white ankles, with jewel-laden fingers, with jewels in her hair, wore now a fashionable costume and a hat that could only have been produced in Paris. Kâramanèh was the one Oriental woman I had ever known who could wear European clothes; and as I watched that exquisite profile, I thought that Delilah must have been just such another as this; that, excepting the Empress Poppæ, history has record of no woman who, looking so innocent, was yet so utterly vile.
"Yes, my dear," Slattin was saying, and through his monocle ogling his beautiful visitor, "I shall be ready for you to-morrow night."
I felt Smith start at the words.
"There will be a sufficient number of men?"
Kâramanèh put the question in a strangely listless way.
"My dear little girl," replied Slattin, rising and standing looking down at her, with his gold tooth twinkling in the lamplight, "there will be a whole division, if a whole division is necessary."
He sought to take her white gloved hand, which rested upon the chair arm; but she evaded the attempt with seeming artlessness, and stood up. Slattin fixed his bold gaze upon her.
"So now, give me my orders," he said.
"I am not prepared to do so, yet," replied the girl composedly; "but now that I know you are ready, I can make my plans."
She glided past him to the door, avoiding his outstretched arm with an artless art which made me writhe; for once I had been the willing victim of all these wiles.
"But—" began Slattin.
"I will ring you up in less than half an hour," said Kâramanèh; and without further ceremony, she opened the door.
I still had my eyes glued to the aperture in the blind, when Smith began tugging at my arm.
"Down! you fool!" he hissed sharply; "if she sees us, all is lost!"
Realizing this, and none too soon, I turned, and rather clumsily followed my friend. I dislodged a piece of granite in my descent; but, fortunately Slattin had gone out into the hall and could not well have heard it.
We were crouching around an angle of the house, when a flood of light poured down the steps, and Kâramanèh rapidly descended. I had a glimpse of a dark-faced man who evidently had opened the door for her; then all my thoughts were centred upon that graceful figure receding from me in the direction of the avenue. She wore a loose cloak, and I saw this fluttering for a moment against the white gate-posts; then she was gone.
Yet Smith did not move. Detaining me with his hand he crouched there against a quick-set hedge; until, from a spot lower down the hill, we heard the start of the cab, which had been waiting. Twenty seconds elapsed, and from some other distant spot a second cab started.
"That's Weymouth!" snapped Smith. "With decent luck, we should know Fu-Manchu's hiding-place before Slattin tells us!"
"But—"
"Oh! as it happens he's apparently playing the game." In the half-light, Smith stared at me significantly. "Which makes it all the more important," he concluded, "that we should not rely upon his aid!"
Those grim words were prophetic.
My companion made no attempt to communicate with the detective (or detectives) who shared ourvigil; we took up a position close under the lighted study window and waited—waited.
Once, a taxi-cab laboured hideously up the steep gradient of the avenue.... It was gone. The lights at the upper windows above us became extinguished. A policeman tramped past the gateway, casually flashing his lamp in at the opening. One by one the illuminated windows in other houses visible to us became dull; then lived again as mirrors for the pallid moon. In the silence, words spoken within the study were clearly audible; and we heard some one—presumably the man who had opened the door—inquire if his services would be wanted again that night.
Smith inclined his head and hung over me in a tense attitude, in order to catch Slattin's reply.
"Yes, Burke," it came, "I want you to sit up until I return; I shall be going out shortly."
Evidently the man withdrew at that; for a complete silence followed which prevailed for fully half an hour. I sought cautiously to move my cramped limbs, unlike Smith, who seeming to have sinews of piano-wire, crouched beside me immovable, untiringly. Then loud upon the stillness, broke the strident note of the telephone bell.
I started, nervously, clutching at Smith's arm. It felt hard as iron to my grip.
"Hullo!" I heard Slattin call, "who is speaking?... Yes, yes! This is Mr. A. S.... I am to come at once?... I know where—yes!... You will meet me there?... Good!—I shall be with you in half an hour.... Good-bye!"
Distinctly I heard the creak of the revolving office-chair as Slattin rose; then Smith had me by the arm, and we were flying swiftly away from the door to take up our former post around the angle of the building. This gained—
"He's going to his death!" rapped Smith beside me; "but Carter has a cab from the Yard waiting inthe nearest rank. We shall follow to see where he goes—for it is possible that Weymouth may have been thrown off the scent; then, when we are sure of his destination, we can take a hand in the game! We—"
The end of the sentence was lost to me—drowned in such a frightful wave of sound as I despair to describe. It began with a high, thin scream, which was choked off staccato fashion; upon it followed a loud and dreadful cry uttered with all the strength of Slattin's lungs.
"Oh, God!" he cried, and again—"Oh, God!"
This in turn merged into a sort of hysterical sobbing.
I was on my feet now, and automatically making for the door. I had a vague impression of Nayland Smith's face beside me, the eyes glassy with a fearful apprehension. Then the door was flung open, and, in the bright light of the hall-way, I saw Slattin standing—swaying and seemingly fighting with the empty air.
"What is it? For God's sake, what has happened?" reached my ears dimly—and the man Burke showed behind his master. White-faced I saw him to be; for now Smith and I were racing up the steps.
Ere we could reach him, Slattin, uttering another choking cry, pitched forward and lay half across the threshold.
We burst into the hall, where Burke stood with both his hands raised dazedly to his head. I could hear the sound of running feet upon the gravel, and knew that Carter was coming to join us.
Burke, a heavy man with a lowering, bull-dog type of face, collapsed on to his knees beside Slattin, and began softly to laugh in little rising peals.
"Drop that!" snapped Smith, and grasping him by the shoulders, he sent him spinning along the hall-way, where he sank upon the bottom step of the stairs, to sit with his outstretched fingers extendedbefore his face, and peering at us grotesquely through the crevices.
There were rustlings and subdued cries from the upper part of the house. Carter came in out of the darkness, carefully stepping over the recumbent figure; and the three of us stood there in the lighted hall looking down at Slattin.
"Help me to move him back," directed Smith tensely; "far enough to close the door."
Between us we accomplished this, and Carter fastened the door. We were alone with the shadow of Fu-Manchu's vengeance; for as I knelt beside the body on the floor, a look and a touch sufficed to tell me that this was but clay from which the spirit had fled!
Smith met my glance as I raised my head, and his teeth came together with a loud snap; the jaw muscles stood out prominently beneath the dark skin; and his face was grimly set in that old, half-despairful expression which I knew so well but which boded so ill for whomsoever occasioned it.
"Dead, Petrie—already?"
"Lightning could have done the work no better. Can I turn him over?"
Smith nodded.
Together we stooped and rolled the heavy body on its back. A flood of whispers came sibilantly from the stairway. Smith spun around rapidly, and glared upon the group of half-dressed servants.
"Return to your rooms!" he rapped imperiously: "let no one come into the hall without my orders."
The masterful voice had its usual result; there was a hurried retreat to the upper landing. Burke, shaking like a man with an ague, sat on the lower step, pathetically drumming his palms upon his uplifted knees.
"I warned him, I warned him!" he mumbled monotonously, "I warned him, oh, I warned him!"
"Stand up!" shouted Smith, "stand up and come here!"
The man, with his frightened eyes turning to right and left, and seeming to search for something in the shadows about him, advanced obediently.
"Have you a flask?" demanded Smith of Carter.
The detective silently administered to Burke a stiff restorative.
"Now," continued Smith, "you, Petrie, will want to examine him, I suppose?" He pointed to the body. "And in the meantime I have some questions to put to you, my man."
He clapped his hand upon Burke's shoulder.
"My God!" Burke broke out, "I was ten yards from him when it happened!"
"No one is accusing you," said Smith less harshly; "but since you were the only witness, it is by your aid that we hope to clear the matter up."
Exerting a gigantic effort to regain control of himself, Burke nodded, watching my friend with a childlike eagerness. During the ensuing conversation, I examined Slattin for marks of violence; and of what I found, more anon.
"In the first place," said Smith, "you say that you warned him. When did you warn him, and of what?"
"I warned him, sir, that it would come to this—"
"Thatwhatwould come to this?"
"His dealings with the Chinamen!"
"He had dealings with Chinamen?"
"He accidentally met a Chinaman at an East End gaming-house, a man he had known in 'Frisco—a man called Singapore Charlie—"
"What! Singapore Charlie!"
"Yes, sir, the same man that had a dope-shop, two years ago, down Ratcliffe way—"
"There was a fire—"
"But Singapore Charlie escaped, sir."
"And he is one of the gang?"
"He is one of what we used to call, in New York, the Seven Group."
Smith began to tug at the lobe of his left ear, reflectively, as I saw out of the corner of my eye.
"The Seven Group!" he mused. "That is significant. I always suspected that Dr. Fu-Manchu and the notorious Seven Group were one and the same. Go on, Burke."
"Well, sir," the man continued more calmly, "the lieutenant—"
"The lieutenant!" began Smith; then: "Oh! of course; Slattin used to be a police lieutenant!"
"Well, sir, he—Mr. Slattin—had a sort of hold on this Singapore Charlie, and two years ago, when he first met him, he thought that with his aid he was going to pull off the biggest thing of his life—"
"Forestallme, in fact?"
"Yes, sir; but you got in first with the big raid—and spoiled it."
Smith nodded grimly, glancing at the Scotland Yard man, who returned his nod with equal grimness.
"A couple of months ago," resumed Burke, "he met Charlie again down East, and the Chinaman introduced him to a girl—some sort of an Egyptian girl."
"Go on!" snapped Smith. "I know her."
"He saw her a good many times—and she came here once or twice. She made out that she and Singapore Charlie were prepared to give away the boss of the Yellow gang—"
"For a price, of course?"
"I suppose so," said Burke; "but I don't know. I only know that I warned him."
"H'm!" muttered Smith. "And now, what took place to-night?"
"He had an appointment here with the girl," began Burke.
"I know all that," interrupted Smith. "I merelywant to know what took place after the telephone call."
"Well, he told me to wait up, and I was dozing in the next room to the study—the dining-room—when the 'phone bell aroused me. I heard the lieutenant—Mr. Slattin—coming out, and I ran out too, but only in time to see him taking his hat from the rack—"
"But he wears no hat!"
"He never got it off the peg! Just as he reached up to take it, he gave a most frightful scream, and turned around like lightning as though some one had attacked him from behind!"
"There was no one else in the hall?"
"No one at all. I was standing down there outside the dining-room just by the stairs, but he didn't turn in my direction, he turned and looked right behind him—where there was no one—nothing. His cries were frightful." Burke's voice broke, and he shuddered feverishly. "Then he made a rush for the front door. It seemed as though he had not seen me. He stood there screaming; but, before I could reach him, he fell...."
Nayland Smith fixed a piercing gaze upon Burke.
"Is that all you know?" he demanded slowly.
"As God is my judge, sir, that's all I know, and all I saw. There was no living thing near him when he met his death."
"We shall see," muttered Smith. He turned to me. "What killed him, Petrie?" he asked shortly.
"Apparently something which occasioned a minute wound on the left wrist," I replied, and, stooping, I raised the already cold hand in mine.
A tiny, inflamed wound showed on the wrist; and a certain puffiness was becoming observable in the injured hand and arm. Smith bent down and drew a quick, sibilant breath.
"You know what this is, Petrie?" he cried.
"Certainly. It was too late to employ a ligatureand useless to inject ammonia. Death was practically instantaneous. His heart...."
There came a loud knocking and ringing.
"Carter!" cried Smith, turning to the detective, "open that door to no one—no one. Explain who I am—"
"But if it is the inspector—?"
"I said, open the door tono one!" snapped Smith. "Burke, stand exactly where you are! Carter, you can speak to whoever knocks through the letter-box. Petrie, don't move for your life! It may be here, in the hall way!..."