Dr. Fu-Manchu was entering the room immediately beyond.
Snatching up the bunch of keys, I turned and ran, for in another
instant my retreat would be cut off. As I burst once more into the
darkened room I became aware that a door on the further side of it
was open; and framed in the opening was the tall, high-shouldered
figure of the Chinaman, still enveloped in his fur coat and wearing
the grotesque cap. As I saw him, so he perceived me; and as I
sprang to the window, he advanced.
I turned desperately and hurled the bunch of keys with all my
force into the dimly-seen face…
Either because they possessed a chatoyant quality of their own
(as I had often suspected), or by reason of the light reflected
through the open window, the green eyes gleamed upon me vividly
like those of a giant cat. One short guttural exclamation paid
tribute to the accuracy of my aim; then I had the crossbar in my
hand. I threw one leg across the sill, and dire as was my
extremity, hesitated for an instant ere trusting myself to the
flight…
A vise-like grip fastened upon my left ankle.
Hazily I became aware that the dark room was flooded with
figures. The whole yellow gang were upon me—the entire murder-group
composed of units recruited from the darkest place of the East!
I have never counted myself a man of resource, and have always
envied Nayland Smith his possession of that quality, in him
extraordinarily developed; but on this occasion the gods were kind
to me, and I resorted to the only device, perhaps, which could have
saved me. Without releasing my hold upon the crossbar, I clutched
at the ledge with the fingers of both hands and swung back into the
room my right leg, which was already across the sill. With all my
strength I kicked out. My heel came in contact, in sickening
contact, with a human head; beyond doubt that I had split the skull
of the man who held me.
The grip upon my ankle was released automatically; and now
consigning all my weight to the rope I slipped forward, as a diver,
across the broad ledge and found myself sweeping through the night
like a winged thing…
The line, as Karamaneh had assured me, was of well-judged
length. Down I swept to within six or seven feet of the street
level, then up, at ever decreasing speed, toward the vague oblong
of the open window beyond.
I hope I have been successful, in some measure, in portraying
the varied emotions which it was my lot to experience that night,
and it may well seem that nothing more exquisite could remain for
me. Yet it was written otherwise; for as I swept up to my goal,
describing the inevitable arc which I had no power to check, I saw
that one awaited me.
Crouching forward half out of the open window was a Burmese
dacoit, a cross-eyed, leering being whom I well remembered to have
encountered two years before in my dealings with Dr. Fu-Manchu. One
bare, sinewy arm held rigidly at right angles before his breast, he
clutched a long curved knife and waited—waited—for the critical
moment when my throat should be at his mercy!
I have said that a strange coolness had come to my aid; even now
it did not fail me, and so incalculably rapid are the workings of
the human mind that I remember complimenting myself upon an
achievement which Smith himself could not have bettered, and this
in the immeasurable interval which intervened between the
commencement of my upward swing and my arrival on a level with the
window.
I threw my body back and thrust my feet forward. As my legs went
through the opening, an acute pain in one calf told me that I was
not to escape scatheless from the night's melee. But the dacoit
went rolling over in the darkness of the room, as helpless in face
of that ramrod stroke as the veriest infant…
Back I swept upon my trapeze, a sight to have induced any
passing citizen to question his sanity. With might and main I
sought to check the swing of the pendulum, for if I should come
within reach of the window behind I doubted not that other knives
awaited me. It was no difficult feat, and I succeeded in checking
my flight. Swinging there above Museum Street I could even
appreciate, so lucid was my mind, the ludicrous element of the
situation.
I dropped. My wounded leg almost failed me; and greatly shaken,
but with no other serious damage, I picked myself up from the dust
of the roadway. It was a mockery of Fate that the problem which
Nayland Smith had set me to solve, should have been solved thus;
for I could not doubt that by means of the branch of a tall tree or
some other suitable object situated opposite to Smith's house in
Rangoon, Karamaneh had made her escape as tonight I had made
mine.
Apart from the acute pain in my calf I knew that the dacoit's
knife had bitten deeply, by reason of the fact that a warm liquid
was trickling down into my boot. Like any drunkard I stood there in
the middle of the road looking up at the vacant window where the
dacoit had been, and up at the window above the shop of J. Salaman
where I knew Fu-Manchu to be. But for some reason the latter window
had been closed or almost closed, and as I stood there this reason
became apparent to me.
The sound of running footsteps came from the direction of New
Oxford Street. I turned—to see two policemen bearing down upon
me!
This was a time for quick decisions and prompt action. I weighed
all the circumstances in the balance, and made the last vital
choice of the night; I turned and ran toward the British Museum as
though the worst of Fu-Manchu's creatures, and not my allies the
police, were at my heels!
No one else was in sight, but, as I whirled into the Square, the
red lamp of a slowly retreating taxi became visible some hundred
yards to the left. My leg was paining me greatly, but the nature of
the wound did not interfere with my progress; therefore I continued
my headlong career, and ere the police had reached the end of
Museum Street I had my hand upon the door handle of the cab—for,
the Fates being persistently kind to me, the vehicle was for
hire.
"Dr. Cleeve's, Harley Street!" I shouted at the man. "Drive like
hell! It's an urgent case."
I leaped into the cab.
Within five seconds from the time that I slammed the door and
dropped back panting upon the cushions, we were speeding westward
toward the house of the famous pathologist, thereby throwing the
police hopelessly off the track.
Faintly to my ears came the purr of a police whistle. The
taxi-man evidently did not hear the significant sound. Merciful
Providence had rung down the curtain; for to-night my role in the
yellow drama was finished.
Less than two hours later, Inspector Weymouth and a party of men
from Scotland Yard raided the house in Museum Street. They found
the stock of J. Salaman practically intact, and, in the strangely
appointed rooms above, every evidence of a hasty outgoing. But of
the instruments, drugs and other laboratory paraphernalia not one
item remained. I would gladly have given my income for a year, to
have gained possession of the books, alone; for, beyond all shadow
of doubt, I knew them to contain formula calculated to
revolutionize the science of medicine.
Exhausted, physically and mentally, and with my mind a
whispering-gallery of conjectures (it were needless for me to
mention whom respecting) I turned in, gratefully, having patched up
the slight wound in my calf.
I seemed scarcely to have closed my eyes, when Nayland Smith was
shaking me into wakefulness.
"You are probably tired out," he said; "but your crazy
expedition of last night entitles you to no sympathy. Read this;
there is a train in an hour. We will reserve a compartment and you
can resume your interrupted slumbers in a corner seat."
As I struggled upright in bed, rubbing my eyes sleepily, Smith
handed me the Daily Telegraph, pointing to the following paragraph
upon the literary page:
Messrs. M—— announce that they will publish shortly the long
delayed work of Kegan Van Roon, the celebrated American traveler,
Orientalist and psychic investigator, dealing with his recent
inquiries in China. It will be remembered that Mr. Van Roon
undertook to motor from Canton to Siberia last winter, but met with
unforeseen difficulties in the province of Ho-Nan. He fell into the
hands of a body of fanatics and was fortunate to escape with his
life. His book will deal in particular with his experiences in
Ho-Nan, and some sensational revelations regarding the awakening of
that most mysterious race, the Chinese, are promised. For reasons
of his own he has decided to remain in England until the completion
of his book (which will be published simultaneously in New York and
London) and has leased Cragmire Tower, Somersetshire, in which
romantic and historical residence he will collate his notes and
prepare for the world a work ear-marked as a classic even before it
is published.
I glanced up from the paper, to find Smith's eyes fixed upon me,
inquiringly.
"From what I have been able to learn," he said, evenly, "we
should reach Saul, with decent luck, just before dusk."
As he turned, and quitted the room without another word, I
realized, in a flash, the purport of our mission; I understood my
friend's ominous calm, betokening suppressed excitement.
The Fates were with us (or so it seemed); and whereas we had not
hoped to gain Saul before sunset, as a matter of fact, the autumn
afternoon was in its most glorious phase as we left the little
village with its oldtime hostelry behind us and set out in an
easterly direction, with the Bristol Channel far away on our left
and a gently sloping upland on our right.
The crooked high-street practically constituted the entire
hamlet of Saul, and the inn, "The Wagoners," was the last house in
the street. Now, as we followed the ribbon of moor-path to the top
of the rise, we could stand and look back upon the way we had come;
and although we had covered fully a mile of ground, it was possible
to detect the sunlight gleaming now and then upon the gilt
lettering of the inn sign as it swayed in the breeze. The day had
been unpleasantly warm, but was relieved by this same sea breeze,
which, although but slight, had in it the tang of the broad
Atlantic. Behind us, then, the foot-path sloped down to Saul,
unpeopled by any living thing; east and northeast swelled the
monotony of the moor right out to the hazy distance where the sky
began and the sea remotely lay hidden; west fell the gentle
gradient from the top of the slope which we had mounted, and here,
as far as the eye could reach, the country had an appearance
suggestive of a huge and dried-up lake. This idea was borne out by
an odd blotchiness, for sometimes there would be half a mile or
more of seeming moorland, then a sharply defined change (or it
seemed sharply defined from that bird's-eye point of view). A vivid
greenness marked these changes, which merged into a dun-colored
smudge and again into the brilliant green; then the moor would
begin once more.
"That will be the Tor of Glastonbury, I suppose," said Smith,
suddenly peering through his field-glasses in an easterly
direction; "and yonder, unless I am greatly mistaken, is Cragmire
Tower."
Shading my eyes with my hand, I also looked ahead, and saw the
place for which we were bound; one of those round towers, more
common in Ireland, which some authorities have declared to be of
Phoenician origin. Ramshackle buildings clustered untidily about
its base, and to it a sort of tongue of that oddly venomous green
which patched the lowlands, shot out and seemed almost to reach the
towerbase. The land for miles around was as flat as the palm of my
hand, saving certain hummocks, lesser tors, and irregular piles of
boulders which dotted its expanse. Hills and uplands there were in
the hazy distance, forming a sort of mighty inland bay which I
doubted not in some past age had been covered by the sea. Even in
the brilliant sunlight the place had something of a mournful
aspect, looking like a great dried-up pool into which the children
of giants had carelessly cast stones.
We met no living soul upon the moor. With Cragmire Tower but a
quarter of a mile off, Smith paused again, and raising his powerful
glasses swept the visible landscape.
"Not a sign. Petrie," he said, softly; "yet… "
Dropping the glasses back into their case, my companion began to
tug at his left ear.
"Have we been over-confident?" he said, narrowing his eyes in
speculative fashion. "No less than three times I have had the idea
that something, or some one, has just dropped out of sight, behind
me, as I focused… "
"What do you mean, Smith?"
"Are we"—he glanced about him as though the vastness were
peopled with listening Chinamen—"followed?"
Silently we looked into one another's eyes, each seeking for the
dread which neither had named. Then:
"Come on Petrie!" said Smith, grasping my arm; and at quick
march we were off again.
Cragmire Tower stood upon a very slight eminence, and what had
looked like a green tongue, from the moorland slopes above, was in
fact a creek, flanked by lush land, which here found its way to the
sea. The house which we were come to visit consisted in a low,
two-story building, joining the ancient tower on the east with two
smaller outbuildings. There was a miniature kitchen-garden, and a
few stunted fruit trees in the northwest corner; the whole being
surrounded by a gray stone wall.
The shadow of the tower fell sharply across the path, which ran
up almost alongside of it. We were both extremely warm by reason of
our long and rapid walk on that hot day, and this shade should have
been grateful to us. In short, I find it difficult to account for
the unwelcome chill which I experienced at the moment that I found
myself at the foot of the time-worn monument. I know that we both
pulled up sharply and looked at one another as though acted upon by
some mutual disturbance.
But not a sound broke the stillness save a remote murmuring,
until a solitary sea gull rose in the air and circled directly over
the tower, uttering its mournful and unmusical cry. Automatically
to my mind sprang the lines of the poem:
Far from all brother-men, in the weird of the fen,
With God's creatures I bide, 'mid the birds that I ken;
Where the winds ever dree, where the hymn of the sea
Brings a message of peace from the ocean to me.
Not a soul was visible about the premises; there was no sound of
human activity and no dog barked. Nayland Smith drew a long breath,
glanced back along the way we had come, then went on, following the
wall, I beside him, until we came to the gate. It was unfastened,
and we walked up the stone path through a wilderness of weeds. Four
windows of the house were visible, two on the ground floor and two
above. Those on the ground floor were heavily boarded up, those
above, though glazed, boasted neither blinds nor curtains. Cragmire
Tower showed not the slightest evidence of tenancy.
We mounted three steps and stood before a tremendously massive
oaken door. An iron bell-pull, ancient and rusty, hung on the right
of the door, and Smith, giving me an odd glance, seized the ring
and tugged it.
From somewhere within the building answered a mournful clangor,
a cracked and toneless jangle, which, seeming to echo through empty
apartments, sought and found an exit apparently by way of one of
the openings in the round tower; for it was from above our heads
that the noise came to us.
It died away, that eerie ringing—that clanging so dismal that it
could chill my heart even then with the bright sunlight streaming
down out of the blue; it awoke no other response than the mournful
cry of the sea gull circling over our heads. Silence fell. We
looked at one another, and we were both about to express a mutual
doubt when, unheralded by any unfastening of bolts or bars, the
oaken door was opened, and a huge mulatto, dressed in white, stood
there regarding us.
I started nervously, for the apparition was so unexpected, but
Nayland Smith, without evidence of surprise, thrust a card into the
man's hand.
"Take my card to Mr. Van Roon, and say that I wish to see him on
important business," he directed, authoritatively.
The mulatto bowed and retired. His white figure seemed to be
swallowed up by the darkness within, for beyond the patch of
uncarpeted floor revealed by the peeping sunlight, was a barn-like
place of densest shadow. I was about to speak, but Smith laid his
hand upon my arm warningly, as, out from the shadows the mulatto
returned. He stood on the right of the door and bowed again.
"Be pleased to enter," he said, in his harsh, negro voice. "Mr.
Van Roon will see you."
The gladness of the sun could no longer stir me; a chill and
sense of foreboding bore me company, as beside Nayland Smith I
entered Cragmire Tower.