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—"
"That what would come to this?"'
"His dealings with the Chinaman!"
"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—"
"Forestall me, 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 merely want 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?" he asked, shortly.
"Apparently, 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 ligature and 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 to no 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 hallway!—"
Our search of the house of Abel Slattin ceased only with the
coming of the dawn, and yielded nothing but disappointment. Failure
followed upon failure; for, in the gray light of the morning, our
own quest concluded, Inspector Weymouth returned to report that the
girl, Karamaneh, had thrown him off the scent.
Again he stood before me, the big, burly friend of old and
dreadful days, a little grayer above the temples, which I set down
for a record of former horrors, but deliberate, stoical, thorough,
as ever. His blue eyes melted in the old generous way as he saw me,
and he gripped my hand in greeting.
"Once again," he said, "your dark-eyed friend has been too
clever for me, Doctor. But the track as far as I could follow,
leads to the old spot. In fact,"—he turned to Smith, who,
grim-faced and haggard, looked thoroughly ill in that gray light—"I
believe Fu-Manchu's lair is somewhere near the former opium-den of
Shen-Yan—'Singapore Charlie.'"
Smith nodded.
"We will turn our attention in that direction," he replied, "at
a very early date."
Inspector Weymouth looked down at the body of Abel Slattin.
"How was it done?" he asked softly.
"Clumsily for Fu-Manchu," I replied. "A snake was introduced
into the house by some means—"
"By Karamaneh!" rapped Smith.
"Very possibly by Karamaneh," I continued firmly. "The thing has
escaped us."
"My own idea," said Smith, "is that it was concealed about his
clothing. When he fell by the open door it glided out of the house.
We must have the garden searched thoroughly by daylight."
"He"—Weymouth glanced at that which lay upon the floor—"must be
moved; but otherwise we can leave the place untouched, clear out
the servants, and lock the house up."
"I have already given orders to that effect," answered Smith. He
spoke wearily and with a note of conscious defeat in his voice.
"Nothing has been disturbed;"—he swept his arm around
comprehensively—"papers and so forth you can examine at
leisure."
Presently we quitted that house upon which the fateful Chinaman
had set his seal, as the suburb was awakening to a new day. The
clank of milk-cans was my final impression of the avenue to which a
dreadful minister of death had come at the bidding of the death
lord. We left Inspector Weymouth in charge and returned to my
rooms, scarcely exchanging a word upon the way.
Nayland Smith, ignoring my entreaties, composed himself for
slumber in the white cane chair in my study. About noon he retired
to the bathroom, and returning, made a pretense of breakfast; then
resumed his seat in the cane armchair. Carter reported in the
afternoon, but his report was merely formal. Returning from my
round of professional visits at half past five, I found Nayland
Smith in the same position; and so the day waned into evening, and
dusk fell uneventfully.
In the corner of the big room by the empty fireplace, Nayland
Smith lay, with his long, lean frame extended in the white cane
chair. A tumbler, from which two straws protruded, stood by his
right elbow, and a perfect continent of tobacco smoke lay between
us, wafted toward the door by the draught from an open window. He
had littered the hearth with matches and tobacco ash, being the
most untidy smoker I have ever met; and save for his frequent
rapping-out of his pipe bowl and perpetual striking of matches, he
had shown no sign of activity for the past hour. Collarless and
wearing an old tweed jacket, he had spent the evening, as he had
spent the day, in the cane chair, only quitting it for some ten
minutes, or less, to toy with dinner.
My several attempts at conversation had elicited nothing but
growls; therefore, as dusk descended, having dismissed my few
patients, I busied myself collating my notes upon the renewed
activity of the Yellow Doctor, and was thus engaged when the 'phone
bell disturbed me. It was Smith who was wanted, however; and he
went out eagerly, leaving me to my task.
At the end of a lengthy conversation, he returned from the
'phone and began, restlessly, to pace the room. I made a pretense
of continuing my labors, but covertly I was watching him. He was
twitching at the lobe of his left ear, and his face was a study in
perplexity. Abruptly he burst out:
"I shall throw the thing up, Petrie! Either I am growing too old
to cope with such an adversary as Fu-Manchu, or else my intellect
has become dull. I cannot seem to think clearly or consistently.
For the Doctor, this crime, this removal of Slattin, is
clumsy—unfinished. There are two explanations. Either he, too, is
losing his old cunning or he has been interrupted!"
"Interrupted!"
"Take the facts, Petrie,"—Smith clapped his hands upon my table
and bent down, peering into my eyes—"is it characteristic of
Fu-Manchu to kill a man by the direct agency of a snake and to
implicate one of his own damnable servants in this way?"
"But we have found no snake!"
"Karamaneh introduced one in some way. Do you doubt it?"
"Certainly Karamaneh visited him on the evening of his death,
but you must be perfectly well aware that even if she had been
arrested, no jury could convict her."
Smith resumed his restless pacings up and down.
"You are very useful to me, Petrie," he replied; "as a counsel
for the defense you constantly rectify my errors of prejudice. Yet
I am convinced that our presence at Slattin's house last night
prevented Fu-Manchu from finishing off this little matter as he had
designed to do."
"What has given you this idea?"
"Weymouth is responsible. He has rung me up from the Yard. The
constable on duty at the house where the murder was committed,
reports that some one, less than an hour ago, attempted to break
in."
"Break in!"
"Ah! you are interested? I thought the circumstance
illuminating, also!"
"Did the officer see this person?"
"No; he only heard him. It was some one who endeavored to enter
by the bathroom window, which, I am told, may be reached fairly
easily by an agile climber."
"The attempt did not succeed?"
"No; the constable interrupted, but failed to make a capture or
even to secure a glimpse of the man."
We were both silent for some moments; then:
"What do you propose to do?" I asked.
"We must not let Fu-Manchu's servants know," replied Smith, "but
to-night I shall conceal myself in Slattin's house and remain there
for a week or a day—it matters not how long—until that attempt is
repeated. Quite obviously, Petrie, we have overlooked something
which implicates the murderer with the murder! In short, either by
accident, by reason of our superior vigilance, or by the clumsiness
of his plans, Fu-Manchu for once in an otherwise blameless career,
has left a clue!"
In utter darkness we groped our way through into the hallway of
Slattin's house, having entered, stealthily, from the rear; for
Smith had selected the study as a suitable base of operations. We
reached it without mishap, and presently I found myself seated in
the very chair which Karamaneh had occupied; my companion took up a
post just within the widely opened door.
So we commenced our ghostly business in the house of the
murdered man—a house from which, but a few hours since, his body
had been removed. This was such a vigil as I had endured once
before, when, with Nayland Smith and another, I had waited for the
coming of one of Fu-Manchu's death agents.
Of all the sounds which, one by one, now began to detach
themselves from the silence, there was a particular sound, homely
enough at another time, which spoke to me more dreadfully than the
rest. It was the ticking of the clock upon the mantelpiece; and I
thought how this sound must have been familiar to Abel Slattin, how
it must have formed part and parcel of his life, as it were, and
how it went on now—tick-tick-tick-tick—whilst he, for whom it had
ticked, lay unheeding—would never heed it more.
As I grew more accustomed to the gloom, I found myself staring
at his office chair; once I found myself expecting Abel Slattin to
enter the room and occupy it. There was a little China Buddha upon
the bureau in one corner, with a gilded cap upon its head, and as
some reflection of the moonlight sought out this little cap, my
thoughts grotesquely turned upon the murdered man's gold tooth.
Vague creakings from within the house, sounds as though of
stealthy footsteps upon the stair, set my nerves tingling; but
Nayland Smith gave no sign, and I knew that my imagination was
magnifying these ordinary night sounds out of all proportion to
their actual significance. Leaves rustled faintly outside the
window at my back: I construed their sibilant whispers into the
dreaded name—Fu-Manchu-Fu-Manchu—Fu-Manchu!
So wore on the night; and, when the ticking clock hollowly
boomed the hour of one, I almost leaped out of my chair, so highly
strung were my nerves, and so appallingly did the sudden clangor
beat upon them. Smith, like a man of stone, showed no sign. He was
capable of so subduing his constitutionally high-strung
temperament, at times, that temporarily he became immune from human
dreads. On such occasions he would be icily cool amid universal
panic; but, his object accomplished, I have seen him in such a
state of collapse, that utter nervous exhaustion is the only term
by which I can describe it.
Tick-tick-tick-tick went the clock, and, with my heart still
thumping noisily in my breast, I began to count the tickings; one,
two, three, four, five, and so on to a hundred, and from one
hundred to many hundreds.
Then, out from the confusion of minor noises, a new, arresting
sound detached itself. I ceased my counting; no longer I noted the
tick-tick of the clock, nor the vague creakings, rustlings and
whispers. I saw Smith, shadowly, raise his hand in warning—in
needless warning, for I was almost holding my breath in an effort
of acute listening.
From high up in the house this new sound came from above the
topmost room, it seemed, up under the roof; a regular squeaking,
oddly familiar, yet elusive. Upon it followed a very soft and
muffled thud; then a metallic sound as of a rusty hinge in motion;
then a new silence, pregnant with a thousand possibilities more
eerie than any clamor.
My mind was rapidly at work. Lighting the topmost landing of the
house was a sort of glazed trap, evidently set in the floor of a
loft-like place extending over the entire building. Somewhere in
the red-tiled roof above, there presumably existed a corresponding
skylight or lantern.
So I argued; and, ere I had come to any proper decision, another
sound, more intimate, came to interrupt me.
This time I could be in no doubt; some one was lifting the trap
above the stairhead—slowly, cautiously, and all but silently. Yet
to my ears, attuned to trifling disturbances, the trap creaked and
groaned noisily.
Nayland Smith waved to me to take a stand on the other side of
the opened door—behind it, in fact, where I should be concealed
from the view of any one descending the stair.
I stood up and crossed the floor to my new post.
A dull thud told of the trap fully raised and resting upon some
supporting joist. A faint rustling (of discarded garments, I told
myself) spoke to my newly awakened, acute perceptions, of the
visitor preparing to lower himself to the landing. Followed a groan
of woodwork submitted to sudden strain—and the unmistakable pad of
bare feet upon the linoleum of the top corridor.
I knew now that one of Dr. Fu-Manchu's uncanny servants had
gained the roof of the house by some means, had broken through the
skylight and had descended by means of the trap beneath on to the
landing.
In such a tensed-up state as I cannot describe, nor, at this
hour mentally reconstruct, I waited for the creaking of the stairs
which should tell of the creature's descent.
I was disappointed. Removed scarce a yard from me as he was, I
could hear Nayland Smith's soft, staccato breathing; but my eyes
were all for the darkened hallway, for the smudgy outline of the
stair-rail with the faint patterning in the background which,
alone, indicated the wall.
It was amid an utter silence, unheralded by even so slight a
sound as those which I had acquired the power of detecting—that I
saw the continuity of the smudgy line of stair-rail to be
interrupted.
A dark patch showed upon it, just within my line of sight,
invisible to Smith on the other side of the doorway, and some ten
or twelve stairs up.
No sound reached me, but the dark patch vanished and reappeared
three feet lower down.
Still I knew that this phantom approach must be unknown to my
companion—and I knew that it was impossible for me to advise him of
it unseen by the dreaded visitor.
A third time the dark patch—the hand of one who, ghostly,
silent, was creeping down into the hallway—vanished and reappeared
on a level with my eyes. Then a vague shape became visible; no more
than a blur upon the dim design of the wall-paper… and Nayland
Smith got his first sight of the stranger.
The clock on the mantelpiece boomed out the half-hour.
At that, such was my state (I blush to relate it) I uttered a
faint cry!
It ended all secrecy—that hysterical weakness of mine. It might
have frustrated our hopes; that it did not do so was in no measure
due to me. But in a sort of passionate whirl, the ensuing events
moved swiftly.
Smith hesitated not one instant. With a panther-like leap he
hurled himself into the hall.
"The lights, Petrie!" he cried—"the lights! The switch is near
the street-door!"
I clenched my fists in a swift effort to regain control of my
treacherous nerves, and, bounding past Smith, and past the foot of
the stair, I reached out my hand to the switch, the situation of
which, fortunately, I knew.
Around I came, in response to a shrill cry from behind me—an
inhuman cry, less a cry than the shriek of some enraged animal…
.
With his left foot upon the first stair, Nayland Smith stood,
his lean body bent perilously backward, his arms rigidly thrust
out, and his sinewy fingers gripping the throat of an almost naked
man—a man whose brown body glistened unctuously, whose shaven head
was apish low, whose bloodshot eyes were the eyes of a mad dog! His
teeth, upper and lower, were bared; they glistened, they gnashed,
and a froth was on his lips. With both his hands, he clutched a
heavy stick, and once—twice, he brought it down upon Nayland
Smith's head!
I leaped forward to my friend's aid; but as though the blows had
been those of a feather, he stood like some figure of archaic
statuary, nor for an instant relaxed the death grip which he had
upon his adversary's throat.
Thrusting my way up the stairs, I wrenched the stick from the
hand of the dacoit—for in this glistening brown man, I recognized
one of that deadly brotherhood who hailed Dr. Fu-Manchu their Lord
and Master.
I cannot dwell upon the end of that encounter; I cannot hope to
make acceptable to my readers an account of how Nayland Smith,
glassy-eyed, and with consciousness ebbing from him instant by
instant, stood there, a realization of Leighton's "Athlete," his
arms rigid as iron bars even after Fu-Manchu's servant hung limply
in that frightful grip.
In his last moments of consciousness, with the blood from his
wounded head trickling down into his eyes, he pointed to the stick
which I had torn from the grip of the dacoit, and which I still
held in my hand.
"Not Aaron's rod, Petrie!" he gasped hoarsely—"the rod of
Moses!—Slattin's stick!"
Even in upon my anxiety for my friend, amazement intruded.
"But," I began—and turned to the rack in which Slattin's
favorite cane at that moment reposed—had reposed at the time of his
death.
Yes!—there stood Slattin's cane; we had not moved it; we had
disturbed nothing in that stricken house; there it stood, in
company with an umbrella and a malacca.
I glanced at the cane in my hand. Surely there could not be two
such in the world?
Smith collapsed on the floor at my feet.
"Examine the one in the rack, Petrie," he whispered, almost
inaudibly, "but do not touch it. It may not be yet… ."
I propped him up against the foot of the stairs, and as the
constable began knocking violently at the street door, crossed to
the rack and lifted out the replica of the cane which I held in my
hand.
A faint cry from Smith—and as if it had been a leprous thing, I
dropped the cane instantly.
"Merciful God!" I groaned.
Although, in every other particular, it corresponded with that
which I held—which I had taken from the dacoit—which he had come to
substitute for the cane now lying upon the floor—in one dreadful
particular it differed.
Up to the snake's head it was an accurate copy; but the head
lived!
Either from pain, fear or starvation, the thing confined in the
hollow tube of this awful duplicate was become torpid. Otherwise,
no power on earth could have saved me from the fate of Abel
Slattin; for the creature was an Australian death-adder.