by Sax Rohmer
“Mrs. Hewett requires me?” I asked abruptly.
The girl stared more stupidly than ever.
“No, sir,” she said: “she don’t, sir; she’s fast asleep!”
“But some one ‘phoned me!” I insisted, rather irritably, I fear.
“Not from here, sir,” declared the now wide-eyed girl. “We haven’t got a telephone, sir.”
For a few moments I stood there, staring as foolishly as she; then abruptly I turned and descended the steps. At the gate I stood looking up and down the road. The houses were all in darkness. What could be the meaning of the mysterious summons? I had made no mistake respecting the name of my patient; it had been twice repeated over the telephone; yet that the call had not emanated from Mrs. Hewett’s house was now palpably evident. Days had been when I should have regarded the episode as preluding some outrage, but to-night I felt more disposed to ascribe it to a silly practical joke.
Eltham walked up briskly.
“You’re in demand to-night, doctor,” he said. “A young person called for you almost directly you had left your house, and, learning where you were gone, followed you.”
“Indeed!” I said, a trifle incredulously. “There are plenty of other doctors if the case is an urgent one.”
“She may have thought it would save time as you were actually up and dressed,” explained Eltham; “and the house is quite near to here, I understand.”
I looked at him a little blankly. Was this another effort of the unknown jester?
“I have been fooled once,” I said. “That ‘phone call was a hoax—”
“But I feel certain,” declared Eltham earnestly, “that this is genuine! The poor girl was dreadfully agitated; her master has broken his leg and is lying helpless: number 280 Rectory Grove.”
“Where is the girl?” I asked sharply.
“She ran back directly she had given me her message.”
“Was she a servant?”
“I should imagine so: French, I think. But she was so wrapped up I had little more than a glimpse of her. I am sorry to hear that some one has played a silly joke on you, but believe me” — he was very earnest— “this is no jest. The poor girl could scarcely speak for sobs. She mistook me for you, of course.”
“Oh!” said I grimly; “well, I suppose I must go. Broken leg, you said? — and my surgical bag, splints and so forth, are at home!”
“My dear Petrie!” cried Eltham, in his enthusiastic way, “you no doubt can do something to alleviate the poor man’s suffering immediately. I will run back to your rooms for the bag and rejoin you at 280 Rectory Grove.”
“It’s awfully good of you, Eltham—”
He held up his hand.
“The call of suffering humanity, Petrie, is one which I may no more refuse to hear than you.”
I made no further protest after that, for his point of view was evident and his determination adamantine, but told him where he would find the bag and once more set out across the moon-bright common, he pursuing a westerly direction and I going east.
Some three hundred yards I had gone, I suppose, and my brain had been very active the while, when something occurred to me which placed a new complexion upon this second summons. I thought of the falsity of the first, of the improbability of even the most hardened practical joker practising his wiles at one o’clock in the morning. I thought of our recent conversation; above all I thought of the girl who had delivered the message to Eltham, the girl whom he had described as a French maid — whose personal charm had so completely enlisted his sympathies. Now, to this train of thought came a new one, and, adding it, my suspicion became almost a certainty.
I remembered (as, knowing the district, I should have remembered before) that there was no number 280 Rectory Grove.
Pulling up sharply, I stood looking about me. Not a living soul was in sight; not even a policeman. Where the lamps marked the main paths across the common nothing moved; in the shadows about me nothing stirred. But something stirred within me — a warning voice which for long had lain dormant.
What was afoot?
A breeze caressed the leaves overhead, breaking the silence with mysterious whisperings. Some portentous truth was seeking for admittance to my brain. I strove to reassure myself, but the sense of impending evil and of mystery became heavier. At last I could combat my strange fears no longer. I turned and began to run towards the south side of the common — towards my rooms — and after Eltham.
I had hoped to head him off, but came upon no sign of him. An all-night tramcar passed at the moment that I reached the high-road, and as I ran around behind it I saw that my windows were lighted and that there was a light in the hall.
My key was yet in the lock when my housekeeper opened the door.
“There’s a gentleman just come, doctor,” she began.
I thrust past her and raced up the stairs to my study.
Standing by the writing-table was a tall thin man, his gaunt face brown as a coffee-berry and his steely grey eyes fixed upon me. My heart gave a great leap — and seemed to stand still.
It was Nayland Smith!
“Smith!” I cried. “Smith, old man, by God, I’m glad to see you!”
He wrung my hand hard, looking at me with his searching eyes; but there was little enough of gladness in his face. He was altogether greyer than when last I had seen him — greyer and sterner.
“Where is Eltham?” I asked.
Smith started back as though I had struck him.
“Eltham!” he whispered— “Eltham! is Eltham here?”
“I left him ten minutes ago on the common.”
Smith dashed his right fist into the palm of his left hand, and his eyes gleamed almost wildly.
“My God, Petrie!” he said, “am I fated always to come too late?”
My dreadful fears in that instant were confirmed. I seemed to feel my legs totter beneath me.
“Smith, you don’t mean—”
“I do, Petrie!” His voice sounded very far away. “Fu-Manchu is here; and Eltham, God help him ... is his first victim!”
CHAPTER II
ELTHAM VANISHES
Smith went racing down the stairs like a man possessed. Heavy with such a foreboding of calamity as I had not known for two years, I followed him — along the hall and out into the road. The very peace and beauty of the night in some way increased my mental agitation. The sky was lighted almost tropically with such a blaze of stars as I could not recall to have seen since, my futile search concluded, I had left Egypt. The glory of the moonlight yellowed the lamps speckled across the expanse of the common. The night was as still as night can ever be in London. The dimming pulse of a cab or car alone disturbed the quietude.
With a quick glance to right and left, Smith ran across on to the common, and, leaving the door wide open behind me, I followed. The path which Eltham had pursued terminated almost opposite to my house. One’s gaze might follow it, white and empty, for several hundred yards past the pond, and farther, until it became overshadowed and was lost amid a clump of trees.
I came up with Smith, and side by side we ran on, whilst pantingly I told my tale.
“It was a trick to get you away from him!” cried Smith. “They meant no doubt to make some attempt at your house, but, as he came out with you, an alternative plan—”
Abreast of the pond, my companion slowed down, and finally stopped.
“Where did you last see Eltham?” he asked, rapidly.
I took his arm, turning him slightly to the right, and pointed across the moon-bathed common.
“You see that clump of bushes on the other side of the road?” I said. “There’s a path to the left of it. I took that path and he took this. We parted at the point where they meet—”
Smith walked right down to the edge of the water and peered about over the surface.
What he hoped to find there I could not imagine. Whatever it had been he was disappointed, and he turned to me again, frowning perplexedly, and tuggi
ng at the lobe of his left ear, an old trick which reminded me of gruesome things we had lived through in the past.
“Come on,” he jerked. “It may be amongst the trees.”
From the tone of his voice I knew that he was tensed up nervously, and his mood but added to the apprehension of my own.
“What may be amongst the trees, Smith?” I asked.
He walked on.
“God knows, Petrie; but I fear—”
Behind us, along the high-road, a tramcar went rocking by, doubtless bearing a few belated workers homeward. The stark incongruity of the thing was appalling. How little those weary toilers, hemmed about with the commonplace, suspected that almost within sight from the car windows, amid prosy benches, iron railings, and unromantic, flickering lamps, two fellow-men moved upon the border of a horror-land!
Beneath the trees a shadow carpet lay, its edges tropically sharp; and fully ten yards from the first of the group, we two, hatless both, and sharing a common dread, paused for a moment and listened.
The car had stopped at the farther extremity of the common, and now with a moan that grew to a shriek was rolling on its way again. We stood and listened until silence reclaimed the night. Not a footstep could be heard. Then slowly we walked on. At the edge of the little coppice we stopped again abruptly.
Smith turned and thrust his pistol into my hand. A white ray of light pierced the shadows; my companion carried an electric torch. But no trace of Eltham was discoverable.
There had been a heavy shower of rain during the evening, just before sunset, and although the open paths were dry again, under the trees the ground was still moist. Ten yards within the coppice we came upon tracks — the tracks of one running, as the deep imprints of the toes indicated.
Abruptly the tracks terminated; others, softer, joined them, two sets converging from left and right. There was a confused patch, trailing off to the west; then this became indistinct, and was finally lost, upon the hard ground outside the group.
For perhaps a minute, or more, we ran about from tree to tree, and from bush to bush, searching like hounds for a scent, and fearful of what we might find. We found nothing; and fully in the moonlight we stood facing one another. The night was profoundly still.
Nayland Smith stepped back into the shadows, and began slowly to turn his head from left to right, taking in the entire visible expanse of the common. Towards a point where the road bisected it he stared intently. Then, with a bound, he set off!
“Come on, Petrie!” he cried. “There they are!”
Vaulting a railing he went away over a field like a madman. Recovering from the shock of surprise, I followed him, but he was well ahead of me, and making for some vaguely seen objects moving against the lights of the roadway.
Another railing was vaulted, and the corner of a second, triangular grass patch crossed at a hot sprint. We were twenty yards from the road when the sound of a starting motor broke the silence. We gained the gravelled footpath only to see the tail-light of the car dwindling to the north!
Smith leant dizzily against a tree.
“Eltham is in that car!” he gasped. “Just God! are we to stand here and see him taken away to — ?”
He beat his fist upon the tree, in a sort of tragic despair. The nearest cab-rank was no great distance away, but, excluding the possibility of no cab being there, it might, for all practicable purposes, as well have been a mile off.
The beat of the retreating motor was scarcely audible; the lights might but just be distinguished. Then, coming in an opposite direction, appeared the headlamp of another car, of a car that raced nearer and nearer to us, so that, within a few seconds of its first appearance, we found ourselves bathed in the beam of its headlights.
Smith bounded out into the road, and stood, a weird silhouette, with upraised arms, fully in its course!
The brakes were applied hurriedly. It was a big limousine, and its driver swerved perilously in avoiding Smith and nearly ran into me. But, the breathless moment past, the car was pulled up, head on to the railings; and a man in evening clothes was demanding excitedly what had happened. Smith, a hatless, dishevelled figure, stepped up to the door.
“My name is Nayland Smith,” he said rapidly— “Burmese Commissioner.” He snatched a letter from his pocket and thrust it into the hands of the bewildered man. “Read that. It is signed by another Commissioner — the Commissioner of Police.”
With amazement written all over him, the other obeyed.
“You see,” continued my friend tersely, “it is carte blanche. I wish to commandeer your car, sir, on a matter of life and death!”
The other returned the letter.
“Allow me to offer it!” he said, descending. “My man will take your orders. I can finish my journey by cab. I am—”
But Smith did not wait to learn whom he might be.
“Quick!” he cried to the stupefied chauffeur. “You passed a car a minute ago — yonder. Can you overtake it?”
“I can try, sir, if I don’t lose her track.”
Smith leapt in, pulling me after him.
“Do it!” he snapped. “There are no speed limits for me. Thanks! Good night, sir!”
We were off! The car swung around and the chase commenced.
One last glimpse I had of the man we had dispossessed, standing alone by the roadside, and at ever-increasing speed, we leapt away in the track of Eltham’s captors.
Smith was too highly excited for ordinary conversation, but he threw out short, staccato remarks.
“I have followed Fu-Manchu from Hong-Kong,” he jerked. “Lost him at Suez. He got here a boat ahead of me. Eltham has been corresponding with some mandarin up-country. Knew that. Came straight to you. Only got in this evening. He — Fu-Manchu — has been sent here to get Eltham. My God! and he has him! He will question him! The interior of China — a seething pot, Petrie! They had to stop the leakage of information. He is here for that.”
The car pulled up with a jerk that pitched me out of my seat, and the chauffeur leapt to the road and ran ahead. Smith was out in a trice, as the man, who had run up to a constable, came racing back.
“Jump in, sir — jump in!” he cried, his eyes bright with the lust of the chase; “they are making for Battersea!”
And we were off again.
Through the empty streets we roared on. A place of gasometers and desolate waste lots slipped behind and we were in a narrow way where gates of yards and a few lowly houses faced upon a prospect of high blank wall.
“Thames on our right,” said Smith, peering ahead. “His rathole is by the river as usual. Hi!” — he grabbed up the speaking-tube— “Stop! Stop!”
The limousine swung into the narrow sidewalk, and pulled up close by a yard gate. I, too, had seen our quarry — a long, low-bodied car, showing no inside lights. It had turned the next corner, where a street lamp shone greenly not a hundred yards ahead.
Smith leapt out, and I followed him.
“That must be a cul-de-sac,” he said, and turned to the eager-eyed chauffeur. “Run back to that last turning,” he ordered, “and wait there, out of sight. Bring the car up when you hear a police-whistle.”
The man looked disappointed, but did not question the order. As he began to back away, Smith grasped me by the arm and drew me forward.
“We must get to that corner,” he said, “and see where the car stands, without showing ourselves.”
CHAPTER III
THE WIRE JACKET
I suppose we were not more than a dozen paces from the lamp when we heard the thudding of the motor. The car was backing out!
It was a desperate moment, for it seemed that we could not fail to be discovered. Nayland Smith began to look about him, feverishly, for a hiding place, a quest which I seconded with equal anxiety. And Fate was kind to us — doubly kind as after events revealed. A wooden gate broke the expanse of wall hard by upon the right, and, as the result of some recent accident, a ragged gap had been torn in the panels close to the
top.
The chain of the padlock hung loosely; and in a second Smith was up, with his foot in this as in a stirrup. He threw his arm over the top and drew himself upright. A second later he was astride the broken gate.
“Up you come, Petrie!” he said, and reached down his hand to aid me.
I got my foot into the loop of chain, grasped at a projection in the gate-post, and found myself up.
“There is a crossbar, on this side to stand on,” said Smith.
He climbed over and vanished in the darkness. I was still astride the broken gate when the car turned the corner, slowly, for there was scanty room; but I was standing upon the bar on the inside and had my head below the gap ere the driver could possibly have seen me.
“Stay where you are until he passes,” hissed my companion, below. “There is a row of kegs under you.”
The sound of the motor passing outside grew loud — louder — then began to die away. I felt about with my left foot, discerned the top of a keg, and dropped, panting, beside Smith.
“Phew!” I said— “that was a close thing! Smith — how do we know — ?”
“That we have followed the right car?” he interrupted. “Ask yourself the question: what would any ordinary man be doing motoring in a place like this at two o’clock in the morning?”
“You are right, Smith,” I agreed. “Shall we get out again?”
“Not yet. I have an idea. Look yonder.”
He grasped my arm, turning me in the desired direction.
Beyond a great expanse of unbroken darkness a ray of moonlight slanted into the place wherein we stood, spilling its cold radiance upon rows of kegs.
“That’s another door,” continued my friend. I now began dimly to perceive him beside me. “If my calculations are not entirely wrong, it opens on a wharf gate—”