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 stillness.
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 further, 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 moonbathed 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
tugging 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 highroad, 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, in a place of 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 further 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. Toward 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 object 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
graveled footpath only to see the taillight of the car dwindling to the
north!
Smith leaned 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 practical 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, disheveled 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 leaped in, pulling me after him.
“Do it!” he snapped. “There are no speed limits for me. Thanks!
Goodnight, 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 leaped 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 Hongkong,” 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 leaped 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 in to 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 leaped 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.”