CHAPTER VIII
IN what order we dashed down to the drawing-room I cannot recall. Butnone was before me when I leaped over the threshold and saw Miss Elthamprone by the French windows.
These were closed and bolted, and she lay with hands outstretched inthe alcove which they formed. I bent over her. Nayland Smith was atmy elbow.
"Get my bag" I said. "She has swooned. It is nothing serious."
Her father, pale and wide-eyed, hovered about me, mutteringincoherently; but I managed to reassure him; and his gratitude when, Ihaving administered a simple restorative, the girl sighed shudderinglyand opened her eyes, was quite pathetic.
I would permit no questioning at that time, and on her father's arm sheretired to her own rooms.
It was some fifteen minutes later that her message was brought to me.I followed the maid to a quaint little octagonal apartment, and GrebaEltham stood before me, the candlelight caressing the soft curves ofher face and gleaming in the meshes of her rich brown hair.
When she had answered my first question she hesitated in prettyconfusion.
"We are anxious to know what alarmed you, Miss Eltham."
She bit her lip and glanced with apprehension towards the window.
"I am almost afraid to tell father," she began rapidly. "He will thinkme imaginative, but you have been so kind. It was two green eyes! Oh!Dr. Petrie, they looked up at me from the steps leading to the lawn.And they shone like the eyes of a cat."
The words thrilled me strangely.
"Are you sure it was not a cat, Miss Eltham?"
"The eyes were too large, Dr. Petrie. There was something dreadful,most dreadful, in their appearance. I feel foolish and silly forhaving fainted, twice in two days! But the suspense is telling uponme, I suppose. Father thinks"--she was becoming charminglyconfidential, as a woman often will with a tactful physician--"thatshut up here we are safe from--whatever threatens us." I noted, withconcern, a repetition of the nervous shudder. "But since our returnsomeone else has been in Redmoat!"
"Whatever do you mean, Miss Eltham?"
"Oh! I don't quite know what I do mean, Dr. Petrie. What does it ALLmean? Vernon has been explaining to me that some awful Chinaman isseeking the life of Mr. Nayland Smith. But if the same man wants tokill my father, why has he not done so?"
"I am afraid you puzzle me."
"Of course, I must do so. But--the man in the train. He could havekilled us both quite easily! And--last night someone was in father'sroom."
"In his room!"
"I could not sleep, and I heard something moving. My room is the nextone. I knocked on the wall and woke father. There was nothing; so Isaid it was the howling of the dog that had frightened me."
"How could anyone get into his room?"
"I cannot imagine. But I am not sure it was a man."
"Miss Eltham, you alarm me. What do you suspect?"
"You must think me hysterical and silly, but whilst father and I havebeen away from Redmoat perhaps the usual precautions have beenneglected. Is there any creature, any large creature, which couldclimb up the wall to the window? Do you know of anything with a long,thin body?"
For a moment I offered no reply, studying the girl's pretty face, hereager, blue-gray eyes widely opened and fixed upon mine. She was notof the neurotic type, with her clear complexion and sun-kissed neck;her arms, healthily toned by exposure to the country airs, were roundedand firm, and she had the agile shape of a young Diana with none of theanaemic languor which breeds morbid dreams. She was frightened; yes,who would not have been? But the mere idea of this thing which shebelieved to be in Redmoat, without the apparition of the green eyes,must have prostrated a victim of "nerves."
"Have you seen such a creature, Miss Eltham?"
She hesitated again, glancing down and pressing her finger-tipstogether.
"As father awoke and called out to know why I knocked, I glanced frommy window. The moonlight threw half the lawn into shadow, and justdisappearing in this shadow was something--something of a brown color,marked with sections!"
"What size and shape?"
"It moved so quickly I could form no idea of its shape; but I saw quitesix feet of it flash across the grass!"
"Did you hear anything?"
"A swishing sound in the shrubbery, then nothing more."
She met my eyes expectantly. Her confidence in my powers ofunderstanding and sympathy was gratifying, though I knew that I butoccupied the position of a father-confessor.
"Have you any idea," I said, "how it came about that you awoke in thetrain yesterday whilst your father did not?"
"We had coffee at a refreshment-room; it must have been drugged in someway. I scarcely tasted mine, the flavor was so awful; but father is anold traveler and drank the whole of his cupful!"
Mr. Eltham's voice called from below.
"Dr. Petrie," said the girl quickly, "what do you think they want to doto him?"
"Ah!" I replied, "I wish I knew that."
"Will you think over what I have told you? For I do assure you thereis something here in Redmoat--something that comes and goes in spite offather's 'fortifications'? Caesar knows there is. Listen to him. Hedrags at his chain so that I wonder he does not break it."
As we passed downstairs the howling of the mastiff sounded eerilythrough the house, as did the clank-clank of the tightening chain as hethrew the weight of his big body upon it.
I sat in Smith's room that night for some time, he pacing the floorsmoking and talking.
"Eltham has influential Chinese friends," he said; "but they dare nothave him in Nan-Yang at present. He knows the country as he knowsNorfolk; he would see things!
"His precautions here have baffled the enemy, I think. The attempt inthe train points to an anxiety to waste no opportunity. But whilstEltham was absent (he was getting his outfit in London, by the way)they have been fixing some second string to their fiddle here. In caseno opportunity offered before he returned, they provided for getting athim here!"
"But how, Smith?"
"That's the mystery. But the dead dog in the shrubbery is significant."
"Do you think some emissary of Fu-Manchu is actually inside the moat?"
"It's impossible, Petrie. You are thinking of secret passages, and soforth. There are none. Eltham has measured up every foot of theplace. There isn't a rathole left unaccounted for; and as for a tunnelunder the moat, the house stands on a solid mass of Roman masonry, aformer camp of Hadrian's time. I have seen a very old plan of theRound Moat Priory as it was called. There is no entrance and no exitsave by the steps. So how was the dog killed?"
I knocked out my pipe on a bar of the grate.
"We are in the thick of it here," I said.
"We are always in the thick of it," replied Smith. "Our danger is nogreater in Norfolk than in London. But what do they want to do? Thatman in the train with the case of instruments--WHAT instruments? Thenthe apparition of the green eyes to-night. Can they have been the eyesof Fu-Manchu? Is some peculiarly unique outrage contemplated--somethingcalling for the presence of the master?"
"He may have to prevent Eltham's leaving England without killing him."
"Quite so. He probably has instructions to be merciful. But God helpthe victim of Chinese mercy!"
I went to my own room then. But I did not even undress, refilling mypipe and seating myself at the open window. Having looked upon theawful Chinese doctor, the memory of his face, with its filmed greeneyes, could never leave me. The idea that he might be near at thatmoment was a poor narcotic.
The howling and baying of the mastiff was almost continuous.
When all else in Redmoat was still the dog's mournful note yet rose onthe night with something menacing in it. I sat looking out across thesloping turf to where the shrubbery showed as a black island in a greensea. The moon swam in a cloudless sky, and the air was warm andfragrant with country scents.
It was in the shrubbery that Denby's coll
ie had met his mysteriousdeath--that the thing seen by Miss Eltham had disappeared. Whatuncanny secret did it hold?
Caesar became silent.
As the stopping of a clock will sometimes awaken a sleeper, the abruptcessation of that distant howling, to which I had grown accustomed, nowrecalled me from a world of gloomy imaginings.
I glanced at my watch in the moonlight. It was twelve minutes pastmidnight.
As I replaced it the dog suddenly burst out afresh, but now in a toneof sheer anger. He was alternately howling and snarling in a way thatsounded new to me. The crashes, as he leapt to the end of his chain,shook the building in which he was confined. It was as I stood up tolean from the window and commanded a view of the corner of the housethat he broke loose.
With a hoarse bay he took that decisive leap, and I heard his heavybody fall against the wooden wall. There followed a strange, gutturalcry . . . and the growling of the dog died away at the rear of the house.He was out! But that guttural note had not come from the throat of adog. Of what was he in pursuit?
At which point his mysterious quarry entered the shrubbery I do notknow. I only know that I saw absolutely nothing, until Caesar's litheshape was streaked across the lawn, and the great creature wentcrashing into the undergrowth.
Then a faint sound above and to my right told me that I was not theonly spectator of the scene. I leaned farther from the window.
"Is that you, Miss Eltham?" I asked.
"Oh, Dr. Petrie!" she said. "I am so glad you are awake. Can we donothing to help? Caesar will be killed."
"Did you see what he went after?"
"No," she called back, and drew her breath sharply.
For a strange figure went racing across the grass. It was that of aman in a blue dressing-gown, who held a lantern high before him, and arevolver in his right hand. Coincident with my recognition of Mr.Eltham he leaped, plunging into the shrubbery in the wake of the dog.
But the night held yet another surprise; for Nayland Smith's voice came:
"Come back! Come back, Eltham!"
I ran out into the passage and downstairs. The front door was open. Aterrible conflict waged in the shrubbery, between the mastiff andsomething else. Passing round to the lawn, I met Smith fully dressed.He just had dropped from a first-floor window.
"The man is mad!" he snapped. "Heaven knows what lurks there! Heshould not have gone alone!"
Together we ran towards the dancing light of Eltham's lantern. Thesounds of conflict ceased suddenly. Stumbling over stumps and lashedby low-sweeping branches, we struggled forward to where the clergymanknelt amongst the bushes. He glanced up with tears in his eyes, as wasrevealed by the dim light.
"Look!" he cried.
The body of the dog lay at his feet.
It was pitiable to think that the fearless brute should have met hisdeath in such a fashion, and when I bent and examined him I was glad tofind traces of life.
"Drag him out. He is not dead," I said.
"And hurry," rapped Smith, peering about him right and left.
So we three hurried from that haunted place, dragging the dog with us.We were not molested. No sound disturbed the now perfect stillness.
By the lawn edge we came upon Denby, half dressed; and almostimmediately Edwards the gardener also appeared. The white faces of thehouse servants showed at one window, and Miss Eltham called to me fromher room:
"Is he dead?"
"No," I replied; "only stunned."
We carried the dog round to the yard, and I examined his head. It hadbeen struck by some heavy blunt instrument, but the skull was notbroken. It is hard to kill a mastiff.
"Will you attend to him, Doctor?" asked Eltham. "We must see that thevillain does not escape."
His face was grim and set. This was a different man from the diffidentclergyman we knew: this was "Parson Dan" again.
I accepted the care of the canine patient, and Eltham with the otherswent off for more lights to search the shrubbery. As I was washing abad wound between the mastiff's ears, Miss Eltham joined me. It wasthe sound of her voice, I think, rather than my more scientificministration, which recalled Caesar to life. For, as she entered, histail wagged feebly, and a moment later he struggled to his feet--one ofwhich was injured.
Having provided for his immediate needs, I left him in charge of hisyoung mistress and joined the search party. They had entered theshrubbery from four points and drawn blank.
"There is absolutely nothing there, and no one can possibly have leftthe grounds," said Eltham amazedly.
We stood on the lawn looking at one another, Nayland Smith, angry butthoughtful, tugging at the lobe of his left ear, as was his habit inmoments of perplexity.