CHAPTER IV. THE CRY OF A NIGHTHAWK
Such were the episodes that marked the coming of Dr. Fu-Manchu toLondon, that awakened fears long dormant and reopened old wounds--nay,poured poison into them. I strove desperately, by close attention tomy professional duties, to banish the very memory of Karamaneh from mymind; desperately, but how vainly! Peace was for me no more, joy wasgone from the world, and only mockery remained as my portion.
Poor Eltham we had placed in a nursing establishment, where hisindescribable hurts could be properly tended: and his uncomplainingfortitude not infrequently made me thoroughly ashamed of myself.Needless to say, Smith had made such other arrangements as werenecessary to safeguard the injured man, and these proved so successfulthat the malignant being whose plans they thwarted abandoned his designsupon the heroic clergyman and directed his attention elsewhere, as Imust now proceed to relate.
Dusk always brought with it a cloud of apprehensions, for darkness mustever be the ally of crime; and it was one night, long after the clockshad struck the mystic hour "when churchyards yawn," that the hand ofDr. Fu-Manchu again stretched out to grasp a victim. I was dismissing achance patient.
"Good night, Dr. Petrie," he said.
"Good night, Mr. Forsyth," I replied; and, having conducted my latevisitor to the door, I closed and bolted it, switched off the light andwent upstairs.
My patient was chief officer of one of the P. and O. boats. He had cuthis hand rather badly on the homeward run, and signs of poisoninghaving developed, had called to have the wound treated, apologizing fortroubling me at so late an hour, but explaining that he had only justcome from the docks. The hall clock announced the hour of one as Iascended the stairs. I found myself wondering what there was in Mr.Forsyth's appearance which excited some vague and elusive memory. Comingto the top floor, I opened the door of a front bedroom and was surprisedto find the interior in darkness.
"Smith!" I called.
"Come here and watch!" was the terse response. Nayland Smith was sittingin the dark at the open window and peering out across the common. Evenas I saw him, a dim silhouette, I could detect that tensity in hisattitude which told of high-strung nerves.
I joined him.
"What is it?" I said, curiously.
"I don't know. Watch that clump of elms."
His masterful voice had the dry tone in it betokening excitement. Ileaned on the ledge beside him and looked out. The blaze of stars almostcompensated for the absence of the moon and the night had a quality ofstillness that made for awe. This was a tropical summer, and the common,with its dancing lights dotted irregularly about it, had an unfamiliarlook to-night. The clump of nine elms showed as a dense and irregularmass, lacking detail.
Such moods as that which now claimed my friend are magnetic. I had nothought of the night's beauty, for it only served to remind me thatsomewhere amid London's millions was lurking an uncanny being, whoselife was a mystery, whose very existence was a scientific miracle.
"Where's your patient?" rapped Smith.
His abrupt query diverted my thoughts into a new channel. No footstepdisturbed the silence of the highroad; where was my patient?
I craned from the window. Smith grabbed my arm.
"Don't lean out," he said.
I drew back, glancing at him surprisedly.
"For Heaven's sake, why not?"
"I'll tell you presently, Petrie. Did you see him?"
"I did, and I can't make out what he is doing. He seems to have remainedstanding at the gate for some reason."
"He has seen it!" snapped Smith. "Watch those elms."
His hand remained upon my arm, gripping it nervously. Shall I say thatI was surprised? I can say it with truth. But I shall add that I wasthrilled, eerily; for this subdued excitement and alert watching ofSmith could only mean one thing:
Fu-Manchu!
And that was enough to set me watching as keenly as he; to set melistening; not only for sounds outside the house but for sounds within.Doubts, suspicions, dreads, heaped themselves up in my mind. Why wasForsyth standing there at the gate? I had never seen him before, tomy knowledge, yet there was something oddly reminiscent about the man.Could it be that his visit formed part of a plot? Yet his wound had beengenuine enough. Thus my mind worked, feverishly; such was the effect ofan unspoken thought--Fu-Manchu.
Nayland Smith's grip tightened on my arm.
"There it is again, Petrie!" he whispered.
"Look, look!"
His words were wholly unnecessary. I, too, had seen it; a wonderful anduncanny sight. Out of the darkness under the elms, low down upon theground, grew a vaporous blue light. It flared up, elfinish, thenbegan to ascend. Like an igneous phantom, a witch flame, it rose,high--higher--higher, to what I adjudged to be some twelve feet or morefrom the ground. Then, high in the air, it died away again as it hadcome!
"For God's sake, Smith, what was it?"
"Don't ask me, Petrie. I have seen it twice. We--"
He paused. Rapid footsteps sounded below. Over Smith's shoulder I sawForsyth cross the road, climb the low rail, and set out across thecommon.
Smith sprang impetuously to his feet.
"We must stop him!" he said hoarsely; then, clapping a hand to my mouthas I was about to call out--"Not a sound, Petrie!"
He ran out of the room and went blundering downstairs in the dark,crying:
"Out through the garden--the side entrance!"
I overtook him as he threw wide the door of my dispensing room. Throughit he ran and opened the door at the other end. I followed himout, closing it behind me. The smell from some tobacco plants in aneighboring flower-bed was faintly perceptible; no breeze stirred; andin the great silence I could hear Smith, in front of me, tugging at thebolt of the gate.
Then he had it open, and I stepped out, close on his heels, and left thedoor ajar.
"We must not appear to have come from your house," explained Smithrapidly. "I will go along the highroad and cross to the common a hundredyards up, where there is a pathway, as though homeward bound to thenorth side. Give me half a minute's start, then you proceed in anopposite direction and cross from the corner of the next road. Directlyyou are out of the light of the street lamps, get over the rails and runfor the elms!"
He thrust a pistol into my hand and was off.
While he had been with me, speaking in that incisive, impetuous way ofhis, with his dark face close to mine, and his eyes gleaming like steel,I had been at one with him in his feverish mood, but now, when I stoodalone, in that staid and respectable byway, holding a loaded pistol inmy hand, the whole thing became utterly unreal.
It was in an odd frame of mind that I walked to the next corner, asdirected; for I was thinking, not of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the great and evilman who dreamed of Europe and America under Chinese rule, not of NaylandSmith, who alone stood between the Chinaman and the realization of hismonstrous schemes, not even of Karamaneh the slave girl, whose gloriousbeauty was a weapon of might in Fu-Manchu's hand, but of what impressionI must have made upon a patient had I encountered one then.
Such were my ideas up to the moment that I crossed to the common andvaulted into the field on my right. As I began to run toward the elms Ifound myself wondering what it was all about, and for what we werecome. Fifty yards west of the trees it occurred to me that if Smith hadcounted on cutting Forsyth off we were too late, for it appeared to methat he must already be in the coppice.
I was right. Twenty paces more I ran, and ahead of me, from the elms,came a sound. Clearly it came through the still air--the eerie hoot of anighthawk. I could not recall ever to have heard the cry of that bird onthe common before, but oddly enough I attached little significance to ituntil, in the ensuing instant, a most dreadful scream--a scream in whichfear, and loathing, and anger were hideously blended--thrilled me withhorror.
After that I have no recollection of anything until I found myselfstanding by the southernmost elm.
"Smith!" I cried breathlessly. "Smith! my God! where are you?"
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As if in answer to my cry came an indescribable sound, a mingled sobbingand choking. Out from the shadows staggered a ghastly figure--that of aman whose face appeared to be streaked. His eyes glared at me madly andhe mowed the air with his hands like one blind and insane with fear.
I started back; words died upon my tongue. The figure reeled and the manfell babbling and sobbing at my very feet.
Inert I stood, looking down at him. He writhed a moment--and was still.The silence again became perfect. Then, from somewhere beyond the elms,Nayland Smith appeared. I did not move. Even when he stood beside me, Imerely stared at him fatuously.
"I let him walk to his death, Petrie," I heard dimly. "God forgiveme--God forgive me!"
The words aroused me.
"Smith"--my voice came as a whisper--"for one awful moment I thought--"
"So did some one else," he rapped. "Our poor sailor has met the enddesigned for me, Petrie!"
At that I realized two things: I knew why Forsyth's face had struck meas being familiar in some puzzling way, and I knew why Forsyth nowlay dead upon the grass. Save that he was a fair man and wore a slightmustache, he was, in features and build, the double of Nayland Smith!