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Page 118
Nayland Smith, gaunt and wild-eyed, and trembling yet with his
tremendous exertions, turned to the man whom I knew to be
the messenger from Scotland Yard.
"Well?" he rapped.
"He is arrested, sir," the detective reported. "They have kept
him at his chambers as you ordered."
"Has she slept through it?" said Smith to me.
(I had just returned from a visit to the room above.) I nodded.
"Is HE safe for an hour or two?"--indicating the figure on the couch.
"For eight or ten," I replied grimly.
"Come, then. Our night's labors are not nearly complete."
CHAPTER XXX
LATER was forthcoming evidence to show that poor Weymouth had lived
a wild life, in hiding among the thick bushes of the tract of land
which lay between the village and the suburb on the neighboring hill.
Literally, he had returned to primitive savagery and some of his food
had been that of the lower animals, though he had not scrupled to steal,
as we learned when his lair was discovered.
He had hidden himself cunningly; but witnesses appeared who had seen him,
in the dusk, and fled from him. They never learned that the object
of their fear was Inspector John Weymouth. How, having escaped death
in the Thames, he had crossed London unobserved, we never knew;
but his trick of knocking upon his own door at half-past two each morning
(a sort of dawning of sanity mysteriously linked with old custom)
will be a familiar class of symptom to all students of alienation.
I revert to the night when Smith solved the mystery of the knocking.
In a car which he had in waiting at the end of the village we sped
through the deserted streets to New Inn Court. I, who had followed
Nayland Smith through the failures and successes of his mission,
knew that to-night he had surpassed himself; had justified the confidence
placed in him by the highest authorities.
We were admitted to an untidy room--that of a student,
a traveler and a crank--by a plain-clothes officer.
Amid picturesque and disordered fragments of a hundred ages,
in a great carven chair placed before a towering statue
of the Buddha, sat a hand-cuffed man. His white hair
and beard were patriarchal; his pose had great dignity.
But his expression was entirely masked by the smoked glasses
which he wore.
Two other detectives were guarding the prisoner.
"We arrested Professor Jenner Monde as he came in, sir,"
reported the man who had opened the door. "He has made no statement.
I hope there isn't a mistake."
"I hope not," rapped Smith.
He strode across the room. He was consumed by a fever of excitement.
Almost savagely, he tore away the beard, tore off the snowy wig dashed
the smoked glasses upon the floor.
A great, high brow was revealed, and green, malignant eyes, which fixed
themselves upon him with an expression I never can forget.
IT WAS DR. FU-MANCHU!
One intense moment of silence ensued--of silence which seemed
to throb. Then:
"What have you done with Professor Monde?" demanded Smith.
Dr. Fu-Manchu showed his even, yellow teeth in the singularly evil
smile which I knew so well. A manacled prisoner he sat as unruffled
as a judge upon the bench. In truth and in justice I am compelled
to say that Fu-Manchu was absolutely fearless.
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