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Page 27
"No," he said tensely. "Not until I see him lying dead before me
shall I believe it."
Then memory resumed its sway. I struggled to my feet.
"Smith, where is she?" I cried. "Where is she?"
"I don't know," he answered.
"She's given us the slip, Doctor," said Inspector Weymouth,
as a fire-engine came swinging round the corner of the narrow lane.
"So has Mr. Singapore Charlie--and, I'm afraid, somebody else.
We've got six or eight all-sorts, some awake and some asleep,
but I suppose we shall have to let 'em go again.
Mr. Smith tells me that the girl was disguised as a Chinaman.
I expect that's why she managed to slip away."
I recalled how I had been dragged from the pit by the false queue,
how the strange discovery which had brought death to poor Cadby
had brought life to me, and I seemed to remember, too, that Smith
had dropped it as he threw his arm about me on the ladder.
Her mask the girl might have retained, but her wig, I felt certain,
had been dropped into the water.
It was later that night, when the brigade still were playing
upon the blackened shell of what had been Shen-Yan's opium-shop,
and Smith and I were speeding away in a cab from the scene of God
knows how many crimes, that I had an idea.
"Smith," I said, "did you bring the pigtail with you that was
found on Cadby?"
"Yes. I had hoped to meet the owner."
"Have you got it now?"
"No. I met the owner."
I thrust my hands deep into the pockets of the big pea-jacket
lent to me by Inspector Ryman, leaning back in my corner.
"We shall never really excel at this business," continued Nayland Smith.
"We are far too sentimental. I knew what it meant to us, Petrie, what it
meant to the world, but I hadn't the heart. I owed her your life--
I had to square the account."
CHAPTER VII
NIGHT fell on Redmoat. I glanced from the window at
the nocturne in silver and green which lay beneath me.
To the west of the shrubbery, with its broken canopy of elms
and beyond the copper beech which marked the center of its mazes,
a gap offered a glimpse of the Waverney where it swept into a broad.
Faint bird-calls floated over the water. These, with the whisper
of leaves, alone claimed the ear.
Ideal rural peace, and the music of an English summer evening;
but to my eyes, every shadow holding fantastic terrors;
to my ears, every sound a signal of dread. For the deathful
hand of Fu-Manchu was stretched over Redmoat, at any hour
to loose strange, Oriental horrors upon its inmates.
"Well," said Nayland Smith, joining me at the window, "we had dared
to hope him dead, but we know now that he lives!"
The Rev. J. D. Eltham coughed nervously, and I turned, leaning my elbow
upon the table, and studied the play of expression upon the refined,
sensitive face of the clergyman.
"You think I acted rightly in sending for you, Mr. Smith?"
Nayland Smith smoked furiously.
"Mr. Eltham," he replied, "you see in me a man groping in the dark.
I am to-day no nearer to the conclusion of my mission than
upon the day when I left Mandalay. You offer me a clew;
I am here. Your affair, I believe, stands thus:
A series of attempted burglaries, or something of the kind,
has alarmed your household. Yesterday, returning from London
with your daughter, you were both drugged in some way and,
occupying a compartment to yourselves, you both slept.
Your daughter awoke, and saw someone else in the carriage--
a yellow-faced man who held a case of instruments in his hands."
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