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Page 39
"Wait!" snapped Eltham, and rushed indoors.
A moment later he was out again, his eyes gleaming madly.
"Above the moat," he panted. And we were off en masse
round the edge of the trees.
It was dark above the moat; but not so dark as to prevent our
seeing a narrow ladder of thin bamboo joints and silken cord
hanging by two hooks from the top of the twelve-foot wire fence.
There was no sound.
"He's out!" screamed Eltham. "Down the steps!"
We all ran our best and swiftest. But Eltham outran us. Like a fury
he tore at bolts and bars, and like a fury sprang out into the road.
Straight and white it showed to the acclivity by the Roman ruin.
But no living thing moved upon it. The distant baying of the dog
was borne to our ears.
"Curse it! he's crippled," hissed Smith. "Without him,
as well pursue a shadow!"
A few hours later the shrubbery yielded up its secret, a simple one enough:
A big cask sunk in a pit, with a laurel shrub cunningly affixed
to its movable lid, which was further disguised with tufts of grass.
A slender bamboo-jointed rod lay near the fence. It had a hook on the top,
and was evidently used for attaching the ladder.
"It was the end of this ladder which Miss Eltham saw," said Smith,
"as he trailed it behind him into the shrubbery when she interrupted
him in her fathers room. He and whomever he had with him doubtless
slipped in during the daytime--whilst Eltham was absent in London--
bringing the prepared cask and all necessary implements with them.
They concealed themselves somewhere--probably in the shrubbery--
and during the night made the cache. The excavated earth would be
disposed of on the flower-beds; the dummy bush they probably had ready.
You see, the problem of getting IN was never a big one.
But owing to the `defenses' it was impossible (whilst Eltham
was in residence at any rate) to get OUT after dark.
For Fu-Manchu's purposes, then, a working-base INSIDE
Redmoat was essential. His servant--for he needed assistance--
must have been in hiding somewhere outside; Heaven knows where!
During the day they could come or go by the gates, as we
have already noted."
"You think it was the Doctor himself?"
"It seems possible. Who else has eyes like the eyes Miss Eltham
saw from the window last night?"
Then remains to tell the nature of the outrage whereby Fu-Manchu had planned
to prevent Eltham's leaving England for China. This we learned from Denby.
For Denby was not dead.
It was easy to divine that he had stumbled upon the fiendish
visitor at the very entrance to his burrow; had been stunned
(judging from the evidence, with a sand-bag), and dragged down into
the cache--to which he must have lain in such dangerous proximity
as to render detection of the dummy bush possible in removing him.
The quickest expedient, then, had been to draw him beneath.
When the search of the shrubbery was concluded, his body had been
borne to the edge of the bushes and laid where we found it.
Why his life had been spared, I cannot conjecture, but provision
had been made against his recovering consciousness and revealing
the secret of the shrubbery. The ruse of releasing the mastiff alone
had terminated the visit of the unbidden guest within Redmoat.
Denby made a very slow recovery; and, even when convalescent,
consciously added not one fact to those we already had collated;
his memory had completely deserted him!
This, in my opinion, as in those of the several specialists consulted,
was due, not to the blow on the head, but to the presence,
slightly below and to the right of the first cervical curve of the spine,
of a minute puncture--undoubtedly caused by a hypodermic syringe.
Then, unconsciously, poor Denby furnished the last link in the chain;
for undoubtedly, by means of this operation, Fu-Manchu had designed
to efface from Eltham's mind his plans of return to Ho-Nan.
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