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Page 4
"You have taken your leave early?"
"I am not on leave," he replied, and slowly filled his pipe.
"I am on duty."
"On duty!" I exclaimed. "What, are you moved to London or something?"
"I have got a roving commission, Petrie, and it doesn't rest
with me where I am to-day nor where I shall be to-morrow."
There was something ominous in the words, and, putting down my glass,
its contents untasted, I faced round and looked him squarely in the eyes.
"Out with it!" I said. "What is it all about?"
Smith suddenly stood up and stripped off his coat.
Rolling back his left shirt-sleeve he revealed a wicked-looking
wound in the fleshy part of the forearm. It was quite healed,
but curiously striated for an inch or so around.
"Ever seen one like it?" he asked.
"Not exactly," I confessed. "It appears to have been deeply cauterized."
"Right! Very deeply!" he rapped. "A barb steeped in the venom
of a hamadryad went in there!"
A shudder I could not repress ran coldly through me at mention
of that most deadly of all the reptiles of the East.
"There's only one treatment," he continued, rolling his sleeve down again,
"and that's with a sharp knife, a match, and a broken cartridge.
I lay on my back, raving, for three days afterwards, in a forest that stank
with malaria, but I should have been lying there now if I had hesitated.
Here's the point. It was not an accident!"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that it was a deliberate attempt on my life, and I am hard upon
the tracks of the man who extracted that venom--patiently, drop by drop--
from the poison-glands of the snake, who prepared that arrow, and who caused
it to be shot at me."
"What fiend is this?"
"A fiend who, unless my calculations are at fault is now in London,
and who regularly wars with pleasant weapons of that kind. Petrie, I have
traveled from Burma not in the interests of the British Government merely,
but in the interests of the entire white race, and I honestly believe--
though I pray I may be wrong--that its survival depends largely upon
the success of my mission."
To say that I was perplexed conveys no idea of the mental chaos
created by these extraordinary statements, for into my humdrum
suburban life Nayland Smith had brought fantasy of the wildest.
I did not know what to think, what to believe.
"I am wasting precious time!" he rapped decisively, and, draining his glass,
he stood up. "I came straight to you, because you are the only man I dare
to trust. Except the big chief at headquarters, you are the only person
in England, I hope, who knows that Nayland Smith has quitted Burma.
I must have someone with me, Petrie, all the time--it's imperative!
Can you put me up here, and spare a few days to the strangest business,
I promise you, that ever was recorded in fact or fiction?"
I agreed readily enough, for, unfortunately, my professional
duties were not onerous.
"Good man!" he cried, wringing my hand in his impetuous way.
"We start now."
"What, to-night?"
"To-night! I had thought of turning in, I must admit. I have not dared
to sleep for forty-eight hours, except in fifteen-minute stretches.
But there is one move that must be made to-night and immediately.
I must warn Sir Crichton Davey."
"Sir Crichton Davey--of the India--"
"Petrie, he is a doomed man! Unless he follows my instructions
without question, without hesitation--before Heaven, nothing can
save him! I do not know when the blow will fall, how it will fall,
nor from whence, but I know that my first duty is to warn him.
Let us walk down to the corner of the common and get a taxi."
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