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Page 11
A steam siren hooted dismally, apparently from quite close at hand.
"I'm right!" snapped Smith. "That turning leads down to the gate. Come
on, Petrie!"
He directed the light of the electric torch upon a narrow path through
the ranks of casks, and led the way to the further door. A good two
feet of moonlight showed along the top. I heard Smith straining;
then--
"These kegs are all loaded with grease!" he said, "and I want to
reconnoiter over that door."
"I am leaning on a crate which seems easy to move," I reported. "Yes,
it's empty. Lend a hand."
We grasped the empty crate, and between us, set it up on a solid
pedestal of casks. Then Smith mounted to this observation platform and
I scrambled up beside him, and looked down upon the lane outside.
It terminated as Smith had foreseen at a wharf gate some six feet to
the right of our post. Piled up in the lane beneath us, against the
warehouse door, was a stack of empty casks. Beyond, over the way, was
a kind of ramshackle building that had possibly been a dwelling-house
at some time. Bills were stuck in the ground-floor window indicating
that the three floors were to let as offices; so much was discernible
in that reflected moonlight.
I could hear the tide, lapping upon the wharf, could feel the chill
from the river and hear the vague noises which, night nor day, never
cease upon the great commercial waterway.
"Down!" whispered Smith. "Make no noise! I suspected it. They heard
the car following!"
I obeyed, clutching at him for support; for I was suddenly dizzy, and
my heart was leaping wildly--furiously.
"You saw her?" he whispered.
Saw her! yes, I had seen her! And my poor dream-world was toppling
about me, its cities, ashes and its fairness, dust.
Peering from the window, her great eyes wondrous in the moonlight and
her red lips parted, hair gleaming like burnished foam and her anxious
gaze set upon the corner of the lane--was Karamaneh . . . Karamaneh
whom once we had rescued from the house of this fiendish Chinese
doctor; Karamaneh who had been our ally; in fruitless quest of
whom,--when, too late, I realized how empty my life was become--I had
wasted what little of the world's goods I possessed;--Karamaneh!
"Poor old Petrie," murmured Smith--"I knew, but I hadn't the heart--He
has her again--God knows by what chains he holds her. But she's only a
woman, old boy, and women are very much alike--very much alike from
Charing Cross to Pagoda Road."
He rested his hand on my shoulder for a moment; I am ashamed to
confess that I was trembling; then, clenching my teeth with that
mechanical physical effort which often accompanies a mental one, I
swallowed the bitter draught of Nayland Smith's philosophy. He was
raising himself, to peer, cautiously, over the top of the door. I did
likewise.
The window from which the girl had looked was nearly on a level with
our eyes, and as I raised my head above the woodwork, I quite
distinctly saw her go out of the room. The door, as she opened it,
admitted a dull light, against which her figure showed silhouetted for
a moment. Then the door was reclosed.
"We must risk the other windows," rapped Smith.
Before I had grasped the nature of his plan he was over and had
dropped almost noiselessly upon the casks outside. Again I followed
his lead.
"You are not going to attempt anything, singlehanded--against him?" I
asked.
"Petrie--Eltham is in that house. He has been brought here to be put
to the question, in the medieval, and Chinese, sense! Is there time to
summon assistance?"
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