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Page 17
I was right. Twenty paces more I ran, and ahead of me, from the elms,
came a sound. Clearly it came through the still air--the eerie hoot of
a nighthawk. I could not recall ever to have heard the cry of that
bird on the common before, but oddly enough I attached little
significance to it until, in the ensuing instant, a most dreadful
scream--a scream in which fear, and loathing, and anger were hideously
blended--thrilled me with horror.
After that I have no recollection of anything until I found myself
standing by the southernmost elm.
"Smith!" I cried breathlessly. "Smith! my God! where are you?"
As if in answer to my cry came an indescribable sound, a mingled
sobbing and choking. Out from the shadows staggered a ghastly
figure--that of a man whose face appeared to be streaked. His eyes
glared at me madly and he mowed the air with his hands like one blind
and insane with fear.
I started back; words died upon my tongue. The figure reeled and the
man fell babbling and sobbing at my very feet.
Inert I stood, looking down at him. He writhed a moment--and was
still. The silence again became perfect. Then, from somewhere beyond
the elms, Nayland Smith appeared. I did not move. Even when he stood
beside me, I merely stared at him fatuously.
"I let him walk to his death, Petrie," I heard dimly. "God forgive me
--God forgive me!"
The words aroused me.
"Smith"--my voice came as a whisper--"for one awful moment I
thought--"
"So did some one else," he rapped. "Our poor sailor has met the end
designed for me, Petrie!"
At that I realized two things: I knew why Forsyth's face had struck me
as being familiar in some puzzling way, and I knew why Forsyth now lay
dead upon the grass. Save that he was a fair man and wore a slight
mustache, he was, in features and build, the double of Nayland Smith!
CHAPTER V
THE NET
We raised the poor victim and turned him over on his back. I dropped
upon my knees, and with unsteady fingers began to strike a match. A
slight breeze was arising and sighing gently through the elms, but,
screened by my hands, the flame of the match took life. It illuminated
wanly the sun-baked face of Nayland Smith, his eyes gleaming with
unnatural brightness. I bent forward, and the dying light of the match
touched that other face.
"Oh, God!" whispered Smith.
A faint puff of wind extinguished the match.
In all my surgical experience I had never met with anything quite so
horrible. Forsyth's livid face was streaked with tiny streams of
blood, which proceeded from a series of irregular wounds. One group of
these clustered upon his left temple, another beneath his right eye,
and others extended from the chin down to the throat. They were black,
almost like tattoo marks, and the entire injured surface was bloated
indescribably. His fists were clenched; he was quite rigid.
Smith's piercing eyes were set upon me eloquently as I knelt on the
path and made my examination--an examination which that first glimpse
when Forsyth came staggering out from the trees had rendered useless--
a mere matter of form.
"He's quite dead, Smith," I said huskily. "It's--unnatural--it--"
Smith began beating his fist into his left palm and taking little,
short, nervous strides up and down beside the dead man. I could hear a
car humming along the highroad, but I remained there on my knees
staring dully at the disfigured bloody face which but a matter of
minutes since had been that of a clean looking British seaman. I found
myself contrasting his neat, squarely trimmed mustache with the
bloated face above it, and counting the little drops of blood which
trembled upon its edge. There were footsteps approaching. I stood up.
The footsteps quickened; and I turned as a constable ran up.
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