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Page 25
He charged into me, shoulder lowered, and sent me reeling!
Mixed up with his excited cry I had heard a loud splintering and
sweeping of branches overhead; and now as we staggered into the
shadows it seemed that one of the elms was reaching down to touch us!
So, at least, the phenomenon presented itself to my mind in that
fleeting moment while Smith, uttering his warning cry, was hurling me
back.
Then the truth became apparent.
With an appalling crash, a huge bough fell from above. One piercing,
awful shriek there was, a crackling of broken branches, and a choking
groan . . .
The crack of Smith's pistol close beside me completed my confusion of
mind.
"Missed!" he yelled. "Shoot it, Petrie! On your left! For God's sake
don't miss it!"
I turned. A lithe black shape was streaking past me. I fired--once--
twice. Another frightful cry made yet more hideous the nocturne.
Nayland Smith was directing the ray of a pocket torch upon the fallen
bough.
"Have you killed it, Petrie?" he cried.
"Yes, yes!"
I stood beside him, looking down. From the tangle of leaves and twigs
an evil yellow face looked up at us. The features were contorted with
agony, but the malignant eyes, wherein light was dying, regarded us
with inflexible hatred. The man was pinned beneath the heavy bough;
his back was broken; and as we watched, he expired, frothing slightly
at the mouth, and quitted his tenement of clay, leaving those glassy
eyes set hideously upon us.
"The pagan gods fight upon our side," said Smith strangely. "Elms have
a dangerous habit of shedding boughs in still weather--particularly
after a storm. Pan, god of the woods, with this one has performed
Justice's work of retribution."
"I don't understand. Where was this man--"
"Up the tree, lying along the bough which fell, Petrie! That is why he
left no footmarks. Last night no doubt he made his escape by swinging
from bough to bough, ape fashion, and descending to the ground
somewhere at the other side of the coppice."
He glanced at me.
"You are wondering, perhaps," he suggested, "what caused the mysterious
light? I could have told you this morning, but I fear I was in a bad
temper, Petrie. It's very simple: a length of tape soaked in spirit or
something of the kind, and sheltered from the view of any one watching
from your windows, behind the trunk of the tree; then, the end
ignited, lowered, still behind the tree, to the ground. The operator
swinging it around, the flame ascended, of course. I found the
unburned fragment of the tape last night, a few yards from here."
I was peering down at Fu-Manchu's servant, the hideous yellow man who
lay dead in a bower of elm leaves.
"He has some kind of leather bag beside him," I began--
"Exactly!" rapped Smith. "In that he carried his dangerous instrument
of death; from that he released it!"
"Released what?"
"What your fascinating friend came to recapture this morning."
"Don't taunt me, Smith!" I said bitterly. "Is it some species of
bird?"
"You saw the marks on Forsyth's body, and I told you of those which I
had traced upon the ground here. They were caused by claws, Petrie!"
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