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Page 47
It was Dr. Fu-Manchu's marmoset.
Smith dragged me back into the room which we had just left. As he
partly reclosed the door, I heard the clapping of hands. In a
condition of most dreadful suspense, we waited; until a new, ominous
sound proclaimed itself. Some heavy body was being dragged into the
passage. I heard the opening of a trap. Exclamations in guttural
voices told of a heavy task in progress; there was a great straining
and creaking--whereupon the trap was softly reclosed.
Smith bent to my ear.
"Fu-Manchu has chastised one of his servants," he whispered. "There
will be food for the grappling-irons to-night!"
I shuddered violently, for, without Smith's words, I knew that a
bloody deed had been done in that house within a few yards of where we
stood.
In the new silence, I could hear the drip, drip, drip of the rain
outside the window; then a steam siren hooted dismally upon the river,
and I thought how the screw of that very vessel, even as we listened,
might be tearing the body of Fu-Manchu's servant!
"Have you some one waiting?" whispered Smith, eagerly.
"How long was I insensible?"
"About half an hour."
"Then the cabman will be waiting."
"Have you a whistle with you?"
I felt in my coat pocket.
"Yes," I reported.
"Good! Then we will take a chance."
Again we slipped out into the passage and began a stealthy progress to
the west. Ten paces amid absolute darkness, and we found ourselves
abreast of a branch corridor. At the further end, through a kind of
little window, a dim light shone.
"See if you can find the trap," whispered Smith; "light your lamp."
I directed the ray of the pocket-lamp upon the floor, and there at my
feet was a square wooden trap. As I stooped to examine it, I glanced
back, painfully, over my shoulder--and saw Nayland Smith tiptoeing
away from me along the passage toward the light!
Inwardly I cursed his folly, but the temptation to peep in at that
little window proved too strong for me, as it had proved too strong
for him.
Fearful that some board would creak beneath my tread, I followed; and
side by side we two crouched, looking into a small rectangular room.
It was a bare and cheerless apartment with unpapered walls and
carpetless floor. A table and a chair constituted the sole furniture.
Seated in the chair, with his back toward us, was a portly Chinaman
who wore a yellow, silken robe. His face, it was impossible to see;
but he was beating his fist upon the table, and pouring out a torrent
of words in a thin, piping voice. So much I perceived at a glance;
then, into view at the distant end of the room, paced a tall, high-
shouldered figure--a figure unforgettable, at once imposing and
dreadful, stately and sinister.
With the long, bony hands behind him, fingers twining and intertwining
serpentinely about the handle of a little fan, and with the pointed
chin resting on the breast of the yellow robe, so that the light from
the lamp swinging in the center of the ceiling gleamed upon the great,
dome-like brow, this tall man paced somberly from left to right.
He cast a sidelong, venomous glance at the voluble speaker out of
half-shut eyes; in the act they seemed to light up as with an internal
luminance; momentarily they sparkled like emeralds; then their
brilliance was filmed over as in the eyes of a bird when the membrane
is lowered.
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