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Page 61
"It's gone, Petrie! It has the strength of four men even now. Look!"
He stooped, and from the clenched left hand of the dead Burman,
extracted a piece of paper and opened it.
"Hold the lantern a moment," he said.
In the yellow light he glanced at the scrap of paper.
"As I expected--a leaf of Burke's notebook; it worked by scent." He
turned to me with an odd expression in his gray eyes. "I wonder what
piece of my personal property Fu-Manchu has pilfered," he said, "in
order to enable it to sleuth me?"
He met the gaze of the man holding the lantern.
"Perhaps you had better return to the house," he said, looking him
squarely in the eyes.
The other's face blanched.
"You don't mean, sir--you don't mean . . ."
"Brace up!" said Smith, laying his hand upon his shoulder. "Remember--
he chose to play with fire!"
One wild look the man cast from Smith to me, then went off,
staggering, toward the farm.
"Smith," I began . . .
He turned to me with an impatient gesture.
"Weymouth has driven into Upminster," he snapped; "and the whole
district will be scoured before morning. They probably motored here,
but the sounds of the shots will have enabled whoever was with the car
to make good his escape. And exhausted from loss of blood, its capture
is only a matter of time, Petrie."
CHAPTER XVII
ONE DAY IN RANGOON
Nayland Smith returned from the telephone. Nearly twenty-four hours
had elapsed since the awful death of Burke.
"No news, Petrie," he said, shortly. "It must have crept into some
inaccessible hole to die."
I glanced up from my notes. Smith settled into the white cane
armchair, and began to surround himself with clouds of aromatic smoke.
I took up a half-sheet of foolscap covered with penciled writing in my
friend's cramped characters, and transcribed the following, in order
to complete my account of the latest Fu-Manchu outrage:
"The Amharun, a Semitic tribe allied to the Falashas, who have been
settled for many generations in the southern province of Shoa
(Abyssinia) have been regarded as unclean and outcast, apparently
since the days of Menelek--son of Suleyman and the Queen of
Sheba--from whom they claim descent. Apart from their custom of eating
meat cut from living beasts, they are accursed because of their
alleged association with the Cynocephalus hamadryas (Sacred Baboon).
I, myself, was taken to a hut on the banks of the Hawash and shown a
creature . . . whose predominant trait was an unreasoning malignity
toward . . . and a ferocious tenderness for the society of its furry
brethren. Its powers of scent were fully equal to those of a
bloodhound, whilst its abnormally long forearms possessed incredible
strength . . . a Cynocephalyte such as this, contracts phthisis even
in the more northern provinces of Abyssinia . . ."
"You have not explained to me, Smith," I said, having completed this
note, "how you got in touch with Fu-Manchu; how you learnt that he was
not dead, as we had supposed, but living--active."
Nayland Smith stood up and fixed his steely eyes upon me with an
indefinable expression in them. Then:
"No," he replied; "I haven't. Do you wish to know?"
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