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Page 8
"You see that clump of bushes on the other side of the road?" I said.
"There's a path to the left of it. I took that path and he took this.
We parted at the point where they meet--"
Smith walked right down to the edge of the water and peered about over
the surface.
What he hoped to find there I could not imagine. Whatever it had been
he was disappointed, and he turned to me again, frowning perplexedly,
and tugging at the lobe of his left ear, an old trick which reminded
me of gruesome things we had lived through in the past.
"Come on," he jerked. "It may be amongst the trees."
From the tone of his voice I knew that he was tensed up nervously, and
his mood but added to the apprehension of my own.
"What may be amongst the trees, Smith?" I asked.
He walked on.
"God knows, Petrie; but I fear--"
Behind us, along the highroad, a tramcar went rocking by, doubtless
bearing a few belated workers homeward. The stark incongruity of the
thing was appalling. How little those weary toilers, hemmed about with
the commonplace, suspected that almost within sight from the car
windows, in a place of prosy benches, iron railings, and unromantic,
flickering lamps, two fellow men moved upon the border of a
horror-land!
Beneath the trees a shadow carpet lay, its edges tropically sharp; and
fully ten yards from the first of the group, we two, hatless both, and
sharing a common dread, paused for a moment and listened.
The car had stopped at the further extremity of the common, and now
with a moan that grew to a shriek was rolling on its way again. We
stood and listened until silence reclaimed the night. Not a footstep
could be heard. Then slowly we walked on. At the edge of the little
coppice we stopped again abruptly.
Smith turned and thrust his pistol into my hand. A white ray of light
pierced the shadows; my companion carried an electric torch. But no
trace of Eltham was discoverable.
There had been a heavy shower of rain during the evening just before
sunset, and although the open paths were dry again, under the trees
the ground was still moist. Ten yards within the coppice we came upon
tracks--the tracks of one running, as the deep imprints of the toes
indicated.
Abruptly the tracks terminated; others, softer, joined them, two sets
converging from left and right. There was a confused patch, trailing
off to the west; then this became indistinct, and was finally lost
upon the hard ground outside the group.
For perhaps a minute, or more, we ran about from tree to tree, and
from bush to bush, searching like hounds for a scent, and fearful of
what we might find. We found nothing; and fully in the moonlight we
stood facing one another. The night was profoundly still.
Nayland Smith stepped back into the shadows, and began slowly to turn
his head from left to right, taking in the entire visible expanse of
the common. Toward a point where the road bisected it he stared
intently. Then, with a bound, he set off.
"Come on, Petrie!" he cried. "There they are!"
Vaulting a railing he went away over a field like a madman. Recovering
from the shock of surprise, I followed him, but he was well ahead of
me, and making for some vaguely seen object moving against the lights
of the roadway.
Another railing was vaulted, and the corner of a second, triangular
grass patch crossed at a hot sprint. We were twenty yards from the
road when the sound of a starting motor broke the silence. We gained
the graveled footpath only to see the taillight of the car dwindling
to the north!
Smith leaned dizzily against a tree.
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