THE DEVIL DOCTOR. Sax Rohmer
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heard the thudding of the motor. The car was backing out!
It was a desperate moment, for it seemed that we could not fail to be
discovered. Nayland Smith began to look about him, feverishly, for a
hiding place, a quest which I seconded with equal anxiety. And Fate
was kind to us--doubly kind as after events revealed. A wooden gate
broke the expanse of wall hard by upon the right, and, as the result
of some recent accident, a ragged gap had been torn in the panels
close to the top.
The chain of the padlock hung loosely; and in a second Smith was up,
with his foot in this as in a stirrup. He threw his arm over the top
and drew himself upright. A second later he was astride the broken
gate.
"Up you come, Petrie!" he said, and reached down his hand to aid me.
I got my foot into the loop of chain, grasped at a projection in the
gate-post, and found myself up.
"There is a crossbar, on this side to stand on," said Smith.
He climbed over and vanished in the darkness. I was still astride the
broken gate when the car turned the corner, slowly, for there was
scanty room; but I was standing upon the bar on the inside and had my
head below the gap ere the driver could possibly have seen me.
"Stay where you are until he passes," hissed my companion, below.
"There is a row of kegs under you."
The sound of the motor passing outside grew loud--louder--then began
to die away. I felt about with my left foot, discerned the top of a
keg, and dropped, panting, beside Smith.
"Phew!" I said--"that was a close thing! Smith--how do we know--?"
"That we have followed the right car?" he interrupted. "Ask yourself
the question: what would any ordinary man be doing motoring in a place
like this at two o'clock in the morning?"
"You are right, Smith," I agreed. "Shall we get out again?"
"Not yet. I have an idea. Look yonder."
He grasped my arm, turning me in the desired direction.
Beyond a great expanse of unbroken darkness a ray of moonlight slanted
into the place wherein we stood, spilling its cold radiance upon rows
of kegs.
"That's another door," continued my friend. I now began dimly to
perceive him beside me. "If my calculations are not entirely wrong, it
opens on a wharf gate--"
A steam siren hooted dismally, apparently from quite close at hand.
"I'm right!" snapped Smith. "That turning leads down to the gate. Come
on, Petrie!"
He directed the light of the electric torch upon a narrow path through
the ranks of casks, and led the way to the farther door. A good two
feet of moonlight showed along the top. I heard Smith straining;
then--
"These kegs are all loaded with grease," he said, "and I want to
reconnoitre over that door."
"I am leaning on a crate which seems easy to move," I reported. "Yes,
it's empty. Lend a hand."
We grasped the empty crate, and, between us, set it up on a solid
pedestal of casks. Then Smith mounted to this observation platform and
I scrambled up beside him, and looked down upon the lane outside.
It terminated as Smith had foreseen at a wharf gate some six feet to
the right of our post. Piled up in the lane beneath us, against the
warehouse door, was a stack of empty casks. Beyond, over the way, was
a kind of ramshackle building that had possibly been a dwelling-house
at some time. Bills were stuck in the ground-floor windows indicating
that the three floors were to let as offices; so much was discernible
in that reflected moonlight.
I could hear the tide lapping upon the wharf, could feel the chill
from the near river and hear the vague noises which, night nor day,
never cease upon the great commercial waterway.
"Down!" whispered Smith. "Make no noise! I suspected it. They heard
the car following!"
I obeyed, clutching at him for support; for I was suddenly dizzy, and
my heart was leaping wildly--furiously.
"You saw her?" he whispered.
Saw her! Yes, I had seen her! And my poor dream-world was toppling
about me, its cities ashes and its fairness dust.
Peering from the window, her great eyes wondrous in the moonlight and
her red lips parted, hair gleaming like burnished foam and her anxious
gaze set upon the corner of the lane--was Kâramanèh ... Kâramanèh
whom once we had rescued from the house of this fiendish Chinese
doctor; Kâramanèh who had been our ally, in fruitless quest of
whom,--when, too late, I realized how empty my life was become--I had
wasted what little of the world's goods I possessed:--Kâramanèh!
"Poor old Petrie," murmured Smith. "I knew, but I hadn't the
heart--_He_ has her again--God knows by what chains he holds her. But
she's only a woman, old boy, and women are very much alike--very much
alike from Charing Cross to Pagoda Road."
He rested his hand on my shoulder for a moment; I am ashamed to
confess that I was trembling; then, clenching my teeth with that
mechanical physical effort which often accompanies a mental one, I
swallowed the bitter draught of Nayland Smith's philosophy. He was
raising himself, to peer, cautiously, over the top of the door. I did
likewise.
The window from which the girl had looked was nearly on a level with
our eyes, and as I raised my head above the woodwork, I quite
distinctly saw her go out of the room. The door, as she opened it,
admitted a dull light, against which her figure showed silhouetted for
a moment. Then the door was reclosed.
"We must risk the other windows," rapped Smith.
Before I had grasped the nature of his plan, he was over and had
dropped