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I understand.”
I looked at him a little blankly. Was this another effort of the unknown jester?
“I have been fooled once,” I said. “That ‘phone call was a hoax—”
“But I feel certain,” declared Eltham, earnestly, “that this is genuine! The poor girl was dreadfully agitated; her master has broken his leg and is lying helpless: number 280, Rectory Grove.”
“Where is the girl?” I asked, sharply.
“She ran back directly she had given me her message.”
“Was she a servant?”
“I should imagine so: French, I think. But she was so wrapped up I had little more than a glimpse of her. I am sorry to hear that some one has played a silly joke on you, but believe me—” he was very earnest—“this is no jest. The poor girl could scarcely speak for sobs. She mistook me for you, of course.”
“Oh!” said I grimly, “well, I suppose I must go. Broken leg, you said?—and my surgical bag, splints and so forth, are at home!”
“My dear Petrie!” cried Eltham, in his enthusiastic way—“you no doubt can do something to alleviate the poor man’s suffering immediately. I will run back to your rooms for the bag and rejoin you at 280, Rectory Grove.”
“It’s awfully good of you, Eltham—”
He held up his hand.
“The call of suffering humanity, Petrie, is one which I may no more refuse to hear than you.”
I made no further protest after that, for his point of view was evident and his determination adamant, but told him where he would find the bag and once more set out across the moonbright common, he pursuing a westerly direction and I going east.
Some three hundred yards I had gone, I suppose, and my brain had been very active the while, when something occurred to me which placed a new complexion upon this second summons. I thought of the falsity of the first, of the improbability of even the most hardened practical joker practising his wiles at one o’clock in the morning. I thought of our recent conversation; above all I thought of the girl who had delivered the message to Eltham, the girl whom he had described as a French maid—whose personal charm had so completely enlisted his sympathies. Now, to this train of thought came a new one, and, adding it, my suspicion became almost a certainty.
I remembered (as, knowing the district, I should have remembered before) that there was no number 280 in Rectory Grove.
Pulling up sharply I stood looking about me. Not a living soul was in sight; not even a policeman. Where the lamps marked the main paths across the common nothing moved; in the shadows about me nothing stirred. But something stirred within me—a warning voice which for long had lain dormant.
What was afoot?
A breeze caressed the leaves overhead, breaking the silence with mysterious whisperings. Some portentous truth was seeking for admittance to my brain. I strove to reassure myself, but the sense of impending evil and of mystery became heavier. At last I could combat my strange fears no longer. I turned and began to run toward the south side of the common—toward my rooms—and after Eltham.
I had hoped to head him off, but came upon no sign of him. An all-night tramcar passed at the moment that I reached the high road, and as I ran around behind it I saw that my windows were lighted and that there was a light in the hall.
My key was yet in the lock when my housekeeper opened the door.
“There’s a gentleman just come, Doctor,” she began—
I thrust past her and raced up the stairs into my study.
Standing by the writing-table was a tall, thin man, his gaunt face brown as a coffee-berry and his steely gray eyes fixed upon me. My heart gave a great leap—and seemed to stand still.
It was Nayland Smith!
“Smith,” I cried. “Smith, old man, by God, I’m glad to see you!”
He wrung my hand hard, looking at me with his searching eyes; but there was little enough of gladness in his face. He was altogether grayer than when last I had seen him—grayer and sterner.
“Where is Eltham?” I asked.
Smith started back as though I had struck him.
“Eltham!” he whispered—“Eltham! is Eltham here?”
“I left him ten minutes ago on the common—”
Smith dashed his right fist into the palm of his left hand and his eyes gleamed almost wildly.
“My God, Petrie!” he said, “am I fated always to come too late?”
My dreadful fears in that instant were confirmed. I seemed to feel my legs totter beneath me.
“Smith, you don’t mean—”
“I do, Petrie!” His voice sounded very far away. “Fu-Manchu is here; and Eltham, God help him … is his first victim!”
CHAPTER II. ELTHAM VANISHES
Smith went racing down the stairs like a man possessed. Heavy with such a foreboding of calamity as I had not known for two years, I followed him—along the hall and out into the road. The very peace and beauty of the night in some way increased my mental agitation. The sky was lighted almost tropically with such a blaze of stars as I could not recall to have seen since, my futile search concluded, I had left Egypt. The glory of the moonlight yellowed the lamps speckled across the expanse of the common. The night was as still as night can ever be in London. The dimming pulse of a cab or car alone disturbed the stillness.
With a quick glance to right and left, Smith ran across on to the common, and, leaving the door wide open behind me, I followed. The path which Eltham had pursued terminated almost opposite to my house. One’s gaze might follow it, white and empty, for several hundred yards past the pond, and further, until it became overshadowed and was lost amid a clump of trees.
I came up with Smith, and side by side we ran on, whilst pantingly, I told my tale.
“It was a trick to get you away from him!” cried Smith. “They meant no doubt to make some attempt at your house, but as he came out with you, an alternative plan—”
Abreast of the pond, my companion slowed down, and finally stopped.
“Where did you last see Eltham?” he asked rapidly.
I took his arm, turning him slightly to the right, and pointed across the moonbathed common.
“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,