“But, Smith—this is the print of a
“I know!” He ran to the door. “Gallaho! Instruct Jussac to search all rooms opening on this courtyard and to make sure that nothing—not even a small parcel—leaves any of them. Come on, Kerrigan.”
Picking up the florist’s box, he returned to our locked apartments. Ardatha was in a room nearby, in charge of a sympathetic housekeeper. As we entered the sitting room, I pulled up, staring . . .
At the moment of my firing at that thing up under the cornice, Smith, just behind me, had been standing in front of a walnut cabinet.
The top of the cabinet had disappeared!
“Merciful heaven!” I whispered, “you escaped death by a fraction of a second!”
“Yes! Ericksen’s Ray! The thing with the red eyes has at least elementary intelligence to be entrusted with such a weapon. This creature, or one like it, had been smuggled into Delibes’ house, but made its escape. In the present case the same device of the flower box was used, an adjoining room having been reserved by a mythical Mme Hulbert. During our absence this evening, by means of the ray, that hole was bored through the wall.”
“But the box remains unopened!”
“So do the boxes, apparently, used by stage magicians. I think we may risk it now!”
“Is all well in there, Sir Denis?” came Gallaho’s husky voice from the lobby.
“All’s well, Inspector.”
He cut the string and opened the box.
It was empty.
“Assuming a thinking creature small enough to get into such a box, for it to get out again would be a simple matter: merely necessary to draw these two end flaps and replace them without unfastening the string . . .”
I cannot say, I shall never know, what drew my attention away from the trick box, but I found myself staring fixedly into the shadows beneath the bureau. This bureau stood almost immediately below the hole high up under the cornice. Some dully shining object lay upon the carpet.
As I stepped forward to pick it up, indeed, all but had my hand upon it, I recognized it for what it was—just such a tube as I had seen in the possession of Dr Fu Manchu.
And as this recognition came I saw the thing with the red eyes!
“Quick! Grab it for your life, Kerrigan!”
Wounded, the creature had dropped the silver tube in that sudden darkness, had sought to escape, and then for some reason had returned for the day. It crouched now beside the bureau, a black dwarf no more than fifteen inches high, naked save for a loincloth also black: a perfectly formed human being!
Its features, which were Negroid, contorted in animal fury, its red eyes glaring like those of a rabid dog, it sprang up the tube.
But I snatched it in the nick of time . . .
That which happened next threatens to defeat my powers of description. Smith, who had been maneuvering for a shot fired—but as I made that frenzied grab, stumbling onto my knees, my fingers closed upon a sort of trigger in the butt end of the tube.
Smith’s bullet buried itself in the wall. I experienced a tingling sensation. The thing with the red eyes which crouched before me, disappeared!
My last recollection is that of the bureau crashing down upon my head.
* * *
“Bart, dearest, are you better?”
I lay propped on cushions. Ardatha’s arms were around me. My head buzzed like a wasps’ nest, and a man whom I took to be a surgeon was bathing a painful cut on my brow.
“Yes, he is better,” said the surgeon, smiling. “No serious damage.” He turned to Nayland Smith who stood watching. “It must have been a heavy blow, nevertheless.”
“It was!” Smith assured him. “Fortunately, he has a thick skull.”
When the medical man was gone and I felt capable of sitting up and observing my surroundings, I realized that I had been moved to another room.
“Explanation of what had occurred would have been too difficult,” Smith declared. “So we brought you in here.”
And now came the memory of the black dwarf who had disappeared . . .
“Smith—he was disintegrated!”
“So was a portion of the bureau,” Smith replied, “hence your being knocked out. It toppled before I had a chance to get at it. I have the mysterious tube, Kerrigan, Exhibit A, which resolves matter into its particles; but I don’t propose to experiment further. We should be grateful for the fact that it was not ourselves who were dispersed!”
Ardatha held my hand tightly, and a swift glad wave of happiness swept over me. The unbelievable had come true.
“I am by no means sure how long this peaceful interlude will last,” Smith continued. “My taking forcible means to save Marcel Delibes may be construed, however, as a triumph for the Si-Fan. In this case our interests were identical. Possibly we shall be granted a reprieve!”
“We deserve one!” I was staring at something which lay upon a side table. It resembled a small watch but I knew that I had never seen it before. “What have you there, Smith?”
“Exhibit B!” He smiled. “It must have been in the possession of the dwarf—the smallest and also the most malignant human being I have ever come across. Gallaho found it in the cavity between the two rooms, so that I assume the dwarf intended to return, having recovered the silver tube, and to make his escape by way of the window of number 36.I suspect that this possibility had been provided for.”
“But what is it?”
Ardatha’s grasp on my hand tightened.
“It is a radiophone,” she said. “Sometimes—not often—those carrying out Si-Fan instructions are given one. In this way they are kept directly in contact with whoever is directing them.”
I turned my aching head and looked into her eyes.
“Did
“Yes,” she answered simply, “when I was sent to get the portfolio of the police commissioner in London!”
“You understand now, Kerrigan,” snapped Smith, “that voice which we both heard in the study of M. Delibes? I am going to ask you, Ardatha, to show me how to get ‘directly in contact’!”
Ardatha released my hand and stood up. She was supremely graceful in all her movements. Her poise was perfect, and I knew now that that momentary despair had been for
“I will do so if you wish. Nothing may happen. You can only listen: you cannot reply.”
She took the tiny instrument which Smith handed to her and made some adjustments. We both watched closely. Paris lay about us, not sleeping, but seething with rumors of war. But in that room was silence—silence in which we waited.
It was broken.
A guttural voice spoke rapidly in a tongue unknown to me. It ceased. Ardatha adjusted the instrument.
“To move it to there,” she said—but her tones were not steady—”means ‘I do not understand.’“
And now (I confess that my heart leapt uncomfortably) that guttural voice spoke in English . . . and I knew that the speaker was Dr Fu Manchu!
“Can it be Sir Denis who calls me?”
Ardatha’s fingers moved.
“Indeed! I rejoice that you live, Sir Denis. I suspect that Ardatha is with you. Any information which she may be able to impart you will find of small value. I assume that one of my three Negritos pygmies is lost. But this is no more than just. Your work in regard to M. Delibes resulted in the cancelling of the grotesque order for your removal. I welcome your co-operation . . . I regret my dwarf. Such a specimen represents twenty years’ culture. Destroy the Ericksen tube: it is dangerous. Those who use it do not live long. The radiophone I commend to you. Waste no time seeking me . . .”
That unique voice faded away. Ardatha was trembling in my arms.
