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 2 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, 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.
'Eltham is in that car!' he gasped. 'Just God! are we to stand here and see him taken away to—'
He beat his fist upon the tree, in a sort of tragic despair. The nearest cab-rank was no great distance away, but, excluding the possibility of no cab being there, it might, for all practical purposes, as well have been a mile off.
The beat of the retreating motor was scarcely audible; the lights might but just be distinguished. Then, coming in an opposite direction, appeared the headlamp of another car, of a car that raced nearer and nearer to us, so that, within a few seconds of its first appearance, we found ourselves bathed in the beam of its headlights.
Smith bounded out into the road, and stood, a weird silhouette, with upraised arms, fully in its course!
The brakes were applied hurriedly. It was a big limousine, and its driver swerved perilously in avoiding Smith and nearly ran into me. But, the breathless moment past, the car was pulled up, head on to the railings; and a man in evening clothes was demanding excitedly what had happened. Smith, a hatless, disheveled figure, stepped up to the door.
'My name is Nayland Smith,' he said rapidly—'Burmese Commissioner.' He snatched a letter from his pocket and thrust it into the hands of the bewildered man. 'Read that. It is signed by another Commissioner—the Commissioner of Police.'
With amazement written all over him, the other obeyed.
'You see,' continued my friend, tersely—'it is carte blanche. I wish to commandeer your car, sir, on a matter of life and death!'.
The other returned the letter.
'Allow me to offer it!' he said, descending. 'My man will take your orders. I can finish my journey by cab. I am—'
But Smith did not wait to learn whom he might be.
'Quick!' he cried to the stupefied chauffeur—'You passed a car a minute ago—yonder. Can you overtake it?'
'I can try, sir, if I don't lose her track.'
Smith leaped in, pulling me after him.
'Do it!' he snapped. 'There are no speed limits for me. Thanks! Goodnight, sir!'
We were off! The car swung around and the chase commenced.
One last glimpse I had of the man we had dispossessed, standing alone by the roadside, and at ever increasing speed, we leaped away in the track of Eltham's captors.
