“By Jove! something has cut in there. And my other ankle is painful, too, but in front.”
“Let me see,” he said rapidly. “Rest both feet on this chair here.”
Whereupon he stooped and examined my ankles with the utmost care, and finally:
“You have been tied,” he said, “and from the appearance of your ankles, brutally tied, with some very thin but presumably very strong material.” He glanced up, smiling sourly. “I think, Greville, I have a length of that same mysterious material carefully preserved among my belongings!”
He watched me steadily, and I knew what he hoped for.
“No!” I shook my head sadly. “I have undoubtedly been tied, as you surmise, but I have no recollection whatever of the matter.”
“Damn!” he rapped, and stood upright. “I can’t help you in this case. There’s no cue word, you see, to arouse that drugged memory. By heaven, Greville—” he suddenly shook his clenched fist in the air—”if I and those behind me can defeat the genius of this one old man, we shall have accomplished a feat which Homer might have sung. He is stupendous!”
He ceased suddenly and began to stare at me again.
“H’m!” he added. “I am forgetting how to keep my head in difficult moments. I have allowed elementary routine to go to the winds. Have you by any chance examined the contents of your pockets since you returned?”
“No!” I replied in surprise; “it never occurred to me.”
“Be good enough to turn out all your pockets and place their contents upon this table.”
Mechanically I obeyed. A wallet, a pipe, a pouch, a cigarette case, I extracted from various pockets and laid down upon the table. A box of matches, a pocketknife, a bunch of keys, some loose money, a handkerchief, a trouser button, two toothpicks, and an automatic lighter which never functioned but which I carried as a habit.
“That’s the lot,” I announced dully.
“Anything missing?”
“Not that I can remember.”
Nayland Smith took up my cigarette case, opened it, and glanced inside.
“How many cigarettes were in your case when you left?”
I paused for a moment, and then:
“None,” I replied confidently. “I remember dropping my last in the garden, here, just before I sighted Fah Lo Suee.”
He took up my pipe: it was filled but had not been lighted.
“Odd! Isn’t it?” he asked. “Remember anything about this!”
I dropped my weary head into my hands again, thinking hard, and at last:
“Yes,” I replied. “I remember that I never lighted it.”
Nayland Smith sniffed at the tobacco, opened my pouch and sniffed at the contents, also; then:
“Is your small change all right?”
“To the best of my recollection.”
“Examine the wallet. You probably know exactly what you had there.”
I obeyed; and at the first glance, I made a singular discovery.
A small envelope of thick gray paper containing a bulky enclosure protruded from one of the pockets of the wallet!
“Sir Denis!” I said excitedly, “this wasn’t here. This doesn’t belong to me!”
“It does now,” he replied grimly, and, stooping, he pulled out the envelope from the wallet which I held in my hand.
“‘Shan Greville, Private,’“ he read aloud. “Do you know the writing?”
I stared at the envelope which he had placed on the table before me. Yes, that handwriting was familiar— hauntingly familiar, but difficult to place. Where had I seen it before?
“Well?”
It was queer, square writing, the horizontal strokes written very thickly, and the ink used was of a peculiar shade of green. I looked up.
“Yes, I have seen it—somewhere.”
“Good. As it is addressed to you and marked ‘private,’ perhaps you had better open it.”
I tore open the small square envelope. It contained a single sheet of the same thick, gray paper folded in which was a little piece of muslin, a tiny extemporised bag, tied with green silk. It contained some small, hard object, and I placed it on the table glancing at Nayland Smith, and then began to read the note written in green ink upon the gray paper. This is what I read:
I do not want you to suffer because of what I have been compelled to do. You love Rima. If she does not come back—trust me. I am not jealous. I send you a tablet which must be dissolved in a half litre of matured white wine, and which you must drink as quickly as possible. I trust you also—
This I read aloud, then dropped the letter on the table and glanced at Nayland Smith. He was watching me fixedly.
“‘He will be crowned in Damascus,’“ he echoed. “Quick! Do those words, now, take you back any further?”
I shook my head.
“Do you know the writing? Think.”
“I am thinking. Yes, I have it! I have only seen it once before in my life.” “Well?” “It’s the writing ofFu Manchu’s daughter—Fab Lo Suee!”
Sir Denis snapped his fingers and began to walk up and down again.
“I knew it!” he snapped. “Greville! Greville! It’s the old days over again! But this time we’re dealing with a she-devil. And dare we trust her? Dare we trust her?”
I was untying the little packet, and from it I dropped an ordinary-looking tablet, small, round, and white, which might have been aspirin, upon the table.
“Personally,” I said, with a ghastly attempt at a smile, “I would as soon think of following the instructions in her letter as of jumping out of that window.”
Nayland Smith continued to walk up and down.
“For the moment I express no opinion,” he replied. “I may have a better knowledge of the mentality of Eastern women than you have, Greville. And I may have paid a high price for my knowledge. But don’t misunderstand me.”
I picked up the tablet and was in the act of throwing it out into the garden, when:
“Don’t do that!” He sprang forward and grasped my wrist. “You leap to conclusions too hastily. Think! Thought is man’s prerogative. You definitely recognise this as the writing of Fu Manchu’s daughter? Granting it even to be a forgery—what then?” He stared at me coldly. “Can you conceive of any object which would be served by bringing your death about in so complicated a manner?”
It was a new point of view—but a startling one.
“Frankly, no.” I admitted. “But we have had experience in the past, Sir Denis, of remarkable behaviour on the part of persons subjected to the poisons of Dr. Fu Manchu.”
“You are thinking of an attempt once made unconsciously by Rima to murder
He pointed to the tablet upon the table.
“I suppose you’re right,” I said dully. “But all the same, you are not suggesting that I should follow out these instructions?”
Nayland Smith shook his head.
“I am merely suggesting,” he answere’d, “that you should keep this remarkable clue. It may have its uses later.”
Already he was sniffing at the paper and envelope, scrutinising the writing—holding the sheet up to the light— examining its texture.
“Very remarkable,” he “murmured, and, tuning, stared at me fixedly.
