the river.
Fleet Street suspected that there was a wonderful story behind this communique, but the real story if ever discovered was never published.
Mrs. Sam Pak was let off with a fine and had been covered assiduously ever since. Her movements had afforded no clue to those who watched her. She accepted the disappearance of her aged husband as philosophically as she had accepted his presence. She was permitted to re-open the shop but not the Sailors’ Club.
Enquiries at Dovelands Cottage, Lower Kingswood, revealed the fact that the place belonged to a Mrs. Ryatt, who lived in Streatham and who used it in the summer but let it when possible during the winter months.
The place had been vacant for a long time, but had recently been leased by a gentleman whose address proved to be untraceable, for the convalescence of his daughter who had had a nervous breakdown. Mrs. Ryatt had actually visited the cottage on the evening that her new tenant entered into occupation, and reported that the daughter was an uncommonly pretty girl whose manner was very strange; and the nurse in charge was an elderly foreign woman of rather forbidding appearance.
She had been satisfied, however, of the respectability of her tenant and had returned to London.
No trace of the woman described by Mrs. Ryatt and by Fleurette could be found. . . .
Nayland Smith, tugging at the lobe of his ear, walked up and down the room. He glanced several times at a large clock upon the mantelpiece; then:
“I expected no news, Gallaho,” he said, rapidly. “Yet——”
“Surely you have no doubts left, sir?”
Sterling stared eagerly at Sir Denis, awaiting his reply.
“Fleurette’s manner disturbs me,” snapped the latter. “She seems to have inherited from her mother a sort of extra sense where Dr. Fu Manchu is concerned. It is no doubt due, in both cases, to the fact that he has subjected Fleurette—as he subjected Karamaneh—to hypnotic influences at various times.”
Sterling moved cautiously in the armchair. He was nursing an injured rib.
“In fact,” Smith went on, “I never feel entirely happy about her, when she is not here, actually under my own eyes.”
“Dr. Petrie, her father, is with her,” Gallaho growled.
“I agree, she could not be in better hands. It’s just an instinctive distrust.”
“Based upon her queer ideas, sir?” Gallaho went on in a puzzled way.
He had assumed his favourite pose, one elbow resting on the mantelpiece.
“Surely her manner is to be expected in one who has suffered the sort of things that she has suffered. I mean—” he hesitated, seeking for words—”it will naturally take some little time before she gets over the idea that her movements are controlled. Now that I know her history, I think she is simply wonderful.”
“You are right, Inspector,” said Sterling, warmly. “She is wonderful. If you or I had been through what Fleurette has been through I wager we should be stretcher cases.”
“You are probably right,” said Gallaho.
Nayland Smith, his back to the room, stood staring out of the window. He was thinking of the itinerant match seller, who beyond any shadow of doubt had been a spy of Dr. Fu Manchu. Fey’s report of what had happened down there on the Embankment on the night of the destruction of the Thames tunnel, frequently recurred to his mind, but the match seller—like the other mysterious servants of the Chinese doctor—had disappeared; all enquiries had failed to establish his identity.
He was said to have traded there for many years, but there was some difference of opinion on this point between constables patrolling that part of the Embankment. Nayland Smith was inclined to believe that the original vendor had been bought out, or driven out, and that an understudy made up to resemble him had taken his place.
Suddenly turning:
“Switch the lights up, Gallaho, if you don’t mind,” he said.
The lofty, homely room became brilliantly illuminated.
“Ah!” muttered Gallaho—”this will be the doctor and the young lady.”
The faint but familiar sound of the lift gate had arrested his attention. A moment later, Fey opened the outer door. The voice of Fleurette was heard—as she came running in, followed by Dr. Petrie.
She was very lovely, and ignoring Petrie’s frown, Sterling struggled to his feet.
“Please sit down, dear!” Fleurette pressed her hands on his shoulders. “No! you must rest.
“But I feel so rottenly guilty.”
“I know it’s a shame that this big darling has to come pottering around all the shops with me,” said Fleurette, laughingly. “But there are so many things I want before we leave for Egypt. The longer we stay the more I shall want! And I don’t believe he really minds.” She linked her arm in Petrie’s and leaned her head upon his shoulder. “Do you?”
“Mind?” he said, and hugged her. “It’s a joy to be with you, dear. And although Alan is temporarily crocked, it’s only right that you should get out sometimes, after all.”
“I suggest cocktails,” said Sir Denis, his good humour quite restored; and was about to press a bell when the ringing of a telephone in the lobby arrested him in the act.
“7 can make cocktails,” said Fleurette, gaily. “I’ll make you one none of you has ever tasted before, if you’ll just wait until I take my hat off.”
She ran out. Petrie watched her with gleaming eyes. This miraculous double of his beautiful wife had brought a new happiness into his life, keen as only a joy can be which one has relinquished for ever.
Fey rapped upon the door, and in response to Nayland Smith’s snappy “Come in,” entered.
“Yes, Fey, what is it?”
“There’s a P.C. Ireland on the telephone, sir; he says you know him—and he has something which he believes to be important to tell you.”
“Ireland?” Gallaho growled. “That’s the constable who was on duty at Professor Ambrose’s house on the night the business started.”
“A good man,” snapped Nayland Smith. “I marked him at the time.”
He went out to the lobby.
CHAPTER 50
THE NIGHT WATCHMAN
“Strangely like old times, Smith!”
Nayland Smith stared at Petrie. Gallaho, bowler worn at a rakish angle, sat on the seat before them in the Scotland Yard car.
This was one of those nondescript nights which marked the gradual dispersal of the phenomenal fog of 1934. There was a threat in the air that the monster might at any moment return. The car was speeding along beside a Common. Lamps gleamed yellowly where roads crossed it. One could see, through gaunt, unclothed trees, a distant highroad.
‘Yes,” Smith returned. “Some queer things have happened to us, Petrie, on that Common.”
“The queerest thing of all is happening now,” Petrie went on. “The inevitable cycle of it is almost appalling. Here we are, after all the years, back again in the same old spot.”
“Sir Denis pointed out to me this queer cycle, doctor, which seems to run through our lives,” Gallaho said, glancing back over his shoulder. “I’ve thought about it a lot since. And I can see, now that over and over again it crops up. I suppose Sir Denis has told you that we were actually in your old room early last week?”
“Yes,” said Petrie, and stared vaguely from the window.
There came a silent interval.
Sterling had been deposited in his apartment at a hotel in Northumberland Avenue. “You are under my orders, now,” Petrie had said, “and I don’t want you out on this foul night. I dislike that cough. Lie down when you have had something to eat. I shall of course come and see you when I return. . . .”
The doctor had been loath to leave his daughter at Sir Denis’s flat, where they were staying. But recognizing how keenly he wanted to go, Fleurette had insisted. “I have victimized you all the afternoon, dear; I think you deserve an hour off. I shall read until you come back. . . .”
“This may be a wild-goose chase,” growled Gallaho suddenly, “but on the other hand, it may not. We’ve got
