“Don’t move, Hepburn,” came Nayland Smith’s crisp command. “Don’t stir until I give the word!”
An indeterminable odour became perceptible—chemical, nauseating. . . .
“Sir Denis!”
It was the voice of Fey.
“Don’t come in, Fey!” cried Nayland Smith. “Don’t open the door!”
“Very good, sir.”
Only a very keen observer would have recognized the note of emotion in Fey’s almost toneless voice.
The hissing noise continued.
“This is terrible!” Hepburn exclaimed. “Sir Denis! What has happened?”
The hissing ceased: Hepburn had identified it now.
“There’s a switch on your right,” came swiftly. “See if you can reach it, but stay where you are.”
Hepburn, altering his position, reached out, found the switch, and depressed it. Lights sprang up. He turned— and saw Nayland Smith poised on top of the bureau. The strange weapon which vaguely he had seen in the darkness proved to be a large syringe fitted with a long nozzle.
The air was heavy with a sickly sweet smell suggesting at once iodine and ether.
He looked towards the bed . . . and would have sworn that a figure lay under the coverlet—a sheet drawn up over its face! On the pillow and beside the place where the sleeper’s head seemed to lie rested a small wooden box no more than half the size of those made to contain cigars. One of the narrow sides—that which faced him—was open.
There seemed to be a number of large black spots upon the pillow. . . .
“It’s possible,” said Nayland Smith, staring across the room, “that I missed the more active. I doubt it. But we must be careful.”
Above the muted midnight boom of New York, sounds of disturbance, far below, became audible.
“I’m glad you didn’t miss our man, Hepburn!” rapped Nayland Smith, dropping on to the carpeted floor.
“I have been trained to shoot straight,” Mark Hepburn replied monotonously.
Nayland Smith nodded.
“He deserved all that came to him. I faked the bed when I heard his approach. . . . Jump into a suit and rejoin me in the sitting-room. We shall be wanted down there at any moment. . . .”
Three minutes later they both stood staring at a row of black insects laid upon a sheet of white paper. The reek of iodine and ether was creeping in from the adjoining bedroom. Fey, at a side table, prepared whiskies imperturbably. He was correctly dressed except for two trifling irregularities: his collar was that of a pyjama jacket, and he wore bedroom slippers.
“This is your province, Hepburn,” said Nayland Smith. “These things are outside my experience. But you will note that they are quite dead, with their legs curled up. The preparation I used in the syringe is a simple formula by my old friend Petrie: he found it useful in Egypt . . . . Thank you, Fey.”
Mark Hepburn studied the dead insects through a hand-lens. Shrunken up as they were by the merciless spray which had destroyed them, upon their dense black bodies he clearly saw vivid scarlet spots—”Scarlet spots”—the last words spoken by James Richet!
“What are they, Hepburn?”
“I’m not sure. They belong to the genus
“Their bite is certainly deadly!” rapped Nayland Smith. “An attack by two or more evidently results in death within three minutes—also a characteristic vivid scarlet rash. You know, now, what was in the cardboard box which James Richet opened in the taxi-cab! No doubt he had orders to open it at the moment that he reached the hotel. One of the Doctor’s jests. I take it they are tropical?”
“Beyond doubt.”
“Once exposed to the frosty air, and their deadly work done, they would die. You know, now, why I provided myself with that”—he pointed to the syringe. “I have met other servants of Fu Manchu to whom a stone-faced building was a grand staircase.”
“Good God!” Mark Hepburn said hoarsely. “This man is a fiend—a sadistic madman——”
“Or a genius, Hepburn! If you will glance at the receptacle which our late visitor deposited on my pillow, you will notice that it is made from a common cigar box. One side lifts shut-terwise: there is a small spring. It was controlled, you see, by this length of fine twine, one end of which still rests on the window ledge. This hook on top was intended to enable the Doctor’s servant to lift it into the room on the end of the tele-scopic rod. The box is lightly lined with hay. You may safely examine it. I have satisfied myself that there is nothing alive inside. . . .”
“This man is the most awful creature who has ever appeared in American history,” said Hepburn. “The situation was tough enough, anyway. Where does he get these horrors? He must have agents all over the world.”
Nayland Smith began to walk up and down, twitching at the lobe of his ear.
“Undoubtedly he has. In my experience I have never felt called upon to step more warily. Also, I begin to think that my powers are failing me.”
“What do you mean?”
“For years, Hepburn, for many years, a palpable fact has escaped me. There is a certain very old Chinaman whose records I have come across in all parts of the world; in London, in Liverpool, in Shanghai, in Port Said,
