moved the handle. The door was unlocked. Inch by inch I opened it, until at last, having made hardly any sound, I could creep in.
The room was in darkness, save for a dim reflection through the slats of the shutters. Yet I was afraid to switch on the light, for I had no wish to disturb him. I crept slowly forward in the direction of the bed, and my eyes growing accustomed to the semidarkness, by the time that I reached it a startling fact had become evident:
The bed was empty! It had never been slept in!
I switched on the bedside lamp and stared about me distractedly.
He had not undressed!
I crossed to the shuttered window. The shutters were not fastened but just lightly closed. I pushed them open and stared out. I could see across to the landing stage. The ledge was not more than four feet above the pavement, as was the case in my own room. Why, I asked myself desperately, had he of all men, he, marked down as Enemy Number One by Dr Fu Manchu, exposed himself to such a risk?
And where was he?
I pressed the night porter’s bell, crossed to the sitting room and threw the door open. In less than a minute, I suppose, the porter appeared.
“Can you tell me,” I asked,”if Sir Denis Nayland Smith has gone out tonight?”
“No sir, he has not gone out.”
The man looked surprised—in fact, startled.
“But I suppose he could have gone out without being seen?”
“No sir. After midnight, except on special occasions, the door is locked. I open it for anyone returning late.”
“And do you remain in the lobby?”
“Yes sir.”
“Did anyone return late tonight?”
“No sir. There are few people in the hotel at the moment and all were in before eleven o’clock.”
“When you came on duty?”
“When I came on duty, yes sir.”
“You mean that it is quite impossible for Sir Denis to have gone out without your seeing him?”
“Quite impossible, sir.”
Although his room exhibited no evidence whatever of a struggle, one explanation, a ghastly one, alone presented itself to my mind.
He had been overcome, carried out by way of the window and so to the landing stage! Those movements in the night were explained. My lovely companion’s coolness under circumstances calculated to terrify a normal girl assumed a different aspect . . .
My friend, the best friend I should ever have, had been fighting for his life while I clung to the lips of Ardatha!
Venice Claims A Victim
A police officer was an almost unendurably long time in reaching the hotel. When at last he arrived, a captain of Carabinieri, he brought two detectives with him. His English was defective but fortunately for me one of the men spoke it well.
When I had made the facts clear and a search of the room had taken place:
“I fear, sir,” said the English-speaking detective,”that your suspicions are confirmed. I am satisfied that your friend did not leave by the front door of the hotel. As he evidently did not go to bed, however, there is a possibility is there not, that he left of his own free will?”
“Yes.” I grasped gladly at this straw. “There is! Why had I not thought of that?”
There was a brief conference in Italian between the three, and then:
“It has been suggested,” the detective went on,”that if Sir Denis Nayland Smith, for whom a bodyguard had been arranged by order of Colonel Correnti, had decided to go out for any reason, he would probably have awakened you.”
“I was not asleep,” I said shortly.
Where did my duty lie? Should I confess that Ardatha had been with me?
“It makes it all the more strange. You were perhaps reading or writing?”
“No. I was thinking and staring out of the window.”
“Did you hear any suspicious sounds?”
“Yes. What I took to be footsteps and a faint scuffling. But I heard no more.”
“It is all the more curious,” the man went on,”because we have two officers on duty, one in a gondola moored near the steps, and the other at the back of the hotel. Before coming here I personally interviewed both these officers and neither had seen anything suspicious.”
The mystery grew deeper.
“My own room was lighted,” I said. “Are my windows visible from the point of view of the man in the gondola?”
“We will go and see.”
We moved along to my room. My feelings as I looked at the divan upon which Ardatha had lain in my arms I find myself unable to describe . . . One of the detectives glanced out of the window and reported that owing to the wall of that little courtyard to which I have referred, this window would be outside the viewpoint of the man in the gondola.
“But the window of Sir Denis7 room—this he could see.”
Another idea came.
“The sitting room!”
“It is possible. Let us look.”
We looked—and solely because, I suppose, no one had attached any importance to the sitting room, it now immediately became evident that one shutter was open.
It had not been open when I had parted from Smith that night!
“You see!” exclaimed the detective,”here is the story: He was overcome, perhaps drugged, in his room, carried in here and lowered out through that window!”
“But”—I was thinking now of Ardatha—”how could the kidnappers have got him away without attracting the notice of one of your men?”
Another consultation took place. All three were becoming wildly excited.
“I must explain”—a half-dressed and bewildered manager had joined us—”that passing under the window of your own room, Mr. Kerrigan, it is possible—there is a gate there—to reach the bridge over the Rio Banieli—the small canal.”
“But you say”—I turned to the detective—”that you had a man on duty at the rear of the hotel?”
“True, but here is dense shadow at this hour of the night. It would be possible—just possible—for one to reach and cross that bridge unnoticed.”
In my mind I was reconstructing the tragedy of the night. I saw Nayland Smith, drugged, helpless, being carried (probably on the shoulder of one of Dr Fu Manchu’s Thugs) right below my window as I lay there intoxicated by the beauty of Ardatha. I felt myself choked with rage and mortification.
“But it is simply incredible,” I cried,”that such a crime can be committed here in Venice! We must find Sir Denis! We must find him!”
“It is understood, sir, that we must find him. This is very bad for the Venice police, because you are under our special protection. The chief has been notified and will shortly be here. It is a tragedy—yes:
I regret it deeply.”
Overcome by a sense of the futility of it all, the hopelessness of outwitting that criminal genius who played with human lives as a chess player with pieces, I turned and walked back to the sitting room. I stared dumbly at the open window through which my poor friend had disappeared, probably forever.
The police left the suite, in deference, I think, to my evident sorrow, and I found myself alone.
The girl to whom I had lost my heart, my reason was a modern Delilah. Her part had been to lull my suspicions, to detain me there—if need be with kisses—while the dreadful master of the Si-Fan removed an enemy
