fashionable activities of Park Avenue, I thought that we were isolated, alone as though Fate had cast us together on an uninhabited island. Indeed, a man may be as hopelessly alone, as far from human aid, in the midst of a million fellows as one in the heart of the Sahara. The death-mark of Fu Manchu was set upon Kennard Wood’s door; he knew.
“I have found absolutely nothing,” said Smith at last, “if I except these remnants of some kind of wrapping, which, how-every, you may be able to identify.”
He. displayed what looked like a tattered piece of grease-proof paper.
“No.” Kennard Wood shook his head. “Nothing of mine was wrapped in that. Possibly a relic of some former occupant.”
“Possibly,” Smith murmured, and set the fragment aside. “Now for the acid test. I warn you, Wood, that I am submitting you to an ordeal of which I know nothing. But its outcome may be the solution to the mystery of the Snapping Fingers; an explanation of Longton’s death.”
“Give me my orders.”
“I must add that nothing may be attempted. Possibly the agents of Fu Manchu responsible for your dismissal know that you are not alone. Both windows are open: the attack may come from either of them. In order to steel you for what may be a nerve-racking task, let me say that I believe that Longton was mistaken for yourself—”
“And died in my place?”
“I may be wrong, but I think so. Did you ever stay at Mrs. Mendel Hammett’s?”
“Yes.”
“Then I am right! But they know, now. The material in the portfolio contained new facts?”
“New facts! Smith, there’s a conspiracy aimed against this government which has no parallel in history!”
“I know,” said Smith quietly. “That is why Longton died, why so many have died; why I am here. Now, Wood. I am going to ask you to lie down on the bed, and then I am going to turn out every light in the apartment. This thing always strikes in the dark.”
“Very well.”
Kennard Wood threw himself on to the coverlet, taking an automatic from his pocket as he did so.
“No shooting!” snapped Smith. “Yours is the harder, the passive part. Is it agreed?”
“As you say!”
“Just here by the door, Kerrigan.Do nothing without the word from me.”
He moved. I heard several clicks. The whole place was plunged in darkness. Then came Smith’s voice: “Steady, everybody.Be ready for anything.”
In the sudden darkness and complete silence, the buzz of that sleepless hive which is New York rising from far below, I became aware of a sense of impending peril which, as I knew at that moment, I had experienced before. Agents of Dr. Fu Manchu were near. Even had I been uninformed of the fact I should have known it; every nerve in my body proclaimed it, was a herald announcing, psychically, the approach of some lethal thing.
Quite distinctly, from no more than a stride away, came a faint clicking sound.
“My God!” breathed Kennard Wood, “it’s here!”
“The Snapping Fingers!” whispered Smith. “Stand fast.”
CHAPTER XV
NAYLAND SMITH FIRES TWICE
The sudden knowledge that here, in the darkness of the room, some nocturnal creature which drained one’s blood was already questing victims, imposed a test upon my nerves which I found hard to meet. Kennard Wood breathed rapidly.
True, I shared the horror and the peril. But recalling that story told by the house detective, his strange account of something which might have been the “phantom hound of Peel”, I had a stiff struggle with my imagination. Since Smith had examined almost every foot of the apartment, it was not admissible that such a creature could be hiding there; but I remembered that windows were open and I visualized a giant vampire bat at this very moment entering stealthily; a hybrid horror created in the laboratories of Dr. Fu Manchu. The suspense of those tense moments was almost unendurable.
A repetition of the snapping sounded very distinctly—on this occasion, I thought, from near the bed. A third time I heard it.
‘It’s utterly uncanny!” muttered Kennard Wood. “What is it. Smith? What
“Ssh!” Smith warned. “Don’t stir.”
Twice again in quick succession it came—
‘“Now!” cried Smith—’“we shall know!”
He was standing near the door, and as he cried out he turned up all the lights.
What I had expected to see it is impossible to state—some ghoul of medieval demonology I believe. What I actually saw was Kennard Wood crouching on the bed automatic in hand, staring, wild-eyed, about him, and Smith beside me looking right and left in ever growing amazement.
Nothing whatever was visible to account for the sounds! “It’s supernatural!” groaned the Colonel. “We all heard it.”
“Nothing touched you in the dark?” Smith asked. “Nothing.”
“You, Kerrigan?”
“Nothing at all.”
“Yet it’s here!” Smith cried angrily. “It’s here!” Crossing the room, he jerked the draperies aside and stared out. I could see twinkling lights and a rectangular patch of starry sky. The windows were wide open. He turned, tugging at the lobe of his left ear.
“Defeated,” he said quietly. “Get you kit together quickly, Wood: we will lend a hand. Must have you out of this!”
Kennard Wood went eagerly to work, and as we gathered up his belongings and hastily stacked them in the suitcase, I could hear the hum of traffic rising from Park Avenue. When finally we opened the door and deposited case, topcoats, and other gear out in the corridor, Sergeant Doherty came doubling up.
“All’s well,” I said. “The Colonel is changing his quarters.”
Smith, last to leave, switched off the lights inside and brought the key.
“Get all this stuff downstairs. Sergeant,” he said. “Colonel Kennard Wood will be coming with us. I will give the management instructions about this apartment in a moment.”
But as we moved towards the elevator his preoccupied manner was so marked that I was on the point of saying something about it when: “Kerrigan,” he snapped, and pulled up dead. “Did you observe a flower vase in the bedroom?”
“Yes, I believe there was a vase of flowers.”
“The management,” Kennard Wood explained wearily, “decorate the apartments of incoming guests in this way.”
Without another word. Smith turned and began to run back.
“Smith,” I cried, and followed. “What is it?”
“A bad show for Nayland Smith!” he replied. “I examined everything else, but I did not examine the flowers!”
“But surely—”
“Slipshod methods are fatal”—he was unlocking the door—”in dealing with Dr. Fu Manchu.”
Throwing the door open, he stood still for a moment.
“Quiet! Listen!”
I almost held my breath. But all that came to me out of the dark and ominous apartment was the subdued roar of Park Avenue rising from below,
He switched the lights up, and I followed him through the sitting-room into the bedroom. We both looked at a round table set between the windows. Here had stood a glass flower vase.
“Good God!” Smith shouted. “It’s gone!”
For my own part I was so dazed by this inexplicable incident that I began seriously to wonder if the Haitian Negroes had been right, if the Snapping Fingers were pure Voodoo. If, in short, we were faced with supernormal
