when, mustering all my presence of mind and all my failing courage, I
recognized that I had better employment of my energies, and began to
swim straight ahead, desperately determined to face all the horrors of
this place--to die hard if die I must.
A drop of liquid fire fell through the darkness and hissed into the
water beside me!
I felt that, despite my resolution, I was going mad.
Another fiery drop--and another!
I touched a rotting wooden post and slimy timbers. I had reached one
bound of my watery prison. More fire fell from above, and the scream
of hysteria quivered, unuttered, in my throat.
Keeping myself afloat with increasing difficulty in my heavy garments,
I threw my head back and raised my eyes.
No more drops fell, and no more drops would fall; but it was merely a
question of time for the floor to collapse. For it was beginning to
emit a dull, red glow.
The room above me was in flames!
It was drops of burning oil from the lamp, finding passage through the
cracks in the crazy flooring, which had fallen about me--for the death
trap had reclosed, I suppose, mechanically.
My saturated garments were dragging me down, and now I could hear the
flames hungrily eating into the ancient rottenness overhead. Shortly
that cauldron would be loosed upon my head. The glow of the flames
grew brighter . . . and showed me the half-rotten piles upholding the
building, showed me the tidal mark upon the slime-coated walls--showed
me that there was no escape!
By some subterranean duct the foul place was fed from the Thames. By
that duct, with the outgoing tide, my body would pass, in the wake of
Mason, Cadby, and many another victim!
Rusty iron rungs were affixed to one of the walls communicating with a
trap--but the bottom three were missing!
Brighter and brighter grew the awesome light the light of what should
be my funeral pyre--reddening the oily water and adding a new dread to
the whispering, clammy horror of the pit. But something it showed
me . . . a projecting beam a few feet above the water . . . and directly
below the iron ladder!
"Merciful Heaven!" I breathed. "Have I the strength?"
A desire for laughter claimed me with sudden, all but irresistible
force. I knew what it portended and fought it down--grimly, sternly.
My garments weighed upon me like a suit of mail; with my chest aching
dully, my veins throbbing to bursting, I forced tired muscles to work,
and, every stroke an agony, approached the beam. Nearer I swam
. . . nearer. Its shadow fell black upon the water, which now had all
the seeming of a pool of blood. Confused sounds--a remote uproar--came
to my ears. I was nearly spent . . . I was in the shadow of the beam! If
I could throw up one arm. . .
A shrill scream sounded far above me!
"Petrie! Petrie!" (That voice must be Smith's!) "Don't touch the
beam! For God's sake DON'T TOUCH THE BEAM! Keep afloat another few
seconds and I can get to you!"
Another few seconds! Was that possible?
I managed to turn, to raise my throbbing head; and I saw the strangest
sight which that night yet had offered.
Nayland Smith stood upon the lowest iron rung . . . supported by the
hideous, crook-backed Chinaman, who stood upon the rung above!
"I can't reach him!"
It was as Smith hissed the words despairingly that I looked up--and saw
the Chinaman snatch at his coiled pigtail and pull it off! With it
came the wig to which it was attached; and the ghastly yellow mask,
deprived of its fastenings, fell from position! "Here! Here! Be
quick! Oh! be quick! You can lower this to him! Be quick! Be
quick!"
A cloud of hair came falling about the slim shoulders as the speaker
bent to pass this strange lifeline to Smith; and I think it was my
wonder at knowing her for the girl whom that day I had surprised in
Cadby's rooms which saved my life.
For I not only kept afloat, but kept my gaze upturned to that
beautiful, flushed face, and my eyes fixed upon hers--which were wild
with fear . . . for me!
Smith, by some contortion, got the false queue into my grasp, and I,
with the strength of desperation, by that means seized hold upon the
lowest rung. With my friend's arm round me I realized that exhaustion
was even nearer than I had supposed. My last distinct memory is of the
bursting of the floor above and the big burning joist hissing into the
pool beneath us. Its fiery passage, striated with light, disclosed two
sword blades, riveted, edges up along the top of the beam which I had
striven to reach.
"The severed fingers--" I said; and swooned.
How Smith got me through the trap I do not know--nor how we made our
way through the smoke and flames of the narrow passage it opened upon.
My next recollection is of sitting up, with my friend's arm supporting
me and Inspector Ryman holding a glass to my lips.
A bright glare dazzled my eyes. A crowd surged about us, and a clangor
and shouting drew momentarily nearer.
"It's the engines coming," explained Smith, seeing my bewilderment.
"Shen-Yan's is in flames. It was your shot, as you fell through the
trap, broke the oil-lamp."
"Is everybody out?"
"So far as we know."
"Fu-Manchu?"
Smith shrugged his shoulders.
"No one has seen him. There was some door at the back--"
"Do you think he may--"
"No," he said tensely. "Not until I see him lying dead before me shall
I believe it."
Then