rapidly. "I will go along to the high-road and cross to the common a
hundred yards up, where there is a pathway, as though homeward bound
to the north side. Give me half a minute's start, then you proceed in
an opposite direction and cross from the corner of the next road.
Directly you are out of the light of the street lamps, get over the
rails and run for the elms!"
He thrust a pistol into my hand and was off.
While he had been with me, speaking in that incisive impetuous way of
his, his dark face close to mine, and his eyes gleaming like steel, I
had been at one with him in his feverish mood, but now, when I stood
alone in that staid and respectable by-way, holding a loaded pistol in
my hand, the whole thing became utterly unreal.
It was in an odd frame of mind that I walked to the next corner, as
directed, for I was thinking, not of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the great and evil
man who dreamed of Europe and America under Chinese rule, not of
Nayland Smith, who alone stood between the Chinaman and the
realization of his monstrous schemes, not even of Kâramanèh, the slave
girl, whose glorious beauty was a weapon of might in Fu-Manchu's
hand, but of what impression I must have made upon a patient had I
encountered one then.
Such were my ideas up to the moment that I crossed to the common and
vaulted into the field on my right. As I began to run toward the elms
I found myself wondering what it was all about, and for what we were
come. Fifty yards west of the trees it occurred to me that if Smith
had counted on cutting Forsyth off we were too late, for it appeared
to me that he must already be in the coppice.
I was right. Twenty paces more I ran, and ahead of me, from the elms,
came a sound. Clearly it came through the still air--the eerie hoot of
a nighthawk. I could not recall ever to have heard the cry of that
bird on the common before, but oddly enough I attached little
significance to it until, in the ensuing instant, a most dreadful
scream--a scream in which fear and loathing and anger were hideously
blended--thrilled me with horror.
After that I have no recollection of anything until I found myself
standing by the southernmost elm.
"Smith!" I cried breathlessly. "Smith! my God! where are you?"
As if in answer to my cry came an indescribable sound, a mingled
sobbing and choking. Out from the shadows staggered a ghastly
figure--that of a man whose face appeared to be _streaked_. His eyes
glared at me madly, and he moved the air with his hands like one blind
and insane with fear.
I started back; words died upon my tongue. The figure reeled, and the
man fell babbling and sobbing at my very feet.
Inert I stood, looking down at him. He writhed a moment--and was
still. The silence again became perfect. Then, from somewhere beyond
the elms, Nayland Smith appeared. I did not move. Even when he stood
beside me, I merely stared at him fatuously.
"I let him walk to his death, Petrie," I heard dimly. "God forgive
me--God forgive me!"
The words aroused me.
"Smith"--my voice came as a whisper--"for one awful moment I
thought--"
"So did some one else," he rapped. "Our poor sailor has met the end
designed for _me_, Petrie!"
At that I realized two things: I knew why Forsyth's face had struck me
as being familiar in some puzzling way, and I knew why Forsyth now lay
dead upon the grass. Save that he was a fair man and wore a slight
moustache, he was, in features and build, the double of Nayland Smith!
THE NET
We raised the poor victim and turned him over on his back. I dropped
upon my knees, and with unsteady fingers began to strike a match. A
slight breeze was arising and sighing gently through the elms, but,
screened by my hands, the flame of the match took life. It illuminated
wanly the sun-baked face of Nayland Smith, his eyes gleaming with
unnatural brightness. I bent forward, and the dying light of the match
touched that other face.
"Oh, God!" whispered Smith.
A faint puff of wind extinguished the match.
In all my surgical experience I had never met with anything quite so
horrible. Forsyth's livid face was streaked with tiny streams of
blood, which proceeded from a series of irregular wounds. One group of
these clustered upon his left temple, another beneath his right eye,
and others extended from the chin down to the throat. They were
black, almost like tattoo marks, and the entire injured surface was
bloated indescribably. His fists were clenched; he was quite rigid.
Smith's piercing eyes were set upon me eloquently as I knelt on the
path and made my examination--an examination which that first glimpse
when Forsyth came staggering out from the trees had rendered
useless--a mere matter of form.
"He's quite dead, Smith," I said huskily. "It's--unnatural--it--"
Smith began beating his fist into his left palm and taking little,
short, nervous strides up and down beside the dead man. I could hear a
car skirling along the high-road, but I remained there on my knees
staring dully at the disfigured bloody face which but a matter of
minutes since had been that of a clean-looking British seaman. I found
myself contrasting his neat, squarely trimmed moustache with the
bloated face above it, and counting the little drops of blood which
trembled upon its edge. There were footsteps approaching. I arose. The
footsteps quickened, and I turned as a constable ran up.
"What's this?" he demanded gruffly, and stood with his fists clenched,
looking from Smith to me and down at