Beneath the trees a shadow carpet lay, its edges tropically sharp; and fully ten yards from the first of the group, we two, hatless both, and sharing a common dread, paused for a moment and listened.
The car had stopped at the further extremity of the common, and now with a moan that grew to a shriek was rolling on its way again. We stood and listened until silence reclaimed the night. Not a footstep could be heard. Then slowly we walked on. At the edge of the little coppice we stopped again abruptly.
Smith turned and thrust his pistol into my hand. A white ray of light pierced the shadows; my companion carried an electric torch. But no trace of Eltham was discoverable.
There had been a heavy shower of rain during the evening just before sunset, and although the open paths were dry again, under the trees the ground was still moist. Ten yards within the coppice we came upon tracks—the tracks of one running, as the deep imprints of the toes indicated.
Abruptly the tracks terminated; others, softer, joined them, two sets converging from left and right. There was a confused patch, trailing off to the west; then this became indistinct, and was finally lost upon the hard ground outside the group.
For perhaps a minute, or more, we ran about from tree to tree, and from bush to bush, searching like hounds for a scent, and fearful of what we might find. We found nothing; and fully in the moonlight we stood facing one another. The night was profoundly still.
Nayland Smith stepped back into the shadows, and began slowly to turn his head from left to right, taking in the entire visible expanse of the common. Toward a point where the road bisected it he stared intently. Then, with a bound, he set off.
“Come on, Petrie!” he cried. “There they are!”
Vaulting a railing he went away over a field like a madman. Recovering from the shock of surprise, I followed him, but he was well ahead of me, and making for some vaguely seen object moving against the lights of the roadway.
Another railing was vaulted, and the corner of a second, triangular grass patch crossed at a hot sprint. We were twenty yards from the road when the sound of a starting motor broke the silence. We gained the graveled footpath only to see the taillight of the car dwindling to the north!
Smith leaned dizzily against a tree.
“Eltham is in that car!” he gasped. “Just God! are we to stand here and see him taken away to—”
He beat his fist upon the tree, in a sort of tragic despair. The nearest cab-rank was no great distance away, but, excluding the possibility of no cab being there, it might, for all practical purposes, as well have been a mile off.
The beat of the retreating motor was scarcely audible; the lights might but just be distinguished. Then, coming in an opposite direction, appeared the headlamp of another car, of a car that raced nearer and nearer to us, so that, within a few seconds of its first appearance, we found ourselves bathed in the beam of its headlights.
Smith bounded out into the road, and stood, a weird silhouette, with upraised arms, fully in its course!
The brakes were applied hurriedly. It was a big limousine, and its driver swerved perilously in avoiding Smith and nearly ran into me. But, the breathless moment past, the car was pulled up, head on to the railings; and a man in evening clothes was demanding excitedly what had happened. Smith, a hatless, disheveled figure, stepped up to the door.
“My name is Nayland Smith,” he said rapidly—“Burmese Commissioner.” He snatched a letter from his pocket and thrust it into the hands of the bewildered man. “Read that. It is signed by another Commissioner—the Commissioner of Police.”
With amazement written all over him, the other obeyed.
“You see,” continued my friend, tersely—“it is carte blanche. I wish to commandeer your car, sir, on a matter of life and death!”.
The other returned the letter.
“Allow me to offer it!” he said, descending. “My man will take your orders. I can finish my journey by cab. I am—”
But Smith did not wait to learn whom he might be.
“Quick!” he cried to the stupefied chauffeur—“You passed a car a minute ago—yonder. Can you overtake it?”
“I can try, sir, if I don’t lose her track.”
Smith leaped in, pulling me after him.
“Do it!” he snapped. “There are no speed limits for me. Thanks! Goodnight, sir!”
We were off! The car swung around and the chase commenced.
One last glimpse I had of the man we had dispossessed, standing alone by the roadside, and at ever increasing speed, we leaped away in the track of Eltham’s captors.
Smith was too highly excited for ordinary conversation, but he threw out short, staccato remarks.
“I have followed Fu-Manchu from Hongkong,” he jerked. “Lost him at Suez. He got here a boat ahead of me. Eltham has been corresponding with some mandarin up-country. Knew that. Came straight to you. Only got in this evening. He—Fu-Manchu—has been sent here to get Eltham. My God! and he has him! He will question him! The interior of China—a seething pot, Petrie! They had to stop the leakage of information. He is here for that.”
The car pulled up with a jerk that pitched me out of my seat, and the chauffeur leaped to the road and ran ahead. Smith was out in a trice, as the man, who had run up to a constable, came racing back.
“Jump in, sir—jump in!” he cried, his eyes bright with the lust of the chase; “they are making for Battersea!”
And we were off again.
Through the empty streets we roared on. A place of gasometers and desolate waste lots slipped behind and we were in a narrow way where gates of yards and a few lowly houses faced upon a prospect of high blank wall.
“Thames on our right,” said Smith, peering ahead. “His rathole is by the river as usual. Hi!”—he grabbed up the speaking-tube—“Stop! Stop!”
The limousine swung in to the narrow sidewalk, and pulled up close by a yard gate. I, too, had seen our quarry—a long, low bodied car, showing no inside lights. It had turned the next corner, where a street lamp shone greenly, not a hundred yards ahead.
Smith leaped out, and I followed him.
“That must be a cul de sac,” he said, and turned to the eager-eyed chauffeur. “Run back to that last turning,” he ordered, “and wait there, out of sight. Bring the car up when you hear a police-whistle.”
The man looked disappointed, but did not question the order. As he began to back away, Smith grasped me by the arm and drew me forward.
“We must get to that corner,” he said, “and see where the car stands, without showing ourselves.”
CHAPTER III. THE WIRE JACKET
I suppose we were not more than a dozen paces from the lamp when we heard the thudding of the motor. The car was backing out!
It was a desperate moment, for it seemed that we could not fail to be discovered. Nayland Smith began to look about him, feverishly, for a hiding-place, a quest in which I seconded with equal anxiety. And Fate was kind to us—doubly kind as after events revealed. A wooden gate broke the expanse of wall hard by upon the right, and, as the result of some recent accident, a ragged gap had been torn