Fire-Tongue by Sax Rohmer (the best electronic book reader txt) 📖

“Mr. Harley,” he began, “I feel somewhat ill at ease in encroaching upon your time, for I am by no means sure that my case comes within your particular province.”

“Sit down, Sir Charles,” said Harley with quiet geniality. “Officially, my working day is ended; but if nothing comes of your visit beyond a chat it will have been very welcome. Calcutta, was it not, where we last met?”

“It was,” replied Sir Charles, placing his hat and cane upon the table and sitting down rather wearily in a big leather armchair which Harley had pushed forward. “If I presume upon so slight an acquaintance, I am sorry, but I must confess that only the fact of having met you socially encouraged me to make this visit.”

He raised his eyes to Harley’s face and gazed at him with that peculiarly searching look which belongs to members of his profession; but mingled with it was an expression of almost pathetic appeal, of appeal for understanding, for sympathy of some kind.

“Go on, Sir Charles,” said Harley. He pushed forward a box of cigars. “Will you smoke?”

“Thanks, no,” was the answer.

Sir Charles evidently was oppressed by some secret trouble, thus Harley mused silently, as, taking out a tin of tobacco from a cabinet beside him, he began in leisurely manner to load a briar. In this he desired to convey that he treated the visit as that of a friend, and also, since business was over, that Sir Charles might without scruple speak at length and at leisure of whatever matters had brought him there.

“Very well, then,” began the surgeon; “I am painfully conscious that the facts which I am in a position to lay before you are very scanty and unsatisfactory.”

Paul Harley nodded encouragingly.

“If this were not so,” he explained, “you would have no occasion to apply to me, Sir Charles. It is my business to look for facts. Naturally, I do not expect my clients to supply them.”

Sir Charles slowly nodded his head, and seemed in some measure to recover confidence.

“Briefly, then,” he said, “I believe my life is in danger.”

“You mean that there is someone who desires your death?”

“I do.”

“H’m,” said Harley, replacing the tin in the cupboard and striking a match. “Even if the facts are scanty, no doubt you have fairly substantial grounds for such a suspicion?”

“I cannot say that they are substantial, Mr. Harley. They are rather more circumstantial. Frankly, I have forced myself to come here, and now that I have intruded upon your privacy, I realize my difficulties more keenly than ever.”

The expression of embarrassment upon the speaker’s face had grown intense; and now he paused, bending forward in his chair. He seemed in his glance to appeal for patience on the part of his hearer, and Harley, lighting his pipe, nodded in understanding fashion. He was the last man in the world to jump to conclusions. He had learned by bitter experience that lightly to dismiss such cases as this of Sir Charles as coming within the province of delusion, was sometimes tantamount to refusing aid to a man in deadly peril.

“You are naturally anxious for the particulars,” Sir Charles presently resumed. “They bear, I regret to say, a close resemblance to the symptoms of a well-known form of hallucination. In short, with one exception, they may practically all be classed under the head of surveillance.”

“Surveillance,” said Paul Harley. “You mean that you are more or less constantly followed?”

“I do.”

“And what is your impression of this follower?”

“A very hazy one. To-night, as I came to your office, I have every reason to believe that someone followed me in a taxicab.”

“You came in a car?”

“I did.”

“And a cab followed you the whole way?”

“Practically the whole way, except that as my chauffeur turned into Chancery Lane, the cab stopped at the corner of Fleet Street.”

“Your idea is that your pursuer followed on foot from this point?”

“Such was my impression.”

“H’m, quite impossible. And is this sort of thing constant, Sir Charles?”

“It has been for some time past.”

“Anything else?”

“One very notable thing, Mr. Harley. I was actually assaulted less than a week ago within sight of my own house.”

“Indeed! Tell me of this.” Paul Harley became aware of an awakening curiosity. Sir Charles Abingdon was not the type of man who is lightly intimidated.

“I had been to visit a friend in the neighbourhood,” Sir Charles continued, “whom I am at present attending professionally, although I am actually retired. I was returning across the square, close to midnight, when, fortunately for myself, I detected the sound of light, pattering footsteps immediately behind me. The place was quite deserted at that hour, and although I was so near home, the worst would have happened, I fear, if my sense of hearing had been less acute. I turned in the very instant that a man was about to spring upon me from behind. He was holding in his hand what looked like a large silk handkerchief. This encounter took place in the shadow of some trees, and beyond the fact that my assailant was a small man, I could form no impression of his identity.”

“What did you do?”

“I turned and struck out with my stick.”

“And then?”

“Then he made no attempt to contest the issue, but simply ran swiftly off, always keeping in the shadows of the trees.”

“Very strange,” murmured Harley. “Do you think he had meant to drug you?”

“Maybe,” replied Sir Charles. “The handkerchief was perhaps saturated with some drug, or he may even have designed to attempt to strangle me.”

“And you formed absolutely no impression of the man?”

“None whatever, Mr. Harley. When you see the spot at which the encounter took place, if you care to do so, you will recognize the difficulties. It is perfectly dark there after nightfall.”

“H’m,” mused Harley. “A very alarming occurrence, Sir Charles. It must have shaken you very badly. But we must not overlook the possibility that this may have been an ordinary footpad.”

“His methods were scarcely those of a footpad,” murmured Sir Charles.

“I quite agree,” said Harley. “They were rather Oriental, if I may say so.”

Sir Charles Abingdon started. “Oriental!” he whispered. “Yes, you are right.”