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mixed up with which were a brass ring and a number of unusually
large-sized split-shot, nipped on in the manner usual on a fishing-line.
“My theory proven,” he resumed. “Not anticipating a search on the roof,
they had been careless. This was to weight the line and to prevent
the creature clinging to the walls of the chimney. Directly it had dropped
in the grate, however, by means of this ring I assume that the weighted
line was withdrawn, and the thing was only held by one slender thread,
which sufficed, though, to draw it back again when it had done its work.
lt might have got tangled, of course, but they reckoned on its making
straight up the carved leg of the writing-table for the prepared envelope.
From there to the hand of Sir Crichton—which, from having touched
the envelope, would also be scented with the perfume—was a certain move.”
“My God! How horrible!” I exclaimed, and glanced apprehensively into
the dusky shadows of the room. “What is your theory respecting this creature—
what shape, what color—?”
“It is something that moves rapidly and silently. I will
venture no more at present, but I think it works in the dark.
The study was dark, remember, save for the bright patch beneath
the reading-lamp. I have observed that the rear of this
house is ivy-covered right up to and above your bedroom.
Let us make ostentatious preparations to retire, and I think
we may rely upon Fu-Manchu’s servants to attempt my removal,
at any rate—if not yours.”
“But, my dear fellow, it is a climb of thirty-five feet at the very least.”
“You remember the cry in the back lane? It suggested something to me,
and I tested my idea—successfully. It was the cry of a dacoit.
Oh, dacoity, though quiescent, is by no means extinct. Fu-Manchu has
dacoits in his train, and probably it is one who operates the Zayat Kiss,
since it was a dacoit who watched the window of the study this evening.
To such a man an ivy-covered wall is a grand staircase.”
The horrible events that followed are punctuated, in my mind,
by the striking of a distant clock. It is singular how
trivialities thus assert themselves in moments of high tension.
I will proceed, then, by these punctuations, to the coming
of the horror that it was written we should encounter.
The clock across the common struck two.
Having removed all traces of the scent of the orchid from our hands with
a solution of ammonia Smith and I had followed the programme laid down.
It was an easy matter to reach the rear of the house, by simply climbing
a fence, and we did not doubt that seeing the light go out in the front,
our unseen watcher would proceed to the back.
The room was a large one, and we had made up my camp-bed at one end,
stuffing odds and ends under the clothes to lend the appearance of a sleeper,
which device we also had adopted in the case of the larger bed.
The perfumed envelope lay upon a little coffee table in the center
of the floor, and Smith, with an electric pocket lamp, a revolver,
and a brassey beside him, sat on cushions in the shadow of the wardrobe.
I occupied a post between the windows.
No unusual sound, so far, had disturbed the stillness of the night.
Save for the muffled throb of the rare all-night cars passing
the front of the house, our vigil had been a silent one.
The full moon had painted about the floor weird shadows of
the clustering ivy, spreading the design gradually from the door,
across the room, past the little table where the envelope lay,
and finally to the foot of the bed.
The distant clock struck a quarter-past two.
A slight breeze stirred the ivy, and a new shadow added itself
to the extreme edge of the moon’s design.
Something rose, inch by inch, above the sill of the westerly window.
I could see only its shadow, but a sharp, sibilant breath from Smith
told me that he, from his post, could see the cause of the shadow.
Every nerve in my body seemed to be strung tensely.
I was icy cold, expectant, and prepared for whatever horror
was upon us.
The shadow became stationary. The dacoit was studying the interior
of the room.
Then it suddenly lengthened, and, craning my head to the left,
I saw a lithe, black-clad form, surmounted by a Yellow face,
sketchy in the moonlight, pressed against the window-panes!
One thin, brown hand appeared over the edge of the lowered sash,
which it grasped—and then another. The man made absolutely
no sound whatever. The second hand disappeared—and reappeared.
It held a small, square box. There was a very faint CLICK.
The dacoit swung himself below the window with the agility
of an ape, as, with a dull, muffled thud, SOMETHING dropped
upon the carpet!
“Stand still, for your life!” came Smith’s voice, high-pitched.
A beam of white leaped out across the room and played full upon
the coffee-table in the center.
Prepared as I was for something horrible, I know that I paled at sight
of the thing that was running round the edge of the envelope.
It was an insect, full six inches long, and of a vivid, venomous, red color!
It had something of the appearance of a great ant, with its long, quivering
antennae and its febrile, horrible vitality; but it was proportionately
longer of body and smaller of head, and had numberless rapidly moving legs.
In short, it was a giant centipede, apparently of the scolopendra group,
but of a form quite new to me.
These things I realized in one breathless instant; in the next—
Smith had dashed the thing’s poisonous life out with one straight,
true blow of the golf club!
I leaped to the window and threw it widely open, feeling a silk
thread brush my hand as I did so. A black shape was dropping,
with incredible agility from branch to branch of the ivy,
and, without once offering a mark for a revolver-shot, it
merged into the shadows beneath the trees of the garden.
As I turned and switched on the light Nayland Smith dropped
limply into a chair, leaning his head upon his hands.
Even that grim courage had been tried sorely.
“Never mind the dacoit, Petrie,” he said. “Nemesis will know where
to find him. We know now what causes the mark of the Zayat Kiss.
Therefore science is richer for our first brush with the enemy,
and the enemy is poorer—unless he has any more unclassified centipedes.
I understand now something that has been puzzling me since I heard of it—
Sir Crichton’s stifled cry. When we remember that he was almost past speech,
it is reasonable to suppose that his cry was not `The red hand!’
but `The red ANT! Petrie, to think that I failed, by less than an hour,
to save him from such an end!”
“THE body of a lascar, dressed in the manner usual on the P. & O. boats,
was recovered from the Thames off Tilbury by the river police at six
A.M. this morning. It is supposed that the man met with an accident
in leaving his ship.”
Nayland Smith passed me the evening paper and pointed to the above paragraph.
“For `lascar’ read `dacoit,’” he said. “Our visitor, who came by way
of the ivy, fortunately for us, failed to follow his instructions.
Also, he lost the centipede and left a clew behind him.
Dr. Fu-Manchu does not overlook such lapses.”
It was a sidelight upon the character of the awful being with whom we
had to deal. My very soul recoiled from bare consideration of the fate
that would be ours if ever we fell into his hands.
The telephone bell rang. I went out and found that Inspector
Weymouth of New Scotland Yard had called us up.
“Will Mr. Nayland Smith please come to the Wapping River Police
Station at once,” was the message.
Peaceful interludes were few enough throughout that wild pursuit.
“It is certainly something important,” said my friend; “and, if
Fu-Manchu is at the bottom of it—as we must presume him to be—
probably something ghastly.”
A brief survey of the time-tables showed us that there were no trains
to serve our haste. We accordingly chartered a cab and proceeded east.
Smith, throughout the journey, talked entertainingly about his work in Burma.
Of intent, I think, he avoided any reference to the circumstances which first
had brought him in contact with the sinister genius of the Yellow Movement.
His talk was rather of the sunshine of the East than of its shadows.
But the drive concluded—and all too soon. In a silence which neither
of us seemed disposed to break, we entered the police depot, and followed
an officer who received us into the room where Weymouth waited.
The inspector greeted us briefly, nodding toward the table.
“Poor Cadby, the most promising lad at the Yard,” he said;
and his usually gruff voice had softened strangely.
Smith struck his right fist into the palm of his left hand and swore
under his breath, striding up and down the neat little room.
No one spoke for a moment, and in the silence I could hear the whispering
of the Thames outside—of the Thames which had so many strange secrets
to tell, and now was burdened with another.
The body lay prone upon the deal table—this latest of the river’s dead—
dressed in rough sailor garb, and, to all outward seeming, a seaman of
nondescript nationality—such as is no stranger in Wapping and Shadwell.
His dark, curly hair clung clammily about the brown forehead;
his skin was stained, they told me. He wore a gold ring in one ear,
and three fingers of the left hand were missing.
“It was almost the same with Mason.” The river police inspector
was speaking. “A week ago, on a Wednesday, he went off in his own
time on some funny business down St. George’s way—and Thursday
night the ten-o’clock boat got the grapnel on him off Hanover Hole.
His first two fingers on the right hand were clean gone, and his left
hand was mutilated frightfully.”
He paused and glanced at Smith.
“That lascar, too,” he continued, “that you came down to see, sir;
you remember his hands?”
Smith nodded.
“He was not a lascar,” he said shortly. “He was a dacoit.”
Silence fell again.
I turned to the array of objects lying on the table—those which
had been found in Cadby’s clothing. None of them were noteworthy,
except that which had been found thrust into the loose neck of his shirt.
This last it was which had led the police to send for Nayland Smith,
for it constituted the first clew which had come to light pointing
to the authors of these mysterious tragedies.
It was a Chinese pigtail. That alone was sufficiently remarkable;
but it was rendered more so by the fact that the plaited queue
was a false one being attached to a most ingenious bald wig.
“You’re sure it wasn’t part of a Chinese make-up?” questioned Weymouth,
his eye on the strange relic. “Cadby was clever at disguise.”
Smith snatched the wig from my hands with a certain irritation,
and tried to fit it on the dead detective.
“Too small by inches!” he jerked. “And look how it’s padded in the crown.
This thing was made for a most abnormal head.”
He threw it down, and fell to pacing the room
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