The Devil Doctor | Page 4

the door.
"There's a gentleman just come, doctor," she began.
I thrust past her and raced up the stairs to my study.
Standing by the writing-table was a tall thin man, his gaunt face brown as a coffee-berry and his steely grey eyes fixed upon me. My heart gave a great leap--and seemed to stand still.
It was Nayland Smith!
"Smith!" I cried. "Smith, old man, by God, I'm glad to see you!"
He wrung my hand hard, looking at me with his searching eyes; but there was little enough of gladness in his face. He was altogether greyer than when last I had seen him--greyer and sterner.
"Where is Eltham?" I asked.
Smith started back as though I had struck him.
"Eltham!" he whispered--"Eltham! is Eltham here?"
"I left him ten minutes ago on the common."
Smith dashed his right fist into the palm of his left hand, and his eyes gleamed almost wildly.
"My God, Petrie!" he said, "am I fated always to come too late?"
My dreadful fears in that instant were confirmed. I seemed to feel my legs totter beneath me.
"Smith, you don't mean--"
"I do, Petrie!" His voice sounded very far away. "Fu-Manchu is here; and Eltham, God help him ... is his first victim!"
CHAPTER II
ELTHAM VANISHES
Smith went racing down the stairs like a man possessed. Heavy with such a foreboding of calamity as I had not known for two years, I followed him--along the hall and out into the road. The very peace and beauty of the night in some way increased my mental agitation. The sky was lighted almost tropically with such a blaze of stars as I could not recall to have seen since, my futile search concluded, I had left Egypt. The glory of the moonlight yellowed the lamps speckled across the expanse of the common. The night was as still as night can ever be in London. The dimming pulse of a cab or car alone disturbed the quietude.
With a quick glance to right and left, Smith ran across on to the common, and, leaving the door wide open behind me, I followed. The path which Eltham had pursued terminated almost opposite to my house. One's gaze might follow it, white and empty, for several hundred yards past the pond, and farther, until it became overshadowed and was lost amid a clump of trees.
I came up with Smith, and side by side we ran on, whilst pantingly I told my tale.
"It was a trick to get you away from him!" cried Smith. "They meant no doubt to make some attempt at your house, but, as he came out with you, an alternative plan--"
Abreast of the pond, my companion slowed down, and finally stopped.
"Where did you last see Eltham?" he asked, rapidly.
I took his arm, turning him slightly to the right, and pointed across the moon-bathed common.
"You see that clump of bushes on the other side of the road?" I said. "There's a path to the left of it. I took that path and he took this. We parted at the point where they meet--"
Smith walked right down to the edge of the water and peered about over the surface.
What he hoped to find there I could not imagine. Whatever it had been he was disappointed, and he turned to me again, frowning perplexedly, and tugging at the lobe of his left ear, an old trick which reminded me of gruesome things we had lived through in the past.
"Come on," he jerked. "It may be amongst the trees."
From the tone of his voice I knew that he was tensed up nervously, and his mood but added to the apprehension of my own.
"What may be amongst the trees, Smith?" I asked.
He walked on.
"God knows, Petrie; but I fear--"
Behind us, along the high-road, a tramcar went rocking by, doubtless bearing a few belated workers homeward. The stark incongruity of the thing was appalling. How little those weary toilers, hemmed about with the commonplace, suspected that almost within sight from the car windows, amid prosy benches, iron railings, and unromantic, flickering lamps, two fellow-men moved upon the border of a horror-land!
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 farther 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