The Devil Doctor | Page 4

stirred within me--a warning
voice which for long had lain dormant.
What was afoot?
A breeze caressed the leaves overhead, breaking the silence with mysterious whisperings.
Some portentous truth was seeking for admittance to my brain. I strove to reassure myself,

but the sense of impending evil and of mystery became heavier. At last I could combat
my strange fears no longer. I turned and began to run towards the south side of the
common--towards my rooms--and after Eltham.
I had hoped to head him off, but came upon no sign of him. An all-night tramcar passed
at the moment that I reached the high-road, and as I ran around behind it I saw that my
windows were lighted and that there was a light in the hall.
My key was yet in the lock when my housekeeper opened 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