The Devil Doctor | Page 5

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 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. Towards 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 objects 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 gravelled footpath only to see the tail-light of the car
dwindling to the north!

Smith leant 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
practicable 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, dishevelled 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 leapt in, pulling me after