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!"
CHAPTER IV
"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