The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, Sax Rohmer [free novels .txt] 📗

a look and a touch sufficed to tell me that this was but clay from which the spirit had fled!

Smith met my glance as I raised my head, and his teeth came together with a loud snap; the jaw muscles stood out prominently beneath the dark skin; and his face was grimly set in that odd, half-despairful expression which I knew so well but which boded so ill for whomsoever occasioned it.

“Dead, Petrie!—already?”

“Lightning could have done the work no better. Can I turn him over?”

Smith nodded.

Together we stooped and rolled the heavy body on its back. A flood of whispers came sibilantly from the stairway. Smith spun around rapidly, and glared upon the group of half-dressed servants.

“Return to your rooms!” he rapped, imperiously; “let no one come into the hall without my orders.”

The masterful voice had its usual result; there was a hurried retreat to the upper landing. Burke, shaking like a man with an ague, sat on the lower step, pathetically drumming his palms upon his uplifted knees.

“I warned him, I warned him!” he mumbled monotonously, “I warned him, oh, I warned him!”

“Stand up!” shouted Smith—“stand up and come here!”

The man, with his frightened eyes turning to right and left, and seeming to search for something in the shadows about him, advanced obediently.

“Have you a flask?” demanded Smith of Carter.

The detective silently administered to Burke a stiff restorative.

“Now,” continued Smith, “you, Petrie, will want to examine him, I suppose?” He pointed to the body. “And in the meantime I have some questions to put to you, my man.”

He clapped his hand upon Burke’s shoulder.

“My God!” Burke broke out, “I was ten yards from him when it happened!”

“No one is accusing you,” said Smith, less harshly; “but since you were the only witness, it is by your aid that we hope to clear the matter up.”

Exerting a gigantic effort to regain control of himself, Burke nodded, watching my friend with a childlike eagerness. During the ensuing conversation, I examined Slattin for marks of violence; and of what I found, more anon.

“In the first place,” said Smith, “you say that you warned him. When did you warn him and of what?”

“I warned him, sir, that it would come to this—”

“That what would come to this?”’

“His dealings with the Chinaman!”

“He had dealings with Chinamen?”

“He accidentally met a Chinaman at an East End gaming-house, a man he had known in Frisco—a man called Singapore Charlie—”

“What! Singapore Charlie!”

“Yes, sir, the same man that had a dope-shop, two years ago, down Ratcliffe way—”

“There was a fire—”

“But Singapore Charlie escaped, sir.”

“And he is one of the gang?”

“He is one of what we used to call in New York, the Seven Group.”

Smith began to tug at the lobe of his left ear, reflectively, as I saw out of the corner of my eye.

“The Seven Group!” he mused. “That is significant. I always suspected that Dr. Fu-Manchu and the notorious Seven Group were one and the same. Go on, Burke.”

“Well, sir,” the man continued, more calmly, “the lieutenant—”

“The lieutenant!” began Smith; then: “Oh! of course; Slattin used to be a police lieutenant!”

“Well, sir, he—Mr. Slattin—had a sort of hold on this Singapore Charlie, and two years ago, when he first met him, he thought that with his aid he was going to pull off the biggest thing of his life—”

“Forestall me, in fact?”

“Yes, sir; but you got in first, with the big raid and spoiled it.”

Smith nodded grimly, glancing at the Scotland Yard man, who returned his nod with equal grimness.

“A couple of months ago,” resumed Burke, “he met Charlie again down East, and the Chinaman introduced him to a girl—some sort of an Egyptian girl.”

“Go on!” snapped Smith—“I know her.”

“He saw her a good many times—and she came here once or twice. She made out that she and Singapore Charlie were prepared to give away the boss of the Yellow gang—”

“For a price, of course?”

“I suppose so,” said Burke; “but I don’t know. I only know that I warned him.”

“H’m!” muttered Smith. “And now, what took place to-night?”

“He had an appointment here with the girl,” began Burke

“I know all that,” interrupted Smith. “I merely want to know, what took place after the telephone call?”

“Well, he told me to wait up, and I was dozing in the next room to the study—the dining-room—when the ‘phone bell aroused me. I heard the lieutenant—Mr. Slattin, coming out, and I ran out too, but only in time to see him taking his hat from the rack—”

“But he wears no hat!”

“He never got it off the peg! Just as he reached up to take it, he gave a most frightful scream, and turned around like lightning as though some one had attacked him from behind!”

“There was no one else in the hall?”

“No one at all. I was standing down there outside the dining-room just by the stairs, but he didn’t turn in my direction, he turned and looked right behind him—where there was no one—nothing. His cries were frightful.” Burke’s voice broke, and he shuddered feverishly. “Then he made a rush for the front door. It seemed as though he had not seen me. He stood there screaming; but, before I could reach him, he fell....”

Nayland Smith fixed a piercing gaze upon Burke.

“Is that all you know?” he demanded slowly.

“As God is my judge, sir, that’s all I know, and all I saw. There was no living thing near him when he met his death.”

“We shall see,” muttered Smith. He turned to me—“What killed him?” he asked, shortly.

“Apparently, a minute wound on the left wrist,” I replied, and, stooping, I raised the already cold hand in mine.

A tiny, inflamed wound showed on the wrist; and a certain puffiness