Sax Rohmer - THE DEVIL DOCTOR

His hand remained upon my arm, gripping it nervously. Shall I say that

I was surprised? I can say it with truth. But I shall add that I was

thrilled, eerily; for this subdued excitement and alert watching of

Smith's could only mean one thing:

Fu-Manchu!

And that was enough to set me watching as keenly as he; to set me

listening, not only for sounds outside the house but for sounds

within. Doubts, suspicions, dreads heaped themselves up in my mind.

Why was Forsyth standing there at the gate? I had never seen him

before, to my knowledge, yet there was something oddly reminiscent

about the man. Could it be that his visit formed part of a plot? Yet

his wound had been genuine enough. Thus my mind worked, feverishly;

such was the effect of an unspoken thought--Fu-Manchu.

Nayland Smith's grip tightened on my arm.

"There it is again, Petrie!" he whispered. "Look, look!"

His words were wholly unnecessary. I, too, had seen it; a wonderful

and uncanny sight. Out of the darkness under the elms, low down upon

the ground, grew a vaporous blue light. It flared up, elfinish, then

began to ascend. Like an igneous phantom, a witch flame, it rose,

higher, higher, higher, to what I adjudged to be some twelve feet or

more from the ground. Then, high in the air, it died away again as it

had come!

"For God's sake, Smith, what was it?"

"Don't ask me, Petrie. I have seen it twice. We--"

He paused. Rapid footsteps sounded below. Over Smith's shoulder I saw

Forsyth cross the road, climb the low rail, and set out across the

common.

Smith sprang impetuously to his feet.

"We must stop him!" he said hoarsely; then, clapping a hand to my

mouth as I was about to call out--"Not a sound, Petrie!"

He ran out of the room and went blundering downstairs in the dark,

crying:

"Out through the garden--the side entrance!"

I overtook him as he threw wide the door of my dispensing room.

Through he ran and opened the door at the other end. I followed him

out, closing it behind me. The smell from some tobacco plants in a

neighbouring flower-bed was faintly perceptible; no breeze stirred;

and in the great silence I could hear Smith, in front of me, tugging

at the bolt of the gate.

Then he had it open, and I stepped out, close on his heels, and left

the door ajar.

"We must not appear to have come from your house," explained Smith

rapidly. "I will go along to the high-road and cross to the common a

hundred yards up, where there is a pathway, as though homeward bound

to the north side. Give me half a minute's start, then you proceed in

an opposite direction and cross from the corner of the next road.

Directly you are out of the light of the street lamps, get over the

rails and run for the elms!"

He thrust a pistol into my hand and was off.

While he had been with me, speaking in that incisive impetuous way of

his, his dark face close to mine, and his eyes gleaming like steel, I

had been at one with him in his feverish mood, but now, when I stood

alone in that staid and respectable by-way, holding a loaded pistol in

my hand, the whole thing became utterly unreal.

It was in an odd frame of mind that I walked to the next corner, as

directed, for I was thinking, not of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the great and evil

man who dreamed of Europe and America under Chinese rule, not of

Nayland Smith, who alone stood between the Chinaman and the

realization of his monstrous schemes, not even of Kâramanèh, the slave

girl, whose glorious beauty was a weapon of might in Fu-Manchu's

hand, but of what impression I must have made upon a patient had I

encountered one then.

Such were my ideas up to the moment that I crossed to the common and

vaulted into the field on my right. As I began to run toward the elms

I found myself wondering what it was all about, and for what we were

come. Fifty yards west of the trees it occurred to me that if Smith

had counted on cutting Forsyth off we were too late, for it appeared

to me that he must already be in the coppice.

I was right. Twenty paces more I ran, and ahead of me, from the elms,

came a sound. Clearly it came through the still air--the eerie hoot of

a nighthawk. I could not recall ever to have heard the cry of that

bird on the common before, but oddly enough I attached little

significance to it until, in the ensuing instant, a most dreadful

scream--a scream in which fear and loathing and anger were hideously

blended--thrilled me with horror.

After that I have no recollection of anything until I found myself

standing by the southernmost elm.

"Smith!" I cried breathlessly. "Smith! my God! where are you?"

As if in answer to my cry came an indescribable sound, a mingled

sobbing and choking. Out from the shadows staggered a ghastly

figure--that of a man whose face appeared to be _streaked_. His eyes

glared at me madly, and he moved the air with his hands like one blind

and insane with fear.

I started back; words died upon my tongue. The figure reeled, and the

man fell babbling and sobbing at my very feet.

Inert I stood, looking down at him. He writhed a moment--and was

still. The silence again became perfect. Then, from somewhere beyond

the elms, Nayland Smith appeared. I did not move. Even when he stood

beside me, I merely stared at him fatuously.

"I let him walk to his death, Petrie," I heard dimly. "God forgive

me--God forgive me!"

The words aroused me.

"Smith"--my voice came as a whisper--"for one awful moment I

thought--"

"So did some one else," he rapped. "Our poor sailor has met the end

designed for _me_, Petrie!"

At that I realized two things: I knew why Forsyth's face had struck me

as being familiar in some puzzling way, and I knew why Forsyth now lay

dead upon the grass. Save that he was a fair man and wore a slight

moustache, he was, in features and build, the double of Nayland Smith!

We raised the poor victim and turned him over on his back. I dropped

upon my knees, and with unsteady fingers began to strike a match. A

slight breeze was arising and sighing gently through the elms, but,

screened by my hands, the flame of the match took life. It illuminated

wanly the sun-baked face of Nayland Smith, his eyes gleaming with

unnatural brightness. I bent forward, and the dying light of the match

touched that other face.

"Oh, God!" whispered Smith.

A faint puff of wind extinguished the match.

In all my surgical experience I had never met with anything quite so

horrible. Forsyth's livid face was streaked with tiny streams of

blood, which proceeded from a series of irregular wounds. One group of

these clustered upon his left temple, another beneath his right eye,

and others extended from the chin down to the throat. They were

black, almost like tattoo marks, and the entire injured surface was

bloated indescribably. His fists were clenched; he was quite rigid.

Smith's piercing eyes were set upon me eloquently as I knelt on the

path and made my examination--an examination which that first glimpse

when Forsyth came staggering out from the trees had rendered

useless--a mere matter of form.

"He's quite dead, Smith," I said huskily. "It's--unnatural--it--"

Smith began beating his fist into his left palm and taking little,

short, nervous strides up and down beside the dead man. I could hear a

car skirling along the high-road, but I remained there on my knees