Free The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer Page B

Can
they have been the eyes of Fu-Manchu? Is some peculiarly unique
outrage contemplated-something calling for the presence of the
master?"
    "He may have to prevent Eltham's leaving England without killing
him."
    "Quite so. He probably has instructions to be merciful. But God
help the victim of Chinese mercy!"
    I went to my own room then. But I did not even undress,
refilling my pipe and seating myself at the open window. Having
looked upon the awful Chinese doctor, the memory of his face, with
its filmed green eyes, could never leave me. The idea that he might
be near at that moment was a poor narcotic.
    The howling and baying of the mastiff was almost continuous.
    When all else in Redmoat was still the dog's mournful note yet
rose on the night with something menacing in it. I sat looking out
across the sloping turf to where the shrubbery showed as a black
island in a green sea. The moon swam in a cloudless sky, and the
air was warm and fragrant with country scents.
    It was in the shrubbery that Denby's collie had met his
mysterious death-that the thing seen by Miss Eltham had
disappeared. What uncanny secret did it hold?
    Caesar became silent.
    As the stopping of a clock will sometimes awaken a sleeper, the
abrupt cessation of that distant howling, to which I had grown
accustomed, now recalled me from a world of gloomy imaginings.
    I glanced at my watch in the moonlight. It was twelve minutes
past midnight.
    As I replaced it the dog suddenly burst out afresh, but now in a
tone of sheer anger. He was alternately howling and snarling in a
way that sounded new to me. The crashes, as he leapt to the end of
his chain, shook the building in which he was confined. It was as I
stood up to lean from the window and commanded a view of the corner
of the house that he broke loose.
    With a hoarse bay he took that decisive leap, and I heard his
heavy body fall against the wooden wall. There followed a strange,
guttural cry… and the growling of the dog died away at the rear of
the house. He was out! But that guttural note had not come from the
throat of a dog. Of what was he in pursuit?
    At which point his mysterious quarry entered the shrubbery I do
not know. I only know that I saw absolutely nothing, until Caesar's
lithe shape was streaked across the lawn, and the great creature
went crashing into the undergrowth.
    Then a faint sound above and to my right told me that I was not
the only spectator of the scene. I leaned farther from the
window.
    "Is that you, Miss Eltham?" I asked.
    "Oh, Dr. Petrie!" she said. "I am so glad you are awake. Can we
do nothing to help? Caesar will be killed."
    "Did you see what he went after?"
    "No," she called back, and drew her breath sharply.
    For a strange figure went racing across the grass. It was that
of a man in a blue dressing-gown, who held a lantern high before
him, and a revolver in his right hand. Coincident with my
recognition of Mr. Eltham he leaped, plunging into the shrubbery in
the wake of the dog.
    But the night held yet another surprise; for Nayland Smith's
voice came:
    "Come back! Come back, Eltham!"
    I ran out into the passage and downstairs. The front door was
open. A terrible conflict waged in the shrubbery, between the
mastiff and something else. Passing round to the lawn, I met Smith
fully dressed. He just had dropped from a first-floor window.
    "The man is mad!" he snapped. "Heaven knows what lurks there! He
should not have gone alone!"
    Together we ran towards the dancing light of Eltham's lantern.
The sounds of conflict ceased suddenly. Stumbling over stumps and
lashed by low-sweeping branches, we struggled forward to where the
clergyman knelt amongst the bushes. He glanced up with tears in his
eyes, as was revealed by the dim light.
    "Look!" he cried.
    The body of the dog lay at his feet.
    It was pitiable to think that the fearless brute should have met
his death in such a fashion, and when I bent and examined him I was
glad to find traces of life.
    "Drag him out. He is not