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Now, with those remorseless memories jostling in my mind, I was entering the house of Fu-Manchu's last victim, and the shadow of that giant evil seemed to be upon it like a palpable cloud. Cadby's old landlady greeted me with a queer mixture of fear and embarrassment in her manner. "I am Dr. Petrie," I said, "and I regret that I bring bad news respecting Mr. Cadby." "Oh, sir!" she cried.
What disguise do you propose to adopt?" "A sort of Dago seaman, I think; something like poor Cadby. I can rely on my knowledge of the brutes, if I am sure of my disguise." "You are forgetting me, Smith," I said. He turned to me quickly. "Petrie," he replied, "it is MY business, unfortunately, but it is no sort of hobby." "You mean that you can no longer rely upon me?" I said angrily.
In a silence which neither of us seemed disposed to break, we entered the police depot, and followed an officer who received us into the room where Weymouth waited. The inspector greeted us briefly, nodding toward the table. "Poor Cadby, the most promising lad at the Yard," he said; and his usually gruff voice had softened strangely.
The glow of the flames grew brighter . . . and showed me the half-rotten piles upholding the building, showed me the tidal mark upon the slime-coated walls showed me that there was no escape! By some subterranean duct the foul place was fed from the Thames. By that duct, with the outgoing tide, my body would pass, in the wake of Mason, Cadby, and many another victim!
And my uncle, chewing the end of his cigar, sniffed angrily, seeming half inclined to give his friend a gentle hint that the name Cadby was placed beyond the pale of good society. "Better not say anything about it," I urged. "It's Leithcourt's own affair, uncle not ours." "Yes, but if a man sets up a position in the country he mustn't be allowed to ask us to meet such fellows.
"You're sure it wasn't part of a Chinese make-up?" questioned Weymouth, his eye on the strange relic. "Cadby was clever at disguise." Smith snatched the wig from my hands with a certain irritation, and tried to fit it on the dead detective. "Too small by inches!" he jerked. "And look how it's padded in the crown. This thing was made for a most abnormal head."
"Why, he pulled off the quarter-mile championship at the Crystal Palace last year! Cadby wasn't a man easy to drown. And as for Mason, he was an R.N.R., and like a fish in the water!" Smith shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "Let us hope that one day we shall know how they died," he said simply. Weymouth returned from the telephone. "The address is No. Cold Harbor Lane," he reported.
I expect that's why she managed to slip away." I recalled how I had been dragged from the pit by the false queue, how the strange discovery which had brought death to poor Cadby had brought life to me, and I seemed to remember, too, that Smith had dropped it as he threw his arm about me on the ladder.
"They lay flat, and this was in the middle. I see the hand of retributive justice in that, Inspector. Cadby, who was there disguised, noted a booming sound. Later, he identified the lascar in some mortuary. We have no means of fixing the date of this visit to Shen-Yan's, but I feel inclined to put down the 'lascar' as the dacoit who was murdered by Fu-Manchu! It is sheer supposition, however.
"Smith," I said, "did you bring the pigtail with you that was found on Cadby?" "Yes. I had hoped to meet the owner." "Have you got it now?" "No. I met the owner." I thrust my hands deep into the pockets of the big pea-jacket lent to me by Inspector Ryman, leaning back in my corner. "We shall never really excel at this business," continued Nayland Smith. "We are far too sentimental.
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