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After that they can take 'em to the village mortuary if they like. But I've one or two things I'd like to ask you Merriton, and one or two things I want to examine. Gad! it's a beastly task, boys. That sheet's big enough, thank fortune! Cross the pitchforks, Petrie, and make a sort of stretcher out of them, that way. That's right. Now then, forward.... Gad! what a morning!"
The sixty dwellings of the settlement, with their barns and outhouses, were all burned, forty or fifty of the inhabitants were killed, and about three times that number, chiefly women and children, were made prisoners, including Johan Jost Petrie, the magistrate of the place.
"No, sir plain as a pikestaff!" returned Petrie importantly, for he felt the burden of responsibility and hoped that this would mean promotion. Dollops, who was by no means a regular member of the force, simply looked at Cleek with considerable pride fighting through the natural horror that the find had given birth to. "Funny thing!" broke in Cleek at this juncture.
"One may walk from there along the roof of the southeast front, and by lying face downwards at the point where it projects above the main entrance look into Sir Lionel's room!" "I saw you go!" "I feared that some one was watching me, but that it was you I had never supposed. Neither Barton nor his man are in that room, Petrie! They have been spirited away! This is Kâramaneh's door."
She almost wished that she had been English, in order that the man's home and friends might have suited her. She was thinking of all this as she stood pretending to talk to an American lady, who was very eloquent on the delights of Florence. In the meantime Olivia and Mr. Glascock had moved away together, and Miss Petrie was left alone.
Only this crooning, and the labored breathing of Smith and myself, broke that impressive stillness. Suddenly the guttural voice began: "You come at an opportune time, Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith, and Dr. Petrie; at a time when the greatest man in China flatters me with a visit.
"What may be amongst the trees, Smith?" I asked. He walked on. "God knows, Petrie; but I fear " Behind us, along the highroad, a tramcar went rocking by, doubtless bearing a few belated workers homeward. The stark incongruity of the thing was appalling.
"I have followed Fu-Manchu from Hong-Kong," he jerked. "Lost him at Suez. He got here a boat ahead of me. Eltham has been corresponding with some mandarin up-country. Knew that. Came straight to you. Only got in this evening. He Fu-Manchu has been sent here to get Eltham. My God! and he has him! He will question him! The interior of China a seething pot, Petrie!
Petrie," he said, "and I was even less anxious to arouse your neighbour; but somebody seems to be trying to get a message, presumably urgent, through to you." "To me!" I cried. "I cannot make it out," admitted Platts, running his fingers through dishevelled hair, "but I thought it better to arouse you. Will you come up?"
I drew back, apprehensively; then: "Ah! Dr. Petrie!" he said in a softly musical voice which made me start again, "to God be all praise that I have found you!" Some emotion, which at present I could not define, was stirring within me. Where had I seen this graceful Eastern youth before? Where had I heard that soft voice? "Do you wish to see me professionally?"
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