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It was incredible, inhuman, that we should remain there inert whilst a fellow-man, and our host to boot, was being done to death out there in the darkness. I exerted all my strength to break away; but although my efforts told upon him, as his loud breathing revealed, Nayland Smith clung to me tenaciously.
"Another fifty yards, Petrie," breathed Nayland Smith, "and after that it's unchartered ground." On we went through the rain and the darkness; then: "Slow up! slow up!" cried Smith. "It feels soft!" Indeed, already I had made one false step and the hungry mire had fastened upon my foot, almost tripping me. "Lost the path!" We stopped dead. The falling rain walled us in.
"He's found the traitor and stopped the leak." "Yes, but we're still responsible, as a team, for this betrayal," the Israeli pointed out. "This Nayland is only a symptom of the enmity which politicians and militarists feel toward the Free Scientists, and of their opposition to the research-contract system. Now they have a scandal to use.
Fu-Manchu had looked upon the scene; and I found myself marveling that its beauty had not wilted up. Even now the dread Chinaman must be near to us. As Mr. Henderson unlocked the ancient iron gates he turned to Nayland Smith. His face twitched oddly. "Witness that I do this unwillingly," he said "most unwillingly." "Mine be the responsibility," was the reply.
I suppose we were not more than a dozen paces from the lamp when we heard the thudding of the motor. The car was backing out! It was a desperate moment, for it seemed that we could not fail to be discovered. Nayland Smith began to look about him, feverishly, for a hiding-place, a quest in which I seconded with equal anxiety. And Fate was kind to us doubly kind as after events revealed.
It contained an odd assortment of garments, and amongst other things several gray wigs and a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. Kneeling there with this strange litter about me, I looked up amazedly. Nayland Smith, with the unsuitable silk hat set right upon the back of his head, was pacing the room excitedly, his fuming pipe protruding from the tangle of factitious beard.
One two three four five minutes passed. The light vanished and did not appear again. Five more age-long minutes elapsed in absolute silence, whilst I peered into the darkness of the night and listened, muscles tensed, for the return of Nayland Smith.
I had not slept and had scarcely tasted food for more than thirty hours; for, following up a faint clue supplied by Burke, Slattin's man, and, like his master, an ex-officer of New York Police, my friend, Nayland Smith, on the previous evening, had set out in quest of some obscene den where the man called Shen-Yan former keeper of an opium shop was now said to be in hiding.
Stretched flat upon the floor lay Nayland Smith, partially stripped, his arms thrown back over his head and his wrists chained to a stout iron staple attached to the wall; he was fully conscious and staring intently at the Chinese doctor.
Eltham regarded me sympathetically; he knew something of my search with Nayland Smith for the dark-eyed, Eastern girl who had brought romance into my drab life; he knew that I treasured my memories of her as I loathed and abhorred those of the fiendish, brilliant Chinese doctor who had been her master.
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