Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 11, 2025
The word rests with you. If I am wrong, and you agree to my proposal, there is none whose susceptibilities will suffer " "My own, sir!" "If I am right, and you prevent me from acting, you become a murderer, Mr. Henderson." The lawyer started, staring nervously up at Smith, who now towered over him menacingly. "Lord Southery was a lonely man," continued my friend.
"But, nevertheless, I look to you to regard our recent questions as confidential." As we were leaving the house, hushed awesomely in deference to the unseen visitor who had touched Lord Southery with gray, cold fingers, Smith paused, detaining a black-coated man who passed us on the stairs. "You were Lord Southery's valet?" The man bowed. "Were you in the room at the moment of his fatal seizure?"
Lord Southery, a bizarre figure, my traveling coat wrapped about him, and supported by his solicitor, who was almost as pale as himself, emerged from the vault into the moonlight. "This is a triumph for you, Smith," I said. The throb of Fu-Manchu's car died into faintness and was lost in the night's silence. "Only half a triumph," he replied.
The air beneath was damp and chill. It touched us as with clammy fingers; and the sensation was not wholly physical. Before the narrow mansion which now sufficed Lord Southery, the great engineer whom kings had honored, Henderson reeled and clutched at me for support. Smith and I had looked to him for no aid in our uncanny task, and rightly.
Nayland Smith, whose restless pacing had led him to the far end of the library, turned, a remote but virile figure, and looked back to where I stood by the open hearth with the solicitor. "I am in your hands, Mr. Henderson," he said, and advanced upon the latter, his gray eyes ablaze. "Save for the heir, who is abroad on foreign service, you say there is no kin of Lord Southery to consider.
"But we still have another chance the raid on his house. When will the word come from Karamaneh?" Southery spoke in a weak voice. "Gentlemen," he said, "it seems I am raised from the dead." It was the weirdest moment of the night wherein we heard that newly buried man speak from the mold of his tomb.
My friend reached across the table and rested the tip of a long finger upon one of the sub-headings to the account: "SIR FRANK NARCOMBE SUMMONED TOO LATE." "You see," said Smith, "Southery died during the night, but Sir Frank Narcombe, arriving a few minutes later, unhesitatingly pronounced death to be due to syncope, and seems to have noticed nothing suspicious." I looked at him thoughtfully.
"It is all right," I said, and had time to note how my voice had assumed a professional tone. "A little brandy from my flask is all that is necessary now." "You have two patients, Doctor," rapped my friend. Mr. Henderson had fallen in a swoon to the floor of the vault. "Quiet," whispered Smith; "HE is here." He extinguished the light. I supported Lord Southery.
"It's no good, Petrie," he burst out suddenly; "it cannot be a coincidence. We must go around and see him." An hour later we stood in the silent room, with its drawn blinds and its deathful atmosphere, looking down at the pale, intellectual face of Henry Stradwick, Lord Southery, the greatest engineer of his day.
I managed to move sufficiently to see at the top, as I fired up the stairs, the yellow face of Dr. Fu-Manchu, to see the gleaming, chatoyant eyes, greenly terrible, as they sought to pierce the gloom. He stumbled and fell, by which I knew that he was hit; but went on again, Smith hard on his heels. "Mr. Henderson!" I cried, "relight the lantern and take charge of Lord Southery.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking