CHAPTER II. ELTHAM VANISHES
Smith went racing down the stairs like a man possessed. Heavy with sucha foreboding of calamity as I had not known for two years, I followedhim--along the hall and out into the road. The very peace and beauty ofthe night in some way increased my mental agitation. The sky was lightedalmost tropically with such a blaze of stars as I could not recall tohave seen since, my futile search concluded, I had left Egypt. The gloryof the moonlight yellowed the lamps speckled across the expanse ofthe common. The night was as still as night can ever be in London. Thedimming pulse of a cab or car alone disturbed the stillness.
With a quick glance to right and left, Smith ran across on to thecommon, and, leaving the door wide open behind me, I followed. The pathwhich Eltham had pursued terminated almost opposite to my house. One'sgaze might follow it, white and empty, for several hundred yards pastthe pond, and further, until it became overshadowed and was lost amid aclump of trees.
I came up with Smith, and side by side we ran on, whilst pantingly, Itold my tale.
"It was a trick to get you away from him!" cried Smith. "They meant nodoubt to make some attempt at your house, but as he came out with you,an alternative plan--"
Abreast of the pond, my companion slowed down, and finally stopped.
"Where did you last see Eltham?" he asked rapidly.
I took his arm, turning him slightly to the right, and pointed acrossthe moonbathed common.
"You see that clump of bushes on the other side of the road?" I said."There's a path to the left of it. I took that path and he took this. Weparted at the point where they meet--"
Smith walked right down to the edge of the water and peered about overthe surface.
What he hoped to find there I could not imagine. Whatever it had been hewas disappointed, and he turned to me again, frowning perplexedly, andtugging at the lobe of his left ear, an old trick which reminded me ofgruesome things we had lived through in the past.
"Come on," he jerked. "It may be amongst the trees."
From the tone of his voice I knew that he was tensed up nervously, andhis mood but added to the apprehension of my own.
"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, doubtlessbearing a few belated workers homeward. The stark incongruity of thething was appalling. How little those weary toilers, hemmed aboutwith the commonplace, suspected that almost within sight from the carwindows, in a place of prosy benches, iron railings, and unromantic,flickering lamps, two fellow men moved upon the border of a horror-land!
Beneath the trees a shadow carpet lay, its edges tropically sharp; andfully ten yards from the first of the group, we two, hatless both, andsharing a common dread, paused for a moment and listened.
The car had stopped at the further extremity of the common, and now witha moan that grew to a shriek was rolling on its way again. We stoodand listened until silence reclaimed the night. Not a footstep could beheard. Then slowly we walked on. At the edge of the little coppice westopped again abruptly.
Smith turned and thrust his pistol into my hand. A white ray of lightpierced the shadows; my companion carried an electric torch. But notrace of Eltham was discoverable.
There had been a heavy shower of rain during the evening just beforesunset, and although the open paths were dry again, under the treesthe ground was still moist. Ten yards within the coppice we came upontracks--the tracks of one running, as the deep imprints of the toesindicated.
Abruptly the tracks terminated; others, softer, joined them, two setsconverging from left and right. There was a confused patch, trailing offto the west; then this became indistinct, and was finally lost upon thehard ground outside the group.
For perhaps a minute, or more, we ran about from tree to tree, and frombush to bush, searching like hounds for a scent, and fearful of what wemight find. We found nothing; and fully in the moonlight we stood facingone another. The night was profoundly still.
Nayland Smith stepped back into the shadows, and began slowly to turnhis head from left to right, taking in the entire visible expanse of thecommon. Toward a point where the road bisected it he stared intently.Then, with a bound, he set off.
"Come on, Petrie!" he cried. "There they are!"
Vaulting a railing he went away over a field like a madman. Recoveringfrom the shock of surprise, I followed him, but he was well ahead of me,and making for some vaguely seen object moving against the lights of theroadway.
Another railing was vaulted, and the corner of a second, triangulargrass patch crossed at a hot sprint. We were twenty yards from the roadwhen the sound of a starting motor broke the silence. We gained thegraveled footpath only to see the taillight of the car dwindling to thenorth!
Smith leaned dizzily against a tree.
"Eltham is in that car!" he gasped. "Just God! are we to stand here andsee him taken away to--"
He beat his fist upon the tree, in a sort of tragic despair. The nearestcab-rank was no great distance away, but, excluding the possibility ofno cab being there, it might, for all practical purposes, as well havebeen a mile off.
The beat of the retreating motor was scarcely audible; the lightsmight but just be distinguished. Then, coming in an opposite direction,appeared the headlamp of another car, of a car that raced nearer andnearer to us, so that, within a few seconds of its first appearance, wefound ourselves bathed in the beam of its headlights.
Smith bounded out into the road, and stood, a weird silhouette, withupraised arms, fully in its course!
The brakes were applied hurriedly. It was a big limousine, and itsdriver swerved perilously in avoiding Smith and nearly ran into me.But, the breathless moment past, the car was pulled up, head on to therailings; and a man in evening clothes was demanding excitedly what hadhappened. Smith, a hatless, disheveled figure, stepped up to the door.
"My name is Nayland Smith," he said rapidly--"Burmese Commissioner." Hesnatched a letter from his pocket and thrust it into the hands of thebewildered man. "Read that. It is signed by another Commissioner--theCommissioner of Police."
With amazement written all over him, the other obeyed.
"You see," continued my friend, tersely--"it is carte blanche. I wish tocommandeer your car, sir, on a matter of life and death!".
The other returned the letter.
"Allow me to offer it!" he said, descending. "My man will take yourorders. I can finish my journey by cab. I am--"
But Smith did not wait to learn whom he might be.
"Quick!" he cried to the stupefied chauffeur--"You passed a car a minuteago--yonder. Can you overtake it?"
"I can try, sir, if I don't lose her track."
Smith leaped in, pulling me after him.
"Do it!" he snapped. "There are no speed limits for me. Thanks!Goodnight, sir!"
We were off! The car swung around and the chase commenced.
One last glimpse I had of the man we had dispossessed, standing alone bythe roadside, and at ever increasing speed, we leaped away in the trackof Eltham's captors.
Smith was too highly excited for ordinary conversation, but he threw outshort, staccato remarks.
"I have followed Fu-Manchu from Hongkong," he jerked. "Lost him at Suez.He got here a boat ahead of me. Eltham has been corresponding with somemandarin up-country. Knew that. Came straight to you. Only got in thisevening. He--Fu-Manchu--has been sent here to get Eltham. My God! andhe has him! He will question him! The interior of China--a seethingpot, Petrie! They had to stop the leakage of information. He is here forthat."
The car pulled up with a jerk that pitched me out of my seat, and thechauffeur leaped to the road and ran ahead. Smith was out in a trice, asthe man, who had run up to a constable, came racing back.
"Jump in, sir--jump in!" he cried, his eyes bright with the lust of thechase; "they are making for Battersea!"
And we were off again.
Through the empty streets we roared on. A place of gasometers anddesolate waste lots slipped behind and we were in a narrow way wheregates of yards and a few lowly houses faced upon a prospect of highblank wall.
"Thames on our right," said Smith, peering ahead. "His rathole is by theriver as usual. Hi!"--he grabbed up the speaking-tube--"Stop! Stop!"
The limousine swung in to the narrow sidewalk, and pulled up close by ayard gate. I, too, had seen our quarry--a long, low bodied car, showingno inside lights. It had turned the next corner, where a street lampshone greenly, not a hundred yards ahead.
Smith leaped out, and I followed him.
"That must be a cul de sac," he said, and turned to the eager-eyedchauffeur. "Run back to that last turning," he ordered, "and wait there,out of sight. Bring the car up when you hear a police-whistle."
The man looked disappointed, but did not question the order. As he beganto back away, Smith grasped me by the arm and drew me forward.
"We must get to that corner," he said, "and see where the car stands,without showing ourselves."