The Hand of Fu Manchu Read Free

head
on that brass box, and sat watching over it all day."
    "'Beeton!' he'd cry out, perhaps in the middle of the night—'Beeton—
do you hear that damned woman!' But although I'd begun to think I
could hear something, I believe it was the constant strain working on
my nerves and nothing else at all.
    "Then he was always listening out for some one he called 'the man with
the limp.' Five and six times a night he'd have me up to listen with
him. 'There he goes, Beeton!' he'd whisper, crouching with his ear
pressed flat to the door. 'Do you hear him dragging himself along?'
    "God knows how I've stood it as I have; for I've known no peace since
we left China. Once we got here I thought it would be better, but it's
been worse.
    "Gentlemen have come (from the India Office, I believe), but he would
not see them. Said he would see no one but Mr. Nayland Smith. He had
never lain in his bed until to-night, but what with taking no proper
food nor sleep, and some secret trouble that was killing him by inches,
he collapsed altogether a while ago, and I carried him in and laid him
on the bed as I told you. Now he's dead—now he's dead."
    Beeton leant up against the mantelpiece and buried his face in his
hands, whilst his shoulders shook convulsively. He had evidently been
greatly attached to his master, and I found something very pathetic in
this breakdown of a physically strong man. Smith laid his hands upon
his shoulders.
    "You have passed through a very trying ordeal," he said, "and no man
could have done his duty better; but forces beyond your control have
proved too strong for you. I am Nayland Smith."
    The man spun around with a surprising expression of relief upon his
pale face.
    "So that whatever can be done," continued my friend, "to carry out
your master's wishes, will be done now. Rely upon it. Go into your
room and lie down until we call you."
    "Thank you, sir, and thank God you are here," said Beeton dazedly, and
with one hand raised to his head he went, obediently, to the smaller
bedroom and disappeared within.
    "Now, Petrie," rapped Smith, glancing around the littered floor,
"since I am empowered to deal with this matter as I see fit, and since
you are a medical man, we can devote the next half-hour, at any rate,
to a strictly confidential inquiry into this most perplexing case. I
propose that you examine the body for any evidences that may assist
you determining the cause of death, whilst I make a few inquiries here."
    I nodded, without speaking, and went into the bedroom. It contained not
one solitary item of the dead man's belongings, and in every way bore
out Beeton's statement that Sir Gregory had never inhabited it. I bent
over Hale, as he lay fully dressed upon the bed.
    Saving the singularity of the symptom which had immediately preceded
death—viz., the paralysis of the muscles of articulation—I should
have felt disposed to ascribe his end to sheer inanition; and a
cursory examination brought to light nothing contradictory to that
view. Not being prepared to proceed further in the matter at the moment
I was about to rejoin Smith, whom I could hear rummaging about amongst
the litter of the outer room, when I made a curious discovery.
    Lying in a fold of the disordered bed linen were a few petals of some
kind of blossom, three of them still attached to a fragment of slender
stalk.
    I collected the tiny petals, mechanically, and held them in the palm
of my hand studying them for some moments before the mystery of their
presence there became fully appreciable to me. Then I began to wonder.
The petals (which I was disposed to class as belonging to some species
of
Curcas
or Physic Nut), though bruised, were fresh, and therefore
could not have been in the room for many hours. How had they been
introduced, and by whom? Above all, what could their presence there
at that time portend?
    "Smith," I called, and walked towards the door carrying the mysterious
fragments in my palm. "Look what I have found upon the