The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu Read Free

turned to me again, frowning
perplexedly, and tugging at the lobe of his left ear, an old trick
which reminded me of gruesome 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, and his 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,
doubtless bearing a few belated workers homeward. The stark
incongruity of the thing was appalling. How little those weary
toilers, hemmed about with the commonplace, suspected that almost
within sight from the car windows, 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; and fully ten yards from the first of the group, we two,
hatless both, and sharing a common dread, paused for a moment and
listened.
    The car had stopped at the further extremity of the common, and
now with a moan that grew to a shriek was rolling on its way again.
We stood and listened until silence reclaimed the night. Not a
footstep could be heard. Then slowly we walked on. At the edge of
the little coppice we stopped again abruptly.
    Smith turned and thrust his pistol into my hand. A white ray of
light pierced the shadows; my companion carried an electric torch.
But no trace of Eltham was discoverable.
    There had been a heavy shower of rain during the evening just
before sunset, and although the open paths were dry again, under
the trees the ground was still moist. Ten yards within the coppice
we came upon tracks—the tracks of one running, as the deep imprints
of the toes indicated.
    Abruptly the tracks terminated; others, softer, joined them, two
sets converging from left and right. There was a confused patch,
trailing off to the west; then this became indistinct, and was
finally lost upon the hard ground outside the group.
    For perhaps a minute, or more, we ran about from tree to tree,
and from bush to bush, searching like hounds for a scent, and
fearful of what we might find. We found nothing; and fully in the
moonlight we stood facing one another. The night was profoundly
still.
    Nayland Smith stepped back into the shadows, and began slowly to
turn his head from left to right, taking in the entire visible
expanse of the common. 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.
Recovering from 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 the roadway.
    Another railing was vaulted, and the corner of a second,
triangular grass patch crossed at a hot sprint. We were twenty
yards from the road when the sound of a starting motor broke the
silence. We gained the graveled footpath only to see the taillight
of the car dwindling to the north!
    Smith leaned dizzily against a tree.
    "Eltham is in that car!" he gasped. "Just God! are we to stand
here and see him taken away to—"
    He beat his fist upon the tree, in a sort of tragic despair. The
nearest cab-rank was no great distance away, but, excluding the
possibility of no cab being there, it might, for all practical
purposes, as well have been a mile off.
    The beat of the retreating motor was scarcely audible; the
lights might but just be distinguished. Then, coming in an opposite
direction, appeared the headlamp of another car, of a car that
raced nearer and nearer to us, so that, within a few seconds of its
first appearance, we found ourselves bathed in the beam of its
headlights.
    Smith bounded out into the road, and stood, a weird silhouette,
with upraised arms, fully in its course!
    The brakes were applied hurriedly. It