A faint cry from Smith--and as if it had been a leprous thing, I
dropped the cane instantly.
"Merciful God!" I groaned.
Although, in every other particular, it corresponded with that which I
held--which I had taken from the dacoit--which he had come to
substitute for the cane now lying upon the floor--in one dreadful
particular it differed.
Up to the snake's head it was an accurate copy; _but the head lived_!
Either from pain, fear, or starvation, the thing confined in the
hollow tube of this awful duplicate was become torpid. Otherwise, no
power on earth could have saved me from the fate of Abel Slattin; for
the creature was an Australian death-adder.
CHAPTER XI
THE WHITE PEACOCK
Nayland Smith wasted no time in pursuing the plan of campaign which he
had mentioned to Inspector Weymouth. Less than forty-eight hours after
quitting the house of the murdered Slattin I found myself bound along
Whitechapel Road upon strange enough business.
A very fine rain was falling, which rendered it difficult to see
clearly from the windows; but the weather apparently had little effect
upon the commercial activities of the district. The cab was threading
a hazardous way through the cosmopolitan throng crowding the street.
On either side of me extended a row of stalls, seemingly established
in opposition to the more legitimate shops upon the inner side of the
pavement.
Jewish hawkers, many of them in their shirt-sleeves, acclaimed the
rarity of the bargains which they had to offer; and, allowing for the
difference of costume, these tireless Israelites, heedless of climatic
conditions, sweating at their mongery, might well have stood, not in
a squalid London thoroughfare, but in an equally squalid market-street
of the Orient.
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