Ahead was a black mouth, which promised to swallow me up as it had
swallowed up my friend.
In short, what with my lowered condition, and consequent frame of
mind, and what with the traditions, for me inseparable from that
gloomy quarter of London, I was in the grip of a shadowy menace which
at any moment might become tangible--I perceived, in the most
commonplace objects, the yellow hand of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
When the cab stopped in a place of utter darkness, I aroused myself
with an effort, opened the door, and stepped out into the mud of a
narrow lane. A high brick wall frowned upon me from one side, and,
dimly perceptible, there towered a smoke stack beyond. On my right
uprose the side of a wharf building, shadowly, and some distance
ahead, almost obscured by the drizzling rain, a solitary lamp
flickered.
I turned up the collar of my raincoat, shivering, as much at the
prospect as from physical chill.
"You will wait here," I said to the man; and, feeling in my
breast-pocket, I added: "If you hear the note of a whistle, drive on
and rejoin me."
He listened attentively and with a certain eagerness. I had selected
him that night for the reason that he had driven Smith and myself on
previous occasions and had proved himself a man of intelligence.
Transferring a Browning pistol from my hip-pocket to that of my
raincoat, I trudged on into the mist.
The headlights of the taxi were swallowed up behind me, and just
abreast of the street lamp I stood listening.
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