No word was spoken, save that the cabman suppressed a curse of
amazement; and the Chinaman, his sinister servant at his elbow, bowed
low--and left us, surely to the mocking laughter of the gods!
CHAPTER XIV
THE COUGHING HORROR
I leapt up in bed with a great start.
My sleep was troubled often enough in those days which immediately
followed our almost miraculous escape from the den of Fu-Manchu; and
now; as I crouched there, nerves aquiver--listening--listening--I
could not be sure if this dank panic which possessed me had its origin
in nightmare or in something else.
Surely a scream, a choking cry for help, had reached my ears; but now,
almost holding my breath in that sort of nervous tensity peculiar to
one aroused thus, I listened, and the silence seemed complete. Perhaps
I had been dreaming....
"Help! Petrie! _Help_!..."
It was Nayland Smith in the room above me!
My doubts were resolved; this was no trick of an imagination
disordered. Some dreadful menace threatened my friend. Not delaying
even to snatch my dressing-gown, I rushed out on to the landing, up
the stairs, bare-footed as I was, threw open the door of Smith's room
and literally hurled myself in.
Those cries had been the cries of one assailed, had been uttered, I
judged, in the brief interval of a life and death struggle; had been
choked off....
A certain amount of moonlight found access to the room, without
spreading so far as the bed in which my friend lay.
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