There were
figures moving at the end of a long alleyway between the glass houses,
and one, carrying a lantern, stooped over something which lay upon the
ground.
"That's Burke's cousin with the lantern," whispered Smith, in my ear;
"don't tell him yet."
I nodded, and we hurried up to join the group. I found myself looking
down at one of those thickset Burmans whom I always associated with
Fu-Manchu's activities. He lay quite flat, face downward; but the back
of his head was a shapeless blood-clotted mass, and a heavy
stock-whip, the butt end ghastly because of the blood and hair which
clung to it, lay beside him. I started back appalled as Smith caught
my arm.
"_It_ turned on its keeper!" he hissed in my ear. "I wounded it twice
from below, and you severed one arm; in its insensate fury, its
unreasoning malignity, it returned--and there lies its second
victim...."
"Then...."
"It's gone, Petrie! It has the strength of four men even now. Look!"
He stooped, and from the clenched left hand of the dead Burman,
extracted a piece of paper and opened it.
"Hold the lantern a moment," he said.
In the yellow light he glanced at the scrap of paper.
"As I expected--a leaf of Burke's notebook; it worked by _scent_." He
turned to me with an odd expression in his grey eyes. "I wonder what
piece of _my_ personal property Fu-Manchu has pilfered," he said, "in
order to enable it to sleuth _me_?"
He met the gaze of the man holding the lantern.
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