...
Back I swept upon my trapeze, a sight to have induced any passing
citizen to question his sanity. With might and main I sought to check
the swing of the pendulum, for if I should come within reach of the
window behind I doubted not that other knives awaited me. It was no
difficult feat, and I succeeded in checking my flight. Swinging there
above Museum Street I could even appreciate, so lucid was my mind, the
ludicrous element of the situation.
I dropped. My wounded leg almost failed me; and greatly shaken, but
with no other serious damage, I picked myself up from the dust of the
roadway--to see the bar vanishing into the darkness above. It was a
mockery of Fate that the problem which Nayland Smith had set me to
solve should have been solved thus: for I could not doubt that by
means of the branch of a tall tree or some other suitable object
situated opposite to Smith's house in Rangoon, Karamaneh had made her
escape as to-night I had made mine.
Apart from the acute pain in my calf I knew that the dacoit's knife
had bitten deeply by reason of the fact that a warm liquid was
trickling down into my boot. Like any drunkard I stood there in the
middle of the road looking up at the vacant window where the dacoit
had been, and up at the window above the shop of J. Salaman where I
knew Fu-Manchu to be. But for some reason the latter window had been
closed or almost closed, and as I stood there this reason became
apparent to me.
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