We found ourselves on the floor above, in a corridor traversing
the house from back to front. An apartment on the immediate left was
indicated by the mulatto as that allotted to Smith. It was a room of
fair size, furnished quite simply but boasting a wardrobe cupboard,
and Smith's grip stood beside the white-enamelled bed. I glanced
around, and then prepared to follow the man, who had awaited me in the
doorway.
He still wore his dark livery, and as I followed the lithe yet brawny
figure along the corridor, I found myself considering critically his
breadth of shoulder and the extraordinary thickness of his neck.
I have repeatedly spoken of a sort of foreboding, an elusive stirring
in the depths of my being, of which I became conscious at certain
times in my dealings with Dr. Fu-Manchu and his murderous servants.
This sensation, or something akin to it, claimed me now,
unaccountably, as I stood looking into the neat bedroom, on the same
side of the corridor but at the extreme end, wherein I was to sleep. A
voiceless warning urged me to return; a kind of childish panic came
fluttering about my heart, a dread of entering the room, of allowing
the mulatto to come _behind me_.
Doubtless this was no more than a subconscious product of my
observations respecting his abnormal breadth of shoulder. But whatever
the origin of the impulse, I found myself unable to disobey it.
Therefore, I merely nodded, turned on my heel and went back to Smith's
room.
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