The muscular development
was simply enormous; the man had a neck like a column, and the thews
around his back and shoulders were like ivy tentacles wreathing some
gnarled oak.
Whilst Van Roon, his evil gaze upon the bed, held the candle aloft,
the mulatto, with a curious preparatory writhing movement of the
mighty shoulders, lowered his outstretched fingers to the disordered
bed linen....
I pushed open the cupboard door and thrust out the Browning. As I did
so a dramatic thing happened. A tall, gaunt figure shot suddenly
upright from _beyond_ the bed. It was Nayland Smith!
Upraised in his hand he held a heavy walking cane. I knew the handle
to be leaded, and I could judge of the force with which he wielded it
by the fact that it cut the air with a keen _swishing_ sound. It
descended upon the back of the mulatto's skull with a sickening thud,
and the great brown body dropped inert upon the padded bed--in which
not Smith, but his grip, reposed. There was no word, no cry. Then--
"Shoot, Petrie! Shoot the fiend! _Shoot_!..."
Van Roon, dropping the candle, in the falling gleam of which I saw
the whites of the oblique eyes, turned and leapt from the room with
the agility of a wild cat. The ensuing darkness was split by a streak
of lightning ... and there was Nayland Smith scrambling around the
foot of the bed and making for the door in hot pursuit.
We gained it almost together. Smith had dropped the cane, and now held
his pistol in his hand.
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