But"--he held up his hand--"you can tell me all that at some
other time, Petrie! We must take no chances. Sergeant Carter is
downstairs with the cab; you might ask him to step up. He and Aziz can
remain here until our return."
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE SAMURAI'S SWORD
The muffled drumming of sleepless London seemed very remote from us,
as side by side we crept up the narrow path to the studio. This was a
starry but moonless night, and the little dingy white building with a
solitary tree peeping, in silhouette above its glazed roof, bore an
odd resemblance to one of those tombs which form a city of the dead so
near to the city of feverish life, on the slopes of the Mokattam
Hills. This line of reflection proved unpleasant, and I dismissed it
sternly from my mind.
The shriek of a train-whistle reached me, a sound which breaks the
stillness of the most silent London night, telling of the ceaseless,
febrile life of the great world-capital whose activity ceases not with
the coming of darkness. Around and about us a very great stillness
reigned, however, and the velvet dusk--which, with the star-jewelled
sky, was strongly suggestive of an Eastern night--gave up no sign to
show that it masked the presence of more than twenty men. Some
distance away on our right was The Gables, that sinister and deserted
mansion which we assumed, and with good reason, to be nothing less
than the gateway to the subterranean abode of Dr.
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