He passed on, slowly. I began to run again. Black against the silvern patch, I saw him emerge--and look up.
“Be careful, Smith!” I cried--and I was racing under the trees to join him.
Uttering a loud cry, he leaped--away from the pool of light.
“Stand back, Petrie!” he screamed--“Back! further!”
He charged into me, shoulder lowered, and sent me reeling!
Mixed up with his excited cry I had heard a loud splintering and sweeping of branches overhead; and now as we staggered into the shadows it seemed that one of the elms was reaching down to touch us! So, at least, the phenomenon presented itself to my mind in that fleeting moment while Smith, uttering his warning cry, was hurling me back.
With an appalling crash, a huge bough fell from above. One piercing, awful shriek there was, a crackling of broken branches, and a choking groan...
The crack of Smith’s pistol close beside me completed my confusion of mind.
“Missed!” he yelled. “Shoot it, Petrie! On your left! For God’s sake don’t miss it!”
I turned. A lithe black shape was streaking past me. I fired--once--twice. Another frightful cry made yet more hideous the nocturne.
Nayland Smith was directing the ray of a pocket torch upon the fallen bough.
I stood beside him, looking down. From the tangle of leaves and twigs an evil yellow face looked up at us. The features were contorted with agony, but the malignant eyes, wherein light was dying, regarded us with inflexible hatred. The man was pinned beneath the heavy bough; his back was broken; and as we watched, he expired, frothing slightly at the mouth, and quitted his tenement of clay, leaving those glassy eyes set hideously upon us.
“The pagan gods fight upon our side,” said Smith strangely. “Elms have a dangerous habit of shedding boughs in still weather--particularly after a storm. Pan, god of the woods, with this one has performed Justice’s work of retribution.”
“I don’t understand. Where was this man--”
“Up the tree, lying along the bough which fell, Petrie! That is why he left no footmarks. Last night no doubt he made his escape by swinging from bough to bough, ape fashion, and descending to the ground somewhere at the other side of the coppice.”
“You are wondering, perhaps,” he suggested, “what caused the mysterious light? I could have told you this morning, but I fear I was in a bad temper, Petrie. It’s very simple: a length of tape soaked in spirit or something of the kind, and sheltered from the view of any one watching from your windows, behind the trunk of the tree; then, the end ignited, lowered, still behind the tree, to the ground. The operator swinging it around, the flame ascended, of course. I found the unburned fragment of the tape last night, a few yards from here.”