"Smith!" I cried from the window; "Smith, for mercy's sake where are you?"
Footsteps came racing up the stairs. Behind me the door burst open and Nayland Smith stumbled into the room.
"God!" he said, and started back in the doorway.
"Have you got it, Smith?" I demanded hoarsely. "In sanity's name what is it--_what is it?_"
"Come downstairs," replied Smith quietly, "and see for yourself." He turned his head aside from the bed.
Very unsteadily I followed him down the stairs and through the rambling old house out into the stone-paved courtyard. There were figures moving at the end of a long alleyway between the glass houses, and one, carrying a lantern, stooped over something which lay upon the ground.
"That's Burke's cousin with the lantern," whispered Smith, in my ear; "don't tell him yet."
I nodded, and we hurried up to join the group. I found myself looking down at one of those thickset Burmans whom I always associated with Fu-Manchu's activities. He lay quite flat, face downward; but the back of his head was a shapeless blood-clotted mass, and a heavy stock-whip, the butt end ghastly because of the blood and hair which clung to it, lay beside him. I started back appalled as Smith caught my arm.
"_It_ turned on its keeper!" he hissed in my ear. "I wounded it twice from below, and you severed one arm; in its insensate fury, its unreasoning malignity, it returned--and there lies its second victim...."
"It's gone, Petrie! It has the strength of four men even now. Look!"
He stooped, and from the clenched left hand of the dead Burman, extracted a piece of paper and opened it.
In the yellow light he glanced at the scrap of paper.
"As I expected--a leaf of Burke's notebook; it worked by _scent_." He turned to me with an odd expression in his grey eyes. "I wonder what piece of _my_ personal property Fu-Manchu has pilfered," he said, "in order to enable it to sleuth _me_?"
He met the gaze of the man holding the lantern.
"Perhaps you had better return to the house," he said, looking him squarely in the eyes.
"You don't mean, sir--you don't mean...."
"Brace up!" said Smith, laying his hand upon his shoulder. "Remember--he chose to play with fire!"
One wild look the man cast from Smith to me, then went off, staggering, toward the farm.