The Mask of Fu-Manchu Read Online Free PDF Page B

woodwork?”
    “He didn’t say so.”
    Nayland Smith snapped his fingers and nodded to me to go on.
    “Imagine my feelings. Sir Denis, when Rima awakened me on Saturday night saying that she had heard a cry from Van Berg’s room, almost immediately above her own (that is, the room, in which we are now), followed, as she crept out of her door to awaken me, by a moaning sound outside the house, and high up in the air!”
    “Where is your room?”
    “At the farther end of the same corridor below.”
    “I must inspect this corridor. Go on.”
    “Rima woke me up—I had been fast asleep. I won’t disguise, Sir Denis, the fact that our possession of these relics had become somewhat of a nightmare. When I learned of the disturbance in Van Berg’s room above, followed by that strange cry, which I could only suppose to be the same that he himself had heard, I feared the worst... and I was right.”
    “Did Rima more particularly describe this cry?” Nayland Smith asked impatiently.
    “No. But I can do so.”
    “What?”
    “I heard it later myself as I went along the corridor past her room.”
    “Was the moon up?”
    “Yes.”
    “Was her door open?”
    “Wide open.”
    “Was there any light in her room?”
    “Yes—she had opened her shutters and was listening, so I understand, for further sounds from Van Berg’s room above.”
    “Was that when she heard the sound?”
    “No. She heard it as she opened her door and came along to me.”
    “Is there a window facing the door of her room?”
    “Yes, almost immediately opposite; in fact, just below where I am standing.”
    “Good!” rapped Nayland Smith. “Go on.”
    I stared at him for a moment. I detected something like a glint of satisfaction in the steely gray eyes and began to wonder if he had already seen light where all around was darkness to the rest of us.
    “I had just reached Rima’s door,” I went on, “when I myself heard the extraordinary sound for the first time.”
    “It was not the cry of a dacoit?”
    “It was not.”
    “Give me some idea of it. Can you imitate it?”
    “I fear that’s impossible.”
    “Was it a sound made by a human being? By an animal—by some kind of musical instrument?”
    “Frankly, I dare not venture to say. It began with a sort of whistling note, which rose to a shriek and died away in a kind of wail.”
    Nayland Smith, who had been pacing up and down throughout the whole time that I had been speaking, accelerated his step and began tugging at the lobe of his left ear, in a state of furious irritation or deep reflection—I could not determine which. Until, since I had paused:
    “Go on!” he snapped.
    “Quite frankly, I was scared out of my life. I called very softly to Rima to go down to the lobby and wake Ali Mahmoud, and I went on upstairs to the corridor outside this door.”
    “Did you hear anything?”
    “Yes; a vague, scuffling sound. I stepped forward to the door and called Van Berg. The scuffling continued, but there was no reply. I opened the door.”
    “It was not locked, then?”
    “No. Van Berg had no occasion to lock his door, since his room, so far as we knew, was inaccessible except by means of the street entrance—and Ali Mahmoud slept in the lobby. I saw that the shutters—those before you—were half open. Two Caspian kittens, pets of the chief, which are now locked in an adjoining room, were in here. Van Berg was very fond of animals, and I imagine that they had been sleeping at the foot of his bed at the time he was aroused.”
    “You need not tell me where he lay,” said Nayland Smith grimly; “the stain is still on the floor. Where was the iron box?”
    “He lay across it,” I said, and my voice was rather shaky, “clutching the two handles. He had been stabbed from behind with a long, narrow blade, which had pierced right through to his heart. But there was not a soul in the room, and the street below was deserted. Apart from which this window is thirty feet above the