The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu Read Online Free PDF

in the air, it died
away again as it had come!
    "For God's sake, Smith, what was it?"
    "Don't ask me, Petrie. I have seen it twice. We—"
    He paused. Rapid footsteps sounded below. Over Smith's shoulder
I saw Forsyth cross the road, climb the low rail, and set out
across the common.
    Smith sprang impetuously to his feet.
    "We must stop him!" he said hoarsely; then, clapping a hand to
my mouth as I was about to call out—"Not a sound, Petrie!"
    He ran out of the room and went blundering downstairs in the
dark, crying:
    "Out through the garden—the side entrance!"
    I overtook him as he threw wide the door of my dispensing room.
Through it he ran and opened the door at the other end. I followed
him out, closing it behind me. The smell from some tobacco plants
in a neighboring flower-bed was faintly perceptible; no breeze
stirred; and in the great silence I could hear Smith, in front of
me, tugging at the bolt of the gate.
    Then he had it open, and I stepped out, close on his heels, and
left the door ajar.
    "We must not appear to have come from your house," explained
Smith rapidly. "I will go along the highroad and cross to the
common a hundred yards up, where there is a pathway, as though
homeward bound to the north side. Give me half a minute's start,
then you proceed in an opposite direction and cross from the corner
of the next road. Directly you are out of the light of the street
lamps, get over the rails and run for the elms!"
    He thrust a pistol into my hand and was off.
    While he had been with me, speaking in that incisive, impetuous
way of his, with his dark face close to mine, and his eyes gleaming
like steel, I had been at one with him in his feverish mood, but
now, when I stood alone, in that staid and respectable byway,
holding a loaded pistol in my hand, the whole thing became utterly
unreal.
    It was in an odd frame of mind that I walked to the next corner,
as directed; for I was thinking, not of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the great
and evil man who dreamed of Europe and America under Chinese rule,
not of Nayland Smith, who alone stood between the Chinaman and the
realization of his monstrous schemes, not even of Karamaneh the
slave girl, whose glorious beauty was a weapon of might in
Fu-Manchu's hand, but of what impression I must have made upon a
patient had I encountered one then.
    Such were my ideas up to the moment that I crossed to the common
and vaulted into the field on my right. As I began to run toward
the elms I found myself wondering what it was all about, and for
what we were come. Fifty yards west of the trees it occurred to me
that if Smith had counted on cutting Forsyth off we were too late,
for it appeared to me that he must already be in the coppice.
    I was right. Twenty paces more I ran, and ahead of me, from the
elms, came a sound. Clearly it came through the still air—the eerie
hoot of a nighthawk. I could not recall ever to have heard the cry
of that bird on the common before, but oddly enough I attached
little significance to it until, in the ensuing instant, a most
dreadful scream—a scream in which fear, and loathing, and anger
were hideously blended—thrilled me with horror.
    After that I have no recollection of anything until I found
myself standing by the southernmost elm.
    "Smith!" I cried breathlessly. "Smith! my God! where are
you?"
    As if in answer to my cry came an indescribable sound, a mingled
sobbing and choking. Out from the shadows staggered a ghastly
figure—that of a man whose face appeared to be streaked. His eyes
glared at me madly and he mowed the air with his hands like one
blind and insane with fear.
    I started back; words died upon my tongue. The figure reeled and
the man fell babbling and sobbing at my very feet.
    Inert I stood, looking down at him. He writhed a moment—and was
still. The silence again became perfect. Then, from somewhere
beyond the elms, Nayland Smith appeared. I did not move. Even when
he stood beside me, I merely stared at him fatuously.
    "I let him walk