CHAPTER XX. THE NOTE ON THE DOOR
I saw little of Nayland Smith for the remainder of that day. Presumably he was following those "promptings" to which he had referred, though I was unable to conjecture whither they were leading him. Then, towards dusk he arrived in a perfect whirl, figuratively sweeping me off my feet.
"Get your coat on, Petrie!" he cried; "you forget that we have a most urgent appointment!" Beyond doubt I had forgotten that we had any appointment whatever that evening, and some surprise must have shown upon my face, for—
"Really you are becoming very forgetful!" my friend continued. "You know we can no longer trust the 'phone. I have to leave certain instructions for Weymouth at the rendezvous!" There was a hidden significance in his manner, and, my memory harking back to an adventure which we had shared in the past, I suddenly glimpsed the depths of my own stupidity.
He suspected the presence of an eavesdropper! Yes! incredible though it might appear, we were spied upon in the New Louvre; agents of the Si-Fan, of Dr. Fu-Manchu, were actually within the walls of the great hotel!
We hurried out into the corridor, and descended by the lift to the lobby. M. Samarkan, long famous as mâitre d'hôtel of one of Cairo's fashionable khans , and now principal of the New Louvre, greeted us with true Greek courtesy. He trusted that we should be present at some charitable function or other to be held at the hotel on the following evening.
"If possible, M. Samarkan—if possible," said Smith. "We have many demands upon our time." Then, abruptly, to me: "Come, Petrie, we will walk as far as Charing Cross and take a cab from the rank there." "The hall-porter can call you a cab," said M. Samarkan, solicitous for the comfort of his guests. "Thanks," snapped Smith; "we prefer to walk a little way." Passing along the Strand, he took my arm, and speaking close to my ear—
"That place is alive with spies, Petrie," he said; "or if there are only a few of them they are remarkably efficient!" Not another word could I get from him, although I was eager enough to talk; since one dearer to me than all else in the world was in the hands of the damnable organization we knew as the Si-Fan; until, arrived at Charing Cross, he walked out to the cab rank, and—
"Jump in!" he snapped.
He opened the door of the first cab on the rank.
"Drive to J—— Street, Kennington," he directed the man. In something of a mental stupor I entered and found myself seated beside Smith. The cab made off towards Trafalgar Square, then swung around into Whitehall.
"Look behind!" cried Smith, intense excitement expressed in his voice— "look behind!" I turned and peered through the little square window.
The cab which had stood second upon the rank was closely following us!
"We are tracked!" snapped my companion. "If further evidence were necessary of the fact that our every movement is watched, here it is!" I turned to him, momentarily at a loss for words; then—
"Was this the object of our journey?" I said. "Your reference to a 'rendezvous' was presumably addressed to a hypothetical spy? "Partly," he replied. "I have a plan, as you will see in a moment." I looked again from the window in the rear of the cab. We were now passing between the House of Lords and the back of Westminster Abbey … and fifty yards behind us the pursuing cab was crossing from Whitehall! A great excitement grew up within me, and a great curiosity respecting the identity of our pursuer.
"What is the place for which we are bound, Smith?" I said rapidly.
"It is a house which I chanced to notice a few days ago, and I marked it as useful for such a purpose as our present one. You will see what I mean when we arrive." On we went, following the course of the river, then turned over Vauxhall Bridge and on down Vauxhall Bridge Road into a very dreary neighborhood where gasometers formed the notable feature of the landscape.
"That's the Oval just beyond," said Smith suddenly, "and—here we are." In a narrow cul de sac which apparently communicated with the boundary of the famous cricket ground, the cabman pulled up. Smith jumped out and paid the fare.
"Pull back to that court with the iron posts," he directed the man, "and wait there for me." Then: "Come on, Petrie!" he snapped.
Side by side we entered the wooden gate of a small detached house, or more properly cottage, and passed up the tiled path towards a sort of side entrance which apparently gave access to the tiny garden. At this moment I became aware of two things; the first, that the house was an empty one, and the second, that some one—some one who had quitted the second cab (which I had heard pull up at no great distance behind us) was approaching stealthily along the dark and uninviting street, walking upon the opposite pavement and taking advantage of the shadow of a high wooden fence which skirted it for some distance.
Smith pushed the gate open, and I found myself in a narrow passageway in almost complete darkness. But my friend walked confidently forward, turned the angle of the building and entered the miniature wilderness which once had been a garden.
"In here, Petrie!" he whispered.
He seized me by the arm, pushed open a door and thrust me forward down two stone steps into absolute darkness.
"Walk straight ahead!" he directed, still in the same intense whisper, "and you will find a locked door having a broken panel. Watch through the opening for any one who may enter the room beyond, but see that your presence is not detected. Whatever I say or do, don't stir until I actually rejoin you." He stepped back across the floor and was gone. One glimpse I had of him, silhouetted against the faint light of the open door, then the door was gently closed, and I was left alone in the empty house.
Smith's methods frequently surprised me, but always in the past I had found that they were dictated by sound reasons. I had no doubt that an emergency unknown to me dictated his present course, but it was with my mind in a wildly confused condition, that I groped for and found the door with the broken panel and that I stood there in the complete darkness of the deserted house listening.
I can well appreciate how the blind develop an unusually keen sense of hearing; for there, in the blackness, which (at first) was entirely unrelieved by any speck of light, I became aware of the fact, by dint of tense listening, that Smith was retiring by means of some gateway at the upper end of the little garden, and I became aware of the fact that a lane or court, with which this gateway communicated, gave access to the main road.
Faintly, I heard our discharged cab backing out from the cul de sac ; then, from some nearer place, came Smith's voice speaking loudly. "Come along, Petrie!" he cried; "there is no occasion for us to wait. Weymouth will see the note pinned on the door." I started—and was about to stumble back across the room, when, as my mind began to work more clearly, I realized that the words had been spoken as a ruse—a favorite device of Nayland Smith's. Rigidly I stood there, and continued to listen.
"All right, cabman!" came more distantly now; "back to the New Louvre— jump in, Petrie!" The cab went rattling away … as a faint light became perceptible in the room beyond the broken panel.
Hitherto I had been able to detect the presence of this panel only by my sense of touch and by means of a faint draught which blew through it; now it suddenly became clearly perceptible. I found myself looking into what was evidently the principal room of the house—a dreary apartment with tatters of paper hanging from the walls and litter of all sorts lying about upon the floor and in the rusty fireplace.
Some one had partly raised the front window and opened the shutters. A patch of moonlight shone down upon the floor immediately below my hiding-place and furthermore enabled me vaguely to discern the disorder of the room.
A bulky figure showed silhouetted against the dirty panes. It was that of a man who, leaning upon the window sill, was peering intently in. Silently he had approached, and silently had raised the sash and opened the shutters.
For thirty seconds or more he stood so, moving his head from right to left … and I watched him through the broken panel, almost holding my breath with suspense. Then, fully raising the window, the man stepped into the room, and, first reclosing the shutters, suddenly flashed the light of an electric lamp all about the place. I was enabled to discern him more clearly, this mysterious spy who had tracked us from the moment that we had left the hotel.
He was a man of portly build wearing a heavy fur-lined overcoat and having a soft felt hat, the brim turned down so as to shade the upper part of his face. Moreover, he wore his fur collar turned up, which served further to disguise him, since it concealed the greater part of his chin. But the eyes which now were searching every corner of the room, the alert, dark eyes, were strangely familiar. The black mustache, the clear-cut, aquiline nose, confirmed the impression.
Our follower was M. Samarkan, manager of the New Louvre.
I suppressed a gasp of astonishment. Small wonder that our plans had leaked out. This was a momentous discovery indeed.
And as I watched the portly Greek who was not only one of the most celebrated mâitres d'hôtel in Europe, but also a creature of Dr. Fu-Manchu, he cast the light of his electric lamp upon a note attached by means of a drawing-pin to the inside of the room door. I immediately divined that my friend must have pinned the note in its place earlier in the day; even at that distance I recognized Smith's neat, illegible writing. Samarkan quickly scanned the message scribbled upon the white page; then, exhibiting an agility uncommon in a man of his bulk, he threw open the shutters again, having first replaced his lamp in his pocket, climbed out into the little front garden, reclosed the window, and disappeared!
A moment I stood, lost to my surroundings, plunged in a sea of wonderment concerning the damnable organization which, its tentacles extending I knew not whither, since new and unexpected limbs were ever coming to light, sought no less a goal than Yellow dominion of the world! I reflected how one man—Nayland Smith—alone stood between this powerful group and the realization of their project … when I was aroused by a hand grasping my arm in the darkness!
I uttered a short cry, of which I was instantly ashamed, for Nayland Smith's voice came:— "I startled you, eh, Petrie?" "Smith," I said, "how long have you been standing there?" "I only returned in time to see our Fenimore Cooper friend retreating through the window," he replied; "but no doubt you had a good look at him?" "I had!" I answered eagerly. "It was Samarkan!" "I thought so! I have suspected as much for a long time." "Was this the object of our visit here?" "It was one of the objects," admitted Nayland Smith evasively. From some place not far distant came the sound of a restarted engine.
"The other," he added, "was this: to enable M. Samarkan to read the note which I had pinned upon the door!"
