Nayland Smith lay with his arms outside the coverlet
and his fists tightly clenched. His thin, tanned
face wore a grayish hue, and a white bandage was about
his head. He breathed stentoriously.
“We can only wait,” said Dr. Hamilton,
“and trust that there will be no complications.”
I clenched my fists involuntarily, but, speaking no
word, turned and passed from the room.
Downstairs in Dr. Hamilton’s study was the man
who had found Nayland Smith.
“We don’t know when it was done, sir,”
he said, answering my first question. “Staples
and me stumbled on him in the dusk, just by the big
beech—a good quarter-mile from the village.
I don’t know how long he’d laid there,
but it must have been for some time, as the last rain
arrived an hour earlier. No, sir, he hadn’t
been robbed; his money and watch were on him but his
pocketbook lay open beside him;— though,
funny as it seems, there were three five-pound notes
in it!”
“Do you understand, Petrie?” cried Sir
Lionel. “Smith evidently obtained a copy
of the old plan of the secret passages of Graywater
and Monkswell, sooner than he expected, and determined
to return to-night. They left him for dead, having
robbed him of the plans!”
“But the attack on Dr. Hamilton’s man?”
“Fu-Manchu clearly tried to prevent communication
with us to-night! He is playing for time.
Depend on it, Petrie, the hour of his departure draws
near and he is afraid of being trapped at the last
moment.”
He began taking huge strides up and down the room,
forcibly reminding me of a caged lion.
“To think,” I said bitterly, “that
all our efforts have failed to discover the secret——”
“The secret of my own property!” roared
Barton—“and one known to that damned,
cunning Chinese devil!”
“And in all probability now known also to Smith——”
“And he cannot speak! ...”
“Who cannot speak?” demanded a
hoarse voice.
I turned in a flash, unable to credit my senses—and
there, holding weakly to the doorpost, stood Nayland
Smith!
“Smith!” I cried reproachfully—“you
should not have left your room!”
He sank into an arm-chair, assisted by Dr. Hamilton.
“My skull is fortunately thick!” he replied,
a ghostly smile playing around the corners of his
mouth—“and it was a physical impossibility
for me to remain inert considering that Dr. Fu-Manchu
proposes to leave England to-night!”
THE MONK’S PLAN
“My inquiries in the Manuscript Room of the
British Museum,” said Nayland Smith, his voice
momentarily growing stronger and some of the old fire
creeping back into his eyes, “have proved entirely
successful.”
Sir Lionel Barton, Dr. Hamilton, and myself hung upon
every word; and often I fond myself glancing at the
old-fashioned clock on the doctor’s mantel-piece.
