“But——”
“There are no *buts.’ I left the car in which I had been driven over from Cannes some distance back on the road tonight, and walked ahead to look for this villa, the exact location of which my driver didn’t know. I had nearly reached the way in when I heard a sound.”
“I heard it too.”
“I know you did. But to you it meant nothing—except that it was horrible; to me, it meant a lot. You see, I had heard it before.”
“What was it? I shall never forget it!”
“It was the signal used by certain Burmans, loosely known as dacoits, to give warning to one another. If poor old Petrie shad come across this new species of tsetse fly—he would have begun to think. If he had heard that cry...he would have known!”
“He would have known what?” I asked, aware of a growing excitement communicated to me by the speaker.
“He would have known what he was up against.” He raised his fists in a gesture almost of despair. “We are children!” he said vehemently, momentarily taken out of himself. “What do you know of botany, and what does Petrie know of medicine beside Dr. Fu Manchu?”
“Dr. Fu Manchu?” I echoed.
“A synonym for Satan—evil immutable; apparently eternal.”
“Sir Denis——” I began.
But he turned aside abruptly, bending again over the motionless body of his old friend.
“Poor Karamaneh!” he murmured.
He was silent a while, then, without looking around:
“Do you know his wife, Sterling?” he asked.
“No, Sir Denis; we have never met.”
“She is still young, as we count tears to-day. She was a child when Petrie married her—and she is the most beautiful woman I have ever known....”
As he spoke I seemed to hear a soft voice saying, “Think of me as Derceto”...Fleurette! Fleurette was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen....
“She was chosen by a master—who rarely makes mistakes.”
His manner and his words were so strange that I may be forgiven for misunderstanding.
“A master? Do you mean a painter?”
At that, he turned and smiled. His smile was the most boyish and disarming I had ever met with in a grown man.
“Yes, Sterling, a painter! His canvas, the world; his colours, the human races....”
This was mystery capping mystery, and certainly I should never have left the matter there; but at this moment we were interrupted by a series of short staccato shrieks.
I ran to the door. I had recognized the voice.
“Who is it?” Sir Denis snapped.
“Mme Dubonnet.”
“Housekeeper?”
“Yes.”
“Keep her out.”
I threw the door open—and the terrified woman tottered into my arms.
“M. Sterling,” she panted, hysterically—”something terrible has happened! I know—I know—something terrible has happened!”
“Don’t worry, Mme Dubonnet,” I said, and endeavoured to lead her away. “Dr. Petrie——”
“But I must tell the doctor—it concerns him. As I look up fi-om my casserole dish I see at the window just above me—a face—a dreadful yellow face with cross eyes....”
“Rather a quandary, Sterling,” Sir Denis cut in, standing squarely between the excited woman and the insensible man on the couch. “One of those murderous devils is hanging about the place....”
Dimly I heard the sound of an insistent motor horn on the Comiche road above, nearing the head of that narrow byway which debouched from the Comiche and led down to the Villa Jasmin.
“The ambulance from the hospital!” Sir Denis exclaimed in relief.
chapter sixth
“654”
mme dubonnet, still shaking nervously, was escorted back to her quarters. Petrie, we told her, was down with a severe attack of influenza and must be moved immediately. The appearance of the yellow face at the window, mendacity had failed to explain; and the old lady announced that she should lock herself into the kitchen until such time as someone could take her home.
She was left lamenting, “Oh, the poor, dear kind doctor!...”
Cartier had come in person, with two orderlies and a driver. The bearded, round-faced little man exhibited such perfect consternation on beholding Dr. Petrie that it must have been fanny had it not been tragic. He dropped to his knees, bending over the insensible man.
“The black stigmata!” he muttered, touching the purple-shadowed brow. “I am too late! The coma. Soon—in an hour, or less, the final convulsions...the end! God! it is terrible. He is a dead man!”
“I’m not so sure,” Sir Denis interrupted. “Forgive me, doctor; my name is Nayland Smith. I have ventured to give an injection——”
Dr. Cartier stood up excitedly.
“What injection?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” Sir Denis replied calmly.
“What is this?”
“I don’t know. I used a preparation of Petrie’s which he called ‘654.’“
“654!”
Dr. Carter dropped upon his knees again beside the insensible man.
“How long,” he demanded, “since the shadow appeared?”
“Difficult to say, doctor,” I replied. “He was alone here. But it hasn’t increased.”
“How long since the injection?”
Nayland Smith shot out a lean brown wrist and glanced at a gun-metal watch in a leather strap.
“Forty-three minutes,” he reported.
Cartier sprang to his feet again.
“Dr. Smith!” he cried excitedly—and I saw Sir Denis suppress a smile—”this is triumph! From the time that the ecchy-mosis appears, it never ceases to creep down and down to the eyes! It has remained static for forty-three minutes, you tell me? This is triumph!”
“Let us dare to hope so,” said Sir Denis gravely.
When all arrangements had been completed and the good Dr. Cartier had grasped the astounding fact that Nayland Smith was not a confrere but a super-policeman:
“It’s very important,” Sir Denis whispered to me,, “that this place should be watched to-night. We have to take into consideration—” he gripped my arm—”the possibility that they fail to save Petrie. The formula for ‘654’ must be somewhere here!”
But we had searched for it in vain; nor was it on his person.
The driver of the car in which Sir Denis had come, agreed, on terms, to mount guard over the laboratory. He remained in ignorance of the nature of Petrie’s illness; but Dr. Cartier assured us there was no danger of direct infection at this stage.
And so, poor Petrie having been rushed to the isolation ward, Nayland Smith going with the ambulance, I drove Mme Dubonnet home, leaving the chauffeur from Cannes on guard. Returning, I gave the man freedom of the dinner which Fate had decreed that Petrie and I were not to eat, lent him a repeater, and set out in turn for the hospital.
This secret war against the strange plague which threatened to strip the Blue Coast of visitors and prosperity had aroused the enthusiasm of the whole of that small hospital staff.
Petrie, with other sufferers from the new pestilence, was lodged in an outbuilding separated from the hospital proper by a stretch of waste land. A porter, after some delay, led me through this miniature wilderness to the door of the isolation ward. The low building was dominated by a clump of pines.
A nursing sister admitted me, conducting me in silence along a narrow passage to Petrie’s room.
As I entered, and the sister withdrew, I saw at a glance the cause of a suppressed feverish excitement which I had detect-^deven in the bearing of the lodge porter.
Dr. Cartier was in tears. He was taking the pulse of the unconscious man. Nayland Smith, standing beside him, nodded to me reassuringly as I came in.