“Good God! You’re right!”
He stared at me for a moment.
“They used it to lower his body to the garden,” he said slowly. “I can see the rope marks on the balcony rail! There is an old, strong clematis growing up the wall below. One of Fu Manchu’s thugs climbed it whilst Longton was in the bath: he may or may not have forced open the window. He returned, later, bundled up the body, and lowered it to an assistant waiting in the garden. Miss Dinsford showed me over the ground-floor rooms: unlikely that anyone would hear; these fellows work as silently as stoats.”
“But what killed him?” I cried. “There may be some clues here—”
I had turned to the disordered bed, when: “Stand back, Kerrigan!” Smith said sharply. “Touch nothing. Leave the search to me.”
Arrested by his words, I stood there whilst he stripped the bed, opened the Chinese box (which contained nothing more lethal than cigarettes), explored every bookcase, cabinet, nook, and cranny in the room. He was as painstaking in the other rooms; and from amongst Longton’s possessions he selected the key of the suitcase, opened the case, examined its contents. And all the time he was sniffing—sniffing like a hound on a half-lost scent.
“The smell is fading?” he jerked. “You note this? I can spare no more time. But the room must be sealed: it is imperative. You have no doubt remarked that the large portfolio mentioned by Mrs. Mendel Hammett has disappeared.”
CHAPTER XIV
WE HEAR THE SNAPPING FINGERS
As I hurried past the hall porter’s desk in the main entrance to the Regal Athenian, a boy came running after me. Smith had been detained, but he was anxious that I should establish contact with Sergeant Rorke.
“Urgent message for you,Mr. Kerrigan.”
At the sight of the handwriting on the envelope, my heart skipped a beat; the message was from Ardatha! I tore it open, there where I stood, and read:
Please do not recognize me unless I am alone. I think I have been followed. I am in the main foyer: you can see me as you come up the steps. If there is anyone with me, go up to your apartment and I will try to ring you up.
The note was not signed.
Thrusting it into my pocket, I started up the imposing flight of carpeted stairs which had always reminded me of the palace scene in a Cinderella pantomime, and surveyed the vast foyer. The cosmopolitan atmosphere for which the Regal Athenian was celebrated tonight was absent; but there was a considerable ebb and flow of the after-theatre supper-seekers. I saw Ardatha at once.
She was seated on a divan not five yards away—deep in conversation with a sallow-faced man. She wore a perfectly simple blue evening frock which outlined her slender figure provocatively, exposing her lovely arms and shoulders so that her head, poised proudly, with its crown of gleaming hair set me thinking of a cameo by some great master. She did not so much as glance in my direction. But I knew that she had seen me.
Resolutely I walked along to the elevator and went up to our apartment. The knowledge that the presence of the sallow man alone had denied me at least a few stolen moments with Ardatha was a bitter pill to swallow; I could gladly have strangled him.
I opened the door, to find Sergeant Rorke standing Just inside. recognizing me, his tense attitude relaxed and he beganto chew again.
“Anything to report?”
“No, sir—except that a lady calls up ten minutes ago. She won’t leave her name. I just say you are out,”
“Nothing from Sir Lionel Barton?”
“No, sir. I’m a gladder man when he’s back here. Feeding wild animals is no part of a police officer’s duty.” He displayed a bandaged finger. “There’s one dead monkey on the books if I have my way.”
But I went into the sitting-room, lighted a cigarette, and began to walk to and fro beside the telephone. Ardatha was here! She had tried to get in touch with me. She had been followed; but she would try again. That the fact of her presence meant also that of Dr. Fu Manchu could not terrorize me tonight. Ardatha was here: soon, perhaps, I should hear her voice. If I had ever doubted what she meant in my life (and certainly I had known, always; for I had wanted to die when I believed that she had left me) tonight that swift vision of her dainty loveliness, her aloof, always mysterious personality, had confirmed the fact that without her I did not want to go on.
How long I wandered up and down the carpet, how many cigarettes I smoked, I cannot say. But, at last, the phone buzzed.
So utterly selfish was my mood, so completely was I absorbed in my dreams of Ardatha, that had the caller been Smith, or even the missing Kennard Wood, I know that I should have been disappointed. But it was Ardatha.
“Please listen very carefully.” Her adorable accent was unusually marked. “First, for someone else—a man called Colonel Kennard Wood will be killed tonight at some time before twelve o’clock. I cannot tell you how, and I do not know where he is, except that he is in New York. These—murders, horrify me. Try to save this man—”
“Ardatha—”
“Please, I beg of you! At any moment I may be discovered. We are setting out for Cristobal later tonight—as soon, I think, as Colonel Wood is dead. Tell me, now, if you found in London, any trace of Peko,Dr. Fu Manchu’s marmoset. He mourns him as one mourning a lost child.”
“He’s here, darling!We have him!”
“Ah!” the word reached me as a wondering sigh. “Please God you keep him safe! Tell me again. I cannot believe it: you have him?”
“We have him, Ardatha.”
“He may mean escape for me—the end of the living death. Come to Cristobal—Bart. When you reach the Panama Canal—”
“Ardatha! It’s more than I can suffer! Give me the word, and I will seeDr. Fu Manchu now, and test the value of this hostage!”
“Stop! It is impossible, I say! Listen: you can get in touch with me at the shop of a—”
The line was disconnected.
* * *
“So much and yet so little!” said Smith.
He was pacing restlessly up and down, surrounding himself with a smoke screen of pipe fumes.
“One thing at least is clear,” I declared. “Kennard Wood is doomed!”
“Don’t say that, Kerrigan! the idea drives me mad. Longton’s gone—and Kennard Wood next, whilst I stay idle! I wish I had been here when Ardatha called you. However, my delay with the police resulted in another clue, but a baffling one.”
“What clue?”
“The sheet—the sheet in which Longton’s body was thrown into the river—has been discovered.”
“Well?”
“It is bloodstained all over!”
“But—”
“Don’t tell me there were stains on the blanket, because I looked for them. Not a trace.” He turned suddenly. “You have noticed no evidence here of the peculiar smell?”
“None. But I have placed it. I know of what it reminded me—a chamel house!”
“Exactly. Hullo! Who’s this?”
The phone had buzzed, and he had the receiver off in a second.
“What! Kennard Wood? Thank God! Quick, man—where are you? At the Hotel Prado. No, no! Listen to me. I cannot explain, now. But you simply must not dream of going to bed! Leave all lights on in your apartment, remain fully dressed and wait until I join you!”
Running out to the lobby, he gave rapid instructions to Sergeant Rorke.
“You understand?” he said finally: “Inspector Hawk is downstairs. Tell him he is to start now, get this report and stand by at the Prado. Move.”
As Sergeant Rorke went out. Smith ran to the phone and called Police Headquarters. He was through in a matter of seconds.