‘“We must assume that Dr. Stewart was ignorant of the secret, assume that he retained these gruesome relics for purely sentimental reasons. It remained for me to discover that the historical silver bullet was hollow. I submitted it to a microscopical examination. It was one of the most beautifully made things I have handled—the work of an expert gunsmith. There was a pin in the base. This being removed, it became possible to unscrew the shell—for a shell it was. I extracted a roll of some tough vegetable fibre, no larger than a wooden match.”
Nayland Smith was staring hard at Sir Lionel, who had now taken from the steel box a tiny piece of papyrus set under glass. The expression upon Barton’s sun-wrinkled, truculent face was ironical.
“I should be glad, Mr. Hannessy,” he said, “if you would examine this and then pass it on.” He handed the fragment to John Hannessy. “A glance was enough. Christophe had had a chart—a minute chart—made of his treasure cave and had hidden it in his own skull at the instant of death!”
There was a momentary silence, an awed silence, as Mr. Hannessy passed the chart to Commander Ingles.
“It can be read only by aid of a powerful lens,” Barton went on; “but it shows an enormous cavern, in which the cache is marked by a red cross. Further inquiry—you know something about it. Smith—led to the discovery that this cavern, which has an underwater outlet to the sea, was big enough to hide a battle fleet”
“I am prepared to hear. Sir Lionel,” said Commander Ingles, studying the chart through a magnifying glass, “that you have identified the location of this cave. You know its exact bearings?”
“Commander Ingles—I know my way there as well as I know my way from my town house (now sold) to my club. And listen. Smith. The passage from da Cunha’s manuscript in the British Museum was copied byDr. Fu Manchu, in person, so long as a year ago. I have evidence to prove that. But I have beaten him to it this time. Wilton of Drury Lane, the best manuscript faker in Europe, made me a duplicate of Christophe’s chart. Wilton’s duplicate was exact in every particular—except that the treasure cache and the precise bearings of the entrances to the cave from land and sea were slightly altered. It was Wilton’s chart that was stolen by Dr. Fu Manchu. This is the original!”
Nayland Smith was tugging at one ear.
“There’s your secret submarine base, gentlemen.It will be my privilege to—”
“Who’s there?” cried Commander Ingles and glanced back over his shoulder.
He had been absorbed in study of the chart. Now, his lens clattered on to the table.
“I heard nothing,” snapped Nayland Smith.
“Nor did I. But, nevertheless, something touched me!”
“Touched you?” Barton began to chuckle. “Perhaps it was my story!”
“I insist that someone bent over my shoulder whilst I was examining the chart.”
We all sat perfectly still, listening. Commander Ingles was not a man whose self-possession is easily ruffled, but it was plain to see that he was disturbed.
The ceaseless voice of the city came up to us from the streets far below, dazzling sunshine shone in at the windows. Yet I, my brain working feverishly, became possessed of an uncanny sense that something, some supernormal thing, had joined our council. Then: “Who opened that door?” Nayland Smith demanded sharply.
Those with their backs to the door indicated turned in a flash. all looked in that direction.
The door leading to my room was half-open—and, now, the marmoset, in Barton’s quarters beyond began to whistle shrilly!
Smith exchanged a swift glance with me and then sprang up. He reached the open door first but I was not far behind him. Everybody was up. As we dashed through to Sir Lionel’s room I saw at a glance that the outer door, that which led into the hotel corridor, was wide open.
Smith muttered something under his breath and went running out.We came behind in a pack.
The corridor outside was bare from end to end. Neither elevator was moving. Several of the party began to talk at once.
“Silence!” rapped Smith angrily.“I want to listen.”
Silence fell, save for the whistling chatter of the monkey, and we all listened.
We all heard it: Pad, pad, pad . . . .
Soft footsteps were moving along the corridor, far away to the left. But no living thing was visible.
“Rush to that staircase, Kerrigan!” cried Smith. “Bar the way of anything—visible or invisible.”
And as I dashed off, a conviction seized my mind that he, too, had grasped the possibility, hitherto incredible, which indeed I had regarded as inadmissible, that something—something which we could not see, had been amongst us and not for the first time.
I raced headlong to the end of the corridor, trusting to my considerable poundage to sweep anything from my path. However, nothing obstructed me.
Coming to the head of the staircase which forty floors below gave access to the foyer, I stood still breathing heavily and listening.
Smith’s snappy orders had followed me in my rush:—
“You, Barton—that way. Watch all the doors. If one opens, rush for it. Commander, cover both elevators. Allow no one and nothing to enter, whoever comes out . . .”
Fists clenched, I stood listening.
That sound of padded footsteps was no longer audible. No elevator was moving, and apart from a buzz of excited voices from our party along the passage, I could hear nothing; so that as I stood there the seeming insanity of the thing burst upon me, irresistibly. We were all victims of some illusion, some trick. Its object must have been to get us out of the apartment. As this idea seized me I turned from the head of the staircase and began to run back.
“Smith!” I shouted, “it’s a ruse! Someone should have stayed in the room.”
“Don’t worry.” Smith was standing there on guard. “I have stuck here and Barton’s door is locked.”
But we found no one and heard no one. The shadow had come—and gone.
Completely baffled,we reassembled in the sitting-room and resumed our places about the table. Nayland Smith solemnly deposited before Barton the ancient pistol, the silver bullet and the chart.
“You left them behind. I picked them up for safety.”
We stared rather blankly at one another for a moment, and then: “It seems to me, gentlemen,” said John Hannessy, “that the experience which we have Just shared calls for a consultation.”
Everybody was in tacit agreement with the speaker. Commander Ingles replied in his crisp way: “I give my testimony here and now without hesitation, that something, something palpable, touched my shoulder at the moment that I called out. Something or someone we could not see was in the room at that time. We all know that a door was open which had not been open when this session began. We all know that the communicating doors were closed. And I think I am right”—he looked around—”in saying that we all heard the sound of soft footsteps in the corridor outside.”
He paused suddenly, staring down at some notes on the table before him. His silence was so unexpected, and his expression so strange, that: “What’s wrong?” growled Barton, leaning forward. “What have you found there?”
Commander Ingles looked round from face to face, and I saw that he held a sheet of paper in his hand.
“Just this . . . I will read out what is written here: “ ‘FIRST NOTICE’—”