“What do you mean, you can’t tell us?”
“I mean I don’t know. I had just mixed myself a final and was going out to make sure that the police officer you were kind enough to allot to me (whose presence I had discovered earlier) was awake, when I thought I heard that damned padding sound.”
“You mean the soft footsteps we have heard before?”
“Yes. Now let me give you the exact facts. I assure you they are peculiar. I had been to take a look at that blasted marmoset. He was asleep. I opened the door of my own room on to the main corridor, and glanced along to see if the police officer was awake. He was. He sang out, and I wished him good-night; but he is a garrulous fellow and he held me in conversation for some time.”
“Your door remaining open?” suggested Smith. “Yes—that’s the point.”
“Was the sergeant smoking?”
“He smoked all the time.”
“Was his manner normal?”
‘“Undoubtedly. Never stopped talking.”
“And you heard no unusual sound?”
“None whatever. I came in, sat down, lighted a pipe and was about to take a drink—when I saw something. I want to make it clear. Smith, that I saw this before I took the drink and I want to add that it was not a delusion and that I was very wide awake.”
“What did you see?” Barton stared truculently at Smith as he replied: saw a green hand”
“A green hand!” I echoed.
Smith began to pace up and down restlessly, tugging at the lobe of his left ear.
“I saw a human hand floating in space—no arm, no body. It was sea green in colour. It was visible for no more than a matter of ten seconds; then it vanished. It was over by the door, there—’
“What did you do?” snapped Smith.
“I ran to the spot. I searched everywhere. I began to wonder if there was anything wrong with me. This prompted me idea of a drink, so I sat down and took one. The last thing I remember thinking is that this hotel sells the world’s worst whisky.”
“You mean that you fell asleep?”
“No doubt about it.”
Smith kept up that restless promenade.
“A green hand,” he muttered, “And those padding footsteps! What is it? What in heaven’s name is it?”
“I don’t know what it is,” growled Barton, “but I thank God I’m alive. It’s Fu Manchu—of that I am certain. But there’s no love lost between us. Why didn’t he finish me?”
“That I think I can answer,” Smith replied. “Several days have yet to elapse before his First Notice or ultimatum expires. The Doctor has a nice sense of decorum.”
“I gather that he has recaptured the girl Ardatha. You have my very sincere sympathy, Kerrigan. I don’t know what to say.I, alone, am responsible and I lost your hostage.”
I bent down and shook his hand, as he lay back in the armchair.
“Not a word. Barton,” I said, “on that subject.Our enemy uses mysterious weapons which neither you nor I know how to counter.”
“Death by The Snapping Fingers,” murmured Smith. “The green hand and the Shadow which comes and goes, but which no one ever sees. How did Fu Manchu get here? Where did he hide? How does he travel and where has he gone?” He pulled up in front of me. “You have to make a quick decision, Kerrigan. As you know, my plans are fixed. Tomorrow we leave for Port au Prince.”
“I know,” I groaned; “and I know that it would be useless for me to remain behind.”
CHAPTER XXVI
SECOND NOTICE
Only my knowledge that in war-scarred Europe many thousands suffered just as I was suffering held me up during the next few days. Although I know I dreamed of her every night, resolutely in the waking hours I strove to banish all thought of Ardatha from my mind. As I saw the matter, we had lost every trick so far. In a mood of deadly, useless introspection I remained throughout the journey to Haiti. For the time all zest for the battle left me; and then it returned in the form of a cold resolution, If she were alive I would find her again; I would face the dreadful Chinese doctor who held her life in his hands, and accept any price which he exacted from me for her freedom—short of betraying my principles.
Many times I had opened the glass front of the box containing the shrivelled head, and had pressed the red control. It had remained silent. But these notes, actually written some time later, bring me to the occurrence which jolted me sharply back from a sort of fatalistic passivity to active interest in affairs of the moment.
We were quartered in a hotel in Port au Prince; not that in which The Snapping Fingers had appeared. Nayland Smith habitually eschewed official residences, preferring complete freedom of movement. The beauty of Haiti, its flowers and trees arid trailing vines; the gay-plumaged birds and painted butterflies; those sunsets passing from shell pink through every colour appreciated by the human eye into deep purple night: all formed but a gaudy background to my sorrow. For those purple nights, throughout which distant drums beat ceaselessly—remorselessly—to me seemed to be throbbing her name: Ardatha—Ardatha Can I ever forget the dark hours in Haiti?
Following such a spell of restless drum-haunted insomnia, I came downstairs one morning, a morning destined to be memorable.
One side of the dining-room opened upon a pleasant tropical garden in which palms mingled with star apple trees and flowering creepers which formed festoons from branch to branch and trellised the pillars against one of which our table was set. At this season, we had learned from the proprietor, business normally was slack; but as in Cristobal, the hotel was full. In fact, failing instructions sent to the American consul, I doubt if we should have secured accommodation. Even so, our party had been split up; and looking around, whilst making my way across to my friends, I recognized the fact that of the twelve or fifteen people present in the dining-room, there were at least four whom I had seen in Colon!
Taking my place at the table: “Are these spies following us, Smith?” I asked, wearily shaking out my napkin, “or are we following them?”
“The very thing, Kemgan,” said Barton in a whisper audible a hundred yards away, “which I have been asking Smith.”
“Neither,” Smith replied shortly. “But the position of the Allied forces in Europe is so critical that if action is to come from this side of the Atlantic, it must come soon. I don’t suggest that the British Empire is in danger; I mean that any other Power wishing to take a hand in the game must act now or never. The United States is not impregnable on the Carribbean front. At least one belligerent is watching, and possibly a “neutral5. Dr. Fu Manchu is watching all of them.” He pushed his plate aside and lighted a cigarette. “Had a good night, Kerrigan?”
“Not too good. Did you?”
“No. Those infernal drums.”
“Exactly.”
“I thought I was back in Africa,” growled Barton. “Felt that way the first time I landed here.”
“It is Africa,” said Smith shortly. “An African island in the Caribbean. Those drums which beat all through the night, near, and far, on hills and in the valleys—since we arrived, do you know what they have been saying?”
I stared at him perhaps a little vacantly.
“No,” I replied; “the language of African drums is a closed book to me.”
“It used to be to me.” He ceased speaking as a Haitian waiter placed grape fruit before me and withdrew. “But they use drums in Burma, you know—in fact, all over India. In my then capacity—Gad! it seems many years ago—I went out of my way to learn how messages were flashed quicker than the telegraph could work, quick as radio, from one end of the country to another. I picked up the elements, but I can’t claim to be an expert. When you and I were together”—he turned to Barton—”in Egypt, and afterwards on the business of the Mask of the Veiled Prophet, I tried to bring my information up to date, but the language of these negro drums is a different language. Nevertheless, I know what the drums are saying.”