Smith bent to his ear.
“Good man!” he replied.
“The others sir?”
Nayland Smith indicated the steps below, and Gallaho lighting the way, the two began to descend. A sheet of water swept the point at which Smith had left Sterling and Sergeant Murphy.
Their situation had become untenable and they had mounted half-way up to the next platform. Smith’s chief worry was concerned with Sterling who was obviously in bad shape. But the sight of Gallaho afforded just that stimulus which he required. And the detective, throwing an arm around him to help him upwards, and recognizing that he was nearly spent, had an inspiration.
Bending close to his ear:
“Stick it, sir!” he shouted. ‘Your friend Miss Petrie is safe and well in Sir Denis’s flat!”
That stimulus was magical.
Nevertheless, the rope ladder, now nearly submerged in the ever widening waterspout, taxed Sterling to the limit. Murphy followed up behind. Merton, at the top, when collapse threatened, at the critical moment craned over and hauled Sterling to safety.
Nayland Smith came next—Gallaho truculently having claimed the right to bring up the rear.
He had earned that perilous honour.
The men in the brick passage-way broke into unorthodox cheers; nor did Forester check them.
“All out!” cried Nayland Smith. “Anything may happen when the furnace goes!”
The passage already was an inch deep in water, but they retreated along it, Gallaho and Nayland Smith last of the party.
They had reached the masked door in Sam Pak’s kitchen when the furnace exploded. Steam belched out of the corridor as from a huge exhaust. The ancient building shook.
Nayland Smith turned to Gallaho and very solemnly held out his hand.
CHAPTER 49
WAITING
“Nothing to report,” said Inspector Gallaho.
Nayland Smith nodded and glanced at Alan Sterling seated smoking in the armchair. It was the evening of the sixth day after the subterranean explosion in Chinatown, an explosion which had had several remarkable results.
The top of that forgotten pit leading down to the abandoned tunnel was actually covered, as later investigations showed, by the paved yard which adjoined Sam Pak’s restaurant. The ventilation shaft passed right through his premises; and there seemed to be a distinct possibility that the old house as well as the wooden superstructure, were actually part of the abandoned workings, modified and adapted to their later purpose.
A great crack had appeared in one wall of the restaurant. But no other visible damage appeared upon the surface.
Something resembling a phenomenal tide had disturbed Limehouse Reach that night, and was widely reported from crafts upon the river. The shaft with its horrible secrets was filled to within fifteen feet of the top.
Even allowing for secret getaways communicating with adjoining premises, it was reasonable to assume that neither Dr. Fu Manchu nor any of those attached to his service had escaped alive from the fire and flood.
A cordon had been thrown around the entire area with the cooperation of the River Police. Of old Sam Pak and the other Asiatics who had been in the Sailors’ Club, nothing had been seen. A house to house search in the yellow light of dawn satisfied Gallaho that they were not concealed in the neighbourhood. Nothing came of these researches to afford a clue to the mystery.
A guarded communication was issued to the newspapers under the Commissioner’s direction, to the effect that in forcing a way into suspected premises a buttress had collapsed and an old tunnel working been flooded by the river.
Fleet Street suspected that there was a wonderful story behind this communique, but the real story if ever discovered was never published.
Mrs. Sam Pak was let off with a fine and had been covered assiduously ever since. Her movements had afforded no clue to those who watched her. She accepted the disappearance of her aged husband as philosophically as she had accepted his presence. She was permitted to re-open the shop but not the Sailors’ Club.
Enquiries at Dovelands Cottage, Lower Kingswood, revealed the fact that the place belonged to a Mrs. Ryatt, who lived in Streatham and who used it in the summer but let it when possible during the winter months.
The place had been vacant for a long time, but had recently been leased by a gentleman whose address proved to be untraceable, for the convalescence of his daughter who had had a nervous breakdown. Mrs. Ryatt had actually visited the cottage on the evening that her new tenant entered into occupation, and reported that the daughter was an uncommonly pretty girl whose manner was very strange; and the nurse in charge was an elderly foreign woman of rather forbidding appearance.
She had been satisfied, however, of the respectability of her tenant and had returned to London.
No trace of the woman described by Mrs. Ryatt and by Fleurette could be found. . . .
Nayland Smith, tugging at the lobe of his ear, walked up and down the room. He glanced several times at a large clock upon the mantelpiece; then:
“I expected no news, Gallaho,” he said, rapidly. “Yet——”
“Surely you have no doubts left, sir?”
Sterling stared eagerly at Sir Denis, awaiting his reply.
“Fleurette’s manner disturbs me,” snapped the latter. “She seems to have inherited from her mother a sort of extra sense where Dr. Fu Manchu is concerned. It is no doubt due, in both cases, to the fact that he has subjected Fleurette—as he subjected Karamaneh—to hypnotic influences at various times.”
Sterling moved cautiously in the armchair. He was nursing an injured rib.
“In fact,” Smith went on, “I never feel entirely happy about her, when she is not here, actually under my own eyes.”
“Dr. Petrie, her father, is with her,” Gallaho growled.
“I agree, she could not be in better hands. It’s just an instinctive distrust.”
“Based upon her queer ideas, sir?” Gallaho went on in a puzzled way.
He had assumed his favourite pose, one elbow resting on the mantelpiece.
“Surely her manner is to be expected in one who has suffered the sort of things that she has suffered. I mean—” he hesitated, seeking for words—”it will naturally take some little time before she gets over the idea that her movements are controlled. Now that I know her history, I think she is simply wonderful.”
“You are right, Inspector,” said Sterling, warmly. “She is wonderful. If you or I had been through what Fleurette has been through I wager we should be stretcher cases.”
“You are probably right,” said Gallaho.
Nayland Smith, his back to the room, stood staring out of the window. He was thinking of the itinerant match seller, who beyond any shadow of doubt had been a spy of Dr. Fu Manchu. Fey’s report of what had happened down there on the Embankment on the night of the destruction of the Thames tunnel, frequently recurred to his mind, but the match seller—like the other mysterious servants of the Chinese doctor—had disappeared; all enquiries had failed to establish his identity.
He was said to have traded there for many years, but there was some difference of opinion on this point between constables patrolling that part of the Embankment. Nayland Smith was inclined to believe that the original vendor had been bought out, or driven out, and that an understudy made up to resemble him had taken his place.
Suddenly turning:
“Switch the lights up, Gallaho, if you don’t mind,” he said.
The lofty, homely room became brilliantly illuminated.
“Ah!” muttered Gallaho—”this will be the doctor and the young lady.”
The faint but familiar sound of the lift gate had arrested his attention. A moment later, Fey opened the outer door. The voice of Fleurette was heard—as she came running in, followed by Dr. Petrie.