The Devil Doctor | Page 7

spilling its cold radiance upon rows of kegs.
"That's another door," continued my friend. I now began dimly to perceive him beside me.
"If my calculations are not entirely wrong, it opens on a wharf gate--"

A steam siren hooted dismally, apparently from quite close at hand.
"I'm right!" snapped Smith. "That turning leads down to the gate. Come on, Petrie!"
He directed the light of the electric torch upon a narrow path through the ranks of casks,
and led the way to the farther door. A good two feet of moonlight showed along the top. I
heard Smith straining; then--
"These kegs are all loaded with grease," he said, "and I want to reconnoitre over that
door."
"I am leaning on a crate which seems easy to move," I reported. "Yes, it's empty. Lend a
hand."
We grasped the empty crate, and, between us, set it up on a solid pedestal of casks. Then
Smith mounted to this observation platform and I scrambled up beside him, and looked
down upon the lane outside.
It terminated as Smith had foreseen at a wharf gate some six feet to the right of our post.
Piled up in the lane beneath us, against the warehouse door, was a stack of empty casks.
Beyond, over the way, was a kind of ramshackle building that had possibly been a
dwelling-house at some time. Bills were stuck in the ground-floor windows indicating
that the three floors were to let as offices; so much was discernible in that reflected
moonlight.
I could hear the tide lapping upon the wharf, could feel the chill from the near river and
hear the vague noises which, night nor day, never cease upon the great commercial
waterway.
"Down!" whispered Smith. "Make no noise! I suspected it. They heard the car
following!"
I obeyed, clutching at him for support; for I was suddenly dizzy, and my heart was
leaping wildly--furiously.
"You saw her?" he whispered.
Saw her! Yes, I had seen her! And my poor dream-world was toppling about me, its cities
ashes and its fairness dust.
Peering from the window, her great eyes wondrous in the moonlight and her red lips
parted, hair gleaming like burnished foam and her anxious gaze set upon the corner of the
lane--was Kâramanèh ... Kâramanèh whom once we had rescued from the house of this
fiendish Chinese doctor; Kâramanèh who had been our ally, in fruitless quest of
whom,--when, too late, I realized how empty my life was become--I had wasted what
little of the world's goods I possessed:--Kâramanèh!
"Poor old Petrie," murmured Smith. "I knew, but I hadn't the heart--He has her

again--God knows by what chains he holds her. But she's only a woman, old boy, and
women are very much alike--very much alike from Charing Cross to Pagoda Road."
He rested his hand on my shoulder for a moment; I am ashamed to confess that I was
trembling; then, clenching my teeth with that mechanical physical effort which often
accompanies a mental one, I swallowed the bitter draught of Nayland Smith's philosophy.
He was raising himself, to peer, cautiously, over the top of the door. I did likewise.
The window from which the girl had looked was nearly on a level with our eyes, and as I
raised my head above the woodwork, I quite distinctly saw her go out of the room. The
door, as she opened it, admitted a dull light, against which her figure showed silhouetted
for a moment. Then the door was reclosed.
"We must risk the other windows," rapped Smith.
Before I had grasped the nature of his plan, he was over and had dropped almost
noiselessly upon the casks outside. Again I followed his lead.
"You are not going to attempt anything, single-handed--against him?" I asked.
"Petrie--Eltham is in that house. He has been brought here to be put to the question, in the
mediæval, and Chinese, sense! Is there time to summon assistance?"
I shuddered. This had been in my mind, certainly, but so expressed it was definitely
horrible--revolting, yet stimulating.
"You have the pistol," added Smith; "follow closely, and quietly."
He walked across the tops of the casks and leapt down, pointing to that nearest to the
closed door of the house. I helped him place it under the open window. A second we set
beside it, and, not without some noise, got a third on top.
Smith mounted.
His jaw muscles were very prominent and his eyes shone like steel; but he was as cool as
though he were about to enter a theatre and not the den of the most stupendous genius
who ever worked for evil. I would forgive any man who, knowing Dr. Fu-Manchu, feared
him; I feared him myself--feared him as one fears a scorpion; but when Nayland Smith
hauled