LITMIR.BIZ

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got a roving commission, Petrie, and it doesn't rest with me

      where I am to-day nor where I shall be to-morrow."

      There was something ominous in the words, and, putting down my glass,

      its contents untasted, I faced round and looked him squarely in the

      eyes. "Out with it!" I said. "What is it all about?"

      Smith suddenly stood up and stripped off his coat. Rolling back his

      left shirt-sleeve he revealed a wicked-looking wound in the fleshy part

      of the forearm. It was quite healed, but curiously striated for an

      inch or so around.

      "Ever seen one like it?" he asked.

      "Not exactly," I confessed. "It appears to have been deeply

      cauterized."

      "Right! Very deeply!" he rapped. "A barb steeped in the venom of a

      hamadryad went in there!"

      A shudder I could not repress ran coldly through me at mention of that

      most deadly of all the reptiles of the East.

      "There's only one treatment," he continued, rolling his sleeve down

      again, "and that's with a sharp knife, a match, and a broken cartridge.

      I lay on my back, raving, for three days afterwards, in a forest that

      stank with malaria, but I should have been lying there now if I had

      hesitated. Here's the point. It was not an accident!"

      "What do you mean?"

      "I mean that it was a deliberate attempt on my life, and I am hard upon

      the tracks of the man who extracted that venom--patiently, drop by

      drop--from the poison-glands of the snake, who prepared that arrow, and

      who caused it to be shot at me."

      "What fiend is this?"

      "A fiend who, unless my calculations are at fault is now in London, and

      who regularly wars with pleasant weapons of that kind. Petrie, I have

      traveled from Burma not in the interests of the British Government

      merely, but in the interests of the entire white race, and I honestly

      believe--though I pray I may be wrong--that its survival depends

      largely upon the success of my mission."

      To say that I was perplexed conveys no idea of the mental chaos created

      by these extraordinary statements, for into my humdrum suburban life

      Nayland Smith had brought fantasy of the wildest. I did not know what

      to think, what to believe.

      "I am wasting precious time!" he rapped decisively, and, draining his

      glass, he stood up. "I came straight to you, because you are the only

      man I dare to trust. Except the big chief at headquarters, you are the

      only person in England, I hope, who knows that Nayland Smith has

      quitted Burma. I must have someone with me, Petrie, all the time--it's

      imperative! Can you put me up here, and spare a few days to the

      strangest business, I promise you, that ever was recorded in fact or

      fiction?"

      I agreed readily enough, for, unfortunately, my professional duties

      were not onerous.

      "Good man!" he cried, wringing my hand in his impetuous way. "We start

      now."

      "What, to-night?"

      "To-night! I had thought of turning in, I must admit. I have not

      dared to sleep for forty-eight hours, except in fifteen-minute

      stretches. But there is one move that must be made to-night and

      immediately. I must warn Sir Crichton Davey."

      "Sir Crichton Davey--of the India--"

      "Petrie, he is a doomed man! Unless he follows my instructions without

      question, without hesitation--before Heaven, nothing can save him! I

      do not know when the blow will fall, how it will fall, nor from whence,

      but I know that my first duty is to warn him. Let us walk down to the

      corner of the common and get a taxi."

      How strangely does the adventurous intrude upon the humdrum; for, when

      it intrudes at all, more often than not its intrusion is sudden and

      unlooked for. To-day, we may seek for romance and fail to find it:

      unsought, it lies in wait for us at most prosaic corners of life's

      highway.

      The drive that night, though it divided the drably commonplace from the

      wildly bizarre--though it was the bridge between the ordinary and the

      outre--has left no impression upon my mind. Into the heart of a weird

      mystery the cab bore me; and in reviewing my memories of those days I

      wonder that the busy thoroughfares through which we passed did not

      display before my eyes signs and portents--warnings.

      It was not so. I recall nothing of the route and little of import that

      passed between us (we both were strangely silent, I think) until we

      were come to our journey's end. Then:

      "What's this?" muttered my friend hoarsely.

      Constables were moving on a little crowd of curious idlers who pressed

      about the steps of Sir Crichton Davey's house and sought to peer in at

      the open door. Without waiting for the cab to draw up to the curb,

      Nayland Smith recklessly leaped out and I followed close at his heels.

      "What has happened?" he demanded breathlessly of a constable.

      The latter glanced at him doubtfully, but something in his voice and

      bearing commanded respect.

      "Sir Crichton Davey has been killed, sir."

      Smith lurched back as though he had received a physical blow, and

      clutched my shoulder convulsively. Beneath the heavy tan his face had

      blanched, and his eyes were set in a stare of horror.

      "My God!" he whispered. "I am too late!"

      With clenched fists he turned and, pressing through the group of

      loungers, bounded up the steps. In the hall a man who unmistakably was

      a Scotland Yard official stood talking to a footman. Other members of

      the household were moving about, more or less aimlessly, and the chilly

      hand of King Fear had touched one and all, for, as they came and went,

      they glanced ever over their shoulders, as if each shadow cloaked a

      menace, and listened, as it seemed, for some sound which they dreaded

      to

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