The Drums of Fu-Manchu (37 page)

The cottage commanded a view of one of the wildest parts of the moor. Immediately in front the ground fell away steeply, boulder-strewn and rugged, to where, far below, a little stream wound its way to the distant Dart. Beyond, it rose gradually to the sky line, and there, stark against a hot blue resembling that of Egypt, was one of those mysterious tors which are a feature of the moors.

* * *

Away to the left were wide expanses with no habitation visible, dotted with boulders like pebbles on a giant beach, and blotched with brilliant green, the blotches marking morasses which had swallowed many a sheep and pony during those heavy mists which sweep over the moor. To the right, through diamond-pure air tropically quivering under a merciless sun, stretched a granite wilderness beyond which lay the big convict prison of Princetown.

As we headed back for the Quarry Inn, Smith very silent, I told myself that by noon the thermometer would register at least eighty-five in the shade, for there was no evidence in the weather reports of any break in the heat wave. Suddenly:

“What do you make of the daughter?” Smith snapped.

I turned, startled by the suddenness of his question.

“She is quite unlike her father in character,” I replied, “and so listless that I should suspect anemia.”

“Anemia!” Smith echoed. “Yes. You may be right. She has a trick of staring straight before her, like a dog whose master is absent. Very queer.”

“Have you learned all you wanted to know?” I asked laughingly; “because. Smith, I was never deceived. From the first you suspected something or other and you have dragged me out here to test your suspicions.”

Smith pulled out his pipe and began to load it as he walked rapidly along—too rapidly for my liking under that merciless sun.

“Right, Petrie,” he admitted; “quite right. But, unfortunately, I don’t know what I did suspect, or what I expected to learn. As it is, I have learned nothing.”

“Also,” I suggested, “you wore hoping to make the further acquaintance of Mr. Pine?”

Nayland Smith nodded.

“That man reminds me of someone or something. I’m sure he’s a link, but I can’t fit him into place—because I don’t know to what chain he belongs! I learned all I could from Marsburg, and it appears that Pine is an American citizen who has acted as one of his two private secretaries for nearly three years now. Pine’s province is the scientific. He assists the old man with his collection, and the preparation of his books and papers. Marsburg assured me that Pine had no mean knowledge of the subject.”

“It’s odd we haven’t seen him.”

“I saw him going out of the Inn this morning. It appears he has gone into Exeter again. Marsburg is expecting an important cablegram.”

* * *

The days wore on uneventfully. We tramped miles over the moor, north, south, east and west, returning healthily tired at night and turning in early, after sharing a drink with the cheery landlord in the bar of the Inn.

Once or twice we sighted Henry Marsburg’s sun helmet gleaming like a giant toadstool amid the stony wastes or had a nearer glimpse of the fern hunter, laden with the paraphernalia of his craft, in some obscure part of the moor. Once he was accompanied by Isola, but of Mr. Pine we saw nothing, although he was actually living under the same roof with us.

Smith, however, had apparently ceased to interest himself in our neighbors, and I had more or less dismissed the eccentric scientist and his household from my mind, when, perhaps by accident, but more probably because Fate had willed it so, their affairs were again thrust upon our notice.

Isola Marsburg came in one morning, very disconsolate, her heavy-lidded eyes tearful, just as Smith and I were setting out with
the idea of following-the course of the little stream to which I have referred to its distant source somewhere on a tor-topped crag.

“Oh, Dr, Petrie!” she said excitedly, “I’m in such trouble…”

“What is the matter?” I cried, a sudden unaccountable fear claiming my mind.

“Jack has disappeared!” she added brokenly.

For a moment I was silent, the name at first conveying nothing to me. Then, suddenly, the solution came. While I was sorry for the girl, I was aware, too, of a wave of relief.

“Your dog!” snapped a voice at my elbow.

Turning, I saw that Nayland Smith had joined us.

“Yes, Sir Denis. I loved him so. We’ve been pals for five years.”

Nayland Smith’s face was very grim, and when he spoke again I realized with surprise that he was not merely trying to be sympathetic, but that he attached almost as great an importance to the girl’s loss as she did herself, for:

“Tell me, Miss Marsburg,” he went on rapidly, “when did you miss the dog?”

“Last night.”

“Did you search?”

“Yes. We all searched for miles around. Father and Mr. Pine are out now, still looking. I came here in the vain hope that you might have found him and brought him back to the Inn.”

* * *

She bit her lip, restraining tears with difficulty. We walked back part of the way with her, meeting old miss Ugglestone, their resident housekeeper, vigorously prodding a big stick into every bush that might have concealed the body of a dog.

The episode left an unpleasant impression, heightened by
Nayland Smith’s manner. And when presently we resumed our original route:

“I don’t like it, Petrie,” he said. “Why should a good watchdog like that wander away from the cottage?”

“What are you suggesting?” said I guardedly: “that the dog has been stolen?”

“Well,” he snapped, “I’m not prepared to believe that a highly intelligent dog would voluntarily walk into a mire. But short of his being stolen, or lured away—which is the same thing—what other explanation remains?”

We went on, in silence. At points we walked in a narrow ravine, overhung by foliage, the little stream dancing and gurgling at our very feet. Then the ravine would widen out and great boulders flank our path, until presently, hot and tired, we pulled up for a rest.

“According to the big map,” said Nayland Smith, “at somewhere about here, I imagine over the top yonder, there’s an ancient mine-working dating back to very early times. Shall we explore and have a look at it?”

I agreed. And climbing steeply up from the stream, across a sparsely vegetated slope with great up-crops of granite, we found ourselves at the edge of what was evidently a deserted quarry.

“Phew!” Smith whistled. “Dangerous!”

We pulled up, staring into the depths. There was a clearly marked path, below, to the left, bordering a bright green patch which I strongly suspected to be morass. This path was lost in the shadows, below, but wound out of the artificial gully of the quarry in the direction of a little valley dotted with those primitive stone huts which mark the abode of some vanished race.

“The mine-working is somewhere beyond the huts,” said Smith. “But how the devil do we get to the bottom without breaking our necks?”

“There’s the way,” said I, triumphantly, and pointed.

It was a detour of a quarter of a mile. Nayland Smith stared, shading his eyes with upraised hand; then:

“You’re right, Petrie,” he agreed. “Come on.”

* * *

We plodded on our way, and I knew that the thermometer was rising at least two degrees an hour. Presently we found ourselves on the narrow path which we had seen from above, and which hugged the walls of the granite cliff quarried out in some past time, and skirted the edge of a treacherous bog which, under that tropical sun, exhaled a visible mist.

“Phew!” said Nayland Smith, taking off his hat and mopping his forehead. “By heavens! We might be in Burma.”

The artificial cliff faced due south, and literally danced with the heat. Around its base clustered rank vegetation. The place was alive with flies and there were cavern-like, unwholesome hollows in the rock. I suppose these conditions had been created by weeks of unprecedented heat, but the entire atmosphere of the place was inherently unwholesome, so that I was glad to find myself upon the open moor and headed for the stone huts.

At the first of these, Smith paused, curiously.

“Have you ever realized, Petrie,” he said, “how utterly beyond the power of our imagination it is to conjure up the lives of the men and women who lived in these places?
How
did they live? What were their aims? Who were their enemies? What shared the moor with them in those days?”

He crossed the dense black shadow patch of the opening and entered that weird prehistoric home. I was about to follow, when:

“Petrie!” came hoarsely—“Petrie!”

I sprang forward. Smith grasped my arm for a second with a hand that quivered… then, bending down, he pointed.

There, where blazing sunlight poured over the ruined walls onto the floor, lay the body of Jack—Isola Marsburg’s dog!

* * *

I shall never forget the expression on Smith’s drawn face, although I despair of describing it, when presently he arose from his knees. His jaws were tightly clenched and his eyes danced in a sort of mad irritation.

“Do you see it, Petrie? Do you see it?”

He was pointing to the poor brute’s muzzle, as it lay against the stone floor in a pool of foamy slaver. Mixed up with this, and visible also in patches upon the animal’s head, was a quantity of some bright purple powder.

I examined the victim closely, gingerly touching the strange powder with my finger and scrutinizing it with interest.

“I shouldn’t taste it, Petrie,” said Smith grimly.

“I don’t intend to,” I assured him. “The poor brute has been poisoned with this, whatever it is… But, hello! What have we here?”

I had noticed a mark on the neck of the dog, visible through the sweat-clotted hair. I parted the hair carefully with my fingers, bending low over the body.

“Purple marks,” I reported, “dullish, not unlike bruises.”

“What’s that?” Smith almost shouted. I turned and looked at him. His eyes were blazing, now; his interest was intense. He got to his knees beside me.

“I have found three,” I went on, “here and here—look! And there’s a fourth!”

“And you will find a
fifth
,” he said slowly, “you will find a
fifth
…”

I looked—and it was true!

“It’s the Mark of the Monkey!” he whispered.

“Smith!” I said sharply, and grasped his arm. “If you know how this dog died, for heaven’s sake tell me, because I have never seen a similar condition in all my experience.”

“I don’t suppose you have, Petrie,” he returned, and looked at me in a weary way. “Does the arrangement of the marks suggest anything to you?”

“Certainly! They resemble those which would be made by the grasp of a very small hand…”

“Such as the hand of a monkey?”

“Exactly.”

“That is why this thing is called the Mark of the Monkey.”

“But what is it?”

Nayland Smith shook his head.

“It is known in Nepal as the Hanuman Death, and is reputed to come to those who excite the anger of the Sacred Monkeys.”

“But this purple froth?”

“I cannot account for that. Hitherto I have seen only one victim of the Hanuman Death or the Mark of the Monkey, as it is known in Burma. Although the man had evidently died in convulsions, the same purple stuff was present. But here, in England, what the devil does it mean, Petrie? You are sure it’s poison?”

“I could swear to it. And this,” I brushed the purple dust from my finger, “is the medium used.”

* * *

Nayland Smith began to examine the hut with close attention.

“The dog didn’t find it here,” he said. “He ran in from somewhere else. Look at the trail of saliva.”

I had already noted it, and merely nodded. “He was poisoned, therefore, somewhere else, but presumably somewhere not far away.”

I agreed.

“Therefore, the outstanding fact is this: that the dog died from some unknown poison, yesterday evening, at approximately four miles from his temporary home.” Smith tugged at his ear and stared at me almost fiercely. “What is the curious point that occurs to you?”

“That anyone,” I replied immediately, “who desired to poison the dog should take the animal four miles to do it.”

“Right!” said Smith. “Any explanation?”

“An obvious one,” I replied. “That the body should not be found.”

Nayland Smith stepped out of the hut and stood looking about him; then:

“I object to ‘obvious,’” he returned. “The widest and deepest mire on Dartmoor lies three miles nearer to the cottage and is more accessible in every way.” He looked at me. “Any other suggestions?”

“No!” I confessed, blankly. Your objection—and now others occur to me—leaves me defeated. So does the purpose of such a cruel, useless outrage”

“That’s my difficulty,” Smith snapped. “I think I can get over the other.”

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter now, and I may be wrong, but the significance of this lies not in how it was accomplished, but why it was undertaken. The minor point we must endeavor to clear up first. Work back, Petrie,” he directed, “towards the quarry. I’ll take the other route towards the mine.”

“But what am I looking for?”

“Purple powder,” he jerked. “Any trace of it, anywhere.”

I set off. For fifteen or twenty minutes I searched in vain. Presently,
hot and weary, turning and looking back, I saw Nayland Smith coming to rejoin me.

“Any luck?” I challenged.

He shook his head savagely.

“What now?”

“Back to the quarry, as fast as we can get there—I’ll think on the way.”

We retraced the path by which we had descended, exchanging never a word until we had reached that point on the top of the quarry from which we had had our first glimpse of the stone huts. Here we paused, for a moment… and suddenly Smith’s muscular grip dug viciously into my arm. It was needless for him to speak.

Silhouetted against the blazing sun, so that details were indistinguishable, a figure was moving over the slope below!

Even as I saw him he disappeared in the direction of the huts. Smith pulled me back from the crest, and:

“Quick!” he said. “I only hope we weren’t seen!”

He began to race down the slope at a tremendous pace, and, at last, exhaustedly: