"For God's sake, Smith, what was it?"

"Don't ask me, Petrie. I have seen it twice. We--"

He paused. Rapid footsteps sounded below. Over Smith's shoulder I saw
Forsyth cross the road, climb the low rail, and set out across the
common.

Smith sprang impetuously to his feet.

"We must stop him!" he said hoarsely; then, clapping a hand to my
mouth as I was about to call out--"Not a sound, Petrie!"

He ran out of the room and went blundering downstairs in the dark,
crying:

"Out through the garden--the side entrance!"

I overtook him as he threw wide the door of my dispensing room.
Through he ran and opened the door at the other end. I followed him
out, closing it behind me. The smell from some tobacco plants in a
neighbouring flower-bed was faintly perceptible; no breeze stirred;
and in the great silence I could hear Smith, in front of me, tugging
at the bolt of the gate.

Then he had it open, and I stepped out, close on his heels, and left
the door ajar.

"We must not appear to have come from your house," explained Smith
rapidly. "I will go along to the high-road and cross to the common a
hundred yards up, where there is a pathway, as though homeward bound
to the north side. Give me half a minute's start, then you proceed in
an opposite direction and cross from the corner of the next road.
Directly you are out of the light of the street lamps, get over the
rails and run for the elms!"

He thrust a pistol into my hand and was off.

While he had been with me, speaking in that incisive impetuous way of
his, his dark face close to mine, and his eyes gleaming like steel, I
had been at one with him in his feverish mood, but now, when I stood
alone in that staid and respectable by-way, holding a loaded pistol in
my hand, the whole thing became utterly unreal.

It was in an odd frame of mind that I walked to the next corner, as
directed, for I was thinking, not of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the great and evil
man who dreamed of Europe and America under Chinese rule, not of
Nayland Smith, who alone stood between the Chinaman and the
realization of his monstrous schemes, not even of Kâramanèh, the slave
girl, whose glorious beauty was a weapon of might in Fu-Manchu's
hand, but of what impression I must have made upon a patient had I
encountered one then.

Such were my ideas up to the moment that I crossed to the common and
vaulted into the field on my right. As I began to run toward the elms
I found myself wondering what it was all about, and for what we were
come. Fifty yards west of the trees it occurred to me that if Smith
had counted on cutting Forsyth off we were too late, for it appeared
to me that he must already be in the coppice.

I was right. Twenty paces more I ran, and ahead of me, from the elms,
came a sound. Clearly it came through the still air--the eerie hoot of
a nighthawk. I could not recall ever to have heard the cry of that
bird on the common before, but oddly enough I attached little
significance to it until, in the ensuing instant, a most dreadful
scream--a scream in which fear and loathing and anger were hideously
blended--thrilled me with horror.

After that I have no recollection of anything until I found myself
standing by the southernmost elm.

"Smith!" I cried breathlessly. "Smith! my God! where are you?"

As if in answer to my cry came an indescribable sound, a mingled
sobbing and choking. Out from the shadows staggered a ghastly
figure--that of a man whose face appeared to be _streaked_. His eyes
glared at me madly, and he moved the air with his hands like one blind
and insane with fear.

I started back; words died upon my tongue. The figure reeled, and the
man fell babbling and sobbing at my very feet.

Inert I stood, looking down at him. He writhed a moment--and was
still. The silence again became perfect. Then, from somewhere beyond
the elms, Nayland Smith appeared. I did not move. Even when he stood
beside me, I merely stared at him fatuously.

"I let him walk to his death, Petrie," I heard dimly. "God forgive
me--God forgive me!"

The words aroused me.

"Smith"--my voice came as a whisper--"for one awful moment I
thought--"

"So did some one else," he rapped. "Our poor sailor has met the end
designed for _me_, Petrie!"

At that I realized two things: I knew why Forsyth's face had struck me
as being familiar in some puzzling way, and I knew why Forsyth now lay
dead upon the grass. Save that he was a fair man and wore a slight
moustache, he was, in features and build, the double of Nayland Smith!