or pain, than the reality
whereof it is a mental forecast; but that inactive waiting at Redmoat,
for the blow which we knew full well to be pending exceeded in its
nerve taxation, anything I hitherto had experienced.

I felt as one bound upon an Aztec altar, with the priest's obsidian
knife raised above my breast!

Secret and malign forces throbbed about us; forces against which we had
no armor. Dreadful as it was, I count it a mercy that the climax was
reached so quickly. And it came suddenly enough; for there in that
quiet Norfolk home we found ourselves at hand grips with one of the
mysterious horrors which characterized the operations of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
It was upon us before we realized it. There is no incidental music to
the dramas of real life.

As we sat on the little terrace in the creeping twilight, I remember
thinking how the peace of the scene gave the lie to my fears that we
bordered upon tragic things. Then Caesar, who had been a docile
patient all day, began howling again; and I saw Greba Eltham shudder.

I caught Smith's eye, and was about to propose our retirement indoors,
when the party was broken up in more turbulent fashion. I suppose it
was the presence of the girl which prompted Denby to the rash act, a
desire personally to distinguish himself. But, as I recalled
afterwards, his gaze had rarely left the shrubbery since dusk, save to
seek her face, and now he leaped wildly to his feet, overturning his
chair, and dashed across the grass to the trees.

"Did you see it?" he yelled. "Did you see it?"

He evidently carried a revolver. For from the edge of the shrubbery a
shot sounded, and in the flash we saw Denby with the weapon raised.

"Greba, go in and fasten the windows," cried Eltham. "Mr. Smith, will
you enter the bushes from the west. Dr. Petrie, east. Edwards,
Edwards--" And he was off across the lawn with the nervous activity of
a cat.

As I made off in an opposite direction I heard the gardener's voice
from the lower gate, and I saw Eltham's plan. It was to surround the
shrubbery.

Two more shots and two flashes from the dense heart of greenwood. Then
a loud cry--I thought, from Denby--and a second, muffled one.

Following--silence, only broken by the howling of the mastiff.

I sprinted through the rose garden, leaped heedlessly over a bed of
geranium and heliotrope, and plunged in among the bushes and under the
elms. Away on the left I heard Edwards shouting, and Elt