ry
American with his tales of witch-lights and haunted abbeys has been
playing the devil with our nerves."

Together we waited by the gate until the half-caste appeared on the bend
of the path with a grip in either hand. He was a great, muscular fellow
with a stoic face, and, for the purpose of visiting Saul, presumably,
he had doffed his white raiment and now wore a sort of livery, with a
peaked cap.

Smith watched him enter the house. Then:

"I wonder where Van Roon obtains his provisions and so forth," he
muttered. "It's odd they knew nothing about the new tenant of Cragmire
Tower at 'The Wagoners.'"

There came a sort of sudden expectancy into his manner for which I found
myself at a loss to account. He turned his gaze inland and stood there
tugging at his left ear and clicking his teeth together. He stared at
me, and his eyes looked very bright in the dusk, for a sort of red glow
from the sunset touched them; but he spoke no word, merely taking my
arm and leading me off on a rambling walk around and about the house.
Neither of us spoke a word until we stood at the gate of Cragmire Tower
again; then:

"I'll swear, now, that we were followed here today!" muttered Smith.

The lofty place immediately within the doorway proved, in the light of a
lamp now fixed in an iron bracket, to be a square entrance hall meagerly
furnished. The closed study door faced the entrance, and on the left of
it ascended an open staircase up which the mulatto led the way. We found
ourselves on the floor above, in a corridor traversing the house from
back to front. An apartment on the immediate left was indicated by the
mulatto as that allotted to Smith. It was a room of fair size, furnished
quite simply but boasting a wardrobe cupboard, and Smith's grip stood
beside the white enameled bed. I glanced around, and then prepared to
follow the man, who had awaited me in the doorway.

He still wore his dark livery, and as I followed the lithe,
broad-shouldered figure along the corridor, I found myself considering
critically his breadth of shoulder and the extraordinary thickness of
his neck.

I have repeatedly spoken of a sort of foreboding, an elusive stirring in
the depths of my being of which I became conscious at certain times
in my dealings with Dr. Fu-Manchu and his murderous servants. This
sensation, or something akin to it, claimed me now, unaccountably, as
I stood looking into the neat bedroom, on the same side of the corridor