d been
genuine enough. Thus my mind worked, feverishly; such was the effect of
an unspoken thought--Fu-Manchu.

Nayland Smith's grip tightened on my arm.

"There it is again, Petrie!" he whispered.

"Look, look!"

His words were wholly unnecessary. I, too, had seen it; a wonderful and
uncanny sight. Out of the darkness under the elms, low down upon the
ground, grew a vaporous blue light. It flared up, elfinish, then
began to ascend. Like an igneous phantom, a witch flame, it rose,
high--higher--higher, to what I adjudged to be some twelve feet or more
from the ground. Then, high in the air, it died away again as it had
come!

"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
it 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
neighboring 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 the highroad 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, with 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 byway, holding a loaded pistol in
my hand, the whole thing became utterly unreal.

It was in an odd