The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer Page A

mingled the heavy perfume of the little
nocturnal red flowers which bloomed luxuriantly upon the
creeper.
    The place looked a veritable wilderness, and when we were
admitted to the hall by Inspector Weymouth I saw that the interior
was in keeping with the exterior, for the hall was constructed from
the model of some apartment in an Assyrian temple, and the squat
columns, the low seats, the hangings, all were eloquent of neglect,
being thickly dust-coated. The musty smell, too, was almost as
pronounced here as outside, beneath the trees.
    To a library, whose contents overflowed in many literary
torrents upon the floor, the detective conducted us.
    "Good heavens!" I cried, "what's that?"
    Something leaped from the top of the bookcase, ambled silently
across the littered carpet, and passed from the library like a
golden streak. I stood looking after it with startled eyes.
Inspector Weymouth laughed dryly.
    "It's a young puma, or a civet-cat, or something, Doctor," he
said. "This house is full of surprises-and mysteries."
    His voice was not quite steady, I thought, and he carefully
closed the door ere proceeding further.
    "Where is he?" asked Nayland Smith harshly. "How was it
done?"
    Weymouth sat down and lighted a cigar which I offered him.
    "I thought you would like to hear what led up to it-so far as we
know-before seeing him?"
    Smith nodded.
    "Well," continued the Inspector, "the man you arranged to send
down from the Yard got here all right and took up a post in the
road outside, where he could command a good view of the gates. He
saw and heard nothing, until going on for half-past ten, when a
young lady turned up and went in."
    "A young lady?"
    "Miss Edmonds, Sir Lionel's shorthand typist. She had found,
after getting home, that her bag, with her purse in, was missing,
and she came back to see if she had left it here. She gave the
alarm. My man heard the row from the road and came in. Then he ran
out and rang us up. I immediately wired for you."
    "He heard the row, you say. What row?"
    "Miss Edmonds went into violent hysterics!"
    Smith was pacing the room now in tense excitement.
    "Describe what he saw when he came in."
    "He saw a negro footman-there isn't an Englishman in the
house-trying to pacify the girl out in the hall yonder, and a Malay
and another colored man beating their foreheads and howling. There
was no sense to be got out of any of them, so he started to
investigate for himself. He had taken the bearings of the place
earlier in the evening, and from the light in a window on the
ground floor had located the study; so he set out to look for the
door. When he found it, it was locked from the inside."
    "Well?"
    "He went out and round to the window. There's no blind, and from
the shrubbery you can see into the lumber-room known as the study.
He looked in, as apparently Miss Edmonds had done before him. What
he saw accounted for her hysterics."
    Both Smith and I were hanging upon his words.
    "All amongst the rubbish on the floor a big Egyptian mummy case
was lying on its side, and face downwards, with his arms thrown
across it, lay Sir Lionel Barton."
    "My God! Yes. Go on."
    "There was only a shaded reading-lamp alight, and it stood on a
chair, shining right down on him; it made a patch of light on the
floor, you understand." The Inspector indicated its extent with his
hands. "Well, as the man smashed the glass and got the window open,
and was just climbing in, he saw something else, so he says."
    He paused.
    "What did he see?" demanded Smith shortly.
    "A sort of GREEN MIST, sir. He says it seemed to be alive. It
moved over the floor, about a foot from the ground, going away from
him and towards a curtain at the other end of the study."
    Nayland Smith fixed his eyes upon the speaker.
    "Where did he first see this green mist?"
    "He says, Mr. Smith, that he thinks it came from the mummy
case."
    "Yes; go on."
    "It is to his credit that he climbed into the room after seeing
a thing like that. He did. He turned the body