“Certainly.”

“Then you have some idea respecting Karamaneh’s quarry?”

“Nothing of the kind!”

Smith shrugged his shoulders.

“Come along, Petrie,” he said, linking his arm in mine.

We proceeded.  Many questions there were that I wanted to put to him, but one above all.

“Smith,” I said, “what, in Heaven’s name, were you doing on the mound?  Digging something up?”

“No,” he replied, smiling dryly; “burying something!”

CHAPTER VI

UNDER THE ELMS

Dusk found Nayland Smith and me at the top bedroom window.  We knew, now that poor Forsyth’s body had been properly examined, that he had died from poisoning.  Smith, declaring that I did not deserve his confidence, had refused to confide in me his theory of the origin of the peculiar marks upon the body.

“On the soft ground under the trees,” he said, “I found his tracks right up to the point where something happened.  There were no other fresh tracks for several yards around.  He was attacked as he stood close to the trunk of one of the elms.  Six or seven feet away I found some other tracks, very much like this.”

He marked a series of dots upon the blotting pad at his elbow.

“Claws!” I cried.  “That eerie call! like the call of a nighthawk—­is it some unknown species of—­flying thing?”

“We shall see, shortly; possibly to-night,” was his reply.  “Since, probably owing to the absence of any moon, a mistake was made,” his jaw hardened at the thoughts of poor Forsyth—­“another attempt along the same lines will almost certainly follow—­you know Fu-Manchu’s system?”

So in the darkness, expectant, we sat watching the group of nine elms.  To-night the moon was come, raising her Aladdin’s lamp up to the star world and summoning magic shadows into being.  By midnight the highroad showed deserted, the common was a place of mystery; and save for the periodical passage of an electric car, in blazing modernity, this was a fit enough stage for an eerie drama.

No notice of the tragedy had appeared in print; Nayland Smith was vested with powers to silence the press.  No detectives, no special constables, were posted.  My friend was of opinion that the publicity which had been given to the deeds of Dr. Fu-Manchu in the past, together with the sometimes clumsy co-operation of the police, had contributed not a little to the Chinaman’s success.

“There is only one thing to fear,” he jerked suddenly; “he may not be ready for another attempt to-night.”

“Why?”

“Since he has only been in England for a short time, his menagerie of venomous things may be a limited one at present.”

Earlier in the evening there had been a brief but violent thunderstorm, with a tropical downpour of rain, and now clouds were scudding across the blue of the sky.  Through a temporary rift in the veiling the crescent of the moon looked down upon us.  It had a greenish tint, and it set me thinking of the filmed, green eyes of Fu-Manchu.