"They have come," Pu-Yi said simply.
"But what has happened?" I whispered, my throat was so dry that the sound was like the rustling of paper.
"I shall know soon. I am going to find out. There is not a minute to lose. Can you, dare you, wait here—"
I nodded and he was out of the room in a flash. Upon the dead man's table was the usual array of bottles and glasses. I took some brandy and gulped it down and my brain cleared instantly. There was a little touch of infinite pathos even in this hideous moment, for by the side of an empty glass I saw a string of beads with a little metal crucifix. The Irishman, a Roman Catholic of course, must have been saying his prayers some time before he met his end. Somehow the thought comforted me and gave me power to act. I found a knife, and cut the bonds that tied the giant to the chair. I lowered him reverently to the floor and finally severed the horrible ligature around his throat. An examination of the steel door in the screen of bars showed that it was securely locked, but the bunch of keys which the dead man usually carried upon a chain was no longer there—the end of the chain dangled from his trousers pocket.
While I was doing these things a most deadly apprehension was standing specter-like by my side and plucking with wan fingers at my sleeve. What had happened, what might even now be happening at the Palacete Mendoza?
Pu-Yi whirled into the room. He made no noise, it was as though a dried leaf had been blown in by the wind. His face was transformed. Every outline was sharpened, and the color was changed until it bore the exact resemblance to a mask of green bronze. In its frozen immobility it was dead, yet awfully alive, and the eyes glittered like little crumbs of diamond.
"Well?"
"I know how it has been done. It is very clever, very clever indeed. Let me tell you that all the power cables connecting us with below have been scientifically cut. We can neither telephone down to the Park nor can we descend to it in one of the lifts. We are isolated up here in the clouds."
"But the men, the staff?" I gasped, and then I stepped back, staring down at his hands. They were all foul and stained with blood.
"Not far away," he said, "there is another body, that of my servant, a youth from my own Province, whom I loved and whom I was educating. He was alive five minutes ago. He had just time to sob out the truth and his repentance."