It seemed that sleep had but just claimed me when I was awakened by some one roughly shaking my shoulder. I sprang upright, my mind alert to sudden danger. The room looked yellow and dismal, illuminated as it was by a cold light of dawn which crept through the window and with which competed the luminance of the electric lamps.
Nayland Smith stood at my bedside, partially dressed!
"Wake up, Petrie!" he cried; "your instincts serve you better than my reasoning. Hell's afoot, old man! Even as you predicted it, perhaps in that same hour, the yellow fiends were at work!"
"What, Smith, what!" I said, leaping out of bed; "you don't mean——"
"Not that, old man," he replied, clapping his hand upon my shoulder; "there is no further news of her, but Weymouth is waiting outside. Sir Baldwin Frazer has disappeared!"
I rubbed my eyes hard and sought to clear my mind of the vapors of sleep.
"Sir Baldwin Frazer!" I said, "of Half-Moon Street? But what——"
"God knows what," snapped Smith; "but our old friend Zarmi, or so it would appear, bore him off last night, and he has completely vanished, leaving practically no trace behind."
Only a few sleeping servants were about as we descended the marble stairs to the lobby of the hotel where Weymouth was awaiting us.
"I have a cab outside from the Yard," he said. "I came straight here to fetch you before going on to Half-Moon Street."