Nayland Smith held me in a vise-like grip, silent, unmoved!
Louder and more agonized came the cry for aid, and I became more than ever certain that it was poor Van Roon who uttered it.
“Mr. Smith! Dr. Petrie! for God’s sake come... or... it will be ... too... late...”
“Smith!” I said, turning furiously upon my friend, “if you are going to remain here whilst murder is done, I am not!”
My blood boiled now with hot resentment. It was incredible, inhuman, that we should remain there inert whilst a fellow man, and our host to boot, was being done to death out there in the darkness. I exerted all my strength to break away; but although my efforts told upon him, as his loud breathing revealed, Nayland Smith clung to me tenaciously. Had my hands been free, in my fury, I could have struck him, for the pitiable cries, growing fainter, now, told their own tale. Then Smith spoke shortly and angrily—breathing hard between the words.
“Be quiet, you fool!” he snapped; “it’s little less than an insult, Petrie, to think me capable of refusing help where help is needed!”
Like a cold douche his words acted; in that instant I knew myself a fool.
“You remember the Call of Siva?” he said, thrusting me away irritably, “—two years ago, and what it meant to those who obeyed it?”
“You might have told me...”
“Told you! You would have been through the window before I had uttered two words!”