“Smith!” I cried—“Smith!”
“Coming!”
Seriously doubting my senses, I looked in the direction from which the voice had seemed to proceed—and there was Nayland Smith.
He stood on the islet in the center of the pond, and, as I perceived him, he walked down into the shallow water and waded across to me!
“Good heavens!” I began—
One of his rare laughs interrupted me.
“You must think me mad this morning, Petrie!” he said. “But I have made several discoveries. Do you know what that islet in the pond really is?”
“Merely an islet, I suppose—”
“Nothing of the kind; it is a burial mound, Petrie! It marks the site of one of the Plague Pits where victims were buried during the Great Plague of London. You will observe that, although you have seen it every morning for some years, it remains for a British Commissioner resident in Burma to acquaint you with its history! Hullo!”—the laughter was gone from his eyes, and they were steely hard again—“what the blazes have we here!”
He picked up the net. “What! a bird trap!”