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?”