I leaped forward to my friend’s aid; but as though the blows had been those of a feather, he stood like some figure of archaic statuary, nor for an instant relaxed the death grip which he had upon his adversary’s throat.
Thrusting my way up the stairs, I wrenched the stick from the hand of the dacoit—for in this glistening brown man, I recognized one of that deadly brotherhood who hailed Dr. Fu-Manchu their Lord and Master.
I cannot dwell upon the end of that encounter; I cannot hope to make acceptable to my readers an account of how Nayland Smith, glassy-eyed, and with consciousness ebbing from him instant by instant, stood there, a realization of Leighton’s “Athlete,” his arms rigid as iron bars even after Fu-Manchu’s servant hung limply in that frightful grip.
In his last moments of consciousness, with the blood from his wounded head trickling down into his eyes, he pointed to the stick which I had torn from the grip of the dacoit, and which I still held in my hand.
“Not Aaron’s rod, Petrie!” he gasped hoarsely—“the rod of Moses!—Slattin’s stick!”
Even in upon my anxiety for my friend, amazement intruded.
“But,” I began—and turned to the rack in which Slattin’s favorite cane at that moment reposed—had reposed at the time of his death.
Yes!—there stood Slattin’s cane; we had not moved it; we had disturbed nothing in that stricken house; there it stood, in company with an umbrella and a malacca.
I glanced at the cane in my hand. Surely there could not be two such in the world?