Smith bent to my ear.
“Fu-Manchu has chastised one of his servants,” he whispered. “There will be food for the grappling-irons to-night!”
I shuddered violently, for, without Smith’s words, I knew that a bloody deed had been done in that house within a few yards of where we stood.
In the new silence, I could hear the drip, drip, drip of the rain outside the window; then a steam siren hooted dismally upon the river, and I thought how the screw of that very vessel, even as we listened, might be tearing the body of Fu-Manchu’s servant!
“Have you some one waiting?” whispered Smith, eagerly.
“How long was I insensible?”
“About half an hour.”
“Then the cabman will be waiting.”
“Have you a whistle with you?”
I felt in my coat pocket.