I completely closed my eyes.
Delicate fingers touched my right eyelid.
Divining what was coming, I rolled my eyes up, as the lid was adroitly lifted and lowered again.
The man moved away.
I had saved the situation!
And noting anew the hush about me—a hush in which I fancied many pairs of ears listened—I was glad.
For just a moment I realized fully how, with the place watched back and front, we yet were cut off, were in the hands of Far Easterns, to some extent in the power of members of that most inscrutably mysterious race, the Chinese.
"Good," whispered Smith at my side.
"I don't think I could have done it.
He took me on trust after that.
My God! what an awful face.
Petrie, it's the hunchback of Cadby's notes.
Ah, I thought so.
Do you see that?"
I turned my eyes round as far as was possible. A man had scrambled down from one of the bunks and was following the bent figure across the room.
They passed around us quietly, the little yellow man leading, with his curious, lithe gait, and the other, an impassive Chinaman, following.
The curtain was raised, and I heard footsteps receding on the stairs.
"Don't stir," whispered Smith.
An intense excitement was clearly upon him, and he communicated it to me.
Who was the occupant of the room above?
Footsteps on the stair, and the Chinaman reappeared, recrossed the floor, and went out.
The little, bent man went over to another bunk, this time leading up the stair one who looked like a lascar.
"Did you see his right hand?" whispered Smith.
"A dacoit!
They come here to report and to take orders.
Petrie, Dr. Fu-Manchu is up there."
"What shall we do?"—softly.
"Wait.
Then we must try to rush the stairs.
It would be futile to bring in the police first.
He is sure to have some other exit.
I will give the word while the little yellow devil is down here.
You are nearer and will have to go first, but if the hunchback follows, I can then deal with him."
Our whispered colloquy was interrupted by the return of the dacoit, who recrossed the room as the Chinaman had done, and immediately took his departure.
A third man, whom Smith identified as a Malay, ascended the mysterious stairs, descended, and went out; and a fourth, whose nationality it was impossible to determine, followed.
Then, as the softly moving usher crossed to a bunk on the right of the outer door—
"Up you go, Petrie," cried Smith, for further delay was dangerous and further dissimulation useless.
I leaped to my feet.
Snatching my revolver from the pocket of the rough jacket I wore, I bounded to the stair and went blundering up in complete darkness.
A chorus of brutish cries clamored from behind, with a muffled scream rising above them all.
But Nayland Smith was close behind as I raced along a covered gangway, in a purer air, and at my heels when I crashed open a door at the end and almost fell into the room beyond.
What I saw were merely a dirty table, with some odds and ends upon it of which I was too excited to take note, an oil-lamp swung by a brass chain above, and a man sitting behind the table.
But from the moment that my gaze rested upon the one who sat there, I think if the place had been an Aladdin's palace I should have had no eyes for any of its wonders.
He wore a plain yellow robe, of a hue almost identical with that of his smooth, hairless countenance.
His hands were large, long and bony, and he held them knuckles upward, and rested his pointed chin upon their thinness.
He had a great, high brow, crowned with sparse, neutral-colored hair.
Of his face, as it looked out at me over the dirty table, I despair of writing convincingly.
It was that of an archangel of evil, and it was wholly dominated by the most uncanny eyes that ever reflected a human soul, for they were narrow and long, very slightly oblique, and of a brilliant green.
But their unique horror lay in a certain filminess (it made me think of the membrana nictitans in a bird) which, obscuring them as I threw wide the door, seemed to lift as I actually passed the threshold, revealing the eyes in all their brilliant iridescence.
I know that I stopped dead, one foot within the room, for the malignant force of the man was something surpassing my experience.