CHAPTER II

THE MAN WITH THE LIMP

“Lock the door!” said Smith significantly, as we stepped into the
corridor.

I did so and had turned to join my friend when, to the accompaniment of
a sort of hysterical muttering, a door further along, and on the
opposite side of the corridor, was suddenly thrown open, and a man whose
face showed ghastly white in the light of the solitary lamp beyond,
literally hurled himself out. He perceived Smith and myself immediately.
Throwing one glance back over his shoulder he came tottering forward to
meet us.

“My God! I can’t stand it any longer!” he babbled, and threw himself
upon Smith, who was foremost, clutching pitifully at him for support.
“Come in and see him, sir, for Heaven’s sake come in! I think he’s
dying; and he’s going mad. I never disobeyed an order in my life before,
but I can’t help myself—I can’t help myself!”

“Brace up!” I cried, seizing him by the shoulders as, still clutching at
Nayland Smith, he turned his ghastly face to me. “Who are you, and
what’s your trouble?”

“I’m Beeton, Sir Gregory Hale’s man.”

Smith started visibly, and his gaunt, tanned face seemed to me to have
grown perceptibly paler.

“Come on, Petrie!” he snapped. “There’s some devilry here.”

Thrusting Beeton aside he rushed in at the open door—upon which, as I
followed him, I had time to note the number, 14a. It communicated with a
suite of rooms almost identical with our own. The sitting-room was empty
and in the utmost disorder, but from the direction of the principal
bedroom came a most horrible mumbling and gurgling sound—a sound
utterly indescribable. For one instant we hesitated at the
threshold—hesitated to face the horror beyond; then almost side by side
we came into the bedroom. . . .

Only one of the two lamps was alight—that above the bed; and on the bed
a man lay writhing. He was incredibly gaunt, so that the suit of
tropical twill which he wore hung upon him in folds, showing, if such
evidence were necessary, how terribly he was fallen away from his
constitutional habit. He wore a beard of at least ten days’ growth,
which served to accentuate the cavitous hollowness of his face. His eyes
seemed starting from their sockets as he lay upon his back uttering
inarticulate sounds and plucking with skinny fingers at his lips.

Smith bent forward peering into the wasted face; and then started back
with a suppressed cry.

“Merciful God! can it be Hale?” he muttered. “What does it mean? what
does it mean?”

I ran to the opposite side of the bed, and placing my arms under the
writhing man, raised him and propped a pillow at his back. He continued
to babble, rolling his eyes from side to side hideously; then by degrees
they seemed to become less glazed, and a light of returning sanity
entered them. They became fixed; and they were fixed upon Nayland Smith,
who, bending over the bed, was watching Sir Gregory (for Sir Gregory I
concluded this pitiable wreck to be) with an expression upon his face
compound of many emotions.

“A glass of water,” I said, catching the glance of the man Beeton, who
stood trembling at the open doorway.

Spilling a liberal quantity upon the carpet, Beeton ultimately succeeded
in conveying the glass to me. Hale, never taking his gaze from Smith,
gulped a little of the water and then thrust my hand away. As I turned
to place the tumbler upon a small table he resumed the wordless
babbling, and now, with his index finger, pointed to his mouth.

“He has lost the power of speech!” whispered Smith.

“He was stricken dumb, gentlemen, ten minutes ago,” said Beeton in a
trembling voice. “He dropped off to sleep out there on the floor, and I
brought him in here and laid him on the bed. When he woke up he was like
that!”

The man on the bed ceased his inchoate babbling and now, gulping
noisily, began to make quick nervous movements with his hands.

“He wants to write something,” said Smith in a low voice. “Quick! hold
him up!”

He thrust his notebook, open at a blank page, before the man whose
moments were numbered, and placed a pencil in the shaking right hand.

Faintly and unevenly Sir Gregory commenced to write—whilst I supported
him. Across the bent shoulders Smith silently questioned me, and my
reply was a negative shake of the head.

The lamp above the bed was swaying as if in a heavy draught; I
remembered that it had been swaying as we entered. There was no fog in
the room, but already from the bleak corridor outside it was entering;
murky, yellow clouds streaming in at the open door. Save for the gulping
of the dying man, and the sobbing breaths of Beeton, there was no sound.
Six irregular lines Sir Gregory Hale scrawled upon the page; then
suddenly his body became a dead weight in my arms. Gently I laid him
back upon the pillows, gently disengaged his fingers from the notebook,
and, my head almost touching Smith’s as we both craned forward over the
page, read, with great difficulty, the following:—

“Guard brass box. . . . Tibetan frontier . . . Key of India.
Beware man . . . with the limp. Yellow . . . rising. Watch Tibet
. . . the _Si-Fan_. . . .”

From somewhere outside the room, whether above or below I could not be
sure, came a faint dragging sound, accompanied by a
_tap—tap—tap_. . . .