Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 36, No. 4, October 20, 1928

What he expected to see there I cannot say. The white-coated milkman with his wagon bore no semblance to the redoubtable master of crime we sought, and there was no one else in sight but an old man being pushed by a nurse in a bath-chair and two children playing with a toy tricycle.

Pennington strode up to him and pulled him round by the fringed ends of a preposterous green scarf that wound round and round his scraggy neck and deputized for a collar and tie.

“What was this address in Hoxton, Joe?” he demanded.

The other shook his head.

“I can’t tell you no more,” he moaned. “Straight I can’t.”

“Can you take us there?” I interposed.

The question seemed to throw him into a greater panic than ever, and he trembled visibly.

“Not for a million pounds!” he asserted. “Not if you was to put in my ’ands!” His manner changed suddenly and he looked me straight in the eyes. “I ain’t afraid of death, guv’nor; I’ve seen it too often. It’s not just plain, ordinary death I’m scared of — knives or a gun — or drownin’ at sea.

“In a way that’s natural; an’ it’s quick. But when ’e kills, it comes to you slowly—’orribly! ’E finds you alone somewhere — in the dark, and lets you feel it comin’ — and when it comes it ain’t finished!”

Pennington nodded.

“Do you know what will happen to you, Joe, if you fail to carry out Chanda-Lung’s commands?” he jerked out quickly.

Mortimer gulped.

“The Crimson Death!” he answered huskily.

We exchanged glances. It was the first definite fact we had elicited that morning.

“And what’s that like, Joe?” boomed out Hodges from the middle of the room.

A wild cry escaped Joe’s lips. The index finger of his right hand, short and stubby and dark as mahogany, indicated a first-floor window of the opposite house. Brought to the window in a body, we saw the vague outline of a head and shoulders vanishing into the inner darkness.

Pennington nudged me.

“Did you see those eyes?” he queried excitedly. “Mortimer was right, old son. That’s Chanda-Lung himself — or I’m a Dutchman. Who lives in that house?”

“People named Henderson. They’re away, I believe. The gardener looks after it.”

He was out of the room and down the stairs like a shot, with Hodges lumbering at his heels. I followed as far as the landing and remembered Parsons. He called to me as I looked back into the room.

“All right, Gray. You carry on. I’ll stop.”

The others were already in the garden of the empty house by the time I caught them. Our insistent knocking bringing no response, Hodges squeezed in by a loose window at the back and admitted us by the side door. I glanced in at the kitchen as I passed.

It was white tiled and beautifully clean; in the scullery at the far end a tap was dripping. Something, protruding just beyond the door that separated these two rooms, caught my attention. It was the sole of a hobnailed boot. In a less tidy place I might not have noticed it.

I slipped back and recoiled in amazement from the huddled form to which the boot was attached — the lifeless corpse of the Henderson’s gardener, with glassy eyes staring up at a very white ceiling and a series of vivid crimson marks around his throat!

For minutes on end I stared at him, rooted to the spot in mute horror. The sound of the others coming down roused me to action.

“There’s nothing there,” Hodges was saying. “You’re certain you saw him, Mr. Pennington? It might have been a trick of Mortimer’s to get us away so that he could bolt.”

“Here!” I called. “Both of you I Quick!”

“What is it?” asked Pennington, coming in at the kitchen door.

“The Crimson Death!” I answered.

It was queer that! I scarcely remembered framing the words — and yet the expression came to me quite glibly. Either this fresh product of the ingenuity of Chanda-Lung was aptly named, or I was merely echoing Mortimer’s words.

Pennington uttered an exclamation and dropped on his knees beside me. Hodges leaned against the door, mopping his forehead.

“Poor devil!” he ejaculated. “I supposed he’s snuffed out?”

Pennington looked up.

“Clean out!” he diagnosed. “Been dead for the past hour or more. Search the top floor again thoroughly, Hodges, we may have missed something. Gray, you nip out into the grounds.”

The words were hardly out of his mouth when a crashing of glass sounded above us, followed by a duller noise outside. We reached the pavement in a bunch, in time to see a long saloon car streaking off into the distance.

It must have come at some mysterious signal from a turning and slowed down for our quarry outside, for a door that had been swinging open was pulled to as we looked.

Hodges jotted down the number and made off for the garage at the corner without a word.

IV

“Well get Parsons,” Pennington sang after him, and we crossed the road together. Leaving him at the telephone in the hall, I pushed on upstairs. The door of the living room was wide open; at first sight the room was empty! I paused on the threshold, puzzled at this fresh development.