him to see her again. From that
hour the fate of Sir Charles was sealed. What he knew, the world
must never know. He had recorded, in a private paper, all that he had
learned. This paper was stolen from his bureau--and its contents led
to my being summoned to the house of Fire-Tongue! It also spurred the
organization to renewed efforts, for it revealed the fact that Sir
Charles contemplated confiding the story to others.

"What were the intentions of the man Ormuz in regard to Miss Abingdon,
I don't know. His entourage all left England some days ago--with three
exceptions. I believe him to have been capable of almost anything.
He was desperate. He knew that Ormuz Khan must finally and definitely
disappear. It is just possible that he meant Miss Abingdon to disappear
along with him!

"However, that danger is past. Mrs. McMurdoch, who to-day accompanied
her to his house, was drugged by these past-masters in the use of
poisons, and left unconscious in a cottage a few miles from Hillside,
the abode of Ormuz.

"You will have observed, gentlemen, that I am somewhat damaged. However,
it was worth it! That the organization of the Fire-Worshippers is
destroyed I am not prepared to assert. But I made a discovery to-day
which untied my hands. Hearing, I shall never know how, that Naida had
had a secret interview with me, Fire-Tongue visited upon her the penalty
paid seven years ago by my informant in Nagpur, by Sir Charles Abingdon,
recently, by God alone knows how many scores--hundreds--in the history
of this damnable group.

"I found her lying on a silken divan in the deserted house, her hands
clasped over a little white flower like an odontoglossum, which lay on
her breast. It was the flower of sleep--and she was dead.

"My seven years' silence was ended. One thing I could do for the world:
remove Fire-Tongue--and do it with my own hands!

"Gentlemen, at the angle where the high road from Upper Claybury joins
the Dover Road is the Merton Cottage Hospital. Mr. Harley is awaiting
us there. He is less damaged than I am. A native chauffeur, whose name I
don't know, is lying insensible in one of the beds--and in another is a
dead man, unrecognizable, except for a birthmark resembling a torch on
his forehead, his head crushed and his neck broken.

"That dead man is Fire-Tongue. I should like, Mr. Commissioner, to sign
the statement."

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Fire-Tongue, by Sax Rohmer

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