lemen, 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 Etext of Fire-Tongue, by Sax Rohmer
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