“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