As if in answer to my cry came an indescribable sound, a mingled sobbing and choking. Out from the shadows staggered a ghastly figure--that of a man whose face appeared to be _streaked_. His eyes glared at me madly, and he moved the air with his hands like one blind and insane with fear. I started back; words died upon my tongue. The figure reeled, and the man fell babbling and sobbing at my very feet. Inert I stood, looking down at him. He writhed a moment--and was still. The silence again became perfect. Then, from somewhere beyond the elms, Nayland Smith appeared. I did not move. Even when he stood beside me, I merely stared at him fatuously. "I let him walk to his death, Petrie," I heard dimly. "God forgive me--God forgive me!" The words aroused me. "Smith"--my voice came as a whisper--"for one awful moment I thought--" "So did some one else," he rapped. "Our poor sailor has met the end designed for _me_, Petrie!" At that I realized two things: I knew why Forsyth's face had struck me as being familiar in some puzzling way, and I knew why Forsyth now lay dead upon the grass. Save that he was a fair man and wore a slight moustache, he was, in features and build, the double of Nayland Smith! CHAPTER V THE NET We raised the poor victim and turned him over on his back. I dropped upon my knees, and with unsteady fingers began to strike a match. A slight breeze was arising and sighing gently through the elms, but, screened by my hands, the flame of the match took life. It illuminated wanly the sun-baked face of Nayland Smith, his eyes gleaming with unnatural brightness. I bent forward, and the dying light of the match touched that other face. "Oh, God!" whispered Smith. A faint puff of wind extinguished the match. In all my surgical experience I had never met with anything quite so horrible. Forsyth's livid face was streaked with tiny streams of blood, which proceeded from a series of irregular wounds. One group of these clustered upon his left temple, another beneath his right eye, and others extended from the chin down to the throat. They were black, almost like tattoo marks, and the entire injured surface was bloated indescribably. His fists were clenched; he was quite rigid. Smith's piercing eyes were set upon me eloquently as I knelt on the path and made my examination--an examination which that first glimpse when Forsyth came staggering out from the trees had rendered useless--a mere matter of form. "He's quite dead, Smith," I said huskily. "It's--unnatural--it--"