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+**The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu**
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+The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
+by Sax Rohmer
+
+October, 1994  [Etext #173]
+
+
+**The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu**
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+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+"A GENTLEMAN to see you, Doctor."
+
+From across the common a clock sounded the half-hour.
+
+"Ten-thirty!" I said.  "A late visitor.  Show him up, if you please."
+
+I pushed my writing aside and tilted the lamp-shade, as footsteps
+sounded on the landing.  The next moment I had jumped to my feet,
+for a tall, lean man, with his square-cut, clean-shaven face
+sun-baked to the hue of coffee, entered and extended both hands,
+with a cry:
+
+"Good old Petrie!  Didn't expect me, I'll swear!"
+
+It was Nayland Smith--whom I had thought to be in Burma!
+
+"Smith," I said, and gripped his hands hard, "this is a delightful surprise!
+Whatever--however--"
+
+"Excuse me, Petrie!" he broke in.  "Don't put it down to the sun!"
+And he put out the lamp, plunging the room into darkness.
+
+I was too surprised to speak.
+
+"No doubt you will think me mad," he continued, and, dimly,
+I could see him at the window, peering out into the road,
+"but before you are many hours older you will know that I
+have good reason to be cautious.  Ah, nothing suspicious!
+Perhaps I am first this time."  And, stepping back to the
+writing-table he relighted the lamp.
+
+"Mysterious enough for you?" he laughed, and glanced at my unfinished MS.
+"A story, eh?  From which I gather that the district is beastly healthy--
+what, Petrie?  Well, I can put some material in your way that, if sheer
+uncanny mystery is a marketable commodity, ought to make you independent
+of influenza and broken legs and shattered nerves and all the rest."
+
+I surveyed him doubtfully, but there was nothing in his appearance
+to justify me in supposing him to suffer from delusions.  His eyes
+were too bright, certainly, and a hardness now had crept over his face.
+I got out the whisky and siphon, saying:
+
+"You have taken your leave early?"
+
+"I am not on leave," he replied, and slowly filled his pipe.
+"I am on duty."
+
+"On duty!" I exclaimed.  "What, are you moved to London or something?"
+
+"I have got a roving commission, Petrie, and it doesn't rest
+with me where I am to-day nor where I shall be to-morrow."
+
+There was something ominous in the words, and, putting down my glass,
+its contents untasted, I faced round and looked him squarely in the eyes.
+"Out with it!" I said.  "What is it all about?"
+
+Smith suddenly stood up and stripped off his coat.
+Rolling back his left shirt-sleeve he revealed a wicked-looking
+wound in the fleshy part of the forearm.  It was quite healed,
+but curiously striated for an inch or so around.
+
+"Ever seen one like it?" he asked.
+
+"Not exactly," I confessed.  "It appears to have been deeply cauterized."
+
+"Right!  Very deeply!" he rapped.  "A barb steeped in the venom
+of a hamadryad went in there!"
+
+A shudder I could not repress ran coldly through me at mention
+of that most deadly of all the reptiles of the East.
+
+"There's only one treatment," he continued, rolling his sleeve down again,
+"and that's with a sharp knife, a match, and a broken cartridge.
+I lay on my back, raving, for three days afterwards, in a forest that stank
+with malaria, but I should have been lying there now if I had hesitated.
+Here's the point.  It was not an accident!"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that it was a deliberate attempt on my life, and I am hard upon
+the tracks of the man who extracted that venom--patiently, drop by drop--
+from the poison-glands of the snake, who prepared that arrow, and who caused
+it to be shot at me."
+
+"What fiend is this?"
+
+"A fiend who, unless my calculations are at fault is now in London,
+and who regularly wars with pleasant weapons of that kind.  Petrie, I have
+traveled from Burma not in the interests of the British Government merely,
+but in the interests of the entire white race, and I honestly believe--
+though I pray I may be wrong--that its survival depends largely upon
+the success of my mission."
+
+To say that I was perplexed conveys no idea of the mental chaos
+created by these extraordinary statements, for into my humdrum
+suburban life Nayland Smith had brought fantasy of the wildest.
+I did not know what to think, what to believe.
+
+"I am wasting precious time!" he rapped decisively, and, draining his glass,
+he stood up.  "I came straight to you, because you are the only man I dare
+to trust.  Except the big chief at headquarters, you are the only person
+in England, I hope, who knows that Nayland Smith has quitted Burma.
+I must have someone with me, Petrie, all the time--it's imperative!
+Can you put me up here, and spare a few days to the strangest business,
+I promise you, that ever was recorded in fact or fiction?"
+
+I agreed readily enough, for, unfortunately, my professional
+duties were not onerous.
+
+"Good man!" he cried, wringing my hand in his impetuous way.
+"We start now."
+
+"What, to-night?
+
+"To-night!  I had thought of turning in, I must admit.  I have not dared
+to sleep for forty-eight hours, except in fifteen-minute stretches.
+But there is one move that must be made to-night and immediately.
+I must warn Sir Crichton Davey."
+
+"Sir Crichton Davey--of the India--"
+
+"Petrie, he is a doomed man!  Unless he follows my instructions
+without question, without hesitation--before Heaven, nothing can
+save him!  I do not know when the blow will fall, how it will fall,
+nor from whence, but I know that my, first duty is to warn him.
+Let us walk down to the corner of the common and get a taxi."
+
+How strangely does the adventurous intrude upon the humdrum;
+for, when it intrudes at all, more often than not its intrusion
+is sudden and unlooked for.  To-day, we may seek for romance
+and fail to find it:  unsought, it lies in wait for us at most
+prosaic corners of life's highway.
+
+The drive that night, though it divided the drably commonplace
+from the wildly bizarre--though it was the bridge between the
+ordinary and the outre--has left no impression upon my mind.
+Into the heart of a weird mystery the cab bore me; and in reviewing
+my memories of those days I wonder that the busy thoroughfares
+through which we passed did not display before my eyes signs
+and portents--warnings.
+
+It was not so.  I recall nothing of the route and little of import
+that passed between us (we both were strangely silent, I think)
+until we were come to our journey's end.  Then:
+
+"What's this?" muttered my friend hoarsely.
+
+Constables were moving on a little crowd of curious idlers who pressed
+about the steps of Sir Crichton Davey's house and sought to peer in at
+the open door.  Without waiting for the cab to draw up to the curb,
+Nayland Smith recklessly leaped out and I followed close at his heels.
+
+"What has happened?" he demanded breathlessly of a constable.
+
+The latter glanced at him doubtfully, but something in his voice
+and bearing commanded respect.
+
+"Sir Crichton Davey has been killed, sir."
+
+Smith lurched back as though he had received a physical blow, and clutched
+my shoulder convulsively.  Beneath the heavy tan his face had blanched,
+and his eyes were set in a stare of horror.
+
+"My God!" he whispered.  "I am too late!"
+
+With clenched fists he turned and, pressing through the group
+of loungers, bounded up the steps.  In the hall a man who unmistakably
+was a Scotland Yard official stood talking to a footman.
+Other members of the household were moving about, more or
+less aimlessly, and the chilly hand of King Fear had touched
+one and all, for, as they came and went, they glanced ever over
+their shoulders, as if each shadow cloaked a menace, and listened,
+as it seemed, for some sound which they dreaded to hear.
+Smith strode up to the detective and showed him a card,
+upon glancing at which the Scotland Yard man said something
+in a low voice, and, nodding, touched his hat to Smith
+in a respectful manner.
+
+A few brief questions and answers, and, in gloomy silence,
+we followed the detective up the heavily carpeted stair,
+along a corridor lined with pictures and busts, and into a
+large library.  A group of people were in this room, and one,
+in whom I recognized Chalmers Cleeve, of Harley Street,
+was bending over a motionless form stretched upon a couch.
+Another door communicated with a small study, and through
+the opening I could see a man on all fours examining the carpet.
+The uncomfortable sense of hush, the group about the physician,
+the bizarre figure crawling, beetle-like, across the inner room,
+and the grim hub, around which all this ominous activity turned,
+made up a scene that etched itself indelibly on my mind.
+
+As we entered Dr. Cleeve straightened himself, frowning thoughtfully.
+
+"Frankly, I do not care to venture any opinion at present regarding
+the immediate cause of death," he said.  "Sir Crichton was addicted
+to cocaine, but there are indications which are not in accordance
+with cocaine-poisoning. I fear that only a post-mortem can
+establish the facts--if," he added, "we ever arrive at them.
+A most mysterious case!"
+
+Smith stepping forward and engaging the famous pathologist in conversation,
+I seized the opportunity to examine Sir Crichton's body.
+
+The dead man was in evening dress, but wore an old
+smoking-jacket. He Lad been of spare but hardy build,
+with thin, aquiline features, which now were oddly puffy,
+as were his clenched hands.  I pushed back his sleeve,
+and saw the marks of the hypodermic syringe upon his left arm.
+Quite mechanically I turned my attention to the right arm.
+It was unscarred, but on the back of the hand was a faint
+red mark, not unlike the imprint of painted lips.
+I examined it closely, and even tried to rub it off, but it
+evidently was caused by some morbid process of local inflammation,
+if it were not a birthmark.
+
+Turning to a pale young man whom I had understood to be Sir
+Crichton's private secretary, I drew his attention to this mark,
+and inquired if it were constitutional.  "It is not, sir,"
+answered Dr. Cleeve, overhearing my question.  "I have already
+made that inquiry.  Does it suggest anything to your mind?
+I must confess that it affords me no assistance."
+
+"Nothing," I replied.  "It is most curious."
+
+"Excuse me, Mr. Burboyne," said Smith, now turning to the secretary,
+"but Inspector Weymouth will tell you that I act with authority.
+I understand that Sir Crichton was--seized with, illness in his study?"
+
+"Yes--at half-past ten.  I was working here in the library, and he inside,
+as was our custom."
+
+"The communicating door was kept closed?"
+
+"Yes, always.  It was open for a minute or less about
+ten-twenty-five, when a message came for Sir Crichton.
+I took it in to him, and he then seemed in his usual health."
+
+"What was the message?"
+
+"I could not say.  it was brought by a district messenger, and he placed
+it beside him on the table.  It is there now, no doubt."
+
+"And at half-past ten?"
+
+"Sir Crichton suddenly burst open the door and threw himself,
+with a scream, into the library.  I ran to him but he waved
+me back.  His eyes were glaring horribly.  I had just
+reached his side when he fell, writhing, upon the floor.
+He seemed past speech, but as I raised him and laid him upon
+the couch, he gasped something that sounded like `The red hand!'
+Before I could get to bell or telephone he was dead!"
+
+Mr. Burboyne's voice shook as he spoke the words, and Smith seemed
+to find this evidence confusing.
+
+"You do not think he referred to the mark on his own hand?"
+
+"I think not.  From the direction of his last glance, I feel
+sure he referred to something in the study."
+
+"What did you do?  Having summoned the servants, I ran into the study.
+But there was absolutely nothing unusual to be seen.  The windows were closed
+and fastened.  He worked with closed windows in the hottest weather.
+There is no other door, for the study occupies the end of a narrow wing,
+so that no one could possibly have gained access to it, whilst I was
+in the library, unseen by me.  Had someone concealed himself in the study
+earlier in the evening--and I am convinced that it offers no hiding-place--
+he could only have come out again by passing through here."
+
+Nayland Smith tugged at the lobe of his left ear, as was his
+habit when meditating.
+
+"You had been at work here in this way for some time?"
+
+"Yes.  Sir Crichton was preparing an important book."
+
+"Had anything unusual occurred prior to this evening?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Burboyne, with evident perplexity; "though I attached
+no importance to it at the time.  Three nights ago Sir Crichton
+came out to me, and appeared very nervous; but at times his nerves--
+you know?  Well, on this occasion he asked me to search the study.
+He had an idea that something was concealed there."
+
+"Some THING or someone?"
+
+"`Something' was the word he used.  I searched, but fruitlessly,
+and he seemed quite satisfied, and returned to his work."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Burboyne.  My friend and I would like a few minutes'
+private investigation in the study."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+SIR CRICHTON DAVEY'S study was a small one, and a glance sufficed to
+show that, as the secretary had said, it offered no hiding-place. It was
+heavily carpeted, and over-full of Burmese and Chinese ornaments and curios,
+and upon the mantelpiece stood several framed photographs which showed
+this to be the sanctum of a wealthy bachelor who was no misogynist.
+A map of the Indian Empire occupied the larger part of one wall.
+The grate was empty, for the weather was extremely warm, and a
+green-shaded lamp on the littered writing-table afforded the only light.
+The air was stale, for both windows were closed and fastened.
+
+Smith immediately pounced upon a large, square envelope that lay beside
+the blotting-pad. Sir Crichton had not even troubled to open it,
+but my friend did so.  It contained a blank sheet of paper!
+
+"Smell!" he directed, handing the letter to me.  I raised it to my nostrils.
+It was scented with some pungent perfume.
+
+"What is it?"  I asked.
+
+"It is a rather rare essential oil," was the reply,
+"which I have met with before, though never in Europe.
+I begin to understand, Petrie."
+
+He tilted the lamp-shade and made a close examination of the scraps
+of paper, matches, and other debris that lay in the grate and on the hearth.
+I took up a copper vase from the mantelpiece, and was examining it curiously,
+when he turned, a strange expression upon his face.
+
+"Put that back, old man," he said quietly.
+
+Much surprised, I did as he directed.
+
+"Don't touch anything in the room.  It may he dangerous."
+
+Something in the tone of his voice chilled me, and I hastily
+replaced the vase, and stood by the door of the study,
+watching him search, methodically, every inch of the room--
+behind the books, in all the ornaments, in table drawers,
+in cupboards, on shelves.
+
+"That will do," he said at last.  "There is nothing here and I
+have no time to search farther."
+
+We returned to the library.
+
+"Inspector Weymouth," said my friend, "I have a particular
+reason for asking that Sir Crichton's body be removed from
+this room at once and the library locked.  Let no one be
+admitted on any pretense whatever until you hear from me."
+It spoke volumes for the mysterious credentials borne by my
+friend that the man from Scotland Yard accepted his orders
+without demur, and, after a brief chat with Mr. Burboyne,
+Smith passed briskly downstairs.  In the hall a man who looked
+like a groom out of livery was waiting.
+
+"Are you Wills?" asked Smith.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"It was you who heard a cry of some kind at the rear of the house
+about the time of Sir Crichton's death?"
+
+"Yes, sir.  I was locking the garage door, and, happening to look up
+at the window of Sir Crichton's study, I saw him jump out of his chair.
+Where he used to sit at his writing, sir, you could see his shadow
+on the blind.  Next minute I heard a call out in the lane."
+
+"What kind of call?"
+
+The man, whom the uncanny happening clearly had frightened,
+seemed puzzled for a suitable description.
+
+"A sort of wail, sir," he said at last.  "I never heard anything
+like it before, and don't want to again."
+
+"Like this?" inquired Smith, and he uttered a low, wailing cry,
+impossible to describe.  Wills perceptibly shuddered; and, indeed,
+it was an eerie sound.
+
+"The same, sir, I think," he said, "but much louder."
+
+"That will do," said Smith, and I thought I detected a note of triumph
+in his voice.  "But stay!  Take us through to the back of the house."
+
+The man bowed and led the way, so that shortly we found ourselves
+in a small, paved courtyard.  It was a perfect summer's night,
+and the deep blue vault above was jeweled with myriads of starry points.
+How impossible it seemed to reconcile that vast, eternal calm
+with the hideous passions and fiendish agencies which that night
+had loosed a soul upon the infinite.
+
+"Up yonder are the study windows, sir.  Over that wall on your left
+is the back lane from which the cry came, and beyond is Regent's Park."
+
+"Are the study windows visible from there?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir."
+
+"Who occupies the adjoining house?"
+
+"Major-General Platt-Houston, sir; but the family is out of town."
+
+"Those iron stairs are a means of communication between the domestic
+offices and the servants' quarters, I take it?"
+
+"Yes, sir."  "Then send someone to make my business known to
+the Major-General's housekeeper; I want to examine those stairs."
+
+Singular though my friend's proceedings appeared to me, I had ceased
+to wonder at anything.  Since Nayland Smith's arrival at my rooms I
+seemed to have been moving through the fitful phases of a nightmare.
+My friend's account of how he came by the wound in his arm;
+the scene on our arrival at the house of Sir Crichton Davey;
+the secretary's story of the dying man's cry, "The red hand!";
+the hidden perils of the study; the wall in the lane--
+all were fitter incidents of delirium than of sane reality.
+So, when a white-faced butler made us known to a nervous old lady
+who proved to be the housekeeper of the next-door residence,
+I was not surprised at Smith's saying:
+
+"Lounge up and down outside, Petrie.  Everyone has cleared off now.
+It is getting late.  Keep your eyes open and be on your guard.
+I thought I had the start, but he is here before me, and, what is worse,
+he probably knows by now that I am here, too."
+
+With which he entered the house and left me out in the square,
+with leisure to think, to try to understand.
+
+The crowd which usually haunts the scene of a sensational crime
+had been cleared away, and it had been circulated that Sir Crichton
+had died from natural causes.  The intense heat having driven most
+of the residents out of town, practically I had the square to myself,
+and I gave myself up to a brief consideration of the mystery in which I
+so suddenly had found myself involved.
+
+By what agency had Sir Crichton met his death?
+Did Nayland Smith know?  I rather suspected that he did.
+What was the hidden significance of the perfumed envelope?
+Who was that mysterious personage whom Smith so evidently dreaded,
+who had attempted his life, who, presumably, had murdered
+Sir Crichton?  Sir Crichton Davey, during the time that he had held
+office in India, and during his long term of service at home,
+had earned the good will of all, British and native alike.
+Who was his secret enemy?
+
+Something touched me lightly on the shoulder.
+
+I turned, with my heart fluttering like a child's. This night's
+work had imposed a severe strain even upon my callous nerves.
+
+A girl wrapped in a hooded opera-cloak stood at my elbow,
+and, as she glanced up at me, I thought that I never had seen
+a face so seductively lovely nor of so unusual a type.
+With the skin of a perfect blonde, she had eyes and lashes
+as black as a Creole's, which, together with her full red lips,
+told me that this beautiful stranger, whose touch had so startled me,
+was not a child of our northern shores.
+
+"Forgive me," she said, speaking with an odd, pretty accent,
+and laying a slim hand, with jeweled fingers, confidingly upon
+my arm, "if I startled you.  But--is it true that Sir Crichton
+Davey has been--murdered?"
+
+I looked into her big, questioning eyes, a harsh suspicion laboring
+in my mind, but could read nothing in their mysterious depths--
+only I wondered anew at my questioner's beauty.  The grotesque
+idea momentarily possessed me that, were the bloom of her red
+lips due to art and not to nature, their kiss would leave--
+though not indelibly--just such a mark as I had seen upon the dead
+man's hand.  But I dismissed the fantastic notion as bred
+of the night's horrors, and worthy only of a mediaeval legend.
+No doubt she was some friend or acquaintance of Sir Crichton
+who lived close by.
+
+"I cannot say that he has been murdered," I replied, acting upon the latter
+supposition, and seeking to tell her what she asked as gently as possible.
+"But he is--Dead?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+She closed her eyes and uttered a low, moaning sound, swaying dizzily.
+Thinking she was about to swoon, I threw my arm round her shoulder
+to support her, but she smiled sadly, and pushed me gently away.
+
+"I am quite well, thank you," she said.
+
+"You are certain?  Let me walk with you until you feel quite
+sure of yourself."
+
+She shook her head, flashed a rapid glance at me with her beautiful eyes,
+and looked away in a sort of sorrowful embarrassment, for which I was entirely
+at a loss to account.  Suddenly she resumed:
+
+"I cannot let my name be mentioned in this dreadful matter, but--I think
+I have some information--for the police.  Will you give this to--
+whomever you think proper?"
+
+She handed me a sealed envelope, again met my eyes
+with one of her dazzling glances, and hurried away.
+She had gone no more than ten or twelve yards, and I still was
+standing bewildered, watching her graceful, retreating figure,
+when she turned abruptly and came back.
+
+Without looking directly at me, but alternately glancing towards a distant
+corner of the square and towards the house of Major-General Platt-Houston,
+she made the following extraordinary request:
+
+"If you would do me a very great service, for which I always would
+be grateful,"--she glanced at me with passionate intentness--"when you
+have given my message to the proper person, leave him and do not go
+near him any more to-night!"
+
+Before I could find words to reply she gathered up her cloak and ran.
+Before I could determine whether or not to follow her (for her words
+had aroused anew all my worst suspicions) she had disappeared!
+I heard the whir of a restarted motor at no great distance, and,
+in the instant that Nayland Smith came running down the steps,
+I knew that I had nodded at my post.
+
+"Smith!"  I cried as he joined me, "tell me what we must do!"
+And rapidly I acquainted him with the incident.
+
+My friend looked very grave; then a grim smile crept round his lips.
+
+"She was a big card to play," he said; "but he did not know that I
+held one to beat it."
+
+"What!  You know this girl!  Who is she?"
+
+"She is one of the finest weapons in the enemy's armory, Petrie.
+But a woman is a two-edged sword, and treacherous.
+To our great good fortune, she has formed a sudden predilection,
+characteristically Oriental, for yourself.  Oh, you may scoff, but it
+is evident.  She was employed to get this letter placed in my hands.
+Give it to me."
+
+I did so.
+
+"She has succeeded.  Smell."
+
+He held the envelope under my nose, and, with a sudden sense of nausea,
+I recognized the strange perfume.
+
+"You know what this presaged in Sir Crichton's case?
+Can you doubt any longer?  She did not want you to share
+my fate, Petrie."
+
+"Smith," I said unsteadily, "I have followed your lead blindly
+in this horrible business and have not pressed for an explanation,
+but I must insist before I go one step farther upon knowing
+what it all means."
+
+"Just a few steps farther," he rejoined; "as far as a cab.
+We are hardly safe here.  Oh, you need not fear shots or knives.
+The man whose servants are watching us now scorns to employ
+such clumsy, tell-tale weapons."
+
+Only three cabs were on the rank, and, as we entered the first,
+something hissed past my ear.  missed both Smith and me
+by a miracle, and, passing over the roof of the taxi,
+presumably fell in the enclosed garden occupying the center
+of the square.
+
+"What was that?" I cried.
+
+"Get in--quickly!"  Smith rapped back.  "It was attempt number one!
+More than that I cannot say.  Don't let the man hear.
+He has noticed nothing.  Pull up the window on your side,
+Petrie, and look out behind.  Good!  We've started."
+
+The cab moved off with a metallic jerk, and I turned and looked
+back through the little window in the rear.
+
+"Someone has got into another cab.  It is following ours, I think."
+
+Nayland Smith lay back and laughed unmirthfully.
+
+"Petrie," he said, "if I escape alive from this business I shall
+know that I bear a charmed life."
+
+I made no reply, as he pulled out the dilapidated pouch and filled his pipe.
+
+"You have asked me to explain matters," he continued, "and I
+will do so to the best of my ability.  You no doubt wonder why
+a servant of the British Government, lately stationed in Burma,
+suddenly appears in London, in the character of a detective.
+I am here, Petrie--and I bear credentials from the very
+highest sources--because, quite by accident, I came upon a clew.
+Following it up, in the ordinary course of routine, I obtained
+evidence of the existence and malignant activity of a certain man.
+At the present stage of the case I should not be justified
+in terming him the emissary of an Eastern Power, but I may say
+that representations are shortly to be made to that Power's
+ambassador in London."
+
+He paused and glanced back towards the pursuing cab.
+
+"There is little to fear until we arrive home," he said calmly.
+"Afterwards there is much.  To continue:  This man, whether a fanatic
+or a duly appointed agent, is, unquestionably, the most malign
+and formidable personality existing in the known world today.
+He is a linguist who speaks with almost equal facility in any
+of the civilized languages, and in most of the barbaric.
+He is an adept in all the arts and sciences which a great
+university could teach him.  He also is an adept in certain obscure
+arts and sciences which no university of to-day can teach.
+He has the brains of any three men of genius.  Petrie, he is
+a mental giant."
+
+"You amaze me!" I said.
+
+"As to his mission among men.  Why did M. Jules Furneaux fall
+dead in a Paris opera house?  Because of heart failure?
+No!  Because his last speech had shown that he held the key
+to the secret of Tongking.  What became of the Grand
+Duke Stanislaus?  Elopement?  Suicide?  Nothing of the kind.
+He alone was fully alive to Russia's growing peril.
+He alone knew the truth about Mongolia.  Why was Sir Crichton
+Davey murdered?  Because, had the work he was engaged upon ever
+seen the light it would have shown him to be the only living
+Englishman who understood the importance of the Tibetan frontiers.
+I say to you solemnly, Petrie, that these are but a few.
+Is there a man who would arouse the West to a sense of
+the awakening of the East, who would teach the deaf to hear,
+the blind to see, that the millions only await their leader?
+He will die.  And this is only one phase of the devilish campaign.
+The others I can merely surmise."
+
+"But, Smith, this is almost incredible!  What perverted genius
+controls this awful secret movement?"
+
+"Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a
+brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull,
+and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all
+the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one
+giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present,
+with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government--
+which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence.
+Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu,
+the yellow peril incarnate in one man."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+I SANK into an arm-chair in my rooms and gulped down a strong
+peg of brandy.
+
+"We have been followed here," I said.  "Why did you make no attempt
+to throw the pursuers off the track, to have them intercepted?"
+
+Smith laughed.
+
+"Useless, in the first place.  Wherever we went, HE
+would find us.  And of what use to arrest his creatures?
+We could prove nothing against them.  Further, it is evident
+that an attempt is to be made upon my life to-night--
+and by the same means that proved so successful in the case
+of poor Sir Crichton."
+
+His square jaw grew truculently prominent, and he leapt stormily to his feet,
+shaking his clenched fists towards the window.
+
+"The villain!" he cried.  "The fiendishly clever villain!
+I suspected that Sir Crichton was next, and I was right.
+But I came too late, Petrie!  That hits me hard, old man.
+To think that I knew and yet failed to save him!"
+
+He resumed his seat, smoking hard.
+
+"Fu-Manchu has made the blunder common to all men of unusual genius,"
+he said.  "He has underrated his adversary.  He has not given
+me credit for perceiving the meaning of the scented messages.
+He has thrown away one powerful weapon--to get such a message
+into my hands--and he thinks that once safe within doors,
+I shall sleep, unsuspecting, and die as Sir Crichton died.
+But without the indiscretion of your charming friend, I should
+have known what to expect when I receive her `information'--
+which by the way, consists of a blank sheet of paper."
+
+"Smith," I broke in, "who is she?"
+
+"She is either Fu-Manchu's daughter, his wife, or his slave.
+I am inclined to believe the last, for she has no will but
+his will, except"--with a quizzical glance--"in a certain instance."
+
+"How can you jest with some awful thing--Heaven knows what--
+hanging over your head?  What is the meaning of these perfumed envelopes?
+How did Sir Crichton die?"
+
+"He died of the Zayat Kiss.  Ask me what that is and I reply
+'I do not know.'  The zayats are the Burmese caravanserais,
+or rest-houses. Along a certain route--upon which I set eyes,
+for the first and only time, upon Dr. Fu-Manchu--travelers who use
+them sometimes die as Sir Crichton died, with nothing to show
+the cause of death but a little mark upon the neck, face, or limb,
+which has earned, in those parts, the title of the `Zayat Kiss.'
+The rest-houses along that route are shunned now.
+I have my theory and I hope to prove it to-night, if I live.
+It will be one more broken weapon in his fiendish armory,
+and it is thus, and thus only, that I can hope to crush him.
+This was my principal reason for not enlightening Dr. Cleeve.
+Even walls have ears where Fu-Manchu is concerned, so I feigned
+ignorance of the meaning of the mark, knowing that he would be
+almost certain to employ the same methods upon some other victim.
+I wanted an opportunity to study the Zayat Kiss in operation,
+and I shall have one."
+
+"But the scented envelopes?"
+
+"In the swampy forests of the district I have referred to a rare
+species of orchid, almost green, and with a peculiar scent,
+is sometimes met with.  I recognized the heavy perfume at once.
+I take it that the thing which kills the traveler is attracted
+by this orchid.  You will notice that the perfume clings to whatever
+it touches.  I doubt if it can be washed off in the ordinary way.
+After at least one unsuccessful attempt to kill Sir Crichton--
+you recall that he thought there was something concealed in his study
+on a previous occasion?--Fu-Manchu hit upon the perfumed envelopes.
+He may have a supply of these green orchids in his possession--
+possibly to feed the creature."
+
+"What creature?  How could any kind of creature have got into Sir
+Crichton's room tonight?"
+
+"You no doubt observed that I examined the grate of the study.
+I found a fair quantity of fallen soot.  I at once assumed, since it
+appeared to be the only means of entrance, that something has been
+dropped down; and I took it for granted that the thing, whatever it was,
+must still be concealed either in the study or in the library.
+But when I had obtained the evidence of the groom, Wills, I perceived
+that the cry from the lane or from the park was a signal.
+I noted that the movements of anyone seated at the study table
+were visible, in shadow, on the blind, and that the study occupied
+the corner of a two-storied wing and, therefore, had a short chimney.
+What did the signal mean?  That Sir Crichton had leaped up from
+his chair, and either had received the Zayat Kiss or had seen the thing
+which someone on the roof had lowered down the straight chimney.
+It was the signal to withdraw that deadly thing.  By means of
+the iron stairway at the rear of Major-General Platt-Houston's, I
+quite easily, gained access to the roof above Sir Crichton's study--
+and I found this."
+
+Out from his pocket Nayland Smith drew a tangled piece of silk,
+mixed up with which were a brass ring and a number of unusually
+large-sized split-shot, nipped on in the manner usual on a fishing-line.
+
+"My theory proven," he resumed.  "Not anticipating a search on the roof,
+they had been careless.  This was to weight the line and to prevent
+the creature clinging to the walls of the chimney.  Directly it had dropped
+in the grate, however, by means of this ring I assume that the weighted
+line was withdrawn, and the thing was only held by one slender thread,
+which sufficed, though, to draw it back again when it had done its work.
+lt might have got tangled, of course, but they reckoned on its making
+straight up the carved leg of the writing-table for the prepared envelope.
+From there to the hand of Sir Crichton--which, from having touched
+the envelope, would also be scented with the perfume--was a certain move."
+
+"My God!  How horrible!" I exclaimed, and glanced apprehensively into
+the dusky shadows of the room.  "What is your theory respecting this creature--
+what shape, what color--?"
+
+"It is something that moves rapidly and silently.  I will
+venture no more at present, but I think it works in the dark.
+The study was dark, remember, save for the bright patch beneath
+the reading-lamp. I have observed that the rear of this
+house is ivy-covered right up to and above your bedroom.
+Let us make ostentatious preparations to retire, and I think
+we may rely upon Fu-Manchu's servants to attempt my removal,
+at any rate--if not yours."
+
+"But, my dear fellow, it is a climb of thirty-five feet at the very least."
+
+"You remember the cry in the back lane?  It suggested something to me,
+and I tested my idea--successfully.  It was the cry of a dacoit.
+Oh, dacoity, though quiescent, is by no means extinct.  Fu-Manchu has
+dacoits in his train, and probably it is one who operates the Zayat Kiss,
+since it was a dacoit who watched the window of the study this evening.
+To such a man an ivy-covered wall is a grand staircase."
+
+The horrible events that followed are punctuated, in my mind,
+by the striking of a distant clock.  It is singular how
+trivialities thus assert themselves in moments of high tension.
+I will proceed, then, by these punctuations, to the coming
+of the horror that it was written we should encounter.
+
+The clock across the common struck two.
+
+Having removed all traces of the scent of the orchid from our hands with
+a solution of ammonia Smith and I had followed the programme laid down.
+It was an easy matter to reach the rear of the house, by simply climbing
+a fence, and we did not doubt that seeing the light go out in the front,
+our unseen watcher would proceed to the back.
+
+The room was a large one, and we had made up my camp-bed at one end,
+stuffing odds and ends under the clothes to lend the appearance of a sleeper,
+which device we also had adopted in the case of the larger bed.
+The perfumed envelope lay upon a little coffee table in the center
+of the floor, and Smith, with an electric pocket lamp, a revolver,
+and a brassey beside him, sat on cushions in the shadow of the wardrobe.
+I occupied a post between the windows.
+
+No unusual sound, so far, had disturbed the stillness of the night.
+Save for the muffled throb of the rare all-night cars passing
+the front of the house, our vigil had been a silent one.
+The full moon bad painted about the floor weird shadows of
+the clustering ivy, spreading the design gradually from the door,
+across the room, past the little table where the envelope lay,
+and finally to the foot of the bed.
+
+The distant clock struck a quarter-past two.
+
+A slight breeze stirred the ivy, and a new shadow added itself
+to the extreme edge of the moon's design.
+
+Something rose, inch by inch, above the sill of the westerly window.
+I could see only its shadow, but a sharp, sibilant breath from Smith
+told me that he, from his post, could see the cause of the shadow.
+
+Every nerve in my body seemed to be strung tensely.
+I was icy cold, expectant, and prepared for whatever horror
+was upon us.
+
+The shadow became stationary.  The dacoit was studying the interior
+of the room.
+
+Then it suddenly lengthened, and, craning my head to the left,
+I saw a lithe, black-clad form, surmounted by a Yellow face,
+sketchy in the moonlight, pressed against the window-panes!
+
+One thin, brown hand appeared over the edge of the lowered sash,
+which it grasped--and then another.  The man made absolutely
+no sound whatever.  The second hand disappeared--and reappeared.
+It held a small, square box.  There was a very faint CLICK.
+
+The dacoit swung himself below the window with the agility
+of an ape, as, with a dull, muffled thud, SOMETHING dropped
+upon the carpet!
+
+"Stand still, for your life!" came Smith's voice, high-pitched.
+
+A beam of white leaped out across the room and played full upon
+the coffee-table in the center.
+
+Prepared as I was for something horrible, I know that I paled at sight
+of the thing that was running round the edge of the envelope.
+
+It was an insect, full six inches long, and of a vivid, venomous, red color!
+It had something of the appearance of a great ant, with its long, quivering
+antennae and its febrile, horrible vitality; but it was proportionately
+longer of body and smaller of head, and had numberless rapidly moving legs.
+In short, it was a giant centipede, apparently of the scolopendra group,
+but of a form quite new to me.
+
+These things I realized in one breathless instant; in the next--
+Smith had dashed the thing's poisonous life out with one straight,
+true blow of the golf club!
+
+I leaped to the window and threw it widely open, feeling a silk
+thread brush my hand as I did so.  A black shape was dropping,
+with incredible agility from branch to branch of the ivy,
+and, without once offering a mark for a revolver-shot, it
+merged into the shadows beneath the trees of the garden.
+As I turned and switched on the light Nayland Smith dropped
+limply into a chair, leaning his head upon his hands.
+Even that grim courage had been tried sorely.
+
+"Never mind the dacoit, Petrie," he said.  "Nemesis will know where
+to find him.  We know now what causes the mark of the Zayat Kiss.
+Therefore science is richer for our first brush with the enemy,
+and the enemy is poorer--unless he has any more unclassified centipedes.
+I understand now something that has been puzzling me since I heard of it--
+Sir Crichton's stifled cry.  When we remember that he was almost past speech,
+it is reasonable to suppose that his cry was not `The red hand!'
+but `The red ANT!  Petrie, to think that I failed, by less than an hour,
+to save him from such an end!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+"THE body of a lascar, dressed in the manner usual on the P. & O. boats,
+was recovered from the Thames off Tilbury by the river police at six
+A.M. this morning.  It is supposed that the man met with an accident
+in leaving his ship."
+
+Nayland Smith passed me the evening paper and pointed to the above paragraph.
+
+"For `lascar' read `dacoit,'" he said.  "Our visitor, who came by way
+of the ivy, fortunately for us, failed to follow his instructions.
+Also, he lost the centipede and left a clew behind him.
+Dr. Fu-Manchu does not overlook such lapses."
+
+It was a sidelight upon the character of the awful being with whom we
+had to deal.  My very soul recoiled from bare consideration of the fate
+that would be ours if ever we fell into his hands.
+
+The telephone bell rang.  I went out and found that Inspector
+Weymouth of New Scotland Yard had called us up.
+
+"Will Mr. Nayland Smith please come to the Wapping River Police
+Station at once," was the message.
+
+Peaceful interludes were few enough throughout that wild pursuit.
+
+"It is certainly something important," said my friend; "and, if
+Fu-Manchu is at the bottom of it--as we must presume him to be--
+probably something ghastly."
+
+A brief survey of the time-tables showed us that there were no trains
+to serve our haste.  We accordingly chartered a cab and proceeded east.
+
+Smith, throughout the journey, talked entertainingly about his work in Burma.
+Of intent, I think, he avoided any reference to the circumstances which first
+had brought him in contact with the sinister genius of the Yellow Movement.
+His talk was rather of the sunshine of the East than of its shadows.
+
+But the drive concluded--and all too soon.  In a silence which neither
+of us seemed disposed to break, we entered the police depot, and followed
+an officer who received us into the room where Weymouth waited.
+
+The inspector greeted us briefly, nodding toward the table.
+
+"Poor Cadby, the most promising lad at the Yard," he said;
+and his usually gruff voice had softened strangely.
+
+Smith struck his right fist into the palm of his left hand and swore
+under his breath, striding up and down the neat little room.
+No one spoke for a moment, and in the silence I could hear the whispering
+of the Thames outside--of the Thames which had so many strange secrets
+to tell, and now was burdened with another.
+
+The body lay prone upon the deal table--this latest of the river's dead--
+dressed in rough sailor garb, and, to all outward seeming, a seaman of
+nondescript nationality--such as is no stranger in Wapping and Shadwell.
+His dark, curly hair clung clammily about the brown forehead;
+his skin was stained, they told me.  He wore a gold ring in one ear,
+and three fingers of the left hand were missing.
+
+"It was almost the same with Mason."  The river police inspector
+was speaking.  "A week ago, on a Wednesday, he went off in his own
+time on some funny business down St. George's way--and Thursday
+night the ten-o'clock boat got the grapnel on him off Hanover Hole.
+His first two fingers on the right hand were clean gone, and his left
+hand was mutilated frightfully."
+
+He paused and glanced at Smith.
+
+"That lascar, too," he continued, "that you came down to see, sir;
+you remember his hands?"
+
+Smith nodded.
+
+"He was not a lascar," he said shortly.  "He was a dacoit."
+
+Silence fell again.
+
+I turned to the array of objects lying on the table--those which
+had been found in Cadby's clothing.  None of them were noteworthy,
+except that which had been found thrust into the loose neck of his shirt.
+This last it was which had led the police to send for Nayland Smith,
+for it constituted the first clew which had come to light pointing
+to the authors of these mysterious tragedies.
+
+It was a Chinese pigtail.  That alone was sufficiently remarkable;
+but it was rendered more so by the fact that the plaited queue
+was a false one being attached to a most ingenious bald wig.
+
+"You're sure it wasn't part of a Chinese make-up?" questioned Weymouth,
+his eye on the strange relic.  "Cadby was clever at disguise."
+
+Smith snatched the wig from my hands with a certain irritation,
+and tried to fit it on the dead detective.
+
+"Too small by inches!" he jerked.  "And look how it's padded in the crown.
+This thing was made for a most abnormal head."
+
+He threw it down, and fell to pacing the room again.
+
+"Where did you find him--exactly?" he asked.
+
+"Limehouse Reach--under Commercial Dock Pier--exactly an hour ago."
+
+"And you last saw him at eight o'clock last night?"--to Weymouth.
+
+"Eight to a quarter past."
+
+"You think he has been dead nearly twenty-four hours, Petrie?"
+
+"Roughly, twenty-four hours," I replied.
+
+"Then, we know that he was on the track of the Fu-Manchu group,
+that he followed up some clew which led him to the neighborhood
+of old Ratcliff Highway, and that he died the same night.
+You are sure that is where he was going?"
+
+"Yes," said Weymouth; "He was jealous of giving anything away,
+poor chap; it meant a big lift for him if he pulled the case off.
+But he gave me to understand that he expected to spend last night
+in that district.  He left the Yard about eight, as I've said,
+to go to his rooms, and dress for the job."
+
+"Did he keep any record of his cases?"
+
+"Of course!  He was most particular.  Cadby was a man
+with ambitions, sir!  You'll want to see his book.
+Wait while I get his address; it's somewhere in Brixton."
+
+He went to the telephone, and Inspector Ryman covered up the dead man's face.
+
+Nayland Smith was palpably excited.
+
+"He almost succeeded where we have failed, Petrie," he said.
+"There is no doubt in my mind that he was hot on the track
+of Fu-Manchu!  Poor Mason had probably blundered on the scent,
+too, and he met with a similar fate.  Without other evidence,
+the fact that they both died in the same way as the dacoit would
+be conclusive, for we know that Fu-Manchu killed the dacoit!"
+
+"What is the meaning of the mutilated hands, Smith?"
+
+"God knows!  Cadby's death was from drowning, you say?"
+
+"There are no other marks of violence."
+
+"But he was a very strong swimmer, Doctor," interrupted Inspector Ryman.
+"Why, he pulled off the quarter-mile championship at the Crystal Palace
+last year!  Cadby wasn't a man easy to drown.  And as for Mason,
+he was an R.N.R., and like a fish in the water!"
+
+Smith shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
+
+"Let us hope that one day we shall know how they died,"
+he said simply.
+
+Weymouth returned from the telephone.
+
+"The address is No.--Cold Harbor Lane," he reported.
+"I shall not be able to come along, but you can't
+miss it; it's close by the Brixton Police Station.
+There's no family, fortunately; he was quite alone in the world.
+His case-book isn't in the American desk, which you'll find in
+his sitting-room; it's in the cupboard in the corner--top shelf.
+Here are his keys, all intact.  I think this is the cupboard key."
+
+Smith nodded.
+
+"Come on, Petrie," he said.  "We haven't a second to waste."
+
+Our cab was waiting, and in a few seconds we were speeding along Wapping
+High Street.  We had gone no more than a few hundred yards, I think,
+when Smith suddenly slapped his open hand down on his knee.
+
+"That pigtail!" he cried.  "I have left it behind!
+We must have it, Petrie!  Stop!  Stop!"
+
+The cab was pulled up, and Smith alighted.
+
+"Don't wait for me," he directed hurriedly.  "Here, take Weymouth's card.
+Remember where he said the book was?  It's all we want.  Come straight
+on to Scotland Yard and meet me there."
+
+"But Smith," I protested, "a few minutes can make no difference!"
+
+"Can't it!" he snapped.  "Do you suppose Fu-Manchu is going to leave
+evidence like that lying about?  It's a thousand to one he has it already,
+but there is just a bare chance."
+
+It was a new aspect of the situation and one that afforded
+no room for comment; and so lost in thought did I become
+that the cab was outside the house for which I was bound ere
+I realized that we had quitted the purlieus of Wapping.
+Yet I had had leisure to review the whole troop of events which had
+crowded my life since the return of Nayland Smith from Burma.
+Mentally, I had looked again upon the dead Sir Crichton Davey,
+and with Smith had waited in the dark for the dreadful thing
+that had killed him.  Now, with those remorseless memories
+jostling in my mind, I was entering the house of Fu-Manchu's
+last victim, and the shadow of that giant evil seemed to be
+upon it like a palpable cloud.
+
+Cadby's old landlady greeted me with a queer mixture of fear
+and embarrassment in her manner.
+
+"I am Dr. Petrie," I said, "and I regret that I bring bad news
+respecting Mr. Cadby."
+
+"Oh, sir!" she cried.  "Don't tell me that anything has happened to him!"
+And divining something of the mission on which I was come,
+for such sad duty often falls to the lot of the medical man:
+"Oh, the poor, brave lad!"
+
+Indeed, I respected the dead man's memory more than ever from that hour,
+since the sorrow of the worthy old soul was quite pathetic, and spoke
+eloquently for the unhappy cause of it.
+
+"There was a terrible wailing at the back of the house last night,
+Doctor, and I heard it again to-night, a second before you knocked.
+Poor lad!  It was the same when his mother died."
+
+At the moment I paid little attention to her words, for such
+beliefs are common, unfortunately; but when she was sufficiently
+composed I went on to explain what I thought necessary.
+And now the old lady's embarrassment took precedence of her sorrow,
+and presently the truth came out:
+
+"There's a--young lady--in his rooms, sir."
+
+I started.  This might mean little or might mean much.
+
+"She came and waited for him last night, Doctor--from ten until half-past--
+and this morning again.  She came the third time about an hour ago,
+and has been upstairs since."
+
+"Do you know her, Mrs. Dolan?"
+
+Mrs. Dolan grew embarrassed again.
+
+"Well, Doctor," she said, wiping her eyes the while, "I DO.
+And God knows he was a good lad, and I like a mother to him;
+but she is not the girl I should have liked a son of mine
+to take up with."
+
+At any other time, this would have been amusing; now, it might be serious.
+Mrs. Dolan's account of the wailing became suddenly significant, for perhaps
+it meant that one of Fu-Manchu's dacoit followers was watching the house,
+to give warning of any stranger's approach!  Warning to whom?  It was unlikely
+that I should forget the dark eyes of another of Fu-Manchu's servants.
+Was that lure of men even now in the house, completing her evil work?
+
+"I should never have allowed her in his rooms--" began Mrs. Dolan again.
+Then there was an interruption.
+
+A soft rustling retched my ears--intimately feminine.
+The girl was stealing down!
+
+I leaped out into the hall, and she turned and fled blindly before me--
+back up the stairs!  Taking three steps at a time, I followed her,
+bounded into the room above almost at her heels, and stood with my back
+to the door.
+
+She cowered against the desk by the window, a slim figure in a
+clinging silk gown, which alone explained Mrs. Dolan's distrust.
+The gaslight was turned very low, and her hat shadowed her face,
+but could not hide its startling, beauty, could not mar the brilliancy
+of the skin, nor dim the wonderful eyes of this modern Delilah.
+For it was she!
+
+"So I came in time" I said grimly, and turned the key in the lock.
+
+"Oh!" she panted at that, and stood facing me, leaning back
+with her jewel-laden hands clutching the desk edge.
+
+"Give me whatever you have removed from here," I said sternly,
+"and then prepare to accompany me."
+
+She took a step forward, her eyes wide with fear, her lips parted.
+
+"I have taken nothing," she said.  her breast was heaving tumultuously.
+"Oh, let me go!  Please, let me go!"  And impulsively she threw
+herself forward, pressing clasped hands against my shoulder and looking
+up into my face with passionate, pleading eyes.
+
+It is with some shame that I confess how her charm enveloped me like a
+magic cloud.  Unfamiliar with the complex Oriental temperament, I had
+laughed at Nayland Smith when he had spoken of this girl's infatuation.
+"Love in the East," he had said, "is like the conjurer's mango-tree;
+it is born, grows and flowers at the touch of a hand."
+Now, in those pleading eyes I read confirmation of his words.
+Her clothes or her hair exhaled a faint perfume.  Like all
+Fu-Manchu's servants, she was perfectly chosen for her peculiar duties.
+Her beauty was wholly intoxicating.
+
+But I thrust her away.
+
+"You have no claim to mercy," I said.  "Do not count upon any.
+What have you taken from here?"
+
+She grasped the lapels of my coat.
+
+"I will tell you all I can--all I dare," she panted eagerly, fearfully.
+"I should know how to deal with your friend, but with you I am lost!
+If you could only understand you would not be so cruel."  Her slight accent
+added charm to the musical voice.  "I am not free, as your English women are.
+What I do I must do, for it is the will of my master, and I am only
+a slave.  Ah, you are not a man if you can give me to the police.
+You have no heart if you can forget that I tried to save you once."
+
+I had feared that plea, for, in her own Oriental fashion, she certainly
+had tried to save me from a deadly peril once--at the expense of my friend.
+But I had feared the plea, for I did not know how to meet it.
+How could I give her up, perhaps to stand her trial for murder?
+And now I fell silent, and she saw why I was silent.
+
+"I may deserve no mercy; I may be even as bad as you think;
+but what have YOU to do with the police?
+It is not your work to hound a woman to death.  Could you
+ever look another woman in the eyes--one that you loved,
+and know that she trusted you--if you had done such a thing?
+Ah, I have no friend in all the world, or I should not be here.
+Do not be my enemy, my judge, and make me worse than I am;
+be my friend, and save me--from HIM." The tremulous
+lips were close to mine, her breath fanned my cheek.
+"Have mercy on me."
+
+At that moment I honestly would have given half of my worldly
+possessions to have been spared the decision which I knew I must
+come to.  After all, what proof had I that she was a willing
+accomplice of Dr. Fu-Manchu?  Furthermore, she was an Oriental,
+and her code must necessarily be different from mine.
+Irreconcilable as the thing may be with Western ideas, Nayland Smith
+had really told me that he believed the girl to be a slave.
+Then there remained that other reason why I loathed the idea
+of becoming her captor.  It was almost tantamount to betrayal!
+Must I soil my hands with such work?
+
+Thus--I suppose--her seductive beauty argued against my sense of right.
+The jeweled fingers grasped my shoulders nervously, and her slim body
+quivered against mine as she watched me, with all her soul in her eyes,
+in an abandonment of pleading despair.  Then I remembered the fate
+of the man in whose room we stood.
+
+"You lured Cadby to his death," I said, and shook her off.
+
+"No, no!" she cried wildly, clutching at me.  "No, I swear by the holy name
+I did not!  I did not!  I watched him, spied upon him--yes!  But, listen:
+it was because he would not be warned that he met his death.
+I could not save him!  Ah, I am not so bad as that.  I will tell you.
+I have taken his notebook and torn out the, last pages and burnt them.
+Look!  in the grate.  The book was too big to steal away.
+I came twice and could not find it.  There, will you let me go?"
+
+"If you will tell me where and how to seize Dr. Fu-Manchu--yes."
+
+Her hands dropped and she took a backward step.
+A new terror was to be read in her face.
+
+"I dare not!  I dare not!"
+
+"Then you would--if you dared?"
+
+She was watching me intently.
+
+"Not if YOU would go to find him," she said.
+
+And, with all that I thought her to be, the stern servant
+of justice that I would have had myself, I felt the hot
+blood leap to my cheek at all which the words implied.
+She grasped my arm.
+
+Could you hide me from him if I came to you, and told you all I know?
+
+"The authorities--"
+
+"Ah!"  Her expression changed.  "They can put me on the rack if they choose,
+but never one word would I speak--never one little word."
+
+She threw up her head scornfully.  Then the proud glance softened again.
+
+"But I will speak for you."
+
+Closer she came, and closer, until she could whisper in my ear.
+
+"Hide me from your police, from HIM, from everybody,
+and I will no longer be his slave."
+
+My heart was beating with painful rapidity.  I had not counted on this
+warring with a woman; moreover, it was harder than I could have dreamt of.
+For some time I had been aware that by the charm of her personality
+and the art of her pleading she bad brought me down from my judgment seat--
+had made it all but impossible for me to give her up to justice.
+Now, I was disarmed--but in a quandary.  What should I do?
+What COULD I do?  I turned away from her and walked to the hearth,
+in which some paper ash lay and yet emitted a faint smell.
+
+Not more than ten seconds elapsed, I am confident, from the time
+that I stepped across the room until I glanced back.
+But she had gone!
+
+As I leapt to the door the key turned gently from the outside.
+
+"Ma 'alesh!" came her soft whisper; "but I am afraid to
+trust you--yet.  Be comforted, for there is one near who would
+have killed you had I wished it.  Remember, I will come to you
+whenever you will take me and hide me."
+
+Light footsteps pattered down the stairs.  I heard a stifled
+cry from Mrs. Dolan as the mysterious visitor ran past her.
+The front door opened and closed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+"Shen-Yan's is a dope-shop in one of the burrows off the old Ratcliff Highway,"
+said Inspector Weymouth.
+
+"`Singapore Charlie's,' they call it.  It's a center for some of
+the Chinese societies, I believe, but all sorts of opium-smokers
+use it.  There have never been any complaints that I know of.
+I don't understand this."
+
+We stood in his room at New Scotland Yard, bending over a sheet
+of foolscap upon which were arranged some burned fragments
+from poor Cadby's grate, for so hurriedly had the girl done
+her work that combustion had not been complete.
+
+"What do we make of this?" said Smith.  "`. . .Hunchback. . .lascar
+went up. . .unlike others. . .not return. . .till Shen-Yan'
+(there is no doubt about the name, I think) `turned me out. . .
+booming sound. . .lascar in. . .mortuary I could ident. . .
+not for days, or suspici. . .Tuesday night in a different make
+. . .snatch. . .pigtail. . .'"
+
+"The pigtail again!" rapped Weymouth.
+
+"She evidently burned the torn-out pages all together,"
+continued Smith.  "They lay flat, and this was in the middle.
+I see the band of retributive justice in that, Inspector.  Now we
+have a reference to a hunchback, and what follows amounts to this:
+A lascar (amongst several other persons) went up somewhere--
+presumably upstairs--at Shen-Yan's, and did not come down again.
+Cadby, who was there disguised, noted a booming sound.
+Later, he identified the lascar in some mortuary.
+We have no means of fixing the date of this visit to Shen-Yan's,
+but I feel inclined to put down the `lascar' as the dacoit
+who was murdered by Fu-Manchu!  It is sheer supposition, however.
+But that Cadby meant to pay another visit to the place in a
+different `make-up' or disguise, is evident, and that the Tuesday
+night proposed was last night is a reasonable deduction.
+The reference to a pigtail is principally interesting because
+of what was found on Cadby's body."
+
+Inspector Weymouth nodded affirmatively, and Smith glanced at his watch.
+
+"Exactly ten-twenty-three," he said.  "I will trouble you, Inspector,
+for the freedom of your fancy wardrobe.  There is time to spend an hour
+in the company of Shen-Yan's opium friends."
+
+Weymouth raised his eyebrows.
+
+"It might be risky.  What about an official visit?"
+
+Nayland Smith laughed.
+
+"Worse than useless!  By your own showing, the place is open to inspection.
+No; guile against guile!  We are dealing with a Chinaman, with the incarnate
+essence of Eastern subtlety, with the most stupendous genius that the modern
+Orient has produced."
+
+"I don't believe in disguises," said Weymouth, with a certain truculence.
+"It's mostly played out, that game, and generally leads to failure.
+Still, if you're determined, sir, there's an end of it.  Foster will make
+your face up.  What disguise do you propose to adopt?"
+
+"A sort of Dago seaman, I think; something like poor Cadby.
+I can rely on my knowledge of the brutes, if I am sure
+of my disguise."
+
+"You are forgetting me, Smith," I said.
+
+He turned to me quickly.
+
+"Petrie," he replied, "it is MY business, unfortunately, but it
+is no sort of hobby."
+
+"You mean that you can no longer rely upon me?"
+I said angrily.
+
+Smith grasped my hand, and met my rather frigid stare with a look
+of real concern on his gaunt, bronzed face.
+
+"My dear old chap," he answered, "that was really unkind.
+You know that I meant something totally different."
+
+"It's all right, Smith;" I said, immediately ashamed of my choler, and wrung
+his hand heartily.  "I can pretend to smoke opium as well as another.
+I shall be going, too, Inspector."
+
+As a result of this little passage of words, some twenty minutes
+later two dangerous-looking seafaring ruffians entered a waiting cab,
+accompanied by Inspector Weymouth, and were driven off into
+the wilderness of London's night.  In this theatrical business
+there was, to my mind, something ridiculous--almost childish--
+and I could have laughed heartily had it not been that grim
+tragedy lurked so near to farce.
+
+The mere recollection that somewhere at our journey's end Fu-Manchu
+awaited us was sufficient to sober my reflections--Fu-Manchu, who,
+with all the powers represented by Nayland Smith pitted against him,
+pursued his dark schemes triumphantly, and lurked in hiding within
+this very area which was so sedulously patrolled--Fu-Manchu, whom
+I had never seen, but whose name stood for horrors indefinable!
+Perhaps I was destined to meet the terrible Chinese doctor to-night.
+
+I ceased to pursue a train of thought which promised to lead to morbid depths,
+and directed my attention to what Smith was saying.
+
+"We will drop down from Wapping and reconnoiter, as you say the place
+is close to the riverside.  Then you can put us ashore somewhere below.
+Ryman can keep the launch close to the back of the premises, and your fellows
+will be hanging about near the front, near enough to hear the whistle."
+
+"Yes," assented Weymouth; "I've arranged for that.
+If you are suspected, you shall give the alarm?"
+
+"I don't know," said Smith thoughtfully.  "Even in that event
+I might wait awhile."
+
+"Don't wait too long," advised the Inspector.  "We shouldn't be
+much wiser if your next appearance was on the end of a grapnel,
+somewhere down Greenwich Reach, with half your fingers missing."
+
+The cab pulled up outside the river police depot, and Smith and I
+entered without delay, four shabby-looking fellows who had been
+seated in the office springing up to salute the Inspector,
+who followed us in.
+
+"Guthrie and Lisle," he said briskly, "get along and find a dark corner
+which commands the door of Singapore Charlie's off the old Highway.
+You look the dirtiest of the troupe, Guthrie; you might drop asleep
+on the pavement, and Lisle can argue with you about getting home.
+Don't move till you hear the whistle inside or have my orders,
+and note everybody that goes in and comes out.  You other two belong
+to this division?"
+
+The C.I.D. men having departed, the remaining pair saluted again.
+
+"Well, you're on special duty to-night. You've been prompt,
+but don't stick your chests out so much.  Do you know of a back
+way to Shen-Yan's?"
+
+The men looked at one another, and both shook their heads.
+
+"There's an empty shop nearly opposite, sir," replied one of them.
+"I know a broken window at the back where we could climb in.
+Then we could get through to the front and watch from there."
+
+"Good!" cried the Inspector.  "See you are not spotted, though; and if you
+hear the whistle, don't mind doing a bit of damage, but be inside Shen-Yan's
+like lightning.  Otherwise, wait for orders."
+
+Inspector Ryman came in, glancing at the clock.
+
+"Launch is waiting," he said.
+
+"Right," replied Smith thoughtfully.  "I am half afraid, though, that the
+recent alarms may have scared our quarry--your man, Mason, and then Cadby.
+Against which we have that, so far as he is likely to know, there has
+been no clew pointing to this opium den.  Remember, he thinks Cadby's
+notes are destroyed."
+
+"The whole business is an utter mystery to me," confessed Ryman.
+"I'm told that there's some dangerous Chinese devil hiding
+somewhere in London, and that you expect to find him at
+Shen-Yan's. Supposing he uses that place, which is possible,
+how do you know he's there to-night?"
+
+"I don't," said Smith; "but it is the first clew we have had
+pointing to one of his haunts, and time means precious lives
+where Dr. Fu-Manchu is concerned."
+
+"Who is he, sir, exactly, this Dr. Fu-Manchu?"
+
+"I have only the vaguest idea, Inspector; but he is no ordinary criminal.
+He is the greatest genius which the powers of evil have put on earth
+for centuries.  He has the backing of a political group whose wealth is
+enormous, and his mission in Europe is to PAVE THE WAY!  Do you follow me?
+He is the advance-agent of a movement so epoch-making that not one Britisher,
+and not one American, in fifty thousand has ever dreamed of it."
+
+Ryman stared, but made no reply, and we went out,
+passing down to the breakwater and boarding the waiting launch.
+With her crew of three, the party numbered seven that swung
+out into the Pool, and, clearing the pier, drew in again
+and hugged the murky shore.
+
+The night had been clear enough hitherto, but now came scudding rainbanks
+to curtain the crescent moon, and anon to unveil her again and show
+the muddy swirls about us.  The view was not extensive from the launch.
+Sometimes a deepening of the near shadows would tell of a moored barge,
+or lights high above our heads mark the deck of a large vessel.
+In the floods of moonlight gaunt shapes towered above; in the ensuing
+darkness only the oily glitter of the tide occupied the foreground
+of the night-piece.
+
+The Surrey shore was a broken wall of blackness, patched with
+lights about which moved hazy suggestions of human activity.
+The bank we were following offered a prospect even more gloomy--
+a dense, dark mass, amid which, sometimes, mysterious half-tones
+told of a dock gate, or sudden high lights leapt flaring
+to the eye.
+
+Then, out of the mystery ahead, a green light grew and crept down upon us.
+A giant shape loomed up, and frowned crushingly upon the little craft.
+A blaze of light, the jangle of a bell, and it was past.  We were dancing
+in the wash of one of the Scotch steamers, and the murk had fallen again.
+
+Discords of remote activity rose above the more intimate
+throbbing of our screw, and we seemed a pigmy company
+floating past the workshops of Brobdingnagian toilers.
+The chill of the near water communicated itself to me, and I
+felt the protection of my shabby garments inadequate against it.
+
+Far over on the Surrey shore a blue light--vaporous, mysterious--
+flicked translucent tongues against the night's curtain.
+It was a weird, elusive flame, leaping, wavering, magically changing
+from blue to a yellowed violet, rising, falling.
+
+"Only a gasworks," came Smith's voice, and I knew that he, too, had been
+watching those elfin fires.  "But it always reminds me of a Mexican <i
+teocalli,> and the altar of sacrifice."
+
+The simile was apt, but gruesome.  I thought of Dr. Fu-Manchu
+and the severed fingers, and could not repress a shudder.
+
+"On your left, past the wooden pier!  Not where the lamp is--
+beyond that; next to the dark, square building--Shen-Yan's."
+
+It was Inspector Ryman speaking.
+
+"Drop us somewhere handy, then," replied Smith, "and lie close in,
+with your ears wide open.  We may have to run for it, so don't
+go far away."
+
+From the tone of his voice I knew that the night mystery of the Thames
+had claimed at least one other victim.
+
+"Dead slow," came Ryman's order.  "We'll put in to the Stone Stairs."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+A SEEMINGLY drunken voice was droning from a neighboring alleyway as Smith
+lurched in hulking fashion to the door of a little shop above which,
+crudely painted, were the words:
+
+
+"SHEN-YAN, Barber."
+
+
+I shuffled along behind him, and had time to note the box of studs,
+German shaving tackle and rolls of twist which lay untidily in the window
+ere Smith kicked the door open, clattered down three wooden steps,
+and pulled himself up with a jerk, seizing my arm for support.
+
+We stood in a bare and very dirty room, which could only
+claim kinship with a civilized shaving-saloon by virtue of
+the grimy towel thrown across the back of the solitary chair.
+A Yiddish theatrical bill of some kind, illustrated, adorned one
+of the walls, and another bill, in what may have been Chinese,
+completed the decorations.  From behind a curtain heavily brocaded
+with filth a little Chinaman appeared, dressed in a loose smock,
+black trousers and thick-soled slippers, and, advancing,
+shook his head vigorously.
+
+"No shavee--no shavee," he chattered, simian fashion,
+squinting from one to the other of us with his twinkling eyes.
+"Too late!  Shuttee shop!"
+
+"Don't you come none of it wi' me!" roared Smith, in a voice of amazing
+gruffness, and shook an artificially dirtied fist under the Chinaman's nose.
+"Get inside and gimme an' my mate a couple o' pipes.  Smokee pipe,
+you yellow scum--savvy?"
+
+My friend bent forward and glared into the other's eyes with a vindictiveness
+that amazed me, unfamiliar as I was with this form of gentle persuasion.
+
+"Kop 'old o' that," he said, and thrust a coin into the Chinaman's
+yellow paw.  "Keep me waitin' an' I'll pull the dam' shop down, Charlie.
+You can lay to it."
+
+"No hab got pipee--" began the other.
+
+Smith raised his fist, and Yan capitulated.
+
+"Allee lightee," he said.  "Full up--no loom.  You come see."
+
+He dived behind the dirty curtain, Smith and I following, and ran up
+a dark stair.  The next moment I found myself in an atmosphere which
+was literally poisonous.  It was all but unbreathable, being loaded
+with opium fumes.  Never before had I experienced anything like it.
+Every breath was an effort.  A tin oil-lamp on a box in the middle
+of the floor dimly illuminated the horrible place, about the walls
+of which ten or twelve bunks were ranged and all of them occupied.
+Most of the occupants were lying motionless, but one or two were
+squatting in their bunks noisily sucking at the little metal pipes.
+These had not yet attained to the opium-smoker's Nirvana.
+
+"No loom--samee tella you," said Shen-Yan, complacently testing
+Smith's shilling with his yellow, decayed teeth.
+
+Smith walked to a corner and dropped cross-legged, on the floor,
+pulling me down with him.
+
+"Two pipe quick," he said.  "Plenty room.  Two piecee pipe--
+or plenty heap trouble."
+
+A dreary voice from one of the bunks came:
+
+"Give 'im a pipe, Charlie, curse yer!  an' stop 'is palaver."
+
+Yan performed a curious little shrug, rather of the back than of
+the shoulders, and shuffled to the box which bore the smoky lamp.
+Holding a needle in the flame, he dipped it, when red-hot, into an old
+cocoa tin, and withdrew it with a bead of opium adhering to the end.
+Slowly roasting this over the lamp, he dropped it into the bowl
+of the metal pipe which he held ready, where it burned with a
+spirituous blue flame.
+
+"Pass it over," said Smith huskily, and rose on his knees with the assumed
+eagerness of a slave to the drug.
+
+Yan handed him the pipe, which he promptly put to his lips,
+and prepared another for me.
+
+"Whatever you do, don't inhale any," came Smith's whispered injunction.
+
+It was with a sense of nausea greater even than that occasioned by the
+disgusting atmosphere of the den that I took the pipe and pretended to smoke.
+Taking my cue from my friend, I allowed my head gradually to sink lower
+and lower, until, within a few minutes, I sprawled sideways on the floor,
+Smith lying close beside me.
+
+"The ship's sinkin'," droned a voice from one of the bunks.
+"Look at the rats."
+
+Yan had noiselessly withdrawn, and I experienced a curious sense
+of isolation from my fellows--from the whole of the Western world.
+My throat was parched with the fumes, my head ached.
+The vicious atmosphere seemed contaminating.  I was as one dropped--
+
+Somewhere East of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
+And there ain't no Ten Commandments and a man can raise a thirst.
+
+Smith began to whisper softly.
+
+"We have carried it through successfully so far," he said.
+"I don't know if you have observed it, but there is a stair
+just behind you, half concealed by a ragged curtain.
+We are near that, and well in the dark.  I have seen nothing
+suspicious so far--or nothing much.  But if there was anything
+going forward it would no doubt be delayed until we new arrivals
+were well doped.  S-SH!>"
+
+He pressed my arm to emphasize the warning.  Through my half-closed eyes
+I perceived a shadowy form near the curtain to which he had referred.
+I lay like a log, but my muscles were tensed nervously.
+
+The shadow materialized as the figure moved forward into the room
+with a curiously lithe movement.
+
+The smoky lamp in the middle of the place afforded
+scant illumination, serving only to indicate sprawling shapes--
+here an extended hand, brown or yellow, there a sketchy,
+corpse-like face; whilst from all about rose obscene sighings
+and murmurings in far-away voices--an uncanny, animal chorus.
+It was like a glimpse of the Inferno seen by some Chinese Dante.
+But so close to us stood the newcomer that I was able to make out a
+ghastly parchment face, with small, oblique eyes, and a misshapen head
+crowned with a coiled pigtail, surmounting a slight, hunched body.
+There was something unnatural, inhuman, about that masklike face,
+and something repulsive in the bent shape and the long,
+yellow hands clasped one upon the other.
+
+Fu-Manchu, from Smith's account, in no way resembled this crouching
+apparition with the death's-head countenance and lithe movements;
+but an instinct of some kind told me that we were on the right scent--
+that this was one of the doctor's servants.  How I came to that conclusion,
+I cannot explain; but with no doubt in my mind that this was a member
+of the formidable murder group, I saw the yellow man creep nearer,
+nearer, silently, bent and peering.
+
+He was watching us.
+
+Of another circumstance I became aware, and a disquieting circumstance.
+There were fewer murmurings and sighings from the surrounding bunks.
+The presence of the crouching figure had created a sudden semi-silence
+in the den, which could only mean that some of the supposed opium-smokers
+had merely feigned coma and the approach of coma.
+
+Nayland Smith lay like a dead man, and trusting to the darkness,
+I, too, lay prone and still, but watched the evil face bending
+lower and lower, until it came within a few inches of my own.
+I completely closed my eyes.
+
+Delicate fingers touched my right eyelid.  Divining what was coming,
+I rolled my eyes up, as the lid was adroitly lifted and lowered again.
+The man moved away.
+
+I had saved the situation!  And noting anew the hush about me--
+a hush in which I fancied many pairs of ears listened--I was glad.
+For just a moment I realized fully how, with the place watched back
+and front, we yet were cut off, were in the hands of Far Easterns,
+to some extent in the power of members of that most inscrutably
+mysterious race, the Chinese.
+
+"Good," whispered Smith at my side.  "I don't think I could have done it.
+He took me on trust after that.  My God!  what an awful face.
+Petrie, it's the hunchback of Cadby's notes.  Ah, I thought so.
+Do you see that?"
+
+I turned my eyes round as far as was possible.  A man had scrambled down
+from one of the bunks and was following the bent figure across the room.
+
+They passed around us quietly, the little yellow man leading, with his
+curious, lithe gait, and the other, an impassive Chinaman, following.
+The curtain was raised, and I heard footsteps receding on the stairs.
+
+"Don't stir," whispered Smith.
+
+An intense excitement was clearly upon him, and he communicated it to me.
+Who was the occupant of the room above?
+
+Footsteps on the stair, and the Chinaman reappeared, recrossed the floor,
+and went out.  The little, bent man went over to another bunk, this time
+leading up the stair one who looked like a lascar.
+
+"Did you see his right hand?" whispered Smith.  "A dacoit!
+They come here to report and to take orders.  Petrie, Dr. Fu-Manchu
+is up there."
+
+"What shall we do?"--softly.
+
+"Wait.  Then we must try to rush the stairs.  It would be futile
+to bring in the police first.  He is sure to have some other exit.
+I will give the word while the little yellow devil is down here.
+You are nearer and will have to go first, but if the hunchback follows,
+I can then deal with him."
+
+Our whispered colloquy was interrupted by the return of the dacoit,
+who recrossed the room as the Chinaman had done, and immediately
+took his departure.  A third man, whom Smith identified as a Malay,
+ascended the mysterious stairs, descended, and went out; and a fourth,
+whose nationality it was impossible to determine, followed.
+Then, as the softly moving usher crossed to a bunk on the right
+of the outer door--
+
+"Up you go, Petrie," cried Smith, for further delay was dangerous
+and further dissimulation useless.
+
+I leaped to my feet.  Snatching my revolver from the pocket
+of the rough jacket I wore, I bounded to the stair and went
+blundering up in complete darkness.  A chorus of brutish cries
+clamored from behind, with a muffled scream rising above them all.
+But Nayland Smith was close behind as I raced along a covered gangway,
+in a purer air, and at my heels when I crashed open a door at
+the end and almost fell into the room beyond.
+
+What I saw were merely a dirty table, with some odds and ends upon
+it of which I was too excited to take note, an oil-lamp swung
+by a brass chain above, and a man sitting behind the table.
+But from the moment that my gaze rested upon the one who sat there,
+I think if the place had been an Aladdin's palace I should have
+had no eyes for any of its wonders.
+
+He wore a plain yellow robe, of a hue almost identical with that
+of his smooth, hairless countenance.  His hands were large,
+long and bony, and he held them knuckles upward, and rested his
+pointed chin upon their thinness.  He had a great, high brow,
+crowned with sparse, neutral-colored hair.
+
+Of his face, as it looked out at me over the dirty table,
+I despair of writing convincingly.  It was that of an archangel
+of evil, and it was wholly dominated by the most uncanny
+eyes that ever reflected a human soul, for they were narrow
+and long, very slightly oblique, and of a brilliant green.
+But their unique horror lay in a certain filminess
+(it made me think of the membrana nictitans in a bird)
+which, obscuring them as I threw wide the door, seemed to lift
+as I actually passed the threshold, revealing the eyes in all
+their brilliant iridescence.
+
+I know that I stopped dead, one foot within the room, for the
+malignant force of the man was something surpassing my experience.
+He was surprised by this sudden intrusion--yes, but no trace of fear
+showed upon that wonderful face, only a sort of pitying contempt.
+And, as I paused, he rose slowly to his feet, never removing his
+gaze from mine.
+
+"IT'S FU-MANCHU!" cried Smith over my shoulder, in a voice
+that was almost a scream.  "IT'S FU-MANCHU!  Cover him!
+Shoot him dead if--"
+
+The conclusion of that sentence I never heard.
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu reached down beside the table, and the floor slipped
+from under me.
+
+One last glimpse I had of the fixed green eyes, and with a scream I was
+unable to repress I dropped, dropped, dropped, and plunged into icy water,
+which closed over my head.
+
+Vaguely I had seen a spurt of flame, had heard another cry following
+my own, a booming sound (the trap), the flat note of a police whistle.
+But when I rose to the surface impenetrable darkness enveloped me;
+I was spitting filthy, oily liquid from my mouth, and fighting down
+the black terror that had me by the throat--terror of the darkness
+about me, of the unknown depths beneath me, of the pit into which I
+was cast amid stifling stenches and the lapping of tidal water.
+
+"Smith!" I cried. . . ."Help!  Help!"
+
+My voice seemed to beat back upon me, yet I was about
+to cry out again, when, mustering all my presence of mind
+and all my failing courage, I recognized that I had better
+employment of my energies, and began to swim straight ahead,
+desperately determined to face all the horrors of this place--
+to die hard if die I must.
+
+A drop of liquid fire fell through the darkness and hissed
+into the water beside me!
+
+I felt that, despite my resolution, I was going mad.
+
+Another fiery drop--and another!
+
+I touched a rotting wooden post and slimy timbers.
+I had reached one bound of my watery prison.  More fire fell
+from above, and the scream of hysteria quivered, unuttered,
+in my throat.
+
+Keeping myself afloat with increasing difficulty in my heavy garments,
+I threw my head back and raised my eyes.
+
+No more drops fell, and no more drops would fall; but it
+was merely a question of time for the floor to collapse.
+For it was beginning to emit a dull, red glow.
+
+The room above me was in flames!
+
+It was drops of burning oil from the lamp, finding passage through
+the cracks in the crazy flooring, which had fallen about me--
+for the death trap had reclosed, I suppose, mechanically.
+
+My saturated garments were dragging me down, and now I could hear
+the flames hungrily eating into the ancient rottenness overhead.
+Shortly that cauldron would be loosed upon my head.  The glow of the
+flames grew brighter. . .and showed me the half-rotten piles upholding
+the building, showed me the tidal mark upon the slime-coated walls--
+showed me that there was no escape!
+
+By some subterranean duct the foul place was fed from the Thames.
+By that duct, with the outgoing tide, my body would pass,
+in the wake of Mason, Cadby, and many another victim!
+
+Rusty iron rungs were affixed to one of the walls communicating with a trap--
+but the bottom three were missing!
+
+Brighter and brighter grew the awesome light the light of what
+should be my funeral pyre--reddening the oily water and adding
+a new dread to the whispering, clammy horror of the pit.
+But something it showed me. . .a projecting beam a few feet
+above the water. . .and directly below the iron ladder!
+
+"Merciful Heaven!" I breathed.  "Have I the strength?"
+
+A desire for laughter claimed me with sudden, all but irresistible force.
+I knew what it portended and fought it down--grimly, sternly.
+
+My garments weighed upon me like a suit of mail; with my chest
+aching dully, my veins throbbing to bursting, I forced tired
+muscles to work, and, every stroke an agony, approached the beam.
+Nearer I swam. . .nearer.  Its shadow fell black upon
+the water, which now had all the seeming of a pool of blood.
+Confused sounds--a remote uproar--came to my ears.
+I was nearly spent. . .I was in the shadow of the beam!
+If I could throw up one arm. . .
+
+A shrill scream sounded far above me!
+
+"Petrie!  Petrie!"  (That voice must be Smith's!)  "Don't touch the beam!
+For God's sake DON'T TOUCH THE BEAM!  Keep afloat another few seconds
+and I can get to you!"
+
+Another few seconds!  Was that possible?
+
+I managed to turn, to raise my throbbing head; and I saw the strangest
+sight which that night yet had offered.
+
+Nayland Smith stood upon the lowest iron rung. . .supported by the hideous,
+crook-backed Chinaman, who stood upon the rung above!
+
+"I can't reach him!"
+
+It was as Smith hissed the words despairingly that I looked up--
+and saw the Chinaman snatch at his coiled pigtail and pull it off!
+With it came the wig to which it was attached; and the ghastly yellow mask,
+deprived of its fastenings, fell from position!  "Here!  Here!  Be quick!
+Oh!  be quick!  You can lower this to him!  Be quick!  Be quick!"
+
+A cloud of hair came falling about the slim shoulders
+as the speaker bent to pass this strange lifeline to Smith;
+and I think it was my wonder at knowing her for the girl whom
+that day I had surprised in Cadby's rooms which saved my life.
+
+For I not only kept afloat, but kept my gaze upturned to that beautiful,
+flushed face, and my eyes fixed upon hers--which were wild with fear
+. . .for me!
+
+Smith, by some contortion, got the false queue into my grasp,
+and I, with the strength of desperation, by that means seized
+hold upon the lowest rung.  With my friend's arm round me I
+realized that exhaustion was even nearer than I had supposed.
+My last distinct memory is of the bursting of the floor above
+and the big burning joist hissing into the pool beneath us.
+Its fiery passage, striated with light, disclosed two
+sword blades, riveted, edges up along the top of the beam
+which I had striven to reach.
+
+"The severed fingers--" I said; and swooned.
+
+How Smith got me through the trap I do not know--nor how we made our way
+through the smoke and flames of the narrow passage it opened upon.
+My next recollection is of sitting up, with my friend's arm supporting
+me and Inspector Ryman holding a glass to my lips.
+
+A bright glare dazzled my eyes.  A crowd surged about us,
+and a clangor and shouting drew momentarily nearer.
+
+"It's the engines coming," explained Smith, seeing my bewilderment.
+"Shen-Yan's is in flames.  It was your shot, as you fell through the trap,
+broke the oil-lamp."
+
+"Is everybody out?"
+
+"So far as we know."
+
+"Fu-Manchu?"
+
+Smith shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"No one has seen him.  There was some door at the back--"
+
+"Do you think he may--"
+
+"No," he said tensely.  "Not until I see him lying dead before me
+shall I believe it."
+
+Then memory resumed its sway.  I struggled to my feet.
+
+"Smith, where is she?" I cried.  "Where is she?"
+
+"I don't know," be answered.
+
+"She's given us the slip, Doctor," said Inspector Weymouth,
+as a fire-engine came swinging round the corner of the narrow lane.
+"So has Mr. Singapore Charlie--and, I'm afraid, somebody else.
+We've got six or eight all-sorts, some awake and some asleep,
+but I suppose we shall have to let 'em go again.
+Mr. Smith tells me that the girl was disguised as a Chinaman.
+I expect that's why she managed to slip away."
+
+I recalled how I had been dragged from the pit by the false queue,
+how the strange discovery which had brought death to poor Cadby
+had brought life to me, and I seemed to remember, too, that Smith
+had dropped it as he threw his arm about me on the ladder.
+Her mask the girl might have retained, but her wig, I felt certain,
+had been dropped into the water.
+
+It was later that night, when the brigade still were playing,
+upon the blackened shell of what had been Shen-Yan's opium-shop,
+and Smith and I were speeding away in a cab from the scene of God
+knows how many crimes, that I had an idea.
+
+"Smith," I said, "did you bring the pigtail with you that was
+found on Cadby?"
+
+"Yes.  I had hoped to meet the owner."
+
+"Have you got it now?"
+
+"No. I met the owner."
+
+I thrust my hands deep into the pockets of the big pea-jacket
+lent to me by Inspector Ryman, leaning back in my corner.
+
+"We shall never really excel at this business," continued Nayland Smith.
+"We are far too sentimental.  I knew what it meant to us, Petrie, what it
+meant to the world, but I hadn't the heart.  I owed her your life--
+I had to square the account."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+NIGHT fell on Redmoat.  I glanced from the window at
+the nocturne in silver and green which lay beneath me.
+To the west of the shrubbery, with its broken canopy of elms
+and beyond the copper beech which marked the center of its mazes,
+a gap offered a glimpse of the Waverney where it swept into a broad.
+Faint bird-calls floated over the water.  These, with the whisper
+of leaves, alone claimed the ear.
+
+Ideal rural peace, and the music of an English summer evening;
+but to my eyes, every shadow holding fantastic terrors;
+to my ears, every sound a signal of dread.  For the deathful
+hand of Fu-Manchu was stretched over Redmoat, at any hour
+to loose strange, Oriental horrors upon its inmates.
+
+"Well," said Nayland Smith, joining me at the window, "we had dared
+to hope him dead, but we know now that he lives!"
+
+The Rev. J. D. Eltham coughed nervously, and I turned, leaning my elbow
+upon the table, and studied the play of expression upon the refined,
+sensitive face of the clergyman.
+
+"You think I acted rightly in sending for you, Mr. Smith?"
+
+Nayland Smith smoked furiously.
+
+"Mr. Eltham," he replied, "you see in me a man groping in the dark.
+I am to-day no nearer to the conclusion of my mission than
+upon the day when I left Mandalay.  You offer me a clew;
+I am here.  Your affair, I believe, stands thus:
+A series of attempted burglaries, or something of the kind,
+has alarmed your household.  Yesterday, returning from London
+with your daughter, you were both drugged in some way and,
+occupying a compartment to yourselves, you both slept.
+Your daughter awoke, and saw someone else in the carriage--
+a yellow-faced man who held a case of instruments in his hands."
+
+"Yes; I was, of course, unable to enter into particulars over the telephone.
+The man was standing by one of the windows.  Directly he observed that my
+daughter was awake, he stepped towards her."
+
+"What did he do with the case in his hands?"
+
+"She did not notice--or did not mention having noticed.
+In fact, as was natural, she was so frightened that she recalls
+nothing more, beyond the fact that she strove to arouse me,
+without succeeding, felt hands grasp her shoulders--and swooned."
+
+"But someone used the emergency cord, and stopped the train."
+
+"Greba has no recollection of having done so."
+
+"Hm!  Of course, no yellow-faced man was on the train.
+When did you awake?"
+
+"I was aroused by the guard, but only when he had repeatedly shaken me."
+
+"Upon reaching Great Yarmouth you immediately called up Scotland Yard?
+You acted very wisely, sir.  How long were you in China?"
+
+Mr. Eltham's start of surprise was almost comical.
+
+"It is perhaps not strange that you should be aware of my residence in China,
+Mr. Smith," he said; "but my not having mentioned it may seem so.
+The fact is"--his sensitive face flushed in palpable embarrassment--
+"I left China under what I may term an episcopal cloud.
+I have lived in retirement ever since.  Unwittingly--I solemnly
+declare to you, Mr. Smith, unwittingly--I stirred up certain
+deep-seated prejudices in my endeavors to do my duty--my duty.
+I think you asked me how long I was in China?  I was there from 1896
+until 1900--four years."
+
+"I recall the circumstances, Mr. Eltham," said Smith, with an odd
+note in his voice.  "I have been endeavoring to think where I
+had come across the name, and a moment ago I remembered.
+I am happy to have met you, sir."
+
+The clergyman blushed again like a girl, and slightly inclined his head,
+with its scanty fair hair.
+
+"Has Redmoat, as its name implies, a moat round it?  I was unable to see
+in the dusk."  "It remains.  Redmoat--a corruption of Round Moat--
+was formerly a priory, disestablished by the eighth Henry in 1536."
+His pedantic manner was quaint at times.  "But the moat is no
+longer flooded.  In fact, we grow cabbages in part of it.
+If you refer to the strategic strength of the place"--he smiled,
+but his manner was embarrassed again--"it is considerable.
+I have barbed wire fencing, and--other arrangements.
+You see, it is a lonely spot," he added apologetically.
+"And now, if you will excuse me, we will resume these gruesome
+inquiries after the more pleasant affairs of dinner."
+
+He left us.
+
+"Who is our host?" I asked, as the door closed.
+
+Smith smiled.
+
+"You are wondering what caused the `episcopal cloud?'" he suggested.
+"Well, the deep-seated prejudices which our reverend friend stirred up
+culminated in the Boxer Risings."
+
+"Good heavens, Smith!" I said; for I could not reconcile the diffident
+personality of the clergyman with the memories which those words awakened.
+
+"He evidently should be on our danger list," my friend continued quickly;
+"but he has so completely effaced himself of recent years that I think it
+probable that someone else has only just recalled his existence to mind.
+The Rev. J. D. Eltham, my dear Petrie, though he may be a poor hand
+at saving souls, at any rate, has saved a score of Christian women
+from death--and worse."
+
+"J. D. Eltham--" I began.
+
+"Is `Parson Dan'!" rapped Smith, "the `Fighting Missionary,'
+the man who with a garrison of a dozen cripples and a German
+doctor held the hospital a Nan-Yang against two hundred Boxers.
+That's who th Rev. J. D. Eltham is!  But what is he up to,
+now, I have yet to find out.  He is keeping something back--
+something which has made him an object of interest to Young China!"
+
+During dinner the matters responsible for our presence there did not
+hold priority in the conversation.  In fact, this, for the most part,
+consisted in light talk of books and theaters.
+
+Greba Eltham, the clergyman's daughter, was a charming young hostess,
+and she, with Vernon Denby, Mr. Eltham's nephew, completed the party.
+No doubt the girl's presence, in part, at any rate, led us to refrain
+from the subject uppermost in our minds.
+
+These little pools of calm dotted along the torrential course of
+the circumstances which were bearing my friend and I onward to unknown
+issues form pleasant, sunny spots in my dark recollections.
+
+So I shall always remember, with pleasure, that dinner-party
+at Redmoat, in the old-world dining-room; it was so very peaceful,
+so almost grotesquely calm.  For I, within my very bones, felt it
+to be the calm before the storm.  When, later, we men passed
+to the library, we seemed to leave that atmosphere behind us.
+
+"Redmoat," said the Rev. J. D. Eltham, "has latterly become the theater
+of strange doings."
+
+He stood on the hearth-rug. A shaded lamp upon the big table
+and candles in ancient sconces upon the mantelpiece afforded
+dim illumination.  Mr. Eltham's nephew, Vernon Denby,
+lolled smoking on the window-seat, and I sat near to him.
+Nayland Smith paced restlessly up and down the room.
+
+"Some mouths ago, almost a year," continued the clergyman,
+"a burglarious attempt was made upon the house.  There was an arrest,
+and the man confessed that he had been tempted by my collection."
+He waved his hand vaguely towards the several cabinets about
+the shadowed room.
+
+"It was shortly afterwards that I allowed my hobby for--
+playing at forts to run away with me."  He smiled an apology.
+"I virtually fortified Redmoat--against trespassers of any kind, I mean.
+You have seen that the house stands upon a kind of large mound.
+This is artificial, being the buried ruins of a Roman outwork;
+a portion of the ancient castrum." Again he waved indicatively,
+this time toward the window.
+
+"When it was a priory it was completely isolated and defended
+by its environing moat.  Today it is completely surrounded by
+barbed-wire fencing.  Below this fence, on the east, is a narrow stream,
+a tributary of the Waverney; on the north and west, the high road,
+but nearly twenty feet below, the banks being perpendicular.
+On the south is the remaining part of the moat--now my kitchen garden;
+but from there up to the level of the house is nearly twenty feet again,
+and the barbed wire must also be counted with.
+
+"The entrance, as you know, is by the way of a kind of cutting.
+There is a gate at the foot of the steps (they are some of the original
+steps of the priory, Dr. Petrie), and another gate at the head."
+
+He paused, and smiled around upon us boyishly.
+
+"My secret defenses remain to be mentioned," he resumed;
+and, opening a cupboard, he pointed to a row of batteries,
+with a number of electric bells upon the wall behind.
+"The more vulnerable spots are connected at night with these bells,"
+he said triumphantly.  "Any attempt to scale the barbed wire
+or to force either gate would set two or more of these ringing.
+A stray cow raised one false alarm," he added, "and a careless
+rook threw us into a perfect panic on another occasion."
+
+He was so boyish--so nervously brisk and acutely sensitive--
+that it was difficult to see in him the hero of the Nan-Yang hospital.
+I could only suppose that he had treated the Boxers' raid in the same spirit
+wherein he met would-be trespassers within the precincts of Redmoat.
+It had been an escapade, of which he was afterwards ashamed, as, faintly,
+he was ashamed of his "fortifications."  "But," rapped Smith, "it was not
+the visit of the burglar which prompted these elaborate precautions."
+
+Mr. Eltham coughed nervously.
+
+"I am aware," he said, "that having invoked official aid, I must be
+perfectly frank with you, Mr. Smith.  It was the burglar who was responsible
+for my continuing the wire fence all round the grounds, but the electrical
+contrivance followed, later, as a result of several disturbed nights.
+My servants grew uneasy about someone who came, they said, after dusk.
+No one could describe this nocturnal visitor, but certainly we found traces.
+I must admit that.
+
+"Then--I received what I may term a warning.  My position is a peculiar one--
+a peculiar one.  My daughter, too, saw this prowling, person,
+over by the Roman castrum, and described him as a yellow man.
+It was the incident in the train following closely upon this other, which led
+me to speak to the police, little as I desired to--er--court publicity."
+
+Nayland Smith walked to a window, and looked out across
+the sloping lawn to where the shadows of the shrubbery lay.
+A dog was howling dismally somewhere.
+
+"Your defenses are not impregnable, after all, then?" he jerked.
+"On our way up this evening Mr. Denby was telling us about the death
+of his collie a few nights ago."
+
+The clergyman's face clouded.
+
+"That, certainly, was alarming," he confessed.
+
+"I had been in London for a few days, and during my absence Vernon
+came down, bringing the dog with him.  On the night of his arrival
+it ran, barking, into the shrubbery yonder, and did not come out.
+He went to look for it with a lantern, and found it lying among
+the bushes, quite dead.  The poor creature had been dreadfully
+beaten about the head."
+
+"The gates were locked," Denby interrupted, "and no one could
+have got out of the grounds without a ladder and someone
+to assist him.  But there was so sign of a living thing about.
+Edwards and I searched every corner."
+
+"How long has that other dog taken to howling?" inquired Smith.
+
+"Only since Rex's death," said Denby quickly.
+
+"It is my mastiff," explained the clergyman, "and he is confined in the yard.
+He is never allowed on this side of the house."
+
+Nayland Smith wandered aimlessly about the library.
+
+"I am sorry to have to press you, Mr. Eltham," he said,
+"but what was the nature of the warning to which you referred,
+and from whom did it come?"
+
+Mr. Eltham hesitated for a long time.
+
+"I have been so unfortunate," he said at last, "in my previous efforts,
+that I feel assured of your hostile criticism when I tell you that I am
+contemplating an immediate return to Ho-Nan!"
+
+Smith jumped round upon him as though moved by a spring.
+
+"Then you are going back to Nan-Yang?" he cried.
+"Now I understand!  Why have you not told me before?
+That is the key for which I have vainly been seeking.
+Your troubles date from the time of your decision to return?"
+
+"Yes, I must admit it," confessed the clergyman diffidently.
+
+"And your warning came from China?"
+
+"It did."
+
+"From a Chinaman?"
+
+"From the Mandarin, Yen-Sun-Yat."
+
+"Yen-Sun-Yat!  My good sir!  He warned you to abandon your visit?
+And you reject his advice?  Listen to me."  Smith was intensely
+excited now, his eyes bright, his lean figure curiously strung up, alert.
+"The Mandarin Yen-Sun-Yat is one of the seven!"
+
+"I do not follow you, Mr. Smith."
+
+"No, sir.  China to-day is not the China of '98.  It is a huge secret machine,
+and Ho-Nan one of its most important wheels!  But if, as I understand,
+this official is a friend of yours, believe me, he has saved your life!
+You would be a dead man now if it were not for your friend in China!
+My dear sir, you must accept his counsel."
+
+Then, for the first time since I had made his acquaintance, "Parson Dan"
+showed through the surface of the Rev. J. D. Eltham.
+
+"No, sir!" replied the clergyman--and the change in his voice was startling.
+"I am called to Nan-Yang. Only One may deter my going."
+
+The admixture of deep spiritual reverence with intense truculence
+in his voice was dissimilar from anything I ever had heard.
+
+"Then only One can protect you," cried Smith, "for, by Heaven,
+no MAN will be able to do so!  Your presence in Ho-Nan
+can do no possible good at present.  It must do harm.
+Your experience in 1900 should be fresh in your memory."
+
+"Hard words, Mr. Smith."
+
+"The class of missionary work which you favor, sir, is injurious
+to international peace.  At the present moment, Ho-Nan is
+a barrel of gunpowder; you would be the lighted match.
+I do not willingly stand between any man and what he chooses
+to consider his duty, but I insist that you abandon your visit
+to the interior of China!"
+
+"You insist, Mr. Smith?"  "As your guest, I regret the necessity
+for reminding you that I hold authority to enforce it."
+
+Denby fidgeted uneasily.  The tone of the conversation was growing harsh
+and the atmosphere of the library portentous with brewing, storms.
+
+There was a short, silent interval.
+
+"This is what I had feared and expected," said the clergyman.
+"This was my reason for not seeking official protection."
+
+"The phantom Yellow Peril," said Nayland Smith, "to-day materializes
+under the very eyes of the Western world."
+
+"The `Yellow Peril'!"
+
+"You scoff, sir, and so do others.  We take the proffered right
+hand of friendship nor inquire if the hidden left holds a knife!
+The peace of the world is at stake, Mr. Eltham.  Unknowingly, you tamper
+with tremendous issues."
+
+Mr. Eltham drew a deep breath, thrusting both hands in his pockets.
+
+"You are painfully frank, Mr. Smith," he said; "but I like you for it.
+I will reconsider my position and talk this matter over again
+with you to-morrow."
+
+Thus, then, the storm blew over.  Yet I had never
+experienced such an overwhelming sense of imminent peril--
+of a sinister presence--as oppressed me at that moment.
+The very atmosphere of Redmoat was impregnated with
+Eastern devilry; it loaded the air like some evil perfume.
+And then, through the silence, cut a throbbing scream--
+the scream of a woman in direst fear.
+
+"My God, it's Greba!" whispered Mr. Eltham.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+IN what order we dashed down to the drawing-room I cannot recall.
+But none was before me when I leaped over the threshold and saw Miss
+Eltham prone by the French windows.
+
+These were closed and bolted, and she lay with hands
+outstretched in the alcove which they formed.  I bent over her.
+Nayland Smith was at my elbow.
+
+"Get my bag" I said.  "She has swooned.  It is nothing serious."
+
+Her father, pale and wide-eyed, hovered about me, muttering incoherently;
+but I managed to reassure him; and his gratitude when, I having administered
+a simple restorative, the girl sighed shudderingly and opened her eyes,
+was quite pathetic.
+
+I would permit no questioning at that time, and on her father's
+arm she retired to her own rooms.
+
+It was some fifteen minutes later that her message was brought to me.
+I followed the maid to a quaint little octagonal apartment, and Greba
+Eltham stood before me, the candlelight caressing the soft curves
+of her face and gleaming in the meshes of her rich brown hair.
+
+When she had answered my first question she hesitated in pretty confusion.
+
+"We are anxious to know what alarmed you, Miss Eltham."
+
+She bit her lip and glanced with apprehension towards the window.
+
+"I am almost afraid to tell father," she began rapidly.
+"He will think me imaginative, but you have been so kind.
+It was two green eyes!  Oh!  Dr. Petrie, they looked up at me
+from the steps leading to the lawn.  And they shone like the eyes
+of a cat."
+
+The words thrilled me strangely.
+
+"Are you sure it was not a cat, Miss Eltham?"
+
+"The eyes were too large, Dr. Petrie.  There was
+something dreadful, most dreadful, in their appearance.
+I feel foolish and silly for having fainted, twice in two days!
+But the suspense is telling upon me, I suppose.
+Father thinks"--she was becoming charmingly confidential,
+as a woman often will with a tactful physician--"that
+shut up here we are safe from--whatever threatens us."
+I noted, with concern, a repetition of the nervous shudder.
+"But since our return someone else has been in Redmoat!"
+
+"Whatever do you mean, Miss Eltham?"
+
+"Oh!  I don't quite know what I do mean, Dr. Petrie.
+What does it ALL mean?  Vernon has been explaining to me
+that some awful Chinaman is seeking the life of Mr. Nayland Smith.
+But if the same man wants to kill my father, why has
+he not done so?"
+
+"I am afraid you puzzle me."
+
+"Of course, I must do so.  But--the man in the train.
+He could have killed us both quite easily!  And--last night
+someone was in father's room."
+
+"In his room!"
+
+"I could not sleep, and I heard something moving.
+My room is the next one.  I knocked on the wall and woke father.
+There was nothing; so I said it was the howling of the dog
+that had frightened me."
+
+"How, could anyone get into his room?"
+
+"I cannot imagine.  But I am not sure it was a man."
+
+"Miss Eltham, you alarm me.  What do you suspect?"
+
+"You must think me hysterical and silly, but whilst father and I have been
+away from Redmoat perhaps the usual precautions have been neglected.
+Is there any creature, any large creature, which could climb up the wall
+to the window?  Do you know of anything with a long, thin body?"
+
+For a moment I offered no reply, studying the girl's pretty face,
+her eager, blue-gray eyes widely opened and fixed upon mine.
+She was not of the neurotic type, with her clear complexion
+and sun-kissed neck; her arms, healthily toned by exposure
+to the country airs, were rounded and firm, and she had the agile
+shape of a young Diana with none of the anaemic languor which breeds
+morbid dreams.  She was frightened; yes, who would not have been?
+But the mere idea of this thing which she believed to be in Redmoat,
+without the apparition of the green eyes, must have prostrated
+a victim of "nerves."
+
+"Have you seen such a creature, Miss Eltham?"
+
+She hesitated again, glancing down and pressing her finger-tips together.
+
+"As father awoke and called out to know why I knocked,
+I glanced from my window.  The moonlight threw half the lawn
+into shadow, and just disappearing in this shadow was something--
+something of a brown color, marked with sections!"
+
+"What size and shape?"
+
+"It moved so quickly I could form no idea of its shape;
+but I saw quite six feet of it flash across the grass!"
+
+"Did you hear anything?"
+
+"A swishing sound in the shrubbery, then nothing more."
+
+She met my eyes expectantly.  Her confidence in my powers of understanding
+and sympathy was gratifying, though I knew that I but occupied the position
+of a father-confessor.
+
+"Have you any idea," I said, "how it came about that you awoke
+in the train yesterday whilst your father did not?"
+
+"We had coffee at a refreshment-room; it must have been drugged in some way.
+I scarcely tasted mine, the flavor was so awful; but father is an old traveler
+and drank the whole of his cupful!"
+
+Mr. Eltham's voice called from below.
+
+"Dr. Petrie," said the girl quickly, "what do you think they
+want to do to him?"
+
+"Ah!" I replied, "I wish I knew that."
+
+"Will you think over what I have told you?  For I do assure you there
+is something here in Redmoat--something that comes and goes in spite
+of father's `fortifications'?  Caesar knows there is.  Listen to him.
+He drags at his chain so that I wonder he does not break it."
+
+As we passed downstairs the howling of the mastiff sounded eerily
+through the house, as did the clank-clank of the tightening chain
+as he threw the weight of his big body upon it.
+
+I sat in Smith's room that night for some time, he pacing the floor
+smoking and talking.
+
+"Eltham has influential Chinese friends," he said;
+"but they dare not have him in Nan-Yang at present.
+He knows the country as he knows Norfolk; he would see things!
+
+"His precautions here have baffled the enemy, I think.
+The attempt in the train points to an anxiety to waste no opportunity.
+But whilst Eltham was absent (he was getting his outfit in London,
+by the way) they have been fixing some second string to their fiddle here.
+In case no opportunity offered before he returned, they provided
+for getting at him here!"
+
+"But how, Smith?"
+
+"That's the mystery.  But the dead dog in the shrubbery is significant."
+
+"Do you think some emissary of Fu-Manchu is actually inside the moat?"
+
+"It's impossible, Petrie.  You are thinking of secret passages,
+and so forth.  There are none.  Eltham has measured up every
+foot of the place.  There isn't a rathole left unaccounted for;
+and as for a tunnel under the moat, the house stands on a solid
+mass of Roman masonry, a former camp of Hadrian's time.
+I have seen a very old plan of the Round Moat Priory as it
+was called.  There is no entrance and no exit save by the steps.
+So how was the dog killed?"
+
+I knocked out my pipe on a bar of the grate.
+
+"We are in the thick of it here," I said.
+
+"We are always in the thick of it," replied Smith.  "Our danger is
+no greater in Norfolk than in London.  But what do they want to do?
+That man in the train with the case of instruments--WHAT instruments?
+Then the apparition of the green eyes to-night. Can they have been
+the eyes of Fu-Manchu?  Is some peculiarly unique outrage contemplated--
+something calling for the presence of the master?"
+
+"He may have to prevent Eltham's leaving England without killing him."
+
+"Quite so.  He probably has instructions to be merciful.
+But God help the victim of Chinese mercy!"
+
+I went to my own room then.  But I did not even undress,
+refilling my pipe and seating myself at the open window.
+Having looked upon the awful Chinese doctor, the memory of
+his face, with its filmed green eyes, could never leave me.
+The idea that he might be near at that moment was a poor narcotic.
+
+The howling and baying of the mastiff was almost continuous.
+
+When all else in Redmoat was still the dog's mournful note yet rose on
+the night with something menacing in it.  I sat looking out across the sloping
+turf to where the shrubbery showed as a black island in a green sea.
+The moon swam in a cloudless sky, and the air was warm and fragrant
+with country scents.
+
+It was in the shrubbery that Denby's collie had met his mysterious death--
+that the thing seen by Miss Eltham had disappeared.  What uncanny secret
+did it hold?
+
+Caesar became silent.
+
+As the stopping of a clock will sometimes awaken a sleeper, the abrupt
+cessation of that distant howling, to which I had grown accustomed,
+now recalled me from a world of gloomy imaginings.
+
+I glanced at my watch in the moonlight.  It was twelve minutes past midnight.
+
+As I replaced it the dog suddenly burst out afresh, but now in a tone
+of sheer anger.  He was alternately howling and snarling in a way
+that sounded new to me.  The crashes, as he leapt to the end
+of his chain, shook the building in which he was confined.
+It was as I stood up to lean from the window and commanded a view
+of the corner of the house that he broke loose.
+
+With a hoarse bay he took that decisive leap, and I
+heard his heavy body fall against the wooden wall.
+There followed a strange, guttural cry. . .and the growling
+of the dog died away at the rear of the house.  He was out!
+But that guttural note had not come from the throat of a dog.
+Of what was he in pursuit?
+
+At which point his mysterious quarry entered the shrubbery I do not know.
+I only know that I saw absolutely nothing, until Caesar's lithe shape
+was streaked across the lawn, and the great creature went crashing
+into the undergrowth.
+
+Then a faint sound above and to my right told me that I was not the only
+spectator of the scene.  I leaned farther from the window.
+
+"Is that you, Miss Eltham?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, Dr. Petrie!" she said.  "I am so glad you are awake.
+Can we do nothing to help?  Caesar will be killed."
+
+"Did you see what he went after?"
+
+"No," she called back, and drew her breath sharply.
+
+For a strange figure went racing across the grass.
+It was that of a man in a blue dressing-gown, who held
+a lantern high before him, and a revolver in his right hand.
+Coincident with my recognition of Mr. Eltham he leaped,
+plunging into the shrubbery in the wake of the dog.
+
+But the night held yet another surprise; for Nayland Smith's voice came:
+
+"Come back!  Come back, Eltham!"
+
+I ran out into the passage and downstairs.  The front door was open.
+A terrible conflict waged in the shrubbery, between the mastiff and
+something else.  Passing round to the lawn, I met Smith fully dressed.
+He just had dropped from a first-floor window.
+
+"The man is mad!" he snapped.  "Heaven knows what lurks there!
+He should not have gone alone!"
+
+Together we ran towards the dancing light of Eltham's lantern.
+The sounds of conflict ceased suddenly.  Stumbling over
+stumps and lashed by low-sweeping branches, we struggled
+forward to where the clergyman knelt amongst the bushes.
+He glanced up with tears in his eyes, as was revealed by
+the dim light.
+
+"Look!" he cried.
+
+The body of the dog lay at his feet.
+
+It was pitiable to think that the fearless brute should have met
+his death in such a fashion, and when I bent and examined him I
+was glad to find traces of life.
+
+"Drag him out.  He is not dead," I said.
+
+"And hurry," rapped Smith, peering about him right and left.
+
+So we three hurried from that haunted place, dragging the dog with us.
+We were not molested.  No sound disturbed the now perfect stillness.
+
+By the lawn edge we came upon Denby, half dressed;
+and almost immediately Edwards the gardener also appeared.
+The white faces of the house servants showed at one window,
+and Miss Eltham called to me from her room:
+
+"Is he dead?"
+
+"No," I replied; "only stunned."
+
+We carried the dog round to the yard, and I examined his head.
+It had been struck by some heavy blunt instrument, but the skull
+was not broken.  It is hard to kill a mastiff.
+
+"Will you attend to him, Doctor?" asked Eltham.
+"We must see that the villain does not escape."
+
+His face was grim and set.  This was a different man from the diffident
+clergyman we knew:  this was "Parson Dan" again.
+
+I accepted the care of the canine patient, and Eltham with
+the others went off for more lights to search the shrubbery.
+As I was washing a bad wound between the mastiff's ears,
+Miss Eltham joined me.  It was the sound of her voice,
+I think, rather than my more scientific ministration,
+which recalled Caesar to life.  For, as she entered, his tail
+wagged feebly, and a moment later he struggled to his feet--
+one of which was injured.
+
+Having provided for his immediate needs, I left him in
+charge of his young mistress and joined the search party.
+They had entered the shrubbery from four points and drawn blank.
+
+"There is absolutely nothing there, and no one can possibly have left
+the grounds," said Eltham amazedly.
+
+We stood on the lawn looking at one another, Nayland Smith,
+angry but thoughtful, tugging at the lobe of his left ear,
+as was his habit in moments of perplexity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+WITH the first coming of light, Eltham, Smith and I tested the electrical
+contrivances from every point.  They were in perfect order.
+It became more and more incomprehensible how anyone could have entered
+and quitted Redmoat during the night.  The barbed-wire fencing was intact,
+and bore no signs of having been tampered with.
+
+Smith and I undertook an exhaustive examination of the shrubbery.
+
+At the spot where we had found the dog, some five paces to the west
+of the copper beech, the grass and weeds were trampled and the
+surrounding laurels and rhododendrons bore evidence of a struggle,
+but no human footprint could be found.
+
+"The ground is dry," said Smith.  "We cannot expect much."
+
+"In my opinion," I said, "someone tried to get at Caesar;
+his presence is dangerous.  And in his rage he broke loose."
+
+"I think so, too," agreed Smith.  "But why did this person make
+for here?  And how, having mastered the dog, get out of Redmoat?
+I am open to admit the possibility of someone's getting in during
+the day whilst the gates are open, and hiding until dusk.
+But how in the name of all that's wonderful does he GET OUT?
+He must possess the attributes of a bird."
+
+I thought of Greba Eltham's statements, reminding my friend
+of her description of the thing which she had seen passing
+into this strangely haunted shrubbery.
+
+"That line of speculation soon takes us out of our depth, Petrie," he said.
+"Let us stick to what we can understand, and that may help us
+to a clearer idea of what, at present, is incomprehensible.
+My view of the case to date stands thus:
+
+"(1) Eltham, having rashly decided to return to the interior of China,
+is warned by an official whose friendship he has won in some way
+to stay in England.
+
+"(2) I know this official for one of the Yellow group represented
+in England by Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+"(3) Several attempts, of which we know but little, to get at
+Eltham are frustrated, presumably by his curious `defenses.'
+An attempt in a train fails owing to Miss Eltham's distaste
+for refreshment-room coffee.  An attempt here fails owing
+to her insomnia.
+
+"(4) During Eltham's absence from Redmoat certain preparations
+are made for his return.  These lead to:
+
+"(a) The death of Denby's collie;
+
+"(b) The things heard and seen by Miss Eltham;
+
+"(c) The things heard and seen by us all last night.
+
+"So that the clearing up of my fourth point--id est, the discovery
+of the nature of these preparations--becomes our immediate concern.
+The prime object of these preparations, Petrie, was to enable someone
+to gain access to Eltham's room.  The other events are incidental.
+The dogs HAD to be got rid of, for instance; and there is no doubt
+that Miss Eltham's wakefulness saved her father a second time."
+
+"But from what?  For Heaven's sake, from what?"
+
+Smith glanced about into the light-patched shadows.
+
+"From a visit by someone--perhaps by Fu-Manchu himself," he said in a
+hushed voice.  "The object of that visit I hope we may never learn;
+for that would mean that it had been achieved."
+
+"Smith," I said, "I do not altogether understand you; but do you
+think he has some incredible creature hidden here somewhere?
+It would be like him."
+
+"I begin to suspect the most formidable creature in the known world
+to be hidden here.  I believe Fu-Manchu is somewhere inside Redmoat!"
+
+Our conversation was interrupted at this point by Denby,
+who came to report that he had examined the moat, the roadside,
+and the bank of the stream, but found no footprints or clew
+of any kind.
+
+"No one left the grounds of Redmoat last night, I think," he said.
+And his voice had awe in it.
+
+That day dragged slowly on.  A party of us scoured the neighborhood
+for traces of strangers, examining every foot of the Roman ruin
+hard by; but vainly.
+
+"May not your presence here induce Fu-Manchu to abandon his plans?"
+I asked Smith.
+
+"I think not," he replied.  "You see, unless we can prevail upon him,
+Eltham sails in a fortnight.  So the Doctor has no time to waste.
+Furthermore, I have an idea that his arrangements are of such a character
+that they MUST go forward.  He might turn aside, of course,
+to assassinate me, if opportunity arose!  But we know, from experience,
+that he permits nothing to interfere with his schemes."
+
+There are few states, I suppose, which exact so severe a toll from one's
+nervous system as the ANTICIPATION of calamity.
+
+All anticipation is keener, be it of joy or pain, than the reality
+whereof it is a mental forecast; but that inactive waiting at Redmoat,
+for the blow which we knew full well to be pending exceeded in its
+nerve taxation, anything, I hitherto had experienced.
+
+I felt as one bound upon an Aztec altar, with the priest's obsidian
+knife raised above my breast!
+
+Secret and malign forces throbbed about us; forces against which
+we had no armor.  Dreadful as it was, I count it a mercy that
+the climax was reached so quickly.  And it came suddenly enough;
+for there in that quiet Norfolk home we found ourselves at hand
+grips with one of the mysterious horrors which characterized
+the operations of Dr. Fu-Manchu. It was upon us before we realized it.
+There is no incidental music to the dramas of real life.
+
+As we sat on the little terrace in the creeping twilight,
+I remember thinking how the peace of the scene gave the lie
+to my fears that we bordered upon tragic things.  Then Caesar,
+who had been a docile patient all day, began howling again;
+and I saw Greba Eltham shudder.
+
+I caught Smith's eye, and was about to propose our retirement indoors,
+when the party was broken up in more turbulent fashion.  I suppose it
+was the presence of the girl which prompted Denby to the rash act,
+a desire personally to distinguish himself.  But, as I recalled afterwards,
+his gaze had rarely left the shrubbery since dusk, save to seek her face,
+and now he leaped wildly to his feet, overturning his chair, and dashed
+across the grass to the trees.
+
+"Did you see it?" he yelled.  "Did you see it?"
+
+He evidently carried a revolver.  For from the edge of the shrubbery
+a shot sounded, and in the flash we saw Denby with the weapon raised.
+
+"Greba, go in and fasten the windows," cried Eltham.
+"Mr. Smith, will you enter the bushes from the west.
+Dr. Petrie, east.  Edwards, Edwards--" And he was off across
+the lawn with the nervous activity of a cat.
+
+As I made off in an opposite direction I heard the gardener's
+voice from the lower gate, and I saw Eltham's plan.
+It was to surround the shrubbery.
+
+Two more shots and two flashes from the dense heart of greenwood.
+Then a loud cry--I thought, from Denby--and a second, muffled one.
+
+Following--silence, only broken by the howling of the mastiff.
+
+I sprinted through the rose garden, leaped heedlessly over a bed of geranium
+and heliotrope, and plunged in among the bushes and under the elms.
+Away on the left I heard Edwards shouting, and Eltham's answering voice.
+
+"Denby!" I cried, and yet louder:  "Denby!"
+
+But the silence fell again.
+
+Dusk was upon Redmoat now, but from sitting in the twilight my eyes had
+grown accustomed to gloom, and I could see fairly well what lay before me.
+Not daring to think what might lurk above, below, around me, I pressed
+on into the midst of the thicket.
+
+"Vernon!" came Eltham's voice from one side.
+
+"Bear more to the right, Edwards," I heard Nayland Smith cry
+directly ahead of me.
+
+With an eerie and indescribable sensation of impending disaster upon me,
+I thrust my way through to a gray patch which marked a break in the
+elmen roof.  At the foot of the copper beech I almost fell over Eltham.
+Then Smith plunged into view.  Lastly, Edwards the gardener rounded a big
+rhododendron and completed the party.
+
+We stood quite still for a moment.
+
+A faint breeze whispered through the beech leaves.
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+I cannot remember who put it into words; I was too dazed with amazement
+to notice.  Then Eltham began shouting:
+
+"Vernon!  Vernon!  VERNON!"
+
+His voice pitched higher upon each repetition.  There was something
+horrible about that vain calling, under the whispering beech,
+with shrubs banked about us cloaking God alone could know what.
+
+From the back of the house came Caesar's faint reply.
+
+"Quick!  Lights!" rapped Smith.  "Every lamp you have!"
+
+Off we went, dodging laurels and privets, and poured out on to the lawn,
+a disordered company.  Eltham's face was deathly pale, and his jaw set hard.
+He met my eye.
+
+"God forgive me!" he said.  "I could do murder to-night!"
+
+He was a man composed of strange perplexities.
+
+It seemed an age before the lights were found.  But at last we returned
+to the bushes, really after a very brief delay; and ten minutes
+sufficed us to explore the entire shrubbery, for it was not extensive.
+We found his revolver, but there was no one there--nothing.
+
+When we all stood again on the lawn, I thought that I had never seen
+Smith so haggard.
+
+"What in Heaven's name can we do?" he muttered.
+"What does it mean?"
+
+He expected no answer; for there was none to offer one.
+
+"Search!  Everywhere," said Eltham hoarsely.
+
+He ran off into the rose garden, and began beating about among
+the flowers like a madman, muttering:  "Vernon!  Vernon!"  For close
+upon an hour we all searched.  We searched every square yard, I think,
+within the wire fencing, and found no trace.  Miss Eltham slipped out
+in the confusion, and joined with the rest of us in that frantic hunt.
+Some of the servants assisted too.
+
+It was a group terrified and awestricken which came together
+again on the terrace.  One and then another would give up,
+until only Eltham and Smith were missing.  Then they came back
+together from examining the steps to the lower gate.
+
+Eltham dropped on to a rustic seat, and sank his head in his hands.
+
+Nayland Smith paced up and down like a newly caged animal,
+snapping his teeth together and tugging at his ear.
+
+Possessed by some sudden idea, or pressed to action by his
+tumultuous thoughts, he snatched up a lantern and strode silently off
+across the grass and to the shrubbery once more.  I followed him.
+I think his idea was that he might surprise anyone who lurked there.
+He surprised himself, and all of us.
+
+For right at the margin he tripped and fell flat.
+I ran to him.
+
+He had fallen over the body of Denby, which lay there!
+
+Denby had not been there a few moments before, and how he came
+to be there now we dared not conjecture.  Mr. Eltham joined us,
+uttered one short, dry sob, and dropped upon his knees.
+Then we were carrying Denby back to the house, with the mastiff
+howling a marche funebre.
+
+We laid him on the grass where it sloped down from the terrace.
+Nayland Smith's haggard face was terrible.  But the stark horror of
+the thing inspired him to that, which conceived earlier, had saved Denby.
+Twisting suddenly to Eltham, he roared in a voice audible beyond the river:
+
+"Heavens!  we are fools!  LOOSE THE DOG!"
+
+"But the dog--" I began.
+
+Smith clapped his hand over my mouth.
+
+"I know he's crippled," he whispered.  "But if anything human lurks there,
+the dog will lead us to it.  If a MAN is there, he will fly!  Why did
+we not think of it before.  Fools, fools!"  He raised his voice again.
+"Keep him on leash, Edwards.  He will lead us."
+
+The scheme succeeded.
+
+Edwards barely had started on his errand when bells began ridging
+inside the house.
+
+"Wait!" snapped Eltham, and rushed indoors.
+
+A moment later he was out again, his eyes gleaming madly.
+"Above the moat," he panted.  And we were off en masse
+round the edge of the trees.
+
+It was dark above the moat; but not so dark as to prevent our
+seeing a narrow ladder of thin bamboo joints and silken cord
+hanging by two hooks from the top of the twelve-foot wire fence.
+There was no sound.
+
+"He's out!" screamed Eltham.  "Down the steps!"
+
+We all ran our best and swiftest.  But Eltham outran us.  Like a fury
+he tore at bolts and bars, and like a fury sprang out into the road.
+Straight and white it showed to the acclivity by the Roman ruin.
+But no living thing moved upon it.  The distant baying of the dog
+was borne to our ears.
+
+"Curse it!  he's crippled," hissed Smith.  "Without him,
+as well pursue a shadow!"
+
+
+A few hours later the shrubbery yielded up its secret, a simple one enough:
+A big cask sunk in a pit, with a laurel shrub cunningly affixed
+to its movable lid, which was further disguised with tufts of grass.
+A slender bamboo-jointed rod lay near the fence.  It had a hook on the top,
+and was evidently used for attaching the ladder.
+
+"It was the end of this ladder which Miss Eltham saw," said Smith,
+"as he trailed it behind him into the shrubbery when she interrupted
+him in her fathers room.  He and whomever he had with him doubtless
+slipped in during the daytime--whilst Eltham was absent in London--
+bringing the prepared cask and all necessary implements with them.
+They concealed themselves somewhere--probably in the shrubbery--
+and during the night made the cache.  The excavated earth would be
+disposed of on the flower-beds; the dummy bush they probably had ready.
+You see, the problem of getting IN was never a big one.
+But owing to the `defenses' it was impossible (whilst Eltham
+was in residence at any rate) to get OUT after dark.
+For Fu-Manchu's purposes, then, a working-base INSIDE
+Redmoat was essential.  His servant--for he needed assistance--
+must have been in hiding somewhere outside; Heaven knows where!
+During the day they could come or go by the gates, as we
+have already noted."
+
+"You think it was the Doctor himself?"
+
+"It seems possible.  Whom else has eyes like the eyes Miss Eltham
+saw from the window last night?"
+
+Then remains to tell the nature of the outrage whereby Fu-Manchu had planned
+to prevent Eltham's leaving England for China.  This we learned from Denby.
+For Denby was not dead.
+
+It was easy to divine that he had stumbled upon the fiendish
+visitor at the very entrance to his burrow; had been stunned
+(judging from the evidence, with a sand-bag), and dragged down into
+the cache--to which he must have lain in such dangerous proximity
+as to render detection of the dummy bush possible in removing him.
+The quickest expedient, then, had been to draw him beneath.
+When the search of the shrubbery was concluded, his body had been
+borne to the edge of the bushes and laid where we found it.
+
+Why his life had been spared, I cannot conjecture, but provision
+had been made against his recovering consciousness and revealing
+the secret of the shrubbery.  The ruse of releasing the mastiff alone
+had terminated the visit of the unbidden guest within Redmoat.
+
+Denby made a very slow recovery; and, even when convalescent,
+consciously added not one fact to those we already had collated;
+his memory had completely deserted him!
+
+This, in my opinion, as in those of the several specialists consulted,
+was due, not to the blow on the head, but to the presence,
+slightly below and to the right of the first cervical curve of the spine,
+of a minute puncture--undoubtedly caused by a hypodermic syringe.
+Then, unconsciously, poor Denby furnished the last link in the chain;
+for undoubtedly, by means of this operation, Fu-Manchu had designed
+to efface from Eltham's mind his plans of return to Ho-Nan.
+
+The nature of the fluid which could produce such mental symptoms
+was a mystery--a mystery which defied Western science:
+one of the many strange secrets of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+SINCE Nayland Smith's return from Burma I had rarely taken up a paper
+without coming upon evidences of that seething which had cast up
+Dr. Fu-Manchu. Whether, hitherto, such items had escaped my attention
+or had seemed to demand no particular notice, or whether they now became
+increasingly numerous, I was unable to determine.
+
+One evening, some little time after our sojourn in Norfolk,
+in glancing through a number of papers which I had brought in with me,
+I chanced upon no fewer than four items of news bearing more or less
+directly upon the grim business which engaged my friend and I.
+
+No white man, I honestly believe, appreciates the unemotional cruelty
+of the Chinese.  Throughout the time that Dr. Fu-Manchu remained in England,
+the press preserved a uniform silence upon the subject of his existence.
+This was due to Nayland Smith.  But, as a result, I feel assured
+that my account of the Chinaman's deeds will, in many quarters,
+meet with an incredulous reception.
+
+I had been at work, earlier in the evening, upon the opening
+chapters of this chronicle, and I had realized how difficult
+it would be for my reader, amid secure and cozy surroundings,
+to credit any human being, with a callous villainy great enough
+to conceive and to put into execution such a death pest
+as that directed against Sir Crichton Davey.
+
+One would expect God's worst man to shrink from employing--
+against however vile an enemy--such an instrument as the Zayat Kiss.
+So thinking, my eye was caught by the following:--
+
+
+EXPRESS CORRESPONDENT
+
+NEW YORK.
+
+"Secret service men of the United States Government are searching
+the South Sea Islands for a certain Hawaiian from the island
+of Maui, who, it is believed, has been selling poisonous scorpions
+to Chinese in Honolulu anxious to get rid of their children.
+
+"Infanticide, by scorpion and otherwise, among the Chinese,
+has increased so terribly that the authorities have started
+a searching inquiry, which has led to the hunt for the scorpion
+dealer of Maui.
+
+"Practically all the babies that die mysteriously are unwanted girls,
+and in nearly every case the parents promptly ascribe the death to the bite
+of a scorpion, and are ready to produce some more or less poisonous insect
+in support of the statement.
+
+"The authorities have no doubt that infanticide by scorpion
+bite is a growing practice, and orders have been given to hunt
+down the scorpion dealer at any cost."
+
+
+Is it any matter for wonder that such a people had produced a
+Fu-Manchu?  I pasted the cutting into a scrap-book, determined that,
+if I lived to publish my account of those days, I would quote it
+therein as casting a sidelight upon Chinese character.
+
+A Reuter message to The Globe and a paragraph in The
+Star also furnished work for my scissors.  Here were evidences
+of the deep-seated unrest, the secret turmoil, which manifested
+itself so far from its center as peaceful England in the person
+of the sinister Doctor.
+
+
+"HONG KONG, Friday.
+
+"Li Hon Hung, the Chinaman who fired at the Governor yesterday,
+was charged before the magistrate with shooting at him with
+intent to kill, which is equivalent to attempted murder.
+The prisoner, who was not defended, pleaded guilty.
+The Assistant Crown Solicitor, who prosecuted, asked for a remand
+until Monday, which was granted.
+
+"Snapshots taken by the spectators of the outrage yesterday disclosed
+the presence of an accomplice, also armed with a revolver.
+It is reported that this man, who was arrested last night,
+was in possession of incriminating documentary evidence."
+
+
+Later.
+
+"Examination of the documents found on Li Hon Hung's accomplice
+has disclosed the fact that both men were well financed by
+the Canton Triad Society, the directors of which had enjoined
+the assassination of Sir F. M. or Mr. C. S., the Colonial Secretary.
+In a report prepared by the accomplice for dispatch to Canton,
+also found on his person, he expressed regret that the attempt
+had failed."--Reuter.
+
+"It is officially reported in St. Petersburg that a force of Chinese soldiers
+and villagers surrounded the house of a Russian subject named Said Effendi,
+near Khotan, in Chinese Turkestan.
+
+"They fired at the house and set it in flames.  There were in the house
+about 100 Russians, many of whom were killed.
+
+"The Russian Government has instructed its Minister at Peking to make
+the most vigorous representations on the subject."--Reuter.
+
+
+Finally, in a Personal Column, I found the following:--
+
+"HO-NAN. Have abandoned visit.--ELTHAM."
+
+
+I had just pasted it into my book when Nayland Smith came in and
+threw himself into an arm-chair, facing me across the table.
+I showed him the cutting.
+
+"I am glad, for Eltham's sake--and for the girl's," was his comment.
+"But it marks another victory for Fu-Manchu!  Just Heaven!  Why is
+retribution delayed!"
+
+Smith's darkly tanned face had grown leaner than ever
+since he bad begun his fight with the most uncanny opponent,
+I suppose, against whom a man ever had pitted himself.
+He stood up and began restlessly to pace the room,
+furiously stuffing tobacco into his briar.
+
+"I have seen Sir Lionel Barton," he said abruptly; "and, to put the whole
+thing in a nutshell, he has laughed at me!  During the months that I
+have been wondering where he had gone to he has been somewhere in Egypt.
+He certainly bears a charmed life, for on the evidence of his letter
+to The Times he has seen things in Tibet which Fu-Manchu would
+have the West blind to; in fact, I think he has found a new keyhole
+to the gate of the Indian Empire!"
+
+Long ago we had placed the name of Sir Lionel Barton upon the list of
+those whose lives stood between Fu-Manchu and the attainment of his end.
+Orientalist and explorer, the fearless traveler who first had penetrated
+to Lhassa, who thrice, as a pilgrim, had entered forbidden Mecca,
+he now had turned his attention again to Tibet--thereby signing
+his own death-warrant.
+
+"That he has reached England alive is a hopeful sign?" I suggested.
+
+Smith shook his head, and lighted the blackened briar.
+
+"England at present is the web," he replied.  "The spider will be waiting.
+Petrie, I sometimes despair.  Sir Lionel is an impossible man to shepherd.
+You ought to see his house at Finchley.  A low, squat place completely
+hemmed in by trees.  Damp as a swamp; smells like a jungle.
+Everything topsy-turvy. He only arrived to-day, and he is working and eating
+(and sleeping I expect), in a study that looks like an earthquake at Sotheby's
+auction-rooms. The rest of the house is half a menagerie and half a circus.
+He has a Bedouin groom, a Chinese body-servant, and Heaven only knows
+what other strange people!"
+
+"Chinese!"
+
+"Yes, I saw him; a squinting Cantonese he calls Kwee.  I don't like him.
+Also, there is a secretary known as Strozza, who has an unpleasant face.
+He is a fine linguist, I understand, and is engaged upon the Spanish
+notes for Barton's forthcoming book on the Mayapan temples.
+By the way, all Sir Lionel's baggage disappeared from the landing-stage--
+including his Tibetan notes."
+
+"Significant!"
+
+"Of course.  But he argues that he has crossed Tibet from the Kuen-Lun
+to the Himalayas without being assassinated, and therefore
+that it is unlikely he will meet with that fate in London.
+I left him dictating the book from memory, at the rate of about
+two hundred words a minute."
+
+"He is wasting no time."
+
+"Wasting time!  In addition to the Yucatan book and the work on Tibet,
+he has to read a paper at the Institute next week about some tomb he has
+unearthed in Egypt.  As I came away, a van drove up from the docks
+and a couple of fellows delivered a sarcophagus as big as a boat.
+It is unique, according to Sir Lionel, and will go to the British Museum
+after he has examined it.  The man crams six months' work into six weeks;
+then he is off again."
+
+"What do you propose to do?"
+
+"What CAN I do?  I know that Fu-Manchu will make an attempt upon him.
+I cannot doubt it.  Ugh!  that house gave me the shudders.
+No sunlight, I'll swear, Petrie, can ever penetrate to the rooms,
+and when I arrived this afternoon clouds of gnats floated like motes
+wherever a stray beam filtered through the trees of the avenue.
+There's a steamy smell about the place that is almost malarious,
+and the whole of the west front is covered with a sort of
+monkey-creeper, which he has imported at some time or other.
+It has a close, exotic perfume that is quite in the picture.
+I tell you, the place was made for murder."
+
+"Have you taken any precautions?"
+
+"I called at Scotland Yard and sent a man down to watch the house, but--"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
+
+"What is Sir Lionel like?"
+
+"A madman, Petrie.  A tall, massive man, wearing a dirty
+dressing-gown of neutral color; a man with untidy gray hair
+and a bristling mustache, keen blue eyes, and a brown skin;
+who wears a short beard or rarely shaves--I don't know which.
+I left him striding about among the thousand and one curiosities
+of that incredible room, picking his way through his antique
+furniture, works of reference, manuscripts, mummies, spears,
+pottery and what not--sometimes kicking a book from his course,
+or stumbling over a stuffed crocodile or a Mexican mask--
+alternately dictating and conversing.  Phew!"
+
+For some time we were silent.
+
+"Smith" I said, "we are making no headway in this business.
+With all the forces arrayed against him, Fu-Manchu still eludes us,
+still pursues his devilish, inscrutable way."
+
+Nayland Smith nodded.
+
+"And we don't know all," he said.  "We mark such and such a man
+as one alive to the Yellow Peril, and we warn him--if we have time.
+Perhaps he escapes; perhaps he does not.  But what do we know, Petrie,
+of those others who may die every week by his murderous agency?
+We cannot know EVERYONE who has read the riddle of China.
+I never see a report of someone found drowned, of an apparent suicide,
+of a sudden, though seemingly natural death, without wondering.
+I tell you, Fu-Manchu is omnipresent; his tentacles embrace everything.
+I said that Sir Lionel must bear a charmed life.  The fact that <i
+we> are alive is a miracle."
+
+He glanced at his watch.
+
+"Nearly eleven," he said.  "But sleep seems a waste of time--
+apart from its dangers."
+
+We heard a bell ring.  A few moments later followed a knock
+at the room door.
+
+"Come in!" I cried.
+
+A girl entered with a telegram addressed to Smith.
+His jaw looked very square in the lamplight, and his eyes shone
+like steel as he took it from her and opened the envelope.
+He glanced at the form, stood up and passed it to me,
+reaching for his hat, which lay upon my writing-table.
+
+"God help us, Petrie!" he said.
+
+This was the message:
+
+
+"Sir Lionel Barton murdered.  Meet me at his house
+at once.--WEYMOUTH, INSPECTOR."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+ALTHOUGH we avoided all unnecessary delay, it was close upon
+midnight when our cab swung round into a darkly shadowed avenue,
+at the farther end of which, as seen through a tunnel,
+the moonlight glittered upon the windows of Rowan House,
+Sir Lionel Barton's home.
+
+Stepping out before the porch of the long, squat building, I saw
+that it was banked in, as Smith had said, by trees and shrubs.
+The facade showed mantled in the strange exotic creeper
+which he had mentioned, and the air was pungent with an odor
+of decaying vegetation, with which mingled the heavy perfume
+of the little nocturnal red flowers which bloomed luxuriantly
+upon the creeper.
+
+The place looked a veritable wilderness, and when we were admitted
+to the hall by Inspector Weymouth I saw that the interior was in keeping
+with the exterior, for the hall was constructed from the model of some
+apartment in an Assyrian temple, and the squat columns, the low seats,
+the hangings, all were eloquent of neglect, being thickly dust-coated.
+The musty smell, too, was almost as pronounced here as outside,
+beneath the trees.
+
+To a library, whose contents overflowed in many literary torrents
+upon the floor, the detective conducted us.
+
+"Good heavens!" I cried, "what's that?"
+
+Something leaped from the top of the bookcase, ambled silently
+across the littered carpet, and passed from the library like a
+golden streak.  I stood looking after it with startled eyes.
+Inspector Weymouth laughed dryly.
+
+"It's a young puma, or a civet-cat, or something, Doctor," he said.
+"This house is full of surprises--and mysteries."
+
+His voice was not quite steady, I thought, and he carefully closed
+the door ere proceeding further.
+
+"Where is he?" asked Nayland Smith harshly.  "How was it done?"
+
+Weymouth sat down and lighted a cigar which I offered him.
+
+"I thought you would like to hear what led up to it--so far as we know--
+before seeing him?"
+
+Smith nodded.
+
+"Well," continued the Inspector, "the man you arranged to send
+down from the Yard got here all right and took up a post in the
+road outside, where he could command a good view of the gates.
+He saw and heard nothing, until going on for half-past ten,
+when a young lady turned up and went in."
+
+"A young lady?"
+
+"Miss Edmonds, Sir Lionel's shorthand typist.  She had found,
+after getting home, that her bag, with her purse in,
+was missing, and she came back to see if she had left it here.
+She gave the alarm.  My man heard the row from the road and came in.
+Then he ran out and rang us up.  I immediately wired for you."
+
+"He heard the row, you say.  What row?"
+
+"Miss Edmonds went into violent hysterics!"
+
+Smith was pacing the room now in tense excitement.
+
+"Describe what he saw when he came in."
+
+"He saw a negro footman--there isn't an Englishman in the house--
+trying to pacify the girl out in the hall yonder, and a Malay
+and another colored man beating their foreheads and howling.
+There was no sense to be got out of any of them, so he started
+to investigate for himself.  He had taken the bearings of the place
+earlier in the evening, and from the light in a window on the ground
+floor had located the study; so he set out to look for the door.
+When he found it, it was locked from the inside."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He went out and round to the window.  There's no blind, and from
+the shrubbery you can see into the lumber-room known as the study.
+He looked in, as apparently Miss Edmonds had done before him.
+What he saw accounted for her hysterics."
+
+Both Smith and I were hanging upon his words.
+
+"All amongst the rubbish on the floor a big Egyptian mummy case was
+lying on its side, and face downwards, with his arms thrown across it,
+lay Sir Lionel Barton."
+
+"My God!  Yes.  Go on."
+
+"There was only a shaded reading-lamp alight, and it stood on a chair,
+shining right down on him; it made a patch of light on the floor,
+you understand."  The Inspector indicated its extent with his bands.
+"Well, as the man smashed the glass and got the window open,
+and was just climbing in, he saw something else, so he says."
+
+He paused.
+
+"What did he see?" demanded Smith shortly.
+
+"A sort of GREEN MIST, sir.  He says it seemed to be alive.
+It moved over the floor, about a foot from the ground, going away
+from him and towards a curtain at the other end of the study."
+
+Nayland Smith fixed his eyes upon the speaker.
+
+"Where did he first see this green mist?"
+
+"He says, Mr. Smith, that he thinks it came from the mummy case."
+
+"Yes; go on."
+
+"It is to his credit that he climbed into the room after
+seeing a thing like that.  He did.  He turned the body over,
+and Sir Lionel looked horrible.  He was quite dead.
+Then Croxted--that's the man's name--went over to this curtain.
+There was a glass door--shut.  He opened it, and it gave on
+a conservatory--a place stacked from the tiled floor to the glass
+roof with more rubbish.  It was dark inside, but enough light
+came from the study--it's really a drawing-room, by the way--
+as he'd turned all the lamps on, to give him another glimpse
+of this green, crawling mist.  There are three steps to go down.
+On the steps lay a dead Chinaman."
+
+"A dead Chinaman!"
+
+"A dead CHINAMAN."
+
+"Doctor seen them?" rapped Smith.
+
+"Yes; a local man.  He was out of his depth, I could see.
+Contradicted himself three times.  But there's no need for
+another opinion--until we get the coroner's."
+
+"And Croxted?"
+
+"Croxted was taken ill, Mr. Smith, and had to be sent home in a cab."
+
+"What ails him?"
+
+Detective-Inspector Weymouth raised his eyebrows and carefully
+knocked the ash from his cigar.
+
+"He held out until I came, gave me the story, and then fainted right away.
+He said that something in the conservatory seemed to get him by the throat."
+
+"Did he mean that literally?"
+
+"I couldn't say.  We had to send the girl home, too, of course."
+
+Nayland Smith was pulling thoughtfully at the lobe of his left ear.
+
+"Got any theory?" he jerked.
+
+Weymouth shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Not one that includes the green mist," he said.
+"Shall we go in now?"
+
+We crossed the Assyrian hall, where the members of that strange
+household were gathered in a panic-stricken group.  They numbered four.
+Two of them were negroes, and two Easterns of some kind.  I missed
+the Chinaman, Kwee, of whom Smith had spoken, and the Italian secretary;
+and from the way in which my friend peered about the shadows
+of the hall I divined that he, too, wondered at their absence.
+We entered Sir Lionel's study--an apartment which I despair of describing.
+
+Nayland Smith's words, "an earthquake at Sotheby's auction-rooms,"
+leaped to my mind at once; for the place was simply stacked
+with curious litter--loot of Africa, Mexico and Persia.
+In a clearing by the hearth a gas stove stood upon a packing-case,
+and about it lay a number of utensils for camp cookery.
+The odor of rotting vegetation, mingled with the insistent
+perfume of the strange night-blooming flowers, was borne
+in through the open window.
+
+In the center of the floor, beside an overturned sarcophagus,
+lay a figure in a neutral-colored dressing-gown, face downwards,
+and arms thrust forward and over the side of the ancient
+Egyptian mummy case.
+
+My friend advanced and knelt beside the dead man.
+
+"Good God!"
+
+Smith sprang upright and turned with an extraordinary expression
+to Inspector Weymouth.
+
+"You do not know Sir Lionel Barton by sight?" he rapped.
+
+"No," began Weymouth, "but--"
+
+"This is not Sir Lionel.  This is Strozza, the secretary."
+
+"What!" shouted Weymouth.
+
+"Where is the other--the Chinaman--quick!" cried Smith.
+
+"I have had him left where he was found--on the conservatory steps,"
+said the Inspector.
+
+Smith ran across the room to where, beyond the open door,
+a glimpse might be obtained of stacked-up curiosities.
+Holding back the curtain to allow more light to penetrate,
+he bent forward over a crumpled-up figure which lay upon
+the steps below.
+
+"It is!" he cried aloud.  "It is Sir Lionel's servant, Kwee."
+
+Weymouth and I looked at one another across the body of the Italian;
+then our eyes turned together to where my friend, grim-faced, stood
+over the dead Chinaman.  A breeze whispered through the leaves;
+a great wave of exotic perfume swept from the open window towards
+the curtained doorway.
+
+It was a breath of the East--that stretched out a yellow hand to the West.
+It was symbolic of the subtle, intangible power manifested in Dr. Fu-Manchu,
+as Nayland Smith--lean, agile, bronzed with the suns of Burma, was symbolic
+of the clean British efficiency which sought to combat the insidious enemy.
+
+"One thing is evident," said Smith:  "no one in the house, Strozza excepted,
+knew that Sir Lionel was absent."
+
+"How do you arrive at that?" asked Weymouth.
+
+"The servants, in the hall, are bewailing him as dead.
+If they had seen him go out they would know that it must
+be someone else who lies here."
+
+"What about the Chinaman?"
+
+"Since there is no other means of entrance to the conservatory save
+through the study, Kwee must have hidden himself there at some time
+when his master was absent from the room."
+
+"Croxted found the communicating door closed.  What killed the Chinaman?"
+
+"Both Miss Edmonds and Croxted found the study door locked from the inside.
+What killed Strozza?" retorted Smith.
+
+"You will have noted," continued the Inspector, "that the secretary is
+wearing Sir Lionel's dressing-gown. It was seeing him in that, as she looked
+in at the window, which led Miss Edmonds to mistake him for her employer--
+and consequently to put us on the wrong scent."
+
+"He wore it in order that anybody looking in at the window would
+be sure to make that mistake," rapped Smith.
+
+"Why?" I asked.
+
+"Because he came here for a felonious purpose.  See."  Smith stooped
+and took up several tools from the litter on the floor.
+"There lies the lid.  He came to open the sarcophagus.
+It contained the mummy of some notable person who flourished
+under Meneptah II; and Sir Lionel told me that a number of valuable
+ornaments and jewels probably were secreted amongst the wrappings.
+He proposed to open the thing and to submit the entire contents
+to examination to-night. He evidently changed his mind--
+fortunately for himself."
+
+I ran my fingers through my hair in perplexity.
+
+"Then what has become of the mummy?"
+
+Nayland Smith laughed dryly.
+
+"It has vanished in the form of a green vapor apparently," he said.
+"Look at Strozza's face."
+
+He turned the body over, and, used as I was to such spectacles,
+the contorted features of the Italian filled me with horror, so--
+suggestive were they of a death more than ordinarily violent.  I pulled aside
+the dressing-gown and searched the body for marks, but failed to find any.
+Nayland Smith crossed the room, and, assisted by the detective,
+carried Kwee, the Chinaman, into the study and laid him fully in the light.
+His puckered yellow face presented a sight even more awful than the other,
+and his blue lips were drawn back, exposing both upper and lower teeth.
+There were no marks of violence, but his limbs, like Strozza's, had been
+tortured during his mortal struggles into unnatural postures.
+
+The breeze was growing higher, and pungent odor-waves from
+the damp shrubbery, bearing, too, the oppressive sweetness of
+the creeping, plant, swept constantly through the open window.
+Inspector Weymouth carefully relighted his cigar.
+
+"I'm with you this far, Mr. Smith," he said.  "Strozza, knowing Sir
+Lionel to be absent, locked himself in here to rifle the mummy case,
+for Croxted, entering by way of the window, found the key on the inside.
+Strozza didn't know that the Chinaman was hidden in the conservatory--"
+
+"And Kwee did not dare to show himself, because he too was there
+for some mysterious reason of his own," interrupted Smith.
+
+"Having got the lid off, something,--somebody--"
+
+"Suppose we say the mummy?"
+
+Weymouth laughed uneasily.
+
+"Well, sir, something that vanished from a locked room without
+opening the door or the window killed Strozza."
+
+"And something which, having killed Strozza, next killed the Chinaman,
+apparently without troubling to open the door behind which he lay concealed,"
+Smith continued.  "For once in a way, Inspector, Dr. Fu-Manchu has employed
+an ally which even his giant will was incapable entirely to subjugate.
+What blind force--what terrific agent of death--had he confined
+in that sarcophagus!"
+
+"You think this is the work of Fu-Manchu?" I said.
+"If you are correct, his power indeed is more than human."
+
+Something in my voice, I suppose, brought Smith right about.
+He surveyed me curiously.
+
+"Can you doubt it?  The presence of a concealed Chinaman surely
+is sufficient.  Kwee, I feel assured, was one of the murder group,
+though probably he had only recently entered that mysterious service.
+He is unarmed, or I should feel disposed to think that his part
+was to assassinate Sir Lionel whilst, unsuspecting the presence of a
+hidden enemy, he was at work here.  Strozza's opening the sarcophagus
+clearly spoiled the scheme."
+
+"And led to the death--"
+
+"Of a servant of Fu-Manchu. Yes.  I am at a loss to account for that."
+
+"Do you think that the sarcophagus entered into the scheme, Smith?"
+
+My friend looked at me in evident perplexity.
+
+"You mean that its arrival at the time when a creature of the Doctor--
+Kwee--was concealed here, may have been a coincidence?"
+
+I nodded; and Smith bent over the sarcophagus, curiously examining
+the garish paintings with which it was decorated inside and out.
+It lay sideways upon the floor, and seizing it by its edge,
+he turned it over.
+
+"Heavy," he muttered; "but Strozza must have capsized it as he fell.
+He would not have laid it on its side to remove the lid.  Hallo!"
+
+He bent farther forward, catching at a piece of twine,
+and out of the mummy case pulled a rubber stopper or "cork."
+
+"This was stuck in a hole level with the floor of the thing," he said.
+"Ugh!  it has a disgusting smell."
+
+I took it from his hands, and was about to examine it, when a loud
+voice sounded outside in the hall.  The door was thrown open,
+and a big man, who, despite the warmth of the weather,
+wore a fur-lined overcoat, rushed impetuously into the room.
+
+"Sir Lionel!" cried Smith eagerly.  "I warned you!
+And see, you have had a very narrow escape."
+
+Sir Lionel Barton glanced at what lay upon the floor,
+then from Smith to myself, and from me to Inspector Weymouth.
+He dropped into one of the few chairs unstacked with books.
+
+"Mr. Smith," he said, with emotion, "what does this mean?
+Tell me--quickly."
+
+In brief terms Smith detailed the happenings of the night--
+or so much as he knew of them.  Sir Lionel Barton listened,
+sitting quite still the while--an unusual repose in a man
+of such evidently tremendous nervous activity.
+
+"He came for the jewels," he said slowly, when Smith was finished;
+and his eyes turned to the body of the dead Italian.
+"I was wrong to submit him to the temptation.  God knows what
+Kwee was doing in hiding.  Perhaps he had come to murder me,
+as you surmise, Mr. Smith, though I find it hard to believe.
+But--I don't think this is the handiwork of your Chinese doctor."
+He fixed his gaze upon the sarcophagus.
+
+Smith stared at him in surprise.  "What do you mean, Sir Lionel?"
+
+The famous traveler continued to look towards the sarcophagus
+with something in his blue eyes that might have been dread.
+
+"I received a wire from Professor Rembold to-night," he continued.
+"You were correct in supposing that no one but Strozza knew
+of my absence.  I dressed hurriedly and met the professor at
+the Traveler's. He knew that I was to read a paper next week upon"--
+again he looked toward the mummy case--"the tomb of Mekara;
+and he knew that the sarcophagus had been brought, untouched, to England.
+He begged me not to open it."
+
+Nayland Smith was studying the speaker's face.
+
+"What reason did he give for so extraordinary a request?" he asked.
+
+Sir Lionel Barton hesitated.
+
+"One," he replied at last, "which amused me--at the time.  I must inform
+you that Mekara--whose tomb my agent had discovered during my absence
+in Tibet, and to enter which I broke my return journey to Alexandria--
+was a high priest and first prophet of Amen--under the Pharaoh of the Exodus;
+in short, one of the magicians who contested in magic arts with Moses.
+I thought the discovery unique, until Professor Rembold furnished me
+with some curious particulars respecting the death of M. Page le Roi,
+the French Egyptologist--particulars new to me."
+
+We listened in growing surprise, scarcely knowing to what this tended.
+
+"M. le Roi," continued Barton, "discovered, but kept secret,
+the tomb of Amenti--another of this particular brotherhood.
+It appears that he opened the mummy case on the spot--
+these priests were of royal line, and are buried in the valley
+of Biban-le-Moluk. His Fellah and Arab servants deserted him
+for some reason--on seeing the mummy case--and he was found dead,
+apparently strangled, beside it.  The matter was hushed up
+by the Egyptian Government.  Rembold could not explain why.
+But he begged of me not to open the sarcophagus of Mekara."
+
+A silence fell.
+
+The strange facts regarding the sudden death of Page le Roi,
+which I now heard for the first time, had impressed me unpleasantly,
+coming from a man of Sir Lionel Barton's experience and reputation.
+
+"How long had it lain in the docks?" jerked Smith.
+
+"For two days, I believe.  I am not a superstitious man, Mr. Smith,
+but neither is Professor Rembold, and now that I know the facts
+respecting Page le Roi, I can find it in my heart to thank God
+that I did not see. . .whatever came out of that sarcophagus."
+
+Nayland Smith stared him hard in the face.  "I am glad you
+did not, Sir Lionel," he said; "for whatever the priest Mekara
+has to do with the matter, by means of his sarcophagus,
+Dr. Fu-Manchu has made his first attempt upon your life.
+He has failed, but I hope you will accompany me from here to a hotel.
+He will not fall twice."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+IT was the night following that of the double tragedy at Rowan House.
+Nayland Smith, with Inspector Weymouth, was engaged in some mysterious inquiry
+at the docks, and I had remained at home to resume my strange chronicle.
+And--why should I not confess it?--my memories had frightened me.
+
+I was arranging my notes respecting the case of Sir Lionel Barton.
+They were hopelessly incomplete.  For instance, I had jotted down
+the following queries:--(1) Did any true parallel exist between the death
+of M. Page le Roi and the death of Kwee, the Chinaman, and of Strozza?
+(2) What had become of the mummy of Mekara?  (3) How had the murderer
+escaped from a locked room?  (4) What was the purpose of the rubber stopper?
+(5) Why was Kwee hiding in the conservatory?  (6) Was the green mist
+a mere subjective hallucination--a figment of Croxted's imagination--
+or had he actually seen it?
+
+Until these questions were satisfactorily answered, further progress
+was impossible.  Nayland Smith frankly admitted that he was out of his depth.
+"It looks, on the face of it, more like a case for the Psychical
+Research people than for a plain Civil Servant, lately of Mandalay,"
+he had said only that morning.
+
+"Sir Lionel Barton really believes that supernatural agencies were
+brought into operation by the opening of the high priest's coffin.
+For my part, even if I believed the same, I should still maintain
+that Dr. Fu-Manchu controlled those manifestations.  But reason
+it out for yourself and see if we arrive at any common center.
+Don't work so much upon the datum of the green mist, but keep
+to the FACTS which are established."
+
+I commenced to knock out my pipe in the ash-tray; then paused,
+pipe in hand.  The house was quite still, for my landlady
+and all the small household were out.
+
+Above the noise of the passing tramcar I thought I had heard the hall
+door open.  In the ensuing silence I sat and listened.
+
+Not a sound.  Stay!  I slipped my hand into the table drawer,
+took out my revolver, and stood up.
+
+There WAS a sound.  Someone or something was creeping upstairs
+in the dark!
+
+Familiar with the ghastly media employed by the Chinaman, I was seized
+with an impulse to leap to the door, shut and lock it.  But the rustling
+sound proceeded, now, from immediately outside my partially opened door.
+I had not the time to close it; knowing somewhat of the horrors
+at the command of Fu-Manchu, I had not the courage to open it.
+My heart leaping wildly, and my eyes upon that bar of darkness with its
+gruesome potentialities, I waited--waited for whatever was to come.
+Perhaps twelve seconds passed in silence.
+
+"Who's there?" I cried.  "Answer, or I fire!"
+
+"Ah!  no," came a soft voice, thrillingly musical.  "Put it down--
+that pistol.  Quick!  I must speak to you."
+
+The door was pushed open, and there entered a slim figure wrapped
+in a hooded cloak.  My hand fell, and I stood, stricken to silence,
+looking into the beautiful dark eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu's messenger--
+if her own statement could be credited, slave.  On two occasions
+this girl, whose association with the Doctor was one of the most
+profound mysteries of the case, had risked--I cannot say what;
+unnameable punishment, perhaps--to save me from death; in both cases
+from a terrible death.  For what was she come now?
+
+Her lips slightly parted, she stood, holding her cloak about her,
+and watching me with great passionate eyes.
+
+"How--" I began.
+
+But she shook her head impatiently.
+
+"HE has a duplicate key of the house door," was her amazing statement.
+"I have never betrayed a secret of my master before, but you must arrange
+to replace the lock."
+
+She came forward and rested her slim hands confidingly upon my shoulders.
+"I have come again to ask you to take me away from him," she said simply.
+
+And she lifted her face to me.
+
+Her words struck a chord in my heart which sang with strange music,
+with music so barbaric that, frankly, I blushed to find it harmony.
+Have I said that she was beautiful?  It can convey no faint
+conception of her.  With her pure, fair skin, eyes like the velvet
+darkness of the East, and red lips so tremulously near to mine,
+she was the most seductively lovely creature I ever had looked upon.
+In that electric moment my heart went out in sympathy to every man
+who had bartered honor, country, all for a woman's kiss.
+
+"I will see that you are placed under proper protection,"
+I said firmly, but my voice was not quite my own.
+"It is quite absurd to talk of slavery here in England.
+You are a free agent, or you could not be here now.
+Dr. Fu-Manchu cannot control your actions."
+
+"Ah!" she cried, casting back her head scornfully, and releasing a cloud
+of hair, through whose softness gleamed a jeweled head-dress. "No?
+He cannot?  Do you know what it means to have been a slave?
+Here, in your free England, do you know what it means--the razzia,
+the desert journey, the whips of the drivers, the house of the dealer,
+the shame.  Bah!"
+
+How beautiful she was in her indignation!
+
+"Slavery is put down, you imagine, perhaps?  You do not believe that
+to-day--TO-DAY--twenty-five English sovereigns will buy a Galla girl,
+who is brown, and"--whisper--"two hundred and fifty a Circassian,
+who is white.  No, there is no slavery!  So!  Then what am I?"
+
+She threw open her cloak, and it is a literal fact that I rubbed my eyes,
+half believing that I dreamed.  For beneath, she was arrayed in gossamer
+silk which more than indicated the perfect lines of her slim shape;
+wore a jeweled girdle and barbaric ornaments; was a figure fit for the walled
+gardens of Stamboul--a figure amazing, incomprehensible, in the prosaic
+setting of my rooms.
+
+"To-night I had no time to make myself an English miss,"
+she said, wrapping her cloak quickly about her.
+"You see me as I am."  Her garments exhaled a faint perfume,
+and it reminded me of another meeting I had had with her.
+I looked into the challenging eyes.
+
+"Your request is but a pretense," I said.  "Why do you keep the secrets
+of that man, when they mean death to so many?"
+
+"Death!  I have seen my own sister die of fever in the desert--
+seen her thrown like carrion into a hole in the sand.
+I have seen men flogged until they prayed for death as a boon.
+I have known the lash myself.  Death!  What does it matter?"
+
+She shocked me inexpressibly.  Enveloped in her cloak again,
+and with only her slight accent to betray her, it was dreadful
+to hear such words from a girl who, save for her singular type
+of beauty, might have been a cultured European.
+
+"Prove, then, that you really wish to leave this man's service.
+Tell me what killed Strozza and the Chinaman," I said.
+
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"I do not know that.  But if you will carry me off"--she clutched me
+nervously--"so that I am helpless, lock me up so that I cannot escape,
+beat me, if you like, I will tell you all I do know.  While he is
+my master I will never betray him.  Tear me from him--by force,
+do you understand, BY FORCE, and my lips will be sealed no longer.
+Ah!  but you do not understand, with your `proper authorities'--
+your police.  Police!  Ah, I have said enough."
+
+A clock across the common began to strike.  The girl
+started and laid her hands upon my shoulders again.
+There were tears glittering among the curved black lashes.
+
+"You do not understand," she whispered.  "Oh, will you
+never understand and release me from him!  I must go.
+Already I have remained too long.  Listen.  Go out without delay.
+Remain out--at a hotel, where you will, but do not stay here."
+
+"And Nayland Smith?"
+
+"What is he to me, this Nayland Smith?  Ah, why will you not unseal my lips?
+You are in danger--you hear me, in danger!  Go away from here to-night."
+
+She dropped her hands and ran from the room.  In the open doorway she turned,
+stamping her foot passionately.
+
+"You have hands and arms," she cried, "and yet you let me go.
+Be warned, then; fly from here--" She broke off with something
+that sounded like a sob.
+
+I made no move to stay her--this beautiful accomplice of the arch-murderer,
+Fu-Manchu. I heard her light footsteps paltering down the stairs, I heard
+her open and close the door--the door of which Dr. Fu-Manchu held the key.
+Still I stood where she had parted from me, and was so standing when a key
+grated in the lock and Nayland Smith came running up.
+
+"Did you see her?" I began.
+
+But his face showed that he had not done so, and rapidly I told
+him of my strange visitor, of her words, of her warning.
+
+"How can she have passed through London in that costume?"
+I cried in bewilderment.  "Where can she have come from?"
+
+Smith shrugged his shoulders and began to stuff broad-cut mixture
+into the familiar cracked briar.
+
+"She might have traveled in a car or in a cab," he said;
+"and undoubtedly she came direct from the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+You should have detained her, Petrie.  It is the third time we
+have had that woman in our power, the third time we have let
+her go free."
+
+"Smith," I replied, "I couldn't. She came of her own free will to give
+me a warning.  She disarms me."
+
+"Because you can see she is in love with you?" he suggested, and burst
+into one of his rare laughs when the angry flush rose to my cheek.
+"She is, Petrie why pretend to be blind to it?  You don't know
+the Oriental mind as I do; but I quite understand the girl's position.
+She fears the English authorities, but would submit to capture by you!
+If you would only seize her by the hair, drag her to some cellar,
+hurl her down and stand over her with a whip, she would tell you
+everything she knows, and salve her strange Eastern conscience with
+the reflection that speech was forced from her.  I am not joking;
+it is so, I assure you.  And she would adore you for your savagery,
+deeming you forceful and strong!"
+
+"Smith," I said, "be serious.  You know what her warning meant before."
+
+"I can guess what it means now," he rapped.  "Hallo!"
+
+Someone was furiously ringing the bell.
+
+"No one at home?" said my friend.  "I will go.  I think I know
+what it is."
+
+A few minutes later he returned, carrying a large square package.
+
+"From Weymouth," he explained, "by district messenger.
+I left him behind at the docks, and he arranged to forward any
+evidence which subsequently he found.  This will be fragments
+of the mummy."
+
+"What!  You think the mummy was abstracted?"
+
+"Yes, at the docks.  I am sure of it; and somebody else
+was in the sarcophagus when it reached Rowan House.
+A sarcophagus, I find, is practically airtight, so that the use
+of the rubber stopper becomes evident--ventilation.  How this
+person killed Strozza I have yet to learn."
+
+"Also, how he escaped from a locked room.  And what about the green mist?"
+
+Nayland Smith spread his hands in a characteristic gesture.
+
+"The green mist, Petrie, can be explained in several ways.
+Remember, we have only one man's word that it existed.
+It is at best a confusing datum to which we must not attach
+a fictitious importance."
+
+He threw the wrappings on the floor and tugged at a twine loop
+in the lid of the square box, which now stood upon the table.
+Suddenly the lid came away, bringing with it a lead lining,
+such as is usual in tea-chests. This lining was partially attached
+to one side of the box, so that the action of removing the lid
+at once raised and tilted it.
+
+Then happened a singular thing.
+
+Out over the table billowed a sort of yellowish-green cloud--
+an oily vapor--and an inspiration, it was nothing less,
+born of a memory and of some words of my beautiful visitor,
+came to me.
+
+"RUN, SMITH!" I screamed.  "The door!  the door, for your life!
+Fu-Manchu sent that box!"  I threw my arms round him.
+As he bent forward the moving vapor rose almost to his nostrils.
+I dragged him back and all but pitched him out on to the landing.
+We entered my bedroom, and there, as I turned on the light,
+I saw that Smith's tanned face was unusually drawn,
+and touched with pallor.
+
+"It is a poisonous gas!" I said hoarsely; "in many respects
+identical with chlorine, but having unique properties which prove
+it to be something else--God and Fu-Manchu, alone know what!
+It is the fumes of chlorine that kill the men in the bleaching
+powder works.  We have been blind--I particularly.  Don't you see?
+There was no one in the sarcophagus, Smith, but there was enough
+of that fearful stuff to have suffocated a regiment!"
+
+Smith clenched his fists convulsively.
+
+"My God!" he said, "how can I hope to deal with the author of such a scheme?
+I see the whole plan.  He did not reckon on the mummy case being overturned,
+and Kwee's part was to remove the plug with the aid of the string--after Sir
+Lionel had been suffocated.  The gas, I take it, is heavier than air."
+
+"Chlorine gas has a specific gravity of 2.470," I said;
+"two and a half times heavier than air.  You can pour it from
+jar to jar like a liquid--if you are wearing a chemist's mask.
+In these respects this stuff appears to be similar; the points
+of difference would not interest you.  The sarcophagus would
+have emptied through the vent, and the gas have dispersed,
+with no clew remaining--except the smell."
+
+"I did smell it, Petrie, on the stopper, but, of course,
+was unfamiliar with it.  You may remember that you were
+prevented from doing so by the arrival of Sir Lionel?
+The scent of those infernal flowers must partially have
+drowned it, too.  Poor, misguided Strozza inhaled the stuff,
+capsized the case in his fall, and all the gas--"
+
+"Went pouring under the conservatory door, and down the steps, where Kwee
+was crouching.  Croxted's breaking the window created sufficient draught
+to disperse what little remained.  It will have settled on the floor now.
+I will go and open both windows."
+
+Nayland raised his haggard face.
+
+"He evidently made more than was necessary to dispatch Sir Lionel Barton,"
+he said; "and contemptuously--you note the attitude, Petrie?--
+contemptuously devoted the surplus to me.  His contempt is justified.
+I am a child striving to cope with a mental giant.  It is by no wit
+of mine that Dr. Fu-Manchu scores a double failure."
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+I WILL tell you, now of a strange dream which I dreamed, and of the stranger
+things to which I awakened.  Since, out of a blank--a void--this vision
+burst in upon my mind, I cannot do better than relate it, without preamble.
+It was thus:
+
+I dreamed that I lay writhing on the floor in agony indescribable.
+My veins were filled with liquid fire, and but that stygian darkness
+was about me, I told myself that I must have seen the smoke arising
+from my burning body.
+
+This, I thought, was death.
+
+Then, a cooling shower descended upon me, soaked through skin
+and tissue to the tortured arteries and quenched the fire within.
+Panting, but free from pain, I lay--exhausted.
+
+Strength gradually returning to me, I tried to rise; but the carpet
+felt so singularly soft that it offered me no foothold.
+I waded and plunged like a swimmer treading water; and all about me
+rose impenetrable walls of darkness, darkness all but palpable.
+I wondered why I could not see the windows.  The horrible idea
+flashed to my mind that I was become blind!
+
+Somehow I got upon my feet, and stood swaying dizzily.
+I became aware of a heavy perfume, and knew it for some
+kind of incense.
+
+Then--a dim light was born, at an immeasurable distance away.
+It grew steadily in brilliance.  It spread like a bluish-red stain--
+like a liquid.  It lapped up the darkness and spread throughout the room.
+
+But this was not my room!  Nor was it any room known to me.
+
+It was an apartment of such size that its dimensions filled me with a
+kind of awe such as I never had known:  the awe of walled vastness.
+Its immense extent produced a sensation of sound.  Its hugeness had
+a distinct NOTE.
+
+Tapestries covered the four walls.  There was no door visible.
+These tapestries were magnificently figured with golden dragons;
+and as the serpentine bodies gleamed and shimmered in the
+increasing radiance, each dragon, I thought, intertwined its
+glittering coils more closely with those of another.
+The carpet was of such richness that I stood knee-deep in its pile.
+And this, too, was fashioned all over with golden dragons; and they
+seemed to glide about amid the shadows of the design--stealthily.
+
+At the farther end of the hall--for hall it was--a huge table
+with dragons' legs stood solitary amid the luxuriance of the carpet.
+It bore scintillating globes, and tubes that held living organisms,
+and books of a size and in such bindings as I never had imagined,
+with instruments of a type unknown to Western science--a heterogeneous
+litter quite indescribable, which overflowed on to the floor,
+forming an amazing oasis in a dragon-haunted desert of carpet.
+A lamp hung above this table, suspended by golden chains from
+the ceiling-which was so lofty that, following the chains upward,
+my gaze lost itself in the purple shadows above.
+
+In a chair piled high with dragon-covered cushions a man sat
+behind this table.  The light from the swinging lamp fell fully
+upon one side of his face, as he leaned forward amid the jumble
+of weird objects, and left the other side in purplish shadow.
+From a plain brass bowl upon the corner of the huge table smoke
+writhed aloft and at times partially obscured that dreadful face.
+
+From the instant that my eyes were drawn to the table and to the man
+who sat there, neither the incredible extent of the room, nor the nightmare
+fashion of its mural decorations, could reclaim my attention.
+I had eyes only for him.
+
+For it was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
+
+Something of the delirium which had seemed to fill my veins
+with fire, to people the walls with dragons, and to plunge me
+knee-deep in the carpet, left me.  Those dreadful, filmed green
+eyes acted somewhat like a cold douche.  I knew, without removing
+my gaze from the still face, that the walls no longer lived,
+but were merely draped in exquisite Chinese dragon tapestry.
+The rich carpet beneath my feet ceased to be as a jungle and became
+a normal carpet--extraordinarily rich, but merely a carpet.
+But the sense of vastness nevertheless remained, with the uncomfortable
+knowledge that the things upon the table and overflowing about it
+were all, or nearly all, of a fashion strange to me.
+
+Then, and almost instantaneously, the comparative sanity which I had
+temporarily experienced began to slip from me again; for the smoke
+faintly penciled through the air--from the burning perfume on the table--
+grew in volume, thickened, and wafted towards me in a cloud of gray horror.
+It enveloped me, clammily.  Dimly, through its oily wreaths, I saw
+the immobile yellow face of Fu-Manchu. And my stupefied brain acclaimed him
+a sorcerer, against whom unwittingly we had pitted our poor human wits.
+The green eyes showed filmy through the fog.  An intense pain shot
+through my lower limbs, and, catching my breath, I looked down.
+As I did so, the points of the red slippers which I dreamed that I wore
+increased in length, curled sinuously upward, twined about my throat
+and choked the breath from my body!
+
+Came an interval, and then a dawning like consciousness;
+but it was a false consciousness, since it brought with it the idea
+that my head lay softly pillowed and that a woman's hand caressed
+my throbbing forehead.  Confusedly, as though in the remote past,
+I recalled a kiss--and the recollection thrilled me strangely.
+Dreamily content I lay, and a voice stole to my ears:
+
+"They are killing him!  they are killing him!  Oh!  do you not understand?"
+In my dazed condition, I thought that it was I who had died, and that this
+musical girl-voice was communicating to me the fact of my own dissolution.
+
+But I was conscious of no interest in the matter.
+
+For hours and hours, I thought, that soothing hand caressed me.
+I never once raised my heavy lids, until there came a resounding
+crash that seemed to set my very bones vibrating--a metallic,
+jangling crash, as the fall of heavy chains.  I thought that, then,
+I half opened my eyes, and that in the dimness I had a fleeting
+glimpse of a figure clad in gossamer silk, with arms covered
+with barbaric bangles and slim ankles surrounded by gold bands.
+The girl was gone, even as I told myself that she was an houri,
+and that I, though a Christian, had been consigned by some error
+to the paradise of Mohammed.
+
+Then--a complete blank.
+
+
+My head throbbed madly; my brain seemed to be clogged--inert; and though
+my first, feeble movement was followed by the rattle of a chain, some moments
+more elapsed ere I realized that the chain was fastened to a steel collar--
+that the steel collar was clasped about my neck.
+
+I moaned weakly.
+
+"Smith!" I muttered, "Where are you?  Smith!"
+
+On to my knees I struggled, and the pain on the top of my skull grew
+all but insupportable.  It was coming back to me now; how Nayland Smith
+and I had started for the hotel to warn Graham Guthrie; how, as we
+passed up the steps from the Embankment and into Essex Street,
+we saw the big motor standing before the door of one of the offices.
+I could recall coming up level with the car--a modern limousine;
+but my mind retained no impression of our having passed it--
+only a vague memory of a rush of footsteps--a blow.  Then, my vision
+of the hall of dragons, and now this real awakening to a worse reality.
+
+Groping in the darkness, my hands touched a body that lay close beside me.
+My fingers sought and found the throat, sought and found the steel
+collar about it.
+
+"Smith," I groaned; and I shook the still form.  "Smith, old man--
+speak to me!  Smith!"
+
+Could he be dead?  Was this the end of his gallant fight with Dr. Fu-Manchu
+and the murder group?  If so, what did the future hold for me--
+what had I to face?
+
+He stirred beneath my trembling hands.
+
+"Thank God!"  I muttered, and I cannot deny that my joy was tainted
+with selfishness.  For, waking in that impenetrable darkness, and yet obsessed
+with the dream I had dreamed, I had known what fear meant, at the realization
+that alone, chained, I must face the dreadful Chinese doctor in the flesh.
+Smith began incoherent mutterings.
+
+"Sand-bagged!. . .Look out, Petrie!. . .He has us at last!. . .Oh, Heavens!"
+. . .He struggled on to his knees, clutching at my hand.
+
+"All right, old man," I said.  "We are both alive!
+So let's be thankful."
+
+A moment's silence, a groan, then:
+
+"Petrie, I have dragged you into this.  God forgive me--"
+
+"Dry up, Smith," I said slowly.  "I'm not a child.
+There is no question of being dragged into the matter.
+I'm here; and if I can be of any use, I'm glad I am here!"
+
+He grasped my hand.
+
+"There were two Chinese, in European clothes--lord, how my head throbs!--
+in that office door.  They sand-bagged us, Petrie--think of it!--
+in broad daylight, within hail of the Strand!  We were rushed
+into the car--and it was all over, before--" His voice grew faint.
+"God!  they gave me an awful knock!"
+
+"Why have we been spared, Smith?  Do you think he is saving us for--"
+
+"Don't, Petrie!  If you had been in China, if you had seen
+what I have seen--"
+
+Footsteps sounded on the flagged passage.  A blade of light crept
+across the floor towards us.  My brain was growing clearer.
+The place had a damp, earthen smell.  It was slimy--some noisome cellar.
+A door was thrown open and a man entered, carrying a lantern.
+Its light showed my surmise to be accurate, showed the
+slime-coated walls of a dungeon some fifteen feet square--
+shone upon the long yellow robe of the man who stood watching us,
+upon the malignant, intellectual countenance.
+
+It was Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+At last they were face to face--the head of the great Yellow Movement,
+and the man who fought on behalf of the entire white race.
+How can I paint the individual who now stood before us--
+perhaps the greatest genius of modern times?
+
+Of him it Had been fitly said that he had a brow like Shakespeare and a face
+like Satan.  Something serpentine, hypnotic, was in his very presence.
+Smith drew one sharp breath, and was silent.  Together, chained to the wall,
+two mediaeval captives, living mockeries of our boasted modern security,
+we crouched before Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+He came forward with an indescribable gait, cat-like yet awkward,
+carrying his high shoulders almost hunched.  He placed the lantern
+in a niche in the wall, never turning away the reptilian gaze
+of those eyes which must haunt my dreams forever.  They possessed
+a viridescence which hitherto I had supposed possible only in the eye
+of the cat--and the film intermittently clouded their brightness--
+but I can speak of them no more.
+
+I had never supposed, prior to meeting Dr. Fu-Manchu, that so intense
+a force of malignancy could radiate--from any human being.  He spoke.
+His English was perfect, though at times his words were oddly chosen;
+his delivery alternately was guttural and sibilant.
+
+"Mr. Smith and Dr. Petrie, your interference with my plans has gone too far.
+I have seriously turned my attention to you."
+
+He displayed his teeth, small and evenly separated,
+but discolored in a way that was familiar to me.
+I studied his eyes with a new professional interest,
+which even the extremity of our danger could not wholly banish.
+Their greenness seemed to be of the iris; the pupil was
+oddly contracted--a pin-point.
+
+Smith leaned his back against the wall with assumed indifference.
+
+"You have presumed," continued Fu-Manchu, "to meddle with a
+world-change. Poor spiders--caught in the wheels of the inevitable!
+You have linked my name with the futility of the Young China Movement--
+the name of Fu-Manchu!  Mr. Smith, you are an incompetent meddler--
+I despise you!  Dr. Petrie, you are a fool--I am sorry for you!"
+
+He rested one bony hand on his hip, narrowing the long
+eyes as he looked down on us.  The purposeful cruelty
+of the man was inherent; it was entirely untheatrical.
+Still Smith remained silent.
+
+"So I am determined to remove you from the scene of your blunders!"
+added Fu-Manchu.
+
+"Opium will very shortly do the same for you!" I rapped at him savagely.
+
+Without emotion he turned the narrowed eyes upon me.
+
+"That is a matter of opinion, Doctor," he said.  "You may have lacked
+the opportunities which have been mine for studying that subject--
+and in any event I shall not be privileged to enjoy your advice
+in the future."
+
+"You will not long outlive me," I replied.  "And our deaths will not
+profit you, incidentally; because--" Smith's foot touched mine.
+
+"Because?" inquired Fu-Manchu softly.
+
+"Ah!  Mr. Smith is so prudent!  He is thinking that I have FILES!"
+He pronounced the word in a way that made me shudder.  "Mr. Smith
+has seen a WIRE JACKET!  Have you ever seen a wire jacket?
+As a surgeon its functions would interest you!"
+
+I stifled a cry that rose to my lips; for, with a shrill whistling sound,
+a small shape came bounding into the dimly lit vault, then shot upward.
+A marmoset landed on the shoulder of Dr. Fu-Manchu and peered grotesquely
+into the dreadful yellow face.  The Doctor raised his bony hand and fondled
+the little creature, crooning to it.
+
+"One of my pets, Mr. Smith," he said, suddenly opening
+his eyes fully so that they blazed like green lamps.
+"I have others, equally useful.  My scorpions--have you
+met my scorpions?  No?  My pythons and hamadryads?
+Then there are my fungi and my tiny allies, the bacilli.
+I have a collection in my laboratory quite unique.  Have you ever
+visited Molokai, the leper island, Doctor?  No?  But Mr. Nayland
+Smith will be familiar with the asylum at Rangoon!
+And we must not forget my black spiders, with their diamond eyes--
+my spiders, that sit in the dark and watch--then leap!"
+
+He raised his lean hands, so that the sleeve of the robe fell back
+to the elbow, and the ape dropped, chattering, to the floor and ran
+from the cellar.
+
+"O God of Cathay!" he cried, "by what death shall these die--
+these miserable ones who would bind thine Empire, which is boundless!"
+
+Like some priest of Tezcat he stood, his eyes upraised to the roof,
+his lean body quivering--a sight to shock the most unimpressionable mind.
+
+"He is mad!" I whispered to Smith.  "God help us, the man
+is a dangerous homicidal maniac!"
+
+Nayland Smith's tanned face was very drawn, but he shook his head grimly.
+
+"Dangerous, yes, I agree," he muttered; "his existence is a danger
+to the entire white race which, now, we are powerless to avert."
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu recovered himself, took up the lantern and,
+turning abruptly, walked to the door, with his awkward, yet feline gait.
+At the threshold be looked back.
+
+"You would have warned Mr. Graham Guthrie?" he said, in a soft voice.
+"To-night, at half-past twelve, Mr. Graham Guthrie dies!"
+
+Smith sat silent and motionless, his eyes fixed upon the speaker.
+
+"You were in Rangoon in 1908?" continued Dr. Fu-Manchu--
+"you remember the Call?"
+
+From somewhere above us--I could not determine the exact direction--
+came a low, wailing cry, an uncanny thing of falling cadences, which, in that
+dismal vault, with the sinister yellow-robed figure at the door, seemed to
+pour ice into my veins.  Its effect upon Smith was truly extraordinary.
+His face showed grayly in the faint light, and I heard him draw a hissing
+breath through clenched teeth.
+
+"It calls for you!" said Fu-Manchu. "At half-past twelve it calls
+for Graham Guthrie!"
+
+The door closed and darkness mantled us again.
+
+"Smith," I said, "what was that?"  The horrors about us were playing
+havoc with my nerves.
+
+"It was the Call of Siva!" replied Smith hoarsely.
+
+"What is it?  Who uttered it?  What does it mean?"
+
+"I don't know what it is, Petrie, nor who utters it.
+But it means death!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+THERE may be some who could have lain, chained to that noisome cell,
+and felt no fear--no dread of what the blackness might hold.
+I confess that I am not one of these.  I knew that Nayland
+Smith and I stood in the path of the most stupendous genius
+who in the world's history had devoted his intellect to crime.
+I knew that the enormous wealth of the political group backing
+Dr. Fu-Manchu rendered him a menace to Europe and to America
+greater than that of the plague.  He was a scientist trained
+at a great university--an explorer of nature's secrets, who had
+gone farther into the unknown, I suppose, than any living man.
+His mission was to remove all obstacles--human obstacles--
+from the path of that secret movement which was progressing
+in the Far East.  Smith and I were two such obstacles;
+and of all the horrible devices at his command, I wondered,
+and my tortured brain refused to leave the subject, by which
+of them were we doomed to be dispatched?
+
+Even at that very moment some venomous centipede might
+be wriggling towards me over the slime of the stones,
+some poisonous spider be preparing to drop from the roof!
+Fu-Manchu might have released a serpent in the cellar,
+or the air be alive with microbes of a loathsome disease!
+
+"Smith," I said, scarcely recognizing my own voice, "I can't bear
+this suspense.  He intends to kill us, that is certain, but--"
+
+"Don't worry," came the reply; "he intends to learn our plans first."
+
+"You mean--?"
+
+"You heard him speak of his files and of his wire jacket?"
+
+"Oh, my God!" I groaned; "can this be England?"
+
+Smith laughed dryly, and I heard him fumbling with the steel
+collar about his neck.
+
+"I have one great hope," he said, "since you share
+my captivity, but we must neglect no minor chance.
+Try with your pocket-knife if you can force the lock.
+I am trying to break this one."
+
+Truth to tell, the idea had not entered my half-dazed mind, but I
+immediately acted upon my friend's suggestion, setting to work with
+the small blade of my knife.  I was so engaged, and, having snapped
+one blade, was about to open another, when a sound arrested me.
+It came from beneath my feet.
+
+"Smith," I whispered, "listen!"
+
+The scraping and clicking which told of Smith's efforts ceased.
+Motionless, we sat in that humid darkness and listened.
+
+Something was moving beneath the stones of the cellar.
+I held my breath; every nerve in my body was strung up.
+
+A line of light showed a few feet from where we lay.
+It widened--became an oblong.  A trap was lifted,
+and within a yard of me, there rose a dimly seen head.
+Horror I had expected--and death, or worse.  Instead, I saw
+a lovely face, crowned with a disordered mass of curling hair;
+I saw a white arm upholding the stone slab, a shapely arm
+clasped about the elbow by a broad gold bangle.
+
+The girl climbed into the cellar and placed the lantern on the stone floor.
+In the dim light she was unreal--a figure from an opium vision, with her
+clinging silk draperies and garish jewelry, with her feet encased in little
+red slippers.  In short, this was the houri of my vision, materialized.
+It was difficult to believe that we were in modern, up-to-date England;
+easy to dream that we were the captives of a caliph, in a dungeon
+in old Bagdad.
+
+"My prayers are answered," said Smith softly.  "She has come
+to save YOU."
+
+"S-sh!" warned the girl, and her wonderful eyes opened widely, fearfully.
+"A sound and he will kill us all."
+
+She bent over me; a key jarred in the lock which had broken my penknife--
+and the collar was off.  As I rose to my feet the girl turned and
+released Smith.  She raised the lantern above the trap, and signed
+to us to descend the wooden steps which its light revealed.
+
+"Your knife," she whispered to me.  "Leave it on the floor.
+He will think you forced the locks.  Down!  Quickly!"
+
+Nayland Smith, stepping gingerly, disappeared into the darkness.
+I rapidly followed.  Last of all came our mysterious friend, a gold band about
+one of her ankles gleaming in the rays of the lantern which she carried.
+We stood in a low-arched passage.
+
+"Tie your handkerchiefs over your eyes and do exactly as I
+tell you," she ordered.
+
+Neither of us hesitated to obey her.  Blind-folded, I allowed
+her to lead me, and Smith rested his hand upon my shoulder.
+In that order we proceeded, and came to stone steps,
+which we ascended.
+
+"Keep to the wall on the left," came a whisper.
+"There is danger on the right."
+
+With my free hand I felt for and found the wall, and we pressed forward.
+The atmosphere of the place through which we were passing was steamy,
+and loaded with an odor like that of exotic plant life.  But a faint animal
+scent crept to my nostrils, too, and there was a subdued stir about me,
+infinitely suggestive--mysterious.
+
+Now my feet sank in a soft carpet, and a curtain brushed my shoulder.
+A gong sounded.  We stopped.
+
+The din of distant drumming came to my ears.
+
+"Where in Heaven's name are we?" hissed Smith in my ear;
+"that is a tom-tom!"
+
+"S-sh!  S-sh!"
+
+The little hand grasping mine quivered nervously.  We were near a door
+or a window, for a breath of perfume was wafted through the air;
+and it reminded me of my other meetings with the beautiful woman
+who was now leading us from the house of Fu-Manchu; who, with her
+own lips, had told me that she was his slave.  Through the horrible
+phantasmagoria she flitted--a seductive vision, her piquant loveliness
+standing out richly in its black setting of murder and devilry.
+Not once, but a thousand times, I had tried to reason out the nature
+of the tie which bound her to the sinister Doctor.
+
+Silence fell.
+
+"Quick!  This way!"
+
+Down a thickly carpeted stair we went.  Our guide opened a door, and led us
+along a passage.  Another door was opened; and we were in the open air.
+But the girl never tarried, pulling me along a graveled path, with a fresh
+breeze blowing in my face, and along until, unmistakably, I stood upon
+the river bank.  Now, planking creaked to our tread; and looking downward
+beneath the handkerchief, I saw the gleam of water beneath my feet.
+
+"Be careful!"  I was warned, and found myself stepping into
+a narrow boat--a punt.
+
+Nayland Smith followed, and the girl pushed the punt off and poled
+out into the stream.
+
+"Don't speak!" she directed.
+
+My brain was fevered; I scarce knew if I dreamed and was waking,
+or if the reality ended with my imprisonment in the clammy cellar
+and this silent escape, blindfolded, upon the river with a girl for our
+guide who might have stepped out of the pages of "The Arabian Nights"
+were fantasy--the mockery of sleep.
+
+Indeed, I began seriously to doubt if this stream whereon we floated,
+whose waters plashed and tinkled about us, were the Thames, the Tigris,
+or the Styx.
+
+The punt touched a bank.
+
+"You will hear a clock strike in a few minutes,"
+said the girl, with her soft, charming accent, "but I rely
+upon your honor not to remove the handkerchiefs until then.
+You owe me this."
+
+"We do!" said Smith fervently.
+
+I heard him scrambling to the bank, and a moment later a soft hand
+was placed in mine, and I, too, was guided on to terra firma.
+Arrived on the bank, I still held the girl's hand, drawing her towards me.
+
+"You must not go back," I whispered.  "We will take care of you.
+You must not return to that place."
+
+"Let me go!" she said.  "When, once, I asked you to take me from him,
+you spoke of police protection; that was your answer, police protection!
+You would let them lock me up--imprison me--and make me betray him!
+For what?  For what?"  She wrenched herself free.  "How little
+you understand me.  Never mind.  Perhaps one day you will know!
+Until the clock strikes!"
+
+She was gone.  I heard the creak of the punt, the drip of the water
+from the pole.  Fainter it grew, and fainter.
+
+"What is her secret?" muttered Smith, beside me.
+"Why does she cling to that monster?"
+
+The distant sound died away entirely.  A clock began to strike;
+it struck the half-hour. In an instant my handkerchief was off,
+and so was Smith's. We stood upon a towing-path. Away to the left
+the moon shone upon the towers and battlements of an ancient fortress.
+
+It was Windsor Castle.
+
+"Half-past ten," cried Smith.  "Two hours to save Graham Guthrie!"
+
+We had exactly fourteen minutes in which to catch the last
+train to Waterloo; and we caught it.  But I sank into a corner
+of the compartment in a state bordering upon collapse.
+Neither of us, I think, could have managed another twenty yards.
+With a lesser stake than a human life at issue, I doubt if we
+should have attempted that dash to Windsor station.
+
+"Due at Waterloo at eleven-fifty-one," panted Smith.
+"That gives us thirty-nine minutes to get to the other side
+of the river and reach his hotel."
+
+"Where in Heaven's name is that house situated?
+Did we come up or down stream?"
+
+"I couldn't determine.  But at any rate, it stands close to the riverside.
+It should be merely a question of time to identify it.  I shall set
+Scotland Yard to work immediately; but I am hoping for nothing.
+Our escape will warn him."
+
+I said no more for a time, sitting wiping the perspiration
+from my forehead and watching my friend load his cracked briar
+with the broadcut Latakia mixture.
+
+"Smith," I said at last, "what was that horrible wailing we heard,
+and what did Fu-Manchu mean when he referred to Rangoon?
+I noticed how it affected you."
+
+My friend nodded and lighted his pipe.
+
+"There was a ghastly business there in 1908 or early in 1909,"
+he replied:  "an utterly mysterious epidemic.  And this beastly
+wailing was associated with it."
+
+"In what way?  And what do you mean by an epidemic?"
+
+"It began, I believe, at the Palace Mansions Hotel, in the cantonments.
+A young American, whose name I cannot recall, was staying there on business
+connected with some new iron buildings.  One night he went to his room,
+locked the door, and jumped out of the window into the courtyard.
+Broke his neck, of course."
+
+"Suicide?"
+
+"Apparently.  But there were singular features in the case.
+For instance, his revolver lay beside him, fully loaded!"
+
+"In the courtyard?"
+
+"In the courtyard!"
+
+"Was it murder by any chance?"
+
+Smith shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"His door was found locked from the inside; had to be broken in."
+
+"But the wailing business?"
+
+"That began later, or was only noticed later.  A French doctor,
+named Lafitte, died in exactly the same way."
+
+"At the same place?"
+
+"At the same hotel; but he occupied a different room.
+Here is the extraordinary part of the affair:  a friend shared
+the room with him, and actually saw him go!"
+
+"Saw him leap from the window?"
+
+"Yes.  The friend--an Englishman--was aroused by the uncanny wailing.
+I was in Rangoon at the time, so that I know more of the case of Lafitte
+than of that of the American.  I spoke to the man about it personally.
+He was an electrical engineer, Edward Martin, and he told me that the cry
+seemed to come from above him."
+
+"It seemed to come from above when we heard it at Fu-Manchu's house."
+
+"Martin sat up in bed, it was a clear moonlight night--
+the sort of moonlight you get in Burma.  Lafitte, for some reason,
+had just gone to the window.  His friend saw him look out.
+The next moment with a dreadful scream, he threw himself forward--
+and crashed down into the courtyard!"
+
+"What then?"
+
+"Martin ran to the window and looked down.
+Lafitte's scream had aroused the place, of course.
+But there was absolutely nothing to account for the occurrence.
+There was no balcony, no ledge, by means of which anyone could
+reach the window."
+
+"But how did you come to recognize the cry?"  "I stopped at the Palace
+Mansions for some time; and one night this uncanny howling aroused me.
+I heard it quite distinctly, and am never likely to forget it.
+It was followed by a hoarse yell.  The man in the next room,
+an orchid hunter, had gone the same way as the others!"
+
+"Did you change your quarters?"
+
+"No. Fortunately for the reputation of the hotel--a first-class establishment--
+several similar cases occurred elsewhere, both in Rangoon, in Prome
+and in Moulmein.  A story got about the native quarter, and was fostered
+by some mad fakir, that the god Siva was reborn and that the cry was his call
+for victims; a ghastly story, which led to an outbreak of dacoity and gave
+the District Superintendent no end of trouble."
+
+"Was there anything unusual about the bodies?"
+
+"They all developed marks after death, as though they had been strangled!
+The marks were said all to possess a peculiar form, though it was not
+appreciable to my eye; and this, again, was declared to be the five
+heads of Siva."
+
+"Were the deaths confined to Europeans?"
+
+"Oh, no.  Several Burmans and others died in the same way.
+At first there was a theory that the victims had contracted leprosy and
+committed suicide as a result; but the medical evidence disproved that.
+The Call of Siva became a perfect nightmare throughout Burma."
+
+"Did you ever hear it again, before this evening?"
+
+"Yes.  I beard it on the Upper Irrawaddy one clear,
+moonlight night, and a Colassie--a deck-hand--leaped from
+the top deck of the steamer aboard which I was traveling!
+My God!  to think that the fiend Fu-Manchu has brought <i
+that> to England!"
+
+"But brought what, Smith?" I cried, in perplexity.
+"What has he brought?  An evil spirit?  A mental disease?
+What is it?  What CAN it be?"
+
+"A new agent of death, Petrie!  Something born in a plague-spot of Burma--
+the home of much that is unclean and much that is inexplicable.
+Heaven grant that we be in time, and are able to save Guthrie."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+THE train was late, and as our cab turned out of Waterloo Station
+and began to ascend to the bridge, from a hundred steeples rang
+out the gongs of midnight, the bell of St. Paul's raised above
+them all to vie with the deep voice of Big Ben.
+
+I looked out from the cab window across the river to where, towering above
+the Embankment, that place of a thousand tragedies, the light of some
+of London's greatest caravanserais formed a sort of minor constellation.
+From the subdued blaze that showed the public supper-rooms I looked
+up to the hundreds of starry points marking the private apartments
+of those giant inns.
+
+I thought how each twinkling window denoted the presence of some
+bird of passage, some wanderer temporarily abiding in our midst.
+There, floor piled upon floor above the chattering throngs,
+were these less gregarious units, each something of a mystery
+to his fellow-guests, each in his separate cell; and each as remote
+from real human companionship as if that cell were fashioned,
+not in the bricks of London, but in the rocks of Hindustan!
+
+In one of those rooms Graham Guthrie might at that moment be sleeping,
+all unaware that he would awake to the Call of Siva, to the summons of death.
+As we neared the Strand, Smith stopped the cab, discharging the man
+outside Sotheby's auction-rooms.
+
+"One of the doctor's watch-dogs may be in the foyer," he said thoughtfully,
+"and it might spoil everything if we were seen to go to Guthrie's rooms.
+There must be a back entrance to the kitchens, and so on?"
+
+"There is," I replied quickly.  "I have seen the vans delivering there.
+But have we time?"
+
+"Yes.  Lead on."
+
+We walked up the Strand and hurried westward.  Into that narrow court,
+with its iron posts and descending steps, upon which opens a well-known
+wine-cellar, we turned.  Then, going parallel with the Strand,
+but on the Embankment level, we ran round the back of the great hotel,
+and came to double doors which were open.  An arc lamp illuminated
+the interior and a number of men were at work among the casks,
+crates and packages stacked about the place.  We entered.
+
+"Hallo!" cried a man in a white overall, "where d'you think you're going?"
+
+Smith grasped him by the arm.
+
+"I want to get to the public part of the hotel without being seen
+from the entrance hall," he said.  "Will you please lead the way?
+
+"Here--" began the other, staring.
+
+"Don't waste time!" snapped my friend, in that tone of authority
+which he knew so well how to assume.  "It's a matter of life and death.
+Lead the way, I say!"
+
+"Police, sir?" asked the man civilly.
+
+"Yes," said Smith; "hurry!"
+
+Off went our guide without further demur.  Skirting sculleries, kitchens,
+laundries and engine-rooms, he led us through those mysterious labyrinths
+which have no existence for the guest above, but which contain the machinery
+that renders these modern khans the Aladdin's palaces they are.
+On a second-floor landing we met a man in a tweed suit, to whom our
+cicerone presented us.
+
+"Glad I met you, sir.  Two gentlemen from the police."
+
+The man regarded us haughtily with a suspicious smile.
+
+"Who are you?" he asked.  "You're not from Scotland Yard,
+at any rate!"
+
+Smith pulled out a card and thrust it into the speaker's hand.
+
+"If you are the hotel detective," he said, "take us without delay
+to Mr. Graham Guthrie."
+
+A marked change took place in the other's demeanor on glancing
+at the card in his hand.
+
+"Excuse me, sir," he said deferentially, "but, of course,
+I didn't know who I was speaking to.  We all have instructions
+to give you every assistance."
+
+"Is Mr. Guthrie in his room?"
+
+"He's been in his room for some time, sir.  You will want to get there
+without being seen?  This way.  We can join the lift on the third floor."
+
+Off we went again, with our new guide.  In the lift:
+
+"Have you noticed anything suspicious about the place to-night?" asked Smith.
+
+"I have!" was the startling reply.  "That accounts for your
+finding me where you did.  My usual post is in the lobby.
+But about eleven o'clock, when the theater people began to come
+in I had a hazy sort of impression that someone or something
+slipped past in the crowd--something that had no business
+in the hotel."
+
+We got out of the lift.
+
+"I don't quite follow you," said Smith.  "If you thought you saw
+something entering, you must have formed a more or less definite
+impression regarding it."
+
+"That's the funny part of the business," answered the man doggedly.
+"I didn't!  But as I stood at the top of the stairs I could
+have sworn that there was something crawling up behind a party--
+two ladies and two gentlemen."
+
+"A dog, for instance?"
+
+"It didn't strike me as being a dog, sir.  Anyway, when the party passed me,
+there was nothing there.  Mind you, whatever it was, it hadn't come
+in by the front.  I have made inquiries everywhere, but without result."
+He stopped abruptly.  "No. 189--Mr. Guthrie's door, sir."
+
+Smith knocked.
+
+"Hallo!" came a muffled voice; "what do you want?"
+
+"Open the door!  Don't delay; it is important."
+
+He turned to the hotel detective.
+
+"Stay right there where you can watch the stairs and the lift,"
+he instructed; "and note everyone and everything that passes this door.
+But whatever you see or hear, do nothing without my orders."
+
+The man moved off, and the door was opened.  Smith whispered
+in my ear:
+
+"Some creature of Dr. Fu-Manchu is in the hotel!"
+
+Mr. Graham Guthrie, British resident in North Bhutan, was a big,
+thick-set man--gray-haired and florid, with widely opened eyes of the true
+fighting blue, a bristling mustache and prominent shaggy brows.
+Nayland Smith introduced himself tersely, proffering his card
+and an open letter.
+
+"Those are my credentials, Mr. Guthrie," he said; "so no doubt
+you will realize that the business which brings me and my friend,
+Dr. Petrie, here at such an hour is of the first importance."
+
+He switched off the light.
+
+"There is no time for ceremony," he explained.  "It is now twenty-five minutes
+past twelve.  At half-past an attempt will be made upon your life!"
+
+"Mr. Smith," said the other, who, arrayed in his pajamas,
+was seated on the edge of the bed, "you alarm me very greatly.
+I may mention that I was advised of your presence in
+England this morning."
+
+"Do you know anything respecting the person called Fu-Manchu--Dr. Fu-Manchu?"
+
+"Only what I was told to-day--that he is the agent of an
+advanced political group."
+
+"It is opposed to his interests that you should return to Bhutan.
+A more gullible agent would be preferable.  Therefore, unless you
+implicitly obey my instructions, you will never leave England!"
+
+Graham Guthrie breathed quickly.  I was growing more used to the gloom,
+and I could dimly discern him, his face turned towards Nayland Smith,
+whilst with his hand he clutched the bed-rail. Such a visit as ours,
+I think, must have shaken the nerve of any man.
+
+"But, Mr. Smith," he said, "surely I am safe enough here!
+The place is full of American visitors at present,
+and I have had to be content with a room right at the top;
+so that the only danger I apprehend is that of fire."
+
+"There is another danger," replied Smith.  "The fact that
+you are at the top of the building enhances that danger.
+Do you recall anything of the mysterious epidemic which broke
+out in Rangoon in 1908--the deaths due to the Call of Siva?"
+
+"I read of it in the Indian papers," said Guthrie uneasily.
+"Suicides, were they not?"  "No!" snapped Smith.  "Murders!"
+
+There was a brief silence.
+
+"From what I recall of the cases," said Guthrie, "that seems impossible.
+In several instances the victims threw themselves from the windows
+of locked rooms--and the windows were quite inaccessible."
+
+"Exactly," replied Smith; and in the dim light his revolver
+gleamed dully, as he placed it on the small table beside the bed.
+"Except that your door is unlocked, the conditions to-night
+are identical.  Silence, please, I hear a clock striking."
+
+It was Big Ben.  It struck the half-hour, leaving the stillness complete.
+In that room, high above the activity which yet prevailed below,
+high above the supping crowds in the hotel, high above the starving
+crowds on the Embankment, a curious chill of isolation swept about me.
+Again I realized how, in the very heart of the great metropolis, a man
+may be as far from aid as in the heart of a desert.  I was glad that I
+was not alone in that room--marked with the death-mark of Fu-Manchu;
+and I am certain that Graham Guthrie welcomed his unexpected company.
+
+I may have mentioned the fact before, but on this occasion it became
+so peculiarly evident to me that I am constrained to record it here--
+I refer to the sense of impending danger which invariably preceded a--
+visit from Fu-Manchu. Even had I not known that an attempt was to be
+made that night, I should have realized it, as, strung to high tension,
+I waited in the darkness.  Some invisible herald went ahead of the
+dreadful Chinaman, proclaiming his coming to every nerve in one's body.
+It was like a breath of astral incense, announcing the presence
+of the priests of death.
+
+A wail, low but singularly penetrating, falling in minor cadences
+to a new silence, came from somewhere close at hand.
+
+"My God!" hissed Guthrie, "what was that?"
+
+"The Call of Siva," whispered Smith.
+
+"Don't stir, for your life!"
+
+Guthrie was breathing hard.
+
+I knew that we were three; that the hotel detective was within hail;
+that there was a telephone in the room; that the traffic of
+the Embankment moved almost beneath us; but I knew, and am not
+ashamed to confess, that King Fear had icy fingers about my heart.
+It was awful--that tense waiting--for--what?
+
+Three taps sounded--very distinctly upon the window.
+
+Graham Guthrie started so as to shake the bed.
+
+"It's supernatural!" he muttered--all that was Celtic in his blood
+recoiling from the omen.  "Nothing human can reach that window!"
+"S-sh!" from Smith.  "Don't stir."
+
+The tapping was repeated.
+
+Smith softly crossed the room.  My heart was beating painfully.
+He threw open the window.  Further inaction was impossible.
+I joined him; and we looked out into the empty air.
+
+"Don't come too near, Petrie!" he warned over his shoulder.
+
+One on either side of the open window, we stood and looked down
+at the moving Embankment lights, at the glitter of the Thames,
+at the silhouetted buildings on the farther bank, with the Shot
+Tower starting above them all.
+
+Three taps sounded on the panes above us.
+
+In all my dealings with Dr. Fu-Manchu I had had to face nothing so uncanny
+as this.  What Burmese ghoul had he loosed?  Was it outside, in the air?
+Was it actually in the room?
+
+"Don't let me go, Petrie!" whispered Smith suddenly.
+"Get a tight hold on me!"
+
+That was the last straw; for I thought that some dreadful
+fascination was impelling my friend to hurl himself out!
+Wildly I threw my arms about him, and Guthrie leaped
+forward to help.
+
+Smith leaned from the window and looked up.
+
+One choking cry he gave--smothered, inarticulate--and I found him slipping
+from my grip--being drawn out of the window--drawn to his death!
+
+"Hold him, Guthrie!" I gasped hoarsely.  "My God, he's going!
+Hold him!"
+
+My friend writhed in our grasp, and I saw him stretch his arm upward.
+The crack of his revolver came, and he collapsed on to the floor,
+carrying me with him.
+
+But as I fell I heard a scream above.  Smith's revolver went
+hurtling through the air, and, hard upon it, went a black shape--
+flashing past the open window into the gulf of the night.
+
+"The light!  The light!"  I cried.
+
+Guthrie ran and turned on the light.  Nayland Smith, his eyes
+starting from his head, his face swollen, lay plucking at a silken
+cord which showed tight about his throat.
+
+"It was a Thug!" screamed Guthrie.  "Get the rope off!  He's choking!"
+
+My hands a-twitch, I seized the strangling-cord.
+
+"A knife!  Quick!"  I cried.  "I have lost mine!"
+
+Guthrie ran to the dressing-table and passed me an open penknife.
+I somehow forced the blade between the rope and Smith's swollen neck,
+and severed the deadly silken thing.
+
+Smith made a choking noise, and fell back, swooning in my arms.
+
+
+When, later, we stood looking down upon the mutilated thing which had
+been brought in from where it fell, Smith showed me a mark on the brow--
+close beside the wound where his bullet had entered.
+
+"The mark of Kali," he said.  "The man was a phansigar--
+a religious strangler.  Since Fu-Manchu has dacoits in his
+service I might have expected that he would have Thugs.
+A group of these fiends would seem to have fled into Burma;
+so that the mysterious epidemic in Rangoon was really an outbreak
+of thuggee--on slightly improved lines!  I had suspected something
+of the kind but, naturally, I had not looked for Thugs near Rangoon.
+My unexpected resistance led the strangler to bungle the rope.
+You have seen how it was fastened about my throat?
+That was unscientific.  The true method, as practiced
+by the group operating in Burma, was to throw the line
+about the victim's neck and jerk him from the window.
+A man leaning from an open window is very nicely poised:
+it requires only a slight jerk to pitch him forward.
+No loop was used, but a running line, which, as the victim fell,
+remained in the hand of the murderer.  No clew!  Therefore we
+see at once what commended the system to Fu-Manchu."
+
+Graham Guthrie, very pale, stood looking down at the dead strangler.
+
+"I owe you my life, Mr. Smith," he said.  "If you had come
+five minutes later--"
+
+He grasped Smith's hand.
+
+"You see," Guthrie continued, "no one thought of looking for a Thug in Burma!
+And no one thought of the ROOF!  These fellows are as active as monkeys,
+and where an ordinary man would infallibly break his neck, they are entirely
+at home.  I might have chosen my room especially for the business!"
+
+"He slipped in late this evening," said Smith.  "The hotel detective saw him,
+but these stranglers are as elusive as shadows, otherwise, despite their
+having changed the scene of their operations, not one could have survived."
+
+"Didn't you mention a case of this kind on the Irrawaddy?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," was the reply; "and I know of what you are thinking.
+The steamers of the Irrawaddy flotilla have a corrugated-iron
+roof over the top deck.  The Thug must have been lying up there
+as the Colassie passed on the deck below."
+
+"But, Smith, what is the motive of the Call?" I continued.
+
+"Partly religious," he explained, "and partly to wake the victims!
+You are perhaps going to ask me how Dr. Fu-Manchu has obtained power over
+such people as phansigars?  I can only reply that Dr. Fu-Manchu has secret
+knowledge of which, so far, we know absolutely nothing; but, despite all,
+at last I begin to score."
+
+"You do," I agreed; "but your victory took you near to death."
+
+"I owe my life to you, Petrie," he said.  "Once to your strength of arm,
+and once to--"
+
+"Don't speak of her, Smith," I interrupted.
+"Dr. Fu-Manchu may have discovered the part she played!
+In which event--"
+
+"God help her!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+UPON the following day we were afoot again, and shortly at handgrips with
+the enemy.  In retrospect, that restless time offers a chaotic prospect,
+with no peaceful spot amid its turmoils.
+
+All that was reposeful in nature seemed to have become
+an irony and a mockery to us--who knew how an evil demigod
+had his sacrificial altars amid our sweetest groves.
+This idea ruled strongly in my mind upon that soft autumnal day.
+
+"The net is closing in," said Nayland Smith.
+
+"Let us hope upon a big catch," I replied, with a laugh.
+
+Beyond where the Thames tided slumberously seaward showed the roofs
+of Royal Windsor, the castle towers showing through the autumn haze.
+The peace of beautiful Thames-side was about us.
+
+This was one of the few tangible clews upon which thus
+far we had chanced; but at last it seemed indeed that we
+were narrowing the resources of that enemy of the white race
+who was writing his name over England in characters of blood.
+To capture Dr. Fu-Manchu we did not hope; but at least there
+was every promise of destroying one of the enemy's strongholds.
+
+We had circled upon the map a tract of country cut by the Thames,
+with Windsor for its center.  Within that circle was the house from
+which miraculously we had escaped--a house used by the most highly
+organized group in the history of criminology.  So much we knew.
+Even if we found the house, and this was likely enough, to find it
+vacated by Fu-Manchu and his mysterious servants we were prepared.
+But it would be a base destroyed.
+
+We were working upon a methodical plan, and although our cooperators
+were invisible, these numbered no fewer than twelve--all of them
+experienced men.  Thus far we had drawn blank, but the place for which
+Smith and I were making now came clearly into view:  an old mansion
+situated in extensive walled grounds.  Leaving the river behind us,
+we turned sharply to the right along a lane flanked by a high wall.
+On an open patch of ground, as we passed, I noted a gypsy caravan.
+An old woman was seated on the steps, her wrinkled face bent,
+her chin resting in the palm of her hand.
+
+I scarcely glanced at her, but pressed on, nor did I notice that my friend
+no longer was beside me.  I was all anxiety to come to some point from
+whence I might obtain a view of the house; all anxiety to know if this
+was the abode of our mysterious enemy--the place where he worked amid
+his weird company, where he bred his deadly scorpions and his bacilli,
+reared his poisonous fungi, from whence he dispatched his murder ministers.
+Above all, perhaps, I wondered if this would prove to be the hiding-place of
+the beautiful slave girl who was such a potent factor in the Doctor's plans,
+but a two-edged sword which yet we hoped to turn upon Fu-Manchu. Even
+in the hands of a master, a woman's beauty is a dangerous weapon.
+
+A cry rang out behind me.  I turned quickly.  And a singular
+sight met my gaze.
+
+Nayland Smith was engaged in a furious struggle with the old gypsy woman!
+His long arms clasped about her, he was roughly dragging her out into
+the roadway, she fighting like a wild thing--silently, fiercely.
+
+Smith often surprised me, but at that sight, frankly, I thought that
+he was become bereft of reason.  I ran back; and I had almost reached
+the scene of this incredible contest, and Smith now was evidently hard put
+to it to hold his own when a man, swarthy, with big rings in his ears,
+leaped from the caravan.
+
+One quick glance he threw in our direction, and made off towards the river.
+
+Smith twisted round upon me, never releasing his hold of the woman.
+
+"After him, Petrie!" he cried.  "After him.  Don't let him escape.
+It's a dacoit!"
+
+My brain in a confused whirl; my mind yet disposed to a belief that my friend
+had lost his senses, the word "dacoit" was sufficient.
+
+I started down the road after the fleetly running man.
+Never once did he glance behind him, so that he evidently had occasion
+to fear pursuit.  The dusty road rang beneath my flying footsteps.
+That sense of fantasy, which claimed me often enough in those days
+of our struggle with the titantic genius whose victory meant the victory
+of the yellow races over the white, now had me fast in its grip again.
+I was an actor in one of those dream-scenes of the grim Fu-Manchu drama.
+
+Out over the grass and down to the river's brink ran the gypsy
+who was no gypsy, but one of that far more sinister brotherhood,
+the dacoits.  I was close upon his heels.  But I was not
+prepared for him to leap in among the rushes at the margin
+of the stream; and seeing him do this I pulled up quickly.
+Straight into the water he plunged; and I saw that he held some
+object in his hand.  He waded out; he dived; and as I gained
+the bank and looked to right and left he had vanished completely.
+Only ever--widening rings showed where he had been.
+I had him.
+
+For directly he rose to the surface he would be visible from
+either bank, and with the police whistle which I carried I could,
+if necessary, summon one of the men in hiding across the stream.
+I waited.  A wild-fowl floated serenely past, untroubled by this
+strange invasion of his precincts.  A full minute I waited.
+From the lane behind me came Smith's voice:
+
+"Don't let him escape, Petrie!"
+
+Never lifting my eyes from the water, I waved my hand reassuringly.
+But still the dacoit did not rise.  I searched the surface in all
+directions as far as my eyes could reach; but no swimmer showed
+above it.  Then it was that I concluded he had dived too deeply,
+become entangled in the weeds and was drowned.  With a final glance
+to right and left and some feeling of awe at this sudden tragedy--
+this grim going out of a life at glorious noonday--I turned away.
+Smith had the woman securely; but I had not taken five steps towards
+him when a faint splash behind warned me.  Instinctively I ducked.
+From whence that saving instinct arose I cannot surmise,
+but to it I owed my life.  For as I rapidly lowered my head,
+something hummed past me, something that flew out over the grass bank,
+and fell with a jangle upon the dusty roadside.  A knife!
+
+I turned and bounded back to the river's brink.  I heard a faint
+cry behind me, which could only have come from the gypsy woman.
+Nothing disturbed the calm surface of the water.  The reach was lonely
+of rowers.  Out by the farther bank a girl was poling a punt along,
+and her white-clad figure was the only living thing that moved upon
+the river within the range of the most expert knife-thrower.
+
+To say that I was nonplused is to say less than the truth; I was amazed.
+That it was the dacoit who had shown me this murderous attention
+I could not doubt.  But where in Heaven's name WAS he?
+He could not humanly have remained below water for so long;
+yet he certainly was not above, was not upon the surface,
+concealed amongst the reeds, nor hidden upon the bank.
+
+There, in the bright sunshine, a consciousness of the eerie possessed me.
+It was with an uncomfortable feeling that my phantom foe might be aiming
+a second knife at my back that I turned away and hastened towards Smith.
+My fearful expectations were not realized, and I picked up the little weapon
+which had so narrowly missed me, and with it in my hand rejoined my friend.
+
+He was standing with one arm closely clasped about the apparently
+exhausted woman, and her dark eyes were fixed upon him with
+an extraordinary expression.
+
+"What does it mean, Smith?" I began.
+
+But he interrupted me.
+
+"Where is the dacoit?" he demanded rapidly.
+
+"Since he seemingly possesses the attributes of a fish,"
+I replied, "I cannot pretend to say."
+
+The gypsy woman lifted her eyes to mine and laughed.
+Her laughter was musical, not that of such an old hag as Smith
+held captive; it was familiar, too.
+
+I started and looked closely into the wizened face.
+
+"He's tricked you," said Smith, an angry note in his voice.
+"What is that you have in your hand?"
+
+I showed him the knife, and told him how it had come into my possession.
+
+"I know," he rapped.  "I saw it.  He was in the water not
+three yards from where you stood.  You must have seen him.
+Was there nothing visible?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+The woman laughed again, and again I wondered.
+
+"A wild-fowl," I added; "nothing else."
+
+"A wild-fowl," snapped Smith.  "If you will consult your
+recollections of the habits of wild-fowl you will see
+that this particular specimen was a RARA AVIS. It's an
+old trick, Petrie, but a good one, for it is used in decoying.
+A dacoit's head was concealed in that wild-fowl!  It's useless.
+He has certainly made good his escape by now."
+
+"Smith," I said, somewhat crestfallen, "why are you detaining
+this gypsy woman?"
+
+"Gypsy woman!" he laughed, hugging her tightly as she made
+an impatient movement.  "Use your eyes, old man."
+
+He jerked the frowsy wig from her head, and beneath was a cloud
+of disordered hair that shimmered in the sunlight.
+
+"A wet sponge will do the rest," he said.
+
+Into my eyes, widely opened in wonder, looked the dark eyes
+of the captive; and beneath the disguise I picked out the charming
+features of the slave girl.  There were tears on the whitened lashes,
+and she was submissive now.
+
+"This time," said my friend hardly, "we have fairly captured her--
+and we will hold her."
+
+From somewhere up-stream came a faint call.
+
+"The dacoit!"
+
+Nayland Smith's lean body straightened; he stood alert, strung up.
+
+Another call answered, and a third responded.
+Then followed the flatly shrill note of a police whistle,
+and I noted a column of black vapor rising beyond the wall,
+mounting straight to heaven as the smoke of a welcome offering.
+
+The surrounded mansion was in flames!
+
+"Curse it!" rapped Smith.  "So this time we were right.  But, of course,
+he has had ample opportunity to remove his effects.  I knew that.
+The man's daring is incredible.  He has given himself till the very
+last moment--and we blundered upon two of the outposts."
+
+"I lost one."
+
+"No matter.  We have the other.  I expect no further arrests,
+and the house will have been so well fired by the Doctor's
+servants that nothing can save it.  I fear its ashes will afford
+us no clew, Petrie; but we have secured a lever which should
+serve to disturb Fu-Manchu's world."
+
+He glanced at the queer figure which hung submissively in his arms.
+She looked up proudly.
+
+"You need not hold me so tight," she said, in her soft voice.
+"I will come with you."
+
+That I moved amid singular happenings, you, who have borne with me
+thus far, have learned, and that I witnessed many curious scenes;
+but of the many such scenes in that race--drama wherein Nayland
+Smith and Dr. Fu-Manchu played the leading parts, I remember none
+more bizarre than the one at my rooms that afternoon.
+
+Without delay, and without taking the Scotland Yard men into
+our confidence, we had hurried our prisoner back to London,
+for my friend's authority was supreme.  A strange trio we were,
+and one which excited no little comment; but the journey came
+to an end at last.  Now we were in my unpretentious sitting-room--
+the room wherein Smith first had unfolded to me the story
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu and of the great secret society which sought
+to upset the balance of the world--to place Europe and America
+beneath the scepter of Cathay.
+
+I sat with my elbows upon the writing-table, my chin in my hands;
+Smith restlessly paced the floor, relighting his blackened
+briar a dozen times in as many minutes.  In the big arm-chair
+the pseudogypsy was curled up.  A brief toilet had converted
+the wizened old woman's face into that of a fascinatingly pretty girl.
+Wildly picturesque she looked in her ragged Romany garb.
+She held a cigarette in her fingers and watched us
+through lowered lashes.
+
+Seemingly, with true Oriental fatalism, she was quite reconciled to her fate,
+and ever and anon she would bestow upon me a glance from her beautiful
+eyes which few men, I say with confidence, could have sustained unmoved.
+Though I could not be blind to the emotions of that passionate Eastern soul,
+yet I strove not to think of them.  Accomplice of an arch-murderer she
+might be; but she was dangerously lovely.
+
+"That man who was with you," said Smith, suddenly turning
+upon her, "was in Burma up till quite recently.  He murdered
+a fisherman thirty miles above Prome only a mouth before I left.
+The D.S.P. had placed a thousand rupees on his head.
+Am I right?"
+
+The girl shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Suppose--What then?" she asked.
+
+"Suppose I handed you over to the police?" suggested Smith.
+But he spoke without conviction, for in the recent past we
+both had owed our lives to this girl.
+
+"As you please," she replied.  "The police would learn nothing."
+
+"You do not belong to the Far East," my friend said abruptly.
+"You may have Eastern blood in your veins, but you are no
+kin of Fu-Manchu."
+
+"That is true," she admitted, and knocked the ash from her cigarette.
+
+"Will you tell me where to find Fu-Manchu?"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders again, glancing eloquently in my direction.
+
+Smith walked to the door.
+
+"I must make out my report, Petrie," he said.  "Look after the prisoner."
+
+And as the door closed softly behind him I knew what was
+expected of me; but, honestly, I shirked my responsibility.
+What attitude should I adopt?  How should I go about my delicate task?
+In a quandary, I stood watching the girl whom singular circumstances
+saw captive in my rooms.
+
+"You do not think we would harm you?" I began awkwardly.
+"No harm shall come to you.  Why will you not trust us?"
+
+She raised her brilliant eyes.
+
+"Of what avail has your protection been to some of those others,"
+she said; "those others whom HE has sought for?"
+
+Alas!  it had been of none, and I knew it well.  I thought I grasped
+the drift of her words.
+
+"You mean that if you speak, Fu-Manchu will find a way of killing you?"
+
+"Of killing ME!" she flashed scornfully.  "Do I seem one
+to fear for myself?"
+
+"Then what do you fear?" I asked, in surprise.
+
+She looked at me oddly.
+
+"When I was seized and sold for a slave," she answered slowly,
+"my sister was taken, too, and my brother--a child."
+She spoke the word with a tender intonation, and her slight accent
+rendered it the more soft.  "My sister died in the desert.
+My brother lived.  Better, far better, that he had died, too."
+
+Her words impressed me intensely.
+
+"Of what are you speaking?" I questioned.  "You speak of
+slave-raids, of the desert.  Where did these things take place?
+Of what country are you?"
+
+"Does it matter?" she questioned in turn.  "Of what country am I?
+A slave has no country, no name."
+
+"No name!" I cried.
+
+"You may call me Karamaneh," she said.  "As Karamaneh I was
+sold to Dr. Fu-Manchu, and my brother also he purchased.
+We were cheap at the price he paid."  She laughed shortly, wildly.
+
+"But he has spent a lot of money to educate me.  My brother is all
+that is left to me in the world to love, and he is in the power
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu. You understand?  It is upon him the blow will fall.
+You ask me to fight against Fu-Manchu. You talk of protection.
+Did your protection save Sir Crichton Davey?"
+
+I shook my head sadly.
+
+"You understand now why I cannot disobey my master's orders--why, if I would,
+I dare not betray him."
+
+I walked to the window and looked out.  How could I answer her arguments?
+What could I say?  I heard the rustle of her ragged skirts, and she who called
+herself Karamaneh stood beside me.  She laid her hand upon my arm.
+
+"Let me go," she pleaded.  "He will kill him!  He will kill him!"
+
+Her voice shook with emotion.
+
+"He cannot revenge himself upon your brother when you are in no way to blame,"
+I said angrily.  "We arrested you; you are not here of your own free will."
+
+She drew her breath sharply, clutching at my arm, and in her eyes I
+could read that she was forcing her mind to some arduous decision.
+
+"Listen."  She was speaking rapidly, nervously.  "If I help you
+to take Dr. Fu-Manchu--tell you where he is to be found ALONE--
+will you promise me, solemnly promise me, that you will immediately
+go to the place where I shall guide you and release my brother;
+that you will let us both go free?"
+
+"I will," I said, without hesitation.  "You may rest assured of it."
+
+"But there is a condition," she added.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"When I have told you where to capture him you must release me."
+
+I hesitated.  Smith often had accused me of weakness
+where this girl was concerned.  What now was my plain duty?
+That she would utterly decline to speak under any circumstances
+unless it suited her to do so I felt assured.  If she spoke
+the truth, in her proposed bargain there was no personal element;
+her conduct I now viewed in a new light.  Humanity, I thought,
+dictated that I accept her proposal; policy also.
+
+"I agree," I said, and looked into her eyes, which were aflame
+now with emotion, an excitement perhaps of anticipation,
+perhaps of fear.
+
+She laid her hands upon my shoulders.
+
+"You will be careful?" she said pleadingly.
+
+"For your sake," I replied, "I shall."
+
+"Not for my sake."
+
+"Then for your brother's."
+
+"No." Her voice had sunk to a whisper.  "For your own."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+A COOL breeze met us, blowing from the lower reaches of the Thames.
+Far behind us twinkled the dim lights of Low's Cottages,
+the last regular habitations abutting upon the marshes.
+Between us and the cottages stretched half-a-mile of lush land
+through which at this season there were, however, numerous dry paths.
+Before us the flats again, a dull, monotonous expanse beneath the moon,
+with the promise of the cool breeze that the river flowed round
+the bend ahead.  It was very quiet.  Only the sound of our footsteps,
+as Nayland Smith and I tramped steadily towards our goal,
+broke the stillness of that lonely place.
+
+Not once but many times, within the last twenty minutes,
+I had thought that we were ill-advised to adventure
+alone upon the capture of the formidable Chinese doctor;
+but we were following out our compact with Karamaneh;
+and one of her stipulations had been that the police must
+not be acquainted with her share in the matter.
+
+A light came into view far ahead of us.
+
+"That's the light, Petrie," said Smith.  "If we keep that straight before us,
+according to our information we shall strike the hulk."
+
+I grasped the revolver in my pocket, and the presence
+of the little weapon was curiously reassuring.
+I have endeavored, perhaps in extenuation of my own fears,
+to explain how about Dr. Fu-Manchu there rested an atmosphere
+of horror, peculiar, unique.  He was not as other men.
+The dread that he inspired in all with whom he came in contact,
+the terrors which he controlled and hurled at whomsoever
+cumbered his path, rendered him an object supremely sinister.
+I despair of conveying to those who may read this account
+any but the coldest conception of the man's evil power.
+
+Smith stopped suddenly and grasped my arm.
+We stood listening.  "What?" I asked.
+
+"You heard nothing?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+Smith was peering back over the marshes in his oddly alert way.
+He turned to me, and his tanned face wore a peculiar expression.
+
+"You don't think it's a trap?" he jerked.  "We are trusting her blindly."
+
+Strange it may seem, but something within me rose in arms
+against the innuendo.
+
+"I don't," I said shortly.
+
+He nodded.  We pressed on.
+
+Ten minutes' steady tramping brought us within sight of the Thames.
+Smith and I both had noticed how Fu-Manchu's activities centered
+always about the London river.  Undoubtedly it was his highway,
+his line of communication, along which he moved his mysterious forces.
+The opium den off Shadwell Highway, the mansion upstream,
+at that hour a smoldering shell; now the hulk lying off the marshes.
+Always he made his headquarters upon the river.  It was significant;
+and even if to-night's expedition should fail, this was a clew
+for our future guidance.
+
+"Bear to the right," directed Smith.  "We must reconnoiter
+before making our attack."
+
+We took a path that led directly to the river bank.
+Before us lay the gray expanse of water, and out upon it
+moved the busy shipping of the great mercantile city.
+But this life of the river seemed widely removed from us.
+The lonely spot where we stood had no kinship with human activity.
+Its dreariness illuminated by the brilliant moon, it looked
+indeed a fit setting for an act in such a drama as that wherein
+we played our parts.  When I had lain in the East End opium den,
+when upon such another night as this I had looked out upon
+a peaceful Norfolk countryside, the same knowledge of aloofness,
+of utter detachment from the world of living men, had come to me.
+
+Silently Smith stared out at the distant moving lights.
+
+"Karamaneh merely means a slave," he said irrelevantly.
+
+I made no comment.
+
+"There's the hulk," he added.
+
+The bank upon which we stood dipped in mud slopes to the level
+of the running tide.  Seaward it rose higher, and by a narrow inlet--
+for we perceived that we were upon a kind of promontory--
+a rough pier showed.  Beneath it was a shadowy shape in the patch
+of gloom which the moon threw far out upon the softly eddying water.
+Only one dim light was visible amid this darkness.
+
+"That will be the cabin," said Smith.
+
+Acting upon our prearranged plan, we turned and walked up on
+to the staging above the hulk.  A wooden ladder led out and down
+to the deck below, and was loosely lashed to a ring on the pier.
+With every motion of the tidal waters the ladder rose and fell,
+its rings creaking harshly, against the crazy railing.
+
+"How are we going to get down without being detected?" whispered Smith.
+
+"We've got to risk it," I said grimly.
+
+Without further words my friend climbed around on to the ladder
+and commenced to descend.  I waited until his head disappeared
+below the level, and, clumsily enough, prepared to follow him.
+
+The hulk at that moment giving an unusually heavy heave,
+I stumbled, and for one breathless moment looked down upon
+the glittering surface streaking the darkness beneath me.
+My foot had slipped, and but that I had a firm grip upon the top rung,
+that instant, most probably, had marked the end of my share
+in the fight with Fu-Manchu. As it was I had a narrow escape.
+I felt something slip from my hip pocket, but the weird
+creaking of the ladder, the groans of the laboring hulk,
+and the lapping of the waves about the staging drowned the sound
+of the splash as my revolver dropped into the river.
+
+Rather, white-faced, I think, I joined Smith on the deck.
+He had witnessed my accident, but--
+
+"We must risk it," he whispered in my ear.  "We dare not turn back now."
+
+He plunged into the semi-darkness, making for the cabin,
+I perforce following.
+
+At the bottom of the ladder we came fully into the light streaming out
+from the singular apartments at the entrance to which we found ourselves.
+It was fitted up as a laboratory.  A glimpse I had of shelves loaded
+with jars and bottles, of a table strewn with scientific paraphernalia,
+with retorts, with tubes of extraordinary shapes, holding living organisms,
+and with instruments--some of them of a form unknown to my experience.
+I saw too that books, papers and rolls of parchment littered the bare
+wooden floor.  Then Smith's voice rose above the confused sounds
+about me, incisive, commanding:
+
+"I have you covered, Dr. Fu-Manchu!"
+
+For Fu-Manchu sat at the table.
+
+The picture that he presented at that moment is one which persistently
+clings in my memory.  In his long, yellow robe, his masklike,
+intellectual face bent forward amongst the riot of singular objects upon
+the table, his great, high brow gleaming in the light of the shaded
+lamp above him, and with the abnormal eyes, filmed and green,
+raised to us, he seemed a figure from the realms of delirium.
+But, most amazing circumstance of all, he and his surroundings tallied,
+almost identically, with the dream-picture which had come to me as I
+lay chained in the cell!
+
+Some of the large jars about the place held anatomy specimens.
+A faint smell of opium hung in the air, and playing with the tassel
+of one of the cushions upon which, as upon a divan, Fu-Manchu was seated,
+leaped and chattered a little marmoset.
+
+That was an electric moment.  I was prepared for anything--
+for anything except for what really happened.
+
+The doctor's wonderful, evil face betrayed no hint of emotion.
+The lids flickered over the filmed eyes, and their greenness grew
+momentarily brighter, and filmed over again.
+
+"Put up your hands!" rapped Smith, "and attempt no tricks."
+His voice quivered with excitement.  "The game's up,
+Fu-Manchu. Find something to tie him up with, Petrie."
+
+I moved forward to Smith's side, and was about to pass him
+in the narrow doorway.  The hulk moved beneath our feet
+like a living thing groaning, creaking--and the water lapped
+about the rotten woodwork with a sound infinitely dreary.
+
+"Put up your hands!" ordered Smith imperatively.
+
+Fu-Manchu slowly raised his hands, and a smile dawned upon
+the impassive features--a smile that had no mirth in it,
+only menace, revealing as it did his even, discolored teeth,
+but leaving the filmed eyes inanimate, dull, inhuman.
+
+He spoke softly, sibilantly.
+
+"I would advise Dr. Petrie to glance behind him before he moves."
+
+Smith's keen gray eyes never for a moment quitted the speaker.
+The gleaming barrel moved not a hair's-breadth. But I glanced
+quickly over my shoulder--and stifled a cry of pure horror.
+
+A wicked, pock-marked face, with wolfish fangs bared, and jaundiced
+eyes squinting obliquely into mine, was within two inches of me.
+A lean, brown hand and arm, the great thews standing up like cords,
+held a crescent-shaped knife a fraction of an inch above my jugular vein.
+A slight movement must have dispatched me; a sweep of the fearful weapon,
+I doubt not, would have severed my head from my body.
+
+"Smith!" I whispered hoarsely, "don't look around.
+For God's sake keep him covered.  But a dacoit has his knife
+at my throat!"
+
+Then, for the first time, Smith's hand trembled.  But his glance never wavered
+from the malignant, emotionless countenance of Dr. Fu-Manchu. He clenched
+his teeth hard, so that the muscles stood out prominently upon his jaw.
+
+I suppose that silence which followed my awful discovery prevailed
+but a few seconds.  To me those seconds were each a lingering death.
+
+There, below, in that groaning hulk, I knew more of icy terror
+than any of our meetings with the murder-group had brought
+to me before; and through my brain throbbed a thought:
+the girl had betrayed us!
+
+"You supposed that I was alone?" suggested Fu-Manchu. "So I was."
+
+Yet no trace of fear had broken through the impassive yellow
+mask when we had entered.
+
+"But my faithful servant followed you," he added.  "I thank him.
+The honors, Mr. Smith, are mine, I think?"
+
+Smith made no reply.  I divined that he was thinking furiously.
+Fu-Manchu moved his hand to caress the marmoset, which had leaped
+playfully upon his shoulder, and crouched there gibing at us
+in a whistling voice.
+
+"Don't stir!" said Smith savagely.  "I warn you!"
+
+Fu-Manchu kept his hand raised.
+
+"May I ask you how you discovered my retreat?" he asked.
+
+"This hulk has been watched since dawn," lied Smith brazenly.
+
+"So?"  The Doctor's filmed eyes cleared for a moment.
+"And to-day you compelled me to burn a house, and you
+have captured one of my people, too.  I congratulate you.
+She would not betray me though lashed with scorpions."
+
+The great gleaming knife was so near to my neck that a sheet of notepaper
+could scarcely have been slipped between blade and vein, I think;
+but my heart throbbed even more wildly when I heard those words.
+
+"An impasse," said Fu-Manchu. "I have a proposal to make.
+I assume that you would not accept my word for anything?"
+
+"I would not," replied Smith promptly.
+
+"Therefore," pursued the Chinaman, and the occasional guttural
+alone marred his perfect English, "I must accept yours.
+Of your resources outside this cabin I know nothing.
+You, I take it, know as little of mine.  My Burmese friend and
+Doctor Petrie will lead the way, then; you and I will follow.
+We will strike out across the marsh for, say, three hundred yards.
+You will then place your pistol on the ground, pledging me your
+word to leave it there.  I shall further require your assurance
+that you will make no attempt upon me until I have retraced
+my steps.  I and my good servant will withdraw, leaving you,
+at the expiration of the specified period, to act as you see fit.
+Is it agreed?"
+
+Smith hesitated.  Then:
+
+"The dacoit must leave his knife also," he stipulated.
+Fu-Manchu smiled his evil smile again.
+
+"Agreed.  Shall I lead the way?"
+
+"No!" rapped Smith.  "Petrie and the dacoit first; then you; I last."
+
+A guttural word of command from Fu-Manchu, and we left the cabin,
+with its evil odors, its mortuary specimens, and its strange instruments,
+and in the order arranged mounted to the deck.
+
+"It will be awkward on the ladder," said Fu-Manchu. "Dr. Petrie,
+I will accept your word to adhere to the terms."
+
+"I promise," I said, the words almost choking me.
+
+We mounted the rising and dipping ladder, all reached the pier,
+and strode out across the flats, the Chinaman always under close
+cover of Smith's revolver.  Round about our feet, now leaping ahead,
+now gamboling back, came and went the marmoset.  The dacoit,
+dressed solely in a dark loin-cloth, walked beside me, carrying his
+huge knife, and sometimes glancing at me with his blood-lustful eyes.
+Never before, I venture to say, had an autumn moon lighted such
+a scene in that place.
+
+"Here we part," said Fu-Manchu, and spoke another word to his follower.
+
+The man threw his knife upon the ground.
+
+"Search him, Petrie," directed Smith.  "He may have a second concealed."
+
+The Doctor consented; and I passed my hands over the man's scanty garments.
+
+"Now search Fu-Manchu."
+
+This also I did.  And never have I experienced a similar sense
+of revulsion from any human being.  I shuddered, as though I
+had touched a venomous reptile.
+
+Smith drew down his revolver.
+
+"I curse myself for an honorable fool," he said.  "No one could
+dispute my right to shoot you dead where you stand."
+
+Knowing him as I did, I could tell from the suppressed passion
+in Smith's voice that only by his unhesitating acceptance
+of my friend's word, and implicit faith in his keeping it,
+had Dr. Fu-Manchu escaped just retribution at that moment.
+Fiend though he was, I admired his courage; for all this he,
+too, must have known.
+
+The Doctor turned, and with the dacoit walked back.
+Nayland Smith's next move filled me with surprise.
+For just as, silently, I was thanking God for my escape,
+my friend began shedding his coat, collar and waistcoat.
+
+"Pocket your valuables, and do the same," he muttered hoarsely.
+"We have a poor chances but we are both fairly fit.
+To-night, Petrie, we literally have to run for our lives."
+
+We live in a peaceful age, wherein it falls to the lot of few
+men to owe their survival to their fleetness of foot.
+At Smith's words I realized in a flash that such was to be
+our fate to-night.
+
+I have said that the hulk lay off a sort of promontory.
+East and west, then, we had nothing to hope for.  To the south
+was Fu-Manchu; and even as, stripped of our heavier garments,
+we started to run northward, the weird signal of a dacoit rose
+on the night and was answered--was answered again.
+
+"Three, at least," hissed Smith; "three armed dacoits.  Hopeless."
+
+"Take the revolver," I cried.  "Smith, it's--"
+
+"No," he rapped, through clenched teeth.  "A servant of the Crown
+in the East makes his motto:  `Keep your word, though it break
+your neck!'  I don't think we need fear it being used against us.
+Fu-Manchu avoids noisy methods."
+
+So back we ran, over the course by which, earlier, we had come.
+It was, roughly, a mile to the first building--a deserted cottage--
+and another quarter of a mile to any that was occupied.
+
+Our chance of meeting a living soul, other than Fu-Manchu's dacoits,
+was practically nil.
+
+At first we ran easily, for it was the second half-mile that would
+decide our fate.  The professional murderers who pursued us ran
+like panthers, I knew; and I dare not allow my mind to dwell
+upon those yellow figures with the curved, gleaming, knives.
+For a long time neither of us looked back.
+
+On we ran, and on--silently, doggedly.
+
+Then a hissing breath from Smith warned me what to expect.
+
+Should I, too, look back?  Yes.  It was impossible to resist
+the horrid fascination.
+
+I threw a quick glance over my shoulder.
+
+And never while I live shall I forget what I saw.
+Two of the pursuing dacoits had outdistanced their fellow
+(or fellows), and were actually within three hundred yards of us.
+
+More like dreadful animals they looked than human beings,
+running bent forward, with their faces curiously uptilted.
+The brilliant moonlight gleamed upon bared teeth, as I could see,
+even at that distance, even in that quick, agonized glance,
+and it gleamed upon the crescent-shaped knives.
+
+"As hard as you can go now," panted Smith.  "We must make an attempt
+to break into the empty cottage.  Only chance."
+
+I had never in my younger days been a notable runner; for Smith I
+cannot speak.  But I am confident that the next half-mile was done
+in time that would not have disgraced a crack man.  Not once again did
+either of us look back.  Yard upon yard we raced forward together.
+My heart seemed to be bursting.  My leg muscles throbbed with pain.
+At last, with the empty cottage in sight, it came to that pass with me
+when another three yards looks as unattainable as three miles.
+Once I stumbled.
+
+"My God!" came from Smith weakly.
+
+But I recovered myself.  Bare feet pattered close upon our heels,
+and panting breaths told how even Fu-Manchu's bloodhounds were hard
+put to it by the killing pace we had made.
+
+"Smith," I whispered, "look in front.  Someone!"
+
+As through a red mist I had seen a dark shape detach itself
+from the shadows of the cottage, and merge into them again.
+It could only be another dacoit; but Smith, not heeding,
+or not hearing, my faintly whispered words, crashed open
+the gate and hurled himself blindly at the door.
+
+It burst open before him with a resounding boom, and he pitched forward
+into the interior darkness.  Flat upon the floor he lay, for as,
+with a last effort, I gained the threshold and dragged myself within,
+I almost fell over his recumbent body.
+
+Madly I snatched at the door.  His foot held it open.
+I kicked the foot away, and banged the door to.  As I turned,
+the leading dacoit, his eyes starting from their sockets,
+his face the face of a demon leaped wildly through the gateway.
+
+That Smith had burst the latch I felt assured, but by some divine
+accident my weak hands found the bolt.  With the last ounce
+of strength spared to me I thrust it home in the rusty socket--
+as a full six inches of shining steel split the middle panel
+and protruded above my head.
+
+I dropped, sprawling, beside my friend.
+
+A terrific blow shattered every pane of glass in the solitary window,
+and one of the grinning animal faces looked in.
+
+"Sorry, old man," whispered Smith, and his voice was barely audible.
+Weakly he grasped my hand.  "My fault.  I shouldn't have let, you come."
+
+From the corner of the room where the black shadows lay flicked
+a long tongue of flame.  Muffled, staccato, came the report.
+And the yellow face at the window was blotted out.
+
+One wild cry, ending in a rattling gasp, told of a dacoit gone
+to his account.
+
+A gray figure glided past me and was silhouetted against the broken window.
+
+Again the pistol sent its message into the night, and again came
+the reply to tell how well and truly that message had been delivered.
+In the stillness, intense by sharp contrast, the sound
+of bare soles pattering upon the path outside stole to me.
+Two runners, I thought there were, so that four dacoits must
+have been upon our trail.  The room was full of pungent smoke.
+I staggered to my feet as the gray figure with the revolver
+turned towards me.  Something familiar there was in that long,
+gray garment, and now I perceived why I had thought so.
+
+It was my gray rain-coat.
+
+"Karamaneh," I whispered.
+
+And Smith, with difficulty, supporting himself upright, and holding
+fast to the ledge beside the door, muttered something hoarsely,
+which sounded like "God bless her!"
+
+The girl, trembling now, placed her hands upon my shoulders with that quaint,
+pathetic gesture peculiarly her own.
+
+"I followed you," she said.  "Did you not know I should follow you?
+But I had to hide because of another who was following also.
+I had but just reached this place when I saw you running towards me."
+
+She broke off and turned to Smith.
+
+"This is your pistol," she said naively.  "I found it in your bag.
+Will you please take it!"
+
+He took it without a word.  Perhaps he could not trust himself to speak.
+
+"Now go.  Hurry!" she said.  "You are not safe yet."
+
+"But you?" I asked.
+
+"You have failed," she replied.  "I must go back to him.
+There is no other way."
+
+Strangely sick at heart for a man who has just had a miraculous
+escape from death, I opened the door.  Coatless, disheveled figures,
+my friend and I stepped out into the moonlight.
+
+Hideous under the pale rays lay the two dead men,
+their glazed eyes upcast to the peace of the blue heavens.
+Karamaneh had shot to kill, for both had bullets in their brains.
+If God ever planned a more complex nature than hers--a nature more
+tumultuous with conflicting passions, I cannot conceive of it.
+Yet her beauty was of the sweetest; and in some respects she
+had the heart of a child--this girl who could shoot so straight.
+
+"We must send the police to-night," said Smith.
+"Or the papers--"
+
+"Hurry," came the girl's voice commandingly from the darkness
+of the cottage.
+
+It was a singular situation.  My very soul rebelled against it.
+But what could we do?
+
+"Tell us where we can communicate," began Smith.
+
+"Hurry.  I shall be suspected.  Do you want him to kill me!"
+
+We moved away.  All was very still now, and the lights glimmered
+faintly ahead.  Not a wisp of cloud brushed the moon's disk.
+
+"Good-night, Karamaneh," I whispered softly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+TO pursue further the adventure on the marshes would be a task
+at once useless and thankless.  In its actual and in its dramatic
+significance it concluded with our parting from Karamaneh.
+And in that parting I learned what Shakespeare meant
+by "Sweet Sorrow."
+
+There was a world, I learned, upon the confines of which I stood,
+a world whose very existence hitherto had been unsuspected.
+Not the least of the mysteries which peeped from the darkness was
+the mystery of the heart of Karamaneh.  I sought to forget her.
+I sought to remember her.  Indeed, in the latter task I found
+one more congenial, yet, in the direction and extent of the ideas
+which it engendered, one that led me to a precipice.
+
+East and West may not intermingle.  As a student of
+world-policies, as a physician, I admitted, could not deny,
+that truth.  Again, if Karamaneh were to be credited,
+she had come to Fu-Manchu a slave; had fallen into the hands
+of the raiders; had crossed the desert with the slave-drivers;
+had known the house of the slave-dealer. Could it be?
+With the fading of the crescent of Islam I had thought such
+things to have passed.
+
+But if it were so?
+
+At the mere thought of a girl so deliciously beautiful in the brutal
+power of slavers, I found myself grinding my teeth--closing my eyes
+in a futile attempt to blot out the pictures called up.
+
+Then, at such times, I would find myself discrediting her story.
+Again, I would find myself wondering, vaguely, why such problems
+persistently haunted my mind.  But, always, my heart had an answer.
+And I was a medical man, who sought to build up a family practice!--
+who, in short, a very little time ago, had thought himself past
+the hot follies of youth and entered upon that staid phase of life
+wherein the daily problems of the medical profession hold absolute
+sway and such seductive follies as dark eyes and red lips find--
+no place--are excluded!
+
+But it is foreign from the purpose of this plain record to
+enlist sympathy for the recorder.  The topic upon which, here,
+I have ventured to touch was one fascinating enough to me;
+I cannot hope that it holds equal charm for any other.
+Let us return to that which it is my duty to narrate and let
+us forget my brief digression.
+
+It is a fact, singular, but true, that few Londoners know London.
+Under the guidance of my friend, Nayland Smith, I had learned,
+since his return from Burma, how there are haunts in the very heart
+of the metropolis whose existence is unsuspected by all but the few;
+places unknown even to the ubiquitous copy-hunting pressman.
+
+Into a quiet thoroughfare not two minutes' walk from
+the pulsing life of Leicester Square, Smith led the way.
+Before a door sandwiched in between two dingy shop-fronts
+he paused and turned to me.
+
+"Whatever you see or hear," he cautioned, "express no surprise."
+
+A cab had dropped us at the corner.  We both wore dark suits and fez
+caps with black silk tassels.  My complexion had been artificially
+reduced to a shade resembling the deep tan of my friend's. He rang
+the bell beside the door.
+
+Almost immediately it was opened by a negro woman--gross, hideously ugly.
+
+Smith uttered something in voluble Arabic.  As a linguist his
+attainments were a constant source of surprise.  The jargons
+of the East, Far and Near, he spoke as his mother tongue.
+The woman immediately displayed the utmost servility, ushering us
+into an ill-lighted passage, with every evidence of profound respect.
+Following this passage, and passing an inner door,
+from beyond whence proceeded bursts of discordant music,
+we entered a little room bare of furniture, with coarse matting
+for mural decorations, and a patternless red carpet on the floor.
+In a niche burned a common metal lamp.
+
+The negress left us, and close upon her departure entered a very aged man
+with a long patriarchal beard, who greeted my friend with dignified courtesy.
+Following a brief conversation, the aged Arab--for such he appeared to be--
+drew aside a strip of matting, revealing a dark recess.  Placing his finger
+upon his lips, he silently invited us to enter.
+
+We did so, and the mat was dropped behind us.  The sounds of crude
+music were now much plainer, and as Smith slipped a little shutter
+aside I gave a start of surprise.
+
+Beyond lay a fairly large apartment, having divans or low seats around
+three of its walls.  These divans were occupied by a motley company
+of Turks, Egyptians, Greeks, and others; and I noted two Chinese.
+Most of them smoked cigarettes, and some were drinking.
+A girl was performing a sinuous dance upon the square carpet occupying
+the center of the floor, accompanied by a young negro woman upon
+a guitar and by several members of the assembly who clapped their
+hands to the music or hummed a low, monotonous melody.
+
+Shortly after our entrance into the passage the dance terminated,
+and the dancer fled through a curtained door at the farther end of the room.
+A buzz of conversation arose.
+
+"It is a sort of combined Wekaleh and place of entertainment for a certain
+class of Oriental residents in, or visiting, London," Smith whispered.
+"The old gentleman who has just left us is the proprietor or host.
+I have been here before on several occasions, but have always drawn blank."
+
+He was peering out eagerly into the strange clubroom.
+
+"Whom do you expect to find here?" I asked.
+
+"It is a recognized meeting-place," said Smith in my ear.
+"It is almost a certainty that some of the Fu-Manchu group
+use it at times."
+
+Curiously I surveyed all these faces which were visible from the spy-hole.
+My eyes rested particularly upon the two Chinamen.
+
+"Do you recognize anyone?" I whispered.
+
+"S-sh!"
+
+Smith was craning his neck so as to command a sight of the doorway.
+He obstructed my view, and only by his tense attitude and some
+subtle wave of excitement which he communicated to me did I know
+that a new arrival was entering.  The hum of conversation died away,
+and in the ensuing silence I heard the rustle of draperies.
+The newcomer was a woman, then.  Fearful of making any noise I yet
+managed to get my eyes to the level of the shutter.
+
+A woman in an elegant, flame-colored opera cloak was crossing the floor
+and coming in the direction of the spot where we were concealed.
+She wore a soft silk scarf about her head, a fold partly draped across
+her face.  A momentary view I had of her--and wildly incongruous
+she looked in that place--and she had disappeared from sight,
+having approached someone invisible who sat upon the divan immediately
+beneath our point of vantage.
+
+From the way in which the company gazed towards her, I divined that she
+was no habitue of the place, but that her presence there was as greatly
+surprising to those in the room as it was to me.
+
+Whom could she be, this elegant lady who visited such a haunt--
+who, it would seem, was so anxious to disguise her identity,
+but who was dressed for a society function rather than for a
+midnight expedition of so unusual a character?
+
+I began a whispered question, but Smith tugged at my arm to silence me.
+His excitement was intense.  Had his keener powers enabled him
+to recognize the unknown?
+
+A faint but most peculiar perfume stole to my nostrils, a perfume
+which seemed to contain the very soul of Eastern mystery.
+Only one woman known to me used that perfume--Karamaneh.
+
+Then it was she!
+
+At last my friend's vigilance had been rewarded.  Eagerly I bent forward.
+Smith literally quivered in anticipation of a discovery.  Again the strange
+perfume was wafted to our hiding-place; and, glancing neither to right
+nor left, I saw Karamaneh--for that it was she I no longer doubted--
+recross the room and disappear.
+
+"The man she spoke to," hissed Smith.  "We must see him!
+We must have him!"
+
+He pulled the mat aside and stepped out into the anteroom.
+It was empty.  Down the passage he led, and we were almost come
+to the door of the big room when it was thrown open and a man came
+rapidly out, opened the street door before Smith could reach him,
+and was gone, slamming it fast.
+
+I can swear that we were not four seconds behind him, but when we gained
+the street it was empty.  Our quarry had disappeared as if by magic.
+A big car was just turning the corner towards Leicester Square.
+
+"That is the girl," rapped Smith; "but where in Heaven's
+name is the man to whom she brought the message?
+I would give a hundred pounds to know what business is afoot.
+To think that we have had such an opportunity and have
+thrown it away!"
+
+Angry and nonplused he stood at the corner, looking in the direction
+of the crowded thoroughfare into which the car had been driven, tugging at
+the lobe of his ear, as was his habit in such moments of perplexity,
+and sharply clicking his teeth together.  I, too, was very thoughtful.
+Clews were few enough in those days of our war with that giant antagonist.
+The mere thought that our trifling error of judgment tonight in tarrying
+a moment too long might mean the victory of Fu-Manchu, might mean the turning
+of the balance which a wise providence had adjusted between the white
+and yellow races, was appalling.
+
+To Smith and me, who knew something of the secret influences
+at work to overthrow the Indian Empire, to place, it might be,
+the whole of Europe and America beneath an Eastern rule,
+it seemed that a great yellow hand was stretched out over London.
+Doctor Fu-Manchu was a menace to the civilized world.
+Yet his very existence remained unsuspected by the millions
+whose fate he sought to command.
+
+"Into what dark scheme have we had a glimpse?" said Smith.
+"What State secret is to be filched?  What faithful servant
+of the British Raj to be spirited away?  Upon whom now has
+Fu-Manchu set his death seal?"
+
+"Karamaneh on this occasion may not have been acting as an emissary
+of the Doctor's."
+
+"I feel assured that she was, Petrie.  Of the many whom this yellow
+cloud may at any moment envelop, to which one did her message refer?
+The man's instructions were urgent.  Witness his hasty departure.
+Curse it!"  He dashed his right clenched fist into the palm of his
+left hand.  "I never had a glimpse of his face, first to last.
+To think of the hours I have spent in that place, in anticipation
+of just such a meeting--only to bungle the opportunity when it arose!"
+Scarce heeding what course we followed, we had come now to Piccadilly
+Circus, and had walked out into the heart of the night's traffic.
+I just dragged Smith aside in time to save him from the off-front
+wheel of a big Mercedes.  Then the traffic was blocked, and we found
+ourselves dangerously penned in amidst the press of vehicles.
+
+Somehow we extricated ourselves, jeered at by taxi-drivers,
+who naturally took us for two simple Oriental visitors,
+and just before that impassable barrier the arm of a London
+policeman was lowered and the stream moved on a faint breath
+of perfume became perceptible to me.
+
+The cabs and cars about us were actually beginning to move again,
+and there was nothing for it but a hasty retreat to the curb.
+I could not pause to glance behind, but instinctively I knew
+that someone--someone who used that rare, fragrant essence--
+was leaning from the window of the car.
+
+"ANDAMAN--SECOND!" floated a soft whisper.
+
+We gained the pavement as the pent-up traffic roared upon its way.
+
+Smith had not noticed the perfume worn by the unseen
+occupant of the car, had not detected the whispered words.
+But I had no reason to doubt my senses, and I knew beyond
+question that Fu-Manchu's lovely slave, Karamaneh, had been
+within a yard of us, had recognized us, and had uttered
+those words for our guidance.
+
+On regaining my rooms, we devoted a whole hour to considering
+what "ANDAMAN--SECOND" could possibly mean.
+
+"Hang it all!" cried Smith, "it might mean anything--
+the result of a race, for instance."
+
+He burst into one of his rare laughs, and began to stuff broadcut mixture
+into his briar.  I could see that he had no intention of turning in.
+
+"I can think of no one--no one of note--in London at present
+upon whom it is likely that Fu-Manchu would make an attempt,"
+he said, "except ourselves."
+
+We began methodically to go through the long list of names
+which we had compiled and to review our elaborate notes.
+When, at last, I turned in, the night had given place to a new day.
+But sleep evaded me, and "ANDAMAN--SECOND" danced like a
+mocking phantom through my brain.
+
+Then I heard the telephone bell.  I heard Smith speaking.
+
+A minute afterwards he was in my room, his face very grim.
+
+"I knew as well as if I'd seen it with my own eyes that some
+black business was afoot last night," he said.  "And it was.
+Within pistol-shot of us!  Someone has got at Frank Norris West.
+Inspector Weymouth has just been on the 'phone."
+
+"Norris West!" I cried, "the American aviator--and inventor--"
+"Of the West aero-torpedo--yes.  He's been offering it to the English
+War Office, and they have delayed too long."
+
+I got out of bed.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that the potentialities have attracted the attention
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu!"
+
+Those words operated electrically.  I do not know how long I was in dressing,
+how long a time elapsed ere the cab for which Smith had 'phoned arrived,
+how many precious minutes were lost upon the journey; but, in a nervous whirl,
+these things slipped into the past, like the telegraph poles seen from
+the window of an express, and, still in that tense state, we came upon
+the scene of this newest outrage.
+
+Mr. Norris West, whose lean, stoic face had latterly figured so often
+in the daily press, lay upon the floor in the little entrance hall
+of his chambers, flat upon his back, with the telephone receiver
+in his hand.
+
+The outer door had been forced by the police.  They had
+had to remove a piece of the paneling to get at the bolt.
+A medical man was leaning over the recumbent figure in the striped
+pajama suit, and Detective-Inspector Weymouth stood watching
+him as Smith and I entered.
+
+"He has been heavily drugged," said the Doctor, sniffing at
+West's lips, "but I cannot say what drug has been used.
+It isn't chloroform or anything of that nature.
+He can safely be left to sleep it off, I think."
+
+I agreed, after a brief examination.
+
+"It's most extraordinary," said Weymouth.  "He rang up the Yard
+about an hour ago and said his chambers had been invaded by Chinamen.
+Then the man at the 'phone plainly heard him fall.  When we got here his
+front door was bolted, as you've seen, and the windows are three floors up.
+Nothing is disturbed."
+
+"The plans of the aero-torpedo?" rapped Smith.
+
+"I take it they are in the safe in his bedroom,"
+replied the detective, "and that is locked all right.  I think
+he must have taken an overdose of something and had illusions.
+But in case there was anything in what he mumbled (you could
+hardly understand him) I thought it as well to send for you."
+
+"Quite right," said Smith rapidly.  His eyes shone like steel.
+"Lay him on the bed, Inspector."
+
+It was done, and my friend walked into the bedroom.
+
+Save that the bed was disordered, showing that West had been
+sleeping in it, there were no evidences of the extraordinary
+invasion mentioned by the drugged man.  It was a small room--
+the chambers were of that kind which are let furnished--and very neat.
+A safe with a combination lock stood in a corner.  The window was open
+about a foot at the top.  Smith tried the safe and found it fast.
+He stood for a moment clicking his teeth together, by which I knew
+him to be perplexed.  He walked over to the window and threw it up.
+We both looked out.
+
+"You see," came Weymouth's voice, "it is altogether too far from
+the court below for our cunning Chinese friends to have fixed a ladder
+with one of their bamboo rod arrangements.  And, even if they could
+get up there, it's too far down from the roof--two more stories--
+for them to have fixed it from there."
+
+Smith nodded thoughtfully, at the same time trying the strength of an iron
+bar which ran from side to side of the window-sill. Suddenly he stooped,
+with a sharp exclamation.  Bending over his shoulder I saw what it was
+that had attracted his attention.
+
+Clearly imprinted upon the dust-coated gray stone of the sill was a confused
+series of marks--tracks call them what you will.
+
+Smith straightened himself and turned a wondering look upon me.
+
+"What is it, Petrie?" he said amazedly.  "Some kind of bird has been here,
+and recently."  Inspector Weymouth in turn examined the marks.
+
+"I never saw bird tracks like these, Mr. Smith," he muttered.
+
+Smith was tugging at the lobe of his ear.
+
+"No," he returned reflectively; "come to think of it, neither did I."
+
+He twisted around, looking at the man on the bed.
+
+"Do you think it was all an illusion?" asked the detective.
+
+"What about those marks on the window-sill?" jerked Smith.
+
+He began restlessly pacing about the room, sometimes stopping
+before the locked safe and frequently glancing at Norris West.
+
+Suddenly he walked out and briefly examined the other apartments,
+only to return again to the bedroom.
+
+"Petrie," he said, "we are losing valuable time.
+West must be aroused."
+
+Inspector Weymouth stared.
+
+Smith turned to me impatiently.  The doctor summoned by the police had gone.
+"Is there no means of arousing him, Petrie?" he said.
+
+"Doubtless," I replied, "he could be revived if one but knew
+what drug he had taken."
+
+My friend began his restless pacing again, and suddenly pounced upon
+a little phial of tabloids which had been hidden behind some books
+on a shelf near the bed.  He uttered a triumphant exclamation.
+
+"See what we have here, Petrie!" he directed, handing the phial to me.
+"It bears no label."
+
+I crushed one of the tabloids in my palm and applied my tongue
+to the powder.
+
+"Some preparation of chloral hydrate," I pronounced.
+
+"A sleeping draught?" suggested Smith eagerly.
+
+"We might try," I said, and scribbled a formula upon a leaf of my notebook.
+I asked Weymouth to send the man who accompanied him to call up the nearest
+chemist and procure the antidote.
+
+During the man's absence Smith stood contemplating the unconscious inventor,
+a peculiar expression upon his bronzed face.
+
+"ANDAMAN--SECOND," he muttered.  "Shall we find the key
+to the riddle here, I wonder?"
+
+Inspector Weymouth, who had concluded, I think, that the mysterious
+telephone call was due to mental aberration on the part of Norris West,
+was gnawing at his mustache impatiently when his assistant returned.
+I administered the powerful restorative, and although,
+as later transpired, chloral was not responsible for West's condition,
+the antidote operated successfully.
+
+Norris West struggled into a sitting position, and looked about him
+with haggard eyes.
+
+"The Chinamen!  The Chinamen!" he muttered.
+
+He sprang to his feet, glaring wildly at Smith and me, reeled,
+and almost fell.
+
+"It is all right," I said, supporting him.  "I'm a doctor.
+You have been unwell."
+
+"Have the police come?" he burst out.  "The safe--try the safe!"
+
+"It's all right," said Inspector Weymouth.  "The safe is locked--
+unless someone else knows the combination, there's nothing
+to worry about."
+
+"No one else knows it," said West, and staggered unsteadily to the safe.
+Clearly his mind was in a dazed condition, but, setting his jaw with
+a curious expression of grim determination, he collected his thoughts
+and opened the safe.
+
+He bent down, looking in.
+
+In some way the knowledge came to me that the curtain was about to rise
+on a new and surprising act in the Fu-Manchu drama.
+
+"God!" he whispered--we could scarcely hear him--"the plans are gone!"
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+I HAVE never seen a man quite so surprised as Inspector Weymouth.
+
+"This is absolutely incredible!" he said.  "There's only one door
+to your chambers.  We found it bolted from the inside."
+
+"Yes," groaned West, pressing his hand to his forehead.
+"I bolted it myself at eleven o'clock, when I came in."
+
+"No human being could climb up or down to your windows.
+The plans of the aero-torpedo were inside a safe."
+
+"I put them there myself," said West, "on returning from the War Office,
+and I had occasion to consult them after I had come in and bolted the door.
+I returned them to the safe and locked it.  That it was still locked you
+saw for yourselves, and no one else in the world knows the combination."
+
+"But the plans have gone," said Weymouth.  "It's magic!  How was it done?
+What happened last night, sir?  What did you mean when you rang us up?"
+
+Smith during this colloquy was pacing rapidly up and down the room.
+He turned abruptly to the aviator.
+
+"Every fact you can remember, Mr. West, please," he said tersely;
+"and be as brief as you possibly can."
+
+"I came in, as I said," explained West "about eleven o'clock and having
+made some notes relating to an interview arranged for this morning,
+I locked the plans in the safe and turned in."
+
+"There was no one hidden anywhere in your chambers?" snapped Smith.
+
+"There was not," replied West.  "I looked.  I invariably do.
+Almost immediately, I went to sleep."
+
+"How many chloral tabloids did you take?" I interrupted.
+
+Norris West turned to me with a slow smile.
+
+"You're cute, Doctor," he said.  "I took two.  It's a bad habit,
+but I can't sleep without.  They are specially made up for me
+by a firm in Philadelphia."
+
+"How long sleep lasted, when it became filled with uncanny dreams,
+and when those dreams merged into reality, I do not know--
+shall never know, I suppose.  But out of the dreamless void
+a face came to me--closer--closer--and peered into mine.
+
+"I was in that curious condition wherein one knows
+that one is dreaming and seeks to awaken--to escape.
+But a nightmare-like oppression held me.  So I must lie
+and gaze into the seared yellow face that hung over me,
+for it would drop so close that I could trace the cicatrized
+scar running from the left ear to the corner of the mouth,
+and drawing up the lip like the lip of a snarling cur.
+I could look into the malignant, jaundiced eyes;
+I could hear the dim whispering of the distorted mouth--
+whispering that seemed to counsel something--something evil.
+That whispering intimacy was indescribably repulsive.
+Then the wicked yellow face would be withdrawn, and would recede
+until it became as a pin's head in the darkness far above me--
+almost like a glutinous, liquid thing.
+
+"Somehow I got upon my feet, or dreamed I did--God knows where dreaming ended
+and reality began.  Gentlemen maybe you'll conclude I went mad last night,
+but as I stood holding on to the bedrail I heard the blood throbbing through
+my arteries with a noise like a screw-propeller. I started laughing.
+The laughter issued from my lips with a shrill whistling sound that pierced
+me with physical pain and seemed to wake the echoes of the whole block.
+I thought myself I was going mad, and I tried to command my will--
+to break the power of the chloral--for I concluded that I had accidentally
+taken an overdose.
+
+"Then the walls of my bedroom started to recede, till at last I
+stood holding on to a bed which had shrunk to the size of a
+doll's cot, in the middle of a room like Trafalgar Square!
+That window yonder was such a long way off I could scarcely see it,
+but I could just defect a Chinaman--the owner of the evil
+yellow face--creeping through it.  He was followed by another,
+who was enormously tall--so tall that, as they came towards me
+(and it seemed to take them something like half-an-hour to cross
+this incredible apartment in my dream), the second Chinaman
+seemed to tower over me like a cypress-tree.
+
+"I looked up to his face--his wicked, hairless face.
+Mr. Smith, whatever age I live to, I'll never forget
+that face I saw last night--or did I see it?  God knows!
+The pointed chin, the great dome of a forehead, and the eyes--
+heavens above, the huge green eyes!"
+
+He shook like a sick man, and I glanced at Smith significantly.
+Inspector Weymouth was stroking his mustache, and his mingled
+expression of incredulity and curiosity was singular to behold.
+
+"The pumping of my blood," continued West, "seemed to be
+bursting my body; the room kept expanding and contracting.
+One time the ceiling would be pressing down on my head,
+and the Chinamen--sometimes I thought there were two of them,
+sometimes twenty--became dwarfs; the next instant it shot up
+like the roof of a cathedral.
+
+"`Can I be awake,' I whispered, `or am I dreaming?'
+
+"My whisper went sweeping in windy echoes about the walls,
+and was lost in the shadowy distances up under the invisible roof.
+
+"`You are dreaming--yes.'  It was the Chinaman with the green
+eyes who was addressing me, and the words that he uttered
+appeared to occupy an immeasurable time in the utterance.
+'But at will I can render the subjective objective.'
+I don't think I can have dreamed those singular words, gentlemen.
+"And then he fixed the green eyes upon me--the blazing green eyes.
+I made no attempt to move.  They seemed to be draining me
+of something vital--bleeding me of every drop of mental power.
+The whole nightmare room grew green, and I felt that I was being
+absorbed into its greenness.
+
+"I can see what you think.  And even in my delirium--
+if it was delirium--I thought the same.  Now comes the climax
+of my experience--my vision--I don't know what to call it.
+I SAW some WORDS issuing from my own mouth!"
+
+Inspector Weymouth coughed discreetly.  Smith whisked round upon him.
+
+"This will be outside your experience, Inspector, I know," he said,
+"but Mr. Norris West's statement does not surprise me in the least.
+I know to what the experience was due."
+
+Weymouth stared incredulously, but a dawning perception of the truth
+was come to me, too.
+
+"How I SAW a SOUND I just won't attempt to explain;
+I simply tell you I saw it.  Somehow I knew I had betrayed myself--
+given something away."
+
+"You gave away the secret of the lock combination!" rapped Smith.
+
+"Eh!" grunted Weymouth.
+
+But West went on hoarsely:
+
+"Just before the blank came a name flashed before my eyes.
+It was `Bayard Taylor.'"
+
+At that I interrupted West.
+
+"I understand!" I cried.  "I understand!  Another name has just occurred
+to me, Mr. West--that of the Frenchman, Moreau."
+
+"You have solved the mystery," said Smith.  "It was natural
+Mr. West should have thought of the American traveler,
+Bayard Taylor, though.  Moreau's book is purely scientific.
+He has probably never read it."
+
+"I fought with the stupor that was overcoming me," continued West,
+"striving to associate that vaguely familiar name with the fantastic things
+through which I moved.  It seemed to me that the room was empty again.
+I made for the hall, for the telephone.  I could scarcely drag my feet along.
+It seemed to take me half-an-hour to get there.  I remember calling up
+Scotland Yard, and I remember no more."
+
+There was a short, tense interval.
+
+In some respects I was nonplused; but, frankly, I think Inspector Weymouth
+considered West insane.  Smith, his hands locked behind his back,
+stared out of the window.
+
+"ANDAMAN--SECOND" he said suddenly.  "Weymouth, when is the first
+train to Tilbury?"
+
+"Five twenty-two from Fenchurch Street," replied the Scotland
+Yard man promptly.
+
+"Too late!" rapped my friend.  "Jump in a taxi and pick up
+two good men to leave for China at once!  Then go and charter
+a special to Tilbury to leave in twenty-five minutes.
+Order another cab to wait outside for me."
+
+Weymouth was palpably amazed, but Smith's tone was imperative.
+The Inspector departed hastily.
+
+I stared at Smith, not comprehending what prompted this singular course.
+
+"Now that you can think clearly, Mr. West," he said, "of what
+does your experience remind you?  The errors of perception
+regarding time; the idea of SEEING A SOUND; the illusion
+that the room alternately increased and diminished in size;
+your fit of laughter, and the recollection of the name Bayard Taylor.
+Since evidently you are familiar with that author's work--
+'The Land of the Saracen,' is it not?--these symptoms of the attack
+should be familiar, I think."
+
+Norris West pressed his hands to his evidently aching head.
+
+"Bayard Taylor's book," he said dully.  "Yes!. . .I know of what my brain
+sought to remind me--Taylor's account of his experience under hashish.
+Mr. Smith, someone doped me with hashish!"
+
+Smith nodded grimly.
+
+"Cannabis indica," I said--"Indian hemp.  That is what you were
+drugged with.  I have no doubt that now you experience a feeling of nausea
+and intense thirst, with aching in the muscles, particularly the deltoid.
+I think you must have taken at least fifteen grains."
+
+Smith stopped his perambulations immediately in front of West,
+looking into his dulled eyes.
+
+"Someone visited your chambers last night," he said slowly,
+"and for your chloral tabloids substituted some containing hashish,
+or perhaps not pure hashish.  Fu-Manchu is a profound chemist."
+
+Norris West started.
+
+"Someone substituted--" he began.
+
+"Exactly," said Smith, looking at him keenly; "someone who was
+here yesterday.  Have you any idea whom it could have been?"
+
+West hesitated.  "I had a visitor in the afternoon," he said,
+seemingly speaking the words unwillingly, "but--"
+
+"A lady?" jerked Smith.  "I suggest that it was a lady."
+
+West nodded.
+
+"You're quite right," he admitted.  "I don't know how you arrived
+at the conclusion, but a lady whose acquaintance I made recently--
+a foreign lady."
+
+"Karamaneh!" snapped Smith.
+
+"I don't know what you mean in the least, but she came here--
+knowing this to be my present address--to ask me to protect her from
+a mysterious man who had followed her right from Charing Cross.
+She said he was down in the lobby, and naturally, I asked her to wait
+here whilst I went and sent him about his business."
+
+He laughed shortly.
+
+"I am over-old," he said, "to be guyed by a woman.
+You spoke just now of someone called Fu-Manchu. Is
+that the crook I'm indebted to for the loss of my plans?
+I've had attempts made by agents of two European governments,
+but a Chinaman is a novelty."
+
+"This Chinaman," Smith assured him, "is the greatest novelty of his age.
+You recognize your symptoms now from Bayard Taylors account?"
+
+"Mr. West's statement," I said, "ran closely parallel
+with portions of Moreau's book on `Hashish Hallucinations.'
+Only Fu-Manchu, I think, would have thought of employing Indian hemp.
+I doubt, though, if it was pure Cannabis indica. At any rate,
+it acted as an opiate--"
+
+"And drugged Mr. West," interrupted Smith, "sufficiently to enable
+Fu-Manchu to enter unobserved."
+
+"Whilst it produced symptoms which rendered him an easy subject
+for the Doctor's influence.  It is difficult in this case to separate
+hallucination from reality, but I think, Mr. West, that Fu-Manchu
+must have exercised an hypnotic influence upon your drugged brain.
+We have evidence that he dragged from you the secret of the combination."
+
+"God knows we have!" said West.  "But who is this Fu-Manchu, and how--
+how in the name of wonder did he get into my chambers?"
+
+Smith pulled out his watch.  "That," he said rapidly, "I cannot
+delay to explain if I'm to intercept the man who has the plans.
+Come along, Petrie; we must be at Tilbury within the hour.
+There is just a bare chance."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+IT was with my mind in a condition of unique perplexity that I hurried
+with Nayland Smith into the cab which waited and dashed off through
+the streets in which the busy life of London just stirred into being.
+I suppose I need not say that I could penetrate no farther into this,
+Fu-Manchu's latest plot, than the drugging of Norris West with hashish?
+Of his having been so drugged with Indian hemp--that is,
+converted temporarily into a maniac--would have been evident to any
+medical man who had heard his statement and noted the distressing
+after-effects which conclusively pointed to Indian hemp poisoning.
+Knowing something of the Chinese doctor's powers, I could understand that
+he might have extracted from West the secret of the combination by sheer
+force of will whilst the American was under the influence of the drug.
+But I could not understand how Fu-Manchu had gained access to locked
+chambers on the third story of a building.
+
+"Smith," I said, "those bird tracks on the window-sill--
+they furnish the key to a mystery which is puzzling me."
+
+"They do," said Smith, glancing impatiently at his watch.
+"Consult your memories of Dr. Fu-Manchu's habits--especially your
+memories of his pets."
+
+I reviewed in my mind the creatures gruesome and terrible which
+surrounded the Chinaman--the scorpions, the bacteria, the noxious
+things which were the weapons wherewith he visited death upon
+whomsoever opposed the establishment of a potential Yellow Empire.
+But no one of them could account for the imprints upon the dust
+of West's window-sill.
+
+"You puzzle me, Smith," I confessed.  "There is much in this extraordinary
+case that puzzles me.  I can think of nothing to account for the marks."
+
+"Have you thought of Fu-Manchu's marmoset?" asked Smith.
+
+"The monkey!" I cried.
+
+"They were the footprints of a small ape," my friend continued.
+"For a moment I was deceived as you were, and believed them
+to be the tracks of a large bird; but I have seen the footprints
+of apes before now, and a marmoset, though an American variety,
+I believe, is not unlike some of the apes of Burma."
+
+"I am still in the dark," I said.
+
+"It is pure hypothesis," continued Smith, "but here is the theory--
+in lieu of a better one it covers the facts.  The marmoset--
+and it is contrary from the character of Fu-Manchu to keep any
+creature for mere amusement--is trained to perform certain duties.
+
+"You observed the waterspout running up beside the window; you observed
+the iron bar intended to prevent a window-cleaner from falling out?
+For an ape the climb from the court below to the sill above was
+a simple one.  He carried a cord, probably attached to his body.
+He climbed on to the sill, over the bar, and climbed down again.
+By means of this cord a rope was pulled up over the bar,
+by means of the rope one of those ladders of silk and bamboo.
+One of the Doctor's servants ascended--probably to
+ascertain if the hashish had acted successfully.
+That was the yellow dream-face which West saw bending over him.
+Then followed the Doctor, and to his giant will the drugged brain
+of West was a pliant instrument which he bent to his own ends.
+The court would be deserted at that hour of the night, and,
+in any event, directly after the ascent the ladder probably
+was pulled up, only to be lowered again when West had revealed
+the secret of his own safe and Fu-Manchu had secured the plans.
+The reclosing of the safe and the removing of the hashish tabloids,
+leaving no clew beyond the delirious ravings of a drug slave--
+for so anyone unacquainted with the East must have construed
+West's story--is particularly characteristic.  His own tabloids
+were returned, of course.  The sparing of his life alone is
+a refinement of art which points to a past master."
+
+"Karamaneh was the decoy again?" I said shortly.
+
+"Certainly.  Hers was the task to ascertain West's habits and to
+substitute the tabloids.  She it was who waited in the luxurious car--
+infinitely less likely to attract attention at that hour in
+that place than a modest taxi--and received the stolen plans.
+She did her work well.
+
+"Poor Karamaneh; she had no alternative!  I said I would have given a hundred
+pounds for a sight of the messenger's face--the man to whom she handed them.
+I would give a thousand now!"
+
+"ANDAMAN--SECOND," I said.  "What did she mean?"
+
+"Then it has not dawned upon you?" cried Smith excitedly, as the cab
+turned into the station.  "The ANDAMAN, of the Oriental Navigation
+Company's line, leaves Tilbury with the next tide for China ports.
+Our man is a second-class passenger.  I am wiring to delay her departure,
+and the special should get us to the docks inside of forty minutes."
+
+
+Very vividly I can reconstruct in my mind that dash to the docks
+through the early autumn morning.  My friend being invested
+with extraordinary powers from the highest authorities,
+by Inspector Weymouth's instructions the line had been cleared
+all the way.
+
+Something of the tremendous importance of Nayland Smith's mission came home
+to me as we hurried on to the platform, escorted by the station-master,
+and the five of us--for Weymouth had two other C.I.D. men with him--
+took our seats in the special.
+
+Off we went on top speed, roaring through stations,
+where a glimpse might be had of wondering officials upon
+the platforms, for a special train was a novelty on the line.
+All ordinary traffic arrangements were held up until we had
+passed through, and we reached Tilbury in time which I doubt
+not constituted a record.
+
+There at the docks was the great liner, delayed in her passage
+to the Far East by the will of my royally empowered companion.
+It was novel, and infinitely exciting.
+
+"Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith?" said the captain interrogatively,
+when we were shown into his room, and looked from one to another and back
+to the telegraph form which he held in his hand.
+
+"The same, Captain," said my friend briskly.  "I shall not detain
+you a moment.  I am instructing the authorities at all ports
+east of Suez to apprehend one of your second-class passengers,
+should he leave the ship.  He is in possession of plans
+which practically belong to the British Government?"
+"Why not arrest him now?" asked the seaman bluntly.
+
+"Because I don't know him.  All second-class passengers'
+baggage will be searched as they land.  I am hoping something from that,
+if all else fails.  But I want you privately to instruct your stewards
+to watch any passenger of Oriental nationality, and to cooperate
+with the two Scotland Yard men who are joining you for the voyage.
+I look to you to recover these plans, Captain."
+
+"I will do my best," the captain assured him.
+
+Then, from amid the heterogeneous group on the dockside, we were watching
+the liner depart, and Nayland Smith's expression was a very singular one.
+Inspector Weymouth stood with us, a badly puzzled man.  Then occurred
+the extraordinary incident which to this day remains inexplicable, for,
+clearly heard by all three of us, a guttural voice said:
+
+"Another victory for China, Mr. Nayland Smith!"
+
+I turned as though I had been stung.  Smith turned also.
+My eyes passed from face to face of the group about us.
+None was familiar.  No one apparently had moved away.
+
+But the voice was the voice of DOCTOR FU-MANCHU.
+
+As I write of it, now, I can appreciate the difference
+between that happening, as it appealed to us, and as it must
+appeal to you who merely read of it.  It is beyond my powers
+to convey the sense of the uncanny which the episode created.
+Yet, even as I think of it, I feel again, though in lesser degree,
+the chill which seemed to creep through my veins that day.
+
+From my brief history of the wonderful and evil man who once walked,
+by the way unsuspected, in the midst of the people of England--
+near whom you, personally, may at some time unwittingly, have been--
+I am aware that much must be omitted.  I have no space for lengthy
+examinations of the many points but ill illuminated with which it is dotted.
+This incident at the docks is but one such point.
+
+Another is the singular vision which appeared to me whilst I lay in
+the cellar of the house near Windsor.  It has since struck me that it
+possessed peculiarities akin to those of a hashish hallucination.
+Can it be that we were drugged on that occasion with Indian hemp?  Cannabis
+indica is a treacherous narcotic, as every medical man knows full well;
+but Fu-Manchu's knowledge of the drug was far in advance of our slow science.
+West's experience proved so much.
+
+I may have neglected opportunities--later, you shall judge if I did so--
+opportunities to glean for the West some of the strange knowledge of
+the secret East.  Perhaps, at a future time, I may rectify my errors.
+Perhaps that wisdom--the wisdom stored up by Fu-Manchu--is lost forever.
+There is, however, at least a bare possibility of its survival, in part;
+and I do not wholly despair of one day publishing a scientific sequel
+to this record of our dealings with the Chinese doctor.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+TIME wore on and seemingly brought us no nearer, or very little nearer,
+to our goal.  So carefully had my friend Nayland Smith excluded
+the matter from the press that, whilst public interest was much engaged
+with some of the events in the skein of mystery which he had come from
+Burma to unravel, outside the Secret Service and the special department
+of Scotland Yard few people recognized that the several murders,
+robberies and disappearances formed each a link in a chain; fewer still
+were aware that a baneful presence was in our midst, that a past
+master of the evil arts lay concealed somewhere in the metropolis;
+searched for by the keenest wits which the authorities could direct
+to the task, but eluding all-triumphant, contemptuous.
+
+One link in that chain Smith himself for long failed to recognize.
+Yet it was a big and important link.
+
+"Petrie," he said to me one morning, "listen to this:
+
+"`. . .In sight of Shanghai--a clear, dark night.  On board the deck of a junk
+passing close to seaward of the Andaman a blue flare started up.
+A minute later there was a cry of "Man overboard!"
+
+"`Mr. Lewin, the chief officer, who was in charge, stopped the engines.
+A boat was put out.  But no one was recovered.  There are sharks
+in these waters.  A fairly heavy sea was running.
+
+"`Inquiry showed the missing man to be a James Edwards,
+second class, booked to Shanghai.  I think the name was assumed.
+The man was some sort of Oriental, and we had had him
+under close observation. . . .'"
+
+"That's the end of their report," exclaimed Smith.
+
+He referred to the two C.I.D. men who had joined the Andaman
+at the moment of her departure from Tilbury.
+
+He carefully lighted his pipe.
+
+"IS it a victory for China, Petrie?" he said softly.
+
+"Until the great war reveals her secret resources--and I pray that the day
+be not in my time--we shall never know," I replied.
+
+Smith began striding up and down the room,
+
+"Whose name," he jerked abruptly, "stands now at the head
+of our danger list?"
+
+He referred to a list which we had compiled of the notable men intervening
+between the evil genius who secretly had invaded London and the triumph
+of his cause--the triumph of the yellow races.
+
+I glanced at our notes.  "Lord Southery," I replied.
+
+Smith tossed the morning paper across to me.
+
+"Look," he said shortly.  "He's dead."
+
+I read the account of the peer's death, and glanced at
+the long obituary notice; but no more than glanced at it.
+He had but recently returned from the East, and now, after a
+short illness, had died from some affection of the heart.
+There had been no intimation that his illness was of a
+serious nature, and even Smith, who watched over his flock--
+the flock threatened by the wolf, Fu-Manchu--with jealous zeal,
+had not suspected that the end was so near.
+
+"Do you think he died a natural death, Smith?" I asked.
+
+My friend reached across the table and rested the tip of a long
+ringer upon one of the sub-headings to the account:
+
+
+"SIR FRANK NARCOMBE SUMMONED TOO LATE."
+
+
+"You see," said Smith, "Southery died during the night,
+but Sir Frank Narcombe, arriving a few minutes later,
+unhesitatingly pronounced death to be due to syncope,
+and seems to have noticed nothing suspicious."
+
+I looked at him thoughtfully.
+
+"Sir Frank is a great physician," I said slowly; "but we must
+remember he would be looking for nothing suspicious."
+
+"We must remember," rapped Smith, "that, if Dr. Fu-Manchu
+is responsible for Southery's death, except to the eye
+of an expert there would be nothing suspicious to see.
+Fu-Manchu leaves no clews."
+
+"Are you going around?" I asked.
+
+Smith shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I think not," he replied.  "Either a greater One than Fu-Manchu
+has taken Lord Southery, or the yellow doctor has done his work
+so well that no trace remains of his presence in the matter."
+
+Leaving his breakfast untasted, he wandered aimlessly about the room,
+littering the hearth with matches as he constantly relighted his pipe,
+which went out every few minutes.
+
+"It's no good, Petrie," he burst out suddenly; "it cannot be a coincidence.
+We must go around and see him."
+
+An hour later we stood in the silent room, with its drawn blinds and
+its deathful atmosphere, looking down at the pale, intellectual face
+of Henry Stradwick, Lord Southery, the greatest engineer of his day.
+The mind that lay behind that splendid brow had planned the construction
+of the railway for which Russia had paid so great a price, had conceived
+the scheme for the canal which, in the near future, was to bring
+two great continents, a full week's journey nearer one to the other.
+But now it would plan no more.
+
+"He had latterly developed symptoms of angina pectoris,"
+explained the family physician; "but I had not anticipated a fatal
+termination so soon.  I was called about two o'clock this morning,
+and found Lord Southery in a dangerously exhausted condition.
+I did all that was possible, and Sir Frank Narcombe was sent for.
+But shortly before his arrival the patient expired."
+
+"I understand, Doctor, that you had been treating Lord Southery
+for angina pectoris?" I said.
+
+"Yes," was the reply, "for some months."
+
+"You regard the circumstances of his end as entirely consistent
+with a death from that cause?"
+
+"Certainly.  Do you observe anything unusual yourself?
+Sir Frank Narcombe quite agrees with me.  There is surely
+no room for doubt?"
+
+"No," said Smith, tugging reflectively at the lobe of his left ear.
+"We do not question the accuracy of your diagnosis in any way, sir."
+
+The physician seemed puzzled.
+
+"But am I not right in supposing that you are connected with the police?"
+asked the physician.
+
+"Neither Dr. Petrie nor myself are in any way connected with the police,"
+answered Smith.  "But, nevertheless, I look to you to regard our recent
+questions as confidential."
+
+As we were leaving the house, hushed awesomely in deference to the unseen
+visitor who had touched Lord Southery with gray, cold fingers, Smith paused,
+detaining a black-coated man who passed us on the stairs.
+
+"You were Lord Southery's valet?"
+
+The man bowed.
+
+"Were you in the room at the moment of his fatal seizure?"
+
+"I was, sir."
+
+"Did you see or hear anything unusual--anything unaccountable?"
+
+"Nothing, sir."
+
+"No strange sounds outside the house, for instance?"
+
+The man shook his head, and Smith, taking my arm, passed out into the street.
+
+"Perhaps this business is making me imaginative," he said;
+"but there seems to be something tainting the air in yonder--
+something peculiar to houses whose doors bear the invisible
+death-mark of Fu-Manchu."
+
+"You are right, Smith!" I cried.  "I hesitated to mention the matter, but I,
+too, have developed some other sense which warns me of the Doctor's presence.
+Although there is not a scrap of confirmatory evidence, I am as sure that he
+has brought about Lord Southery's death as if I had seen him strike the blow."
+
+It was in that torturing frame of mind--chained, helpless,
+in our ignorance, or by reason of the Chinaman's
+supernormal genius--that we lived throughout the ensuing days.
+My friend began to look like a man consumed by a burning fever.
+Yet, we could not act.
+
+In the growing dark of an evening shortly following I
+stood idly turning over some of the works exposed for sale
+outside a second-hand bookseller's in New Oxford Street.
+One dealing with the secret societies of China struck me
+as being likely to prove instructive, and I was about to call
+the shopman when I was startled to feel a hand clutch my arm.
+
+I turned around rapidly--and was looking into the darkly beautiful
+eyes of Karamaneh!  She--whom I had seen in so many guises--
+was dressed in a perfectly fitting walking habit, and had much
+of her wonderful hair concealed beneath a fashionable hat.
+
+She glanced about her apprehensively.
+
+"Quick!  Come round the corner.  I must speak to you," she said,
+her musical voice thrilling with excitement.
+
+I never was quite master of myself in her presence.
+He must have been a man of ice who could have been,
+I think for her beauty had all the bouquet of rarity;
+she was a mystery--and mystery adds charm to a woman.
+Probably she should have been under arrest, but I know I would
+have risked much to save her from it.
+
+As we turned into a quiet thoroughfare she stopped and said:
+
+"I am in distress.  You have often asked me to enable you to capture
+Dr. Fu-Manchu. I am prepared to do so."
+
+I could scarcely believe that I heard right.
+
+"Your brother--" I began.
+
+She seized my arm entreatingly, looking into my eyes.
+
+"You are a doctor," she said.  "I want you to come and see him now."
+
+"What!  Is he in London?"
+
+"He is at the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu."
+
+"And you would have me ---"
+
+"Accompany me there, yes."
+
+Nayland Smith, I doubted not, would have counseled me against
+trusting my life in the hands of this girl with the pleading eyes.
+Yet I did so, and with little hesitation; shortly we were traveling
+eastward in a closed cab.  Karamaneh was very silent, but always when I
+turned to her I found her big eyes fixed upon me with an expression
+in which there was pleading, in which there was sorrow, in which there
+was something else--something indefinable, yet strangely disturbing.
+The cabman she had directed to drive to the lower end of the Commercial Road,
+the neighborhood of the new docks, and the scene of one of our early
+adventures with Dr. Fu-Manchu. The mantle of dusk had closed about
+the squalid activity of the East End streets as we neared our destination.
+Aliens of every shade of color were about us now, emerging from
+burrow-like alleys into the glare of the lamps upon the main road.
+In the short space of the drive we had passed from the bright world
+of the West into the dubious underworld of the East.
+
+I do not know that Karamaneh moved; but in sympathy, as we neared
+the abode of the sinister Chinaman, she crept nearer to me,
+and when the cab was discharged, and together we walked down
+a narrow turning leading riverward, she clung to me fearfully,
+hesitated, and even seemed upon the point of turning back.
+But, overcoming her fear or repugnance, she led on, through a maze
+of alleyways and courts, wherein I hopelessly lost my bearings,
+so that it came home to me how wholly I was in the hands of this
+girl whose history was so full of shadows, whose real character
+was so inscrutable, whose beauty, whose charm truly might mask
+the cunning of a serpent.
+
+I spoke to her.
+
+"S-SH!" She laid her hand upon my arm, enjoining me to silence.
+
+The high, drab brick wall of what looked like some part of a dock
+building loomed above us in the darkness, and the indescribable
+stenches of the lower Thames were borne to my nostrils through
+a gloomy, tunnel-like opening, beyond which whispered the river.
+The muffled clangor of waterside activity was about us.
+I heard a key grate in a lock, and Karamaneh drew me into the shadow
+of an open door, entered, and closed it behind her.
+
+For the first time I perceived, in contrast to the odors
+of the court without, the fragrance of the peculiar perfume
+which now I had come to associate with her.  Absolute darkness
+was about us, and by this perfume alone I knew that she,
+was near to me, until her hand touched mine, and I was led
+along an uncarpeted passage and up an uncarpeted stair.
+A second door was unlocked, and I found myself in an exquisitely
+furnished room, illuminated by the soft light of a shaded lamp
+which stood upon a low, inlaid table amidst a perfect ocean
+of silken cushions, strewn upon a Persian carpet, whose yellow
+richness was lost in the shadows beyond the circle of light.
+
+Karamaneh raised a curtain draped before a doorway, and stood
+listening intently for a moment.
+
+The silence was unbroken.
+
+Then something stirred amid the wilderness of cushions, and two
+tiny bright eyes looked up at me.  Peering closely, I succeeded
+in distinguishing, crouched in that soft luxuriance, a little ape.
+It was Dr. Fu-Manchu's marmoset.  "This way," whispered Karamaneh.
+
+Never, I thought, was a staid medical man committed to a more
+unwise enterprise, but so far I had gone, and no consideration
+of prudence could now be of avail.
+
+The corridor beyond was thickly carpeted.  Following the direction
+of a faint light which gleamed ahead, it proved to extend
+as a balcony across one end of a spacious apartment.
+Together we stood high up there in the shadows, and looked
+down upon such a scene as I never could have imagined to exist
+within many a mile of that district.
+
+The place below was even more richly appointed than the room into
+which first we had come.  Here, as there, piles of cushions formed
+splashes of gaudy color about the floor.  Three lamps hung by chains
+from the ceiling, their light softened by rich silk shades.
+One wall was almost entirely occupied by glass cases containing
+chemical apparatus, tubes, retorts and other less orthodox indications
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu's pursuits, whilst close against another lay
+the most extraordinary object of a sufficiently extraordinary room--
+a low couch, upon which was extended the motionless form of a boy.
+In the light of a lamp which hung directly above him, his olive
+face showed an almost startling resemblance to that of Karamaneh--
+save that the girl's coloring was more delicate.  He had black,
+curly hair, which stood out prominently against the white covering
+upon which he lay, his hands crossed upon his breast.
+
+Transfixed with astonishment, I stood looking down upon him.
+The wonders of the "Arabian Nights" were wonders no longer,
+for here, in East-End London, was a true magician's palace,
+lacking not its beautiful slave lacking not its enchanted prince!
+
+"It is Aziz, my brother," said Karamaneh.
+
+We passed down a stairway on to the floor of the apartment.
+Karamaneh knelt and bent over the boy, stroking his hair
+and whispering to him lovingly.  I, too, bent over him;
+and I shall never forget the anxiety in the girl's eyes as she
+watched me eagerly whilst I made a brief examination.
+
+Brief, indeed, for even ere I had touched him I knew that the comely
+shell held no spark of life.  But Karamaneh fondled the cold hands,
+and spoke softly in that Arabic tongue which long before I had divined
+must be her native language.
+
+Then, as I remained silent, she turned and looked at me,
+read the truth in my eyes, and rose from her knees,
+stood rigidly upright, and clutched me tremblingly.
+
+"He is not dead--he is NOT dead!" she whispered, and shook me
+as a child might, seeking to arouse me to a proper understanding.
+"Oh, tell me he is not ---"
+
+"I cannot," I replied gently, "for indeed he is."
+
+"No!" she said, wild-eyed, and raising her hands to her face as though
+half distraught.  "You do not understand--yet you are a doctor.
+You do not understand ---"
+
+She stopped, moaning to herself and looking from the handsome
+face of the boy to me.  It was pitiful; it was uncanny.
+But sorrow for the girl predominated in my mind.
+
+Then from somewhere I heard a sound which I had heard before in houses
+occupied by Dr. Fu-Manchu--that of a muffled gong.
+
+"Quick!"  Karamaneh had me by the arm.  "Up!  He has returned!"
+
+She fled up the stairs to the balcony, I close at her heels.
+The shadows veiled us, the thick carpet deadened the sound
+of our tread, or certainly we must have been detected by the man
+who entered the room we had just quitted.
+
+It was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
+
+Yellow-robbed, immobile, the inhuman green eyes glittering catlike even,
+it seemed, before the light struck them, he threaded his way through
+the archipelago of cushions and bent over the couch of Aziz.
+
+Karamaneh dragged me down on to my knees.
+
+"Watch!" she whispered.  "Watch!"
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu felt for the pulse of the boy whom a moment since I
+had pronounced dead, and, stepping to the tall glass case,
+took out a long-necked flask of chased gold, and from it,
+into a graduated glass, he poured some drops of an amber liquid
+wholly unfamiliar to me.  I watched him with all my eyes,
+and noted how high the liquid rose in the measure.
+He charged a needle-syringe, and, bending again over Aziz,
+made an injection.
+
+Then all the wonders I had heard of this man became possible,
+and with an awe which any other physician who had examined
+Aziz must have felt, I admitted him a miracle-worker. For
+as I watched, all but breathless, the dead came to life!
+The glow of health crept upon the olive cheek--the boy moved--
+he raised his hands above his head--he sat up, supported by
+the Chinese doctor!
+
+Fu-Manchu touched some hidden bell.  A hideous yellow man with a scarred
+face entered, carrying a tray upon which were a bowl containing
+some steaming fluid, apparently soup, what looked like oaten cakes,
+and a flask of red wine.
+
+As the boy, exhibiting no more unusual symptoms than if he had just
+awakened from a normal sleep, commenced his repast, Karamaneh drew me
+gently along the passage into the room which we had first entered.
+My heart leaped wildly as the marmoset bounded past us to drop hand
+over hand to the lower apartment in search of its master.
+
+"You see," said Karamaneh, her voice quivering, "he is not dead!
+But without Fu-Manchu he is dead to me.  How can I leave him
+when he holds the life of Aziz in his hand?"
+
+"You must get me that flask, or some of its contents," I directed.
+"But tell me, how does he produce the appearance of death?"
+
+"I cannot tell you," she replied.  "I do not know.  It is something
+in the wine.  In another hour Aziz will be again as you saw him.
+But see."  And, opening a little ebony box, she produced a phial
+half filled with the amber liquid.
+
+"Good!" I said, and slipped it into my pocket.  "When will be the best
+time to seize Fu-Manchu and to restore your brother?"
+
+"I will let you know," she whispered, and, opening the door, pushed me
+hurriedly from the room.  "He is going away to-night to the north;
+but you must not come to-night. Quick!  Quick!  Along the passage.
+He may call me at any moment."
+
+So, with the phial in my pocket containing a potent preparation unknown
+to Western science, and with a last long look into the eyes of Karamaneh,
+I passed out into the narrow alley, out from the fragrant perfumes
+of that mystery house into the place of Thames-side stenches.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+"WE must arrange for the house to be raided without delay," said Smith.
+"This time we are sure of our ally--"
+
+"But we must keep our promise to her," I interrupted.
+
+"You can look after that, Petrie," my friend said.
+"I will devote the whole of my attention to Dr. Fu-Manchu!"
+he added grimly.
+
+Up and down the room he paced, gripping the blackened briar between
+his teeth, so that the muscles stood out squarely upon his lean jaws.
+The bronze which spoke of the Burmese sun enhanced the brightness
+of his gray eyes.
+
+"What have I all along maintained?" he jerked, looking back at me across
+his shoulder--"that, although Karamaneh was one of the strongest weapons in
+the Doctor's armory, she was one which some day would be turned against him.
+That day has dawned."
+
+"We must await word from her."
+
+"Quite so."
+
+He knocked out his pipe on the grate.  Then:
+
+"Have you any idea of the nature of the fluid in the phial?"
+
+"Not the slightest.  And I have none to spare for analytical purposes."
+
+Nayland Smith began stuffing mixture into the hot pipe-bowl,
+and dropping an almost equal quantity on the floor.
+
+"I cannot rest, Petrie," he said.  "I am itching to get to work.
+Yet, a false move, and--" He lighted his pipe, and stood staring
+from the window.
+
+"I shall, of course, take a needle-syringe with me," I explained.
+
+Smith made no reply.
+
+"If I but knew the composition of the drug which produced the semblance
+of death," I continued, "my fame would long survive my ashes."
+
+My friend did not turn.  But:
+
+"She said it was something he put in the wine?" he jerked.
+
+"In the wine, yes."
+
+Silence fell.  My thoughts reverted to Karamaneh, whom Dr. Fu-Manchu held
+in bonds stronger than any slave-chains. For, with Aziz, her brother,
+suspended between life and death, what could she do save obey
+the mandates of the cunning Chinaman?  What perverted genius was his!
+If that treasury of obscure wisdom which he, perhaps alone of living men,
+had rifled, could but be thrown open to the sick and suffering, the name
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu would rank with the golden ones in the history of healing.
+
+Nayland Smith suddenly turned, and the expression upon his face amazed me.
+
+"Look up the next train to L--!" he rapped.  "To L--?  What--?"
+
+"There's the Bradshaw.  We haven't a minute to waste."
+
+In his voice was the imperative note I knew so well; in his
+eyes was the light which told of an urgent need for action--
+a portentous truth suddenly grasped.
+
+"One in half-an-hour--the last."
+
+"We must catch it."
+
+No further word of explanation he vouchsafed, but darted off to dress;
+for he had spent the afternoon pacing the room in his dressing-gown
+and smoking without intermission.
+
+Out and to the corner we hurried, and leaped into the first taxi
+upon the rank.  Smith enjoined the man to hasten, and we were off--
+all in that whirl of feverish activity which characterized my friend's
+movements in times of important action.
+
+He sat glancing impatiently from the window and twitching at the lobe
+of his ear.
+
+"I know you will forgive me, old man," he said, "but there
+is a little problem which I am trying to work out in my mind.
+Did you bring the things I mentioned?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Conversation lapsed, until, just as the cab turned into the station,
+Smith said:  "Should you consider Lord Southery to have been the first
+constructive engineer of his time, Petrie?"
+
+"Undoubtedly," I replied.
+
+"Greater than Von Homber, of Berlin?"
+
+"Possibly not.  But Von Homber has been dead for three years."
+
+"Three years, is it?"
+
+"Roughly."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+
+We reached the station in time to secure a non-corridor
+compartment to ourselves, and to allow Smith leisure carefully
+to inspect the occupants of all the others, from the engine
+to the guard's van.  He was muffled up to the eyes, and he warned
+me to keep out of sight in the corner of the compartment.
+In fact, his behavior had me bursting with curiosity.
+The train having started:
+
+"Don't imagine, Petrie," said Smith "that I am trying to lead you
+blindfolded in order later to dazzle you with my perspicacity.
+I am simply afraid that this may be a wild-goose chase.
+The idea upon which I am acting does not seem to have struck you.
+I wish it had.  The fact would argue in favor of its being, sound."
+
+"At present I am hopelessly mystified."
+
+"Well, then, I will not bias you towards my view.
+But just study the situation, and see if you can arrive at
+the reason for this sudden journey.  I shall be distinctly
+encouraged if you succeed."
+
+But I did not succeed, and since Smith obviously was
+unwilling to enlighten me, I pressed him no more.
+The train stopped at Rugby, where he was engaged with
+the stationmaster in making some mysterious arrangements.
+At L--, however, their object became plain, for a high-power car
+was awaiting us, and into this we hurried and ere the greater
+number of passengers had reached the platform were being driven
+off at headlong speed along the moon-bathed roads.
+
+Twenty minutes' rapid traveling, and a white mansion leaped into the line
+of sight, standing out vividly against its woody backing.
+
+"Stradwick Hall," said Smith.  "The home of Lord Southery.
+We are first--but Dr. Fu-Manchu was on the train."
+
+Then the truth dawned upon the gloom of my perplexity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+"YOUR extraordinary proposal fills me with horror, Mr. Smith!"
+
+The sleek little man in the dress suit, who looked like a head waiter
+(but was the trusted legal adviser of the house of Southery)
+puffed at his cigar indignantly.  Nayland Smith, whose restless
+pacing had led him to the far end of the library, turned, a remote
+but virile figure, and looked back to where I stood by the open
+hearth with the solicitor.
+
+"I am in your hands, Mr. Henderson," he said, and advanced
+upon the latter, his gray eyes ablaze.  "Save for the heir,
+who is abroad on foreign service, you say there is no kin
+of Lord Southery to consider.  The word rests with you.
+If I am wrong, and you agree to my proposal, there is none
+whose susceptibilities will suffer--"
+
+"My own, sir!"
+
+"If I am right, and you prevent me from acting, you become
+a murderer, Mr. Henderson."
+
+The lawyer started, staring nervously up at Smith, who now towered
+over him menacingly.
+
+"Lord Southery was a lonely man," continued my friend.
+"If I could have placed my proposition before one of his blood,
+I do not doubt what my answer had been.  Why do you hesitate?
+Why do you experience this feeling of horror?"
+
+Mr. Henderson stared down into the fire.  His constitutionally
+ruddy face was pale.
+
+"It is entirely irregular, Mr. Smith.  We have not the necessary powers--"
+
+Smith snapped his teeth together impatiently, snatching his watch
+from his pocket and glancing at it.
+
+"I am vested with the necessary powers.  I will give you
+a written order, sir."
+
+"The proceeding savors of paganism.  Such a course might be admissible
+in China, in Burma--"
+
+"Do you weigh a life against such quibbles?  Do you suppose that,
+granting MY irresponsibility, Dr. Petrie would countenance
+such a thing if be doubted the necessity?"
+
+Mr. Henderson looked at me with pathetic hesitance.
+
+"There are guests in the house--mourners who attended
+the ceremony to-day. They--"
+
+"Will never know, if we are in error," interrupted Smith.
+"Good God!  why do you delay?"
+
+"You wish it to be kept secret?"
+
+"You and I, Mr. Henderson, and Dr. Petrie will go now.
+We require no other witnesses.  We are answerable only
+to our consciences."
+
+The lawyer passed his hand across his damp brow.
+
+"I have never in my life been called upon to come to so
+momentous a decision in so short a time," he confessed.
+But, aided by Smith's indomitable will, he made his decision.
+As its result, we three, looking and feeling like conspirators,
+hurried across the park beneath a moon whose placidity was a rebuke
+to the turbulent passions which reared their strangle-growth in
+the garden of England.  Not a breath of wind stirred amid the leaves.
+The calm of perfect night soothed everything to slumber.
+Yet, if Smith were right (and I did not doubt him),
+the green eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu had looked upon the scene;
+and I found myself marveling that its beauty had not wilted up.
+Even now the dread Chinaman must be near to us.
+
+As Mr. Henderson unlocked the ancient iron gates he turned to Nayland Smith.
+His face twitched oddly.
+
+"Witness that I do this unwillingly," he said--"most unwillingly."
+
+"Mine be the responsibility," was the reply.
+
+Smith's voice quivered, responsive to the nervous vitality pent
+up within that lean frame.  He stood motionless, listening--and I
+knew for whom he listened.  He peered about him to right and left--
+and I knew whom he expected but dreaded to see.
+
+Above us now the trees looked down with a solemnity different from
+the aspect of the monarchs of the park, and the nearer we came to our
+journey's end the more somber and lowering bent the verdant arch--
+or so it seemed.
+
+By that path, patched now with pools of moonlight, Lord Southery
+had passed upon his bier, with the sun to light his going;
+by that path several generations of Stradwicks had gone
+to their last resting-place.
+
+To the doors of the vault the moon rays found free access.
+No branch, no leaf, intervened.  Mr. Henderson's face looked ghastly.
+The keys which he carried rattled in his hand.
+
+"Light the lantern," he said unsteadily.
+
+Nayland Smith, who again had been peering suspiciously about into
+the shadows, struck a match and lighted the lantern which he carried.
+He turned to the solicitor.
+
+"Be calm, Mr. Henderson," he said sternly.  "It is your plain
+duty to your client."
+
+"God be my witness that I doubt it," replied Henderson,
+and opened the door.
+
+We descended the steps.  The air beneath was damp and chill.
+It touched us as with clammy fingers; and the sensation was
+not wholly physical.
+
+Before the narrow mansion which now sufficed Lord Southery, the great engineer
+whom kings had honored, Henderson reeled and clutched at me for support.
+Smith and I had looked to him for no aid in our uncanny task, and rightly.
+
+With averted eyes he stood over by the steps of the tomb, whilst my friend
+and myself set to work.  In the pursuit of my profession I had undertaken
+labors as unpleasant, but never amid an environment such as this.
+It seemed that generations of Stradwicks listened to each turn of every screw.
+
+At last it was done, and the pallid face of Lord Southery questioned
+the intruding light.  Nayland Smith's hand was as steady as a rigid bar
+when he raised the lantern.  Later, I knew, there would be a sudden
+releasing of the tension of will--a reaction physical and mental--
+but not until his work was finished.
+
+That my own hand was steady I ascribed to one thing solely--
+professional zeal.  For, under conditions which, in the event
+of failure and exposure, must have led to an unpleasant
+inquiry by the British Medical Association, I was about
+to attempt an experiment never before essayed by a physician
+of the white races.
+
+Though I failed, though I succeeded, that it ever came before the B.M.A., or
+any other council, was improbable; in the former event, all but impossible.
+But the knowledge that I was about to practice charlatanry, or what any one
+of my fellow-practitioners must have designated as such, was with me.  Yet so
+profound had my belief become in the extraordinary being whose existence was
+a danger to the world that I reveled in my immunity from official censure.
+I was glad that it had fallen to my lot to take at least one step--
+though blindly--into the FUTURE of medical science.
+
+So far as my skill bore me, Lord Southery was dead.  Unhesitatingly, I
+would have given a death certificate, save for two considerations.
+The first, although his latest scheme ran contrary from the interests
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu, his genius, diverted into other channels,
+would serve the yellow group better than his death.  The second,
+I had seen the boy Aziz raised from a state as like death as this.
+
+From the phial of amber-hued liquid which I had with me,
+I charged the needle syringe.  I made the injection, and waited.
+
+"If he is really dead!" whispered Smith.  "It seems incredible
+that he can have survived for three days without food.
+Yet I have known a fakir to go for a week."
+
+Mr. Henderson groaned.
+
+Watch in hand, I stood observing the gray face.
+
+A second passed; another; a third.  In the fourth the miracle began.
+Over the seemingly cold clay crept the hue of pulsing life.
+It came in waves--in waves which corresponded with the throbbing
+of the awakened heart; which swept fuller and stronger;
+which filled and quickened the chilled body.
+
+As we rapidly freed the living man from the trappings of
+the dead one, Southery, uttering a stifled scream, sat up,
+looked about him with half-glazed eyes, and fell back.
+"My God!" cried Smith.
+
+"It is all right," I said, and had time to note how my voice
+had assumed a professional tone.  "A little brandy from my flask
+is all that is necessary now."
+
+"You have two patients, Doctor," rapped my friend.
+
+Mr. Henderson had fallen in a swoon to the floor of the vault.
+
+"Quiet," whispered Smith; "HE is here."
+
+He extinguished the light.
+
+I supported Lord Southery.  "What has happened?" he kept moaning.
+"Where am I?  Oh, God!  what has happened?"
+
+I strove to reassure him in a whisper, and placed my traveling
+coat about him.  The door at the top of the mausoleum steps we
+had reclosed but not relocked.  Now, as I upheld the man whom
+literally we had rescued from the grave, I heard the door reopen.
+To aid Henderson I could make no move.  Smith was breathing hard beside me.
+I dared not think what was about to happen, nor what its effects
+might be upon Lord Southery in his exhausted condition.
+
+Through the Memphian dark of the tomb cut a spear of light,
+touching the last stone of the stairway.
+
+A guttural voice spoke some words rapidly, and I knew that Dr. Fu-Manchu
+stood at the head of the stairs.  Although I could not see my friend,
+I became aware that Nayland Smith had his revolver in his hand,
+and I reached into my pocket for mine.
+
+At last the cunning Chinaman was about to fall into a trap.
+It would require all his genius, I thought, to save him to-night.
+Unless his suspicions were aroused by the unlocked door,
+his capture was imminent.
+
+Someone was descending the steps.
+
+In my right hand I held my revolver, and with my left arm about Lord Southery,
+I waited through ten such seconds of suspense as I have rarely known.
+
+The spear of light plunged into the well of darkness again.
+
+Lord Southery, Smith and myself were hidden by the angle of the wall;
+but full upon the purplish face of Mr. Henderson the beam shone.
+In some way it penetrated to the murk in his mind; and he awakened
+from his swoon with a hoarse cry, struggled to his feet, and stood
+looking up the stair in a sort of frozen horror.
+
+Smith was past him at a bound.  Something flashed towards him as the light
+was extinguished.  I saw him duck, and heard the knife ring upon the floor.
+
+I managed to move sufficiently to see at the top, as I fired up
+the stairs, the yellow face of Dr. Fu-Manchu, to see the gleaming,
+chatoyant eyes, greenly terrible, as they sought to pierce the gloom.
+A flying figure was racing up, three steps at a time (that of a brown man
+scantily clad). He stumbled and fell, by which I knew that he was hit;
+but went on again, Smith hard on his heels.
+
+"Mr. Henderson!" I cried, "relight the lantern and take
+charge of Lord Southery.  Here is my flask on the floor.
+I rely upon you."
+
+Smith's revolver spoke again as I went bounding up the stair.
+Black against the square of moonlight I saw him stagger, I saw him fall.
+As he fell, for the third time, I heard the crack of his revolver.
+
+Instantly I was at his side.  Somewhere along the black aisle
+beneath the trees receding footsteps pattered.
+
+"Are you hurt, Smith?" I cried anxiously.
+
+He got upon his feet.
+
+"He has a dacoit with him," he replied, and showed me the long curved
+knife which he held in his hand, a full inch of the blade bloodstained.
+"A near thing for me, Petrie."
+
+I heard the whir of a restarted motor.
+
+"We have lost him," said Smith.
+
+"But we have saved Lord Southery," I said.  "Fu-Manchu will credit
+us with a skill as great as his own."
+
+"We must get to the car," Smith muttered, "and try to overtake them.
+Ugh!  my left arm is useless."
+
+"It would be mere waste of time to attempt to overtake them," I argued,
+"for we have no idea in which direction they will proceed."
+
+"I have a very good idea," snapped Smith.  "Stradwick Hall is less
+than ten miles from the coast.  There is only one practicable means
+of conveying an unconscious man secretly from here to London."
+
+"You think he meant to take him from here to London?"
+
+"Prior to shipping him to China; I think so.  His clearing-house
+is probably on the Thames."
+
+"A boat?"
+
+"A yacht, presumably, is lying off the coast in readiness.
+Fu-Manchu may even have designed to ship him direct to China."
+
+Lord Southery, a bizarre figure, my traveling coat wrapped about him,
+and supported by his solicitor, who was almost as pale as himself,
+emerged from the vault into the moonlight.
+
+"This is a triumph for you, Smith," I said.
+
+The throb of Fu-Manchu's car died into faintness and was lost
+in the night's silence.
+
+"Only half a triumph," he replied.  "But we still have another chance--
+the raid on his house.  When will the word come from Karamaneh?"
+
+Southery spoke in a weak voice.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, "it seems I am raised from the dead."
+
+It was the weirdest moment of the night wherein we heard that newly
+buried man speak from the mold of his tomb.
+
+"Yes," replied Smith slowly, "and spared from the fate of Heaven
+alone knows how many men of genius.  The yellow society lacks
+a Southery, but that Dr. Fu-Manchu was in Germany three years
+ago I have reason to believe; so that, even without visiting
+the grave of your great Teutonic rival, who suddenly died at about
+that time, I venture to predict that they have a Von Homber.
+And the futurist group in China knows how to MAKE men work!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+FROM the rescue of Lord Southery my story bears me mercilessly
+on to other things.  I may not tarry, as more leisurely penmen,
+to round my incidents; they were not of my choosing.
+I may not pause to make you better acquainted with the figure
+of my drama; its scheme is none of mine.  Often enough,
+in those days, I found a fitness in the lines of Omar:
+
+
+    We are no other than a moving show
+    Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
+    Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held
+    In Midnight by the Master of the Show.
+
+
+But "the Master of the Show," in this case, was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
+
+I have been asked many times since the days with which these records deal:
+Who WAS Dr. Fu-Manchu?  Let me confess here that my final answer must
+be postponed.  I can only indicate, at this place, the trend of my reasoning,
+and leave my reader to form whatever conclusion he pleases.
+
+What group can we isolate and label as responsible for the overthrow
+of the Manchus?  The casual student of modern Chinese history will reply:
+"Young China."  This is unsatisfactory.  What do we mean by Young China?
+In my own hearing Fu-Manchu had disclaimed, with scorn, association with the
+whole of that movement; and assuming that the name were not an assumed one,
+he clearly can have been no anti-Manchu, no Republican.
+
+The Chinese Republican is of the mandarin class, but of a new
+generation which veneers its Confucianism with Western polish.
+These youthful and unbalanced reformers, in conjunction
+with older but no less ill-balanced provincial politicians,
+may be said to represent Young China.  Amid such turmoils as this
+we invariably look for, and invariably find, a Third Party.
+In my opinion, Dr. Fu-Manchu was one of the leaders of such a party.
+
+Another question often put to me was:  Where did the Doctor
+hide during the time that he pursued his operations in London?
+This is more susceptible of explanation.  For a time Nayland
+Smith supposed, as I did myself, that the opium den adjacent
+to the old Ratcliff Highway was the Chinaman's base of operations;
+later we came to believe that the mansion near Windsor was his
+hiding-place, and later still, the hulk lying off the downstream flats.
+But I think I can state with confidence that the spot which he had
+chosen for his home was neither of these, but the East End riverside
+building which I was the first to enter.  Of this I am all but sure;
+for the reason that it not only was the home of Fu-Manchu, of Karamaneh,
+and of her brother, Aziz, but the home of something else--
+of something which I shall speak of later.
+
+The dreadful tragedy (or series of tragedies) which attended the raid upon the
+place will always mark in my memory the supreme horror of a horrible case.
+Let me endeavor to explain what occurred.
+
+By the aid of Karamaneh, you have seen how we had located
+the whilom warehouse, which, from the exterior, was so drab
+and dreary, but which within was a place of wondrous luxury.
+At the moment selected by our beautiful accomplice,
+Inspector Weymouth and a body of detectives entirely surrounded it;
+a river police launch lay off the wharf which opened from it
+on the river-side; and this upon a singularly black night,
+than which a better could not have been chosen.
+
+"You will fulfill your promise to me?" said Karamaneh,
+and looked up into my face.
+
+She was enveloped in a big, loose cloak, and from the shadow
+of the hood her wonderful eyes gleamed out like stars.
+
+"What do you wish us to do?" asked Nayland Smith.
+
+"You--and Dr. Petrie," she replied swiftly, "must enter first,
+and bring out Aziz.  Until he is safe--until he is out of that place--
+you are to make no attempt upon--"
+
+"Upon Dr. Fu-Manchu?" interrupted Weymouth; for Karamaneh
+hesitated to pronounce the dreaded name, as she always did.
+"But how can we be sure that there is no trap laid for us?"
+
+The Scotland Yard man did not entirely share my confidence in the integrity
+of this Eastern girl whom he knew to have been a creature of the Chinaman's.
+
+"Aziz lies in the private room," she explained eagerly, her old accent more
+noticeable than usual.  "There is only one of the Burmese men in the house,
+and he--he dare not enter without orders!"
+
+"But Fu-Manchu?"
+
+"We have nothing to fear from him.  He will be your prisoner
+within ten minutes from now!  I have no time for words--
+you must believe!"  She stamped her foot impatiently.
+"And the dacoit?" snapped Smith.
+
+"He also."
+
+"I think perhaps I'd better come in, too," said Weymouth slowly.
+
+Karamaneh shrugged her shoulders with quick impatience,
+and unlocked the door in the high brick wall which divided
+the gloomy, evil-smelling court from the luxurious apartments
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+"Make no noise," she warned.  And Smith and myself followed her along
+the uncarpeted passage beyond.
+
+Inspector Weymouth, with a final word of instruction to his
+second in command, brought up the rear.  The door was reclosed;
+a few paces farther on a second was unlocked.  Passing through
+a small room, unfurnished, a farther passage led us to a balcony.
+The transition was startling.
+
+Darkness was about us now, and silence:  a perfumed, slumberous darkness--
+a silence full of mystery.  For, beyond the walls of the apartment whereon
+we looked down waged the unceasing battle of sounds that is the hymn
+of the great industrial river.  About the scented confines which bounded
+us now floated the smoke-laden vapors of the Lower Thames.
+
+From the metallic but infinitely human clangor of dock-side life,
+from the unpleasant but homely odors which prevail where ships swallow
+in and belch out the concrete evidences of commercial prosperity,
+we had come into this incensed stillness, where one shaded lamp
+painted dim enlargements of its Chinese silk upon the nearer walls,
+and left the greater part of the room the darker for its contrast.
+
+Nothing of the Thames-side activity--of the riveting and scraping--
+the bumping of bales--the bawling of orders--the hiss of steam--
+penetrated to this perfumed place.  In the pool of tinted light
+lay the deathlike figure of a dark-haired boy, Karamaneh's muffled
+form bending over him.
+
+"At last I stand in the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu!" whispered Smith.
+
+Despite the girl's assurance, we knew that proximity
+to the sinister Chinaman must be fraught with danger.
+We stood, not in the lion's den, but in the serpent's lair.
+
+From the time when Nayland Smith had come from Burma in pursuit
+of this advance-guard of a cogent Yellow Peril, the face of
+Dr. Fu-Manchu rarely had been absent from my dreams day or night.
+The millions might sleep in peace--the millions in whose
+cause we labored!--but we who knew the reality of the danger
+knew that a veritable octopus had fastened upon England--
+a yellow octopus whose head was that of Dr. Fu-Manchu,
+whose tentacles were dacoity, thuggee, modes of death,
+secret and swift, which in the darkness plucked men from life
+and left no clew behind.
+
+"Karamaneh!" I called softly.
+
+The muffled form beneath the lamp turned so that the soft
+light fell upon the lovely face of the slave girl.
+She who had been a pliant instrument in the hands of Fu-Manchu
+now was to be the means whereby society should be rid of him.
+
+She raised her finger warningly; then beckoned me to approach.
+
+My feet sinking in the rich pile of the carpet, I came through
+the gloom of the great apartment in to the patch of light,
+and, Karamaneh beside me, stood looking down upon the boy.
+It was Aziz, her brother; dead so far as Western lore had power
+to judge, but kept alive in that deathlike trance by the uncanny
+power of the Chinese doctor.
+
+"Be quick," she said; "be quick!  Awaken him!  I am afraid."
+
+From the case which I carried I took out a needle-syringe
+and a phial containing a small quantity of amber-hued liquid.
+It was a drug not to be found in the British Pharmacopoeia.
+Of its constitution I knew nothing.  Although I had had
+the phial in my possession for some days I had not dared
+to devote any of its precious contents to analytical purposes.
+The amber drops spelled life for the boy Aziz, spelled success
+for the mission of Nayland Smith, spelled ruin for
+the fiendish Chinaman.
+
+I raised the white coverlet.  The boy, fully dressed,
+lay with his arms crossed upon his breast.  I discerned the mark
+of previous injections as, charging the syringe from the phial,
+I made what I hoped would be the last of such experiments upon him.
+I would have given half of my small worldly possessions to have
+known the real nature of the drug which was now coursing through
+the veins of Aziz--which was tinting the grayed face with the olive
+tone of life; which, so far as my medical training bore me,
+was restoring the dead to life.
+
+But such was not the purpose of my visit.  I was come to remove from
+the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu the living chain which bound Karamaneh to him.
+The boy alive and free, the Doctor's hold upon the slave girl would be broken.
+
+My lovely companion, her hands convulsively clasped, knelt and devoured
+with her eyes the face of the boy who was passing through the most
+amazing physiological change in the history of therapeutics.
+The peculiar perfume which she wore--which seemed to be a part of her--
+which always I associated with her--was faintly perceptible.
+Karamaneh was breathing rapidly.
+
+"You have nothing to fear," I whispered; "see, he is reviving.
+In a few moments all will be well with him."
+
+The hanging lamp with its garishly colored shade swung gently above us,
+wafted, it seemed, by some draught which passed through the apartment.
+The boy's heavy lids began to quiver, and Karamaneh nervously clutched
+my arm, and held me so whilst we watched for the long-lashed eyes to open.
+The stillness of the place was positively unnatural; it seemed inconceivable
+that all about us was the discordant activity of the commercial East End.
+Indeed, this eerie silence was becoming oppressive; it began positively
+to appall me.
+
+Inspector Weymouth's wondering face peeped over my shoulder.
+
+"Where is Dr. Fu-Manchu?" I whispered, as Nayland Smith in turn appeared
+beside me.  "I cannot understand the silence of the house--"
+
+"Look about," replied Karamaneh, never taking her eyes from the face of Aziz.
+
+I peered around the shadowy walls.  Tall glass cases there were,
+shelves and niches:  where once, from the gallery above, I had seen the tubes
+and retorts, the jars of unfamiliar organisms, the books of unfamiliar lore,
+the impedimenta of the occult student and man of science--the visible
+evidences of Fu-Manchu's presence.  Shelves--cases--niches--were bare.
+Of the complicated appliances unknown to civilized laboratories,
+wherewith he pursued his strange experiments, of the tubes wherein
+he isolated the bacilli of unclassified diseases, of the yellow-bound
+volumes for a glimpse at which (had they known of their contents)
+the great men of Harley Street would have given a fortune--no trace remained.
+The silken cushions; the inlaid tables; all were gone.
+
+The room was stripped, dismantled.  Had Fu-Manchu fled?
+The silence assumed a new significance.  His dacoits and kindred
+ministers of death all must have fled, too.
+
+"You have let him escape us!" I said rapidly.
+"You promised to aid us to capture him--to send us a message--
+and you have delayed until--"
+
+"No," she said; "no!" and clutched at my arm again.
+"Oh!  is he not reviving slowly?  Are you sure you have
+made no mistake?"
+
+Her thoughts were all for the boy; and her solicitude touched me.
+I again examined Aziz, the most remarkable patient of my
+busy professional career.
+
+As I counted the strengthening pulse, he opened his dark eyes--
+which were so like the eyes of Karamaneh--and, with the girl's
+eager arms tightly about him, sat up, looking wonderingly around.
+
+Karamaneh pressed her cheek to his, whispering loving words in that softly
+spoken Arabic which had first betrayed her nationality to Nayland Smith.
+I handed her my flask, which I had filled with wine.
+
+"My promise is fulfilled!" I said.  "You are free!
+Now for Fu-Manchu!  But first let us admit the police to this house;
+there is something uncanny in its stillness."
+
+"No," she replied.  "First let my brother be taken out and placed in safety.
+Will you carry him?"
+
+She raised her face to that of Inspector Weymouth, upon which was written
+awe and wonder.
+
+The burly detective lifted the boy as tenderly as a woman, passed through
+the shadows to the stairway, ascended, and was swallowed up in the gloom.
+Nayland Smith's eyes gleamed feverishly.  He turned to Karamaneh.
+
+"You are not playing with us?" he said harshly.  "We have done our part;
+it remains for you to do yours."
+
+"Do not speak so loudly," the girl begged.  "HE is near us--
+and, oh, God, I fear him so!"
+
+"Where is he?" persisted my friend.
+
+Karamaneh's eyes were glassy with fear now.
+
+"You must not touch him until the police are here," she said--
+but from the direction of her quick, agitated glances I knew that,
+her brother safe now, she feared for me, and for me alone.
+Those glances sent my blood dancing; for Karamaneh was
+an Eastern jewel which any man of flesh and blood must
+have coveted had he known it to lie within his reach.
+Her eyes were twin lakes of mystery which, more than once,
+I had known the desire to explore.
+
+"Look--beyond that curtain"--her voice was barely audible--"but do not enter.
+Even as he is, I fear him."
+
+Her voice, her palpable agitation, prepared us for something extraordinary.
+Tragedy and Fu-Manchu were never far apart.  Though we were two, and help
+was so near, we were in the abode of the most cunning murderer who ever came
+out of the East.
+
+It was with strangely mingled emotions that I crossed the thick carpet,
+Nayland Smith beside me, and drew aside the draperies concealing a door,
+to which Karamaneh had pointed.  Then, upon looking into the dim place beyond,
+all else save what it held was forgotten.
+
+We looked upon a small, square room, the walls draped with fantastic
+Chinese tapestry, the floor strewn with cushions; and reclining
+in a corner, where the faint, blue light from a lamp, placed upon
+a low table, painted grotesque shadows about the cavernous face--
+was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
+
+At sight of him my heart leaped--and seemed to suspend its functions,
+so intense was the horror which this man's presence inspired in me.
+My hand clutching the curtain, I stood watching him.  The lids
+veiled the malignant green eyes, but the thin lips seemed to smile.
+Then Smith silently pointed to the hand which held a little pipe.
+A sickly perfume assailed my nostrils, and the explanation
+of the hushed silence, and the ease with which we had thus far
+executed our plan, came to me.  The cunning mind was torpid--
+lost in a brutish world of dreams.
+
+Fu-Manchu was in an opium sleep!
+
+The dim light traced out a network of tiny lines, which covered
+the yellow face from the pointed chin to the top of the great domed brow,
+and formed deep shadow pools in the hollows beneath his eyes.
+At last we had triumphed.
+
+I could not determine the depth of his obscene trance; and mastering
+some of my repugnance, and forgetful of Karamaneh's warning, I was about
+to step forward into the room, loaded with its nauseating opium fumes,
+when a soft breath fanned my cheek.
+
+"Do not go in!" came Karamaneh's warning voice--hushed--trembling.
+
+Her little hand grasped my arm.  She drew Smith and myself back
+from the door.
+
+"There is danger there!" she whispered.
+
+"Do not enter that room!  The police must reach him in some way--
+and drag him out!  Do not enter that room!"
+
+The girl's voice quivered hysterically; her eyes blazed into savage flame.
+The fierce resentment born of dreadful wrongs was consuming her now;
+but fear of Fu-Manchu held her yet.  Inspector Weymouth came down the stairs
+and joined us.
+
+"I have sent the boy to Ryman's room at the station," he said.
+"The divisional surgeon will look after him until you arrive,
+Dr. Petrie.  All is ready now.  The launch is just off
+the wharf and every side of the place under observation.
+Where's our man?"
+
+He drew a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and raised
+his eyebrows interrogatively.  The absence of sound--
+of any demonstration from the uncanny Chinaman whom he was there
+to arrest--puzzled him.
+
+Nayland Smith jerked his thumb toward the curtain.
+
+At that, and before we could utter a word, Weymouth stepped
+to the draped door.  He was a man who drove straight at
+his goal and saved reflections for subsequent leisure.
+I think, moreover, that the atmosphere of the place
+(stripped as it was it retained its heavy, voluptuous perfume)
+had begun to get a hold upon him.  He was anxious to shake it off;
+to be up and doing.
+
+He pulled the curtain aside and stepped into the room.
+Smith and I perforce followed him.  Just within the door
+the three of us stood looking across at the limp thing which
+had spread terror throughout the Eastern and Western world.
+Helpless as Fu-Manchu was, he inspired terror now, though the giant
+intellect was inert--stupefied.
+
+In the dimly lit apartment we had quitted I heard Karamaneh utter
+a stifled scream.  But it came too late.
+
+As though cast up by a volcano, the silken cushions,
+the inlaid table with its blue-shaded lamp, the garish walls,
+the sprawling figure with the ghastly light playing upon
+its features--quivered, and shot upward!
+
+So it seemed to me; though, in the ensuing instant I remembered,
+too late, a previous experience of the floors of Fu-Manchu's
+private apartments; I knew what had indeed befallen us.
+A trap had been released beneath our feet.
+
+I recall falling--but have no recollection of the end of my fall--
+of the shock marking the drop.  I only remember fighting for my
+life against a stifling something which had me by the throat.
+I knew that I was being suffocated, but my hands met only
+the deathly emptiness.
+
+Into a poisonous well of darkness I sank.  I could not cry out.
+I was helpless.  Of the fate of my companions I knew nothing--
+could surmise nothing.  Then. . .all consciousness ended.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+I WAS being carried along a dimly lighted, tunnel-like place, slung, sackwise,
+across the shoulder of a Burman.  He was not a big man, but he supported
+my considerable weight with apparent ease.  A deadly nausea held me,
+but the rough handling had served to restore me to consciousness.
+My hands and feet were closely lashed.  I hung limply as a wet towel:
+I felt that this spark of tortured life which had flickered up in me must
+ere long finally become extinguished.
+
+A fancy possessed me, in these the first moments of my restoration
+to the world of realities, that I had been smuggled into China;
+and as I swung head downward I told myself that the huge,
+puffy things which strewed the path were a species of giant toadstool,
+unfamiliar to me and possibly peculiar to whatever district of China
+I now was in.
+
+The air was hot, steamy, and loaded with a smell as of rotting vegetation.
+I wondered why my bearer so scrupulously avoided touching any of the
+unwholesome-looking growths in passing through what seemed a succession
+of cellars, but steered a tortuous course among the bloated, unnatural shapes,
+lifting his bare brown feet with a catlike delicacy.
+
+He passed under a low arch, dropped me roughly to the ground and ran back.
+Half stunned, I lay watching the agile brown body melt into
+the distances of the cellars.  Their walls and roof seemed to emit
+a faint, phosphorescent light.
+
+"Petrie!" came a weak voice from somewhere ahead. . . ."Is that you, Petrie?"
+
+It was Nayland Smith!
+
+"Smith!" I said, and strove to sit up.  But the intense nausea overcame me,
+so that I all but swooned.
+
+I heard his voice again, but could attach no meaning to the words
+which he uttered.  A sound of terrific blows reached my ears, too.
+The Burman reappeared, bending under the heavy load which he bore.
+For, as he picked his way through the bloated things which grew
+upon the floors of the cellars, I realized that he was carrying
+the inert body of Inspector Weymouth.  And I found time to compare
+the strength of the little brown man with that of a Nile beetle,
+which can raise many times its own weight.  Then, behind him,
+appeared a second figure, which immediately claimed the whole
+of my errant attention.
+
+"Fu-Manchu!" hissed my friend, from the darkness which concealed him.
+
+It was indeed none other than Fu-Manchu--the Fu-Manchu whom we
+had thought to be helpless.  The deeps of the Chinaman's cunning--
+the fine quality of his courage, were forced upon me as amazing facts.
+
+He had assumed the appearance of a drugged opium-smoker so well
+as to dupe me--a medical man; so well as to dupe Karamaneh--
+whose experience of the noxious habit probably was greater than
+my own.  And, with the gallows dangling before him, he had waited--
+played the part of a lure--whilst a body of police actually
+surrounded the place!
+
+I have since thought that the room probably was one which he actually used
+for opium debauches, and the device of the trap was intended to protect him
+during the comatose period.
+
+Now, holding a lantern above his head, the deviser of the trap
+whereinto we, mouselike, had blindly entered, came through
+the cellars, following the brown man who carried Weymouth.
+The faint rays of the lantern (it apparently contained a candle)
+revealed a veritable forest of the gigantic fungi--poisonously colored--
+hideously swollen--climbing from the floor up the slimy walls--
+climbing like horrid parasites to such part of the arched roof
+as was visible to me.
+
+Fu-Manchu picked his way through the fungi ranks as daintily
+as though the distorted, tumid things had been viper-headed.
+
+The resounding blows which I had noted before, and which had never ceased,
+culminated in a splintering crash.  Dr. Fu-Manchu and his servant,
+who carried the apparently insensible detective, passed in under
+the arch, Fu-Manchu glancing back once along the passages.
+The lantern he extinguished, or concealed; and whilst I waited,
+my mind dully surveying, memories of all the threats which this
+uncanny being had uttered, a distant clamor came to my ears.
+
+Then, abruptly, it ceased.  Dr. Fu-Manchu had closed a heavy door;
+and to my surprise I perceived that the greater part of it was of glass.
+The will-o'-the-wisp glow which played around the fungi rendered the vista
+of the cellars faintly luminous, and visible to me from where I lay.
+Fu-Manchu spoke softly.  His voice, its guttural note alternating
+with a sibilance on certain words, betrayed no traces of agitation.
+The man's unbroken calm had in it something inhuman.  For he had just
+perpetrated an act of daring unparalleled in my experience, and,
+in the clamor now shut out by the glass door I tardily recognized
+the entrance of the police into some barricaded part of the house--
+the coming of those who would save us--who would hold the Chinese
+doctor for the hangman!
+
+"I have decided," he said deliberately, "that you are more worthy
+of my attention than I had formerly supposed.  A man who can solve
+the secret of the Golden Elixir (I had not solved it; I had merely
+stolen some) should be a valuable acquisition to my Council.
+The extent of the plans of Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith and
+of the English Scotland Yard it is incumbent upon me to learn.
+Therefore, gentlemen, you live--for the present!"
+
+"And you'll swing," came Weymouth's hoarse voice, "in the near future!
+You and all your yellow gang!"
+
+"I trust not," was the placid reply.  "Most of my people are safe:
+some are shipped as lascars upon the liners; others have departed
+by different means.  Ah!"
+
+That last word was the only one indicative of excitement
+which had yet escaped him.  A disk of light danced among
+the brilliant poison hues of the passages--but no sound reached us;
+by which I knew that the glass door must fit almost hermetically.
+It was much cooler here than in the place through which we had passed,
+and the nausea began to leave me, my brain to grow more clear.
+Had I known what was to follow I should have cursed the lucidity
+of mind which now came to me; I should have prayed for oblivion--
+to be spared the sight of that which ensued.
+
+"It's Logan!" cried Inspector Weymouth; and I could tell
+that he was struggling to free himself of his bonds.
+From his voice it was evident that he, too, was recovering
+from the effects of the narcotic which had been administered
+to us all.
+
+"Logan!" he cried.  "Logan!  This way--HELP!"
+
+But the cry beat back upon us in that enclosed space and seemed
+to carry no farther than the invisible walls of our prison.
+
+"The door fits well," came Fu-Manchu's mocking voice.
+"It is fortunate for us all that it is so.  This is my
+observation window, Dr. Petrie, and you are about to enjoy
+an unique opportunity of studying fungology.  I have already
+drawn your attention to the anaesthetic properties of the <i
+lycoperdon,> or common puff-ball. You may have recognized the fumes?
+The chamber into which you rashly precipitated yourselves
+was charged with them.  By a process of my own I have greatly
+enhanced the value of the puff-ball in this respect.
+Your friend, Mr. Weymouth, proved the most obstinate subject;
+but he succumbed in fifteen seconds."
+
+"Logan!  Help!  HELP!  This way, man!"
+
+Something very like fear sounded in Weymouth's voice now.
+Indeed, the situation was so uncanny that it almost seemed unreal.
+A group of men had entered the farthermost cellars, led by one who bore
+an electric pocket-lamp. The hard, white ray danced from bloated gray
+fungi to others of nightmare shape, of dazzling, venomous brilliance.
+The mocking, lecture-room voice continued:
+
+"Note the snowy growth upon the roof, Doctor.  Do not be deceived by
+its size.  It is a giant variety of my own culture and is of the order <i
+empusa.> You, in England, are familiar with the death of the common house-fly--
+which is found attached to the window-pane by a coating of white mold.
+I have developed the spores of this mold and have produced a giant species.
+Observe the interesting effect of the strong light upon my orange and blue
+amanita fungus!"
+
+Hard beside me I heard Nayland Smith groan, Weymouth had become
+suddenly silent.  For my own part, I could have shrieked in pure horror.
+FOR I KNEW WHAT WAS COMING. I realized in one agonized instant
+the significance of the dim lantern, of the careful progress
+through the subterranean fungi grove, of the care with which
+Fu-Manchu and his servant had avoided touching any of the growths.
+I knew, now, that Dr. Fu-Manchu was the greatest fungologist
+the world had ever known; was a poisoner to whom the Borgias were
+as children--and I knew that the detectives blindly were walking
+into a valley of death.
+
+Then it began--the unnatural scene--the saturnalia of murder.
+
+Like so many bombs the brilliantly colored caps of the huge toadstool-like
+things alluded to by the Chinaman exploded, as the white ray sought
+them out in the darkness which alone preserved their existence.
+A brownish cloud--I could not determine whether liquid or powdery--
+arose in the cellar.
+
+I tried to close my eyes--or to turn them away from the reeling forms
+of the men who were trapped in that poison-hole. It was useless:
+
+I must look.
+
+The bearer of the lamp had dropped it, but the dim,
+eerily illuminated gloom endured scarce a second.
+A bright light sprang up--doubtless at the touch of the fiendish
+being who now resumed speech:
+
+"Observe the symptoms of delirium, Doctor!"  Out there,
+beyond the glass door, the unhappy victims were laughing--
+tearing their garments from their bodies--leaping--waving their arms--
+were become MANIACS!
+
+"We will now release the ripe spores of giant entpusa,"
+continued the wicked voice.  "The air of the second cellar
+being super-charged with oxygen, they immediately germinate.
+Ah!  it is a triumph!  That process is the scientific triumph
+of my life!"
+
+Like powdered snow the white spores fell from the roof,
+frosting the writhing shapes of the already poisoned men.
+Before my horrified gaze, THE FUNGUS GREW; it spread
+from the head to the, feet of those it touched; it enveloped
+them as in glittering shrouds. . . .
+
+"They die like flies!" screamed Fu-Manchu, with a sudden febrile excitement;
+and I felt assured of something I had long suspected:  that that magnificent,
+perverted brain was the brain of a homicidal maniac--though Smith would
+never accept the theory.
+
+"It is my fly-trap!" shrieked the Chinaman.  "And I am
+the god of destruction!"
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+THE clammy touch of the mist revived me.  The culmination of the scene
+in the poison cellars, together with the effects of the fumes
+which I had inhaled again, had deprived me of consciousness.
+Now I knew that I was afloat on the river.  I still was bound:
+furthermore, a cloth was wrapped tightly about my mouth,
+and I was secured to a ring in the deck.
+
+By moving my aching head to the left I could look down into the oily water;
+by moving it to the right I could catch a glimpse of the empurpled
+face of Inspector Weymouth, who, similarly bound and gagged,
+lay beside me, but only of the feet and legs of Nayland Smith.
+For I could not turn my head sufficiently far to see more.
+
+We were aboard an electric launch.  I heard the hated guttural
+voice of Fu-Manchu, subdued now to its habitual calm,
+and my heart leaped to hear the voice that answered him.
+It was that of Karamaneh.  His triumph was complete.
+Clearly his plans for departure were complete; his slaughter
+of the police in the underground passages had been a final
+reckless demonstration of which the Chinaman's subtle cunning
+would have been incapable had he not known his escape from
+the country to be assured.
+
+What fate was in store for us?  How would he avenge himself upon the girl
+who had betrayed him to his enemies?  What portion awaited those enemies?
+He seemed to have formed the singular determination to smuggle me into China--
+but what did he purpose in the case of Weymouth, and in the case
+of Nayland Smith?
+
+All but silently we were feeling our way through the mist.
+Astern died the clangor of dock and wharf into a remote discord.
+Ahead hung the foggy curtain veiling the traffic of the great waterway;
+but through it broke the calling of sirens, the tinkling of bells.
+
+The gentle movement of the screw ceased altogether.
+The launch lay heaving slightly upon the swells.
+
+A distant throbbing grew louder--and something advanced upon
+us through the haze.
+
+A bell rang and muffled by the fog a voice proclaimed itself--
+a voice which I knew.  I felt Weymouth writhing impotently
+beside me; heard him mumbling incoherently; and I knew
+that he, too, had recognized the voice.
+
+It was that of Inspector Ryman of the river police and their launch
+was within biscuit-throw of that upon which we lay!
+
+"'Hoy!  'Hoy!"
+
+I trembled.  A feverish excitement claimed me.  They were hailing us.
+We carried no lights; but now--and ignoring the pain which shot from
+my spine to my skull I craned my neck to the left--the port light
+of the police launch glowed angrily through the mist.
+
+I was unable to utter any save mumbling sounds, and my
+companions were equally helpless.  It was a desperate position.
+Had the police seen us or had they hailed at random?
+The light drew nearer.
+
+"Launch, 'hoy!"
+
+They had seen us!  Fu-Manchu's guttural voice spoke shortly--
+and our screw began to revolve again; we leaped ahead into the bank
+of darkness.  Faint grew the light of the police launch--and was gone.
+But I heard Ryman's voice shouting.
+
+"Full speed!" came faintly through the darkness.  "Port!  Port!"
+
+Then the murk closed down, and with our friends far astern of us
+we were racing deeper into the fog banks--speeding seaward;
+though of this I was unable to judge at the time.
+
+On we raced, and on, sweeping over growing swells.
+Once, a black, towering shape dropped down upon us.
+Far above, lights blazed, bells rang, vague cries pierced the fog.
+The launch pitched and rolled perilously, but weathered the wash
+of the liner which so nearly had concluded this episode.
+It was such a journey as I had taken once before,
+early in our pursuit of the genius of the Yellow Peril;
+but this was infinitely more terrible; for now we were utterly
+in Fu-Manchu's power.
+
+A voice mumbled in my ear.  I turned my bound-up face;
+and Inspector Weymouth raised his hands in the dimness and partly
+slipped the bandage from his mouth.
+
+"I've been working at the cords since we left those filthy cellars,"
+he whispered.  "My wrists are all cut, but when I've got out a knife
+and freed my ankles--"
+
+Smith had kicked him with his bound feet.  The detective slipped
+the bandage back to position and placed his hands behind him again.
+Dr. Fu-Manchu, wearing a heavy overcoat but no hat, came aft.
+He was dragging Karamaneh by the wrists.  He seated himself
+on the cushions near to us, pulling the girl down beside him.
+Now, I could see her face--and the expression in her beautiful
+eyes made me writhe.
+
+Fu-Manchu was watching us, his discolored teeth faintly visible
+in the dim light, to which my eyes were becoming accustomed.
+
+"Dr. Petrie," he said, "you shall be my honored guest at my home in China.
+You shall assist me to revolutionize chemistry.  Mr. Smith, I fear
+you know more of my plans than I had deemed it possible for you
+to have learned, and I am anxious to know if you have a confidant.
+Where your memory fails you, and my files and wire jackets prove ineffectual,
+Inspector Weymouth's recollections may prove more accurate."
+
+He turned to the cowering girl--who shrank away from him
+in pitiful, abject terror.
+
+"In my hands, Doctor," he continued, "I hold a needle charged
+with a rare culture.  It is the link between the bacilli
+and the fungi.  You have seemed to display an undue interest
+in the peach and pearl which render my Karamaneh so delightful,
+In the supple grace of her movements and the sparkle of her eyes.
+You can never devote your whole mind to those studies which I
+have planned for you whilst such distractions exist.
+A touch of this keen point, and the laughing Karamaneh becomes
+the shrieking hag--the maniacal, mowing--"
+
+Then, with an ox-like rush, Weymouth was upon him!
+
+Karamaneh, wrought upon past endurance, with a sobbing cry, sank to the deck--
+and lay still.  I managed to writhe into a half-sitting posture, and Smith
+rolled aside as the detective and the Chinaman crashed down together.
+
+Weymouth had one big hand at the Doctor's yellow throat;
+with his left he grasped the Chinaman's right.
+It held the needle.
+
+Now, I could look along, the length of the little craft, and, so far
+as it was possible to make out in the fog, only one other was aboard--
+the half-clad brown man who navigated her--and who had carried us through
+the cellars.  The murk had grown denser and now shut us in like a box.
+The throb of the motor--the hissing breath of the two who fought--
+with so much at issue--these sounds and the wash of the water alone
+broke the eerie stillness.
+
+By slow degrees, and with a reptilian agility horrible to watch,
+Fu-Manchu was neutralizing the advantage gained by Weymouth.
+His clawish fingers were fast in the big man's throat; the right hand
+with its deadly needle was forcing down the left of his opponent.
+He had been underneath, but now he was gaining the upper place.
+His powers of physical endurance must have been truly marvelous.
+His breath was whistling through his nostrils significantly,
+but Weymouth was palpably tiring.
+
+The latter suddenly changed his tactics.  By a supreme effort,
+to which he was spurred, I think, by the growing proximity
+of the needle, he raised Fu-Manchu--by the throat and arm--
+and pitched him sideways.
+
+The Chinaman's grip did not relax, and the two wrestlers dropped,
+a writhing mass, upon the port cushions.  The launch heeled over,
+and my cry of horror was crushed back into my throat by the bandage.
+For, as Fu-Manchu sought to extricate himself, he overbalanced--
+fell back--and, bearing Weymouth with him--slid into the river!
+
+The mist swallowed them up.
+
+There are moments of which no man can recall his mental impressions,
+moments so acutely horrible that, mercifully, our memory retains
+nothing of the emotions they occasioned.  This was one of them.
+A chaos ruled in my mind.  I had a vague belief that the Burman,
+forward, glanced back.  Then the course of the launch was changed.
+How long intervened between the tragic end of that Gargantuan struggle
+and the time when a black wall leaped suddenly up before us I cannot
+pretend to state.
+
+With a sickening jerk we ran aground.  A loud explosion ensued,
+and I clearly remember seeing the brown man leap out into the fog--
+which was the last I saw of him.
+
+Water began to wash aboard.
+
+Fully alive to our imminent peril, I fought with the cords
+that bound me; but I lacked poor Weymouth's strength of wrist,
+and I began to accept as a horrible and imminent possibility,
+a death from drowning, within six feet of the bank.
+
+Beside me, Nayland Smith was straining and twisting.  I think
+his object was to touch Karamaneh, in the hope of arousing her.
+Where he failed in his project, the inflowing water succeeded.
+A silent prayer of thankfulness came from my very soul when I
+saw her stir--when I saw her raise her hands to her head--
+and saw the big, horror-bright eyes gleam through the mist veil.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+WE quitted the wrecked launch but a few seconds before her
+stern settled down into the river.  Where the mud-bank upon
+which we found ourselves was situated we had no idea.
+But at least it was terra firma and we were free from Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+Smith stood looking out towards the river.
+
+"My God!" he groaned.  "My God!"
+
+He was thinking, as I was, of Weymouth.
+
+And when, an hour later, the police boat located us (on the mud-flats
+below Greenwich) and we heard that the toll of the poison cellars
+was eight men, we also heard news of our brave companion.
+
+
+"Back there in the fog, sir," reported Inspector Ryman, who was in charge,
+and his voice was under poor command, "there was an uncanny howling,
+and peals of laughter that I'm going to dream about for weeks--"
+
+Karamaneh, who nestled beside me like a frightened child, shivered; and I
+knew that the needle had done its work, despite Weymouth's giant strength.
+
+Smith swallowed noisily.
+
+"Pray God the river has that yellow Satan," he said.
+"I would sacrifice a year of my life to see his rat's body
+on the end of a grappling-iron!"
+
+We were a sad party that steamed through the fog homeward that night.
+It seemed almost like deserting a staunch comrade to leave the spot--so nearly
+as we could locate it--where Weymouth had put up that last gallant fight.
+Our helplessness was pathetic, and although, had the night been clear
+as crystal, I doubt if we could have acted otherwise, it came to me that this
+stinking murk was a new enemy which drove us back in coward retreat.
+
+But so many were the calls upon our activity, and so numerous
+the stimulants to our initiative in those times, that soon we
+had matter to relieve our minds from this stress of sorrow.
+
+There was Karamaneh to be considered--Karamaneh and her brother.
+A brief counsel was held, whereat it was decided that for the present
+they should be lodged at a hotel.
+
+"I shall arrange," Smith whispered to me, for the girl was watching us,
+"to have the place patrolled night and day."
+
+"You cannot suppose--"
+
+"Petrie!  I cannot and dare not suppose Fu-Manchu dead until with my own
+eyes I have seen him so!"
+
+Accordingly we conveyed the beautiful Oriental girl and her
+brother away from that luxurious abode in its sordid setting.
+I will not dwell upon the final scene in the poison cellars
+lest I be accused of accumulating horror for horror's sake.
+Members of the fire brigade, helmed against contagion, brought out
+the bodies of the victims wrapped in their living shrouds. . . .
+
+From Karamaneh we learned much of Fu-Manchu, little of herself.
+
+"What am I?  Does my poor history matter--to anyone?"
+was her answer to questions respecting herself.
+
+And she would droop her lashes over her dark eyes.
+
+The dacoits whom the Chinaman had brought to England originally
+numbered seven, we learned.  As you, having followed me thus far,
+will be aware, we had thinned the ranks of the Burmans.
+Probably only one now remained in England.  They had
+lived in a camp in the grounds of the house near Windsor
+(which, as we had learned at the time of its destruction,
+the Doctor had bought outright). The Thames had been his highway.
+
+Other members of the group had occupied quarters in various parts
+of the East End, where sailormen of all nationalities congregate.
+Shen-Yan's had been the East End headquarters.  He had employed the hulk
+from the time of his arrival, as a laboratory for a certain class
+of experiments undesirable in proximity to a place of residence.
+
+Nayland Smith asked the girl on one occasion if the Chinaman had had
+a private sea-going vessel, and she replied in the affirmative.
+She had never been on board, however, had never even set eyes upon it,
+and could give us no information respecting its character.
+It had sailed for China.
+
+"You are sure," asked Smith keenly, "that it has actually left?"
+
+"I understood so, and that we were to follow by another route."
+
+"It would have been difficult for Fu-Manchu to travel by a passenger boat?"
+
+"I cannot say what were his plans."
+
+In a state of singular uncertainty, then, readily to be understood,
+we passed the days following the tragedy which had deprived us
+of our fellow-worker.
+
+Vividly I recall the scene at poor Weymouth's home, on the day that we
+visited it.  I then made the acquaintance of the Inspector's brother.
+Nayland Smith gave him a detailed account of the last scene.
+
+"Out there in the mist," he concluded wearily, "it all seemed very unreal."
+
+"I wish to God it had been!"
+
+"Amen to that, Mr. Weymouth.  But your brother made a gallant finish.
+If ridding the world of Fu-Manchu were the only good deed to his credit,
+his life had been well spent."
+
+James Weymouth smoked awhile in thoughtful silence.
+Though but four and a half miles S.S.E. of St. Paul's the quaint
+little cottage, with its rustic garden, shadowed by the tall trees
+which had so lined the village street before motor 'buses were,
+was a spot as peaceful and secluded as any in broad England.
+But another shadow lay upon it to-day--chilling, fearful.
+An incarnate evil had come out of the dim East and in its dying
+malevolence had touched this home.
+
+"There are two things I don't understand about it, sir," continued Weymouth.
+"What was the meaning of the horrible laughter which the river police heard
+in the fog?  And where are the bodies?"
+
+Karamaneh, seated beside me, shuddered at the words.
+Smith, whose restless spirit granted him little repose,
+paused in his aimless wanderings about the room and looked at her.
+
+In these latter days of his Augean labors to purge England
+of the unclean thing which had fastened upon her, my friend
+was more lean and nervous-looking than I had ever known him.
+His long residence in Burma had rendered him spare
+and had burned his naturally dark skin to a coppery hue;
+but now his gray eyes had grown feverishly bright and his
+face so lean as at times to appear positively emaciated.
+But I knew that he was as fit as ever.
+
+"This lady may be able to answer your first question," he said.
+"She and her brother were for some time in the household of
+Dr. Fu-Manchu. In fact, Mr. Weymouth, Karamaneh, as her name implies,
+was a slave."
+
+Weymouth glanced at the beautiful, troubled face with scarcely
+veiled distrust.  "You don't look as though you had come
+from China, miss," he said, with a sort of unwilling admiration.
+
+I do not come from China, replied Karamaneh.  "My father
+was a pure Bedawee.  But my history does not matter."
+(At times there was something imperious in her manner; and to this
+her musical accent added force.) "When your brave brother,
+Inspector Weymouth, and Dr. Fu-Manchu, were swallowed up
+by the river, Fu-Manchu held a poisoned needle in his hand.
+The laughter meant that the needle had done its work.
+Your brother had become mad!"
+
+Weymouth turned aside to hide his emotion.  "What was on the needle?"
+he asked huskily.
+
+"It was something which he prepared from the venom of a kind of swamp adder,"
+she answered.  "It produces madness, but not always death."
+
+"He would have had a poor chance," said Smith, "even had he been in complete
+possession of his senses.  At the time of the encounter we must have been
+some considerable distance from shore, and the fog was impenetrable."
+
+"But how do you account for the fact that neither of the bodies
+have been recovered?"
+
+"Ryman of the river police tells me that persons lost at that point
+are not always recovered--or not until a considerable time later."
+
+There was a faint sound from the room above.  The news of that
+tragic happening out in the mist upon the Thames had prostrated
+poor Mrs. Weymouth.
+
+"She hasn't been told half the truth," said her brother-in-law. "She doesn't
+know about--the poisoned needle.  What kind of fiend was this Dr. Fu-Manchu?"
+He burst out into a sudden blaze of furious resentment.  "John never told
+me much, and you have let mighty little leak into the papers.  What was he?
+Who was he?"
+
+Half he addressed the words to Smith, half to Karamaneh.
+
+"Dr. Fu-Manchu," replied the former, "was the ultimate expression of
+Chinese cunning; a phenomenon such as occurs but once in many generations.
+He was a superman of incredible genius, who, had he willed,
+could have revolutionized science.  There is a superstition in some
+parts of China according to which, under certain peculiar conditions
+(one of which is proximity to a deserted burial-ground) an evil spirit
+of incredible age may enter unto the body of a new-born infant.
+All my efforts thus far have not availed me to trace the genealogy
+of the man called Dr. Fu-Manchu. Even Karamaneh cannot help me in this.
+But I have sometimes thought that he was a member of a certain very old
+Kiangsu family--and that the peculiar conditions I have mentioned
+prevailed at his birth!"
+
+Smith, observing our looks of amazement, laughed shortly,
+and quite mirthlessly.
+
+"Poor old Weymouth!" he jerked.  "I suppose my labors are finished;
+but I am far from triumphant.  Is there any improvement in
+Mrs. Weymouth's condition?"
+
+"Very little," was the reply; "she has lain in a semi-conscious
+state since the news came.  No one had any idea she would
+take it so.  At one time we were afraid her brain was going.
+She seemed to have delusions."
+
+Smith spun round upon Weymouth.
+
+"Of what nature?" he asked rapidly.
+
+The other pulled nervously at his mustache.
+
+"My wife has been staying with her," he explained, "since--it happened;
+and for the last three nights poor John's widow has cried out at
+the same time--half-past two--that someone was knocking on the door."
+
+"What door?"
+
+"That door yonder--the street door."
+
+All our eyes turned in the direction indicated.
+
+"John often came home at half-past two from the Yard," continued Weymouth;
+"so we naturally thought poor Mary was wandering in her mind.
+But last night--and it's not to be wondered at--my wife couldn't sleep,
+and she was wide awake at half-past two."
+
+"Well?"
+
+Nayland Smith was standing before him, alert, bright-eyed.
+
+"She heard it, too!"
+
+The sun was streaming into the cozy little sitting-room;
+but I will confess that Weymouth's words chilled me uncannily.
+Karamaneh laid her hand upon mine, in a quaint, childish fashion
+peculiarly her own.  Her hand was cold, but its touch thrilled me.
+For Karamaneh was not a child, but a rarely beautiful girl--
+a pearl of the East such as many a monarch has fought for.
+
+"What then?" asked Smith.
+
+"She was afraid to move--afraid to look from the window!"
+
+My friend turned and stared hard at me.
+
+"A subjective hallucination, Petrie?"
+
+"In all probability," I replied.  "You should arrange that
+your wife be relieved in her trying duties, Mr. Weymouth.
+It is too great a strain for an inexperienced nurse."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+OF all that we had hoped for in our pursuit of Fu-Manchu how
+little had we accomplished.  Excepting Karamaneh and her brother
+(who were victims and not creatures of the Chinese doctor's)
+not one of the formidable group had fallen alive into our hands.
+Dreadful crimes had marked Fu-Manchu's passage through the land.
+Not one-half of the truth (and nothing of the later developments)
+had been made public.  Nayland Smith's authority was sufficient
+to control the press.
+
+In the absence of such a veto a veritable panic must have seized upon
+the entire country; for a monster--a thing more than humanly evil--
+existed in our midst.
+
+Always Fu-Manchu's secret activities had centered about the great waterway.
+There was much of poetic justice in his end; for the Thames had claimed him,
+who so long had used the stream as a highway for the passage to and fro for
+his secret forces.  Gone now were the yellow men who had been the instruments
+of his evil will; gone was the giant intellect which had controlled
+the complex murder machine.  Karamaneh, whose beauty he had used as a lure,
+at last was free, and no more with her smile would tempt men to death--
+that her brother might live.
+
+Many there are, I doubt not, who will regard the Eastern girl with horror.
+I ask their forgiveness in that I regarded her quite differently.
+No man having seen her could have condemned her unheard.  Many, having looked
+into her lovely eyes, had they found there what I found, must have forgiven
+her almost any crime.
+
+That she valued human life but little was no matter for wonder.
+Her nationality--her history--furnished adequate excuse for an attitude
+not condonable in a European equally cultured.
+
+But indeed let me confess that hers was a nature incomprehensible to me
+in some respects.  The soul of Karamaneh was a closed book to my short-sighted
+Western eyes.  But the body of Karamaneh was exquisite; her beauty of a kind
+that was a key to the most extravagant rhapsodies of Eastern poets.
+Her eyes held a challenge wholly Oriental in its appeal; her lips,
+even in repose, were a taunt.  And, herein, East is West and West is East.
+
+Finally, despite her lurid history, despite the scornful self-possession
+of which I knew her capable, she was an unprotected girl--
+in years, I believe, a mere child--whom Fate had cast in my way.
+At her request, we had booked passages for her brother and herself
+to Egypt.  The boat sailed in three days.  But Karamaneh's beautiful
+eyes were sad; often I detected tears on the black lashes.
+Shall I endeavor to describe my own tumultuous, conflicting emotions?
+It would be useless, since I know it to be impossible.
+For in those dark eyes burned a fire I might not see; those silken
+lashes veiled a message I dared not read.
+
+Nayland Smith was not blind to the facts of the complicated situation.
+I can truthfully assert that he was the only man of my acquaintance who,
+having come in contact with Karamaneh, had kept his head.
+
+We endeavored to divert her mind from the recent tragedies by a round
+of amusements, though with poor Weymouth's body still at the mercy
+of unknown waters Smith and I made but a poor show of gayety;
+and I took a gloomy pride in the admiration which our lovely
+companion everywhere excited.  I learned, in those days, how rare
+a thing in nature is a really beautiful woman.
+
+One afternoon we found ourselves at an exhibition of water
+colors in Bond Street.  Karamaneh was intensely interested
+in the subjects of the drawings--which were entirely Egyptian.
+As usual, she furnished matter for comment amongst the other visitors,
+as did the boy, Aziz, her brother, anew upon the world from his
+living grave in the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+Suddenly Aziz clutched at his sister's arm, whispering rapidly in Arabic.
+I saw her peachlike color fade; saw her become pale and wild-eyed--
+the haunted Karamaneh of the old days.
+
+She turned to me.
+
+"Dr. Petrie--he says that Fu-Manchu is here!"
+
+"Where?"
+
+Nayland Smith rapped out the question violently, turning in a flash
+from the picture which he was examining.
+
+"In this room!" she whispered glancing furtively, affrightedly about her.
+"Something tells Aziz when HE is near--and I, too, feel strangely afraid.
+Oh, can it be that he is not dead!"
+
+She held my arm tightly.  Her brother was searching the room with big,
+velvet black eyes.  I studied the faces of the several visitors;
+and Smith was staring about him with the old alert look, and tugging
+nervously at the lobe of his ear.  The name of the giant foe of the white
+race instantaneously had strung him up to a pitch of supreme intensity.
+
+Our united scrutinies discovered no figure which could have been
+that of the Chinese doctor.  Who could mistake that long, gaunt shape,
+with the high, mummy-like shoulders, and the indescribable gait,
+which I can only liken to that of an awkward cat?
+
+Then, over the heads of a group of people who stood by the doorway, I saw
+Smith peering at someone--at someone who passed across the outer room.
+Stepping aside, I, too, obtained a glimpse of this person.
+
+As I saw him, he was a tall, old man, wearing a black Inverness
+coat and a rather shabby silk hat.  He had long white hair
+and a patriarchal beard, wore smoked glasses and walked slowly,
+leaning upon a stick.
+
+Smith's gaunt face paled.  With a rapid glance at Karamaneh,
+he made off across the room.
+
+Could it be Dr. Fu-Manchu?
+
+Many days had passed since, already half-choked by Inspector Weymouth's iron
+grip, Fu-Manchu, before our own eyes, had been swallowed up by the Thames.
+Even now men were seeking his body, and that of his last victim.
+Nor had we left any stone unturned.  Acting upon information furnished
+by Karamaneh, the police had searched every known haunt of the murder group.
+But everything pointed to the fact that the group was disbanded and dispersed;
+that the lord of strange deaths who had ruled it was no more.
+
+Yet Smith was not satisfied.  Neither, let me confess,
+was I. Every port was watched; and in suspected districts
+a kind of house-to-house patrol had been instituted.
+Unknown to the great public, in those days a secret war waged--
+a war in which all the available forces of the authorities
+took the field against one man!  But that one man was the evil
+of the East incarnate.
+
+When we rejoined him, Nayland Smith was talking to the commissionaire
+at the door.  He turned to me.
+
+"That is Professor Jenner Monde," he said.  "The sergeant, here,
+knows him well."
+
+The name of the celebrated Orientalist of course was familiar to me,
+although I had never before set eyes upon him.
+
+"The Professor was out East the last time I was there, sir,"
+stated the commissionaire.  "I often used to see him.  But he's
+an eccentric old gentleman.  Seems to live in a world of his own.
+He's recently back from China, I think."
+
+Nayland Smith stood clicking his teeth together in irritable hesitation.
+I heard Karamaneh sigh, and, looking at her, I saw that her cheeks were
+regaining their natural color.
+
+She smiled in pathetic apology.
+
+"If he was here he is gone," she said.  "I am not afraid now."
+
+Smith thanked the commissionaire for his information and we
+quitted the gallery.
+
+"Professor Jenner Monde," muttered my friend, "has lived so long
+in China as almost to be a Chinaman.  I have never met him--
+never seen him, before; but I wonder--"
+
+"You wonder what, Smith?"
+
+"I wonder if he could possibly be an ally, of the Doctor's!"
+
+I stared at him in amazement.
+
+"If we are to attach any importance to the incident at all,"
+I said, "we must remember that the boy's impression--and Karamaneh's--
+was that Fu-Manchu was present in person."
+
+"I DO attach importance to the incident, Petrie; they are naturally
+sensitive to such impressions.  But I doubt if even the abnormal
+organization of Aziz could distinguish between the hidden presence
+of a creature of the Doctor's and that of the Doctor himself.
+I shall make a point of calling upon Professor Jenner Monde."
+
+But Fate had ordained that much should happen ere Smith made
+his proposed call upon the Professor.
+
+Karamaneh and her brother safely lodged in their hotel
+(which was watched night and day by four men under Smith's
+orders), we returned to my quiet suburban rooms.
+
+"First," said Smith, "let us see what we can find out
+respecting Professor Monde."
+
+He went to the telephone and called up New Scotland Yard.
+There followed some little delay before the requisite information
+was obtained.  Finally, however, we learned that the Professor
+was something of a recluse, having few acquaintances,
+and fewer friends.
+
+He lived alone in chambers in New Inn Court, Carey Street.
+A charwoman did such cleaning as was considered necessary
+by the Professor, who employed no regular domestic.
+When he was in London he might be seen fairly frequently
+at the British Museum, where his shabby figure was familiar
+to the officials.  When he was not in London--that is,
+during the greater part of each year--no one knew where he went.
+He never left any address to which letters might be forwarded.
+
+"How long has he been in London now?" asked Smith.
+
+So far as could be ascertained from New Inn Court (replied Scotland Yard)
+roughly a week.
+
+My friend left the telephone and began restlessly to pace the room.
+The charred briar was produced and stuffed with that broad cut Latakia
+mixture of which Nayland Smith consumed close upon a pound a week.
+He was one of those untidy smokers who leave tangled tufts
+hanging from the pipe-bowl and when they light up strew the floor
+with smoldering fragments.
+
+A ringing came, and shortly afterwards a girl entered.
+
+"Mr. James Weymouth to see you, sir."
+
+"Hullo!" rapped Smith.  "What's this?"
+
+Weymouth entered, big and florid, and in some respects
+singularly like his brother, in others as singularly unlike.
+Now, in his black suit, he was a somber figure; and in the blue
+eyes I read a fear suppressed.
+
+"Mr. Smith," he began, "there's something uncanny going on at Maple Cottage."
+
+Smith wheeled the big arm-chair forward.
+
+"Sit down, Mr. Weymouth," he said.  "I am not entirely surprised.
+But you have my attention.  What has occurred?"
+
+Weymouth took a cigarette from the box which I proffered and poured
+out a peg of whisky.  His hand was not quite steady.
+
+"That knocking," he explained.  "It came again the night
+after you were there, and Mrs. Weymouth--my wife, I mean--
+felt that she couldn't spend another night there, alone" "Did she
+look out of the window?" I asked.
+
+"No, Doctor; she was afraid.  But I spent last night downstairs
+in the sitting-room--and _I_ looked out!"
+
+He took a gulp from his glass.  Nayland Smith, seated on
+the edge of the table, his extinguished pipe in his hand,
+was watching him keenly.
+
+"I'll admit I didn't look out at once," Weymouth resumed.
+"There was something so uncanny, gentlemen, in that knocking--
+knocking--in the dead of the night.  I thought"--his voice
+shook--"of poor Jack, lying somewhere amongst the slime
+of the river--and, oh, my God!  it came to me that it was Jack
+who was knocking--and I dare not think what he--what it--
+would look like!"
+
+He leaned forward, his chin in his hand.  For a few moments we
+were all silent.
+
+"I know I funked," he continued huskily.  "But when the wife came
+to the head of the stairs and whispered to me:  `There it is again.
+What in heaven's name can it be'--I started to unbolt the door.
+The knocking had stopped.  Everything was very still.
+I heard Mary--HIS widow--sobbing, upstairs; that was all.
+I opened the door, a little bit at a time."
+
+Pausing again, he cleared his throat, and went on:
+
+"It was a bright night, and there was no one there--not a soul.
+But somewhere down the lane, as I looked out into the porch, I heard
+most awful groans!  They got fainter and fainter.  Then--I could
+have sworn I heard SOMEONE LAUGHING!  My nerves cracked up at that;
+and I shut the door again."
+
+The narration of his weird experience revived something of the natural
+fear which it had occasioned.  He raised his glass, with unsteady hand,
+and drained it.
+
+Smith struck a match and relighted his pipe.  He began to pace
+the room again.  His eyes were literally on fire.
+
+"Would it be possible to get Mrs. Weymouth out of the house
+before to-night?  Remove her to your place, for instance?"
+he asked abruptly.
+
+Weymouth looked up in surprise.
+
+"She seems to be in a very low state," he replied.  He glanced at me.
+"Perhaps Dr. Petrie would give us an opinion?"
+
+"I will come and see her," I said.  "But what is your idea, Smith?"
+
+"I want to hear that knocking!" he rapped.  "But in what I may see fit
+to do I must not be handicapped by the presence of a sick woman."
+
+"Her condition at any rate will admit of our administering an opiate,"
+I suggested.  "That would meet the situation?"
+
+"Good!" cried Smith.  He was intensely excited now.
+"I rely upon you to arrange something, Petrie.  Mr. Weymouth"--
+he turned to our visitor--"I shall be with you this evening
+not later than twelve o'clock."
+
+Weymouth appeared to be greatly relieved.  I asked him
+to wait whilst I prepared a drought for the patient.
+When he was gone:
+
+"What do you think this knocking means, Smith?" I asked.
+
+He tapped out his pipe on the side of the grate and began with nervous
+energy to refill it again from the dilapidated pouch.
+
+"I dare not tell you what I hope, Petrie," he replied--
+"nor what I fear."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+DUSK was falling when we made our way in the direction of Maple Cottage.
+Nayland Smith appeared to be keenly interested in the character
+of the district.  A high and ancient wall bordered the road along
+which we walked for a considerable distance.  Later it gave place
+to a rickety fence.
+
+My friend peered through a gap in the latter.
+
+"There is quite an extensive estate here," he said, "not yet
+cut up by the builder.  It is well wooded on one side,
+and there appears to be a pool lower down."
+
+The road was a quiet one, and we plainly heard the tread--
+quite unmistakable--of an approaching policeman.
+Smith continued to peer through the hole in the fence,
+until the officer drew up level with us.  Then:
+
+"Does this piece of ground extend down to the village,
+constable?" he inquired.
+
+Quite willing for a chat, the man stopped, and stood with his thumbs
+thrust in his belt.
+
+"Yes, sir.  They tell me three new roads will be made through it
+between here and the hill."
+
+"It must be a happy hunting ground for tramps?"
+
+"I've seen some suspicious-looking coves about at times.
+But after dusk an army might be inside there and nobody would
+ever be the wiser."
+
+"Burglaries frequent in the houses backing on to it?"
+
+"Oh, no.  A favorite game in these parts is snatching
+loaves and bottles of milk from the doors, first thing,
+as they're delivered.  There's been an extra lot of it lately.
+My mate who relieves me has got special instructions
+to keep his eye open in the mornings!"  The man grinned.
+"It wouldn't be a very big case even if he caught anybody!"
+"No," said Smith absently; "perhaps not.  Your business must
+be a dry one this warm weather.  Good-night."
+
+"Good-night, sir," replied the constable, richer by
+half-a-crown--"and thank you."
+
+Smith stared after him for a moment, tugging reflectively at the lobe
+of his ear.
+
+"I don't know that it wouldn't be a big case, after all," he murmured.
+"Come on, Petrie."
+
+Not another word did he speak, until we stood at the gate of Maple Cottage.
+There a plain-clothes man was standing, evidently awaiting Smith.
+He touched his hat.
+
+"Have you found a suitable hiding-place?" asked my companion rapidly.
+
+"Yes, sir," was the reply.  "Kent--my mate--is there now.
+You'll notice that he can't be seen from here."
+
+"No," agreed Smith, peering all about him.  "He can't. Where is he?"
+
+"Behind the broken wall," explained the man, pointing.
+"Through that ivy there's a clear view of the cottage door."
+
+"Good.  Keep your eyes open.  If a messenger comes for me, he is to
+be intercepted, you understand.  No one must be allowed to disturb us.
+You will recognize the messenger.  He will be one of your fellows.
+Should he come--hoot three times, as much like an owl as you can."
+
+We walked up to the porch of the cottage.  In response to Smith's ringing
+came James Weymouth, who seemed greatly relieved by our arrival.
+
+"First," said my friend briskly, "you had better run up and see the patient."
+
+Accordingly, I followed Weymouth upstairs and was admitted by his
+wife to a neat little bedroom where the grief-stricken woman lay,
+a wanly pathetic sight.
+
+"Did you administer the draught, as directed?" I asked.
+
+Mrs. James Weymouth nodded.  She was a kindly looking woman,
+with the same dread haunting her hazel eyes as that which lurked
+in her husband's blue ones.
+
+The patient was sleeping soundly.  Some whispered instructions I gave to
+the faithful nurse and descended to the sitting-room. It was a warm night,
+and Weymouth sat by the open window, smoking.  The dim light from the lamp
+on the table lent him an almost startling likeness to his brother; and for
+a moment I stood at the foot of the stairs scarce able to trust my reason.
+Then he turned his face fully towards me, and the illusion was lost.
+
+"Do you think she is likely to wake, Doctor?" he asked.
+
+"I think not," I replied.
+
+Nayland Smith stood upon the rug before the hearth, swinging from one
+foot to the other, in his nervously restless way.  The room was foggy
+with the fumes of tobacco, for he, too, was smoking.
+
+At intervals of some five to ten minutes, his blackened briar
+(which I never knew him to clean or scrape) would go out.
+I think Smith used more matches than any other smoker I have
+ever met, and he invariably carried three boxes in various
+pockets of his garments.
+
+The tobacco habit is infectious, and, seating myself in an arm-chair,
+I lighted a cigarette.  For this dreary vigil I had come prepared
+with a bunch of rough notes, a writing-block, and a fountain pen.
+I settled down to work upon my record of the Fu-Manchu case.
+
+Silence fell upon Maple Cottage.  Save for the shuddering sigh
+which whispered through the over-hanging cedars and Smith's eternal
+match-striking, nothing was there to disturb me in my task.
+Yet I could make little progress.  Between my mind and the chapter upon
+which I was at work a certain sentence persistently intruded itself.
+It was as though an unseen hand held the written page closely before my eyes.
+This was the sentence:
+
+"Imagine a person, tall, lean, and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow
+like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long,
+magnetic eyes of the true cat-green: invest him with all the cruel cunning
+of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect. . ."
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu!  Fu-Manchu as Smith had described him to me on that night
+which now seemed so remotely distant--the night upon which I had learned
+of the existence of the wonderful and evil being born of that secret
+quickening which stirred in the womb of the yellow races.
+
+As Smith, for the ninth or tenth time, knocked out his pipe on a bar
+of the grate, the cuckoo clock in the kitchen proclaimed the hour.
+
+"Two," said James Weymouth.
+
+I abandoned my task, replacing notes and writing-block in the bag that I
+had with me.  Weymouth adjusted the lamp which had begun to smoke.
+
+I tiptoed to the stairs and, stepping softly, ascended to the sick room.
+All was quiet, and Mrs. Weymouth whispered to me that the patient still
+slept soundly.  I returned to find Nayland Smith pacing about the room
+in that state of suppressed excitement habitual with him in the approach
+of any crisis.  At a quarter past two the breeze dropped entirely,
+and such a stillness reigned all about us as I could not have supposed
+possible so near to the ever-throbbing heart of the great metropolis.
+Plainly I could hear Weymouth's heavy breathing.  He sat at the window
+and looked out into the black shadows under the cedars.  Smith ceased
+his pacing and stood again on the rug very still.  He was listening!
+I doubt not we were all listening.
+
+Some faint sound broke the impressive stillness, coming from the direction
+of the village street.  It was a vague, indefinite disturbance,
+brief, and upon it ensued a silence more marked than ever.
+Some minutes before, Smith had extinguished the lamp.
+In the darkness I heard his teeth snap sharply together.
+
+The call of an owl sounded very clearly three times.
+
+I knew that to mean that a messenger had come; but from whence or bearing
+what tidings I knew not.  My friend's plans were incomprehensible to me,
+nor had I pressed him for any explanation of their nature, knowing him
+to be in that high-strung and somewhat irritable mood which claimed him
+at times of uncertainty--when he doubted the wisdom of his actions,
+the accuracy of his surmises.  He gave no sign.
+
+Very faintly I heard a clock strike the half-hour. A soft breeze
+stole again through the branches above.  The wind I thought must
+be in a new quarter since I had not heard the clock before.
+In so lonely a spot it was difficult to believe that the bell
+was that of St. Paul's. Yet such was the fact.
+
+And hard upon the ringing followed another sound--a sound we all had expected,
+had waited for; but at whose coming no one of us, I think, retained complete
+mastery of himself.
+
+Breaking up the silence in a manner that set my heart wildly leaping it came--
+an imperative knocking on the door!
+
+"My God!" groaned Weymouth--but he did not move from his position
+at the window.
+
+"Stand by, Petrie!" said Smith.
+
+He strode to the door--and threw it widely open.
+
+I know I was very pale.  I think I cried out as I fell back--
+retreated with clenched hands from before THAT which stood
+on the threshold.
+
+It was a wild, unkempt figure, with straggling beard, hideously staring eyes.
+With its hands it clutched at its hair--at its chin; plucked at its mouth.
+No moonlight touched the features of this unearthly visitant,
+but scanty as was the illumination we could see the gleaming teeth--
+and the wildly glaring eyes.
+
+It began to laugh--peal after peal--hideous and shrill.
+
+Nothing so terrifying had ever smote upon my ears.
+I was palsied by the horror of the sound.
+
+Then Nayland Smith pressed the button of an electric torch which he carried.
+He directed the disk of white light fully upon the face in the doorway.
+
+"Oh, God!" cried Weymouth.  "It's John!"--and again and again:
+"Oh, God!  Oh, God!"
+
+Perhaps for the first time in my life I really believed (nay, I
+could not doubt) that a thing of another world stood before me.
+I am ashamed to confess the extent of the horror that came upon me.
+James Weymouth raised his hands, as if to thrust away from him
+that awful thing in the door.  He was babbling--prayers, I think,
+but wholly incoherent.
+
+"Hold him, Petrie!"
+
+Smith's voice was low.  (When we were past thought or intelligent action,
+he, dominant and cool, with that forced calm for which, a crisis over,
+he always paid so dearly, was thinking of the woman who slept above.)
+
+He leaped forward; and in the instant that he grappled with
+the one who had knocked I knew the visitant for a man of flesh
+and blood--a man who shrieked and fought like a savage animal,
+foamed at the mouth and gnashed his teeth in horrid frenzy;
+knew him for a madman--knew him for the victim of Fu-Manchu--
+not dead, but living--for Inspector Weymouth--a maniac!
+
+In a flash I realized all this and sprang to Smith's assistance.
+There was a sound of racing footsteps and the men who had been
+watching outside came running into the porch.  A third was with them;
+and the five of us (for Weymouth's brother had not yet grasped
+the fact that a man and not a spirit shrieked and howled in our midst)
+clung to the infuriated madman, yet barely held our own with him.
+
+"The syringe, Petrie!" gasped Smith.  "Quick!  You must manage
+to make an injection!"
+
+I extricated myself and raced into the cottage for my bag.
+A hypodermic syringe ready charged I had brought with me
+at Smith's request.  Even in that thrilling moment I could
+find time to admire the wonderful foresight of my friend,
+who had divined what would befall--isolated the strange,
+pitiful truth from the chaotic circumstances which saw us
+at Maple Cottage that night.
+
+Let me not enlarge upon the end of the awful struggle.
+At one time I despaired (we all despaired) of quieting the poor,
+demented creature.  But at last it was done; and the gaunt,
+blood-stained savage whom we had known as Detective-Inspector
+Weymouth lay passive upon the couch in his own sitting-room. A
+great wonder possessed my mind for the genius of the uncanny
+being who with the scratch of a needle had made a brave
+and kindly man into this unclean, brutish thing.
+
+Nayland Smith, gaunt and wild-eyed, and trembling yet with his
+tremendous exertions, turned to the man whom I knew to be
+the messenger from Scotland Yard.
+
+"Well?" he rapped.
+
+"He is arrested, sir," the detective reported.  "They have kept
+him at his chambers as you ordered."
+
+"Has she slept through it?" said Smith to me.
+(I had just returned from a visit to the room above.) I nodded.
+
+"Is HE safe for an hour or two?"--indicating the figure on the couch.
+"For eight or ten," I replied grimly.
+
+"Come, then.  Our night's labors are not nearly complete."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+LATER was forthcoming evidence to show that poor Weymouth had lived
+a wild life, in hiding among the thick bushes of the tract of land
+which lay between the village and the suburb on the neighboring hill.
+Literally, he had returned to primitive savagery and some of his food
+had been that of the lower animals, though he had not scrupled to steal,
+as we learned when his lair was discovered.
+
+He had hidden himself cunningly; but witnesses appeared who had seen him,
+in the dusk, and fled from him.  They never learned that the object
+of their fear was Inspector John Weymouth.  How, having escaped death
+in the Thames, he had crossed London unobserved, we never knew;
+but his trick of knocking upon his own door at half-past two each morning
+(a sort of dawning of sanity mysteriously linked with old custom)
+will be a familiar class of symptom to all students of alienation.
+
+I revert to the night when Smith solved the mystery of the knocking.
+
+In a car which he had in waiting at the end of the village we sped
+through the deserted streets to New Inn Court.  I, who had followed
+Nayland Smith through the failures and successes of his mission,
+knew that to-night he had surpassed himself; had justified the confidence
+placed in him by the highest authorities.
+
+We were admitted to an untidy room--that of a student,
+a traveler and a crank--by a plain-clothes officer.
+Amid picturesque and disordered fragments of a hundred ages,
+in a great carven chair placed before a towering statue
+of the Buddha, sat a hand-cuffed man.  His white hair
+and beard were patriarchal; his pose had great dignity.
+But his expression was entirely masked by the smoked glasses
+which he wore.
+
+Two other detectives were guarding the prisoner.
+
+"We arrested Professor Jenner Monde as he came in, sir,"
+reported the man who had opened the door.  "He has made no statement.
+I hope there isn't a mistake."
+
+"I hope not," rapped Smith.
+
+He strode across the room.  He was consumed by a fever of excitement.
+Almost savagely, he tore away the beard, tore off the snowy wig dashed
+the smoked glasses upon the floor.
+
+A great, high brow was revealed, and green, malignant eyes, which fixed
+themselves upon him with an expression I never can forget.
+
+IT WAS DR. FU-MANCHU!
+
+One intense moment of silence ensued--of silence which seemed
+to throb.  Then:
+
+"What have you done with Professor Monde?" demanded Smith.
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu showed his even, yellow teeth in the singularly evil
+smile which I knew so well.  A manacled prisoner he sat as unruffled
+as a judge upon the bench.  In truth and in justice I am compelled
+to say that Fu-Manchu was absolutely fearless.
+
+"He has been detained in China," he replied, in smooth,
+sibilant tones--"by affairs of great urgency.  His well-known
+personality and ungregarious habits have served me well, here!"
+
+Smith, I could see, was undetermined how to act; he stood tugging at his ear
+and glancing from the impassive Chinaman to the wondering detectives.
+
+"What are we to do, sir?" one of them asked.
+
+"Leave Dr. Petrie and myself alone with the prisoner, until I call you."
+
+The three withdrew.  I divined now what was coming.
+
+"Can you restore Weymouth's sanity?" rapped Smith abruptly.
+"I cannot save you from the hangman, nor"--his fists clenched
+convulsively--"would I if I could; but--"
+
+Fu-Manchu fixed his brilliant eyes upon him.
+
+"Say no more, Mr. Smith," he interrupted; "you misunderstand me.
+I do not quarrel with that, but what I have done from conviction
+and what I have done of necessity are separated--are seas apart.
+The brave Inspector Weymouth I wounded with a poisoned needle,
+in self-defense; but I regret his condition as greatly as you do.
+I respect such a man.  There is an antidote to the poison
+of the needle."
+
+"Name it," said Smith.
+
+Fu-Manchu smiled again.
+
+"Useless," he replied.  "I alone can prepare it.  My secrets
+shall die with me.  I will make a sane man of Inspector Weymouth,
+but no one else shall be in the house but he and I."
+
+"It will be surrounded by police," interrupted Smith grimly.
+
+"As you please," said Fu-Manchu. "Make your arrangements.
+In that ebony case upon the table are the instruments for the cure.
+Arrange for me to visit him where and when you will--"
+
+"I distrust you utterly.  It is some trick," jerked Smith.
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu rose slowly and drew himself up to his great height.
+His manacled hands could not rob him of the uncanny dignity which was his.
+He raised them above his head with a tragic gesture and fixed his piercing
+gaze upon Nayland Smith.
+
+"The God of Cathay bear me," he said, with a deep, guttural note
+in his voice--"I swear--"
+
+
+The most awful visitor who ever threatened the peace of England, the end
+of the visit of Fu-Manchu was characteristic--terrible--inexplicable.
+
+Strange to relate, I did not doubt that this weird
+being had conceived some kind of admiration or respect
+for the man to whom he had wrought so terrible an injury.
+He was capable of such sentiments, for he entertained some
+similar one in regard to myself.
+
+A cottage farther down the village street than Weymouth's was vacant, and in
+the early dawn of that morning became the scene of outre happenings.
+Poor Weymouth, still in a comatose condition, we removed there (Smith having
+secured the key from the astonished agent). I suppose so strange a specialist
+never visited a patient before--certainly not under such conditions.
+
+For into the cottage, which had been entirely surrounded by a ring
+of police, Dr. Fu-Manchu was admitted from the closed car in which,
+his work of healing complete, he was to be borne to prison--to death!
+
+Law and justice were suspended by my royally empowered friend that the enemy
+of the white race might heal one of those who had hunted him down!
+
+No curious audience was present, for sunrise was not yet come;
+no concourse of excited students followed the hand of the Master;
+but within that surrounded cottage was performed one of those
+miracles of science which in other circumstances had made the fame
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu to live forever.
+
+Inspector Weymouth, dazed, disheveled, clutching his head
+as a man who has passed through the Valley of the Shadow--
+but sane--sane!--walked out into the porch!
+
+He looked towards us--his eyes wild, but not with the fearsome
+wildness of insanity.
+
+"Mr. Smith!" he cried--and staggered down the path--"Dr. Petrie!  What--"
+
+There came a deafening explosion.  From EVERY visible window
+of the deserted cottage flames burst forth!
+
+"QUICK!" Smith's voice rose almost to a scream--"into the house!"
+
+He raced up the path, past Inspector Weymouth, who stood
+swaying there like a drunken man.  I was close upon his heels.
+Behind me came the police.
+
+The door was impassable!  Already, it vomited a deathly heat,
+borne upon stifling fumes like those of the mouth of the Pit.
+We burst a window.  The room within was a furnace!
+
+"My God!" cried someone.  "This is supernatural!"
+
+"Listen!" cried another.  "Listen!"
+
+The crowd which a fire can conjure up at any hour of day
+or night, out of the void of nowhere, was gathering already.
+But upon all descended a pall of silence.
+
+From the heat of the holocaust a voice proclaimed itself--a voice raised,
+not in anguish but in TRIUMPH!  It chanted barbarically--and was still.
+
+The abnormal flames rose higher--leaping forth from every window.
+
+"The alarm!" said Smith hoarsely.  "Call up the brigade!"
+
+
+I come to the close of my chronicle, and feel that I betray a trust--
+the trust of my reader.  For having limned in the colors at my
+command the fiendish Chinese doctor, I am unable to conclude my task
+as I should desire, unable, with any consciousness of finality,
+to write Finis to the end of my narrative.
+
+It seems to me sometimes that my pen is but temporarily idle--that I
+have but dealt with a single phase of a movement having a hundred phases.
+One sequel I hope for, and against all the promptings of logic and
+Western bias.  If my hope shall be realized I cannot, at this time,
+pretend to state.
+
+The future, 'mid its many secrets, holds this precious one from me.
+
+I ask you then, to absolve me from the charge of ill completing my work;
+for any curiosity with which this narrative may leave the reader burdened
+is shared by the writer.
+
+With intent, I have rushed you from the chambers of Professor
+Jenner Monde to that closing episode at the deserted cottage;
+I have made the pace hot in order to impart to these last
+pages of my account something of the breathless scurry which
+characterized those happenings.
+
+My canvas may seem sketchy:  it is my impression of the reality.
+No hard details remain in my mind of the dealings of that night.
+Fu-Manchu arrested--Fu-Manchu, manacled, entering the cottage on his
+mission of healing; Weymouth, miraculously rendered sane, coming forth;
+the place in flames.
+
+And then?
+
+To a shell the cottage burned, with an incredible rapidity
+which pointed to some hidden agency; to a shell about ashes
+which held NO TRACE OF HUMAN BONES!
+
+It has been asked of me:  Was there no possibility of
+Fu-Manchu's having eluded us in the ensuing confusion?
+Was there no loophole of escape?
+
+I reply, that so far as I was able to judge, a rat could scarce
+have quitted the building undetected.  Yet that Fu-Manchu had,
+in some incomprehensible manner and by some mysterious agency,
+produced those abnormal flames, I cannot doubt.
+Did he voluntarily ignite his own funeral pyre?
+
+As I write, there lies before me a soiled and creased sheet of vellum.
+It bears some lines traced in a cramped, peculiar, and all but
+illegible hand.  This fragment was found by Inspector Weymouth
+(to this day a man mentally sound) in a pocket of his ragged garments.
+
+When it was written I leave you to judge.  How it came to be where Weymouth
+found it calls for no explanation:
+
+
+"To Mr. Commissioner NAYLAND SMITH and Dr. PETRIE--
+
+"Greeting!  I am recalled home by One who may not be denied.
+In much that I came to do I have failed.  Much that I
+have done I would undo; some little I have undone.
+Out of fire I came--the smoldering fire of a thing one day
+to be a consuming flame; in fire I go.  Seek not my ashes.
+I am the lord of the fires!  Farewell.
+
+"FU-MANCHU."
+
+
+Who has been with me in my several meetings with the man
+who penned that message I leave to adjudge if it be the letter
+of a madman bent upon self-destruction by strange means,
+or the gibe of a preternaturally clever scientist and the most
+elusive being ever born of the land of mystery--China.
+
+For the present, I can aid you no more in the forming of your verdict.
+A day may come though I pray it do not--when I shall be able to throw
+new light upon much that is dark in this matter.  That day, so far as I
+can judge, could only dawn in the event of the Chinaman's survival;
+therefore I pray that the veil be never lifted.
+
+But, as I have said, there is another sequel to this story
+which I can contemplate with a different countenance.
+How, then, shall I conclude this very unsatisfactory account?
+
+Shall I tell you, finally, of my parting with lovely, dark-eyed Karamaneh,
+on board the liner which was to bear her to Egypt?
+
+No, let me, instead, conclude with the words of Nayland Smith:
+
+"_I_ sail for Burma in a fortnight, Petrie.  I have leave to break my
+journey at the Ditch.  How would a run up the Nile fit your programme?
+Bit early for the season, but you might find something to amuse you!
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
+
+
+
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+**The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu**
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+The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
+by Sax Rohmer
+
+October, 1994  [Etext #173]
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+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+"A GENTLEMAN to see you, Doctor."
+
+From across the common a clock sounded the half-hour.
+
+"Ten-thirty!" I said.  "A late visitor.  Show him up, if you please."
+
+I pushed my writing aside and tilted the lamp-shade, as footsteps
+sounded on the landing.  The next moment I had jumped to my feet,
+for a tall, lean man, with his square-cut, clean-shaven face
+sun-baked to the hue of coffee, entered and extended both hands,
+with a cry:
+
+"Good old Petrie!  Didn't expect me, I'll swear!"
+
+It was Nayland Smith--whom I had thought to be in Burma!
+
+"Smith," I said, and gripped his hands hard, "this is a delightful surprise!
+Whatever--however--"
+
+"Excuse me, Petrie!" he broke in.  "Don't put it down to the sun!"
+And he put out the lamp, plunging the room into darkness.
+
+I was too surprised to speak.
+
+"No doubt you will think me mad," he continued, and, dimly,
+I could see him at the window, peering out into the road,
+"but before you are many hours older you will know that I
+have good reason to be cautious.  Ah, nothing suspicious!
+Perhaps I am first this time."  And, stepping back to the
+writing-table he relighted the lamp.
+
+"Mysterious enough for you?" he laughed, and glanced at my unfinished MS.
+"A story, eh?  From which I gather that the district is beastly healthy--
+what, Petrie?  Well, I can put some material in your way that, if sheer
+uncanny mystery is a marketable commodity, ought to make you independent
+of influenza and broken legs and shattered nerves and all the rest."
+
+I surveyed him doubtfully, but there was nothing in his appearance
+to justify me in supposing him to suffer from delusions.  His eyes
+were too bright, certainly, and a hardness now had crept over his face.
+I got out the whisky and siphon, saying:
+
+"You have taken your leave early?"
+
+"I am not on leave," he replied, and slowly filled his pipe.
+"I am on duty."
+
+"On duty!" I exclaimed.  "What, are you moved to London or something?"
+
+"I have got a roving commission, Petrie, and it doesn't rest
+with me where I am to-day nor where I shall be to-morrow."
+
+There was something ominous in the words, and, putting down my glass,
+its contents untasted, I faced round and looked him squarely in the eyes.
+"Out with it!" I said.  "What is it all about?"
+
+Smith suddenly stood up and stripped off his coat.
+Rolling back his left shirt-sleeve he revealed a wicked-looking
+wound in the fleshy part of the forearm.  It was quite healed,
+but curiously striated for an inch or so around.
+
+"Ever seen one like it?" he asked.
+
+"Not exactly," I confessed.  "It appears to have been deeply cauterized."
+
+"Right!  Very deeply!" he rapped.  "A barb steeped in the venom
+of a hamadryad went in there!"
+
+A shudder I could not repress ran coldly through me at mention
+of that most deadly of all the reptiles of the East.
+
+"There's only one treatment," he continued, rolling his sleeve down again,
+"and that's with a sharp knife, a match, and a broken cartridge.
+I lay on my back, raving, for three days afterwards, in a forest that stank
+with malaria, but I should have been lying there now if I had hesitated.
+Here's the point.  It was not an accident!"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that it was a deliberate attempt on my life, and I am hard upon
+the tracks of the man who extracted that venom--patiently, drop by drop--
+from the poison-glands of the snake, who prepared that arrow, and who caused
+it to be shot at me."
+
+"What fiend is this?"
+
+"A fiend who, unless my calculations are at fault is now in London,
+and who regularly wars with pleasant weapons of that kind.  Petrie, I have
+traveled from Burma not in the interests of the British Government merely,
+but in the interests of the entire white race, and I honestly believe--
+though I pray I may be wrong--that its survival depends largely upon
+the success of my mission."
+
+To say that I was perplexed conveys no idea of the mental chaos
+created by these extraordinary statements, for into my humdrum
+suburban life Nayland Smith had brought fantasy of the wildest.
+I did not know what to think, what to believe.
+
+"I am wasting precious time!" he rapped decisively, and, draining his glass,
+he stood up.  "I came straight to you, because you are the only man I dare
+to trust.  Except the big chief at headquarters, you are the only person
+in England, I hope, who knows that Nayland Smith has quitted Burma.
+I must have someone with me, Petrie, all the time--it's imperative!
+Can you put me up here, and spare a few days to the strangest business,
+I promise you, that ever was recorded in fact or fiction?"
+
+I agreed readily enough, for, unfortunately, my professional
+duties were not onerous.
+
+"Good man!" he cried, wringing my hand in his impetuous way.
+"We start now."
+
+"What, to-night?
+
+"To-night!  I had thought of turning in, I must admit.  I have not dared
+to sleep for forty-eight hours, except in fifteen-minute stretches.
+But there is one move that must be made to-night and immediately.
+I must warn Sir Crichton Davey."
+
+"Sir Crichton Davey--of the India--"
+
+"Petrie, he is a doomed man!  Unless he follows my instructions
+without question, without hesitation--before Heaven, nothing can
+save him!  I do not know when the blow will fall, how it will fall,
+nor from whence, but I know that my first duty is to warn him.
+Let us walk down to the corner of the common and get a taxi."
+
+How strangely does the adventurous intrude upon the humdrum;
+for, when it intrudes at all, more often than not its intrusion
+is sudden and unlooked for.  To-day, we may seek for romance
+and fail to find it:  unsought, it lies in wait for us at most
+prosaic corners of life's highway.
+
+The drive that night, though it divided the drably commonplace
+from the wildly bizarre--though it was the bridge between the
+ordinary and the outre--has left no impression upon my mind.
+Into the heart of a weird mystery the cab bore me; and in reviewing
+my memories of those days I wonder that the busy thoroughfares
+through which we passed did not display before my eyes signs
+and portents--warnings.
+
+It was not so.  I recall nothing of the route and little of import
+that passed between us (we both were strangely silent, I think)
+until we were come to our journey's end.  Then:
+
+"What's this?" muttered my friend hoarsely.
+
+Constables were moving on a little crowd of curious idlers who pressed
+about the steps of Sir Crichton Davey's house and sought to peer in at
+the open door.  Without waiting for the cab to draw up to the curb,
+Nayland Smith recklessly leaped out and I followed close at his heels.
+
+"What has happened?" he demanded breathlessly of a constable.
+
+The latter glanced at him doubtfully, but something in his voice
+and bearing commanded respect.
+
+"Sir Crichton Davey has been killed, sir."
+
+Smith lurched back as though he had received a physical blow, and clutched
+my shoulder convulsively.  Beneath the heavy tan his face had blanched,
+and his eyes were set in a stare of horror.
+
+"My God!" he whispered.  "I am too late!"
+
+With clenched fists he turned and, pressing through the group
+of loungers, bounded up the steps.  In the hall a man who unmistakably
+was a Scotland Yard official stood talking to a footman.
+Other members of the household were moving about, more or
+less aimlessly, and the chilly hand of King Fear had touched
+one and all, for, as they came and went, they glanced ever over
+their shoulders, as if each shadow cloaked a menace, and listened,
+as it seemed, for some sound which they dreaded to hear.
+Smith strode up to the detective and showed him a card,
+upon glancing at which the Scotland Yard man said something
+in a low voice, and, nodding, touched his hat to Smith
+in a respectful manner.
+
+A few brief questions and answers, and, in gloomy silence,
+we followed the detective up the heavily carpeted stair,
+along a corridor lined with pictures and busts, and into a
+large library.  A group of people were in this room, and one,
+in whom I recognized Chalmers Cleeve, of Harley Street,
+was bending over a motionless form stretched upon a couch.
+Another door communicated with a small study, and through
+the opening I could see a man on all fours examining the carpet.
+The uncomfortable sense of hush, the group about the physician,
+the bizarre figure crawling, beetle-like, across the inner room,
+and the grim hub, around which all this ominous activity turned,
+made up a scene that etched itself indelibly on my mind.
+
+As we entered Dr. Cleeve straightened himself, frowning thoughtfully.
+
+"Frankly, I do not care to venture any opinion at present regarding
+the immediate cause of death," he said.  "Sir Crichton was addicted
+to cocaine, but there are indications which are not in accordance
+with cocaine-poisoning. I fear that only a post-mortem can
+establish the facts--if," he added, "we ever arrive at them.
+A most mysterious case!"
+
+Smith stepping forward and engaging the famous pathologist in conversation,
+I seized the opportunity to examine Sir Crichton's body.
+
+The dead man was in evening dress, but wore an old
+smoking-jacket. He had been of spare but hardy build,
+with thin, aquiline features, which now were oddly puffy,
+as were his clenched hands.  I pushed back his sleeve,
+and saw the marks of the hypodermic syringe upon his left arm.
+Quite mechanically I turned my attention to the right arm.
+It was unscarred, but on the back of the hand was a faint
+red mark, not unlike the imprint of painted lips.
+I examined it closely, and even tried to rub it off, but it
+evidently was caused by some morbid process of local inflammation,
+if it were not a birthmark.
+
+Turning to a pale young man whom I had understood to be Sir
+Crichton's private secretary, I drew his attention to this mark,
+and inquired if it were constitutional.  "It is not, sir,"
+answered Dr. Cleeve, overhearing my question.  "I have already
+made that inquiry.  Does it suggest anything to your mind?
+I must confess that it affords me no assistance."
+
+"Nothing," I replied.  "It is most curious."
+
+"Excuse me, Mr. Burboyne," said Smith, now turning to the secretary,
+"but Inspector Weymouth will tell you that I act with authority.
+I understand that Sir Crichton was--seized with illness in his study?"
+
+"Yes--at half-past ten.  I was working here in the library, and he inside,
+as was our custom."
+
+"The communicating door was kept closed?"
+
+"Yes, always.  It was open for a minute or less about
+ten-twenty-five, when a message came for Sir Crichton.
+I took it in to him, and he then seemed in his usual health."
+
+"What was the message?"
+
+"I could not say.  it was brought by a district messenger, and he placed
+it beside him on the table.  It is there now, no doubt."
+
+"And at half-past ten?"
+
+"Sir Crichton suddenly burst open the door and threw himself,
+with a scream, into the library.  I ran to him but he waved
+me back.  His eyes were glaring horribly.  I had just
+reached his side when he fell, writhing, upon the floor.
+He seemed past speech, but as I raised him and laid him upon
+the couch, he gasped something that sounded like `The red hand!'
+Before I could get to bell or telephone he was dead!"
+
+Mr. Burboyne's voice shook as he spoke the words, and Smith seemed
+to find this evidence confusing.
+
+"You do not think he referred to the mark on his own hand?"
+
+"I think not.  From the direction of his last glance, I feel
+sure he referred to something in the study."
+
+"What did you do?  Having summoned the servants, I ran into the study.
+But there was absolutely nothing unusual to be seen.  The windows were closed
+and fastened.  He worked with closed windows in the hottest weather.
+There is no other door, for the study occupies the end of a narrow wing,
+so that no one could possibly have gained access to it, whilst I was
+in the library, unseen by me.  Had someone concealed himself in the study
+earlier in the evening--and I am convinced that it offers no hiding-place--
+he could only have come out again by passing through here."
+
+Nayland Smith tugged at the lobe of his left ear, as was his
+habit when meditating.
+
+"You had been at work here in this way for some time?"
+
+"Yes.  Sir Crichton was preparing an important book."
+
+"Had anything unusual occurred prior to this evening?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Burboyne, with evident perplexity; "though I attached
+no importance to it at the time.  Three nights ago Sir Crichton
+came out to me, and appeared very nervous; but at times his nerves--
+you know?  Well, on this occasion he asked me to search the study.
+He had an idea that something was concealed there."
+
+"Some THING or someone?"
+
+"`Something' was the word he used.  I searched, but fruitlessly,
+and he seemed quite satisfied, and returned to his work."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Burboyne.  My friend and I would like a few minutes'
+private investigation in the study."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+SIR CRICHTON DAVEY'S study was a small one, and a glance sufficed to
+show that, as the secretary had said, it offered no hiding-place. It was
+heavily carpeted, and over-full of Burmese and Chinese ornaments and curios,
+and upon the mantelpiece stood several framed photographs which showed
+this to be the sanctum of a wealthy bachelor who was no misogynist.
+A map of the Indian Empire occupied the larger part of one wall.
+The grate was empty, for the weather was extremely warm, and a
+green-shaded lamp on the littered writing-table afforded the only light.
+The air was stale, for both windows were closed and fastened.
+
+Smith immediately pounced upon a large, square envelope that lay beside
+the blotting-pad. Sir Crichton had not even troubled to open it,
+but my friend did so.  It contained a blank sheet of paper!
+
+"Smell!" he directed, handing the letter to me.  I raised it to my nostrils.
+It was scented with some pungent perfume.
+
+"What is it?"  I asked.
+
+"It is a rather rare essential oil," was the reply,
+"which I have met with before, though never in Europe.
+I begin to understand, Petrie."
+
+He tilted the lamp-shade and made a close examination of the scraps
+of paper, matches, and other debris that lay in the grate and on the hearth.
+I took up a copper vase from the mantelpiece, and was examining it curiously,
+when he turned, a strange expression upon his face.
+
+"Put that back, old man," he said quietly.
+
+Much surprised, I did as he directed.
+
+"Don't touch anything in the room.  It may he dangerous."
+
+Something in the tone of his voice chilled me, and I hastily
+replaced the vase, and stood by the door of the study,
+watching him search, methodically, every inch of the room--
+behind the books, in all the ornaments, in table drawers,
+in cupboards, on shelves.
+
+"That will do," he said at last.  "There is nothing here and I
+have no time to search farther."
+
+We returned to the library.
+
+"Inspector Weymouth," said my friend, "I have a particular
+reason for asking that Sir Crichton's body be removed from
+this room at once and the library locked.  Let no one be
+admitted on any pretense whatever until you hear from me."
+It spoke volumes for the mysterious credentials borne by my
+friend that the man from Scotland Yard accepted his orders
+without demur, and, after a brief chat with Mr. Burboyne,
+Smith passed briskly downstairs.  In the hall a man who looked
+like a groom out of livery was waiting.
+
+"Are you Wills?" asked Smith.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"It was you who heard a cry of some kind at the rear of the house
+about the time of Sir Crichton's death?"
+
+"Yes, sir.  I was locking the garage door, and, happening to look up
+at the window of Sir Crichton's study, I saw him jump out of his chair.
+Where he used to sit at his writing, sir, you could see his shadow
+on the blind.  Next minute I heard a call out in the lane."
+
+"What kind of call?"
+
+The man, whom the uncanny happening clearly had frightened,
+seemed puzzled for a suitable description.
+
+"A sort of wail, sir," he said at last.  "I never heard anything
+like it before, and don't want to again."
+
+"Like this?" inquired Smith, and he uttered a low, wailing cry,
+impossible to describe.  Wills perceptibly shuddered; and, indeed,
+it was an eerie sound.
+
+"The same, sir, I think," he said, "but much louder."
+
+"That will do," said Smith, and I thought I detected a note of triumph
+in his voice.  "But stay!  Take us through to the back of the house."
+
+The man bowed and led the way, so that shortly we found ourselves
+in a small, paved courtyard.  It was a perfect summer's night,
+and the deep blue vault above was jeweled with myriads of starry points.
+How impossible it seemed to reconcile that vast, eternal calm
+with the hideous passions and fiendish agencies which that night
+had loosed a soul upon the infinite.
+
+"Up yonder are the study windows, sir.  Over that wall on your left
+is the back lane from which the cry came, and beyond is Regent's Park."
+
+"Are the study windows visible from there?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir."
+
+"Who occupies the adjoining house?"
+
+"Major-General Platt-Houston, sir; but the family is out of town."
+
+"Those iron stairs are a means of communication between the domestic
+offices and the servants' quarters, I take it?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Then send someone to make my business known the Major-General's
+housekeeper; I want to examine those stairs."
+
+Singular though my friend's proceedings appeared to me, I had ceased
+to wonder at anything.  Since Nayland Smith's arrival at my rooms I
+seemed to have been moving through the fitful phases of a nightmare.
+My friend's account of how he came by the wound in his arm;
+the scene on our arrival at the house of Sir Crichton Davey;
+the secretary's story of the dying man's cry, "The red hand!";
+the hidden perils of the study; the wail in the lane--
+all were fitter incidents of delirium than of sane reality.
+So, when a white-faced butler made us known to a nervous old lady
+who proved to be the housekeeper of the next-door residence,
+I was not surprised at Smith's saying:
+
+"Lounge up and down outside, Petrie.  Everyone has cleared off now.
+It is getting late.  Keep your eyes open and be on your guard.
+I thought I had the start, but he is here before me, and, what is worse,
+he probably knows by now that I am here, too."
+
+With which he entered the house and left me out in the square,
+with leisure to think, to try to understand.
+
+The crowd which usually haunts the scene of a sensational crime
+had been cleared away, and it had been circulated that Sir Crichton
+had died from natural causes.  The intense heat having driven most
+of the residents out of town, practically I had the square to myself,
+and I gave myself up to a brief consideration of the mystery in which I
+so suddenly had found myself involved.
+
+By what agency had Sir Crichton met his death?
+Did Nayland Smith know?  I rather suspected that he did.
+What was the hidden significance of the perfumed envelope?
+Who was that mysterious personage whom Smith so evidently dreaded,
+who had attempted his life, who, presumably, had murdered
+Sir Crichton?  Sir Crichton Davey, during the time that he had held
+office in India, and during his long term of service at home,
+had earned the good will of all, British and native alike.
+Who was his secret enemy?
+
+Something touched me lightly on the shoulder.
+
+I turned, with my heart fluttering like a child's. This night's
+work had imposed a severe strain even upon my callous nerves.
+
+A girl wrapped in a hooded opera-cloak stood at my elbow,
+and, as she glanced up at me, I thought that I never had seen
+a face so seductively lovely nor of so unusual a type.
+With the skin of a perfect blonde, she had eyes and lashes
+as black as a Creole's, which, together with her full red lips,
+told me that this beautiful stranger, whose touch had so startled me,
+was not a child of our northern shores.
+
+"Forgive me," she said, speaking with an odd, pretty accent,
+and laying a slim hand, with jeweled fingers, confidingly upon
+my arm, "if I startled you.  But--is it true that Sir Crichton
+Davey has been--murdered?"
+
+I looked into her big, questioning eyes, a harsh suspicion laboring
+in my mind, but could read nothing in their mysterious depths--
+only I wondered anew at my questioner's beauty.  The grotesque
+idea momentarily possessed me that, were the bloom of her red
+lips due to art and not to nature, their kiss would leave--
+though not indelibly--just such a mark as I had seen upon the dead
+man's hand.  But I dismissed the fantastic notion as bred
+of the night's horrors, and worthy only of a mediaeval legend.
+No doubt she was some friend or acquaintance of Sir Crichton
+who lived close by.
+
+"I cannot say that he has been murdered," I replied, acting upon the latter
+supposition, and seeking to tell her what she asked as gently as possible.
+
+"But he is--Dead?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+She closed her eyes and uttered a low, moaning sound, swaying dizzily.
+Thinking she was about to swoon, I threw my arm round her shoulder
+to support her, but she smiled sadly, and pushed me gently away.
+
+"I am quite well, thank you," she said.
+
+"You are certain?  Let me walk with you until you feel quite
+sure of yourself."
+
+She shook her head, flashed a rapid glance at me with her beautiful eyes,
+and looked away in a sort of sorrowful embarrassment, for which I was entirely
+at a loss to account.  Suddenly she resumed:
+
+"I cannot let my name be mentioned in this dreadful matter, but--I think
+I have some information--for the police.  Will you give this to--
+whomever you think proper?"
+
+She handed me a sealed envelope, again met my eyes
+with one of her dazzling glances, and hurried away.
+She had gone no more than ten or twelve yards, and I still was
+standing bewildered, watching her graceful, retreating figure,
+when she turned abruptly and came back.
+
+Without looking directly at me, but alternately glancing towards a distant
+corner of the square and towards the house of Major-General Platt-Houston,
+she made the following extraordinary request:
+
+"If you would do me a very great service, for which I always would
+be grateful,"--she glanced at me with passionate intentness--"when you
+have given my message to the proper person, leave him and do not go
+near him any more to-night!"
+
+Before I could find words to reply she gathered up her cloak and ran.
+Before I could determine whether or not to follow her (for her words
+had aroused anew all my worst suspicions) she had disappeared!
+I heard the whir of a restarted motor at no great distance, and,
+in the instant that Nayland Smith came running down the steps,
+I knew that I had nodded at my post.
+
+"Smith!"  I cried as he joined me, "tell me what we must do!"
+And rapidly I acquainted him with the incident.
+
+My friend looked very grave; then a grim smile crept round his lips.
+
+"She was a big card to play," he said; "but he did not know that I
+held one to beat it."
+
+"What!  You know this girl!  Who is she?"
+
+"She is one of the finest weapons in the enemy's armory, Petrie.
+But a woman is a two-edged sword, and treacherous.
+To our great good fortune, she has formed a sudden predilection,
+characteristically Oriental, for yourself.  Oh, you may scoff, but it
+is evident.  She was employed to get this letter placed in my hands.
+Give it to me."
+
+I did so.
+
+"She has succeeded.  Smell."
+
+He held the envelope under my nose, and, with a sudden sense of nausea,
+I recognized the strange perfume.
+
+"You know what this presaged in Sir Crichton's case?
+Can you doubt any longer?  She did not want you to share
+my fate, Petrie."
+
+"Smith," I said unsteadily, "I have followed your lead blindly
+in this horrible business and have not pressed for an explanation,
+but I must insist before I go one step farther upon knowing
+what it all means."
+
+"Just a few steps farther," he rejoined; "as far as a cab.
+We are hardly safe here.  Oh, you need not fear shots or knives.
+The man whose servants are watching us now scorns to employ
+such clumsy, tell-tale weapons."
+
+Only three cabs were on the rank, and, as we entered the first,
+something hissed past my ear.  missed both Smith and me
+by a miracle, and, passing over the roof of the taxi,
+presumably fell in the enclosed garden occupying the center
+of the square.
+
+"What was that?" I cried.
+
+"Get in--quickly!"  Smith rapped back.  "It was attempt number one!
+More than that I cannot say.  Don't let the man hear.
+He has noticed nothing.  Pull up the window on your side,
+Petrie, and look out behind.  Good!  We've started."
+
+The cab moved off with a metallic jerk, and I turned and looked
+back through the little window in the rear.
+
+"Someone has got into another cab.  It is following ours, I think."
+
+Nayland Smith lay back and laughed unmirthfully.
+
+"Petrie," he said, "if I escape alive from this business I shall
+know that I bear a charmed life."
+
+I made no reply, as he pulled out the dilapidated pouch and filled his pipe.
+
+"You have asked me to explain matters," he continued, "and I
+will do so to the best of my ability.  You no doubt wonder why
+a servant of the British Government, lately stationed in Burma,
+suddenly appears in London, in the character of a detective.
+I am here, Petrie--and I bear credentials from the very
+highest sources--because, quite by accident, I came upon a clew.
+Following it up, in the ordinary course of routine, I obtained
+evidence of the existence and malignant activity of a certain man.
+At the present stage of the case I should not be justified
+in terming him the emissary of an Eastern Power, but I may say
+that representations are shortly to be made to that Power's
+ambassador in London."
+
+He paused and glanced back towards the pursuing cab.
+
+"There is little to fear until we arrive home," he said calmly.
+"Afterwards there is much.  To continue:  This man, whether a fanatic
+or a duly appointed agent, is, unquestionably, the most malign
+and formidable personality existing in the known world today.
+He is a linguist who speaks with almost equal facility in any
+of the civilized languages, and in most of the barbaric.
+He is an adept in all the arts and sciences which a great
+university could teach him.  He also is an adept in certain obscure
+arts and sciences which no university of to-day can teach.
+He has the brains of any three men of genius.  Petrie, he is
+a mental giant."
+
+"You amaze me!" I said.
+
+"As to his mission among men.  Why did M. Jules Furneaux fall
+dead in a Paris opera house?  Because of heart failure?
+No!  Because his last speech had shown that he held the key
+to the secret of Tongking.  What became of the Grand
+Duke Stanislaus?  Elopement?  Suicide?  Nothing of the kind.
+He alone was fully alive to Russia's growing peril.
+He alone knew the truth about Mongolia.  Why was Sir Crichton
+Davey murdered?  Because, had the work he was engaged upon ever
+seen the light it would have shown him to be the only living
+Englishman who understood the importance of the Tibetan frontiers.
+I say to you solemnly, Petrie, that these are but a few.
+Is there a man who would arouse the West to a sense of
+the awakening of the East, who would teach the deaf to hear,
+the blind to see, that the millions only await their leader?
+He will die.  And this is only one phase of the devilish campaign.
+The others I can merely surmise."
+
+"But, Smith, this is almost incredible!  What perverted genius
+controls this awful secret movement?"
+
+"Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a
+brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull,
+and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all
+the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one
+giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present,
+with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government--
+which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence.
+Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu,
+the yellow peril incarnate in one man."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+I SANK into an arm-chair in my rooms and gulped down a strong
+peg of brandy.
+
+"We have been followed here," I said.  "Why did you make no attempt
+to throw the pursuers off the track, to have them intercepted?"
+
+Smith laughed.
+
+"Useless, in the first place.  Wherever we went, HE
+would find us.  And of what use to arrest his creatures?
+We could prove nothing against them.  Further, it is evident
+that an attempt is to be made upon my life to-night--
+and by the same means that proved so successful in the case
+of poor Sir Crichton."
+
+His square jaw grew truculently prominent, and he leapt stormily to his feet,
+shaking his clenched fists towards the window.
+
+"The villain!" he cried.  "The fiendishly clever villain!
+I suspected that Sir Crichton was next, and I was right.
+But I came too late, Petrie!  That hits me hard, old man.
+To think that I knew and yet failed to save him!"
+
+He resumed his seat, smoking hard.
+
+"Fu-Manchu has made the blunder common to all men of unusual genius,"
+he said.  "He has underrated his adversary.  He has not given
+me credit for perceiving the meaning of the scented messages.
+He has thrown away one powerful weapon--to get such a message
+into my hands--and he thinks that once safe within doors,
+I shall sleep, unsuspecting, and die as Sir Crichton died.
+But without the indiscretion of your charming friend, I should
+have known what to expect when I receive her `information'--
+which by the way, consists of a blank sheet of paper."
+
+"Smith," I broke in, "who is she?"
+
+"She is either Fu-Manchu's daughter, his wife, or his slave.
+I am inclined to believe the last, for she has no will but
+his will, except"--with a quizzical glance--"in a certain instance."
+
+"How can you jest with some awful thing--Heaven knows what--
+hanging over your head?  What is the meaning of these perfumed envelopes?
+How did Sir Crichton die?"
+
+"He died of the Zayat Kiss.  Ask me what that is and I reply
+'I do not know.'  The zayats are the Burmese caravanserais,
+or rest-houses. Along a certain route--upon which I set eyes,
+for the first and only time, upon Dr. Fu-Manchu--travelers who use
+them sometimes die as Sir Crichton died, with nothing to show
+the cause of death but a little mark upon the neck, face, or limb,
+which has earned, in those parts, the title of the `Zayat Kiss.'
+The rest-houses along that route are shunned now.
+I have my theory and I hope to prove it to-night, if I live.
+It will be one more broken weapon in his fiendish armory,
+and it is thus, and thus only, that I can hope to crush him.
+This was my principal reason for not enlightening Dr. Cleeve.
+Even walls have ears where Fu-Manchu is concerned, so I feigned
+ignorance of the meaning of the mark, knowing that he would be
+almost certain to employ the same methods upon some other victim.
+I wanted an opportunity to study the Zayat Kiss in operation,
+and I shall have one."
+
+"But the scented envelopes?"
+
+"In the swampy forests of the district I have referred to a rare
+species of orchid, almost green, and with a peculiar scent,
+is sometimes met with.  I recognized the heavy perfume at once.
+I take it that the thing which kills the traveler is attracted
+by this orchid.  You will notice that the perfume clings to whatever
+it touches.  I doubt if it can be washed off in the ordinary way.
+After at least one unsuccessful attempt to kill Sir Crichton--
+you recall that he thought there was something concealed in his study
+on a previous occasion?--Fu-Manchu hit upon the perfumed envelopes.
+He may have a supply of these green orchids in his possession--
+possibly to feed the creature."
+
+"What creature?  How could any kind of creature have got into Sir
+Crichton's room tonight?"
+
+"You no doubt observed that I examined the grate of the study.
+I found a fair quantity of fallen soot.  I at once assumed, since it
+appeared to be the only means of entrance, that something has been
+dropped down; and I took it for granted that the thing, whatever it was,
+must still be concealed either in the study or in the library.
+But when I had obtained the evidence of the groom, Wills, I perceived
+that the cry from the lane or from the park was a signal.
+I noted that the movements of anyone seated at the study table
+were visible, in shadow, on the blind, and that the study occupied
+the corner of a two-storied wing and, therefore, had a short chimney.
+What did the signal mean?  That Sir Crichton had leaped up from
+his chair, and either had received the Zayat Kiss or had seen the thing
+which someone on the roof had lowered down the straight chimney.
+It was the signal to withdraw that deadly thing.  By means of
+the iron stairway at the rear of Major-General Platt-Houston's, I
+quite easily, gained access to the roof above Sir Crichton's study--
+and I found this."
+
+Out from his pocket Nayland Smith drew a tangled piece of silk,
+mixed up with which were a brass ring and a number of unusually
+large-sized split-shot, nipped on in the manner usual on a fishing-line.
+
+"My theory proven," he resumed.  "Not anticipating a search on the roof,
+they had been careless.  This was to weight the line and to prevent
+the creature clinging to the walls of the chimney.  Directly it had dropped
+in the grate, however, by means of this ring I assume that the weighted
+line was withdrawn, and the thing was only held by one slender thread,
+which sufficed, though, to draw it back again when it had done its work.
+lt might have got tangled, of course, but they reckoned on its making
+straight up the carved leg of the writing-table for the prepared envelope.
+From there to the hand of Sir Crichton--which, from having touched
+the envelope, would also be scented with the perfume--was a certain move."
+
+"My God!  How horrible!" I exclaimed, and glanced apprehensively into
+the dusky shadows of the room.  "What is your theory respecting this creature--
+what shape, what color--?"
+
+"It is something that moves rapidly and silently.  I will
+venture no more at present, but I think it works in the dark.
+The study was dark, remember, save for the bright patch beneath
+the reading-lamp. I have observed that the rear of this
+house is ivy-covered right up to and above your bedroom.
+Let us make ostentatious preparations to retire, and I think
+we may rely upon Fu-Manchu's servants to attempt my removal,
+at any rate--if not yours."
+
+"But, my dear fellow, it is a climb of thirty-five feet at the very least."
+
+"You remember the cry in the back lane?  It suggested something to me,
+and I tested my idea--successfully.  It was the cry of a dacoit.
+Oh, dacoity, though quiescent, is by no means extinct.  Fu-Manchu has
+dacoits in his train, and probably it is one who operates the Zayat Kiss,
+since it was a dacoit who watched the window of the study this evening.
+To such a man an ivy-covered wall is a grand staircase."
+
+The horrible events that followed are punctuated, in my mind,
+by the striking of a distant clock.  It is singular how
+trivialities thus assert themselves in moments of high tension.
+I will proceed, then, by these punctuations, to the coming
+of the horror that it was written we should encounter.
+
+The clock across the common struck two.
+
+Having removed all traces of the scent of the orchid from our hands with
+a solution of ammonia Smith and I had followed the programme laid down.
+It was an easy matter to reach the rear of the house, by simply climbing
+a fence, and we did not doubt that seeing the light go out in the front,
+our unseen watcher would proceed to the back.
+
+The room was a large one, and we had made up my camp-bed at one end,
+stuffing odds and ends under the clothes to lend the appearance of a sleeper,
+which device we also had adopted in the case of the larger bed.
+The perfumed envelope lay upon a little coffee table in the center
+of the floor, and Smith, with an electric pocket lamp, a revolver,
+and a brassey beside him, sat on cushions in the shadow of the wardrobe.
+I occupied a post between the windows.
+
+No unusual sound, so far, had disturbed the stillness of the night.
+Save for the muffled throb of the rare all-night cars passing
+the front of the house, our vigil had been a silent one.
+The full moon bad painted about the floor weird shadows of
+the clustering ivy, spreading the design gradually from the door,
+across the room, past the little table where the envelope lay,
+and finally to the foot of the bed.
+
+The distant clock struck a quarter-past two.
+
+A slight breeze stirred the ivy, and a new shadow added itself
+to the extreme edge of the moon's design.
+
+Something rose, inch by inch, above the sill of the westerly window.
+I could see only its shadow, but a sharp, sibilant breath from Smith
+told me that he, from his post, could see the cause of the shadow.
+
+Every nerve in my body seemed to be strung tensely.
+I was icy cold, expectant, and prepared for whatever horror
+was upon us.
+
+The shadow became stationary.  The dacoit was studying the interior
+of the room.
+
+Then it suddenly lengthened, and, craning my head to the left,
+I saw a lithe, black-clad form, surmounted by a Yellow face,
+sketchy in the moonlight, pressed against the window-panes!
+
+One thin, brown hand appeared over the edge of the lowered sash,
+which it grasped--and then another.  The man made absolutely
+no sound whatever.  The second hand disappeared--and reappeared.
+It held a small, square box.  There was a very faint CLICK.
+
+The dacoit swung himself below the window with the agility
+of an ape, as, with a dull, muffled thud, SOMETHING dropped
+upon the carpet!
+
+"Stand still, for your life!" came Smith's voice, high-pitched.
+
+A beam of white leaped out across the room and played full upon
+the coffee-table in the center.
+
+Prepared as I was for something horrible, I know that I paled at sight
+of the thing that was running round the edge of the envelope.
+
+It was an insect, full six inches long, and of a vivid, venomous, red color!
+It had something of the appearance of a great ant, with its long, quivering
+antennae and its febrile, horrible vitality; but it was proportionately
+longer of body and smaller of head, and had numberless rapidly moving legs.
+In short, it was a giant centipede, apparently of the scolopendra group,
+but of a form quite new to me.
+
+These things I realized in one breathless instant; in the next--
+Smith had dashed the thing's poisonous life out with one straight,
+true blow of the golf club!
+
+I leaped to the window and threw it widely open, feeling a silk
+thread brush my hand as I did so.  A black shape was dropping,
+with incredible agility from branch to branch of the ivy,
+and, without once offering a mark for a revolver-shot, it
+merged into the shadows beneath the trees of the garden.
+As I turned and switched on the light Nayland Smith dropped
+limply into a chair, leaning his head upon his hands.
+Even that grim courage had been tried sorely.
+
+"Never mind the dacoit, Petrie," he said.  "Nemesis will know where
+to find him.  We know now what causes the mark of the Zayat Kiss.
+Therefore science is richer for our first brush with the enemy,
+and the enemy is poorer--unless he has any more unclassified centipedes.
+I understand now something that has been puzzling me since I heard of it--
+Sir Crichton's stifled cry.  When we remember that he was almost past speech,
+it is reasonable to suppose that his cry was not `The red hand!'
+but `The red ANT!  Petrie, to think that I failed, by less than an hour,
+to save him from such an end!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+"THE body of a lascar, dressed in the manner usual on the P. & O. boats,
+was recovered from the Thames off Tilbury by the river police at six
+A.M. this morning.  It is supposed that the man met with an accident
+in leaving his ship."
+
+Nayland Smith passed me the evening paper and pointed to the above paragraph.
+
+"For `lascar' read `dacoit,'" he said.  "Our visitor, who came by way
+of the ivy, fortunately for us, failed to follow his instructions.
+Also, he lost the centipede and left a clew behind him.
+Dr. Fu-Manchu does not overlook such lapses."
+
+It was a sidelight upon the character of the awful being with whom we
+had to deal.  My very soul recoiled from bare consideration of the fate
+that would be ours if ever we fell into his hands.
+
+The telephone bell rang.  I went out and found that Inspector
+Weymouth of New Scotland Yard had called us up.
+
+"Will Mr. Nayland Smith please come to the Wapping River Police
+Station at once," was the message.
+
+Peaceful interludes were few enough throughout that wild pursuit.
+
+"It is certainly something important," said my friend; "and, if
+Fu-Manchu is at the bottom of it--as we must presume him to be--
+probably something ghastly."
+
+A brief survey of the time-tables showed us that there were no trains
+to serve our haste.  We accordingly chartered a cab and proceeded east.
+
+Smith, throughout the journey, talked entertainingly about his work in Burma.
+Of intent, I think, he avoided any reference to the circumstances which first
+had brought him in contact with the sinister genius of the Yellow Movement.
+His talk was rather of the sunshine of the East than of its shadows.
+
+But the drive concluded--and all too soon.  In a silence which neither
+of us seemed disposed to break, we entered the police depot, and followed
+an officer who received us into the room where Weymouth waited.
+
+The inspector greeted us briefly, nodding toward the table.
+
+"Poor Cadby, the most promising lad at the Yard," he said;
+and his usually gruff voice had softened strangely.
+
+Smith struck his right fist into the palm of his left hand and swore
+under his breath, striding up and down the neat little room.
+No one spoke for a moment, and in the silence I could hear the whispering
+of the Thames outside--of the Thames which had so many strange secrets
+to tell, and now was burdened with another.
+
+The body lay prone upon the deal table--this latest of the river's dead--
+dressed in rough sailor garb, and, to all outward seeming, a seaman of
+nondescript nationality--such as is no stranger in Wapping and Shadwell.
+His dark, curly hair clung clammily about the brown forehead;
+his skin was stained, they told me.  He wore a gold ring in one ear,
+and three fingers of the left hand were missing.
+
+"It was almost the same with Mason."  The river police inspector
+was speaking.  "A week ago, on a Wednesday, he went off in his own
+time on some funny business down St. George's way--and Thursday
+night the ten-o'clock boat got the grapnel on him off Hanover Hole.
+His first two fingers on the right hand were clean gone, and his left
+hand was mutilated frightfully."
+
+He paused and glanced at Smith.
+
+"That lascar, too," he continued, "that you came down to see, sir;
+you remember his hands?"
+
+Smith nodded.
+
+"He was not a lascar," he said shortly.  "He was a dacoit."
+
+Silence fell again.
+
+I turned to the array of objects lying on the table--those which
+had been found in Cadby's clothing.  None of them were noteworthy,
+except that which had been found thrust into the loose neck of his shirt.
+This last it was which had led the police to send for Nayland Smith,
+for it constituted the first clew which had come to light pointing
+to the authors of these mysterious tragedies.
+
+It was a Chinese pigtail.  That alone was sufficiently remarkable;
+but it was rendered more so by the fact that the plaited queue
+was a false one being attached to a most ingenious bald wig.
+
+"You're sure it wasn't part of a Chinese make-up?" questioned Weymouth,
+his eye on the strange relic.  "Cadby was clever at disguise."
+
+Smith snatched the wig from my hands with a certain irritation,
+and tried to fit it on the dead detective.
+
+"Too small by inches!" he jerked.  "And look how it's padded in the crown.
+This thing was made for a most abnormal head."
+
+He threw it down, and fell to pacing the room again.
+
+"Where did you find him--exactly?" he asked.
+
+"Limehouse Reach--under Commercial Dock Pier--exactly an hour ago."
+
+"And you last saw him at eight o'clock last night?"--to Weymouth.
+
+"Eight to a quarter past."
+
+"You think he has been dead nearly twenty-four hours, Petrie?"
+
+"Roughly, twenty-four hours," I replied.
+
+"Then, we know that he was on the track of the Fu-Manchu group,
+that he followed up some clew which led him to the neighborhood
+of old Ratcliff Highway, and that he died the same night.
+You are sure that is where he was going?"
+
+"Yes," said Weymouth; "He was jealous of giving anything away,
+poor chap; it meant a big lift for him if he pulled the case off.
+But he gave me to understand that he expected to spend last night
+in that district.  He left the Yard about eight, as I've said,
+to go to his rooms, and dress for the job."
+
+"Did he keep any record of his cases?"
+
+"Of course!  He was most particular.  Cadby was a man
+with ambitions, sir!  You'll want to see his book.
+Wait while I get his address; it's somewhere in Brixton."
+
+He went to the telephone, and Inspector Ryman covered up the dead man's face.
+
+Nayland Smith was palpably excited.
+
+"He almost succeeded where we have failed, Petrie," he said.
+"There is no doubt in my mind that he was hot on the track
+of Fu-Manchu!  Poor Mason had probably blundered on the scent,
+too, and he met with a similar fate.  Without other evidence,
+the fact that they both died in the same way as the dacoit would
+be conclusive, for we know that Fu-Manchu killed the dacoit!"
+
+"What is the meaning of the mutilated hands, Smith?"
+
+"God knows!  Cadby's death was from drowning, you say?"
+
+"There are no other marks of violence."
+
+"But he was a very strong swimmer, Doctor," interrupted Inspector Ryman.
+"Why, he pulled off the quarter-mile championship at the Crystal Palace
+last year!  Cadby wasn't a man easy to drown.  And as for Mason,
+he was an R.N.R., and like a fish in the water!"
+
+Smith shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
+
+"Let us hope that one day we shall know how they died,"
+he said simply.
+
+Weymouth returned from the telephone.
+
+"The address is No.--Cold Harbor Lane," he reported.
+"I shall not be able to come along, but you can't
+miss it; it's close by the Brixton Police Station.
+There's no family, fortunately; he was quite alone in the world.
+His case-book isn't in the American desk, which you'll find in
+his sitting-room; it's in the cupboard in the corner--top shelf.
+Here are his keys, all intact.  I think this is the cupboard key."
+
+Smith nodded.
+
+"Come on, Petrie," he said.  "We haven't a second to waste."
+
+Our cab was waiting, and in a few seconds we were speeding along Wapping
+High Street.  We had gone no more than a few hundred yards, I think,
+when Smith suddenly slapped his open hand down on his knee.
+
+"That pigtail!" he cried.  "I have left it behind!
+We must have it, Petrie!  Stop!  Stop!"
+
+The cab was pulled up, and Smith alighted.
+
+"Don't wait for me," he directed hurriedly.  "Here, take Weymouth's card.
+Remember where he said the book was?  It's all we want.  Come straight
+on to Scotland Yard and meet me there."
+
+"But Smith," I protested, "a few minutes can make no difference!"
+
+"Can't it!" he snapped.  "Do you suppose Fu-Manchu is going to leave
+evidence like that lying about?  It's a thousand to one he has it already,
+but there is just a bare chance."
+
+It was a new aspect of the situation and one that afforded
+no room for comment; and so lost in thought did I become
+that the cab was outside the house for which I was bound ere
+I realized that we had quitted the purlieus of Wapping.
+Yet I had had leisure to review the whole troop of events which had
+crowded my life since the return of Nayland Smith from Burma.
+Mentally, I had looked again upon the dead Sir Crichton Davey,
+and with Smith had waited in the dark for the dreadful thing
+that had killed him.  Now, with those remorseless memories
+jostling in my mind, I was entering the house of Fu-Manchu's
+last victim, and the shadow of that giant evil seemed to be
+upon it like a palpable cloud.
+
+Cadby's old landlady greeted me with a queer mixture of fear
+and embarrassment in her manner.
+
+"I am Dr. Petrie," I said, "and I regret that I bring bad news
+respecting Mr. Cadby."
+
+"Oh, sir!" she cried.  "Don't tell me that anything has happened to him!"
+And divining something of the mission on which I was come,
+for such sad duty often falls to the lot of the medical man:
+"Oh, the poor, brave lad!"
+
+Indeed, I respected the dead man's memory more than ever from that hour,
+since the sorrow of the worthy old soul was quite pathetic, and spoke
+eloquently for the unhappy cause of it.
+
+"There was a terrible wailing at the back of the house last night,
+Doctor, and I heard it again to-night, a second before you knocked.
+Poor lad!  It was the same when his mother died."
+
+At the moment I paid little attention to her words, for such
+beliefs are common, unfortunately; but when she was sufficiently
+composed I went on to explain what I thought necessary.
+And now the old lady's embarrassment took precedence of her sorrow,
+and presently the truth came out:
+
+"There's a--young lady--in his rooms, sir."
+
+I started.  This might mean little or might mean much.
+
+"She came and waited for him last night, Doctor--from ten until half-past--
+and this morning again.  She came the third time about an hour ago,
+and has been upstairs since."
+
+"Do you know her, Mrs. Dolan?"
+
+Mrs. Dolan grew embarrassed again.
+
+"Well, Doctor," she said, wiping her eyes the while, "I DO.
+And God knows he was a good lad, and I like a mother to him;
+but she is not the girl I should have liked a son of mine
+to take up with."
+
+At any other time, this would have been amusing; now, it might be serious.
+Mrs. Dolan's account of the wailing became suddenly significant, for perhaps
+it meant that one of Fu-Manchu's dacoit followers was watching the house,
+to give warning of any stranger's approach!  Warning to whom?  It was unlikely
+that I should forget the dark eyes of another of Fu-Manchu's servants.
+Was that lure of men even now in the house, completing her evil work?
+
+"I should never have allowed her in his rooms--" began Mrs. Dolan again.
+Then there was an interruption.
+
+A soft rustling retched my ears--intimately feminine.
+The girl was stealing down!
+
+I leaped out into the hall, and she turned and fled blindly before me--
+back up the stairs!  Taking three steps at a time, I followed her,
+bounded into the room above almost at her heels, and stood with my back
+to the door.
+
+She cowered against the desk by the window, a slim figure in a
+clinging silk gown, which alone explained Mrs. Dolan's distrust.
+The gaslight was turned very low, and her hat shadowed her face,
+but could not hide its startling, beauty, could not mar the brilliancy
+of the skin, nor dim the wonderful eyes of this modern Delilah.
+For it was she!
+
+"So I came in time" I said grimly, and turned the key in the lock.
+
+"Oh!" she panted at that, and stood facing me, leaning back
+with her jewel-laden hands clutching the desk edge.
+
+"Give me whatever you have removed from here," I said sternly,
+"and then prepare to accompany me."
+
+She took a step forward, her eyes wide with fear, her lips parted.
+
+"I have taken nothing," she said.  her breast was heaving tumultuously.
+"Oh, let me go!  Please, let me go!"  And impulsively she threw
+herself forward, pressing clasped hands against my shoulder and looking
+up into my face with passionate, pleading eyes.
+
+It is with some shame that I confess how her charm enveloped me like a
+magic cloud.  Unfamiliar with the complex Oriental temperament, I had
+laughed at Nayland Smith when he had spoken of this girl's infatuation.
+"Love in the East," he had said, "is like the conjurer's mango-tree;
+it is born, grows and flowers at the touch of a hand."
+Now, in those pleading eyes I read confirmation of his words.
+Her clothes or her hair exhaled a faint perfume.  Like all
+Fu-Manchu's servants, she was perfectly chosen for her peculiar duties.
+Her beauty was wholly intoxicating.
+
+But I thrust her away.
+
+"You have no claim to mercy," I said.  "Do not count upon any.
+What have you taken from here?"
+
+She grasped the lapels of my coat.
+
+"I will tell you all I can--all I dare," she panted eagerly, fearfully.
+"I should know how to deal with your friend, but with you I am lost!
+If you could only understand you would not be so cruel."  Her slight accent
+added charm to the musical voice.  "I am not free, as your English women are.
+What I do I must do, for it is the will of my master, and I am only
+a slave.  Ah, you are not a man if you can give me to the police.
+You have no heart if you can forget that I tried to save you once."
+
+I had feared that plea, for, in her own Oriental fashion, she certainly
+had tried to save me from a deadly peril once--at the expense of my friend.
+But I had feared the plea, for I did not know how to meet it.
+How could I give her up, perhaps to stand her trial for murder?
+And now I fell silent, and she saw why I was silent.
+
+"I may deserve no mercy; I may be even as bad as you think;
+but what have YOU to do with the police?
+It is not your work to hound a woman to death.  Could you
+ever look another woman in the eyes--one that you loved,
+and know that she trusted you--if you had done such a thing?
+Ah, I have no friend in all the world, or I should not be here.
+Do not be my enemy, my judge, and make me worse than I am;
+be my friend, and save me--from HIM." The tremulous
+lips were close to mine, her breath fanned my cheek.
+"Have mercy on me."
+
+At that moment I honestly would have given half of my worldly
+possessions to have been spared the decision which I knew I must
+come to.  After all, what proof had I that she was a willing
+accomplice of Dr. Fu-Manchu?  Furthermore, she was an Oriental,
+and her code must necessarily be different from mine.
+Irreconcilable as the thing may be with Western ideas, Nayland Smith
+had really told me that he believed the girl to be a slave.
+Then there remained that other reason why I loathed the idea
+of becoming her captor.  It was almost tantamount to betrayal!
+Must I soil my hands with such work?
+
+Thus--I suppose--her seductive beauty argued against my sense of right.
+The jeweled fingers grasped my shoulders nervously, and her slim body
+quivered against mine as she watched me, with all her soul in her eyes,
+in an abandonment of pleading despair.  Then I remembered the fate
+of the man in whose room we stood.
+
+"You lured Cadby to his death," I said, and shook her off.
+
+"No, no!" she cried wildly, clutching at me.  "No, I swear by the holy name
+I did not!  I did not!  I watched him, spied upon him--yes!  But, listen:
+it was because he would not be warned that he met his death.
+I could not save him!  Ah, I am not so bad as that.  I will tell you.
+I have taken his notebook and torn out the last pages and burnt them.
+Look!  in the grate.  The book was too big to steal away.
+I came twice and could not find it.  There, will you let me go?"
+
+"If you will tell me where and how to seize Dr. Fu-Manchu--yes."
+
+Her hands dropped and she took a backward step.
+A new terror was to be read in her face.
+
+"I dare not!  I dare not!"
+
+"Then you would--if you dared?"
+
+She was watching me intently.
+
+"Not if YOU would go to find him," she said.
+
+And, with all that I thought her to be, the stern servant
+of justice that I would have had myself, I felt the hot
+blood leap to my cheek at all which the words implied.
+She grasped my arm.
+
+Could you hide me from him if I came to you, and told you all I know?
+
+"The authorities--"
+
+"Ah!"  Her expression changed.  "They can put me on the rack if they choose,
+but never one word would I speak--never one little word."
+
+She threw up her head scornfully.  Then the proud glance softened again.
+
+"But I will speak for you."
+
+Closer she came, and closer, until she could whisper in my ear.
+
+"Hide me from your police, from HIM, from everybody,
+and I will no longer be his slave."
+
+My heart was beating with painful rapidity.  I had not counted on this
+warring with a woman; moreover, it was harder than I could have dreamt of.
+For some time I had been aware that by the charm of her personality
+and the art of her pleading she bad brought me down from my judgment seat--
+had made it all but impossible for me to give her up to justice.
+Now, I was disarmed--but in a quandary.  What should I do?
+What COULD I do?  I turned away from her and walked to the hearth,
+in which some paper ash lay and yet emitted a faint smell.
+
+Not more than ten seconds elapsed, I am confident, from the time
+that I stepped across the room until I glanced back.
+But she had gone!
+
+As I leapt to the door the key turned gently from the outside.
+
+"Ma 'alesh!" came her soft whisper; "but I am afraid to
+trust you--yet.  Be comforted, for there is one near who would
+have killed you had I wished it.  Remember, I will come to you
+whenever you will take me and hide me."
+
+Light footsteps pattered down the stairs.  I heard a stifled
+cry from Mrs. Dolan as the mysterious visitor ran past her.
+The front door opened and closed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+"Shen-Yan's is a dope-shop in one of the burrows off the old Ratcliff Highway,"
+said Inspector Weymouth.
+
+"`Singapore Charlie's,' they call it.  It's a center for some of
+the Chinese societies, I believe, but all sorts of opium-smokers
+use it.  There have never been any complaints that I know of.
+I don't understand this."
+
+We stood in his room at New Scotland Yard, bending over a sheet
+of foolscap upon which were arranged some burned fragments
+from poor Cadby's grate, for so hurriedly had the girl done
+her work that combustion had not been complete.
+
+"What do we make of this?" said Smith.  "`. . .Hunchback. . .lascar
+went up. . .unlike others. . .not return. . .till Shen-Yan'
+(there is no doubt about the name, I think) `turned me out. . .
+booming sound. . .lascar in. . .mortuary I could ident. . .
+not for days, or suspici. . .Tuesday night in a different make
+. . .snatch. . .pigtail. . .'"
+
+"The pigtail again!" rapped Weymouth.
+
+"She evidently burned the torn-out pages all together,"
+continued Smith.  "They lay flat, and this was in the middle.
+I see the band of retributive justice in that, Inspector.  Now we
+have a reference to a hunchback, and what follows amounts to this:
+A lascar (amongst several other persons) went up somewhere--
+presumably upstairs--at Shen-Yan's, and did not come down again.
+Cadby, who was there disguised, noted a booming sound.
+Later, he identified the lascar in some mortuary.
+We have no means of fixing the date of this visit to Shen-Yan's,
+but I feel inclined to put down the `lascar' as the dacoit
+who was murdered by Fu-Manchu!  It is sheer supposition, however.
+But that Cadby meant to pay another visit to the place in a
+different `make-up' or disguise, is evident, and that the Tuesday
+night proposed was last night is a reasonable deduction.
+The reference to a pigtail is principally interesting because
+of what was found on Cadby's body."
+
+Inspector Weymouth nodded affirmatively, and Smith glanced at his watch.
+
+"Exactly ten-twenty-three," he said.  "I will trouble you, Inspector,
+for the freedom of your fancy wardrobe.  There is time to spend an hour
+in the company of Shen-Yan's opium friends."
+
+Weymouth raised his eyebrows.
+
+"It might be risky.  What about an official visit?"
+
+Nayland Smith laughed.
+
+"Worse than useless!  By your own showing, the place is open to inspection.
+No; guile against guile!  We are dealing with a Chinaman, with the incarnate
+essence of Eastern subtlety, with the most stupendous genius that the modern
+Orient has produced."
+
+"I don't believe in disguises," said Weymouth, with a certain truculence.
+"It's mostly played out, that game, and generally leads to failure.
+Still, if you're determined, sir, there's an end of it.  Foster will make
+your face up.  What disguise do you propose to adopt?"
+
+"A sort of Dago seaman, I think; something like poor Cadby.
+I can rely on my knowledge of the brutes, if I am sure
+of my disguise."
+
+"You are forgetting me, Smith," I said.
+
+He turned to me quickly.
+
+"Petrie," he replied, "it is MY business, unfortunately, but it
+is no sort of hobby."
+
+"You mean that you can no longer rely upon me?"
+I said angrily.
+
+Smith grasped my hand, and met my rather frigid stare with a look
+of real concern on his gaunt, bronzed face.
+
+"My dear old chap," he answered, "that was really unkind.
+You know that I meant something totally different."
+
+"It's all right, Smith;" I said, immediately ashamed of my choler, and wrung
+his hand heartily.  "I can pretend to smoke opium as well as another.
+I shall be going, too, Inspector."
+
+As a result of this little passage of words, some twenty minutes
+later two dangerous-looking seafaring ruffians entered a waiting cab,
+accompanied by Inspector Weymouth, and were driven off into
+the wilderness of London's night.  In this theatrical business
+there was, to my mind, something ridiculous--almost childish--
+and I could have laughed heartily had it not been that grim
+tragedy lurked so near to farce.
+
+The mere recollection that somewhere at our journey's end Fu-Manchu
+awaited us was sufficient to sober my reflections--Fu-Manchu, who,
+with all the powers represented by Nayland Smith pitted against him,
+pursued his dark schemes triumphantly, and lurked in hiding within
+this very area which was so sedulously patrolled--Fu-Manchu, whom
+I had never seen, but whose name stood for horrors indefinable!
+Perhaps I was destined to meet the terrible Chinese doctor to-night.
+
+I ceased to pursue a train of thought which promised to lead to morbid depths,
+and directed my attention to what Smith was saying.
+
+"We will drop down from Wapping and reconnoiter, as you say the place
+is close to the riverside.  Then you can put us ashore somewhere below.
+Ryman can keep the launch close to the back of the premises, and your fellows
+will be hanging about near the front, near enough to hear the whistle."
+
+"Yes," assented Weymouth; "I've arranged for that.
+If you are suspected, you shall give the alarm?"
+
+"I don't know," said Smith thoughtfully.  "Even in that event
+I might wait awhile."
+
+"Don't wait too long," advised the Inspector.  "We shouldn't be
+much wiser if your next appearance was on the end of a grapnel,
+somewhere down Greenwich Reach, with half your fingers missing."
+
+The cab pulled up outside the river police depot, and Smith and I
+entered without delay, four shabby-looking fellows who had been
+seated in the office springing up to salute the Inspector,
+who followed us in.
+
+"Guthrie and Lisle," he said briskly, "get along and find a dark corner
+which commands the door of Singapore Charlie's off the old Highway.
+You look the dirtiest of the troupe, Guthrie; you might drop asleep
+on the pavement, and Lisle can argue with you about getting home.
+Don't move till you hear the whistle inside or have my orders,
+and note everybody that goes in and comes out.  You other two belong
+to this division?"
+
+The C.I.D. men having departed, the remaining pair saluted again.
+
+"Well, you're on special duty to-night. You've been prompt,
+but don't stick your chests out so much.  Do you know of a back
+way to Shen-Yan's?"
+
+The men looked at one another, and both shook their heads.
+
+"There's an empty shop nearly opposite, sir," replied one of them.
+"I know a broken window at the back where we could climb in.
+Then we could get through to the front and watch from there."
+
+"Good!" cried the Inspector.  "See you are not spotted, though; and if you
+hear the whistle, don't mind doing a bit of damage, but be inside Shen-Yan's
+like lightning.  Otherwise, wait for orders."
+
+Inspector Ryman came in, glancing at the clock.
+
+"Launch is waiting," he said.
+
+"Right," replied Smith thoughtfully.  "I am half afraid, though, that the
+recent alarms may have scared our quarry--your man, Mason, and then Cadby.
+Against which we have that, so far as he is likely to know, there has
+been no clew pointing to this opium den.  Remember, he thinks Cadby's
+notes are destroyed."
+
+"The whole business is an utter mystery to me," confessed Ryman.
+"I'm told that there's some dangerous Chinese devil hiding
+somewhere in London, and that you expect to find him at
+Shen-Yan's. Supposing he uses that place, which is possible,
+how do you know he's there to-night?"
+
+"I don't," said Smith; "but it is the first clew we have had
+pointing to one of his haunts, and time means precious lives
+where Dr. Fu-Manchu is concerned."
+
+"Who is he, sir, exactly, this Dr. Fu-Manchu?"
+
+"I have only the vaguest idea, Inspector; but he is no ordinary criminal.
+He is the greatest genius which the powers of evil have put on earth
+for centuries.  He has the backing of a political group whose wealth is
+enormous, and his mission in Europe is to PAVE THE WAY!  Do you follow me?
+He is the advance-agent of a movement so epoch-making that not one Britisher,
+and not one American, in fifty thousand has ever dreamed of it."
+
+Ryman stared, but made no reply, and we went out,
+passing down to the breakwater and boarding the waiting launch.
+With her crew of three, the party numbered seven that swung
+out into the Pool, and, clearing the pier, drew in again
+and hugged the murky shore.
+
+The night had been clear enough hitherto, but now came scudding rainbanks
+to curtain the crescent moon, and anon to unveil her again and show
+the muddy swirls about us.  The view was not extensive from the launch.
+Sometimes a deepening of the near shadows would tell of a moored barge,
+or lights high above our heads mark the deck of a large vessel.
+In the floods of moonlight gaunt shapes towered above; in the ensuing
+darkness only the oily glitter of the tide occupied the foreground
+of the night-piece.
+
+The Surrey shore was a broken wall of blackness, patched with
+lights about which moved hazy suggestions of human activity.
+The bank we were following offered a prospect even more gloomy--
+a dense, dark mass, amid which, sometimes, mysterious half-tones
+told of a dock gate, or sudden high lights leapt flaring
+to the eye.
+
+Then, out of the mystery ahead, a green light grew and crept down upon us.
+A giant shape loomed up, and frowned crushingly upon the little craft.
+A blaze of light, the jangle of a bell, and it was past.  We were dancing
+in the wash of one of the Scotch steamers, and the murk had fallen again.
+
+Discords of remote activity rose above the more intimate
+throbbing of our screw, and we seemed a pigmy company
+floating past the workshops of Brobdingnagian toilers.
+The chill of the near water communicated itself to me, and I
+felt the protection of my shabby garments inadequate against it.
+
+Far over on the Surrey shore a blue light--vaporous, mysterious--
+flicked translucent tongues against the night's curtain.
+It was a weird, elusive flame, leaping, wavering, magically changing
+from blue to a yellowed violet, rising, falling.
+
+"Only a gasworks," came Smith's voice, and I knew that he, too, had been
+watching those elfin fires.  "But it always reminds me of a Mexican
+teocalli, and the altar of sacrifice."
+
+The simile was apt, but gruesome.  I thought of Dr. Fu-Manchu
+and the severed fingers, and could not repress a shudder.
+
+"On your left, past the wooden pier!  Not where the lamp is--
+beyond that; next to the dark, square building--Shen-Yan's."
+
+It was Inspector Ryman speaking.
+
+"Drop us somewhere handy, then," replied Smith, "and lie close in,
+with your ears wide open.  We may have to run for it, so don't
+go far away."
+
+From the tone of his voice I knew that the night mystery of the Thames
+had claimed at least one other victim.
+
+"Dead slow," came Ryman's order.  "We'll put in to the Stone Stairs."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+A SEEMINGLY drunken voice was droning from a neighboring alleyway as Smith
+lurched in hulking fashion to the door of a little shop above which,
+crudely painted, were the words:
+
+
+"SHEN-YAN, Barber."
+
+
+I shuffled along behind him, and had time to note the box of studs,
+German shaving tackle and rolls of twist which lay untidily in the window
+ere Smith kicked the door open, clattered down three wooden steps,
+and pulled himself up with a jerk, seizing my arm for support.
+
+We stood in a bare and very dirty room, which could only
+claim kinship with a civilized shaving-saloon by virtue of
+the grimy towel thrown across the back of the solitary chair.
+A Yiddish theatrical bill of some kind, illustrated, adorned one
+of the walls, and another bill, in what may have been Chinese,
+completed the decorations.  From behind a curtain heavily brocaded
+with filth a little Chinaman appeared, dressed in a loose smock,
+black trousers and thick-soled slippers, and, advancing,
+shook his head vigorously.
+
+"No shavee--no shavee," he chattered, simian fashion,
+squinting from one to the other of us with his twinkling eyes.
+"Too late!  Shuttee shop!"
+
+"Don't you come none of it wi' me!" roared Smith, in a voice of amazing
+gruffness, and shook an artificially dirtied fist under the Chinaman's nose.
+"Get inside and gimme an' my mate a couple o' pipes.  Smokee pipe,
+you yellow scum--savvy?"
+
+My friend bent forward and glared into the other's eyes with a vindictiveness
+that amazed me, unfamiliar as I was with this form of gentle persuasion.
+
+"Kop 'old o' that," he said, and thrust a coin into the Chinaman's
+yellow paw.  "Keep me waitin' an' I'll pull the dam' shop down, Charlie.
+You can lay to it."
+
+"No hab got pipee--" began the other.
+
+Smith raised his fist, and Yan capitulated.
+
+"Allee lightee," he said.  "Full up--no loom.  You come see."
+
+He dived behind the dirty curtain, Smith and I following, and ran up
+a dark stair.  The next moment I found myself in an atmosphere which
+was literally poisonous.  It was all but unbreathable, being loaded
+with opium fumes.  Never before had I experienced anything like it.
+Every breath was an effort.  A tin oil-lamp on a box in the middle
+of the floor dimly illuminated the horrible place, about the walls
+of which ten or twelve bunks were ranged and all of them occupied.
+Most of the occupants were lying motionless, but one or two were
+squatting in their bunks noisily sucking at the little metal pipes.
+These had not yet attained to the opium-smoker's Nirvana.
+
+"No loom--samee tella you," said Shen-Yan, complacently testing
+Smith's shilling with his yellow, decayed teeth.
+
+Smith walked to a corner and dropped cross-legged, on the floor,
+pulling me down with him.
+
+"Two pipe quick," he said.  "Plenty room.  Two piecee pipe--
+or plenty heap trouble."
+
+A dreary voice from one of the bunks came:
+
+"Give 'im a pipe, Charlie, curse yer!  an' stop 'is palaver."
+
+Yan performed a curious little shrug, rather of the back than of
+the shoulders, and shuffled to the box which bore the smoky lamp.
+Holding a needle in the flame, he dipped it, when red-hot, into an old
+cocoa tin, and withdrew it with a bead of opium adhering to the end.
+Slowly roasting this over the lamp, he dropped it into the bowl
+of the metal pipe which he held ready, where it burned with a
+spirituous blue flame.
+
+"Pass it over," said Smith huskily, and rose on his knees with the assumed
+eagerness of a slave to the drug.
+
+Yan handed him the pipe, which he promptly put to his lips,
+and prepared another for me.
+
+"Whatever you do, don't inhale any," came Smith's whispered injunction.
+
+It was with a sense of nausea greater even than that occasioned by the
+disgusting atmosphere of the den that I took the pipe and pretended to smoke.
+Taking my cue from my friend, I allowed my head gradually to sink lower
+and lower, until, within a few minutes, I sprawled sideways on the floor,
+Smith lying close beside me.
+
+"The ship's sinkin'," droned a voice from one of the bunks.
+"Look at the rats."
+
+Yan had noiselessly withdrawn, and I experienced a curious sense
+of isolation from my fellows--from the whole of the Western world.
+My throat was parched with the fumes, my head ached.
+The vicious atmosphere seemed contaminating.  I was as one dropped--
+
+Somewhere East of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
+And there ain't no Ten Commandments and a man can raise a thirst.
+
+Smith began to whisper softly.
+
+"We have carried it through successfully so far," he said.
+"I don't know if you have observed it, but there is a stair
+just behind you, half concealed by a ragged curtain.
+We are near that, and well in the dark.  I have seen nothing
+suspicious so far--or nothing much.  But if there was anything
+going forward it would no doubt be delayed until we new arrivals
+were well doped.  S-SH!"
+
+He pressed my arm to emphasize the warning.  Through my half-closed eyes
+I perceived a shadowy form near the curtain to which he had referred.
+I lay like a log, but my muscles were tensed nervously.
+
+The shadow materialized as the figure moved forward into the room
+with a curiously lithe movement.
+
+The smoky lamp in the middle of the place afforded
+scant illumination, serving only to indicate sprawling shapes--
+here an extended hand, brown or yellow, there a sketchy,
+corpse-like face; whilst from all about rose obscene sighings
+and murmurings in far-away voices--an uncanny, animal chorus.
+It was like a glimpse of the Inferno seen by some Chinese Dante.
+But so close to us stood the newcomer that I was able to make out a
+ghastly parchment face, with small, oblique eyes, and a misshapen head
+crowned with a coiled pigtail, surmounting a slight, hunched body.
+There was something unnatural, inhuman, about that masklike face,
+and something repulsive in the bent shape and the long,
+yellow hands clasped one upon the other.
+
+Fu-Manchu, from Smith's account, in no way resembled this crouching
+apparition with the death's-head countenance and lithe movements;
+but an instinct of some kind told me that we were on the right scent--
+that this was one of the doctor's servants.  How I came to that conclusion,
+I cannot explain; but with no doubt in my mind that this was a member
+of the formidable murder group, I saw the yellow man creep nearer,
+nearer, silently, bent and peering.
+
+He was watching us.
+
+Of another circumstance I became aware, and a disquieting circumstance.
+There were fewer murmurings and sighings from the surrounding bunks.
+The presence of the crouching figure had created a sudden semi-silence
+in the den, which could only mean that some of the supposed opium-smokers
+had merely feigned coma and the approach of coma.
+
+Nayland Smith lay like a dead man, and trusting to the darkness,
+I, too, lay prone and still, but watched the evil face bending
+lower and lower, until it came within a few inches of my own.
+I completely closed my eyes.
+
+Delicate fingers touched my right eyelid.  Divining what was coming,
+I rolled my eyes up, as the lid was adroitly lifted and lowered again.
+The man moved away.
+
+I had saved the situation!  And noting anew the hush about me--
+a hush in which I fancied many pairs of ears listened--I was glad.
+For just a moment I realized fully how, with the place watched back
+and front, we yet were cut off, were in the hands of Far Easterns,
+to some extent in the power of members of that most inscrutably
+mysterious race, the Chinese.
+
+"Good," whispered Smith at my side.  "I don't think I could have done it.
+He took me on trust after that.  My God!  what an awful face.
+Petrie, it's the hunchback of Cadby's notes.  Ah, I thought so.
+Do you see that?"
+
+I turned my eyes round as far as was possible.  A man had scrambled down
+from one of the bunks and was following the bent figure across the room.
+
+They passed around us quietly, the little yellow man leading, with his
+curious, lithe gait, and the other, an impassive Chinaman, following.
+The curtain was raised, and I heard footsteps receding on the stairs.
+
+"Don't stir," whispered Smith.
+
+An intense excitement was clearly upon him, and he communicated it to me.
+Who was the occupant of the room above?
+
+Footsteps on the stair, and the Chinaman reappeared, recrossed the floor,
+and went out.  The little, bent man went over to another bunk, this time
+leading up the stair one who looked like a lascar.
+
+"Did you see his right hand?" whispered Smith.  "A dacoit!
+They come here to report and to take orders.  Petrie, Dr. Fu-Manchu
+is up there."
+
+"What shall we do?"--softly.
+
+"Wait.  Then we must try to rush the stairs.  It would be futile
+to bring in the police first.  He is sure to have some other exit.
+I will give the word while the little yellow devil is down here.
+You are nearer and will have to go first, but if the hunchback follows,
+I can then deal with him."
+
+Our whispered colloquy was interrupted by the return of the dacoit,
+who recrossed the room as the Chinaman had done, and immediately
+took his departure.  A third man, whom Smith identified as a Malay,
+ascended the mysterious stairs, descended, and went out; and a fourth,
+whose nationality it was impossible to determine, followed.
+Then, as the softly moving usher crossed to a bunk on the right
+of the outer door--
+
+"Up you go, Petrie," cried Smith, for further delay was dangerous
+and further dissimulation useless.
+
+I leaped to my feet.  Snatching my revolver from the pocket
+of the rough jacket I wore, I bounded to the stair and went
+blundering up in complete darkness.  A chorus of brutish cries
+clamored from behind, with a muffled scream rising above them all.
+But Nayland Smith was close behind as I raced along a covered gangway,
+in a purer air, and at my heels when I crashed open a door at
+the end and almost fell into the room beyond.
+
+What I saw were merely a dirty table, with some odds and ends upon
+it of which I was too excited to take note, an oil-lamp swung
+by a brass chain above, and a man sitting behind the table.
+But from the moment that my gaze rested upon the one who sat there,
+I think if the place had been an Aladdin's palace I should have
+had no eyes for any of its wonders.
+
+He wore a plain yellow robe, of a hue almost identical with that
+of his smooth, hairless countenance.  His hands were large,
+long and bony, and he held them knuckles upward, and rested his
+pointed chin upon their thinness.  He had a great, high brow,
+crowned with sparse, neutral-colored hair.
+
+Of his face, as it looked out at me over the dirty table,
+I despair of writing convincingly.  It was that of an archangel
+of evil, and it was wholly dominated by the most uncanny
+eyes that ever reflected a human soul, for they were narrow
+and long, very slightly oblique, and of a brilliant green.
+But their unique horror lay in a certain filminess
+(it made me think of the membrana nictitans in a bird)
+which, obscuring them as I threw wide the door, seemed to lift
+as I actually passed the threshold, revealing the eyes in all
+their brilliant iridescence.
+
+I know that I stopped dead, one foot within the room, for the
+malignant force of the man was something surpassing my experience.
+He was surprised by this sudden intrusion--yes, but no trace of fear
+showed upon that wonderful face, only a sort of pitying contempt.
+And, as I paused, he rose slowly to his feet, never removing his
+gaze from mine.
+
+"IT'S FU-MANCHU!" cried Smith over my shoulder, in a voice
+that was almost a scream.  "IT'S FU-MANCHU!  Cover him!
+Shoot him dead if--"
+
+The conclusion of that sentence I never heard.
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu reached down beside the table, and the floor slipped
+from under me.
+
+One last glimpse I had of the fixed green eyes, and with a scream I was
+unable to repress I dropped, dropped, dropped, and plunged into icy water,
+which closed over my head.
+
+Vaguely I had seen a spurt of flame, had heard another cry following
+my own, a booming sound (the trap), the flat note of a police whistle.
+But when I rose to the surface impenetrable darkness enveloped me;
+I was spitting filthy, oily liquid from my mouth, and fighting down
+the black terror that had me by the throat--terror of the darkness
+about me, of the unknown depths beneath me, of the pit into which I
+was cast amid stifling stenches and the lapping of tidal water.
+
+"Smith!" I cried. . . ."Help!  Help!"
+
+My voice seemed to beat back upon me, yet I was about
+to cry out again, when, mustering all my presence of mind
+and all my failing courage, I recognized that I had better
+employment of my energies, and began to swim straight ahead,
+desperately determined to face all the horrors of this place--
+to die hard if die I must.
+
+A drop of liquid fire fell through the darkness and hissed
+into the water beside me!
+
+I felt that, despite my resolution, I was going mad.
+
+Another fiery drop--and another!
+
+I touched a rotting wooden post and slimy timbers.
+I had reached one bound of my watery prison.  More fire fell
+from above, and the scream of hysteria quivered, unuttered,
+in my throat.
+
+Keeping myself afloat with increasing difficulty in my heavy garments,
+I threw my head back and raised my eyes.
+
+No more drops fell, and no more drops would fall; but it
+was merely a question of time for the floor to collapse.
+For it was beginning to emit a dull, red glow.
+
+The room above me was in flames!
+
+It was drops of burning oil from the lamp, finding passage through
+the cracks in the crazy flooring, which had fallen about me--
+for the death trap had reclosed, I suppose, mechanically.
+
+My saturated garments were dragging me down, and now I could hear
+the flames hungrily eating into the ancient rottenness overhead.
+Shortly that cauldron would be loosed upon my head.  The glow of the
+flames grew brighter. . .and showed me the half-rotten piles upholding
+the building, showed me the tidal mark upon the slime-coated walls--
+showed me that there was no escape!
+
+By some subterranean duct the foul place was fed from the Thames.
+By that duct, with the outgoing tide, my body would pass,
+in the wake of Mason, Cadby, and many another victim!
+
+Rusty iron rungs were affixed to one of the walls communicating with a trap--
+but the bottom three were missing!
+
+Brighter and brighter grew the awesome light the light of what
+should be my funeral pyre--reddening the oily water and adding
+a new dread to the whispering, clammy horror of the pit.
+But something it showed me. . .a projecting beam a few feet
+above the water. . .and directly below the iron ladder!
+
+"Merciful Heaven!" I breathed.  "Have I the strength?"
+
+A desire for laughter claimed me with sudden, all but irresistible force.
+I knew what it portended and fought it down--grimly, sternly.
+
+My garments weighed upon me like a suit of mail; with my chest
+aching dully, my veins throbbing to bursting, I forced tired
+muscles to work, and, every stroke an agony, approached the beam.
+Nearer I swam. . .nearer.  Its shadow fell black upon
+the water, which now had all the seeming of a pool of blood.
+Confused sounds--a remote uproar--came to my ears.
+I was nearly spent. . .I was in the shadow of the beam!
+If I could throw up one arm. . .
+
+A shrill scream sounded far above me!
+
+"Petrie!  Petrie!"  (That voice must be Smith's!)  "Don't touch the beam!
+For God's sake DON'T TOUCH THE BEAM!  Keep afloat another few seconds
+and I can get to you!"
+
+Another few seconds!  Was that possible?
+
+I managed to turn, to raise my throbbing head; and I saw the strangest
+sight which that night yet had offered.
+
+Nayland Smith stood upon the lowest iron rung. . .supported by the hideous,
+crook-backed Chinaman, who stood upon the rung above!
+
+"I can't reach him!"
+
+It was as Smith hissed the words despairingly that I looked up--
+and saw the Chinaman snatch at his coiled pigtail and pull it off!
+With it came the wig to which it was attached; and the ghastly yellow mask,
+deprived of its fastenings, fell from position!  "Here!  Here!  Be quick!
+Oh!  be quick!  You can lower this to him!  Be quick!  Be quick!"
+
+A cloud of hair came falling about the slim shoulders
+as the speaker bent to pass this strange lifeline to Smith;
+and I think it was my wonder at knowing her for the girl whom
+that day I had surprised in Cadby's rooms which saved my life.
+
+For I not only kept afloat, but kept my gaze upturned to that beautiful,
+flushed face, and my eyes fixed upon hers--which were wild with fear
+. . .for me!
+
+Smith, by some contortion, got the false queue into my grasp,
+and I, with the strength of desperation, by that means seized
+hold upon the lowest rung.  With my friend's arm round me I
+realized that exhaustion was even nearer than I had supposed.
+My last distinct memory is of the bursting of the floor above
+and the big burning joist hissing into the pool beneath us.
+Its fiery passage, striated with light, disclosed two
+sword blades, riveted, edges up along the top of the beam
+which I had striven to reach.
+
+"The severed fingers--" I said; and swooned.
+
+How Smith got me through the trap I do not know--nor how we made our way
+through the smoke and flames of the narrow passage it opened upon.
+My next recollection is of sitting up, with my friend's arm supporting
+me and Inspector Ryman holding a glass to my lips.
+
+A bright glare dazzled my eyes.  A crowd surged about us,
+and a clangor and shouting drew momentarily nearer.
+
+"It's the engines coming," explained Smith, seeing my bewilderment.
+"Shen-Yan's is in flames.  It was your shot, as you fell through the trap,
+broke the oil-lamp."
+
+"Is everybody out?"
+
+"So far as we know."
+
+"Fu-Manchu?"
+
+Smith shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"No one has seen him.  There was some door at the back--"
+
+"Do you think he may--"
+
+"No," he said tensely.  "Not until I see him lying dead before me
+shall I believe it."
+
+Then memory resumed its sway.  I struggled to my feet.
+
+"Smith, where is she?" I cried.  "Where is she?"
+
+"I don't know," be answered.
+
+"She's given us the slip, Doctor," said Inspector Weymouth,
+as a fire-engine came swinging round the corner of the narrow lane.
+"So has Mr. Singapore Charlie--and, I'm afraid, somebody else.
+We've got six or eight all-sorts, some awake and some asleep,
+but I suppose we shall have to let 'em go again.
+Mr. Smith tells me that the girl was disguised as a Chinaman.
+I expect that's why she managed to slip away."
+
+I recalled how I had been dragged from the pit by the false queue,
+how the strange discovery which had brought death to poor Cadby
+had brought life to me, and I seemed to remember, too, that Smith
+had dropped it as he threw his arm about me on the ladder.
+Her mask the girl might have retained, but her wig, I felt certain,
+had been dropped into the water.
+
+It was later that night, when the brigade still were playing,
+upon the blackened shell of what had been Shen-Yan's opium-shop,
+and Smith and I were speeding away in a cab from the scene of God
+knows how many crimes, that I had an idea.
+
+"Smith," I said, "did you bring the pigtail with you that was
+found on Cadby?"
+
+"Yes.  I had hoped to meet the owner."
+
+"Have you got it now?"
+
+"No. I met the owner."
+
+I thrust my hands deep into the pockets of the big pea-jacket
+lent to me by Inspector Ryman, leaning back in my corner.
+
+"We shall never really excel at this business," continued Nayland Smith.
+"We are far too sentimental.  I knew what it meant to us, Petrie, what it
+meant to the world, but I hadn't the heart.  I owed her your life--
+I had to square the account."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+NIGHT fell on Redmoat.  I glanced from the window at
+the nocturne in silver and green which lay beneath me.
+To the west of the shrubbery, with its broken canopy of elms
+and beyond the copper beech which marked the center of its mazes,
+a gap offered a glimpse of the Waverney where it swept into a broad.
+Faint bird-calls floated over the water.  These, with the whisper
+of leaves, alone claimed the ear.
+
+Ideal rural peace, and the music of an English summer evening;
+but to my eyes, every shadow holding fantastic terrors;
+to my ears, every sound a signal of dread.  For the deathful
+hand of Fu-Manchu was stretched over Redmoat, at any hour
+to loose strange, Oriental horrors upon its inmates.
+
+"Well," said Nayland Smith, joining me at the window, "we had dared
+to hope him dead, but we know now that he lives!"
+
+The Rev. J. D. Eltham coughed nervously, and I turned, leaning my elbow
+upon the table, and studied the play of expression upon the refined,
+sensitive face of the clergyman.
+
+"You think I acted rightly in sending for you, Mr. Smith?"
+
+Nayland Smith smoked furiously.
+
+"Mr. Eltham," he replied, "you see in me a man groping in the dark.
+I am to-day no nearer to the conclusion of my mission than
+upon the day when I left Mandalay.  You offer me a clew;
+I am here.  Your affair, I believe, stands thus:
+A series of attempted burglaries, or something of the kind,
+has alarmed your household.  Yesterday, returning from London
+with your daughter, you were both drugged in some way and,
+occupying a compartment to yourselves, you both slept.
+Your daughter awoke, and saw someone else in the carriage--
+a yellow-faced man who held a case of instruments in his hands."
+
+"Yes; I was, of course, unable to enter into particulars over the telephone.
+The man was standing by one of the windows.  Directly he observed that my
+daughter was awake, he stepped towards her."
+
+"What did he do with the case in his hands?"
+
+"She did not notice--or did not mention having noticed.
+In fact, as was natural, she was so frightened that she recalls
+nothing more, beyond the fact that she strove to arouse me,
+without succeeding, felt hands grasp her shoulders--and swooned."
+
+"But someone used the emergency cord, and stopped the train."
+
+"Greba has no recollection of having done so."
+
+"Hm!  Of course, no yellow-faced man was on the train.
+When did you awake?"
+
+"I was aroused by the guard, but only when he had repeatedly shaken me."
+
+"Upon reaching Great Yarmouth you immediately called up Scotland Yard?
+You acted very wisely, sir.  How long were you in China?"
+
+Mr. Eltham's start of surprise was almost comical.
+
+"It is perhaps not strange that you should be aware of my residence in China,
+Mr. Smith," he said; "but my not having mentioned it may seem so.
+The fact is"--his sensitive face flushed in palpable embarrassment--
+"I left China under what I may term an episcopal cloud.
+I have lived in retirement ever since.  Unwittingly--I solemnly
+declare to you, Mr. Smith, unwittingly--I stirred up certain
+deep-seated prejudices in my endeavors to do my duty--my duty.
+I think you asked me how long I was in China?  I was there from 1896
+until 1900--four years."
+
+"I recall the circumstances, Mr. Eltham," said Smith, with an odd
+note in his voice.  "I have been endeavoring to think where I
+had come across the name, and a moment ago I remembered.
+I am happy to have met you, sir."
+
+The clergyman blushed again like a girl, and slightly inclined his head,
+with its scanty fair hair.
+
+"Has Redmoat, as its name implies, a moat round it?  I was unable to see
+in the dusk."  "It remains.  Redmoat--a corruption of Round Moat--
+was formerly a priory, disestablished by the eighth Henry in 1536."
+His pedantic manner was quaint at times.  "But the moat is no
+longer flooded.  In fact, we grow cabbages in part of it.
+If you refer to the strategic strength of the place"--he smiled,
+but his manner was embarrassed again--"it is considerable.
+I have barbed wire fencing, and--other arrangements.
+You see, it is a lonely spot," he added apologetically.
+"And now, if you will excuse me, we will resume these gruesome
+inquiries after the more pleasant affairs of dinner."
+
+He left us.
+
+"Who is our host?" I asked, as the door closed.
+
+Smith smiled.
+
+"You are wondering what caused the `episcopal cloud?'" he suggested.
+"Well, the deep-seated prejudices which our reverend friend stirred up
+culminated in the Boxer Risings."
+
+"Good heavens, Smith!" I said; for I could not reconcile the diffident
+personality of the clergyman with the memories which those words awakened.
+
+"He evidently should be on our danger list," my friend continued quickly;
+"but he has so completely effaced himself of recent years that I think it
+probable that someone else has only just recalled his existence to mind.
+The Rev. J. D. Eltham, my dear Petrie, though he may be a poor hand
+at saving souls, at any rate, has saved a score of Christian women
+from death--and worse."
+
+"J. D. Eltham--" I began.
+
+"Is `Parson Dan'!" rapped Smith, "the `Fighting Missionary,'
+the man who with a garrison of a dozen cripples and a German
+doctor held the hospital at Nan-Yang against two hundred Boxers.
+That's who the Rev. J. D. Eltham is!  But what is he up to,
+now, I have yet to find out.  He is keeping something back--
+something which has made him an object of interest to Young China!"
+
+During dinner the matters responsible for our presence there did not
+hold priority in the conversation.  In fact, this, for the most part,
+consisted in light talk of books and theaters.
+
+Greba Eltham, the clergyman's daughter, was a charming young hostess,
+and she, with Vernon Denby, Mr. Eltham's nephew, completed the party.
+No doubt the girl's presence, in part, at any rate, led us to refrain
+from the subject uppermost in our minds.
+
+These little pools of calm dotted along the torrential course of
+the circumstances which were bearing my friend and I onward to unknown
+issues form pleasant, sunny spots in my dark recollections.
+
+So I shall always remember, with pleasure, that dinner-party
+at Redmoat, in the old-world dining-room; it was so very peaceful,
+so almost grotesquely calm.  For I, within my very bones, felt it
+to be the calm before the storm.  When, later, we men passed
+to the library, we seemed to leave that atmosphere behind us.
+
+"Redmoat," said the Rev. J. D. Eltham, "has latterly become the theater
+of strange doings."
+
+He stood on the hearth-rug. A shaded lamp upon the big table
+and candles in ancient sconces upon the mantelpiece afforded
+dim illumination.  Mr. Eltham's nephew, Vernon Denby,
+lolled smoking on the window-seat, and I sat near to him.
+Nayland Smith paced restlessly up and down the room.
+
+"Some mouths ago, almost a year," continued the clergyman,
+"a burglarious attempt was made upon the house.  There was an arrest,
+and the man confessed that he had been tempted by my collection."
+He waved his hand vaguely towards the several cabinets about
+the shadowed room.
+
+"It was shortly afterwards that I allowed my hobby for--
+playing at forts to run away with me."  He smiled an apology.
+"I virtually fortified Redmoat--against trespassers of any kind, I mean.
+You have seen that the house stands upon a kind of large mound.
+This is artificial, being the buried ruins of a Roman outwork;
+a portion of the ancient castrum." Again he waved indicatively,
+this time toward the window.
+
+"When it was a priory it was completely isolated and defended
+by its environing moat.  Today it is completely surrounded by
+barbed-wire fencing.  Below this fence, on the east, is a narrow stream,
+a tributary of the Waverney; on the north and west, the high road,
+but nearly twenty feet below, the banks being perpendicular.
+On the south is the remaining part of the moat--now my kitchen garden;
+but from there up to the level of the house is nearly twenty feet again,
+and the barbed wire must also be counted with.
+
+"The entrance, as you know, is by the way of a kind of cutting.
+There is a gate at the foot of the steps (they are some of the original
+steps of the priory, Dr. Petrie), and another gate at the head."
+
+He paused, and smiled around upon us boyishly.
+
+"My secret defenses remain to be mentioned," he resumed;
+and, opening a cupboard, he pointed to a row of batteries,
+with a number of electric bells upon the wall behind.
+"The more vulnerable spots are connected at night with these bells,"
+he said triumphantly.  "Any attempt to scale the barbed wire
+or to force either gate would set two or more of these ringing.
+A stray cow raised one false alarm," he added, "and a careless
+rook threw us into a perfect panic on another occasion."
+
+He was so boyish--so nervously brisk and acutely sensitive--
+that it was difficult to see in him the hero of the Nan-Yang hospital.
+I could only suppose that he had treated the Boxers' raid in the same spirit
+wherein he met would-be trespassers within the precincts of Redmoat.
+It had been an escapade, of which he was afterwards ashamed, as, faintly,
+he was ashamed of his "fortifications."  "But," rapped Smith, "it was not
+the visit of the burglar which prompted these elaborate precautions."
+
+Mr. Eltham coughed nervously.
+
+"I am aware," he said, "that having invoked official aid, I must be
+perfectly frank with you, Mr. Smith.  It was the burglar who was responsible
+for my continuing the wire fence all round the grounds, but the electrical
+contrivance followed, later, as a result of several disturbed nights.
+My servants grew uneasy about someone who came, they said, after dusk.
+No one could describe this nocturnal visitor, but certainly we found traces.
+I must admit that.
+
+"Then--I received what I may term a warning.  My position is a peculiar one--
+a peculiar one.  My daughter, too, saw this prowling, person,
+over by the Roman castrum, and described him as a yellow man.
+It was the incident in the train following closely upon this other, which led
+me to speak to the police, little as I desired to--er--court publicity."
+
+Nayland Smith walked to a window, and looked out across
+the sloping lawn to where the shadows of the shrubbery lay.
+A dog was howling dismally somewhere.
+
+"Your defenses are not impregnable, after all, then?" he jerked.
+"On our way up this evening Mr. Denby was telling us about the death
+of his collie a few nights ago."
+
+The clergyman's face clouded.
+
+"That, certainly, was alarming," he confessed.
+
+"I had been in London for a few days, and during my absence Vernon
+came down, bringing the dog with him.  On the night of his arrival
+it ran, barking, into the shrubbery yonder, and did not come out.
+He went to look for it with a lantern, and found it lying among
+the bushes, quite dead.  The poor creature had been dreadfully
+beaten about the head."
+
+"The gates were locked," Denby interrupted, "and no one could
+have got out of the grounds without a ladder and someone
+to assist him.  But there was so sign of a living thing about.
+Edwards and I searched every corner."
+
+"How long has that other dog taken to howling?" inquired Smith.
+
+"Only since Rex's death," said Denby quickly.
+
+"It is my mastiff," explained the clergyman, "and he is confined in the yard.
+He is never allowed on this side of the house."
+
+Nayland Smith wandered aimlessly about the library.
+
+"I am sorry to have to press you, Mr. Eltham," he said,
+"but what was the nature of the warning to which you referred,
+and from whom did it come?"
+
+Mr. Eltham hesitated for a long time.
+
+"I have been so unfortunate," he said at last, "in my previous efforts,
+that I feel assured of your hostile criticism when I tell you that I am
+contemplating an immediate return to Ho-Nan!"
+
+Smith jumped round upon him as though moved by a spring.
+
+"Then you are going back to Nan-Yang?" he cried.
+"Now I understand!  Why have you not told me before?
+That is the key for which I have vainly been seeking.
+Your troubles date from the time of your decision to return?"
+
+"Yes, I must admit it," confessed the clergyman diffidently.
+
+"And your warning came from China?"
+
+"It did."
+
+"From a Chinaman?"
+
+"From the Mandarin, Yen-Sun-Yat."
+
+"Yen-Sun-Yat!  My good sir!  He warned you to abandon your visit?
+And you reject his advice?  Listen to me."  Smith was intensely
+excited now, his eyes bright, his lean figure curiously strung up, alert.
+"The Mandarin Yen-Sun-Yat is one of the seven!"
+
+"I do not follow you, Mr. Smith."
+
+"No, sir.  China to-day is not the China of '98.  It is a huge secret machine,
+and Ho-Nan one of its most important wheels!  But if, as I understand,
+this official is a friend of yours, believe me, he has saved your life!
+You would be a dead man now if it were not for your friend in China!
+My dear sir, you must accept his counsel."
+
+Then, for the first time since I had made his acquaintance, "Parson Dan"
+showed through the surface of the Rev. J. D. Eltham.
+
+"No, sir!" replied the clergyman--and the change in his voice was startling.
+"I am called to Nan-Yang. Only One may deter my going."
+
+The admixture of deep spiritual reverence with intense truculence
+in his voice was dissimilar from anything I ever had heard.
+
+"Then only One can protect you," cried Smith, "for, by Heaven,
+no MAN will be able to do so!  Your presence in Ho-Nan
+can do no possible good at present.  It must do harm.
+Your experience in 1900 should be fresh in your memory."
+
+"Hard words, Mr. Smith."
+
+"The class of missionary work which you favor, sir, is injurious
+to international peace.  At the present moment, Ho-Nan is
+a barrel of gunpowder; you would be the lighted match.
+I do not willingly stand between any man and what he chooses
+to consider his duty, but I insist that you abandon your visit
+to the interior of China!"
+
+"You insist, Mr. Smith?"
+
+"As your guest, I regret the necessity
+for reminding you that I hold authority to enforce it."
+
+Denby fidgeted uneasily.  The tone of the conversation was growing harsh
+and the atmosphere of the library portentous with brewing, storms.
+
+There was a short, silent interval.
+
+"This is what I had feared and expected," said the clergyman.
+"This was my reason for not seeking official protection."
+
+"The phantom Yellow Peril," said Nayland Smith, "to-day materializes
+under the very eyes of the Western world."
+
+"The `Yellow Peril'!"
+
+"You scoff, sir, and so do others.  We take the proffered right
+hand of friendship nor inquire if the hidden left holds a knife!
+The peace of the world is at stake, Mr. Eltham.  Unknowingly, you tamper
+with tremendous issues."
+
+Mr. Eltham drew a deep breath, thrusting both hands in his pockets.
+
+"You are painfully frank, Mr. Smith," he said; "but I like you for it.
+I will reconsider my position and talk this matter over again
+with you to-morrow."
+
+Thus, then, the storm blew over.  Yet I had never
+experienced such an overwhelming sense of imminent peril--
+of a sinister presence--as oppressed me at that moment.
+The very atmosphere of Redmoat was impregnated with
+Eastern devilry; it loaded the air like some evil perfume.
+And then, through the silence, cut a throbbing scream--
+the scream of a woman in direst fear.
+
+"My God, it's Greba!" whispered Mr. Eltham.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+IN what order we dashed down to the drawing-room I cannot recall.
+But none was before me when I leaped over the threshold and saw Miss
+Eltham prone by the French windows.
+
+These were closed and bolted, and she lay with hands
+outstretched in the alcove which they formed.  I bent over her.
+Nayland Smith was at my elbow.
+
+"Get my bag" I said.  "She has swooned.  It is nothing serious."
+
+Her father, pale and wide-eyed, hovered about me, muttering incoherently;
+but I managed to reassure him; and his gratitude when, I having administered
+a simple restorative, the girl sighed shudderingly and opened her eyes,
+was quite pathetic.
+
+I would permit no questioning at that time, and on her father's
+arm she retired to her own rooms.
+
+It was some fifteen minutes later that her message was brought to me.
+I followed the maid to a quaint little octagonal apartment, and Greba
+Eltham stood before me, the candlelight caressing the soft curves
+of her face and gleaming in the meshes of her rich brown hair.
+
+When she had answered my first question she hesitated in pretty confusion.
+
+"We are anxious to know what alarmed you, Miss Eltham."
+
+She bit her lip and glanced with apprehension towards the window.
+
+"I am almost afraid to tell father," she began rapidly.
+"He will think me imaginative, but you have been so kind.
+It was two green eyes!  Oh!  Dr. Petrie, they looked up at me
+from the steps leading to the lawn.  And they shone like the eyes
+of a cat."
+
+The words thrilled me strangely.
+
+"Are you sure it was not a cat, Miss Eltham?"
+
+"The eyes were too large, Dr. Petrie.  There was
+something dreadful, most dreadful, in their appearance.
+I feel foolish and silly for having fainted, twice in two days!
+But the suspense is telling upon me, I suppose.
+Father thinks"--she was becoming charmingly confidential,
+as a woman often will with a tactful physician--"that
+shut up here we are safe from--whatever threatens us."
+I noted, with concern, a repetition of the nervous shudder.
+"But since our return someone else has been in Redmoat!"
+
+"Whatever do you mean, Miss Eltham?"
+
+"Oh!  I don't quite know what I do mean, Dr. Petrie.
+What does it ALL mean?  Vernon has been explaining to me
+that some awful Chinaman is seeking the life of Mr. Nayland Smith.
+But if the same man wants to kill my father, why has
+he not done so?"
+
+"I am afraid you puzzle me."
+
+"Of course, I must do so.  But--the man in the train.
+He could have killed us both quite easily!  And--last night
+someone was in father's room."
+
+"In his room!"
+
+"I could not sleep, and I heard something moving.
+My room is the next one.  I knocked on the wall and woke father.
+There was nothing; so I said it was the howling of the dog
+that had frightened me."
+
+"How, could anyone get into his room?"
+
+"I cannot imagine.  But I am not sure it was a man."
+
+"Miss Eltham, you alarm me.  What do you suspect?"
+
+"You must think me hysterical and silly, but whilst father and I have been
+away from Redmoat perhaps the usual precautions have been neglected.
+Is there any creature, any large creature, which could climb up the wall
+to the window?  Do you know of anything with a long, thin body?"
+
+For a moment I offered no reply, studying the girl's pretty face,
+her eager, blue-gray eyes widely opened and fixed upon mine.
+She was not of the neurotic type, with her clear complexion
+and sun-kissed neck; her arms, healthily toned by exposure
+to the country airs, were rounded and firm, and she had the agile
+shape of a young Diana with none of the anaemic languor which breeds
+morbid dreams.  She was frightened; yes, who would not have been?
+But the mere idea of this thing which she believed to be in Redmoat,
+without the apparition of the green eyes, must have prostrated
+a victim of "nerves."
+
+"Have you seen such a creature, Miss Eltham?"
+
+She hesitated again, glancing down and pressing her finger-tips together.
+
+"As father awoke and called out to know why I knocked,
+I glanced from my window.  The moonlight threw half the lawn
+into shadow, and just disappearing in this shadow was something--
+something of a brown color, marked with sections!"
+
+"What size and shape?"
+
+"It moved so quickly I could form no idea of its shape;
+but I saw quite six feet of it flash across the grass!"
+
+"Did you hear anything?"
+
+"A swishing sound in the shrubbery, then nothing more."
+
+She met my eyes expectantly.  Her confidence in my powers of understanding
+and sympathy was gratifying, though I knew that I but occupied the position
+of a father-confessor.
+
+"Have you any idea," I said, "how it came about that you awoke
+in the train yesterday whilst your father did not?"
+
+"We had coffee at a refreshment-room; it must have been drugged in some way.
+I scarcely tasted mine, the flavor was so awful; but father is an old traveler
+and drank the whole of his cupful!"
+
+Mr. Eltham's voice called from below.
+
+"Dr. Petrie," said the girl quickly, "what do you think they
+want to do to him?"
+
+"Ah!" I replied, "I wish I knew that."
+
+"Will you think over what I have told you?  For I do assure you there
+is something here in Redmoat--something that comes and goes in spite
+of father's `fortifications'?  Caesar knows there is.  Listen to him.
+He drags at his chain so that I wonder he does not break it."
+
+As we passed downstairs the howling of the mastiff sounded eerily
+through the house, as did the clank-clank of the tightening chain
+as he threw the weight of his big body upon it.
+
+I sat in Smith's room that night for some time, he pacing the floor
+smoking and talking.
+
+"Eltham has influential Chinese friends," he said;
+"but they dare not have him in Nan-Yang at present.
+He knows the country as he knows Norfolk; he would see things!
+
+"His precautions here have baffled the enemy, I think.
+The attempt in the train points to an anxiety to waste no opportunity.
+But whilst Eltham was absent (he was getting his outfit in London,
+by the way) they have been fixing some second string to their fiddle here.
+In case no opportunity offered before he returned, they provided
+for getting at him here!"
+
+"But how, Smith?"
+
+"That's the mystery.  But the dead dog in the shrubbery is significant."
+
+"Do you think some emissary of Fu-Manchu is actually inside the moat?"
+
+"It's impossible, Petrie.  You are thinking of secret passages,
+and so forth.  There are none.  Eltham has measured up every
+foot of the place.  There isn't a rathole left unaccounted for;
+and as for a tunnel under the moat, the house stands on a solid
+mass of Roman masonry, a former camp of Hadrian's time.
+I have seen a very old plan of the Round Moat Priory as it
+was called.  There is no entrance and no exit save by the steps.
+So how was the dog killed?"
+
+I knocked out my pipe on a bar of the grate.
+
+"We are in the thick of it here," I said.
+
+"We are always in the thick of it," replied Smith.  "Our danger is
+no greater in Norfolk than in London.  But what do they want to do?
+That man in the train with the case of instruments--WHAT instruments?
+Then the apparition of the green eyes to-night. Can they have been
+the eyes of Fu-Manchu?  Is some peculiarly unique outrage contemplated--
+something calling for the presence of the master?"
+
+"He may have to prevent Eltham's leaving England without killing him."
+
+"Quite so.  He probably has instructions to be merciful.
+But God help the victim of Chinese mercy!"
+
+I went to my own room then.  But I did not even undress,
+refilling my pipe and seating myself at the open window.
+Having looked upon the awful Chinese doctor, the memory of
+his face, with its filmed green eyes, could never leave me.
+The idea that he might be near at that moment was a poor narcotic.
+
+The howling and baying of the mastiff was almost continuous.
+
+When all else in Redmoat was still the dog's mournful note yet rose on
+the night with something menacing in it.  I sat looking out across the sloping
+turf to where the shrubbery showed as a black island in a green sea.
+The moon swam in a cloudless sky, and the air was warm and fragrant
+with country scents.
+
+It was in the shrubbery that Denby's collie had met his mysterious death--
+that the thing seen by Miss Eltham had disappeared.  What uncanny secret
+did it hold?
+
+Caesar became silent.
+
+As the stopping of a clock will sometimes awaken a sleeper, the abrupt
+cessation of that distant howling, to which I had grown accustomed,
+now recalled me from a world of gloomy imaginings.
+
+I glanced at my watch in the moonlight.  It was twelve minutes past midnight.
+
+As I replaced it the dog suddenly burst out afresh, but now in a tone
+of sheer anger.  He was alternately howling and snarling in a way
+that sounded new to me.  The crashes, as he leapt to the end
+of his chain, shook the building in which he was confined.
+It was as I stood up to lean from the window and commanded a view
+of the corner of the house that he broke loose.
+
+With a hoarse bay he took that decisive leap, and I
+heard his heavy body fall against the wooden wall.
+There followed a strange, guttural cry. . .and the growling
+of the dog died away at the rear of the house.  He was out!
+But that guttural note had not come from the throat of a dog.
+Of what was he in pursuit?
+
+At which point his mysterious quarry entered the shrubbery I do not know.
+I only know that I saw absolutely nothing, until Caesar's lithe shape
+was streaked across the lawn, and the great creature went crashing
+into the undergrowth.
+
+Then a faint sound above and to my right told me that I was not the only
+spectator of the scene.  I leaned farther from the window.
+
+"Is that you, Miss Eltham?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, Dr. Petrie!" she said.  "I am so glad you are awake.
+Can we do nothing to help?  Caesar will be killed."
+
+"Did you see what he went after?"
+
+"No," she called back, and drew her breath sharply.
+
+For a strange figure went racing across the grass.
+It was that of a man in a blue dressing-gown, who held
+a lantern high before him, and a revolver in his right hand.
+Coincident with my recognition of Mr. Eltham he leaped,
+plunging into the shrubbery in the wake of the dog.
+
+But the night held yet another surprise; for Nayland Smith's voice came:
+
+"Come back!  Come back, Eltham!"
+
+I ran out into the passage and downstairs.  The front door was open.
+A terrible conflict waged in the shrubbery, between the mastiff and
+something else.  Passing round to the lawn, I met Smith fully dressed.
+He just had dropped from a first-floor window.
+
+"The man is mad!" he snapped.  "Heaven knows what lurks there!
+He should not have gone alone!"
+
+Together we ran towards the dancing light of Eltham's lantern.
+The sounds of conflict ceased suddenly.  Stumbling over
+stumps and lashed by low-sweeping branches, we struggled
+forward to where the clergyman knelt amongst the bushes.
+He glanced up with tears in his eyes, as was revealed by
+the dim light.
+
+"Look!" he cried.
+
+The body of the dog lay at his feet.
+
+It was pitiable to think that the fearless brute should have met
+his death in such a fashion, and when I bent and examined him I
+was glad to find traces of life.
+
+"Drag him out.  He is not dead," I said.
+
+"And hurry," rapped Smith, peering about him right and left.
+
+So we three hurried from that haunted place, dragging the dog with us.
+We were not molested.  No sound disturbed the now perfect stillness.
+
+By the lawn edge we came upon Denby, half dressed;
+and almost immediately Edwards the gardener also appeared.
+The white faces of the house servants showed at one window,
+and Miss Eltham called to me from her room:
+
+"Is he dead?"
+
+"No," I replied; "only stunned."
+
+We carried the dog round to the yard, and I examined his head.
+It had been struck by some heavy blunt instrument, but the skull
+was not broken.  It is hard to kill a mastiff.
+
+"Will you attend to him, Doctor?" asked Eltham.
+"We must see that the villain does not escape."
+
+His face was grim and set.  This was a different man from the diffident
+clergyman we knew:  this was "Parson Dan" again.
+
+I accepted the care of the canine patient, and Eltham with
+the others went off for more lights to search the shrubbery.
+As I was washing a bad wound between the mastiff's ears,
+Miss Eltham joined me.  It was the sound of her voice,
+I think, rather than my more scientific ministration,
+which recalled Caesar to life.  For, as she entered, his tail
+wagged feebly, and a moment later he struggled to his feet--
+one of which was injured.
+
+Having provided for his immediate needs, I left him in
+charge of his young mistress and joined the search party.
+They had entered the shrubbery from four points and drawn blank.
+
+"There is absolutely nothing there, and no one can possibly have left
+the grounds," said Eltham amazedly.
+
+We stood on the lawn looking at one another, Nayland Smith,
+angry but thoughtful, tugging at the lobe of his left ear,
+as was his habit in moments of perplexity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+WITH the first coming of light, Eltham, Smith and I tested the electrical
+contrivances from every point.  They were in perfect order.
+It became more and more incomprehensible how anyone could have entered
+and quitted Redmoat during the night.  The barbed-wire fencing was intact,
+and bore no signs of having been tampered with.
+
+Smith and I undertook an exhaustive examination of the shrubbery.
+
+At the spot where we had found the dog, some five paces to the west
+of the copper beech, the grass and weeds were trampled and the
+surrounding laurels and rhododendrons bore evidence of a struggle,
+but no human footprint could be found.
+
+"The ground is dry," said Smith.  "We cannot expect much."
+
+"In my opinion," I said, "someone tried to get at Caesar;
+his presence is dangerous.  And in his rage he broke loose."
+
+"I think so, too," agreed Smith.  "But why did this person make
+for here?  And how, having mastered the dog, get out of Redmoat?
+I am open to admit the possibility of someone's getting in during
+the day whilst the gates are open, and hiding until dusk.
+But how in the name of all that's wonderful does he GET OUT?
+He must possess the attributes of a bird."
+
+I thought of Greba Eltham's statements, reminding my friend
+of her description of the thing which she had seen passing
+into this strangely haunted shrubbery.
+
+"That line of speculation soon takes us out of our depth, Petrie," he said.
+"Let us stick to what we can understand, and that may help us
+to a clearer idea of what, at present, is incomprehensible.
+My view of the case to date stands thus:
+
+"(1) Eltham, having rashly decided to return to the interior of China,
+is warned by an official whose friendship he has won in some way
+to stay in England.
+
+"(2) I know this official for one of the Yellow group represented
+in England by Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+"(3) Several attempts, of which we know but little, to get at
+Eltham are frustrated, presumably by his curious `defenses.'
+An attempt in a train fails owing to Miss Eltham's distaste
+for refreshment-room coffee.  An attempt here fails owing
+to her insomnia.
+
+"(4) During Eltham's absence from Redmoat certain preparations
+are made for his return.  These lead to:
+
+"(a) The death of Denby's collie;
+
+"(b) The things heard and seen by Miss Eltham;
+
+"(c) The things heard and seen by us all last night.
+
+"So that the clearing up of my fourth point--id est, the discovery
+of the nature of these preparations--becomes our immediate concern.
+The prime object of these preparations, Petrie, was to enable someone
+to gain access to Eltham's room.  The other events are incidental.
+The dogs HAD to be got rid of, for instance; and there is no doubt
+that Miss Eltham's wakefulness saved her father a second time."
+
+"But from what?  For Heaven's sake, from what?"
+
+Smith glanced about into the light-patched shadows.
+
+"From a visit by someone--perhaps by Fu-Manchu himself," he said in a
+hushed voice.  "The object of that visit I hope we may never learn;
+for that would mean that it had been achieved."
+
+"Smith," I said, "I do not altogether understand you; but do you
+think he has some incredible creature hidden here somewhere?
+It would be like him."
+
+"I begin to suspect the most formidable creature in the known world
+to be hidden here.  I believe Fu-Manchu is somewhere inside Redmoat!"
+
+Our conversation was interrupted at this point by Denby,
+who came to report that he had examined the moat, the roadside,
+and the bank of the stream, but found no footprints or clew
+of any kind.
+
+"No one left the grounds of Redmoat last night, I think," he said.
+And his voice had awe in it.
+
+That day dragged slowly on.  A party of us scoured the neighborhood
+for traces of strangers, examining every foot of the Roman ruin
+hard by; but vainly.
+
+"May not your presence here induce Fu-Manchu to abandon his plans?"
+I asked Smith.
+
+"I think not," he replied.  "You see, unless we can prevail upon him,
+Eltham sails in a fortnight.  So the Doctor has no time to waste.
+Furthermore, I have an idea that his arrangements are of such a character
+that they MUST go forward.  He might turn aside, of course,
+to assassinate me, if opportunity arose!  But we know, from experience,
+that he permits nothing to interfere with his schemes."
+
+There are few states, I suppose, which exact so severe a toll from one's
+nervous system as the ANTICIPATION of calamity.
+
+All anticipation is keener, be it of joy or pain, than the reality
+whereof it is a mental forecast; but that inactive waiting at Redmoat,
+for the blow which we knew full well to be pending exceeded in its
+nerve taxation, anything, I hitherto had experienced.
+
+I felt as one bound upon an Aztec altar, with the priest's obsidian
+knife raised above my breast!
+
+Secret and malign forces throbbed about us; forces against which
+we had no armor.  Dreadful as it was, I count it a mercy that
+the climax was reached so quickly.  And it came suddenly enough;
+for there in that quiet Norfolk home we found ourselves at hand
+grips with one of the mysterious horrors which characterized
+the operations of Dr. Fu-Manchu. It was upon us before we realized it.
+There is no incidental music to the dramas of real life.
+
+As we sat on the little terrace in the creeping twilight,
+I remember thinking how the peace of the scene gave the lie
+to my fears that we bordered upon tragic things.  Then Caesar,
+who had been a docile patient all day, began howling again;
+and I saw Greba Eltham shudder.
+
+I caught Smith's eye, and was about to propose our retirement indoors,
+when the party was broken up in more turbulent fashion.  I suppose it
+was the presence of the girl which prompted Denby to the rash act,
+a desire personally to distinguish himself.  But, as I recalled afterwards,
+his gaze had rarely left the shrubbery since dusk, save to seek her face,
+and now he leaped wildly to his feet, overturning his chair, and dashed
+across the grass to the trees.
+
+"Did you see it?" he yelled.  "Did you see it?"
+
+He evidently carried a revolver.  For from the edge of the shrubbery
+a shot sounded, and in the flash we saw Denby with the weapon raised.
+
+"Greba, go in and fasten the windows," cried Eltham.
+"Mr. Smith, will you enter the bushes from the west.
+Dr. Petrie, east.  Edwards, Edwards--" And he was off across
+the lawn with the nervous activity of a cat.
+
+As I made off in an opposite direction I heard the gardener's
+voice from the lower gate, and I saw Eltham's plan.
+It was to surround the shrubbery.
+
+Two more shots and two flashes from the dense heart of greenwood.
+Then a loud cry--I thought, from Denby--and a second, muffled one.
+
+Following--silence, only broken by the howling of the mastiff.
+
+I sprinted through the rose garden, leaped heedlessly over a bed of geranium
+and heliotrope, and plunged in among the bushes and under the elms.
+Away on the left I heard Edwards shouting, and Eltham's answering voice.
+
+"Denby!" I cried, and yet louder:  "Denby!"
+
+But the silence fell again.
+
+Dusk was upon Redmoat now, but from sitting in the twilight my eyes had
+grown accustomed to gloom, and I could see fairly well what lay before me.
+Not daring to think what might lurk above, below, around me, I pressed
+on into the midst of the thicket.
+
+"Vernon!" came Eltham's voice from one side.
+
+"Bear more to the right, Edwards," I heard Nayland Smith cry
+directly ahead of me.
+
+With an eerie and indescribable sensation of impending disaster upon me,
+I thrust my way through to a gray patch which marked a break in the
+elmen roof.  At the foot of the copper beech I almost fell over Eltham.
+Then Smith plunged into view.  Lastly, Edwards the gardener rounded a big
+rhododendron and completed the party.
+
+We stood quite still for a moment.
+
+A faint breeze whispered through the beech leaves.
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+I cannot remember who put it into words; I was too dazed with amazement
+to notice.  Then Eltham began shouting:
+
+"Vernon!  Vernon!  VERNON!"
+
+His voice pitched higher upon each repetition.  There was something
+horrible about that vain calling, under the whispering beech,
+with shrubs banked about us cloaking God alone could know what.
+
+From the back of the house came Caesar's faint reply.
+
+"Quick!  Lights!" rapped Smith.  "Every lamp you have!"
+
+Off we went, dodging laurels and privets, and poured out on to the lawn,
+a disordered company.  Eltham's face was deathly pale, and his jaw set hard.
+He met my eye.
+
+"God forgive me!" he said.  "I could do murder to-night!"
+
+He was a man composed of strange perplexities.
+
+It seemed an age before the lights were found.  But at last we returned
+to the bushes, really after a very brief delay; and ten minutes
+sufficed us to explore the entire shrubbery, for it was not extensive.
+We found his revolver, but there was no one there--nothing.
+
+When we all stood again on the lawn, I thought that I had never seen
+Smith so haggard.
+
+"What in Heaven's name can we do?" he muttered.
+"What does it mean?"
+
+He expected no answer; for there was none to offer one.
+
+"Search!  Everywhere," said Eltham hoarsely.
+
+He ran off into the rose garden, and began beating about among
+the flowers like a madman, muttering:  "Vernon!  Vernon!"  For close
+upon an hour we all searched.  We searched every square yard, I think,
+within the wire fencing, and found no trace.  Miss Eltham slipped out
+in the confusion, and joined with the rest of us in that frantic hunt.
+Some of the servants assisted too.
+
+It was a group terrified and awestricken which came together
+again on the terrace.  One and then another would give up,
+until only Eltham and Smith were missing.  Then they came back
+together from examining the steps to the lower gate.
+
+Eltham dropped on to a rustic seat, and sank his head in his hands.
+
+Nayland Smith paced up and down like a newly caged animal,
+snapping his teeth together and tugging at his ear.
+
+Possessed by some sudden idea, or pressed to action by his
+tumultuous thoughts, he snatched up a lantern and strode silently off
+across the grass and to the shrubbery once more.  I followed him.
+I think his idea was that he might surprise anyone who lurked there.
+He surprised himself, and all of us.
+
+For right at the margin he tripped and fell flat.
+I ran to him.
+
+He had fallen over the body of Denby, which lay there!
+
+Denby had not been there a few moments before, and how he came
+to be there now we dared not conjecture.  Mr. Eltham joined us,
+uttered one short, dry sob, and dropped upon his knees.
+Then we were carrying Denby back to the house, with the mastiff
+howling a marche funebre.
+
+We laid him on the grass where it sloped down from the terrace.
+Nayland Smith's haggard face was terrible.  But the stark horror of
+the thing inspired him to that, which conceived earlier, had saved Denby.
+Twisting suddenly to Eltham, he roared in a voice audible beyond the river:
+
+"Heavens!  we are fools!  LOOSE THE DOG!"
+
+"But the dog--" I began.
+
+Smith clapped his hand over my mouth.
+
+"I know he's crippled," he whispered.  "But if anything human lurks there,
+the dog will lead us to it.  If a MAN is there, he will fly!  Why did
+we not think of it before.  Fools, fools!"  He raised his voice again.
+"Keep him on leash, Edwards.  He will lead us."
+
+The scheme succeeded.
+
+Edwards barely had started on his errand when bells began ridging
+inside the house.
+
+"Wait!" snapped Eltham, and rushed indoors.
+
+A moment later he was out again, his eyes gleaming madly.
+"Above the moat," he panted.  And we were off en masse
+round the edge of the trees.
+
+It was dark above the moat; but not so dark as to prevent our
+seeing a narrow ladder of thin bamboo joints and silken cord
+hanging by two hooks from the top of the twelve-foot wire fence.
+There was no sound.
+
+"He's out!" screamed Eltham.  "Down the steps!"
+
+We all ran our best and swiftest.  But Eltham outran us.  Like a fury
+he tore at bolts and bars, and like a fury sprang out into the road.
+Straight and white it showed to the acclivity by the Roman ruin.
+But no living thing moved upon it.  The distant baying of the dog
+was borne to our ears.
+
+"Curse it!  he's crippled," hissed Smith.  "Without him,
+as well pursue a shadow!"
+
+
+A few hours later the shrubbery yielded up its secret, a simple one enough:
+A big cask sunk in a pit, with a laurel shrub cunningly affixed
+to its movable lid, which was further disguised with tufts of grass.
+A slender bamboo-jointed rod lay near the fence.  It had a hook on the top,
+and was evidently used for attaching the ladder.
+
+"It was the end of this ladder which Miss Eltham saw," said Smith,
+"as he trailed it behind him into the shrubbery when she interrupted
+him in her fathers room.  He and whomever he had with him doubtless
+slipped in during the daytime--whilst Eltham was absent in London--
+bringing the prepared cask and all necessary implements with them.
+They concealed themselves somewhere--probably in the shrubbery--
+and during the night made the cache.  The excavated earth would be
+disposed of on the flower-beds; the dummy bush they probably had ready.
+You see, the problem of getting IN was never a big one.
+But owing to the `defenses' it was impossible (whilst Eltham
+was in residence at any rate) to get OUT after dark.
+For Fu-Manchu's purposes, then, a working-base INSIDE
+Redmoat was essential.  His servant--for he needed assistance--
+must have been in hiding somewhere outside; Heaven knows where!
+During the day they could come or go by the gates, as we
+have already noted."
+
+"You think it was the Doctor himself?"
+
+"It seems possible.  Whom else has eyes like the eyes Miss Eltham
+saw from the window last night?"
+
+Then remains to tell the nature of the outrage whereby Fu-Manchu had planned
+to prevent Eltham's leaving England for China.  This we learned from Denby.
+For Denby was not dead.
+
+It was easy to divine that he had stumbled upon the fiendish
+visitor at the very entrance to his burrow; had been stunned
+(judging from the evidence, with a sand-bag), and dragged down into
+the cache--to which he must have lain in such dangerous proximity
+as to render detection of the dummy bush possible in removing him.
+The quickest expedient, then, had been to draw him beneath.
+When the search of the shrubbery was concluded, his body had been
+borne to the edge of the bushes and laid where we found it.
+
+Why his life had been spared, I cannot conjecture, but provision
+had been made against his recovering consciousness and revealing
+the secret of the shrubbery.  The ruse of releasing the mastiff alone
+had terminated the visit of the unbidden guest within Redmoat.
+
+Denby made a very slow recovery; and, even when convalescent,
+consciously added not one fact to those we already had collated;
+his memory had completely deserted him!
+
+This, in my opinion, as in those of the several specialists consulted,
+was due, not to the blow on the head, but to the presence,
+slightly below and to the right of the first cervical curve of the spine,
+of a minute puncture--undoubtedly caused by a hypodermic syringe.
+Then, unconsciously, poor Denby furnished the last link in the chain;
+for undoubtedly, by means of this operation, Fu-Manchu had designed
+to efface from Eltham's mind his plans of return to Ho-Nan.
+
+The nature of the fluid which could produce such mental symptoms
+was a mystery--a mystery which defied Western science:
+one of the many strange secrets of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+SINCE Nayland Smith's return from Burma I had rarely taken up a paper
+without coming upon evidences of that seething which had cast up
+Dr. Fu-Manchu. Whether, hitherto, such items had escaped my attention
+or had seemed to demand no particular notice, or whether they now became
+increasingly numerous, I was unable to determine.
+
+One evening, some little time after our sojourn in Norfolk,
+in glancing through a number of papers which I had brought in with me,
+I chanced upon no fewer than four items of news bearing more or less
+directly upon the grim business which engaged my friend and I.
+
+No white man, I honestly believe, appreciates the unemotional cruelty
+of the Chinese.  Throughout the time that Dr. Fu-Manchu remained in England,
+the press preserved a uniform silence upon the subject of his existence.
+This was due to Nayland Smith.  But, as a result, I feel assured
+that my account of the Chinaman's deeds will, in many quarters,
+meet with an incredulous reception.
+
+I had been at work, earlier in the evening, upon the opening
+chapters of this chronicle, and I had realized how difficult
+it would be for my reader, amid secure and cozy surroundings,
+to credit any human being, with a callous villainy great enough
+to conceive and to put into execution such a death pest
+as that directed against Sir Crichton Davey.
+
+One would expect God's worst man to shrink from employing--
+against however vile an enemy--such an instrument as the Zayat Kiss.
+So thinking, my eye was caught by the following:--
+
+
+EXPRESS CORRESPONDENT
+
+NEW YORK.
+
+"Secret service men of the United States Government are searching
+the South Sea Islands for a certain Hawaiian from the island
+of Maui, who, it is believed, has been selling poisonous scorpions
+to Chinese in Honolulu anxious to get rid of their children.
+
+"Infanticide, by scorpion and otherwise, among the Chinese,
+has increased so terribly that the authorities have started
+a searching inquiry, which has led to the hunt for the scorpion
+dealer of Maui.
+
+"Practically all the babies that die mysteriously are unwanted girls,
+and in nearly every case the parents promptly ascribe the death to the bite
+of a scorpion, and are ready to produce some more or less poisonous insect
+in support of the statement.
+
+"The authorities have no doubt that infanticide by scorpion
+bite is a growing practice, and orders have been given to hunt
+down the scorpion dealer at any cost."
+
+
+Is it any matter for wonder that such a people had produced a
+Fu-Manchu?  I pasted the cutting into a scrap-book, determined that,
+if I lived to publish my account of those days, I would quote it
+therein as casting a sidelight upon Chinese character.
+
+A Reuter message to The Globe and a paragraph in The
+Star also furnished work for my scissors.  Here were evidences
+of the deep-seated unrest, the secret turmoil, which manifested
+itself so far from its center as peaceful England in the person
+of the sinister Doctor.
+
+
+"HONG KONG, Friday.
+
+"Li Hon Hung, the Chinaman who fired at the Governor yesterday,
+was charged before the magistrate with shooting at him with
+intent to kill, which is equivalent to attempted murder.
+The prisoner, who was not defended, pleaded guilty.
+The Assistant Crown Solicitor, who prosecuted, asked for a remand
+until Monday, which was granted.
+
+"Snapshots taken by the spectators of the outrage yesterday disclosed
+the presence of an accomplice, also armed with a revolver.
+It is reported that this man, who was arrested last night,
+was in possession of incriminating documentary evidence."
+
+
+Later.
+
+"Examination of the documents found on Li Hon Hung's accomplice
+has disclosed the fact that both men were well financed by
+the Canton Triad Society, the directors of which had enjoined
+the assassination of Sir F. M. or Mr. C. S., the Colonial Secretary.
+In a report prepared by the accomplice for dispatch to Canton,
+also found on his person, he expressed regret that the attempt
+had failed."--Reuter.
+
+"It is officially reported in St. Petersburg that a force of Chinese soldiers
+and villagers surrounded the house of a Russian subject named Said Effendi,
+near Khotan, in Chinese Turkestan.
+
+"They fired at the house and set it in flames.  There were in the house
+about 100 Russians, many of whom were killed.
+
+"The Russian Government has instructed its Minister at Peking to make
+the most vigorous representations on the subject."--Reuter.
+
+
+Finally, in a Personal Column, I found the following:--
+
+"HO-NAN. Have abandoned visit.--ELTHAM."
+
+
+I had just pasted it into my book when Nayland Smith came in and
+threw himself into an arm-chair, facing me across the table.
+I showed him the cutting.
+
+"I am glad, for Eltham's sake--and for the girl's," was his comment.
+"But it marks another victory for Fu-Manchu!  Just Heaven!  Why is
+retribution delayed!"
+
+Smith's darkly tanned face had grown leaner than ever
+since he bad begun his fight with the most uncanny opponent,
+I suppose, against whom a man ever had pitted himself.
+He stood up and began restlessly to pace the room,
+furiously stuffing tobacco into his briar.
+
+"I have seen Sir Lionel Barton," he said abruptly; "and, to put the whole
+thing in a nutshell, he has laughed at me!  During the months that I
+have been wondering where he had gone to he has been somewhere in Egypt.
+He certainly bears a charmed life, for on the evidence of his letter
+to The Times he has seen things in Tibet which Fu-Manchu would
+have the West blind to; in fact, I think he has found a new keyhole
+to the gate of the Indian Empire!"
+
+Long ago we had placed the name of Sir Lionel Barton upon the list of
+those whose lives stood between Fu-Manchu and the attainment of his end.
+Orientalist and explorer, the fearless traveler who first had penetrated
+to Lhassa, who thrice, as a pilgrim, had entered forbidden Mecca,
+he now had turned his attention again to Tibet--thereby signing
+his own death-warrant.
+
+"That he has reached England alive is a hopeful sign?" I suggested.
+
+Smith shook his head, and lighted the blackened briar.
+
+"England at present is the web," he replied.  "The spider will be waiting.
+Petrie, I sometimes despair.  Sir Lionel is an impossible man to shepherd.
+You ought to see his house at Finchley.  A low, squat place completely
+hemmed in by trees.  Damp as a swamp; smells like a jungle.
+Everything topsy-turvy. He only arrived to-day, and he is working and eating
+(and sleeping I expect), in a study that looks like an earthquake at Sotheby's
+auction-rooms. The rest of the house is half a menagerie and half a circus.
+He has a Bedouin groom, a Chinese body-servant, and Heaven only knows
+what other strange people!"
+
+"Chinese!"
+
+"Yes, I saw him; a squinting Cantonese he calls Kwee.  I don't like him.
+Also, there is a secretary known as Strozza, who has an unpleasant face.
+He is a fine linguist, I understand, and is engaged upon the Spanish
+notes for Barton's forthcoming book on the Mayapan temples.
+By the way, all Sir Lionel's baggage disappeared from the landing-stage--
+including his Tibetan notes."
+
+"Significant!"
+
+"Of course.  But he argues that he has crossed Tibet from the Kuen-Lun
+to the Himalayas without being assassinated, and therefore
+that it is unlikely he will meet with that fate in London.
+I left him dictating the book from memory, at the rate of about
+two hundred words a minute."
+
+"He is wasting no time."
+
+"Wasting time!  In addition to the Yucatan book and the work on Tibet,
+he has to read a paper at the Institute next week about some tomb he has
+unearthed in Egypt.  As I came away, a van drove up from the docks
+and a couple of fellows delivered a sarcophagus as big as a boat.
+It is unique, according to Sir Lionel, and will go to the British Museum
+after he has examined it.  The man crams six months' work into six weeks;
+then he is off again."
+
+"What do you propose to do?"
+
+"What CAN I do?  I know that Fu-Manchu will make an attempt upon him.
+I cannot doubt it.  Ugh!  that house gave me the shudders.
+No sunlight, I'll swear, Petrie, can ever penetrate to the rooms,
+and when I arrived this afternoon clouds of gnats floated like motes
+wherever a stray beam filtered through the trees of the avenue.
+There's a steamy smell about the place that is almost malarious,
+and the whole of the west front is covered with a sort of
+monkey-creeper, which he has imported at some time or other.
+It has a close, exotic perfume that is quite in the picture.
+I tell you, the place was made for murder."
+
+"Have you taken any precautions?"
+
+"I called at Scotland Yard and sent a man down to watch the house, but--"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
+
+"What is Sir Lionel like?"
+
+"A madman, Petrie.  A tall, massive man, wearing a dirty
+dressing-gown of neutral color; a man with untidy gray hair
+and a bristling mustache, keen blue eyes, and a brown skin;
+who wears a short beard or rarely shaves--I don't know which.
+I left him striding about among the thousand and one curiosities
+of that incredible room, picking his way through his antique
+furniture, works of reference, manuscripts, mummies, spears,
+pottery and what not--sometimes kicking a book from his course,
+or stumbling over a stuffed crocodile or a Mexican mask--
+alternately dictating and conversing.  Phew!"
+
+For some time we were silent.
+
+"Smith" I said, "we are making no headway in this business.
+With all the forces arrayed against him, Fu-Manchu still eludes us,
+still pursues his devilish, inscrutable way."
+
+Nayland Smith nodded.
+
+"And we don't know all," he said.  "We mark such and such a man
+as one alive to the Yellow Peril, and we warn him--if we have time.
+Perhaps he escapes; perhaps he does not.  But what do we know, Petrie,
+of those others who may die every week by his murderous agency?
+We cannot know EVERYONE who has read the riddle of China.
+I never see a report of someone found drowned, of an apparent suicide,
+of a sudden, though seemingly natural death, without wondering.
+I tell you, Fu-Manchu is omnipresent; his tentacles embrace everything.
+I said that Sir Lionel must bear a charmed life.  The fact that
+WE are alive is a miracle."
+
+He glanced at his watch.
+
+"Nearly eleven," he said.  "But sleep seems a waste of time--
+apart from its dangers."
+
+We heard a bell ring.  A few moments later followed a knock
+at the room door.
+
+"Come in!" I cried.
+
+A girl entered with a telegram addressed to Smith.
+His jaw looked very square in the lamplight, and his eyes shone
+like steel as he took it from her and opened the envelope.
+He glanced at the form, stood up and passed it to me,
+reaching for his hat, which lay upon my writing-table.
+
+"God help us, Petrie!" he said.
+
+This was the message:
+
+
+"Sir Lionel Barton murdered.  Meet me at his house
+at once.--WEYMOUTH, INSPECTOR."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+ALTHOUGH we avoided all unnecessary delay, it was close upon
+midnight when our cab swung round into a darkly shadowed avenue,
+at the farther end of which, as seen through a tunnel,
+the moonlight glittered upon the windows of Rowan House,
+Sir Lionel Barton's home.
+
+Stepping out before the porch of the long, squat building, I saw
+that it was banked in, as Smith had said, by trees and shrubs.
+The facade showed mantled in the strange exotic creeper
+which he had mentioned, and the air was pungent with an odor
+of decaying vegetation, with which mingled the heavy perfume
+of the little nocturnal red flowers which bloomed luxuriantly
+upon the creeper.
+
+The place looked a veritable wilderness, and when we were admitted
+to the hall by Inspector Weymouth I saw that the interior was in keeping
+with the exterior, for the hall was constructed from the model of some
+apartment in an Assyrian temple, and the squat columns, the low seats,
+the hangings, all were eloquent of neglect, being thickly dust-coated.
+The musty smell, too, was almost as pronounced here as outside,
+beneath the trees.
+
+To a library, whose contents overflowed in many literary torrents
+upon the floor, the detective conducted us.
+
+"Good heavens!" I cried, "what's that?"
+
+Something leaped from the top of the bookcase, ambled silently
+across the littered carpet, and passed from the library like a
+golden streak.  I stood looking after it with startled eyes.
+Inspector Weymouth laughed dryly.
+
+"It's a young puma, or a civet-cat, or something, Doctor," he said.
+"This house is full of surprises--and mysteries."
+
+His voice was not quite steady, I thought, and he carefully closed
+the door ere proceeding further.
+
+"Where is he?" asked Nayland Smith harshly.  "How was it done?"
+
+Weymouth sat down and lighted a cigar which I offered him.
+
+"I thought you would like to hear what led up to it--so far as we know--
+before seeing him?"
+
+Smith nodded.
+
+"Well," continued the Inspector, "the man you arranged to send
+down from the Yard got here all right and took up a post in the
+road outside, where he could command a good view of the gates.
+He saw and heard nothing, until going on for half-past ten,
+when a young lady turned up and went in."
+
+"A young lady?"
+
+"Miss Edmonds, Sir Lionel's shorthand typist.  She had found,
+after getting home, that her bag, with her purse in,
+was missing, and she came back to see if she had left it here.
+She gave the alarm.  My man heard the row from the road and came in.
+Then he ran out and rang us up.  I immediately wired for you."
+
+"He heard the row, you say.  What row?"
+
+"Miss Edmonds went into violent hysterics!"
+
+Smith was pacing the room now in tense excitement.
+
+"Describe what he saw when he came in."
+
+"He saw a negro footman--there isn't an Englishman in the house--
+trying to pacify the girl out in the hall yonder, and a Malay
+and another colored man beating their foreheads and howling.
+There was no sense to be got out of any of them, so he started
+to investigate for himself.  He had taken the bearings of the place
+earlier in the evening, and from the light in a window on the ground
+floor had located the study; so he set out to look for the door.
+When he found it, it was locked from the inside."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He went out and round to the window.  There's no blind, and from
+the shrubbery you can see into the lumber-room known as the study.
+He looked in, as apparently Miss Edmonds had done before him.
+What he saw accounted for her hysterics."
+
+Both Smith and I were hanging upon his words.
+
+"All amongst the rubbish on the floor a big Egyptian mummy case was
+lying on its side, and face downwards, with his arms thrown across it,
+lay Sir Lionel Barton."
+
+"My God!  Yes.  Go on."
+
+"There was only a shaded reading-lamp alight, and it stood on a chair,
+shining right down on him; it made a patch of light on the floor,
+you understand."  The Inspector indicated its extent with his bands.
+"Well, as the man smashed the glass and got the window open,
+and was just climbing in, he saw something else, so he says."
+
+He paused.
+
+"What did he see?" demanded Smith shortly.
+
+"A sort of GREEN MIST, sir.  He says it seemed to be alive.
+It moved over the floor, about a foot from the ground, going away
+from him and towards a curtain at the other end of the study."
+
+Nayland Smith fixed his eyes upon the speaker.
+
+"Where did he first see this green mist?"
+
+"He says, Mr. Smith, that he thinks it came from the mummy case."
+
+"Yes; go on."
+
+"It is to his credit that he climbed into the room after
+seeing a thing like that.  He did.  He turned the body over,
+and Sir Lionel looked horrible.  He was quite dead.
+Then Croxted--that's the man's name--went over to this curtain.
+There was a glass door--shut.  He opened it, and it gave on
+a conservatory--a place stacked from the tiled floor to the glass
+roof with more rubbish.  It was dark inside, but enough light
+came from the study--it's really a drawing-room, by the way--
+as he'd turned all the lamps on, to give him another glimpse
+of this green, crawling mist.  There are three steps to go down.
+On the steps lay a dead Chinaman."
+
+"A dead Chinaman!"
+
+"A dead CHINAMAN."
+
+"Doctor seen them?" rapped Smith.
+
+"Yes; a local man.  He was out of his depth, I could see.
+Contradicted himself three times.  But there's no need for
+another opinion--until we get the coroner's."
+
+"And Croxted?"
+
+"Croxted was taken ill, Mr. Smith, and had to be sent home in a cab."
+
+"What ails him?"
+
+Detective-Inspector Weymouth raised his eyebrows and carefully
+knocked the ash from his cigar.
+
+"He held out until I came, gave me the story, and then fainted right away.
+He said that something in the conservatory seemed to get him by the throat."
+
+"Did he mean that literally?"
+
+"I couldn't say.  We had to send the girl home, too, of course."
+
+Nayland Smith was pulling thoughtfully at the lobe of his left ear.
+
+"Got any theory?" he jerked.
+
+Weymouth shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Not one that includes the green mist," he said.
+"Shall we go in now?"
+
+We crossed the Assyrian hall, where the members of that strange
+household were gathered in a panic-stricken group.  They numbered four.
+Two of them were negroes, and two Easterns of some kind.  I missed
+the Chinaman, Kwee, of whom Smith had spoken, and the Italian secretary;
+and from the way in which my friend peered about the shadows
+of the hall I divined that he, too, wondered at their absence.
+We entered Sir Lionel's study--an apartment which I despair of describing.
+
+Nayland Smith's words, "an earthquake at Sotheby's auction-rooms,"
+leaped to my mind at once; for the place was simply stacked
+with curious litter--loot of Africa, Mexico and Persia.
+In a clearing by the hearth a gas stove stood upon a packing-case,
+and about it lay a number of utensils for camp cookery.
+The odor of rotting vegetation, mingled with the insistent
+perfume of the strange night-blooming flowers, was borne
+in through the open window.
+
+In the center of the floor, beside an overturned sarcophagus,
+lay a figure in a neutral-colored dressing-gown, face downwards,
+and arms thrust forward and over the side of the ancient
+Egyptian mummy case.
+
+My friend advanced and knelt beside the dead man.
+
+"Good God!"
+
+Smith sprang upright and turned with an extraordinary expression
+to Inspector Weymouth.
+
+"You do not know Sir Lionel Barton by sight?" he rapped.
+
+"No," began Weymouth, "but--"
+
+"This is not Sir Lionel.  This is Strozza, the secretary."
+
+"What!" shouted Weymouth.
+
+"Where is the other--the Chinaman--quick!" cried Smith.
+
+"I have had him left where he was found--on the conservatory steps,"
+said the Inspector.
+
+Smith ran across the room to where, beyond the open door,
+a glimpse might be obtained of stacked-up curiosities.
+Holding back the curtain to allow more light to penetrate,
+he bent forward over a crumpled-up figure which lay upon
+the steps below.
+
+"It is!" he cried aloud.  "It is Sir Lionel's servant, Kwee."
+
+Weymouth and I looked at one another across the body of the Italian;
+then our eyes turned together to where my friend, grim-faced, stood
+over the dead Chinaman.  A breeze whispered through the leaves;
+a great wave of exotic perfume swept from the open window towards
+the curtained doorway.
+
+It was a breath of the East--that stretched out a yellow hand to the West.
+It was symbolic of the subtle, intangible power manifested in Dr. Fu-Manchu,
+as Nayland Smith--lean, agile, bronzed with the suns of Burma, was symbolic
+of the clean British efficiency which sought to combat the insidious enemy.
+
+"One thing is evident," said Smith:  "no one in the house, Strozza excepted,
+knew that Sir Lionel was absent."
+
+"How do you arrive at that?" asked Weymouth.
+
+"The servants, in the hall, are bewailing him as dead.
+If they had seen him go out they would know that it must
+be someone else who lies here."
+
+"What about the Chinaman?"
+
+"Since there is no other means of entrance to the conservatory save
+through the study, Kwee must have hidden himself there at some time
+when his master was absent from the room."
+
+"Croxted found the communicating door closed.  What killed the Chinaman?"
+
+"Both Miss Edmonds and Croxted found the study door locked from the inside.
+What killed Strozza?" retorted Smith.
+
+"You will have noted," continued the Inspector, "that the secretary is
+wearing Sir Lionel's dressing-gown. It was seeing him in that, as she looked
+in at the window, which led Miss Edmonds to mistake him for her employer--
+and consequently to put us on the wrong scent."
+
+"He wore it in order that anybody looking in at the window would
+be sure to make that mistake," rapped Smith.
+
+"Why?" I asked.
+
+"Because he came here for a felonious purpose.  See."  Smith stooped
+and took up several tools from the litter on the floor.
+"There lies the lid.  He came to open the sarcophagus.
+It contained the mummy of some notable person who flourished
+under Meneptah II; and Sir Lionel told me that a number of valuable
+ornaments and jewels probably were secreted amongst the wrappings.
+He proposed to open the thing and to submit the entire contents
+to examination to-night. He evidently changed his mind--
+fortunately for himself."
+
+I ran my fingers through my hair in perplexity.
+
+"Then what has become of the mummy?"
+
+Nayland Smith laughed dryly.
+
+"It has vanished in the form of a green vapor apparently," he said.
+"Look at Strozza's face."
+
+He turned the body over, and, used as I was to such spectacles,
+the contorted features of the Italian filled me with horror, so--
+suggestive were they of a death more than ordinarily violent.  I pulled aside
+the dressing-gown and searched the body for marks, but failed to find any.
+Nayland Smith crossed the room, and, assisted by the detective,
+carried Kwee, the Chinaman, into the study and laid him fully in the light.
+His puckered yellow face presented a sight even more awful than the other,
+and his blue lips were drawn back, exposing both upper and lower teeth.
+There were no marks of violence, but his limbs, like Strozza's, had been
+tortured during his mortal struggles into unnatural postures.
+
+The breeze was growing higher, and pungent odor-waves from
+the damp shrubbery, bearing, too, the oppressive sweetness of
+the creeping, plant, swept constantly through the open window.
+Inspector Weymouth carefully relighted his cigar.
+
+"I'm with you this far, Mr. Smith," he said.  "Strozza, knowing Sir
+Lionel to be absent, locked himself in here to rifle the mummy case,
+for Croxted, entering by way of the window, found the key on the inside.
+Strozza didn't know that the Chinaman was hidden in the conservatory--"
+
+"And Kwee did not dare to show himself, because he too was there
+for some mysterious reason of his own," interrupted Smith.
+
+"Having got the lid off, something,--somebody--"
+
+"Suppose we say the mummy?"
+
+Weymouth laughed uneasily.
+
+"Well, sir, something that vanished from a locked room without
+opening the door or the window killed Strozza."
+
+"And something which, having killed Strozza, next killed the Chinaman,
+apparently without troubling to open the door behind which he lay concealed,"
+Smith continued.  "For once in a way, Inspector, Dr. Fu-Manchu has employed
+an ally which even his giant will was incapable entirely to subjugate.
+What blind force--what terrific agent of death--had he confined
+in that sarcophagus!"
+
+"You think this is the work of Fu-Manchu?" I said.
+"If you are correct, his power indeed is more than human."
+
+Something in my voice, I suppose, brought Smith right about.
+He surveyed me curiously.
+
+"Can you doubt it?  The presence of a concealed Chinaman surely
+is sufficient.  Kwee, I feel assured, was one of the murder group,
+though probably he had only recently entered that mysterious service.
+He is unarmed, or I should feel disposed to think that his part
+was to assassinate Sir Lionel whilst, unsuspecting the presence of a
+hidden enemy, he was at work here.  Strozza's opening the sarcophagus
+clearly spoiled the scheme."
+
+"And led to the death--"
+
+"Of a servant of Fu-Manchu. Yes.  I am at a loss to account for that."
+
+"Do you think that the sarcophagus entered into the scheme, Smith?"
+
+My friend looked at me in evident perplexity.
+
+"You mean that its arrival at the time when a creature of the Doctor--
+Kwee--was concealed here, may have been a coincidence?"
+
+I nodded; and Smith bent over the sarcophagus, curiously examining
+the garish paintings with which it was decorated inside and out.
+It lay sideways upon the floor, and seizing it by its edge,
+he turned it over.
+
+"Heavy," he muttered; "but Strozza must have capsized it as he fell.
+He would not have laid it on its side to remove the lid.  Hallo!"
+
+He bent farther forward, catching at a piece of twine,
+and out of the mummy case pulled a rubber stopper or "cork."
+
+"This was stuck in a hole level with the floor of the thing," he said.
+"Ugh!  it has a disgusting smell."
+
+I took it from his hands, and was about to examine it, when a loud
+voice sounded outside in the hall.  The door was thrown open,
+and a big man, who, despite the warmth of the weather,
+wore a fur-lined overcoat, rushed impetuously into the room.
+
+"Sir Lionel!" cried Smith eagerly.  "I warned you!
+And see, you have had a very narrow escape."
+
+Sir Lionel Barton glanced at what lay upon the floor,
+then from Smith to myself, and from me to Inspector Weymouth.
+He dropped into one of the few chairs unstacked with books.
+
+"Mr. Smith," he said, with emotion, "what does this mean?
+Tell me--quickly."
+
+In brief terms Smith detailed the happenings of the night--
+or so much as he knew of them.  Sir Lionel Barton listened,
+sitting quite still the while--an unusual repose in a man
+of such evidently tremendous nervous activity.
+
+"He came for the jewels," he said slowly, when Smith was finished;
+and his eyes turned to the body of the dead Italian.
+"I was wrong to submit him to the temptation.  God knows what
+Kwee was doing in hiding.  Perhaps he had come to murder me,
+as you surmise, Mr. Smith, though I find it hard to believe.
+But--I don't think this is the handiwork of your Chinese doctor."
+He fixed his gaze upon the sarcophagus.
+
+Smith stared at him in surprise.  "What do you mean, Sir Lionel?"
+
+The famous traveler continued to look towards the sarcophagus
+with something in his blue eyes that might have been dread.
+
+"I received a wire from Professor Rembold to-night," he continued.
+"You were correct in supposing that no one but Strozza knew
+of my absence.  I dressed hurriedly and met the professor at
+the Traveler's. He knew that I was to read a paper next week upon"--
+again he looked toward the mummy case--"the tomb of Mekara;
+and he knew that the sarcophagus had been brought, untouched, to England.
+He begged me not to open it."
+
+Nayland Smith was studying the speaker's face.
+
+"What reason did he give for so extraordinary a request?" he asked.
+
+Sir Lionel Barton hesitated.
+
+"One," he replied at last, "which amused me--at the time.  I must inform
+you that Mekara--whose tomb my agent had discovered during my absence
+in Tibet, and to enter which I broke my return journey to Alexandria--
+was a high priest and first prophet of Amen--under the Pharaoh of the Exodus;
+in short, one of the magicians who contested in magic arts with Moses.
+I thought the discovery unique, until Professor Rembold furnished me
+with some curious particulars respecting the death of M. Page le Roi,
+the French Egyptologist--particulars new to me."
+
+We listened in growing surprise, scarcely knowing to what this tended.
+
+"M. le Roi," continued Barton, "discovered, but kept secret,
+the tomb of Amenti--another of this particular brotherhood.
+It appears that he opened the mummy case on the spot--
+these priests were of royal line, and are buried in the valley
+of Biban-le-Moluk. His Fellah and Arab servants deserted him
+for some reason--on seeing the mummy case--and he was found dead,
+apparently strangled, beside it.  The matter was hushed up
+by the Egyptian Government.  Rembold could not explain why.
+But he begged of me not to open the sarcophagus of Mekara."
+
+A silence fell.
+
+The strange facts regarding the sudden death of Page le Roi,
+which I now heard for the first time, had impressed me unpleasantly,
+coming from a man of Sir Lionel Barton's experience and reputation.
+
+"How long had it lain in the docks?" jerked Smith.
+
+"For two days, I believe.  I am not a superstitious man, Mr. Smith,
+but neither is Professor Rembold, and now that I know the facts
+respecting Page le Roi, I can find it in my heart to thank God
+that I did not see. . .whatever came out of that sarcophagus."
+
+Nayland Smith stared him hard in the face.  "I am glad you
+did not, Sir Lionel," he said; "for whatever the priest Mekara
+has to do with the matter, by means of his sarcophagus,
+Dr. Fu-Manchu has made his first attempt upon your life.
+He has failed, but I hope you will accompany me from here to a hotel.
+He will not fail twice."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+IT was the night following that of the double tragedy at Rowan House.
+Nayland Smith, with Inspector Weymouth, was engaged in some mysterious inquiry
+at the docks, and I had remained at home to resume my strange chronicle.
+And--why should I not confess it?--my memories had frightened me.
+
+I was arranging my notes respecting the case of Sir Lionel Barton.
+They were hopelessly incomplete.  For instance, I had jotted down
+the following queries:--(1) Did any true parallel exist between the death
+of M. Page le Roi and the death of Kwee, the Chinaman, and of Strozza?
+(2) What had become of the mummy of Mekara?  (3) How had the murderer
+escaped from a locked room?  (4) What was the purpose of the rubber stopper?
+(5) Why was Kwee hiding in the conservatory?  (6) Was the green mist
+a mere subjective hallucination--a figment of Croxted's imagination--
+or had he actually seen it?
+
+Until these questions were satisfactorily answered, further progress
+was impossible.  Nayland Smith frankly admitted that he was out of his depth.
+"It looks, on the face of it, more like a case for the Psychical
+Research people than for a plain Civil Servant, lately of Mandalay,"
+he had said only that morning.
+
+"Sir Lionel Barton really believes that supernatural agencies were
+brought into operation by the opening of the high priest's coffin.
+For my part, even if I believed the same, I should still maintain
+that Dr. Fu-Manchu controlled those manifestations.  But reason
+it out for yourself and see if we arrive at any common center.
+Don't work so much upon the datum of the green mist, but keep
+to the FACTS which are established."
+
+I commenced to knock out my pipe in the ash-tray; then paused,
+pipe in hand.  The house was quite still, for my landlady
+and all the small household were out.
+
+Above the noise of the passing tramcar I thought I had heard the hall
+door open.  In the ensuing silence I sat and listened.
+
+Not a sound.  Stay!  I slipped my hand into the table drawer,
+took out my revolver, and stood up.
+
+There WAS a sound.  Someone or something was creeping upstairs
+in the dark!
+
+Familiar with the ghastly media employed by the Chinaman, I was seized
+with an impulse to leap to the door, shut and lock it.  But the rustling
+sound proceeded, now, from immediately outside my partially opened door.
+I had not the time to close it; knowing somewhat of the horrors
+at the command of Fu-Manchu, I had not the courage to open it.
+My heart leaping wildly, and my eyes upon that bar of darkness with its
+gruesome potentialities, I waited--waited for whatever was to come.
+Perhaps twelve seconds passed in silence.
+
+"Who's there?" I cried.  "Answer, or I fire!"
+
+"Ah!  no," came a soft voice, thrillingly musical.  "Put it down--
+that pistol.  Quick!  I must speak to you."
+
+The door was pushed open, and there entered a slim figure wrapped
+in a hooded cloak.  My hand fell, and I stood, stricken to silence,
+looking into the beautiful dark eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu's messenger--
+if her own statement could be credited, slave.  On two occasions
+this girl, whose association with the Doctor was one of the most
+profound mysteries of the case, had risked--I cannot say what;
+unnameable punishment, perhaps--to save me from death; in both cases
+from a terrible death.  For what was she come now?
+
+Her lips slightly parted, she stood, holding her cloak about her,
+and watching me with great passionate eyes.
+
+"How--" I began.
+
+But she shook her head impatiently.
+
+"HE has a duplicate key of the house door," was her amazing statement.
+"I have never betrayed a secret of my master before, but you must arrange
+to replace the lock."
+
+She came forward and rested her slim hands confidingly upon my shoulders.
+"I have come again to ask you to take me away from him," she said simply.
+
+And she lifted her face to me.
+
+Her words struck a chord in my heart which sang with strange music,
+with music so barbaric that, frankly, I blushed to find it harmony.
+Have I said that she was beautiful?  It can convey no faint
+conception of her.  With her pure, fair skin, eyes like the velvet
+darkness of the East, and red lips so tremulously near to mine,
+she was the most seductively lovely creature I ever had looked upon.
+In that electric moment my heart went out in sympathy to every man
+who had bartered honor, country, all for a woman's kiss.
+
+"I will see that you are placed under proper protection,"
+I said firmly, but my voice was not quite my own.
+"It is quite absurd to talk of slavery here in England.
+You are a free agent, or you could not be here now.
+Dr. Fu-Manchu cannot control your actions."
+
+"Ah!" she cried, casting back her head scornfully, and releasing a cloud
+of hair, through whose softness gleamed a jeweled head-dress. "No?
+He cannot?  Do you know what it means to have been a slave?
+Here, in your free England, do you know what it means--the razzia,
+the desert journey, the whips of the drivers, the house of the dealer,
+the shame.  Bah!"
+
+How beautiful she was in her indignation!
+
+"Slavery is put down, you imagine, perhaps?  You do not believe that
+to-day--TO-DAY--twenty-five English sovereigns will buy a Galla girl,
+who is brown, and"--whisper--"two hundred and fifty a Circassian,
+who is white.  No, there is no slavery!  So!  Then what am I?"
+
+She threw open her cloak, and it is a literal fact that I rubbed my eyes,
+half believing that I dreamed.  For beneath, she was arrayed in gossamer
+silk which more than indicated the perfect lines of her slim shape;
+wore a jeweled girdle and barbaric ornaments; was a figure fit for the walled
+gardens of Stamboul--a figure amazing, incomprehensible, in the prosaic
+setting of my rooms.
+
+"To-night I had no time to make myself an English miss,"
+she said, wrapping her cloak quickly about her.
+"You see me as I am."  Her garments exhaled a faint perfume,
+and it reminded me of another meeting I had had with her.
+I looked into the challenging eyes.
+
+"Your request is but a pretense," I said.  "Why do you keep the secrets
+of that man, when they mean death to so many?"
+
+"Death!  I have seen my own sister die of fever in the desert--
+seen her thrown like carrion into a hole in the sand.
+I have seen men flogged until they prayed for death as a boon.
+I have known the lash myself.  Death!  What does it matter?"
+
+She shocked me inexpressibly.  Enveloped in her cloak again,
+and with only her slight accent to betray her, it was dreadful
+to hear such words from a girl who, save for her singular type
+of beauty, might have been a cultured European.
+
+"Prove, then, that you really wish to leave this man's service.
+Tell me what killed Strozza and the Chinaman," I said.
+
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"I do not know that.  But if you will carry me off"--she clutched me
+nervously--"so that I am helpless, lock me up so that I cannot escape,
+beat me, if you like, I will tell you all I do know.  While he is
+my master I will never betray him.  Tear me from him--by force,
+do you understand, BY FORCE, and my lips will be sealed no longer.
+Ah!  but you do not understand, with your `proper authorities'--
+your police.  Police!  Ah, I have said enough."
+
+A clock across the common began to strike.  The girl
+started and laid her hands upon my shoulders again.
+There were tears glittering among the curved black lashes.
+
+"You do not understand," she whispered.  "Oh, will you
+never understand and release me from him!  I must go.
+Already I have remained too long.  Listen.  Go out without delay.
+Remain out--at a hotel, where you will, but do not stay here."
+
+"And Nayland Smith?"
+
+"What is he to me, this Nayland Smith?  Ah, why will you not unseal my lips?
+You are in danger--you hear me, in danger!  Go away from here to-night."
+
+She dropped her hands and ran from the room.  In the open doorway she turned,
+stamping her foot passionately.
+
+"You have hands and arms," she cried, "and yet you let me go.
+Be warned, then; fly from here--" She broke off with something
+that sounded like a sob.
+
+I made no move to stay her--this beautiful accomplice of the arch-murderer,
+Fu-Manchu. I heard her light footsteps paltering down the stairs, I heard
+her open and close the door--the door of which Dr. Fu-Manchu held the key.
+Still I stood where she had parted from me, and was so standing when a key
+grated in the lock and Nayland Smith came running up.
+
+"Did you see her?" I began.
+
+But his face showed that he had not done so, and rapidly I told
+him of my strange visitor, of her words, of her warning.
+
+"How can she have passed through London in that costume?"
+I cried in bewilderment.  "Where can she have come from?"
+
+Smith shrugged his shoulders and began to stuff broad-cut mixture
+into the familiar cracked briar.
+
+"She might have traveled in a car or in a cab," he said;
+"and undoubtedly she came direct from the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+You should have detained her, Petrie.  It is the third time we
+have had that woman in our power, the third time we have let
+her go free."
+
+"Smith," I replied, "I couldn't. She came of her own free will to give
+me a warning.  She disarms me."
+
+"Because you can see she is in love with you?" he suggested, and burst
+into one of his rare laughs when the angry flush rose to my cheek.
+"She is, Petrie why pretend to be blind to it?  You don't know
+the Oriental mind as I do; but I quite understand the girl's position.
+She fears the English authorities, but would submit to capture by you!
+If you would only seize her by the hair, drag her to some cellar,
+hurl her down and stand over her with a whip, she would tell you
+everything she knows, and salve her strange Eastern conscience with
+the reflection that speech was forced from her.  I am not joking;
+it is so, I assure you.  And she would adore you for your savagery,
+deeming you forceful and strong!"
+
+"Smith," I said, "be serious.  You know what her warning meant before."
+
+"I can guess what it means now," he rapped.  "Hallo!"
+
+Someone was furiously ringing the bell.
+
+"No one at home?" said my friend.  "I will go.  I think I know
+what it is."
+
+A few minutes later he returned, carrying a large square package.
+
+"From Weymouth," he explained, "by district messenger.
+I left him behind at the docks, and he arranged to forward any
+evidence which subsequently he found.  This will be fragments
+of the mummy."
+
+"What!  You think the mummy was abstracted?"
+
+"Yes, at the docks.  I am sure of it; and somebody else
+was in the sarcophagus when it reached Rowan House.
+A sarcophagus, I find, is practically airtight, so that the use
+of the rubber stopper becomes evident--ventilation.  How this
+person killed Strozza I have yet to learn."
+
+"Also, how he escaped from a locked room.  And what about the green mist?"
+
+Nayland Smith spread his hands in a characteristic gesture.
+
+"The green mist, Petrie, can be explained in several ways.
+Remember, we have only one man's word that it existed.
+It is at best a confusing datum to which we must not attach
+a fictitious importance."
+
+He threw the wrappings on the floor and tugged at a twine loop
+in the lid of the square box, which now stood upon the table.
+Suddenly the lid came away, bringing with it a lead lining,
+such as is usual in tea-chests. This lining was partially attached
+to one side of the box, so that the action of removing the lid
+at once raised and tilted it.
+
+Then happened a singular thing.
+
+Out over the table billowed a sort of yellowish-green cloud--
+an oily vapor--and an inspiration, it was nothing less,
+born of a memory and of some words of my beautiful visitor,
+came to me.
+
+"RUN, SMITH!" I screamed.  "The door!  the door, for your life!
+Fu-Manchu sent that box!"  I threw my arms round him.
+As he bent forward the moving vapor rose almost to his nostrils.
+I dragged him back and all but pitched him out on to the landing.
+We entered my bedroom, and there, as I turned on the light,
+I saw that Smith's tanned face was unusually drawn,
+and touched with pallor.
+
+"It is a poisonous gas!" I said hoarsely; "in many respects
+identical with chlorine, but having unique properties which prove
+it to be something else--God and Fu-Manchu, alone know what!
+It is the fumes of chlorine that kill the men in the bleaching
+powder works.  We have been blind--I particularly.  Don't you see?
+There was no one in the sarcophagus, Smith, but there was enough
+of that fearful stuff to have suffocated a regiment!"
+
+Smith clenched his fists convulsively.
+
+"My God!" he said, "how can I hope to deal with the author of such a scheme?
+I see the whole plan.  He did not reckon on the mummy case being overturned,
+and Kwee's part was to remove the plug with the aid of the string--after Sir
+Lionel had been suffocated.  The gas, I take it, is heavier than air."
+
+"Chlorine gas has a specific gravity of 2.470," I said;
+"two and a half times heavier than air.  You can pour it from
+jar to jar like a liquid--if you are wearing a chemist's mask.
+In these respects this stuff appears to be similar; the points
+of difference would not interest you.  The sarcophagus would
+have emptied through the vent, and the gas have dispersed,
+with no clew remaining--except the smell."
+
+"I did smell it, Petrie, on the stopper, but, of course,
+was unfamiliar with it.  You may remember that you were
+prevented from doing so by the arrival of Sir Lionel?
+The scent of those infernal flowers must partially have
+drowned it, too.  Poor, misguided Strozza inhaled the stuff,
+capsized the case in his fall, and all the gas--"
+
+"Went pouring under the conservatory door, and down the steps, where Kwee
+was crouching.  Croxted's breaking the window created sufficient draught
+to disperse what little remained.  It will have settled on the floor now.
+I will go and open both windows."
+
+Nayland raised his haggard face.
+
+"He evidently made more than was necessary to dispatch Sir Lionel Barton,"
+he said; "and contemptuously--you note the attitude, Petrie?--
+contemptuously devoted the surplus to me.  His contempt is justified.
+I am a child striving to cope with a mental giant.  It is by no wit
+of mine that Dr. Fu-Manchu scores a double failure."
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+I WILL tell you, now of a strange dream which I dreamed, and of the stranger
+things to which I awakened.  Since, out of a blank--a void--this vision
+burst in upon my mind, I cannot do better than relate it, without preamble.
+It was thus:
+
+I dreamed that I lay writhing on the floor in agony indescribable.
+My veins were filled with liquid fire, and but that stygian darkness
+was about me, I told myself that I must have seen the smoke arising
+from my burning body.
+
+This, I thought, was death.
+
+Then, a cooling shower descended upon me, soaked through skin
+and tissue to the tortured arteries and quenched the fire within.
+Panting, but free from pain, I lay--exhausted.
+
+Strength gradually returning to me, I tried to rise; but the carpet
+felt so singularly soft that it offered me no foothold.
+I waded and plunged like a swimmer treading water; and all about me
+rose impenetrable walls of darkness, darkness all but palpable.
+I wondered why I could not see the windows.  The horrible idea
+flashed to my mind that I was become blind!
+
+Somehow I got upon my feet, and stood swaying dizzily.
+I became aware of a heavy perfume, and knew it for some
+kind of incense.
+
+Then--a dim light was born, at an immeasurable distance away.
+It grew steadily in brilliance.  It spread like a bluish-red stain--
+like a liquid.  It lapped up the darkness and spread throughout the room.
+
+But this was not my room!  Nor was it any room known to me.
+
+It was an apartment of such size that its dimensions filled me with a
+kind of awe such as I never had known:  the awe of walled vastness.
+Its immense extent produced a sensation of sound.  Its hugeness had
+a distinct NOTE.
+
+Tapestries covered the four walls.  There was no door visible.
+These tapestries were magnificently figured with golden dragons;
+and as the serpentine bodies gleamed and shimmered in the
+increasing radiance, each dragon, I thought, intertwined its
+glittering coils more closely with those of another.
+The carpet was of such richness that I stood knee-deep in its pile.
+And this, too, was fashioned all over with golden dragons; and they
+seemed to glide about amid the shadows of the design--stealthily.
+
+At the farther end of the hall--for hall it was--a huge table
+with dragons' legs stood solitary amid the luxuriance of the carpet.
+It bore scintillating globes, and tubes that held living organisms,
+and books of a size and in such bindings as I never had imagined,
+with instruments of a type unknown to Western science--a heterogeneous
+litter quite indescribable, which overflowed on to the floor,
+forming an amazing oasis in a dragon-haunted desert of carpet.
+A lamp hung above this table, suspended by golden chains from
+the ceiling-which was so lofty that, following the chains upward,
+my gaze lost itself in the purple shadows above.
+
+In a chair piled high with dragon-covered cushions a man sat
+behind this table.  The light from the swinging lamp fell fully
+upon one side of his face, as he leaned forward amid the jumble
+of weird objects, and left the other side in purplish shadow.
+From a plain brass bowl upon the corner of the huge table smoke
+writhed aloft and at times partially obscured that dreadful face.
+
+From the instant that my eyes were drawn to the table and to the man
+who sat there, neither the incredible extent of the room, nor the nightmare
+fashion of its mural decorations, could reclaim my attention.
+I had eyes only for him.
+
+For it was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
+
+Something of the delirium which had seemed to fill my veins
+with fire, to people the walls with dragons, and to plunge me
+knee-deep in the carpet, left me.  Those dreadful, filmed green
+eyes acted somewhat like a cold douche.  I knew, without removing
+my gaze from the still face, that the walls no longer lived,
+but were merely draped in exquisite Chinese dragon tapestry.
+The rich carpet beneath my feet ceased to be as a jungle and became
+a normal carpet--extraordinarily rich, but merely a carpet.
+But the sense of vastness nevertheless remained, with the uncomfortable
+knowledge that the things upon the table and overflowing about it
+were all, or nearly all, of a fashion strange to me.
+
+Then, and almost instantaneously, the comparative sanity which I had
+temporarily experienced began to slip from me again; for the smoke
+faintly penciled through the air--from the burning perfume on the table--
+grew in volume, thickened, and wafted towards me in a cloud of gray horror.
+It enveloped me, clammily.  Dimly, through its oily wreaths, I saw
+the immobile yellow face of Fu-Manchu. And my stupefied brain acclaimed him
+a sorcerer, against whom unwittingly we had pitted our poor human wits.
+The green eyes showed filmy through the fog.  An intense pain shot
+through my lower limbs, and, catching my breath, I looked down.
+As I did so, the points of the red slippers which I dreamed that I wore
+increased in length, curled sinuously upward, twined about my throat
+and choked the breath from my body!
+
+Came an interval, and then a dawning like consciousness;
+but it was a false consciousness, since it brought with it the idea
+that my head lay softly pillowed and that a woman's hand caressed
+my throbbing forehead.  Confusedly, as though in the remote past,
+I recalled a kiss--and the recollection thrilled me strangely.
+Dreamily content I lay, and a voice stole to my ears:
+
+"They are killing him!  they are killing him!  Oh!  do you not understand?"
+In my dazed condition, I thought that it was I who had died, and that this
+musical girl-voice was communicating to me the fact of my own dissolution.
+
+But I was conscious of no interest in the matter.
+
+For hours and hours, I thought, that soothing hand caressed me.
+I never once raised my heavy lids, until there came a resounding
+crash that seemed to set my very bones vibrating--a metallic,
+jangling crash, as the fall of heavy chains.  I thought that, then,
+I half opened my eyes, and that in the dimness I had a fleeting
+glimpse of a figure clad in gossamer silk, with arms covered
+with barbaric bangles and slim ankles surrounded by gold bands.
+The girl was gone, even as I told myself that she was an houri,
+and that I, though a Christian, had been consigned by some error
+to the paradise of Mohammed.
+
+Then--a complete blank.
+
+
+My head throbbed madly; my brain seemed to be clogged--inert; and though
+my first, feeble movement was followed by the rattle of a chain, some moments
+more elapsed ere I realized that the chain was fastened to a steel collar--
+that the steel collar was clasped about my neck.
+
+I moaned weakly.
+
+"Smith!" I muttered, "Where are you?  Smith!"
+
+On to my knees I struggled, and the pain on the top of my skull grew
+all but insupportable.  It was coming back to me now; how Nayland Smith
+and I had started for the hotel to warn Graham Guthrie; how, as we
+passed up the steps from the Embankment and into Essex Street,
+we saw the big motor standing before the door of one of the offices.
+I could recall coming up level with the car--a modern limousine;
+but my mind retained no impression of our having passed it--
+only a vague memory of a rush of footsteps--a blow.  Then, my vision
+of the hall of dragons, and now this real awakening to a worse reality.
+
+Groping in the darkness, my hands touched a body that lay close beside me.
+My fingers sought and found the throat, sought and found the steel
+collar about it.
+
+"Smith," I groaned; and I shook the still form.  "Smith, old man--
+speak to me!  Smith!"
+
+Could he be dead?  Was this the end of his gallant fight with Dr. Fu-Manchu
+and the murder group?  If so, what did the future hold for me--
+what had I to face?
+
+He stirred beneath my trembling hands.
+
+"Thank God!"  I muttered, and I cannot deny that my joy was tainted
+with selfishness.  For, waking in that impenetrable darkness, and yet obsessed
+with the dream I had dreamed, I had known what fear meant, at the realization
+that alone, chained, I must face the dreadful Chinese doctor in the flesh.
+Smith began incoherent mutterings.
+
+"Sand-bagged!. . .Look out, Petrie!. . .He has us at last!. . .Oh, Heavens!"
+. . .He struggled on to his knees, clutching at my hand.
+
+"All right, old man," I said.  "We are both alive!
+So let's be thankful."
+
+A moment's silence, a groan, then:
+
+"Petrie, I have dragged you into this.  God forgive me--"
+
+"Dry up, Smith," I said slowly.  "I'm not a child.
+There is no question of being dragged into the matter.
+I'm here; and if I can be of any use, I'm glad I am here!"
+
+He grasped my hand.
+
+"There were two Chinese, in European clothes--lord, how my head throbs!--
+in that office door.  They sand-bagged us, Petrie--think of it!--
+in broad daylight, within hail of the Strand!  We were rushed
+into the car--and it was all over, before--" His voice grew faint.
+"God!  they gave me an awful knock!"
+
+"Why have we been spared, Smith?  Do you think he is saving us for--"
+
+"Don't, Petrie!  If you had been in China, if you had seen
+what I have seen--"
+
+Footsteps sounded on the flagged passage.  A blade of light crept
+across the floor towards us.  My brain was growing clearer.
+The place had a damp, earthen smell.  It was slimy--some noisome cellar.
+A door was thrown open and a man entered, carrying a lantern.
+Its light showed my surmise to be accurate, showed the
+slime-coated walls of a dungeon some fifteen feet square--
+shone upon the long yellow robe of the man who stood watching us,
+upon the malignant, intellectual countenance.
+
+It was Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+At last they were face to face--the head of the great Yellow Movement,
+and the man who fought on behalf of the entire white race.
+How can I paint the individual who now stood before us--
+perhaps the greatest genius of modern times?
+
+Of him it Had been fitly said that he had a brow like Shakespeare and a face
+like Satan.  Something serpentine, hypnotic, was in his very presence.
+Smith drew one sharp breath, and was silent.  Together, chained to the wall,
+two mediaeval captives, living mockeries of our boasted modern security,
+we crouched before Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+He came forward with an indescribable gait, cat-like yet awkward,
+carrying his high shoulders almost hunched.  He placed the lantern
+in a niche in the wall, never turning away the reptilian gaze
+of those eyes which must haunt my dreams forever.  They possessed
+a viridescence which hitherto I had supposed possible only in the eye
+of the cat--and the film intermittently clouded their brightness--
+but I can speak of them no more.
+
+I had never supposed, prior to meeting Dr. Fu-Manchu, that so intense
+a force of malignancy could radiate--from any human being.  He spoke.
+His English was perfect, though at times his words were oddly chosen;
+his delivery alternately was guttural and sibilant.
+
+"Mr. Smith and Dr. Petrie, your interference with my plans has gone too far.
+I have seriously turned my attention to you."
+
+He displayed his teeth, small and evenly separated,
+but discolored in a way that was familiar to me.
+I studied his eyes with a new professional interest,
+which even the extremity of our danger could not wholly banish.
+Their greenness seemed to be of the iris; the pupil was
+oddly contracted--a pin-point.
+
+Smith leaned his back against the wall with assumed indifference.
+
+"You have presumed," continued Fu-Manchu, "to meddle with a
+world-change. Poor spiders--caught in the wheels of the inevitable!
+You have linked my name with the futility of the Young China Movement--
+the name of Fu-Manchu!  Mr. Smith, you are an incompetent meddler--
+I despise you!  Dr. Petrie, you are a fool--I am sorry for you!"
+
+He rested one bony hand on his hip, narrowing the long
+eyes as he looked down on us.  The purposeful cruelty
+of the man was inherent; it was entirely untheatrical.
+Still Smith remained silent.
+
+"So I am determined to remove you from the scene of your blunders!"
+added Fu-Manchu.
+
+"Opium will very shortly do the same for you!" I rapped at him savagely.
+
+Without emotion he turned the narrowed eyes upon me.
+
+"That is a matter of opinion, Doctor," he said.  "You may have lacked
+the opportunities which have been mine for studying that subject--
+and in any event I shall not be privileged to enjoy your advice
+in the future."
+
+"You will not long outlive me," I replied.  "And our deaths will not
+profit you, incidentally; because--" Smith's foot touched mine.
+
+"Because?" inquired Fu-Manchu softly.
+
+"Ah!  Mr. Smith is so prudent!  He is thinking that I have FILES!"
+He pronounced the word in a way that made me shudder.  "Mr. Smith
+has seen a WIRE JACKET!  Have you ever seen a wire jacket?
+As a surgeon its functions would interest you!"
+
+I stifled a cry that rose to my lips; for, with a shrill whistling sound,
+a small shape came bounding into the dimly lit vault, then shot upward.
+A marmoset landed on the shoulder of Dr. Fu-Manchu and peered grotesquely
+into the dreadful yellow face.  The Doctor raised his bony hand and fondled
+the little creature, crooning to it.
+
+"One of my pets, Mr. Smith," he said, suddenly opening
+his eyes fully so that they blazed like green lamps.
+"I have others, equally useful.  My scorpions--have you
+met my scorpions?  No?  My pythons and hamadryads?
+Then there are my fungi and my tiny allies, the bacilli.
+I have a collection in my laboratory quite unique.  Have you ever
+visited Molokai, the leper island, Doctor?  No?  But Mr. Nayland
+Smith will be familiar with the asylum at Rangoon!
+And we must not forget my black spiders, with their diamond eyes--
+my spiders, that sit in the dark and watch--then leap!"
+
+He raised his lean hands, so that the sleeve of the robe fell back
+to the elbow, and the ape dropped, chattering, to the floor and ran
+from the cellar.
+
+"O God of Cathay!" he cried, "by what death shall these die--
+these miserable ones who would bind thine Empire, which is boundless!"
+
+Like some priest of Tezcat he stood, his eyes upraised to the roof,
+his lean body quivering--a sight to shock the most unimpressionable mind.
+
+"He is mad!" I whispered to Smith.  "God help us, the man
+is a dangerous homicidal maniac!"
+
+Nayland Smith's tanned face was very drawn, but he shook his head grimly.
+
+"Dangerous, yes, I agree," he muttered; "his existence is a danger
+to the entire white race which, now, we are powerless to avert."
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu recovered himself, took up the lantern and,
+turning abruptly, walked to the door, with his awkward, yet feline gait.
+At the threshold be looked back.
+
+"You would have warned Mr. Graham Guthrie?" he said, in a soft voice.
+"To-night, at half-past twelve, Mr. Graham Guthrie dies!"
+
+Smith sat silent and motionless, his eyes fixed upon the speaker.
+
+"You were in Rangoon in 1908?" continued Dr. Fu-Manchu--
+"you remember the Call?"
+
+From somewhere above us--I could not determine the exact direction--
+came a low, wailing cry, an uncanny thing of falling cadences, which, in that
+dismal vault, with the sinister yellow-robed figure at the door, seemed to
+pour ice into my veins.  Its effect upon Smith was truly extraordinary.
+His face showed grayly in the faint light, and I heard him draw a hissing
+breath through clenched teeth.
+
+"It calls for you!" said Fu-Manchu. "At half-past twelve it calls
+for Graham Guthrie!"
+
+The door closed and darkness mantled us again.
+
+"Smith," I said, "what was that?"  The horrors about us were playing
+havoc with my nerves.
+
+"It was the Call of Siva!" replied Smith hoarsely.
+
+"What is it?  Who uttered it?  What does it mean?"
+
+"I don't know what it is, Petrie, nor who utters it.
+But it means death!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+THERE may be some who could have lain, chained to that noisome cell,
+and felt no fear--no dread of what the blackness might hold.
+I confess that I am not one of these.  I knew that Nayland
+Smith and I stood in the path of the most stupendous genius
+who in the world's history had devoted his intellect to crime.
+I knew that the enormous wealth of the political group backing
+Dr. Fu-Manchu rendered him a menace to Europe and to America
+greater than that of the plague.  He was a scientist trained
+at a great university--an explorer of nature's secrets, who had
+gone farther into the unknown, I suppose, than any living man.
+His mission was to remove all obstacles--human obstacles--
+from the path of that secret movement which was progressing
+in the Far East.  Smith and I were two such obstacles;
+and of all the horrible devices at his command, I wondered,
+and my tortured brain refused to leave the subject, by which
+of them were we doomed to be dispatched?
+
+Even at that very moment some venomous centipede might
+be wriggling towards me over the slime of the stones,
+some poisonous spider be preparing to drop from the roof!
+Fu-Manchu might have released a serpent in the cellar,
+or the air be alive with microbes of a loathsome disease!
+
+"Smith," I said, scarcely recognizing my own voice, "I can't bear
+this suspense.  He intends to kill us, that is certain, but--"
+
+"Don't worry," came the reply; "he intends to learn our plans first."
+
+"You mean--?"
+
+"You heard him speak of his files and of his wire jacket?"
+
+"Oh, my God!" I groaned; "can this be England?"
+
+Smith laughed dryly, and I heard him fumbling with the steel
+collar about his neck.
+
+"I have one great hope," he said, "since you share
+my captivity, but we must neglect no minor chance.
+Try with your pocket-knife if you can force the lock.
+I am trying to break this one."
+
+Truth to tell, the idea had not entered my half-dazed mind, but I
+immediately acted upon my friend's suggestion, setting to work with
+the small blade of my knife.  I was so engaged, and, having snapped
+one blade, was about to open another, when a sound arrested me.
+It came from beneath my feet.
+
+"Smith," I whispered, "listen!"
+
+The scraping and clicking which told of Smith's efforts ceased.
+Motionless, we sat in that humid darkness and listened.
+
+Something was moving beneath the stones of the cellar.
+I held my breath; every nerve in my body was strung up.
+
+A line of light showed a few feet from where we lay.
+It widened--became an oblong.  A trap was lifted,
+and within a yard of me, there rose a dimly seen head.
+Horror I had expected--and death, or worse.  Instead, I saw
+a lovely face, crowned with a disordered mass of curling hair;
+I saw a white arm upholding the stone slab, a shapely arm
+clasped about the elbow by a broad gold bangle.
+
+The girl climbed into the cellar and placed the lantern on the stone floor.
+In the dim light she was unreal--a figure from an opium vision, with her
+clinging silk draperies and garish jewelry, with her feet encased in little
+red slippers.  In short, this was the houri of my vision, materialized.
+It was difficult to believe that we were in modern, up-to-date England;
+easy to dream that we were the captives of a caliph, in a dungeon
+in old Bagdad.
+
+"My prayers are answered," said Smith softly.  "She has come
+to save YOU."
+
+"S-sh!" warned the girl, and her wonderful eyes opened widely, fearfully.
+"A sound and he will kill us all."
+
+She bent over me; a key jarred in the lock which had broken my penknife--
+and the collar was off.  As I rose to my feet the girl turned and
+released Smith.  She raised the lantern above the trap, and signed
+to us to descend the wooden steps which its light revealed.
+
+"Your knife," she whispered to me.  "Leave it on the floor.
+He will think you forced the locks.  Down!  Quickly!"
+
+Nayland Smith, stepping gingerly, disappeared into the darkness.
+I rapidly followed.  Last of all came our mysterious friend, a gold band about
+one of her ankles gleaming in the rays of the lantern which she carried.
+We stood in a low-arched passage.
+
+"Tie your handkerchiefs over your eyes and do exactly as I
+tell you," she ordered.
+
+Neither of us hesitated to obey her.  Blind-folded, I allowed
+her to lead me, and Smith rested his hand upon my shoulder.
+In that order we proceeded, and came to stone steps,
+which we ascended.
+
+"Keep to the wall on the left," came a whisper.
+"There is danger on the right."
+
+With my free hand I felt for and found the wall, and we pressed forward.
+The atmosphere of the place through which we were passing was steamy,
+and loaded with an odor like that of exotic plant life.  But a faint animal
+scent crept to my nostrils, too, and there was a subdued stir about me,
+infinitely suggestive--mysterious.
+
+Now my feet sank in a soft carpet, and a curtain brushed my shoulder.
+A gong sounded.  We stopped.
+
+The din of distant drumming came to my ears.
+
+"Where in Heaven's name are we?" hissed Smith in my ear;
+"that is a tom-tom!"
+
+"S-sh!  S-sh!"
+
+The little hand grasping mine quivered nervously.  We were near a door
+or a window, for a breath of perfume was wafted through the air;
+and it reminded me of my other meetings with the beautiful woman
+who was now leading us from the house of Fu-Manchu; who, with her
+own lips, had told me that she was his slave.  Through the horrible
+phantasmagoria she flitted--a seductive vision, her piquant loveliness
+standing out richly in its black setting of murder and devilry.
+Not once, but a thousand times, I had tried to reason out the nature
+of the tie which bound her to the sinister Doctor.
+
+Silence fell.
+
+"Quick!  This way!"
+
+Down a thickly carpeted stair we went.  Our guide opened a door, and led us
+along a passage.  Another door was opened; and we were in the open air.
+But the girl never tarried, pulling me along a graveled path, with a fresh
+breeze blowing in my face, and along until, unmistakably, I stood upon
+the river bank.  Now, planking creaked to our tread; and looking downward
+beneath the handkerchief, I saw the gleam of water beneath my feet.
+
+"Be careful!"  I was warned, and found myself stepping into
+a narrow boat--a punt.
+
+Nayland Smith followed, and the girl pushed the punt off and poled
+out into the stream.
+
+"Don't speak!" she directed.
+
+My brain was fevered; I scarce knew if I dreamed and was waking,
+or if the reality ended with my imprisonment in the clammy cellar
+and this silent escape, blindfolded, upon the river with a girl for our
+guide who might have stepped out of the pages of "The Arabian Nights"
+were fantasy--the mockery of sleep.
+
+Indeed, I began seriously to doubt if this stream whereon we floated,
+whose waters plashed and tinkled about us, were the Thames, the Tigris,
+or the Styx.
+
+The punt touched a bank.
+
+"You will hear a clock strike in a few minutes,"
+said the girl, with her soft, charming accent, "but I rely
+upon your honor not to remove the handkerchiefs until then.
+You owe me this."
+
+"We do!" said Smith fervently.
+
+I heard him scrambling to the bank, and a moment later a soft hand
+was placed in mine, and I, too, was guided on to terra firma.
+Arrived on the bank, I still held the girl's hand, drawing her towards me.
+
+"You must not go back," I whispered.  "We will take care of you.
+You must not return to that place."
+
+"Let me go!" she said.  "When, once, I asked you to take me from him,
+you spoke of police protection; that was your answer, police protection!
+You would let them lock me up--imprison me--and make me betray him!
+For what?  For what?"  She wrenched herself free.  "How little
+you understand me.  Never mind.  Perhaps one day you will know!
+Until the clock strikes!"
+
+She was gone.  I heard the creak of the punt, the drip of the water
+from the pole.  Fainter it grew, and fainter.
+
+"What is her secret?" muttered Smith, beside me.
+"Why does she cling to that monster?"
+
+The distant sound died away entirely.  A clock began to strike;
+it struck the half-hour. In an instant my handkerchief was off,
+and so was Smith's. We stood upon a towing-path. Away to the left
+the moon shone upon the towers and battlements of an ancient fortress.
+
+It was Windsor Castle.
+
+"Half-past ten," cried Smith.  "Two hours to save Graham Guthrie!"
+
+We had exactly fourteen minutes in which to catch the last
+train to Waterloo; and we caught it.  But I sank into a corner
+of the compartment in a state bordering upon collapse.
+Neither of us, I think, could have managed another twenty yards.
+With a lesser stake than a human life at issue, I doubt if we
+should have attempted that dash to Windsor station.
+
+"Due at Waterloo at eleven-fifty-one," panted Smith.
+"That gives us thirty-nine minutes to get to the other side
+of the river and reach his hotel."
+
+"Where in Heaven's name is that house situated?
+Did we come up or down stream?"
+
+"I couldn't determine.  But at any rate, it stands close to the riverside.
+It should be merely a question of time to identify it.  I shall set
+Scotland Yard to work immediately; but I am hoping for nothing.
+Our escape will warn him."
+
+I said no more for a time, sitting wiping the perspiration
+from my forehead and watching my friend load his cracked briar
+with the broadcut Latakia mixture.
+
+"Smith," I said at last, "what was that horrible wailing we heard,
+and what did Fu-Manchu mean when he referred to Rangoon?
+I noticed how it affected you."
+
+My friend nodded and lighted his pipe.
+
+"There was a ghastly business there in 1908 or early in 1909,"
+he replied:  "an utterly mysterious epidemic.  And this beastly
+wailing was associated with it."
+
+"In what way?  And what do you mean by an epidemic?"
+
+"It began, I believe, at the Palace Mansions Hotel, in the cantonments.
+A young American, whose name I cannot recall, was staying there on business
+connected with some new iron buildings.  One night he went to his room,
+locked the door, and jumped out of the window into the courtyard.
+Broke his neck, of course."
+
+"Suicide?"
+
+"Apparently.  But there were singular features in the case.
+For instance, his revolver lay beside him, fully loaded!"
+
+"In the courtyard?"
+
+"In the courtyard!"
+
+"Was it murder by any chance?"
+
+Smith shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"His door was found locked from the inside; had to be broken in."
+
+"But the wailing business?"
+
+"That began later, or was only noticed later.  A French doctor,
+named Lafitte, died in exactly the same way."
+
+"At the same place?"
+
+"At the same hotel; but he occupied a different room.
+Here is the extraordinary part of the affair:  a friend shared
+the room with him, and actually saw him go!"
+
+"Saw him leap from the window?"
+
+"Yes.  The friend--an Englishman--was aroused by the uncanny wailing.
+I was in Rangoon at the time, so that I know more of the case of Lafitte
+than of that of the American.  I spoke to the man about it personally.
+He was an electrical engineer, Edward Martin, and he told me that the cry
+seemed to come from above him."
+
+"It seemed to come from above when we heard it at Fu-Manchu's house."
+
+"Martin sat up in bed, it was a clear moonlight night--
+the sort of moonlight you get in Burma.  Lafitte, for some reason,
+had just gone to the window.  His friend saw him look out.
+The next moment with a dreadful scream, he threw himself forward--
+and crashed down into the courtyard!"
+
+"What then?"
+
+"Martin ran to the window and looked down.
+Lafitte's scream had aroused the place, of course.
+But there was absolutely nothing to account for the occurrence.
+There was no balcony, no ledge, by means of which anyone could
+reach the window."
+
+"But how did you come to recognize the cry?"
+
+"I stopped at the Palace Mansions for some time;
+and one night this uncanny howling aroused me.
+I heard it quite distinctly, and am never likely to forget it.
+It was followed by a hoarse yell.  The man in the next room,
+an orchid hunter, had gone the same way as the others!"
+
+"Did you change your quarters?"
+
+"No. Fortunately for the reputation of the hotel--a first-class establishment--
+several similar cases occurred elsewhere, both in Rangoon, in Prome
+and in Moulmein.  A story got about the native quarter, and was fostered
+by some mad fakir, that the god Siva was reborn and that the cry was his call
+for victims; a ghastly story, which led to an outbreak of dacoity and gave
+the District Superintendent no end of trouble."
+
+"Was there anything unusual about the bodies?"
+
+"They all developed marks after death, as though they had been strangled!
+The marks were said all to possess a peculiar form, though it was not
+appreciable to my eye; and this, again, was declared to be the five
+heads of Siva."
+
+"Were the deaths confined to Europeans?"
+
+"Oh, no.  Several Burmans and others died in the same way.
+At first there was a theory that the victims had contracted leprosy and
+committed suicide as a result; but the medical evidence disproved that.
+The Call of Siva became a perfect nightmare throughout Burma."
+
+"Did you ever hear it again, before this evening?"
+
+"Yes.  I beard it on the Upper Irrawaddy one clear,
+moonlight night, and a Colassie--a deck-hand--leaped from
+the top deck of the steamer aboard which I was traveling!
+My God!  to think that the fiend Fu-Manchu has brought
+That to England!"
+
+"But brought what, Smith?" I cried, in perplexity.
+"What has he brought?  An evil spirit?  A mental disease?
+What is it?  What CAN it be?"
+
+"A new agent of death, Petrie!  Something born in a plague-spot of Burma--
+the home of much that is unclean and much that is inexplicable.
+Heaven grant that we be in time, and are able to save Guthrie."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+THE train was late, and as our cab turned out of Waterloo Station
+and began to ascend to the bridge, from a hundred steeples rang
+out the gongs of midnight, the bell of St. Paul's raised above
+them all to vie with the deep voice of Big Ben.
+
+I looked out from the cab window across the river to where, towering above
+the Embankment, that place of a thousand tragedies, the light of some
+of London's greatest caravanserais formed a sort of minor constellation.
+From the subdued blaze that showed the public supper-rooms I looked
+up to the hundreds of starry points marking the private apartments
+of those giant inns.
+
+I thought how each twinkling window denoted the presence of some
+bird of passage, some wanderer temporarily abiding in our midst.
+There, floor piled upon floor above the chattering throngs,
+were these less gregarious units, each something of a mystery
+to his fellow-guests, each in his separate cell; and each as remote
+from real human companionship as if that cell were fashioned,
+not in the bricks of London, but in the rocks of Hindustan!
+
+In one of those rooms Graham Guthrie might at that moment be sleeping,
+all unaware that he would awake to the Call of Siva, to the summons of death.
+As we neared the Strand, Smith stopped the cab, discharging the man
+outside Sotheby's auction-rooms.
+
+"One of the doctor's watch-dogs may be in the foyer," he said thoughtfully,
+"and it might spoil everything if we were seen to go to Guthrie's rooms.
+There must be a back entrance to the kitchens, and so on?"
+
+"There is," I replied quickly.  "I have seen the vans delivering there.
+But have we time?"
+
+"Yes.  Lead on."
+
+We walked up the Strand and hurried westward.  Into that narrow court,
+with its iron posts and descending steps, upon which opens a well-known
+wine-cellar, we turned.  Then, going parallel with the Strand,
+but on the Embankment level, we ran round the back of the great hotel,
+and came to double doors which were open.  An arc lamp illuminated
+the interior and a number of men were at work among the casks,
+crates and packages stacked about the place.  We entered.
+
+"Hallo!" cried a man in a white overall, "where d'you think you're going?"
+
+Smith grasped him by the arm.
+
+"I want to get to the public part of the hotel without being seen
+from the entrance hall," he said.  "Will you please lead the way?
+
+"Here--" began the other, staring.
+
+"Don't waste time!" snapped my friend, in that tone of authority
+which he knew so well how to assume.  "It's a matter of life and death.
+Lead the way, I say!"
+
+"Police, sir?" asked the man civilly.
+
+"Yes," said Smith; "hurry!"
+
+Off went our guide without further demur.  Skirting sculleries, kitchens,
+laundries and engine-rooms, he led us through those mysterious labyrinths
+which have no existence for the guest above, but which contain the machinery
+that renders these modern khans the Aladdin's palaces they are.
+On a second-floor landing we met a man in a tweed suit, to whom our
+cicerone presented us.
+
+"Glad I met you, sir.  Two gentlemen from the police."
+
+The man regarded us haughtily with a suspicious smile.
+
+"Who are you?" he asked.  "You're not from Scotland Yard,
+at any rate!"
+
+Smith pulled out a card and thrust it into the speaker's hand.
+
+"If you are the hotel detective," he said, "take us without delay
+to Mr. Graham Guthrie."
+
+A marked change took place in the other's demeanor on glancing
+at the card in his hand.
+
+"Excuse me, sir," he said deferentially, "but, of course,
+I didn't know who I was speaking to.  We all have instructions
+to give you every assistance."
+
+"Is Mr. Guthrie in his room?"
+
+"He's been in his room for some time, sir.  You will want to get there
+without being seen?  This way.  We can join the lift on the third floor."
+
+Off we went again, with our new guide.  In the lift:
+
+"Have you noticed anything suspicious about the place to-night?" asked Smith.
+
+"I have!" was the startling reply.  "That accounts for your
+finding me where you did.  My usual post is in the lobby.
+But about eleven o'clock, when the theater people began to come
+in I had a hazy sort of impression that someone or something
+slipped past in the crowd--something that had no business
+in the hotel."
+
+We got out of the lift.
+
+"I don't quite follow you," said Smith.  "If you thought you saw
+something entering, you must have formed a more or less definite
+impression regarding it."
+
+"That's the funny part of the business," answered the man doggedly.
+"I didn't!  But as I stood at the top of the stairs I could
+have sworn that there was something crawling up behind a party--
+two ladies and two gentlemen."
+
+"A dog, for instance?"
+
+"It didn't strike me as being a dog, sir.  Anyway, when the party passed me,
+there was nothing there.  Mind you, whatever it was, it hadn't come
+in by the front.  I have made inquiries everywhere, but without result."
+He stopped abruptly.  "No. 189--Mr. Guthrie's door, sir."
+
+Smith knocked.
+
+"Hallo!" came a muffled voice; "what do you want?"
+
+"Open the door!  Don't delay; it is important."
+
+He turned to the hotel detective.
+
+"Stay right there where you can watch the stairs and the lift,"
+he instructed; "and note everyone and everything that passes this door.
+But whatever you see or hear, do nothing without my orders."
+
+The man moved off, and the door was opened.  Smith whispered
+in my ear:
+
+"Some creature of Dr. Fu-Manchu is in the hotel!"
+
+Mr. Graham Guthrie, British resident in North Bhutan, was a big,
+thick-set man--gray-haired and florid, with widely opened eyes of the true
+fighting blue, a bristling mustache and prominent shaggy brows.
+Nayland Smith introduced himself tersely, proffering his card
+and an open letter.
+
+"Those are my credentials, Mr. Guthrie," he said; "so no doubt
+you will realize that the business which brings me and my friend,
+Dr. Petrie, here at such an hour is of the first importance."
+
+He switched off the light.
+
+"There is no time for ceremony," he explained.  "It is now twenty-five minutes
+past twelve.  At half-past an attempt will be made upon your life!"
+
+"Mr. Smith," said the other, who, arrayed in his pajamas,
+was seated on the edge of the bed, "you alarm me very greatly.
+I may mention that I was advised of your presence in
+England this morning."
+
+"Do you know anything respecting the person called Fu-Manchu--Dr. Fu-Manchu?"
+
+"Only what I was told to-day--that he is the agent of an
+advanced political group."
+
+"It is opposed to his interests that you should return to Bhutan.
+A more gullible agent would be preferable.  Therefore, unless you
+implicitly obey my instructions, you will never leave England!"
+
+Graham Guthrie breathed quickly.  I was growing more used to the gloom,
+and I could dimly discern him, his face turned towards Nayland Smith,
+whilst with his hand he clutched the bed-rail. Such a visit as ours,
+I think, must have shaken the nerve of any man.
+
+"But, Mr. Smith," he said, "surely I am safe enough here!
+The place is full of American visitors at present,
+and I have had to be content with a room right at the top;
+so that the only danger I apprehend is that of fire."
+
+"There is another danger," replied Smith.  "The fact that
+you are at the top of the building enhances that danger.
+Do you recall anything of the mysterious epidemic which broke
+out in Rangoon in 1908--the deaths due to the Call of Siva?"
+
+"I read of it in the Indian papers," said Guthrie uneasily.
+"Suicides, were they not?"  "No!" snapped Smith.  "Murders!"
+
+There was a brief silence.
+
+"From what I recall of the cases," said Guthrie, "that seems impossible.
+In several instances the victims threw themselves from the windows
+of locked rooms--and the windows were quite inaccessible."
+
+"Exactly," replied Smith; and in the dim light his revolver
+gleamed dully, as he placed it on the small table beside the bed.
+"Except that your door is unlocked, the conditions to-night
+are identical.  Silence, please, I hear a clock striking."
+
+It was Big Ben.  It struck the half-hour, leaving the stillness complete.
+In that room, high above the activity which yet prevailed below,
+high above the supping crowds in the hotel, high above the starving
+crowds on the Embankment, a curious chill of isolation swept about me.
+Again I realized how, in the very heart of the great metropolis, a man
+may be as far from aid as in the heart of a desert.  I was glad that I
+was not alone in that room--marked with the death-mark of Fu-Manchu;
+and I am certain that Graham Guthrie welcomed his unexpected company.
+
+I may have mentioned the fact before, but on this occasion it became
+so peculiarly evident to me that I am constrained to record it here--
+I refer to the sense of impending danger which invariably preceded a--
+visit from Fu-Manchu. Even had I not known that an attempt was to be
+made that night, I should have realized it, as, strung to high tension,
+I waited in the darkness.  Some invisible herald went ahead of the
+dreadful Chinaman, proclaiming his coming to every nerve in one's body.
+It was like a breath of astral incense, announcing the presence
+of the priests of death.
+
+A wail, low but singularly penetrating, falling in minor cadences
+to a new silence, came from somewhere close at hand.
+
+"My God!" hissed Guthrie, "what was that?"
+
+"The Call of Siva," whispered Smith.
+
+"Don't stir, for your life!"
+
+Guthrie was breathing hard.
+
+I knew that we were three; that the hotel detective was within hail;
+that there was a telephone in the room; that the traffic of
+the Embankment moved almost beneath us; but I knew, and am not
+ashamed to confess, that King Fear had icy fingers about my heart.
+It was awful--that tense waiting--for--what?
+
+Three taps sounded--very distinctly upon the window.
+
+Graham Guthrie started so as to shake the bed.
+
+"It's supernatural!" he muttered--all that was Celtic in his blood
+recoiling from the omen.  "Nothing human can reach that window!"
+"S-sh!" from Smith.  "Don't stir."
+
+The tapping was repeated.
+
+Smith softly crossed the room.  My heart was beating painfully.
+He threw open the window.  Further inaction was impossible.
+I joined him; and we looked out into the empty air.
+
+"Don't come too near, Petrie!" he warned over his shoulder.
+
+One on either side of the open window, we stood and looked down
+at the moving Embankment lights, at the glitter of the Thames,
+at the silhouetted buildings on the farther bank, with the Shot
+Tower starting above them all.
+
+Three taps sounded on the panes above us.
+
+In all my dealings with Dr. Fu-Manchu I had had to face nothing so uncanny
+as this.  What Burmese ghoul had he loosed?  Was it outside, in the air?
+Was it actually in the room?
+
+"Don't let me go, Petrie!" whispered Smith suddenly.
+"Get a tight hold on me!"
+
+That was the last straw; for I thought that some dreadful
+fascination was impelling my friend to hurl himself out!
+Wildly I threw my arms about him, and Guthrie leaped
+forward to help.
+
+Smith leaned from the window and looked up.
+
+One choking cry he gave--smothered, inarticulate--and I found him slipping
+from my grip--being drawn out of the window--drawn to his death!
+
+"Hold him, Guthrie!" I gasped hoarsely.  "My God, he's going!
+Hold him!"
+
+My friend writhed in our grasp, and I saw him stretch his arm upward.
+The crack of his revolver came, and he collapsed on to the floor,
+carrying me with him.
+
+But as I fell I heard a scream above.  Smith's revolver went
+hurtling through the air, and, hard upon it, went a black shape--
+flashing past the open window into the gulf of the night.
+
+"The light!  The light!"  I cried.
+
+Guthrie ran and turned on the light.  Nayland Smith, his eyes
+starting from his head, his face swollen, lay plucking at a silken
+cord which showed tight about his throat.
+
+"It was a Thug!" screamed Guthrie.  "Get the rope off!  He's choking!"
+
+My hands a-twitch, I seized the strangling-cord.
+
+"A knife!  Quick!"  I cried.  "I have lost mine!"
+
+Guthrie ran to the dressing-table and passed me an open penknife.
+I somehow forced the blade between the rope and Smith's swollen neck,
+and severed the deadly silken thing.
+
+Smith made a choking noise, and fell back, swooning in my arms.
+
+
+When, later, we stood looking down upon the mutilated thing which had
+been brought in from where it fell, Smith showed me a mark on the brow--
+close beside the wound where his bullet had entered.
+
+"The mark of Kali," he said.  "The man was a phansigar--
+a religious strangler.  Since Fu-Manchu has dacoits in his
+service I might have expected that he would have Thugs.
+A group of these fiends would seem to have fled into Burma;
+so that the mysterious epidemic in Rangoon was really an outbreak
+of thuggee--on slightly improved lines!  I had suspected something
+of the kind but, naturally, I had not looked for Thugs near Rangoon.
+My unexpected resistance led the strangler to bungle the rope.
+You have seen how it was fastened about my throat?
+That was unscientific.  The true method, as practiced
+by the group operating in Burma, was to throw the line
+about the victim's neck and jerk him from the window.
+A man leaning from an open window is very nicely poised:
+it requires only a slight jerk to pitch him forward.
+No loop was used, but a running line, which, as the victim fell,
+remained in the hand of the murderer.  No clew!  Therefore we
+see at once what commended the system to Fu-Manchu."
+
+Graham Guthrie, very pale, stood looking down at the dead strangler.
+
+"I owe you my life, Mr. Smith," he said.  "If you had come
+five minutes later--"
+
+He grasped Smith's hand.
+
+"You see," Guthrie continued, "no one thought of looking for a Thug in Burma!
+And no one thought of the ROOF!  These fellows are as active as monkeys,
+and where an ordinary man would infallibly break his neck, they are entirely
+at home.  I might have chosen my room especially for the business!"
+
+"He slipped in late this evening," said Smith.  "The hotel detective saw him,
+but these stranglers are as elusive as shadows, otherwise, despite their
+having changed the scene of their operations, not one could have survived."
+
+"Didn't you mention a case of this kind on the Irrawaddy?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," was the reply; "and I know of what you are thinking.
+The steamers of the Irrawaddy flotilla have a corrugated-iron
+roof over the top deck.  The Thug must have been lying up there
+as the Colassie passed on the deck below."
+
+"But, Smith, what is the motive of the Call?" I continued.
+
+"Partly religious," he explained, "and partly to wake the victims!
+You are perhaps going to ask me how Dr. Fu-Manchu has obtained power over
+such people as phansigars?  I can only reply that Dr. Fu-Manchu has secret
+knowledge of which, so far, we know absolutely nothing; but, despite all,
+at last I begin to score."
+
+"You do," I agreed; "but your victory took you near to death."
+
+"I owe my life to you, Petrie," he said.  "Once to your strength of arm,
+and once to--"
+
+"Don't speak of her, Smith," I interrupted.
+"Dr. Fu-Manchu may have discovered the part she played!
+In which event--"
+
+"God help her!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+UPON the following day we were afoot again, and shortly at handgrips with
+the enemy.  In retrospect, that restless time offers a chaotic prospect,
+with no peaceful spot amid its turmoils.
+
+All that was reposeful in nature seemed to have become
+an irony and a mockery to us--who knew how an evil demigod
+had his sacrificial altars amid our sweetest groves.
+This idea ruled strongly in my mind upon that soft autumnal day.
+
+"The net is closing in," said Nayland Smith.
+
+"Let us hope upon a big catch," I replied, with a laugh.
+
+Beyond where the Thames tided slumberously seaward showed the roofs
+of Royal Windsor, the castle towers showing through the autumn haze.
+The peace of beautiful Thames-side was about us.
+
+This was one of the few tangible clews upon which thus
+far we had chanced; but at last it seemed indeed that we
+were narrowing the resources of that enemy of the white race
+who was writing his name over England in characters of blood.
+To capture Dr. Fu-Manchu we did not hope; but at least there
+was every promise of destroying one of the enemy's strongholds.
+
+We had circled upon the map a tract of country cut by the Thames,
+with Windsor for its center.  Within that circle was the house from
+which miraculously we had escaped--a house used by the most highly
+organized group in the history of criminology.  So much we knew.
+Even if we found the house, and this was likely enough, to find it
+vacated by Fu-Manchu and his mysterious servants we were prepared.
+But it would be a base destroyed.
+
+We were working upon a methodical plan, and although our cooperators
+were invisible, these numbered no fewer than twelve--all of them
+experienced men.  Thus far we had drawn blank, but the place for which
+Smith and I were making now came clearly into view:  an old mansion
+situated in extensive walled grounds.  Leaving the river behind us,
+we turned sharply to the right along a lane flanked by a high wall.
+On an open patch of ground, as we passed, I noted a gypsy caravan.
+An old woman was seated on the steps, her wrinkled face bent,
+her chin resting in the palm of her hand.
+
+I scarcely glanced at her, but pressed on, nor did I notice that my friend
+no longer was beside me.  I was all anxiety to come to some point from
+whence I might obtain a view of the house; all anxiety to know if this
+was the abode of our mysterious enemy--the place where he worked amid
+his weird company, where he bred his deadly scorpions and his bacilli,
+reared his poisonous fungi, from whence he dispatched his murder ministers.
+Above all, perhaps, I wondered if this would prove to be the hiding-place of
+the beautiful slave girl who was such a potent factor in the Doctor's plans,
+but a two-edged sword which yet we hoped to turn upon Fu-Manchu. Even
+in the hands of a master, a woman's beauty is a dangerous weapon.
+
+A cry rang out behind me.  I turned quickly.  And a singular
+sight met my gaze.
+
+Nayland Smith was engaged in a furious struggle with the old gypsy woman!
+His long arms clasped about her, he was roughly dragging her out into
+the roadway, she fighting like a wild thing--silently, fiercely.
+
+Smith often surprised me, but at that sight, frankly, I thought that
+he was become bereft of reason.  I ran back; and I had almost reached
+the scene of this incredible contest, and Smith now was evidently hard put
+to it to hold his own when a man, swarthy, with big rings in his ears,
+leaped from the caravan.
+
+One quick glance he threw in our direction, and made off towards the river.
+
+Smith twisted round upon me, never releasing his hold of the woman.
+
+"After him, Petrie!" he cried.  "After him.  Don't let him escape.
+It's a dacoit!"
+
+My brain in a confused whirl; my mind yet disposed to a belief that my friend
+had lost his senses, the word "dacoit" was sufficient.
+
+I started down the road after the fleetly running man.
+Never once did he glance behind him, so that he evidently had occasion
+to fear pursuit.  The dusty road rang beneath my flying footsteps.
+That sense of fantasy, which claimed me often enough in those days
+of our struggle with the titantic genius whose victory meant the victory
+of the yellow races over the white, now had me fast in its grip again.
+I was an actor in one of those dream-scenes of the grim Fu-Manchu drama.
+
+Out over the grass and down to the river's brink ran the gypsy
+who was no gypsy, but one of that far more sinister brotherhood,
+the dacoits.  I was close upon his heels.  But I was not
+prepared for him to leap in among the rushes at the margin
+of the stream; and seeing him do this I pulled up quickly.
+Straight into the water he plunged; and I saw that he held some
+object in his hand.  He waded out; he dived; and as I gained
+the bank and looked to right and left he had vanished completely.
+Only ever--widening rings showed where he had been.
+I had him.
+
+For directly he rose to the surface he would be visible from
+either bank, and with the police whistle which I carried I could,
+if necessary, summon one of the men in hiding across the stream.
+I waited.  A wild-fowl floated serenely past, untroubled by this
+strange invasion of his precincts.  A full minute I waited.
+From the lane behind me came Smith's voice:
+
+"Don't let him escape, Petrie!"
+
+Never lifting my eyes from the water, I waved my hand reassuringly.
+But still the dacoit did not rise.  I searched the surface in all
+directions as far as my eyes could reach; but no swimmer showed
+above it.  Then it was that I concluded he had dived too deeply,
+become entangled in the weeds and was drowned.  With a final glance
+to right and left and some feeling of awe at this sudden tragedy--
+this grim going out of a life at glorious noonday--I turned away.
+Smith had the woman securely; but I had not taken five steps towards
+him when a faint splash behind warned me.  Instinctively I ducked.
+From whence that saving instinct arose I cannot surmise,
+but to it I owed my life.  For as I rapidly lowered my head,
+something hummed past me, something that flew out over the grass bank,
+and fell with a jangle upon the dusty roadside.  A knife!
+
+I turned and bounded back to the river's brink.  I heard a faint
+cry behind me, which could only have come from the gypsy woman.
+Nothing disturbed the calm surface of the water.  The reach was lonely
+of rowers.  Out by the farther bank a girl was poling a punt along,
+and her white-clad figure was the only living thing that moved upon
+the river within the range of the most expert knife-thrower.
+
+To say that I was nonplused is to say less than the truth; I was amazed.
+That it was the dacoit who had shown me this murderous attention
+I could not doubt.  But where in Heaven's name WAS he?
+He could not humanly have remained below water for so long;
+yet he certainly was not above, was not upon the surface,
+concealed amongst the reeds, nor hidden upon the bank.
+
+There, in the bright sunshine, a consciousness of the eerie possessed me.
+It was with an uncomfortable feeling that my phantom foe might be aiming
+a second knife at my back that I turned away and hastened towards Smith.
+My fearful expectations were not realized, and I picked up the little weapon
+which had so narrowly missed me, and with it in my hand rejoined my friend.
+
+He was standing with one arm closely clasped about the apparently
+exhausted woman, and her dark eyes were fixed upon him with
+an extraordinary expression.
+
+"What does it mean, Smith?" I began.
+
+But he interrupted me.
+
+"Where is the dacoit?" he demanded rapidly.
+
+"Since he seemingly possesses the attributes of a fish,"
+I replied, "I cannot pretend to say."
+
+The gypsy woman lifted her eyes to mine and laughed.
+Her laughter was musical, not that of such an old hag as Smith
+held captive; it was familiar, too.
+
+I started and looked closely into the wizened face.
+
+"He's tricked you," said Smith, an angry note in his voice.
+"What is that you have in your hand?"
+
+I showed him the knife, and told him how it had come into my possession.
+
+"I know," he rapped.  "I saw it.  He was in the water not
+three yards from where you stood.  You must have seen him.
+Was there nothing visible?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+The woman laughed again, and again I wondered.
+
+"A wild-fowl," I added; "nothing else."
+
+"A wild-fowl," snapped Smith.  "If you will consult your
+recollections of the habits of wild-fowl you will see
+that this particular specimen was a RARA AVIS. It's an
+old trick, Petrie, but a good one, for it is used in decoying.
+A dacoit's head was concealed in that wild-fowl!  It's useless.
+He has certainly made good his escape by now."
+
+"Smith," I said, somewhat crestfallen, "why are you detaining
+this gypsy woman?"
+
+"Gypsy woman!" he laughed, hugging her tightly as she made
+an impatient movement.  "Use your eyes, old man."
+
+He jerked the frowsy wig from her head, and beneath was a cloud
+of disordered hair that shimmered in the sunlight.
+
+"A wet sponge will do the rest," he said.
+
+Into my eyes, widely opened in wonder, looked the dark eyes
+of the captive; and beneath the disguise I picked out the charming
+features of the slave girl.  There were tears on the whitened lashes,
+and she was submissive now.
+
+"This time," said my friend hardly, "we have fairly captured her--
+and we will hold her."
+
+From somewhere up-stream came a faint call.
+
+"The dacoit!"
+
+Nayland Smith's lean body straightened; he stood alert, strung up.
+
+Another call answered, and a third responded.
+Then followed the flatly shrill note of a police whistle,
+and I noted a column of black vapor rising beyond the wall,
+mounting straight to heaven as the smoke of a welcome offering.
+
+The surrounded mansion was in flames!
+
+"Curse it!" rapped Smith.  "So this time we were right.  But, of course,
+he has had ample opportunity to remove his effects.  I knew that.
+The man's daring is incredible.  He has given himself till the very
+last moment--and we blundered upon two of the outposts."
+
+"I lost one."
+
+"No matter.  We have the other.  I expect no further arrests,
+and the house will have been so well fired by the Doctor's
+servants that nothing can save it.  I fear its ashes will afford
+us no clew, Petrie; but we have secured a lever which should
+serve to disturb Fu-Manchu's world."
+
+He glanced at the queer figure which hung submissively in his arms.
+She looked up proudly.
+
+"You need not hold me so tight," she said, in her soft voice.
+"I will come with you."
+
+That I moved amid singular happenings, you, who have borne with me
+thus far, have learned, and that I witnessed many curious scenes;
+but of the many such scenes in that race--drama wherein Nayland
+Smith and Dr. Fu-Manchu played the leading parts, I remember none
+more bizarre than the one at my rooms that afternoon.
+
+Without delay, and without taking the Scotland Yard men into
+our confidence, we had hurried our prisoner back to London,
+for my friend's authority was supreme.  A strange trio we were,
+and one which excited no little comment; but the journey came
+to an end at last.  Now we were in my unpretentious sitting-room--
+the room wherein Smith first had unfolded to me the story
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu and of the great secret society which sought
+to upset the balance of the world--to place Europe and America
+beneath the scepter of Cathay.
+
+I sat with my elbows upon the writing-table, my chin in my hands;
+Smith restlessly paced the floor, relighting his blackened
+briar a dozen times in as many minutes.  In the big arm-chair
+the pseudogypsy was curled up.  A brief toilet had converted
+the wizened old woman's face into that of a fascinatingly pretty girl.
+Wildly picturesque she looked in her ragged Romany garb.
+She held a cigarette in her fingers and watched us
+through lowered lashes.
+
+Seemingly, with true Oriental fatalism, she was quite reconciled to her fate,
+and ever and anon she would bestow upon me a glance from her beautiful
+eyes which few men, I say with confidence, could have sustained unmoved.
+Though I could not be blind to the emotions of that passionate Eastern soul,
+yet I strove not to think of them.  Accomplice of an arch-murderer she
+might be; but she was dangerously lovely.
+
+"That man who was with you," said Smith, suddenly turning
+upon her, "was in Burma up till quite recently.  He murdered
+a fisherman thirty miles above Prome only a mouth before I left.
+The D.S.P. had placed a thousand rupees on his head.
+Am I right?"
+
+The girl shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Suppose--What then?" she asked.
+
+"Suppose I handed you over to the police?" suggested Smith.
+But he spoke without conviction, for in the recent past we
+both had owed our lives to this girl.
+
+"As you please," she replied.  "The police would learn nothing."
+
+"You do not belong to the Far East," my friend said abruptly.
+"You may have Eastern blood in your veins, but you are no
+kin of Fu-Manchu."
+
+"That is true," she admitted, and knocked the ash from her cigarette.
+
+"Will you tell me where to find Fu-Manchu?"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders again, glancing eloquently in my direction.
+
+Smith walked to the door.
+
+"I must make out my report, Petrie," he said.  "Look after the prisoner."
+
+And as the door closed softly behind him I knew what was
+expected of me; but, honestly, I shirked my responsibility.
+What attitude should I adopt?  How should I go about my delicate task?
+In a quandary, I stood watching the girl whom singular circumstances
+saw captive in my rooms.
+
+"You do not think we would harm you?" I began awkwardly.
+"No harm shall come to you.  Why will you not trust us?"
+
+She raised her brilliant eyes.
+
+"Of what avail has your protection been to some of those others,"
+she said; "those others whom HE has sought for?"
+
+Alas!  it had been of none, and I knew it well.  I thought I grasped
+the drift of her words.
+
+"You mean that if you speak, Fu-Manchu will find a way of killing you?"
+
+"Of killing ME!" she flashed scornfully.  "Do I seem one
+to fear for myself?"
+
+"Then what do you fear?" I asked, in surprise.
+
+She looked at me oddly.
+
+"When I was seized and sold for a slave," she answered slowly,
+"my sister was taken, too, and my brother--a child."
+She spoke the word with a tender intonation, and her slight accent
+rendered it the more soft.  "My sister died in the desert.
+My brother lived.  Better, far better, that he had died, too."
+
+Her words impressed me intensely.
+
+"Of what are you speaking?" I questioned.  "You speak of
+slave-raids, of the desert.  Where did these things take place?
+Of what country are you?"
+
+"Does it matter?" she questioned in turn.  "Of what country am I?
+A slave has no country, no name."
+
+"No name!" I cried.
+
+"You may call me Karamaneh," she said.  "As Karamaneh I was
+sold to Dr. Fu-Manchu, and my brother also he purchased.
+We were cheap at the price he paid."  She laughed shortly, wildly.
+
+"But he has spent a lot of money to educate me.  My brother is all
+that is left to me in the world to love, and he is in the power
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu. You understand?  It is upon him the blow will fall.
+You ask me to fight against Fu-Manchu. You talk of protection.
+Did your protection save Sir Crichton Davey?"
+
+I shook my head sadly.
+
+"You understand now why I cannot disobey my master's orders--why, if I would,
+I dare not betray him."
+
+I walked to the window and looked out.  How could I answer her arguments?
+What could I say?  I heard the rustle of her ragged skirts, and she who called
+herself Karamaneh stood beside me.  She laid her hand upon my arm.
+
+"Let me go," she pleaded.  "He will kill him!  He will kill him!"
+
+Her voice shook with emotion.
+
+"He cannot revenge himself upon your brother when you are in no way to blame,"
+I said angrily.  "We arrested you; you are not here of your own free will."
+
+She drew her breath sharply, clutching at my arm, and in her eyes I
+could read that she was forcing her mind to some arduous decision.
+
+"Listen."  She was speaking rapidly, nervously.  "If I help you
+to take Dr. Fu-Manchu--tell you where he is to be found ALONE--
+will you promise me, solemnly promise me, that you will immediately
+go to the place where I shall guide you and release my brother;
+that you will let us both go free?"
+
+"I will," I said, without hesitation.  "You may rest assured of it."
+
+"But there is a condition," she added.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"When I have told you where to capture him you must release me."
+
+I hesitated.  Smith often had accused me of weakness
+where this girl was concerned.  What now was my plain duty?
+That she would utterly decline to speak under any circumstances
+unless it suited her to do so I felt assured.  If she spoke
+the truth, in her proposed bargain there was no personal element;
+her conduct I now viewed in a new light.  Humanity, I thought,
+dictated that I accept her proposal; policy also.
+
+"I agree," I said, and looked into her eyes, which were aflame
+now with emotion, an excitement perhaps of anticipation,
+perhaps of fear.
+
+She laid her hands upon my shoulders.
+
+"You will be careful?" she said pleadingly.
+
+"For your sake," I replied, "I shall."
+
+"Not for my sake."
+
+"Then for your brother's."
+
+"No." Her voice had sunk to a whisper.  "For your own."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+A COOL breeze met us, blowing from the lower reaches of the Thames.
+Far behind us twinkled the dim lights of Low's Cottages,
+the last regular habitations abutting upon the marshes.
+Between us and the cottages stretched half-a-mile of lush land
+through which at this season there were, however, numerous dry paths.
+Before us the flats again, a dull, monotonous expanse beneath the moon,
+with the promise of the cool breeze that the river flowed round
+the bend ahead.  It was very quiet.  Only the sound of our footsteps,
+as Nayland Smith and I tramped steadily towards our goal,
+broke the stillness of that lonely place.
+
+Not once but many times, within the last twenty minutes,
+I had thought that we were ill-advised to adventure
+alone upon the capture of the formidable Chinese doctor;
+but we were following out our compact with Karamaneh;
+and one of her stipulations had been that the police must
+not be acquainted with her share in the matter.
+
+A light came into view far ahead of us.
+
+"That's the light, Petrie," said Smith.  "If we keep that straight before us,
+according to our information we shall strike the hulk."
+
+I grasped the revolver in my pocket, and the presence
+of the little weapon was curiously reassuring.
+I have endeavored, perhaps in extenuation of my own fears,
+to explain how about Dr. Fu-Manchu there rested an atmosphere
+of horror, peculiar, unique.  He was not as other men.
+The dread that he inspired in all with whom he came in contact,
+the terrors which he controlled and hurled at whomsoever
+cumbered his path, rendered him an object supremely sinister.
+I despair of conveying to those who may read this account
+any but the coldest conception of the man's evil power.
+
+Smith stopped suddenly and grasped my arm.
+We stood listening.  "What?" I asked.
+
+"You heard nothing?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+Smith was peering back over the marshes in his oddly alert way.
+He turned to me, and his tanned face wore a peculiar expression.
+
+"You don't think it's a trap?" he jerked.  "We are trusting her blindly."
+
+Strange it may seem, but something within me rose in arms
+against the innuendo.
+
+"I don't," I said shortly.
+
+He nodded.  We pressed on.
+
+Ten minutes' steady tramping brought us within sight of the Thames.
+Smith and I both had noticed how Fu-Manchu's activities centered
+always about the London river.  Undoubtedly it was his highway,
+his line of communication, along which he moved his mysterious forces.
+The opium den off Shadwell Highway, the mansion upstream,
+at that hour a smoldering shell; now the hulk lying off the marshes.
+Always he made his headquarters upon the river.  It was significant;
+and even if to-night's expedition should fail, this was a clew
+for our future guidance.
+
+"Bear to the right," directed Smith.  "We must reconnoiter
+before making our attack."
+
+We took a path that led directly to the river bank.
+Before us lay the gray expanse of water, and out upon it
+moved the busy shipping of the great mercantile city.
+But this life of the river seemed widely removed from us.
+The lonely spot where we stood had no kinship with human activity.
+Its dreariness illuminated by the brilliant moon, it looked
+indeed a fit setting for an act in such a drama as that wherein
+we played our parts.  When I had lain in the East End opium den,
+when upon such another night as this I had looked out upon
+a peaceful Norfolk countryside, the same knowledge of aloofness,
+of utter detachment from the world of living men, had come to me.
+
+Silently Smith stared out at the distant moving lights.
+
+"Karamaneh merely means a slave," he said irrelevantly.
+
+I made no comment.
+
+"There's the hulk," he added.
+
+The bank upon which we stood dipped in mud slopes to the level
+of the running tide.  Seaward it rose higher, and by a narrow inlet--
+for we perceived that we were upon a kind of promontory--
+a rough pier showed.  Beneath it was a shadowy shape in the patch
+of gloom which the moon threw far out upon the softly eddying water.
+Only one dim light was visible amid this darkness.
+
+"That will be the cabin," said Smith.
+
+Acting upon our prearranged plan, we turned and walked up on
+to the staging above the hulk.  A wooden ladder led out and down
+to the deck below, and was loosely lashed to a ring on the pier.
+With every motion of the tidal waters the ladder rose and fell,
+its rings creaking harshly, against the crazy railing.
+
+"How are we going to get down without being detected?" whispered Smith.
+
+"We've got to risk it," I said grimly.
+
+Without further words my friend climbed around on to the ladder
+and commenced to descend.  I waited until his head disappeared
+below the level, and, clumsily enough, prepared to follow him.
+
+The hulk at that moment giving an unusually heavy heave,
+I stumbled, and for one breathless moment looked down upon
+the glittering surface streaking the darkness beneath me.
+My foot had slipped, and but that I had a firm grip upon the top rung,
+that instant, most probably, had marked the end of my share
+in the fight with Fu-Manchu. As it was I had a narrow escape.
+I felt something slip from my hip pocket, but the weird
+creaking of the ladder, the groans of the laboring hulk,
+and the lapping of the waves about the staging drowned the sound
+of the splash as my revolver dropped into the river.
+
+Rather, white-faced, I think, I joined Smith on the deck.
+He had witnessed my accident, but--
+
+"We must risk it," he whispered in my ear.  "We dare not turn back now."
+
+He plunged into the semi-darkness, making for the cabin,
+I perforce following.
+
+At the bottom of the ladder we came fully into the light streaming out
+from the singular apartments at the entrance to which we found ourselves.
+It was fitted up as a laboratory.  A glimpse I had of shelves loaded
+with jars and bottles, of a table strewn with scientific paraphernalia,
+with retorts, with tubes of extraordinary shapes, holding living organisms,
+and with instruments--some of them of a form unknown to my experience.
+I saw too that books, papers and rolls of parchment littered the bare
+wooden floor.  Then Smith's voice rose above the confused sounds
+about me, incisive, commanding:
+
+"I have you covered, Dr. Fu-Manchu!"
+
+For Fu-Manchu sat at the table.
+
+The picture that he presented at that moment is one which persistently
+clings in my memory.  In his long, yellow robe, his masklike,
+intellectual face bent forward amongst the riot of singular objects upon
+the table, his great, high brow gleaming in the light of the shaded
+lamp above him, and with the abnormal eyes, filmed and green,
+raised to us, he seemed a figure from the realms of delirium.
+But, most amazing circumstance of all, he and his surroundings tallied,
+almost identically, with the dream-picture which had come to me as I
+lay chained in the cell!
+
+Some of the large jars about the place held anatomy specimens.
+A faint smell of opium hung in the air, and playing with the tassel
+of one of the cushions upon which, as upon a divan, Fu-Manchu was seated,
+leaped and chattered a little marmoset.
+
+That was an electric moment.  I was prepared for anything--
+for anything except for what really happened.
+
+The doctor's wonderful, evil face betrayed no hint of emotion.
+The lids flickered over the filmed eyes, and their greenness grew
+momentarily brighter, and filmed over again.
+
+"Put up your hands!" rapped Smith, "and attempt no tricks."
+His voice quivered with excitement.  "The game's up,
+Fu-Manchu. Find something to tie him up with, Petrie."
+
+I moved forward to Smith's side, and was about to pass him
+in the narrow doorway.  The hulk moved beneath our feet
+like a living thing groaning, creaking--and the water lapped
+about the rotten woodwork with a sound infinitely dreary.
+
+"Put up your hands!" ordered Smith imperatively.
+
+Fu-Manchu slowly raised his hands, and a smile dawned upon
+the impassive features--a smile that had no mirth in it,
+only menace, revealing as it did his even, discolored teeth,
+but leaving the filmed eyes inanimate, dull, inhuman.
+
+He spoke softly, sibilantly.
+
+"I would advise Dr. Petrie to glance behind him before he moves."
+
+Smith's keen gray eyes never for a moment quitted the speaker.
+The gleaming barrel moved not a hair's-breadth. But I glanced
+quickly over my shoulder--and stifled a cry of pure horror.
+
+A wicked, pock-marked face, with wolfish fangs bared, and jaundiced
+eyes squinting obliquely into mine, was within two inches of me.
+A lean, brown hand and arm, the great thews standing up like cords,
+held a crescent-shaped knife a fraction of an inch above my jugular vein.
+A slight movement must have dispatched me; a sweep of the fearful weapon,
+I doubt not, would have severed my head from my body.
+
+"Smith!" I whispered hoarsely, "don't look around.
+For God's sake keep him covered.  But a dacoit has his knife
+at my throat!"
+
+Then, for the first time, Smith's hand trembled.  But his glance never wavered
+from the malignant, emotionless countenance of Dr. Fu-Manchu. He clenched
+his teeth hard, so that the muscles stood out prominently upon his jaw.
+
+I suppose that silence which followed my awful discovery prevailed
+but a few seconds.  To me those seconds were each a lingering death.
+
+There, below, in that groaning hulk, I knew more of icy terror
+than any of our meetings with the murder-group had brought
+to me before; and through my brain throbbed a thought:
+the girl had betrayed us!
+
+"You supposed that I was alone?" suggested Fu-Manchu. "So I was."
+
+Yet no trace of fear had broken through the impassive yellow
+mask when we had entered.
+
+"But my faithful servant followed you," he added.  "I thank him.
+The honors, Mr. Smith, are mine, I think?"
+
+Smith made no reply.  I divined that he was thinking furiously.
+Fu-Manchu moved his hand to caress the marmoset, which had leaped
+playfully upon his shoulder, and crouched there gibing at us
+in a whistling voice.
+
+"Don't stir!" said Smith savagely.  "I warn you!"
+
+Fu-Manchu kept his hand raised.
+
+"May I ask you how you discovered my retreat?" he asked.
+
+"This hulk has been watched since dawn," lied Smith brazenly.
+
+"So?"  The Doctor's filmed eyes cleared for a moment.
+"And to-day you compelled me to burn a house, and you
+have captured one of my people, too.  I congratulate you.
+She would not betray me though lashed with scorpions."
+
+The great gleaming knife was so near to my neck that a sheet of notepaper
+could scarcely have been slipped between blade and vein, I think;
+but my heart throbbed even more wildly when I heard those words.
+
+"An impasse," said Fu-Manchu. "I have a proposal to make.
+I assume that you would not accept my word for anything?"
+
+"I would not," replied Smith promptly.
+
+"Therefore," pursued the Chinaman, and the occasional guttural
+alone marred his perfect English, "I must accept yours.
+Of your resources outside this cabin I know nothing.
+You, I take it, know as little of mine.  My Burmese friend and
+Doctor Petrie will lead the way, then; you and I will follow.
+We will strike out across the marsh for, say, three hundred yards.
+You will then place your pistol on the ground, pledging me your
+word to leave it there.  I shall further require your assurance
+that you will make no attempt upon me until I have retraced
+my steps.  I and my good servant will withdraw, leaving you,
+at the expiration of the specified period, to act as you see fit.
+Is it agreed?"
+
+Smith hesitated.  Then:
+
+"The dacoit must leave his knife also," he stipulated.
+Fu-Manchu smiled his evil smile again.
+
+"Agreed.  Shall I lead the way?"
+
+"No!" rapped Smith.  "Petrie and the dacoit first; then you; I last."
+
+A guttural word of command from Fu-Manchu, and we left the cabin,
+with its evil odors, its mortuary specimens, and its strange instruments,
+and in the order arranged mounted to the deck.
+
+"It will be awkward on the ladder," said Fu-Manchu. "Dr. Petrie,
+I will accept your word to adhere to the terms."
+
+"I promise," I said, the words almost choking me.
+
+We mounted the rising and dipping ladder, all reached the pier,
+and strode out across the flats, the Chinaman always under close
+cover of Smith's revolver.  Round about our feet, now leaping ahead,
+now gamboling back, came and went the marmoset.  The dacoit,
+dressed solely in a dark loin-cloth, walked beside me, carrying his
+huge knife, and sometimes glancing at me with his blood-lustful eyes.
+Never before, I venture to say, had an autumn moon lighted such
+a scene in that place.
+
+"Here we part," said Fu-Manchu, and spoke another word to his follower.
+
+The man threw his knife upon the ground.
+
+"Search him, Petrie," directed Smith.  "He may have a second concealed."
+
+The Doctor consented; and I passed my hands over the man's scanty garments.
+
+"Now search Fu-Manchu."
+
+This also I did.  And never have I experienced a similar sense
+of revulsion from any human being.  I shuddered, as though I
+had touched a venomous reptile.
+
+Smith drew down his revolver.
+
+"I curse myself for an honorable fool," he said.  "No one could
+dispute my right to shoot you dead where you stand."
+
+Knowing him as I did, I could tell from the suppressed passion
+in Smith's voice that only by his unhesitating acceptance
+of my friend's word, and implicit faith in his keeping it,
+had Dr. Fu-Manchu escaped just retribution at that moment.
+Fiend though he was, I admired his courage; for all this he,
+too, must have known.
+
+The Doctor turned, and with the dacoit walked back.
+Nayland Smith's next move filled me with surprise.
+For just as, silently, I was thanking God for my escape,
+my friend began shedding his coat, collar and waistcoat.
+
+"Pocket your valuables, and do the same," he muttered hoarsely.
+"We have a poor chances but we are both fairly fit.
+To-night, Petrie, we literally have to run for our lives."
+
+We live in a peaceful age, wherein it falls to the lot of few
+men to owe their survival to their fleetness of foot.
+At Smith's words I realized in a flash that such was to be
+our fate to-night.
+
+I have said that the hulk lay off a sort of promontory.
+East and west, then, we had nothing to hope for.  To the south
+was Fu-Manchu; and even as, stripped of our heavier garments,
+we started to run northward, the weird signal of a dacoit rose
+on the night and was answered--was answered again.
+
+"Three, at least," hissed Smith; "three armed dacoits.  Hopeless."
+
+"Take the revolver," I cried.  "Smith, it's--"
+
+"No," he rapped, through clenched teeth.  "A servant of the Crown
+in the East makes his motto:  `Keep your word, though it break
+your neck!'  I don't think we need fear it being used against us.
+Fu-Manchu avoids noisy methods."
+
+So back we ran, over the course by which, earlier, we had come.
+It was, roughly, a mile to the first building--a deserted cottage--
+and another quarter of a mile to any that was occupied.
+
+Our chance of meeting a living soul, other than Fu-Manchu's dacoits,
+was practically nil.
+
+At first we ran easily, for it was the second half-mile that would
+decide our fate.  The professional murderers who pursued us ran
+like panthers, I knew; and I dare not allow my mind to dwell
+upon those yellow figures with the curved, gleaming, knives.
+For a long time neither of us looked back.
+
+On we ran, and on--silently, doggedly.
+
+Then a hissing breath from Smith warned me what to expect.
+
+Should I, too, look back?  Yes.  It was impossible to resist
+the horrid fascination.
+
+I threw a quick glance over my shoulder.
+
+And never while I live shall I forget what I saw.
+Two of the pursuing dacoits had outdistanced their fellow
+(or fellows), and were actually within three hundred yards of us.
+
+More like dreadful animals they looked than human beings,
+running bent forward, with their faces curiously uptilted.
+The brilliant moonlight gleamed upon bared teeth, as I could see,
+even at that distance, even in that quick, agonized glance,
+and it gleamed upon the crescent-shaped knives.
+
+"As hard as you can go now," panted Smith.  "We must make an attempt
+to break into the empty cottage.  Only chance."
+
+I had never in my younger days been a notable runner; for Smith I
+cannot speak.  But I am confident that the next half-mile was done
+in time that would not have disgraced a crack man.  Not once again did
+either of us look back.  Yard upon yard we raced forward together.
+My heart seemed to be bursting.  My leg muscles throbbed with pain.
+At last, with the empty cottage in sight, it came to that pass with me
+when another three yards looks as unattainable as three miles.
+Once I stumbled.
+
+"My God!" came from Smith weakly.
+
+But I recovered myself.  Bare feet pattered close upon our heels,
+and panting breaths told how even Fu-Manchu's bloodhounds were hard
+put to it by the killing pace we had made.
+
+"Smith," I whispered, "look in front.  Someone!"
+
+As through a red mist I had seen a dark shape detach itself
+from the shadows of the cottage, and merge into them again.
+It could only be another dacoit; but Smith, not heeding,
+or not hearing, my faintly whispered words, crashed open
+the gate and hurled himself blindly at the door.
+
+It burst open before him with a resounding boom, and he pitched forward
+into the interior darkness.  Flat upon the floor he lay, for as,
+with a last effort, I gained the threshold and dragged myself within,
+I almost fell over his recumbent body.
+
+Madly I snatched at the door.  His foot held it open.
+I kicked the foot away, and banged the door to.  As I turned,
+the leading dacoit, his eyes starting from their sockets,
+his face the face of a demon leaped wildly through the gateway.
+
+That Smith had burst the latch I felt assured, but by some divine
+accident my weak hands found the bolt.  With the last ounce
+of strength spared to me I thrust it home in the rusty socket--
+as a full six inches of shining steel split the middle panel
+and protruded above my head.
+
+I dropped, sprawling, beside my friend.
+
+A terrific blow shattered every pane of glass in the solitary window,
+and one of the grinning animal faces looked in.
+
+"Sorry, old man," whispered Smith, and his voice was barely audible.
+Weakly he grasped my hand.  "My fault.  I shouldn't have let, you come."
+
+From the corner of the room where the black shadows lay flicked
+a long tongue of flame.  Muffled, staccato, came the report.
+And the yellow face at the window was blotted out.
+
+One wild cry, ending in a rattling gasp, told of a dacoit gone
+to his account.
+
+A gray figure glided past me and was silhouetted against the broken window.
+
+Again the pistol sent its message into the night, and again came
+the reply to tell how well and truly that message had been delivered.
+In the stillness, intense by sharp contrast, the sound
+of bare soles pattering upon the path outside stole to me.
+Two runners, I thought there were, so that four dacoits must
+have been upon our trail.  The room was full of pungent smoke.
+I staggered to my feet as the gray figure with the revolver
+turned towards me.  Something familiar there was in that long,
+gray garment, and now I perceived why I had thought so.
+
+It was my gray rain-coat.
+
+"Karamaneh," I whispered.
+
+And Smith, with difficulty, supporting himself upright, and holding
+fast to the ledge beside the door, muttered something hoarsely,
+which sounded like "God bless her!"
+
+The girl, trembling now, placed her hands upon my shoulders with that quaint,
+pathetic gesture peculiarly her own.
+
+"I followed you," she said.  "Did you not know I should follow you?
+But I had to hide because of another who was following also.
+I had but just reached this place when I saw you running towards me."
+
+She broke off and turned to Smith.
+
+"This is your pistol," she said naively.  "I found it in your bag.
+Will you please take it!"
+
+He took it without a word.  Perhaps he could not trust himself to speak.
+
+"Now go.  Hurry!" she said.  "You are not safe yet."
+
+"But you?" I asked.
+
+"You have failed," she replied.  "I must go back to him.
+There is no other way."
+
+Strangely sick at heart for a man who has just had a miraculous
+escape from death, I opened the door.  Coatless, disheveled figures,
+my friend and I stepped out into the moonlight.
+
+Hideous under the pale rays lay the two dead men,
+their glazed eyes upcast to the peace of the blue heavens.
+Karamaneh had shot to kill, for both had bullets in their brains.
+If God ever planned a more complex nature than hers--a nature more
+tumultuous with conflicting passions, I cannot conceive of it.
+Yet her beauty was of the sweetest; and in some respects she
+had the heart of a child--this girl who could shoot so straight.
+
+"We must send the police to-night," said Smith.
+"Or the papers--"
+
+"Hurry," came the girl's voice commandingly from the darkness
+of the cottage.
+
+It was a singular situation.  My very soul rebelled against it.
+But what could we do?
+
+"Tell us where we can communicate," began Smith.
+
+"Hurry.  I shall be suspected.  Do you want him to kill me!"
+
+We moved away.  All was very still now, and the lights glimmered
+faintly ahead.  Not a wisp of cloud brushed the moon's disk.
+
+"Good-night, Karamaneh," I whispered softly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+TO pursue further the adventure on the marshes would be a task
+at once useless and thankless.  In its actual and in its dramatic
+significance it concluded with our parting from Karamaneh.
+And in that parting I learned what Shakespeare meant
+by "Sweet Sorrow."
+
+There was a world, I learned, upon the confines of which I stood,
+a world whose very existence hitherto had been unsuspected.
+Not the least of the mysteries which peeped from the darkness was
+the mystery of the heart of Karamaneh.  I sought to forget her.
+I sought to remember her.  Indeed, in the latter task I found
+one more congenial, yet, in the direction and extent of the ideas
+which it engendered, one that led me to a precipice.
+
+East and West may not intermingle.  As a student of
+world-policies, as a physician, I admitted, could not deny,
+that truth.  Again, if Karamaneh were to be credited,
+she had come to Fu-Manchu a slave; had fallen into the hands
+of the raiders; had crossed the desert with the slave-drivers;
+had known the house of the slave-dealer. Could it be?
+With the fading of the crescent of Islam I had thought such
+things to have passed.
+
+But if it were so?
+
+At the mere thought of a girl so deliciously beautiful in the brutal
+power of slavers, I found myself grinding my teeth--closing my eyes
+in a futile attempt to blot out the pictures called up.
+
+Then, at such times, I would find myself discrediting her story.
+Again, I would find myself wondering, vaguely, why such problems
+persistently haunted my mind.  But, always, my heart had an answer.
+And I was a medical man, who sought to build up a family practice!--
+who, in short, a very little time ago, had thought himself past
+the hot follies of youth and entered upon that staid phase of life
+wherein the daily problems of the medical profession hold absolute
+sway and such seductive follies as dark eyes and red lips find--
+no place--are excluded!
+
+But it is foreign from the purpose of this plain record to
+enlist sympathy for the recorder.  The topic upon which, here,
+I have ventured to touch was one fascinating enough to me;
+I cannot hope that it holds equal charm for any other.
+Let us return to that which it is my duty to narrate and let
+us forget my brief digression.
+
+It is a fact, singular, but true, that few Londoners know London.
+Under the guidance of my friend, Nayland Smith, I had learned,
+since his return from Burma, how there are haunts in the very heart
+of the metropolis whose existence is unsuspected by all but the few;
+places unknown even to the ubiquitous copy-hunting pressman.
+
+Into a quiet thoroughfare not two minutes' walk from
+the pulsing life of Leicester Square, Smith led the way.
+Before a door sandwiched in between two dingy shop-fronts
+he paused and turned to me.
+
+"Whatever you see or hear," he cautioned, "express no surprise."
+
+A cab had dropped us at the corner.  We both wore dark suits and fez
+caps with black silk tassels.  My complexion had been artificially
+reduced to a shade resembling the deep tan of my friend's. He rang
+the bell beside the door.
+
+Almost immediately it was opened by a negro woman--gross, hideously ugly.
+
+Smith uttered something in voluble Arabic.  As a linguist his
+attainments were a constant source of surprise.  The jargons
+of the East, Far and Near, he spoke as his mother tongue.
+The woman immediately displayed the utmost servility, ushering us
+into an ill-lighted passage, with every evidence of profound respect.
+Following this passage, and passing an inner door,
+from beyond whence proceeded bursts of discordant music,
+we entered a little room bare of furniture, with coarse matting
+for mural decorations, and a patternless red carpet on the floor.
+In a niche burned a common metal lamp.
+
+The negress left us, and close upon her departure entered a very aged man
+with a long patriarchal beard, who greeted my friend with dignified courtesy.
+Following a brief conversation, the aged Arab--for such he appeared to be--
+drew aside a strip of matting, revealing a dark recess.  Placing his finger
+upon his lips, he silently invited us to enter.
+
+We did so, and the mat was dropped behind us.  The sounds of crude
+music were now much plainer, and as Smith slipped a little shutter
+aside I gave a start of surprise.
+
+Beyond lay a fairly large apartment, having divans or low seats around
+three of its walls.  These divans were occupied by a motley company
+of Turks, Egyptians, Greeks, and others; and I noted two Chinese.
+Most of them smoked cigarettes, and some were drinking.
+A girl was performing a sinuous dance upon the square carpet occupying
+the center of the floor, accompanied by a young negro woman upon
+a guitar and by several members of the assembly who clapped their
+hands to the music or hummed a low, monotonous melody.
+
+Shortly after our entrance into the passage the dance terminated,
+and the dancer fled through a curtained door at the farther end of the room.
+A buzz of conversation arose.
+
+"It is a sort of combined Wekaleh and place of entertainment for a certain
+class of Oriental residents in, or visiting, London," Smith whispered.
+"The old gentleman who has just left us is the proprietor or host.
+I have been here before on several occasions, but have always drawn blank."
+
+He was peering out eagerly into the strange clubroom.
+
+"Whom do you expect to find here?" I asked.
+
+"It is a recognized meeting-place," said Smith in my ear.
+"It is almost a certainty that some of the Fu-Manchu group
+use it at times."
+
+Curiously I surveyed all these faces which were visible from the spy-hole.
+My eyes rested particularly upon the two Chinamen.
+
+"Do you recognize anyone?" I whispered.
+
+"S-sh!"
+
+Smith was craning his neck so as to command a sight of the doorway.
+He obstructed my view, and only by his tense attitude and some
+subtle wave of excitement which he communicated to me did I know
+that a new arrival was entering.  The hum of conversation died away,
+and in the ensuing silence I heard the rustle of draperies.
+The newcomer was a woman, then.  Fearful of making any noise I yet
+managed to get my eyes to the level of the shutter.
+
+A woman in an elegant, flame-colored opera cloak was crossing the floor
+and coming in the direction of the spot where we were concealed.
+She wore a soft silk scarf about her head, a fold partly draped across
+her face.  A momentary view I had of her--and wildly incongruous
+she looked in that place--and she had disappeared from sight,
+having approached someone invisible who sat upon the divan immediately
+beneath our point of vantage.
+
+From the way in which the company gazed towards her, I divined that she
+was no habitue of the place, but that her presence there was as greatly
+surprising to those in the room as it was to me.
+
+Whom could she be, this elegant lady who visited such a haunt--
+who, it would seem, was so anxious to disguise her identity,
+but who was dressed for a society function rather than for a
+midnight expedition of so unusual a character?
+
+I began a whispered question, but Smith tugged at my arm to silence me.
+His excitement was intense.  Had his keener powers enabled him
+to recognize the unknown?
+
+A faint but most peculiar perfume stole to my nostrils, a perfume
+which seemed to contain the very soul of Eastern mystery.
+Only one woman known to me used that perfume--Karamaneh.
+
+Then it was she!
+
+At last my friend's vigilance had been rewarded.  Eagerly I bent forward.
+Smith literally quivered in anticipation of a discovery.  Again the strange
+perfume was wafted to our hiding-place; and, glancing neither to right
+nor left, I saw Karamaneh--for that it was she I no longer doubted--
+recross the room and disappear.
+
+"The man she spoke to," hissed Smith.  "We must see him!
+We must have him!"
+
+He pulled the mat aside and stepped out into the anteroom.
+It was empty.  Down the passage he led, and we were almost come
+to the door of the big room when it was thrown open and a man came
+rapidly out, opened the street door before Smith could reach him,
+and was gone, slamming it fast.
+
+I can swear that we were not four seconds behind him, but when we gained
+the street it was empty.  Our quarry had disappeared as if by magic.
+A big car was just turning the corner towards Leicester Square.
+
+"That is the girl," rapped Smith; "but where in Heaven's
+name is the man to whom she brought the message?
+I would give a hundred pounds to know what business is afoot.
+To think that we have had such an opportunity and have
+thrown it away!"
+
+Angry and nonplused he stood at the corner, looking in the direction
+of the crowded thoroughfare into which the car had been driven, tugging at
+the lobe of his ear, as was his habit in such moments of perplexity,
+and sharply clicking his teeth together.  I, too, was very thoughtful.
+Clews were few enough in those days of our war with that giant antagonist.
+The mere thought that our trifling error of judgment tonight in tarrying
+a moment too long might mean the victory of Fu-Manchu, might mean the turning
+of the balance which a wise providence had adjusted between the white
+and yellow races, was appalling.
+
+To Smith and me, who knew something of the secret influences
+at work to overthrow the Indian Empire, to place, it might be,
+the whole of Europe and America beneath an Eastern rule,
+it seemed that a great yellow hand was stretched out over London.
+Doctor Fu-Manchu was a menace to the civilized world.
+Yet his very existence remained unsuspected by the millions
+whose fate he sought to command.
+
+"Into what dark scheme have we had a glimpse?" said Smith.
+"What State secret is to be filched?  What faithful servant
+of the British Raj to be spirited away?  Upon whom now has
+Fu-Manchu set his death seal?"
+
+"Karamaneh on this occasion may not have been acting as an emissary
+of the Doctor's."
+
+"I feel assured that she was, Petrie.  Of the many whom this yellow
+cloud may at any moment envelop, to which one did her message refer?
+The man's instructions were urgent.  Witness his hasty departure.
+Curse it!"  He dashed his right clenched fist into the palm of his
+left hand.  "I never had a glimpse of his face, first to last.
+To think of the hours I have spent in that place, in anticipation
+of just such a meeting--only to bungle the opportunity when it arose!"
+Scarce heeding what course we followed, we had come now to Piccadilly
+Circus, and had walked out into the heart of the night's traffic.
+I just dragged Smith aside in time to save him from the off-front
+wheel of a big Mercedes.  Then the traffic was blocked, and we found
+ourselves dangerously penned in amidst the press of vehicles.
+
+Somehow we extricated ourselves, jeered at by taxi-drivers,
+who naturally took us for two simple Oriental visitors,
+and just before that impassable barrier the arm of a London
+policeman was lowered and the stream moved on a faint breath
+of perfume became perceptible to me.
+
+The cabs and cars about us were actually beginning to move again,
+and there was nothing for it but a hasty retreat to the curb.
+I could not pause to glance behind, but instinctively I knew
+that someone--someone who used that rare, fragrant essence--
+was leaning from the window of the car.
+
+"ANDAMAN--SECOND!" floated a soft whisper.
+
+We gained the pavement as the pent-up traffic roared upon its way.
+
+Smith had not noticed the perfume worn by the unseen
+occupant of the car, had not detected the whispered words.
+But I had no reason to doubt my senses, and I knew beyond
+question that Fu-Manchu's lovely slave, Karamaneh, had been
+within a yard of us, had recognized us, and had uttered
+those words for our guidance.
+
+On regaining my rooms, we devoted a whole hour to considering
+what "ANDAMAN--SECOND" could possibly mean.
+
+"Hang it all!" cried Smith, "it might mean anything--
+the result of a race, for instance."
+
+He burst into one of his rare laughs, and began to stuff broadcut mixture
+into his briar.  I could see that he had no intention of turning in.
+
+"I can think of no one--no one of note--in London at present
+upon whom it is likely that Fu-Manchu would make an attempt,"
+he said, "except ourselves."
+
+We began methodically to go through the long list of names
+which we had compiled and to review our elaborate notes.
+When, at last, I turned in, the night had given place to a new day.
+But sleep evaded me, and "ANDAMAN--SECOND" danced like a
+mocking phantom through my brain.
+
+Then I heard the telephone bell.  I heard Smith speaking.
+
+A minute afterwards he was in my room, his face very grim.
+
+"I knew as well as if I'd seen it with my own eyes that some
+black business was afoot last night," he said.  "And it was.
+Within pistol-shot of us!  Someone has got at Frank Norris West.
+Inspector Weymouth has just been on the 'phone."
+
+"Norris West!" I cried, "the American aviator--and inventor--"
+"Of the West aero-torpedo--yes.  He's been offering it to the English
+War Office, and they have delayed too long."
+
+I got out of bed.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that the potentialities have attracted the attention
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu!"
+
+Those words operated electrically.  I do not know how long I was in dressing,
+how long a time elapsed ere the cab for which Smith had 'phoned arrived,
+how many precious minutes were lost upon the journey; but, in a nervous whirl,
+these things slipped into the past, like the telegraph poles seen from
+the window of an express, and, still in that tense state, we came upon
+the scene of this newest outrage.
+
+Mr. Norris West, whose lean, stoic face had latterly figured so often
+in the daily press, lay upon the floor in the little entrance hall
+of his chambers, flat upon his back, with the telephone receiver
+in his hand.
+
+The outer door had been forced by the police.  They had
+had to remove a piece of the paneling to get at the bolt.
+A medical man was leaning over the recumbent figure in the striped
+pajama suit, and Detective-Inspector Weymouth stood watching
+him as Smith and I entered.
+
+"He has been heavily drugged," said the Doctor, sniffing at
+West's lips, "but I cannot say what drug has been used.
+It isn't chloroform or anything of that nature.
+He can safely be left to sleep it off, I think."
+
+I agreed, after a brief examination.
+
+"It's most extraordinary," said Weymouth.  "He rang up the Yard
+about an hour ago and said his chambers had been invaded by Chinamen.
+Then the man at the 'phone plainly heard him fall.  When we got here his
+front door was bolted, as you've seen, and the windows are three floors up.
+Nothing is disturbed."
+
+"The plans of the aero-torpedo?" rapped Smith.
+
+"I take it they are in the safe in his bedroom,"
+replied the detective, "and that is locked all right.  I think
+he must have taken an overdose of something and had illusions.
+But in case there was anything in what he mumbled (you could
+hardly understand him) I thought it as well to send for you."
+
+"Quite right," said Smith rapidly.  His eyes shone like steel.
+"Lay him on the bed, Inspector."
+
+It was done, and my friend walked into the bedroom.
+
+Save that the bed was disordered, showing that West had been
+sleeping in it, there were no evidences of the extraordinary
+invasion mentioned by the drugged man.  It was a small room--
+the chambers were of that kind which are let furnished--and very neat.
+A safe with a combination lock stood in a corner.  The window was open
+about a foot at the top.  Smith tried the safe and found it fast.
+He stood for a moment clicking his teeth together, by which I knew
+him to be perplexed.  He walked over to the window and threw it up.
+We both looked out.
+
+"You see," came Weymouth's voice, "it is altogether too far from
+the court below for our cunning Chinese friends to have fixed a ladder
+with one of their bamboo rod arrangements.  And, even if they could
+get up there, it's too far down from the roof--two more stories--
+for them to have fixed it from there."
+
+Smith nodded thoughtfully, at the same time trying the strength of an iron
+bar which ran from side to side of the window-sill. Suddenly he stooped,
+with a sharp exclamation.  Bending over his shoulder I saw what it was
+that had attracted his attention.
+
+Clearly imprinted upon the dust-coated gray stone of the sill was a confused
+series of marks--tracks call them what you will.
+
+Smith straightened himself and turned a wondering look upon me.
+
+"What is it, Petrie?" he said amazedly.  "Some kind of bird has been here,
+and recently."  Inspector Weymouth in turn examined the marks.
+
+"I never saw bird tracks like these, Mr. Smith," he muttered.
+
+Smith was tugging at the lobe of his ear.
+
+"No," he returned reflectively; "come to think of it, neither did I."
+
+He twisted around, looking at the man on the bed.
+
+"Do you think it was all an illusion?" asked the detective.
+
+"What about those marks on the window-sill?" jerked Smith.
+
+He began restlessly pacing about the room, sometimes stopping
+before the locked safe and frequently glancing at Norris West.
+
+Suddenly he walked out and briefly examined the other apartments,
+only to return again to the bedroom.
+
+"Petrie," he said, "we are losing valuable time.
+West must be aroused."
+
+Inspector Weymouth stared.
+
+Smith turned to me impatiently.  The doctor summoned by the police had gone.
+"Is there no means of arousing him, Petrie?" he said.
+
+"Doubtless," I replied, "he could be revived if one but knew
+what drug he had taken."
+
+My friend began his restless pacing again, and suddenly pounced upon
+a little phial of tabloids which had been hidden behind some books
+on a shelf near the bed.  He uttered a triumphant exclamation.
+
+"See what we have here, Petrie!" he directed, handing the phial to me.
+"It bears no label."
+
+I crushed one of the tabloids in my palm and applied my tongue
+to the powder.
+
+"Some preparation of chloral hydrate," I pronounced.
+
+"A sleeping draught?" suggested Smith eagerly.
+
+"We might try," I said, and scribbled a formula upon a leaf of my notebook.
+I asked Weymouth to send the man who accompanied him to call up the nearest
+chemist and procure the antidote.
+
+During the man's absence Smith stood contemplating the unconscious inventor,
+a peculiar expression upon his bronzed face.
+
+"ANDAMAN--SECOND," he muttered.  "Shall we find the key
+to the riddle here, I wonder?"
+
+Inspector Weymouth, who had concluded, I think, that the mysterious
+telephone call was due to mental aberration on the part of Norris West,
+was gnawing at his mustache impatiently when his assistant returned.
+I administered the powerful restorative, and although,
+as later transpired, chloral was not responsible for West's condition,
+the antidote operated successfully.
+
+Norris West struggled into a sitting position, and looked about him
+with haggard eyes.
+
+"The Chinamen!  The Chinamen!" he muttered.
+
+He sprang to his feet, glaring wildly at Smith and me, reeled,
+and almost fell.
+
+"It is all right," I said, supporting him.  "I'm a doctor.
+You have been unwell."
+
+"Have the police come?" he burst out.  "The safe--try the safe!"
+
+"It's all right," said Inspector Weymouth.  "The safe is locked--
+unless someone else knows the combination, there's nothing
+to worry about."
+
+"No one else knows it," said West, and staggered unsteadily to the safe.
+Clearly his mind was in a dazed condition, but, setting his jaw with
+a curious expression of grim determination, he collected his thoughts
+and opened the safe.
+
+He bent down, looking in.
+
+In some way the knowledge came to me that the curtain was about to rise
+on a new and surprising act in the Fu-Manchu drama.
+
+"God!" he whispered--we could scarcely hear him--"the plans are gone!"
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+I HAVE never seen a man quite so surprised as Inspector Weymouth.
+
+"This is absolutely incredible!" he said.  "There's only one door
+to your chambers.  We found it bolted from the inside."
+
+"Yes," groaned West, pressing his hand to his forehead.
+"I bolted it myself at eleven o'clock, when I came in."
+
+"No human being could climb up or down to your windows.
+The plans of the aero-torpedo were inside a safe."
+
+"I put them there myself," said West, "on returning from the War Office,
+and I had occasion to consult them after I had come in and bolted the door.
+I returned them to the safe and locked it.  That it was still locked you
+saw for yourselves, and no one else in the world knows the combination."
+
+"But the plans have gone," said Weymouth.  "It's magic!  How was it done?
+What happened last night, sir?  What did you mean when you rang us up?"
+
+Smith during this colloquy was pacing rapidly up and down the room.
+He turned abruptly to the aviator.
+
+"Every fact you can remember, Mr. West, please," he said tersely;
+"and be as brief as you possibly can."
+
+"I came in, as I said," explained West "about eleven o'clock and having
+made some notes relating to an interview arranged for this morning,
+I locked the plans in the safe and turned in."
+
+"There was no one hidden anywhere in your chambers?" snapped Smith.
+
+"There was not," replied West.  "I looked.  I invariably do.
+Almost immediately, I went to sleep."
+
+"How many chloral tabloids did you take?" I interrupted.
+
+Norris West turned to me with a slow smile.
+
+"You're cute, Doctor," he said.  "I took two.  It's a bad habit,
+but I can't sleep without.  They are specially made up for me
+by a firm in Philadelphia."
+
+"How long sleep lasted, when it became filled with uncanny dreams,
+and when those dreams merged into reality, I do not know--
+shall never know, I suppose.  But out of the dreamless void
+a face came to me--closer--closer--and peered into mine.
+
+"I was in that curious condition wherein one knows
+that one is dreaming and seeks to awaken--to escape.
+But a nightmare-like oppression held me.  So I must lie
+and gaze into the seared yellow face that hung over me,
+for it would drop so close that I could trace the cicatrized
+scar running from the left ear to the corner of the mouth,
+and drawing up the lip like the lip of a snarling cur.
+I could look into the malignant, jaundiced eyes;
+I could hear the dim whispering of the distorted mouth--
+whispering that seemed to counsel something--something evil.
+That whispering intimacy was indescribably repulsive.
+Then the wicked yellow face would be withdrawn, and would recede
+until it became as a pin's head in the darkness far above me--
+almost like a glutinous, liquid thing.
+
+"Somehow I got upon my feet, or dreamed I did--God knows where dreaming ended
+and reality began.  Gentlemen maybe you'll conclude I went mad last night,
+but as I stood holding on to the bedrail I heard the blood throbbing through
+my arteries with a noise like a screw-propeller. I started laughing.
+The laughter issued from my lips with a shrill whistling sound that pierced
+me with physical pain and seemed to wake the echoes of the whole block.
+I thought myself I was going mad, and I tried to command my will--
+to break the power of the chloral--for I concluded that I had accidentally
+taken an overdose.
+
+"Then the walls of my bedroom started to recede, till at last I
+stood holding on to a bed which had shrunk to the size of a
+doll's cot, in the middle of a room like Trafalgar Square!
+That window yonder was such a long way off I could scarcely see it,
+but I could just defect a Chinaman--the owner of the evil
+yellow face--creeping through it.  He was followed by another,
+who was enormously tall--so tall that, as they came towards me
+(and it seemed to take them something like half-an-hour to cross
+this incredible apartment in my dream), the second Chinaman
+seemed to tower over me like a cypress-tree.
+
+"I looked up to his face--his wicked, hairless face.
+Mr. Smith, whatever age I live to, I'll never forget
+that face I saw last night--or did I see it?  God knows!
+The pointed chin, the great dome of a forehead, and the eyes--
+heavens above, the huge green eyes!"
+
+He shook like a sick man, and I glanced at Smith significantly.
+Inspector Weymouth was stroking his mustache, and his mingled
+expression of incredulity and curiosity was singular to behold.
+
+"The pumping of my blood," continued West, "seemed to be
+bursting my body; the room kept expanding and contracting.
+One time the ceiling would be pressing down on my head,
+and the Chinamen--sometimes I thought there were two of them,
+sometimes twenty--became dwarfs; the next instant it shot up
+like the roof of a cathedral.
+
+"`Can I be awake,' I whispered, `or am I dreaming?'
+
+"My whisper went sweeping in windy echoes about the walls,
+and was lost in the shadowy distances up under the invisible roof.
+
+"`You are dreaming--yes.'  It was the Chinaman with the green
+eyes who was addressing me, and the words that he uttered
+appeared to occupy an immeasurable time in the utterance.
+'But at will I can render the subjective objective.'
+I don't think I can have dreamed those singular words, gentlemen.
+"And then he fixed the green eyes upon me--the blazing green eyes.
+I made no attempt to move.  They seemed to be draining me
+of something vital--bleeding me of every drop of mental power.
+The whole nightmare room grew green, and I felt that I was being
+absorbed into its greenness.
+
+"I can see what you think.  And even in my delirium--
+if it was delirium--I thought the same.  Now comes the climax
+of my experience--my vision--I don't know what to call it.
+I SAW some WORDS issuing from my own mouth!"
+
+Inspector Weymouth coughed discreetly.  Smith whisked round upon him.
+
+"This will be outside your experience, Inspector, I know," he said,
+"but Mr. Norris West's statement does not surprise me in the least.
+I know to what the experience was due."
+
+Weymouth stared incredulously, but a dawning perception of the truth
+was come to me, too.
+
+"How I SAW a SOUND I just won't attempt to explain;
+I simply tell you I saw it.  Somehow I knew I had betrayed myself--
+given something away."
+
+"You gave away the secret of the lock combination!" rapped Smith.
+
+"Eh!" grunted Weymouth.
+
+But West went on hoarsely:
+
+"Just before the blank came a name flashed before my eyes.
+It was `Bayard Taylor.'"
+
+At that I interrupted West.
+
+"I understand!" I cried.  "I understand!  Another name has just occurred
+to me, Mr. West--that of the Frenchman, Moreau."
+
+"You have solved the mystery," said Smith.  "It was natural
+Mr. West should have thought of the American traveler,
+Bayard Taylor, though.  Moreau's book is purely scientific.
+He has probably never read it."
+
+"I fought with the stupor that was overcoming me," continued West,
+"striving to associate that vaguely familiar name with the fantastic things
+through which I moved.  It seemed to me that the room was empty again.
+I made for the hall, for the telephone.  I could scarcely drag my feet along.
+It seemed to take me half-an-hour to get there.  I remember calling up
+Scotland Yard, and I remember no more."
+
+There was a short, tense interval.
+
+In some respects I was nonplused; but, frankly, I think Inspector Weymouth
+considered West insane.  Smith, his hands locked behind his back,
+stared out of the window.
+
+"ANDAMAN--SECOND" he said suddenly.  "Weymouth, when is the first
+train to Tilbury?"
+
+"Five twenty-two from Fenchurch Street," replied the Scotland
+Yard man promptly.
+
+"Too late!" rapped my friend.  "Jump in a taxi and pick up
+two good men to leave for China at once!  Then go and charter
+a special to Tilbury to leave in twenty-five minutes.
+Order another cab to wait outside for me."
+
+Weymouth was palpably amazed, but Smith's tone was imperative.
+The Inspector departed hastily.
+
+I stared at Smith, not comprehending what prompted this singular course.
+
+"Now that you can think clearly, Mr. West," he said, "of what
+does your experience remind you?  The errors of perception
+regarding time; the idea of SEEING A SOUND; the illusion
+that the room alternately increased and diminished in size;
+your fit of laughter, and the recollection of the name Bayard Taylor.
+Since evidently you are familiar with that author's work--
+'The Land of the Saracen,' is it not?--these symptoms of the attack
+should be familiar, I think."
+
+Norris West pressed his hands to his evidently aching head.
+
+"Bayard Taylor's book," he said dully.  "Yes!. . .I know of what my brain
+sought to remind me--Taylor's account of his experience under hashish.
+Mr. Smith, someone doped me with hashish!"
+
+Smith nodded grimly.
+
+"Cannabis indica," I said--"Indian hemp.  That is what you were
+drugged with.  I have no doubt that now you experience a feeling of nausea
+and intense thirst, with aching in the muscles, particularly the deltoid.
+I think you must have taken at least fifteen grains."
+
+Smith stopped his perambulations immediately in front of West,
+looking into his dulled eyes.
+
+"Someone visited your chambers last night," he said slowly,
+"and for your chloral tabloids substituted some containing hashish,
+or perhaps not pure hashish.  Fu-Manchu is a profound chemist."
+
+Norris West started.
+
+"Someone substituted--" he began.
+
+"Exactly," said Smith, looking at him keenly; "someone who was
+here yesterday.  Have you any idea whom it could have been?"
+
+West hesitated.  "I had a visitor in the afternoon," he said,
+seemingly speaking the words unwillingly, "but--"
+
+"A lady?" jerked Smith.  "I suggest that it was a lady."
+
+West nodded.
+
+"You're quite right," he admitted.  "I don't know how you arrived
+at the conclusion, but a lady whose acquaintance I made recently--
+a foreign lady."
+
+"Karamaneh!" snapped Smith.
+
+"I don't know what you mean in the least, but she came here--
+knowing this to be my present address--to ask me to protect her from
+a mysterious man who had followed her right from Charing Cross.
+She said he was down in the lobby, and naturally, I asked her to wait
+here whilst I went and sent him about his business."
+
+He laughed shortly.
+
+"I am over-old," he said, "to be guyed by a woman.
+You spoke just now of someone called Fu-Manchu. Is
+that the crook I'm indebted to for the loss of my plans?
+I've had attempts made by agents of two European governments,
+but a Chinaman is a novelty."
+
+"This Chinaman," Smith assured him, "is the greatest novelty of his age.
+You recognize your symptoms now from Bayard Taylors account?"
+
+"Mr. West's statement," I said, "ran closely parallel
+with portions of Moreau's book on `Hashish Hallucinations.'
+Only Fu-Manchu, I think, would have thought of employing Indian hemp.
+I doubt, though, if it was pure Cannabis indica. At any rate,
+it acted as an opiate--"
+
+"And drugged Mr. West," interrupted Smith, "sufficiently to enable
+Fu-Manchu to enter unobserved."
+
+"Whilst it produced symptoms which rendered him an easy subject
+for the Doctor's influence.  It is difficult in this case to separate
+hallucination from reality, but I think, Mr. West, that Fu-Manchu
+must have exercised an hypnotic influence upon your drugged brain.
+We have evidence that he dragged from you the secret of the combination."
+
+"God knows we have!" said West.  "But who is this Fu-Manchu, and how--
+how in the name of wonder did he get into my chambers?"
+
+Smith pulled out his watch.  "That," he said rapidly, "I cannot
+delay to explain if I'm to intercept the man who has the plans.
+Come along, Petrie; we must be at Tilbury within the hour.
+There is just a bare chance."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+IT was with my mind in a condition of unique perplexity that I hurried
+with Nayland Smith into the cab which waited and dashed off through
+the streets in which the busy life of London just stirred into being.
+I suppose I need not say that I could penetrate no farther into this,
+Fu-Manchu's latest plot, than the drugging of Norris West with hashish?
+Of his having been so drugged with Indian hemp--that is,
+converted temporarily into a maniac--would have been evident to any
+medical man who had heard his statement and noted the distressing
+after-effects which conclusively pointed to Indian hemp poisoning.
+Knowing something of the Chinese doctor's powers, I could understand that
+he might have extracted from West the secret of the combination by sheer
+force of will whilst the American was under the influence of the drug.
+But I could not understand how Fu-Manchu had gained access to locked
+chambers on the third story of a building.
+
+"Smith," I said, "those bird tracks on the window-sill--
+they furnish the key to a mystery which is puzzling me."
+
+"They do," said Smith, glancing impatiently at his watch.
+"Consult your memories of Dr. Fu-Manchu's habits--especially your
+memories of his pets."
+
+I reviewed in my mind the creatures gruesome and terrible which
+surrounded the Chinaman--the scorpions, the bacteria, the noxious
+things which were the weapons wherewith he visited death upon
+whomsoever opposed the establishment of a potential Yellow Empire.
+But no one of them could account for the imprints upon the dust
+of West's window-sill.
+
+"You puzzle me, Smith," I confessed.  "There is much in this extraordinary
+case that puzzles me.  I can think of nothing to account for the marks."
+
+"Have you thought of Fu-Manchu's marmoset?" asked Smith.
+
+"The monkey!" I cried.
+
+"They were the footprints of a small ape," my friend continued.
+"For a moment I was deceived as you were, and believed them
+to be the tracks of a large bird; but I have seen the footprints
+of apes before now, and a marmoset, though an American variety,
+I believe, is not unlike some of the apes of Burma."
+
+"I am still in the dark," I said.
+
+"It is pure hypothesis," continued Smith, "but here is the theory--
+in lieu of a better one it covers the facts.  The marmoset--
+and it is contrary from the character of Fu-Manchu to keep any
+creature for mere amusement--is trained to perform certain duties.
+
+"You observed the waterspout running up beside the window; you observed
+the iron bar intended to prevent a window-cleaner from falling out?
+For an ape the climb from the court below to the sill above was
+a simple one.  He carried a cord, probably attached to his body.
+He climbed on to the sill, over the bar, and climbed down again.
+By means of this cord a rope was pulled up over the bar,
+by means of the rope one of those ladders of silk and bamboo.
+One of the Doctor's servants ascended--probably to
+ascertain if the hashish had acted successfully.
+That was the yellow dream-face which West saw bending over him.
+Then followed the Doctor, and to his giant will the drugged brain
+of West was a pliant instrument which he bent to his own ends.
+The court would be deserted at that hour of the night, and,
+in any event, directly after the ascent the ladder probably
+was pulled up, only to be lowered again when West had revealed
+the secret of his own safe and Fu-Manchu had secured the plans.
+The reclosing of the safe and the removing of the hashish tabloids,
+leaving no clew beyond the delirious ravings of a drug slave--
+for so anyone unacquainted with the East must have construed
+West's story--is particularly characteristic.  His own tabloids
+were returned, of course.  The sparing of his life alone is
+a refinement of art which points to a past master."
+
+"Karamaneh was the decoy again?" I said shortly.
+
+"Certainly.  Hers was the task to ascertain West's habits and to
+substitute the tabloids.  She it was who waited in the luxurious car--
+infinitely less likely to attract attention at that hour in
+that place than a modest taxi--and received the stolen plans.
+She did her work well.
+
+"Poor Karamaneh; she had no alternative!  I said I would have given a hundred
+pounds for a sight of the messenger's face--the man to whom she handed them.
+I would give a thousand now!"
+
+"ANDAMAN--SECOND," I said.  "What did she mean?"
+
+"Then it has not dawned upon you?" cried Smith excitedly, as the cab
+turned into the station.  "The ANDAMAN, of the Oriental Navigation
+Company's line, leaves Tilbury with the next tide for China ports.
+Our man is a second-class passenger.  I am wiring to delay her departure,
+and the special should get us to the docks inside of forty minutes."
+
+
+Very vividly I can reconstruct in my mind that dash to the docks
+through the early autumn morning.  My friend being invested
+with extraordinary powers from the highest authorities,
+by Inspector Weymouth's instructions the line had been cleared
+all the way.
+
+Something of the tremendous importance of Nayland Smith's mission came home
+to me as we hurried on to the platform, escorted by the station-master,
+and the five of us--for Weymouth had two other C.I.D. men with him--
+took our seats in the special.
+
+Off we went on top speed, roaring through stations,
+where a glimpse might be had of wondering officials upon
+the platforms, for a special train was a novelty on the line.
+All ordinary traffic arrangements were held up until we had
+passed through, and we reached Tilbury in time which I doubt
+not constituted a record.
+
+There at the docks was the great liner, delayed in her passage
+to the Far East by the will of my royally empowered companion.
+It was novel, and infinitely exciting.
+
+"Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith?" said the captain interrogatively,
+when we were shown into his room, and looked from one to another and back
+to the telegraph form which he held in his hand.
+
+"The same, Captain," said my friend briskly.  "I shall not detain
+you a moment.  I am instructing the authorities at all ports
+east of Suez to apprehend one of your second-class passengers,
+should he leave the ship.  He is in possession of plans
+which practically belong to the British Government?"
+"Why not arrest him now?" asked the seaman bluntly.
+
+"Because I don't know him.  All second-class passengers'
+baggage will be searched as they land.  I am hoping something from that,
+if all else fails.  But I want you privately to instruct your stewards
+to watch any passenger of Oriental nationality, and to cooperate
+with the two Scotland Yard men who are joining you for the voyage.
+I look to you to recover these plans, Captain."
+
+"I will do my best," the captain assured him.
+
+Then, from amid the heterogeneous group on the dockside, we were watching
+the liner depart, and Nayland Smith's expression was a very singular one.
+Inspector Weymouth stood with us, a badly puzzled man.  Then occurred
+the extraordinary incident which to this day remains inexplicable, for,
+clearly heard by all three of us, a guttural voice said:
+
+"Another victory for China, Mr. Nayland Smith!"
+
+I turned as though I had been stung.  Smith turned also.
+My eyes passed from face to face of the group about us.
+None was familiar.  No one apparently had moved away.
+
+But the voice was the voice of DOCTOR FU-MANCHU.
+
+As I write of it, now, I can appreciate the difference
+between that happening, as it appealed to us, and as it must
+appeal to you who merely read of it.  It is beyond my powers
+to convey the sense of the uncanny which the episode created.
+Yet, even as I think of it, I feel again, though in lesser degree,
+the chill which seemed to creep through my veins that day.
+
+From my brief history of the wonderful and evil man who once walked,
+by the way unsuspected, in the midst of the people of England--
+near whom you, personally, may at some time unwittingly, have been--
+I am aware that much must be omitted.  I have no space for lengthy
+examinations of the many points but ill illuminated with which it is dotted.
+This incident at the docks is but one such point.
+
+Another is the singular vision which appeared to me whilst I lay in
+the cellar of the house near Windsor.  It has since struck me that it
+possessed peculiarities akin to those of a hashish hallucination.
+Can it be that we were drugged on that occasion with Indian hemp?  Cannabis
+indica is a treacherous narcotic, as every medical man knows full well;
+but Fu-Manchu's knowledge of the drug was far in advance of our slow science.
+West's experience proved so much.
+
+I may have neglected opportunities--later, you shall judge if I did so--
+opportunities to glean for the West some of the strange knowledge of
+the secret East.  Perhaps, at a future time, I may rectify my errors.
+Perhaps that wisdom--the wisdom stored up by Fu-Manchu--is lost forever.
+There is, however, at least a bare possibility of its survival, in part;
+and I do not wholly despair of one day publishing a scientific sequel
+to this record of our dealings with the Chinese doctor.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+TIME wore on and seemingly brought us no nearer, or very little nearer,
+to our goal.  So carefully had my friend Nayland Smith excluded
+the matter from the press that, whilst public interest was much engaged
+with some of the events in the skein of mystery which he had come from
+Burma to unravel, outside the Secret Service and the special department
+of Scotland Yard few people recognized that the several murders,
+robberies and disappearances formed each a link in a chain; fewer still
+were aware that a baneful presence was in our midst, that a past
+master of the evil arts lay concealed somewhere in the metropolis;
+searched for by the keenest wits which the authorities could direct
+to the task, but eluding all-triumphant, contemptuous.
+
+One link in that chain Smith himself for long failed to recognize.
+Yet it was a big and important link.
+
+"Petrie," he said to me one morning, "listen to this:
+
+"`. . .In sight of Shanghai--a clear, dark night.  On board the deck of a junk
+passing close to seaward of the Andaman a blue flare started up.
+A minute later there was a cry of "Man overboard!"
+
+"`Mr. Lewin, the chief officer, who was in charge, stopped the engines.
+A boat was put out.  But no one was recovered.  There are sharks
+in these waters.  A fairly heavy sea was running.
+
+"`Inquiry showed the missing man to be a James Edwards,
+second class, booked to Shanghai.  I think the name was assumed.
+The man was some sort of Oriental, and we had had him
+under close observation. . . .'"
+
+"That's the end of their report," exclaimed Smith.
+
+He referred to the two C.I.D. men who had joined the Andaman
+at the moment of her departure from Tilbury.
+
+He carefully lighted his pipe.
+
+"IS it a victory for China, Petrie?" he said softly.
+
+"Until the great war reveals her secret resources--and I pray that the day
+be not in my time--we shall never know," I replied.
+
+Smith began striding up and down the room,
+
+"Whose name," he jerked abruptly, "stands now at the head
+of our danger list?"
+
+He referred to a list which we had compiled of the notable men intervening
+between the evil genius who secretly had invaded London and the triumph
+of his cause--the triumph of the yellow races.
+
+I glanced at our notes.  "Lord Southery," I replied.
+
+Smith tossed the morning paper across to me.
+
+"Look," he said shortly.  "He's dead."
+
+I read the account of the peer's death, and glanced at
+the long obituary notice; but no more than glanced at it.
+He had but recently returned from the East, and now, after a
+short illness, had died from some affection of the heart.
+There had been no intimation that his illness was of a
+serious nature, and even Smith, who watched over his flock--
+the flock threatened by the wolf, Fu-Manchu--with jealous zeal,
+had not suspected that the end was so near.
+
+"Do you think he died a natural death, Smith?" I asked.
+
+My friend reached across the table and rested the tip of a long
+ringer upon one of the sub-headings to the account:
+
+
+"SIR FRANK NARCOMBE SUMMONED TOO LATE."
+
+
+"You see," said Smith, "Southery died during the night,
+but Sir Frank Narcombe, arriving a few minutes later,
+unhesitatingly pronounced death to be due to syncope,
+and seems to have noticed nothing suspicious."
+
+I looked at him thoughtfully.
+
+"Sir Frank is a great physician," I said slowly; "but we must
+remember he would be looking for nothing suspicious."
+
+"We must remember," rapped Smith, "that, if Dr. Fu-Manchu
+is responsible for Southery's death, except to the eye
+of an expert there would be nothing suspicious to see.
+Fu-Manchu leaves no clews."
+
+"Are you going around?" I asked.
+
+Smith shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I think not," he replied.  "Either a greater One than Fu-Manchu
+has taken Lord Southery, or the yellow doctor has done his work
+so well that no trace remains of his presence in the matter."
+
+Leaving his breakfast untasted, he wandered aimlessly about the room,
+littering the hearth with matches as he constantly relighted his pipe,
+which went out every few minutes.
+
+"It's no good, Petrie," he burst out suddenly; "it cannot be a coincidence.
+We must go around and see him."
+
+An hour later we stood in the silent room, with its drawn blinds and
+its deathful atmosphere, looking down at the pale, intellectual face
+of Henry Stradwick, Lord Southery, the greatest engineer of his day.
+The mind that lay behind that splendid brow had planned the construction
+of the railway for which Russia had paid so great a price, had conceived
+the scheme for the canal which, in the near future, was to bring
+two great continents, a full week's journey nearer one to the other.
+But now it would plan no more.
+
+"He had latterly developed symptoms of angina pectoris,"
+explained the family physician; "but I had not anticipated a fatal
+termination so soon.  I was called about two o'clock this morning,
+and found Lord Southery in a dangerously exhausted condition.
+I did all that was possible, and Sir Frank Narcombe was sent for.
+But shortly before his arrival the patient expired."
+
+"I understand, Doctor, that you had been treating Lord Southery
+for angina pectoris?" I said.
+
+"Yes," was the reply, "for some months."
+
+"You regard the circumstances of his end as entirely consistent
+with a death from that cause?"
+
+"Certainly.  Do you observe anything unusual yourself?
+Sir Frank Narcombe quite agrees with me.  There is surely
+no room for doubt?"
+
+"No," said Smith, tugging reflectively at the lobe of his left ear.
+"We do not question the accuracy of your diagnosis in any way, sir."
+
+The physician seemed puzzled.
+
+"But am I not right in supposing that you are connected with the police?"
+asked the physician.
+
+"Neither Dr. Petrie nor myself are in any way connected with the police,"
+answered Smith.  "But, nevertheless, I look to you to regard our recent
+questions as confidential."
+
+As we were leaving the house, hushed awesomely in deference to the unseen
+visitor who had touched Lord Southery with gray, cold fingers, Smith paused,
+detaining a black-coated man who passed us on the stairs.
+
+"You were Lord Southery's valet?"
+
+The man bowed.
+
+"Were you in the room at the moment of his fatal seizure?"
+
+"I was, sir."
+
+"Did you see or hear anything unusual--anything unaccountable?"
+
+"Nothing, sir."
+
+"No strange sounds outside the house, for instance?"
+
+The man shook his head, and Smith, taking my arm, passed out into the street.
+
+"Perhaps this business is making me imaginative," he said;
+"but there seems to be something tainting the air in yonder--
+something peculiar to houses whose doors bear the invisible
+death-mark of Fu-Manchu."
+
+"You are right, Smith!" I cried.  "I hesitated to mention the matter, but I,
+too, have developed some other sense which warns me of the Doctor's presence.
+Although there is not a scrap of confirmatory evidence, I am as sure that he
+has brought about Lord Southery's death as if I had seen him strike the blow."
+
+It was in that torturing frame of mind--chained, helpless,
+in our ignorance, or by reason of the Chinaman's
+supernormal genius--that we lived throughout the ensuing days.
+My friend began to look like a man consumed by a burning fever.
+Yet, we could not act.
+
+In the growing dark of an evening shortly following I
+stood idly turning over some of the works exposed for sale
+outside a second-hand bookseller's in New Oxford Street.
+One dealing with the secret societies of China struck me
+as being likely to prove instructive, and I was about to call
+the shopman when I was startled to feel a hand clutch my arm.
+
+I turned around rapidly--and was looking into the darkly beautiful
+eyes of Karamaneh!  She--whom I had seen in so many guises--
+was dressed in a perfectly fitting walking habit, and had much
+of her wonderful hair concealed beneath a fashionable hat.
+
+She glanced about her apprehensively.
+
+"Quick!  Come round the corner.  I must speak to you," she said,
+her musical voice thrilling with excitement.
+
+I never was quite master of myself in her presence.
+He must have been a man of ice who could have been,
+I think for her beauty had all the bouquet of rarity;
+she was a mystery--and mystery adds charm to a woman.
+Probably she should have been under arrest, but I know I would
+have risked much to save her from it.
+
+As we turned into a quiet thoroughfare she stopped and said:
+
+"I am in distress.  You have often asked me to enable you to capture
+Dr. Fu-Manchu. I am prepared to do so."
+
+I could scarcely believe that I heard right.
+
+"Your brother--" I began.
+
+She seized my arm entreatingly, looking into my eyes.
+
+"You are a doctor," she said.  "I want you to come and see him now."
+
+"What!  Is he in London?"
+
+"He is at the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu."
+
+"And you would have me ---"
+
+"Accompany me there, yes."
+
+Nayland Smith, I doubted not, would have counseled me against
+trusting my life in the hands of this girl with the pleading eyes.
+Yet I did so, and with little hesitation; shortly we were traveling
+eastward in a closed cab.  Karamaneh was very silent, but always when I
+turned to her I found her big eyes fixed upon me with an expression
+in which there was pleading, in which there was sorrow, in which there
+was something else--something indefinable, yet strangely disturbing.
+The cabman she had directed to drive to the lower end of the Commercial Road,
+the neighborhood of the new docks, and the scene of one of our early
+adventures with Dr. Fu-Manchu. The mantle of dusk had closed about
+the squalid activity of the East End streets as we neared our destination.
+Aliens of every shade of color were about us now, emerging from
+burrow-like alleys into the glare of the lamps upon the main road.
+In the short space of the drive we had passed from the bright world
+of the West into the dubious underworld of the East.
+
+I do not know that Karamaneh moved; but in sympathy, as we neared
+the abode of the sinister Chinaman, she crept nearer to me,
+and when the cab was discharged, and together we walked down
+a narrow turning leading riverward, she clung to me fearfully,
+hesitated, and even seemed upon the point of turning back.
+But, overcoming her fear or repugnance, she led on, through a maze
+of alleyways and courts, wherein I hopelessly lost my bearings,
+so that it came home to me how wholly I was in the hands of this
+girl whose history was so full of shadows, whose real character
+was so inscrutable, whose beauty, whose charm truly might mask
+the cunning of a serpent.
+
+I spoke to her.
+
+"S-SH!" She laid her hand upon my arm, enjoining me to silence.
+
+The high, drab brick wall of what looked like some part of a dock
+building loomed above us in the darkness, and the indescribable
+stenches of the lower Thames were borne to my nostrils through
+a gloomy, tunnel-like opening, beyond which whispered the river.
+The muffled clangor of waterside activity was about us.
+I heard a key grate in a lock, and Karamaneh drew me into the shadow
+of an open door, entered, and closed it behind her.
+
+For the first time I perceived, in contrast to the odors
+of the court without, the fragrance of the peculiar perfume
+which now I had come to associate with her.  Absolute darkness
+was about us, and by this perfume alone I knew that she,
+was near to me, until her hand touched mine, and I was led
+along an uncarpeted passage and up an uncarpeted stair.
+A second door was unlocked, and I found myself in an exquisitely
+furnished room, illuminated by the soft light of a shaded lamp
+which stood upon a low, inlaid table amidst a perfect ocean
+of silken cushions, strewn upon a Persian carpet, whose yellow
+richness was lost in the shadows beyond the circle of light.
+
+Karamaneh raised a curtain draped before a doorway, and stood
+listening intently for a moment.
+
+The silence was unbroken.
+
+Then something stirred amid the wilderness of cushions, and two
+tiny bright eyes looked up at me.  Peering closely, I succeeded
+in distinguishing, crouched in that soft luxuriance, a little ape.
+It was Dr. Fu-Manchu's marmoset.  "This way," whispered Karamaneh.
+
+Never, I thought, was a staid medical man committed to a more
+unwise enterprise, but so far I had gone, and no consideration
+of prudence could now be of avail.
+
+The corridor beyond was thickly carpeted.  Following the direction
+of a faint light which gleamed ahead, it proved to extend
+as a balcony across one end of a spacious apartment.
+Together we stood high up there in the shadows, and looked
+down upon such a scene as I never could have imagined to exist
+within many a mile of that district.
+
+The place below was even more richly appointed than the room into
+which first we had come.  Here, as there, piles of cushions formed
+splashes of gaudy color about the floor.  Three lamps hung by chains
+from the ceiling, their light softened by rich silk shades.
+One wall was almost entirely occupied by glass cases containing
+chemical apparatus, tubes, retorts and other less orthodox indications
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu's pursuits, whilst close against another lay
+the most extraordinary object of a sufficiently extraordinary room--
+a low couch, upon which was extended the motionless form of a boy.
+In the light of a lamp which hung directly above him, his olive
+face showed an almost startling resemblance to that of Karamaneh--
+save that the girl's coloring was more delicate.  He had black,
+curly hair, which stood out prominently against the white covering
+upon which he lay, his hands crossed upon his breast.
+
+Transfixed with astonishment, I stood looking down upon him.
+The wonders of the "Arabian Nights" were wonders no longer,
+for here, in East-End London, was a true magician's palace,
+lacking not its beautiful slave lacking not its enchanted prince!
+
+"It is Aziz, my brother," said Karamaneh.
+
+We passed down a stairway on to the floor of the apartment.
+Karamaneh knelt and bent over the boy, stroking his hair
+and whispering to him lovingly.  I, too, bent over him;
+and I shall never forget the anxiety in the girl's eyes as she
+watched me eagerly whilst I made a brief examination.
+
+Brief, indeed, for even ere I had touched him I knew that the comely
+shell held no spark of life.  But Karamaneh fondled the cold hands,
+and spoke softly in that Arabic tongue which long before I had divined
+must be her native language.
+
+Then, as I remained silent, she turned and looked at me,
+read the truth in my eyes, and rose from her knees,
+stood rigidly upright, and clutched me tremblingly.
+
+"He is not dead--he is NOT dead!" she whispered, and shook me
+as a child might, seeking to arouse me to a proper understanding.
+"Oh, tell me he is not ---"
+
+"I cannot," I replied gently, "for indeed he is."
+
+"No!" she said, wild-eyed, and raising her hands to her face as though
+half distraught.  "You do not understand--yet you are a doctor.
+You do not understand ---"
+
+She stopped, moaning to herself and looking from the handsome
+face of the boy to me.  It was pitiful; it was uncanny.
+But sorrow for the girl predominated in my mind.
+
+Then from somewhere I heard a sound which I had heard before in houses
+occupied by Dr. Fu-Manchu--that of a muffled gong.
+
+"Quick!"  Karamaneh had me by the arm.  "Up!  He has returned!"
+
+She fled up the stairs to the balcony, I close at her heels.
+The shadows veiled us, the thick carpet deadened the sound
+of our tread, or certainly we must have been detected by the man
+who entered the room we had just quitted.
+
+It was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
+
+Yellow-robed, immobile, the inhuman green eyes glittering catlike even,
+it seemed, before the light struck them, he threaded his way through
+the archipelago of cushions and bent over the couch of Aziz.
+
+Karamaneh dragged me down on to my knees.
+
+"Watch!" she whispered.  "Watch!"
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu felt for the pulse of the boy whom a moment since I
+had pronounced dead, and, stepping to the tall glass case,
+took out a long-necked flask of chased gold, and from it,
+into a graduated glass, he poured some drops of an amber liquid
+wholly unfamiliar to me.  I watched him with all my eyes,
+and noted how high the liquid rose in the measure.
+He charged a needle-syringe, and, bending again over Aziz,
+made an injection.
+
+Then all the wonders I had heard of this man became possible,
+and with an awe which any other physician who had examined
+Aziz must have felt, I admitted him a miracle-worker. For
+as I watched, all but breathless, the dead came to life!
+The glow of health crept upon the olive cheek--the boy moved--
+he raised his hands above his head--he sat up, supported by
+the Chinese doctor!
+
+Fu-Manchu touched some hidden bell.  A hideous yellow man with a scarred
+face entered, carrying a tray upon which were a bowl containing
+some steaming fluid, apparently soup, what looked like oaten cakes,
+and a flask of red wine.
+
+As the boy, exhibiting no more unusual symptoms than if he had just
+awakened from a normal sleep, commenced his repast, Karamaneh drew me
+gently along the passage into the room which we had first entered.
+My heart leaped wildly as the marmoset bounded past us to drop hand
+over hand to the lower apartment in search of its master.
+
+"You see," said Karamaneh, her voice quivering, "he is not dead!
+But without Fu-Manchu he is dead to me.  How can I leave him
+when he holds the life of Aziz in his hand?"
+
+"You must get me that flask, or some of its contents," I directed.
+"But tell me, how does he produce the appearance of death?"
+
+"I cannot tell you," she replied.  "I do not know.  It is something
+in the wine.  In another hour Aziz will be again as you saw him.
+But see."  And, opening a little ebony box, she produced a phial
+half filled with the amber liquid.
+
+"Good!" I said, and slipped it into my pocket.  "When will be the best
+time to seize Fu-Manchu and to restore your brother?"
+
+"I will let you know," she whispered, and, opening the door, pushed me
+hurriedly from the room.  "He is going away to-night to the north;
+but you must not come to-night. Quick!  Quick!  Along the passage.
+He may call me at any moment."
+
+So, with the phial in my pocket containing a potent preparation unknown
+to Western science, and with a last long look into the eyes of Karamaneh,
+I passed out into the narrow alley, out from the fragrant perfumes
+of that mystery house into the place of Thames-side stenches.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+"WE must arrange for the house to be raided without delay," said Smith.
+"This time we are sure of our ally--"
+
+"But we must keep our promise to her," I interrupted.
+
+"You can look after that, Petrie," my friend said.
+"I will devote the whole of my attention to Dr. Fu-Manchu!"
+he added grimly.
+
+Up and down the room he paced, gripping the blackened briar between
+his teeth, so that the muscles stood out squarely upon his lean jaws.
+The bronze which spoke of the Burmese sun enhanced the brightness
+of his gray eyes.
+
+"What have I all along maintained?" he jerked, looking back at me across
+his shoulder--"that, although Karamaneh was one of the strongest weapons in
+the Doctor's armory, she was one which some day would be turned against him.
+That day has dawned."
+
+"We must await word from her."
+
+"Quite so."
+
+He knocked out his pipe on the grate.  Then:
+
+"Have you any idea of the nature of the fluid in the phial?"
+
+"Not the slightest.  And I have none to spare for analytical purposes."
+
+Nayland Smith began stuffing mixture into the hot pipe-bowl,
+and dropping an almost equal quantity on the floor.
+
+"I cannot rest, Petrie," he said.  "I am itching to get to work.
+Yet, a false move, and--" He lighted his pipe, and stood staring
+from the window.
+
+"I shall, of course, take a needle-syringe with me," I explained.
+
+Smith made no reply.
+
+"If I but knew the composition of the drug which produced the semblance
+of death," I continued, "my fame would long survive my ashes."
+
+My friend did not turn.  But:
+
+"She said it was something he put in the wine?" he jerked.
+
+"In the wine, yes."
+
+Silence fell.  My thoughts reverted to Karamaneh, whom Dr. Fu-Manchu held
+in bonds stronger than any slave-chains. For, with Aziz, her brother,
+suspended between life and death, what could she do save obey
+the mandates of the cunning Chinaman?  What perverted genius was his!
+If that treasury of obscure wisdom which he, perhaps alone of living men,
+had rifled, could but be thrown open to the sick and suffering, the name
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu would rank with the golden ones in the history of healing.
+
+Nayland Smith suddenly turned, and the expression upon his face amazed me.
+
+"Look up the next train to L--!" he rapped.  "To L--?  What--?"
+
+"There's the Bradshaw.  We haven't a minute to waste."
+
+In his voice was the imperative note I knew so well; in his
+eyes was the light which told of an urgent need for action--
+a portentous truth suddenly grasped.
+
+"One in half-an-hour--the last."
+
+"We must catch it."
+
+No further word of explanation he vouchsafed, but darted off to dress;
+for he had spent the afternoon pacing the room in his dressing-gown
+and smoking without intermission.
+
+Out and to the corner we hurried, and leaped into the first taxi
+upon the rank.  Smith enjoined the man to hasten, and we were off--
+all in that whirl of feverish activity which characterized my friend's
+movements in times of important action.
+
+He sat glancing impatiently from the window and twitching at the lobe
+of his ear.
+
+"I know you will forgive me, old man," he said, "but there
+is a little problem which I am trying to work out in my mind.
+Did you bring the things I mentioned?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Conversation lapsed, until, just as the cab turned into the station,
+Smith said:  "Should you consider Lord Southery to have been the first
+constructive engineer of his time, Petrie?"
+
+"Undoubtedly," I replied.
+
+"Greater than Von Homber, of Berlin?"
+
+"Possibly not.  But Von Homber has been dead for three years."
+
+"Three years, is it?"
+
+"Roughly."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+
+We reached the station in time to secure a non-corridor
+compartment to ourselves, and to allow Smith leisure carefully
+to inspect the occupants of all the others, from the engine
+to the guard's van.  He was muffled up to the eyes, and he warned
+me to keep out of sight in the corner of the compartment.
+In fact, his behavior had me bursting with curiosity.
+The train having started:
+
+"Don't imagine, Petrie," said Smith "that I am trying to lead you
+blindfolded in order later to dazzle you with my perspicacity.
+I am simply afraid that this may be a wild-goose chase.
+The idea upon which I am acting does not seem to have struck you.
+I wish it had.  The fact would argue in favor of its being, sound."
+
+"At present I am hopelessly mystified."
+
+"Well, then, I will not bias you towards my view.
+But just study the situation, and see if you can arrive at
+the reason for this sudden journey.  I shall be distinctly
+encouraged if you succeed."
+
+But I did not succeed, and since Smith obviously was
+unwilling to enlighten me, I pressed him no more.
+The train stopped at Rugby, where he was engaged with
+the stationmaster in making some mysterious arrangements.
+At L--, however, their object became plain, for a high-power car
+was awaiting us, and into this we hurried and ere the greater
+number of passengers had reached the platform were being driven
+off at headlong speed along the moon-bathed roads.
+
+Twenty minutes' rapid traveling, and a white mansion leaped into the line
+of sight, standing out vividly against its woody backing.
+
+"Stradwick Hall," said Smith.  "The home of Lord Southery.
+We are first--but Dr. Fu-Manchu was on the train."
+
+Then the truth dawned upon the gloom of my perplexity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+"YOUR extraordinary proposal fills me with horror, Mr. Smith!"
+
+The sleek little man in the dress suit, who looked like a head waiter
+(but was the trusted legal adviser of the house of Southery)
+puffed at his cigar indignantly.  Nayland Smith, whose restless
+pacing had led him to the far end of the library, turned, a remote
+but virile figure, and looked back to where I stood by the open
+hearth with the solicitor.
+
+"I am in your hands, Mr. Henderson," he said, and advanced
+upon the latter, his gray eyes ablaze.  "Save for the heir,
+who is abroad on foreign service, you say there is no kin
+of Lord Southery to consider.  The word rests with you.
+If I am wrong, and you agree to my proposal, there is none
+whose susceptibilities will suffer--"
+
+"My own, sir!"
+
+"If I am right, and you prevent me from acting, you become
+a murderer, Mr. Henderson."
+
+The lawyer started, staring nervously up at Smith, who now towered
+over him menacingly.
+
+"Lord Southery was a lonely man," continued my friend.
+"If I could have placed my proposition before one of his blood,
+I do not doubt what my answer had been.  Why do you hesitate?
+Why do you experience this feeling of horror?"
+
+Mr. Henderson stared down into the fire.  His constitutionally
+ruddy face was pale.
+
+"It is entirely irregular, Mr. Smith.  We have not the necessary powers--"
+
+Smith snapped his teeth together impatiently, snatching his watch
+from his pocket and glancing at it.
+
+"I am vested with the necessary powers.  I will give you
+a written order, sir."
+
+"The proceeding savors of paganism.  Such a course might be admissible
+in China, in Burma--"
+
+"Do you weigh a life against such quibbles?  Do you suppose that,
+granting MY irresponsibility, Dr. Petrie would countenance
+such a thing if be doubted the necessity?"
+
+Mr. Henderson looked at me with pathetic hesitance.
+
+"There are guests in the house--mourners who attended
+the ceremony to-day. They--"
+
+"Will never know, if we are in error," interrupted Smith.
+"Good God!  why do you delay?"
+
+"You wish it to be kept secret?"
+
+"You and I, Mr. Henderson, and Dr. Petrie will go now.
+We require no other witnesses.  We are answerable only
+to our consciences."
+
+The lawyer passed his hand across his damp brow.
+
+"I have never in my life been called upon to come to so
+momentous a decision in so short a time," he confessed.
+But, aided by Smith's indomitable will, he made his decision.
+As its result, we three, looking and feeling like conspirators,
+hurried across the park beneath a moon whose placidity was a rebuke
+to the turbulent passions which reared their strangle-growth in
+the garden of England.  Not a breath of wind stirred amid the leaves.
+The calm of perfect night soothed everything to slumber.
+Yet, if Smith were right (and I did not doubt him),
+the green eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu had looked upon the scene;
+and I found myself marveling that its beauty had not wilted up.
+Even now the dread Chinaman must be near to us.
+
+As Mr. Henderson unlocked the ancient iron gates he turned to Nayland Smith.
+His face twitched oddly.
+
+"Witness that I do this unwillingly," he said--"most unwillingly."
+
+"Mine be the responsibility," was the reply.
+
+Smith's voice quivered, responsive to the nervous vitality pent
+up within that lean frame.  He stood motionless, listening--and I
+knew for whom he listened.  He peered about him to right and left--
+and I knew whom he expected but dreaded to see.
+
+Above us now the trees looked down with a solemnity different from
+the aspect of the monarchs of the park, and the nearer we came to our
+journey's end the more somber and lowering bent the verdant arch--
+or so it seemed.
+
+By that path, patched now with pools of moonlight, Lord Southery
+had passed upon his bier, with the sun to light his going;
+by that path several generations of Stradwicks had gone
+to their last resting-place.
+
+To the doors of the vault the moon rays found free access.
+No branch, no leaf, intervened.  Mr. Henderson's face looked ghastly.
+The keys which he carried rattled in his hand.
+
+"Light the lantern," he said unsteadily.
+
+Nayland Smith, who again had been peering suspiciously about into
+the shadows, struck a match and lighted the lantern which he carried.
+He turned to the solicitor.
+
+"Be calm, Mr. Henderson," he said sternly.  "It is your plain
+duty to your client."
+
+"God be my witness that I doubt it," replied Henderson,
+and opened the door.
+
+We descended the steps.  The air beneath was damp and chill.
+It touched us as with clammy fingers; and the sensation was
+not wholly physical.
+
+Before the narrow mansion which now sufficed Lord Southery, the great engineer
+whom kings had honored, Henderson reeled and clutched at me for support.
+Smith and I had looked to him for no aid in our uncanny task, and rightly.
+
+With averted eyes he stood over by the steps of the tomb, whilst my friend
+and myself set to work.  In the pursuit of my profession I had undertaken
+labors as unpleasant, but never amid an environment such as this.
+It seemed that generations of Stradwicks listened to each turn of every screw.
+
+At last it was done, and the pallid face of Lord Southery questioned
+the intruding light.  Nayland Smith's hand was as steady as a rigid bar
+when he raised the lantern.  Later, I knew, there would be a sudden
+releasing of the tension of will--a reaction physical and mental--
+but not until his work was finished.
+
+That my own hand was steady I ascribed to one thing solely--
+professional zeal.  For, under conditions which, in the event
+of failure and exposure, must have led to an unpleasant
+inquiry by the British Medical Association, I was about
+to attempt an experiment never before essayed by a physician
+of the white races.
+
+Though I failed, though I succeeded, that it ever came before the B.M.A., or
+any other council, was improbable; in the former event, all but impossible.
+But the knowledge that I was about to practice charlatanry, or what any one
+of my fellow-practitioners must have designated as such, was with me.  Yet so
+profound had my belief become in the extraordinary being whose existence was
+a danger to the world that I reveled in my immunity from official censure.
+I was glad that it had fallen to my lot to take at least one step--
+though blindly--into the FUTURE of medical science.
+
+So far as my skill bore me, Lord Southery was dead.  Unhesitatingly, I
+would have given a death certificate, save for two considerations.
+The first, although his latest scheme ran contrary from the interests
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu, his genius, diverted into other channels,
+would serve the yellow group better than his death.  The second,
+I had seen the boy Aziz raised from a state as like death as this.
+
+From the phial of amber-hued liquid which I had with me,
+I charged the needle syringe.  I made the injection, and waited.
+
+"If he is really dead!" whispered Smith.  "It seems incredible
+that he can have survived for three days without food.
+Yet I have known a fakir to go for a week."
+
+Mr. Henderson groaned.
+
+Watch in hand, I stood observing the gray face.
+
+A second passed; another; a third.  In the fourth the miracle began.
+Over the seemingly cold clay crept the hue of pulsing life.
+It came in waves--in waves which corresponded with the throbbing
+of the awakened heart; which swept fuller and stronger;
+which filled and quickened the chilled body.
+
+As we rapidly freed the living man from the trappings of
+the dead one, Southery, uttering a stifled scream, sat up,
+looked about him with half-glazed eyes, and fell back.
+"My God!" cried Smith.
+
+"It is all right," I said, and had time to note how my voice
+had assumed a professional tone.  "A little brandy from my flask
+is all that is necessary now."
+
+"You have two patients, Doctor," rapped my friend.
+
+Mr. Henderson had fallen in a swoon to the floor of the vault.
+
+"Quiet," whispered Smith; "HE is here."
+
+He extinguished the light.
+
+I supported Lord Southery.  "What has happened?" he kept moaning.
+"Where am I?  Oh, God!  what has happened?"
+
+I strove to reassure him in a whisper, and placed my traveling
+coat about him.  The door at the top of the mausoleum steps we
+had reclosed but not relocked.  Now, as I upheld the man whom
+literally we had rescued from the grave, I heard the door reopen.
+To aid Henderson I could make no move.  Smith was breathing hard beside me.
+I dared not think what was about to happen, nor what its effects
+might be upon Lord Southery in his exhausted condition.
+
+Through the Memphian dark of the tomb cut a spear of light,
+touching the last stone of the stairway.
+
+A guttural voice spoke some words rapidly, and I knew that Dr. Fu-Manchu
+stood at the head of the stairs.  Although I could not see my friend,
+I became aware that Nayland Smith had his revolver in his hand,
+and I reached into my pocket for mine.
+
+At last the cunning Chinaman was about to fall into a trap.
+It would require all his genius, I thought, to save him to-night.
+Unless his suspicions were aroused by the unlocked door,
+his capture was imminent.
+
+Someone was descending the steps.
+
+In my right hand I held my revolver, and with my left arm about Lord Southery,
+I waited through ten such seconds of suspense as I have rarely known.
+
+The spear of light plunged into the well of darkness again.
+
+Lord Southery, Smith and myself were hidden by the angle of the wall;
+but full upon the purplish face of Mr. Henderson the beam shone.
+In some way it penetrated to the murk in his mind; and he awakened
+from his swoon with a hoarse cry, struggled to his feet, and stood
+looking up the stair in a sort of frozen horror.
+
+Smith was past him at a bound.  Something flashed towards him as the light
+was extinguished.  I saw him duck, and heard the knife ring upon the floor.
+
+I managed to move sufficiently to see at the top, as I fired up
+the stairs, the yellow face of Dr. Fu-Manchu, to see the gleaming,
+chatoyant eyes, greenly terrible, as they sought to pierce the gloom.
+A flying figure was racing up, three steps at a time (that of a brown man
+scantily clad). He stumbled and fell, by which I knew that he was hit;
+but went on again, Smith hard on his heels.
+
+"Mr. Henderson!" I cried, "relight the lantern and take
+charge of Lord Southery.  Here is my flask on the floor.
+I rely upon you."
+
+Smith's revolver spoke again as I went bounding up the stair.
+Black against the square of moonlight I saw him stagger, I saw him fall.
+As he fell, for the third time, I heard the crack of his revolver.
+
+Instantly I was at his side.  Somewhere along the black aisle
+beneath the trees receding footsteps pattered.
+
+"Are you hurt, Smith?" I cried anxiously.
+
+He got upon his feet.
+
+"He has a dacoit with him," he replied, and showed me the long curved
+knife which he held in his hand, a full inch of the blade bloodstained.
+"A near thing for me, Petrie."
+
+I heard the whir of a restarted motor.
+
+"We have lost him," said Smith.
+
+"But we have saved Lord Southery," I said.  "Fu-Manchu will credit
+us with a skill as great as his own."
+
+"We must get to the car," Smith muttered, "and try to overtake them.
+Ugh!  my left arm is useless."
+
+"It would be mere waste of time to attempt to overtake them," I argued,
+"for we have no idea in which direction they will proceed."
+
+"I have a very good idea," snapped Smith.  "Stradwick Hall is less
+than ten miles from the coast.  There is only one practicable means
+of conveying an unconscious man secretly from here to London."
+
+"You think he meant to take him from here to London?"
+
+"Prior to shipping him to China; I think so.  His clearing-house
+is probably on the Thames."
+
+"A boat?"
+
+"A yacht, presumably, is lying off the coast in readiness.
+Fu-Manchu may even have designed to ship him direct to China."
+
+Lord Southery, a bizarre figure, my traveling coat wrapped about him,
+and supported by his solicitor, who was almost as pale as himself,
+emerged from the vault into the moonlight.
+
+"This is a triumph for you, Smith," I said.
+
+The throb of Fu-Manchu's car died into faintness and was lost
+in the night's silence.
+
+"Only half a triumph," he replied.  "But we still have another chance--
+the raid on his house.  When will the word come from Karamaneh?"
+
+Southery spoke in a weak voice.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, "it seems I am raised from the dead."
+
+It was the weirdest moment of the night wherein we heard that newly
+buried man speak from the mold of his tomb.
+
+"Yes," replied Smith slowly, "and spared from the fate of Heaven
+alone knows how many men of genius.  The yellow society lacks
+a Southery, but that Dr. Fu-Manchu was in Germany three years
+ago I have reason to believe; so that, even without visiting
+the grave of your great Teutonic rival, who suddenly died at about
+that time, I venture to predict that they have a Von Homber.
+And the futurist group in China knows how to MAKE men work!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+FROM the rescue of Lord Southery my story bears me mercilessly
+on to other things.  I may not tarry, as more leisurely penmen,
+to round my incidents; they were not of my choosing.
+I may not pause to make you better acquainted with the figure
+of my drama; its scheme is none of mine.  Often enough,
+in those days, I found a fitness in the lines of Omar:
+
+
+    We are no other than a moving show
+    Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
+    Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held
+    In Midnight by the Master of the Show.
+
+
+But "the Master of the Show," in this case, was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
+
+I have been asked many times since the days with which these records deal:
+Who WAS Dr. Fu-Manchu?  Let me confess here that my final answer must
+be postponed.  I can only indicate, at this place, the trend of my reasoning,
+and leave my reader to form whatever conclusion he pleases.
+
+What group can we isolate and label as responsible for the overthrow
+of the Manchus?  The casual student of modern Chinese history will reply:
+"Young China."  This is unsatisfactory.  What do we mean by Young China?
+In my own hearing Fu-Manchu had disclaimed, with scorn, association with the
+whole of that movement; and assuming that the name were not an assumed one,
+he clearly can have been no anti-Manchu, no Republican.
+
+The Chinese Republican is of the mandarin class, but of a new
+generation which veneers its Confucianism with Western polish.
+These youthful and unbalanced reformers, in conjunction
+with older but no less ill-balanced provincial politicians,
+may be said to represent Young China.  Amid such turmoils as this
+we invariably look for, and invariably find, a Third Party.
+In my opinion, Dr. Fu-Manchu was one of the leaders of such a party.
+
+Another question often put to me was:  Where did the Doctor
+hide during the time that he pursued his operations in London?
+This is more susceptible of explanation.  For a time Nayland
+Smith supposed, as I did myself, that the opium den adjacent
+to the old Ratcliff Highway was the Chinaman's base of operations;
+later we came to believe that the mansion near Windsor was his
+hiding-place, and later still, the hulk lying off the downstream flats.
+But I think I can state with confidence that the spot which he had
+chosen for his home was neither of these, but the East End riverside
+building which I was the first to enter.  Of this I am all but sure;
+for the reason that it not only was the home of Fu-Manchu, of Karamaneh,
+and of her brother, Aziz, but the home of something else--
+of something which I shall speak of later.
+
+The dreadful tragedy (or series of tragedies) which attended the raid upon the
+place will always mark in my memory the supreme horror of a horrible case.
+Let me endeavor to explain what occurred.
+
+By the aid of Karamaneh, you have seen how we had located
+the whilom warehouse, which, from the exterior, was so drab
+and dreary, but which within was a place of wondrous luxury.
+At the moment selected by our beautiful accomplice,
+Inspector Weymouth and a body of detectives entirely surrounded it;
+a river police launch lay off the wharf which opened from it
+on the river-side; and this upon a singularly black night,
+than which a better could not have been chosen.
+
+"You will fulfill your promise to me?" said Karamaneh,
+and looked up into my face.
+
+She was enveloped in a big, loose cloak, and from the shadow
+of the hood her wonderful eyes gleamed out like stars.
+
+"What do you wish us to do?" asked Nayland Smith.
+
+"You--and Dr. Petrie," she replied swiftly, "must enter first,
+and bring out Aziz.  Until he is safe--until he is out of that place--
+you are to make no attempt upon--"
+
+"Upon Dr. Fu-Manchu?" interrupted Weymouth; for Karamaneh
+hesitated to pronounce the dreaded name, as she always did.
+"But how can we be sure that there is no trap laid for us?"
+
+The Scotland Yard man did not entirely share my confidence in the integrity
+of this Eastern girl whom he knew to have been a creature of the Chinaman's.
+
+"Aziz lies in the private room," she explained eagerly, her old accent more
+noticeable than usual.  "There is only one of the Burmese men in the house,
+and he--he dare not enter without orders!"
+
+"But Fu-Manchu?"
+
+"We have nothing to fear from him.  He will be your prisoner
+within ten minutes from now!  I have no time for words--
+you must believe!"  She stamped her foot impatiently.
+"And the dacoit?" snapped Smith.
+
+"He also."
+
+"I think perhaps I'd better come in, too," said Weymouth slowly.
+
+Karamaneh shrugged her shoulders with quick impatience,
+and unlocked the door in the high brick wall which divided
+the gloomy, evil-smelling court from the luxurious apartments
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+"Make no noise," she warned.  And Smith and myself followed her along
+the uncarpeted passage beyond.
+
+Inspector Weymouth, with a final word of instruction to his
+second in command, brought up the rear.  The door was reclosed;
+a few paces farther on a second was unlocked.  Passing through
+a small room, unfurnished, a farther passage led us to a balcony.
+The transition was startling.
+
+Darkness was about us now, and silence:  a perfumed, slumberous darkness--
+a silence full of mystery.  For, beyond the walls of the apartment whereon
+we looked down waged the unceasing battle of sounds that is the hymn
+of the great industrial river.  About the scented confines which bounded
+us now floated the smoke-laden vapors of the Lower Thames.
+
+From the metallic but infinitely human clangor of dock-side life,
+from the unpleasant but homely odors which prevail where ships swallow
+in and belch out the concrete evidences of commercial prosperity,
+we had come into this incensed stillness, where one shaded lamp
+painted dim enlargements of its Chinese silk upon the nearer walls,
+and left the greater part of the room the darker for its contrast.
+
+Nothing of the Thames-side activity--of the riveting and scraping--
+the bumping of bales--the bawling of orders--the hiss of steam--
+penetrated to this perfumed place.  In the pool of tinted light
+lay the deathlike figure of a dark-haired boy, Karamaneh's muffled
+form bending over him.
+
+"At last I stand in the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu!" whispered Smith.
+
+Despite the girl's assurance, we knew that proximity
+to the sinister Chinaman must be fraught with danger.
+We stood, not in the lion's den, but in the serpent's lair.
+
+From the time when Nayland Smith had come from Burma in pursuit
+of this advance-guard of a cogent Yellow Peril, the face of
+Dr. Fu-Manchu rarely had been absent from my dreams day or night.
+The millions might sleep in peace--the millions in whose
+cause we labored!--but we who knew the reality of the danger
+knew that a veritable octopus had fastened upon England--
+a yellow octopus whose head was that of Dr. Fu-Manchu,
+whose tentacles were dacoity, thuggee, modes of death,
+secret and swift, which in the darkness plucked men from life
+and left no clew behind.
+
+"Karamaneh!" I called softly.
+
+The muffled form beneath the lamp turned so that the soft
+light fell upon the lovely face of the slave girl.
+She who had been a pliant instrument in the hands of Fu-Manchu
+now was to be the means whereby society should be rid of him.
+
+She raised her finger warningly; then beckoned me to approach.
+
+My feet sinking in the rich pile of the carpet, I came through
+the gloom of the great apartment in to the patch of light,
+and, Karamaneh beside me, stood looking down upon the boy.
+It was Aziz, her brother; dead so far as Western lore had power
+to judge, but kept alive in that deathlike trance by the uncanny
+power of the Chinese doctor.
+
+"Be quick," she said; "be quick!  Awaken him!  I am afraid."
+
+From the case which I carried I took out a needle-syringe
+and a phial containing a small quantity of amber-hued liquid.
+It was a drug not to be found in the British Pharmacopoeia.
+Of its constitution I knew nothing.  Although I had had
+the phial in my possession for some days I had not dared
+to devote any of its precious contents to analytical purposes.
+The amber drops spelled life for the boy Aziz, spelled success
+for the mission of Nayland Smith, spelled ruin for
+the fiendish Chinaman.
+
+I raised the white coverlet.  The boy, fully dressed,
+lay with his arms crossed upon his breast.  I discerned the mark
+of previous injections as, charging the syringe from the phial,
+I made what I hoped would be the last of such experiments upon him.
+I would have given half of my small worldly possessions to have
+known the real nature of the drug which was now coursing through
+the veins of Aziz--which was tinting the grayed face with the olive
+tone of life; which, so far as my medical training bore me,
+was restoring the dead to life.
+
+But such was not the purpose of my visit.  I was come to remove from
+the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu the living chain which bound Karamaneh to him.
+The boy alive and free, the Doctor's hold upon the slave girl would be broken.
+
+My lovely companion, her hands convulsively clasped, knelt and devoured
+with her eyes the face of the boy who was passing through the most
+amazing physiological change in the history of therapeutics.
+The peculiar perfume which she wore--which seemed to be a part of her--
+which always I associated with her--was faintly perceptible.
+Karamaneh was breathing rapidly.
+
+"You have nothing to fear," I whispered; "see, he is reviving.
+In a few moments all will be well with him."
+
+The hanging lamp with its garishly colored shade swung gently above us,
+wafted, it seemed, by some draught which passed through the apartment.
+The boy's heavy lids began to quiver, and Karamaneh nervously clutched
+my arm, and held me so whilst we watched for the long-lashed eyes to open.
+The stillness of the place was positively unnatural; it seemed inconceivable
+that all about us was the discordant activity of the commercial East End.
+Indeed, this eerie silence was becoming oppressive; it began positively
+to appall me.
+
+Inspector Weymouth's wondering face peeped over my shoulder.
+
+"Where is Dr. Fu-Manchu?" I whispered, as Nayland Smith in turn appeared
+beside me.  "I cannot understand the silence of the house--"
+
+"Look about," replied Karamaneh, never taking her eyes from the face of Aziz.
+
+I peered around the shadowy walls.  Tall glass cases there were,
+shelves and niches:  where once, from the gallery above, I had seen the tubes
+and retorts, the jars of unfamiliar organisms, the books of unfamiliar lore,
+the impedimenta of the occult student and man of science--the visible
+evidences of Fu-Manchu's presence.  Shelves--cases--niches--were bare.
+Of the complicated appliances unknown to civilized laboratories,
+wherewith he pursued his strange experiments, of the tubes wherein
+he isolated the bacilli of unclassified diseases, of the yellow-bound
+volumes for a glimpse at which (had they known of their contents)
+the great men of Harley Street would have given a fortune--no trace remained.
+The silken cushions; the inlaid tables; all were gone.
+
+The room was stripped, dismantled.  Had Fu-Manchu fled?
+The silence assumed a new significance.  His dacoits and kindred
+ministers of death all must have fled, too.
+
+"You have let him escape us!" I said rapidly.
+"You promised to aid us to capture him--to send us a message--
+and you have delayed until--"
+
+"No," she said; "no!" and clutched at my arm again.
+"Oh!  is he not reviving slowly?  Are you sure you have
+made no mistake?"
+
+Her thoughts were all for the boy; and her solicitude touched me.
+I again examined Aziz, the most remarkable patient of my
+busy professional career.
+
+As I counted the strengthening pulse, he opened his dark eyes--
+which were so like the eyes of Karamaneh--and, with the girl's
+eager arms tightly about him, sat up, looking wonderingly around.
+
+Karamaneh pressed her cheek to his, whispering loving words in that softly
+spoken Arabic which had first betrayed her nationality to Nayland Smith.
+I handed her my flask, which I had filled with wine.
+
+"My promise is fulfilled!" I said.  "You are free!
+Now for Fu-Manchu!  But first let us admit the police to this house;
+there is something uncanny in its stillness."
+
+"No," she replied.  "First let my brother be taken out and placed in safety.
+Will you carry him?"
+
+She raised her face to that of Inspector Weymouth, upon which was written
+awe and wonder.
+
+The burly detective lifted the boy as tenderly as a woman, passed through
+the shadows to the stairway, ascended, and was swallowed up in the gloom.
+Nayland Smith's eyes gleamed feverishly.  He turned to Karamaneh.
+
+"You are not playing with us?" he said harshly.  "We have done our part;
+it remains for you to do yours."
+
+"Do not speak so loudly," the girl begged.  "HE is near us--
+and, oh, God, I fear him so!"
+
+"Where is he?" persisted my friend.
+
+Karamaneh's eyes were glassy with fear now.
+
+"You must not touch him until the police are here," she said--
+but from the direction of her quick, agitated glances I knew that,
+her brother safe now, she feared for me, and for me alone.
+Those glances sent my blood dancing; for Karamaneh was
+an Eastern jewel which any man of flesh and blood must
+have coveted had he known it to lie within his reach.
+Her eyes were twin lakes of mystery which, more than once,
+I had known the desire to explore.
+
+"Look--beyond that curtain"--her voice was barely audible--"but do not enter.
+Even as he is, I fear him."
+
+Her voice, her palpable agitation, prepared us for something extraordinary.
+Tragedy and Fu-Manchu were never far apart.  Though we were two, and help
+was so near, we were in the abode of the most cunning murderer who ever came
+out of the East.
+
+It was with strangely mingled emotions that I crossed the thick carpet,
+Nayland Smith beside me, and drew aside the draperies concealing a door,
+to which Karamaneh had pointed.  Then, upon looking into the dim place beyond,
+all else save what it held was forgotten.
+
+We looked upon a small, square room, the walls draped with fantastic
+Chinese tapestry, the floor strewn with cushions; and reclining
+in a corner, where the faint, blue light from a lamp, placed upon
+a low table, painted grotesque shadows about the cavernous face--
+was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
+
+At sight of him my heart leaped--and seemed to suspend its functions,
+so intense was the horror which this man's presence inspired in me.
+My hand clutching the curtain, I stood watching him.  The lids
+veiled the malignant green eyes, but the thin lips seemed to smile.
+Then Smith silently pointed to the hand which held a little pipe.
+A sickly perfume assailed my nostrils, and the explanation
+of the hushed silence, and the ease with which we had thus far
+executed our plan, came to me.  The cunning mind was torpid--
+lost in a brutish world of dreams.
+
+Fu-Manchu was in an opium sleep!
+
+The dim light traced out a network of tiny lines, which covered
+the yellow face from the pointed chin to the top of the great domed brow,
+and formed deep shadow pools in the hollows beneath his eyes.
+At last we had triumphed.
+
+I could not determine the depth of his obscene trance; and mastering
+some of my repugnance, and forgetful of Karamaneh's warning, I was about
+to step forward into the room, loaded with its nauseating opium fumes,
+when a soft breath fanned my cheek.
+
+"Do not go in!" came Karamaneh's warning voice--hushed--trembling.
+
+Her little hand grasped my arm.  She drew Smith and myself back
+from the door.
+
+"There is danger there!" she whispered.
+
+"Do not enter that room!  The police must reach him in some way--
+and drag him out!  Do not enter that room!"
+
+The girl's voice quivered hysterically; her eyes blazed into savage flame.
+The fierce resentment born of dreadful wrongs was consuming her now;
+but fear of Fu-Manchu held her yet.  Inspector Weymouth came down the stairs
+and joined us.
+
+"I have sent the boy to Ryman's room at the station," he said.
+"The divisional surgeon will look after him until you arrive,
+Dr. Petrie.  All is ready now.  The launch is just off
+the wharf and every side of the place under observation.
+Where's our man?"
+
+He drew a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and raised
+his eyebrows interrogatively.  The absence of sound--
+of any demonstration from the uncanny Chinaman whom he was there
+to arrest--puzzled him.
+
+Nayland Smith jerked his thumb toward the curtain.
+
+At that, and before we could utter a word, Weymouth stepped
+to the draped door.  He was a man who drove straight at
+his goal and saved reflections for subsequent leisure.
+I think, moreover, that the atmosphere of the place
+(stripped as it was it retained its heavy, voluptuous perfume)
+had begun to get a hold upon him.  He was anxious to shake it off;
+to be up and doing.
+
+He pulled the curtain aside and stepped into the room.
+Smith and I perforce followed him.  Just within the door
+the three of us stood looking across at the limp thing which
+had spread terror throughout the Eastern and Western world.
+Helpless as Fu-Manchu was, he inspired terror now, though the giant
+intellect was inert--stupefied.
+
+In the dimly lit apartment we had quitted I heard Karamaneh utter
+a stifled scream.  But it came too late.
+
+As though cast up by a volcano, the silken cushions,
+the inlaid table with its blue-shaded lamp, the garish walls,
+the sprawling figure with the ghastly light playing upon
+its features--quivered, and shot upward!
+
+So it seemed to me; though, in the ensuing instant I remembered,
+too late, a previous experience of the floors of Fu-Manchu's
+private apartments; I knew what had indeed befallen us.
+A trap had been released beneath our feet.
+
+I recall falling--but have no recollection of the end of my fall--
+of the shock marking the drop.  I only remember fighting for my
+life against a stifling something which had me by the throat.
+I knew that I was being suffocated, but my hands met only
+the deathly emptiness.
+
+Into a poisonous well of darkness I sank.  I could not cry out.
+I was helpless.  Of the fate of my companions I knew nothing--
+could surmise nothing.  Then. . .all consciousness ended.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+I WAS being carried along a dimly lighted, tunnel-like place, slung, sackwise,
+across the shoulder of a Burman.  He was not a big man, but he supported
+my considerable weight with apparent ease.  A deadly nausea held me,
+but the rough handling had served to restore me to consciousness.
+My hands and feet were closely lashed.  I hung limply as a wet towel:
+I felt that this spark of tortured life which had flickered up in me must
+ere long finally become extinguished.
+
+A fancy possessed me, in these the first moments of my restoration
+to the world of realities, that I had been smuggled into China;
+and as I swung head downward I told myself that the huge,
+puffy things which strewed the path were a species of giant toadstool,
+unfamiliar to me and possibly peculiar to whatever district of China
+I now was in.
+
+The air was hot, steamy, and loaded with a smell as of rotting vegetation.
+I wondered why my bearer so scrupulously avoided touching any of the
+unwholesome-looking growths in passing through what seemed a succession
+of cellars, but steered a tortuous course among the bloated, unnatural shapes,
+lifting his bare brown feet with a catlike delicacy.
+
+He passed under a low arch, dropped me roughly to the ground and ran back.
+Half stunned, I lay watching the agile brown body melt into
+the distances of the cellars.  Their walls and roof seemed to emit
+a faint, phosphorescent light.
+
+"Petrie!" came a weak voice from somewhere ahead. . . ."Is that you, Petrie?"
+
+It was Nayland Smith!
+
+"Smith!" I said, and strove to sit up.  But the intense nausea overcame me,
+so that I all but swooned.
+
+I heard his voice again, but could attach no meaning to the words
+which he uttered.  A sound of terrific blows reached my ears, too.
+The Burman reappeared, bending under the heavy load which he bore.
+For, as he picked his way through the bloated things which grew
+upon the floors of the cellars, I realized that he was carrying
+the inert body of Inspector Weymouth.  And I found time to compare
+the strength of the little brown man with that of a Nile beetle,
+which can raise many times its own weight.  Then, behind him,
+appeared a second figure, which immediately claimed the whole
+of my errant attention.
+
+"Fu-Manchu!" hissed my friend, from the darkness which concealed him.
+
+It was indeed none other than Fu-Manchu--the Fu-Manchu whom we
+had thought to be helpless.  The deeps of the Chinaman's cunning--
+the fine quality of his courage, were forced upon me as amazing facts.
+
+He had assumed the appearance of a drugged opium-smoker so well
+as to dupe me--a medical man; so well as to dupe Karamaneh--
+whose experience of the noxious habit probably was greater than
+my own.  And, with the gallows dangling before him, he had waited--
+played the part of a lure--whilst a body of police actually
+surrounded the place!
+
+I have since thought that the room probably was one which he actually used
+for opium debauches, and the device of the trap was intended to protect him
+during the comatose period.
+
+Now, holding a lantern above his head, the deviser of the trap
+whereinto we, mouselike, had blindly entered, came through
+the cellars, following the brown man who carried Weymouth.
+The faint rays of the lantern (it apparently contained a candle)
+revealed a veritable forest of the gigantic fungi--poisonously colored--
+hideously swollen--climbing from the floor up the slimy walls--
+climbing like horrid parasites to such part of the arched roof
+as was visible to me.
+
+Fu-Manchu picked his way through the fungi ranks as daintily
+as though the distorted, tumid things had been viper-headed.
+
+The resounding blows which I had noted before, and which had never ceased,
+culminated in a splintering crash.  Dr. Fu-Manchu and his servant,
+who carried the apparently insensible detective, passed in under
+the arch, Fu-Manchu glancing back once along the passages.
+The lantern he extinguished, or concealed; and whilst I waited,
+my mind dully surveying, memories of all the threats which this
+uncanny being had uttered, a distant clamor came to my ears.
+
+Then, abruptly, it ceased.  Dr. Fu-Manchu had closed a heavy door;
+and to my surprise I perceived that the greater part of it was of glass.
+The will-o'-the-wisp glow which played around the fungi rendered the vista
+of the cellars faintly luminous, and visible to me from where I lay.
+Fu-Manchu spoke softly.  His voice, its guttural note alternating
+with a sibilance on certain words, betrayed no traces of agitation.
+The man's unbroken calm had in it something inhuman.  For he had just
+perpetrated an act of daring unparalleled in my experience, and,
+in the clamor now shut out by the glass door I tardily recognized
+the entrance of the police into some barricaded part of the house--
+the coming of those who would save us--who would hold the Chinese
+doctor for the hangman!
+
+"I have decided," he said deliberately, "that you are more worthy
+of my attention than I had formerly supposed.  A man who can solve
+the secret of the Golden Elixir (I had not solved it; I had merely
+stolen some) should be a valuable acquisition to my Council.
+The extent of the plans of Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith and
+of the English Scotland Yard it is incumbent upon me to learn.
+Therefore, gentlemen, you live--for the present!"
+
+"And you'll swing," came Weymouth's hoarse voice, "in the near future!
+You and all your yellow gang!"
+
+"I trust not," was the placid reply.  "Most of my people are safe:
+some are shipped as lascars upon the liners; others have departed
+by different means.  Ah!"
+
+That last word was the only one indicative of excitement
+which had yet escaped him.  A disk of light danced among
+the brilliant poison hues of the passages--but no sound reached us;
+by which I knew that the glass door must fit almost hermetically.
+It was much cooler here than in the place through which we had passed,
+and the nausea began to leave me, my brain to grow more clear.
+Had I known what was to follow I should have cursed the lucidity
+of mind which now came to me; I should have prayed for oblivion--
+to be spared the sight of that which ensued.
+
+"It's Logan!" cried Inspector Weymouth; and I could tell
+that he was struggling to free himself of his bonds.
+From his voice it was evident that he, too, was recovering
+from the effects of the narcotic which had been administered
+to us all.
+
+"Logan!" he cried.  "Logan!  This way--HELP!"
+
+But the cry beat back upon us in that enclosed space and seemed
+to carry no farther than the invisible walls of our prison.
+
+"The door fits well," came Fu-Manchu's mocking voice.
+"It is fortunate for us all that it is so.  This is my
+observation window, Dr. Petrie, and you are about to enjoy
+an unique opportunity of studying fungology.  I have already
+drawn your attention to the anaesthetic properties of the
+lycoperdon, or common puff-ball. You may have recognized the fumes?
+The chamber into which you rashly precipitated yourselves
+was charged with them.  By a process of my own I have greatly
+enhanced the value of the puff-ball in this respect.
+Your friend, Mr. Weymouth, proved the most obstinate subject;
+but he succumbed in fifteen seconds."
+
+"Logan!  Help!  HELP!  This way, man!"
+
+Something very like fear sounded in Weymouth's voice now.
+Indeed, the situation was so uncanny that it almost seemed unreal.
+A group of men had entered the farthermost cellars, led by one who bore
+an electric pocket-lamp. The hard, white ray danced from bloated gray
+fungi to others of nightmare shape, of dazzling, venomous brilliance.
+The mocking, lecture-room voice continued:
+
+"Note the snowy growth upon the roof, Doctor.  Do not be deceived by
+its size.  It is a giant variety of my own culture and is of the order
+empusa. You, in England, are familiar with the death of the common house-fly--
+which is found attached to the window-pane by a coating of white mold.
+I have developed the spores of this mold and have produced a giant species.
+Observe the interesting effect of the strong light upon my orange and blue
+amanita fungus!"
+
+Hard beside me I heard Nayland Smith groan, Weymouth had become
+suddenly silent.  For my own part, I could have shrieked in pure horror.
+FOR I KNEW WHAT WAS COMING. I realized in one agonized instant
+the significance of the dim lantern, of the careful progress
+through the subterranean fungi grove, of the care with which
+Fu-Manchu and his servant had avoided touching any of the growths.
+I knew, now, that Dr. Fu-Manchu was the greatest fungologist
+the world had ever known; was a poisoner to whom the Borgias were
+as children--and I knew that the detectives blindly were walking
+into a valley of death.
+
+Then it began--the unnatural scene--the saturnalia of murder.
+
+Like so many bombs the brilliantly colored caps of the huge toadstool-like
+things alluded to by the Chinaman exploded, as the white ray sought
+them out in the darkness which alone preserved their existence.
+A brownish cloud--I could not determine whether liquid or powdery--
+arose in the cellar.
+
+I tried to close my eyes--or to turn them away from the reeling forms
+of the men who were trapped in that poison-hole. It was useless:
+
+I must look.
+
+The bearer of the lamp had dropped it, but the dim,
+eerily illuminated gloom endured scarce a second.
+A bright light sprang up--doubtless at the touch of the fiendish
+being who now resumed speech:
+
+"Observe the symptoms of delirium, Doctor!"  Out there,
+beyond the glass door, the unhappy victims were laughing--
+tearing their garments from their bodies--leaping--waving their arms--
+were become MANIACS!
+
+"We will now release the ripe spores of giant entpusa,"
+continued the wicked voice.  "The air of the second cellar
+being super-charged with oxygen, they immediately germinate.
+Ah!  it is a triumph!  That process is the scientific triumph
+of my life!"
+
+Like powdered snow the white spores fell from the roof,
+frosting the writhing shapes of the already poisoned men.
+Before my horrified gaze, THE FUNGUS GREW; it spread
+from the head to the, feet of those it touched; it enveloped
+them as in glittering shrouds. . . .
+
+"They die like flies!" screamed Fu-Manchu, with a sudden febrile excitement;
+and I felt assured of something I had long suspected:  that that magnificent,
+perverted brain was the brain of a homicidal maniac--though Smith would
+never accept the theory.
+
+"It is my fly-trap!" shrieked the Chinaman.  "And I am
+the god of destruction!"
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+THE clammy touch of the mist revived me.  The culmination of the scene
+in the poison cellars, together with the effects of the fumes
+which I had inhaled again, had deprived me of consciousness.
+Now I knew that I was afloat on the river.  I still was bound:
+furthermore, a cloth was wrapped tightly about my mouth,
+and I was secured to a ring in the deck.
+
+By moving my aching head to the left I could look down into the oily water;
+by moving it to the right I could catch a glimpse of the empurpled
+face of Inspector Weymouth, who, similarly bound and gagged,
+lay beside me, but only of the feet and legs of Nayland Smith.
+For I could not turn my head sufficiently far to see more.
+
+We were aboard an electric launch.  I heard the hated guttural
+voice of Fu-Manchu, subdued now to its habitual calm,
+and my heart leaped to hear the voice that answered him.
+It was that of Karamaneh.  His triumph was complete.
+Clearly his plans for departure were complete; his slaughter
+of the police in the underground passages had been a final
+reckless demonstration of which the Chinaman's subtle cunning
+would have been incapable had he not known his escape from
+the country to be assured.
+
+What fate was in store for us?  How would he avenge himself upon the girl
+who had betrayed him to his enemies?  What portion awaited those enemies?
+He seemed to have formed the singular determination to smuggle me into China--
+but what did he purpose in the case of Weymouth, and in the case
+of Nayland Smith?
+
+All but silently we were feeling our way through the mist.
+Astern died the clangor of dock and wharf into a remote discord.
+Ahead hung the foggy curtain veiling the traffic of the great waterway;
+but through it broke the calling of sirens, the tinkling of bells.
+
+The gentle movement of the screw ceased altogether.
+The launch lay heaving slightly upon the swells.
+
+A distant throbbing grew louder--and something advanced upon
+us through the haze.
+
+A bell rang and muffled by the fog a voice proclaimed itself--
+a voice which I knew.  I felt Weymouth writhing impotently
+beside me; heard him mumbling incoherently; and I knew
+that he, too, had recognized the voice.
+
+It was that of Inspector Ryman of the river police and their launch
+was within biscuit-throw of that upon which we lay!
+
+"'Hoy!  'Hoy!"
+
+I trembled.  A feverish excitement claimed me.  They were hailing us.
+We carried no lights; but now--and ignoring the pain which shot from
+my spine to my skull I craned my neck to the left--the port light
+of the police launch glowed angrily through the mist.
+
+I was unable to utter any save mumbling sounds, and my
+companions were equally helpless.  It was a desperate position.
+Had the police seen us or had they hailed at random?
+The light drew nearer.
+
+"Launch, 'hoy!"
+
+They had seen us!  Fu-Manchu's guttural voice spoke shortly--
+and our screw began to revolve again; we leaped ahead into the bank
+of darkness.  Faint grew the light of the police launch--and was gone.
+But I heard Ryman's voice shouting.
+
+"Full speed!" came faintly through the darkness.  "Port!  Port!"
+
+Then the murk closed down, and with our friends far astern of us
+we were racing deeper into the fog banks--speeding seaward;
+though of this I was unable to judge at the time.
+
+On we raced, and on, sweeping over growing swells.
+Once, a black, towering shape dropped down upon us.
+Far above, lights blazed, bells rang, vague cries pierced the fog.
+The launch pitched and rolled perilously, but weathered the wash
+of the liner which so nearly had concluded this episode.
+It was such a journey as I had taken once before,
+early in our pursuit of the genius of the Yellow Peril;
+but this was infinitely more terrible; for now we were utterly
+in Fu-Manchu's power.
+
+A voice mumbled in my ear.  I turned my bound-up face;
+and Inspector Weymouth raised his hands in the dimness and partly
+slipped the bandage from his mouth.
+
+"I've been working at the cords since we left those filthy cellars,"
+he whispered.  "My wrists are all cut, but when I've got out a knife
+and freed my ankles--"
+
+Smith had kicked him with his bound feet.  The detective slipped
+the bandage back to position and placed his hands behind him again.
+Dr. Fu-Manchu, wearing a heavy overcoat but no hat, came aft.
+He was dragging Karamaneh by the wrists.  He seated himself
+on the cushions near to us, pulling the girl down beside him.
+Now, I could see her face--and the expression in her beautiful
+eyes made me writhe.
+
+Fu-Manchu was watching us, his discolored teeth faintly visible
+in the dim light, to which my eyes were becoming accustomed.
+
+"Dr. Petrie," he said, "you shall be my honored guest at my home in China.
+You shall assist me to revolutionize chemistry.  Mr. Smith, I fear
+you know more of my plans than I had deemed it possible for you
+to have learned, and I am anxious to know if you have a confidant.
+Where your memory fails you, and my files and wire jackets prove ineffectual,
+Inspector Weymouth's recollections may prove more accurate."
+
+He turned to the cowering girl--who shrank away from him
+in pitiful, abject terror.
+
+"In my hands, Doctor," he continued, "I hold a needle charged
+with a rare culture.  It is the link between the bacilli
+and the fungi.  You have seemed to display an undue interest
+in the peach and pearl which render my Karamaneh so delightful,
+In the supple grace of her movements and the sparkle of her eyes.
+You can never devote your whole mind to those studies which I
+have planned for you whilst such distractions exist.
+A touch of this keen point, and the laughing Karamaneh becomes
+the shrieking hag--the maniacal, mowing--"
+
+Then, with an ox-like rush, Weymouth was upon him!
+
+Karamaneh, wrought upon past endurance, with a sobbing cry, sank to the deck--
+and lay still.  I managed to writhe into a half-sitting posture, and Smith
+rolled aside as the detective and the Chinaman crashed down together.
+
+Weymouth had one big hand at the Doctor's yellow throat;
+with his left he grasped the Chinaman's right.
+It held the needle.
+
+Now, I could look along, the length of the little craft, and, so far
+as it was possible to make out in the fog, only one other was aboard--
+the half-clad brown man who navigated her--and who had carried us through
+the cellars.  The murk had grown denser and now shut us in like a box.
+The throb of the motor--the hissing breath of the two who fought--
+with so much at issue--these sounds and the wash of the water alone
+broke the eerie stillness.
+
+By slow degrees, and with a reptilian agility horrible to watch,
+Fu-Manchu was neutralizing the advantage gained by Weymouth.
+His clawish fingers were fast in the big man's throat; the right hand
+with its deadly needle was forcing down the left of his opponent.
+He had been underneath, but now he was gaining the upper place.
+His powers of physical endurance must have been truly marvelous.
+His breath was whistling through his nostrils significantly,
+but Weymouth was palpably tiring.
+
+The latter suddenly changed his tactics.  By a supreme effort,
+to which he was spurred, I think, by the growing proximity
+of the needle, he raised Fu-Manchu--by the throat and arm--
+and pitched him sideways.
+
+The Chinaman's grip did not relax, and the two wrestlers dropped,
+a writhing mass, upon the port cushions.  The launch heeled over,
+and my cry of horror was crushed back into my throat by the bandage.
+For, as Fu-Manchu sought to extricate himself, he overbalanced--
+fell back--and, bearing Weymouth with him--slid into the river!
+
+The mist swallowed them up.
+
+There are moments of which no man can recall his mental impressions,
+moments so acutely horrible that, mercifully, our memory retains
+nothing of the emotions they occasioned.  This was one of them.
+A chaos ruled in my mind.  I had a vague belief that the Burman,
+forward, glanced back.  Then the course of the launch was changed.
+How long intervened between the tragic end of that Gargantuan struggle
+and the time when a black wall leaped suddenly up before us I cannot
+pretend to state.
+
+With a sickening jerk we ran aground.  A loud explosion ensued,
+and I clearly remember seeing the brown man leap out into the fog--
+which was the last I saw of him.
+
+Water began to wash aboard.
+
+Fully alive to our imminent peril, I fought with the cords
+that bound me; but I lacked poor Weymouth's strength of wrist,
+and I began to accept as a horrible and imminent possibility,
+a death from drowning, within six feet of the bank.
+
+Beside me, Nayland Smith was straining and twisting.  I think
+his object was to touch Karamaneh, in the hope of arousing her.
+Where he failed in his project, the inflowing water succeeded.
+A silent prayer of thankfulness came from my very soul when I
+saw her stir--when I saw her raise her hands to her head--
+and saw the big, horror-bright eyes gleam through the mist veil.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+WE quitted the wrecked launch but a few seconds before her
+stern settled down into the river.  Where the mud-bank upon
+which we found ourselves was situated we had no idea.
+But at least it was terra firma and we were free from Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+Smith stood looking out towards the river.
+
+"My God!" he groaned.  "My God!"
+
+He was thinking, as I was, of Weymouth.
+
+And when, an hour later, the police boat located us (on the mud-flats
+below Greenwich) and we heard that the toll of the poison cellars
+was eight men, we also heard news of our brave companion.
+
+
+"Back there in the fog, sir," reported Inspector Ryman, who was in charge,
+and his voice was under poor command, "there was an uncanny howling,
+and peals of laughter that I'm going to dream about for weeks--"
+
+Karamaneh, who nestled beside me like a frightened child, shivered; and I
+knew that the needle had done its work, despite Weymouth's giant strength.
+
+Smith swallowed noisily.
+
+"Pray God the river has that yellow Satan," he said.
+"I would sacrifice a year of my life to see his rat's body
+on the end of a grappling-iron!"
+
+We were a sad party that steamed through the fog homeward that night.
+It seemed almost like deserting a staunch comrade to leave the spot--so nearly
+as we could locate it--where Weymouth had put up that last gallant fight.
+Our helplessness was pathetic, and although, had the night been clear
+as crystal, I doubt if we could have acted otherwise, it came to me that this
+stinking murk was a new enemy which drove us back in coward retreat.
+
+But so many were the calls upon our activity, and so numerous
+the stimulants to our initiative in those times, that soon we
+had matter to relieve our minds from this stress of sorrow.
+
+There was Karamaneh to be considered--Karamaneh and her brother.
+A brief counsel was held, whereat it was decided that for the present
+they should be lodged at a hotel.
+
+"I shall arrange," Smith whispered to me, for the girl was watching us,
+"to have the place patrolled night and day."
+
+"You cannot suppose--"
+
+"Petrie!  I cannot and dare not suppose Fu-Manchu dead until with my own
+eyes I have seen him so!"
+
+Accordingly we conveyed the beautiful Oriental girl and her
+brother away from that luxurious abode in its sordid setting.
+I will not dwell upon the final scene in the poison cellars
+lest I be accused of accumulating horror for horror's sake.
+Members of the fire brigade, helmed against contagion, brought out
+the bodies of the victims wrapped in their living shrouds. . . .
+
+From Karamaneh we learned much of Fu-Manchu, little of herself.
+
+"What am I?  Does my poor history matter--to anyone?"
+was her answer to questions respecting herself.
+
+And she would droop her lashes over her dark eyes.
+
+The dacoits whom the Chinaman had brought to England originally
+numbered seven, we learned.  As you, having followed me thus far,
+will be aware, we had thinned the ranks of the Burmans.
+Probably only one now remained in England.  They had
+lived in a camp in the grounds of the house near Windsor
+(which, as we had learned at the time of its destruction,
+the Doctor had bought outright). The Thames had been his highway.
+
+Other members of the group had occupied quarters in various parts
+of the East End, where sailormen of all nationalities congregate.
+Shen-Yan's had been the East End headquarters.  He had employed the hulk
+from the time of his arrival, as a laboratory for a certain class
+of experiments undesirable in proximity to a place of residence.
+
+Nayland Smith asked the girl on one occasion if the Chinaman had had
+a private sea-going vessel, and she replied in the affirmative.
+She had never been on board, however, had never even set eyes upon it,
+and could give us no information respecting its character.
+It had sailed for China.
+
+"You are sure," asked Smith keenly, "that it has actually left?"
+
+"I understood so, and that we were to follow by another route."
+
+"It would have been difficult for Fu-Manchu to travel by a passenger boat?"
+
+"I cannot say what were his plans."
+
+In a state of singular uncertainty, then, readily to be understood,
+we passed the days following the tragedy which had deprived us
+of our fellow-worker.
+
+Vividly I recall the scene at poor Weymouth's home, on the day that we
+visited it.  I then made the acquaintance of the Inspector's brother.
+Nayland Smith gave him a detailed account of the last scene.
+
+"Out there in the mist," he concluded wearily, "it all seemed very unreal."
+
+"I wish to God it had been!"
+
+"Amen to that, Mr. Weymouth.  But your brother made a gallant finish.
+If ridding the world of Fu-Manchu were the only good deed to his credit,
+his life had been well spent."
+
+James Weymouth smoked awhile in thoughtful silence.
+Though but four and a half miles S.S.E. of St. Paul's the quaint
+little cottage, with its rustic garden, shadowed by the tall trees
+which had so lined the village street before motor 'buses were,
+was a spot as peaceful and secluded as any in broad England.
+But another shadow lay upon it to-day--chilling, fearful.
+An incarnate evil had come out of the dim East and in its dying
+malevolence had touched this home.
+
+"There are two things I don't understand about it, sir," continued Weymouth.
+"What was the meaning of the horrible laughter which the river police heard
+in the fog?  And where are the bodies?"
+
+Karamaneh, seated beside me, shuddered at the words.
+Smith, whose restless spirit granted him little repose,
+paused in his aimless wanderings about the room and looked at her.
+
+In these latter days of his Augean labors to purge England
+of the unclean thing which had fastened upon her, my friend
+was more lean and nervous-looking than I had ever known him.
+His long residence in Burma had rendered him spare
+and had burned his naturally dark skin to a coppery hue;
+but now his gray eyes had grown feverishly bright and his
+face so lean as at times to appear positively emaciated.
+But I knew that he was as fit as ever.
+
+"This lady may be able to answer your first question," he said.
+"She and her brother were for some time in the household of
+Dr. Fu-Manchu. In fact, Mr. Weymouth, Karamaneh, as her name implies,
+was a slave."
+
+Weymouth glanced at the beautiful, troubled face with scarcely
+veiled distrust.  "You don't look as though you had come
+from China, miss," he said, with a sort of unwilling admiration.
+
+"I do not come from China," replied Karamaneh.  "My father
+was a pure Bedawee.  But my history does not matter."
+(At times there was something imperious in her manner; and to this
+her musical accent added force.) "When your brave brother,
+Inspector Weymouth, and Dr. Fu-Manchu, were swallowed up
+by the river, Fu-Manchu held a poisoned needle in his hand.
+The laughter meant that the needle had done its work.
+Your brother had become mad!"
+
+Weymouth turned aside to hide his emotion.  "What was on the needle?"
+he asked huskily.
+
+"It was something which he prepared from the venom of a kind of swamp adder,"
+she answered.  "It produces madness, but not always death."
+
+"He would have had a poor chance," said Smith, "even had he been in complete
+possession of his senses.  At the time of the encounter we must have been
+some considerable distance from shore, and the fog was impenetrable."
+
+"But how do you account for the fact that neither of the bodies
+have been recovered?"
+
+"Ryman of the river police tells me that persons lost at that point
+are not always recovered--or not until a considerable time later."
+
+There was a faint sound from the room above.  The news of that
+tragic happening out in the mist upon the Thames had prostrated
+poor Mrs. Weymouth.
+
+"She hasn't been told half the truth," said her brother-in-law. "She doesn't
+know about--the poisoned needle.  What kind of fiend was this Dr. Fu-Manchu?"
+He burst out into a sudden blaze of furious resentment.  "John never told
+me much, and you have let mighty little leak into the papers.  What was he?
+Who was he?"
+
+Half he addressed the words to Smith, half to Karamaneh.
+
+"Dr. Fu-Manchu," replied the former, "was the ultimate expression of
+Chinese cunning; a phenomenon such as occurs but once in many generations.
+He was a superman of incredible genius, who, had he willed,
+could have revolutionized science.  There is a superstition in some
+parts of China according to which, under certain peculiar conditions
+(one of which is proximity to a deserted burial-ground) an evil spirit
+of incredible age may enter unto the body of a new-born infant.
+All my efforts thus far have not availed me to trace the genealogy
+of the man called Dr. Fu-Manchu. Even Karamaneh cannot help me in this.
+But I have sometimes thought that he was a member of a certain very old
+Kiangsu family--and that the peculiar conditions I have mentioned
+prevailed at his birth!"
+
+Smith, observing our looks of amazement, laughed shortly,
+and quite mirthlessly.
+
+"Poor old Weymouth!" he jerked.  "I suppose my labors are finished;
+but I am far from triumphant.  Is there any improvement in
+Mrs. Weymouth's condition?"
+
+"Very little," was the reply; "she has lain in a semi-conscious
+state since the news came.  No one had any idea she would
+take it so.  At one time we were afraid her brain was going.
+She seemed to have delusions."
+
+Smith spun round upon Weymouth.
+
+"Of what nature?" he asked rapidly.
+
+The other pulled nervously at his mustache.
+
+"My wife has been staying with her," he explained, "since--it happened;
+and for the last three nights poor John's widow has cried out at
+the same time--half-past two--that someone was knocking on the door."
+
+"What door?"
+
+"That door yonder--the street door."
+
+All our eyes turned in the direction indicated.
+
+"John often came home at half-past two from the Yard," continued Weymouth;
+"so we naturally thought poor Mary was wandering in her mind.
+But last night--and it's not to be wondered at--my wife couldn't sleep,
+and she was wide awake at half-past two."
+
+"Well?"
+
+Nayland Smith was standing before him, alert, bright-eyed.
+
+"She heard it, too!"
+
+The sun was streaming into the cozy little sitting-room;
+but I will confess that Weymouth's words chilled me uncannily.
+Karamaneh laid her hand upon mine, in a quaint, childish fashion
+peculiarly her own.  Her hand was cold, but its touch thrilled me.
+For Karamaneh was not a child, but a rarely beautiful girl--
+a pearl of the East such as many a monarch has fought for.
+
+"What then?" asked Smith.
+
+"She was afraid to move--afraid to look from the window!"
+
+My friend turned and stared hard at me.
+
+"A subjective hallucination, Petrie?"
+
+"In all probability," I replied.  "You should arrange that
+your wife be relieved in her trying duties, Mr. Weymouth.
+It is too great a strain for an inexperienced nurse."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+OF all that we had hoped for in our pursuit of Fu-Manchu how
+little had we accomplished.  Excepting Karamaneh and her brother
+(who were victims and not creatures of the Chinese doctor's)
+not one of the formidable group had fallen alive into our hands.
+Dreadful crimes had marked Fu-Manchu's passage through the land.
+Not one-half of the truth (and nothing of the later developments)
+had been made public.  Nayland Smith's authority was sufficient
+to control the press.
+
+In the absence of such a veto a veritable panic must have seized upon
+the entire country; for a monster--a thing more than humanly evil--
+existed in our midst.
+
+Always Fu-Manchu's secret activities had centered about the great waterway.
+There was much of poetic justice in his end; for the Thames had claimed him,
+who so long had used the stream as a highway for the passage to and fro for
+his secret forces.  Gone now were the yellow men who had been the instruments
+of his evil will; gone was the giant intellect which had controlled
+the complex murder machine.  Karamaneh, whose beauty he had used as a lure,
+at last was free, and no more with her smile would tempt men to death--
+that her brother might live.
+
+Many there are, I doubt not, who will regard the Eastern girl with horror.
+I ask their forgiveness in that I regarded her quite differently.
+No man having seen her could have condemned her unheard.  Many, having looked
+into her lovely eyes, had they found there what I found, must have forgiven
+her almost any crime.
+
+That she valued human life but little was no matter for wonder.
+Her nationality--her history--furnished adequate excuse for an attitude
+not condonable in a European equally cultured.
+
+But indeed let me confess that hers was a nature incomprehensible to me
+in some respects.  The soul of Karamaneh was a closed book to my short-sighted
+Western eyes.  But the body of Karamaneh was exquisite; her beauty of a kind
+that was a key to the most extravagant rhapsodies of Eastern poets.
+Her eyes held a challenge wholly Oriental in its appeal; her lips,
+even in repose, were a taunt.  And, herein, East is West and West is East.
+
+Finally, despite her lurid history, despite the scornful self-possession
+of which I knew her capable, she was an unprotected girl--
+in years, I believe, a mere child--whom Fate had cast in my way.
+At her request, we had booked passages for her brother and herself
+to Egypt.  The boat sailed in three days.  But Karamaneh's beautiful
+eyes were sad; often I detected tears on the black lashes.
+Shall I endeavor to describe my own tumultuous, conflicting emotions?
+It would be useless, since I know it to be impossible.
+For in those dark eyes burned a fire I might not see; those silken
+lashes veiled a message I dared not read.
+
+Nayland Smith was not blind to the facts of the complicated situation.
+I can truthfully assert that he was the only man of my acquaintance who,
+having come in contact with Karamaneh, had kept his head.
+
+We endeavored to divert her mind from the recent tragedies by a round
+of amusements, though with poor Weymouth's body still at the mercy
+of unknown waters Smith and I made but a poor show of gayety;
+and I took a gloomy pride in the admiration which our lovely
+companion everywhere excited.  I learned, in those days, how rare
+a thing in nature is a really beautiful woman.
+
+One afternoon we found ourselves at an exhibition of water
+colors in Bond Street.  Karamaneh was intensely interested
+in the subjects of the drawings--which were entirely Egyptian.
+As usual, she furnished matter for comment amongst the other visitors,
+as did the boy, Aziz, her brother, anew upon the world from his
+living grave in the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+Suddenly Aziz clutched at his sister's arm, whispering rapidly in Arabic.
+I saw her peachlike color fade; saw her become pale and wild-eyed--
+the haunted Karamaneh of the old days.
+
+She turned to me.
+
+"Dr. Petrie--he says that Fu-Manchu is here!"
+
+"Where?"
+
+Nayland Smith rapped out the question violently, turning in a flash
+from the picture which he was examining.
+
+"In this room!" she whispered glancing furtively, affrightedly about her.
+"Something tells Aziz when HE is near--and I, too, feel strangely afraid.
+Oh, can it be that he is not dead!"
+
+She held my arm tightly.  Her brother was searching the room with big,
+velvet black eyes.  I studied the faces of the several visitors;
+and Smith was staring about him with the old alert look, and tugging
+nervously at the lobe of his ear.  The name of the giant foe of the white
+race instantaneously had strung him up to a pitch of supreme intensity.
+
+Our united scrutinies discovered no figure which could have been
+that of the Chinese doctor.  Who could mistake that long, gaunt shape,
+with the high, mummy-like shoulders, and the indescribable gait,
+which I can only liken to that of an awkward cat?
+
+Then, over the heads of a group of people who stood by the doorway, I saw
+Smith peering at someone--at someone who passed across the outer room.
+Stepping aside, I, too, obtained a glimpse of this person.
+
+As I saw him, he was a tall, old man, wearing a black Inverness
+coat and a rather shabby silk hat.  He had long white hair
+and a patriarchal beard, wore smoked glasses and walked slowly,
+leaning upon a stick.
+
+Smith's gaunt face paled.  With a rapid glance at Karamaneh,
+he made off across the room.
+
+Could it be Dr. Fu-Manchu?
+
+Many days had passed since, already half-choked by Inspector Weymouth's iron
+grip, Fu-Manchu, before our own eyes, had been swallowed up by the Thames.
+Even now men were seeking his body, and that of his last victim.
+Nor had we left any stone unturned.  Acting upon information furnished
+by Karamaneh, the police had searched every known haunt of the murder group.
+But everything pointed to the fact that the group was disbanded and dispersed;
+that the lord of strange deaths who had ruled it was no more.
+
+Yet Smith was not satisfied.  Neither, let me confess,
+was I. Every port was watched; and in suspected districts
+a kind of house-to-house patrol had been instituted.
+Unknown to the great public, in those days a secret war waged--
+a war in which all the available forces of the authorities
+took the field against one man!  But that one man was the evil
+of the East incarnate.
+
+When we rejoined him, Nayland Smith was talking to the commissionaire
+at the door.  He turned to me.
+
+"That is Professor Jenner Monde," he said.  "The sergeant, here,
+knows him well."
+
+The name of the celebrated Orientalist of course was familiar to me,
+although I had never before set eyes upon him.
+
+"The Professor was out East the last time I was there, sir,"
+stated the commissionaire.  "I often used to see him.  But he's
+an eccentric old gentleman.  Seems to live in a world of his own.
+He's recently back from China, I think."
+
+Nayland Smith stood clicking his teeth together in irritable hesitation.
+I heard Karamaneh sigh, and, looking at her, I saw that her cheeks were
+regaining their natural color.
+
+She smiled in pathetic apology.
+
+"If he was here he is gone," she said.  "I am not afraid now."
+
+Smith thanked the commissionaire for his information and we
+quitted the gallery.
+
+"Professor Jenner Monde," muttered my friend, "has lived so long
+in China as almost to be a Chinaman.  I have never met him--
+never seen him, before; but I wonder--"
+
+"You wonder what, Smith?"
+
+"I wonder if he could possibly be an ally, of the Doctor's!"
+
+I stared at him in amazement.
+
+"If we are to attach any importance to the incident at all,"
+I said, "we must remember that the boy's impression--and Karamaneh's--
+was that Fu-Manchu was present in person."
+
+"I DO attach importance to the incident, Petrie; they are naturally
+sensitive to such impressions.  But I doubt if even the abnormal
+organization of Aziz could distinguish between the hidden presence
+of a creature of the Doctor's and that of the Doctor himself.
+I shall make a point of calling upon Professor Jenner Monde."
+
+But Fate had ordained that much should happen ere Smith made
+his proposed call upon the Professor.
+
+Karamaneh and her brother safely lodged in their hotel
+(which was watched night and day by four men under Smith's
+orders), we returned to my quiet suburban rooms.
+
+"First," said Smith, "let us see what we can find out
+respecting Professor Monde."
+
+He went to the telephone and called up New Scotland Yard.
+There followed some little delay before the requisite information
+was obtained.  Finally, however, we learned that the Professor
+was something of a recluse, having few acquaintances,
+and fewer friends.
+
+He lived alone in chambers in New Inn Court, Carey Street.
+A charwoman did such cleaning as was considered necessary
+by the Professor, who employed no regular domestic.
+When he was in London he might be seen fairly frequently
+at the British Museum, where his shabby figure was familiar
+to the officials.  When he was not in London--that is,
+during the greater part of each year--no one knew where he went.
+He never left any address to which letters might be forwarded.
+
+"How long has he been in London now?" asked Smith.
+
+So far as could be ascertained from New Inn Court (replied Scotland Yard)
+roughly a week.
+
+My friend left the telephone and began restlessly to pace the room.
+The charred briar was produced and stuffed with that broad cut Latakia
+mixture of which Nayland Smith consumed close upon a pound a week.
+He was one of those untidy smokers who leave tangled tufts
+hanging from the pipe-bowl and when they light up strew the floor
+with smoldering fragments.
+
+A ringing came, and shortly afterwards a girl entered.
+
+"Mr. James Weymouth to see you, sir."
+
+"Hullo!" rapped Smith.  "What's this?"
+
+Weymouth entered, big and florid, and in some respects
+singularly like his brother, in others as singularly unlike.
+Now, in his black suit, he was a somber figure; and in the blue
+eyes I read a fear suppressed.
+
+"Mr. Smith," he began, "there's something uncanny going on at Maple Cottage."
+
+Smith wheeled the big arm-chair forward.
+
+"Sit down, Mr. Weymouth," he said.  "I am not entirely surprised.
+But you have my attention.  What has occurred?"
+
+Weymouth took a cigarette from the box which I proffered and poured
+out a peg of whisky.  His hand was not quite steady.
+
+"That knocking," he explained.  "It came again the night
+after you were there, and Mrs. Weymouth--my wife, I mean--
+felt that she couldn't spend another night there, alone" "Did she
+look out of the window?" I asked.
+
+"No, Doctor; she was afraid.  But I spent last night downstairs
+in the sitting-room--and _I_ looked out!"
+
+He took a gulp from his glass.  Nayland Smith, seated on
+the edge of the table, his extinguished pipe in his hand,
+was watching him keenly.
+
+"I'll admit I didn't look out at once," Weymouth resumed.
+"There was something so uncanny, gentlemen, in that knocking--
+knocking--in the dead of the night.  I thought"--his voice
+shook--"of poor Jack, lying somewhere amongst the slime
+of the river--and, oh, my God!  it came to me that it was Jack
+who was knocking--and I dare not think what he--what it--
+would look like!"
+
+He leaned forward, his chin in his hand.  For a few moments we
+were all silent.
+
+"I know I funked," he continued huskily.  "But when the wife came
+to the head of the stairs and whispered to me:  `There it is again.
+What in heaven's name can it be'--I started to unbolt the door.
+The knocking had stopped.  Everything was very still.
+I heard Mary--HIS widow--sobbing, upstairs; that was all.
+I opened the door, a little bit at a time."
+
+Pausing again, he cleared his throat, and went on:
+
+"It was a bright night, and there was no one there--not a soul.
+But somewhere down the lane, as I looked out into the porch, I heard
+most awful groans!  They got fainter and fainter.  Then--I could
+have sworn I heard SOMEONE LAUGHING!  My nerves cracked up at that;
+and I shut the door again."
+
+The narration of his weird experience revived something of the natural
+fear which it had occasioned.  He raised his glass, with unsteady hand,
+and drained it.
+
+Smith struck a match and relighted his pipe.  He began to pace
+the room again.  His eyes were literally on fire.
+
+"Would it be possible to get Mrs. Weymouth out of the house
+before to-night?  Remove her to your place, for instance?"
+he asked abruptly.
+
+Weymouth looked up in surprise.
+
+"She seems to be in a very low state," he replied.  He glanced at me.
+"Perhaps Dr. Petrie would give us an opinion?"
+
+"I will come and see her," I said.  "But what is your idea, Smith?"
+
+"I want to hear that knocking!" he rapped.  "But in what I may see fit
+to do I must not be handicapped by the presence of a sick woman."
+
+"Her condition at any rate will admit of our administering an opiate,"
+I suggested.  "That would meet the situation?"
+
+"Good!" cried Smith.  He was intensely excited now.
+"I rely upon you to arrange something, Petrie.  Mr. Weymouth"--
+he turned to our visitor--"I shall be with you this evening
+not later than twelve o'clock."
+
+Weymouth appeared to be greatly relieved.  I asked him
+to wait whilst I prepared a drought for the patient.
+When he was gone:
+
+"What do you think this knocking means, Smith?" I asked.
+
+He tapped out his pipe on the side of the grate and began with nervous
+energy to refill it again from the dilapidated pouch.
+
+"I dare not tell you what I hope, Petrie," he replied--
+"nor what I fear."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+DUSK was falling when we made our way in the direction of Maple Cottage.
+Nayland Smith appeared to be keenly interested in the character
+of the district.  A high and ancient wall bordered the road along
+which we walked for a considerable distance.  Later it gave place
+to a rickety fence.
+
+My friend peered through a gap in the latter.
+
+"There is quite an extensive estate here," he said, "not yet
+cut up by the builder.  It is well wooded on one side,
+and there appears to be a pool lower down."
+
+The road was a quiet one, and we plainly heard the tread--
+quite unmistakable--of an approaching policeman.
+Smith continued to peer through the hole in the fence,
+until the officer drew up level with us.  Then:
+
+"Does this piece of ground extend down to the village,
+constable?" he inquired.
+
+Quite willing for a chat, the man stopped, and stood with his thumbs
+thrust in his belt.
+
+"Yes, sir.  They tell me three new roads will be made through it
+between here and the hill."
+
+"It must be a happy hunting ground for tramps?"
+
+"I've seen some suspicious-looking coves about at times.
+But after dusk an army might be inside there and nobody would
+ever be the wiser."
+
+"Burglaries frequent in the houses backing on to it?"
+
+"Oh, no.  A favorite game in these parts is snatching
+loaves and bottles of milk from the doors, first thing,
+as they're delivered.  There's been an extra lot of it lately.
+My mate who relieves me has got special instructions
+to keep his eye open in the mornings!"  The man grinned.
+"It wouldn't be a very big case even if he caught anybody!"
+"No," said Smith absently; "perhaps not.  Your business must
+be a dry one this warm weather.  Good-night."
+
+"Good-night, sir," replied the constable, richer by
+half-a-crown--"and thank you."
+
+Smith stared after him for a moment, tugging reflectively at the lobe
+of his ear.
+
+"I don't know that it wouldn't be a big case, after all," he murmured.
+"Come on, Petrie."
+
+Not another word did he speak, until we stood at the gate of Maple Cottage.
+There a plain-clothes man was standing, evidently awaiting Smith.
+He touched his hat.
+
+"Have you found a suitable hiding-place?" asked my companion rapidly.
+
+"Yes, sir," was the reply.  "Kent--my mate--is there now.
+You'll notice that he can't be seen from here."
+
+"No," agreed Smith, peering all about him.  "He can't. Where is he?"
+
+"Behind the broken wall," explained the man, pointing.
+"Through that ivy there's a clear view of the cottage door."
+
+"Good.  Keep your eyes open.  If a messenger comes for me, he is to
+be intercepted, you understand.  No one must be allowed to disturb us.
+You will recognize the messenger.  He will be one of your fellows.
+Should he come--hoot three times, as much like an owl as you can."
+
+We walked up to the porch of the cottage.  In response to Smith's ringing
+came James Weymouth, who seemed greatly relieved by our arrival.
+
+"First," said my friend briskly, "you had better run up and see the patient."
+
+Accordingly, I followed Weymouth upstairs and was admitted by his
+wife to a neat little bedroom where the grief-stricken woman lay,
+a wanly pathetic sight.
+
+"Did you administer the draught, as directed?" I asked.
+
+Mrs. James Weymouth nodded.  She was a kindly looking woman,
+with the same dread haunting her hazel eyes as that which lurked
+in her husband's blue ones.
+
+The patient was sleeping soundly.  Some whispered instructions I gave to
+the faithful nurse and descended to the sitting-room. It was a warm night,
+and Weymouth sat by the open window, smoking.  The dim light from the lamp
+on the table lent him an almost startling likeness to his brother; and for
+a moment I stood at the foot of the stairs scarce able to trust my reason.
+Then he turned his face fully towards me, and the illusion was lost.
+
+"Do you think she is likely to wake, Doctor?" he asked.
+
+"I think not," I replied.
+
+Nayland Smith stood upon the rug before the hearth, swinging from one
+foot to the other, in his nervously restless way.  The room was foggy
+with the fumes of tobacco, for he, too, was smoking.
+
+At intervals of some five to ten minutes, his blackened briar
+(which I never knew him to clean or scrape) would go out.
+I think Smith used more matches than any other smoker I have
+ever met, and he invariably carried three boxes in various
+pockets of his garments.
+
+The tobacco habit is infectious, and, seating myself in an arm-chair,
+I lighted a cigarette.  For this dreary vigil I had come prepared
+with a bunch of rough notes, a writing-block, and a fountain pen.
+I settled down to work upon my record of the Fu-Manchu case.
+
+Silence fell upon Maple Cottage.  Save for the shuddering sigh
+which whispered through the over-hanging cedars and Smith's eternal
+match-striking, nothing was there to disturb me in my task.
+Yet I could make little progress.  Between my mind and the chapter upon
+which I was at work a certain sentence persistently intruded itself.
+It was as though an unseen hand held the written page closely before my eyes.
+This was the sentence:
+
+"Imagine a person, tall, lean, and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow
+like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long,
+magnetic eyes of the true cat-green: invest him with all the cruel cunning
+of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect. . ."
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu!  Fu-Manchu as Smith had described him to me on that night
+which now seemed so remotely distant--the night upon which I had learned
+of the existence of the wonderful and evil being born of that secret
+quickening which stirred in the womb of the yellow races.
+
+As Smith, for the ninth or tenth time, knocked out his pipe on a bar
+of the grate, the cuckoo clock in the kitchen proclaimed the hour.
+
+"Two," said James Weymouth.
+
+I abandoned my task, replacing notes and writing-block in the bag that I
+had with me.  Weymouth adjusted the lamp which had begun to smoke.
+
+I tiptoed to the stairs and, stepping softly, ascended to the sick room.
+All was quiet, and Mrs. Weymouth whispered to me that the patient still
+slept soundly.  I returned to find Nayland Smith pacing about the room
+in that state of suppressed excitement habitual with him in the approach
+of any crisis.  At a quarter past two the breeze dropped entirely,
+and such a stillness reigned all about us as I could not have supposed
+possible so near to the ever-throbbing heart of the great metropolis.
+Plainly I could hear Weymouth's heavy breathing.  He sat at the window
+and looked out into the black shadows under the cedars.  Smith ceased
+his pacing and stood again on the rug very still.  He was listening!
+I doubt not we were all listening.
+
+Some faint sound broke the impressive stillness, coming from the direction
+of the village street.  It was a vague, indefinite disturbance,
+brief, and upon it ensued a silence more marked than ever.
+Some minutes before, Smith had extinguished the lamp.
+In the darkness I heard his teeth snap sharply together.
+
+The call of an owl sounded very clearly three times.
+
+I knew that to mean that a messenger had come; but from whence or bearing
+what tidings I knew not.  My friend's plans were incomprehensible to me,
+nor had I pressed him for any explanation of their nature, knowing him
+to be in that high-strung and somewhat irritable mood which claimed him
+at times of uncertainty--when he doubted the wisdom of his actions,
+the accuracy of his surmises.  He gave no sign.
+
+Very faintly I heard a clock strike the half-hour. A soft breeze
+stole again through the branches above.  The wind I thought must
+be in a new quarter since I had not heard the clock before.
+In so lonely a spot it was difficult to believe that the bell
+was that of St. Paul's. Yet such was the fact.
+
+And hard upon the ringing followed another sound--a sound we all had expected,
+had waited for; but at whose coming no one of us, I think, retained complete
+mastery of himself.
+
+Breaking up the silence in a manner that set my heart wildly leaping it came--
+an imperative knocking on the door!
+
+"My God!" groaned Weymouth--but he did not move from his position
+at the window.
+
+"Stand by, Petrie!" said Smith.
+
+He strode to the door--and threw it widely open.
+
+I know I was very pale.  I think I cried out as I fell back--
+retreated with clenched hands from before THAT which stood
+on the threshold.
+
+It was a wild, unkempt figure, with straggling beard, hideously staring eyes.
+With its hands it clutched at its hair--at its chin; plucked at its mouth.
+No moonlight touched the features of this unearthly visitant,
+but scanty as was the illumination we could see the gleaming teeth--
+and the wildly glaring eyes.
+
+It began to laugh--peal after peal--hideous and shrill.
+
+Nothing so terrifying had ever smote upon my ears.
+I was palsied by the horror of the sound.
+
+Then Nayland Smith pressed the button of an electric torch which he carried.
+He directed the disk of white light fully upon the face in the doorway.
+
+"Oh, God!" cried Weymouth.  "It's John!"--and again and again:
+"Oh, God!  Oh, God!"
+
+Perhaps for the first time in my life I really believed (nay, I
+could not doubt) that a thing of another world stood before me.
+I am ashamed to confess the extent of the horror that came upon me.
+James Weymouth raised his hands, as if to thrust away from him
+that awful thing in the door.  He was babbling--prayers, I think,
+but wholly incoherent.
+
+"Hold him, Petrie!"
+
+Smith's voice was low.  (When we were past thought or intelligent action,
+he, dominant and cool, with that forced calm for which, a crisis over,
+he always paid so dearly, was thinking of the woman who slept above.)
+
+He leaped forward; and in the instant that he grappled with
+the one who had knocked I knew the visitant for a man of flesh
+and blood--a man who shrieked and fought like a savage animal,
+foamed at the mouth and gnashed his teeth in horrid frenzy;
+knew him for a madman--knew him for the victim of Fu-Manchu--
+not dead, but living--for Inspector Weymouth--a maniac!
+
+In a flash I realized all this and sprang to Smith's assistance.
+There was a sound of racing footsteps and the men who had been
+watching outside came running into the porch.  A third was with them;
+and the five of us (for Weymouth's brother had not yet grasped
+the fact that a man and not a spirit shrieked and howled in our midst)
+clung to the infuriated madman, yet barely held our own with him.
+
+"The syringe, Petrie!" gasped Smith.  "Quick!  You must manage
+to make an injection!"
+
+I extricated myself and raced into the cottage for my bag.
+A hypodermic syringe ready charged I had brought with me
+at Smith's request.  Even in that thrilling moment I could
+find time to admire the wonderful foresight of my friend,
+who had divined what would befall--isolated the strange,
+pitiful truth from the chaotic circumstances which saw us
+at Maple Cottage that night.
+
+Let me not enlarge upon the end of the awful struggle.
+At one time I despaired (we all despaired) of quieting the poor,
+demented creature.  But at last it was done; and the gaunt,
+blood-stained savage whom we had known as Detective-Inspector
+Weymouth lay passive upon the couch in his own sitting-room. A
+great wonder possessed my mind for the genius of the uncanny
+being who with the scratch of a needle had made a brave
+and kindly man into this unclean, brutish thing.
+
+Nayland Smith, gaunt and wild-eyed, and trembling yet with his
+tremendous exertions, turned to the man whom I knew to be
+the messenger from Scotland Yard.
+
+"Well?" he rapped.
+
+"He is arrested, sir," the detective reported.  "They have kept
+him at his chambers as you ordered."
+
+"Has she slept through it?" said Smith to me.
+(I had just returned from a visit to the room above.) I nodded.
+
+"Is HE safe for an hour or two?"--indicating the figure on the couch.
+"For eight or ten," I replied grimly.
+
+"Come, then.  Our night's labors are not nearly complete."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+LATER was forthcoming evidence to show that poor Weymouth had lived
+a wild life, in hiding among the thick bushes of the tract of land
+which lay between the village and the suburb on the neighboring hill.
+Literally, he had returned to primitive savagery and some of his food
+had been that of the lower animals, though he had not scrupled to steal,
+as we learned when his lair was discovered.
+
+He had hidden himself cunningly; but witnesses appeared who had seen him,
+in the dusk, and fled from him.  They never learned that the object
+of their fear was Inspector John Weymouth.  How, having escaped death
+in the Thames, he had crossed London unobserved, we never knew;
+but his trick of knocking upon his own door at half-past two each morning
+(a sort of dawning of sanity mysteriously linked with old custom)
+will be a familiar class of symptom to all students of alienation.
+
+I revert to the night when Smith solved the mystery of the knocking.
+
+In a car which he had in waiting at the end of the village we sped
+through the deserted streets to New Inn Court.  I, who had followed
+Nayland Smith through the failures and successes of his mission,
+knew that to-night he had surpassed himself; had justified the confidence
+placed in him by the highest authorities.
+
+We were admitted to an untidy room--that of a student,
+a traveler and a crank--by a plain-clothes officer.
+Amid picturesque and disordered fragments of a hundred ages,
+in a great carven chair placed before a towering statue
+of the Buddha, sat a hand-cuffed man.  His white hair
+and beard were patriarchal; his pose had great dignity.
+But his expression was entirely masked by the smoked glasses
+which he wore.
+
+Two other detectives were guarding the prisoner.
+
+"We arrested Professor Jenner Monde as he came in, sir,"
+reported the man who had opened the door.  "He has made no statement.
+I hope there isn't a mistake."
+
+"I hope not," rapped Smith.
+
+He strode across the room.  He was consumed by a fever of excitement.
+Almost savagely, he tore away the beard, tore off the snowy wig dashed
+the smoked glasses upon the floor.
+
+A great, high brow was revealed, and green, malignant eyes, which fixed
+themselves upon him with an expression I never can forget.
+
+IT WAS DR. FU-MANCHU!
+
+One intense moment of silence ensued--of silence which seemed
+to throb.  Then:
+
+"What have you done with Professor Monde?" demanded Smith.
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu showed his even, yellow teeth in the singularly evil
+smile which I knew so well.  A manacled prisoner he sat as unruffled
+as a judge upon the bench.  In truth and in justice I am compelled
+to say that Fu-Manchu was absolutely fearless.
+
+"He has been detained in China," he replied, in smooth,
+sibilant tones--"by affairs of great urgency.  His well-known
+personality and ungregarious habits have served me well, here!"
+
+Smith, I could see, was undetermined how to act; he stood tugging at his ear
+and glancing from the impassive Chinaman to the wondering detectives.
+
+"What are we to do, sir?" one of them asked.
+
+"Leave Dr. Petrie and myself alone with the prisoner, until I call you."
+
+The three withdrew.  I divined now what was coming.
+
+"Can you restore Weymouth's sanity?" rapped Smith abruptly.
+"I cannot save you from the hangman, nor"--his fists clenched
+convulsively--"would I if I could; but--"
+
+Fu-Manchu fixed his brilliant eyes upon him.
+
+"Say no more, Mr. Smith," he interrupted; "you misunderstand me.
+I do not quarrel with that, but what I have done from conviction
+and what I have done of necessity are separated--are seas apart.
+The brave Inspector Weymouth I wounded with a poisoned needle,
+in self-defense; but I regret his condition as greatly as you do.
+I respect such a man.  There is an antidote to the poison
+of the needle."
+
+"Name it," said Smith.
+
+Fu-Manchu smiled again.
+
+"Useless," he replied.  "I alone can prepare it.  My secrets
+shall die with me.  I will make a sane man of Inspector Weymouth,
+but no one else shall be in the house but he and I."
+
+"It will be surrounded by police," interrupted Smith grimly.
+
+"As you please," said Fu-Manchu. "Make your arrangements.
+In that ebony case upon the table are the instruments for the cure.
+Arrange for me to visit him where and when you will--"
+
+"I distrust you utterly.  It is some trick," jerked Smith.
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu rose slowly and drew himself up to his great height.
+His manacled hands could not rob him of the uncanny dignity which was his.
+He raised them above his head with a tragic gesture and fixed his piercing
+gaze upon Nayland Smith.
+
+"The God of Cathay bear me," he said, with a deep, guttural note
+in his voice--"I swear--"
+
+
+The most awful visitor who ever threatened the peace of England, the end
+of the visit of Fu-Manchu was characteristic--terrible--inexplicable.
+
+Strange to relate, I did not doubt that this weird
+being had conceived some kind of admiration or respect
+for the man to whom he had wrought so terrible an injury.
+He was capable of such sentiments, for he entertained some
+similar one in regard to myself.
+
+A cottage farther down the village street than Weymouth's was vacant, and in
+the early dawn of that morning became the scene of outre happenings.
+Poor Weymouth, still in a comatose condition, we removed there (Smith having
+secured the key from the astonished agent). I suppose so strange a specialist
+never visited a patient before--certainly not under such conditions.
+
+For into the cottage, which had been entirely surrounded by a ring
+of police, Dr. Fu-Manchu was admitted from the closed car in which,
+his work of healing complete, he was to be borne to prison--to death!
+
+Law and justice were suspended by my royally empowered friend that the enemy
+of the white race might heal one of those who had hunted him down!
+
+No curious audience was present, for sunrise was not yet come;
+no concourse of excited students followed the hand of the Master;
+but within that surrounded cottage was performed one of those
+miracles of science which in other circumstances had made the fame
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu to live forever.
+
+Inspector Weymouth, dazed, disheveled, clutching his head
+as a man who has passed through the Valley of the Shadow--
+but sane--sane!--walked out into the porch!
+
+He looked towards us--his eyes wild, but not with the fearsome
+wildness of insanity.
+
+"Mr. Smith!" he cried--and staggered down the path--"Dr. Petrie!  What--"
+
+There came a deafening explosion.  From EVERY visible window
+of the deserted cottage flames burst forth!
+
+"QUICK!" Smith's voice rose almost to a scream--"into the house!"
+
+He raced up the path, past Inspector Weymouth, who stood
+swaying there like a drunken man.  I was close upon his heels.
+Behind me came the police.
+
+The door was impassable!  Already, it vomited a deathly heat,
+borne upon stifling fumes like those of the mouth of the Pit.
+We burst a window.  The room within was a furnace!
+
+"My God!" cried someone.  "This is supernatural!"
+
+"Listen!" cried another.  "Listen!"
+
+The crowd which a fire can conjure up at any hour of day
+or night, out of the void of nowhere, was gathering already.
+But upon all descended a pall of silence.
+
+From the heat of the holocaust a voice proclaimed itself--a voice raised,
+not in anguish but in TRIUMPH!  It chanted barbarically--and was still.
+
+The abnormal flames rose higher--leaping forth from every window.
+
+"The alarm!" said Smith hoarsely.  "Call up the brigade!"
+
+
+I come to the close of my chronicle, and feel that I betray a trust--
+the trust of my reader.  For having limned in the colors at my
+command the fiendish Chinese doctor, I am unable to conclude my task
+as I should desire, unable, with any consciousness of finality,
+to write Finis to the end of my narrative.
+
+It seems to me sometimes that my pen is but temporarily idle--that I
+have but dealt with a single phase of a movement having a hundred phases.
+One sequel I hope for, and against all the promptings of logic and
+Western bias.  If my hope shall be realized I cannot, at this time,
+pretend to state.
+
+The future, 'mid its many secrets, holds this precious one from me.
+
+I ask you then, to absolve me from the charge of ill completing my work;
+for any curiosity with which this narrative may leave the reader burdened
+is shared by the writer.
+
+With intent, I have rushed you from the chambers of Professor
+Jenner Monde to that closing episode at the deserted cottage;
+I have made the pace hot in order to impart to these last
+pages of my account something of the breathless scurry which
+characterized those happenings.
+
+My canvas may seem sketchy:  it is my impression of the reality.
+No hard details remain in my mind of the dealings of that night.
+Fu-Manchu arrested--Fu-Manchu, manacled, entering the cottage on his
+mission of healing; Weymouth, miraculously rendered sane, coming forth;
+the place in flames.
+
+And then?
+
+To a shell the cottage burned, with an incredible rapidity
+which pointed to some hidden agency; to a shell about ashes
+which held NO TRACE OF HUMAN BONES!
+
+It has been asked of me:  Was there no possibility of
+Fu-Manchu's having eluded us in the ensuing confusion?
+Was there no loophole of escape?
+
+I reply, that so far as I was able to judge, a rat could scarce
+have quitted the building undetected.  Yet that Fu-Manchu had,
+in some incomprehensible manner and by some mysterious agency,
+produced those abnormal flames, I cannot doubt.
+Did he voluntarily ignite his own funeral pyre?
+
+As I write, there lies before me a soiled and creased sheet of vellum.
+It bears some lines traced in a cramped, peculiar, and all but
+illegible hand.  This fragment was found by Inspector Weymouth
+(to this day a man mentally sound) in a pocket of his ragged garments.
+
+When it was written I leave you to judge.  How it came to be where Weymouth
+found it calls for no explanation:
+
+
+"To Mr. Commissioner NAYLAND SMITH and Dr. PETRIE--
+
+"Greeting!  I am recalled home by One who may not be denied.
+In much that I came to do I have failed.  Much that I
+have done I would undo; some little I have undone.
+Out of fire I came--the smoldering fire of a thing one day
+to be a consuming flame; in fire I go.  Seek not my ashes.
+I am the lord of the fires!  Farewell.
+
+"FU-MANCHU."
+
+
+Who has been with me in my several meetings with the man
+who penned that message I leave to adjudge if it be the letter
+of a madman bent upon self-destruction by strange means,
+or the gibe of a preternaturally clever scientist and the most
+elusive being ever born of the land of mystery--China.
+
+For the present, I can aid you no more in the forming of your verdict.
+A day may come though I pray it do not--when I shall be able to throw
+new light upon much that is dark in this matter.  That day, so far as I
+can judge, could only dawn in the event of the Chinaman's survival;
+therefore I pray that the veil be never lifted.
+
+But, as I have said, there is another sequel to this story
+which I can contemplate with a different countenance.
+How, then, shall I conclude this very unsatisfactory account?
+
+Shall I tell you, finally, of my parting with lovely, dark-eyed Karamaneh,
+on board the liner which was to bear her to Egypt?
+
+No, let me, instead, conclude with the words of Nayland Smith:
+
+"_I_ sail for Burma in a fortnight, Petrie.  I have leave to break my
+journey at the Ditch.  How would a run up the Nile fit your programme?
+Bit early for the season, but you might find something to amuse you!
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
+
+
+
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+Project Gutenberg Etext The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer
+#1 in our series by Sax Rohmer
+
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+The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu
+
+by Sax Rohmer
+
+October, 1994  [Etext #173]
+[Date last updated: May 2, 2006]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer
+*******This file should be named fuman12.txt or fuman12.zip******
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+This etext was updated by Stewart A. Levin of Englewood, CO.
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+
+
+
+
+The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu
+
+by Sax Rohmer
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+"A GENTLEMAN to see you, Doctor."
+
+From across the common a clock sounded the half-hour.
+
+"Ten-thirty!" I said.  "A late visitor.  Show him up, if you please."
+
+I pushed my writing aside and tilted the lamp-shade, as footsteps
+sounded on the landing.  The next moment I had jumped to my feet,
+for a tall, lean man, with his square-cut, clean-shaven face
+sun-baked to the hue of coffee, entered and extended both hands,
+with a cry:
+
+"Good old Petrie!  Didn't expect me, I'll swear!"
+
+It was Nayland Smith--whom I had thought to be in Burma!
+
+"Smith," I said, and gripped his hands hard, "this is a delightful surprise!
+Whatever--however--"
+
+"Excuse me, Petrie!" he broke in.  "Don't put it down to the sun!"
+And he put out the lamp, plunging the room into darkness.
+
+I was too surprised to speak.
+
+"No doubt you will think me mad," he continued, and, dimly,
+I could see him at the window, peering out into the road,
+"but before you are many hours older you will know that I
+have good reason to be cautious.  Ah, nothing suspicious!
+Perhaps I am first this time."  And, stepping back to the
+writing-table he relighted the lamp.
+
+"Mysterious enough for you?" he laughed, and glanced at my unfinished MS.
+"A story, eh?  From which I gather that the district is beastly healthy--
+what, Petrie?  Well, I can put some material in your way that, if sheer
+uncanny mystery is a marketable commodity, ought to make you independent
+of influenza and broken legs and shattered nerves and all the rest."
+
+I surveyed him doubtfully, but there was nothing in his appearance
+to justify me in supposing him to suffer from delusions.  His eyes
+were too bright, certainly, and a hardness now had crept over his face.
+I got out the whisky and siphon, saying:
+
+"You have taken your leave early?"
+
+"I am not on leave," he replied, and slowly filled his pipe.
+"I am on duty."
+
+"On duty!" I exclaimed.  "What, are you moved to London or something?"
+
+"I have got a roving commission, Petrie, and it doesn't rest
+with me where I am to-day nor where I shall be to-morrow."
+
+There was something ominous in the words, and, putting down my glass,
+its contents untasted, I faced round and looked him squarely in the eyes.
+"Out with it!" I said.  "What is it all about?"
+
+Smith suddenly stood up and stripped off his coat.
+Rolling back his left shirt-sleeve he revealed a wicked-looking
+wound in the fleshy part of the forearm.  It was quite healed,
+but curiously striated for an inch or so around.
+
+"Ever seen one like it?" he asked.
+
+"Not exactly," I confessed.  "It appears to have been deeply cauterized."
+
+"Right!  Very deeply!" he rapped.  "A barb steeped in the venom
+of a hamadryad went in there!"
+
+A shudder I could not repress ran coldly through me at mention
+of that most deadly of all the reptiles of the East.
+
+"There's only one treatment," he continued, rolling his sleeve down again,
+"and that's with a sharp knife, a match, and a broken cartridge.
+I lay on my back, raving, for three days afterwards, in a forest that stank
+with malaria, but I should have been lying there now if I had hesitated.
+Here's the point.  It was not an accident!"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that it was a deliberate attempt on my life, and I am hard upon
+the tracks of the man who extracted that venom--patiently, drop by drop--
+from the poison-glands of the snake, who prepared that arrow, and who caused
+it to be shot at me."
+
+"What fiend is this?"
+
+"A fiend who, unless my calculations are at fault is now in London,
+and who regularly wars with pleasant weapons of that kind.  Petrie, I have
+traveled from Burma not in the interests of the British Government merely,
+but in the interests of the entire white race, and I honestly believe--
+though I pray I may be wrong--that its survival depends largely upon
+the success of my mission."
+
+To say that I was perplexed conveys no idea of the mental chaos
+created by these extraordinary statements, for into my humdrum
+suburban life Nayland Smith had brought fantasy of the wildest.
+I did not know what to think, what to believe.
+
+"I am wasting precious time!" he rapped decisively, and, draining his glass,
+he stood up.  "I came straight to you, because you are the only man I dare
+to trust.  Except the big chief at headquarters, you are the only person
+in England, I hope, who knows that Nayland Smith has quitted Burma.
+I must have someone with me, Petrie, all the time--it's imperative!
+Can you put me up here, and spare a few days to the strangest business,
+I promise you, that ever was recorded in fact or fiction?"
+
+I agreed readily enough, for, unfortunately, my professional
+duties were not onerous.
+
+"Good man!" he cried, wringing my hand in his impetuous way.
+"We start now."
+
+"What, to-night?"
+
+"To-night!  I had thought of turning in, I must admit.  I have not dared
+to sleep for forty-eight hours, except in fifteen-minute stretches.
+But there is one move that must be made to-night and immediately.
+I must warn Sir Crichton Davey."
+
+"Sir Crichton Davey--of the India--"
+
+"Petrie, he is a doomed man!  Unless he follows my instructions
+without question, without hesitation--before Heaven, nothing can
+save him!  I do not know when the blow will fall, how it will fall,
+nor from whence, but I know that my first duty is to warn him.
+Let us walk down to the corner of the common and get a taxi."
+
+How strangely does the adventurous intrude upon the humdrum;
+for, when it intrudes at all, more often than not its intrusion
+is sudden and unlooked for.  To-day, we may seek for romance
+and fail to find it:  unsought, it lies in wait for us at most
+prosaic corners of life's highway.
+
+The drive that night, though it divided the drably commonplace
+from the wildly bizarre--though it was the bridge between the
+ordinary and the outre--has left no impression upon my mind.
+Into the heart of a weird mystery the cab bore me; and in reviewing
+my memories of those days I wonder that the busy thoroughfares
+through which we passed did not display before my eyes signs
+and portents--warnings.
+
+It was not so.  I recall nothing of the route and little of import
+that passed between us (we both were strangely silent, I think)
+until we were come to our journey's end.  Then:
+
+"What's this?" muttered my friend hoarsely.
+
+Constables were moving on a little crowd of curious idlers who pressed
+about the steps of Sir Crichton Davey's house and sought to peer in at
+the open door.  Without waiting for the cab to draw up to the curb,
+Nayland Smith recklessly leaped out and I followed close at his heels.
+
+"What has happened?" he demanded breathlessly of a constable.
+
+The latter glanced at him doubtfully, but something in his voice
+and bearing commanded respect.
+
+"Sir Crichton Davey has been killed, sir."
+
+Smith lurched back as though he had received a physical blow, and clutched
+my shoulder convulsively.  Beneath the heavy tan his face had blanched,
+and his eyes were set in a stare of horror.
+
+"My God!" he whispered.  "I am too late!"
+
+With clenched fists he turned and, pressing through the group
+of loungers, bounded up the steps.  In the hall a man who unmistakably
+was a Scotland Yard official stood talking to a footman.
+Other members of the household were moving about, more or
+less aimlessly, and the chilly hand of King Fear had touched
+one and all, for, as they came and went, they glanced ever over
+their shoulders, as if each shadow cloaked a menace, and listened,
+as it seemed, for some sound which they dreaded to hear.
+Smith strode up to the detective and showed him a card,
+upon glancing at which the Scotland Yard man said something
+in a low voice, and, nodding, touched his hat to Smith
+in a respectful manner.
+
+A few brief questions and answers, and, in gloomy silence,
+we followed the detective up the heavily carpeted stair,
+along a corridor lined with pictures and busts, and into a
+large library.  A group of people were in this room, and one,
+in whom I recognized Chalmers Cleeve, of Harley Street,
+was bending over a motionless form stretched upon a couch.
+Another door communicated with a small study, and through
+the opening I could see a man on all fours examining the carpet.
+The uncomfortable sense of hush, the group about the physician,
+the bizarre figure crawling, beetle-like, across the inner room,
+and the grim hub, around which all this ominous activity turned,
+made up a scene that etched itself indelibly on my mind.
+
+As we entered Dr. Cleeve straightened himself, frowning thoughtfully.
+
+"Frankly, I do not care to venture any opinion at present regarding
+the immediate cause of death," he said.  "Sir Crichton was addicted
+to cocaine, but there are indications which are not in accordance
+with cocaine-poisoning. I fear that only a post-mortem can
+establish the facts--if," he added, "we ever arrive at them.
+A most mysterious case!"
+
+Smith stepping forward and engaging the famous pathologist in conversation,
+I seized the opportunity to examine Sir Crichton's body.
+
+The dead man was in evening dress, but wore an old
+smoking-jacket. He had been of spare but hardy build,
+with thin, aquiline features, which now were oddly puffy,
+as were his clenched hands.  I pushed back his sleeve,
+and saw the marks of the hypodermic syringe upon his left arm.
+Quite mechanically I turned my attention to the right arm.
+It was unscarred, but on the back of the hand was a faint
+red mark, not unlike the imprint of painted lips.
+I examined it closely, and even tried to rub it off, but it
+evidently was caused by some morbid process of local inflammation,
+if it were not a birthmark.
+
+Turning to a pale young man whom I had understood to be Sir
+Crichton's private secretary, I drew his attention to this mark,
+and inquired if it were constitutional.  "It is not, sir,"
+answered Dr. Cleeve, overhearing my question.  "I have already
+made that inquiry.  Does it suggest anything to your mind?
+I must confess that it affords me no assistance."
+
+"Nothing," I replied.  "It is most curious."
+
+"Excuse me, Mr. Burboyne," said Smith, now turning to the secretary,
+"but Inspector Weymouth will tell you that I act with authority.
+I understand that Sir Crichton was--seized with illness in his study?"
+
+"Yes--at half-past ten.  I was working here in the library, and he inside,
+as was our custom."
+
+"The communicating door was kept closed?"
+
+"Yes, always.  It was open for a minute or less about
+ten-twenty-five, when a message came for Sir Crichton.
+I took it in to him, and he then seemed in his usual health."
+
+"What was the message?"
+
+"I could not say.  It was brought by a district messenger, and he 
+placed it beside him on the table.  It is there now, no doubt."
+
+"And at half-past ten?"
+
+"Sir Crichton suddenly burst open the door and threw himself,
+with a scream, into the library.  I ran to him but he waved
+me back.  His eyes were glaring horribly.  I had just
+reached his side when he fell, writhing, upon the floor.
+He seemed past speech, but as I raised him and laid him upon
+the couch, he gasped something that sounded like `The red hand!'
+Before I could get to bell or telephone he was dead!"
+
+Mr. Burboyne's voice shook as he spoke the words, and Smith seemed
+to find this evidence confusing.
+
+"You do not think he referred to the mark on his own hand?"
+
+"I think not.  From the direction of his last glance, I feel
+sure he referred to something in the study."
+
+"What did you do?"  
+
+"Having summoned the servants, I ran into the study. But there was
+absolutely nothing unusual to be seen.  The windows were closed
+and fastened.  He worked with closed windows in the hottest weather.
+There is no other door, for the study occupies the end of a narrow wing,
+so that no one could possibly have gained access to it, whilst I was
+in the library, unseen by me.  Had someone concealed himself in the study
+earlier in the evening--and I am convinced that it offers no hiding-place--
+he could only have come out again by passing through here."
+
+Nayland Smith tugged at the lobe of his left ear, as was his
+habit when meditating.
+
+"You had been at work here in this way for some time?"
+
+"Yes.  Sir Crichton was preparing an important book."
+
+"Had anything unusual occurred prior to this evening?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Burboyne, with evident perplexity; "though I attached
+no importance to it at the time.  Three nights ago Sir Crichton
+came out to me, and appeared very nervous; but at times his nerves--
+you know?  Well, on this occasion he asked me to search the study.
+He had an idea that something was concealed there."
+
+"Some THING or someone?"
+
+"`Something' was the word he used.  I searched, but fruitlessly,
+and he seemed quite satisfied, and returned to his work."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Burboyne.  My friend and I would like a few minutes'
+private investigation in the study."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+SIR CRICHTON DAVEY'S study was a small one, and a glance sufficed to
+show that, as the secretary had said, it offered no hiding-place. It was
+heavily carpeted, and over-full of Burmese and Chinese ornaments and curios,
+and upon the mantelpiece stood several framed photographs which showed
+this to be the sanctum of a wealthy bachelor who was no misogynist.
+A map of the Indian Empire occupied the larger part of one wall.
+The grate was empty, for the weather was extremely warm, and a
+green-shaded lamp on the littered writing-table afforded the only light.
+The air was stale, for both windows were closed and fastened.
+
+Smith immediately pounced upon a large, square envelope that lay beside
+the blotting-pad. Sir Crichton had not even troubled to open it,
+but my friend did so.  It contained a blank sheet of paper!
+
+"Smell!" he directed, handing the letter to me.  I raised it to my nostrils.
+It was scented with some pungent perfume.
+
+"What is it?"  I asked.
+
+"It is a rather rare essential oil," was the reply,
+"which I have met with before, though never in Europe.
+I begin to understand, Petrie."
+
+He tilted the lamp-shade and made a close examination of the scraps
+of paper, matches, and other debris that lay in the grate and on the hearth.
+I took up a copper vase from the mantelpiece, and was examining it curiously,
+when he turned, a strange expression upon his face.
+
+"Put that back, old man," he said quietly.
+
+Much surprised, I did as he directed.
+
+"Don't touch anything in the room.  It may be dangerous."
+
+Something in the tone of his voice chilled me, and I hastily
+replaced the vase, and stood by the door of the study,
+watching him search, methodically, every inch of the room--
+behind the books, in all the ornaments, in table drawers,
+in cupboards, on shelves.
+
+"That will do," he said at last.  "There is nothing here and I
+have no time to search farther."
+
+We returned to the library.
+
+"Inspector Weymouth," said my friend, "I have a particular
+reason for asking that Sir Crichton's body be removed from
+this room at once and the library locked.  Let no one be
+admitted on any pretense whatever until you hear from me."
+It spoke volumes for the mysterious credentials borne by my
+friend that the man from Scotland Yard accepted his orders
+without demur, and, after a brief chat with Mr. Burboyne,
+Smith passed briskly downstairs.  In the hall a man who looked
+like a groom out of livery was waiting.
+
+"Are you Wills?" asked Smith.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"It was you who heard a cry of some kind at the rear of the house
+about the time of Sir Crichton's death?"
+
+"Yes, sir.  I was locking the garage door, and, happening to look up
+at the window of Sir Crichton's study, I saw him jump out of his chair.
+Where he used to sit at his writing, sir, you could see his shadow
+on the blind.  Next minute I heard a call out in the lane."
+
+"What kind of call?"
+
+The man, whom the uncanny happening clearly had frightened,
+seemed puzzled for a suitable description.
+
+"A sort of wail, sir," he said at last.  "I never heard anything
+like it before, and don't want to again."
+
+"Like this?" inquired Smith, and he uttered a low, wailing cry,
+impossible to describe.  Wills perceptibly shuddered; and, indeed,
+it was an eerie sound.
+
+"The same, sir, I think," he said, "but much louder."
+
+"That will do," said Smith, and I thought I detected a note of triumph
+in his voice.  "But stay!  Take us through to the back of the house."
+
+The man bowed and led the way, so that shortly we found ourselves
+in a small, paved courtyard.  It was a perfect summer's night,
+and the deep blue vault above was jeweled with myriads of starry points.
+How impossible it seemed to reconcile that vast, eternal calm
+with the hideous passions and fiendish agencies which that night
+had loosed a soul upon the infinite.
+
+"Up yonder are the study windows, sir.  Over that wall on your left
+is the back lane from which the cry came, and beyond is Regent's Park."
+
+"Are the study windows visible from there?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir."
+
+"Who occupies the adjoining house?"
+
+"Major-General Platt-Houston, sir; but the family is out of town."
+
+"Those iron stairs are a means of communication between the domestic
+offices and the servants' quarters, I take it?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Then send someone to make my business known to the Major-General's
+housekeeper; I want to examine those stairs."
+
+Singular though my friend's proceedings appeared to me, I had ceased
+to wonder at anything.  Since Nayland Smith's arrival at my rooms I
+seemed to have been moving through the fitful phases of a nightmare.
+My friend's account of how he came by the wound in his arm;
+the scene on our arrival at the house of Sir Crichton Davey;
+the secretary's story of the dying man's cry, "The red hand!";
+the hidden perils of the study; the wail in the lane--
+all were fitter incidents of delirium than of sane reality.
+So, when a white-faced butler made us known to a nervous old lady
+who proved to be the housekeeper of the next-door residence,
+I was not surprised at Smith's saying:
+
+"Lounge up and down outside, Petrie.  Everyone has cleared off now.
+It is getting late.  Keep your eyes open and be on your guard.
+I thought I had the start, but he is here before me, and, what is worse,
+he probably knows by now that I am here, too."
+
+With which he entered the house and left me out in the square,
+with leisure to think, to try to understand.
+
+The crowd which usually haunts the scene of a sensational crime
+had been cleared away, and it had been circulated that Sir Crichton
+had died from natural causes.  The intense heat having driven most
+of the residents out of town, practically I had the square to myself,
+and I gave myself up to a brief consideration of the mystery in which I
+so suddenly had found myself involved.
+
+By what agency had Sir Crichton met his death?
+Did Nayland Smith know?  I rather suspected that he did.
+What was the hidden significance of the perfumed envelope?
+Who was that mysterious personage whom Smith so evidently dreaded,
+who had attempted his life, who, presumably, had murdered
+Sir Crichton?  Sir Crichton Davey, during the time that he had held
+office in India, and during his long term of service at home,
+had earned the good will of all, British and native alike.
+Who was his secret enemy?
+
+Something touched me lightly on the shoulder.
+
+I turned, with my heart fluttering like a child's. This night's
+work had imposed a severe strain even upon my callous nerves.
+
+A girl wrapped in a hooded opera-cloak stood at my elbow,
+and, as she glanced up at me, I thought that I never had seen
+a face so seductively lovely nor of so unusual a type.
+With the skin of a perfect blonde, she had eyes and lashes
+as black as a Creole's, which, together with her full red lips,
+told me that this beautiful stranger, whose touch had so startled me,
+was not a child of our northern shores.
+
+"Forgive me," she said, speaking with an odd, pretty accent,
+and laying a slim hand, with jeweled fingers, confidingly upon
+my arm, "if I startled you.  But--is it true that Sir Crichton
+Davey has been--murdered?"
+
+I looked into her big, questioning eyes, a harsh suspicion laboring
+in my mind, but could read nothing in their mysterious depths--
+only I wondered anew at my questioner's beauty.  The grotesque
+idea momentarily possessed me that, were the bloom of her red
+lips due to art and not to nature, their kiss would leave--
+though not indelibly--just such a mark as I had seen upon the dead
+man's hand.  But I dismissed the fantastic notion as bred
+of the night's horrors, and worthy only of a mediaeval legend.
+No doubt she was some friend or acquaintance of Sir Crichton
+who lived close by.
+
+"I cannot say that he has been murdered," I replied, acting upon the latter
+supposition, and seeking to tell her what she asked as gently as possible.
+
+"But he is--Dead?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+She closed her eyes and uttered a low, moaning sound, swaying dizzily.
+Thinking she was about to swoon, I threw my arm round her shoulder
+to support her, but she smiled sadly, and pushed me gently away.
+
+"I am quite well, thank you," she said.
+
+"You are certain?  Let me walk with you until you feel quite
+sure of yourself."
+
+She shook her head, flashed a rapid glance at me with her beautiful eyes,
+and looked away in a sort of sorrowful embarrassment, for which I was entirely
+at a loss to account.  Suddenly she resumed:
+
+"I cannot let my name be mentioned in this dreadful matter, but--I think
+I have some information--for the police.  Will you give this to--
+whomever you think proper?"
+
+She handed me a sealed envelope, again met my eyes
+with one of her dazzling glances, and hurried away.
+She had gone no more than ten or twelve yards, and I still was
+standing bewildered, watching her graceful, retreating figure,
+when she turned abruptly and came back.
+
+Without looking directly at me, but alternately glancing towards a distant
+corner of the square and towards the house of Major-General Platt-Houston,
+she made the following extraordinary request:
+
+"If you would do me a very great service, for which I always would
+be grateful,"--she glanced at me with passionate intentness--"when you
+have given my message to the proper person, leave him and do not go
+near him any more to-night!"
+
+Before I could find words to reply she gathered up her cloak and ran.
+Before I could determine whether or not to follow her (for her words
+had aroused anew all my worst suspicions) she had disappeared!
+I heard the whir of a restarted motor at no great distance, and,
+in the instant that Nayland Smith came running down the steps,
+I knew that I had nodded at my post.
+
+"Smith!"  I cried as he joined me, "tell me what we must do!"
+And rapidly I acquainted him with the incident.
+
+My friend looked very grave; then a grim smile crept round his lips.
+
+"She was a big card to play," he said; "but he did not know that I
+held one to beat it."
+
+"What!  You know this girl!  Who is she?"
+
+"She is one of the finest weapons in the enemy's armory, Petrie.
+But a woman is a two-edged sword, and treacherous.
+To our great good fortune, she has formed a sudden predilection,
+characteristically Oriental, for yourself.  Oh, you may scoff, but it
+is evident.  She was employed to get this letter placed in my hands.
+Give it to me."
+
+I did so.
+
+"She has succeeded.  Smell."
+
+He held the envelope under my nose, and, with a sudden sense of nausea,
+I recognized the strange perfume.
+
+"You know what this presaged in Sir Crichton's case?
+Can you doubt any longer?  She did not want you to share
+my fate, Petrie."
+
+"Smith," I said unsteadily, "I have followed your lead blindly
+in this horrible business and have not pressed for an explanation,
+but I must insist before I go one step farther upon knowing
+what it all means."
+
+"Just a few steps farther," he rejoined; "as far as a cab.
+We are hardly safe here.  Oh, you need not fear shots or knives.
+The man whose servants are watching us now scorns to employ
+such clumsy, tell-tale weapons."
+
+Only three cabs were on the rank, and, as we entered the first,
+something hissed past my ear, missed both Smith and me
+by a miracle, and, passing over the roof of the taxi,
+presumably fell in the enclosed garden occupying the center
+of the square.
+
+"What was that?" I cried.
+
+"Get in--quickly!"  Smith rapped back.  "It was attempt number one!
+More than that I cannot say.  Don't let the man hear.
+He has noticed nothing.  Pull up the window on your side,
+Petrie, and look out behind.  Good!  We've started."
+
+The cab moved off with a metallic jerk, and I turned and looked
+back through the little window in the rear.
+
+"Someone has got into another cab.  It is following ours, I think."
+
+Nayland Smith lay back and laughed unmirthfully.
+
+"Petrie," he said, "if I escape alive from this business I shall
+know that I bear a charmed life."
+
+I made no reply, as he pulled out the dilapidated pouch and filled his pipe.
+
+"You have asked me to explain matters," he continued, "and I
+will do so to the best of my ability.  You no doubt wonder why
+a servant of the British Government, lately stationed in Burma,
+suddenly appears in London, in the character of a detective.
+I am here, Petrie--and I bear credentials from the very
+highest sources--because, quite by accident, I came upon a clew.
+Following it up, in the ordinary course of routine, I obtained
+evidence of the existence and malignant activity of a certain man.
+At the present stage of the case I should not be justified
+in terming him the emissary of an Eastern Power, but I may say
+that representations are shortly to be made to that Power's
+ambassador in London."
+
+He paused and glanced back towards the pursuing cab.
+
+"There is little to fear until we arrive home," he said calmly.
+"Afterwards there is much.  To continue:  This man, whether a fanatic
+or a duly appointed agent, is, unquestionably, the most malign
+and formidable personality existing in the known world today.
+He is a linguist who speaks with almost equal facility in any
+of the civilized languages, and in most of the barbaric.
+He is an adept in all the arts and sciences which a great
+university could teach him.  He also is an adept in certain obscure
+arts and sciences which no university of to-day can teach.
+He has the brains of any three men of genius.  Petrie, he is
+a mental giant."
+
+"You amaze me!" I said.
+
+"As to his mission among men.  Why did M. Jules Furneaux fall
+dead in a Paris opera house?  Because of heart failure?
+No!  Because his last speech had shown that he held the key
+to the secret of Tongking.  What became of the Grand
+Duke Stanislaus?  Elopement?  Suicide?  Nothing of the kind.
+He alone was fully alive to Russia's growing peril.
+He alone knew the truth about Mongolia.  Why was Sir Crichton
+Davey murdered?  Because, had the work he was engaged upon ever
+seen the light it would have shown him to be the only living
+Englishman who understood the importance of the Tibetan frontiers.
+I say to you solemnly, Petrie, that these are but a few.
+Is there a man who would arouse the West to a sense of
+the awakening of the East, who would teach the deaf to hear,
+the blind to see, that the millions only await their leader?
+He will die.  And this is only one phase of the devilish campaign.
+The others I can merely surmise."
+
+"But, Smith, this is almost incredible!  What perverted genius
+controls this awful secret movement?"
+
+"Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a
+brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull,
+and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all
+the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one
+giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present,
+with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government--
+which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence.
+Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu,
+the yellow peril incarnate in one man."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+I SANK into an arm-chair in my rooms and gulped down a strong
+peg of brandy.
+
+"We have been followed here," I said.  "Why did you make no attempt
+to throw the pursuers off the track, to have them intercepted?"
+
+Smith laughed.
+
+"Useless, in the first place.  Wherever we went, HE
+would find us.  And of what use to arrest his creatures?
+We could prove nothing against them.  Further, it is evident
+that an attempt is to be made upon my life to-night--
+and by the same means that proved so successful in the case
+of poor Sir Crichton."
+
+His square jaw grew truculently prominent, and he leapt stormily to his feet,
+shaking his clenched fists towards the window.
+
+"The villain!" he cried.  "The fiendishly clever villain!
+I suspected that Sir Crichton was next, and I was right.
+But I came too late, Petrie!  That hits me hard, old man.
+To think that I knew and yet failed to save him!"
+
+He resumed his seat, smoking hard.
+
+"Fu-Manchu has made the blunder common to all men of unusual genius,"
+he said.  "He has underrated his adversary.  He has not given
+me credit for perceiving the meaning of the scented messages.
+He has thrown away one powerful weapon--to get such a message
+into my hands--and he thinks that once safe within doors,
+I shall sleep, unsuspecting, and die as Sir Crichton died.
+But without the indiscretion of your charming friend, I should
+have known what to expect when I receive her `information'--
+which by the way, consists of a blank sheet of paper."
+
+"Smith," I broke in, "who is she?"
+
+"She is either Fu-Manchu's daughter, his wife, or his slave.
+I am inclined to believe the last, for she has no will but
+his will, except"--with a quizzical glance--"in a certain instance."
+
+"How can you jest with some awful thing--Heaven knows what--
+hanging over your head?  What is the meaning of these perfumed envelopes?
+How did Sir Crichton die?"
+
+"He died of the Zayat Kiss.  Ask me what that is and I reply
+`I do not know.'  The zayats are the Burmese caravanserais,
+or rest-houses. Along a certain route--upon which I set eyes,
+for the first and only time, upon Dr. Fu-Manchu--travelers who use
+them sometimes die as Sir Crichton died, with nothing to show
+the cause of death but a little mark upon the neck, face, or limb,
+which has earned, in those parts, the title of the `Zayat Kiss.'
+The rest-houses along that route are shunned now.
+I have my theory and I hope to prove it to-night, if I live.
+It will be one more broken weapon in his fiendish armory,
+and it is thus, and thus only, that I can hope to crush him.
+This was my principal reason for not enlightening Dr. Cleeve.
+Even walls have ears where Fu-Manchu is concerned, so I feigned
+ignorance of the meaning of the mark, knowing that he would be
+almost certain to employ the same methods upon some other victim.
+I wanted an opportunity to study the Zayat Kiss in operation,
+and I shall have one."
+
+"But the scented envelopes?"
+
+"In the swampy forests of the district I have referred to a rare
+species of orchid, almost green, and with a peculiar scent,
+is sometimes met with.  I recognized the heavy perfume at once.
+I take it that the thing which kills the traveler is attracted
+by this orchid.  You will notice that the perfume clings to whatever
+it touches.  I doubt if it can be washed off in the ordinary way.
+After at least one unsuccessful attempt to kill Sir Crichton--
+you recall that he thought there was something concealed in his study
+on a previous occasion?--Fu-Manchu hit upon the perfumed envelopes.
+He may have a supply of these green orchids in his possession--
+possibly to feed the creature."
+
+"What creature?  How could any kind of creature have got into Sir
+Crichton's room tonight?"
+
+"You no doubt observed that I examined the grate of the study.
+I found a fair quantity of fallen soot.  I at once assumed, since it
+appeared to be the only means of entrance, that something has been
+dropped down; and I took it for granted that the thing, whatever it was,
+must still be concealed either in the study or in the library.
+But when I had obtained the evidence of the groom, Wills, I perceived
+that the cry from the lane or from the park was a signal.
+I noted that the movements of anyone seated at the study table
+were visible, in shadow, on the blind, and that the study occupied
+the corner of a two-storied wing and, therefore, had a short chimney.
+What did the signal mean?  That Sir Crichton had leaped up from
+his chair, and either had received the Zayat Kiss or had seen the thing
+which someone on the roof had lowered down the straight chimney.
+It was the signal to withdraw that deadly thing.  By means of
+the iron stairway at the rear of Major-General Platt-Houston's, I
+quite easily, gained access to the roof above Sir Crichton's study--
+and I found this."
+
+Out from his pocket Nayland Smith drew a tangled piece of silk,
+mixed up with which were a brass ring and a number of unusually
+large-sized split-shot, nipped on in the manner usual on a fishing-line.
+
+"My theory proven," he resumed.  "Not anticipating a search on the roof,
+they had been careless.  This was to weight the line and to prevent
+the creature clinging to the walls of the chimney.  Directly it had dropped
+in the grate, however, by means of this ring I assume that the weighted
+line was withdrawn, and the thing was only held by one slender thread,
+which sufficed, though, to draw it back again when it had done its work.
+It might have got tangled, of course, but they reckoned on its making
+straight up the carved leg of the writing-table for the prepared envelope.
+From there to the hand of Sir Crichton--which, from having touched
+the envelope, would also be scented with the perfume--was a certain move."
+
+"My God!  How horrible!" I exclaimed, and glanced apprehensively into
+the dusky shadows of the room.  "What is your theory respecting this creature--
+what shape, what color--?"
+
+"It is something that moves rapidly and silently.  I will
+venture no more at present, but I think it works in the dark.
+The study was dark, remember, save for the bright patch beneath
+the reading-lamp. I have observed that the rear of this
+house is ivy-covered right up to and above your bedroom.
+Let us make ostentatious preparations to retire, and I think
+we may rely upon Fu-Manchu's servants to attempt my removal,
+at any rate--if not yours."
+
+"But, my dear fellow, it is a climb of thirty-five feet at the very least."
+
+"You remember the cry in the back lane?  It suggested something to me,
+and I tested my idea--successfully.  It was the cry of a dacoit.
+Oh, dacoity, though quiescent, is by no means extinct.  Fu-Manchu has
+dacoits in his train, and probably it is one who operates the Zayat Kiss,
+since it was a dacoit who watched the window of the study this evening.
+To such a man an ivy-covered wall is a grand staircase."
+
+The horrible events that followed are punctuated, in my mind,
+by the striking of a distant clock.  It is singular how
+trivialities thus assert themselves in moments of high tension.
+I will proceed, then, by these punctuations, to the coming
+of the horror that it was written we should encounter.
+
+The clock across the common struck two.
+
+Having removed all traces of the scent of the orchid from our hands with
+a solution of ammonia Smith and I had followed the programme laid down.
+It was an easy matter to reach the rear of the house, by simply climbing
+a fence, and we did not doubt that seeing the light go out in the front,
+our unseen watcher would proceed to the back.
+
+The room was a large one, and we had made up my camp-bed at one end,
+stuffing odds and ends under the clothes to lend the appearance of a sleeper,
+which device we also had adopted in the case of the larger bed.
+The perfumed envelope lay upon a little coffee table in the center
+of the floor, and Smith, with an electric pocket lamp, a revolver,
+and a brassey beside him, sat on cushions in the shadow of the wardrobe.
+I occupied a post between the windows.
+
+No unusual sound, so far, had disturbed the stillness of the night.
+Save for the muffled throb of the rare all-night cars passing
+the front of the house, our vigil had been a silent one.
+The full moon had painted about the floor weird shadows of
+the clustering ivy, spreading the design gradually from the door,
+across the room, past the little table where the envelope lay,
+and finally to the foot of the bed.
+
+The distant clock struck a quarter-past two.
+
+A slight breeze stirred the ivy, and a new shadow added itself
+to the extreme edge of the moon's design.
+
+Something rose, inch by inch, above the sill of the westerly window.
+I could see only its shadow, but a sharp, sibilant breath from Smith
+told me that he, from his post, could see the cause of the shadow.
+
+Every nerve in my body seemed to be strung tensely.
+I was icy cold, expectant, and prepared for whatever horror
+was upon us.
+
+The shadow became stationary.  The dacoit was studying the interior
+of the room.
+
+Then it suddenly lengthened, and, craning my head to the left,
+I saw a lithe, black-clad form, surmounted by a Yellow face,
+sketchy in the moonlight, pressed against the window-panes!
+
+One thin, brown hand appeared over the edge of the lowered sash,
+which it grasped--and then another.  The man made absolutely
+no sound whatever.  The second hand disappeared--and reappeared.
+It held a small, square box.  There was a very faint CLICK.
+
+The dacoit swung himself below the window with the agility
+of an ape, as, with a dull, muffled thud, SOMETHING dropped
+upon the carpet!
+
+"Stand still, for your life!" came Smith's voice, high-pitched.
+
+A beam of white leaped out across the room and played full upon
+the coffee-table in the center.
+
+Prepared as I was for something horrible, I know that I paled at sight
+of the thing that was running round the edge of the envelope.
+
+It was an insect, full six inches long, and of a vivid, venomous, red color!
+It had something of the appearance of a great ant, with its long, quivering
+antennae and its febrile, horrible vitality; but it was proportionately
+longer of body and smaller of head, and had numberless rapidly moving legs.
+In short, it was a giant centipede, apparently of the scolopendra group,
+but of a form quite new to me.
+
+These things I realized in one breathless instant; in the next--
+Smith had dashed the thing's poisonous life out with one straight,
+true blow of the golf club!
+
+I leaped to the window and threw it widely open, feeling a silk
+thread brush my hand as I did so.  A black shape was dropping,
+with incredible agility from branch to branch of the ivy,
+and, without once offering a mark for a revolver-shot, it
+merged into the shadows beneath the trees of the garden.
+As I turned and switched on the light Nayland Smith dropped
+limply into a chair, leaning his head upon his hands.
+Even that grim courage had been tried sorely.
+
+"Never mind the dacoit, Petrie," he said.  "Nemesis will know where
+to find him.  We know now what causes the mark of the Zayat Kiss.
+Therefore science is richer for our first brush with the enemy,
+and the enemy is poorer--unless he has any more unclassified centipedes.
+I understand now something that has been puzzling me since I heard of it--
+Sir Crichton's stifled cry.  When we remember that he was almost past speech,
+it is reasonable to suppose that his cry was not `The red hand!'
+but `The red ANT!'  Petrie, to think that I failed, by less than an hour,
+to save him from such an end!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+"THE body of a lascar, dressed in the manner usual on the P. & O. boats,
+was recovered from the Thames off Tilbury by the river police at six
+A.M. this morning.  It is supposed that the man met with an accident
+in leaving his ship."
+
+Nayland Smith passed me the evening paper and pointed to the above paragraph.
+
+"For `lascar' read `dacoit,'" he said.  "Our visitor, who came by way
+of the ivy, fortunately for us, failed to follow his instructions.
+Also, he lost the centipede and left a clew behind him.
+Dr. Fu-Manchu does not overlook such lapses."
+
+It was a sidelight upon the character of the awful being with whom we
+had to deal.  My very soul recoiled from bare consideration of the fate
+that would be ours if ever we fell into his hands.
+
+The telephone bell rang.  I went out and found that Inspector
+Weymouth of New Scotland Yard had called us up.
+
+"Will Mr. Nayland Smith please come to the Wapping River Police
+Station at once," was the message.
+
+Peaceful interludes were few enough throughout that wild pursuit.
+
+"It is certainly something important," said my friend; "and, if
+Fu-Manchu is at the bottom of it--as we must presume him to be--
+probably something ghastly."
+
+A brief survey of the time-tables showed us that there were no trains
+to serve our haste.  We accordingly chartered a cab and proceeded east.
+
+Smith, throughout the journey, talked entertainingly about his work in Burma.
+Of intent, I think, he avoided any reference to the circumstances which first
+had brought him in contact with the sinister genius of the Yellow Movement.
+His talk was rather of the sunshine of the East than of its shadows.
+
+But the drive concluded--and all too soon.  In a silence which neither
+of us seemed disposed to break, we entered the police depot, and followed
+an officer who received us into the room where Weymouth waited.
+
+The inspector greeted us briefly, nodding toward the table.
+
+"Poor Cadby, the most promising lad at the Yard," he said;
+and his usually gruff voice had softened strangely.
+
+Smith struck his right fist into the palm of his left hand and swore
+under his breath, striding up and down the neat little room.
+No one spoke for a moment, and in the silence I could hear the whispering
+of the Thames outside--of the Thames which had so many strange secrets
+to tell, and now was burdened with another.
+
+The body lay prone upon the deal table--this latest of the river's dead--
+dressed in rough sailor garb, and, to all outward seeming, a seaman of
+nondescript nationality--such as is no stranger in Wapping and Shadwell.
+His dark, curly hair clung clammily about the brown forehead;
+his skin was stained, they told me.  He wore a gold ring in one ear,
+and three fingers of the left hand were missing.
+
+"It was almost the same with Mason."  The river police inspector
+was speaking.  "A week ago, on a Wednesday, he went off in his own
+time on some funny business down St. George's way--and Thursday
+night the ten-o'clock boat got the grapnel on him off Hanover Hole.
+His first two fingers on the right hand were clean gone, and his left
+hand was mutilated frightfully."
+
+He paused and glanced at Smith.
+
+"That lascar, too," he continued, "that you came down to see, sir;
+you remember his hands?"
+
+Smith nodded.
+
+"He was not a lascar," he said shortly.  "He was a dacoit."
+
+Silence fell again.
+
+I turned to the array of objects lying on the table--those which
+had been found in Cadby's clothing.  None of them were noteworthy,
+except that which had been found thrust into the loose neck of his shirt.
+This last it was which had led the police to send for Nayland Smith,
+for it constituted the first clew which had come to light pointing
+to the authors of these mysterious tragedies.
+
+It was a Chinese pigtail.  That alone was sufficiently remarkable;
+but it was rendered more so by the fact that the plaited queue
+was a false one being attached to a most ingenious bald wig.
+
+"You're sure it wasn't part of a Chinese make-up?" questioned Weymouth,
+his eye on the strange relic.  "Cadby was clever at disguise."
+
+Smith snatched the wig from my hands with a certain irritation,
+and tried to fit it on the dead detective.
+
+"Too small by inches!" he jerked.  "And look how it's padded in the crown.
+This thing was made for a most abnormal head."
+
+He threw it down, and fell to pacing the room again.
+
+"Where did you find him--exactly?" he asked.
+
+"Limehouse Reach--under Commercial Dock Pier--exactly an hour ago."
+
+"And you last saw him at eight o'clock last night?"--to Weymouth.
+
+"Eight to a quarter past."
+
+"You think he has been dead nearly twenty-four hours, Petrie?"
+
+"Roughly, twenty-four hours," I replied.
+
+"Then, we know that he was on the track of the Fu-Manchu group,
+that he followed up some clew which led him to the neighborhood
+of old Ratcliff Highway, and that he died the same night.
+You are sure that is where he was going?"
+
+"Yes," said Weymouth; "He was jealous of giving anything away,
+poor chap; it meant a big lift for him if he pulled the case off.
+But he gave me to understand that he expected to spend last night
+in that district.  He left the Yard about eight, as I've said,
+to go to his rooms, and dress for the job."
+
+"Did he keep any record of his cases?"
+
+"Of course!  He was most particular.  Cadby was a man
+with ambitions, sir!  You'll want to see his book.
+Wait while I get his address; it's somewhere in Brixton."
+
+He went to the telephone, and Inspector Ryman covered up the dead man's face.
+
+Nayland Smith was palpably excited.
+
+"He almost succeeded where we have failed, Petrie," he said.
+"There is no doubt in my mind that he was hot on the track
+of Fu-Manchu!  Poor Mason had probably blundered on the scent,
+too, and he met with a similar fate.  Without other evidence,
+the fact that they both died in the same way as the dacoit would
+be conclusive, for we know that Fu-Manchu killed the dacoit!"
+
+"What is the meaning of the mutilated hands, Smith?"
+
+"God knows!  Cadby's death was from drowning, you say?"
+
+"There are no other marks of violence."
+
+"But he was a very strong swimmer, Doctor," interrupted Inspector Ryman.
+"Why, he pulled off the quarter-mile championship at the Crystal Palace
+last year!  Cadby wasn't a man easy to drown.  And as for Mason,
+he was an R.N.R., and like a fish in the water!"
+
+Smith shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
+
+"Let us hope that one day we shall know how they died,"
+he said simply.
+
+Weymouth returned from the telephone.
+
+"The address is No.--Cold Harbor Lane," he reported.
+"I shall not be able to come along, but you can't
+miss it; it's close by the Brixton Police Station.
+There's no family, fortunately; he was quite alone in the world.
+His case-book isn't in the American desk, which you'll find in
+his sitting-room; it's in the cupboard in the corner--top shelf.
+Here are his keys, all intact.  I think this is the cupboard key."
+
+Smith nodded.
+
+"Come on, Petrie," he said.  "We haven't a second to waste."
+
+Our cab was waiting, and in a few seconds we were speeding along Wapping
+High Street.  We had gone no more than a few hundred yards, I think,
+when Smith suddenly slapped his open hand down on his knee.
+
+"That pigtail!" he cried.  "I have left it behind!
+We must have it, Petrie!  Stop!  Stop!"
+
+The cab was pulled up, and Smith alighted.
+
+"Don't wait for me," he directed hurriedly.  "Here, take Weymouth's card.
+Remember where he said the book was?  It's all we want.  Come straight
+on to Scotland Yard and meet me there."
+
+"But Smith," I protested, "a few minutes can make no difference!"
+
+"Can't it!" he snapped.  "Do you suppose Fu-Manchu is going to leave
+evidence like that lying about?  It's a thousand to one he has it already,
+but there is just a bare chance."
+
+It was a new aspect of the situation and one that afforded
+no room for comment; and so lost in thought did I become
+that the cab was outside the house for which I was bound ere
+I realized that we had quitted the purlieus of Wapping.
+Yet I had had leisure to review the whole troop of events which had
+crowded my life since the return of Nayland Smith from Burma.
+Mentally, I had looked again upon the dead Sir Crichton Davey,
+and with Smith had waited in the dark for the dreadful thing
+that had killed him.  Now, with those remorseless memories
+jostling in my mind, I was entering the house of Fu-Manchu's
+last victim, and the shadow of that giant evil seemed to be
+upon it like a palpable cloud.
+
+Cadby's old landlady greeted me with a queer mixture of fear
+and embarrassment in her manner.
+
+"I am Dr. Petrie," I said, "and I regret that I bring bad news
+respecting Mr. Cadby."
+
+"Oh, sir!" she cried.  "Don't tell me that anything has happened to him!"
+And divining something of the mission on which I was come,
+for such sad duty often falls to the lot of the medical man:
+"Oh, the poor, brave lad!"
+
+Indeed, I respected the dead man's memory more than ever from that hour,
+since the sorrow of the worthy old soul was quite pathetic, and spoke
+eloquently for the unhappy cause of it.
+
+"There was a terrible wailing at the back of the house last night,
+Doctor, and I heard it again to-night, a second before you knocked.
+Poor lad!  It was the same when his mother died."
+
+At the moment I paid little attention to her words, for such
+beliefs are common, unfortunately; but when she was sufficiently
+composed I went on to explain what I thought necessary.
+And now the old lady's embarrassment took precedence of her sorrow,
+and presently the truth came out:
+
+"There's a--young lady--in his rooms, sir."
+
+I started.  This might mean little or might mean much.
+
+"She came and waited for him last night, Doctor--from ten until half-past--
+and this morning again.  She came the third time about an hour ago,
+and has been upstairs since."
+
+"Do you know her, Mrs. Dolan?"
+
+Mrs. Dolan grew embarrassed again.
+
+"Well, Doctor," she said, wiping her eyes the while, "I DO.
+And God knows he was a good lad, and I like a mother to him;
+but she is not the girl I should have liked a son of mine
+to take up with."
+
+At any other time, this would have been amusing; now, it might be serious.
+Mrs. Dolan's account of the wailing became suddenly significant, for perhaps
+it meant that one of Fu-Manchu's dacoit followers was watching the house,
+to give warning of any stranger's approach!  Warning to whom?  It was unlikely
+that I should forget the dark eyes of another of Fu-Manchu's servants.
+Was that lure of men even now in the house, completing her evil work?
+
+"I should never have allowed her in his rooms--" began Mrs. Dolan again.
+Then there was an interruption.
+
+A soft rustling reached my ears--intimately feminine.
+The girl was stealing down!
+
+I leaped out into the hall, and she turned and fled blindly before me--
+back up the stairs!  Taking three steps at a time, I followed her,
+bounded into the room above almost at her heels, and stood with my back
+to the door.
+
+She cowered against the desk by the window, a slim figure in a
+clinging silk gown, which alone explained Mrs. Dolan's distrust.
+The gaslight was turned very low, and her hat shadowed her face,
+but could not hide its startling beauty, could not mar the brilliancy
+of the skin, nor dim the wonderful eyes of this modern Delilah.
+For it was she!
+
+"So I came in time," I said grimly, and turned the key in the lock.
+
+"Oh!" she panted at that, and stood facing me, leaning back
+with her jewel-laden hands clutching the desk edge.
+
+"Give me whatever you have removed from here," I said sternly,
+"and then prepare to accompany me."
+
+She took a step forward, her eyes wide with fear, her lips parted.
+
+"I have taken nothing," she said.  Her breast was heaving tumultuously.
+"Oh, let me go!  Please, let me go!"  And impulsively she threw
+herself forward, pressing clasped hands against my shoulder and looking
+up into my face with passionate, pleading eyes.
+
+It is with some shame that I confess how her charm enveloped me like a
+magic cloud.  Unfamiliar with the complex Oriental temperament, I had
+laughed at Nayland Smith when he had spoken of this girl's infatuation.
+"Love in the East," he had said, "is like the conjurer's mango-tree;
+it is born, grows and flowers at the touch of a hand."
+Now, in those pleading eyes I read confirmation of his words.
+Her clothes or her hair exhaled a faint perfume.  Like all
+Fu-Manchu's servants, she was perfectly chosen for her peculiar duties.
+Her beauty was wholly intoxicating.
+
+But I thrust her away.
+
+"You have no claim to mercy," I said.  "Do not count upon any.
+What have you taken from here?"
+
+She grasped the lapels of my coat.
+
+"I will tell you all I can--all I dare," she panted eagerly, fearfully.
+"I should know how to deal with your friend, but with you I am lost!
+If you could only understand you would not be so cruel."  Her slight accent
+added charm to the musical voice.  "I am not free, as your English women are.
+What I do I must do, for it is the will of my master, and I am only
+a slave.  Ah, you are not a man if you can give me to the police.
+You have no heart if you can forget that I tried to save you once."
+
+I had feared that plea, for, in her own Oriental fashion, she certainly
+had tried to save me from a deadly peril once--at the expense of my friend.
+But I had feared the plea, for I did not know how to meet it.
+How could I give her up, perhaps to stand her trial for murder?
+And now I fell silent, and she saw why I was silent.
+
+"I may deserve no mercy; I may be even as bad as you think;
+but what have YOU to do with the police?
+It is not your work to hound a woman to death.  Could you
+ever look another woman in the eyes--one that you loved,
+and know that she trusted you--if you had done such a thing?
+Ah, I have no friend in all the world, or I should not be here.
+Do not be my enemy, my judge, and make me worse than I am;
+be my friend, and save me--from HIM." The tremulous
+lips were close to mine, her breath fanned my cheek.
+"Have mercy on me."
+
+At that moment I honestly would have given half of my worldly
+possessions to have been spared the decision which I knew I must
+come to.  After all, what proof had I that she was a willing
+accomplice of Dr. Fu-Manchu?  Furthermore, she was an Oriental,
+and her code must necessarily be different from mine.
+Irreconcilable as the thing may be with Western ideas, Nayland Smith
+had really told me that he believed the girl to be a slave.
+Then there remained that other reason why I loathed the idea
+of becoming her captor.  It was almost tantamount to betrayal!
+Must I soil my hands with such work?
+
+Thus--I suppose--her seductive beauty argued against my sense of right.
+The jeweled fingers grasped my shoulders nervously, and her slim body
+quivered against mine as she watched me, with all her soul in her eyes,
+in an abandonment of pleading despair.  Then I remembered the fate
+of the man in whose room we stood.
+
+"You lured Cadby to his death," I said, and shook her off.
+
+"No, no!" she cried wildly, clutching at me.  "No, I swear by the holy name
+I did not!  I did not!  I watched him, spied upon him--yes!  But, listen:
+it was because he would not be warned that he met his death.
+I could not save him!  Ah, I am not so bad as that.  I will tell you.
+I have taken his notebook and torn out the last pages and burnt them.
+Look!  in the grate.  The book was too big to steal away.
+I came twice and could not find it.  There, will you let me go?"
+
+"If you will tell me where and how to seize Dr. Fu-Manchu--yes."
+
+Her hands dropped and she took a backward step.
+A new terror was to be read in her face.
+
+"I dare not!  I dare not!"
+
+"Then you would--if you dared?"
+
+She was watching me intently.
+
+"Not if YOU would go to find him," she said.
+
+And, with all that I thought her to be, the stern servant
+of justice that I would have had myself, I felt the hot
+blood leap to my cheek at all which the words implied.
+She grasped my arm.
+
+"Could you hide me from him if I came to you, and told you all I know?"
+
+"The authorities--"
+
+"Ah!"  Her expression changed.  "They can put me on the rack if they choose,
+but never one word would I speak--never one little word."
+
+She threw up her head scornfully.  Then the proud glance softened again.
+
+"But I will speak for you."
+
+Closer she came, and closer, until she could whisper in my ear.
+
+"Hide me from your police, from HIM, from everybody,
+and I will no longer be his slave."
+
+My heart was beating with painful rapidity.  I had not counted on this
+warring with a woman; moreover, it was harder than I could have dreamt of.
+For some time I had been aware that by the charm of her personality
+and the art of her pleading she had brought me down from my judgment seat--
+had made it all but impossible for me to give her up to justice.
+Now, I was disarmed--but in a quandary.  What should I do?
+What COULD I do?  I turned away from her and walked to the hearth,
+in which some paper ash lay and yet emitted a faint smell.
+
+Not more than ten seconds elapsed, I am confident, from the time
+that I stepped across the room until I glanced back.
+But she had gone!
+
+As I leapt to the door the key turned gently from the outside.
+
+"Ma 'alesh!" came her soft whisper; "but I am afraid to
+trust you--yet.  Be comforted, for there is one near who would
+have killed you had I wished it.  Remember, I will come to you
+whenever you will take me and hide me."
+
+Light footsteps pattered down the stairs.  I heard a stifled
+cry from Mrs. Dolan as the mysterious visitor ran past her.
+The front door opened and closed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+"Shen-Yan's is a dope-shop in one of the burrows off the old Ratcliff Highway,"
+said Inspector Weymouth.
+
+"`Singapore Charlie's,' they call it.  It's a center for some of
+the Chinese societies, I believe, but all sorts of opium-smokers
+use it.  There have never been any complaints that I know of.
+I don't understand this."
+
+We stood in his room at New Scotland Yard, bending over a sheet
+of foolscap upon which were arranged some burned fragments
+from poor Cadby's grate, for so hurriedly had the girl done
+her work that combustion had not been complete.
+
+"What do we make of this?" said Smith.  "`. . .Hunchback. . .lascar
+went up . . . unlike others . . . not return . . . till Shen-Yan'
+(there is no doubt about the name, I think) `turned me out . . .
+booming sound . . . lascar in . . . mortuary I could ident . . .
+not for days, or suspici . . . Tuesday night in a different make
+. . . snatch . . . pigtail . . .'"
+
+"The pigtail again!" rapped Weymouth.
+
+"She evidently burned the torn-out pages all together,"
+continued Smith.  "They lay flat, and this was in the middle.
+I see the hand of retributive justice in that, Inspector.  Now we
+have a reference to a hunchback, and what follows amounts to this:
+A lascar (amongst several other persons) went up somewhere--
+presumably upstairs--at Shen-Yan's, and did not come down again.
+Cadby, who was there disguised, noted a booming sound.
+Later, he identified the lascar in some mortuary.
+We have no means of fixing the date of this visit to Shen-Yan's,
+but I feel inclined to put down the `lascar' as the dacoit
+who was murdered by Fu-Manchu!  It is sheer supposition, however.
+But that Cadby meant to pay another visit to the place in a
+different `make-up' or disguise, is evident, and that the Tuesday
+night proposed was last night is a reasonable deduction.
+The reference to a pigtail is principally interesting because
+of what was found on Cadby's body."
+
+Inspector Weymouth nodded affirmatively, and Smith glanced at his watch.
+
+"Exactly ten-twenty-three," he said.  "I will trouble you, Inspector,
+for the freedom of your fancy wardrobe.  There is time to spend an hour
+in the company of Shen-Yan's opium friends."
+
+Weymouth raised his eyebrows.
+
+"It might be risky.  What about an official visit?"
+
+Nayland Smith laughed.
+
+"Worse than useless!  By your own showing, the place is open to inspection.
+No; guile against guile!  We are dealing with a Chinaman, with the incarnate
+essence of Eastern subtlety, with the most stupendous genius that the modern
+Orient has produced."
+
+"I don't believe in disguises," said Weymouth, with a certain truculence.
+"It's mostly played out, that game, and generally leads to failure.
+Still, if you're determined, sir, there's an end of it.  Foster will make
+your face up.  What disguise do you propose to adopt?"
+
+"A sort of Dago seaman, I think; something like poor Cadby.
+I can rely on my knowledge of the brutes, if I am sure
+of my disguise."
+
+"You are forgetting me, Smith," I said.
+
+He turned to me quickly.
+
+"Petrie," he replied, "it is MY business, unfortunately, but it
+is no sort of hobby."
+
+"You mean that you can no longer rely upon me?"
+I said angrily.
+
+Smith grasped my hand, and met my rather frigid stare with a look
+of real concern on his gaunt, bronzed face.
+
+"My dear old chap," he answered, "that was really unkind.
+You know that I meant something totally different."
+
+"It's all right, Smith;" I said, immediately ashamed of my choler, and wrung
+his hand heartily.  "I can pretend to smoke opium as well as another.
+I shall be going, too, Inspector."
+
+As a result of this little passage of words, some twenty minutes
+later two dangerous-looking seafaring ruffians entered a waiting cab,
+accompanied by Inspector Weymouth, and were driven off into
+the wilderness of London's night.  In this theatrical business
+there was, to my mind, something ridiculous--almost childish--
+and I could have laughed heartily had it not been that grim
+tragedy lurked so near to farce.
+
+The mere recollection that somewhere at our journey's end Fu-Manchu
+awaited us was sufficient to sober my reflections--Fu-Manchu, who,
+with all the powers represented by Nayland Smith pitted against him,
+pursued his dark schemes triumphantly, and lurked in hiding within
+this very area which was so sedulously patrolled--Fu-Manchu, whom
+I had never seen, but whose name stood for horrors indefinable!
+Perhaps I was destined to meet the terrible Chinese doctor to-night.
+
+I ceased to pursue a train of thought which promised to lead to morbid depths,
+and directed my attention to what Smith was saying.
+
+"We will drop down from Wapping and reconnoiter, as you say the place
+is close to the riverside.  Then you can put us ashore somewhere below.
+Ryman can keep the launch close to the back of the premises, and your fellows
+will be hanging about near the front, near enough to hear the whistle."
+
+"Yes," assented Weymouth; "I've arranged for that.
+If you are suspected, you shall give the alarm?"
+
+"I don't know," said Smith thoughtfully.  "Even in that event
+I might wait awhile."
+
+"Don't wait too long," advised the Inspector.  "We shouldn't be
+much wiser if your next appearance was on the end of a grapnel,
+somewhere down Greenwich Reach, with half your fingers missing."
+
+The cab pulled up outside the river police depot, and Smith and I
+entered without delay, four shabby-looking fellows who had been
+seated in the office springing up to salute the Inspector,
+who followed us in.
+
+"Guthrie and Lisle," he said briskly, "get along and find a dark corner
+which commands the door of Singapore Charlie's off the old Highway.
+You look the dirtiest of the troupe, Guthrie; you might drop asleep
+on the pavement, and Lisle can argue with you about getting home.
+Don't move till you hear the whistle inside or have my orders,
+and note everybody that goes in and comes out.  You other two belong
+to this division?"
+
+The C.I.D. men having departed, the remaining pair saluted again.
+
+"Well, you're on special duty to-night. You've been prompt,
+but don't stick your chests out so much.  Do you know of a back
+way to Shen-Yan's?"
+
+The men looked at one another, and both shook their heads.
+
+"There's an empty shop nearly opposite, sir," replied one of them.
+"I know a broken window at the back where we could climb in.
+Then we could get through to the front and watch from there."
+
+"Good!" cried the Inspector.  "See you are not spotted, though; and if you
+hear the whistle, don't mind doing a bit of damage, but be inside Shen-Yan's
+like lightning.  Otherwise, wait for orders."
+
+Inspector Ryman came in, glancing at the clock.
+
+"Launch is waiting," he said.
+
+"Right," replied Smith thoughtfully.  "I am half afraid, though, that the
+recent alarms may have scared our quarry--your man, Mason, and then Cadby.
+Against which we have that, so far as he is likely to know, there has
+been no clew pointing to this opium den.  Remember, he thinks Cadby's
+notes are destroyed."
+
+"The whole business is an utter mystery to me," confessed Ryman.
+"I'm told that there's some dangerous Chinese devil hiding
+somewhere in London, and that you expect to find him at
+Shen-Yan's. Supposing he uses that place, which is possible,
+how do you know he's there to-night?"
+
+"I don't," said Smith; "but it is the first clew we have had
+pointing to one of his haunts, and time means precious lives
+where Dr. Fu-Manchu is concerned."
+
+"Who is he, sir, exactly, this Dr. Fu-Manchu?"
+
+"I have only the vaguest idea, Inspector; but he is no ordinary criminal.
+He is the greatest genius which the powers of evil have put on earth
+for centuries.  He has the backing of a political group whose wealth is
+enormous, and his mission in Europe is to PAVE THE WAY!  Do you follow me?
+He is the advance-agent of a movement so epoch-making that not one Britisher,
+and not one American, in fifty thousand has ever dreamed of it."
+
+Ryman stared, but made no reply, and we went out,
+passing down to the breakwater and boarding the waiting launch.
+With her crew of three, the party numbered seven that swung
+out into the Pool, and, clearing the pier, drew in again
+and hugged the murky shore.
+
+The night had been clear enough hitherto, but now came scudding rainbanks
+to curtain the crescent moon, and anon to unveil her again and show
+the muddy swirls about us.  The view was not extensive from the launch.
+Sometimes a deepening of the near shadows would tell of a moored barge,
+or lights high above our heads mark the deck of a large vessel.
+In the floods of moonlight gaunt shapes towered above; in the ensuing
+darkness only the oily glitter of the tide occupied the foreground
+of the night-piece.
+
+The Surrey shore was a broken wall of blackness, patched with
+lights about which moved hazy suggestions of human activity.
+The bank we were following offered a prospect even more gloomy--
+a dense, dark mass, amid which, sometimes, mysterious half-tones
+told of a dock gate, or sudden high lights leapt flaring
+to the eye.
+
+Then, out of the mystery ahead, a green light grew and crept down upon us.
+A giant shape loomed up, and frowned crushingly upon the little craft.
+A blaze of light, the jangle of a bell, and it was past.  We were dancing
+in the wash of one of the Scotch steamers, and the murk had fallen again.
+
+Discords of remote activity rose above the more intimate
+throbbing of our screw, and we seemed a pigmy company
+floating past the workshops of Brobdingnagian toilers.
+The chill of the near water communicated itself to me, and I
+felt the protection of my shabby garments inadequate against it.
+
+Far over on the Surrey shore a blue light--vaporous, mysterious--
+flicked translucent tongues against the night's curtain.
+It was a weird, elusive flame, leaping, wavering, magically changing
+from blue to a yellowed violet, rising, falling.
+
+"Only a gasworks," came Smith's voice, and I knew that he, too, had been
+watching those elfin fires.  "But it always reminds me of a Mexican
+teocalli, and the altar of sacrifice."
+
+The simile was apt, but gruesome.  I thought of Dr. Fu-Manchu
+and the severed fingers, and could not repress a shudder.
+
+"On your left, past the wooden pier!  Not where the lamp is--
+beyond that; next to the dark, square building--Shen-Yan's."
+
+It was Inspector Ryman speaking.
+
+"Drop us somewhere handy, then," replied Smith, "and lie close in,
+with your ears wide open.  We may have to run for it, so don't
+go far away."
+
+From the tone of his voice I knew that the night mystery of the Thames
+had claimed at least one other victim.
+
+"Dead slow," came Ryman's order.  "We'll put in to the Stone Stairs."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+A SEEMINGLY drunken voice was droning from a neighboring alleyway as Smith
+lurched in hulking fashion to the door of a little shop above which,
+crudely painted, were the words:
+
+
+"SHEN-YAN, Barber."
+
+
+I shuffled along behind him, and had time to note the box of studs,
+German shaving tackle and rolls of twist which lay untidily in the window
+ere Smith kicked the door open, clattered down three wooden steps,
+and pulled himself up with a jerk, seizing my arm for support.
+
+We stood in a bare and very dirty room, which could only
+claim kinship with a civilized shaving-saloon by virtue of
+the grimy towel thrown across the back of the solitary chair.
+A Yiddish theatrical bill of some kind, illustrated, adorned one
+of the walls, and another bill, in what may have been Chinese,
+completed the decorations.  From behind a curtain heavily brocaded
+with filth a little Chinaman appeared, dressed in a loose smock,
+black trousers and thick-soled slippers, and, advancing,
+shook his head vigorously.
+
+"No shavee--no shavee," he chattered, simian fashion,
+squinting from one to the other of us with his twinkling eyes.
+"Too late!  Shuttee shop!"
+
+"Don't you come none of it wi' me!" roared Smith, in a voice of amazing
+gruffness, and shook an artificially dirtied fist under the Chinaman's nose.
+"Get inside and gimme an' my mate a couple o' pipes.  Smokee pipe,
+you yellow scum--savvy?"
+
+My friend bent forward and glared into the other's eyes with a vindictiveness
+that amazed me, unfamiliar as I was with this form of gentle persuasion.
+
+"Kop 'old o' that," he said, and thrust a coin into the Chinaman's
+yellow paw.  "Keep me waitin' an' I'll pull the dam' shop down, Charlie.
+You can lay to it."
+
+"No hab got pipee--" began the other.
+
+Smith raised his fist, and Yan capitulated.
+
+"Allee lightee," he said.  "Full up--no loom.  You come see."
+
+He dived behind the dirty curtain, Smith and I following, and ran up
+a dark stair.  The next moment I found myself in an atmosphere which
+was literally poisonous.  It was all but unbreathable, being loaded
+with opium fumes.  Never before had I experienced anything like it.
+Every breath was an effort.  A tin oil-lamp on a box in the middle
+of the floor dimly illuminated the horrible place, about the walls
+of which ten or twelve bunks were ranged and all of them occupied.
+Most of the occupants were lying motionless, but one or two were
+squatting in their bunks noisily sucking at the little metal pipes.
+These had not yet attained to the opium-smoker's Nirvana.
+
+"No loom--samee tella you," said Shen-Yan, complacently testing
+Smith's shilling with his yellow, decayed teeth.
+
+Smith walked to a corner and dropped cross-legged, on the floor,
+pulling me down with him.
+
+"Two pipe quick," he said.  "Plenty room.  Two piecee pipe--
+or plenty heap trouble."
+
+A dreary voice from one of the bunks came:
+
+"Give 'im a pipe, Charlie, curse yer!  an' stop 'is palaver."
+
+Yan performed a curious little shrug, rather of the back than of
+the shoulders, and shuffled to the box which bore the smoky lamp.
+Holding a needle in the flame, he dipped it, when red-hot, into an old
+cocoa tin, and withdrew it with a bead of opium adhering to the end.
+Slowly roasting this over the lamp, he dropped it into the bowl
+of the metal pipe which he held ready, where it burned with a
+spirituous blue flame.
+
+"Pass it over," said Smith huskily, and rose on his knees with the assumed
+eagerness of a slave to the drug.
+
+Yan handed him the pipe, which he promptly put to his lips,
+and prepared another for me.
+
+"Whatever you do, don't inhale any," came Smith's whispered injunction.
+
+It was with a sense of nausea greater even than that occasioned by the
+disgusting atmosphere of the den that I took the pipe and pretended to smoke.
+Taking my cue from my friend, I allowed my head gradually to sink lower
+and lower, until, within a few minutes, I sprawled sideways on the floor,
+Smith lying close beside me.
+
+"The ship's sinkin'," droned a voice from one of the bunks.
+"Look at the rats."
+
+Yan had noiselessly withdrawn, and I experienced a curious sense
+of isolation from my fellows--from the whole of the Western world.
+My throat was parched with the fumes, my head ached.
+The vicious atmosphere seemed contaminating.  I was as one dropped--
+
+Somewhere East of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
+And there ain't no Ten Commandments and a man can raise a thirst.
+
+Smith began to whisper softly.
+
+"We have carried it through successfully so far," he said.
+"I don't know if you have observed it, but there is a stair
+just behind you, half concealed by a ragged curtain.
+We are near that, and well in the dark.  I have seen nothing
+suspicious so far--or nothing much.  But if there was anything
+going forward it would no doubt be delayed until we new arrivals
+were well doped.  S-SH!"
+
+He pressed my arm to emphasize the warning.  Through my half-closed eyes
+I perceived a shadowy form near the curtain to which he had referred.
+I lay like a log, but my muscles were tensed nervously.
+
+The shadow materialized as the figure moved forward into the room
+with a curiously lithe movement.
+
+The smoky lamp in the middle of the place afforded
+scant illumination, serving only to indicate sprawling shapes--
+here an extended hand, brown or yellow, there a sketchy,
+corpse-like face; whilst from all about rose obscene sighings
+and murmurings in far-away voices--an uncanny, animal chorus.
+It was like a glimpse of the Inferno seen by some Chinese Dante.
+But so close to us stood the newcomer that I was able to make out a
+ghastly parchment face, with small, oblique eyes, and a misshapen head
+crowned with a coiled pigtail, surmounting a slight, hunched body.
+There was something unnatural, inhuman, about that masklike face,
+and something repulsive in the bent shape and the long,
+yellow hands clasped one upon the other.
+
+Fu-Manchu, from Smith's account, in no way resembled this crouching
+apparition with the death's-head countenance and lithe movements;
+but an instinct of some kind told me that we were on the right scent--
+that this was one of the doctor's servants.  How I came to that conclusion,
+I cannot explain; but with no doubt in my mind that this was a member
+of the formidable murder group, I saw the yellow man creep nearer,
+nearer, silently, bent and peering.
+
+He was watching us.
+
+Of another circumstance I became aware, and a disquieting circumstance.
+There were fewer murmurings and sighings from the surrounding bunks.
+The presence of the crouching figure had created a sudden semi-silence
+in the den, which could only mean that some of the supposed opium-smokers
+had merely feigned coma and the approach of coma.
+
+Nayland Smith lay like a dead man, and trusting to the darkness,
+I, too, lay prone and still, but watched the evil face bending
+lower and lower, until it came within a few inches of my own.
+I completely closed my eyes.
+
+Delicate fingers touched my right eyelid.  Divining what was coming,
+I rolled my eyes up, as the lid was adroitly lifted and lowered again.
+The man moved away.
+
+I had saved the situation!  And noting anew the hush about me--
+a hush in which I fancied many pairs of ears listened--I was glad.
+For just a moment I realized fully how, with the place watched back
+and front, we yet were cut off, were in the hands of Far Easterns,
+to some extent in the power of members of that most inscrutably
+mysterious race, the Chinese.
+
+"Good," whispered Smith at my side.  "I don't think I could have done it.
+He took me on trust after that.  My God!  what an awful face.
+Petrie, it's the hunchback of Cadby's notes.  Ah, I thought so.
+Do you see that?"
+
+I turned my eyes round as far as was possible.  A man had scrambled down
+from one of the bunks and was following the bent figure across the room.
+
+They passed around us quietly, the little yellow man leading, with his
+curious, lithe gait, and the other, an impassive Chinaman, following.
+The curtain was raised, and I heard footsteps receding on the stairs.
+
+"Don't stir," whispered Smith.
+
+An intense excitement was clearly upon him, and he communicated it to me.
+Who was the occupant of the room above?
+
+Footsteps on the stair, and the Chinaman reappeared, recrossed the floor,
+and went out.  The little, bent man went over to another bunk, this time
+leading up the stair one who looked like a lascar.
+
+"Did you see his right hand?" whispered Smith.  "A dacoit!
+They come here to report and to take orders.  Petrie, Dr. Fu-Manchu
+is up there."
+
+"What shall we do?"--softly.
+
+"Wait.  Then we must try to rush the stairs.  It would be futile
+to bring in the police first.  He is sure to have some other exit.
+I will give the word while the little yellow devil is down here.
+You are nearer and will have to go first, but if the hunchback follows,
+I can then deal with him."
+
+Our whispered colloquy was interrupted by the return of the dacoit,
+who recrossed the room as the Chinaman had done, and immediately
+took his departure.  A third man, whom Smith identified as a Malay,
+ascended the mysterious stairs, descended, and went out; and a fourth,
+whose nationality it was impossible to determine, followed.
+Then, as the softly moving usher crossed to a bunk on the right
+of the outer door--
+
+"Up you go, Petrie," cried Smith, for further delay was dangerous
+and further dissimulation useless.
+
+I leaped to my feet.  Snatching my revolver from the pocket
+of the rough jacket I wore, I bounded to the stair and went
+blundering up in complete darkness.  A chorus of brutish cries
+clamored from behind, with a muffled scream rising above them all.
+But Nayland Smith was close behind as I raced along a covered gangway,
+in a purer air, and at my heels when I crashed open a door at
+the end and almost fell into the room beyond.
+
+What I saw were merely a dirty table, with some odds and ends upon
+it of which I was too excited to take note, an oil-lamp swung
+by a brass chain above, and a man sitting behind the table.
+But from the moment that my gaze rested upon the one who sat there,
+I think if the place had been an Aladdin's palace I should have
+had no eyes for any of its wonders.
+
+He wore a plain yellow robe, of a hue almost identical with that
+of his smooth, hairless countenance.  His hands were large,
+long and bony, and he held them knuckles upward, and rested his
+pointed chin upon their thinness.  He had a great, high brow,
+crowned with sparse, neutral-colored hair.
+
+Of his face, as it looked out at me over the dirty table,
+I despair of writing convincingly.  It was that of an archangel
+of evil, and it was wholly dominated by the most uncanny
+eyes that ever reflected a human soul, for they were narrow
+and long, very slightly oblique, and of a brilliant green.
+But their unique horror lay in a certain filminess
+(it made me think of the membrana nictitans in a bird)
+which, obscuring them as I threw wide the door, seemed to lift
+as I actually passed the threshold, revealing the eyes in all
+their brilliant iridescence.
+
+I know that I stopped dead, one foot within the room, for the
+malignant force of the man was something surpassing my experience.
+He was surprised by this sudden intrusion--yes, but no trace of fear
+showed upon that wonderful face, only a sort of pitying contempt.
+And, as I paused, he rose slowly to his feet, never removing his
+gaze from mine.
+
+"IT'S FU-MANCHU!" cried Smith over my shoulder, in a voice
+that was almost a scream.  "IT'S FU-MANCHU!  Cover him!
+Shoot him dead if--"
+
+The conclusion of that sentence I never heard.
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu reached down beside the table, and the floor slipped
+from under me.
+
+One last glimpse I had of the fixed green eyes, and with a scream I was
+unable to repress I dropped, dropped, dropped, and plunged into icy water,
+which closed over my head.
+
+Vaguely I had seen a spurt of flame, had heard another cry following
+my own, a booming sound (the trap), the flat note of a police whistle.
+But when I rose to the surface impenetrable darkness enveloped me;
+I was spitting filthy, oily liquid from my mouth, and fighting down
+the black terror that had me by the throat--terror of the darkness
+about me, of the unknown depths beneath me, of the pit into which I
+was cast amid stifling stenches and the lapping of tidal water.
+
+"Smith!" I cried. . . . "Help!  Help!"
+
+My voice seemed to beat back upon me, yet I was about
+to cry out again, when, mustering all my presence of mind
+and all my failing courage, I recognized that I had better
+employment of my energies, and began to swim straight ahead,
+desperately determined to face all the horrors of this place--
+to die hard if die I must.
+
+A drop of liquid fire fell through the darkness and hissed
+into the water beside me!
+
+I felt that, despite my resolution, I was going mad.
+
+Another fiery drop--and another!
+
+I touched a rotting wooden post and slimy timbers.
+I had reached one bound of my watery prison.  More fire fell
+from above, and the scream of hysteria quivered, unuttered,
+in my throat.
+
+Keeping myself afloat with increasing difficulty in my heavy garments,
+I threw my head back and raised my eyes.
+
+No more drops fell, and no more drops would fall; but it
+was merely a question of time for the floor to collapse.
+For it was beginning to emit a dull, red glow.
+
+The room above me was in flames!
+
+It was drops of burning oil from the lamp, finding passage through
+the cracks in the crazy flooring, which had fallen about me--
+for the death trap had reclosed, I suppose, mechanically.
+
+My saturated garments were dragging me down, and now I could hear
+the flames hungrily eating into the ancient rottenness overhead.
+Shortly that cauldron would be loosed upon my head.  The glow of the
+flames grew brighter . . . and showed me the half-rotten piles upholding
+the building, showed me the tidal mark upon the slime-coated walls--
+showed me that there was no escape!
+
+By some subterranean duct the foul place was fed from the Thames.
+By that duct, with the outgoing tide, my body would pass,
+in the wake of Mason, Cadby, and many another victim!
+
+Rusty iron rungs were affixed to one of the walls communicating with a trap--
+but the bottom three were missing!
+
+Brighter and brighter grew the awesome light the light of what
+should be my funeral pyre--reddening the oily water and adding
+a new dread to the whispering, clammy horror of the pit.
+But something it showed me . . . a projecting beam a few feet
+above the water . . . and directly below the iron ladder!
+
+"Merciful Heaven!" I breathed.  "Have I the strength?"
+
+A desire for laughter claimed me with sudden, all but irresistible force.
+I knew what it portended and fought it down--grimly, sternly.
+
+My garments weighed upon me like a suit of mail; with my chest
+aching dully, my veins throbbing to bursting, I forced tired
+muscles to work, and, every stroke an agony, approached the beam.
+Nearer I swam . . . nearer.  Its shadow fell black upon
+the water, which now had all the seeming of a pool of blood.
+Confused sounds--a remote uproar--came to my ears.
+I was nearly spent. . .I was in the shadow of the beam!
+If I could throw up one arm. . .
+
+A shrill scream sounded far above me!
+
+"Petrie!  Petrie!"  (That voice must be Smith's!)  "Don't touch the beam!
+For God's sake DON'T TOUCH THE BEAM!  Keep afloat another few seconds
+and I can get to you!"
+
+Another few seconds!  Was that possible?
+
+I managed to turn, to raise my throbbing head; and I saw the strangest
+sight which that night yet had offered.
+
+Nayland Smith stood upon the lowest iron rung . . . supported by the
+hideous, crook-backed Chinaman, who stood upon the rung above!
+
+"I can't reach him!"
+
+It was as Smith hissed the words despairingly that I looked up--
+and saw the Chinaman snatch at his coiled pigtail and pull it off!
+With it came the wig to which it was attached; and the ghastly yellow mask,
+deprived of its fastenings, fell from position!  "Here!  Here!  Be quick!
+Oh!  be quick!  You can lower this to him!  Be quick!  Be quick!"
+
+A cloud of hair came falling about the slim shoulders
+as the speaker bent to pass this strange lifeline to Smith;
+and I think it was my wonder at knowing her for the girl whom
+that day I had surprised in Cadby's rooms which saved my life.
+
+For I not only kept afloat, but kept my gaze upturned to that beautiful,
+flushed face, and my eyes fixed upon hers--which were wild with fear
+. . .for me!
+
+Smith, by some contortion, got the false queue into my grasp,
+and I, with the strength of desperation, by that means seized
+hold upon the lowest rung.  With my friend's arm round me I
+realized that exhaustion was even nearer than I had supposed.
+My last distinct memory is of the bursting of the floor above
+and the big burning joist hissing into the pool beneath us.
+Its fiery passage, striated with light, disclosed two
+sword blades, riveted, edges up along the top of the beam
+which I had striven to reach.
+
+"The severed fingers--" I said; and swooned.
+
+How Smith got me through the trap I do not know--nor how we made our way
+through the smoke and flames of the narrow passage it opened upon.
+My next recollection is of sitting up, with my friend's arm supporting
+me and Inspector Ryman holding a glass to my lips.
+
+A bright glare dazzled my eyes.  A crowd surged about us,
+and a clangor and shouting drew momentarily nearer.
+
+"It's the engines coming," explained Smith, seeing my bewilderment.
+"Shen-Yan's is in flames.  It was your shot, as you fell through the trap,
+broke the oil-lamp."
+
+"Is everybody out?"
+
+"So far as we know."
+
+"Fu-Manchu?"
+
+Smith shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"No one has seen him.  There was some door at the back--"
+
+"Do you think he may--"
+
+"No," he said tensely.  "Not until I see him lying dead before me
+shall I believe it."
+
+Then memory resumed its sway.  I struggled to my feet.
+
+"Smith, where is she?" I cried.  "Where is she?"
+
+"I don't know," he answered.
+
+"She's given us the slip, Doctor," said Inspector Weymouth,
+as a fire-engine came swinging round the corner of the narrow lane.
+"So has Mr. Singapore Charlie--and, I'm afraid, somebody else.
+We've got six or eight all-sorts, some awake and some asleep,
+but I suppose we shall have to let 'em go again.
+Mr. Smith tells me that the girl was disguised as a Chinaman.
+I expect that's why she managed to slip away."
+
+I recalled how I had been dragged from the pit by the false queue,
+how the strange discovery which had brought death to poor Cadby
+had brought life to me, and I seemed to remember, too, that Smith
+had dropped it as he threw his arm about me on the ladder.
+Her mask the girl might have retained, but her wig, I felt certain,
+had been dropped into the water.
+
+It was later that night, when the brigade still were playing
+upon the blackened shell of what had been Shen-Yan's opium-shop,
+and Smith and I were speeding away in a cab from the scene of God
+knows how many crimes, that I had an idea.
+
+"Smith," I said, "did you bring the pigtail with you that was
+found on Cadby?"
+
+"Yes.  I had hoped to meet the owner."
+
+"Have you got it now?"
+
+"No. I met the owner."
+
+I thrust my hands deep into the pockets of the big pea-jacket
+lent to me by Inspector Ryman, leaning back in my corner.
+
+"We shall never really excel at this business," continued Nayland Smith.
+"We are far too sentimental.  I knew what it meant to us, Petrie, what it
+meant to the world, but I hadn't the heart.  I owed her your life--
+I had to square the account."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+NIGHT fell on Redmoat.  I glanced from the window at
+the nocturne in silver and green which lay beneath me.
+To the west of the shrubbery, with its broken canopy of elms
+and beyond the copper beech which marked the center of its mazes,
+a gap offered a glimpse of the Waverney where it swept into a broad.
+Faint bird-calls floated over the water.  These, with the whisper
+of leaves, alone claimed the ear.
+
+Ideal rural peace, and the music of an English summer evening;
+but to my eyes, every shadow holding fantastic terrors;
+to my ears, every sound a signal of dread.  For the deathful
+hand of Fu-Manchu was stretched over Redmoat, at any hour
+to loose strange, Oriental horrors upon its inmates.
+
+"Well," said Nayland Smith, joining me at the window, "we had dared
+to hope him dead, but we know now that he lives!"
+
+The Rev. J. D. Eltham coughed nervously, and I turned, leaning my elbow
+upon the table, and studied the play of expression upon the refined,
+sensitive face of the clergyman.
+
+"You think I acted rightly in sending for you, Mr. Smith?"
+
+Nayland Smith smoked furiously.
+
+"Mr. Eltham," he replied, "you see in me a man groping in the dark.
+I am to-day no nearer to the conclusion of my mission than
+upon the day when I left Mandalay.  You offer me a clew;
+I am here.  Your affair, I believe, stands thus:
+A series of attempted burglaries, or something of the kind,
+has alarmed your household.  Yesterday, returning from London
+with your daughter, you were both drugged in some way and,
+occupying a compartment to yourselves, you both slept.
+Your daughter awoke, and saw someone else in the carriage--
+a yellow-faced man who held a case of instruments in his hands."
+
+"Yes; I was, of course, unable to enter into particulars over the telephone.
+The man was standing by one of the windows.  Directly he observed that my
+daughter was awake, he stepped towards her."
+
+"What did he do with the case in his hands?"
+
+"She did not notice--or did not mention having noticed.
+In fact, as was natural, she was so frightened that she recalls
+nothing more, beyond the fact that she strove to arouse me,
+without succeeding, felt hands grasp her shoulders--and swooned."
+
+"But someone used the emergency cord, and stopped the train."
+
+"Greba has no recollection of having done so."
+
+"Hm!  Of course, no yellow-faced man was on the train.
+When did you awake?"
+
+"I was aroused by the guard, but only when he had repeatedly shaken me."
+
+"Upon reaching Great Yarmouth you immediately called up Scotland Yard?
+You acted very wisely, sir.  How long were you in China?"
+
+Mr. Eltham's start of surprise was almost comical.
+
+"It is perhaps not strange that you should be aware of my residence in China,
+Mr. Smith," he said; "but my not having mentioned it may seem so.
+The fact is"--his sensitive face flushed in palpable embarrassment--
+"I left China under what I may term an episcopal cloud.
+I have lived in retirement ever since.  Unwittingly--I solemnly
+declare to you, Mr. Smith, unwittingly--I stirred up certain
+deep-seated prejudices in my endeavors to do my duty--my duty.
+I think you asked me how long I was in China?  I was there from 1896
+until 1900--four years."
+
+"I recall the circumstances, Mr. Eltham," said Smith, with an odd
+note in his voice.  "I have been endeavoring to think where I
+had come across the name, and a moment ago I remembered.
+I am happy to have met you, sir."
+
+The clergyman blushed again like a girl, and slightly inclined his head,
+with its scanty fair hair.
+
+"Has Redmoat, as its name implies, a moat round it?  I was unable to see
+in the dusk."  
+
+"It remains.  Redmoat--a corruption of Round Moat--was formerly a
+priory, disestablished by the eighth Henry in 1536." His pedantic
+manner was quaint at times. "But the moat is no longer flooded. In
+fact, we grow cabbages in part of it. If you refer to the strategic
+strength of the place"--he smiled, but his manner was embarrassed
+again--"it is considerable. I have barbed wire fencing, and--other
+arrangements. You see, it is a lonely spot," he added apologetically.
+"And now, if you will excuse me, we will resume these gruesome
+inquiries after the more pleasant affairs of dinner."
+
+He left us.
+
+"Who is our host?" I asked, as the door closed.
+
+Smith smiled.
+
+"You are wondering what caused the `episcopal cloud?'" he suggested.
+"Well, the deep-seated prejudices which our reverend friend stirred up
+culminated in the Boxer Risings."
+
+"Good heavens, Smith!" I said; for I could not reconcile the diffident
+personality of the clergyman with the memories which those words awakened.
+
+"He evidently should be on our danger list," my friend continued quickly;
+"but he has so completely effaced himself of recent years that I think it
+probable that someone else has only just recalled his existence to mind.
+The Rev. J. D. Eltham, my dear Petrie, though he may be a poor hand
+at saving souls, at any rate, has saved a score of Christian women
+from death--and worse."
+
+"J. D. Eltham--" I began.
+
+"Is `Parson Dan'!" rapped Smith, "the `Fighting Missionary,'
+the man who with a garrison of a dozen cripples and a German
+doctor held the hospital at Nan-Yang against two hundred Boxers.
+That's who the Rev. J. D. Eltham is!  But what is he up to,
+now, I have yet to find out.  He is keeping something back--
+something which has made him an object of interest to Young China!"
+
+During dinner the matters responsible for our presence there did not
+hold priority in the conversation.  In fact, this, for the most part,
+consisted in light talk of books and theaters.
+
+Greba Eltham, the clergyman's daughter, was a charming young hostess,
+and she, with Vernon Denby, Mr. Eltham's nephew, completed the party.
+No doubt the girl's presence, in part, at any rate, led us to refrain
+from the subject uppermost in our minds.
+
+These little pools of calm dotted along the torrential course of
+the circumstances which were bearing my friend and me onward to unknown
+issues form pleasant, sunny spots in my dark recollections.
+
+So I shall always remember, with pleasure, that dinner-party
+at Redmoat, in the old-world dining-room; it was so very peaceful,
+so almost grotesquely calm.  For I, within my very bones, felt it
+to be the calm before the storm.  When, later, we men passed
+to the library, we seemed to leave that atmosphere behind us.
+
+"Redmoat," said the Rev. J. D. Eltham, "has latterly become the theater
+of strange doings."
+
+He stood on the hearth-rug. A shaded lamp upon the big table
+and candles in ancient sconces upon the mantelpiece afforded
+dim illumination.  Mr. Eltham's nephew, Vernon Denby,
+lolled smoking on the window-seat, and I sat near to him.
+Nayland Smith paced restlessly up and down the room.
+
+"Some months ago, almost a year," continued the clergyman,
+"a burglarious attempt was made upon the house.  There was an arrest,
+and the man confessed that he had been tempted by my collection."
+He waved his hand vaguely towards the several cabinets about
+the shadowed room.
+
+"It was shortly afterwards that I allowed my hobby for--
+playing at forts to run away with me."  He smiled an apology.
+"I virtually fortified Redmoat--against trespassers of any kind, I mean.
+You have seen that the house stands upon a kind of large mound.
+This is artificial, being the buried ruins of a Roman outwork;
+a portion of the ancient castrum." Again he waved indicatively,
+this time toward the window.
+
+"When it was a priory it was completely isolated and defended
+by its environing moat.  Today it is completely surrounded by
+barbed-wire fencing.  Below this fence, on the east, is a narrow stream,
+a tributary of the Waverney; on the north and west, the high road,
+but nearly twenty feet below, the banks being perpendicular.
+On the south is the remaining part of the moat--now my kitchen garden;
+but from there up to the level of the house is nearly twenty feet again,
+and the barbed wire must also be counted with.
+
+"The entrance, as you know, is by the way of a kind of cutting.
+There is a gate at the foot of the steps (they are some of the original
+steps of the priory, Dr. Petrie), and another gate at the head."
+
+He paused, and smiled around upon us boyishly.
+
+"My secret defenses remain to be mentioned," he resumed;
+and, opening a cupboard, he pointed to a row of batteries,
+with a number of electric bells upon the wall behind.
+"The more vulnerable spots are connected at night with these bells,"
+he said triumphantly.  "Any attempt to scale the barbed wire
+or to force either gate would set two or more of these ringing.
+A stray cow raised one false alarm," he added, "and a careless
+rook threw us into a perfect panic on another occasion."
+
+He was so boyish--so nervously brisk and acutely sensitive--
+that it was difficult to see in him the hero of the Nan-Yang hospital.
+I could only suppose that he had treated the Boxers' raid in the same spirit
+wherein he met would-be trespassers within the precincts of Redmoat.
+It had been an escapade, of which he was afterwards ashamed, as, faintly,
+he was ashamed of his "fortifications."  "But," rapped Smith, "it was not
+the visit of the burglar which prompted these elaborate precautions."
+
+Mr. Eltham coughed nervously.
+
+"I am aware," he said, "that having invoked official aid, I must be
+perfectly frank with you, Mr. Smith.  It was the burglar who was responsible
+for my continuing the wire fence all round the grounds, but the electrical
+contrivance followed, later, as a result of several disturbed nights.
+My servants grew uneasy about someone who came, they said, after dusk.
+No one could describe this nocturnal visitor, but certainly we found traces.
+I must admit that.
+
+"Then--I received what I may term a warning.  My position is a peculiar one--
+a peculiar one.  My daughter, too, saw this prowling person,
+over by the Roman castrum, and described him as a yellow man.
+It was the incident in the train following closely upon this other, which led
+me to speak to the police, little as I desired to--er--court publicity."
+
+Nayland Smith walked to a window, and looked out across
+the sloping lawn to where the shadows of the shrubbery lay.
+A dog was howling dismally somewhere.
+
+"Your defenses are not impregnable, after all, then?" he jerked.
+"On our way up this evening Mr. Denby was telling us about the death
+of his collie a few nights ago."
+
+The clergyman's face clouded.
+
+"That, certainly, was alarming," he confessed.
+
+"I had been in London for a few days, and during my absence Vernon
+came down, bringing the dog with him.  On the night of his arrival
+it ran, barking, into the shrubbery yonder, and did not come out.
+He went to look for it with a lantern, and found it lying among
+the bushes, quite dead.  The poor creature had been dreadfully
+beaten about the head."
+
+"The gates were locked," Denby interrupted, "and no one could
+have got out of the grounds without a ladder and someone
+to assist him.  But there was so sign of a living thing about.
+Edwards and I searched every corner."
+
+"How long has that other dog taken to howling?" inquired Smith.
+
+"Only since Rex's death," said Denby quickly.
+
+"It is my mastiff," explained the clergyman, "and he is confined in the yard.
+He is never allowed on this side of the house."
+
+Nayland Smith wandered aimlessly about the library.
+
+"I am sorry to have to press you, Mr. Eltham," he said,
+"but what was the nature of the warning to which you referred,
+and from whom did it come?"
+
+Mr. Eltham hesitated for a long time.
+
+"I have been so unfortunate," he said at last, "in my previous efforts,
+that I feel assured of your hostile criticism when I tell you that I am
+contemplating an immediate return to Ho-Nan!"
+
+Smith jumped round upon him as though moved by a spring.
+
+"Then you are going back to Nan-Yang?" he cried.
+"Now I understand!  Why have you not told me before?
+That is the key for which I have vainly been seeking.
+Your troubles date from the time of your decision to return?"
+
+"Yes, I must admit it," confessed the clergyman diffidently.
+
+"And your warning came from China?"
+
+"It did."
+
+"From a Chinaman?"
+
+"From the Mandarin, Yen-Sun-Yat."
+
+"Yen-Sun-Yat!  My good sir!  He warned you to abandon your visit?
+And you reject his advice?  Listen to me."  Smith was intensely
+excited now, his eyes bright, his lean figure curiously strung up, alert.
+"The Mandarin Yen-Sun-Yat is one of the seven!"
+
+"I do not follow you, Mr. Smith."
+
+"No, sir.  China to-day is not the China of '98.  It is a huge secret machine,
+and Ho-Nan one of its most important wheels!  But if, as I understand,
+this official is a friend of yours, believe me, he has saved your life!
+You would be a dead man now if it were not for your friend in China!
+My dear sir, you must accept his counsel."
+
+Then, for the first time since I had made his acquaintance, "Parson Dan"
+showed through the surface of the Rev. J. D. Eltham.
+
+"No, sir!" replied the clergyman--and the change in his voice was startling.
+"I am called to Nan-Yang. Only One may deter my going."
+
+The admixture of deep spiritual reverence with intense truculence
+in his voice was dissimilar from anything I ever had heard.
+
+"Then only One can protect you," cried Smith, "for, by Heaven,
+no MAN will be able to do so!  Your presence in Ho-Nan
+can do no possible good at present.  It must do harm.
+Your experience in 1900 should be fresh in your memory."
+
+"Hard words, Mr. Smith."
+
+"The class of missionary work which you favor, sir, is injurious
+to international peace.  At the present moment, Ho-Nan is
+a barrel of gunpowder; you would be the lighted match.
+I do not willingly stand between any man and what he chooses
+to consider his duty, but I insist that you abandon your visit
+to the interior of China!"
+
+"You insist, Mr. Smith?"
+
+"As your guest, I regret the necessity
+for reminding you that I hold authority to enforce it."
+
+Denby fidgeted uneasily.  The tone of the conversation was growing harsh
+and the atmosphere of the library portentous with brewing storms.
+
+There was a short, silent interval.
+
+"This is what I had feared and expected," said the clergyman.
+"This was my reason for not seeking official protection."
+
+"The phantom Yellow Peril," said Nayland Smith, "to-day materializes
+under the very eyes of the Western world."
+
+"The `Yellow Peril'!"
+
+"You scoff, sir, and so do others.  We take the proffered right
+hand of friendship nor inquire if the hidden left holds a knife!
+The peace of the world is at stake, Mr. Eltham.  Unknowingly, you tamper
+with tremendous issues."
+
+Mr. Eltham drew a deep breath, thrusting both hands in his pockets.
+
+"You are painfully frank, Mr. Smith," he said; "but I like you for it.
+I will reconsider my position and talk this matter over again
+with you to-morrow."
+
+Thus, then, the storm blew over.  Yet I had never
+experienced such an overwhelming sense of imminent peril--
+of a sinister presence--as oppressed me at that moment.
+The very atmosphere of Redmoat was impregnated with
+Eastern devilry; it loaded the air like some evil perfume.
+And then, through the silence, cut a throbbing scream--
+the scream of a woman in direst fear.
+
+"My God, it's Greba!" whispered Mr. Eltham.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+IN what order we dashed down to the drawing-room I cannot recall.
+But none was before me when I leaped over the threshold and saw Miss
+Eltham prone by the French windows.
+
+These were closed and bolted, and she lay with hands
+outstretched in the alcove which they formed.  I bent over her.
+Nayland Smith was at my elbow.
+
+"Get my bag" I said.  "She has swooned.  It is nothing serious."
+
+Her father, pale and wide-eyed, hovered about me, muttering incoherently;
+but I managed to reassure him; and his gratitude when, I having administered
+a simple restorative, the girl sighed shudderingly and opened her eyes,
+was quite pathetic.
+
+I would permit no questioning at that time, and on her father's
+arm she retired to her own rooms.
+
+It was some fifteen minutes later that her message was brought to me.
+I followed the maid to a quaint little octagonal apartment, and Greba
+Eltham stood before me, the candlelight caressing the soft curves
+of her face and gleaming in the meshes of her rich brown hair.
+
+When she had answered my first question she hesitated in pretty confusion.
+
+"We are anxious to know what alarmed you, Miss Eltham."
+
+She bit her lip and glanced with apprehension towards the window.
+
+"I am almost afraid to tell father," she began rapidly.
+"He will think me imaginative, but you have been so kind.
+It was two green eyes!  Oh!  Dr. Petrie, they looked up at me
+from the steps leading to the lawn.  And they shone like the eyes
+of a cat."
+
+The words thrilled me strangely.
+
+"Are you sure it was not a cat, Miss Eltham?"
+
+"The eyes were too large, Dr. Petrie.  There was
+something dreadful, most dreadful, in their appearance.
+I feel foolish and silly for having fainted, twice in two days!
+But the suspense is telling upon me, I suppose.
+Father thinks"--she was becoming charmingly confidential,
+as a woman often will with a tactful physician--"that
+shut up here we are safe from--whatever threatens us."
+I noted, with concern, a repetition of the nervous shudder.
+"But since our return someone else has been in Redmoat!"
+
+"Whatever do you mean, Miss Eltham?"
+
+"Oh!  I don't quite know what I do mean, Dr. Petrie.
+What does it ALL mean?  Vernon has been explaining to me
+that some awful Chinaman is seeking the life of Mr. Nayland Smith.
+But if the same man wants to kill my father, why has
+he not done so?"
+
+"I am afraid you puzzle me."
+
+"Of course, I must do so.  But--the man in the train.
+He could have killed us both quite easily!  And--last night
+someone was in father's room."
+
+"In his room!"
+
+"I could not sleep, and I heard something moving.
+My room is the next one.  I knocked on the wall and woke father.
+There was nothing; so I said it was the howling of the dog
+that had frightened me."
+
+"How could anyone get into his room?"
+
+"I cannot imagine.  But I am not sure it was a man."
+
+"Miss Eltham, you alarm me.  What do you suspect?"
+
+"You must think me hysterical and silly, but whilst father and I have been
+away from Redmoat perhaps the usual precautions have been neglected.
+Is there any creature, any large creature, which could climb up the wall
+to the window?  Do you know of anything with a long, thin body?"
+
+For a moment I offered no reply, studying the girl's pretty face,
+her eager, blue-gray eyes widely opened and fixed upon mine.
+She was not of the neurotic type, with her clear complexion
+and sun-kissed neck; her arms, healthily toned by exposure
+to the country airs, were rounded and firm, and she had the agile
+shape of a young Diana with none of the anaemic languor which breeds
+morbid dreams.  She was frightened; yes, who would not have been?
+But the mere idea of this thing which she believed to be in Redmoat,
+without the apparition of the green eyes, must have prostrated
+a victim of "nerves."
+
+"Have you seen such a creature, Miss Eltham?"
+
+She hesitated again, glancing down and pressing her finger-tips together.
+
+"As father awoke and called out to know why I knocked,
+I glanced from my window.  The moonlight threw half the lawn
+into shadow, and just disappearing in this shadow was something--
+something of a brown color, marked with sections!"
+
+"What size and shape?"
+
+"It moved so quickly I could form no idea of its shape;
+but I saw quite six feet of it flash across the grass!"
+
+"Did you hear anything?"
+
+"A swishing sound in the shrubbery, then nothing more."
+
+She met my eyes expectantly.  Her confidence in my powers of understanding
+and sympathy was gratifying, though I knew that I but occupied the position
+of a father-confessor.
+
+"Have you any idea," I said, "how it came about that you awoke
+in the train yesterday whilst your father did not?"
+
+"We had coffee at a refreshment-room; it must have been drugged in some way.
+I scarcely tasted mine, the flavor was so awful; but father is an old traveler
+and drank the whole of his cupful!"
+
+Mr. Eltham's voice called from below.
+
+"Dr. Petrie," said the girl quickly, "what do you think they
+want to do to him?"
+
+"Ah!" I replied, "I wish I knew that."
+
+"Will you think over what I have told you?  For I do assure you there
+is something here in Redmoat--something that comes and goes in spite
+of father's `fortifications'?  Caesar knows there is.  Listen to him.
+He drags at his chain so that I wonder he does not break it."
+
+As we passed downstairs the howling of the mastiff sounded eerily
+through the house, as did the clank-clank of the tightening chain
+as he threw the weight of his big body upon it.
+
+I sat in Smith's room that night for some time, he pacing the floor
+smoking and talking.
+
+"Eltham has influential Chinese friends," he said;
+"but they dare not have him in Nan-Yang at present.
+He knows the country as he knows Norfolk; he would see things!
+
+"His precautions here have baffled the enemy, I think.
+The attempt in the train points to an anxiety to waste no opportunity.
+But whilst Eltham was absent (he was getting his outfit in London,
+by the way) they have been fixing some second string to their fiddle here.
+In case no opportunity offered before he returned, they provided
+for getting at him here!"
+
+"But how, Smith?"
+
+"That's the mystery.  But the dead dog in the shrubbery is significant."
+
+"Do you think some emissary of Fu-Manchu is actually inside the moat?"
+
+"It's impossible, Petrie.  You are thinking of secret passages,
+and so forth.  There are none.  Eltham has measured up every
+foot of the place.  There isn't a rathole left unaccounted for;
+and as for a tunnel under the moat, the house stands on a solid
+mass of Roman masonry, a former camp of Hadrian's time.
+I have seen a very old plan of the Round Moat Priory as it
+was called.  There is no entrance and no exit save by the steps.
+So how was the dog killed?"
+
+I knocked out my pipe on a bar of the grate.
+
+"We are in the thick of it here," I said.
+
+"We are always in the thick of it," replied Smith.  "Our danger is
+no greater in Norfolk than in London.  But what do they want to do?
+That man in the train with the case of instruments--WHAT instruments?
+Then the apparition of the green eyes to-night. Can they have been
+the eyes of Fu-Manchu?  Is some peculiarly unique outrage contemplated--
+something calling for the presence of the master?"
+
+"He may have to prevent Eltham's leaving England without killing him."
+
+"Quite so.  He probably has instructions to be merciful.
+But God help the victim of Chinese mercy!"
+
+I went to my own room then.  But I did not even undress,
+refilling my pipe and seating myself at the open window.
+Having looked upon the awful Chinese doctor, the memory of
+his face, with its filmed green eyes, could never leave me.
+The idea that he might be near at that moment was a poor narcotic.
+
+The howling and baying of the mastiff was almost continuous.
+
+When all else in Redmoat was still the dog's mournful note yet rose on
+the night with something menacing in it.  I sat looking out across the sloping
+turf to where the shrubbery showed as a black island in a green sea.
+The moon swam in a cloudless sky, and the air was warm and fragrant
+with country scents.
+
+It was in the shrubbery that Denby's collie had met his mysterious death--
+that the thing seen by Miss Eltham had disappeared.  What uncanny secret
+did it hold?
+
+Caesar became silent.
+
+As the stopping of a clock will sometimes awaken a sleeper, the abrupt
+cessation of that distant howling, to which I had grown accustomed,
+now recalled me from a world of gloomy imaginings.
+
+I glanced at my watch in the moonlight.  It was twelve minutes past midnight.
+
+As I replaced it the dog suddenly burst out afresh, but now in a tone
+of sheer anger.  He was alternately howling and snarling in a way
+that sounded new to me.  The crashes, as he leapt to the end
+of his chain, shook the building in which he was confined.
+It was as I stood up to lean from the window and commanded a view
+of the corner of the house that he broke loose.
+
+With a hoarse bay he took that decisive leap, and I
+heard his heavy body fall against the wooden wall.
+There followed a strange, guttural cry. . .and the growling
+of the dog died away at the rear of the house.  He was out!
+But that guttural note had not come from the throat of a dog.
+Of what was he in pursuit?
+
+At which point his mysterious quarry entered the shrubbery I do not know.
+I only know that I saw absolutely nothing, until Caesar's lithe shape
+was streaked across the lawn, and the great creature went crashing
+into the undergrowth.
+
+Then a faint sound above and to my right told me that I was not the only
+spectator of the scene.  I leaned farther from the window.
+
+"Is that you, Miss Eltham?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, Dr. Petrie!" she said.  "I am so glad you are awake.
+Can we do nothing to help?  Caesar will be killed."
+
+"Did you see what he went after?"
+
+"No," she called back, and drew her breath sharply.
+
+For a strange figure went racing across the grass.
+It was that of a man in a blue dressing-gown, who held
+a lantern high before him, and a revolver in his right hand.
+Coincident with my recognition of Mr. Eltham he leaped,
+plunging into the shrubbery in the wake of the dog.
+
+But the night held yet another surprise; for Nayland Smith's voice came:
+
+"Come back!  Come back, Eltham!"
+
+I ran out into the passage and downstairs.  The front door was open.
+A terrible conflict waged in the shrubbery, between the mastiff and
+something else.  Passing round to the lawn, I met Smith fully dressed.
+He just had dropped from a first-floor window.
+
+"The man is mad!" he snapped.  "Heaven knows what lurks there!
+He should not have gone alone!"
+
+Together we ran towards the dancing light of Eltham's lantern.
+The sounds of conflict ceased suddenly.  Stumbling over
+stumps and lashed by low-sweeping branches, we struggled
+forward to where the clergyman knelt amongst the bushes.
+He glanced up with tears in his eyes, as was revealed by
+the dim light.
+
+"Look!" he cried.
+
+The body of the dog lay at his feet.
+
+It was pitiable to think that the fearless brute should have met
+his death in such a fashion, and when I bent and examined him I
+was glad to find traces of life.
+
+"Drag him out.  He is not dead," I said.
+
+"And hurry," rapped Smith, peering about him right and left.
+
+So we three hurried from that haunted place, dragging the dog with us.
+We were not molested.  No sound disturbed the now perfect stillness.
+
+By the lawn edge we came upon Denby, half dressed;
+and almost immediately Edwards the gardener also appeared.
+The white faces of the house servants showed at one window,
+and Miss Eltham called to me from her room:
+
+"Is he dead?"
+
+"No," I replied; "only stunned."
+
+We carried the dog round to the yard, and I examined his head.
+It had been struck by some heavy blunt instrument, but the skull
+was not broken.  It is hard to kill a mastiff.
+
+"Will you attend to him, Doctor?" asked Eltham.
+"We must see that the villain does not escape."
+
+His face was grim and set.  This was a different man from the diffident
+clergyman we knew:  this was "Parson Dan" again.
+
+I accepted the care of the canine patient, and Eltham with
+the others went off for more lights to search the shrubbery.
+As I was washing a bad wound between the mastiff's ears,
+Miss Eltham joined me.  It was the sound of her voice,
+I think, rather than my more scientific ministration,
+which recalled Caesar to life.  For, as she entered, his tail
+wagged feebly, and a moment later he struggled to his feet--
+one of which was injured.
+
+Having provided for his immediate needs, I left him in
+charge of his young mistress and joined the search party.
+They had entered the shrubbery from four points and drawn blank.
+
+"There is absolutely nothing there, and no one can possibly have left
+the grounds," said Eltham amazedly.
+
+We stood on the lawn looking at one another, Nayland Smith,
+angry but thoughtful, tugging at the lobe of his left ear,
+as was his habit in moments of perplexity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+WITH the first coming of light, Eltham, Smith and I tested the electrical
+contrivances from every point.  They were in perfect order.
+It became more and more incomprehensible how anyone could have entered
+and quitted Redmoat during the night.  The barbed-wire fencing was intact,
+and bore no signs of having been tampered with.
+
+Smith and I undertook an exhaustive examination of the shrubbery.
+
+At the spot where we had found the dog, some five paces to the west
+of the copper beech, the grass and weeds were trampled and the
+surrounding laurels and rhododendrons bore evidence of a struggle,
+but no human footprint could be found.
+
+"The ground is dry," said Smith.  "We cannot expect much."
+
+"In my opinion," I said, "someone tried to get at Caesar;
+his presence is dangerous.  And in his rage he broke loose."
+
+"I think so, too," agreed Smith.  "But why did this person make
+for here?  And how, having mastered the dog, get out of Redmoat?
+I am open to admit the possibility of someone's getting in during
+the day whilst the gates are open, and hiding until dusk.
+But how in the name of all that's wonderful does he GET OUT?
+He must possess the attributes of a bird."
+
+I thought of Greba Eltham's statements, reminding my friend
+of her description of the thing which she had seen passing
+into this strangely haunted shrubbery.
+
+"That line of speculation soon takes us out of our depth, Petrie," he said.
+"Let us stick to what we can understand, and that may help us
+to a clearer idea of what, at present, is incomprehensible.
+My view of the case to date stands thus:
+
+"(1) Eltham, having rashly decided to return to the interior of China,
+is warned by an official whose friendship he has won in some way
+to stay in England.
+
+"(2) I know this official for one of the Yellow group represented
+in England by Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+"(3) Several attempts, of which we know but little, to get at
+Eltham are frustrated, presumably by his curious `defenses.'
+An attempt in a train fails owing to Miss Eltham's distaste
+for refreshment-room coffee.  An attempt here fails owing
+to her insomnia.
+
+"(4) During Eltham's absence from Redmoat certain preparations
+are made for his return.  These lead to:
+
+"(a) The death of Denby's collie;
+
+"(b) The things heard and seen by Miss Eltham;
+
+"(c) The things heard and seen by us all last night.
+
+"So that the clearing up of my fourth point--id est, the discovery
+of the nature of these preparations--becomes our immediate concern.
+The prime object of these preparations, Petrie, was to enable someone
+to gain access to Eltham's room.  The other events are incidental.
+The dogs HAD to be got rid of, for instance; and there is no doubt
+that Miss Eltham's wakefulness saved her father a second time."
+
+"But from what?  For Heaven's sake, from what?"
+
+Smith glanced about into the light-patched shadows.
+
+"From a visit by someone--perhaps by Fu-Manchu himself," he said in a
+hushed voice.  "The object of that visit I hope we may never learn;
+for that would mean that it had been achieved."
+
+"Smith," I said, "I do not altogether understand you; but do you
+think he has some incredible creature hidden here somewhere?
+It would be like him."
+
+"I begin to suspect the most formidable creature in the known world
+to be hidden here.  I believe Fu-Manchu is somewhere inside Redmoat!"
+
+Our conversation was interrupted at this point by Denby,
+who came to report that he had examined the moat, the roadside,
+and the bank of the stream, but found no footprints or clew
+of any kind.
+
+"No one left the grounds of Redmoat last night, I think," he said.
+And his voice had awe in it.
+
+That day dragged slowly on.  A party of us scoured the neighborhood
+for traces of strangers, examining every foot of the Roman ruin
+hard by; but vainly.
+
+"May not your presence here induce Fu-Manchu to abandon his plans?"
+I asked Smith.
+
+"I think not," he replied.  "You see, unless we can prevail upon him,
+Eltham sails in a fortnight.  So the Doctor has no time to waste.
+Furthermore, I have an idea that his arrangements are of such a character
+that they MUST go forward.  He might turn aside, of course,
+to assassinate me, if opportunity arose!  But we know, from experience,
+that he permits nothing to interfere with his schemes."
+
+There are few states, I suppose, which exact so severe a toll from one's
+nervous system as the ANTICIPATION of calamity.
+
+All anticipation is keener, be it of joy or pain, than the reality
+whereof it is a mental forecast; but that inactive waiting at Redmoat,
+for the blow which we knew full well to be pending exceeded in its
+nerve taxation, anything I hitherto had experienced.
+
+I felt as one bound upon an Aztec altar, with the priest's obsidian
+knife raised above my breast!
+
+Secret and malign forces throbbed about us; forces against which
+we had no armor.  Dreadful as it was, I count it a mercy that
+the climax was reached so quickly.  And it came suddenly enough;
+for there in that quiet Norfolk home we found ourselves at hand
+grips with one of the mysterious horrors which characterized
+the operations of Dr. Fu-Manchu. It was upon us before we realized it.
+There is no incidental music to the dramas of real life.
+
+As we sat on the little terrace in the creeping twilight,
+I remember thinking how the peace of the scene gave the lie
+to my fears that we bordered upon tragic things.  Then Caesar,
+who had been a docile patient all day, began howling again;
+and I saw Greba Eltham shudder.
+
+I caught Smith's eye, and was about to propose our retirement indoors,
+when the party was broken up in more turbulent fashion.  I suppose it
+was the presence of the girl which prompted Denby to the rash act,
+a desire personally to distinguish himself.  But, as I recalled afterwards,
+his gaze had rarely left the shrubbery since dusk, save to seek her face,
+and now he leaped wildly to his feet, overturning his chair, and dashed
+across the grass to the trees.
+
+"Did you see it?" he yelled.  "Did you see it?"
+
+He evidently carried a revolver.  For from the edge of the shrubbery
+a shot sounded, and in the flash we saw Denby with the weapon raised.
+
+"Greba, go in and fasten the windows," cried Eltham.
+"Mr. Smith, will you enter the bushes from the west.
+Dr. Petrie, east.  Edwards, Edwards--" And he was off across
+the lawn with the nervous activity of a cat.
+
+As I made off in an opposite direction I heard the gardener's
+voice from the lower gate, and I saw Eltham's plan.
+It was to surround the shrubbery.
+
+Two more shots and two flashes from the dense heart of greenwood.
+Then a loud cry--I thought, from Denby--and a second, muffled one.
+
+Following--silence, only broken by the howling of the mastiff.
+
+I sprinted through the rose garden, leaped heedlessly over a bed of geranium
+and heliotrope, and plunged in among the bushes and under the elms.
+Away on the left I heard Edwards shouting, and Eltham's answering voice.
+
+"Denby!" I cried, and yet louder:  "Denby!"
+
+But the silence fell again.
+
+Dusk was upon Redmoat now, but from sitting in the twilight my eyes had
+grown accustomed to gloom, and I could see fairly well what lay before me.
+Not daring to think what might lurk above, below, around me, I pressed
+on into the midst of the thicket.
+
+"Vernon!" came Eltham's voice from one side.
+
+"Bear more to the right, Edwards," I heard Nayland Smith cry
+directly ahead of me.
+
+With an eerie and indescribable sensation of impending disaster upon me,
+I thrust my way through to a gray patch which marked a break in the
+elmen roof.  At the foot of the copper beech I almost fell over Eltham.
+Then Smith plunged into view.  Lastly, Edwards the gardener rounded a big
+rhododendron and completed the party.
+
+We stood quite still for a moment.
+
+A faint breeze whispered through the beech leaves.
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+I cannot remember who put it into words; I was too dazed with amazement
+to notice.  Then Eltham began shouting:
+
+"Vernon!  Vernon!  VERNON!"
+
+His voice pitched higher upon each repetition.  There was something
+horrible about that vain calling, under the whispering beech,
+with shrubs banked about us cloaking God alone could know what.
+
+From the back of the house came Caesar's faint reply.
+
+"Quick!  Lights!" rapped Smith.  "Every lamp you have!"
+
+Off we went, dodging laurels and privets, and poured out on to the lawn,
+a disordered company.  Eltham's face was deathly pale, and his jaw set hard.
+He met my eye.
+
+"God forgive me!" he said.  "I could do murder to-night!"
+
+He was a man composed of strange perplexities.
+
+It seemed an age before the lights were found.  But at last we returned
+to the bushes, really after a very brief delay; and ten minutes
+sufficed us to explore the entire shrubbery, for it was not extensive.
+We found his revolver, but there was no one there--nothing.
+
+When we all stood again on the lawn, I thought that I had never seen
+Smith so haggard.
+
+"What in Heaven's name can we do?" he muttered.
+"What does it mean?"
+
+He expected no answer; for there was none to offer one.
+
+"Search!  Everywhere," said Eltham hoarsely.
+
+He ran off into the rose garden, and began beating about among
+the flowers like a madman, muttering:  "Vernon!  Vernon!"  For close
+upon an hour we all searched.  We searched every square yard, I think,
+within the wire fencing, and found no trace.  Miss Eltham slipped out
+in the confusion, and joined with the rest of us in that frantic hunt.
+Some of the servants assisted too.
+
+It was a group terrified and awestricken which came together
+again on the terrace.  One and then another would give up,
+until only Eltham and Smith were missing.  Then they came back
+together from examining the steps to the lower gate.
+
+Eltham dropped on to a rustic seat, and sank his head in his hands.
+
+Nayland Smith paced up and down like a newly caged animal,
+snapping his teeth together and tugging at his ear.
+
+Possessed by some sudden idea, or pressed to action by his
+tumultuous thoughts, he snatched up a lantern and strode silently off
+across the grass and to the shrubbery once more.  I followed him.
+I think his idea was that he might surprise anyone who lurked there.
+He surprised himself, and all of us.
+
+For right at the margin he tripped and fell flat.
+I ran to him.
+
+He had fallen over the body of Denby, which lay there!
+
+Denby had not been there a few moments before, and how he came
+to be there now we dared not conjecture.  Mr. Eltham joined us,
+uttered one short, dry sob, and dropped upon his knees.
+Then we were carrying Denby back to the house, with the mastiff
+howling a marche funebre.
+
+We laid him on the grass where it sloped down from the terrace.
+Nayland Smith's haggard face was terrible.  But the stark horror of
+the thing inspired him to that, which conceived earlier, had saved Denby.
+Twisting suddenly to Eltham, he roared in a voice audible beyond the river:
+
+"Heavens!  we are fools!  LOOSE THE DOG!"
+
+"But the dog--" I began.
+
+Smith clapped his hand over my mouth.
+
+"I know he's crippled," he whispered.  "But if anything human lurks there,
+the dog will lead us to it.  If a MAN is there, he will fly!  Why did
+we not think of it before.  Fools, fools!"  He raised his voice again.
+"Keep him on leash, Edwards.  He will lead us."
+
+The scheme succeeded.
+
+Edwards barely had started on his errand when bells began ringing
+inside the house.
+
+"Wait!" snapped Eltham, and rushed indoors.
+
+A moment later he was out again, his eyes gleaming madly.
+"Above the moat," he panted.  And we were off en masse
+round the edge of the trees.
+
+It was dark above the moat; but not so dark as to prevent our
+seeing a narrow ladder of thin bamboo joints and silken cord
+hanging by two hooks from the top of the twelve-foot wire fence.
+There was no sound.
+
+"He's out!" screamed Eltham.  "Down the steps!"
+
+We all ran our best and swiftest.  But Eltham outran us.  Like a fury
+he tore at bolts and bars, and like a fury sprang out into the road.
+Straight and white it showed to the acclivity by the Roman ruin.
+But no living thing moved upon it.  The distant baying of the dog
+was borne to our ears.
+
+"Curse it!  he's crippled," hissed Smith.  "Without him,
+as well pursue a shadow!"
+
+
+A few hours later the shrubbery yielded up its secret, a simple one enough:
+A big cask sunk in a pit, with a laurel shrub cunningly affixed
+to its movable lid, which was further disguised with tufts of grass.
+A slender bamboo-jointed rod lay near the fence.  It had a hook on the top,
+and was evidently used for attaching the ladder.
+
+"It was the end of this ladder which Miss Eltham saw," said Smith,
+"as he trailed it behind him into the shrubbery when she interrupted
+him in her fathers room.  He and whomever he had with him doubtless
+slipped in during the daytime--whilst Eltham was absent in London--
+bringing the prepared cask and all necessary implements with them.
+They concealed themselves somewhere--probably in the shrubbery--
+and during the night made the cache.  The excavated earth would be
+disposed of on the flower-beds; the dummy bush they probably had ready.
+You see, the problem of getting IN was never a big one.
+But owing to the `defenses' it was impossible (whilst Eltham
+was in residence at any rate) to get OUT after dark.
+For Fu-Manchu's purposes, then, a working-base INSIDE
+Redmoat was essential.  His servant--for he needed assistance--
+must have been in hiding somewhere outside; Heaven knows where!
+During the day they could come or go by the gates, as we
+have already noted."
+
+"You think it was the Doctor himself?"
+
+"It seems possible.  Who else has eyes like the eyes Miss Eltham
+saw from the window last night?"
+
+Then remains to tell the nature of the outrage whereby Fu-Manchu had planned
+to prevent Eltham's leaving England for China.  This we learned from Denby.
+For Denby was not dead.
+
+It was easy to divine that he had stumbled upon the fiendish
+visitor at the very entrance to his burrow; had been stunned
+(judging from the evidence, with a sand-bag), and dragged down into
+the cache--to which he must have lain in such dangerous proximity
+as to render detection of the dummy bush possible in removing him.
+The quickest expedient, then, had been to draw him beneath.
+When the search of the shrubbery was concluded, his body had been
+borne to the edge of the bushes and laid where we found it.
+
+Why his life had been spared, I cannot conjecture, but provision
+had been made against his recovering consciousness and revealing
+the secret of the shrubbery.  The ruse of releasing the mastiff alone
+had terminated the visit of the unbidden guest within Redmoat.
+
+Denby made a very slow recovery; and, even when convalescent,
+consciously added not one fact to those we already had collated;
+his memory had completely deserted him!
+
+This, in my opinion, as in those of the several specialists consulted,
+was due, not to the blow on the head, but to the presence,
+slightly below and to the right of the first cervical curve of the spine,
+of a minute puncture--undoubtedly caused by a hypodermic syringe.
+Then, unconsciously, poor Denby furnished the last link in the chain;
+for undoubtedly, by means of this operation, Fu-Manchu had designed
+to efface from Eltham's mind his plans of return to Ho-Nan.
+
+The nature of the fluid which could produce such mental symptoms
+was a mystery--a mystery which defied Western science:
+one of the many strange secrets of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+SINCE Nayland Smith's return from Burma I had rarely taken up a paper
+without coming upon evidences of that seething which had cast up
+Dr. Fu-Manchu. Whether, hitherto, such items had escaped my attention
+or had seemed to demand no particular notice, or whether they now became
+increasingly numerous, I was unable to determine.
+
+One evening, some little time after our sojourn in Norfolk,
+in glancing through a number of papers which I had brought in with me,
+I chanced upon no fewer than four items of news bearing more or less
+directly upon the grim business which engaged my friend and I.
+
+No white man, I honestly believe, appreciates the unemotional cruelty
+of the Chinese.  Throughout the time that Dr. Fu-Manchu remained in England,
+the press preserved a uniform silence upon the subject of his existence.
+This was due to Nayland Smith.  But, as a result, I feel assured
+that my account of the Chinaman's deeds will, in many quarters,
+meet with an incredulous reception.
+
+I had been at work, earlier in the evening, upon the opening
+chapters of this chronicle, and I had realized how difficult
+it would be for my reader, amid secure and cozy surroundings,
+to credit any human being with a callous villainy great enough
+to conceive and to put into execution such a death pest
+as that directed against Sir Crichton Davey.
+
+One would expect God's worst man to shrink from employing--
+against however vile an enemy--such an instrument as the Zayat Kiss.
+So thinking, my eye was caught by the following:--
+
+
+EXPRESS CORRESPONDENT
+
+NEW YORK.
+
+"Secret service men of the United States Government are searching
+the South Sea Islands for a certain Hawaiian from the island
+of Maui, who, it is believed, has been selling poisonous scorpions
+to Chinese in Honolulu anxious to get rid of their children.
+
+"Infanticide, by scorpion and otherwise, among the Chinese,
+has increased so terribly that the authorities have started
+a searching inquiry, which has led to the hunt for the scorpion
+dealer of Maui.
+
+"Practically all the babies that die mysteriously are unwanted girls,
+and in nearly every case the parents promptly ascribe the death to the bite
+of a scorpion, and are ready to produce some more or less poisonous insect
+in support of the statement.
+
+"The authorities have no doubt that infanticide by scorpion
+bite is a growing practice, and orders have been given to hunt
+down the scorpion dealer at any cost."
+
+
+Is it any matter for wonder that such a people had produced a
+Fu-Manchu?  I pasted the cutting into a scrap-book, determined that,
+if I lived to publish my account of those days, I would quote it
+therein as casting a sidelight upon Chinese character.
+
+A Reuter message to The Globe and a paragraph in The
+Star also furnished work for my scissors.  Here were evidences
+of the deep-seated unrest, the secret turmoil, which manifested
+itself so far from its center as peaceful England in the person
+of the sinister Doctor.
+
+
+"HONG KONG, Friday.
+
+"Li Hon Hung, the Chinaman who fired at the Governor yesterday,
+was charged before the magistrate with shooting at him with
+intent to kill, which is equivalent to attempted murder.
+The prisoner, who was not defended, pleaded guilty.
+The Assistant Crown Solicitor, who prosecuted, asked for a remand
+until Monday, which was granted.
+
+"Snapshots taken by the spectators of the outrage yesterday disclosed
+the presence of an accomplice, also armed with a revolver.
+It is reported that this man, who was arrested last night,
+was in possession of incriminating documentary evidence."
+
+
+Later.
+
+"Examination of the documents found on Li Hon Hung's accomplice
+has disclosed the fact that both men were well financed by
+the Canton Triad Society, the directors of which had enjoined
+the assassination of Sir F. M. or Mr. C. S., the Colonial Secretary.
+In a report prepared by the accomplice for dispatch to Canton,
+also found on his person, he expressed regret that the attempt
+had failed."--Reuter.
+
+"It is officially reported in St. Petersburg that a force of Chinese soldiers
+and villagers surrounded the house of a Russian subject named Said Effendi,
+near Khotan, in Chinese Turkestan.
+
+"They fired at the house and set it in flames.  There were in the house
+about 100 Russians, many of whom were killed.
+
+"The Russian Government has instructed its Minister at Peking to make
+the most vigorous representations on the subject."--Reuter.
+
+
+Finally, in a Personal Column, I found the following:--
+
+"HO-NAN. Have abandoned visit.--ELTHAM."
+
+
+I had just pasted it into my book when Nayland Smith came in and
+threw himself into an arm-chair, facing me across the table.
+I showed him the cutting.
+
+"I am glad, for Eltham's sake--and for the girl's," was his comment.
+"But it marks another victory for Fu-Manchu!  Just Heaven!  Why is
+retribution delayed!"
+
+Smith's darkly tanned face had grown leaner than ever since he had
+begun his fight with the most uncanny opponent, I suppose, against
+whom a man ever had pitted himself. He stood up and began restlessly
+to pace the room, furiously stuffing tobacco into his briar.
+
+"I have seen Sir Lionel Barton," he said abruptly; "and, to put the whole
+thing in a nutshell, he has laughed at me!  During the months that I
+have been wondering where he had gone to he has been somewhere in Egypt.
+He certainly bears a charmed life, for on the evidence of his letter
+to The Times he has seen things in Tibet which Fu-Manchu would
+have the West blind to; in fact, I think he has found a new keyhole
+to the gate of the Indian Empire!"
+
+Long ago we had placed the name of Sir Lionel Barton upon the list of
+those whose lives stood between Fu-Manchu and the attainment of his end.
+Orientalist and explorer, the fearless traveler who first had penetrated
+to Lhassa, who thrice, as a pilgrim, had entered forbidden Mecca,
+he now had turned his attention again to Tibet--thereby signing
+his own death-warrant.
+
+"That he has reached England alive is a hopeful sign?" I suggested.
+
+Smith shook his head, and lighted the blackened briar.
+
+"England at present is the web," he replied.  "The spider will be waiting.
+Petrie, I sometimes despair.  Sir Lionel is an impossible man to shepherd.
+You ought to see his house at Finchley.  A low, squat place completely
+hemmed in by trees.  Damp as a swamp; smells like a jungle.
+Everything topsy-turvy. He only arrived to-day, and he is working and eating
+(and sleeping I expect), in a study that looks like an earthquake at Sotheby's
+auction-rooms. The rest of the house is half a menagerie and half a circus.
+He has a Bedouin groom, a Chinese body-servant, and Heaven only knows
+what other strange people!"
+
+"Chinese!"
+
+"Yes, I saw him; a squinting Cantonese he calls Kwee.  I don't like him.
+Also, there is a secretary known as Strozza, who has an unpleasant face.
+He is a fine linguist, I understand, and is engaged upon the Spanish
+notes for Barton's forthcoming book on the Mayapan temples.
+By the way, all Sir Lionel's baggage disappeared from the landing-stage--
+including his Tibetan notes."
+
+"Significant!"
+
+"Of course.  But he argues that he has crossed Tibet from the Kuen-Lun
+to the Himalayas without being assassinated, and therefore
+that it is unlikely he will meet with that fate in London.
+I left him dictating the book from memory, at the rate of about
+two hundred words a minute."
+
+"He is wasting no time."
+
+"Wasting time!  In addition to the Yucatan book and the work on Tibet,
+he has to read a paper at the Institute next week about some tomb he has
+unearthed in Egypt.  As I came away, a van drove up from the docks
+and a couple of fellows delivered a sarcophagus as big as a boat.
+It is unique, according to Sir Lionel, and will go to the British Museum
+after he has examined it.  The man crams six months' work into six weeks;
+then he is off again."
+
+"What do you propose to do?"
+
+"What CAN I do?  I know that Fu-Manchu will make an attempt upon him.
+I cannot doubt it.  Ugh!  that house gave me the shudders.
+No sunlight, I'll swear, Petrie, can ever penetrate to the rooms,
+and when I arrived this afternoon clouds of gnats floated like motes
+wherever a stray beam filtered through the trees of the avenue.
+There's a steamy smell about the place that is almost malarious,
+and the whole of the west front is covered with a sort of
+monkey-creeper, which he has imported at some time or other.
+It has a close, exotic perfume that is quite in the picture.
+I tell you, the place was made for murder."
+
+"Have you taken any precautions?"
+
+"I called at Scotland Yard and sent a man down to watch the house, but--"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
+
+"What is Sir Lionel like?"
+
+"A madman, Petrie.  A tall, massive man, wearing a dirty
+dressing-gown of neutral color; a man with untidy gray hair
+and a bristling mustache, keen blue eyes, and a brown skin;
+who wears a short beard or rarely shaves--I don't know which.
+I left him striding about among the thousand and one curiosities
+of that incredible room, picking his way through his antique
+furniture, works of reference, manuscripts, mummies, spears,
+pottery and what not--sometimes kicking a book from his course,
+or stumbling over a stuffed crocodile or a Mexican mask--
+alternately dictating and conversing.  Phew!"
+
+For some time we were silent.
+
+"Smith" I said, "we are making no headway in this business.
+With all the forces arrayed against him, Fu-Manchu still eludes us,
+still pursues his devilish, inscrutable way."
+
+Nayland Smith nodded.
+
+"And we don't know all," he said.  "We mark such and such a man
+as one alive to the Yellow Peril, and we warn him--if we have time.
+Perhaps he escapes; perhaps he does not.  But what do we know, Petrie,
+of those others who may die every week by his murderous agency?
+We cannot know EVERYONE who has read the riddle of China.
+I never see a report of someone found drowned, of an apparent suicide,
+of a sudden, though seemingly natural death, without wondering.
+I tell you, Fu-Manchu is omnipresent; his tentacles embrace everything.
+I said that Sir Lionel must bear a charmed life.  The fact that
+WE are alive is a miracle."
+
+He glanced at his watch.
+
+"Nearly eleven," he said.  "But sleep seems a waste of time--
+apart from its dangers."
+
+We heard a bell ring.  A few moments later followed a knock
+at the room door.
+
+"Come in!" I cried.
+
+A girl entered with a telegram addressed to Smith.
+His jaw looked very square in the lamplight, and his eyes shone
+like steel as he took it from her and opened the envelope.
+He glanced at the form, stood up and passed it to me,
+reaching for his hat, which lay upon my writing-table.
+
+"God help us, Petrie!" he said.
+
+This was the message:
+
+
+"Sir Lionel Barton murdered.  Meet me at his house
+at once.--WEYMOUTH, INSPECTOR."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+ALTHOUGH we avoided all unnecessary delay, it was close upon
+midnight when our cab swung round into a darkly shadowed avenue,
+at the farther end of which, as seen through a tunnel,
+the moonlight glittered upon the windows of Rowan House,
+Sir Lionel Barton's home.
+
+Stepping out before the porch of the long, squat building, I saw
+that it was banked in, as Smith had said, by trees and shrubs.
+The facade showed mantled in the strange exotic creeper
+which he had mentioned, and the air was pungent with an odor
+of decaying vegetation, with which mingled the heavy perfume
+of the little nocturnal red flowers which bloomed luxuriantly
+upon the creeper.
+
+The place looked a veritable wilderness, and when we were admitted
+to the hall by Inspector Weymouth I saw that the interior was in keeping
+with the exterior, for the hall was constructed from the model of some
+apartment in an Assyrian temple, and the squat columns, the low seats,
+the hangings, all were eloquent of neglect, being thickly dust-coated.
+The musty smell, too, was almost as pronounced here as outside,
+beneath the trees.
+
+To a library, whose contents overflowed in many literary torrents
+upon the floor, the detective conducted us.
+
+"Good heavens!" I cried, "what's that?"
+
+Something leaped from the top of the bookcase, ambled silently
+across the littered carpet, and passed from the library like a
+golden streak.  I stood looking after it with startled eyes.
+Inspector Weymouth laughed dryly.
+
+"It's a young puma, or a civet-cat, or something, Doctor," he said.
+"This house is full of surprises--and mysteries."
+
+His voice was not quite steady, I thought, and he carefully closed
+the door ere proceeding further.
+
+"Where is he?" asked Nayland Smith harshly.  "How was it done?"
+
+Weymouth sat down and lighted a cigar which I offered him.
+
+"I thought you would like to hear what led up to it--so far as we know--
+before seeing him?"
+
+Smith nodded.
+
+"Well," continued the Inspector, "the man you arranged to send
+down from the Yard got here all right and took up a post in the
+road outside, where he could command a good view of the gates.
+He saw and heard nothing, until going on for half-past ten,
+when a young lady turned up and went in."
+
+"A young lady?"
+
+"Miss Edmonds, Sir Lionel's shorthand typist.  She had found,
+after getting home, that her bag, with her purse in,
+was missing, and she came back to see if she had left it here.
+She gave the alarm.  My man heard the row from the road and came in.
+Then he ran out and rang us up.  I immediately wired for you."
+
+"He heard the row, you say.  What row?"
+
+"Miss Edmonds went into violent hysterics!"
+
+Smith was pacing the room now in tense excitement.
+
+"Describe what he saw when he came in."
+
+"He saw a negro footman--there isn't an Englishman in the house--
+trying to pacify the girl out in the hall yonder, and a Malay
+and another colored man beating their foreheads and howling.
+There was no sense to be got out of any of them, so he started
+to investigate for himself.  He had taken the bearings of the place
+earlier in the evening, and from the light in a window on the ground
+floor had located the study; so he set out to look for the door.
+When he found it, it was locked from the inside."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He went out and round to the window.  There's no blind, and from
+the shrubbery you can see into the lumber-room known as the study.
+He looked in, as apparently Miss Edmonds had done before him.
+What he saw accounted for her hysterics."
+
+Both Smith and I were hanging upon his words.
+
+"All amongst the rubbish on the floor a big Egyptian mummy case was
+lying on its side, and face downwards, with his arms thrown across it,
+lay Sir Lionel Barton."
+
+"My God!  Yes.  Go on."
+
+"There was only a shaded reading-lamp alight, and it stood on a chair,
+shining right down on him; it made a patch of light on the floor,
+you understand."  The Inspector indicated its extent with his hands.
+"Well, as the man smashed the glass and got the window open,
+and was just climbing in, he saw something else, so he says."
+
+He paused.
+
+"What did he see?" demanded Smith shortly.
+
+"A sort of GREEN MIST, sir.  He says it seemed to be alive.
+It moved over the floor, about a foot from the ground, going away
+from him and towards a curtain at the other end of the study."
+
+Nayland Smith fixed his eyes upon the speaker.
+
+"Where did he first see this green mist?"
+
+"He says, Mr. Smith, that he thinks it came from the mummy case."
+
+"Yes; go on."
+
+"It is to his credit that he climbed into the room after
+seeing a thing like that.  He did.  He turned the body over,
+and Sir Lionel looked horrible.  He was quite dead.
+Then Croxted--that's the man's name--went over to this curtain.
+There was a glass door--shut.  He opened it, and it gave on
+a conservatory--a place stacked from the tiled floor to the glass
+roof with more rubbish.  It was dark inside, but enough light
+came from the study--it's really a drawing-room, by the way--
+as he'd turned all the lamps on, to give him another glimpse
+of this green, crawling mist.  There are three steps to go down.
+On the steps lay a dead Chinaman."
+
+"A dead Chinaman!"
+
+"A dead CHINAMAN."
+
+"Doctor seen them?" rapped Smith.
+
+"Yes; a local man.  He was out of his depth, I could see.
+Contradicted himself three times.  But there's no need for
+another opinion--until we get the coroner's."
+
+"And Croxted?"
+
+"Croxted was taken ill, Mr. Smith, and had to be sent home in a cab."
+
+"What ails him?"
+
+Detective-Inspector Weymouth raised his eyebrows and carefully
+knocked the ash from his cigar.
+
+"He held out until I came, gave me the story, and then fainted right away.
+He said that something in the conservatory seemed to get him by the throat."
+
+"Did he mean that literally?"
+
+"I couldn't say.  We had to send the girl home, too, of course."
+
+Nayland Smith was pulling thoughtfully at the lobe of his left ear.
+
+"Got any theory?" he jerked.
+
+Weymouth shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Not one that includes the green mist," he said.
+"Shall we go in now?"
+
+We crossed the Assyrian hall, where the members of that strange
+household were gathered in a panic-stricken group.  They numbered four.
+Two of them were negroes, and two Easterns of some kind.  I missed
+the Chinaman, Kwee, of whom Smith had spoken, and the Italian secretary;
+and from the way in which my friend peered about the shadows
+of the hall I divined that he, too, wondered at their absence.
+We entered Sir Lionel's study--an apartment which I despair of describing.
+
+Nayland Smith's words, "an earthquake at Sotheby's auction-rooms,"
+leaped to my mind at once; for the place was simply stacked
+with curious litter--loot of Africa, Mexico and Persia.
+In a clearing by the hearth a gas stove stood upon a packing-case,
+and about it lay a number of utensils for camp cookery.
+The odor of rotting vegetation, mingled with the insistent
+perfume of the strange night-blooming flowers, was borne
+in through the open window.
+
+In the center of the floor, beside an overturned sarcophagus,
+lay a figure in a neutral-colored dressing-gown, face downwards,
+and arms thrust forward and over the side of the ancient
+Egyptian mummy case.
+
+My friend advanced and knelt beside the dead man.
+
+"Good God!"
+
+Smith sprang upright and turned with an extraordinary expression
+to Inspector Weymouth.
+
+"You do not know Sir Lionel Barton by sight?" he rapped.
+
+"No," began Weymouth, "but--"
+
+"This is not Sir Lionel.  This is Strozza, the secretary."
+
+"What!" shouted Weymouth.
+
+"Where is the other--the Chinaman--quick!" cried Smith.
+
+"I have had him left where he was found--on the conservatory steps,"
+said the Inspector.
+
+Smith ran across the room to where, beyond the open door,
+a glimpse might be obtained of stacked-up curiosities.
+Holding back the curtain to allow more light to penetrate,
+he bent forward over a crumpled-up figure which lay upon
+the steps below.
+
+"It is!" he cried aloud.  "It is Sir Lionel's servant, Kwee."
+
+Weymouth and I looked at one another across the body of the Italian;
+then our eyes turned together to where my friend, grim-faced, stood
+over the dead Chinaman.  A breeze whispered through the leaves;
+a great wave of exotic perfume swept from the open window towards
+the curtained doorway.
+
+It was a breath of the East--that stretched out a yellow hand to the West.
+It was symbolic of the subtle, intangible power manifested in Dr. Fu-Manchu,
+as Nayland Smith--lean, agile, bronzed with the suns of Burma, was symbolic
+of the clean British efficiency which sought to combat the insidious enemy.
+
+"One thing is evident," said Smith:  "no one in the house, Strozza excepted,
+knew that Sir Lionel was absent."
+
+"How do you arrive at that?" asked Weymouth.
+
+"The servants, in the hall, are bewailing him as dead.
+If they had seen him go out they would know that it must
+be someone else who lies here."
+
+"What about the Chinaman?"
+
+"Since there is no other means of entrance to the conservatory save
+through the study, Kwee must have hidden himself there at some time
+when his master was absent from the room."
+
+"Croxted found the communicating door closed.  What killed the Chinaman?"
+
+"Both Miss Edmonds and Croxted found the study door locked from the inside.
+What killed Strozza?" retorted Smith.
+
+"You will have noted," continued the Inspector, "that the secretary is
+wearing Sir Lionel's dressing-gown. It was seeing him in that, as she looked
+in at the window, which led Miss Edmonds to mistake him for her employer--
+and consequently to put us on the wrong scent."
+
+"He wore it in order that anybody looking in at the window would
+be sure to make that mistake," rapped Smith.
+
+"Why?" I asked.
+
+"Because he came here for a felonious purpose.  See."  Smith stooped
+and took up several tools from the litter on the floor.
+"There lies the lid.  He came to open the sarcophagus.
+It contained the mummy of some notable person who flourished
+under Meneptah II; and Sir Lionel told me that a number of valuable
+ornaments and jewels probably were secreted amongst the wrappings.
+He proposed to open the thing and to submit the entire contents
+to examination to-night. He evidently changed his mind--
+fortunately for himself."
+
+I ran my fingers through my hair in perplexity.
+
+"Then what has become of the mummy?"
+
+Nayland Smith laughed dryly.
+
+"It has vanished in the form of a green vapor apparently," he said.
+"Look at Strozza's face."
+
+He turned the body over, and, used as I was to such spectacles,
+the contorted features of the Italian filled me with horror, so--
+suggestive were they of a death more than ordinarily violent.  I pulled aside
+the dressing-gown and searched the body for marks, but failed to find any.
+Nayland Smith crossed the room, and, assisted by the detective,
+carried Kwee, the Chinaman, into the study and laid him fully in the light.
+His puckered yellow face presented a sight even more awful than the other,
+and his blue lips were drawn back, exposing both upper and lower teeth.
+There were no marks of violence, but his limbs, like Strozza's, had been
+tortured during his mortal struggles into unnatural postures.
+
+The breeze was growing higher, and pungent odor-waves from
+the damp shrubbery, bearing, too, the oppressive sweetness of
+the creeping plant, swept constantly through the open window.
+Inspector Weymouth carefully relighted his cigar.
+
+"I'm with you this far, Mr. Smith," he said.  "Strozza, knowing Sir
+Lionel to be absent, locked himself in here to rifle the mummy case,
+for Croxted, entering by way of the window, found the key on the inside.
+Strozza didn't know that the Chinaman was hidden in the conservatory--"
+
+"And Kwee did not dare to show himself, because he too was there
+for some mysterious reason of his own," interrupted Smith.
+
+"Having got the lid off, something,--somebody--"
+
+"Suppose we say the mummy?"
+
+Weymouth laughed uneasily.
+
+"Well, sir, something that vanished from a locked room without
+opening the door or the window killed Strozza."
+
+"And something which, having killed Strozza, next killed the Chinaman,
+apparently without troubling to open the door behind which he lay concealed,"
+Smith continued.  "For once in a way, Inspector, Dr. Fu-Manchu has employed
+an ally which even his giant will was incapable entirely to subjugate.
+What blind force--what terrific agent of death--had he confined
+in that sarcophagus!"
+
+"You think this is the work of Fu-Manchu?" I said.
+"If you are correct, his power indeed is more than human."
+
+Something in my voice, I suppose, brought Smith right about.
+He surveyed me curiously.
+
+"Can you doubt it?  The presence of a concealed Chinaman surely
+is sufficient.  Kwee, I feel assured, was one of the murder group,
+though probably he had only recently entered that mysterious service.
+He is unarmed, or I should feel disposed to think that his part
+was to assassinate Sir Lionel whilst, unsuspecting the presence of a
+hidden enemy, he was at work here.  Strozza's opening the sarcophagus
+clearly spoiled the scheme."
+
+"And led to the death--"
+
+"Of a servant of Fu-Manchu. Yes.  I am at a loss to account for that."
+
+"Do you think that the sarcophagus entered into the scheme, Smith?"
+
+My friend looked at me in evident perplexity.
+
+"You mean that its arrival at the time when a creature of the Doctor--
+Kwee--was concealed here, may have been a coincidence?"
+
+I nodded; and Smith bent over the sarcophagus, curiously examining
+the garish paintings with which it was decorated inside and out.
+It lay sideways upon the floor, and seizing it by its edge,
+he turned it over.
+
+"Heavy," he muttered; "but Strozza must have capsized it as he fell.
+He would not have laid it on its side to remove the lid.  Hallo!"
+
+He bent farther forward, catching at a piece of twine,
+and out of the mummy case pulled a rubber stopper or "cork."
+
+"This was stuck in a hole level with the floor of the thing," he said.
+"Ugh!  it has a disgusting smell."
+
+I took it from his hands, and was about to examine it, when a loud
+voice sounded outside in the hall.  The door was thrown open,
+and a big man, who, despite the warmth of the weather,
+wore a fur-lined overcoat, rushed impetuously into the room.
+
+"Sir Lionel!" cried Smith eagerly.  "I warned you!
+And see, you have had a very narrow escape."
+
+Sir Lionel Barton glanced at what lay upon the floor,
+then from Smith to myself, and from me to Inspector Weymouth.
+He dropped into one of the few chairs unstacked with books.
+
+"Mr. Smith," he said, with emotion, "what does this mean?
+Tell me--quickly."
+
+In brief terms Smith detailed the happenings of the night--
+or so much as he knew of them.  Sir Lionel Barton listened,
+sitting quite still the while--an unusual repose in a man
+of such evidently tremendous nervous activity.
+
+"He came for the jewels," he said slowly, when Smith was finished;
+and his eyes turned to the body of the dead Italian.
+"I was wrong to submit him to the temptation.  God knows what
+Kwee was doing in hiding.  Perhaps he had come to murder me,
+as you surmise, Mr. Smith, though I find it hard to believe.
+But--I don't think this is the handiwork of your Chinese doctor."
+He fixed his gaze upon the sarcophagus.
+
+Smith stared at him in surprise.  "What do you mean, Sir Lionel?"
+
+The famous traveler continued to look towards the sarcophagus
+with something in his blue eyes that might have been dread.
+
+"I received a wire from Professor Rembold to-night," he continued.
+"You were correct in supposing that no one but Strozza knew
+of my absence.  I dressed hurriedly and met the professor at
+the Traveler's. He knew that I was to read a paper next week upon"--
+again he looked toward the mummy case--"the tomb of Mekara;
+and he knew that the sarcophagus had been brought, untouched, to England.
+He begged me not to open it."
+
+Nayland Smith was studying the speaker's face.
+
+"What reason did he give for so extraordinary a request?" he asked.
+
+Sir Lionel Barton hesitated.
+
+"One," he replied at last, "which amused me--at the time.  I must inform
+you that Mekara--whose tomb my agent had discovered during my absence
+in Tibet, and to enter which I broke my return journey to Alexandria--
+was a high priest and first prophet of Amen--under the Pharaoh of the Exodus;
+in short, one of the magicians who contested in magic arts with Moses.
+I thought the discovery unique, until Professor Rembold furnished me
+with some curious particulars respecting the death of M. Page le Roi,
+the French Egyptologist--particulars new to me."
+
+We listened in growing surprise, scarcely knowing to what this tended.
+
+"M. le Roi," continued Barton, "discovered, but kept secret,
+the tomb of Amenti--another of this particular brotherhood.
+It appears that he opened the mummy case on the spot--
+these priests were of royal line, and are buried in the valley
+of Biban-le-Moluk. His Fellah and Arab servants deserted him
+for some reason--on seeing the mummy case--and he was found dead,
+apparently strangled, beside it.  The matter was hushed up
+by the Egyptian Government.  Rembold could not explain why.
+But he begged of me not to open the sarcophagus of Mekara."
+
+A silence fell.
+
+The strange facts regarding the sudden death of Page le Roi,
+which I now heard for the first time, had impressed me unpleasantly,
+coming from a man of Sir Lionel Barton's experience and reputation.
+
+"How long had it lain in the docks?" jerked Smith.
+
+"For two days, I believe.  I am not a superstitious man, Mr. Smith,
+but neither is Professor Rembold, and now that I know the facts
+respecting Page le Roi, I can find it in my heart to thank God
+that I did not see . . . whatever came out of that sarcophagus."
+
+Nayland Smith stared him hard in the face.  "I am glad you
+did not, Sir Lionel," he said; "for whatever the priest Mekara
+has to do with the matter, by means of his sarcophagus,
+Dr. Fu-Manchu has made his first attempt upon your life.
+He has failed, but I hope you will accompany me from here to a hotel.
+He will not fail twice."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+IT was the night following that of the double tragedy at Rowan House.
+Nayland Smith, with Inspector Weymouth, was engaged in some mysterious inquiry
+at the docks, and I had remained at home to resume my strange chronicle.
+And--why should I not confess it?--my memories had frightened me.
+
+I was arranging my notes respecting the case of Sir Lionel Barton.
+They were hopelessly incomplete.  For instance, I had jotted down
+the following queries:--(1) Did any true parallel exist between the death
+of M. Page le Roi and the death of Kwee, the Chinaman, and of Strozza?
+(2) What had become of the mummy of Mekara?  (3) How had the murderer
+escaped from a locked room?  (4) What was the purpose of the rubber stopper?
+(5) Why was Kwee hiding in the conservatory?  (6) Was the green mist
+a mere subjective hallucination--a figment of Croxted's imagination--
+or had he actually seen it?
+
+Until these questions were satisfactorily answered, further progress
+was impossible.  Nayland Smith frankly admitted that he was out of his depth.
+"It looks, on the face of it, more like a case for the Psychical
+Research people than for a plain Civil Servant, lately of Mandalay,"
+he had said only that morning.
+
+"Sir Lionel Barton really believes that supernatural agencies were
+brought into operation by the opening of the high priest's coffin.
+For my part, even if I believed the same, I should still maintain
+that Dr. Fu-Manchu controlled those manifestations.  But reason
+it out for yourself and see if we arrive at any common center.
+Don't work so much upon the datum of the green mist, but keep
+to the FACTS which are established."
+
+I commenced to knock out my pipe in the ash-tray; then paused,
+pipe in hand.  The house was quite still, for my landlady
+and all the small household were out.
+
+Above the noise of the passing tramcar I thought I had heard the hall
+door open.  In the ensuing silence I sat and listened.
+
+Not a sound.  Stay!  I slipped my hand into the table drawer,
+took out my revolver, and stood up.
+
+There WAS a sound.  Someone or something was creeping upstairs
+in the dark!
+
+Familiar with the ghastly media employed by the Chinaman, I was seized
+with an impulse to leap to the door, shut and lock it.  But the rustling
+sound proceeded, now, from immediately outside my partially opened door.
+I had not the time to close it; knowing somewhat of the horrors
+at the command of Fu-Manchu, I had not the courage to open it.
+My heart leaping wildly, and my eyes upon that bar of darkness with its
+gruesome potentialities, I waited--waited for whatever was to come.
+Perhaps twelve seconds passed in silence.
+
+"Who's there?" I cried.  "Answer, or I fire!"
+
+"Ah!  no," came a soft voice, thrillingly musical.  "Put it down--
+that pistol.  Quick!  I must speak to you."
+
+The door was pushed open, and there entered a slim figure wrapped
+in a hooded cloak.  My hand fell, and I stood, stricken to silence,
+looking into the beautiful dark eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu's messenger--
+if her own statement could be credited, slave.  On two occasions
+this girl, whose association with the Doctor was one of the most
+profound mysteries of the case, had risked--I cannot say what;
+unnameable punishment, perhaps--to save me from death; in both cases
+from a terrible death.  For what was she come now?
+
+Her lips slightly parted, she stood, holding her cloak about her,
+and watching me with great passionate eyes.
+
+"How--" I began.
+
+But she shook her head impatiently.
+
+"HE has a duplicate key of the house door," was her amazing statement.
+"I have never betrayed a secret of my master before, but you must arrange
+to replace the lock."
+
+She came forward and rested her slim hands confidingly upon my shoulders.
+"I have come again to ask you to take me away from him," she said simply.
+
+And she lifted her face to me.
+
+Her words struck a chord in my heart which sang with strange music,
+with music so barbaric that, frankly, I blushed to find it harmony.
+Have I said that she was beautiful?  It can convey no faint
+conception of her.  With her pure, fair skin, eyes like the velvet
+darkness of the East, and red lips so tremulously near to mine,
+she was the most seductively lovely creature I ever had looked upon.
+In that electric moment my heart went out in sympathy to every man
+who had bartered honor, country, all for a woman's kiss.
+
+"I will see that you are placed under proper protection,"
+I said firmly, but my voice was not quite my own.
+"It is quite absurd to talk of slavery here in England.
+You are a free agent, or you could not be here now.
+Dr. Fu-Manchu cannot control your actions."
+
+"Ah!" she cried, casting back her head scornfully, and releasing a cloud
+of hair, through whose softness gleamed a jeweled head-dress. "No?
+He cannot?  Do you know what it means to have been a slave?
+Here, in your free England, do you know what it means--the razzia,
+the desert journey, the whips of the drivers, the house of the dealer,
+the shame.  Bah!"
+
+How beautiful she was in her indignation!
+
+"Slavery is put down, you imagine, perhaps?  You do not believe that
+to-day--TO-DAY--twenty-five English sovereigns will buy a Galla girl,
+who is brown, and"--whisper--"two hundred and fifty a Circassian,
+who is white.  No, there is no slavery!  So!  Then what am I?"
+
+She threw open her cloak, and it is a literal fact that I rubbed my eyes,
+half believing that I dreamed.  For beneath, she was arrayed in gossamer
+silk which more than indicated the perfect lines of her slim shape;
+wore a jeweled girdle and barbaric ornaments; was a figure fit for the walled
+gardens of Stamboul--a figure amazing, incomprehensible, in the prosaic
+setting of my rooms.
+
+"To-night I had no time to make myself an English miss,"
+she said, wrapping her cloak quickly about her.
+"You see me as I am."  Her garments exhaled a faint perfume,
+and it reminded me of another meeting I had had with her.
+I looked into the challenging eyes.
+
+"Your request is but a pretense," I said.  "Why do you keep the secrets
+of that man, when they mean death to so many?"
+
+"Death!  I have seen my own sister die of fever in the desert--
+seen her thrown like carrion into a hole in the sand.
+I have seen men flogged until they prayed for death as a boon.
+I have known the lash myself.  Death!  What does it matter?"
+
+She shocked me inexpressibly.  Enveloped in her cloak again,
+and with only her slight accent to betray her, it was dreadful
+to hear such words from a girl who, save for her singular type
+of beauty, might have been a cultured European.
+
+"Prove, then, that you really wish to leave this man's service.
+Tell me what killed Strozza and the Chinaman," I said.
+
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"I do not know that.  But if you will carry me off"--she clutched me
+nervously--"so that I am helpless, lock me up so that I cannot escape,
+beat me, if you like, I will tell you all I do know.  While he is
+my master I will never betray him.  Tear me from him--by force,
+do you understand, BY FORCE, and my lips will be sealed no longer.
+Ah!  but you do not understand, with your `proper authorities'--
+your police.  Police!  Ah, I have said enough."
+
+A clock across the common began to strike.  The girl
+started and laid her hands upon my shoulders again.
+There were tears glittering among the curved black lashes.
+
+"You do not understand," she whispered.  "Oh, will you
+never understand and release me from him!  I must go.
+Already I have remained too long.  Listen.  Go out without delay.
+Remain out--at a hotel, where you will, but do not stay here."
+
+"And Nayland Smith?"
+
+"What is he to me, this Nayland Smith?  Ah, why will you not unseal my lips?
+You are in danger--you hear me, in danger!  Go away from here to-night."
+
+She dropped her hands and ran from the room.  In the open doorway she turned,
+stamping her foot passionately.
+
+"You have hands and arms," she cried, "and yet you let me go.
+Be warned, then; fly from here--" She broke off with something
+that sounded like a sob.
+
+I made no move to stay her--this beautiful accomplice of the arch-murderer,
+Fu-Manchu. I heard her light footsteps pattering down the stairs, I heard
+her open and close the door--the door of which Dr. Fu-Manchu held the key.
+Still I stood where she had parted from me, and was so standing when a key
+grated in the lock and Nayland Smith came running up.
+
+"Did you see her?" I began.
+
+But his face showed that he had not done so, and rapidly I told
+him of my strange visitor, of her words, of her warning.
+
+"How can she have passed through London in that costume?"
+I cried in bewilderment.  "Where can she have come from?"
+
+Smith shrugged his shoulders and began to stuff broad-cut mixture
+into the familiar cracked briar.
+
+"She might have traveled in a car or in a cab," he said;
+"and undoubtedly she came direct from the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+You should have detained her, Petrie.  It is the third time we
+have had that woman in our power, the third time we have let
+her go free."
+
+"Smith," I replied, "I couldn't. She came of her own free will to give
+me a warning.  She disarms me."
+
+"Because you can see she is in love with you?" he suggested, and burst
+into one of his rare laughs when the angry flush rose to my cheek.
+"She is, Petrie why pretend to be blind to it?  You don't know
+the Oriental mind as I do; but I quite understand the girl's position.
+She fears the English authorities, but would submit to capture by you!
+If you would only seize her by the hair, drag her to some cellar,
+hurl her down and stand over her with a whip, she would tell you
+everything she knows, and salve her strange Eastern conscience with
+the reflection that speech was forced from her.  I am not joking;
+it is so, I assure you.  And she would adore you for your savagery,
+deeming you forceful and strong!"
+
+"Smith," I said, "be serious.  You know what her warning meant before."
+
+"I can guess what it means now," he rapped.  "Hallo!"
+
+Someone was furiously ringing the bell.
+
+"No one at home?" said my friend.  "I will go.  I think I know
+what it is."
+
+A few minutes later he returned, carrying a large square package.
+
+"From Weymouth," he explained, "by district messenger.
+I left him behind at the docks, and he arranged to forward any
+evidence which subsequently he found.  This will be fragments
+of the mummy."
+
+"What!  You think the mummy was abstracted?"
+
+"Yes, at the docks.  I am sure of it; and somebody else
+was in the sarcophagus when it reached Rowan House.
+A sarcophagus, I find, is practically airtight, so that the use
+of the rubber stopper becomes evident--ventilation.  How this
+person killed Strozza I have yet to learn."
+
+"Also, how he escaped from a locked room.  And what about the green mist?"
+
+Nayland Smith spread his hands in a characteristic gesture.
+
+"The green mist, Petrie, can be explained in several ways.
+Remember, we have only one man's word that it existed.
+It is at best a confusing datum to which we must not attach
+a factitious importance."
+
+He threw the wrappings on the floor and tugged at a twine loop
+in the lid of the square box, which now stood upon the table.
+Suddenly the lid came away, bringing with it a lead lining,
+such as is usual in tea-chests. This lining was partially attached
+to one side of the box, so that the action of removing the lid
+at once raised and tilted it.
+
+Then happened a singular thing.
+
+Out over the table billowed a sort of yellowish-green cloud--
+an oily vapor--and an inspiration, it was nothing less,
+born of a memory and of some words of my beautiful visitor,
+came to me.
+
+"RUN, SMITH!" I screamed.  "The door!  the door, for your life!
+Fu-Manchu sent that box!"  I threw my arms round him.
+As he bent forward the moving vapor rose almost to his nostrils.
+I dragged him back and all but pitched him out on to the landing.
+We entered my bedroom, and there, as I turned on the light,
+I saw that Smith's tanned face was unusually drawn,
+and touched with pallor.
+
+"It is a poisonous gas!" I said hoarsely; "in many respects
+identical with chlorine, but having unique properties which prove
+it to be something else--God and Fu-Manchu, alone know what!
+It is the fumes of chlorine that kill the men in the bleaching
+powder works.  We have been blind--I particularly.  Don't you see?
+There was no one in the sarcophagus, Smith, but there was enough
+of that fearful stuff to have suffocated a regiment!"
+
+Smith clenched his fists convulsively.
+
+"My God!" he said, "how can I hope to deal with the author of such a scheme?
+I see the whole plan.  He did not reckon on the mummy case being overturned,
+and Kwee's part was to remove the plug with the aid of the string--after Sir
+Lionel had been suffocated.  The gas, I take it, is heavier than air."
+
+"Chlorine gas has a specific gravity of 2.470," I said;
+"two and a half times heavier than air.  You can pour it from
+jar to jar like a liquid--if you are wearing a chemist's mask.
+In these respects this stuff appears to be similar; the points
+of difference would not interest you.  The sarcophagus would
+have emptied through the vent, and the gas have dispersed,
+with no clew remaining--except the smell."
+
+"I did smell it, Petrie, on the stopper, but, of course,
+was unfamiliar with it.  You may remember that you were
+prevented from doing so by the arrival of Sir Lionel?
+The scent of those infernal flowers must partially have
+drowned it, too.  Poor, misguided Strozza inhaled the stuff,
+capsized the case in his fall, and all the gas--"
+
+"Went pouring under the conservatory door, and down the steps, where Kwee
+was crouching.  Croxted's breaking the window created sufficient draught
+to disperse what little remained.  It will have settled on the floor now.
+I will go and open both windows."
+
+Nayland raised his haggard face.
+
+"He evidently made more than was necessary to dispatch Sir Lionel Barton,"
+he said; "and contemptuously--you note the attitude, Petrie?--
+contemptuously devoted the surplus to me.  His contempt is justified.
+I am a child striving to cope with a mental giant.  It is by no wit
+of mine that Dr. Fu-Manchu scores a double failure."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+I WILL tell you, now of a strange dream which I dreamed, and of the stranger
+things to which I awakened.  Since, out of a blank--a void--this vision
+burst in upon my mind, I cannot do better than relate it, without preamble.
+It was thus:
+
+I dreamed that I lay writhing on the floor in agony indescribable.
+My veins were filled with liquid fire, and but that stygian darkness
+was about me, I told myself that I must have seen the smoke arising
+from my burning body.
+
+This, I thought, was death.
+
+Then, a cooling shower descended upon me, soaked through skin
+and tissue to the tortured arteries and quenched the fire within.
+Panting, but free from pain, I lay--exhausted.
+
+Strength gradually returning to me, I tried to rise; but the carpet
+felt so singularly soft that it offered me no foothold.
+I waded and plunged like a swimmer treading water; and all about me
+rose impenetrable walls of darkness, darkness all but palpable.
+I wondered why I could not see the windows.  The horrible idea
+flashed to my mind that I was become blind!
+
+Somehow I got upon my feet, and stood swaying dizzily.
+I became aware of a heavy perfume, and knew it for some
+kind of incense.
+
+Then--a dim light was born, at an immeasurable distance away.
+It grew steadily in brilliance.  It spread like a bluish-red stain--
+like a liquid.  It lapped up the darkness and spread throughout the room.
+
+But this was not my room!  Nor was it any room known to me.
+
+It was an apartment of such size that its dimensions filled me with a
+kind of awe such as I never had known:  the awe of walled vastness.
+Its immense extent produced a sensation of sound.  Its hugeness had
+a distinct NOTE.
+
+Tapestries covered the four walls.  There was no door visible.
+These tapestries were magnificently figured with golden dragons;
+and as the serpentine bodies gleamed and shimmered in the
+increasing radiance, each dragon, I thought, intertwined its
+glittering coils more closely with those of another.
+The carpet was of such richness that I stood knee-deep in its pile.
+And this, too, was fashioned all over with golden dragons; and they
+seemed to glide about amid the shadows of the design--stealthily.
+
+At the farther end of the hall--for hall it was--a huge table
+with dragons' legs stood solitary amid the luxuriance of the carpet.
+It bore scintillating globes, and tubes that held living organisms,
+and books of a size and in such bindings as I never had imagined,
+with instruments of a type unknown to Western science--a heterogeneous
+litter quite indescribable, which overflowed on to the floor,
+forming an amazing oasis in a dragon-haunted desert of carpet.
+A lamp hung above this table, suspended by golden chains from
+the ceiling--which was so lofty that, following the chains upward,
+my gaze lost itself in the purple shadows above.
+
+In a chair piled high with dragon-covered cushions a man sat
+behind this table.  The light from the swinging lamp fell fully
+upon one side of his face, as he leaned forward amid the jumble
+of weird objects, and left the other side in purplish shadow.
+From a plain brass bowl upon the corner of the huge table smoke
+writhed aloft and at times partially obscured that dreadful face.
+
+From the instant that my eyes were drawn to the table and to the man
+who sat there, neither the incredible extent of the room, nor the nightmare
+fashion of its mural decorations, could reclaim my attention.
+I had eyes only for him.
+
+For it was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
+
+Something of the delirium which had seemed to fill my veins
+with fire, to people the walls with dragons, and to plunge me
+knee-deep in the carpet, left me.  Those dreadful, filmed green
+eyes acted somewhat like a cold douche.  I knew, without removing
+my gaze from the still face, that the walls no longer lived,
+but were merely draped in exquisite Chinese dragon tapestry.
+The rich carpet beneath my feet ceased to be as a jungle and became
+a normal carpet--extraordinarily rich, but merely a carpet.
+But the sense of vastness nevertheless remained, with the uncomfortable
+knowledge that the things upon the table and overflowing about it
+were all, or nearly all, of a fashion strange to me.
+
+Then, and almost instantaneously, the comparative sanity which I had
+temporarily experienced began to slip from me again; for the smoke
+faintly penciled through the air--from the burning perfume on the table--
+grew in volume, thickened, and wafted towards me in a cloud of gray horror.
+It enveloped me, clammily.  Dimly, through its oily wreaths, I saw
+the immobile yellow face of Fu-Manchu. And my stupefied brain acclaimed him
+a sorcerer, against whom unwittingly we had pitted our poor human wits.
+The green eyes showed filmy through the fog.  An intense pain shot
+through my lower limbs, and, catching my breath, I looked down.
+As I did so, the points of the red slippers which I dreamed that I wore
+increased in length, curled sinuously upward, twined about my throat
+and choked the breath from my body!
+
+Came an interval, and then a dawning like consciousness;
+but it was a false consciousness, since it brought with it the idea
+that my head lay softly pillowed and that a woman's hand caressed
+my throbbing forehead.  Confusedly, as though in the remote past,
+I recalled a kiss--and the recollection thrilled me strangely.
+Dreamily content I lay, and a voice stole to my ears:
+
+"They are killing him!  they are killing him!  Oh!  do you not understand?"
+In my dazed condition, I thought that it was I who had died, and that this
+musical girl-voice was communicating to me the fact of my own dissolution.
+
+But I was conscious of no interest in the matter.
+
+For hours and hours, I thought, that soothing hand caressed me.
+I never once raised my heavy lids, until there came a resounding
+crash that seemed to set my very bones vibrating--a metallic,
+jangling crash, as the fall of heavy chains.  I thought that, then,
+I half opened my eyes, and that in the dimness I had a fleeting
+glimpse of a figure clad in gossamer silk, with arms covered
+with barbaric bangles and slim ankles surrounded by gold bands.
+The girl was gone, even as I told myself that she was an houri,
+and that I, though a Christian, had been consigned by some error
+to the paradise of Mohammed.
+
+Then--a complete blank.
+
+
+My head throbbed madly; my brain seemed to be clogged--inert; and though
+my first, feeble movement was followed by the rattle of a chain, some moments
+more elapsed ere I realized that the chain was fastened to a steel collar--
+that the steel collar was clasped about my neck.
+
+I moaned weakly.
+
+"Smith!" I muttered, "Where are you?  Smith!"
+
+On to my knees I struggled, and the pain on the top of my skull grew
+all but insupportable.  It was coming back to me now; how Nayland Smith
+and I had started for the hotel to warn Graham Guthrie; how, as we
+passed up the steps from the Embankment and into Essex Street,
+we saw the big motor standing before the door of one of the offices.
+I could recall coming up level with the car--a modern limousine;
+but my mind retained no impression of our having passed it--
+only a vague memory of a rush of footsteps--a blow.  Then, my vision
+of the hall of dragons, and now this real awakening to a worse reality.
+
+Groping in the darkness, my hands touched a body that lay close beside me.
+My fingers sought and found the throat, sought and found the steel
+collar about it.
+
+"Smith," I groaned; and I shook the still form.  "Smith, old man--
+speak to me!  Smith!"
+
+Could he be dead?  Was this the end of his gallant fight with Dr. Fu-Manchu
+and the murder group?  If so, what did the future hold for me--
+what had I to face?
+
+He stirred beneath my trembling hands.
+
+"Thank God!"  I muttered, and I cannot deny that my joy was tainted
+with selfishness.  For, waking in that impenetrable darkness, and yet obsessed
+with the dream I had dreamed, I had known what fear meant, at the realization
+that alone, chained, I must face the dreadful Chinese doctor in the flesh.
+Smith began incoherent mutterings.
+
+"Sand-bagged! . . . Look out, Petrie! . . . He has us at last! . . . 
+Oh, Heavens!" . . .He struggled on to his knees, clutching at my hand.
+
+"All right, old man," I said.  "We are both alive!
+So let's be thankful."
+
+A moment's silence, a groan, then:
+
+"Petrie, I have dragged you into this.  God forgive me--"
+
+"Dry up, Smith," I said slowly.  "I'm not a child.
+There is no question of being dragged into the matter.
+I'm here; and if I can be of any use, I'm glad I am here!"
+
+He grasped my hand.
+
+"There were two Chinese, in European clothes--lord, how my head throbs!--
+in that office door.  They sand-bagged us, Petrie--think of it!--
+in broad daylight, within hail of the Strand!  We were rushed
+into the car--and it was all over, before--" His voice grew faint.
+"God!  they gave me an awful knock!"
+
+"Why have we been spared, Smith?  Do you think he is saving us for--"
+
+"Don't, Petrie!  If you had been in China, if you had seen
+what I have seen--"
+
+Footsteps sounded on the flagged passage.  A blade of light crept
+across the floor towards us.  My brain was growing clearer.
+The place had a damp, earthen smell.  It was slimy--some noisome cellar.
+A door was thrown open and a man entered, carrying a lantern.
+Its light showed my surmise to be accurate, showed the
+slime-coated walls of a dungeon some fifteen feet square--
+shone upon the long yellow robe of the man who stood watching us,
+upon the malignant, intellectual countenance.
+
+It was Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+At last they were face to face--the head of the great Yellow Movement,
+and the man who fought on behalf of the entire white race.
+How can I paint the individual who now stood before us--
+perhaps the greatest genius of modern times?
+
+Of him it had been fitly said that he had a brow like Shakespeare and a face
+like Satan.  Something serpentine, hypnotic, was in his very presence.
+Smith drew one sharp breath, and was silent.  Together, chained to the wall,
+two mediaeval captives, living mockeries of our boasted modern security,
+we crouched before Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+He came forward with an indescribable gait, cat-like yet awkward,
+carrying his high shoulders almost hunched.  He placed the lantern
+in a niche in the wall, never turning away the reptilian gaze
+of those eyes which must haunt my dreams forever.  They possessed
+a viridescence which hitherto I had supposed possible only in the eye
+of the cat--and the film intermittently clouded their brightness--
+but I can speak of them no more.
+
+I had never supposed, prior to meeting Dr. Fu-Manchu, that so intense
+a force of malignancy could radiate--from any human being.  He spoke.
+His English was perfect, though at times his words were oddly chosen;
+his delivery alternately was guttural and sibilant.
+
+"Mr. Smith and Dr. Petrie, your interference with my plans has gone too far.
+I have seriously turned my attention to you."
+
+He displayed his teeth, small and evenly separated,
+but discolored in a way that was familiar to me.
+I studied his eyes with a new professional interest,
+which even the extremity of our danger could not wholly banish.
+Their greenness seemed to be of the iris; the pupil was
+oddly contracted--a pin-point.
+
+Smith leaned his back against the wall with assumed indifference.
+
+"You have presumed," continued Fu-Manchu, "to meddle with a
+world-change. Poor spiders--caught in the wheels of the inevitable!
+You have linked my name with the futility of the Young China Movement--
+the name of Fu-Manchu!  Mr. Smith, you are an incompetent meddler--
+I despise you!  Dr. Petrie, you are a fool--I am sorry for you!"
+
+He rested one bony hand on his hip, narrowing the long
+eyes as he looked down on us.  The purposeful cruelty
+of the man was inherent; it was entirely untheatrical.
+Still Smith remained silent.
+
+"So I am determined to remove you from the scene of your blunders!"
+added Fu-Manchu.
+
+"Opium will very shortly do the same for you!" I rapped at him savagely.
+
+Without emotion he turned the narrowed eyes upon me.
+
+"That is a matter of opinion, Doctor," he said.  "You may have lacked
+the opportunities which have been mine for studying that subject--
+and in any event I shall not be privileged to enjoy your advice
+in the future."
+
+"You will not long outlive me," I replied.  "And our deaths will not
+profit you, incidentally; because--" Smith's foot touched mine.
+
+"Because?" inquired Fu-Manchu softly.
+
+"Ah!  Mr. Smith is so prudent!  He is thinking that I have FILES!"
+He pronounced the word in a way that made me shudder.  "Mr. Smith
+has seen a WIRE JACKET!  Have you ever seen a wire jacket?
+As a surgeon its functions would interest you!"
+
+I stifled a cry that rose to my lips; for, with a shrill whistling sound,
+a small shape came bounding into the dimly lit vault, then shot upward.
+A marmoset landed on the shoulder of Dr. Fu-Manchu and peered grotesquely
+into the dreadful yellow face.  The Doctor raised his bony hand and fondled
+the little creature, crooning to it.
+
+"One of my pets, Mr. Smith," he said, suddenly opening
+his eyes fully so that they blazed like green lamps.
+"I have others, equally useful.  My scorpions--have you
+met my scorpions?  No?  My pythons and hamadryads?
+Then there are my fungi and my tiny allies, the bacilli.
+I have a collection in my laboratory quite unique.  Have you ever
+visited Molokai, the leper island, Doctor?  No?  But Mr. Nayland
+Smith will be familiar with the asylum at Rangoon!
+And we must not forget my black spiders, with their diamond eyes--
+my spiders, that sit in the dark and watch--then leap!"
+
+He raised his lean hands, so that the sleeve of the robe fell back
+to the elbow, and the ape dropped, chattering, to the floor and ran
+from the cellar.
+
+"O God of Cathay!" he cried, "by what death shall these die--
+these miserable ones who would bind thine Empire, which is boundless!"
+
+Like some priest of Tezcat he stood, his eyes upraised to the roof,
+his lean body quivering--a sight to shock the most unimpressionable mind.
+
+"He is mad!" I whispered to Smith.  "God help us, the man
+is a dangerous homicidal maniac!"
+
+Nayland Smith's tanned face was very drawn, but he shook his head grimly.
+
+"Dangerous, yes, I agree," he muttered; "his existence is a danger
+to the entire white race which, now, we are powerless to avert."
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu recovered himself, took up the lantern and,
+turning abruptly, walked to the door, with his awkward, yet feline gait.
+At the threshold be looked back.
+
+"You would have warned Mr. Graham Guthrie?" he said, in a soft voice.
+"To-night, at half-past twelve, Mr. Graham Guthrie dies!"
+
+Smith sat silent and motionless, his eyes fixed upon the speaker.
+
+"You were in Rangoon in 1908?" continued Dr. Fu-Manchu--
+"you remember the Call?"
+
+From somewhere above us--I could not determine the exact direction--
+came a low, wailing cry, an uncanny thing of falling cadences, which, in that
+dismal vault, with the sinister yellow-robed figure at the door, seemed to
+pour ice into my veins.  Its effect upon Smith was truly extraordinary.
+His face showed grayly in the faint light, and I heard him draw a hissing
+breath through clenched teeth.
+
+"It calls for you!" said Fu-Manchu. "At half-past twelve it calls
+for Graham Guthrie!"
+
+The door closed and darkness mantled us again.
+
+"Smith," I said, "what was that?"  The horrors about us were playing
+havoc with my nerves.
+
+"It was the Call of Siva!" replied Smith hoarsely.
+
+"What is it?  Who uttered it?  What does it mean?"
+
+"I don't know what it is, Petrie, nor who utters it.
+But it means death!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+THERE may be some who could have lain, chained to that noisome cell,
+and felt no fear--no dread of what the blackness might hold.
+I confess that I am not one of these.  I knew that Nayland
+Smith and I stood in the path of the most stupendous genius
+who in the world's history had devoted his intellect to crime.
+I knew that the enormous wealth of the political group backing
+Dr. Fu-Manchu rendered him a menace to Europe and to America
+greater than that of the plague.  He was a scientist trained
+at a great university--an explorer of nature's secrets, who had
+gone farther into the unknown, I suppose, than any living man.
+His mission was to remove all obstacles--human obstacles--
+from the path of that secret movement which was progressing
+in the Far East.  Smith and I were two such obstacles;
+and of all the horrible devices at his command, I wondered,
+and my tortured brain refused to leave the subject, by which
+of them were we doomed to be dispatched?
+
+Even at that very moment some venomous centipede might
+be wriggling towards me over the slime of the stones,
+some poisonous spider be preparing to drop from the roof!
+Fu-Manchu might have released a serpent in the cellar,
+or the air be alive with microbes of a loathsome disease!
+
+"Smith," I said, scarcely recognizing my own voice, "I can't bear
+this suspense.  He intends to kill us, that is certain, but--"
+
+"Don't worry," came the reply; "he intends to learn our plans first."
+
+"You mean--?"
+
+"You heard him speak of his files and of his wire jacket?"
+
+"Oh, my God!" I groaned; "can this be England?"
+
+Smith laughed dryly, and I heard him fumbling with the steel
+collar about his neck.
+
+"I have one great hope," he said, "since you share
+my captivity, but we must neglect no minor chance.
+Try with your pocket-knife if you can force the lock.
+I am trying to break this one."
+
+Truth to tell, the idea had not entered my half-dazed mind, but I
+immediately acted upon my friend's suggestion, setting to work with
+the small blade of my knife.  I was so engaged, and, having snapped
+one blade, was about to open another, when a sound arrested me.
+It came from beneath my feet.
+
+"Smith," I whispered, "listen!"
+
+The scraping and clicking which told of Smith's efforts ceased.
+Motionless, we sat in that humid darkness and listened.
+
+Something was moving beneath the stones of the cellar.
+I held my breath; every nerve in my body was strung up.
+
+A line of light showed a few feet from where we lay.
+It widened--became an oblong.  A trap was lifted,
+and within a yard of me, there rose a dimly seen head.
+Horror I had expected--and death, or worse.  Instead, I saw
+a lovely face, crowned with a disordered mass of curling hair;
+I saw a white arm upholding the stone slab, a shapely arm
+clasped about the elbow by a broad gold bangle.
+
+The girl climbed into the cellar and placed the lantern on the stone floor.
+In the dim light she was unreal--a figure from an opium vision, with her
+clinging silk draperies and garish jewelry, with her feet encased in little
+red slippers.  In short, this was the houri of my vision, materialized.
+It was difficult to believe that we were in modern, up-to-date England;
+easy to dream that we were the captives of a caliph, in a dungeon
+in old Bagdad.
+
+"My prayers are answered," said Smith softly.  "She has come
+to save YOU."
+
+"S-sh!" warned the girl, and her wonderful eyes opened widely, fearfully.
+"A sound and he will kill us all."
+
+She bent over me; a key jarred in the lock which had broken my penknife--
+and the collar was off.  As I rose to my feet the girl turned and
+released Smith.  She raised the lantern above the trap, and signed
+to us to descend the wooden steps which its light revealed.
+
+"Your knife," she whispered to me.  "Leave it on the floor.
+He will think you forced the locks.  Down!  Quickly!"
+
+Nayland Smith, stepping gingerly, disappeared into the darkness.
+I rapidly followed.  Last of all came our mysterious friend, a gold band about
+one of her ankles gleaming in the rays of the lantern which she carried.
+We stood in a low-arched passage.
+
+"Tie your handkerchiefs over your eyes and do exactly as I
+tell you," she ordered.
+
+Neither of us hesitated to obey her.  Blind-folded, I allowed
+her to lead me, and Smith rested his hand upon my shoulder.
+In that order we proceeded, and came to stone steps,
+which we ascended.
+
+"Keep to the wall on the left," came a whisper.
+"There is danger on the right."
+
+With my free hand I felt for and found the wall, and we pressed forward.
+The atmosphere of the place through which we were passing was steamy,
+and loaded with an odor like that of exotic plant life.  But a faint animal
+scent crept to my nostrils, too, and there was a subdued stir about me,
+infinitely suggestive--mysterious.
+
+Now my feet sank in a soft carpet, and a curtain brushed my shoulder.
+A gong sounded.  We stopped.
+
+The din of distant drumming came to my ears.
+
+"Where in Heaven's name are we?" hissed Smith in my ear;
+"that is a tom-tom!"
+
+"S-sh!  S-sh!"
+
+The little hand grasping mine quivered nervously.  We were near a door
+or a window, for a breath of perfume was wafted through the air;
+and it reminded me of my other meetings with the beautiful woman
+who was now leading us from the house of Fu-Manchu; who, with her
+own lips, had told me that she was his slave.  Through the horrible
+phantasmagoria she flitted--a seductive vision, her piquant loveliness
+standing out richly in its black setting of murder and devilry.
+Not once, but a thousand times, I had tried to reason out the nature
+of the tie which bound her to the sinister Doctor.
+
+Silence fell.
+
+"Quick!  This way!"
+
+Down a thickly carpeted stair we went.  Our guide opened a door, and led us
+along a passage.  Another door was opened; and we were in the open air.
+But the girl never tarried, pulling me along a graveled path, with a fresh
+breeze blowing in my face, and along until, unmistakably, I stood upon
+the river bank.  Now, planking creaked to our tread; and looking downward
+beneath the handkerchief, I saw the gleam of water beneath my feet.
+
+"Be careful!"  I was warned, and found myself stepping into
+a narrow boat--a punt.
+
+Nayland Smith followed, and the girl pushed the punt off and poled
+out into the stream.
+
+"Don't speak!" she directed.
+
+My brain was fevered; I scarce knew if I dreamed and was waking,
+or if the reality ended with my imprisonment in the clammy cellar
+and this silent escape, blindfolded, upon the river with a girl for our
+guide who might have stepped out of the pages of "The Arabian Nights"
+were fantasy--the mockery of sleep.
+
+Indeed, I began seriously to doubt if this stream whereon we floated,
+whose waters plashed and tinkled about us, were the Thames, the Tigris,
+or the Styx.
+
+The punt touched a bank.
+
+"You will hear a clock strike in a few minutes,"
+said the girl, with her soft, charming accent, "but I rely
+upon your honor not to remove the handkerchiefs until then.
+You owe me this."
+
+"We do!" said Smith fervently.
+
+I heard him scrambling to the bank, and a moment later a soft hand
+was placed in mine, and I, too, was guided on to terra firma.
+Arrived on the bank, I still held the girl's hand, drawing her towards me.
+
+"You must not go back," I whispered.  "We will take care of you.
+You must not return to that place."
+
+"Let me go!" she said.  "When, once, I asked you to take me from him,
+you spoke of police protection; that was your answer, police protection!
+You would let them lock me up--imprison me--and make me betray him!
+For what?  For what?"  She wrenched herself free.  "How little
+you understand me.  Never mind.  Perhaps one day you will know!
+Until the clock strikes!"
+
+She was gone.  I heard the creak of the punt, the drip of the water
+from the pole.  Fainter it grew, and fainter.
+
+"What is her secret?" muttered Smith, beside me.
+"Why does she cling to that monster?"
+
+The distant sound died away entirely.  A clock began to strike;
+it struck the half-hour. In an instant my handkerchief was off,
+and so was Smith's. We stood upon a towing-path. Away to the left
+the moon shone upon the towers and battlements of an ancient fortress.
+
+It was Windsor Castle.
+
+"Half-past ten," cried Smith.  "Two hours to save Graham Guthrie!"
+
+We had exactly fourteen minutes in which to catch the last
+train to Waterloo; and we caught it.  But I sank into a corner
+of the compartment in a state bordering upon collapse.
+Neither of us, I think, could have managed another twenty yards.
+With a lesser stake than a human life at issue, I doubt if we
+should have attempted that dash to Windsor station.
+
+"Due at Waterloo at eleven-fifty-one," panted Smith.
+"That gives us thirty-nine minutes to get to the other side
+of the river and reach his hotel."
+
+"Where in Heaven's name is that house situated?
+Did we come up or down stream?"
+
+"I couldn't determine.  But at any rate, it stands close to the riverside.
+It should be merely a question of time to identify it.  I shall set
+Scotland Yard to work immediately; but I am hoping for nothing.
+Our escape will warn him."
+
+I said no more for a time, sitting wiping the perspiration
+from my forehead and watching my friend load his cracked briar
+with the broadcut Latakia mixture.
+
+"Smith," I said at last, "what was that horrible wailing we heard,
+and what did Fu-Manchu mean when he referred to Rangoon?
+I noticed how it affected you."
+
+My friend nodded and lighted his pipe.
+
+"There was a ghastly business there in 1908 or early in 1909,"
+he replied:  "an utterly mysterious epidemic.  And this beastly
+wailing was associated with it."
+
+"In what way?  And what do you mean by an epidemic?"
+
+"It began, I believe, at the Palace Mansions Hotel, in the cantonments.
+A young American, whose name I cannot recall, was staying there on business
+connected with some new iron buildings.  One night he went to his room,
+locked the door, and jumped out of the window into the courtyard.
+Broke his neck, of course."
+
+"Suicide?"
+
+"Apparently.  But there were singular features in the case.
+For instance, his revolver lay beside him, fully loaded!"
+
+"In the courtyard?"
+
+"In the courtyard!"
+
+"Was it murder by any chance?"
+
+Smith shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"His door was found locked from the inside; had to be broken in."
+
+"But the wailing business?"
+
+"That began later, or was only noticed later.  A French doctor,
+named Lafitte, died in exactly the same way."
+
+"At the same place?"
+
+"At the same hotel; but he occupied a different room.
+Here is the extraordinary part of the affair:  a friend shared
+the room with him, and actually saw him go!"
+
+"Saw him leap from the window?"
+
+"Yes.  The friend--an Englishman--was aroused by the uncanny wailing.
+I was in Rangoon at the time, so that I know more of the case of Lafitte
+than of that of the American.  I spoke to the man about it personally.
+He was an electrical engineer, Edward Martin, and he told me that the cry
+seemed to come from above him."
+
+"It seemed to come from above when we heard it at Fu-Manchu's house."
+
+"Martin sat up in bed, it was a clear moonlight night--
+the sort of moonlight you get in Burma.  Lafitte, for some reason,
+had just gone to the window.  His friend saw him look out.
+The next moment with a dreadful scream, he threw himself forward--
+and crashed down into the courtyard!"
+
+"What then?"
+
+"Martin ran to the window and looked down.
+Lafitte's scream had aroused the place, of course.
+But there was absolutely nothing to account for the occurrence.
+There was no balcony, no ledge, by means of which anyone could
+reach the window."
+
+"But how did you come to recognize the cry?"
+
+"I stopped at the Palace Mansions for some time;
+and one night this uncanny howling aroused me.
+I heard it quite distinctly, and am never likely to forget it.
+It was followed by a hoarse yell.  The man in the next room,
+an orchid hunter, had gone the same way as the others!"
+
+"Did you change your quarters?"
+
+"No. Fortunately for the reputation of the hotel--a first-class establishment--
+several similar cases occurred elsewhere, both in Rangoon, in Prome
+and in Moulmein.  A story got about the native quarter, and was fostered
+by some mad fakir, that the god Siva was reborn and that the cry was his call
+for victims; a ghastly story, which led to an outbreak of dacoity and gave
+the District Superintendent no end of trouble."
+
+"Was there anything unusual about the bodies?"
+
+"They all developed marks after death, as though they had been strangled!
+The marks were said all to possess a peculiar form, though it was not
+appreciable to my eye; and this, again, was declared to be the five
+heads of Siva."
+
+"Were the deaths confined to Europeans?"
+
+"Oh, no.  Several Burmans and others died in the same way.
+At first there was a theory that the victims had contracted leprosy and
+committed suicide as a result; but the medical evidence disproved that.
+The Call of Siva became a perfect nightmare throughout Burma."
+
+"Did you ever hear it again, before this evening?"
+
+"Yes.  I heard it on the Upper Irrawaddy one clear,
+moonlight night, and a Colassie--a deck-hand--leaped from
+the top deck of the steamer aboard which I was traveling!
+My God!  to think that the fiend Fu-Manchu has brought
+That to England!"
+
+"But brought what, Smith?" I cried, in perplexity.
+"What has he brought?  An evil spirit?  A mental disease?
+What is it?  What CAN it be?"
+
+"A new agent of death, Petrie!  Something born in a plague-spot of Burma--
+the home of much that is unclean and much that is inexplicable.
+Heaven grant that we be in time, and are able to save Guthrie."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+THE train was late, and as our cab turned out of Waterloo Station
+and began to ascend to the bridge, from a hundred steeples rang
+out the gongs of midnight, the bell of St. Paul's raised above
+them all to vie with the deep voice of Big Ben.
+
+I looked out from the cab window across the river to where, towering above
+the Embankment, that place of a thousand tragedies, the light of some
+of London's greatest caravanserais formed a sort of minor constellation.
+From the subdued blaze that showed the public supper-rooms I looked
+up to the hundreds of starry points marking the private apartments
+of those giant inns.
+
+I thought how each twinkling window denoted the presence of some
+bird of passage, some wanderer temporarily abiding in our midst.
+There, floor piled upon floor above the chattering throngs,
+were these less gregarious units, each something of a mystery
+to his fellow-guests, each in his separate cell; and each as remote
+from real human companionship as if that cell were fashioned,
+not in the bricks of London, but in the rocks of Hindustan!
+
+In one of those rooms Graham Guthrie might at that moment be sleeping,
+all unaware that he would awake to the Call of Siva, to the summons of death.
+As we neared the Strand, Smith stopped the cab, discharging the man
+outside Sotheby's auction-rooms.
+
+"One of the doctor's watch-dogs may be in the foyer," he said thoughtfully,
+"and it might spoil everything if we were seen to go to Guthrie's rooms.
+There must be a back entrance to the kitchens, and so on?"
+
+"There is," I replied quickly.  "I have seen the vans delivering there.
+But have we time?"
+
+"Yes.  Lead on."
+
+We walked up the Strand and hurried westward.  Into that narrow court,
+with its iron posts and descending steps, upon which opens a well-known
+wine-cellar, we turned.  Then, going parallel with the Strand,
+but on the Embankment level, we ran round the back of the great hotel,
+and came to double doors which were open.  An arc lamp illuminated
+the interior and a number of men were at work among the casks,
+crates and packages stacked about the place.  We entered.
+
+"Hallo!" cried a man in a white overall, "where d'you think you're going?"
+
+Smith grasped him by the arm.
+
+"I want to get to the public part of the hotel without being seen
+from the entrance hall," he said.  "Will you please lead the way?"
+
+"Here--" began the other, staring.
+
+"Don't waste time!" snapped my friend, in that tone of authority
+which he knew so well how to assume.  "It's a matter of life and death.
+Lead the way, I say!"
+
+"Police, sir?" asked the man civilly.
+
+"Yes," said Smith; "hurry!"
+
+Off went our guide without further demur.  Skirting sculleries, kitchens,
+laundries and engine-rooms, he led us through those mysterious labyrinths
+which have no existence for the guest above, but which contain the machinery
+that renders these modern khans the Aladdin's palaces they are.
+On a second-floor landing we met a man in a tweed suit, to whom our
+cicerone presented us.
+
+"Glad I met you, sir.  Two gentlemen from the police."
+
+The man regarded us haughtily with a suspicious smile.
+
+"Who are you?" he asked.  "You're not from Scotland Yard,
+at any rate!"
+
+Smith pulled out a card and thrust it into the speaker's hand.
+
+"If you are the hotel detective," he said, "take us without delay
+to Mr. Graham Guthrie."
+
+A marked change took place in the other's demeanor on glancing
+at the card in his hand.
+
+"Excuse me, sir," he said deferentially, "but, of course,
+I didn't know who I was speaking to.  We all have instructions
+to give you every assistance."
+
+"Is Mr. Guthrie in his room?"
+
+"He's been in his room for some time, sir.  You will want to get there
+without being seen?  This way.  We can join the lift on the third floor."
+
+Off we went again, with our new guide.  In the lift:
+
+"Have you noticed anything suspicious about the place to-night?" asked Smith.
+
+"I have!" was the startling reply.  "That accounts for your
+finding me where you did.  My usual post is in the lobby.
+But about eleven o'clock, when the theater people began to come
+in I had a hazy sort of impression that someone or something
+slipped past in the crowd--something that had no business
+in the hotel."
+
+We got out of the lift.
+
+"I don't quite follow you," said Smith.  "If you thought you saw
+something entering, you must have formed a more or less definite
+impression regarding it."
+
+"That's the funny part of the business," answered the man doggedly.
+"I didn't!  But as I stood at the top of the stairs I could
+have sworn that there was something crawling up behind a party--
+two ladies and two gentlemen."
+
+"A dog, for instance?"
+
+"It didn't strike me as being a dog, sir.  Anyway, when the party passed me,
+there was nothing there.  Mind you, whatever it was, it hadn't come
+in by the front.  I have made inquiries everywhere, but without result."
+He stopped abruptly.  "No. 189--Mr. Guthrie's door, sir."
+
+Smith knocked.
+
+"Hallo!" came a muffled voice; "what do you want?"
+
+"Open the door!  Don't delay; it is important."
+
+He turned to the hotel detective.
+
+"Stay right there where you can watch the stairs and the lift,"
+he instructed; "and note everyone and everything that passes this door.
+But whatever you see or hear, do nothing without my orders."
+
+The man moved off, and the door was opened.  Smith whispered
+in my ear:
+
+"Some creature of Dr. Fu-Manchu is in the hotel!"
+
+Mr. Graham Guthrie, British resident in North Bhutan, was a big,
+thick-set man--gray-haired and florid, with widely opened eyes of the true
+fighting blue, a bristling mustache and prominent shaggy brows.
+Nayland Smith introduced himself tersely, proffering his card
+and an open letter.
+
+"Those are my credentials, Mr. Guthrie," he said; "so no doubt
+you will realize that the business which brings me and my friend,
+Dr. Petrie, here at such an hour is of the first importance."
+
+He switched off the light.
+
+"There is no time for ceremony," he explained.  "It is now twenty-five minutes
+past twelve.  At half-past an attempt will be made upon your life!"
+
+"Mr. Smith," said the other, who, arrayed in his pajamas,
+was seated on the edge of the bed, "you alarm me very greatly.
+I may mention that I was advised of your presence in
+England this morning."
+
+"Do you know anything respecting the person called Fu-Manchu--Dr. Fu-Manchu?"
+
+"Only what I was told to-day--that he is the agent of an
+advanced political group."
+
+"It is opposed to his interests that you should return to Bhutan.
+A more gullible agent would be preferable.  Therefore, unless you
+implicitly obey my instructions, you will never leave England!"
+
+Graham Guthrie breathed quickly.  I was growing more used to the gloom,
+and I could dimly discern him, his face turned towards Nayland Smith,
+whilst with his hand he clutched the bed-rail. Such a visit as ours,
+I think, must have shaken the nerve of any man.
+
+"But, Mr. Smith," he said, "surely I am safe enough here!
+The place is full of American visitors at present,
+and I have had to be content with a room right at the top;
+so that the only danger I apprehend is that of fire."
+
+"There is another danger," replied Smith.  "The fact that
+you are at the top of the building enhances that danger.
+Do you recall anything of the mysterious epidemic which broke
+out in Rangoon in 1908--the deaths due to the Call of Siva?"
+
+"I read of it in the Indian papers," said Guthrie uneasily.
+"Suicides, were they not?"  
+
+"No!" snapped Smith.  "Murders!"
+
+There was a brief silence.
+
+"From what I recall of the cases," said Guthrie, "that seems impossible.
+In several instances the victims threw themselves from the windows
+of locked rooms--and the windows were quite inaccessible."
+
+"Exactly," replied Smith; and in the dim light his revolver
+gleamed dully, as he placed it on the small table beside the bed.
+"Except that your door is unlocked, the conditions to-night
+are identical.  Silence, please, I hear a clock striking."
+
+It was Big Ben.  It struck the half-hour, leaving the stillness complete.
+In that room, high above the activity which yet prevailed below,
+high above the supping crowds in the hotel, high above the starving
+crowds on the Embankment, a curious chill of isolation swept about me.
+Again I realized how, in the very heart of the great metropolis, a man
+may be as far from aid as in the heart of a desert.  I was glad that I
+was not alone in that room--marked with the death-mark of Fu-Manchu;
+and I am certain that Graham Guthrie welcomed his unexpected company.
+
+I may have mentioned the fact before, but on this occasion it became
+so peculiarly evident to me that I am constrained to record it here--
+I refer to the sense of impending danger which invariably preceded a
+visit from Fu-Manchu. Even had I not known that an attempt was to be
+made that night, I should have realized it, as, strung to high tension,
+I waited in the darkness.  Some invisible herald went ahead of the
+dreadful Chinaman, proclaiming his coming to every nerve in one's body.
+It was like a breath of astral incense, announcing the presence
+of the priests of death.
+
+A wail, low but singularly penetrating, falling in minor cadences
+to a new silence, came from somewhere close at hand.
+
+"My God!" hissed Guthrie, "what was that?"
+
+"The Call of Siva," whispered Smith.
+
+"Don't stir, for your life!"
+
+Guthrie was breathing hard.
+
+I knew that we were three; that the hotel detective was within hail;
+that there was a telephone in the room; that the traffic of
+the Embankment moved almost beneath us; but I knew, and am not
+ashamed to confess, that King Fear had icy fingers about my heart.
+It was awful--that tense waiting--for--what?
+
+Three taps sounded--very distinctly upon the window.
+
+Graham Guthrie started so as to shake the bed.
+
+"It's supernatural!" he muttered--all that was Celtic in his blood
+recoiling from the omen.  "Nothing human can reach that window!"
+"S-sh!" from Smith.  "Don't stir."
+
+The tapping was repeated.
+
+Smith softly crossed the room.  My heart was beating painfully.
+He threw open the window.  Further inaction was impossible.
+I joined him; and we looked out into the empty air.
+
+"Don't come too near, Petrie!" he warned over his shoulder.
+
+One on either side of the open window, we stood and looked down
+at the moving Embankment lights, at the glitter of the Thames,
+at the silhouetted buildings on the farther bank, with the Shot
+Tower starting above them all.
+
+Three taps sounded on the panes above us.
+
+In all my dealings with Dr. Fu-Manchu I had had to face nothing so uncanny
+as this.  What Burmese ghoul had he loosed?  Was it outside, in the air?
+Was it actually in the room?
+
+"Don't let me go, Petrie!" whispered Smith suddenly.
+"Get a tight hold on me!"
+
+That was the last straw; for I thought that some dreadful
+fascination was impelling my friend to hurl himself out!
+Wildly I threw my arms about him, and Guthrie leaped
+forward to help.
+
+Smith leaned from the window and looked up.
+
+One choking cry he gave--smothered, inarticulate--and I found him slipping
+from my grip--being drawn out of the window--drawn to his death!
+
+"Hold him, Guthrie!" I gasped hoarsely.  "My God, he's going!
+Hold him!"
+
+My friend writhed in our grasp, and I saw him stretch his arm upward.
+The crack of his revolver came, and he collapsed on to the floor,
+carrying me with him.
+
+But as I fell I heard a scream above.  Smith's revolver went
+hurtling through the air, and, hard upon it, went a black shape--
+flashing past the open window into the gulf of the night.
+
+"The light!  The light!"  I cried.
+
+Guthrie ran and turned on the light.  Nayland Smith, his eyes
+starting from his head, his face swollen, lay plucking at a silken
+cord which showed tight about his throat.
+
+"It was a Thug!" screamed Guthrie.  "Get the rope off!  He's choking!"
+
+My hands a-twitch, I seized the strangling-cord.
+
+"A knife!  Quick!"  I cried.  "I have lost mine!"
+
+Guthrie ran to the dressing-table and passed me an open penknife.
+I somehow forced the blade between the rope and Smith's swollen neck,
+and severed the deadly silken thing.
+
+Smith made a choking noise, and fell back, swooning in my arms.
+
+
+When, later, we stood looking down upon the mutilated thing which had
+been brought in from where it fell, Smith showed me a mark on the brow--
+close beside the wound where his bullet had entered.
+
+"The mark of Kali," he said.  "The man was a phansigar--
+a religious strangler.  Since Fu-Manchu has dacoits in his
+service I might have expected that he would have Thugs.
+A group of these fiends would seem to have fled into Burma;
+so that the mysterious epidemic in Rangoon was really an outbreak
+of thuggee--on slightly improved lines!  I had suspected something
+of the kind but, naturally, I had not looked for Thugs near Rangoon.
+My unexpected resistance led the strangler to bungle the rope.
+You have seen how it was fastened about my throat?
+That was unscientific.  The true method, as practiced
+by the group operating in Burma, was to throw the line
+about the victim's neck and jerk him from the window.
+A man leaning from an open window is very nicely poised:
+it requires only a slight jerk to pitch him forward.
+No loop was used, but a running line, which, as the victim fell,
+remained in the hand of the murderer.  No clew!  Therefore we
+see at once what commended the system to Fu-Manchu."
+
+Graham Guthrie, very pale, stood looking down at the dead strangler.
+
+"I owe you my life, Mr. Smith," he said.  "If you had come
+five minutes later--"
+
+He grasped Smith's hand.
+
+"You see," Guthrie continued, "no one thought of looking for a Thug in Burma!
+And no one thought of the ROOF!  These fellows are as active as monkeys,
+and where an ordinary man would infallibly break his neck, they are entirely
+at home.  I might have chosen my room especially for the business!"
+
+"He slipped in late this evening," said Smith.  "The hotel detective saw him,
+but these stranglers are as elusive as shadows, otherwise, despite their
+having changed the scene of their operations, not one could have survived."
+
+"Didn't you mention a case of this kind on the Irrawaddy?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," was the reply; "and I know of what you are thinking.
+The steamers of the Irrawaddy flotilla have a corrugated-iron
+roof over the top deck.  The Thug must have been lying up there
+as the Colassie passed on the deck below."
+
+"But, Smith, what is the motive of the Call?" I continued.
+
+"Partly religious," he explained, "and partly to wake the victims!
+You are perhaps going to ask me how Dr. Fu-Manchu has obtained power over
+such people as phansigars?  I can only reply that Dr. Fu-Manchu has secret
+knowledge of which, so far, we know absolutely nothing; but, despite all,
+at last I begin to score."
+
+"You do," I agreed; "but your victory took you near to death."
+
+"I owe my life to you, Petrie," he said.  "Once to your strength of arm,
+and once to--"
+
+"Don't speak of her, Smith," I interrupted.
+"Dr. Fu-Manchu may have discovered the part she played!
+In which event--"
+
+"God help her!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+UPON the following day we were afoot again, and shortly at handgrips with
+the enemy.  In retrospect, that restless time offers a chaotic prospect,
+with no peaceful spot amid its turmoils.
+
+All that was reposeful in nature seemed to have become
+an irony and a mockery to us--who knew how an evil demigod
+had his sacrificial altars amid our sweetest groves.
+This idea ruled strongly in my mind upon that soft autumnal day.
+
+"The net is closing in," said Nayland Smith.
+
+"Let us hope upon a big catch," I replied, with a laugh.
+
+Beyond where the Thames tided slumberously seaward showed the roofs
+of Royal Windsor, the castle towers showing through the autumn haze.
+The peace of beautiful Thames-side was about us.
+
+This was one of the few tangible clews upon which thus
+far we had chanced; but at last it seemed indeed that we
+were narrowing the resources of that enemy of the white race
+who was writing his name over England in characters of blood.
+To capture Dr. Fu-Manchu we did not hope; but at least there
+was every promise of destroying one of the enemy's strongholds.
+
+We had circled upon the map a tract of country cut by the Thames,
+with Windsor for its center.  Within that circle was the house from
+which miraculously we had escaped--a house used by the most highly
+organized group in the history of criminology.  So much we knew.
+Even if we found the house, and this was likely enough, to find it
+vacated by Fu-Manchu and his mysterious servants we were prepared.
+But it would be a base destroyed.
+
+We were working upon a methodical plan, and although our cooperators
+were invisible, these numbered no fewer than twelve--all of them
+experienced men.  Thus far we had drawn blank, but the place for which
+Smith and I were making now came clearly into view:  an old mansion
+situated in extensive walled grounds.  Leaving the river behind us,
+we turned sharply to the right along a lane flanked by a high wall.
+On an open patch of ground, as we passed, I noted a gypsy caravan.
+An old woman was seated on the steps, her wrinkled face bent,
+her chin resting in the palm of her hand.
+
+I scarcely glanced at her, but pressed on, nor did I notice that my friend
+no longer was beside me.  I was all anxiety to come to some point from
+whence I might obtain a view of the house; all anxiety to know if this
+was the abode of our mysterious enemy--the place where he worked amid
+his weird company, where he bred his deadly scorpions and his bacilli,
+reared his poisonous fungi, from whence he dispatched his murder ministers.
+Above all, perhaps, I wondered if this would prove to be the hiding-place of
+the beautiful slave girl who was such a potent factor in the Doctor's plans,
+but a two-edged sword which yet we hoped to turn upon Fu-Manchu. Even
+in the hands of a master, a woman's beauty is a dangerous weapon.
+
+A cry rang out behind me.  I turned quickly.  And a singular
+sight met my gaze.
+
+Nayland Smith was engaged in a furious struggle with the old gypsy woman!
+His long arms clasped about her, he was roughly dragging her out into
+the roadway, she fighting like a wild thing--silently, fiercely.
+
+Smith often surprised me, but at that sight, frankly, I thought that
+he was become bereft of reason.  I ran back; and I had almost reached
+the scene of this incredible contest, and Smith now was evidently hard put
+to it to hold his own when a man, swarthy, with big rings in his ears,
+leaped from the caravan.
+
+One quick glance he threw in our direction, and made off towards the river.
+
+Smith twisted round upon me, never releasing his hold of the woman.
+
+"After him, Petrie!" he cried.  "After him.  Don't let him escape.
+It's a dacoit!"
+
+My brain in a confused whirl; my mind yet disposed to a belief that my friend
+had lost his senses, the word "dacoit" was sufficient.
+
+I started down the road after the fleetly running man.
+Never once did he glance behind him, so that he evidently had occasion
+to fear pursuit.  The dusty road rang beneath my flying footsteps.
+That sense of fantasy, which claimed me often enough in those days
+of our struggle with the titanic genius whose victory meant the victory
+of the yellow races over the white, now had me fast in its grip again.
+I was an actor in one of those dream-scenes of the grim Fu-Manchu drama.
+
+Out over the grass and down to the river's brink ran the gypsy
+who was no gypsy, but one of that far more sinister brotherhood,
+the dacoits.  I was close upon his heels.  But I was not
+prepared for him to leap in among the rushes at the margin
+of the stream; and seeing him do this I pulled up quickly.
+Straight into the water he plunged; and I saw that he held some
+object in his hand.  He waded out; he dived; and as I gained
+the bank and looked to right and left he had vanished completely.
+Only ever-widening rings showed where he had been. I had him.
+
+For directly he rose to the surface he would be visible from
+either bank, and with the police whistle which I carried I could,
+if necessary, summon one of the men in hiding across the stream.
+I waited.  A wild-fowl floated serenely past, untroubled by this
+strange invasion of his precincts.  A full minute I waited.
+From the lane behind me came Smith's voice:
+
+"Don't let him escape, Petrie!"
+
+Never lifting my eyes from the water, I waved my hand reassuringly.
+But still the dacoit did not rise.  I searched the surface in all
+directions as far as my eyes could reach; but no swimmer showed
+above it.  Then it was that I concluded he had dived too deeply,
+become entangled in the weeds and was drowned.  With a final glance
+to right and left and some feeling of awe at this sudden tragedy--
+this grim going out of a life at glorious noonday--I turned away.
+Smith had the woman securely; but I had not taken five steps towards
+him when a faint splash behind warned me.  Instinctively I ducked.
+From whence that saving instinct arose I cannot surmise,
+but to it I owed my life.  For as I rapidly lowered my head,
+something hummed past me, something that flew out over the grass bank,
+and fell with a jangle upon the dusty roadside.  A knife!
+
+I turned and bounded back to the river's brink.  I heard a faint
+cry behind me, which could only have come from the gypsy woman.
+Nothing disturbed the calm surface of the water.  The reach was lonely
+of rowers.  Out by the farther bank a girl was poling a punt along,
+and her white-clad figure was the only living thing that moved upon
+the river within the range of the most expert knife-thrower.
+
+To say that I was nonplused is to say less than the truth; I was amazed.
+That it was the dacoit who had shown me this murderous attention
+I could not doubt.  But where in Heaven's name WAS he?
+He could not humanly have remained below water for so long;
+yet he certainly was not above, was not upon the surface,
+concealed amongst the reeds, nor hidden upon the bank.
+
+There, in the bright sunshine, a consciousness of the eerie possessed me.
+It was with an uncomfortable feeling that my phantom foe might be aiming
+a second knife at my back that I turned away and hastened towards Smith.
+My fearful expectations were not realized, and I picked up the little weapon
+which had so narrowly missed me, and with it in my hand rejoined my friend.
+
+He was standing with one arm closely clasped about the apparently
+exhausted woman, and her dark eyes were fixed upon him with
+an extraordinary expression.
+
+"What does it mean, Smith?" I began.
+
+But he interrupted me.
+
+"Where is the dacoit?" he demanded rapidly.
+
+"Since he seemingly possesses the attributes of a fish,"
+I replied, "I cannot pretend to say."
+
+The gypsy woman lifted her eyes to mine and laughed.
+Her laughter was musical, not that of such an old hag as Smith
+held captive; it was familiar, too.
+
+I started and looked closely into the wizened face.
+
+"He's tricked you," said Smith, an angry note in his voice.
+"What is that you have in your hand?"
+
+I showed him the knife, and told him how it had come into my possession.
+
+"I know," he rapped.  "I saw it.  He was in the water not
+three yards from where you stood.  You must have seen him.
+Was there nothing visible?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+The woman laughed again, and again I wondered.
+
+"A wild-fowl," I added; "nothing else."
+
+"A wild-fowl," snapped Smith.  "If you will consult your
+recollections of the habits of wild-fowl you will see
+that this particular specimen was a RARA AVIS. It's an
+old trick, Petrie, but a good one, for it is used in decoying.
+A dacoit's head was concealed in that wild-fowl!  It's useless.
+He has certainly made good his escape by now."
+
+"Smith," I said, somewhat crestfallen, "why are you detaining
+this gypsy woman?"
+
+"Gypsy woman!" he laughed, hugging her tightly as she made
+an impatient movement.  "Use your eyes, old man."
+
+He jerked the frowsy wig from her head, and beneath was a cloud
+of disordered hair that shimmered in the sunlight.
+
+"A wet sponge will do the rest," he said.
+
+Into my eyes, widely opened in wonder, looked the dark eyes
+of the captive; and beneath the disguise I picked out the charming
+features of the slave girl.  There were tears on the whitened lashes,
+and she was submissive now.
+
+"This time," said my friend hardly, "we have fairly captured her--
+and we will hold her."
+
+From somewhere up-stream came a faint call.
+
+"The dacoit!"
+
+Nayland Smith's lean body straightened; he stood alert, strung up.
+
+Another call answered, and a third responded.
+Then followed the flatly shrill note of a police whistle,
+and I noted a column of black vapor rising beyond the wall,
+mounting straight to heaven as the smoke of a welcome offering.
+
+The surrounded mansion was in flames!
+
+"Curse it!" rapped Smith.  "So this time we were right.  But, of course,
+he has had ample opportunity to remove his effects.  I knew that.
+The man's daring is incredible.  He has given himself till the very
+last moment--and we blundered upon two of the outposts."
+
+"I lost one."
+
+"No matter.  We have the other.  I expect no further arrests,
+and the house will have been so well fired by the Doctor's
+servants that nothing can save it.  I fear its ashes will afford
+us no clew, Petrie; but we have secured a lever which should
+serve to disturb Fu-Manchu's world."
+
+He glanced at the queer figure which hung submissively in his arms.
+She looked up proudly.
+
+"You need not hold me so tight," she said, in her soft voice.
+"I will come with you."
+
+That I moved amid singular happenings, you, who have borne with me
+thus far, have learned, and that I witnessed many curious scenes;
+but of the many such scenes in that race-drama wherein Nayland
+Smith and Dr. Fu-Manchu played the leading parts, I remember none
+more bizarre than the one at my rooms that afternoon.
+
+Without delay, and without taking the Scotland Yard men into
+our confidence, we had hurried our prisoner back to London,
+for my friend's authority was supreme.  A strange trio we were,
+and one which excited no little comment; but the journey came
+to an end at last.  Now we were in my unpretentious sitting-room--
+the room wherein Smith first had unfolded to me the story
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu and of the great secret society which sought
+to upset the balance of the world--to place Europe and America
+beneath the scepter of Cathay.
+
+I sat with my elbows upon the writing-table, my chin in my hands;
+Smith restlessly paced the floor, relighting his blackened
+briar a dozen times in as many minutes.  In the big arm-chair
+the pseudogypsy was curled up.  A brief toilet had converted
+the wizened old woman's face into that of a fascinatingly pretty girl.
+Wildly picturesque she looked in her ragged Romany garb.
+She held a cigarette in her fingers and watched us
+through lowered lashes.
+
+Seemingly, with true Oriental fatalism, she was quite reconciled to her fate,
+and ever and anon she would bestow upon me a glance from her beautiful
+eyes which few men, I say with confidence, could have sustained unmoved.
+Though I could not be blind to the emotions of that passionate Eastern soul,
+yet I strove not to think of them.  Accomplice of an arch-murderer she
+might be; but she was dangerously lovely.
+
+"That man who was with you," said Smith, suddenly turning
+upon her, "was in Burma up till quite recently.  He murdered
+a fisherman thirty miles above Prome only a mouth before I left.
+The D.S.P. had placed a thousand rupees on his head.
+Am I right?"
+
+The girl shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Suppose--What then?" she asked.
+
+"Suppose I handed you over to the police?" suggested Smith.
+But he spoke without conviction, for in the recent past we
+both had owed our lives to this girl.
+
+"As you please," she replied.  "The police would learn nothing."
+
+"You do not belong to the Far East," my friend said abruptly.
+"You may have Eastern blood in your veins, but you are no
+kin of Fu-Manchu."
+
+"That is true," she admitted, and knocked the ash from her cigarette.
+
+"Will you tell me where to find Fu-Manchu?"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders again, glancing eloquently in my direction.
+
+Smith walked to the door.
+
+"I must make out my report, Petrie," he said.  "Look after the prisoner."
+
+And as the door closed softly behind him I knew what was
+expected of me; but, honestly, I shirked my responsibility.
+What attitude should I adopt?  How should I go about my delicate task?
+In a quandary, I stood watching the girl whom singular circumstances
+saw captive in my rooms.
+
+"You do not think we would harm you?" I began awkwardly.
+"No harm shall come to you.  Why will you not trust us?"
+
+She raised her brilliant eyes.
+
+"Of what avail has your protection been to some of those others,"
+she said; "those others whom HE has sought for?"
+
+Alas!  it had been of none, and I knew it well.  I thought I grasped
+the drift of her words.
+
+"You mean that if you speak, Fu-Manchu will find a way of killing you?"
+
+"Of killing ME!" she flashed scornfully.  "Do I seem one
+to fear for myself?"
+
+"Then what do you fear?" I asked, in surprise.
+
+She looked at me oddly.
+
+"When I was seized and sold for a slave," she answered slowly,
+"my sister was taken, too, and my brother--a child."
+She spoke the word with a tender intonation, and her slight accent
+rendered it the more soft.  "My sister died in the desert.
+My brother lived.  Better, far better, that he had died, too."
+
+Her words impressed me intensely.
+
+"Of what are you speaking?" I questioned.  "You speak of
+slave-raids, of the desert.  Where did these things take place?
+Of what country are you?"
+
+"Does it matter?" she questioned in turn.  "Of what country am I?
+A slave has no country, no name."
+
+"No name!" I cried.
+
+"You may call me Karamaneh," she said.  "As Karamaneh I was
+sold to Dr. Fu-Manchu, and my brother also he purchased.
+We were cheap at the price he paid."  She laughed shortly, wildly.
+
+"But he has spent a lot of money to educate me.  My brother is all
+that is left to me in the world to love, and he is in the power
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu. You understand?  It is upon him the blow will fall.
+You ask me to fight against Fu-Manchu. You talk of protection.
+Did your protection save Sir Crichton Davey?"
+
+I shook my head sadly.
+
+"You understand now why I cannot disobey my master's orders--why, if I would,
+I dare not betray him."
+
+I walked to the window and looked out.  How could I answer her arguments?
+What could I say?  I heard the rustle of her ragged skirts, and she who called
+herself Karamaneh stood beside me.  She laid her hand upon my arm.
+
+"Let me go," she pleaded.  "He will kill him!  He will kill him!"
+
+Her voice shook with emotion.
+
+"He cannot revenge himself upon your brother when you are in no way to blame,"
+I said angrily.  "We arrested you; you are not here of your own free will."
+
+She drew her breath sharply, clutching at my arm, and in her eyes I
+could read that she was forcing her mind to some arduous decision.
+
+"Listen."  She was speaking rapidly, nervously.  "If I help you
+to take Dr. Fu-Manchu--tell you where he is to be found ALONE--
+will you promise me, solemnly promise me, that you will immediately
+go to the place where I shall guide you and release my brother;
+that you will let us both go free?"
+
+"I will," I said, without hesitation.  "You may rest assured of it."
+
+"But there is a condition," she added.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"When I have told you where to capture him you must release me."
+
+I hesitated.  Smith often had accused me of weakness
+where this girl was concerned.  What now was my plain duty?
+That she would utterly decline to speak under any circumstances
+unless it suited her to do so I felt assured.  If she spoke
+the truth, in her proposed bargain there was no personal element;
+her conduct I now viewed in a new light.  Humanity, I thought,
+dictated that I accept her proposal; policy also.
+
+"I agree," I said, and looked into her eyes, which were aflame
+now with emotion, an excitement perhaps of anticipation,
+perhaps of fear.
+
+She laid her hands upon my shoulders.
+
+"You will be careful?" she said pleadingly.
+
+"For your sake," I replied, "I shall."
+
+"Not for my sake."
+
+"Then for your brother's."
+
+"No." Her voice had sunk to a whisper.  "For your own."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+A COOL breeze met us, blowing from the lower reaches of the Thames.
+Far behind us twinkled the dim lights of Low's Cottages,
+the last regular habitations abutting upon the marshes.
+Between us and the cottages stretched half-a-mile of lush land
+through which at this season there were, however, numerous dry paths.
+Before us the flats again, a dull, monotonous expanse beneath the moon,
+with the promise of the cool breeze that the river flowed round
+the bend ahead.  It was very quiet.  Only the sound of our footsteps,
+as Nayland Smith and I tramped steadily towards our goal,
+broke the stillness of that lonely place.
+
+Not once but many times, within the last twenty minutes,
+I had thought that we were ill-advised to adventure
+alone upon the capture of the formidable Chinese doctor;
+but we were following out our compact with Karamaneh;
+and one of her stipulations had been that the police must
+not be acquainted with her share in the matter.
+
+A light came into view far ahead of us.
+
+"That's the light, Petrie," said Smith.  "If we keep that straight before us,
+according to our information we shall strike the hulk."
+
+I grasped the revolver in my pocket, and the presence
+of the little weapon was curiously reassuring.
+I have endeavored, perhaps in extenuation of my own fears,
+to explain how about Dr. Fu-Manchu there rested an atmosphere
+of horror, peculiar, unique.  He was not as other men.
+The dread that he inspired in all with whom he came in contact,
+the terrors which he controlled and hurled at whomsoever
+cumbered his path, rendered him an object supremely sinister.
+I despair of conveying to those who may read this account
+any but the coldest conception of the man's evil power.
+
+Smith stopped suddenly and grasped my arm.
+We stood listening.  "What?" I asked.
+
+"You heard nothing?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+Smith was peering back over the marshes in his oddly alert way.
+He turned to me, and his tanned face wore a peculiar expression.
+
+"You don't think it's a trap?" he jerked.  "We are trusting her blindly."
+
+Strange it may seem, but something within me rose in arms
+against the innuendo.
+
+"I don't," I said shortly.
+
+He nodded.  We pressed on.
+
+Ten minutes' steady tramping brought us within sight of the Thames.
+Smith and I both had noticed how Fu-Manchu's activities centered
+always about the London river.  Undoubtedly it was his highway,
+his line of communication, along which he moved his mysterious forces.
+The opium den off Shadwell Highway, the mansion upstream,
+at that hour a smoldering shell; now the hulk lying off the marshes.
+Always he made his headquarters upon the river.  It was significant;
+and even if to-night's expedition should fail, this was a clew
+for our future guidance.
+
+"Bear to the right," directed Smith.  "We must reconnoiter
+before making our attack."
+
+We took a path that led directly to the river bank.
+Before us lay the gray expanse of water, and out upon it
+moved the busy shipping of the great mercantile city.
+But this life of the river seemed widely removed from us.
+The lonely spot where we stood had no kinship with human activity.
+Its dreariness illuminated by the brilliant moon, it looked
+indeed a fit setting for an act in such a drama as that wherein
+we played our parts.  When I had lain in the East End opium den,
+when upon such another night as this I had looked out upon
+a peaceful Norfolk countryside, the same knowledge of aloofness,
+of utter detachment from the world of living men, had come to me.
+
+Silently Smith stared out at the distant moving lights.
+
+"Karamaneh merely means a slave," he said irrelevantly.
+
+I made no comment.
+
+"There's the hulk," he added.
+
+The bank upon which we stood dipped in mud slopes to the level
+of the running tide.  Seaward it rose higher, and by a narrow inlet--
+for we perceived that we were upon a kind of promontory--
+a rough pier showed.  Beneath it was a shadowy shape in the patch
+of gloom which the moon threw far out upon the softly eddying water.
+Only one dim light was visible amid this darkness.
+
+"That will be the cabin," said Smith.
+
+Acting upon our prearranged plan, we turned and walked up on
+to the staging above the hulk.  A wooden ladder led out and down
+to the deck below, and was loosely lashed to a ring on the pier.
+With every motion of the tidal waters the ladder rose and fell,
+its rings creaking harshly, against the crazy railing.
+
+"How are we going to get down without being detected?" whispered Smith.
+
+"We've got to risk it," I said grimly.
+
+Without further words my friend climbed around on to the ladder
+and commenced to descend.  I waited until his head disappeared
+below the level, and, clumsily enough, prepared to follow him.
+
+The hulk at that moment giving an unusually heavy heave,
+I stumbled, and for one breathless moment looked down upon
+the glittering surface streaking the darkness beneath me.
+My foot had slipped, and but that I had a firm grip upon the top rung,
+that instant, most probably, had marked the end of my share
+in the fight with Fu-Manchu. As it was I had a narrow escape.
+I felt something slip from my hip pocket, but the weird
+creaking of the ladder, the groans of the laboring hulk,
+and the lapping of the waves about the staging drowned the sound
+of the splash as my revolver dropped into the river.
+
+Rather white-faced, I think, I joined Smith on the deck.
+He had witnessed my accident, but--
+
+"We must risk it," he whispered in my ear.  "We dare not turn back now."
+
+He plunged into the semi-darkness, making for the cabin,
+I perforce following.
+
+At the bottom of the ladder we came fully into the light streaming out
+from the singular apartments at the entrance to which we found ourselves.
+It was fitted up as a laboratory.  A glimpse I had of shelves loaded
+with jars and bottles, of a table strewn with scientific paraphernalia,
+with retorts, with tubes of extraordinary shapes, holding living organisms,
+and with instruments--some of them of a form unknown to my experience.
+I saw too that books, papers and rolls of parchment littered the bare
+wooden floor.  Then Smith's voice rose above the confused sounds
+about me, incisive, commanding:
+
+"I have you covered, Dr. Fu-Manchu!"
+
+For Fu-Manchu sat at the table.
+
+The picture that he presented at that moment is one which persistently
+clings in my memory.  In his long, yellow robe, his masklike,
+intellectual face bent forward amongst the riot of singular objects upon
+the table, his great, high brow gleaming in the light of the shaded
+lamp above him, and with the abnormal eyes, filmed and green,
+raised to us, he seemed a figure from the realms of delirium.
+But, most amazing circumstance of all, he and his surroundings tallied,
+almost identically, with the dream-picture which had come to me as I
+lay chained in the cell!
+
+Some of the large jars about the place held anatomy specimens.
+A faint smell of opium hung in the air, and playing with the tassel
+of one of the cushions upon which, as upon a divan, Fu-Manchu was seated,
+leaped and chattered a little marmoset.
+
+That was an electric moment.  I was prepared for anything--
+for anything except for what really happened.
+
+The doctor's wonderful, evil face betrayed no hint of emotion.
+The lids flickered over the filmed eyes, and their greenness grew
+momentarily brighter, and filmed over again.
+
+"Put up your hands!" rapped Smith, "and attempt no tricks."
+His voice quivered with excitement.  "The game's up,
+Fu-Manchu. Find something to tie him up with, Petrie."
+
+I moved forward to Smith's side, and was about to pass him
+in the narrow doorway.  The hulk moved beneath our feet
+like a living thing groaning, creaking--and the water lapped
+about the rotten woodwork with a sound infinitely dreary.
+
+"Put up your hands!" ordered Smith imperatively.
+
+Fu-Manchu slowly raised his hands, and a smile dawned upon
+the impassive features--a smile that had no mirth in it,
+only menace, revealing as it did his even, discolored teeth,
+but leaving the filmed eyes inanimate, dull, inhuman.
+
+He spoke softly, sibilantly.
+
+"I would advise Dr. Petrie to glance behind him before he moves."
+
+Smith's keen gray eyes never for a moment quitted the speaker.
+The gleaming barrel moved not a hair's-breadth. But I glanced
+quickly over my shoulder--and stifled a cry of pure horror.
+
+A wicked, pock-marked face, with wolfish fangs bared, and jaundiced
+eyes squinting obliquely into mine, was within two inches of me.
+A lean, brown hand and arm, the great thews standing up like cords,
+held a crescent-shaped knife a fraction of an inch above my jugular vein.
+A slight movement must have dispatched me; a sweep of the fearful weapon,
+I doubt not, would have severed my head from my body.
+
+"Smith!" I whispered hoarsely, "don't look around.
+For God's sake keep him covered.  But a dacoit has his knife
+at my throat!"
+
+Then, for the first time, Smith's hand trembled.  But his glance never wavered
+from the malignant, emotionless countenance of Dr. Fu-Manchu. He clenched
+his teeth hard, so that the muscles stood out prominently upon his jaw.
+
+I suppose that silence which followed my awful discovery prevailed
+but a few seconds.  To me those seconds were each a lingering death.
+
+There, below, in that groaning hulk, I knew more of icy terror
+than any of our meetings with the murder-group had brought
+to me before; and through my brain throbbed a thought:
+the girl had betrayed us!
+
+"You supposed that I was alone?" suggested Fu-Manchu. "So I was."
+
+Yet no trace of fear had broken through the impassive yellow
+mask when we had entered.
+
+"But my faithful servant followed you," he added.  "I thank him.
+The honors, Mr. Smith, are mine, I think?"
+
+Smith made no reply.  I divined that he was thinking furiously.
+Fu-Manchu moved his hand to caress the marmoset, which had leaped
+playfully upon his shoulder, and crouched there gibing at us
+in a whistling voice.
+
+"Don't stir!" said Smith savagely.  "I warn you!"
+
+Fu-Manchu kept his hand raised.
+
+"May I ask you how you discovered my retreat?" he asked.
+
+"This hulk has been watched since dawn," lied Smith brazenly.
+
+"So?"  The Doctor's filmed eyes cleared for a moment.
+"And to-day you compelled me to burn a house, and you
+have captured one of my people, too.  I congratulate you.
+She would not betray me though lashed with scorpions."
+
+The great gleaming knife was so near to my neck that a sheet of notepaper
+could scarcely have been slipped between blade and vein, I think;
+but my heart throbbed even more wildly when I heard those words.
+
+"An impasse," said Fu-Manchu. "I have a proposal to make.
+I assume that you would not accept my word for anything?"
+
+"I would not," replied Smith promptly.
+
+"Therefore," pursued the Chinaman, and the occasional guttural
+alone marred his perfect English, "I must accept yours.
+Of your resources outside this cabin I know nothing.
+You, I take it, know as little of mine.  My Burmese friend and
+Doctor Petrie will lead the way, then; you and I will follow.
+We will strike out across the marsh for, say, three hundred yards.
+You will then place your pistol on the ground, pledging me your
+word to leave it there.  I shall further require your assurance
+that you will make no attempt upon me until I have retraced
+my steps.  I and my good servant will withdraw, leaving you,
+at the expiration of the specified period, to act as you see fit.
+Is it agreed?"
+
+Smith hesitated.  Then:
+
+"The dacoit must leave his knife also," he stipulated.
+Fu-Manchu smiled his evil smile again.
+
+"Agreed.  Shall I lead the way?"
+
+"No!" rapped Smith.  "Petrie and the dacoit first; then you; I last."
+
+A guttural word of command from Fu-Manchu, and we left the cabin,
+with its evil odors, its mortuary specimens, and its strange instruments,
+and in the order arranged mounted to the deck.
+
+"It will be awkward on the ladder," said Fu-Manchu. "Dr. Petrie,
+I will accept your word to adhere to the terms."
+
+"I promise," I said, the words almost choking me.
+
+We mounted the rising and dipping ladder, all reached the pier,
+and strode out across the flats, the Chinaman always under close
+cover of Smith's revolver.  Round about our feet, now leaping ahead,
+now gamboling back, came and went the marmoset.  The dacoit,
+dressed solely in a dark loin-cloth, walked beside me, carrying his
+huge knife, and sometimes glancing at me with his blood-lustful eyes.
+Never before, I venture to say, had an autumn moon lighted such
+a scene in that place.
+
+"Here we part," said Fu-Manchu, and spoke another word to his follower.
+
+The man threw his knife upon the ground.
+
+"Search him, Petrie," directed Smith.  "He may have a second concealed."
+
+The Doctor consented; and I passed my hands over the man's scanty garments.
+
+"Now search Fu-Manchu."
+
+This also I did.  And never have I experienced a similar sense
+of revulsion from any human being.  I shuddered, as though I
+had touched a venomous reptile.
+
+Smith threw down his revolver.
+
+"I curse myself for an honorable fool," he said.  "No one could
+dispute my right to shoot you dead where you stand."
+
+Knowing him as I did, I could tell from the suppressed passion
+in Smith's voice that only by his unhesitating acceptance
+of my friend's word, and implicit faith in his keeping it,
+had Dr. Fu-Manchu escaped just retribution at that moment.
+Fiend though he was, I admired his courage; for all this he,
+too, must have known.
+
+The Doctor turned, and with the dacoit walked back.
+Nayland Smith's next move filled me with surprise.
+For just as, silently, I was thanking God for my escape,
+my friend began shedding his coat, collar, and waistcoat.
+
+"Pocket your valuables, and do the same," he muttered hoarsely.
+"We have a poor chance but we are both fairly fit.
+To-night, Petrie, we literally have to run for our lives."
+
+We live in a peaceful age, wherein it falls to the lot of few
+men to owe their survival to their fleetness of foot.
+At Smith's words I realized in a flash that such was to be
+our fate to-night.
+
+I have said that the hulk lay off a sort of promontory.
+East and west, then, we had nothing to hope for.  To the south
+was Fu-Manchu; and even as, stripped of our heavier garments,
+we started to run northward, the weird signal of a dacoit rose
+on the night and was answered--was answered again.
+
+"Three, at least," hissed Smith; "three armed dacoits.  Hopeless."
+
+"Take the revolver," I cried.  "Smith, it's--"
+
+"No," he rapped, through clenched teeth.  "A servant of the Crown
+in the East makes his motto:  `Keep your word, though it break
+your neck!'  I don't think we need fear it being used against us.
+Fu-Manchu avoids noisy methods."
+
+So back we ran, over the course by which, earlier, we had come.
+It was, roughly, a mile to the first building--a deserted cottage--
+and another quarter of a mile to any that was occupied.
+
+Our chance of meeting a living soul, other than Fu-Manchu's dacoits,
+was practically nil.
+
+At first we ran easily, for it was the second half-mile that would
+decide our fate.  The professional murderers who pursued us ran
+like panthers, I knew; and I dare not allow my mind to dwell
+upon those yellow figures with the curved, gleaming knives.
+For a long time neither of us looked back.
+
+On we ran, and on--silently, doggedly.
+
+Then a hissing breath from Smith warned me what to expect.
+
+Should I, too, look back?  Yes.  It was impossible to resist
+the horrid fascination.
+
+I threw a quick glance over my shoulder.
+
+And never while I live shall I forget what I saw.
+Two of the pursuing dacoits had outdistanced their fellow
+(or fellows), and were actually within three hundred yards of us.
+
+More like dreadful animals they looked than human beings,
+running bent forward, with their faces curiously uptilted.
+The brilliant moonlight gleamed upon bared teeth, as I could see,
+even at that distance, even in that quick, agonized glance,
+and it gleamed upon the crescent-shaped knives.
+
+"As hard as you can go now," panted Smith.  "We must make an attempt
+to break into the empty cottage.  Only chance."
+
+I had never in my younger days been a notable runner; for Smith I
+cannot speak.  But I am confident that the next half-mile was done
+in time that would not have disgraced a crack man.  Not once again did
+either of us look back.  Yard upon yard we raced forward together.
+My heart seemed to be bursting.  My leg muscles throbbed with pain.
+At last, with the empty cottage in sight, it came to that pass with me
+when another three yards looks as unattainable as three miles.
+Once I stumbled.
+
+"My God!" came from Smith weakly.
+
+But I recovered myself.  Bare feet pattered close upon our heels,
+and panting breaths told how even Fu-Manchu's bloodhounds were hard
+put to it by the killing pace we had made.
+
+"Smith," I whispered, "look in front.  Someone!"
+
+As through a red mist I had seen a dark shape detach itself
+from the shadows of the cottage, and merge into them again.
+It could only be another dacoit; but Smith, not heeding,
+or not hearing, my faintly whispered words, crashed open
+the gate and hurled himself blindly at the door.
+
+It burst open before him with a resounding boom, and he pitched forward
+into the interior darkness.  Flat upon the floor he lay, for as,
+with a last effort, I gained the threshold and dragged myself within,
+I almost fell over his recumbent body.
+
+Madly I snatched at the door.  His foot held it open.
+I kicked the foot away, and banged the door to.  As I turned,
+the leading dacoit, his eyes starting from their sockets,
+his face the face of a demon leaped wildly through the gateway.
+
+That Smith had burst the latch I felt assured, but by some divine
+accident my weak hands found the bolt.  With the last ounce
+of strength spared to me I thrust it home in the rusty socket--
+as a full six inches of shining steel split the middle panel
+and protruded above my head.
+
+I dropped, sprawling, beside my friend.
+
+A terrific blow shattered every pane of glass in the solitary window,
+and one of the grinning animal faces looked in.
+
+"Sorry, old man," whispered Smith, and his voice was barely audible.
+Weakly he grasped my hand.  "My fault.  I shouldn't have let you come."
+
+From the corner of the room where the black shadows lay flicked
+a long tongue of flame.  Muffled, staccato, came the report.
+And the yellow face at the window was blotted out.
+
+One wild cry, ending in a rattling gasp, told of a dacoit gone
+to his account.
+
+A gray figure glided past me and was silhouetted against the broken window.
+
+Again the pistol sent its message into the night, and again came
+the reply to tell how well and truly that message had been delivered.
+In the stillness, intense by sharp contrast, the sound
+of bare soles pattering upon the path outside stole to me.
+Two runners, I thought there were, so that four dacoits must
+have been upon our trail.  The room was full of pungent smoke.
+I staggered to my feet as the gray figure with the revolver
+turned towards me.  Something familiar there was in that long,
+gray garment, and now I perceived why I had thought so.
+
+It was my gray rain-coat.
+
+"Karamaneh," I whispered.
+
+And Smith, with difficulty, supporting himself upright, and holding
+fast to the ledge beside the door, muttered something hoarsely,
+which sounded like "God bless her!"
+
+The girl, trembling now, placed her hands upon my shoulders with that quaint,
+pathetic gesture peculiarly her own.
+
+"I followed you," she said.  "Did you not know I should follow you?
+But I had to hide because of another who was following also.
+I had but just reached this place when I saw you running towards me."
+
+She broke off and turned to Smith.
+
+"This is your pistol," she said naively.  "I found it in your bag.
+Will you please take it!"
+
+He took it without a word.  Perhaps he could not trust himself to speak.
+
+"Now go.  Hurry!" she said.  "You are not safe yet."
+
+"But you?" I asked.
+
+"You have failed," she replied.  "I must go back to him.
+There is no other way."
+
+Strangely sick at heart for a man who has just had a miraculous
+escape from death, I opened the door.  Coatless, disheveled figures,
+my friend and I stepped out into the moonlight.
+
+Hideous under the pale rays lay the two dead men,
+their glazed eyes upcast to the peace of the blue heavens.
+Karamaneh had shot to kill, for both had bullets in their brains.
+If God ever planned a more complex nature than hers--a nature more
+tumultuous with conflicting passions, I cannot conceive of it.
+Yet her beauty was of the sweetest; and in some respects she
+had the heart of a child--this girl who could shoot so straight.
+
+"We must send the police to-night," said Smith.
+"Or the papers--"
+
+"Hurry," came the girl's voice commandingly from the darkness
+of the cottage.
+
+It was a singular situation.  My very soul rebelled against it.
+But what could we do?
+
+"Tell us where we can communicate," began Smith.
+
+"Hurry.  I shall be suspected.  Do you want him to kill me!"
+
+We moved away.  All was very still now, and the lights glimmered
+faintly ahead.  Not a wisp of cloud brushed the moon's disk.
+
+"Good-night, Karamaneh," I whispered softly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+TO pursue further the adventure on the marshes would be a task
+at once useless and thankless.  In its actual and in its dramatic
+significance it concluded with our parting from Karamaneh.
+And in that parting I learned what Shakespeare meant
+by "Sweet Sorrow."
+
+There was a world, I learned, upon the confines of which I stood,
+a world whose very existence hitherto had been unsuspected.
+Not the least of the mysteries which peeped from the darkness was
+the mystery of the heart of Karamaneh.  I sought to forget her.
+I sought to remember her.  Indeed, in the latter task I found
+one more congenial, yet, in the direction and extent of the ideas
+which it engendered, one that led me to a precipice.
+
+East and West may not intermingle.  As a student of
+world-policies, as a physician, I admitted, could not deny,
+that truth.  Again, if Karamaneh were to be credited,
+she had come to Fu-Manchu a slave; had fallen into the hands
+of the raiders; had crossed the desert with the slave-drivers;
+had known the house of the slave-dealer. Could it be?
+With the fading of the crescent of Islam I had thought such
+things to have passed.
+
+But if it were so?
+
+At the mere thought of a girl so deliciously beautiful in the brutal
+power of slavers, I found myself grinding my teeth--closing my eyes
+in a futile attempt to blot out the pictures called up.
+
+Then, at such times, I would find myself discrediting her story.
+Again, I would find myself wondering, vaguely, why such problems
+persistently haunted my mind.  But, always, my heart had an answer.
+And I was a medical man, who sought to build up a family practice!--
+who, in short, a very little time ago, had thought himself past
+the hot follies of youth and entered upon that staid phase of life
+wherein the daily problems of the medical profession hold absolute
+sway and such seductive follies as dark eyes and red lips find--
+no place--are excluded!
+
+But it is foreign from the purpose of this plain record to
+enlist sympathy for the recorder.  The topic upon which, here,
+I have ventured to touch was one fascinating enough to me;
+I cannot hope that it holds equal charm for any other.
+Let us return to that which it is my duty to narrate and let
+us forget my brief digression.
+
+It is a fact, singular, but true, that few Londoners know London.
+Under the guidance of my friend, Nayland Smith, I had learned,
+since his return from Burma, how there are haunts in the very heart
+of the metropolis whose existence is unsuspected by all but the few;
+places unknown even to the ubiquitous copy-hunting pressman.
+
+Into a quiet thoroughfare not two minutes' walk from
+the pulsing life of Leicester Square, Smith led the way.
+Before a door sandwiched in between two dingy shop-fronts
+he paused and turned to me.
+
+"Whatever you see or hear," he cautioned, "express no surprise."
+
+A cab had dropped us at the corner.  We both wore dark suits and fez
+caps with black silk tassels.  My complexion had been artificially
+reduced to a shade resembling the deep tan of my friend's. He rang
+the bell beside the door.
+
+Almost immediately it was opened by a negro woman--gross, hideously ugly.
+
+Smith uttered something in voluble Arabic.  As a linguist his
+attainments were a constant source of surprise.  The jargons
+of the East, Far and Near, he spoke as his mother tongue.
+The woman immediately displayed the utmost servility, ushering us
+into an ill-lighted passage, with every evidence of profound respect.
+Following this passage, and passing an inner door,
+from beyond whence proceeded bursts of discordant music,
+we entered a little room bare of furniture, with coarse matting
+for mural decorations, and a patternless red carpet on the floor.
+In a niche burned a common metal lamp.
+
+The negress left us, and close upon her departure entered a very aged man
+with a long patriarchal beard, who greeted my friend with dignified courtesy.
+Following a brief conversation, the aged Arab--for such he appeared to be--
+drew aside a strip of matting, revealing a dark recess.  Placing his finger
+upon his lips, he silently invited us to enter.
+
+We did so, and the mat was dropped behind us.  The sounds of crude
+music were now much plainer, and as Smith slipped a little shutter
+aside I gave a start of surprise.
+
+Beyond lay a fairly large apartment, having divans or low seats around
+three of its walls.  These divans were occupied by a motley company
+of Turks, Egyptians, Greeks, and others; and I noted two Chinese.
+Most of them smoked cigarettes, and some were drinking.
+A girl was performing a sinuous dance upon the square carpet occupying
+the center of the floor, accompanied by a young negro woman upon
+a guitar and by several members of the assembly who clapped their
+hands to the music or hummed a low, monotonous melody.
+
+Shortly after our entrance into the passage the dance terminated,
+and the dancer fled through a curtained door at the farther end of the room.
+A buzz of conversation arose.
+
+"It is a sort of combined Wekaleh and place of entertainment for a certain
+class of Oriental residents in, or visiting, London," Smith whispered.
+"The old gentleman who has just left us is the proprietor or host.
+I have been here before on several occasions, but have always drawn blank."
+
+He was peering out eagerly into the strange clubroom.
+
+"Whom do you expect to find here?" I asked.
+
+"It is a recognized meeting-place," said Smith in my ear.
+"It is almost a certainty that some of the Fu-Manchu group
+use it at times."
+
+Curiously I surveyed all these faces which were visible from the spy-hole.
+My eyes rested particularly upon the two Chinamen.
+
+"Do you recognize anyone?" I whispered.
+
+"S-sh!"
+
+Smith was craning his neck so as to command a sight of the doorway.
+He obstructed my view, and only by his tense attitude and some
+subtle wave of excitement which he communicated to me did I know
+that a new arrival was entering.  The hum of conversation died away,
+and in the ensuing silence I heard the rustle of draperies.
+The newcomer was a woman, then.  Fearful of making any noise I yet
+managed to get my eyes to the level of the shutter.
+
+A woman in an elegant, flame-colored opera cloak was crossing the floor
+and coming in the direction of the spot where we were concealed.
+She wore a soft silk scarf about her head, a fold partly draped across
+her face.  A momentary view I had of her--and wildly incongruous
+she looked in that place--and she had disappeared from sight,
+having approached someone invisible who sat upon the divan immediately
+beneath our point of vantage.
+
+From the way in which the company gazed towards her, I divined that she
+was no habitue of the place, but that her presence there was as greatly
+surprising to those in the room as it was to me.
+
+Whom could she be, this elegant lady who visited such a haunt--
+who, it would seem, was so anxious to disguise her identity,
+but who was dressed for a society function rather than for a
+midnight expedition of so unusual a character?
+
+I began a whispered question, but Smith tugged at my arm to silence me.
+His excitement was intense.  Had his keener powers enabled him
+to recognize the unknown?
+
+A faint but most peculiar perfume stole to my nostrils, a perfume
+which seemed to contain the very soul of Eastern mystery.
+Only one woman known to me used that perfume--Karamaneh.
+
+Then it was she!
+
+At last my friend's vigilance had been rewarded.  Eagerly I bent forward.
+Smith literally quivered in anticipation of a discovery.  Again the strange
+perfume was wafted to our hiding-place; and, glancing neither to right
+nor left, I saw Karamaneh--for that it was she I no longer doubted--
+recross the room and disappear.
+
+"The man she spoke to," hissed Smith.  "We must see him!
+We must have him!"
+
+He pulled the mat aside and stepped out into the anteroom.
+It was empty.  Down the passage he led, and we were almost come
+to the door of the big room when it was thrown open and a man came
+rapidly out, opened the street door before Smith could reach him,
+and was gone, slamming it fast.
+
+I can swear that we were not four seconds behind him, but when we gained
+the street it was empty.  Our quarry had disappeared as if by magic.
+A big car was just turning the corner towards Leicester Square.
+
+"That is the girl," rapped Smith; "but where in Heaven's
+name is the man to whom she brought the message?
+I would give a hundred pounds to know what business is afoot.
+To think that we have had such an opportunity and have
+thrown it away!"
+
+Angry and nonplused he stood at the corner, looking in the direction
+of the crowded thoroughfare into which the car had been driven, tugging at
+the lobe of his ear, as was his habit in such moments of perplexity,
+and sharply clicking his teeth together.  I, too, was very thoughtful.
+Clews were few enough in those days of our war with that giant antagonist.
+The mere thought that our trifling error of judgment tonight in tarrying
+a moment too long might mean the victory of Fu-Manchu, might mean the turning
+of the balance which a wise providence had adjusted between the white
+and yellow races, was appalling.
+
+To Smith and me, who knew something of the secret influences
+at work to overthrow the Indian Empire, to place, it might be,
+the whole of Europe and America beneath an Eastern rule,
+it seemed that a great yellow hand was stretched out over London.
+Doctor Fu-Manchu was a menace to the civilized world.
+Yet his very existence remained unsuspected by the millions
+whose fate he sought to command.
+
+"Into what dark scheme have we had a glimpse?" said Smith.
+"What State secret is to be filched?  What faithful servant
+of the British Raj to be spirited away?  Upon whom now has
+Fu-Manchu set his death seal?"
+
+"Karamaneh on this occasion may not have been acting as an emissary
+of the Doctor's."
+
+"I feel assured that she was, Petrie.  Of the many whom this yellow
+cloud may at any moment envelop, to which one did her message refer?
+The man's instructions were urgent.  Witness his hasty departure.
+Curse it!"  He dashed his right clenched fist into the palm of his
+left hand.  "I never had a glimpse of his face, first to last.
+To think of the hours I have spent in that place, in anticipation
+of just such a meeting--only to bungle the opportunity when it arose!"
+Scarce heeding what course we followed, we had come now to Piccadilly
+Circus, and had walked out into the heart of the night's traffic.
+I just dragged Smith aside in time to save him from the off-front
+wheel of a big Mercedes.  Then the traffic was blocked, and we found
+ourselves dangerously penned in amidst the press of vehicles.
+
+Somehow we extricated ourselves, jeered at by taxi-drivers,
+who naturally took us for two simple Oriental visitors,
+and just before that impassable barrier the arm of a London
+policeman was lowered and the stream moved on a faint breath
+of perfume became perceptible to me.
+
+The cabs and cars about us were actually beginning to move again,
+and there was nothing for it but a hasty retreat to the curb.
+I could not pause to glance behind, but instinctively I knew
+that someone--someone who used that rare, fragrant essence--
+was leaning from the window of the car.
+
+"ANDAMAN--SECOND!" floated a soft whisper.
+
+We gained the pavement as the pent-up traffic roared upon its way.
+
+Smith had not noticed the perfume worn by the unseen
+occupant of the car, had not detected the whispered words.
+But I had no reason to doubt my senses, and I knew beyond
+question that Fu-Manchu's lovely slave, Karamaneh, had been
+within a yard of us, had recognized us, and had uttered
+those words for our guidance.
+
+On regaining my rooms, we devoted a whole hour to considering
+what "ANDAMAN--SECOND" could possibly mean.
+
+"Hang it all!" cried Smith, "it might mean anything--
+the result of a race, for instance."
+
+He burst into one of his rare laughs, and began to stuff broadcut mixture
+into his briar.  I could see that he had no intention of turning in.
+
+"I can think of no one--no one of note--in London at present
+upon whom it is likely that Fu-Manchu would make an attempt,"
+he said, "except ourselves."
+
+We began methodically to go through the long list of names
+which we had compiled and to review our elaborate notes.
+When, at last, I turned in, the night had given place to a new day.
+But sleep evaded me, and "ANDAMAN--SECOND" danced like a
+mocking phantom through my brain.
+
+Then I heard the telephone bell.  I heard Smith speaking.
+
+A minute afterwards he was in my room, his face very grim.
+
+"I knew as well as if I'd seen it with my own eyes that some
+black business was afoot last night," he said.  "And it was.
+Within pistol-shot of us!  Someone has got at Frank Norris West.
+Inspector Weymouth has just been on the 'phone."
+
+"Norris West!" I cried, "the American aviator--and inventor--"
+"Of the West aero-torpedo--yes.  He's been offering it to the English
+War Office, and they have delayed too long."
+
+I got out of bed.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that the potentialities have attracted the attention
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu!"
+
+Those words operated electrically.  I do not know how long I was in dressing,
+how long a time elapsed ere the cab for which Smith had 'phoned arrived,
+how many precious minutes were lost upon the journey; but, in a nervous whirl,
+these things slipped into the past, like the telegraph poles seen from
+the window of an express, and, still in that tense state, we came upon
+the scene of this newest outrage.
+
+Mr. Norris West, whose lean, stoic face had latterly figured so often
+in the daily press, lay upon the floor in the little entrance hall
+of his chambers, flat upon his back, with the telephone receiver
+in his hand.
+
+The outer door had been forced by the police.  They had
+had to remove a piece of the paneling to get at the bolt.
+A medical man was leaning over the recumbent figure in the striped
+pajama suit, and Detective-Inspector Weymouth stood watching
+him as Smith and I entered.
+
+"He has been heavily drugged," said the Doctor, sniffing at
+West's lips, "but I cannot say what drug has been used.
+It isn't chloroform or anything of that nature.
+He can safely be left to sleep it off, I think."
+
+I agreed, after a brief examination.
+
+"It's most extraordinary," said Weymouth.  "He rang up the Yard
+about an hour ago and said his chambers had been invaded by Chinamen.
+Then the man at the 'phone plainly heard him fall.  When we got here his
+front door was bolted, as you've seen, and the windows are three floors up.
+Nothing is disturbed."
+
+"The plans of the aero-torpedo?" rapped Smith.
+
+"I take it they are in the safe in his bedroom,"
+replied the detective, "and that is locked all right.  I think
+he must have taken an overdose of something and had illusions.
+But in case there was anything in what he mumbled (you could
+hardly understand him) I thought it as well to send for you."
+
+"Quite right," said Smith rapidly.  His eyes shone like steel.
+"Lay him on the bed, Inspector."
+
+It was done, and my friend walked into the bedroom.
+
+Save that the bed was disordered, showing that West had been
+sleeping in it, there were no evidences of the extraordinary
+invasion mentioned by the drugged man.  It was a small room--
+the chambers were of that kind which are let furnished--and very neat.
+A safe with a combination lock stood in a corner.  The window was open
+about a foot at the top.  Smith tried the safe and found it fast.
+He stood for a moment clicking his teeth together, by which I knew
+him to be perplexed.  He walked over to the window and threw it up.
+We both looked out.
+
+"You see," came Weymouth's voice, "it is altogether too far from
+the court below for our cunning Chinese friends to have fixed a ladder
+with one of their bamboo rod arrangements.  And, even if they could
+get up there, it's too far down from the roof--two more stories--
+for them to have fixed it from there."
+
+Smith nodded thoughtfully, at the same time trying the strength of an iron
+bar which ran from side to side of the window-sill. Suddenly he stooped,
+with a sharp exclamation.  Bending over his shoulder I saw what it was
+that had attracted his attention.
+
+Clearly imprinted upon the dust-coated gray stone of the sill was a confused
+series of marks--tracks call them what you will.
+
+Smith straightened himself and turned a wondering look upon me.
+
+"What is it, Petrie?" he said amazedly.  "Some kind of bird has been here,
+and recently."  Inspector Weymouth in turn examined the marks.
+
+"I never saw bird tracks like these, Mr. Smith," he muttered.
+
+Smith was tugging at the lobe of his ear.
+
+"No," he returned reflectively; "come to think of it, neither did I."
+
+He twisted around, looking at the man on the bed.
+
+"Do you think it was all an illusion?" asked the detective.
+
+"What about those marks on the window-sill?" jerked Smith.
+
+He began restlessly pacing about the room, sometimes stopping
+before the locked safe and frequently glancing at Norris West.
+
+Suddenly he walked out and briefly examined the other apartments,
+only to return again to the bedroom.
+
+"Petrie," he said, "we are losing valuable time.
+West must be aroused."
+
+Inspector Weymouth stared.
+
+Smith turned to me impatiently.  The doctor summoned by the police had gone.
+"Is there no means of arousing him, Petrie?" he said.
+
+"Doubtless," I replied, "he could be revived if one but knew
+what drug he had taken."
+
+My friend began his restless pacing again, and suddenly pounced upon
+a little phial of tabloids which had been hidden behind some books
+on a shelf near the bed.  He uttered a triumphant exclamation.
+
+"See what we have here, Petrie!" he directed, handing the phial to me.
+"It bears no label."
+
+I crushed one of the tabloids in my palm and applied my tongue
+to the powder.
+
+"Some preparation of chloral hydrate," I pronounced.
+
+"A sleeping draught?" suggested Smith eagerly.
+
+"We might try," I said, and scribbled a formula upon a leaf of my notebook.
+I asked Weymouth to send the man who accompanied him to call up the nearest
+chemist and procure the antidote.
+
+During the man's absence Smith stood contemplating the unconscious inventor,
+a peculiar expression upon his bronzed face.
+
+"ANDAMAN--SECOND," he muttered.  "Shall we find the key
+to the riddle here, I wonder?"
+
+Inspector Weymouth, who had concluded, I think, that the mysterious
+telephone call was due to mental aberration on the part of Norris West,
+was gnawing at his mustache impatiently when his assistant returned.
+I administered the powerful restorative, and although,
+as later transpired, chloral was not responsible for West's condition,
+the antidote operated successfully.
+
+Norris West struggled into a sitting position, and looked about him
+with haggard eyes.
+
+"The Chinamen!  The Chinamen!" he muttered.
+
+He sprang to his feet, glaring wildly at Smith and me, reeled,
+and almost fell.
+
+"It is all right," I said, supporting him.  "I'm a doctor.
+You have been unwell."
+
+"Have the police come?" he burst out.  "The safe--try the safe!"
+
+"It's all right," said Inspector Weymouth.  "The safe is locked--
+unless someone else knows the combination, there's nothing
+to worry about."
+
+"No one else knows it," said West, and staggered unsteadily to the safe.
+Clearly his mind was in a dazed condition, but, setting his jaw with
+a curious expression of grim determination, he collected his thoughts
+and opened the safe.
+
+He bent down, looking in.
+
+In some way the knowledge came to me that the curtain was about to rise
+on a new and surprising act in the Fu-Manchu drama.
+
+"God!" he whispered--we could scarcely hear him--"the plans are gone!"
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+I HAVE never seen a man quite so surprised as Inspector Weymouth.
+
+"This is absolutely incredible!" he said.  "There's only one door
+to your chambers.  We found it bolted from the inside."
+
+"Yes," groaned West, pressing his hand to his forehead.
+"I bolted it myself at eleven o'clock, when I came in."
+
+"No human being could climb up or down to your windows.
+The plans of the aero-torpedo were inside a safe."
+
+"I put them there myself," said West, "on returning from the War Office,
+and I had occasion to consult them after I had come in and bolted the door.
+I returned them to the safe and locked it.  That it was still locked you
+saw for yourselves, and no one else in the world knows the combination."
+
+"But the plans have gone," said Weymouth.  "It's magic!  How was it done?
+What happened last night, sir?  What did you mean when you rang us up?"
+
+Smith during this colloquy was pacing rapidly up and down the room.
+He turned abruptly to the aviator.
+
+"Every fact you can remember, Mr. West, please," he said tersely;
+"and be as brief as you possibly can."
+
+"I came in, as I said," explained West, "about eleven o'clock and having
+made some notes relating to an interview arranged for this morning,
+I locked the plans in the safe and turned in."
+
+"There was no one hidden anywhere in your chambers?" snapped Smith.
+
+"There was not," replied West.  "I looked.  I invariably do.
+Almost immediately, I went to sleep."
+
+"How many chloral tabloids did you take?" I interrupted.
+
+Norris West turned to me with a slow smile.
+
+"You're cute, Doctor," he said.  "I took two.  It's a bad habit,
+but I can't sleep without.  They are specially made up for me
+by a firm in Philadelphia."
+
+"How long sleep lasted, when it became filled with uncanny dreams,
+and when those dreams merged into reality, I do not know--
+shall never know, I suppose.  But out of the dreamless void
+a face came to me--closer--closer--and peered into mine.
+
+"I was in that curious condition wherein one knows
+that one is dreaming and seeks to awaken--to escape.
+But a nightmare-like oppression held me.  So I must lie
+and gaze into the seared yellow face that hung over me,
+for it would drop so close that I could trace the cicatrized
+scar running from the left ear to the corner of the mouth,
+and drawing up the lip like the lip of a snarling cur.
+I could look into the malignant, jaundiced eyes;
+I could hear the dim whispering of the distorted mouth--
+whispering that seemed to counsel something--something evil.
+That whispering intimacy was indescribably repulsive.
+Then the wicked yellow face would be withdrawn, and would recede
+until it became as a pin's head in the darkness far above me--
+almost like a glutinous, liquid thing.
+
+"Somehow I got upon my feet, or dreamed I did--God knows where dreaming ended
+and reality began.  Gentlemen maybe you'll conclude I went mad last night,
+but as I stood holding on to the bedrail I heard the blood throbbing through
+my arteries with a noise like a screw-propeller. I started laughing.
+The laughter issued from my lips with a shrill whistling sound that pierced
+me with physical pain and seemed to wake the echoes of the whole block.
+I thought myself I was going mad, and I tried to command my will--
+to break the power of the chloral--for I concluded that I had accidentally
+taken an overdose.
+
+"Then the walls of my bedroom started to recede, till at last I
+stood holding on to a bed which had shrunk to the size of a
+doll's cot, in the middle of a room like Trafalgar Square!
+That window yonder was such a long way off I could scarcely see it,
+but I could just detect a Chinaman--the owner of the evil
+yellow face--creeping through it.  He was followed by another,
+who was enormously tall--so tall that, as they came towards me
+(and it seemed to take them something like half-an-hour to cross
+this incredible apartment in my dream), the second Chinaman
+seemed to tower over me like a cypress-tree.
+
+"I looked up to his face--his wicked, hairless face.
+Mr. Smith, whatever age I live to, I'll never forget
+that face I saw last night--or did I see it?  God knows!
+The pointed chin, the great dome of a forehead, and the eyes--
+heavens above, the huge green eyes!"
+
+He shook like a sick man, and I glanced at Smith significantly.
+Inspector Weymouth was stroking his mustache, and his mingled
+expression of incredulity and curiosity was singular to behold.
+
+"The pumping of my blood," continued West, "seemed to be
+bursting my body; the room kept expanding and contracting.
+One time the ceiling would be pressing down on my head,
+and the Chinamen--sometimes I thought there were two of them,
+sometimes twenty--became dwarfs; the next instant it shot up
+like the roof of a cathedral.
+
+"`Can I be awake,' I whispered, `or am I dreaming?'
+
+"My whisper went sweeping in windy echoes about the walls,
+and was lost in the shadowy distances up under the invisible roof.
+
+"`You are dreaming--yes.'  It was the Chinaman with the green
+eyes who was addressing me, and the words that he uttered
+appeared to occupy an immeasurable time in the utterance.
+'But at will I can render the subjective objective.'
+I don't think I can have dreamed those singular words, gentlemen.
+
+"And then he fixed the green eyes upon me--the blazing green eyes.
+I made no attempt to move.  They seemed to be draining me
+of something vital--bleeding me of every drop of mental power.
+The whole nightmare room grew green, and I felt that I was being
+absorbed into its greenness.
+
+"I can see what you think.  And even in my delirium--
+if it was delirium--I thought the same.  Now comes the climax
+of my experience--my vision--I don't know what to call it.
+I SAW some WORDS issuing from my own mouth!"
+
+Inspector Weymouth coughed discreetly.  Smith whisked round upon him.
+
+"This will be outside your experience, Inspector, I know," he said,
+"but Mr. Norris West's statement does not surprise me in the least.
+I know to what the experience was due."
+
+Weymouth stared incredulously, but a dawning perception of the truth
+was come to me, too.
+
+"How I SAW a SOUND I just won't attempt to explain;
+I simply tell you I saw it.  Somehow I knew I had betrayed myself--
+given something away."
+
+"You gave away the secret of the lock combination!" rapped Smith.
+
+"Eh!" grunted Weymouth.
+
+But West went on hoarsely:
+
+"Just before the blank came a name flashed before my eyes.
+It was `Bayard Taylor.'"
+
+At that I interrupted West.
+
+"I understand!" I cried.  "I understand!  Another name has just occurred
+to me, Mr. West--that of the Frenchman, Moreau."
+
+"You have solved the mystery," said Smith.  "It was natural
+Mr. West should have thought of the American traveler,
+Bayard Taylor, though.  Moreau's book is purely scientific.
+He has probably never read it."
+
+"I fought with the stupor that was overcoming me," continued West,
+"striving to associate that vaguely familiar name with the fantastic things
+through which I moved.  It seemed to me that the room was empty again.
+I made for the hall, for the telephone.  I could scarcely drag my feet along.
+It seemed to take me half-an-hour to get there.  I remember calling up
+Scotland Yard, and I remember no more."
+
+There was a short, tense interval.
+
+In some respects I was nonplused; but, frankly, I think Inspector Weymouth
+considered West insane.  Smith, his hands locked behind his back,
+stared out of the window.
+
+"ANDAMAN--SECOND" he said suddenly.  "Weymouth, when is the first
+train to Tilbury?"
+
+"Five twenty-two from Fenchurch Street," replied the Scotland
+Yard man promptly.
+
+"Too late!" rapped my friend.  "Jump in a taxi and pick up
+two good men to leave for China at once!  Then go and charter
+a special to Tilbury to leave in twenty-five minutes.
+Order another cab to wait outside for me."
+
+Weymouth was palpably amazed, but Smith's tone was imperative.
+The Inspector departed hastily.
+
+I stared at Smith, not comprehending what prompted this singular course.
+
+"Now that you can think clearly, Mr. West," he said, "of what
+does your experience remind you?  The errors of perception
+regarding time; the idea of SEEING A SOUND; the illusion
+that the room alternately increased and diminished in size;
+your fit of laughter, and the recollection of the name Bayard Taylor.
+Since evidently you are familiar with that author's work--
+`The Land of the Saracen,' is it not?--these symptoms of the attack
+should be familiar, I think."
+
+Norris West pressed his hands to his evidently aching head.
+
+"Bayard Taylor's book," he said dully.  "Yes! . . . I know of what my
+brain sought to remind me--Taylor's account of his experience under
+hashish. Mr. Smith, someone doped me with hashish!"
+
+Smith nodded grimly.
+
+"Cannabis indica," I said--"Indian hemp.  That is what you were drugged
+with.  I have no doubt that now you experience a feeling of nausea and
+intense thirst, with aching in the muscles, particularly the deltoid.
+I think you must have taken at least fifteen grains."
+
+Smith stopped his perambulations immediately in front of West,
+looking into his dulled eyes.
+
+"Someone visited your chambers last night," he said slowly,
+"and for your chloral tabloids substituted some containing hashish,
+or perhaps not pure hashish.  Fu-Manchu is a profound chemist."
+
+Norris West started.
+
+"Someone substituted--" he began.
+
+"Exactly," said Smith, looking at him keenly; "someone who was
+here yesterday.  Have you any idea whom it could have been?"
+
+West hesitated.  "I had a visitor in the afternoon," he said,
+seemingly speaking the words unwillingly, "but--"
+
+"A lady?" jerked Smith.  "I suggest that it was a lady."
+
+West nodded.
+
+"You're quite right," he admitted.  "I don't know how you arrived
+at the conclusion, but a lady whose acquaintance I made recently--
+a foreign lady."
+
+"Karamaneh!" snapped Smith.
+
+"I don't know what you mean in the least, but she came here--
+knowing this to be my present address--to ask me to protect her from
+a mysterious man who had followed her right from Charing Cross.
+She said he was down in the lobby, and naturally, I asked her to wait
+here whilst I went and sent him about his business."
+
+He laughed shortly.
+
+"I am over-old," he said, "to be guyed by a woman.
+You spoke just now of someone called Fu-Manchu. Is
+that the crook I'm indebted to for the loss of my plans?
+I've had attempts made by agents of two European governments,
+but a Chinaman is a novelty."
+
+"This Chinaman," Smith assured him, "is the greatest novelty of his age.
+You recognize your symptoms now from Bayard Taylor's account?"
+
+"Mr. West's statement," I said, "ran closely parallel
+with portions of Moreau's book on `Hashish Hallucinations.'
+Only Fu-Manchu, I think, would have thought of employing Indian hemp.
+I doubt, though, if it was pure Cannabis indica. At any rate,
+it acted as an opiate--"
+
+"And drugged Mr. West," interrupted Smith, "sufficiently to enable
+Fu-Manchu to enter unobserved."
+
+"Whilst it produced symptoms which rendered him an easy subject
+for the Doctor's influence.  It is difficult in this case to separate
+hallucination from reality, but I think, Mr. West, that Fu-Manchu
+must have exercised an hypnotic influence upon your drugged brain.
+We have evidence that he dragged from you the secret of the combination."
+
+"God knows we have!" said West.  "But who is this Fu-Manchu, and how--
+how in the name of wonder did he get into my chambers?"
+
+Smith pulled out his watch.  "That," he said rapidly, "I cannot
+delay to explain if I'm to intercept the man who has the plans.
+Come along, Petrie; we must be at Tilbury within the hour.
+There is just a bare chance."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+IT was with my mind in a condition of unique perplexity that I hurried
+with Nayland Smith into the cab which waited and dashed off through
+the streets in which the busy life of London just stirred into being.
+I suppose I need not say that I could penetrate no farther into this,
+Fu-Manchu's latest plot, than the drugging of Norris West with hashish?
+Of his having been so drugged with Indian hemp--that is,
+converted temporarily into a maniac--would have been evident to any
+medical man who had heard his statement and noted the distressing
+after-effects which conclusively pointed to Indian hemp poisoning.
+Knowing something of the Chinese doctor's powers, I could understand that
+he might have extracted from West the secret of the combination by sheer
+force of will whilst the American was under the influence of the drug.
+But I could not understand how Fu-Manchu had gained access to locked
+chambers on the third story of a building.
+
+"Smith," I said, "those bird tracks on the window-sill--
+they furnish the key to a mystery which is puzzling me."
+
+"They do," said Smith, glancing impatiently at his watch.
+"Consult your memories of Dr. Fu-Manchu's habits--especially your
+memories of his pets."
+
+I reviewed in my mind the creatures gruesome and terrible which
+surrounded the Chinaman--the scorpions, the bacteria, the noxious
+things which were the weapons wherewith he visited death upon
+whomsoever opposed the establishment of a potential Yellow Empire.
+But no one of them could account for the imprints upon the dust
+of West's window-sill.
+
+"You puzzle me, Smith," I confessed.  "There is much in this extraordinary
+case that puzzles me.  I can think of nothing to account for the marks."
+
+"Have you thought of Fu-Manchu's marmoset?" asked Smith.
+
+"The monkey!" I cried.
+
+"They were the footprints of a small ape," my friend continued.
+"For a moment I was deceived as you were, and believed them
+to be the tracks of a large bird; but I have seen the footprints
+of apes before now, and a marmoset, though an American variety,
+I believe, is not unlike some of the apes of Burma."
+
+"I am still in the dark," I said.
+
+"It is pure hypothesis," continued Smith, "but here is the theory--
+in lieu of a better one it covers the facts.  The marmoset--
+and it is contrary from the character of Fu-Manchu to keep any
+creature for mere amusement--is trained to perform certain duties.
+
+"You observed the waterspout running up beside the window; you observed
+the iron bar intended to prevent a window-cleaner from falling out?
+For an ape the climb from the court below to the sill above was
+a simple one.  He carried a cord, probably attached to his body.
+He climbed on to the sill, over the bar, and climbed down again.
+By means of this cord a rope was pulled up over the bar,
+by means of the rope one of those ladders of silk and bamboo.
+One of the Doctor's servants ascended--probably to
+ascertain if the hashish had acted successfully.
+That was the yellow dream-face which West saw bending over him.
+Then followed the Doctor, and to his giant will the drugged brain
+of West was a pliant instrument which he bent to his own ends.
+The court would be deserted at that hour of the night, and,
+in any event, directly after the ascent the ladder probably
+was pulled up, only to be lowered again when West had revealed
+the secret of his own safe and Fu-Manchu had secured the plans.
+The reclosing of the safe and the removing of the hashish tabloids,
+leaving no clew beyond the delirious ravings of a drug slave--
+for so anyone unacquainted with the East must have construed
+West's story--is particularly characteristic.  His own tabloids
+were returned, of course.  The sparing of his life alone is
+a refinement of art which points to a past master."
+
+"Karamaneh was the decoy again?" I said shortly.
+
+"Certainly.  Hers was the task to ascertain West's habits and to
+substitute the tabloids.  She it was who waited in the luxurious car--
+infinitely less likely to attract attention at that hour in
+that place than a modest taxi--and received the stolen plans.
+She did her work well.
+
+"Poor Karamaneh; she had no alternative!  I said I would have given a hundred
+pounds for a sight of the messenger's face--the man to whom she handed them.
+I would give a thousand now!"
+
+"ANDAMAN--SECOND," I said.  "What did she mean?"
+
+"Then it has not dawned upon you?" cried Smith excitedly, as the cab
+turned into the station.  "The ANDAMAN, of the Oriental Navigation
+Company's line, leaves Tilbury with the next tide for China ports.
+Our man is a second-class passenger.  I am wiring to delay her departure,
+and the special should get us to the docks inside of forty minutes."
+
+
+Very vividly I can reconstruct in my mind that dash to the docks
+through the early autumn morning.  My friend being invested
+with extraordinary powers from the highest authorities,
+by Inspector Weymouth's instructions the line had been cleared
+all the way.
+
+Something of the tremendous importance of Nayland Smith's mission came home
+to me as we hurried on to the platform, escorted by the station-master,
+and the five of us--for Weymouth had two other C.I.D. men with him--
+took our seats in the special.
+
+Off we went on top speed, roaring through stations,
+where a glimpse might be had of wondering officials upon
+the platforms, for a special train was a novelty on the line.
+All ordinary traffic arrangements were held up until we had
+passed through, and we reached Tilbury in time which I doubt
+not constituted a record.
+
+There at the docks was the great liner, delayed in her passage
+to the Far East by the will of my royally empowered companion.
+It was novel, and infinitely exciting.
+
+"Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith?" said the captain interrogatively,
+when we were shown into his room, and looked from one to another and back
+to the telegraph form which he held in his hand.
+
+"The same, Captain," said my friend briskly.  "I shall not detain
+you a moment.  I am instructing the authorities at all ports
+east of Suez to apprehend one of your second-class passengers,
+should he leave the ship.  He is in possession of plans
+which practically belong to the British Government!"
+
+"Why not arrest him now?" asked the seaman bluntly.
+
+"Because I don't know him.  All second-class passengers'
+baggage will be searched as they land.  I am hoping something from that,
+if all else fails.  But I want you privately to instruct your stewards
+to watch any passenger of Oriental nationality, and to cooperate
+with the two Scotland Yard men who are joining you for the voyage.
+I look to you to recover these plans, Captain."
+
+"I will do my best," the captain assured him.
+
+Then, from amid the heterogeneous group on the dockside, we were watching
+the liner depart, and Nayland Smith's expression was a very singular one.
+Inspector Weymouth stood with us, a badly puzzled man.  Then occurred
+the extraordinary incident which to this day remains inexplicable, for,
+clearly heard by all three of us, a guttural voice said:
+
+"Another victory for China, Mr. Nayland Smith!"
+
+I turned as though I had been stung.  Smith turned also.
+My eyes passed from face to face of the group about us.
+None was familiar.  No one apparently had moved away.
+
+But the voice was the voice of DOCTOR FU-MANCHU.
+
+As I write of it, now, I can appreciate the difference
+between that happening, as it appealed to us, and as it must
+appeal to you who merely read of it.  It is beyond my powers
+to convey the sense of the uncanny which the episode created.
+Yet, even as I think of it, I feel again, though in lesser degree,
+the chill which seemed to creep through my veins that day.
+
+From my brief history of the wonderful and evil man who once walked,
+by the way unsuspected, in the midst of the people of England--
+near whom you, personally, may at some time unwittingly, have been--
+I am aware that much must be omitted.  I have no space for lengthy
+examinations of the many points but ill illuminated with which it is dotted.
+This incident at the docks is but one such point.
+
+Another is the singular vision which appeared to me whilst I lay in
+the cellar of the house near Windsor.  It has since struck me that it
+possessed peculiarities akin to those of a hashish hallucination.
+Can it be that we were drugged on that occasion with Indian hemp?  Cannabis
+indica is a treacherous narcotic, as every medical man knows full well;
+but Fu-Manchu's knowledge of the drug was far in advance of our slow science.
+West's experience proved so much.
+
+I may have neglected opportunities--later, you shall judge if I did so--
+opportunities to glean for the West some of the strange knowledge of
+the secret East.  Perhaps, at a future time, I may rectify my errors.
+Perhaps that wisdom--the wisdom stored up by Fu-Manchu--is lost forever.
+There is, however, at least a bare possibility of its survival, in part;
+and I do not wholly despair of one day publishing a scientific sequel
+to this record of our dealings with the Chinese doctor.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+TIME wore on and seemingly brought us no nearer, or very little nearer,
+to our goal.  So carefully had my friend Nayland Smith excluded
+the matter from the press that, whilst public interest was much engaged
+with some of the events in the skein of mystery which he had come from
+Burma to unravel, outside the Secret Service and the special department
+of Scotland Yard few people recognized that the several murders,
+robberies and disappearances formed each a link in a chain; fewer still
+were aware that a baneful presence was in our midst, that a past
+master of the evil arts lay concealed somewhere in the metropolis;
+searched for by the keenest wits which the authorities could direct
+to the task, but eluding all--triumphant, contemptuous.
+
+One link in that chain Smith himself for long failed to recognize.
+Yet it was a big and important link.
+
+"Petrie," he said to me one morning, "listen to this:
+
+"`. . .In sight of Shanghai--a clear, dark night.  On board the deck of a junk
+passing close to seaward of the Andaman a blue flare started up.
+A minute later there was a cry of "Man overboard!"
+
+"`Mr. Lewin, the chief officer, who was in charge, stopped the engines.
+A boat was put out.  But no one was recovered.  There are sharks
+in these waters.  A fairly heavy sea was running.
+
+"`Inquiry showed the missing man to be a James Edwards,
+second class, booked to Shanghai.  I think the name was assumed.
+The man was some sort of Oriental, and we had had him
+under close observation. . . .'"
+
+"That's the end of their report," exclaimed Smith.
+
+He referred to the two C.I.D. men who had joined the Andaman
+at the moment of her departure from Tilbury.
+
+He carefully lighted his pipe.
+
+"IS it a victory for China, Petrie?" he said softly.
+
+"Until the great war reveals her secret resources--and I pray that the day
+be not in my time--we shall never know," I replied.
+
+Smith began striding up and down the room.
+
+"Whose name," he jerked abruptly, "stands now at the head
+of our danger list?"
+
+He referred to a list which we had compiled of the notable men intervening
+between the evil genius who secretly had invaded London and the triumph
+of his cause--the triumph of the yellow races.
+
+I glanced at our notes.  "Lord Southery," I replied.
+
+Smith tossed the morning paper across to me.
+
+"Look," he said shortly.  "He's dead."
+
+I read the account of the peer's death, and glanced at
+the long obituary notice; but no more than glanced at it.
+He had but recently returned from the East, and now, after a
+short illness, had died from some affection of the heart.
+There had been no intimation that his illness was of a
+serious nature, and even Smith, who watched over his flock--
+the flock threatened by the wolf, Fu-Manchu--with jealous zeal,
+had not suspected that the end was so near.
+
+"Do you think he died a natural death, Smith?" I asked.
+
+My friend reached across the table and rested the tip of a long
+finger upon one of the sub-headings to the account:
+
+
+"SIR FRANK NARCOMBE SUMMONED TOO LATE."
+
+
+"You see," said Smith, "Southery died during the night,
+but Sir Frank Narcombe, arriving a few minutes later,
+unhesitatingly pronounced death to be due to syncope,
+and seems to have noticed nothing suspicious."
+
+I looked at him thoughtfully.
+
+"Sir Frank is a great physician," I said slowly; "but we must
+remember he would be looking for nothing suspicious."
+
+"We must remember," rapped Smith, "that, if Dr. Fu-Manchu
+is responsible for Southery's death, except to the eye
+of an expert there would be nothing suspicious to see.
+Fu-Manchu leaves no clews."
+
+"Are you going around?" I asked.
+
+Smith shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I think not," he replied.  "Either a greater One than Fu-Manchu
+has taken Lord Southery, or the yellow doctor has done his work
+so well that no trace remains of his presence in the matter."
+
+Leaving his breakfast untasted, he wandered aimlessly about the room,
+littering the hearth with matches as he constantly relighted his pipe,
+which went out every few minutes.
+
+"It's no good, Petrie," he burst out suddenly; "it cannot be a coincidence.
+We must go around and see him."
+
+An hour later we stood in the silent room, with its drawn blinds and
+its deathful atmosphere, looking down at the pale, intellectual face
+of Henry Stradwick, Lord Southery, the greatest engineer of his day.
+The mind that lay behind that splendid brow had planned the construction
+of the railway for which Russia had paid so great a price, had conceived
+the scheme for the canal which, in the near future, was to bring
+two great continents, a full week's journey nearer one to the other.
+But now it would plan no more.
+
+"He had latterly developed symptoms of angina pectoris,"
+explained the family physician; "but I had not anticipated a fatal
+termination so soon.  I was called about two o'clock this morning,
+and found Lord Southery in a dangerously exhausted condition.
+I did all that was possible, and Sir Frank Narcombe was sent for.
+But shortly before his arrival the patient expired."
+
+"I understand, Doctor, that you had been treating Lord Southery
+for angina pectoris?" I said.
+
+"Yes," was the reply, "for some months."
+
+"You regard the circumstances of his end as entirely consistent
+with a death from that cause?"
+
+"Certainly.  Do you observe anything unusual yourself?
+Sir Frank Narcombe quite agrees with me.  There is surely
+no room for doubt?"
+
+"No," said Smith, tugging reflectively at the lobe of his left ear.
+"We do not question the accuracy of your diagnosis in any way, sir."
+
+The physician seemed puzzled.
+
+"But am I not right in supposing that you are connected with the police?"
+asked the physician.
+
+"Neither Dr. Petrie nor myself are in any way connected with the police,"
+answered Smith.  "But, nevertheless, I look to you to regard our recent
+questions as confidential."
+
+As we were leaving the house, hushed awesomely in deference to the unseen
+visitor who had touched Lord Southery with gray, cold fingers, Smith paused,
+detaining a black-coated man who passed us on the stairs.
+
+"You were Lord Southery's valet?"
+
+The man bowed.
+
+"Were you in the room at the moment of his fatal seizure?"
+
+"I was, sir."
+
+"Did you see or hear anything unusual--anything unaccountable?"
+
+"Nothing, sir."
+
+"No strange sounds outside the house, for instance?"
+
+The man shook his head, and Smith, taking my arm, passed out into the street.
+
+"Perhaps this business is making me imaginative," he said;
+"but there seems to be something tainting the air in yonder--
+something peculiar to houses whose doors bear the invisible
+death-mark of Fu-Manchu."
+
+"You are right, Smith!" I cried.  "I hesitated to mention the matter, but I,
+too, have developed some other sense which warns me of the Doctor's presence.
+Although there is not a scrap of confirmatory evidence, I am as sure that he
+has brought about Lord Southery's death as if I had seen him strike the blow."
+
+It was in that torturing frame of mind--chained, helpless,
+in our ignorance, or by reason of the Chinaman's
+supernormal genius--that we lived throughout the ensuing days.
+My friend began to look like a man consumed by a burning fever.
+Yet, we could not act.
+
+In the growing dark of an evening shortly following I
+stood idly turning over some of the works exposed for sale
+outside a second-hand bookseller's in New Oxford Street.
+One dealing with the secret societies of China struck me
+as being likely to prove instructive, and I was about to call
+the shopman when I was startled to feel a hand clutch my arm.
+
+I turned around rapidly--and was looking into the darkly beautiful
+eyes of Karamaneh!  She--whom I had seen in so many guises--
+was dressed in a perfectly fitting walking habit, and had much
+of her wonderful hair concealed beneath a fashionable hat.
+
+She glanced about her apprehensively.
+
+"Quick!  Come round the corner.  I must speak to you," she said,
+her musical voice thrilling with excitement.
+
+I never was quite master of myself in her presence.
+He must have been a man of ice who could have been,
+I think, for her beauty had all the bouquet of rarity;
+she was a mystery--and mystery adds charm to a woman.
+Probably she should have been under arrest, but I know I would
+have risked much to save her from it.
+
+As we turned into a quiet thoroughfare she stopped and said:
+
+"I am in distress.  You have often asked me to enable you to capture
+Dr. Fu-Manchu. I am prepared to do so."
+
+I could scarcely believe that I heard right.
+
+"Your brother--" I began.
+
+She seized my arm entreatingly, looking into my eyes.
+
+"You are a doctor," she said.  "I want you to come and see him now."
+
+"What!  Is he in London?"
+
+"He is at the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu."
+
+"And you would have me--"
+
+"Accompany me there, yes."
+
+Nayland Smith, I doubted not, would have counseled me against
+trusting my life in the hands of this girl with the pleading eyes.
+Yet I did so, and with little hesitation; shortly we were traveling
+eastward in a closed cab.  Karamaneh was very silent, but always when I
+turned to her I found her big eyes fixed upon me with an expression
+in which there was pleading, in which there was sorrow, in which there
+was something else--something indefinable, yet strangely disturbing.
+The cabman she had directed to drive to the lower end of the Commercial Road,
+the neighborhood of the new docks, and the scene of one of our early
+adventures with Dr. Fu-Manchu. The mantle of dusk had closed about
+the squalid activity of the East End streets as we neared our destination.
+Aliens of every shade of color were about us now, emerging from
+burrow-like alleys into the glare of the lamps upon the main road.
+In the short space of the drive we had passed from the bright world
+of the West into the dubious underworld of the East.
+
+I do not know that Karamaneh moved; but in sympathy, as we neared
+the abode of the sinister Chinaman, she crept nearer to me,
+and when the cab was discharged, and together we walked down
+a narrow turning leading riverward, she clung to me fearfully,
+hesitated, and even seemed upon the point of turning back.
+But, overcoming her fear or repugnance, she led on, through a maze
+of alleyways and courts, wherein I hopelessly lost my bearings,
+so that it came home to me how wholly I was in the hands of this
+girl whose history was so full of shadows, whose real character
+was so inscrutable, whose beauty, whose charm truly might mask
+the cunning of a serpent.
+
+I spoke to her.
+
+"S-SH!" She laid her hand upon my arm, enjoining me to silence.
+
+The high, drab brick wall of what looked like some part of a dock
+building loomed above us in the darkness, and the indescribable
+stenches of the lower Thames were borne to my nostrils through
+a gloomy, tunnel-like opening, beyond which whispered the river.
+The muffled clangor of waterside activity was about us.
+I heard a key grate in a lock, and Karamaneh drew me into the shadow
+of an open door, entered, and closed it behind her.
+
+For the first time I perceived, in contrast to the odors
+of the court without, the fragrance of the peculiar perfume
+which now I had come to associate with her.  Absolute darkness
+was about us, and by this perfume alone I knew that she
+was near to me, until her hand touched mine, and I was led
+along an uncarpeted passage and up an uncarpeted stair.
+A second door was unlocked, and I found myself in an exquisitely
+furnished room, illuminated by the soft light of a shaded lamp
+which stood upon a low, inlaid table amidst a perfect ocean
+of silken cushions, strewn upon a Persian carpet, whose yellow
+richness was lost in the shadows beyond the circle of light.
+
+Karamaneh raised a curtain draped before a doorway, and stood
+listening intently for a moment.
+
+The silence was unbroken.
+
+Then something stirred amid the wilderness of cushions, and two
+tiny bright eyes looked up at me.  Peering closely, I succeeded
+in distinguishing, crouched in that soft luxuriance, a little ape.
+It was Dr. Fu-Manchu's marmoset.  "This way," whispered Karamaneh.
+
+Never, I thought, was a staid medical man committed to a more
+unwise enterprise, but so far I had gone, and no consideration
+of prudence could now be of avail.
+
+The corridor beyond was thickly carpeted.  Following the direction
+of a faint light which gleamed ahead, it proved to extend
+as a balcony across one end of a spacious apartment.
+Together we stood high up there in the shadows, and looked
+down upon such a scene as I never could have imagined to exist
+within many a mile of that district.
+
+The place below was even more richly appointed than the room into
+which first we had come.  Here, as there, piles of cushions formed
+splashes of gaudy color about the floor.  Three lamps hung by chains
+from the ceiling, their light softened by rich silk shades.
+One wall was almost entirely occupied by glass cases containing
+chemical apparatus, tubes, retorts and other less orthodox indications
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu's pursuits, whilst close against another lay
+the most extraordinary object of a sufficiently extraordinary room--
+a low couch, upon which was extended the motionless form of a boy.
+In the light of a lamp which hung directly above him, his olive
+face showed an almost startling resemblance to that of Karamaneh--
+save that the girl's coloring was more delicate.  He had black,
+curly hair, which stood out prominently against the white covering
+upon which he lay, his hands crossed upon his breast.
+
+Transfixed with astonishment, I stood looking down upon him.
+The wonders of the "Arabian Nights" were wonders no longer,
+for here, in East-End London, was a true magician's palace,
+lacking not its beautiful slave, lacking not its enchanted prince!
+
+"It is Aziz, my brother," said Karamaneh.
+
+We passed down a stairway on to the floor of the apartment.
+Karamaneh knelt and bent over the boy, stroking his hair
+and whispering to him lovingly.  I, too, bent over him;
+and I shall never forget the anxiety in the girl's eyes as she
+watched me eagerly whilst I made a brief examination.
+
+Brief, indeed, for even ere I had touched him I knew that the comely
+shell held no spark of life.  But Karamaneh fondled the cold hands,
+and spoke softly in that Arabic tongue which long before I had divined
+must be her native language.
+
+Then, as I remained silent, she turned and looked at me,
+read the truth in my eyes, and rose from her knees,
+stood rigidly upright, and clutched me tremblingly.
+
+"He is not dead--he is NOT dead!" she whispered, and shook me
+as a child might, seeking to arouse me to a proper understanding.
+"Oh, tell me he is not--"
+
+"I cannot," I replied gently, "for indeed he is."
+
+"No!" she said, wild-eyed, and raising her hands to her face as though
+half distraught.  "You do not understand--yet you are a doctor.
+You do not understand--"
+
+She stopped, moaning to herself and looking from the handsome
+face of the boy to me.  It was pitiful; it was uncanny.
+But sorrow for the girl predominated in my mind.
+
+Then from somewhere I heard a sound which I had heard before in houses
+occupied by Dr. Fu-Manchu--that of a muffled gong.
+
+"Quick!"  Karamaneh had me by the arm.  "Up!  He has returned!"
+
+She fled up the stairs to the balcony, I close at her heels.
+The shadows veiled us, the thick carpet deadened the sound
+of our tread, or certainly we must have been detected by the man
+who entered the room we had just quitted.
+
+It was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
+
+Yellow-robed, immobile, the inhuman green eyes glittering catlike even,
+it seemed, before the light struck them, he threaded his way through
+the archipelago of cushions and bent over the couch of Aziz.
+
+Karamaneh dragged me down on to my knees.
+
+"Watch!" she whispered.  "Watch!"
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu felt for the pulse of the boy whom a moment since I
+had pronounced dead, and, stepping to the tall glass case,
+took out a long-necked flask of chased gold, and from it,
+into a graduated glass, he poured some drops of an amber liquid
+wholly unfamiliar to me.  I watched him with all my eyes,
+and noted how high the liquid rose in the measure.
+He charged a needle-syringe, and, bending again over Aziz,
+made an injection.
+
+Then all the wonders I had heard of this man became possible,
+and with an awe which any other physician who had examined
+Aziz must have felt, I admitted him a miracle-worker. For
+as I watched, all but breathless, the dead came to life!
+The glow of health crept upon the olive cheek--the boy moved--
+he raised his hands above his head--he sat up, supported by
+the Chinese doctor!
+
+Fu-Manchu touched some hidden bell.  A hideous yellow man with a scarred
+face entered, carrying a tray upon which were a bowl containing
+some steaming fluid, apparently soup, what looked like oaten cakes,
+and a flask of red wine.
+
+As the boy, exhibiting no more unusual symptoms than if he had just
+awakened from a normal sleep, commenced his repast, Karamaneh drew me
+gently along the passage into the room which we had first entered.
+My heart leaped wildly as the marmoset bounded past us to drop hand
+over hand to the lower apartment in search of its master.
+
+"You see," said Karamaneh, her voice quivering, "he is not dead!
+But without Fu-Manchu he is dead to me.  How can I leave him
+when he holds the life of Aziz in his hand?"
+
+"You must get me that flask, or some of its contents," I directed.
+"But tell me, how does he produce the appearance of death?"
+
+"I cannot tell you," she replied.  "I do not know.  It is something
+in the wine.  In another hour Aziz will be again as you saw him.
+But see."  And, opening a little ebony box, she produced a phial
+half filled with the amber liquid.
+
+"Good!" I said, and slipped it into my pocket.  "When will be the best
+time to seize Fu-Manchu and to restore your brother?"
+
+"I will let you know," she whispered, and, opening the door, pushed me
+hurriedly from the room.  "He is going away to-night to the north;
+but you must not come to-night. Quick!  Quick!  Along the passage.
+He may call me at any moment."
+
+So, with the phial in my pocket containing a potent preparation unknown
+to Western science, and with a last long look into the eyes of Karamaneh,
+I passed out into the narrow alley, out from the fragrant perfumes
+of that mystery house into the place of Thames-side stenches.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+"WE must arrange for the house to be raided without delay," said Smith.
+"This time we are sure of our ally--"
+
+"But we must keep our promise to her," I interrupted.
+
+"You can look after that, Petrie," my friend said.
+"I will devote the whole of my attention to Dr. Fu-Manchu!"
+he added grimly.
+
+Up and down the room he paced, gripping the blackened briar between
+his teeth, so that the muscles stood out squarely upon his lean jaws.
+The bronze which spoke of the Burmese sun enhanced the brightness
+of his gray eyes.
+
+"What have I all along maintained?" he jerked, looking back at me across
+his shoulder--"that, although Karamaneh was one of the strongest weapons in
+the Doctor's armory, she was one which some day would be turned against him.
+That day has dawned."
+
+"We must await word from her."
+
+"Quite so."
+
+He knocked out his pipe on the grate.  Then:
+
+"Have you any idea of the nature of the fluid in the phial?"
+
+"Not the slightest.  And I have none to spare for analytical purposes."
+
+Nayland Smith began stuffing mixture into the hot pipe-bowl,
+and dropping an almost equal quantity on the floor.
+
+"I cannot rest, Petrie," he said.  "I am itching to get to work.
+Yet, a false move, and--" He lighted his pipe, and stood staring
+from the window.
+
+"I shall, of course, take a needle-syringe with me," I explained.
+
+Smith made no reply.
+
+"If I but knew the composition of the drug which produced the semblance
+of death," I continued, "my fame would long survive my ashes."
+
+My friend did not turn.  But:
+
+"She said it was something he put in the wine?" he jerked.
+
+"In the wine, yes."
+
+Silence fell.  My thoughts reverted to Karamaneh, whom Dr. Fu-Manchu held
+in bonds stronger than any slave-chains. For, with Aziz, her brother,
+suspended between life and death, what could she do save obey
+the mandates of the cunning Chinaman?  What perverted genius was his!
+If that treasury of obscure wisdom which he, perhaps alone of living men,
+had rifled, could but be thrown open to the sick and suffering, the name
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu would rank with the golden ones in the history of healing.
+
+Nayland Smith suddenly turned, and the expression upon his face amazed me.
+
+"Look up the next train to L--!" he rapped.  
+
+"To L--?  What--?"
+
+"There's the Bradshaw.  We haven't a minute to waste."
+
+In his voice was the imperative note I knew so well; in his
+eyes was the light which told of an urgent need for action--
+a portentous truth suddenly grasped.
+
+"One in half-an-hour--the last."
+
+"We must catch it."
+
+No further word of explanation he vouchsafed, but darted off to dress;
+for he had spent the afternoon pacing the room in his dressing-gown
+and smoking without intermission.
+
+Out and to the corner we hurried, and leaped into the first taxi
+upon the rank.  Smith enjoined the man to hasten, and we were off--
+all in that whirl of feverish activity which characterized my friend's
+movements in times of important action.
+
+He sat glancing impatiently from the window and twitching at the lobe
+of his ear.
+
+"I know you will forgive me, old man," he said, "but there
+is a little problem which I am trying to work out in my mind.
+Did you bring the things I mentioned?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Conversation lapsed, until, just as the cab turned into the station,
+Smith said:  "Should you consider Lord Southery to have been the first
+constructive engineer of his time, Petrie?"
+
+"Undoubtedly," I replied.
+
+"Greater than Von Homber, of Berlin?"
+
+"Possibly not.  But Von Homber has been dead for three years."
+
+"Three years, is it?"
+
+"Roughly."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+
+We reached the station in time to secure a non-corridor
+compartment to ourselves, and to allow Smith leisure carefully
+to inspect the occupants of all the others, from the engine
+to the guard's van.  He was muffled up to the eyes, and he warned
+me to keep out of sight in the corner of the compartment.
+In fact, his behavior had me bursting with curiosity.
+The train having started:
+
+"Don't imagine, Petrie," said Smith "that I am trying to lead you
+blindfolded in order later to dazzle you with my perspicacity.
+I am simply afraid that this may be a wild-goose chase.
+The idea upon which I am acting does not seem to have struck you.
+I wish it had.  The fact would argue in favor of its being sound."
+
+"At present I am hopelessly mystified."
+
+"Well, then, I will not bias you towards my view.
+But just study the situation, and see if you can arrive at
+the reason for this sudden journey.  I shall be distinctly
+encouraged if you succeed."
+
+But I did not succeed, and since Smith obviously was
+unwilling to enlighten me, I pressed him no more.
+The train stopped at Rugby, where he was engaged with
+the stationmaster in making some mysterious arrangements.
+At L--, however, their object became plain, for a high-power car
+was awaiting us, and into this we hurried and ere the greater
+number of passengers had reached the platform were being driven
+off at headlong speed along the moon-bathed roads.
+
+Twenty minutes' rapid traveling, and a white mansion leaped into the line
+of sight, standing out vividly against its woody backing.
+
+"Stradwick Hall," said Smith.  "The home of Lord Southery.
+We are first--but Dr. Fu-Manchu was on the train."
+
+Then the truth dawned upon the gloom of my perplexity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+"YOUR extraordinary proposal fills me with horror, Mr. Smith!"
+
+The sleek little man in the dress suit, who looked like a head waiter
+(but was the trusted legal adviser of the house of Southery)
+puffed at his cigar indignantly.  Nayland Smith, whose restless
+pacing had led him to the far end of the library, turned, a remote
+but virile figure, and looked back to where I stood by the open
+hearth with the solicitor.
+
+"I am in your hands, Mr. Henderson," he said, and advanced
+upon the latter, his gray eyes ablaze.  "Save for the heir,
+who is abroad on foreign service, you say there is no kin
+of Lord Southery to consider.  The word rests with you.
+If I am wrong, and you agree to my proposal, there is none
+whose susceptibilities will suffer--"
+
+"My own, sir!"
+
+"If I am right, and you prevent me from acting, you become
+a murderer, Mr. Henderson."
+
+The lawyer started, staring nervously up at Smith, who now towered
+over him menacingly.
+
+"Lord Southery was a lonely man," continued my friend.
+"If I could have placed my proposition before one of his blood,
+I do not doubt what my answer had been.  Why do you hesitate?
+Why do you experience this feeling of horror?"
+
+Mr. Henderson stared down into the fire.  His constitutionally
+ruddy face was pale.
+
+"It is entirely irregular, Mr. Smith.  We have not the necessary powers--"
+
+Smith snapped his teeth together impatiently, snatching his watch
+from his pocket and glancing at it.
+
+"I am vested with the necessary powers.  I will give you
+a written order, sir."
+
+"The proceeding savors of paganism.  Such a course might be admissible
+in China, in Burma--"
+
+"Do you weigh a life against such quibbles?  Do you suppose that,
+granting MY irresponsibility, Dr. Petrie would countenance
+such a thing if he doubted the necessity?"
+
+Mr. Henderson looked at me with pathetic hesitance.
+
+"There are guests in the house--mourners who attended
+the ceremony to-day. They--"
+
+"Will never know, if we are in error," interrupted Smith.
+"Good God!  why do you delay?"
+
+"You wish it to be kept secret?"
+
+"You and I, Mr. Henderson, and Dr. Petrie will go now.
+We require no other witnesses.  We are answerable only
+to our consciences."
+
+The lawyer passed his hand across his damp brow.
+
+"I have never in my life been called upon to come to so
+momentous a decision in so short a time," he confessed.
+But, aided by Smith's indomitable will, he made his decision.
+As its result, we three, looking and feeling like conspirators,
+hurried across the park beneath a moon whose placidity was a rebuke
+to the turbulent passions which reared their strangle-growth in
+the garden of England.  Not a breath of wind stirred amid the leaves.
+The calm of perfect night soothed everything to slumber.
+Yet, if Smith were right (and I did not doubt him),
+the green eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu had looked upon the scene;
+and I found myself marveling that its beauty had not wilted up.
+Even now the dread Chinaman must be near to us.
+
+As Mr. Henderson unlocked the ancient iron gates he turned to Nayland Smith.
+His face twitched oddly.
+
+"Witness that I do this unwillingly," he said--"most unwillingly."
+
+"Mine be the responsibility," was the reply.
+
+Smith's voice quivered, responsive to the nervous vitality pent
+up within that lean frame.  He stood motionless, listening--and I
+knew for whom he listened.  He peered about him to right and left--
+and I knew whom he expected but dreaded to see.
+
+Above us now the trees looked down with a solemnity different from
+the aspect of the monarchs of the park, and the nearer we came to our
+journey's end the more somber and lowering bent the verdant arch--
+or so it seemed.
+
+By that path, patched now with pools of moonlight, Lord Southery
+had passed upon his bier, with the sun to light his going;
+by that path several generations of Stradwicks had gone
+to their last resting-place.
+
+To the doors of the vault the moon rays found free access.
+No branch, no leaf, intervened.  Mr. Henderson's face looked ghastly.
+The keys which he carried rattled in his hand.
+
+"Light the lantern," he said unsteadily.
+
+Nayland Smith, who again had been peering suspiciously about into
+the shadows, struck a match and lighted the lantern which he carried.
+He turned to the solicitor.
+
+"Be calm, Mr. Henderson," he said sternly.  "It is your plain
+duty to your client."
+
+"God be my witness that I doubt it," replied Henderson,
+and opened the door.
+
+We descended the steps.  The air beneath was damp and chill.
+It touched us as with clammy fingers; and the sensation was
+not wholly physical.
+
+Before the narrow mansion which now sufficed Lord Southery, the great engineer
+whom kings had honored, Henderson reeled and clutched at me for support.
+Smith and I had looked to him for no aid in our uncanny task, and rightly.
+
+With averted eyes he stood over by the steps of the tomb, whilst my friend
+and myself set to work.  In the pursuit of my profession I had undertaken
+labors as unpleasant, but never amid an environment such as this.
+It seemed that generations of Stradwicks listened to each turn of every screw.
+
+At last it was done, and the pallid face of Lord Southery questioned
+the intruding light.  Nayland Smith's hand was as steady as a rigid bar
+when he raised the lantern.  Later, I knew, there would be a sudden
+releasing of the tension of will--a reaction physical and mental--
+but not until his work was finished.
+
+That my own hand was steady I ascribed to one thing solely--
+professional zeal.  For, under conditions which, in the event
+of failure and exposure, must have led to an unpleasant
+inquiry by the British Medical Association, I was about
+to attempt an experiment never before essayed by a physician
+of the white races.
+
+Though I failed, though I succeeded, that it ever came before the B.M.A., or
+any other council, was improbable; in the former event, all but impossible.
+But the knowledge that I was about to practice charlatanry, or what any one
+of my fellow-practitioners must have designated as such, was with me.  Yet so
+profound had my belief become in the extraordinary being whose existence was
+a danger to the world that I reveled in my immunity from official censure.
+I was glad that it had fallen to my lot to take at least one step--
+though blindly--into the FUTURE of medical science.
+
+So far as my skill bore me, Lord Southery was dead.  Unhesitatingly, I
+would have given a death certificate, save for two considerations.
+The first, although his latest scheme ran contrary from the interests
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu, his genius, diverted into other channels,
+would serve the yellow group better than his death.  The second,
+I had seen the boy Aziz raised from a state as like death as this.
+
+From the phial of amber-hued liquid which I had with me,
+I charged the needle syringe.  I made the injection, and waited.
+
+"If he is really dead!" whispered Smith.  "It seems incredible
+that he can have survived for three days without food.
+Yet I have known a fakir to go for a week."
+
+Mr. Henderson groaned.
+
+Watch in hand, I stood observing the gray face.
+
+A second passed; another; a third.  In the fourth the miracle began.
+Over the seemingly cold clay crept the hue of pulsing life.
+It came in waves--in waves which corresponded with the throbbing
+of the awakened heart; which swept fuller and stronger;
+which filled and quickened the chilled body.
+
+As we rapidly freed the living man from the trappings of
+the dead one, Southery, uttering a stifled scream, sat up,
+looked about him with half-glazed eyes, and fell back.
+"My God!" cried Smith.
+
+"It is all right," I said, and had time to note how my voice
+had assumed a professional tone.  "A little brandy from my flask
+is all that is necessary now."
+
+"You have two patients, Doctor," rapped my friend.
+
+Mr. Henderson had fallen in a swoon to the floor of the vault.
+
+"Quiet," whispered Smith; "HE is here."
+
+He extinguished the light.
+
+I supported Lord Southery.  "What has happened?" he kept moaning.
+"Where am I?  Oh, God!  what has happened?"
+
+I strove to reassure him in a whisper, and placed my traveling
+coat about him.  The door at the top of the mausoleum steps we
+had reclosed but not relocked.  Now, as I upheld the man whom
+literally we had rescued from the grave, I heard the door reopen.
+To aid Henderson I could make no move.  Smith was breathing hard beside me.
+I dared not think what was about to happen, nor what its effects
+might be upon Lord Southery in his exhausted condition.
+
+Through the Memphian dark of the tomb cut a spear of light,
+touching the last stone of the stairway.
+
+A guttural voice spoke some words rapidly, and I knew that Dr. Fu-Manchu
+stood at the head of the stairs.  Although I could not see my friend,
+I became aware that Nayland Smith had his revolver in his hand,
+and I reached into my pocket for mine.
+
+At last the cunning Chinaman was about to fall into a trap.
+It would require all his genius, I thought, to save him to-night.
+Unless his suspicions were aroused by the unlocked door,
+his capture was imminent.
+
+Someone was descending the steps.
+
+In my right hand I held my revolver, and with my left arm about Lord Southery,
+I waited through ten such seconds of suspense as I have rarely known.
+
+The spear of light plunged into the well of darkness again.
+
+Lord Southery, Smith and myself were hidden by the angle of the wall;
+but full upon the purplish face of Mr. Henderson the beam shone.
+In some way it penetrated to the murk in his mind; and he awakened
+from his swoon with a hoarse cry, struggled to his feet, and stood
+looking up the stair in a sort of frozen horror.
+
+Smith was past him at a bound.  Something flashed towards him as the light
+was extinguished.  I saw him duck, and heard the knife ring upon the floor.
+
+I managed to move sufficiently to see at the top, as I fired up
+the stairs, the yellow face of Dr. Fu-Manchu, to see the gleaming,
+chatoyant eyes, greenly terrible, as they sought to pierce the gloom.
+A flying figure was racing up, three steps at a time (that of a brown man
+scantily clad). He stumbled and fell, by which I knew that he was hit;
+but went on again, Smith hard on his heels.
+
+"Mr. Henderson!" I cried, "relight the lantern and take
+charge of Lord Southery.  Here is my flask on the floor.
+I rely upon you."
+
+Smith's revolver spoke again as I went bounding up the stair.
+Black against the square of moonlight I saw him stagger, I saw him fall.
+As he fell, for the third time, I heard the crack of his revolver.
+
+Instantly I was at his side.  Somewhere along the black aisle
+beneath the trees receding footsteps pattered.
+
+"Are you hurt, Smith?" I cried anxiously.
+
+He got upon his feet.
+
+"He has a dacoit with him," he replied, and showed me the long curved
+knife which he held in his hand, a full inch of the blade bloodstained.
+"A near thing for me, Petrie."
+
+I heard the whir of a restarted motor.
+
+"We have lost him," said Smith.
+
+"But we have saved Lord Southery," I said.  "Fu-Manchu will credit
+us with a skill as great as his own."
+
+"We must get to the car," Smith muttered, "and try to overtake them.
+Ugh!  my left arm is useless."
+
+"It would be mere waste of time to attempt to overtake them," I argued,
+"for we have no idea in which direction they will proceed."
+
+"I have a very good idea," snapped Smith.  "Stradwick Hall is less
+than ten miles from the coast.  There is only one practicable means
+of conveying an unconscious man secretly from here to London."
+
+"You think he meant to take him from here to London?"
+
+"Prior to shipping him to China; I think so.  His clearing-house
+is probably on the Thames."
+
+"A boat?"
+
+"A yacht, presumably, is lying off the coast in readiness.
+Fu-Manchu may even have designed to ship him direct to China."
+
+Lord Southery, a bizarre figure, my traveling coat wrapped about him,
+and supported by his solicitor, who was almost as pale as himself,
+emerged from the vault into the moonlight.
+
+"This is a triumph for you, Smith," I said.
+
+The throb of Fu-Manchu's car died into faintness and was lost
+in the night's silence.
+
+"Only half a triumph," he replied.  "But we still have another chance--
+the raid on his house.  When will the word come from Karamaneh?"
+
+Southery spoke in a weak voice.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, "it seems I am raised from the dead."
+
+It was the weirdest moment of the night wherein we heard that newly
+buried man speak from the mold of his tomb.
+
+"Yes," replied Smith slowly, "and spared from the fate of Heaven
+alone knows how many men of genius.  The yellow society lacks
+a Southery, but that Dr. Fu-Manchu was in Germany three years
+ago I have reason to believe; so that, even without visiting
+the grave of your great Teutonic rival, who suddenly died at about
+that time, I venture to predict that they have a Von Homber.
+And the futurist group in China knows how to MAKE men work!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+FROM the rescue of Lord Southery my story bears me mercilessly
+on to other things.  I may not tarry, as more leisurely penmen,
+to round my incidents; they were not of my choosing.
+I may not pause to make you better acquainted with the figure
+of my drama; its scheme is none of mine.  Often enough,
+in those days, I found a fitness in the lines of Omar:
+
+
+    We are no other than a moving show
+    Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
+    Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held
+    In Midnight by the Master of the Show.
+
+
+But "the Master of the Show," in this case, was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
+
+I have been asked many times since the days with which these records deal:
+Who WAS Dr. Fu-Manchu?  Let me confess here that my final answer must
+be postponed.  I can only indicate, at this place, the trend of my reasoning,
+and leave my reader to form whatever conclusion he pleases.
+
+What group can we isolate and label as responsible for the overthrow
+of the Manchus?  The casual student of modern Chinese history will reply:
+"Young China."  This is unsatisfactory.  What do we mean by Young China?
+In my own hearing Fu-Manchu had disclaimed, with scorn, association with the
+whole of that movement; and assuming that the name were not an assumed one,
+he clearly can have been no anti-Manchu, no Republican.
+
+The Chinese Republican is of the mandarin class, but of a new
+generation which veneers its Confucianism with Western polish.
+These youthful and unbalanced reformers, in conjunction
+with older but no less ill-balanced provincial politicians,
+may be said to represent Young China.  Amid such turmoils as this
+we invariably look for, and invariably find, a Third Party.
+In my opinion, Dr. Fu-Manchu was one of the leaders of such a party.
+
+Another question often put to me was:  Where did the Doctor
+hide during the time that he pursued his operations in London?
+This is more susceptible of explanation.  For a time Nayland
+Smith supposed, as I did myself, that the opium den adjacent
+to the old Ratcliff Highway was the Chinaman's base of operations;
+later we came to believe that the mansion near Windsor was his
+hiding-place, and later still, the hulk lying off the downstream flats.
+But I think I can state with confidence that the spot which he had
+chosen for his home was neither of these, but the East End riverside
+building which I was the first to enter.  Of this I am all but sure;
+for the reason that it not only was the home of Fu-Manchu, of Karamaneh,
+and of her brother, Aziz, but the home of something else--
+of something which I shall speak of later.
+
+The dreadful tragedy (or series of tragedies) which attended the raid upon the
+place will always mark in my memory the supreme horror of a horrible case.
+Let me endeavor to explain what occurred.
+
+By the aid of Karamaneh, you have seen how we had located
+the whilom warehouse, which, from the exterior, was so drab
+and dreary, but which within was a place of wondrous luxury.
+At the moment selected by our beautiful accomplice,
+Inspector Weymouth and a body of detectives entirely surrounded it;
+a river police launch lay off the wharf which opened from it
+on the river-side; and this upon a singularly black night,
+than which a better could not have been chosen.
+
+"You will fulfill your promise to me?" said Karamaneh,
+and looked up into my face.
+
+She was enveloped in a big, loose cloak, and from the shadow
+of the hood her wonderful eyes gleamed out like stars.
+
+"What do you wish us to do?" asked Nayland Smith.
+
+"You--and Dr. Petrie," she replied swiftly, "must enter first,
+and bring out Aziz.  Until he is safe--until he is out of that place--
+you are to make no attempt upon--"
+
+"Upon Dr. Fu-Manchu?" interrupted Weymouth; for Karamaneh
+hesitated to pronounce the dreaded name, as she always did.
+"But how can we be sure that there is no trap laid for us?"
+
+The Scotland Yard man did not entirely share my confidence in the integrity
+of this Eastern girl whom he knew to have been a creature of the Chinaman's.
+
+"Aziz lies in the private room," she explained eagerly, her old accent more
+noticeable than usual.  "There is only one of the Burmese men in the house,
+and he--he dare not enter without orders!"
+
+"But Fu-Manchu?"
+
+"We have nothing to fear from him.  He will be your prisoner
+within ten minutes from now!  I have no time for words--
+you must believe!"  She stamped her foot impatiently.
+"And the dacoit?" snapped Smith.
+
+"He also."
+
+"I think perhaps I'd better come in, too," said Weymouth slowly.
+
+Karamaneh shrugged her shoulders with quick impatience,
+and unlocked the door in the high brick wall which divided
+the gloomy, evil-smelling court from the luxurious apartments
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+"Make no noise," she warned.  And Smith and myself followed her along
+the uncarpeted passage beyond.
+
+Inspector Weymouth, with a final word of instruction to his
+second in command, brought up the rear.  The door was reclosed;
+a few paces farther on a second was unlocked.  Passing through
+a small room, unfurnished, a farther passage led us to a balcony.
+The transition was startling.
+
+Darkness was about us now, and silence:  a perfumed, slumberous darkness--
+a silence full of mystery.  For, beyond the walls of the apartment whereon
+we looked down waged the unceasing battle of sounds that is the hymn
+of the great industrial river.  About the scented confines which bounded
+us now floated the smoke-laden vapors of the Lower Thames.
+
+From the metallic but infinitely human clangor of dock-side life,
+from the unpleasant but homely odors which prevail where ships swallow
+in and belch out the concrete evidences of commercial prosperity,
+we had come into this incensed stillness, where one shaded lamp
+painted dim enlargements of its Chinese silk upon the nearer walls,
+and left the greater part of the room the darker for its contrast.
+
+Nothing of the Thames-side activity--of the riveting and scraping--
+the bumping of bales--the bawling of orders--the hiss of steam--
+penetrated to this perfumed place.  In the pool of tinted light
+lay the deathlike figure of a dark-haired boy, Karamaneh's muffled
+form bending over him.
+
+"At last I stand in the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu!" whispered Smith.
+
+Despite the girl's assurance, we knew that proximity
+to the sinister Chinaman must be fraught with danger.
+We stood, not in the lion's den, but in the serpent's lair.
+
+From the time when Nayland Smith had come from Burma in pursuit
+of this advance-guard of a cogent Yellow Peril, the face of
+Dr. Fu-Manchu rarely had been absent from my dreams day or night.
+The millions might sleep in peace--the millions in whose
+cause we labored!--but we who knew the reality of the danger
+knew that a veritable octopus had fastened upon England--
+a yellow octopus whose head was that of Dr. Fu-Manchu,
+whose tentacles were dacoity, thuggee, modes of death,
+secret and swift, which in the darkness plucked men from life
+and left no clew behind.
+
+"Karamaneh!" I called softly.
+
+The muffled form beneath the lamp turned so that the soft
+light fell upon the lovely face of the slave girl.
+She who had been a pliant instrument in the hands of Fu-Manchu
+now was to be the means whereby society should be rid of him.
+
+She raised her finger warningly; then beckoned me to approach.
+
+My feet sinking in the rich pile of the carpet, I came through
+the gloom of the great apartment in to the patch of light,
+and, Karamaneh beside me, stood looking down upon the boy.
+It was Aziz, her brother; dead so far as Western lore had power
+to judge, but kept alive in that deathlike trance by the uncanny
+power of the Chinese doctor.
+
+"Be quick," she said; "be quick!  Awaken him!  I am afraid."
+
+From the case which I carried I took out a needle-syringe
+and a phial containing a small quantity of amber-hued liquid.
+It was a drug not to be found in the British Pharmacopoeia.
+Of its constitution I knew nothing.  Although I had had
+the phial in my possession for some days I had not dared
+to devote any of its precious contents to analytical purposes.
+The amber drops spelled life for the boy Aziz, spelled success
+for the mission of Nayland Smith, spelled ruin for
+the fiendish Chinaman.
+
+I raised the white coverlet.  The boy, fully dressed,
+lay with his arms crossed upon his breast.  I discerned the mark
+of previous injections as, charging the syringe from the phial,
+I made what I hoped would be the last of such experiments upon him.
+I would have given half of my small worldly possessions to have
+known the real nature of the drug which was now coursing through
+the veins of Aziz--which was tinting the grayed face with the olive
+tone of life; which, so far as my medical training bore me,
+was restoring the dead to life.
+
+But such was not the purpose of my visit.  I was come to remove from
+the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu the living chain which bound Karamaneh to him.
+The boy alive and free, the Doctor's hold upon the slave girl would be broken.
+
+My lovely companion, her hands convulsively clasped, knelt and devoured
+with her eyes the face of the boy who was passing through the most
+amazing physiological change in the history of therapeutics.
+The peculiar perfume which she wore--which seemed to be a part of her--
+which always I associated with her--was faintly perceptible.
+Karamaneh was breathing rapidly.
+
+"You have nothing to fear," I whispered; "see, he is reviving.
+In a few moments all will be well with him."
+
+The hanging lamp with its garishly colored shade swung gently above us,
+wafted, it seemed, by some draught which passed through the apartment.
+The boy's heavy lids began to quiver, and Karamaneh nervously clutched
+my arm, and held me so whilst we watched for the long-lashed eyes to open.
+The stillness of the place was positively unnatural; it seemed inconceivable
+that all about us was the discordant activity of the commercial East End.
+Indeed, this eerie silence was becoming oppressive; it began positively
+to appall me.
+
+Inspector Weymouth's wondering face peeped over my shoulder.
+
+"Where is Dr. Fu-Manchu?" I whispered, as Nayland Smith in turn appeared
+beside me.  "I cannot understand the silence of the house--"
+
+"Look about," replied Karamaneh, never taking her eyes from the face of Aziz.
+
+I peered around the shadowy walls.  Tall glass cases there were,
+shelves and niches:  where once, from the gallery above, I had seen the tubes
+and retorts, the jars of unfamiliar organisms, the books of unfamiliar lore,
+the impedimenta of the occult student and man of science--the visible
+evidences of Fu-Manchu's presence.  Shelves--cases--niches--were bare.
+Of the complicated appliances unknown to civilized laboratories,
+wherewith he pursued his strange experiments, of the tubes wherein
+he isolated the bacilli of unclassified diseases, of the yellow-bound
+volumes for a glimpse at which (had they known of their contents)
+the great men of Harley Street would have given a fortune--no trace remained.
+The silken cushions; the inlaid tables; all were gone.
+
+The room was stripped, dismantled.  Had Fu-Manchu fled?
+The silence assumed a new significance.  His dacoits and kindred
+ministers of death all must have fled, too.
+
+"You have let him escape us!" I said rapidly.
+"You promised to aid us to capture him--to send us a message--
+and you have delayed until--"
+
+"No," she said; "no!" and clutched at my arm again.
+"Oh!  is he not reviving slowly?  Are you sure you have
+made no mistake?"
+
+Her thoughts were all for the boy; and her solicitude touched me.
+I again examined Aziz, the most remarkable patient of my
+busy professional career.
+
+As I counted the strengthening pulse, he opened his dark eyes--
+which were so like the eyes of Karamaneh--and, with the girl's
+eager arms tightly about him, sat up, looking wonderingly around.
+
+Karamaneh pressed her cheek to his, whispering loving words in that softly
+spoken Arabic which had first betrayed her nationality to Nayland Smith.
+I handed her my flask, which I had filled with wine.
+
+"My promise is fulfilled!" I said.  "You are free!
+Now for Fu-Manchu!  But first let us admit the police to this house;
+there is something uncanny in its stillness."
+
+"No," she replied.  "First let my brother be taken out and placed in safety.
+Will you carry him?"
+
+She raised her face to that of Inspector Weymouth, upon which was written
+awe and wonder.
+
+The burly detective lifted the boy as tenderly as a woman, passed through
+the shadows to the stairway, ascended, and was swallowed up in the gloom.
+Nayland Smith's eyes gleamed feverishly.  He turned to Karamaneh.
+
+"You are not playing with us?" he said harshly.  "We have done our part;
+it remains for you to do yours."
+
+"Do not speak so loudly," the girl begged.  "HE is near us--
+and, oh, God, I fear him so!"
+
+"Where is he?" persisted my friend.
+
+Karamaneh's eyes were glassy with fear now.
+
+"You must not touch him until the police are here," she said--
+but from the direction of her quick, agitated glances I knew that,
+her brother safe now, she feared for me, and for me alone.
+Those glances sent my blood dancing; for Karamaneh was
+an Eastern jewel which any man of flesh and blood must
+have coveted had he known it to lie within his reach.
+Her eyes were twin lakes of mystery which, more than once,
+I had known the desire to explore.
+
+"Look--beyond that curtain"--her voice was barely audible--"but do not enter.
+Even as he is, I fear him."
+
+Her voice, her palpable agitation, prepared us for something extraordinary.
+Tragedy and Fu-Manchu were never far apart.  Though we were two, and help
+was so near, we were in the abode of the most cunning murderer who ever came
+out of the East.
+
+It was with strangely mingled emotions that I crossed the thick carpet,
+Nayland Smith beside me, and drew aside the draperies concealing a door,
+to which Karamaneh had pointed.  Then, upon looking into the dim place beyond,
+all else save what it held was forgotten.
+
+We looked upon a small, square room, the walls draped with fantastic
+Chinese tapestry, the floor strewn with cushions; and reclining
+in a corner, where the faint, blue light from a lamp, placed upon
+a low table, painted grotesque shadows about the cavernous face--
+was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
+
+At sight of him my heart leaped--and seemed to suspend its functions,
+so intense was the horror which this man's presence inspired in me.
+My hand clutching the curtain, I stood watching him.  The lids
+veiled the malignant green eyes, but the thin lips seemed to smile.
+Then Smith silently pointed to the hand which held a little pipe.
+A sickly perfume assailed my nostrils, and the explanation
+of the hushed silence, and the ease with which we had thus far
+executed our plan, came to me.  The cunning mind was torpid--
+lost in a brutish world of dreams.
+
+Fu-Manchu was in an opium sleep!
+
+The dim light traced out a network of tiny lines, which covered
+the yellow face from the pointed chin to the top of the great domed brow,
+and formed deep shadow pools in the hollows beneath his eyes.
+At last we had triumphed.
+
+I could not determine the depth of his obscene trance; and mastering
+some of my repugnance, and forgetful of Karamaneh's warning, I was about
+to step forward into the room, loaded with its nauseating opium fumes,
+when a soft breath fanned my cheek.
+
+"Do not go in!" came Karamaneh's warning voice--hushed--trembling.
+
+Her little hand grasped my arm.  She drew Smith and myself back
+from the door.
+
+"There is danger there!" she whispered.
+
+"Do not enter that room!  The police must reach him in some way--
+and drag him out!  Do not enter that room!"
+
+The girl's voice quivered hysterically; her eyes blazed into savage flame.
+The fierce resentment born of dreadful wrongs was consuming her now;
+but fear of Fu-Manchu held her yet.  Inspector Weymouth came down the stairs
+and joined us.
+
+"I have sent the boy to Ryman's room at the station," he said.
+"The divisional surgeon will look after him until you arrive,
+Dr. Petrie.  All is ready now.  The launch is just off
+the wharf and every side of the place under observation.
+Where's our man?"
+
+He drew a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and raised
+his eyebrows interrogatively.  The absence of sound--
+of any demonstration from the uncanny Chinaman whom he was there
+to arrest--puzzled him.
+
+Nayland Smith jerked his thumb toward the curtain.
+
+At that, and before we could utter a word, Weymouth stepped
+to the draped door.  He was a man who drove straight at
+his goal and saved reflections for subsequent leisure.
+I think, moreover, that the atmosphere of the place
+(stripped as it was it retained its heavy, voluptuous perfume)
+had begun to get a hold upon him.  He was anxious to shake it off;
+to be up and doing.
+
+He pulled the curtain aside and stepped into the room.
+Smith and I perforce followed him.  Just within the door
+the three of us stood looking across at the limp thing which
+had spread terror throughout the Eastern and Western world.
+Helpless as Fu-Manchu was, he inspired terror now, though the giant
+intellect was inert--stupefied.
+
+In the dimly lit apartment we had quitted I heard Karamaneh utter
+a stifled scream.  But it came too late.
+
+As though cast up by a volcano, the silken cushions,
+the inlaid table with its blue-shaded lamp, the garish walls,
+the sprawling figure with the ghastly light playing upon
+its features--quivered, and shot upward!
+
+So it seemed to me; though, in the ensuing instant I remembered,
+too late, a previous experience of the floors of Fu-Manchu's
+private apartments; I knew what had indeed befallen us.
+A trap had been released beneath our feet.
+
+I recall falling--but have no recollection of the end of my fall--
+of the shock marking the drop.  I only remember fighting for my
+life against a stifling something which had me by the throat.
+I knew that I was being suffocated, but my hands met only
+the deathly emptiness.
+
+Into a poisonous well of darkness I sank.  I could not cry out.
+I was helpless.  Of the fate of my companions I knew nothing--
+could surmise nothing.  Then. . .all consciousness ended.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+I WAS being carried along a dimly lighted, tunnel-like place, slung, sackwise,
+across the shoulder of a Burman.  He was not a big man, but he supported
+my considerable weight with apparent ease.  A deadly nausea held me,
+but the rough handling had served to restore me to consciousness.
+My hands and feet were closely lashed.  I hung limply as a wet towel:
+I felt that this spark of tortured life which had flickered up in me must
+ere long finally become extinguished.
+
+A fancy possessed me, in these the first moments of my restoration
+to the world of realities, that I had been smuggled into China;
+and as I swung head downward I told myself that the huge,
+puffy things which strewed the path were a species of giant toadstool,
+unfamiliar to me and possibly peculiar to whatever district of China
+I now was in.
+
+The air was hot, steamy, and loaded with a smell as of rotting vegetation.
+I wondered why my bearer so scrupulously avoided touching any of the
+unwholesome-looking growths in passing through what seemed a succession
+of cellars, but steered a tortuous course among the bloated, unnatural shapes,
+lifting his bare brown feet with a catlike delicacy.
+
+He passed under a low arch, dropped me roughly to the ground and ran back.
+Half stunned, I lay watching the agile brown body melt into
+the distances of the cellars.  Their walls and roof seemed to emit
+a faint, phosphorescent light.
+
+"Petrie!" came a weak voice from somewhere ahead. . . . 
+"Is that you, Petrie?"
+
+It was Nayland Smith!
+
+"Smith!" I said, and strove to sit up.  But the intense nausea overcame me,
+so that I all but swooned.
+
+I heard his voice again, but could attach no meaning to the words
+which he uttered.  A sound of terrific blows reached my ears, too.
+The Burman reappeared, bending under the heavy load which he bore.
+For, as he picked his way through the bloated things which grew
+upon the floors of the cellars, I realized that he was carrying
+the inert body of Inspector Weymouth.  And I found time to compare
+the strength of the little brown man with that of a Nile beetle,
+which can raise many times its own weight.  Then, behind him,
+appeared a second figure, which immediately claimed the whole
+of my errant attention.
+
+"Fu-Manchu!" hissed my friend, from the darkness which concealed him.
+
+It was indeed none other than Fu-Manchu--the Fu-Manchu whom we
+had thought to be helpless.  The deeps of the Chinaman's cunning--
+the fine quality of his courage, were forced upon me as amazing facts.
+
+He had assumed the appearance of a drugged opium-smoker so well
+as to dupe me--a medical man; so well as to dupe Karamaneh--
+whose experience of the noxious habit probably was greater than
+my own.  And, with the gallows dangling before him, he had waited--
+played the part of a lure--whilst a body of police actually
+surrounded the place!
+
+I have since thought that the room probably was one which he actually used
+for opium debauches, and the device of the trap was intended to protect him
+during the comatose period.
+
+Now, holding a lantern above his head, the deviser of the trap
+whereinto we, mouselike, had blindly entered, came through
+the cellars, following the brown man who carried Weymouth.
+The faint rays of the lantern (it apparently contained a candle)
+revealed a veritable forest of the gigantic fungi--poisonously colored--
+hideously swollen--climbing from the floor up the slimy walls--
+climbing like horrid parasites to such part of the arched roof
+as was visible to me.
+
+Fu-Manchu picked his way through the fungi ranks as daintily
+as though the distorted, tumid things had been viper-headed.
+
+The resounding blows which I had noted before, and which had never ceased,
+culminated in a splintering crash.  Dr. Fu-Manchu and his servant,
+who carried the apparently insensible detective, passed in under
+the arch, Fu-Manchu glancing back once along the passages.
+The lantern he extinguished, or concealed; and whilst I waited,
+my mind dully surveying memories of all the threats which this
+uncanny being had uttered, a distant clamor came to my ears.
+
+Then, abruptly, it ceased.  Dr. Fu-Manchu had closed a heavy door;
+and to my surprise I perceived that the greater part of it was of glass.
+The will-o'-the-wisp glow which played around the fungi rendered the vista
+of the cellars faintly luminous, and visible to me from where I lay.
+Fu-Manchu spoke softly.  His voice, its guttural note alternating
+with a sibilance on certain words, betrayed no traces of agitation.
+The man's unbroken calm had in it something inhuman.  For he had just
+perpetrated an act of daring unparalleled in my experience, and,
+in the clamor now shut out by the glass door I tardily recognized
+the entrance of the police into some barricaded part of the house--
+the coming of those who would save us--who would hold the Chinese
+doctor for the hangman!
+
+"I have decided," he said deliberately, "that you are more worthy
+of my attention than I had formerly supposed.  A man who can solve
+the secret of the Golden Elixir (I had not solved it; I had merely
+stolen some) should be a valuable acquisition to my Council.
+The extent of the plans of Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith and
+of the English Scotland Yard it is incumbent upon me to learn.
+Therefore, gentlemen, you live--for the present!"
+
+"And you'll swing," came Weymouth's hoarse voice, "in the near future!
+You and all your yellow gang!"
+
+"I trust not," was the placid reply.  "Most of my people are safe:
+some are shipped as lascars upon the liners; others have departed
+by different means.  Ah!"
+
+That last word was the only one indicative of excitement
+which had yet escaped him.  A disk of light danced among
+the brilliant poison hues of the passages--but no sound reached us;
+by which I knew that the glass door must fit almost hermetically.
+It was much cooler here than in the place through which we had passed,
+and the nausea began to leave me, my brain to grow more clear.
+Had I known what was to follow I should have cursed the lucidity
+of mind which now came to me; I should have prayed for oblivion--
+to be spared the sight of that which ensued.
+
+"It's Logan!" cried Inspector Weymouth; and I could tell
+that he was struggling to free himself of his bonds.
+From his voice it was evident that he, too, was recovering
+from the effects of the narcotic which had been administered
+to us all.
+
+"Logan!" he cried.  "Logan!  This way--HELP!"
+
+But the cry beat back upon us in that enclosed space and seemed
+to carry no farther than the invisible walls of our prison.
+
+"The door fits well," came Fu-Manchu's mocking voice.
+"It is fortunate for us all that it is so.  This is my
+observation window, Dr. Petrie, and you are about to enjoy
+an unique opportunity of studying fungology.  I have already
+drawn your attention to the anaesthetic properties of the
+lycoperdon, or common puff-ball. You may have recognized the fumes?
+The chamber into which you rashly precipitated yourselves
+was charged with them.  By a process of my own I have greatly
+enhanced the value of the puff-ball in this respect.
+Your friend, Mr. Weymouth, proved the most obstinate subject;
+but he succumbed in fifteen seconds."
+
+"Logan!  Help!  HELP!  This way, man!"
+
+Something very like fear sounded in Weymouth's voice now.
+Indeed, the situation was so uncanny that it almost seemed unreal.
+A group of men had entered the farthermost cellars, led by one who bore
+an electric pocket-lamp. The hard, white ray danced from bloated gray
+fungi to others of nightmare shape, of dazzling, venomous brilliance.
+The mocking, lecture-room voice continued:
+
+"Note the snowy growth upon the roof, Doctor.  Do not be deceived by
+its size.  It is a giant variety of my own culture and is of the order
+empusa. You, in England, are familiar with the death of the common house-fly--
+which is found attached to the window-pane by a coating of white mold.
+I have developed the spores of this mold and have produced a giant species.
+Observe the interesting effect of the strong light upon my orange and blue
+amanita fungus!"
+
+Hard beside me I heard Nayland Smith groan, Weymouth had become
+suddenly silent.  For my own part, I could have shrieked in pure horror.
+FOR I KNEW WHAT WAS COMING. I realized in one agonized instant
+the significance of the dim lantern, of the careful progress
+through the subterranean fungi grove, of the care with which
+Fu-Manchu and his servant had avoided touching any of the growths.
+I knew, now, that Dr. Fu-Manchu was the greatest fungologist
+the world had ever known; was a poisoner to whom the Borgias were
+as children--and I knew that the detectives blindly were walking
+into a valley of death.
+
+Then it began--the unnatural scene--the saturnalia of murder.
+
+Like so many bombs the brilliantly colored caps of the huge toadstool-like
+things alluded to by the Chinaman exploded, as the white ray sought
+them out in the darkness which alone preserved their existence.
+A brownish cloud--I could not determine whether liquid or powdery--
+arose in the cellar.
+
+I tried to close my eyes--or to turn them away from the reeling forms
+of the men who were trapped in that poison-hole. It was useless:
+
+I must look.
+
+The bearer of the lamp had dropped it, but the dim,
+eerily illuminated gloom endured scarce a second.
+A bright light sprang up--doubtless at the touch of the fiendish
+being who now resumed speech:
+
+"Observe the symptoms of delirium, Doctor!"  Out there,
+beyond the glass door, the unhappy victims were laughing--
+tearing their garments from their bodies--leaping--waving their arms--
+were become MANIACS!
+
+"We will now release the ripe spores of giant entpusa,"
+continued the wicked voice.  "The air of the second cellar
+being super-charged with oxygen, they immediately germinate.
+Ah!  it is a triumph!  That process is the scientific triumph
+of my life!"
+
+Like powdered snow the white spores fell from the roof,
+frosting the writhing shapes of the already poisoned men.
+Before my horrified gaze, THE FUNGUS GREW; it spread
+from the head to the feet of those it touched; it enveloped
+them as in glittering shrouds. . . .
+
+"They die like flies!" screamed Fu-Manchu, with a sudden febrile excitement;
+and I felt assured of something I had long suspected:  that that magnificent,
+perverted brain was the brain of a homicidal maniac--though Smith would
+never accept the theory.
+
+"It is my fly-trap!" shrieked the Chinaman.  "And I am
+the god of destruction!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+THE clammy touch of the mist revived me.  The culmination of the scene
+in the poison cellars, together with the effects of the fumes
+which I had inhaled again, had deprived me of consciousness.
+Now I knew that I was afloat on the river.  I still was bound:
+furthermore, a cloth was wrapped tightly about my mouth,
+and I was secured to a ring in the deck.
+
+By moving my aching head to the left I could look down into the oily water;
+by moving it to the right I could catch a glimpse of the empurpled
+face of Inspector Weymouth, who, similarly bound and gagged,
+lay beside me, but only of the feet and legs of Nayland Smith.
+For I could not turn my head sufficiently far to see more.
+
+We were aboard an electric launch.  I heard the hated guttural
+voice of Fu-Manchu, subdued now to its habitual calm,
+and my heart leaped to hear the voice that answered him.
+It was that of Karamaneh.  His triumph was complete.
+Clearly his plans for departure were complete; his slaughter
+of the police in the underground passages had been a final
+reckless demonstration of which the Chinaman's subtle cunning
+would have been incapable had he not known his escape from
+the country to be assured.
+
+What fate was in store for us?  How would he avenge himself upon the girl
+who had betrayed him to his enemies?  What portion awaited those enemies?
+He seemed to have formed the singular determination to smuggle me into China--
+but what did he purpose in the case of Weymouth, and in the case
+of Nayland Smith?
+
+All but silently we were feeling our way through the mist.
+Astern died the clangor of dock and wharf into a remote discord.
+Ahead hung the foggy curtain veiling the traffic of the great waterway;
+but through it broke the calling of sirens, the tinkling of bells.
+
+The gentle movement of the screw ceased altogether.
+The launch lay heaving slightly upon the swells.
+
+A distant throbbing grew louder--and something advanced upon
+us through the haze.
+
+A bell rang and muffled by the fog a voice proclaimed itself--
+a voice which I knew.  I felt Weymouth writhing impotently
+beside me; heard him mumbling incoherently; and I knew
+that he, too, had recognized the voice.
+
+It was that of Inspector Ryman of the river police and their launch
+was within biscuit-throw of that upon which we lay!
+
+"'Hoy!  'Hoy!"
+
+I trembled.  A feverish excitement claimed me.  They were hailing us.
+We carried no lights; but now--and ignoring the pain which shot from
+my spine to my skull I craned my neck to the left--the port light
+of the police launch glowed angrily through the mist.
+
+I was unable to utter any save mumbling sounds, and my
+companions were equally helpless.  It was a desperate position.
+Had the police seen us or had they hailed at random?
+The light drew nearer.
+
+"Launch, 'hoy!"
+
+They had seen us!  Fu-Manchu's guttural voice spoke shortly--
+and our screw began to revolve again; we leaped ahead into the bank
+of darkness.  Faint grew the light of the police launch--and was gone.
+But I heard Ryman's voice shouting.
+
+"Full speed!" came faintly through the darkness.  "Port!  Port!"
+
+Then the murk closed down, and with our friends far astern of us
+we were racing deeper into the fog banks--speeding seaward;
+though of this I was unable to judge at the time.
+
+On we raced, and on, sweeping over growing swells.
+Once, a black, towering shape dropped down upon us.
+Far above, lights blazed, bells rang, vague cries pierced the fog.
+The launch pitched and rolled perilously, but weathered the wash
+of the liner which so nearly had concluded this episode.
+It was such a journey as I had taken once before,
+early in our pursuit of the genius of the Yellow Peril;
+but this was infinitely more terrible; for now we were utterly
+in Fu-Manchu's power.
+
+A voice mumbled in my ear.  I turned my bound-up face;
+and Inspector Weymouth raised his hands in the dimness and partly
+slipped the bandage from his mouth.
+
+"I've been working at the cords since we left those filthy cellars,"
+he whispered.  "My wrists are all cut, but when I've got out a knife
+and freed my ankles--"
+
+Smith had kicked him with his bound feet.  The detective slipped
+the bandage back to position and placed his hands behind him again.
+Dr. Fu-Manchu, wearing a heavy overcoat but no hat, came aft.
+He was dragging Karamaneh by the wrists.  He seated himself
+on the cushions near to us, pulling the girl down beside him.
+Now, I could see her face--and the expression in her beautiful
+eyes made me writhe.
+
+Fu-Manchu was watching us, his discolored teeth faintly visible
+in the dim light, to which my eyes were becoming accustomed.
+
+"Dr. Petrie," he said, "you shall be my honored guest at my home in China.
+You shall assist me to revolutionize chemistry.  Mr. Smith, I fear
+you know more of my plans than I had deemed it possible for you
+to have learned, and I am anxious to know if you have a confidant.
+Where your memory fails you, and my files and wire jackets prove ineffectual,
+Inspector Weymouth's recollections may prove more accurate."
+
+He turned to the cowering girl--who shrank away from him
+in pitiful, abject terror.
+
+"In my hands, Doctor," he continued, "I hold a needle charged
+with a rare culture.  It is the link between the bacilli
+and the fungi.  You have seemed to display an undue interest
+in the peach and pearl which render my Karamaneh so delightful,
+In the supple grace of her movements and the sparkle of her eyes.
+You can never devote your whole mind to those studies which I
+have planned for you whilst such distractions exist.
+A touch of this keen point, and the laughing Karamaneh becomes
+the shrieking hag--the maniacal, mowing--"
+
+Then, with an ox-like rush, Weymouth was upon him!
+
+Karamaneh, wrought upon past endurance, with a sobbing cry, sank to the deck--
+and lay still.  I managed to writhe into a half-sitting posture, and Smith
+rolled aside as the detective and the Chinaman crashed down together.
+
+Weymouth had one big hand at the Doctor's yellow throat;
+with his left he grasped the Chinaman's right.
+It held the needle.
+
+Now, I could look along the length of the little craft, and, so far
+as it was possible to make out in the fog, only one other was aboard--
+the half-clad brown man who navigated her--and who had carried us through
+the cellars.  The murk had grown denser and now shut us in like a box.
+The throb of the motor--the hissing breath of the two who fought--
+with so much at issue--these sounds and the wash of the water alone
+broke the eerie stillness.
+
+By slow degrees, and with a reptilian agility horrible to watch,
+Fu-Manchu was neutralizing the advantage gained by Weymouth.
+His clawish fingers were fast in the big man's throat; the right hand
+with its deadly needle was forcing down the left of his opponent.
+He had been underneath, but now he was gaining the upper place.
+His powers of physical endurance must have been truly marvelous.
+His breath was whistling through his nostrils significantly,
+but Weymouth was palpably tiring.
+
+The latter suddenly changed his tactics.  By a supreme effort,
+to which he was spurred, I think, by the growing proximity
+of the needle, he raised Fu-Manchu--by the throat and arm--
+and pitched him sideways.
+
+The Chinaman's grip did not relax, and the two wrestlers dropped,
+a writhing mass, upon the port cushions.  The launch heeled over,
+and my cry of horror was crushed back into my throat by the bandage.
+For, as Fu-Manchu sought to extricate himself, he overbalanced--
+fell back--and, bearing Weymouth with him--slid into the river!
+
+The mist swallowed them up.
+
+There are moments of which no man can recall his mental impressions,
+moments so acutely horrible that, mercifully, our memory retains
+nothing of the emotions they occasioned.  This was one of them.
+A chaos ruled in my mind.  I had a vague belief that the Burman,
+forward, glanced back.  Then the course of the launch was changed.
+How long intervened between the tragic end of that Gargantuan struggle
+and the time when a black wall leaped suddenly up before us I cannot
+pretend to state.
+
+With a sickening jerk we ran aground.  A loud explosion ensued,
+and I clearly remember seeing the brown man leap out into the fog--
+which was the last I saw of him.
+
+Water began to wash aboard.
+
+Fully alive to our imminent peril, I fought with the cords
+that bound me; but I lacked poor Weymouth's strength of wrist,
+and I began to accept as a horrible and imminent possibility,
+a death from drowning, within six feet of the bank.
+
+Beside me, Nayland Smith was straining and twisting.  I think
+his object was to touch Karamaneh, in the hope of arousing her.
+Where he failed in his project, the inflowing water succeeded.
+A silent prayer of thankfulness came from my very soul when I
+saw her stir--when I saw her raise her hands to her head--
+and saw the big, horror-bright eyes gleam through the mist veil.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+WE quitted the wrecked launch but a few seconds before her
+stern settled down into the river.  Where the mud-bank upon
+which we found ourselves was situated we had no idea.
+But at least it was terra firma and we were free from Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+Smith stood looking out towards the river.
+
+"My God!" he groaned.  "My God!"
+
+He was thinking, as I was, of Weymouth.
+
+And when, an hour later, the police boat located us (on the mud-flats
+below Greenwich) and we heard that the toll of the poison cellars
+was eight men, we also heard news of our brave companion.
+
+"Back there in the fog, sir," reported Inspector Ryman, who was in charge,
+and his voice was under poor command, "there was an uncanny howling,
+and peals of laughter that I'm going to dream about for weeks--"
+
+Karamaneh, who nestled beside me like a frightened child, shivered; and I
+knew that the needle had done its work, despite Weymouth's giant strength.
+
+Smith swallowed noisily.
+
+"Pray God the river has that yellow Satan," he said.
+"I would sacrifice a year of my life to see his rat's body
+on the end of a grappling-iron!"
+
+We were a sad party that steamed through the fog homeward that night.
+It seemed almost like deserting a staunch comrade to leave the spot--so nearly
+as we could locate it--where Weymouth had put up that last gallant fight.
+Our helplessness was pathetic, and although, had the night been clear
+as crystal, I doubt if we could have acted otherwise, it came to me that this
+stinking murk was a new enemy which drove us back in coward retreat.
+
+But so many were the calls upon our activity, and so numerous
+the stimulants to our initiative in those times, that soon we
+had matter to relieve our minds from this stress of sorrow.
+
+There was Karamaneh to be considered--Karamaneh and her brother.
+A brief counsel was held, whereat it was decided that for the present
+they should be lodged at a hotel.
+
+"I shall arrange," Smith whispered to me, for the girl was watching us,
+"to have the place patrolled night and day."
+
+"You cannot suppose--"
+
+"Petrie!  I cannot and dare not suppose Fu-Manchu dead until with my own
+eyes I have seen him so!"
+
+Accordingly we conveyed the beautiful Oriental girl and her
+brother away from that luxurious abode in its sordid setting.
+I will not dwell upon the final scene in the poison cellars
+lest I be accused of accumulating horror for horror's sake.
+Members of the fire brigade, helmed against contagion, brought out
+the bodies of the victims wrapped in their living shrouds. . . .
+
+From Karamaneh we learned much of Fu-Manchu, little of herself.
+
+"What am I?  Does my poor history matter--to anyone?"
+was her answer to questions respecting herself.
+
+And she would droop her lashes over her dark eyes.
+
+The dacoits whom the Chinaman had brought to England originally
+numbered seven, we learned.  As you, having followed me thus far,
+will be aware, we had thinned the ranks of the Burmans.
+Probably only one now remained in England.  They had
+lived in a camp in the grounds of the house near Windsor
+(which, as we had learned at the time of its destruction,
+the Doctor had bought outright). The Thames had been his highway.
+
+Other members of the group had occupied quarters in various parts
+of the East End, where sailormen of all nationalities congregate.
+Shen-Yan's had been the East End headquarters.  He had employed the hulk
+from the time of his arrival, as a laboratory for a certain class
+of experiments undesirable in proximity to a place of residence.
+
+Nayland Smith asked the girl on one occasion if the Chinaman had had
+a private sea-going vessel, and she replied in the affirmative.
+She had never been on board, however, had never even set eyes upon it,
+and could give us no information respecting its character.
+It had sailed for China.
+
+"You are sure," asked Smith keenly, "that it has actually left?"
+
+"I understood so, and that we were to follow by another route."
+
+"It would have been difficult for Fu-Manchu to travel by a passenger boat?"
+
+"I cannot say what were his plans."
+
+In a state of singular uncertainty, then, readily to be understood,
+we passed the days following the tragedy which had deprived us
+of our fellow-worker.
+
+Vividly I recall the scene at poor Weymouth's home, on the day that we
+visited it.  I then made the acquaintance of the Inspector's brother.
+Nayland Smith gave him a detailed account of the last scene.
+
+"Out there in the mist," he concluded wearily, "it all seemed very unreal."
+
+"I wish to God it had been!"
+
+"Amen to that, Mr. Weymouth.  But your brother made a gallant finish.
+If ridding the world of Fu-Manchu were the only good deed to his credit,
+his life had been well spent."
+
+James Weymouth smoked awhile in thoughtful silence.
+Though but four and a half miles S.S.E. of St. Paul's the quaint
+little cottage, with its rustic garden, shadowed by the tall trees
+which had so lined the village street before motor 'buses were,
+was a spot as peaceful and secluded as any in broad England.
+But another shadow lay upon it to-day--chilling, fearful.
+An incarnate evil had come out of the dim East and in its dying
+malevolence had touched this home.
+
+"There are two things I don't understand about it, sir," continued Weymouth.
+"What was the meaning of the horrible laughter which the river police heard
+in the fog?  And where are the bodies?"
+
+Karamaneh, seated beside me, shuddered at the words.
+Smith, whose restless spirit granted him little repose,
+paused in his aimless wanderings about the room and looked at her.
+
+In these latter days of his Augean labors to purge England
+of the unclean thing which had fastened upon her, my friend
+was more lean and nervous-looking than I had ever known him.
+His long residence in Burma had rendered him spare
+and had burned his naturally dark skin to a coppery hue;
+but now his gray eyes had grown feverishly bright and his
+face so lean as at times to appear positively emaciated.
+But I knew that he was as fit as ever.
+
+"This lady may be able to answer your first question," he said.
+"She and her brother were for some time in the household of
+Dr. Fu-Manchu. In fact, Mr. Weymouth, Karamaneh, as her name implies,
+was a slave."
+
+Weymouth glanced at the beautiful, troubled face with scarcely
+veiled distrust.  "You don't look as though you had come
+from China, miss," he said, with a sort of unwilling admiration.
+
+"I do not come from China," replied Karamaneh.  "My father
+was a pure Bedawee.  But my history does not matter."
+(At times there was something imperious in her manner; and to this
+her musical accent added force.) "When your brave brother,
+Inspector Weymouth, and Dr. Fu-Manchu, were swallowed up
+by the river, Fu-Manchu held a poisoned needle in his hand.
+The laughter meant that the needle had done its work.
+Your brother had become mad!"
+
+Weymouth turned aside to hide his emotion.  "What was on the needle?"
+he asked huskily.
+
+"It was something which he prepared from the venom of a kind of swamp adder,"
+she answered.  "It produces madness, but not always death."
+
+"He would have had a poor chance," said Smith, "even had he been in complete
+possession of his senses.  At the time of the encounter we must have been
+some considerable distance from shore, and the fog was impenetrable."
+
+"But how do you account for the fact that neither of the bodies
+have been recovered?"
+
+"Ryman of the river police tells me that persons lost at that point
+are not always recovered--or not until a considerable time later."
+
+There was a faint sound from the room above.  The news of that
+tragic happening out in the mist upon the Thames had prostrated
+poor Mrs. Weymouth.
+
+"She hasn't been told half the truth," said her brother-in-law. "She doesn't
+know about--the poisoned needle.  What kind of fiend was this Dr. Fu-Manchu?"
+He burst out into a sudden blaze of furious resentment.  "John never told
+me much, and you have let mighty little leak into the papers.  What was he?
+Who was he?"
+
+Half he addressed the words to Smith, half to Karamaneh.
+
+"Dr. Fu-Manchu," replied the former, "was the ultimate expression of
+Chinese cunning; a phenomenon such as occurs but once in many generations.
+He was a superman of incredible genius, who, had he willed,
+could have revolutionized science.  There is a superstition in some
+parts of China according to which, under certain peculiar conditions
+(one of which is proximity to a deserted burial-ground) an evil spirit
+of incredible age may enter unto the body of a new-born infant.
+All my efforts thus far have not availed me to trace the genealogy
+of the man called Dr. Fu-Manchu. Even Karamaneh cannot help me in this.
+But I have sometimes thought that he was a member of a certain very old
+Kiangsu family--and that the peculiar conditions I have mentioned
+prevailed at his birth!"
+
+Smith, observing our looks of amazement, laughed shortly,
+and quite mirthlessly.
+
+"Poor old Weymouth!" he jerked.  "I suppose my labors are finished;
+but I am far from triumphant.  Is there any improvement in
+Mrs. Weymouth's condition?"
+
+"Very little," was the reply; "she has lain in a semi-conscious
+state since the news came.  No one had any idea she would
+take it so.  At one time we were afraid her brain was going.
+She seemed to have delusions."
+
+Smith spun round upon Weymouth.
+
+"Of what nature?" he asked rapidly.
+
+The other pulled nervously at his mustache.
+
+"My wife has been staying with her," he explained, "since--it happened;
+and for the last three nights poor John's widow has cried out at
+the same time--half-past two--that someone was knocking on the door."
+
+"What door?"
+
+"That door yonder--the street door."
+
+All our eyes turned in the direction indicated.
+
+"John often came home at half-past two from the Yard," continued Weymouth;
+"so we naturally thought poor Mary was wandering in her mind.
+But last night--and it's not to be wondered at--my wife couldn't sleep,
+and she was wide awake at half-past two."
+
+"Well?"
+
+Nayland Smith was standing before him, alert, bright-eyed.
+
+"She heard it, too!"
+
+The sun was streaming into the cozy little sitting-room;
+but I will confess that Weymouth's words chilled me uncannily.
+Karamaneh laid her hand upon mine, in a quaint, childish fashion
+peculiarly her own.  Her hand was cold, but its touch thrilled me.
+For Karamaneh was not a child, but a rarely beautiful girl--
+a pearl of the East such as many a monarch has fought for.
+
+"What then?" asked Smith.
+
+"She was afraid to move--afraid to look from the window!"
+
+My friend turned and stared hard at me.
+
+"A subjective hallucination, Petrie?"
+
+"In all probability," I replied.  "You should arrange that
+your wife be relieved in her trying duties, Mr. Weymouth.
+It is too great a strain for an inexperienced nurse."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+OF all that we had hoped for in our pursuit of Fu-Manchu how
+little had we accomplished.  Excepting Karamaneh and her brother
+(who were victims and not creatures of the Chinese doctor's)
+not one of the formidable group had fallen alive into our hands.
+Dreadful crimes had marked Fu-Manchu's passage through the land.
+Not one-half of the truth (and nothing of the later developments)
+had been made public.  Nayland Smith's authority was sufficient
+to control the press.
+
+In the absence of such a veto a veritable panic must have seized upon
+the entire country; for a monster--a thing more than humanly evil--
+existed in our midst.
+
+Always Fu-Manchu's secret activities had centered about the great waterway.
+There was much of poetic justice in his end; for the Thames had claimed him,
+who so long had used the stream as a highway for the passage to and fro for
+his secret forces.  Gone now were the yellow men who had been the instruments
+of his evil will; gone was the giant intellect which had controlled
+the complex murder machine.  Karamaneh, whose beauty he had used as a lure,
+at last was free, and no more with her smile would tempt men to death--
+that her brother might live.
+
+Many there are, I doubt not, who will regard the Eastern girl with horror.
+I ask their forgiveness in that I regarded her quite differently.
+No man having seen her could have condemned her unheard.  Many, having looked
+into her lovely eyes, had they found there what I found, must have forgiven
+her almost any crime.
+
+That she valued human life but little was no matter for wonder.
+Her nationality--her history--furnished adequate excuse for an attitude
+not condonable in a European equally cultured.
+
+But indeed let me confess that hers was a nature incomprehensible to me
+in some respects.  The soul of Karamaneh was a closed book to my short-sighted
+Western eyes.  But the body of Karamaneh was exquisite; her beauty of a kind
+that was a key to the most extravagant rhapsodies of Eastern poets.
+Her eyes held a challenge wholly Oriental in its appeal; her lips,
+even in repose, were a taunt.  And, herein, East is West and West is East.
+
+Finally, despite her lurid history, despite the scornful self-possession
+of which I knew her capable, she was an unprotected girl--
+in years, I believe, a mere child--whom Fate had cast in my way.
+At her request, we had booked passages for her brother and herself
+to Egypt.  The boat sailed in three days.  But Karamaneh's beautiful
+eyes were sad; often I detected tears on the black lashes.
+Shall I endeavor to describe my own tumultuous, conflicting emotions?
+It would be useless, since I know it to be impossible.
+For in those dark eyes burned a fire I might not see; those silken
+lashes veiled a message I dared not read.
+
+Nayland Smith was not blind to the facts of the complicated situation.
+I can truthfully assert that he was the only man of my acquaintance who,
+having come in contact with Karamaneh, had kept his head.
+
+We endeavored to divert her mind from the recent tragedies by a round
+of amusements, though with poor Weymouth's body still at the mercy
+of unknown waters Smith and I made but a poor show of gayety;
+and I took a gloomy pride in the admiration which our lovely
+companion everywhere excited.  I learned, in those days, how rare
+a thing in nature is a really beautiful woman.
+
+One afternoon we found ourselves at an exhibition of water
+colors in Bond Street.  Karamaneh was intensely interested
+in the subjects of the drawings--which were entirely Egyptian.
+As usual, she furnished matter for comment amongst the other visitors,
+as did the boy, Aziz, her brother, anew upon the world from his
+living grave in the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+Suddenly Aziz clutched at his sister's arm, whispering rapidly in Arabic.
+I saw her peachlike color fade; saw her become pale and wild-eyed--
+the haunted Karamaneh of the old days.
+
+She turned to me.
+
+"Dr. Petrie--he says that Fu-Manchu is here!"
+
+"Where?"
+
+Nayland Smith rapped out the question violently, turning in a flash
+from the picture which he was examining.
+
+"In this room!" she whispered glancing furtively, affrightedly about her.
+"Something tells Aziz when HE is near--and I, too, feel strangely afraid.
+Oh, can it be that he is not dead!"
+
+She held my arm tightly.  Her brother was searching the room with big,
+velvet black eyes.  I studied the faces of the several visitors;
+and Smith was staring about him with the old alert look, and tugging
+nervously at the lobe of his ear.  The name of the giant foe of the white
+race instantaneously had strung him up to a pitch of supreme intensity.
+
+Our united scrutinies discovered no figure which could have been
+that of the Chinese doctor.  Who could mistake that long, gaunt shape,
+with the high, mummy-like shoulders, and the indescribable gait,
+which I can only liken to that of an awkward cat?
+
+Then, over the heads of a group of people who stood by the doorway, I saw
+Smith peering at someone--at someone who passed across the outer room.
+Stepping aside, I, too, obtained a glimpse of this person.
+
+As I saw him, he was a tall, old man, wearing a black Inverness
+coat and a rather shabby silk hat.  He had long white hair
+and a patriarchal beard, wore smoked glasses and walked slowly,
+leaning upon a stick.
+
+Smith's gaunt face paled.  With a rapid glance at Karamaneh,
+he made off across the room.
+
+Could it be Dr. Fu-Manchu?
+
+Many days had passed since, already half-choked by Inspector Weymouth's iron
+grip, Fu-Manchu, before our own eyes, had been swallowed up by the Thames.
+Even now men were seeking his body, and that of his last victim.
+Nor had we left any stone unturned.  Acting upon information furnished
+by Karamaneh, the police had searched every known haunt of the murder group.
+But everything pointed to the fact that the group was disbanded and dispersed;
+that the lord of strange deaths who had ruled it was no more.
+
+Yet Smith was not satisfied.  Neither, let me confess,
+was I. Every port was watched; and in suspected districts
+a kind of house-to-house patrol had been instituted.
+Unknown to the great public, in those days a secret war waged--
+a war in which all the available forces of the authorities
+took the field against one man!  But that one man was the evil
+of the East incarnate.
+
+When we rejoined him, Nayland Smith was talking to the commissionaire
+at the door.  He turned to me.
+
+"That is Professor Jenner Monde," he said.  "The sergeant, here,
+knows him well."
+
+The name of the celebrated Orientalist of course was familiar to me,
+although I had never before set eyes upon him.
+
+"The Professor was out East the last time I was there, sir,"
+stated the commissionaire.  "I often used to see him.  But he's
+an eccentric old gentleman.  Seems to live in a world of his own.
+He's recently back from China, I think."
+
+Nayland Smith stood clicking his teeth together in irritable hesitation.
+I heard Karamaneh sigh, and, looking at her, I saw that her cheeks were
+regaining their natural color.
+
+She smiled in pathetic apology.
+
+"If he was here he is gone," she said.  "I am not afraid now."
+
+Smith thanked the commissionaire for his information and we
+quitted the gallery.
+
+"Professor Jenner Monde," muttered my friend, "has lived so long
+in China as almost to be a Chinaman.  I have never met him--
+never seen him, before; but I wonder--"
+
+"You wonder what, Smith?"
+
+"I wonder if he could possibly be an ally, of the Doctor's!"
+
+I stared at him in amazement.
+
+"If we are to attach any importance to the incident at all,"
+I said, "we must remember that the boy's impression--and Karamaneh's--
+was that Fu-Manchu was present in person."
+
+"I DO attach importance to the incident, Petrie; they are naturally
+sensitive to such impressions.  But I doubt if even the abnormal
+organization of Aziz could distinguish between the hidden presence
+of a creature of the Doctor's and that of the Doctor himself.
+I shall make a point of calling upon Professor Jenner Monde."
+
+But Fate had ordained that much should happen ere Smith made
+his proposed call upon the Professor.
+
+Karamaneh and her brother safely lodged in their hotel
+(which was watched night and day by four men under Smith's
+orders), we returned to my quiet suburban rooms.
+
+"First," said Smith, "let us see what we can find out
+respecting Professor Monde."
+
+He went to the telephone and called up New Scotland Yard.
+There followed some little delay before the requisite information
+was obtained.  Finally, however, we learned that the Professor
+was something of a recluse, having few acquaintances,
+and fewer friends.
+
+He lived alone in chambers in New Inn Court, Carey Street.
+A charwoman did such cleaning as was considered necessary
+by the Professor, who employed no regular domestic.
+When he was in London he might be seen fairly frequently
+at the British Museum, where his shabby figure was familiar
+to the officials.  When he was not in London--that is,
+during the greater part of each year--no one knew where he went.
+He never left any address to which letters might be forwarded.
+
+"How long has he been in London now?" asked Smith.
+
+So far as could be ascertained from New Inn Court (replied Scotland Yard)
+roughly a week.
+
+My friend left the telephone and began restlessly to pace the room.
+The charred briar was produced and stuffed with that broad cut Latakia
+mixture of which Nayland Smith consumed close upon a pound a week.
+He was one of those untidy smokers who leave tangled tufts
+hanging from the pipe-bowl and when they light up strew the floor
+with smoldering fragments.
+
+A ringing came, and shortly afterwards a girl entered.
+
+"Mr. James Weymouth to see you, sir."
+
+"Hullo!" rapped Smith.  "What's this?"
+
+Weymouth entered, big and florid, and in some respects
+singularly like his brother, in others as singularly unlike.
+Now, in his black suit, he was a somber figure; and in the blue
+eyes I read a fear suppressed.
+
+"Mr. Smith," he began, "there's something uncanny going on at Maple Cottage."
+
+Smith wheeled the big arm-chair forward.
+
+"Sit down, Mr. Weymouth," he said.  "I am not entirely surprised.
+But you have my attention.  What has occurred?"
+
+Weymouth took a cigarette from the box which I proffered and poured
+out a peg of whisky.  His hand was not quite steady.
+
+"That knocking," he explained.  "It came again the night
+after you were there, and Mrs. Weymouth--my wife, I mean--
+felt that she couldn't spend another night there, alone." 
+
+"Did she look out of the window?" I asked.
+
+"No, Doctor; she was afraid.  But I spent last night downstairs
+in the sitting-room--and _I_ looked out!"
+
+He took a gulp from his glass.  Nayland Smith, seated on
+the edge of the table, his extinguished pipe in his hand,
+was watching him keenly.
+
+"I'll admit I didn't look out at once," Weymouth resumed.
+"There was something so uncanny, gentlemen, in that knocking--
+knocking--in the dead of the night.  I thought"--his voice
+shook--"of poor Jack, lying somewhere amongst the slime
+of the river--and, oh, my God!  it came to me that it was Jack
+who was knocking--and I dare not think what he--what it--
+would look like!"
+
+He leaned forward, his chin in his hand.  For a few moments we
+were all silent.
+
+"I know I funked," he continued huskily.  "But when the wife came
+to the head of the stairs and whispered to me:  `There it is again.
+What in heaven's name can it be'--I started to unbolt the door.
+The knocking had stopped.  Everything was very still.
+I heard Mary--HIS widow--sobbing, upstairs; that was all.
+I opened the door, a little bit at a time."
+
+Pausing again, he cleared his throat, and went on:
+
+"It was a bright night, and there was no one there--not a soul.
+But somewhere down the lane, as I looked out into the porch, I heard
+most awful groans!  They got fainter and fainter.  Then--I could
+have sworn I heard SOMEONE LAUGHING!  My nerves cracked up at that;
+and I shut the door again."
+
+The narration of his weird experience revived something of the natural
+fear which it had occasioned.  He raised his glass, with unsteady hand,
+and drained it.
+
+Smith struck a match and relighted his pipe.  He began to pace
+the room again.  His eyes were literally on fire.
+
+"Would it be possible to get Mrs. Weymouth out of the house
+before to-night?  Remove her to your place, for instance?"
+he asked abruptly.
+
+Weymouth looked up in surprise.
+
+"She seems to be in a very low state," he replied.  He glanced at me.
+"Perhaps Dr. Petrie would give us an opinion?"
+
+"I will come and see her," I said.  "But what is your idea, Smith?"
+
+"I want to hear that knocking!" he rapped.  "But in what I may see fit
+to do I must not be handicapped by the presence of a sick woman."
+
+"Her condition at any rate will admit of our administering an opiate,"
+I suggested.  "That would meet the situation?"
+
+"Good!" cried Smith.  He was intensely excited now.
+"I rely upon you to arrange something, Petrie.  Mr. Weymouth"--
+he turned to our visitor--"I shall be with you this evening
+not later than twelve o'clock."
+
+Weymouth appeared to be greatly relieved.  I asked him
+to wait whilst I prepared a draught for the patient.
+When he was gone:
+
+"What do you think this knocking means, Smith?" I asked.
+
+He tapped out his pipe on the side of the grate and began with nervous
+energy to refill it again from the dilapidated pouch.
+
+"I dare not tell you what I hope, Petrie," he replied--
+"nor what I fear."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+DUSK was falling when we made our way in the direction of Maple Cottage.
+Nayland Smith appeared to be keenly interested in the character
+of the district.  A high and ancient wall bordered the road along
+which we walked for a considerable distance.  Later it gave place
+to a rickety fence.
+
+My friend peered through a gap in the latter.
+
+"There is quite an extensive estate here," he said, "not yet
+cut up by the builder.  It is well wooded on one side,
+and there appears to be a pool lower down."
+
+The road was a quiet one, and we plainly heard the tread--
+quite unmistakable--of an approaching policeman.
+Smith continued to peer through the hole in the fence,
+until the officer drew up level with us.  Then:
+
+"Does this piece of ground extend down to the village,
+constable?" he inquired.
+
+Quite willing for a chat, the man stopped, and stood with his thumbs
+thrust in his belt.
+
+"Yes, sir.  They tell me three new roads will be made through it
+between here and the hill."
+
+"It must be a happy hunting ground for tramps?"
+
+"I've seen some suspicious-looking coves about at times.
+But after dusk an army might be inside there and nobody would
+ever be the wiser."
+
+"Burglaries frequent in the houses backing on to it?"
+
+"Oh, no.  A favorite game in these parts is snatching
+loaves and bottles of milk from the doors, first thing,
+as they're delivered.  There's been an extra lot of it lately.
+My mate who relieves me has got special instructions
+to keep his eye open in the mornings!"  The man grinned.
+"It wouldn't be a very big case even if he caught anybody!"
+"No," said Smith absently; "perhaps not.  Your business must
+be a dry one this warm weather.  Good-night."
+
+"Good-night, sir," replied the constable, richer by
+half-a-crown--"and thank you."
+
+Smith stared after him for a moment, tugging reflectively at the lobe
+of his ear.
+
+"I don't know that it wouldn't be a big case, after all," he murmured.
+"Come on, Petrie."
+
+Not another word did he speak, until we stood at the gate of Maple Cottage.
+There a plain-clothes man was standing, evidently awaiting Smith.
+He touched his hat.
+
+"Have you found a suitable hiding-place?" asked my companion rapidly.
+
+"Yes, sir," was the reply.  "Kent--my mate--is there now.
+You'll notice that he can't be seen from here."
+
+"No," agreed Smith, peering all about him.  "He can't. Where is he?"
+
+"Behind the broken wall," explained the man, pointing.
+"Through that ivy there's a clear view of the cottage door."
+
+"Good.  Keep your eyes open.  If a messenger comes for me, he is to
+be intercepted, you understand.  No one must be allowed to disturb us.
+You will recognize the messenger.  He will be one of your fellows.
+Should he come--hoot three times, as much like an owl as you can."
+
+We walked up to the porch of the cottage.  In response to Smith's ringing
+came James Weymouth, who seemed greatly relieved by our arrival.
+
+"First," said my friend briskly, "you had better run up and see the patient."
+
+Accordingly, I followed Weymouth upstairs and was admitted by his
+wife to a neat little bedroom where the grief-stricken woman lay,
+a wanly pathetic sight.
+
+"Did you administer the draught, as directed?" I asked.
+
+Mrs. James Weymouth nodded.  She was a kindly looking woman,
+with the same dread haunting her hazel eyes as that which lurked
+in her husband's blue ones.
+
+The patient was sleeping soundly.  Some whispered instructions I gave to
+the faithful nurse and descended to the sitting-room. It was a warm night,
+and Weymouth sat by the open window, smoking.  The dim light from the lamp
+on the table lent him an almost startling likeness to his brother; and for
+a moment I stood at the foot of the stairs scarce able to trust my reason.
+Then he turned his face fully towards me, and the illusion was lost.
+
+"Do you think she is likely to wake, Doctor?" he asked.
+
+"I think not," I replied.
+
+Nayland Smith stood upon the rug before the hearth, swinging from one
+foot to the other, in his nervously restless way.  The room was foggy
+with the fumes of tobacco, for he, too, was smoking.
+
+At intervals of some five to ten minutes, his blackened briar
+(which I never knew him to clean or scrape) would go out.
+I think Smith used more matches than any other smoker I have
+ever met, and he invariably carried three boxes in various
+pockets of his garments.
+
+The tobacco habit is infectious, and, seating myself in an arm-chair,
+I lighted a cigarette.  For this dreary vigil I had come prepared
+with a bunch of rough notes, a writing-block, and a fountain pen.
+I settled down to work upon my record of the Fu-Manchu case.
+
+Silence fell upon Maple Cottage.  Save for the shuddering sigh
+which whispered through the over-hanging cedars and Smith's eternal
+match-striking, nothing was there to disturb me in my task.
+Yet I could make little progress.  Between my mind and the chapter upon
+which I was at work a certain sentence persistently intruded itself.
+It was as though an unseen hand held the written page closely before my eyes.
+This was the sentence:
+
+"Imagine a person, tall, lean, and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow
+like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long,
+magnetic eyes of the true cat-green: invest him with all the cruel cunning
+of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect. . ."
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu!  Fu-Manchu as Smith had described him to me on that night
+which now seemed so remotely distant--the night upon which I had learned
+of the existence of the wonderful and evil being born of that secret
+quickening which stirred in the womb of the yellow races.
+
+As Smith, for the ninth or tenth time, knocked out his pipe on a bar
+of the grate, the cuckoo clock in the kitchen proclaimed the hour.
+
+"Two," said James Weymouth.
+
+I abandoned my task, replacing notes and writing-block in the bag that I
+had with me.  Weymouth adjusted the lamp which had begun to smoke.
+
+I tiptoed to the stairs and, stepping softly, ascended to the sick room.
+All was quiet, and Mrs. Weymouth whispered to me that the patient still
+slept soundly.  I returned to find Nayland Smith pacing about the room
+in that state of suppressed excitement habitual with him in the approach
+of any crisis.  At a quarter past two the breeze dropped entirely,
+and such a stillness reigned all about us as I could not have supposed
+possible so near to the ever-throbbing heart of the great metropolis.
+Plainly I could hear Weymouth's heavy breathing.  He sat at the window
+and looked out into the black shadows under the cedars.  Smith ceased
+his pacing and stood again on the rug very still.  He was listening!
+I doubt not we were all listening.
+
+Some faint sound broke the impressive stillness, coming from the direction
+of the village street.  It was a vague, indefinite disturbance,
+brief, and upon it ensued a silence more marked than ever.
+Some minutes before, Smith had extinguished the lamp.
+In the darkness I heard his teeth snap sharply together.
+
+The call of an owl sounded very clearly three times.
+
+I knew that to mean that a messenger had come; but from whence or bearing
+what tidings I knew not.  My friend's plans were incomprehensible to me,
+nor had I pressed him for any explanation of their nature, knowing him
+to be in that high-strung and somewhat irritable mood which claimed him
+at times of uncertainty--when he doubted the wisdom of his actions,
+the accuracy of his surmises.  He gave no sign.
+
+Very faintly I heard a clock strike the half-hour. A soft breeze
+stole again through the branches above.  The wind I thought must
+be in a new quarter since I had not heard the clock before.
+In so lonely a spot it was difficult to believe that the bell
+was that of St. Paul's. Yet such was the fact.
+
+And hard upon the ringing followed another sound--a sound we all had expected,
+had waited for; but at whose coming no one of us, I think, retained complete
+mastery of himself.
+
+Breaking up the silence in a manner that set my heart wildly leaping it came--
+an imperative knocking on the door!
+
+"My God!" groaned Weymouth--but he did not move from his position
+at the window.
+
+"Stand by, Petrie!" said Smith.
+
+He strode to the door--and threw it widely open.
+
+I know I was very pale.  I think I cried out as I fell back--
+retreated with clenched hands from before THAT which stood
+on the threshold.
+
+It was a wild, unkempt figure, with straggling beard, hideously staring eyes.
+With its hands it clutched at its hair--at its chin; plucked at its mouth.
+No moonlight touched the features of this unearthly visitant,
+but scanty as was the illumination we could see the gleaming teeth--
+and the wildly glaring eyes.
+
+It began to laugh--peal after peal--hideous and shrill.
+
+Nothing so terrifying had ever smote upon my ears.
+I was palsied by the horror of the sound.
+
+Then Nayland Smith pressed the button of an electric torch which he carried.
+He directed the disk of white light fully upon the face in the doorway.
+
+"Oh, God!" cried Weymouth.  "It's John!"--and again and again:
+"Oh, God!  Oh, God!"
+
+Perhaps for the first time in my life I really believed (nay, I
+could not doubt) that a thing of another world stood before me.
+I am ashamed to confess the extent of the horror that came upon me.
+James Weymouth raised his hands, as if to thrust away from him
+that awful thing in the door.  He was babbling--prayers, I think,
+but wholly incoherent.
+
+"Hold him, Petrie!"
+
+Smith's voice was low.  (When we were past thought or intelligent action,
+he, dominant and cool, with that forced calm for which, a crisis over,
+he always paid so dearly, was thinking of the woman who slept above.)
+
+He leaped forward; and in the instant that he grappled with
+the one who had knocked I knew the visitant for a man of flesh
+and blood--a man who shrieked and fought like a savage animal,
+foamed at the mouth and gnashed his teeth in horrid frenzy;
+knew him for a madman--knew him for the victim of Fu-Manchu--
+not dead, but living--for Inspector Weymouth--a maniac!
+
+In a flash I realized all this and sprang to Smith's assistance.
+There was a sound of racing footsteps and the men who had been
+watching outside came running into the porch.  A third was with them;
+and the five of us (for Weymouth's brother had not yet grasped
+the fact that a man and not a spirit shrieked and howled in our midst)
+clung to the infuriated madman, yet barely held our own with him.
+
+"The syringe, Petrie!" gasped Smith.  "Quick!  You must manage
+to make an injection!"
+
+I extricated myself and raced into the cottage for my bag.
+A hypodermic syringe ready charged I had brought with me
+at Smith's request.  Even in that thrilling moment I could
+find time to admire the wonderful foresight of my friend,
+who had divined what would befall--isolated the strange,
+pitiful truth from the chaotic circumstances which saw us
+at Maple Cottage that night.
+
+Let me not enlarge upon the end of the awful struggle.
+At one time I despaired (we all despaired) of quieting the poor,
+demented creature.  But at last it was done; and the gaunt,
+blood-stained savage whom we had known as Detective-Inspector
+Weymouth lay passive upon the couch in his own sitting-room. A
+great wonder possessed my mind for the genius of the uncanny
+being who with the scratch of a needle had made a brave
+and kindly man into this unclean, brutish thing.
+
+Nayland Smith, gaunt and wild-eyed, and trembling yet with his
+tremendous exertions, turned to the man whom I knew to be
+the messenger from Scotland Yard.
+
+"Well?" he rapped.
+
+"He is arrested, sir," the detective reported.  "They have kept
+him at his chambers as you ordered."
+
+"Has she slept through it?" said Smith to me.
+(I had just returned from a visit to the room above.) I nodded.
+
+"Is HE safe for an hour or two?"--indicating the figure on the couch.
+"For eight or ten," I replied grimly.
+
+"Come, then.  Our night's labors are not nearly complete."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+LATER was forthcoming evidence to show that poor Weymouth had lived
+a wild life, in hiding among the thick bushes of the tract of land
+which lay between the village and the suburb on the neighboring hill.
+Literally, he had returned to primitive savagery and some of his food
+had been that of the lower animals, though he had not scrupled to steal,
+as we learned when his lair was discovered.
+
+He had hidden himself cunningly; but witnesses appeared who had seen him,
+in the dusk, and fled from him.  They never learned that the object
+of their fear was Inspector John Weymouth.  How, having escaped death
+in the Thames, he had crossed London unobserved, we never knew;
+but his trick of knocking upon his own door at half-past two each morning
+(a sort of dawning of sanity mysteriously linked with old custom)
+will be a familiar class of symptom to all students of alienation.
+
+I revert to the night when Smith solved the mystery of the knocking.
+
+In a car which he had in waiting at the end of the village we sped
+through the deserted streets to New Inn Court.  I, who had followed
+Nayland Smith through the failures and successes of his mission,
+knew that to-night he had surpassed himself; had justified the confidence
+placed in him by the highest authorities.
+
+We were admitted to an untidy room--that of a student,
+a traveler and a crank--by a plain-clothes officer.
+Amid picturesque and disordered fragments of a hundred ages,
+in a great carven chair placed before a towering statue
+of the Buddha, sat a hand-cuffed man.  His white hair
+and beard were patriarchal; his pose had great dignity.
+But his expression was entirely masked by the smoked glasses
+which he wore.
+
+Two other detectives were guarding the prisoner.
+
+"We arrested Professor Jenner Monde as he came in, sir,"
+reported the man who had opened the door.  "He has made no statement.
+I hope there isn't a mistake."
+
+"I hope not," rapped Smith.
+
+He strode across the room.  He was consumed by a fever of excitement.
+Almost savagely, he tore away the beard, tore off the snowy wig dashed
+the smoked glasses upon the floor.
+
+A great, high brow was revealed, and green, malignant eyes, which fixed
+themselves upon him with an expression I never can forget.
+
+IT WAS DR. FU-MANCHU!
+
+One intense moment of silence ensued--of silence which seemed
+to throb.  Then:
+
+"What have you done with Professor Monde?" demanded Smith.
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu showed his even, yellow teeth in the singularly evil
+smile which I knew so well.  A manacled prisoner he sat as unruffled
+as a judge upon the bench.  In truth and in justice I am compelled
+to say that Fu-Manchu was absolutely fearless.
+
+"He has been detained in China," he replied, in smooth,
+sibilant tones--"by affairs of great urgency.  His well-known
+personality and ungregarious habits have served me well, here!"
+
+Smith, I could see, was undetermined how to act; he stood tugging at his ear
+and glancing from the impassive Chinaman to the wondering detectives.
+
+"What are we to do, sir?" one of them asked.
+
+"Leave Dr. Petrie and myself alone with the prisoner, until I call you."
+
+The three withdrew.  I divined now what was coming.
+
+"Can you restore Weymouth's sanity?" rapped Smith abruptly.
+"I cannot save you from the hangman, nor"--his fists clenched
+convulsively--"would I if I could; but--"
+
+Fu-Manchu fixed his brilliant eyes upon him.
+
+"Say no more, Mr. Smith," he interrupted; "you misunderstand me.
+I do not quarrel with that, but what I have done from conviction
+and what I have done of necessity are separated--are seas apart.
+The brave Inspector Weymouth I wounded with a poisoned needle,
+in self-defense; but I regret his condition as greatly as you do.
+I respect such a man.  There is an antidote to the poison
+of the needle."
+
+"Name it," said Smith.
+
+Fu-Manchu smiled again.
+
+"Useless," he replied.  "I alone can prepare it.  My secrets
+shall die with me.  I will make a sane man of Inspector Weymouth,
+but no one else shall be in the house but he and I."
+
+"It will be surrounded by police," interrupted Smith grimly.
+
+"As you please," said Fu-Manchu. "Make your arrangements.
+In that ebony case upon the table are the instruments for the cure.
+Arrange for me to visit him where and when you will--"
+
+"I distrust you utterly.  It is some trick," jerked Smith.
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu rose slowly and drew himself up to his great height.
+His manacled hands could not rob him of the uncanny dignity which was his.
+He raised them above his head with a tragic gesture and fixed his piercing
+gaze upon Nayland Smith.
+
+"The God of Cathay hear me," he said, with a deep, guttural note
+in his voice--"I swear--"
+
+
+The most awful visitor who ever threatened the peace of England, the end
+of the visit of Fu-Manchu was characteristic--terrible--inexplicable.
+
+Strange to relate, I did not doubt that this weird
+being had conceived some kind of admiration or respect
+for the man to whom he had wrought so terrible an injury.
+He was capable of such sentiments, for he entertained some
+similar one in regard to myself.
+
+A cottage farther down the village street than Weymouth's was vacant, and in
+the early dawn of that morning became the scene of outre happenings.
+Poor Weymouth, still in a comatose condition, we removed there (Smith having
+secured the key from the astonished agent). I suppose so strange a specialist
+never visited a patient before--certainly not under such conditions.
+
+For into the cottage, which had been entirely surrounded by a ring
+of police, Dr. Fu-Manchu was admitted from the closed car in which,
+his work of healing complete, he was to be borne to prison--to death!
+
+Law and justice were suspended by my royally empowered friend that the enemy
+of the white race might heal one of those who had hunted him down!
+
+No curious audience was present, for sunrise was not yet come;
+no concourse of excited students followed the hand of the Master;
+but within that surrounded cottage was performed one of those
+miracles of science which in other circumstances had made the fame
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu to live forever.
+
+Inspector Weymouth, dazed, disheveled, clutching his head
+as a man who has passed through the Valley of the Shadow--
+but sane--sane!--walked out into the porch!
+
+He looked towards us--his eyes wild, but not with the fearsome
+wildness of insanity.
+
+"Mr. Smith!" he cried--and staggered down the path--"Dr. Petrie!  What--"
+
+There came a deafening explosion.  From EVERY visible window
+of the deserted cottage flames burst forth!
+
+"QUICK!" Smith's voice rose almost to a scream--"into the house!"
+
+He raced up the path, past Inspector Weymouth, who stood
+swaying there like a drunken man.  I was close upon his heels.
+Behind me came the police.
+
+The door was impassable!  Already, it vomited a deathly heat,
+borne upon stifling fumes like those of the mouth of the Pit.
+We burst a window.  The room within was a furnace!
+
+"My God!" cried someone.  "This is supernatural!"
+
+"Listen!" cried another.  "Listen!"
+
+The crowd which a fire can conjure up at any hour of day
+or night, out of the void of nowhere, was gathering already.
+But upon all descended a pall of silence.
+
+From the heat of the holocaust a voice proclaimed itself--a voice raised,
+not in anguish but in TRIUMPH!  It chanted barbarically--and was still.
+
+The abnormal flames rose higher--leaping forth from every window.
+
+"The alarm!" said Smith hoarsely.  "Call up the brigade!"
+
+
+I come to the close of my chronicle, and feel that I betray a trust--
+the trust of my reader.  For having limned in the colors at my
+command the fiendish Chinese doctor, I am unable to conclude my task
+as I should desire, unable, with any consciousness of finality,
+to write Finis to the end of my narrative.
+
+It seems to me sometimes that my pen is but temporarily idle--that I
+have but dealt with a single phase of a movement having a hundred phases.
+One sequel I hope for, and against all the promptings of logic and
+Western bias.  If my hope shall be realized I cannot, at this time,
+pretend to state.
+
+The future, 'mid its many secrets, holds this precious one from me.
+
+I ask you then, to absolve me from the charge of ill completing my work;
+for any curiosity with which this narrative may leave the reader burdened
+is shared by the writer.
+
+With intent, I have rushed you from the chambers of Professor
+Jenner Monde to that closing episode at the deserted cottage;
+I have made the pace hot in order to impart to these last
+pages of my account something of the breathless scurry which
+characterized those happenings.
+
+My canvas may seem sketchy:  it is my impression of the reality.
+No hard details remain in my mind of the dealings of that night.
+Fu-Manchu arrested--Fu-Manchu, manacled, entering the cottage on his
+mission of healing; Weymouth, miraculously rendered sane, coming forth;
+the place in flames.
+
+And then?
+
+To a shell the cottage burned, with an incredible rapidity
+which pointed to some hidden agency; to a shell about ashes
+which held NO TRACE OF HUMAN BONES!
+
+It has been asked of me:  Was there no possibility of
+Fu-Manchu's having eluded us in the ensuing confusion?
+Was there no loophole of escape?
+
+I reply, that so far as I was able to judge, a rat could scarce
+have quitted the building undetected.  Yet that Fu-Manchu had,
+in some incomprehensible manner and by some mysterious agency,
+produced those abnormal flames, I cannot doubt.
+Did he voluntarily ignite his own funeral pyre?
+
+As I write, there lies before me a soiled and creased sheet of vellum.
+It bears some lines traced in a cramped, peculiar, and all but
+illegible hand.  This fragment was found by Inspector Weymouth
+(to this day a man mentally sound) in a pocket of his ragged garments.
+
+When it was written I leave you to judge.  How it came to be where Weymouth
+found it calls for no explanation:
+
+
+"To Mr. Commissioner NAYLAND SMITH and Dr. PETRIE--
+
+"Greeting!  I am recalled home by One who may not be denied.
+In much that I came to do I have failed.  Much that I
+have done I would undo; some little I have undone.
+Out of fire I came--the smoldering fire of a thing one day
+to be a consuming flame; in fire I go.  Seek not my ashes.
+I am the lord of the fires!  Farewell.
+
+"FU-MANCHU."
+
+
+Who has been with me in my several meetings with the man
+who penned that message I leave to adjudge if it be the letter
+of a madman bent upon self-destruction by strange means,
+or the gibe of a preternaturally clever scientist and the most
+elusive being ever born of the land of mystery--China.
+
+For the present, I can aid you no more in the forming of your verdict.
+A day may come though I pray it do not--when I shall be able to throw
+new light upon much that is dark in this matter.  That day, so far as I
+can judge, could only dawn in the event of the Chinaman's survival;
+therefore I pray that the veil be never lifted.
+
+But, as I have said, there is another sequel to this story
+which I can contemplate with a different countenance.
+How, then, shall I conclude this very unsatisfactory account?
+
+Shall I tell you, finally, of my parting with lovely, dark-eyed Karamaneh,
+on board the liner which was to bear her to Egypt?
+
+No, let me, instead, conclude with the words of Nayland Smith:
+
+"_I_ sail for Burma in a fortnight, Petrie.  I have leave to break my
+journey at the Ditch.  How would a run up the Nile fit your programme?
+Bit early for the season, but you might find something to amuse you!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, by Sax Rohmer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu
+
+Author: Sax Rohmer
+
+Release Date: May 24, 2008 [EBook #173]
+[Last updated: October 13, 2012]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INSIDIOUS DR. FU-MANCHU ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+This etext was updated by Stewart A. Levin of Englewood, CO.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H1 ALIGN="center">
+The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu
+</H1>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+by
+</H3>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+Sax Rohmer
+</H2>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CONTENTS
+</H2>
+
+<P>
+<TABLE ALIGN="center" WIDTH="100%">
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="20%">
+<A HREF="#chap01">CHAPTER I</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="20%">
+<A HREF="#chap02">CHAPTER II</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="20%">
+<A HREF="#chap03">CHAPTER III</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="20%">
+<A HREF="#chap04">CHAPTER IV</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="20%">
+<A HREF="#chap05">CHAPTER V</A>
+</TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap06">CHAPTER VI</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap07">CHAPTER VII</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap08">CHAPTER VIII</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap09">CHAPTER IX</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap10">CHAPTER X</A>
+</TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap11">CHAPTER XI</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap12">CHAPTER XII</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap13">CHAPTER XIII</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap14">CHAPTER XIV</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap15">CHAPTER XV</A>
+</TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap16">CHAPTER XVI</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap17">CHAPTER XVII</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap18">CHAPTER XVIII</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap19">CHAPTER XIX</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap20">CHAPTER XX</A>
+</TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap21">CHAPTER XXI</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap22">CHAPTER XXII</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap23">CHAPTER XXIII</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap24">CHAPTER XXIV</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap25">CHAPTER XXV</A>
+</TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap26">CHAPTER XXVI</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap27">CHAPTER XXVII</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap28">CHAPTER XXVIII</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap29">CHAPTER XXIX</A>
+</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap30">CHAPTER XXX</A>
+</TD>
+</TR>
+
+</TABLE>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap01"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER I
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"A GENTLEMAN to see you, Doctor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From across the common a clock sounded the half-hour.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ten-thirty!" I said.  "A late visitor.  Show him up, if you please."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I pushed my writing aside and tilted the lamp-shade, as footsteps
+sounded on the landing.  The next moment I had jumped to my feet, for a
+tall, lean man, with his square-cut, clean-shaven face sun-baked to the
+hue of coffee, entered and extended both hands, with a cry:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good old Petrie!  Didn't expect me, I'll swear!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was Nayland Smith&mdash;whom I had thought to be in Burma!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smith," I said, and gripped his hands hard, "this is a delightful
+surprise!  Whatever&mdash;however&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Excuse me, Petrie!" he broke in.  "Don't put it down to the sun!" And
+he put out the lamp, plunging the room into darkness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was too surprised to speak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No doubt you will think me mad," he continued, and, dimly, I could see
+him at the window, peering out into the road, "but before you are many
+hours older you will know that I have good reason to be cautious.  Ah,
+nothing suspicious!  Perhaps I am first this time."  And, stepping back
+to the writing-table he relighted the lamp.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mysterious enough for you?" he laughed, and glanced at my unfinished
+MS.  "A story, eh?  From which I gather that the district is beastly
+healthy&mdash;what, Petrie?  Well, I can put some material in your way that,
+if sheer uncanny mystery is a marketable commodity, ought to make you
+independent of influenza and broken legs and shattered nerves and all
+the rest."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I surveyed him doubtfully, but there was nothing in his appearance to
+justify me in supposing him to suffer from delusions.  His eyes were
+too bright, certainly, and a hardness now had crept over his face.  I
+got out the whisky and siphon, saying:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have taken your leave early?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am not on leave," he replied, and slowly filled his pipe.  "I am on
+duty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"On duty!" I exclaimed.  "What, are you moved to London or something?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have got a roving commission, Petrie, and it doesn't rest with me
+where I am to-day nor where I shall be to-morrow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was something ominous in the words, and, putting down my glass,
+its contents untasted, I faced round and looked him squarely in the
+eyes.  "Out with it!" I said.  "What is it all about?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith suddenly stood up and stripped off his coat.  Rolling back his
+left shirt-sleeve he revealed a wicked-looking wound in the fleshy part
+of the forearm.  It was quite healed, but curiously striated for an
+inch or so around.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ever seen one like it?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not exactly," I confessed.  "It appears to have been deeply
+cauterized."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Right!  Very deeply!" he rapped.  "A barb steeped in the venom of a
+hamadryad went in there!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A shudder I could not repress ran coldly through me at mention of that
+most deadly of all the reptiles of the East.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's only one treatment," he continued, rolling his sleeve down
+again, "and that's with a sharp knife, a match, and a broken cartridge.
+I lay on my back, raving, for three days afterwards, in a forest that
+stank with malaria, but I should have been lying there now if I had
+hesitated.  Here's the point.  It was not an accident!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you mean?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean that it was a deliberate attempt on my life, and I am hard upon
+the tracks of the man who extracted that venom&mdash;patiently, drop by
+drop&mdash;from the poison-glands of the snake, who prepared that arrow, and
+who caused it to be shot at me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What fiend is this?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A fiend who, unless my calculations are at fault is now in London, and
+who regularly wars with pleasant weapons of that kind.  Petrie, I have
+traveled from Burma not in the interests of the British Government
+merely, but in the interests of the entire white race, and I honestly
+believe&mdash;though I pray I may be wrong&mdash;that its survival depends
+largely upon the success of my mission."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To say that I was perplexed conveys no idea of the mental chaos created
+by these extraordinary statements, for into my humdrum suburban life
+Nayland Smith had brought fantasy of the wildest.  I did not know what
+to think, what to believe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am wasting precious time!" he rapped decisively, and, draining his
+glass, he stood up.  "I came straight to you, because you are the only
+man I dare to trust.  Except the big chief at headquarters, you are the
+only person in England, I hope, who knows that Nayland Smith has
+quitted Burma.  I must have someone with me, Petrie, all the time&mdash;it's
+imperative!  Can you put me up here, and spare a few days to the
+strangest business, I promise you, that ever was recorded in fact or
+fiction?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I agreed readily enough, for, unfortunately, my professional duties
+were not onerous.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good man!" he cried, wringing my hand in his impetuous way.  "We start
+now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What, to-night?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To-night!  I had thought of turning in, I must admit.  I have not
+dared to sleep for forty-eight hours, except in fifteen-minute
+stretches.  But there is one move that must be made to-night and
+immediately.  I must warn Sir Crichton Davey."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sir Crichton Davey&mdash;of the India&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Petrie, he is a doomed man!  Unless he follows my instructions without
+question, without hesitation&mdash;before Heaven, nothing can save him!  I
+do not know when the blow will fall, how it will fall, nor from whence,
+but I know that my first duty is to warn him.  Let us walk down to the
+corner of the common and get a taxi."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How strangely does the adventurous intrude upon the humdrum; for, when
+it intrudes at all, more often than not its intrusion is sudden and
+unlooked for.  To-day, we may seek for romance and fail to find it:
+unsought, it lies in wait for us at most prosaic corners of life's
+highway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The drive that night, though it divided the drably commonplace from the
+wildly bizarre&mdash;though it was the bridge between the ordinary and the
+outre&mdash;has left no impression upon my mind.  Into the heart of a weird
+mystery the cab bore me; and in reviewing my memories of those days I
+wonder that the busy thoroughfares through which we passed did not
+display before my eyes signs and portents&mdash;warnings.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was not so.  I recall nothing of the route and little of import that
+passed between us (we both were strangely silent, I think) until we
+were come to our journey's end.  Then:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's this?" muttered my friend hoarsely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Constables were moving on a little crowd of curious idlers who pressed
+about the steps of Sir Crichton Davey's house and sought to peer in at
+the open door.  Without waiting for the cab to draw up to the curb,
+Nayland Smith recklessly leaped out and I followed close at his heels.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What has happened?" he demanded breathlessly of a constable.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The latter glanced at him doubtfully, but something in his voice and
+bearing commanded respect.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sir Crichton Davey has been killed, sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith lurched back as though he had received a physical blow, and
+clutched my shoulder convulsively.  Beneath the heavy tan his face had
+blanched, and his eyes were set in a stare of horror.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My God!" he whispered.  "I am too late!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With clenched fists he turned and, pressing through the group of
+loungers, bounded up the steps.  In the hall a man who unmistakably was
+a Scotland Yard official stood talking to a footman.  Other members of
+the household were moving about, more or less aimlessly, and the chilly
+hand of King Fear had touched one and all, for, as they came and went,
+they glanced ever over their shoulders, as if each shadow cloaked a
+menace, and listened, as it seemed, for some sound which they dreaded
+to hear.  Smith strode up to the detective and showed him a card, upon
+glancing at which the Scotland Yard man said something in a low voice,
+and, nodding, touched his hat to Smith in a respectful manner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A few brief questions and answers, and, in gloomy silence, we followed
+the detective up the heavily carpeted stair, along a corridor lined
+with pictures and busts, and into a large library.  A group of people
+were in this room, and one, in whom I recognized Chalmers Cleeve, of
+Harley Street, was bending over a motionless form stretched upon a
+couch.  Another door communicated with a small study, and through the
+opening I could see a man on all fours examining the carpet.  The
+uncomfortable sense of hush, the group about the physician, the bizarre
+figure crawling, beetle-like, across the inner room, and the grim hub,
+around which all this ominous activity turned, made up a scene that
+etched itself indelibly on my mind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As we entered Dr. Cleeve straightened himself, frowning thoughtfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Frankly, I do not care to venture any opinion at present regarding the
+immediate cause of death," he said.  "Sir Crichton was addicted to
+cocaine, but there are indications which are not in accordance with
+cocaine-poisoning. I fear that only a post-mortem can establish the
+facts&mdash;if," he added, "we ever arrive at them.  A most mysterious case!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith stepping forward and engaging the famous pathologist in
+conversation, I seized the opportunity to examine Sir Crichton's body.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dead man was in evening dress, but wore an old smoking-jacket. He
+had been of spare but hardy build, with thin, aquiline features, which
+now were oddly puffy, as were his clenched hands.  I pushed back his
+sleeve, and saw the marks of the hypodermic syringe upon his left arm.
+Quite mechanically I turned my attention to the right arm.  It was
+unscarred, but on the back of the hand was a faint red mark, not unlike
+the imprint of painted lips.  I examined it closely, and even tried to
+rub it off, but it evidently was caused by some morbid process of local
+inflammation, if it were not a birthmark.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Turning to a pale young man whom I had understood to be Sir Crichton's
+private secretary, I drew his attention to this mark, and inquired if
+it were constitutional.  "It is not, sir," answered Dr. Cleeve,
+overhearing my question.  "I have already made that inquiry.  Does it
+suggest anything to your mind?  I must confess that it affords me no
+assistance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing," I replied.  "It is most curious."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Excuse me, Mr. Burboyne," said Smith, now turning to the secretary,
+"but Inspector Weymouth will tell you that I act with authority.  I
+understand that Sir Crichton was&mdash;seized with illness in his study?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes&mdash;at half-past ten.  I was working here in the library, and he
+inside, as was our custom."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The communicating door was kept closed?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, always.  It was open for a minute or less about ten-twenty-five,
+when a message came for Sir Crichton.  I took it in to him, and he then
+seemed in his usual health."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What was the message?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I could not say.  It was brought by a district messenger, and he
+placed it beside him on the table.  It is there now, no doubt."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And at half-past ten?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sir Crichton suddenly burst open the door and threw himself, with a
+scream, into the library.  I ran to him but he waved me back.  His eyes
+were glaring horribly.  I had just reached his side when he fell,
+writhing, upon the floor.  He seemed past speech, but as I raised him
+and laid him upon the couch, he gasped something that sounded like 'The
+red hand!' Before I could get to bell or telephone he was dead!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Burboyne's voice shook as he spoke the words, and Smith seemed to
+find this evidence confusing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You do not think he referred to the mark on his own hand?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think not.  From the direction of his last glance, I feel sure he
+referred to something in the study."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What did you do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Having summoned the servants, I ran into the study. But there was
+absolutely nothing unusual to be seen.  The windows were closed and
+fastened.  He worked with closed windows in the hottest weather.  There
+is no other door, for the study occupies the end of a narrow wing, so
+that no one could possibly have gained access to it, whilst I was in
+the library, unseen by me.  Had someone concealed himself in the study
+earlier in the evening&mdash;and I am convinced that it offers no
+hiding-place&mdash;he could only have come out again by passing through
+here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith tugged at the lobe of his left ear, as was his habit when
+meditating.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You had been at work here in this way for some time?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes.  Sir Crichton was preparing an important book."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Had anything unusual occurred prior to this evening?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Mr. Burboyne, with evident perplexity; "though I attached
+no importance to it at the time.  Three nights ago Sir Crichton came
+out to me, and appeared very nervous; but at times his nerves&mdash;you
+know?  Well, on this occasion he asked me to search the study.  He had
+an idea that something was concealed there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Some THING or someone?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Something' was the word he used.  I searched, but fruitlessly, and he
+seemed quite satisfied, and returned to his work."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you, Mr. Burboyne.  My friend and I would like a few minutes'
+private investigation in the study."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap02"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER II
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+SIR CRICHTON DAVEY'S study was a small one, and a glance sufficed to
+show that, as the secretary had said, it offered no hiding-place. It
+was heavily carpeted, and over-full of Burmese and Chinese ornaments
+and curios, and upon the mantelpiece stood several framed photographs
+which showed this to be the sanctum of a wealthy bachelor who was no
+misogynist.  A map of the Indian Empire occupied the larger part of one
+wall.  The grate was empty, for the weather was extremely warm, and a
+green-shaded lamp on the littered writing-table afforded the only
+light.  The air was stale, for both windows were closed and fastened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith immediately pounced upon a large, square envelope that lay beside
+the blotting-pad. Sir Crichton had not even troubled to open it, but my
+friend did so.  It contained a blank sheet of paper!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smell!" he directed, handing the letter to me.  I raised it to my
+nostrils.  It was scented with some pungent perfume.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it?"  I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is a rather rare essential oil," was the reply, "which I have met
+with before, though never in Europe.  I begin to understand, Petrie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He tilted the lamp-shade and made a close examination of the scraps of
+paper, matches, and other debris that lay in the grate and on the
+hearth.  I took up a copper vase from the mantelpiece, and was
+examining it curiously, when he turned, a strange expression upon his
+face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Put that back, old man," he said quietly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Much surprised, I did as he directed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't touch anything in the room.  It may be dangerous."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Something in the tone of his voice chilled me, and I hastily replaced
+the vase, and stood by the door of the study, watching him search,
+methodically, every inch of the room&mdash;behind the books, in all the
+ornaments, in table drawers, in cupboards, on shelves.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That will do," he said at last.  "There is nothing here and I have no
+time to search farther."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We returned to the library.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Inspector Weymouth," said my friend, "I have a particular reason for
+asking that Sir Crichton's body be removed from this room at once and
+the library locked.  Let no one be admitted on any pretense whatever
+until you hear from me." It spoke volumes for the mysterious
+credentials borne by my friend that the man from Scotland Yard accepted
+his orders without demur, and, after a brief chat with Mr. Burboyne,
+Smith passed briskly downstairs.  In the hall a man who looked like a
+groom out of livery was waiting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you Wills?" asked Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was you who heard a cry of some kind at the rear of the house about
+the time of Sir Crichton's death?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, sir.  I was locking the garage door, and, happening to look up at
+the window of Sir Crichton's study, I saw him jump out of his chair.
+Where he used to sit at his writing, sir, you could see his shadow on
+the blind.  Next minute I heard a call out in the lane."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What kind of call?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man, whom the uncanny happening clearly had frightened, seemed
+puzzled for a suitable description.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A sort of wail, sir," he said at last.  "I never heard anything like
+it before, and don't want to again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Like this?" inquired Smith, and he uttered a low, wailing cry,
+impossible to describe.  Wills perceptibly shuddered; and, indeed, it
+was an eerie sound.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The same, sir, I think," he said, "but much louder."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That will do," said Smith, and I thought I detected a note of triumph
+in his voice.  "But stay!  Take us through to the back of the house."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man bowed and led the way, so that shortly we found ourselves in a
+small, paved courtyard.  It was a perfect summer's night, and the deep
+blue vault above was jeweled with myriads of starry points.  How
+impossible it seemed to reconcile that vast, eternal calm with the
+hideous passions and fiendish agencies which that night had loosed a
+soul upon the infinite.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Up yonder are the study windows, sir.  Over that wall on your left is
+the back lane from which the cry came, and beyond is Regent's Park."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are the study windows visible from there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes, sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who occupies the adjoining house?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Major-General Platt-Houston, sir; but the family is out of town."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Those iron stairs are a means of communication between the domestic
+offices and the servants' quarters, I take it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then send someone to make my business known to the Major-General's
+housekeeper; I want to examine those stairs."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Singular though my friend's proceedings appeared to me, I had ceased to
+wonder at anything.  Since Nayland Smith's arrival at my rooms I seemed
+to have been moving through the fitful phases of a nightmare.  My
+friend's account of how he came by the wound in his arm; the scene on
+our arrival at the house of Sir Crichton Davey; the secretary's story
+of the dying man's cry, "The red hand!"; the hidden perils of the
+study; the wail in the lane&mdash;all were fitter incidents of delirium than
+of sane reality.  So, when a white-faced butler made us known to a
+nervous old lady who proved to be the housekeeper of the next-door
+residence, I was not surprised at Smith's saying:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lounge up and down outside, Petrie.  Everyone has cleared off now.  It
+is getting late.  Keep your eyes open and be on your guard.  I thought
+I had the start, but he is here before me, and, what is worse, he
+probably knows by now that I am here, too."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With which he entered the house and left me out in the square, with
+leisure to think, to try to understand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The crowd which usually haunts the scene of a sensational crime had
+been cleared away, and it had been circulated that Sir Crichton had
+died from natural causes.  The intense heat having driven most of the
+residents out of town, practically I had the square to myself, and I
+gave myself up to a brief consideration of the mystery in which I so
+suddenly had found myself involved.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By what agency had Sir Crichton met his death?  Did Nayland Smith know?
+I rather suspected that he did.  What was the hidden significance of
+the perfumed envelope?  Who was that mysterious personage whom Smith so
+evidently dreaded, who had attempted his life, who, presumably, had
+murdered Sir Crichton?  Sir Crichton Davey, during the time that he had
+held office in India, and during his long term of service at home, had
+earned the good will of all, British and native alike.  Who was his
+secret enemy?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Something touched me lightly on the shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I turned, with my heart fluttering like a child's. This night's work
+had imposed a severe strain even upon my callous nerves.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A girl wrapped in a hooded opera-cloak stood at my elbow, and, as she
+glanced up at me, I thought that I never had seen a face so seductively
+lovely nor of so unusual a type.  With the skin of a perfect blonde,
+she had eyes and lashes as black as a Creole's, which, together with
+her full red lips, told me that this beautiful stranger, whose touch
+had so startled me, was not a child of our northern shores.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Forgive me," she said, speaking with an odd, pretty accent, and laying
+a slim hand, with jeweled fingers, confidingly upon my arm, "if I
+startled you.  But&mdash;is it true that Sir Crichton Davey has
+been&mdash;murdered?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I looked into her big, questioning eyes, a harsh suspicion laboring in
+my mind, but could read nothing in their mysterious depths&mdash;only I
+wondered anew at my questioner's beauty.  The grotesque idea
+momentarily possessed me that, were the bloom of her red lips due to
+art and not to nature, their kiss would leave&mdash;though not
+indelibly&mdash;just such a mark as I had seen upon the dead man's hand.
+But I dismissed the fantastic notion as bred of the night's horrors,
+and worthy only of a mediaeval legend.  No doubt she was some friend or
+acquaintance of Sir Crichton who lived close by.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I cannot say that he has been murdered," I replied, acting upon the
+latter supposition, and seeking to tell her what she asked as gently as
+possible.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But he is&mdash;Dead?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She closed her eyes and uttered a low, moaning sound, swaying dizzily.
+Thinking she was about to swoon, I threw my arm round her shoulder to
+support her, but she smiled sadly, and pushed me gently away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am quite well, thank you," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are certain?  Let me walk with you until you feel quite sure of
+yourself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She shook her head, flashed a rapid glance at me with her beautiful
+eyes, and looked away in a sort of sorrowful embarrassment, for which I
+was entirely at a loss to account.  Suddenly she resumed:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I cannot let my name be mentioned in this dreadful matter, but&mdash;I
+think I have some information&mdash;for the police.  Will you give this
+to&mdash;whomever you think proper?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She handed me a sealed envelope, again met my eyes with one of her
+dazzling glances, and hurried away.  She had gone no more than ten or
+twelve yards, and I still was standing bewildered, watching her
+graceful, retreating figure, when she turned abruptly and came back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without looking directly at me, but alternately glancing towards a
+distant corner of the square and towards the house of Major-General
+Platt-Houston, she made the following extraordinary request:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you would do me a very great service, for which I always would be
+grateful,"&mdash;she glanced at me with passionate intentness&mdash;"when you
+have given my message to the proper person, leave him and do not go
+near him any more to-night!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before I could find words to reply she gathered up her cloak and ran.
+Before I could determine whether or not to follow her (for her words
+had aroused anew all my worst suspicions) she had disappeared!  I heard
+the whir of a restarted motor at no great distance, and, in the instant
+that Nayland Smith came running down the steps, I knew that I had
+nodded at my post.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smith!"  I cried as he joined me, "tell me what we must do!" And
+rapidly I acquainted him with the incident.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My friend looked very grave; then a grim smile crept round his lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She was a big card to play," he said; "but he did not know that I held
+one to beat it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What!  You know this girl!  Who is she?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She is one of the finest weapons in the enemy's armory, Petrie.  But a
+woman is a two-edged sword, and treacherous.  To our great good
+fortune, she has formed a sudden predilection, characteristically
+Oriental, for yourself.  Oh, you may scoff, but it is evident.  She was
+employed to get this letter placed in my hands.  Give it to me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I did so.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She has succeeded.  Smell."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He held the envelope under my nose, and, with a sudden sense of nausea,
+I recognized the strange perfume.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know what this presaged in Sir Crichton's case?  Can you doubt any
+longer?  She did not want you to share my fate, Petrie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smith," I said unsteadily, "I have followed your lead blindly in this
+horrible business and have not pressed for an explanation, but I must
+insist before I go one step farther upon knowing what it all means."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just a few steps farther," he rejoined; "as far as a cab.  We are
+hardly safe here.  Oh, you need not fear shots or knives.  The man
+whose servants are watching us now scorns to employ such clumsy,
+tell-tale weapons."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Only three cabs were on the rank, and, as we entered the first,
+something hissed past my ear, missed both Smith and me by a miracle,
+and, passing over the roof of the taxi, presumably fell in the enclosed
+garden occupying the center of the square.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What was that?" I cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Get in&mdash;quickly!"  Smith rapped back.  "It was attempt number one!
+More than that I cannot say.  Don't let the man hear.  He has noticed
+nothing.  Pull up the window on your side, Petrie, and look out behind.
+Good!  We've started."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The cab moved off with a metallic jerk, and I turned and looked back
+through the little window in the rear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Someone has got into another cab.  It is following ours, I think."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith lay back and laughed unmirthfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Petrie," he said, "if I escape alive from this business I shall know
+that I bear a charmed life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I made no reply, as he pulled out the dilapidated pouch and filled his
+pipe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have asked me to explain matters," he continued, "and I will do so
+to the best of my ability.  You no doubt wonder why a servant of the
+British Government, lately stationed in Burma, suddenly appears in
+London, in the character of a detective.  I am here, Petrie&mdash;and I bear
+credentials from the very highest sources&mdash;because, quite by accident,
+I came upon a clew.  Following it up, in the ordinary course of
+routine, I obtained evidence of the existence and malignant activity of
+a certain man.  At the present stage of the case I should not be
+justified in terming him the emissary of an Eastern Power, but I may
+say that representations are shortly to be made to that Power's
+ambassador in London."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He paused and glanced back towards the pursuing cab.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is little to fear until we arrive home," he said calmly.
+"Afterwards there is much.  To continue:  This man, whether a fanatic
+or a duly appointed agent, is, unquestionably, the most malign and
+formidable personality existing in the known world today.  He is a
+linguist who speaks with almost equal facility in any of the civilized
+languages, and in most of the barbaric.  He is an adept in all the arts
+and sciences which a great university could teach him.  He also is an
+adept in certain obscure arts and sciences which no university of
+to-day can teach.  He has the brains of any three men of genius.
+Petrie, he is a mental giant."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You amaze me!" I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As to his mission among men.  Why did M. Jules Furneaux fall dead in a
+Paris opera house?  Because of heart failure?  No!  Because his last
+speech had shown that he held the key to the secret of Tongking.  What
+became of the Grand Duke Stanislaus?  Elopement?  Suicide?  Nothing of
+the kind.  He alone was fully alive to Russia's growing peril.  He
+alone knew the truth about Mongolia.  Why was Sir Crichton Davey
+murdered?  Because, had the work he was engaged upon ever seen the
+light it would have shown him to be the only living Englishman who
+understood the importance of the Tibetan frontiers.  I say to you
+solemnly, Petrie, that these are but a few.  Is there a man who would
+arouse the West to a sense of the awakening of the East, who would
+teach the deaf to hear, the blind to see, that the millions only await
+their leader?  He will die.  And this is only one phase of the devilish
+campaign.  The others I can merely surmise."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, Smith, this is almost incredible!  What perverted genius controls
+this awful secret movement?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow
+like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long,
+magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel
+cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect,
+with all the resources of science past and present, with all the
+resources, if you will, of a wealthy government&mdash;which, however,
+already has denied all knowledge of his existence.  Imagine that awful
+being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril
+incarnate in one man."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap03"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER III
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+I SANK into an arm-chair in my rooms and gulped down a strong peg of
+brandy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We have been followed here," I said.  "Why did you make no attempt to
+throw the pursuers off the track, to have them intercepted?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Useless, in the first place.  Wherever we went, HE would find us.  And
+of what use to arrest his creatures?  We could prove nothing against
+them.  Further, it is evident that an attempt is to be made upon my
+life to-night&mdash;and by the same means that proved so successful in the
+case of poor Sir Crichton."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His square jaw grew truculently prominent, and he leapt stormily to his
+feet, shaking his clenched fists towards the window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The villain!" he cried.  "The fiendishly clever villain!  I suspected
+that Sir Crichton was next, and I was right.  But I came too late,
+Petrie!  That hits me hard, old man.  To think that I knew and yet
+failed to save him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He resumed his seat, smoking hard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fu-Manchu has made the blunder common to all men of unusual genius,"
+he said.  "He has underrated his adversary.  He has not given me credit
+for perceiving the meaning of the scented messages.  He has thrown away
+one powerful weapon&mdash;to get such a message into my hands&mdash;and he thinks
+that once safe within doors, I shall sleep, unsuspecting, and die as
+Sir Crichton died.  But without the indiscretion of your charming
+friend, I should have known what to expect when I receive her
+'information'&mdash;which by the way, consists of a blank sheet of paper."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smith," I broke in, "who is she?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She is either Fu-Manchu's daughter, his wife, or his slave.  I am
+inclined to believe the last, for she has no will but his will,
+except"&mdash;with a quizzical glance&mdash;"in a certain instance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How can you jest with some awful thing&mdash;Heaven knows what&mdash;hanging
+over your head?  What is the meaning of these perfumed envelopes?  How
+did Sir Crichton die?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He died of the Zayat Kiss.  Ask me what that is and I reply 'I do not
+know.'  The zayats are the Burmese caravanserais, or rest-houses. Along
+a certain route&mdash;upon which I set eyes, for the first and only time,
+upon Dr. Fu-Manchu&mdash;travelers who use them sometimes die as Sir
+Crichton died, with nothing to show the cause of death but a little
+mark upon the neck, face, or limb, which has earned, in those parts,
+the title of the 'Zayat Kiss.' The rest-houses along that route are
+shunned now.  I have my theory and I hope to prove it to-night, if I
+live.  It will be one more broken weapon in his fiendish armory, and it
+is thus, and thus only, that I can hope to crush him.  This was my
+principal reason for not enlightening Dr. Cleeve.  Even walls have ears
+where Fu-Manchu is concerned, so I feigned ignorance of the meaning of
+the mark, knowing that he would be almost certain to employ the same
+methods upon some other victim.  I wanted an opportunity to study the
+Zayat Kiss in operation, and I shall have one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But the scented envelopes?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the swampy forests of the district I have referred to a rare
+species of orchid, almost green, and with a peculiar scent, is
+sometimes met with.  I recognized the heavy perfume at once.  I take it
+that the thing which kills the traveler is attracted by this orchid.
+You will notice that the perfume clings to whatever it touches.  I
+doubt if it can be washed off in the ordinary way.  After at least one
+unsuccessful attempt to kill Sir Crichton&mdash;you recall that he thought
+there was something concealed in his study on a previous
+occasion?&mdash;Fu-Manchu hit upon the perfumed envelopes.  He may have a
+supply of these green orchids in his possession&mdash;possibly to feed the
+creature."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What creature?  How could any kind of creature have got into Sir
+Crichton's room tonight?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You no doubt observed that I examined the grate of the study.  I found
+a fair quantity of fallen soot.  I at once assumed, since it appeared
+to be the only means of entrance, that something has been dropped down;
+and I took it for granted that the thing, whatever it was, must still
+be concealed either in the study or in the library.  But when I had
+obtained the evidence of the groom, Wills, I perceived that the cry
+from the lane or from the park was a signal.  I noted that the
+movements of anyone seated at the study table were visible, in shadow,
+on the blind, and that the study occupied the corner of a two-storied
+wing and, therefore, had a short chimney.  What did the signal mean?
+That Sir Crichton had leaped up from his chair, and either had received
+the Zayat Kiss or had seen the thing which someone on the roof had
+lowered down the straight chimney.  It was the signal to withdraw that
+deadly thing.  By means of the iron stairway at the rear of
+Major-General Platt-Houston's, I quite easily, gained access to the
+roof above Sir Crichton's study&mdash;and I found this."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Out from his pocket Nayland Smith drew a tangled piece of silk, mixed
+up with which were a brass ring and a number of unusually large-sized
+split-shot, nipped on in the manner usual on a fishing-line.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My theory proven," he resumed.  "Not anticipating a search on the
+roof, they had been careless.  This was to weight the line and to
+prevent the creature clinging to the walls of the chimney.  Directly it
+had dropped in the grate, however, by means of this ring I assume that
+the weighted line was withdrawn, and the thing was only held by one
+slender thread, which sufficed, though, to draw it back again when it
+had done its work.  It might have got tangled, of course, but they
+reckoned on its making straight up the carved leg of the writing-table
+for the prepared envelope.  From there to the hand of Sir
+Crichton&mdash;which, from having touched the envelope, would also be
+scented with the perfume&mdash;was a certain move."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My God!  How horrible!" I exclaimed, and glanced apprehensively into
+the dusky shadows of the room.  "What is your theory respecting this
+creature&mdash;what shape, what color&mdash;?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is something that moves rapidly and silently.  I will venture no
+more at present, but I think it works in the dark.  The study was dark,
+remember, save for the bright patch beneath the reading-lamp. I have
+observed that the rear of this house is ivy-covered right up to and
+above your bedroom.  Let us make ostentatious preparations to retire,
+and I think we may rely upon Fu-Manchu's servants to attempt my
+removal, at any rate&mdash;if not yours."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, my dear fellow, it is a climb of thirty-five feet at the very
+least."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You remember the cry in the back lane?  It suggested something to me,
+and I tested my idea&mdash;successfully.  It was the cry of a dacoit.  Oh,
+dacoity, though quiescent, is by no means extinct.  Fu-Manchu has
+dacoits in his train, and probably it is one who operates the Zayat
+Kiss, since it was a dacoit who watched the window of the study this
+evening.  To such a man an ivy-covered wall is a grand staircase."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The horrible events that followed are punctuated, in my mind, by the
+striking of a distant clock.  It is singular how trivialities thus
+assert themselves in moments of high tension.  I will proceed, then, by
+these punctuations, to the coming of the horror that it was written we
+should encounter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The clock across the common struck two.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Having removed all traces of the scent of the orchid from our hands
+with a solution of ammonia Smith and I had followed the programme laid
+down.  It was an easy matter to reach the rear of the house, by simply
+climbing a fence, and we did not doubt that seeing the light go out in
+the front, our unseen watcher would proceed to the back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The room was a large one, and we had made up my camp-bed at one end,
+stuffing odds and ends under the clothes to lend the appearance of a
+sleeper, which device we also had adopted in the case of the larger
+bed.  The perfumed envelope lay upon a little coffee table in the
+center of the floor, and Smith, with an electric pocket lamp, a
+revolver, and a brassey beside him, sat on cushions in the shadow of
+the wardrobe.  I occupied a post between the windows.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No unusual sound, so far, had disturbed the stillness of the night.
+Save for the muffled throb of the rare all-night cars passing the front
+of the house, our vigil had been a silent one.  The full moon had
+painted about the floor weird shadows of the clustering ivy, spreading
+the design gradually from the door, across the room, past the little
+table where the envelope lay, and finally to the foot of the bed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The distant clock struck a quarter-past two.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A slight breeze stirred the ivy, and a new shadow added itself to the
+extreme edge of the moon's design.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Something rose, inch by inch, above the sill of the westerly window.  I
+could see only its shadow, but a sharp, sibilant breath from Smith told
+me that he, from his post, could see the cause of the shadow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Every nerve in my body seemed to be strung tensely.  I was icy cold,
+expectant, and prepared for whatever horror was upon us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The shadow became stationary.  The dacoit was studying the interior of
+the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then it suddenly lengthened, and, craning my head to the left, I saw a
+lithe, black-clad form, surmounted by a Yellow face, sketchy in the
+moonlight, pressed against the window-panes!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One thin, brown hand appeared over the edge of the lowered sash, which
+it grasped&mdash;and then another.  The man made absolutely no sound
+whatever.  The second hand disappeared&mdash;and reappeared.  It held a
+small, square box.  There was a very faint CLICK.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dacoit swung himself below the window with the agility of an ape,
+as, with a dull, muffled thud, SOMETHING dropped upon the carpet!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stand still, for your life!" came Smith's voice, high-pitched.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A beam of white leaped out across the room and played full upon the
+coffee-table in the center.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Prepared as I was for something horrible, I know that I paled at sight
+of the thing that was running round the edge of the envelope.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was an insect, full six inches long, and of a vivid, venomous, red
+color!  It had something of the appearance of a great ant, with its
+long, quivering antennae and its febrile, horrible vitality; but it was
+proportionately longer of body and smaller of head, and had numberless
+rapidly moving legs.  In short, it was a giant centipede, apparently of
+the scolopendra group, but of a form quite new to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+These things I realized in one breathless instant; in the next&mdash;Smith
+had dashed the thing's poisonous life out with one straight, true blow
+of the golf club!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I leaped to the window and threw it widely open, feeling a silk thread
+brush my hand as I did so.  A black shape was dropping, with incredible
+agility from branch to branch of the ivy, and, without once offering a
+mark for a revolver-shot, it merged into the shadows beneath the trees
+of the garden.  As I turned and switched on the light Nayland Smith
+dropped limply into a chair, leaning his head upon his hands.  Even
+that grim courage had been tried sorely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never mind the dacoit, Petrie," he said.  "Nemesis will know where to
+find him.  We know now what causes the mark of the Zayat Kiss.
+Therefore science is richer for our first brush with the enemy, and the
+enemy is poorer&mdash;unless he has any more unclassified centipedes.  I
+understand now something that has been puzzling me since I heard of
+it&mdash;Sir Crichton's stifled cry.  When we remember that he was almost
+past speech, it is reasonable to suppose that his cry was not 'The red
+hand!' but 'The red ANT!'  Petrie, to think that I failed, by less than
+an hour, to save him from such an end!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap04"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER IV
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"THE body of a lascar, dressed in the manner usual on the P. & O.
+boats, was recovered from the Thames off Tilbury by the river police at
+six A.M. this morning.  It is supposed that the man met with an
+accident in leaving his ship."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith passed me the evening paper and pointed to the above
+paragraph.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For 'lascar' read 'dacoit,'" he said.  "Our visitor, who came by way
+of the ivy, fortunately for us, failed to follow his instructions.
+Also, he lost the centipede and left a clew behind him.  Dr. Fu-Manchu
+does not overlook such lapses."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a sidelight upon the character of the awful being with whom we
+had to deal.  My very soul recoiled from bare consideration of the fate
+that would be ours if ever we fell into his hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The telephone bell rang.  I went out and found that Inspector Weymouth
+of New Scotland Yard had called us up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will Mr. Nayland Smith please come to the Wapping River Police Station
+at once," was the message.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peaceful interludes were few enough throughout that wild pursuit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is certainly something important," said my friend; "and, if
+Fu-Manchu is at the bottom of it&mdash;as we must presume him to
+be&mdash;probably something ghastly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A brief survey of the time-tables showed us that there were no trains
+to serve our haste.  We accordingly chartered a cab and proceeded east.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith, throughout the journey, talked entertainingly about his work in
+Burma.  Of intent, I think, he avoided any reference to the
+circumstances which first had brought him in contact with the sinister
+genius of the Yellow Movement.  His talk was rather of the sunshine of
+the East than of its shadows.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the drive concluded&mdash;and all too soon.  In a silence which neither
+of us seemed disposed to break, we entered the police depot, and
+followed an officer who received us into the room where Weymouth waited.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The inspector greeted us briefly, nodding toward the table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Poor Cadby, the most promising lad at the Yard," he said; and his
+usually gruff voice had softened strangely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith struck his right fist into the palm of his left hand and swore
+under his breath, striding up and down the neat little room.  No one
+spoke for a moment, and in the silence I could hear the whispering of
+the Thames outside&mdash;of the Thames which had so many strange secrets to
+tell, and now was burdened with another.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The body lay prone upon the deal table&mdash;this latest of the river's
+dead&mdash;dressed in rough sailor garb, and, to all outward seeming, a
+seaman of nondescript nationality&mdash;such as is no stranger in Wapping
+and Shadwell.  His dark, curly hair clung clammily about the brown
+forehead; his skin was stained, they told me.  He wore a gold ring in
+one ear, and three fingers of the left hand were missing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was almost the same with Mason."  The river police inspector was
+speaking.  "A week ago, on a Wednesday, he went off in his own time on
+some funny business down St. George's way&mdash;and Thursday night the
+ten-o'clock boat got the grapnel on him off Hanover Hole.  His first
+two fingers on the right hand were clean gone, and his left hand was
+mutilated frightfully."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He paused and glanced at Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That lascar, too," he continued, "that you came down to see, sir; you
+remember his hands?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He was not a lascar," he said shortly.  "He was a dacoit."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Silence fell again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I turned to the array of objects lying on the table&mdash;those which had
+been found in Cadby's clothing.  None of them were noteworthy, except
+that which had been found thrust into the loose neck of his shirt.
+This last it was which had led the police to send for Nayland Smith,
+for it constituted the first clew which had come to light pointing to
+the authors of these mysterious tragedies.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a Chinese pigtail.  That alone was sufficiently remarkable; but
+it was rendered more so by the fact that the plaited queue was a false
+one being attached to a most ingenious bald wig.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're sure it wasn't part of a Chinese make-up?" questioned Weymouth,
+his eye on the strange relic.  "Cadby was clever at disguise."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith snatched the wig from my hands with a certain irritation, and
+tried to fit it on the dead detective.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Too small by inches!" he jerked.  "And look how it's padded in the
+crown.  This thing was made for a most abnormal head."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He threw it down, and fell to pacing the room again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where did you find him&mdash;exactly?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Limehouse Reach&mdash;under Commercial Dock Pier&mdash;exactly an hour ago."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you last saw him at eight o'clock last night?"&mdash;to Weymouth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Eight to a quarter past."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You think he has been dead nearly twenty-four hours, Petrie?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Roughly, twenty-four hours," I replied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then, we know that he was on the track of the Fu-Manchu group, that he
+followed up some clew which led him to the neighborhood of old Ratcliff
+Highway, and that he died the same night.  You are sure that is where
+he was going?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Weymouth; "He was jealous of giving anything away, poor
+chap; it meant a big lift for him if he pulled the case off.  But he
+gave me to understand that he expected to spend last night in that
+district.  He left the Yard about eight, as I've said, to go to his
+rooms, and dress for the job."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did he keep any record of his cases?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course!  He was most particular.  Cadby was a man with ambitions,
+sir!  You'll want to see his book.  Wait while I get his address; it's
+somewhere in Brixton."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He went to the telephone, and Inspector Ryman covered up the dead man's
+face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith was palpably excited.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He almost succeeded where we have failed, Petrie," he said.  "There is
+no doubt in my mind that he was hot on the track of Fu-Manchu!  Poor
+Mason had probably blundered on the scent, too, and he met with a
+similar fate.  Without other evidence, the fact that they both died in
+the same way as the dacoit would be conclusive, for we know that
+Fu-Manchu killed the dacoit!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is the meaning of the mutilated hands, Smith?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God knows!  Cadby's death was from drowning, you say?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There are no other marks of violence."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But he was a very strong swimmer, Doctor," interrupted Inspector
+Ryman.  "Why, he pulled off the quarter-mile championship at the
+Crystal Palace last year!  Cadby wasn't a man easy to drown.  And as
+for Mason, he was an R.N.R., and like a fish in the water!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let us hope that one day we shall know how they died," he said simply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weymouth returned from the telephone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The address is No.&mdash;Cold Harbor Lane," he reported.  "I shall not be
+able to come along, but you can't miss it; it's close by the Brixton
+Police Station.  There's no family, fortunately; he was quite alone in
+the world.  His case-book isn't in the American desk, which you'll find
+in his sitting-room; it's in the cupboard in the corner&mdash;top shelf.
+Here are his keys, all intact.  I think this is the cupboard key."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come on, Petrie," he said.  "We haven't a second to waste."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Our cab was waiting, and in a few seconds we were speeding along
+Wapping High Street.  We had gone no more than a few hundred yards, I
+think, when Smith suddenly slapped his open hand down on his knee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That pigtail!" he cried.  "I have left it behind!  We must have it,
+Petrie!  Stop!  Stop!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The cab was pulled up, and Smith alighted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't wait for me," he directed hurriedly.  "Here, take Weymouth's
+card.  Remember where he said the book was?  It's all we want.  Come
+straight on to Scotland Yard and meet me there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But Smith," I protested, "a few minutes can make no difference!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can't it!" he snapped.  "Do you suppose Fu-Manchu is going to leave
+evidence like that lying about?  It's a thousand to one he has it
+already, but there is just a bare chance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a new aspect of the situation and one that afforded no room for
+comment; and so lost in thought did I become that the cab was outside
+the house for which I was bound ere I realized that we had quitted the
+purlieus of Wapping.  Yet I had had leisure to review the whole troop
+of events which had crowded my life since the return of Nayland Smith
+from Burma.  Mentally, I had looked again upon the dead Sir Crichton
+Davey, and with Smith had waited in the dark for the dreadful thing
+that had killed him.  Now, with those remorseless memories jostling in
+my mind, I was entering the house of Fu-Manchu's last victim, and the
+shadow of that giant evil seemed to be upon it like a palpable cloud.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cadby's old landlady greeted me with a queer mixture of fear and
+embarrassment in her manner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am Dr. Petrie," I said, "and I regret that I bring bad news
+respecting Mr. Cadby."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, sir!" she cried.  "Don't tell me that anything has happened to
+him!" And divining something of the mission on which I was come, for
+such sad duty often falls to the lot of the medical man: "Oh, the poor,
+brave lad!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Indeed, I respected the dead man's memory more than ever from that
+hour, since the sorrow of the worthy old soul was quite pathetic, and
+spoke eloquently for the unhappy cause of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There was a terrible wailing at the back of the house last night,
+Doctor, and I heard it again to-night, a second before you knocked.
+Poor lad!  It was the same when his mother died."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the moment I paid little attention to her words, for such beliefs
+are common, unfortunately; but when she was sufficiently composed I
+went on to explain what I thought necessary.  And now the old lady's
+embarrassment took precedence of her sorrow, and presently the truth
+came out:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's a&mdash;young lady&mdash;in his rooms, sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I started.  This might mean little or might mean much.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She came and waited for him last night, Doctor&mdash;from ten until
+half-past&mdash;and this morning again.  She came the third time about an
+hour ago, and has been upstairs since."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you know her, Mrs. Dolan?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Dolan grew embarrassed again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, Doctor," she said, wiping her eyes the while, "I DO.  And God
+knows he was a good lad, and I like a mother to him; but she is not the
+girl I should have liked a son of mine to take up with."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At any other time, this would have been amusing; now, it might be
+serious.  Mrs. Dolan's account of the wailing became suddenly
+significant, for perhaps it meant that one of Fu-Manchu's dacoit
+followers was watching the house, to give warning of any stranger's
+approach!  Warning to whom?  It was unlikely that I should forget the
+dark eyes of another of Fu-Manchu's servants.  Was that lure of men
+even now in the house, completing her evil work?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should never have allowed her in his rooms&mdash;" began Mrs. Dolan
+again.  Then there was an interruption.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A soft rustling reached my ears&mdash;intimately feminine.  The girl was
+stealing down!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I leaped out into the hall, and she turned and fled blindly before
+me&mdash;back up the stairs!  Taking three steps at a time, I followed her,
+bounded into the room above almost at her heels, and stood with my back
+to the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She cowered against the desk by the window, a slim figure in a clinging
+silk gown, which alone explained Mrs. Dolan's distrust.  The gaslight
+was turned very low, and her hat shadowed her face, but could not hide
+its startling beauty, could not mar the brilliancy of the skin, nor dim
+the wonderful eyes of this modern Delilah.  For it was she!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So I came in time," I said grimly, and turned the key in the lock.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh!" she panted at that, and stood facing me, leaning back with her
+jewel-laden hands clutching the desk edge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Give me whatever you have removed from here," I said sternly, "and
+then prepare to accompany me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She took a step forward, her eyes wide with fear, her lips parted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have taken nothing," she said.  Her breast was heaving tumultuously.
+"Oh, let me go!  Please, let me go!"  And impulsively she threw herself
+forward, pressing clasped hands against my shoulder and looking up into
+my face with passionate, pleading eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It is with some shame that I confess how her charm enveloped me like a
+magic cloud.  Unfamiliar with the complex Oriental temperament, I had
+laughed at Nayland Smith when he had spoken of this girl's infatuation.
+"Love in the East," he had said, "is like the conjurer's mango-tree; it
+is born, grows and flowers at the touch of a hand." Now, in those
+pleading eyes I read confirmation of his words.  Her clothes or her
+hair exhaled a faint perfume.  Like all Fu-Manchu's servants, she was
+perfectly chosen for her peculiar duties.  Her beauty was wholly
+intoxicating.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But I thrust her away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have no claim to mercy," I said.  "Do not count upon any.  What
+have you taken from here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She grasped the lapels of my coat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will tell you all I can&mdash;all I dare," she panted eagerly, fearfully.
+"I should know how to deal with your friend, but with you I am lost!
+If you could only understand you would not be so cruel."  Her slight
+accent added charm to the musical voice.  "I am not free, as your
+English women are.  What I do I must do, for it is the will of my
+master, and I am only a slave.  Ah, you are not a man if you can give
+me to the police.  You have no heart if you can forget that I tried to
+save you once."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I had feared that plea, for, in her own Oriental fashion, she certainly
+had tried to save me from a deadly peril once&mdash;at the expense of my
+friend.  But I had feared the plea, for I did not know how to meet it.
+How could I give her up, perhaps to stand her trial for murder?  And
+now I fell silent, and she saw why I was silent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I may deserve no mercy; I may be even as bad as you think; but what
+have YOU to do with the police?  It is not your work to hound a woman
+to death.  Could you ever look another woman in the eyes&mdash;one that you
+loved, and know that she trusted you&mdash;if you had done such a thing?
+Ah, I have no friend in all the world, or I should not be here.  Do not
+be my enemy, my judge, and make me worse than I am; be my friend, and
+save me&mdash;from HIM." The tremulous lips were close to mine, her breath
+fanned my cheek.  "Have mercy on me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At that moment I honestly would have given half of my worldly
+possessions to have been spared the decision which I knew I must come
+to.  After all, what proof had I that she was a willing accomplice of
+Dr. Fu-Manchu?  Furthermore, she was an Oriental, and her code must
+necessarily be different from mine.  Irreconcilable as the thing may be
+with Western ideas, Nayland Smith had really told me that he believed
+the girl to be a slave.  Then there remained that other reason why I
+loathed the idea of becoming her captor.  It was almost tantamount to
+betrayal!  Must I soil my hands with such work?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus&mdash;I suppose&mdash;her seductive beauty argued against my sense of right.
+The jeweled fingers grasped my shoulders nervously, and her slim body
+quivered against mine as she watched me, with all her soul in her eyes,
+in an abandonment of pleading despair.  Then I remembered the fate of
+the man in whose room we stood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You lured Cadby to his death," I said, and shook her off.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no!" she cried wildly, clutching at me.  "No, I swear by the holy
+name I did not!  I did not!  I watched him, spied upon him&mdash;yes!  But,
+listen: it was because he would not be warned that he met his death.  I
+could not save him!  Ah, I am not so bad as that.  I will tell you.  I
+have taken his notebook and torn out the last pages and burnt them.
+Look!  in the grate.  The book was too big to steal away.  I came twice
+and could not find it.  There, will you let me go?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you will tell me where and how to seize Dr. Fu-Manchu&mdash;yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her hands dropped and she took a backward step.  A new terror was to be
+read in her face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I dare not!  I dare not!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you would&mdash;if you dared?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was watching me intently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not if YOU would go to find him," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And, with all that I thought her to be, the stern servant of justice
+that I would have had myself, I felt the hot blood leap to my cheek at
+all which the words implied.  She grasped my arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Could you hide me from him if I came to you, and told you all I know?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The authorities&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah!"  Her expression changed.  "They can put me on the rack if they
+choose, but never one word would I speak&mdash;never one little word."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She threw up her head scornfully.  Then the proud glance softened again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I will speak for you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Closer she came, and closer, until she could whisper in my ear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hide me from your police, from HIM, from everybody, and I will no
+longer be his slave."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My heart was beating with painful rapidity.  I had not counted on this
+warring with a woman; moreover, it was harder than I could have dreamt
+of.  For some time I had been aware that by the charm of her
+personality and the art of her pleading she had brought me down from my
+judgment seat&mdash;had made it all but impossible for me to give her up to
+justice.  Now, I was disarmed&mdash;but in a quandary.  What should I do?
+What COULD I do?  I turned away from her and walked to the hearth, in
+which some paper ash lay and yet emitted a faint smell.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Not more than ten seconds elapsed, I am confident, from the time that I
+stepped across the room until I glanced back.  But she had gone!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As I leapt to the door the key turned gently from the outside.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ma 'alesh!" came her soft whisper; "but I am afraid to trust you&mdash;yet.
+Be comforted, for there is one near who would have killed you had I
+wished it.  Remember, I will come to you whenever you will take me and
+hide me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Light footsteps pattered down the stairs.  I heard a stifled cry from
+Mrs. Dolan as the mysterious visitor ran past her.  The front door
+opened and closed.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap05"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER V
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"Shen-Yan's is a dope-shop in one of the burrows off the old Ratcliff
+Highway," said Inspector Weymouth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Singapore Charlie's,' they call it.  It's a center for some of the
+Chinese societies, I believe, but all sorts of opium-smokers use it.
+There have never been any complaints that I know of.  I don't
+understand this."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We stood in his room at New Scotland Yard, bending over a sheet of
+foolscap upon which were arranged some burned fragments from poor
+Cadby's grate, for so hurriedly had the girl done her work that
+combustion had not been complete.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do we make of this?" said Smith.  "'&#8230; Hunchback&nbsp;&#8230; lascar
+went up&nbsp;&#8230; unlike others&nbsp;&#8230; not return&nbsp;&#8230; till Shen-Yan'
+(there is no doubt about the name, I think) 'turned me out&nbsp;&#8230; booming
+sound&nbsp;&#8230; lascar in&nbsp;&#8230; mortuary I could ident&nbsp;&#8230; not for days,
+or suspici&nbsp;&#8230; Tuesday night in a different make&nbsp;&#8230;
+snatch&nbsp;&#8230; pigtail&#8230;'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The pigtail again!" rapped Weymouth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She evidently burned the torn-out pages all together," continued
+Smith.  "They lay flat, and this was in the middle.  I see the hand of
+retributive justice in that, Inspector.  Now we have a reference to a
+hunchback, and what follows amounts to this: A lascar (amongst several
+other persons) went up somewhere&mdash;presumably upstairs&mdash;at Shen-Yan's,
+and did not come down again.  Cadby, who was there disguised, noted a
+booming sound.  Later, he identified the lascar in some mortuary.  We
+have no means of fixing the date of this visit to Shen-Yan's, but I
+feel inclined to put down the 'lascar' as the dacoit who was murdered
+by Fu-Manchu!  It is sheer supposition, however.  But that Cadby meant
+to pay another visit to the place in a different 'make-up' or disguise,
+is evident, and that the Tuesday night proposed was last night is a
+reasonable deduction.  The reference to a pigtail is principally
+interesting because of what was found on Cadby's body."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Inspector Weymouth nodded affirmatively, and Smith glanced at his watch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Exactly ten-twenty-three," he said.  "I will trouble you, Inspector,
+for the freedom of your fancy wardrobe.  There is time to spend an hour
+in the company of Shen-Yan's opium friends."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weymouth raised his eyebrows.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It might be risky.  What about an official visit?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Worse than useless!  By your own showing, the place is open to
+inspection.  No; guile against guile!  We are dealing with a Chinaman,
+with the incarnate essence of Eastern subtlety, with the most
+stupendous genius that the modern Orient has produced."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't believe in disguises," said Weymouth, with a certain
+truculence.  "It's mostly played out, that game, and generally leads to
+failure.  Still, if you're determined, sir, there's an end of it.
+Foster will make your face up.  What disguise do you propose to adopt?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A sort of Dago seaman, I think; something like poor Cadby.  I can rely
+on my knowledge of the brutes, if I am sure of my disguise."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are forgetting me, Smith," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned to me quickly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Petrie," he replied, "it is MY business, unfortunately, but it is no
+sort of hobby."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean that you can no longer rely upon me?" I said angrily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith grasped my hand, and met my rather frigid stare with a look of
+real concern on his gaunt, bronzed face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear old chap," he answered, "that was really unkind.  You know
+that I meant something totally different."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's all right, Smith;" I said, immediately ashamed of my choler, and
+wrung his hand heartily.  "I can pretend to smoke opium as well as
+another.  I shall be going, too, Inspector."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As a result of this little passage of words, some twenty minutes later
+two dangerous-looking seafaring ruffians entered a waiting cab,
+accompanied by Inspector Weymouth, and were driven off into the
+wilderness of London's night.  In this theatrical business there was,
+to my mind, something ridiculous&mdash;almost childish&mdash;and I could have
+laughed heartily had it not been that grim tragedy lurked so near to
+farce.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The mere recollection that somewhere at our journey's end Fu-Manchu
+awaited us was sufficient to sober my reflections&mdash;Fu-Manchu, who, with
+all the powers represented by Nayland Smith pitted against him, pursued
+his dark schemes triumphantly, and lurked in hiding within this very
+area which was so sedulously patrolled&mdash;Fu-Manchu, whom I had never
+seen, but whose name stood for horrors indefinable!  Perhaps I was
+destined to meet the terrible Chinese doctor to-night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I ceased to pursue a train of thought which promised to lead to morbid
+depths, and directed my attention to what Smith was saying.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We will drop down from Wapping and reconnoiter, as you say the place
+is close to the riverside.  Then you can put us ashore somewhere below.
+Ryman can keep the launch close to the back of the premises, and your
+fellows will be hanging about near the front, near enough to hear the
+whistle."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," assented Weymouth; "I've arranged for that.  If you are
+suspected, you shall give the alarm?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know," said Smith thoughtfully.  "Even in that event I might
+wait awhile."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't wait too long," advised the Inspector.  "We shouldn't be much
+wiser if your next appearance was on the end of a grapnel, somewhere
+down Greenwich Reach, with half your fingers missing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The cab pulled up outside the river police depot, and Smith and I
+entered without delay, four shabby-looking fellows who had been seated
+in the office springing up to salute the Inspector, who followed us in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Guthrie and Lisle," he said briskly, "get along and find a dark corner
+which commands the door of Singapore Charlie's off the old Highway.
+You look the dirtiest of the troupe, Guthrie; you might drop asleep on
+the pavement, and Lisle can argue with you about getting home.  Don't
+move till you hear the whistle inside or have my orders, and note
+everybody that goes in and comes out.  You other two belong to this
+division?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The C.I.D. men having departed, the remaining pair saluted again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, you're on special duty to-night. You've been prompt, but don't
+stick your chests out so much.  Do you know of a back way to
+Shen-Yan's?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The men looked at one another, and both shook their heads.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's an empty shop nearly opposite, sir," replied one of them.  "I
+know a broken window at the back where we could climb in.  Then we
+could get through to the front and watch from there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good!" cried the Inspector.  "See you are not spotted, though; and if
+you hear the whistle, don't mind doing a bit of damage, but be inside
+Shen-Yan's like lightning.  Otherwise, wait for orders."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Inspector Ryman came in, glancing at the clock.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Launch is waiting," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Right," replied Smith thoughtfully.  "I am half afraid, though, that
+the recent alarms may have scared our quarry&mdash;your man, Mason, and then
+Cadby.  Against which we have that, so far as he is likely to know,
+there has been no clew pointing to this opium den.  Remember, he thinks
+Cadby's notes are destroyed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The whole business is an utter mystery to me," confessed Ryman.  "I'm
+told that there's some dangerous Chinese devil hiding somewhere in
+London, and that you expect to find him at Shen-Yan's. Supposing he
+uses that place, which is possible, how do you know he's there
+to-night?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't," said Smith; "but it is the first clew we have had pointing
+to one of his haunts, and time means precious lives where Dr. Fu-Manchu
+is concerned."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who is he, sir, exactly, this Dr. Fu-Manchu?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have only the vaguest idea, Inspector; but he is no ordinary
+criminal.  He is the greatest genius which the powers of evil have put
+on earth for centuries.  He has the backing of a political group whose
+wealth is enormous, and his mission in Europe is to PAVE THE WAY!  Do
+you follow me?  He is the advance-agent of a movement so epoch-making
+that not one Britisher, and not one American, in fifty thousand has
+ever dreamed of it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ryman stared, but made no reply, and we went out, passing down to the
+breakwater and boarding the waiting launch.  With her crew of three,
+the party numbered seven that swung out into the Pool, and, clearing
+the pier, drew in again and hugged the murky shore.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The night had been clear enough hitherto, but now came scudding
+rainbanks to curtain the crescent moon, and anon to unveil her again
+and show the muddy swirls about us.  The view was not extensive from
+the launch.  Sometimes a deepening of the near shadows would tell of a
+moored barge, or lights high above our heads mark the deck of a large
+vessel.  In the floods of moonlight gaunt shapes towered above; in the
+ensuing darkness only the oily glitter of the tide occupied the
+foreground of the night-piece.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Surrey shore was a broken wall of blackness, patched with lights
+about which moved hazy suggestions of human activity.  The bank we were
+following offered a prospect even more gloomy&mdash;a dense, dark mass, amid
+which, sometimes, mysterious half-tones told of a dock gate, or sudden
+high lights leapt flaring to the eye.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, out of the mystery ahead, a green light grew and crept down upon
+us.  A giant shape loomed up, and frowned crushingly upon the little
+craft.  A blaze of light, the jangle of a bell, and it was past.  We
+were dancing in the wash of one of the Scotch steamers, and the murk
+had fallen again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Discords of remote activity rose above the more intimate throbbing of
+our screw, and we seemed a pigmy company floating past the workshops of
+Brobdingnagian toilers.  The chill of the near water communicated
+itself to me, and I felt the protection of my shabby garments
+inadequate against it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Far over on the Surrey shore a blue light&mdash;vaporous,
+mysterious&mdash;flicked translucent tongues against the night's curtain.
+It was a weird, elusive flame, leaping, wavering, magically changing
+from blue to a yellowed violet, rising, falling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only a gasworks," came Smith's voice, and I knew that he, too, had
+been watching those elfin fires.  "But it always reminds me of a
+Mexican teocalli, and the altar of sacrifice."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The simile was apt, but gruesome.  I thought of Dr. Fu-Manchu and the
+severed fingers, and could not repress a shudder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"On your left, past the wooden pier!  Not where the lamp is&mdash;beyond
+that; next to the dark, square building&mdash;Shen-Yan's."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was Inspector Ryman speaking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Drop us somewhere handy, then," replied Smith, "and lie close in, with
+your ears wide open.  We may have to run for it, so don't go far away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the tone of his voice I knew that the night mystery of the Thames
+had claimed at least one other victim.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dead slow," came Ryman's order.  "We'll put in to the Stone Stairs."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap06"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VI
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+A SEEMINGLY drunken voice was droning from a neighboring alleyway as
+Smith lurched in hulking fashion to the door of a little shop above
+which, crudely painted, were the words:
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"SHEN-YAN, Barber."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+I shuffled along behind him, and had time to note the box of studs,
+German shaving tackle and rolls of twist which lay untidily in the
+window ere Smith kicked the door open, clattered down three wooden
+steps, and pulled himself up with a jerk, seizing my arm for support.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We stood in a bare and very dirty room, which could only claim kinship
+with a civilized shaving-saloon by virtue of the grimy towel thrown
+across the back of the solitary chair.  A Yiddish theatrical bill of
+some kind, illustrated, adorned one of the walls, and another bill, in
+what may have been Chinese, completed the decorations.  From behind a
+curtain heavily brocaded with filth a little Chinaman appeared, dressed
+in a loose smock, black trousers and thick-soled slippers, and,
+advancing, shook his head vigorously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No shavee&mdash;no shavee," he chattered, simian fashion, squinting from
+one to the other of us with his twinkling eyes.  "Too late!  Shuttee
+shop!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you come none of it wi' me!" roared Smith, in a voice of amazing
+gruffness, and shook an artificially dirtied fist under the Chinaman's
+nose.  "Get inside and gimme an' my mate a couple o' pipes.  Smokee
+pipe, you yellow scum&mdash;savvy?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My friend bent forward and glared into the other's eyes with a
+vindictiveness that amazed me, unfamiliar as I was with this form of
+gentle persuasion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Kop 'old o' that," he said, and thrust a coin into the Chinaman's
+yellow paw.  "Keep me waitin' an' I'll pull the dam' shop down,
+Charlie.  You can lay to it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No hab got pipee&mdash;" began the other.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith raised his fist, and Yan capitulated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Allee lightee," he said.  "Full up&mdash;no loom.  You come see."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He dived behind the dirty curtain, Smith and I following, and ran up a
+dark stair.  The next moment I found myself in an atmosphere which was
+literally poisonous.  It was all but unbreathable, being loaded with
+opium fumes.  Never before had I experienced anything like it.  Every
+breath was an effort.  A tin oil-lamp on a box in the middle of the
+floor dimly illuminated the horrible place, about the walls of which
+ten or twelve bunks were ranged and all of them occupied.  Most of the
+occupants were lying motionless, but one or two were squatting in their
+bunks noisily sucking at the little metal pipes.  These had not yet
+attained to the opium-smoker's Nirvana.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No loom&mdash;samee tella you," said Shen-Yan, complacently testing Smith's
+shilling with his yellow, decayed teeth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith walked to a corner and dropped cross-legged, on the floor,
+pulling me down with him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Two pipe quick," he said.  "Plenty room.  Two piecee pipe&mdash;or plenty
+heap trouble."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A dreary voice from one of the bunks came:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Give 'im a pipe, Charlie, curse yer!  an' stop 'is palaver."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yan performed a curious little shrug, rather of the back than of the
+shoulders, and shuffled to the box which bore the smoky lamp.  Holding
+a needle in the flame, he dipped it, when red-hot, into an old cocoa
+tin, and withdrew it with a bead of opium adhering to the end.  Slowly
+roasting this over the lamp, he dropped it into the bowl of the metal
+pipe which he held ready, where it burned with a spirituous blue flame.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pass it over," said Smith huskily, and rose on his knees with the
+assumed eagerness of a slave to the drug.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yan handed him the pipe, which he promptly put to his lips, and
+prepared another for me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whatever you do, don't inhale any," came Smith's whispered injunction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was with a sense of nausea greater even than that occasioned by the
+disgusting atmosphere of the den that I took the pipe and pretended to
+smoke.  Taking my cue from my friend, I allowed my head gradually to
+sink lower and lower, until, within a few minutes, I sprawled sideways
+on the floor, Smith lying close beside me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The ship's sinkin'," droned a voice from one of the bunks.  "Look at
+the rats."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yan had noiselessly withdrawn, and I experienced a curious sense of
+isolation from my fellows&mdash;from the whole of the Western world.  My
+throat was parched with the fumes, my head ached.  The vicious
+atmosphere seemed contaminating.  I was as one dropped&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Somewhere East of Suez, where the best is like the worst, And there
+ain't no Ten Commandments and a man can raise a thirst.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith began to whisper softly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We have carried it through successfully so far," he said.  "I don't
+know if you have observed it, but there is a stair just behind you,
+half concealed by a ragged curtain.  We are near that, and well in the
+dark.  I have seen nothing suspicious so far&mdash;or nothing much.  But if
+there was anything going forward it would no doubt be delayed until we
+new arrivals were well doped.  S-SH!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He pressed my arm to emphasize the warning.  Through my half-closed
+eyes I perceived a shadowy form near the curtain to which he had
+referred.  I lay like a log, but my muscles were tensed nervously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The shadow materialized as the figure moved forward into the room with
+a curiously lithe movement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The smoky lamp in the middle of the place afforded scant illumination,
+serving only to indicate sprawling shapes&mdash;here an extended hand, brown
+or yellow, there a sketchy, corpse-like face; whilst from all about
+rose obscene sighings and murmurings in far-away voices&mdash;an uncanny,
+animal chorus.  It was like a glimpse of the Inferno seen by some
+Chinese Dante.  But so close to us stood the newcomer that I was able
+to make out a ghastly parchment face, with small, oblique eyes, and a
+misshapen head crowned with a coiled pigtail, surmounting a slight,
+hunched body.  There was something unnatural, inhuman, about that
+masklike face, and something repulsive in the bent shape and the long,
+yellow hands clasped one upon the other.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fu-Manchu, from Smith's account, in no way resembled this crouching
+apparition with the death's-head countenance and lithe movements; but
+an instinct of some kind told me that we were on the right scent&mdash;that
+this was one of the doctor's servants.  How I came to that conclusion,
+I cannot explain; but with no doubt in my mind that this was a member
+of the formidable murder group, I saw the yellow man creep nearer,
+nearer, silently, bent and peering.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was watching us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of another circumstance I became aware, and a disquieting circumstance.
+There were fewer murmurings and sighings from the surrounding bunks.
+The presence of the crouching figure had created a sudden semi-silence
+in the den, which could only mean that some of the supposed
+opium-smokers had merely feigned coma and the approach of coma.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith lay like a dead man, and trusting to the darkness, I,
+too, lay prone and still, but watched the evil face bending lower and
+lower, until it came within a few inches of my own.  I completely
+closed my eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Delicate fingers touched my right eyelid.  Divining what was coming, I
+rolled my eyes up, as the lid was adroitly lifted and lowered again.
+The man moved away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I had saved the situation!  And noting anew the hush about me&mdash;a hush
+in which I fancied many pairs of ears listened&mdash;I was glad.  For just a
+moment I realized fully how, with the place watched back and front, we
+yet were cut off, were in the hands of Far Easterns, to some extent in
+the power of members of that most inscrutably mysterious race, the
+Chinese.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good," whispered Smith at my side.  "I don't think I could have done
+it.  He took me on trust after that.  My God!  what an awful face.
+Petrie, it's the hunchback of Cadby's notes.  Ah, I thought so.  Do you
+see that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I turned my eyes round as far as was possible.  A man had scrambled
+down from one of the bunks and was following the bent figure across the
+room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They passed around us quietly, the little yellow man leading, with his
+curious, lithe gait, and the other, an impassive Chinaman, following.
+The curtain was raised, and I heard footsteps receding on the stairs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't stir," whispered Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An intense excitement was clearly upon him, and he communicated it to
+me.  Who was the occupant of the room above?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Footsteps on the stair, and the Chinaman reappeared, recrossed the
+floor, and went out.  The little, bent man went over to another bunk,
+this time leading up the stair one who looked like a lascar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you see his right hand?" whispered Smith.  "A dacoit!  They come
+here to report and to take orders.  Petrie, Dr. Fu-Manchu is up there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What shall we do?"&mdash;softly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait.  Then we must try to rush the stairs.  It would be futile to
+bring in the police first.  He is sure to have some other exit.  I will
+give the word while the little yellow devil is down here.  You are
+nearer and will have to go first, but if the hunchback follows, I can
+then deal with him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Our whispered colloquy was interrupted by the return of the dacoit, who
+recrossed the room as the Chinaman had done, and immediately took his
+departure.  A third man, whom Smith identified as a Malay, ascended the
+mysterious stairs, descended, and went out; and a fourth, whose
+nationality it was impossible to determine, followed.  Then, as the
+softly moving usher crossed to a bunk on the right of the outer door&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Up you go, Petrie," cried Smith, for further delay was dangerous and
+further dissimulation useless.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I leaped to my feet.  Snatching my revolver from the pocket of the
+rough jacket I wore, I bounded to the stair and went blundering up in
+complete darkness.  A chorus of brutish cries clamored from behind,
+with a muffled scream rising above them all.  But Nayland Smith was
+close behind as I raced along a covered gangway, in a purer air, and at
+my heels when I crashed open a door at the end and almost fell into the
+room beyond.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What I saw were merely a dirty table, with some odds and ends upon it
+of which I was too excited to take note, an oil-lamp swung by a brass
+chain above, and a man sitting behind the table.  But from the moment
+that my gaze rested upon the one who sat there, I think if the place
+had been an Aladdin's palace I should have had no eyes for any of its
+wonders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He wore a plain yellow robe, of a hue almost identical with that of his
+smooth, hairless countenance.  His hands were large, long and bony, and
+he held them knuckles upward, and rested his pointed chin upon their
+thinness.  He had a great, high brow, crowned with sparse,
+neutral-colored hair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of his face, as it looked out at me over the dirty table, I despair of
+writing convincingly.  It was that of an archangel of evil, and it was
+wholly dominated by the most uncanny eyes that ever reflected a human
+soul, for they were narrow and long, very slightly oblique, and of a
+brilliant green.  But their unique horror lay in a certain filminess
+(it made me think of the membrana nictitans in a bird) which, obscuring
+them as I threw wide the door, seemed to lift as I actually passed the
+threshold, revealing the eyes in all their brilliant iridescence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I know that I stopped dead, one foot within the room, for the malignant
+force of the man was something surpassing my experience.  He was
+surprised by this sudden intrusion&mdash;yes, but no trace of fear showed
+upon that wonderful face, only a sort of pitying contempt.  And, as I
+paused, he rose slowly to his feet, never removing his gaze from mine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"IT'S FU-MANCHU!" cried Smith over my shoulder, in a voice that was
+almost a scream.  "IT'S FU-MANCHU!  Cover him!  Shoot him dead if&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The conclusion of that sentence I never heard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dr. Fu-Manchu reached down beside the table, and the floor slipped from
+under me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One last glimpse I had of the fixed green eyes, and with a scream I was
+unable to repress I dropped, dropped, dropped, and plunged into icy
+water, which closed over my head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Vaguely I had seen a spurt of flame, had heard another cry following my
+own, a booming sound (the trap), the flat note of a police whistle.
+But when I rose to the surface impenetrable darkness enveloped me; I
+was spitting filthy, oily liquid from my mouth, and fighting down the
+black terror that had me by the throat&mdash;terror of the darkness about
+me, of the unknown depths beneath me, of the pit into which I was cast
+amid stifling stenches and the lapping of tidal water.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smith!" I cried.&#8230; "Help!  Help!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My voice seemed to beat back upon me, yet I was about to cry out again,
+when, mustering all my presence of mind and all my failing courage, I
+recognized that I had better employment of my energies, and began to
+swim straight ahead, desperately determined to face all the horrors of
+this place&mdash;to die hard if die I must.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A drop of liquid fire fell through the darkness and hissed into the
+water beside me!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I felt that, despite my resolution, I was going mad.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Another fiery drop&mdash;and another!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I touched a rotting wooden post and slimy timbers.  I had reached one
+bound of my watery prison.  More fire fell from above, and the scream
+of hysteria quivered, unuttered, in my throat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Keeping myself afloat with increasing difficulty in my heavy garments,
+I threw my head back and raised my eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No more drops fell, and no more drops would fall; but it was merely a
+question of time for the floor to collapse.  For it was beginning to
+emit a dull, red glow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The room above me was in flames!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was drops of burning oil from the lamp, finding passage through the
+cracks in the crazy flooring, which had fallen about me&mdash;for the death
+trap had reclosed, I suppose, mechanically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My saturated garments were dragging me down, and now I could hear the
+flames hungrily eating into the ancient rottenness overhead.  Shortly
+that cauldron would be loosed upon my head.  The glow of the flames
+grew brighter&nbsp;&#8230; and showed me the half-rotten piles upholding the
+building, showed me the tidal mark upon the slime-coated walls&mdash;showed
+me that there was no escape!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By some subterranean duct the foul place was fed from the Thames.  By
+that duct, with the outgoing tide, my body would pass, in the wake of
+Mason, Cadby, and many another victim!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rusty iron rungs were affixed to one of the walls communicating with a
+trap&mdash;but the bottom three were missing!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Brighter and brighter grew the awesome light the light of what should
+be my funeral pyre&mdash;reddening the oily water and adding a new dread to
+the whispering, clammy horror of the pit.  But something it showed
+me&nbsp;&#8230; a projecting beam a few feet above the water&nbsp;&#8230; and directly
+below the iron ladder!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Merciful Heaven!" I breathed.  "Have I the strength?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A desire for laughter claimed me with sudden, all but irresistible
+force.  I knew what it portended and fought it down&mdash;grimly, sternly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My garments weighed upon me like a suit of mail; with my chest aching
+dully, my veins throbbing to bursting, I forced tired muscles to work,
+and, every stroke an agony, approached the beam.  Nearer I
+swam&nbsp;&#8230; nearer.  Its shadow fell black upon the water, which now had all
+the seeming of a pool of blood.  Confused sounds&mdash;a remote uproar&mdash;came
+to my ears.  I was nearly spent&nbsp;&#8230; I was in the shadow of the beam!  If
+I could throw up one arm&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A shrill scream sounded far above me!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Petrie!  Petrie!"  (That voice must be Smith's!)  "Don't touch the
+beam!  For God's sake DON'T TOUCH THE BEAM!  Keep afloat another few
+seconds and I can get to you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Another few seconds!  Was that possible?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I managed to turn, to raise my throbbing head; and I saw the strangest
+sight which that night yet had offered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith stood upon the lowest iron rung&nbsp;&#8230; supported by the
+hideous, crook-backed Chinaman, who stood upon the rung above!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't reach him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was as Smith hissed the words despairingly that I looked up&mdash;and saw
+the Chinaman snatch at his coiled pigtail and pull it off!  With it
+came the wig to which it was attached; and the ghastly yellow mask,
+deprived of its fastenings, fell from position!  "Here!  Here!  Be
+quick!  Oh!  be quick!  You can lower this to him!  Be quick!  Be
+quick!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A cloud of hair came falling about the slim shoulders as the speaker
+bent to pass this strange lifeline to Smith; and I think it was my
+wonder at knowing her for the girl whom that day I had surprised in
+Cadby's rooms which saved my life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For I not only kept afloat, but kept my gaze upturned to that
+beautiful, flushed face, and my eyes fixed upon hers&mdash;which were wild
+with fear&nbsp;&#8230; for me!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith, by some contortion, got the false queue into my grasp, and I,
+with the strength of desperation, by that means seized hold upon the
+lowest rung.  With my friend's arm round me I realized that exhaustion
+was even nearer than I had supposed.  My last distinct memory is of the
+bursting of the floor above and the big burning joist hissing into the
+pool beneath us.  Its fiery passage, striated with light, disclosed two
+sword blades, riveted, edges up along the top of the beam which I had
+striven to reach.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The severed fingers&mdash;" I said; and swooned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How Smith got me through the trap I do not know&mdash;nor how we made our
+way through the smoke and flames of the narrow passage it opened upon.
+My next recollection is of sitting up, with my friend's arm supporting
+me and Inspector Ryman holding a glass to my lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A bright glare dazzled my eyes.  A crowd surged about us, and a clangor
+and shouting drew momentarily nearer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's the engines coming," explained Smith, seeing my bewilderment.
+"Shen-Yan's is in flames.  It was your shot, as you fell through the
+trap, broke the oil-lamp."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is everybody out?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So far as we know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fu-Manchu?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith shrugged his shoulders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No one has seen him.  There was some door at the back&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you think he may&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," he said tensely.  "Not until I see him lying dead before me shall
+I believe it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then memory resumed its sway.  I struggled to my feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smith, where is she?" I cried.  "Where is she?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know," he answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's given us the slip, Doctor," said Inspector Weymouth, as a
+fire-engine came swinging round the corner of the narrow lane.  "So has
+Mr. Singapore Charlie&mdash;and, I'm afraid, somebody else.  We've got six
+or eight all-sorts, some awake and some asleep, but I suppose we shall
+have to let 'em go again.  Mr. Smith tells me that the girl was
+disguised as a Chinaman.  I expect that's why she managed to slip away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I recalled how I had been dragged from the pit by the false queue, how
+the strange discovery which had brought death to poor Cadby had brought
+life to me, and I seemed to remember, too, that Smith had dropped it as
+he threw his arm about me on the ladder.  Her mask the girl might have
+retained, but her wig, I felt certain, had been dropped into the water.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was later that night, when the brigade still were playing upon the
+blackened shell of what had been Shen-Yan's opium-shop, and Smith and I
+were speeding away in a cab from the scene of God knows how many
+crimes, that I had an idea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smith," I said, "did you bring the pigtail with you that was found on
+Cadby?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes.  I had hoped to meet the owner."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you got it now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No. I met the owner."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I thrust my hands deep into the pockets of the big pea-jacket lent to
+me by Inspector Ryman, leaning back in my corner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We shall never really excel at this business," continued Nayland
+Smith.  "We are far too sentimental.  I knew what it meant to us,
+Petrie, what it meant to the world, but I hadn't the heart.  I owed her
+your life&mdash;I had to square the account."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap07"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+NIGHT fell on Redmoat.  I glanced from the window at the nocturne in
+silver and green which lay beneath me.  To the west of the shrubbery,
+with its broken canopy of elms and beyond the copper beech which marked
+the center of its mazes, a gap offered a glimpse of the Waverney where
+it swept into a broad.  Faint bird-calls floated over the water.
+These, with the whisper of leaves, alone claimed the ear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ideal rural peace, and the music of an English summer evening; but to
+my eyes, every shadow holding fantastic terrors; to my ears, every
+sound a signal of dread.  For the deathful hand of Fu-Manchu was
+stretched over Redmoat, at any hour to loose strange, Oriental horrors
+upon its inmates.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," said Nayland Smith, joining me at the window, "we had dared to
+hope him dead, but we know now that he lives!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Rev. J. D. Eltham coughed nervously, and I turned, leaning my elbow
+upon the table, and studied the play of expression upon the refined,
+sensitive face of the clergyman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You think I acted rightly in sending for you, Mr. Smith?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith smoked furiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Eltham," he replied, "you see in me a man groping in the dark.  I
+am to-day no nearer to the conclusion of my mission than upon the day
+when I left Mandalay.  You offer me a clew; I am here.  Your affair, I
+believe, stands thus: A series of attempted burglaries, or something of
+the kind, has alarmed your household.  Yesterday, returning from London
+with your daughter, you were both drugged in some way and, occupying a
+compartment to yourselves, you both slept.  Your daughter awoke, and
+saw someone else in the carriage&mdash;a yellow-faced man who held a case of
+instruments in his hands."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; I was, of course, unable to enter into particulars over the
+telephone.  The man was standing by one of the windows.  Directly he
+observed that my daughter was awake, he stepped towards her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What did he do with the case in his hands?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She did not notice&mdash;or did not mention having noticed.  In fact, as
+was natural, she was so frightened that she recalls nothing more,
+beyond the fact that she strove to arouse me, without succeeding, felt
+hands grasp her shoulders&mdash;and swooned."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But someone used the emergency cord, and stopped the train."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Greba has no recollection of having done so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hm!  Of course, no yellow-faced man was on the train.  When did you
+awake?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was aroused by the guard, but only when he had repeatedly shaken me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Upon reaching Great Yarmouth you immediately called up Scotland Yard?
+You acted very wisely, sir.  How long were you in China?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Eltham's start of surprise was almost comical.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is perhaps not strange that you should be aware of my residence in
+China, Mr. Smith," he said; "but my not having mentioned it may seem
+so.  The fact is"&mdash;his sensitive face flushed in palpable
+embarrassment&mdash;"I left China under what I may term an episcopal cloud.
+I have lived in retirement ever since.  Unwittingly&mdash;I solemnly declare
+to you, Mr. Smith, unwittingly&mdash;I stirred up certain deep-seated
+prejudices in my endeavors to do my duty&mdash;my duty.  I think you asked
+me how long I was in China?  I was there from 1896 until 1900&mdash;four
+years."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I recall the circumstances, Mr. Eltham," said Smith, with an odd note
+in his voice.  "I have been endeavoring to think where I had come
+across the name, and a moment ago I remembered.  I am happy to have met
+you, sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The clergyman blushed again like a girl, and slightly inclined his
+head, with its scanty fair hair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Has Redmoat, as its name implies, a moat round it?  I was unable to
+see in the dusk."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It remains.  Redmoat&mdash;a corruption of Round Moat&mdash;was formerly a
+priory, disestablished by the eighth Henry in 1536." His pedantic
+manner was quaint at times. "But the moat is no longer flooded. In
+fact, we grow cabbages in part of it. If you refer to the strategic
+strength of the place"&mdash;he smiled, but his manner was embarrassed
+again&mdash;"it is considerable. I have barbed wire fencing, and&mdash;other
+arrangements. You see, it is a lonely spot," he added apologetically.
+"And now, if you will excuse me, we will resume these gruesome
+inquiries after the more pleasant affairs of dinner."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He left us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who is our host?" I asked, as the door closed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are wondering what caused the 'episcopal cloud?'" he suggested.
+"Well, the deep-seated prejudices which our reverend friend stirred up
+culminated in the Boxer Risings."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good heavens, Smith!" I said; for I could not reconcile the diffident
+personality of the clergyman with the memories which those words
+awakened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He evidently should be on our danger list," my friend continued
+quickly; "but he has so completely effaced himself of recent years that
+I think it probable that someone else has only just recalled his
+existence to mind.  The Rev. J. D. Eltham, my dear Petrie, though he
+may be a poor hand at saving souls, at any rate, has saved a score of
+Christian women from death&mdash;and worse."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"J. D. Eltham&mdash;" I began.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is 'Parson Dan'!" rapped Smith, "the 'Fighting Missionary,' the man
+who with a garrison of a dozen cripples and a German doctor held the
+hospital at Nan-Yang against two hundred Boxers.  That's who the Rev.
+J. D. Eltham is!  But what is he up to, now, I have yet to find out.
+He is keeping something back&mdash;something which has made him an object of
+interest to Young China!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+During dinner the matters responsible for our presence there did not
+hold priority in the conversation.  In fact, this, for the most part,
+consisted in light talk of books and theaters.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Greba Eltham, the clergyman's daughter, was a charming young hostess,
+and she, with Vernon Denby, Mr. Eltham's nephew, completed the party.
+No doubt the girl's presence, in part, at any rate, led us to refrain
+from the subject uppermost in our minds.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+These little pools of calm dotted along the torrential course of the
+circumstances which were bearing my friend and me onward to unknown
+issues form pleasant, sunny spots in my dark recollections.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So I shall always remember, with pleasure, that dinner-party at
+Redmoat, in the old-world dining-room; it was so very peaceful, so
+almost grotesquely calm.  For I, within my very bones, felt it to be
+the calm before the storm.  When, later, we men passed to the library,
+we seemed to leave that atmosphere behind us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Redmoat," said the Rev. J. D. Eltham, "has latterly become the theater
+of strange doings."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stood on the hearth-rug. A shaded lamp upon the big table and
+candles in ancient sconces upon the mantelpiece afforded dim
+illumination.  Mr. Eltham's nephew, Vernon Denby, lolled smoking on the
+window-seat, and I sat near to him.  Nayland Smith paced restlessly up
+and down the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Some months ago, almost a year," continued the clergyman, "a
+burglarious attempt was made upon the house.  There was an arrest, and
+the man confessed that he had been tempted by my collection." He waved
+his hand vaguely towards the several cabinets about the shadowed room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was shortly afterwards that I allowed my hobby for&mdash;playing at
+forts to run away with me."  He smiled an apology.  "I virtually
+fortified Redmoat&mdash;against trespassers of any kind, I mean.  You have
+seen that the house stands upon a kind of large mound.  This is
+artificial, being the buried ruins of a Roman outwork; a portion of the
+ancient castrum." Again he waved indicatively, this time toward the
+window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When it was a priory it was completely isolated and defended by its
+environing moat.  Today it is completely surrounded by barbed-wire
+fencing.  Below this fence, on the east, is a narrow stream, a
+tributary of the Waverney; on the north and west, the high road, but
+nearly twenty feet below, the banks being perpendicular.  On the south
+is the remaining part of the moat&mdash;now my kitchen garden; but from
+there up to the level of the house is nearly twenty feet again, and the
+barbed wire must also be counted with.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The entrance, as you know, is by the way of a kind of cutting.  There
+is a gate at the foot of the steps (they are some of the original steps
+of the priory, Dr. Petrie), and another gate at the head."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He paused, and smiled around upon us boyishly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My secret defenses remain to be mentioned," he resumed; and, opening a
+cupboard, he pointed to a row of batteries, with a number of electric
+bells upon the wall behind.  "The more vulnerable spots are connected
+at night with these bells," he said triumphantly.  "Any attempt to
+scale the barbed wire or to force either gate would set two or more of
+these ringing.  A stray cow raised one false alarm," he added, "and a
+careless rook threw us into a perfect panic on another occasion."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was so boyish&mdash;so nervously brisk and acutely sensitive&mdash;that it was
+difficult to see in him the hero of the Nan-Yang hospital.  I could
+only suppose that he had treated the Boxers' raid in the same spirit
+wherein he met would-be trespassers within the precincts of Redmoat.
+It had been an escapade, of which he was afterwards ashamed, as,
+faintly, he was ashamed of his "fortifications."  "But," rapped Smith,
+"it was not the visit of the burglar which prompted these elaborate
+precautions."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Eltham coughed nervously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am aware," he said, "that having invoked official aid, I must be
+perfectly frank with you, Mr. Smith.  It was the burglar who was
+responsible for my continuing the wire fence all round the grounds, but
+the electrical contrivance followed, later, as a result of several
+disturbed nights.  My servants grew uneasy about someone who came, they
+said, after dusk.  No one could describe this nocturnal visitor, but
+certainly we found traces.  I must admit that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then&mdash;I received what I may term a warning.  My position is a peculiar
+one&mdash;a peculiar one.  My daughter, too, saw this prowling person, over
+by the Roman castrum, and described him as a yellow man.  It was the
+incident in the train following closely upon this other, which led me
+to speak to the police, little as I desired to&mdash;er&mdash;court publicity."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith walked to a window, and looked out across the sloping
+lawn to where the shadows of the shrubbery lay.  A dog was howling
+dismally somewhere.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your defenses are not impregnable, after all, then?" he jerked.  "On
+our way up this evening Mr. Denby was telling us about the death of his
+collie a few nights ago."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The clergyman's face clouded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That, certainly, was alarming," he confessed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I had been in London for a few days, and during my absence Vernon came
+down, bringing the dog with him.  On the night of his arrival it ran,
+barking, into the shrubbery yonder, and did not come out.  He went to
+look for it with a lantern, and found it lying among the bushes, quite
+dead.  The poor creature had been dreadfully beaten about the head."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The gates were locked," Denby interrupted, "and no one could have got
+out of the grounds without a ladder and someone to assist him.  But
+there was no sign of a living thing about.  Edwards and I searched
+every corner."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How long has that other dog taken to howling?" inquired Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only since Rex's death," said Denby quickly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is my mastiff," explained the clergyman, "and he is confined in the
+yard.  He is never allowed on this side of the house."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith wandered aimlessly about the library.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am sorry to have to press you, Mr. Eltham," he said, "but what was
+the nature of the warning to which you referred, and from whom did it
+come?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Eltham hesitated for a long time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have been so unfortunate," he said at last, "in my previous efforts,
+that I feel assured of your hostile criticism when I tell you that I am
+contemplating an immediate return to Ho-Nan!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith jumped round upon him as though moved by a spring.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you are going back to Nan-Yang?" he cried.  "Now I understand!
+Why have you not told me before?  That is the key for which I have
+vainly been seeking.  Your troubles date from the time of your decision
+to return?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I must admit it," confessed the clergyman diffidently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And your warning came from China?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It did."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"From a Chinaman?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"From the Mandarin, Yen-Sun-Yat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yen-Sun-Yat!  My good sir!  He warned you to abandon your visit?  And
+you reject his advice?  Listen to me."  Smith was intensely excited
+now, his eyes bright, his lean figure curiously strung up, alert.  "The
+Mandarin Yen-Sun-Yat is one of the seven!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do not follow you, Mr. Smith."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, sir.  China to-day is not the China of '98.  It is a huge secret
+machine, and Ho-Nan one of its most important wheels!  But if, as I
+understand, this official is a friend of yours, believe me, he has
+saved your life!  You would be a dead man now if it were not for your
+friend in China!  My dear sir, you must accept his counsel."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, for the first time since I had made his acquaintance, "Parson
+Dan" showed through the surface of the Rev. J. D. Eltham.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, sir!" replied the clergyman&mdash;and the change in his voice was
+startling.  "I am called to Nan-Yang. Only One may deter my going."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The admixture of deep spiritual reverence with intense truculence in
+his voice was dissimilar from anything I ever had heard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then only One can protect you," cried Smith, "for, by Heaven, no MAN
+will be able to do so!  Your presence in Ho-Nan can do no possible good
+at present.  It must do harm.  Your experience in 1900 should be fresh
+in your memory."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hard words, Mr. Smith."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The class of missionary work which you favor, sir, is injurious to
+international peace.  At the present moment, Ho-Nan is a barrel of
+gunpowder; you would be the lighted match.  I do not willingly stand
+between any man and what he chooses to consider his duty, but I insist
+that you abandon your visit to the interior of China!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You insist, Mr. Smith?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As your guest, I regret the necessity for reminding you that I hold
+authority to enforce it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Denby fidgeted uneasily.  The tone of the conversation was growing
+harsh and the atmosphere of the library portentous with brewing storms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a short, silent interval.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is what I had feared and expected," said the clergyman.  "This
+was my reason for not seeking official protection."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The phantom Yellow Peril," said Nayland Smith, "to-day materializes
+under the very eyes of the Western world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The 'Yellow Peril'!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You scoff, sir, and so do others.  We take the proffered right hand of
+friendship nor inquire if the hidden left holds a knife!  The peace of
+the world is at stake, Mr. Eltham.  Unknowingly, you tamper with
+tremendous issues."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Eltham drew a deep breath, thrusting both hands in his pockets.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are painfully frank, Mr. Smith," he said; "but I like you for it.
+I will reconsider my position and talk this matter over again with you
+to-morrow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus, then, the storm blew over.  Yet I had never experienced such an
+overwhelming sense of imminent peril&mdash;of a sinister presence&mdash;as
+oppressed me at that moment.  The very atmosphere of Redmoat was
+impregnated with Eastern devilry; it loaded the air like some evil
+perfume.  And then, through the silence, cut a throbbing scream&mdash;the
+scream of a woman in direst fear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My God, it's Greba!" whispered Mr. Eltham.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap08"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VIII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+IN what order we dashed down to the drawing-room I cannot recall.  But
+none was before me when I leaped over the threshold and saw Miss Eltham
+prone by the French windows.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+These were closed and bolted, and she lay with hands outstretched in
+the alcove which they formed.  I bent over her.  Nayland Smith was at
+my elbow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Get my bag" I said.  "She has swooned.  It is nothing serious."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her father, pale and wide-eyed, hovered about me, muttering
+incoherently; but I managed to reassure him; and his gratitude when, I
+having administered a simple restorative, the girl sighed shudderingly
+and opened her eyes, was quite pathetic.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I would permit no questioning at that time, and on her father's arm she
+retired to her own rooms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was some fifteen minutes later that her message was brought to me.
+I followed the maid to a quaint little octagonal apartment, and Greba
+Eltham stood before me, the candlelight caressing the soft curves of
+her face and gleaming in the meshes of her rich brown hair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When she had answered my first question she hesitated in pretty
+confusion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We are anxious to know what alarmed you, Miss Eltham."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She bit her lip and glanced with apprehension towards the window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am almost afraid to tell father," she began rapidly.  "He will think
+me imaginative, but you have been so kind.  It was two green eyes!  Oh!
+Dr. Petrie, they looked up at me from the steps leading to the lawn.
+And they shone like the eyes of a cat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The words thrilled me strangely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you sure it was not a cat, Miss Eltham?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The eyes were too large, Dr. Petrie.  There was something dreadful,
+most dreadful, in their appearance.  I feel foolish and silly for
+having fainted, twice in two days!  But the suspense is telling upon
+me, I suppose.  Father thinks"&mdash;she was becoming charmingly
+confidential, as a woman often will with a tactful physician&mdash;"that
+shut up here we are safe from&mdash;whatever threatens us." I noted, with
+concern, a repetition of the nervous shudder.  "But since our return
+someone else has been in Redmoat!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whatever do you mean, Miss Eltham?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh!  I don't quite know what I do mean, Dr. Petrie.  What does it ALL
+mean?  Vernon has been explaining to me that some awful Chinaman is
+seeking the life of Mr. Nayland Smith.  But if the same man wants to
+kill my father, why has he not done so?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am afraid you puzzle me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course, I must do so.  But&mdash;the man in the train.  He could have
+killed us both quite easily!  And&mdash;last night someone was in father's
+room."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In his room!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I could not sleep, and I heard something moving.  My room is the next
+one.  I knocked on the wall and woke father.  There was nothing; so I
+said it was the howling of the dog that had frightened me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How could anyone get into his room?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I cannot imagine.  But I am not sure it was a man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Eltham, you alarm me.  What do you suspect?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must think me hysterical and silly, but whilst father and I have
+been away from Redmoat perhaps the usual precautions have been
+neglected.  Is there any creature, any large creature, which could
+climb up the wall to the window?  Do you know of anything with a long,
+thin body?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment I offered no reply, studying the girl's pretty face, her
+eager, blue-gray eyes widely opened and fixed upon mine.  She was not
+of the neurotic type, with her clear complexion and sun-kissed neck;
+her arms, healthily toned by exposure to the country airs, were rounded
+and firm, and she had the agile shape of a young Diana with none of the
+anaemic languor which breeds morbid dreams.  She was frightened; yes,
+who would not have been?  But the mere idea of this thing which she
+believed to be in Redmoat, without the apparition of the green eyes,
+must have prostrated a victim of "nerves."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you seen such a creature, Miss Eltham?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She hesitated again, glancing down and pressing her finger-tips
+together.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As father awoke and called out to know why I knocked, I glanced from
+my window.  The moonlight threw half the lawn into shadow, and just
+disappearing in this shadow was something&mdash;something of a brown color,
+marked with sections!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What size and shape?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It moved so quickly I could form no idea of its shape; but I saw quite
+six feet of it flash across the grass!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you hear anything?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A swishing sound in the shrubbery, then nothing more."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She met my eyes expectantly.  Her confidence in my powers of
+understanding and sympathy was gratifying, though I knew that I but
+occupied the position of a father-confessor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you any idea," I said, "how it came about that you awoke in the
+train yesterday whilst your father did not?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We had coffee at a refreshment-room; it must have been drugged in some
+way.  I scarcely tasted mine, the flavor was so awful; but father is an
+old traveler and drank the whole of his cupful!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Eltham's voice called from below.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dr. Petrie," said the girl quickly, "what do you think they want to do
+to him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah!" I replied, "I wish I knew that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you think over what I have told you?  For I do assure you there
+is something here in Redmoat&mdash;something that comes and goes in spite of
+father's 'fortifications'?  Caesar knows there is.  Listen to him.  He
+drags at his chain so that I wonder he does not break it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As we passed downstairs the howling of the mastiff sounded eerily
+through the house, as did the clank-clank of the tightening chain as he
+threw the weight of his big body upon it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I sat in Smith's room that night for some time, he pacing the floor
+smoking and talking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Eltham has influential Chinese friends," he said; "but they dare not
+have him in Nan-Yang at present.  He knows the country as he knows
+Norfolk; he would see things!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"His precautions here have baffled the enemy, I think.  The attempt in
+the train points to an anxiety to waste no opportunity.  But whilst
+Eltham was absent (he was getting his outfit in London, by the way)
+they have been fixing some second string to their fiddle here.  In case
+no opportunity offered before he returned, they provided for getting at
+him here!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But how, Smith?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's the mystery.  But the dead dog in the shrubbery is significant."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you think some emissary of Fu-Manchu is actually inside the moat?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's impossible, Petrie.  You are thinking of secret passages, and so
+forth.  There are none.  Eltham has measured up every foot of the
+place.  There isn't a rathole left unaccounted for; and as for a tunnel
+under the moat, the house stands on a solid mass of Roman masonry, a
+former camp of Hadrian's time.  I have seen a very old plan of the
+Round Moat Priory as it was called.  There is no entrance and no exit
+save by the steps.  So how was the dog killed?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I knocked out my pipe on a bar of the grate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We are in the thick of it here," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We are always in the thick of it," replied Smith.  "Our danger is no
+greater in Norfolk than in London.  But what do they want to do?  That
+man in the train with the case of instruments&mdash;WHAT instruments?  Then
+the apparition of the green eyes to-night. Can they have been the eyes
+of Fu-Manchu?  Is some peculiarly unique outrage contemplated&mdash;something
+calling for the presence of the master?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He may have to prevent Eltham's leaving England without killing him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quite so.  He probably has instructions to be merciful.  But God help
+the victim of Chinese mercy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I went to my own room then.  But I did not even undress, refilling my
+pipe and seating myself at the open window.  Having looked upon the
+awful Chinese doctor, the memory of his face, with its filmed green
+eyes, could never leave me.  The idea that he might be near at that
+moment was a poor narcotic.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The howling and baying of the mastiff was almost continuous.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When all else in Redmoat was still the dog's mournful note yet rose on
+the night with something menacing in it.  I sat looking out across the
+sloping turf to where the shrubbery showed as a black island in a green
+sea.  The moon swam in a cloudless sky, and the air was warm and
+fragrant with country scents.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was in the shrubbery that Denby's collie had met his mysterious
+death&mdash;that the thing seen by Miss Eltham had disappeared.  What
+uncanny secret did it hold?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Caesar became silent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the stopping of a clock will sometimes awaken a sleeper, the abrupt
+cessation of that distant howling, to which I had grown accustomed, now
+recalled me from a world of gloomy imaginings.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I glanced at my watch in the moonlight.  It was twelve minutes past
+midnight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As I replaced it the dog suddenly burst out afresh, but now in a tone
+of sheer anger.  He was alternately howling and snarling in a way that
+sounded new to me.  The crashes, as he leapt to the end of his chain,
+shook the building in which he was confined.  It was as I stood up to
+lean from the window and commanded a view of the corner of the house
+that he broke loose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a hoarse bay he took that decisive leap, and I heard his heavy
+body fall against the wooden wall.  There followed a strange, guttural
+cry&nbsp;&#8230; and the growling of the dog died away at the rear of the house.
+He was out!  But that guttural note had not come from the throat of a
+dog.  Of what was he in pursuit?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At which point his mysterious quarry entered the shrubbery I do not
+know.  I only know that I saw absolutely nothing, until Caesar's lithe
+shape was streaked across the lawn, and the great creature went
+crashing into the undergrowth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then a faint sound above and to my right told me that I was not the
+only spectator of the scene.  I leaned farther from the window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is that you, Miss Eltham?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Dr. Petrie!" she said.  "I am so glad you are awake.  Can we do
+nothing to help?  Caesar will be killed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you see what he went after?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," she called back, and drew her breath sharply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a strange figure went racing across the grass.  It was that of a
+man in a blue dressing-gown, who held a lantern high before him, and a
+revolver in his right hand.  Coincident with my recognition of Mr.
+Eltham he leaped, plunging into the shrubbery in the wake of the dog.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the night held yet another surprise; for Nayland Smith's voice came:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come back!  Come back, Eltham!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I ran out into the passage and downstairs.  The front door was open.  A
+terrible conflict waged in the shrubbery, between the mastiff and
+something else.  Passing round to the lawn, I met Smith fully dressed.
+He just had dropped from a first-floor window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The man is mad!" he snapped.  "Heaven knows what lurks there!  He
+should not have gone alone!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Together we ran towards the dancing light of Eltham's lantern.  The
+sounds of conflict ceased suddenly.  Stumbling over stumps and lashed
+by low-sweeping branches, we struggled forward to where the clergyman
+knelt amongst the bushes.  He glanced up with tears in his eyes, as was
+revealed by the dim light.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look!" he cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The body of the dog lay at his feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was pitiable to think that the fearless brute should have met his
+death in such a fashion, and when I bent and examined him I was glad to
+find traces of life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Drag him out.  He is not dead," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And hurry," rapped Smith, peering about him right and left.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So we three hurried from that haunted place, dragging the dog with us.
+We were not molested.  No sound disturbed the now perfect stillness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By the lawn edge we came upon Denby, half dressed; and almost
+immediately Edwards the gardener also appeared.  The white faces of the
+house servants showed at one window, and Miss Eltham called to me from
+her room:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is he dead?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," I replied; "only stunned."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We carried the dog round to the yard, and I examined his head.  It had
+been struck by some heavy blunt instrument, but the skull was not
+broken.  It is hard to kill a mastiff.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you attend to him, Doctor?" asked Eltham.  "We must see that the
+villain does not escape."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His face was grim and set.  This was a different man from the diffident
+clergyman we knew:  this was "Parson Dan" again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I accepted the care of the canine patient, and Eltham with the others
+went off for more lights to search the shrubbery.  As I was washing a
+bad wound between the mastiff's ears, Miss Eltham joined me.  It was
+the sound of her voice, I think, rather than my more scientific
+ministration, which recalled Caesar to life.  For, as she entered, his
+tail wagged feebly, and a moment later he struggled to his feet&mdash;one of
+which was injured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Having provided for his immediate needs, I left him in charge of his
+young mistress and joined the search party.  They had entered the
+shrubbery from four points and drawn blank.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is absolutely nothing there, and no one can possibly have left
+the grounds," said Eltham amazedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We stood on the lawn looking at one another, Nayland Smith, angry but
+thoughtful, tugging at the lobe of his left ear, as was his habit in
+moments of perplexity.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap09"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER IX
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+WITH the first coming of light, Eltham, Smith and I tested the
+electrical contrivances from every point.  They were in perfect order.
+It became more and more incomprehensible how anyone could have entered
+and quitted Redmoat during the night.  The barbed-wire fencing was
+intact, and bore no signs of having been tampered with.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith and I undertook an exhaustive examination of the shrubbery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the spot where we had found the dog, some five paces to the west of
+the copper beech, the grass and weeds were trampled and the surrounding
+laurels and rhododendrons bore evidence of a struggle, but no human
+footprint could be found.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The ground is dry," said Smith.  "We cannot expect much."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In my opinion," I said, "someone tried to get at Caesar; his presence
+is dangerous.  And in his rage he broke loose."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think so, too," agreed Smith.  "But why did this person make for
+here?  And how, having mastered the dog, get out of Redmoat?  I am open
+to admit the possibility of someone's getting in during the day whilst
+the gates are open, and hiding until dusk.  But how in the name of all
+that's wonderful does he GET OUT?  He must possess the attributes of a
+bird."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I thought of Greba Eltham's statements, reminding my friend of her
+description of the thing which she had seen passing into this strangely
+haunted shrubbery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That line of speculation soon takes us out of our depth, Petrie," he
+said.  "Let us stick to what we can understand, and that may help us to
+a clearer idea of what, at present, is incomprehensible.  My view of
+the case to date stands thus:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"(1) Eltham, having rashly decided to return to the interior of China,
+is warned by an official whose friendship he has won in some way to
+stay in England.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"(2) I know this official for one of the Yellow group represented in
+England by Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"(3) Several attempts, of which we know but little, to get at Eltham
+are frustrated, presumably by his curious 'defenses.' An attempt in a
+train fails owing to Miss Eltham's distaste for refreshment-room
+coffee.  An attempt here fails owing to her insomnia.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"(4) During Eltham's absence from Redmoat certain preparations are made
+for his return.  These lead to:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"(a) The death of Denby's collie;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"(b) The things heard and seen by Miss Eltham;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"(c) The things heard and seen by us all last night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So that the clearing up of my fourth point&mdash;id est, the discovery of
+the nature of these preparations&mdash;becomes our immediate concern.  The
+prime object of these preparations, Petrie, was to enable someone to
+gain access to Eltham's room.  The other events are incidental.  The
+dogs HAD to be got rid of, for instance; and there is no doubt that
+Miss Eltham's wakefulness saved her father a second time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But from what?  For Heaven's sake, from what?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith glanced about into the light-patched shadows.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"From a visit by someone&mdash;perhaps by Fu-Manchu himself," he said in a
+hushed voice.  "The object of that visit I hope we may never learn; for
+that would mean that it had been achieved."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smith," I said, "I do not altogether understand you; but do you think
+he has some incredible creature hidden here somewhere?  It would be
+like him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I begin to suspect the most formidable creature in the known world to
+be hidden here.  I believe Fu-Manchu is somewhere inside Redmoat!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Our conversation was interrupted at this point by Denby, who came to
+report that he had examined the moat, the roadside, and the bank of the
+stream, but found no footprints or clew of any kind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No one left the grounds of Redmoat last night, I think," he said.  And
+his voice had awe in it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That day dragged slowly on.  A party of us scoured the neighborhood for
+traces of strangers, examining every foot of the Roman ruin hard by;
+but vainly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May not your presence here induce Fu-Manchu to abandon his plans?" I
+asked Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think not," he replied.  "You see, unless we can prevail upon him,
+Eltham sails in a fortnight.  So the Doctor has no time to waste.
+Furthermore, I have an idea that his arrangements are of such a
+character that they MUST go forward.  He might turn aside, of course,
+to assassinate me, if opportunity arose!  But we know, from experience,
+that he permits nothing to interfere with his schemes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There are few states, I suppose, which exact so severe a toll from
+one's nervous system as the ANTICIPATION of calamity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All anticipation is keener, be it of joy or pain, than the reality
+whereof it is a mental forecast; but that inactive waiting at Redmoat,
+for the blow which we knew full well to be pending exceeded in its
+nerve taxation, anything I hitherto had experienced.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I felt as one bound upon an Aztec altar, with the priest's obsidian
+knife raised above my breast!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Secret and malign forces throbbed about us; forces against which we had
+no armor.  Dreadful as it was, I count it a mercy that the climax was
+reached so quickly.  And it came suddenly enough; for there in that
+quiet Norfolk home we found ourselves at hand grips with one of the
+mysterious horrors which characterized the operations of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+It was upon us before we realized it.  There is no incidental music to
+the dramas of real life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As we sat on the little terrace in the creeping twilight, I remember
+thinking how the peace of the scene gave the lie to my fears that we
+bordered upon tragic things.  Then Caesar, who had been a docile
+patient all day, began howling again; and I saw Greba Eltham shudder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I caught Smith's eye, and was about to propose our retirement indoors,
+when the party was broken up in more turbulent fashion.  I suppose it
+was the presence of the girl which prompted Denby to the rash act, a
+desire personally to distinguish himself.  But, as I recalled
+afterwards, his gaze had rarely left the shrubbery since dusk, save to
+seek her face, and now he leaped wildly to his feet, overturning his
+chair, and dashed across the grass to the trees.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you see it?" he yelled.  "Did you see it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He evidently carried a revolver.  For from the edge of the shrubbery a
+shot sounded, and in the flash we saw Denby with the weapon raised.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Greba, go in and fasten the windows," cried Eltham.  "Mr. Smith, will
+you enter the bushes from the west.  Dr. Petrie, east.  Edwards,
+Edwards&mdash;" And he was off across the lawn with the nervous activity of
+a cat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As I made off in an opposite direction I heard the gardener's voice
+from the lower gate, and I saw Eltham's plan.  It was to surround the
+shrubbery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Two more shots and two flashes from the dense heart of greenwood.  Then
+a loud cry&mdash;I thought, from Denby&mdash;and a second, muffled one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Following&mdash;silence, only broken by the howling of the mastiff.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I sprinted through the rose garden, leaped heedlessly over a bed of
+geranium and heliotrope, and plunged in among the bushes and under the
+elms.  Away on the left I heard Edwards shouting, and Eltham's
+answering voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Denby!" I cried, and yet louder:  "Denby!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the silence fell again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dusk was upon Redmoat now, but from sitting in the twilight my eyes had
+grown accustomed to gloom, and I could see fairly well what lay before
+me.  Not daring to think what might lurk above, below, around me, I
+pressed on into the midst of the thicket.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Vernon!" came Eltham's voice from one side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bear more to the right, Edwards," I heard Nayland Smith cry directly
+ahead of me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With an eerie and indescribable sensation of impending disaster upon
+me, I thrust my way through to a gray patch which marked a break in the
+elmen roof.  At the foot of the copper beech I almost fell over Eltham.
+Then Smith plunged into view.  Lastly, Edwards the gardener rounded a
+big rhododendron and completed the party.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We stood quite still for a moment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A faint breeze whispered through the beech leaves.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where is he?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I cannot remember who put it into words; I was too dazed with amazement
+to notice.  Then Eltham began shouting:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Vernon!  Vernon!  VERNON!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His voice pitched higher upon each repetition.  There was something
+horrible about that vain calling, under the whispering beech, with
+shrubs banked about us cloaking God alone could know what.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the back of the house came Caesar's faint reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quick!  Lights!" rapped Smith.  "Every lamp you have!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Off we went, dodging laurels and privets, and poured out on to the
+lawn, a disordered company.  Eltham's face was deathly pale, and his
+jaw set hard.  He met my eye.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God forgive me!" he said.  "I could do murder to-night!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was a man composed of strange perplexities.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed an age before the lights were found.  But at last we returned
+to the bushes, really after a very brief delay; and ten minutes
+sufficed us to explore the entire shrubbery, for it was not extensive.
+We found his revolver, but there was no one there&mdash;nothing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When we all stood again on the lawn, I thought that I had never seen
+Smith so haggard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What in Heaven's name can we do?" he muttered.  "What does it mean?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He expected no answer; for there was none to offer one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Search!  Everywhere," said Eltham hoarsely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He ran off into the rose garden, and began beating about among the
+flowers like a madman, muttering:  "Vernon!  Vernon!"  For close upon
+an hour we all searched.  We searched every square yard, I think,
+within the wire fencing, and found no trace.  Miss Eltham slipped out
+in the confusion, and joined with the rest of us in that frantic hunt.
+Some of the servants assisted too.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a group terrified and awestricken which came together again on
+the terrace.  One and then another would give up, until only Eltham and
+Smith were missing.  Then they came back together from examining the
+steps to the lower gate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eltham dropped on to a rustic seat, and sank his head in his hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith paced up and down like a newly caged animal, snapping his
+teeth together and tugging at his ear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Possessed by some sudden idea, or pressed to action by his tumultuous
+thoughts, he snatched up a lantern and strode silently off across the
+grass and to the shrubbery once more.  I followed him.  I think his
+idea was that he might surprise anyone who lurked there.  He surprised
+himself, and all of us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For right at the margin he tripped and fell flat.  I ran to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had fallen over the body of Denby, which lay there!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Denby had not been there a few moments before, and how he came to be
+there now we dared not conjecture.  Mr. Eltham joined us, uttered one
+short, dry sob, and dropped upon his knees.  Then we were carrying
+Denby back to the house, with the mastiff howling a marche funebre.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We laid him on the grass where it sloped down from the terrace.
+Nayland Smith's haggard face was terrible.  But the stark horror of the
+thing inspired him to that, which conceived earlier, had saved Denby.
+Twisting suddenly to Eltham, he roared in a voice audible beyond the
+river:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Heavens!  we are fools!  LOOSE THE DOG!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But the dog&mdash;" I began.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith clapped his hand over my mouth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know he's crippled," he whispered.  "But if anything human lurks
+there, the dog will lead us to it.  If a MAN is there, he will fly!
+Why did we not think of it before.  Fools, fools!"  He raised his voice
+again.  "Keep him on leash, Edwards.  He will lead us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The scheme succeeded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Edwards barely had started on his errand when bells began ringing
+inside the house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait!" snapped Eltham, and rushed indoors.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A moment later he was out again, his eyes gleaming madly.  "Above the
+moat," he panted.  And we were off en masse round the edge of the trees.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was dark above the moat; but not so dark as to prevent our seeing a
+narrow ladder of thin bamboo joints and silken cord hanging by two
+hooks from the top of the twelve-foot wire fence.  There was no sound.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's out!" screamed Eltham.  "Down the steps!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We all ran our best and swiftest.  But Eltham outran us.  Like a fury
+he tore at bolts and bars, and like a fury sprang out into the road.
+Straight and white it showed to the acclivity by the Roman ruin.  But
+no living thing moved upon it.  The distant baying of the dog was borne
+to our ears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Curse it!  he's crippled," hissed Smith.  "Without him, as well pursue
+a shadow!"
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+A few hours later the shrubbery yielded up its secret, a simple one
+enough: A big cask sunk in a pit, with a laurel shrub cunningly affixed
+to its movable lid, which was further disguised with tufts of grass.  A
+slender bamboo-jointed rod lay near the fence.  It had a hook on the
+top, and was evidently used for attaching the ladder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was the end of this ladder which Miss Eltham saw," said Smith, "as
+he trailed it behind him into the shrubbery when she interrupted him in
+her fathers room.  He and whomever he had with him doubtless slipped in
+during the daytime&mdash;whilst Eltham was absent in London&mdash;bringing the
+prepared cask and all necessary implements with them.  They concealed
+themselves somewhere&mdash;probably in the shrubbery&mdash;and during the night
+made the cache.  The excavated earth would be disposed of on the
+flower-beds; the dummy bush they probably had ready.  You see, the
+problem of getting IN was never a big one.  But owing to the 'defenses'
+it was impossible (whilst Eltham was in residence at any rate) to get
+OUT after dark.  For Fu-Manchu's purposes, then, a working-base INSIDE
+Redmoat was essential.  His servant&mdash;for he needed assistance&mdash;must
+have been in hiding somewhere outside; Heaven knows where!  During the
+day they could come or go by the gates, as we have already noted."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You think it was the Doctor himself?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It seems possible.  Who else has eyes like the eyes Miss Eltham saw
+from the window last night?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then remains to tell the nature of the outrage whereby Fu-Manchu had
+planned to prevent Eltham's leaving England for China.  This we learned
+from Denby.  For Denby was not dead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was easy to divine that he had stumbled upon the fiendish visitor at
+the very entrance to his burrow; had been stunned (judging from the
+evidence, with a sand-bag), and dragged down into the cache&mdash;to which
+he must have lain in such dangerous proximity as to render detection of
+the dummy bush possible in removing him.  The quickest expedient, then,
+had been to draw him beneath.  When the search of the shrubbery was
+concluded, his body had been borne to the edge of the bushes and laid
+where we found it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Why his life had been spared, I cannot conjecture, but provision had
+been made against his recovering consciousness and revealing the secret
+of the shrubbery.  The ruse of releasing the mastiff alone had
+terminated the visit of the unbidden guest within Redmoat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Denby made a very slow recovery; and, even when convalescent,
+consciously added not one fact to those we already had collated; his
+memory had completely deserted him!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This, in my opinion, as in those of the several specialists consulted,
+was due, not to the blow on the head, but to the presence, slightly
+below and to the right of the first cervical curve of the spine, of a
+minute puncture&mdash;undoubtedly caused by a hypodermic syringe.  Then,
+unconsciously, poor Denby furnished the last link in the chain; for
+undoubtedly, by means of this operation, Fu-Manchu had designed to
+efface from Eltham's mind his plans of return to Ho-Nan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The nature of the fluid which could produce such mental symptoms was a
+mystery&mdash;a mystery which defied Western science: one of the many
+strange secrets of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap10"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER X
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+SINCE Nayland Smith's return from Burma I had rarely taken up a paper
+without coming upon evidences of that seething which had cast up Dr.
+Fu-Manchu. Whether, hitherto, such items had escaped my attention or
+had seemed to demand no particular notice, or whether they now became
+increasingly numerous, I was unable to determine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One evening, some little time after our sojourn in Norfolk, in glancing
+through a number of papers which I had brought in with me, I chanced
+upon no fewer than four items of news bearing more or less directly
+upon the grim business which engaged my friend and I.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No white man, I honestly believe, appreciates the unemotional cruelty
+of the Chinese.  Throughout the time that Dr. Fu-Manchu remained in
+England, the press preserved a uniform silence upon the subject of his
+existence.  This was due to Nayland Smith.  But, as a result, I feel
+assured that my account of the Chinaman's deeds will, in many quarters,
+meet with an incredulous reception.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I had been at work, earlier in the evening, upon the opening chapters
+of this chronicle, and I had realized how difficult it would be for my
+reader, amid secure and cozy surroundings, to credit any human being
+with a callous villainy great enough to conceive and to put into
+execution such a death pest as that directed against Sir Crichton Davey.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One would expect God's worst man to shrink from employing&mdash;against
+however vile an enemy&mdash;such an instrument as the Zayat Kiss.  So
+thinking, my eye was caught by the following:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+EXPRESS CORRESPONDENT
+<BR>
+NEW YORK.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Secret service men of the United States Government are searching the
+South Sea Islands for a certain Hawaiian from the island of Maui, who,
+it is believed, has been selling poisonous scorpions to Chinese in
+Honolulu anxious to get rid of their children.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Infanticide, by scorpion and otherwise, among the Chinese, has
+increased so terribly that the authorities have started a searching
+inquiry, which has led to the hunt for the scorpion dealer of Maui.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Practically all the babies that die mysteriously are unwanted girls,
+and in nearly every case the parents promptly ascribe the death to the
+bite of a scorpion, and are ready to produce some more or less
+poisonous insect in support of the statement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The authorities have no doubt that infanticide by scorpion bite is a
+growing practice, and orders have been given to hunt down the scorpion
+dealer at any cost."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Is it any matter for wonder that such a people had produced a
+Fu-Manchu?  I pasted the cutting into a scrap-book, determined that, if
+I lived to publish my account of those days, I would quote it therein
+as casting a sidelight upon Chinese character.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A Reuter message to The Globe and a paragraph in The Star also
+furnished work for my scissors.  Here were evidences of the deep-seated
+unrest, the secret turmoil, which manifested itself so far from its
+center as peaceful England in the person of the sinister Doctor.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+"HONG KONG, Friday.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Li Hon Hung, the Chinaman who fired at the Governor yesterday, was
+charged before the magistrate with shooting at him with intent to kill,
+which is equivalent to attempted murder.  The prisoner, who was not
+defended, pleaded guilty.  The Assistant Crown Solicitor, who
+prosecuted, asked for a remand until Monday, which was granted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Snapshots taken by the spectators of the outrage yesterday disclosed
+the presence of an accomplice, also armed with a revolver.  It is
+reported that this man, who was arrested last night, was in possession
+of incriminating documentary evidence."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+Later.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Examination of the documents found on Li Hon Hung's accomplice has
+disclosed the fact that both men were well financed by the Canton Triad
+Society, the directors of which had enjoined the assassination of Sir
+F. M. or Mr. C. S., the Colonial Secretary.  In a report prepared by
+the accomplice for dispatch to Canton, also found on his person, he
+expressed regret that the attempt had failed."&mdash;Reuter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is officially reported in St. Petersburg that a force of Chinese
+soldiers and villagers surrounded the house of a Russian subject named
+Said Effendi, near Khotan, in Chinese Turkestan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They fired at the house and set it in flames.  There were in the house
+about 100 Russians, many of whom were killed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Russian Government has instructed its Minister at Peking to make
+the most vigorous representations on the subject."&mdash;Reuter.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Finally, in a Personal Column, I found the following:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+"HO-NAN. Have abandoned visit.&mdash;ELTHAM."
+</P>
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+I had just pasted it into my book when Nayland Smith came in and threw
+himself into an arm-chair, facing me across the table.  I showed him
+the cutting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am glad, for Eltham's sake&mdash;and for the girl's," was his comment.
+"But it marks another victory for Fu-Manchu!  Just Heaven!  Why is
+retribution delayed!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith's darkly tanned face had grown leaner than ever since he had
+begun his fight with the most uncanny opponent, I suppose, against whom
+a man ever had pitted himself. He stood up and began restlessly to pace
+the room, furiously stuffing tobacco into his briar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have seen Sir Lionel Barton," he said abruptly; "and, to put the
+whole thing in a nutshell, he has laughed at me!  During the months
+that I have been wondering where he had gone to he has been somewhere
+in Egypt.  He certainly bears a charmed life, for on the evidence of
+his letter to The Times he has seen things in Tibet which Fu-Manchu
+would have the West blind to; in fact, I think he has found a new
+keyhole to the gate of the Indian Empire!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Long ago we had placed the name of Sir Lionel Barton upon the list of
+those whose lives stood between Fu-Manchu and the attainment of his
+end.  Orientalist and explorer, the fearless traveler who first had
+penetrated to Lhassa, who thrice, as a pilgrim, had entered forbidden
+Mecca, he now had turned his attention again to Tibet&mdash;thereby signing
+his own death-warrant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That he has reached England alive is a hopeful sign?" I suggested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith shook his head, and lighted the blackened briar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"England at present is the web," he replied.  "The spider will be
+waiting.  Petrie, I sometimes despair.  Sir Lionel is an impossible man
+to shepherd.  You ought to see his house at Finchley.  A low, squat
+place completely hemmed in by trees.  Damp as a swamp; smells like a
+jungle.  Everything topsy-turvy. He only arrived to-day, and he is
+working and eating (and sleeping I expect), in a study that looks like
+an earthquake at Sotheby's auction-rooms. The rest of the house is half
+a menagerie and half a circus.  He has a Bedouin groom, a Chinese
+body-servant, and Heaven only knows what other strange people!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Chinese!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I saw him; a squinting Cantonese he calls Kwee.  I don't like
+him.  Also, there is a secretary known as Strozza, who has an
+unpleasant face.  He is a fine linguist, I understand, and is engaged
+upon the Spanish notes for Barton's forthcoming book on the Mayapan
+temples.  By the way, all Sir Lionel's baggage disappeared from the
+landing-stage&mdash;including his Tibetan notes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Significant!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course.  But he argues that he has crossed Tibet from the Kuen-Lun
+to the Himalayas without being assassinated, and therefore that it is
+unlikely he will meet with that fate in London.  I left him dictating
+the book from memory, at the rate of about two hundred words a minute."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is wasting no time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wasting time!  In addition to the Yucatan book and the work on Tibet,
+he has to read a paper at the Institute next week about some tomb he
+has unearthed in Egypt.  As I came away, a van drove up from the docks
+and a couple of fellows delivered a sarcophagus as big as a boat.  It
+is unique, according to Sir Lionel, and will go to the British Museum
+after he has examined it.  The man crams six months' work into six
+weeks; then he is off again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you propose to do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What CAN I do?  I know that Fu-Manchu will make an attempt upon him.
+I cannot doubt it.  Ugh!  that house gave me the shudders.  No
+sunlight, I'll swear, Petrie, can ever penetrate to the rooms, and when
+I arrived this afternoon clouds of gnats floated like motes wherever a
+stray beam filtered through the trees of the avenue.  There's a steamy
+smell about the place that is almost malarious, and the whole of the
+west front is covered with a sort of monkey-creeper, which he has
+imported at some time or other.  It has a close, exotic perfume that is
+quite in the picture.  I tell you, the place was made for murder."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you taken any precautions?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I called at Scotland Yard and sent a man down to watch the house,
+but&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is Sir Lionel like?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A madman, Petrie.  A tall, massive man, wearing a dirty dressing-gown
+of neutral color; a man with untidy gray hair and a bristling mustache,
+keen blue eyes, and a brown skin; who wears a short beard or rarely
+shaves&mdash;I don't know which.  I left him striding about among the
+thousand and one curiosities of that incredible room, picking his way
+through his antique furniture, works of reference, manuscripts,
+mummies, spears, pottery and what not&mdash;sometimes kicking a book from
+his course, or stumbling over a stuffed crocodile or a Mexican
+mask&mdash;alternately dictating and conversing.  Phew!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For some time we were silent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smith" I said, "we are making no headway in this business.  With all
+the forces arrayed against him, Fu-Manchu still eludes us, still
+pursues his devilish, inscrutable way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And we don't know all," he said.  "We mark such and such a man as one
+alive to the Yellow Peril, and we warn him&mdash;if we have time.  Perhaps
+he escapes; perhaps he does not.  But what do we know, Petrie, of those
+others who may die every week by his murderous agency?  We cannot know
+EVERYONE who has read the riddle of China.  I never see a report of
+someone found drowned, of an apparent suicide, of a sudden, though
+seemingly natural death, without wondering.  I tell you, Fu-Manchu is
+omnipresent; his tentacles embrace everything.  I said that Sir Lionel
+must bear a charmed life.  The fact that WE are alive is a miracle."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He glanced at his watch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nearly eleven," he said.  "But sleep seems a waste of time&mdash;apart from
+its dangers."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We heard a bell ring.  A few moments later followed a knock at the room
+door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come in!" I cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A girl entered with a telegram addressed to Smith.  His jaw looked very
+square in the lamplight, and his eyes shone like steel as he took it
+from her and opened the envelope.  He glanced at the form, stood up and
+passed it to me, reaching for his hat, which lay upon my writing-table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God help us, Petrie!" he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was the message:
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+"Sir Lionel Barton murdered.  Meet me at his house at once.&mdash;WEYMOUTH,
+INSPECTOR."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap11"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XI
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+ALTHOUGH we avoided all unnecessary delay, it was close upon midnight
+when our cab swung round into a darkly shadowed avenue, at the farther
+end of which, as seen through a tunnel, the moonlight glittered upon
+the windows of Rowan House, Sir Lionel Barton's home.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Stepping out before the porch of the long, squat building, I saw that
+it was banked in, as Smith had said, by trees and shrubs.  The facade
+showed mantled in the strange exotic creeper which he had mentioned,
+and the air was pungent with an odor of decaying vegetation, with which
+mingled the heavy perfume of the little nocturnal red flowers which
+bloomed luxuriantly upon the creeper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The place looked a veritable wilderness, and when we were admitted to
+the hall by Inspector Weymouth I saw that the interior was in keeping
+with the exterior, for the hall was constructed from the model of some
+apartment in an Assyrian temple, and the squat columns, the low seats,
+the hangings, all were eloquent of neglect, being thickly dust-coated.
+The musty smell, too, was almost as pronounced here as outside, beneath
+the trees.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To a library, whose contents overflowed in many literary torrents upon
+the floor, the detective conducted us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good heavens!" I cried, "what's that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Something leaped from the top of the bookcase, ambled silently across
+the littered carpet, and passed from the library like a golden streak.
+I stood looking after it with startled eyes.  Inspector Weymouth
+laughed dryly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a young puma, or a civet-cat, or something, Doctor," he said.
+"This house is full of surprises&mdash;and mysteries."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His voice was not quite steady, I thought, and he carefully closed the
+door ere proceeding further.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where is he?" asked Nayland Smith harshly.  "How was it done?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weymouth sat down and lighted a cigar which I offered him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought you would like to hear what led up to it&mdash;so far as we
+know&mdash;before seeing him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," continued the Inspector, "the man you arranged to send down
+from the Yard got here all right and took up a post in the road
+outside, where he could command a good view of the gates.  He saw and
+heard nothing, until going on for half-past ten, when a young lady
+turned up and went in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A young lady?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Edmonds, Sir Lionel's shorthand typist.  She had found, after
+getting home, that her bag, with her purse in, was missing, and she
+came back to see if she had left it here.  She gave the alarm.  My man
+heard the row from the road and came in.  Then he ran out and rang us
+up.  I immediately wired for you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He heard the row, you say.  What row?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Edmonds went into violent hysterics!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith was pacing the room now in tense excitement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Describe what he saw when he came in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He saw a negro footman&mdash;there isn't an Englishman in the house&mdash;trying
+to pacify the girl out in the hall yonder, and a Malay and another
+colored man beating their foreheads and howling.  There was no sense to
+be got out of any of them, so he started to investigate for himself.
+He had taken the bearings of the place earlier in the evening, and from
+the light in a window on the ground floor had located the study; so he
+set out to look for the door.  When he found it, it was locked from the
+inside."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He went out and round to the window.  There's no blind, and from the
+shrubbery you can see into the lumber-room known as the study.  He
+looked in, as apparently Miss Edmonds had done before him.  What he saw
+accounted for her hysterics."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Both Smith and I were hanging upon his words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All amongst the rubbish on the floor a big Egyptian mummy case was
+lying on its side, and face downwards, with his arms thrown across it,
+lay Sir Lionel Barton."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My God!  Yes.  Go on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There was only a shaded reading-lamp alight, and it stood on a chair,
+shining right down on him; it made a patch of light on the floor, you
+understand."  The Inspector indicated its extent with his hands.
+"Well, as the man smashed the glass and got the window open, and was
+just climbing in, he saw something else, so he says."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He paused.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What did he see?" demanded Smith shortly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A sort of GREEN MIST, sir.  He says it seemed to be alive.  It moved
+over the floor, about a foot from the ground, going away from him and
+towards a curtain at the other end of the study."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith fixed his eyes upon the speaker.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where did he first see this green mist?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He says, Mr. Smith, that he thinks it came from the mummy case."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; go on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is to his credit that he climbed into the room after seeing a thing
+like that.  He did.  He turned the body over, and Sir Lionel looked
+horrible.  He was quite dead.  Then Croxted&mdash;that's the man's
+name&mdash;went over to this curtain.  There was a glass door&mdash;shut.  He
+opened it, and it gave on a conservatory&mdash;a place stacked from the
+tiled floor to the glass roof with more rubbish.  It was dark inside,
+but enough light came from the study&mdash;it's really a drawing-room, by
+the way&mdash;as he'd turned all the lamps on, to give him another glimpse
+of this green, crawling mist.  There are three steps to go down.  On
+the steps lay a dead Chinaman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A dead Chinaman!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A dead CHINAMAN."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doctor seen them?" rapped Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; a local man.  He was out of his depth, I could see.  Contradicted
+himself three times.  But there's no need for another opinion&mdash;until we
+get the coroner's."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And Croxted?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Croxted was taken ill, Mr. Smith, and had to be sent home in a cab."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What ails him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Detective-Inspector Weymouth raised his eyebrows and carefully knocked
+the ash from his cigar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He held out until I came, gave me the story, and then fainted right
+away.  He said that something in the conservatory seemed to get him by
+the throat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did he mean that literally?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I couldn't say.  We had to send the girl home, too, of course."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith was pulling thoughtfully at the lobe of his left ear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Got any theory?" he jerked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weymouth shrugged his shoulders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not one that includes the green mist," he said.  "Shall we go in now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We crossed the Assyrian hall, where the members of that strange
+household were gathered in a panic-stricken group.  They numbered four.
+Two of them were negroes, and two Easterns of some kind.  I missed the
+Chinaman, Kwee, of whom Smith had spoken, and the Italian secretary;
+and from the way in which my friend peered about the shadows of the
+hall I divined that he, too, wondered at their absence.  We entered Sir
+Lionel's study&mdash;an apartment which I despair of describing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith's words, "an earthquake at Sotheby's auction-rooms,"
+leaped to my mind at once; for the place was simply stacked with
+curious litter&mdash;loot of Africa, Mexico and Persia.  In a clearing by
+the hearth a gas stove stood upon a packing-case, and about it lay a
+number of utensils for camp cookery.  The odor of rotting vegetation,
+mingled with the insistent perfume of the strange night-blooming
+flowers, was borne in through the open window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the center of the floor, beside an overturned sarcophagus, lay a
+figure in a neutral-colored dressing-gown, face downwards, and arms
+thrust forward and over the side of the ancient Egyptian mummy case.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My friend advanced and knelt beside the dead man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good God!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith sprang upright and turned with an extraordinary expression to
+Inspector Weymouth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You do not know Sir Lionel Barton by sight?" he rapped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," began Weymouth, "but&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is not Sir Lionel.  This is Strozza, the secretary."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What!" shouted Weymouth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where is the other&mdash;the Chinaman&mdash;quick!" cried Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have had him left where he was found&mdash;on the conservatory steps,"
+said the Inspector.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith ran across the room to where, beyond the open door, a glimpse
+might be obtained of stacked-up curiosities.  Holding back the curtain
+to allow more light to penetrate, he bent forward over a crumpled-up
+figure which lay upon the steps below.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is!" he cried aloud.  "It is Sir Lionel's servant, Kwee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weymouth and I looked at one another across the body of the Italian;
+then our eyes turned together to where my friend, grim-faced, stood
+over the dead Chinaman.  A breeze whispered through the leaves; a great
+wave of exotic perfume swept from the open window towards the curtained
+doorway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a breath of the East&mdash;that stretched out a yellow hand to the
+West.  It was symbolic of the subtle, intangible power manifested in
+Dr. Fu-Manchu, as Nayland Smith&mdash;lean, agile, bronzed with the suns of
+Burma, was symbolic of the clean British efficiency which sought to
+combat the insidious enemy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One thing is evident," said Smith:  "no one in the house, Strozza
+excepted, knew that Sir Lionel was absent."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How do you arrive at that?" asked Weymouth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The servants, in the hall, are bewailing him as dead.  If they had
+seen him go out they would know that it must be someone else who lies
+here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What about the Chinaman?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Since there is no other means of entrance to the conservatory save
+through the study, Kwee must have hidden himself there at some time
+when his master was absent from the room."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Croxted found the communicating door closed.  What killed the
+Chinaman?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Both Miss Edmonds and Croxted found the study door locked from the
+inside.  What killed Strozza?" retorted Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will have noted," continued the Inspector, "that the secretary is
+wearing Sir Lionel's dressing-gown. It was seeing him in that, as she
+looked in at the window, which led Miss Edmonds to mistake him for her
+employer&mdash;and consequently to put us on the wrong scent."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He wore it in order that anybody looking in at the window would be
+sure to make that mistake," rapped Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because he came here for a felonious purpose.  See."  Smith stooped
+and took up several tools from the litter on the floor.  "There lies
+the lid.  He came to open the sarcophagus.  It contained the mummy of
+some notable person who flourished under Meneptah II; and Sir Lionel
+told me that a number of valuable ornaments and jewels probably were
+secreted amongst the wrappings.  He proposed to open the thing and to
+submit the entire contents to examination to-night. He evidently
+changed his mind&mdash;fortunately for himself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I ran my fingers through my hair in perplexity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then what has become of the mummy?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith laughed dryly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It has vanished in the form of a green vapor apparently," he said.
+"Look at Strozza's face."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned the body over, and, used as I was to such spectacles, the
+contorted features of the Italian filled me with horror, so&mdash;suggestive
+were they of a death more than ordinarily violent.  I pulled aside the
+dressing-gown and searched the body for marks, but failed to find any.
+Nayland Smith crossed the room, and, assisted by the detective, carried
+Kwee, the Chinaman, into the study and laid him fully in the light.
+His puckered yellow face presented a sight even more awful than the
+other, and his blue lips were drawn back, exposing both upper and lower
+teeth.  There were no marks of violence, but his limbs, like Strozza's,
+had been tortured during his mortal struggles into unnatural postures.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The breeze was growing higher, and pungent odor-waves from the damp
+shrubbery, bearing, too, the oppressive sweetness of the creeping
+plant, swept constantly through the open window.  Inspector Weymouth
+carefully relighted his cigar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm with you this far, Mr. Smith," he said.  "Strozza, knowing Sir
+Lionel to be absent, locked himself in here to rifle the mummy case,
+for Croxted, entering by way of the window, found the key on the
+inside.  Strozza didn't know that the Chinaman was hidden in the
+conservatory&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And Kwee did not dare to show himself, because he too was there for
+some mysterious reason of his own," interrupted Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Having got the lid off, something,&mdash;somebody&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Suppose we say the mummy?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weymouth laughed uneasily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, sir, something that vanished from a locked room without opening
+the door or the window killed Strozza."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And something which, having killed Strozza, next killed the Chinaman,
+apparently without troubling to open the door behind which he lay
+concealed," Smith continued.  "For once in a way, Inspector, Dr.
+Fu-Manchu has employed an ally which even his giant will was incapable
+entirely to subjugate.  What blind force&mdash;what terrific agent of
+death&mdash;had he confined in that sarcophagus!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You think this is the work of Fu-Manchu?" I said.  "If you are
+correct, his power indeed is more than human."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Something in my voice, I suppose, brought Smith right about.  He
+surveyed me curiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can you doubt it?  The presence of a concealed Chinaman surely is
+sufficient.  Kwee, I feel assured, was one of the murder group, though
+probably he had only recently entered that mysterious service.  He is
+unarmed, or I should feel disposed to think that his part was to
+assassinate Sir Lionel whilst, unsuspecting the presence of a hidden
+enemy, he was at work here.  Strozza's opening the sarcophagus clearly
+spoiled the scheme."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And led to the death&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of a servant of Fu-Manchu. Yes.  I am at a loss to account for that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you think that the sarcophagus entered into the scheme, Smith?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My friend looked at me in evident perplexity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean that its arrival at the time when a creature of the
+Doctor&mdash;Kwee&mdash;was concealed here, may have been a coincidence?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I nodded; and Smith bent over the sarcophagus, curiously examining the
+garish paintings with which it was decorated inside and out.  It lay
+sideways upon the floor, and seizing it by its edge, he turned it over.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Heavy," he muttered; "but Strozza must have capsized it as he fell.
+He would not have laid it on its side to remove the lid.  Hallo!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He bent farther forward, catching at a piece of twine, and out of the
+mummy case pulled a rubber stopper or "cork."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This was stuck in a hole level with the floor of the thing," he said.
+"Ugh!  it has a disgusting smell."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I took it from his hands, and was about to examine it, when a loud
+voice sounded outside in the hall.  The door was thrown open, and a big
+man, who, despite the warmth of the weather, wore a fur-lined overcoat,
+rushed impetuously into the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sir Lionel!" cried Smith eagerly.  "I warned you!  And see, you have
+had a very narrow escape."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir Lionel Barton glanced at what lay upon the floor, then from Smith
+to myself, and from me to Inspector Weymouth.  He dropped into one of
+the few chairs unstacked with books.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Smith," he said, with emotion, "what does this mean?  Tell
+me&mdash;quickly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In brief terms Smith detailed the happenings of the night&mdash;or so much
+as he knew of them.  Sir Lionel Barton listened, sitting quite still
+the while&mdash;an unusual repose in a man of such evidently tremendous
+nervous activity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He came for the jewels," he said slowly, when Smith was finished; and
+his eyes turned to the body of the dead Italian.  "I was wrong to
+submit him to the temptation.  God knows what Kwee was doing in hiding.
+Perhaps he had come to murder me, as you surmise, Mr. Smith, though I
+find it hard to believe.  But&mdash;I don't think this is the handiwork of
+your Chinese doctor." He fixed his gaze upon the sarcophagus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith stared at him in surprise.  "What do you mean, Sir Lionel?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The famous traveler continued to look towards the sarcophagus with
+something in his blue eyes that might have been dread.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I received a wire from Professor Rembold to-night," he continued.
+"You were correct in supposing that no one but Strozza knew of my
+absence.  I dressed hurriedly and met the professor at the Traveler's.
+He knew that I was to read a paper next week upon"&mdash;again he looked
+toward the mummy case&mdash;"the tomb of Mekara; and he knew that the
+sarcophagus had been brought, untouched, to England.  He begged me not
+to open it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith was studying the speaker's face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What reason did he give for so extraordinary a request?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir Lionel Barton hesitated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One," he replied at last, "which amused me&mdash;at the time.  I must
+inform you that Mekara&mdash;whose tomb my agent had discovered during my
+absence in Tibet, and to enter which I broke my return journey to
+Alexandria&mdash;was a high priest and first prophet of Amen&mdash;under the
+Pharaoh of the Exodus; in short, one of the magicians who contested in
+magic arts with Moses.  I thought the discovery unique, until Professor
+Rembold furnished me with some curious particulars respecting the death
+of M. Page le Roi, the French Egyptologist&mdash;particulars new to me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We listened in growing surprise, scarcely knowing to what this tended.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"M. le Roi," continued Barton, "discovered, but kept secret, the tomb
+of Amenti&mdash;another of this particular brotherhood.  It appears that he
+opened the mummy case on the spot&mdash;these priests were of royal line,
+and are buried in the valley of Biban-le-Moluk. His Fellah and Arab
+servants deserted him for some reason&mdash;on seeing the mummy case&mdash;and he
+was found dead, apparently strangled, beside it.  The matter was hushed
+up by the Egyptian Government.  Rembold could not explain why.  But he
+begged of me not to open the sarcophagus of Mekara."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A silence fell.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The strange facts regarding the sudden death of Page le Roi, which I
+now heard for the first time, had impressed me unpleasantly, coming
+from a man of Sir Lionel Barton's experience and reputation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How long had it lain in the docks?" jerked Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For two days, I believe.  I am not a superstitious man, Mr. Smith, but
+neither is Professor Rembold, and now that I know the facts respecting
+Page le Roi, I can find it in my heart to thank God that I did not
+see&nbsp;&#8230; whatever came out of that sarcophagus."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith stared him hard in the face.  "I am glad you did not, Sir
+Lionel," he said; "for whatever the priest Mekara has to do with the
+matter, by means of his sarcophagus, Dr. Fu-Manchu has made his first
+attempt upon your life.  He has failed, but I hope you will accompany
+me from here to a hotel.  He will not fail twice."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap12"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+IT was the night following that of the double tragedy at Rowan House.
+Nayland Smith, with Inspector Weymouth, was engaged in some mysterious
+inquiry at the docks, and I had remained at home to resume my strange
+chronicle.  And&mdash;why should I not confess it?&mdash;my memories had
+frightened me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was arranging my notes respecting the case of Sir Lionel Barton.
+They were hopelessly incomplete.  For instance, I had jotted down the
+following queries:&mdash;(1) Did any true parallel exist between the death
+of M. Page le Roi and the death of Kwee, the Chinaman, and of Strozza?
+(2) What had become of the mummy of Mekara?  (3) How had the murderer
+escaped from a locked room?  (4) What was the purpose of the rubber
+stopper?  (5) Why was Kwee hiding in the conservatory?  (6) Was the
+green mist a mere subjective hallucination&mdash;a figment of Croxted's
+imagination&mdash;or had he actually seen it?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Until these questions were satisfactorily answered, further progress
+was impossible.  Nayland Smith frankly admitted that he was out of his
+depth.  "It looks, on the face of it, more like a case for the
+Psychical Research people than for a plain Civil Servant, lately of
+Mandalay," he had said only that morning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sir Lionel Barton really believes that supernatural agencies were
+brought into operation by the opening of the high priest's coffin.  For
+my part, even if I believed the same, I should still maintain that Dr.
+Fu-Manchu controlled those manifestations.  But reason it out for
+yourself and see if we arrive at any common center.  Don't work so much
+upon the datum of the green mist, but keep to the FACTS which are
+established."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I commenced to knock out my pipe in the ash-tray; then paused, pipe in
+hand.  The house was quite still, for my landlady and all the small
+household were out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Above the noise of the passing tramcar I thought I had heard the hall
+door open.  In the ensuing silence I sat and listened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Not a sound.  Stay!  I slipped my hand into the table drawer, took out
+my revolver, and stood up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There WAS a sound.  Someone or something was creeping upstairs in the
+dark!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Familiar with the ghastly media employed by the Chinaman, I was seized
+with an impulse to leap to the door, shut and lock it.  But the
+rustling sound proceeded, now, from immediately outside my partially
+opened door.  I had not the time to close it; knowing somewhat of the
+horrors at the command of Fu-Manchu, I had not the courage to open it.
+My heart leaping wildly, and my eyes upon that bar of darkness with its
+gruesome potentialities, I waited&mdash;waited for whatever was to come.
+Perhaps twelve seconds passed in silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who's there?" I cried.  "Answer, or I fire!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah!  no," came a soft voice, thrillingly musical.  "Put it down&mdash;that
+pistol.  Quick!  I must speak to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The door was pushed open, and there entered a slim figure wrapped in a
+hooded cloak.  My hand fell, and I stood, stricken to silence, looking
+into the beautiful dark eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu's messenger&mdash;if her own
+statement could be credited, slave.  On two occasions this girl, whose
+association with the Doctor was one of the most profound mysteries of
+the case, had risked&mdash;I cannot say what; unnameable punishment,
+perhaps&mdash;to save me from death; in both cases from a terrible death.
+For what was she come now?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her lips slightly parted, she stood, holding her cloak about her, and
+watching me with great passionate eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How&mdash;" I began.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But she shook her head impatiently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"HE has a duplicate key of the house door," was her amazing statement.
+"I have never betrayed a secret of my master before, but you must
+arrange to replace the lock."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She came forward and rested her slim hands confidingly upon my
+shoulders.  "I have come again to ask you to take me away from him,"
+she said simply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And she lifted her face to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her words struck a chord in my heart which sang with strange music,
+with music so barbaric that, frankly, I blushed to find it harmony.
+Have I said that she was beautiful?  It can convey no faint conception
+of her.  With her pure, fair skin, eyes like the velvet darkness of the
+East, and red lips so tremulously near to mine, she was the most
+seductively lovely creature I ever had looked upon.  In that electric
+moment my heart went out in sympathy to every man who had bartered
+honor, country, all for a woman's kiss.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will see that you are placed under proper protection," I said
+firmly, but my voice was not quite my own.  "It is quite absurd to talk
+of slavery here in England.  You are a free agent, or you could not be
+here now.  Dr. Fu-Manchu cannot control your actions."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah!" she cried, casting back her head scornfully, and releasing a
+cloud of hair, through whose softness gleamed a jeweled head-dress.
+"No?  He cannot?  Do you know what it means to have been a slave?
+Here, in your free England, do you know what it means&mdash;the razzia, the
+desert journey, the whips of the drivers, the house of the dealer, the
+shame.  Bah!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How beautiful she was in her indignation!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Slavery is put down, you imagine, perhaps?  You do not believe that
+to-day&mdash;TO-DAY&mdash;twenty-five English sovereigns will buy a Galla girl,
+who is brown, and"&mdash;whisper&mdash;"two hundred and fifty a Circassian, who
+is white.  No, there is no slavery!  So!  Then what am I?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She threw open her cloak, and it is a literal fact that I rubbed my
+eyes, half believing that I dreamed.  For beneath, she was arrayed in
+gossamer silk which more than indicated the perfect lines of her slim
+shape; wore a jeweled girdle and barbaric ornaments; was a figure fit
+for the walled gardens of Stamboul&mdash;a figure amazing, incomprehensible,
+in the prosaic setting of my rooms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To-night I had no time to make myself an English miss," she said,
+wrapping her cloak quickly about her.  "You see me as I am."  Her
+garments exhaled a faint perfume, and it reminded me of another meeting
+I had had with her.  I looked into the challenging eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your request is but a pretense," I said.  "Why do you keep the secrets
+of that man, when they mean death to so many?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Death!  I have seen my own sister die of fever in the desert&mdash;seen her
+thrown like carrion into a hole in the sand.  I have seen men flogged
+until they prayed for death as a boon.  I have known the lash myself.
+Death!  What does it matter?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She shocked me inexpressibly.  Enveloped in her cloak again, and with
+only her slight accent to betray her, it was dreadful to hear such
+words from a girl who, save for her singular type of beauty, might have
+been a cultured European.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Prove, then, that you really wish to leave this man's service.  Tell
+me what killed Strozza and the Chinaman," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do not know that.  But if you will carry me off"&mdash;she clutched me
+nervously&mdash;"so that I am helpless, lock me up so that I cannot escape,
+beat me, if you like, I will tell you all I do know.  While he is my
+master I will never betray him.  Tear me from him&mdash;by force, do you
+understand, BY FORCE, and my lips will be sealed no longer.  Ah!  but
+you do not understand, with your 'proper authorities'&mdash;your police.
+Police!  Ah, I have said enough."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A clock across the common began to strike.  The girl started and laid
+her hands upon my shoulders again.  There were tears glittering among
+the curved black lashes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You do not understand," she whispered.  "Oh, will you never understand
+and release me from him!  I must go.  Already I have remained too long.
+Listen.  Go out without delay.  Remain out&mdash;at a hotel, where you will,
+but do not stay here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And Nayland Smith?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is he to me, this Nayland Smith?  Ah, why will you not unseal my
+lips?  You are in danger&mdash;you hear me, in danger!  Go away from here
+to-night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She dropped her hands and ran from the room.  In the open doorway she
+turned, stamping her foot passionately.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have hands and arms," she cried, "and yet you let me go.  Be
+warned, then; fly from here&mdash;" She broke off with something that
+sounded like a sob.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I made no move to stay her&mdash;this beautiful accomplice of the
+arch-murderer, Fu-Manchu. I heard her light footsteps pattering down
+the stairs, I heard her open and close the door&mdash;the door of which Dr.
+Fu-Manchu held the key.  Still I stood where she had parted from me,
+and was so standing when a key grated in the lock and Nayland Smith
+came running up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you see her?" I began.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But his face showed that he had not done so, and rapidly I told him of
+my strange visitor, of her words, of her warning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How can she have passed through London in that costume?" I cried in
+bewilderment.  "Where can she have come from?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith shrugged his shoulders and began to stuff broad-cut mixture into
+the familiar cracked briar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She might have traveled in a car or in a cab," he said; "and
+undoubtedly she came direct from the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu.  You
+should have detained her, Petrie.  It is the third time we have had
+that woman in our power, the third time we have let her go free."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smith," I replied, "I couldn't. She came of her own free will to give
+me a warning.  She disarms me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because you can see she is in love with you?" he suggested, and burst
+into one of his rare laughs when the angry flush rose to my cheek.
+"She is, Petrie why pretend to be blind to it?  You don't know the
+Oriental mind as I do; but I quite understand the girl's position.  She
+fears the English authorities, but would submit to capture by you!  If
+you would only seize her by the hair, drag her to some cellar, hurl her
+down and stand over her with a whip, she would tell you everything she
+knows, and salve her strange Eastern conscience with the reflection
+that speech was forced from her.  I am not joking; it is so, I assure
+you.  And she would adore you for your savagery, deeming you forceful
+and strong!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smith," I said, "be serious.  You know what her warning meant before."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can guess what it means now," he rapped.  "Hallo!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Someone was furiously ringing the bell.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No one at home?" said my friend.  "I will go.  I think I know what it
+is."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A few minutes later he returned, carrying a large square package.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"From Weymouth," he explained, "by district messenger.  I left him
+behind at the docks, and he arranged to forward any evidence which
+subsequently he found.  This will be fragments of the mummy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What!  You think the mummy was abstracted?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, at the docks.  I am sure of it; and somebody else was in the
+sarcophagus when it reached Rowan House.  A sarcophagus, I find, is
+practically airtight, so that the use of the rubber stopper becomes
+evident&mdash;ventilation.  How this person killed Strozza I have yet to
+learn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Also, how he escaped from a locked room.  And what about the green
+mist?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith spread his hands in a characteristic gesture.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The green mist, Petrie, can be explained in several ways.  Remember,
+we have only one man's word that it existed.  It is at best a confusing
+datum to which we must not attach a factitious importance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He threw the wrappings on the floor and tugged at a twine loop in the
+lid of the square box, which now stood upon the table.  Suddenly the
+lid came away, bringing with it a lead lining, such as is usual in
+tea-chests. This lining was partially attached to one side of the box,
+so that the action of removing the lid at once raised and tilted it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then happened a singular thing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Out over the table billowed a sort of yellowish-green cloud&mdash;an oily
+vapor&mdash;and an inspiration, it was nothing less, born of a memory and of
+some words of my beautiful visitor, came to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"RUN, SMITH!" I screamed.  "The door! the door, for your life!
+Fu-Manchu sent that box!"  I threw my arms round him.  As he bent
+forward the moving vapor rose almost to his nostrils.  I dragged him
+back and all but pitched him out on to the landing.  We entered my
+bedroom, and there, as I turned on the light, I saw that Smith's tanned
+face was unusually drawn, and touched with pallor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is a poisonous gas!" I said hoarsely; "in many respects identical
+with chlorine, but having unique properties which prove it to be
+something else&mdash;God and Fu-Manchu, alone know what!  It is the fumes of
+chlorine that kill the men in the bleaching powder works.  We have been
+blind&mdash;I particularly.  Don't you see?  There was no one in the
+sarcophagus, Smith, but there was enough of that fearful stuff to have
+suffocated a regiment!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith clenched his fists convulsively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My God!" he said, "how can I hope to deal with the author of such a
+scheme?  I see the whole plan.  He did not reckon on the mummy case
+being overturned, and Kwee's part was to remove the plug with the aid
+of the string&mdash;after Sir Lionel had been suffocated.  The gas, I take
+it, is heavier than air."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Chlorine gas has a specific gravity of 2.470," I said; "two and a half
+times heavier than air.  You can pour it from jar to jar like a
+liquid&mdash;if you are wearing a chemist's mask.  In these respects this
+stuff appears to be similar; the points of difference would not
+interest you.  The sarcophagus would have emptied through the vent, and
+the gas have dispersed, with no clew remaining&mdash;except the smell."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did smell it, Petrie, on the stopper, but, of course, was unfamiliar
+with it.  You may remember that you were prevented from doing so by the
+arrival of Sir Lionel?  The scent of those infernal flowers must
+partially have drowned it, too.  Poor, misguided Strozza inhaled the
+stuff, capsized the case in his fall, and all the gas&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Went pouring under the conservatory door, and down the steps, where
+Kwee was crouching.  Croxted's breaking the window created sufficient
+draught to disperse what little remained.  It will have settled on the
+floor now.  I will go and open both windows."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland raised his haggard face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He evidently made more than was necessary to dispatch Sir Lionel
+Barton," he said; "and contemptuously&mdash;you note the attitude,
+Petrie?&mdash;contemptuously devoted the surplus to me.  His contempt is
+justified.  I am a child striving to cope with a mental giant.  It is
+by no wit of mine that Dr. Fu-Manchu scores a double failure."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap13"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+I WILL tell you, now of a strange dream which I dreamed, and of the
+stranger things to which I awakened.  Since, out of a blank&mdash;a
+void&mdash;this vision burst in upon my mind, I cannot do better than relate
+it, without preamble.  It was thus:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I dreamed that I lay writhing on the floor in agony indescribable.  My
+veins were filled with liquid fire, and but that stygian darkness was
+about me, I told myself that I must have seen the smoke arising from my
+burning body.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This, I thought, was death.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, a cooling shower descended upon me, soaked through skin and
+tissue to the tortured arteries and quenched the fire within.  Panting,
+but free from pain, I lay&mdash;exhausted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Strength gradually returning to me, I tried to rise; but the carpet
+felt so singularly soft that it offered me no foothold.  I waded and
+plunged like a swimmer treading water; and all about me rose
+impenetrable walls of darkness, darkness all but palpable.  I wondered
+why I could not see the windows.  The horrible idea flashed to my mind
+that I was become blind!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Somehow I got upon my feet, and stood swaying dizzily.  I became aware
+of a heavy perfume, and knew it for some kind of incense.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then&mdash;a dim light was born, at an immeasurable distance away.  It grew
+steadily in brilliance.  It spread like a bluish-red stain&mdash;like a
+liquid.  It lapped up the darkness and spread throughout the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But this was not my room!  Nor was it any room known to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was an apartment of such size that its dimensions filled me with a
+kind of awe such as I never had known:  the awe of walled vastness.
+Its immense extent produced a sensation of sound.  Its hugeness had a
+distinct NOTE.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tapestries covered the four walls.  There was no door visible.  These
+tapestries were magnificently figured with golden dragons; and as the
+serpentine bodies gleamed and shimmered in the increasing radiance,
+each dragon, I thought, intertwined its glittering coils more closely
+with those of another.  The carpet was of such richness that I stood
+knee-deep in its pile.  And this, too, was fashioned all over with
+golden dragons; and they seemed to glide about amid the shadows of the
+design&mdash;stealthily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the farther end of the hall&mdash;for hall it was&mdash;a huge table with
+dragons' legs stood solitary amid the luxuriance of the carpet.  It
+bore scintillating globes, and tubes that held living organisms, and
+books of a size and in such bindings as I never had imagined, with
+instruments of a type unknown to Western science&mdash;a heterogeneous
+litter quite indescribable, which overflowed on to the floor, forming
+an amazing oasis in a dragon-haunted desert of carpet.  A lamp hung
+above this table, suspended by golden chains from the ceiling&mdash;which
+was so lofty that, following the chains upward, my gaze lost itself in
+the purple shadows above.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In a chair piled high with dragon-covered cushions a man sat behind
+this table.  The light from the swinging lamp fell fully upon one side
+of his face, as he leaned forward amid the jumble of weird objects, and
+left the other side in purplish shadow.  From a plain brass bowl upon
+the corner of the huge table smoke writhed aloft and at times partially
+obscured that dreadful face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the instant that my eyes were drawn to the table and to the man
+who sat there, neither the incredible extent of the room, nor the
+nightmare fashion of its mural decorations, could reclaim my attention.
+I had eyes only for him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For it was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Something of the delirium which had seemed to fill my veins with fire,
+to people the walls with dragons, and to plunge me knee-deep in the
+carpet, left me.  Those dreadful, filmed green eyes acted somewhat like
+a cold douche.  I knew, without removing my gaze from the still face,
+that the walls no longer lived, but were merely draped in exquisite
+Chinese dragon tapestry.  The rich carpet beneath my feet ceased to be
+as a jungle and became a normal carpet&mdash;extraordinarily rich, but
+merely a carpet.  But the sense of vastness nevertheless remained, with
+the uncomfortable knowledge that the things upon the table and
+overflowing about it were all, or nearly all, of a fashion strange to
+me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, and almost instantaneously, the comparative sanity which I had
+temporarily experienced began to slip from me again; for the smoke
+faintly penciled through the air&mdash;from the burning perfume on the
+table&mdash;grew in volume, thickened, and wafted towards me in a cloud of
+gray horror.  It enveloped me, clammily.  Dimly, through its oily
+wreaths, I saw the immobile yellow face of Fu-Manchu. And my stupefied
+brain acclaimed him a sorcerer, against whom unwittingly we had pitted
+our poor human wits.  The green eyes showed filmy through the fog.  An
+intense pain shot through my lower limbs, and, catching my breath, I
+looked down.  As I did so, the points of the red slippers which I
+dreamed that I wore increased in length, curled sinuously upward,
+twined about my throat and choked the breath from my body!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Came an interval, and then a dawning like consciousness; but it was a
+false consciousness, since it brought with it the idea that my head lay
+softly pillowed and that a woman's hand caressed my throbbing forehead.
+Confusedly, as though in the remote past, I recalled a kiss&mdash;and the
+recollection thrilled me strangely.  Dreamily content I lay, and a
+voice stole to my ears:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They are killing him!  they are killing him!  Oh!  do you not
+understand?" In my dazed condition, I thought that it was I who had
+died, and that this musical girl-voice was communicating to me the fact
+of my own dissolution.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But I was conscious of no interest in the matter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For hours and hours, I thought, that soothing hand caressed me.  I
+never once raised my heavy lids, until there came a resounding crash
+that seemed to set my very bones vibrating&mdash;a metallic, jangling crash,
+as the fall of heavy chains.  I thought that, then, I half opened my
+eyes, and that in the dimness I had a fleeting glimpse of a figure clad
+in gossamer silk, with arms covered with barbaric bangles and slim
+ankles surrounded by gold bands.  The girl was gone, even as I told
+myself that she was an houri, and that I, though a Christian, had been
+consigned by some error to the paradise of Mohammed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then&mdash;a complete blank.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+My head throbbed madly; my brain seemed to be clogged&mdash;inert; and
+though my first, feeble movement was followed by the rattle of a chain,
+some moments more elapsed ere I realized that the chain was fastened to
+a steel collar&mdash;that the steel collar was clasped about my neck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I moaned weakly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smith!" I muttered, "Where are you?  Smith!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On to my knees I struggled, and the pain on the top of my skull grew
+all but insupportable.  It was coming back to me now; how Nayland Smith
+and I had started for the hotel to warn Graham Guthrie; how, as we
+passed up the steps from the Embankment and into Essex Street, we saw
+the big motor standing before the door of one of the offices.  I could
+recall coming up level with the car&mdash;a modern limousine; but my mind
+retained no impression of our having passed it&mdash;only a vague memory of
+a rush of footsteps&mdash;a blow.  Then, my vision of the hall of dragons,
+and now this real awakening to a worse reality.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Groping in the darkness, my hands touched a body that lay close beside
+me.  My fingers sought and found the throat, sought and found the steel
+collar about it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smith," I groaned; and I shook the still form.  "Smith, old man&mdash;speak
+to me!  Smith!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Could he be dead?  Was this the end of his gallant fight with Dr.
+Fu-Manchu and the murder group?  If so, what did the future hold for
+me&mdash;what had I to face?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stirred beneath my trembling hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank God!"  I muttered, and I cannot deny that my joy was tainted
+with selfishness.  For, waking in that impenetrable darkness, and yet
+obsessed with the dream I had dreamed, I had known what fear meant, at
+the realization that alone, chained, I must face the dreadful Chinese
+doctor in the flesh.  Smith began incoherent mutterings.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sand-bagged!&#8230; Look out, Petrie!&#8230; He has us at last!&#8230;
+Oh, Heavens!"&#8230; He struggled on to his knees, clutching at my hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right, old man," I said.  "We are both alive!  So let's be
+thankful."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A moment's silence, a groan, then:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Petrie, I have dragged you into this.  God forgive me&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dry up, Smith," I said slowly.  "I'm not a child.  There is no
+question of being dragged into the matter.  I'm here; and if I can be
+of any use, I'm glad I am here!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He grasped my hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There were two Chinese, in European clothes&mdash;lord, how my head
+throbs!&mdash;in that office door.  They sand-bagged us, Petrie&mdash;think of
+it!&mdash;in broad daylight, within hail of the Strand!  We were rushed into
+the car&mdash;and it was all over, before&mdash;" His voice grew faint.  "God!
+they gave me an awful knock!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why have we been spared, Smith?  Do you think he is saving us for&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't, Petrie!  If you had been in China, if you had seen what I have
+seen&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Footsteps sounded on the flagged passage.  A blade of light crept
+across the floor towards us.  My brain was growing clearer.  The place
+had a damp, earthen smell.  It was slimy&mdash;some noisome cellar.  A door
+was thrown open and a man entered, carrying a lantern.  Its light
+showed my surmise to be accurate, showed the slime-coated walls of a
+dungeon some fifteen feet square&mdash;shone upon the long yellow robe of
+the man who stood watching us, upon the malignant, intellectual
+countenance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At last they were face to face&mdash;the head of the great Yellow Movement,
+and the man who fought on behalf of the entire white race.  How can I
+paint the individual who now stood before us&mdash;perhaps the greatest
+genius of modern times?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of him it had been fitly said that he had a brow like Shakespeare and a
+face like Satan.  Something serpentine, hypnotic, was in his very
+presence.  Smith drew one sharp breath, and was silent.  Together,
+chained to the wall, two mediaeval captives, living mockeries of our
+boasted modern security, we crouched before Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He came forward with an indescribable gait, cat-like yet awkward,
+carrying his high shoulders almost hunched.  He placed the lantern in a
+niche in the wall, never turning away the reptilian gaze of those eyes
+which must haunt my dreams forever.  They possessed a viridescence
+which hitherto I had supposed possible only in the eye of the cat&mdash;and
+the film intermittently clouded their brightness&mdash;but I can speak of
+them no more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I had never supposed, prior to meeting Dr. Fu-Manchu, that so intense a
+force of malignancy could radiate&mdash;from any human being.  He spoke.
+His English was perfect, though at times his words were oddly chosen;
+his delivery alternately was guttural and sibilant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Smith and Dr. Petrie, your interference with my plans has gone too
+far.  I have seriously turned my attention to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He displayed his teeth, small and evenly separated, but discolored in a
+way that was familiar to me.  I studied his eyes with a new
+professional interest, which even the extremity of our danger could not
+wholly banish.  Their greenness seemed to be of the iris; the pupil was
+oddly contracted&mdash;a pin-point.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith leaned his back against the wall with assumed indifference.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have presumed," continued Fu-Manchu, "to meddle with a
+world-change. Poor spiders&mdash;caught in the wheels of the inevitable!
+You have linked my name with the futility of the Young China
+Movement&mdash;the name of Fu-Manchu!  Mr. Smith, you are an incompetent
+meddler&mdash;I despise you!  Dr. Petrie, you are a fool&mdash;I am sorry for
+you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He rested one bony hand on his hip, narrowing the long eyes as he
+looked down on us.  The purposeful cruelty of the man was inherent; it
+was entirely untheatrical.  Still Smith remained silent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So I am determined to remove you from the scene of your blunders!"
+added Fu-Manchu.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Opium will very shortly do the same for you!" I rapped at him savagely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without emotion he turned the narrowed eyes upon me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is a matter of opinion, Doctor," he said.  "You may have lacked
+the opportunities which have been mine for studying that subject&mdash;and
+in any event I shall not be privileged to enjoy your advice in the
+future."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will not long outlive me," I replied.  "And our deaths will not
+profit you, incidentally; because&mdash;" Smith's foot touched mine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because?" inquired Fu-Manchu softly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah!  Mr. Smith is so prudent!  He is thinking that I have FILES!" He
+pronounced the word in a way that made me shudder.  "Mr. Smith has seen
+a WIRE JACKET!  Have you ever seen a wire jacket?  As a surgeon its
+functions would interest you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I stifled a cry that rose to my lips; for, with a shrill whistling
+sound, a small shape came bounding into the dimly lit vault, then shot
+upward.  A marmoset landed on the shoulder of Dr. Fu-Manchu and peered
+grotesquely into the dreadful yellow face.  The Doctor raised his bony
+hand and fondled the little creature, crooning to it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One of my pets, Mr. Smith," he said, suddenly opening his eyes fully
+so that they blazed like green lamps.  "I have others, equally useful.
+My scorpions&mdash;have you met my scorpions?  No?  My pythons and
+hamadryads?  Then there are my fungi and my tiny allies, the bacilli.
+I have a collection in my laboratory quite unique.  Have you ever
+visited Molokai, the leper island, Doctor?  No?  But Mr. Nayland Smith
+will be familiar with the asylum at Rangoon!  And we must not forget my
+black spiders, with their diamond eyes&mdash;my spiders, that sit in the
+dark and watch&mdash;then leap!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He raised his lean hands, so that the sleeve of the robe fell back to
+the elbow, and the ape dropped, chattering, to the floor and ran from
+the cellar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O God of Cathay!" he cried, "by what death shall these die&mdash;these
+miserable ones who would bind thine Empire, which is boundless!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Like some priest of Tezcat he stood, his eyes upraised to the roof, his
+lean body quivering&mdash;a sight to shock the most unimpressionable mind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is mad!" I whispered to Smith.  "God help us, the man is a
+dangerous homicidal maniac!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith's tanned face was very drawn, but he shook his head
+grimly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dangerous, yes, I agree," he muttered; "his existence is a danger to
+the entire white race which, now, we are powerless to avert."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dr. Fu-Manchu recovered himself, took up the lantern and, turning
+abruptly, walked to the door, with his awkward, yet feline gait.  At
+the threshold be looked back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You would have warned Mr. Graham Guthrie?" he said, in a soft voice.
+"To-night, at half-past twelve, Mr. Graham Guthrie dies!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith sat silent and motionless, his eyes fixed upon the speaker.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You were in Rangoon in 1908?" continued Dr. Fu-Manchu&mdash;"you remember
+the Call?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From somewhere above us&mdash;I could not determine the exact
+direction&mdash;came a low, wailing cry, an uncanny thing of falling
+cadences, which, in that dismal vault, with the sinister yellow-robed
+figure at the door, seemed to pour ice into my veins.  Its effect upon
+Smith was truly extraordinary.  His face showed grayly in the faint
+light, and I heard him draw a hissing breath through clenched teeth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It calls for you!" said Fu-Manchu. "At half-past twelve it calls for
+Graham Guthrie!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The door closed and darkness mantled us again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smith," I said, "what was that?"  The horrors about us were playing
+havoc with my nerves.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was the Call of Siva!" replied Smith hoarsely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it?  Who uttered it?  What does it mean?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know what it is, Petrie, nor who utters it.  But it means
+death!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap14"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIV
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+THERE may be some who could have lain, chained to that noisome cell,
+and felt no fear&mdash;no dread of what the blackness might hold.  I confess
+that I am not one of these.  I knew that Nayland Smith and I stood in
+the path of the most stupendous genius who in the world's history had
+devoted his intellect to crime.  I knew that the enormous wealth of the
+political group backing Dr. Fu-Manchu rendered him a menace to Europe
+and to America greater than that of the plague.  He was a scientist
+trained at a great university&mdash;an explorer of nature's secrets, who had
+gone farther into the unknown, I suppose, than any living man.  His
+mission was to remove all obstacles&mdash;human obstacles&mdash;from the path of
+that secret movement which was progressing in the Far East.  Smith and
+I were two such obstacles; and of all the horrible devices at his
+command, I wondered, and my tortured brain refused to leave the
+subject, by which of them were we doomed to be dispatched?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Even at that very moment some venomous centipede might be wriggling
+towards me over the slime of the stones, some poisonous spider be
+preparing to drop from the roof!  Fu-Manchu might have released a
+serpent in the cellar, or the air be alive with microbes of a loathsome
+disease!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smith," I said, scarcely recognizing my own voice, "I can't bear this
+suspense.  He intends to kill us, that is certain, but&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't worry," came the reply; "he intends to learn our plans first."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean&mdash;?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You heard him speak of his files and of his wire jacket?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, my God!" I groaned; "can this be England?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith laughed dryly, and I heard him fumbling with the steel collar
+about his neck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have one great hope," he said, "since you share my captivity, but we
+must neglect no minor chance.  Try with your pocket-knife if you can
+force the lock.  I am trying to break this one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Truth to tell, the idea had not entered my half-dazed mind, but I
+immediately acted upon my friend's suggestion, setting to work with the
+small blade of my knife.  I was so engaged, and, having snapped one
+blade, was about to open another, when a sound arrested me.  It came
+from beneath my feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smith," I whispered, "listen!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The scraping and clicking which told of Smith's efforts ceased.
+Motionless, we sat in that humid darkness and listened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Something was moving beneath the stones of the cellar.  I held my
+breath; every nerve in my body was strung up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A line of light showed a few feet from where we lay.  It
+widened&mdash;became an oblong.  A trap was lifted, and within a yard of me,
+there rose a dimly seen head.  Horror I had expected&mdash;and death, or
+worse.  Instead, I saw a lovely face, crowned with a disordered mass of
+curling hair; I saw a white arm upholding the stone slab, a shapely arm
+clasped about the elbow by a broad gold bangle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl climbed into the cellar and placed the lantern on the stone
+floor.  In the dim light she was unreal&mdash;a figure from an opium vision,
+with her clinging silk draperies and garish jewelry, with her feet
+encased in little red slippers.  In short, this was the houri of my
+vision, materialized.  It was difficult to believe that we were in
+modern, up-to-date England; easy to dream that we were the captives of
+a caliph, in a dungeon in old Bagdad.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My prayers are answered," said Smith softly.  "She has come to save
+YOU."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"S-sh!" warned the girl, and her wonderful eyes opened widely,
+fearfully.  "A sound and he will kill us all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She bent over me; a key jarred in the lock which had broken my
+penknife&mdash;and the collar was off.  As I rose to my feet the girl turned
+and released Smith.  She raised the lantern above the trap, and signed
+to us to descend the wooden steps which its light revealed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your knife," she whispered to me.  "Leave it on the floor.  He will
+think you forced the locks.  Down!  Quickly!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith, stepping gingerly, disappeared into the darkness.  I
+rapidly followed.  Last of all came our mysterious friend, a gold band
+about one of her ankles gleaming in the rays of the lantern which she
+carried.  We stood in a low-arched passage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tie your handkerchiefs over your eyes and do exactly as I tell you,"
+she ordered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Neither of us hesitated to obey her.  Blind-folded, I allowed her to
+lead me, and Smith rested his hand upon my shoulder.  In that order we
+proceeded, and came to stone steps, which we ascended.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Keep to the wall on the left," came a whisper.  "There is danger on
+the right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With my free hand I felt for and found the wall, and we pressed
+forward.  The atmosphere of the place through which we were passing was
+steamy, and loaded with an odor like that of exotic plant life.  But a
+faint animal scent crept to my nostrils, too, and there was a subdued
+stir about me, infinitely suggestive&mdash;mysterious.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now my feet sank in a soft carpet, and a curtain brushed my shoulder.
+A gong sounded.  We stopped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The din of distant drumming came to my ears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where in Heaven's name are we?" hissed Smith in my ear; "that is a
+tom-tom!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"S-sh!  S-sh!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The little hand grasping mine quivered nervously.  We were near a door
+or a window, for a breath of perfume was wafted through the air; and it
+reminded me of my other meetings with the beautiful woman who was now
+leading us from the house of Fu-Manchu; who, with her own lips, had
+told me that she was his slave.  Through the horrible phantasmagoria
+she flitted&mdash;a seductive vision, her piquant loveliness standing out
+richly in its black setting of murder and devilry.  Not once, but a
+thousand times, I had tried to reason out the nature of the tie which
+bound her to the sinister Doctor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Silence fell.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quick!  This way!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Down a thickly carpeted stair we went.  Our guide opened a door, and
+led us along a passage.  Another door was opened; and we were in the
+open air.  But the girl never tarried, pulling me along a graveled
+path, with a fresh breeze blowing in my face, and along until,
+unmistakably, I stood upon the river bank.  Now, planking creaked to
+our tread; and looking downward beneath the handkerchief, I saw the
+gleam of water beneath my feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be careful!"  I was warned, and found myself stepping into a narrow
+boat&mdash;a punt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith followed, and the girl pushed the punt off and poled out
+into the stream.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't speak!" she directed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My brain was fevered; I scarce knew if I dreamed and was waking, or if
+the reality ended with my imprisonment in the clammy cellar and this
+silent escape, blindfolded, upon the river with a girl for our guide
+who might have stepped out of the pages of "The Arabian Nights" were
+fantasy&mdash;the mockery of sleep.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Indeed, I began seriously to doubt if this stream whereon we floated,
+whose waters plashed and tinkled about us, were the Thames, the Tigris,
+or the Styx.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The punt touched a bank.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will hear a clock strike in a few minutes," said the girl, with
+her soft, charming accent, "but I rely upon your honor not to remove
+the handkerchiefs until then.  You owe me this."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We do!" said Smith fervently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I heard him scrambling to the bank, and a moment later a soft hand was
+placed in mine, and I, too, was guided on to terra firma.  Arrived on
+the bank, I still held the girl's hand, drawing her towards me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must not go back," I whispered.  "We will take care of you.  You
+must not return to that place."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me go!" she said.  "When, once, I asked you to take me from him,
+you spoke of police protection; that was your answer, police
+protection!  You would let them lock me up&mdash;imprison me&mdash;and make me
+betray him!  For what?  For what?"  She wrenched herself free.  "How
+little you understand me.  Never mind.  Perhaps one day you will know!
+Until the clock strikes!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was gone.  I heard the creak of the punt, the drip of the water
+from the pole.  Fainter it grew, and fainter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is her secret?" muttered Smith, beside me.  "Why does she cling
+to that monster?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The distant sound died away entirely.  A clock began to strike; it
+struck the half-hour. In an instant my handkerchief was off, and so was
+Smith's. We stood upon a towing-path. Away to the left the moon shone
+upon the towers and battlements of an ancient fortress.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was Windsor Castle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Half-past ten," cried Smith.  "Two hours to save Graham Guthrie!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We had exactly fourteen minutes in which to catch the last train to
+Waterloo; and we caught it.  But I sank into a corner of the
+compartment in a state bordering upon collapse.  Neither of us, I
+think, could have managed another twenty yards.  With a lesser stake
+than a human life at issue, I doubt if we should have attempted that
+dash to Windsor station.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Due at Waterloo at eleven-fifty-one," panted Smith.  "That gives us
+thirty-nine minutes to get to the other side of the river and reach his
+hotel."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where in Heaven's name is that house situated?  Did we come up or down
+stream?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I couldn't determine.  But at any rate, it stands close to the
+riverside.  It should be merely a question of time to identify it.  I
+shall set Scotland Yard to work immediately; but I am hoping for
+nothing.  Our escape will warn him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I said no more for a time, sitting wiping the perspiration from my
+forehead and watching my friend load his cracked briar with the
+broadcut Latakia mixture.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smith," I said at last, "what was that horrible wailing we heard, and
+what did Fu-Manchu mean when he referred to Rangoon?  I noticed how it
+affected you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My friend nodded and lighted his pipe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There was a ghastly business there in 1908 or early in 1909," he
+replied:  "an utterly mysterious epidemic.  And this beastly wailing
+was associated with it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In what way?  And what do you mean by an epidemic?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It began, I believe, at the Palace Mansions Hotel, in the cantonments.
+A young American, whose name I cannot recall, was staying there on
+business connected with some new iron buildings.  One night he went to
+his room, locked the door, and jumped out of the window into the
+courtyard.  Broke his neck, of course."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Suicide?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Apparently.  But there were singular features in the case.  For
+instance, his revolver lay beside him, fully loaded!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the courtyard?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the courtyard!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Was it murder by any chance?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith shrugged his shoulders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"His door was found locked from the inside; had to be broken in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But the wailing business?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That began later, or was only noticed later.  A French doctor, named
+Lafitte, died in exactly the same way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At the same place?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At the same hotel; but he occupied a different room.  Here is the
+extraordinary part of the affair:  a friend shared the room with him,
+and actually saw him go!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Saw him leap from the window?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes.  The friend&mdash;an Englishman&mdash;was aroused by the uncanny wailing.
+I was in Rangoon at the time, so that I know more of the case of
+Lafitte than of that of the American.  I spoke to the man about it
+personally.  He was an electrical engineer, Edward Martin, and he told
+me that the cry seemed to come from above him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It seemed to come from above when we heard it at Fu-Manchu's house."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Martin sat up in bed, it was a clear moonlight night&mdash;the sort of
+moonlight you get in Burma.  Lafitte, for some reason, had just gone to
+the window.  His friend saw him look out.  The next moment with a
+dreadful scream, he threw himself forward&mdash;and crashed down into the
+courtyard!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What then?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Martin ran to the window and looked down.  Lafitte's scream had
+aroused the place, of course.  But there was absolutely nothing to
+account for the occurrence.  There was no balcony, no ledge, by means
+of which anyone could reach the window."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But how did you come to recognize the cry?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I stopped at the Palace Mansions for some time; and one night this
+uncanny howling aroused me.  I heard it quite distinctly, and am never
+likely to forget it.  It was followed by a hoarse yell.  The man in the
+next room, an orchid hunter, had gone the same way as the others!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you change your quarters?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No. Fortunately for the reputation of the hotel&mdash;a first-class
+establishment&mdash;several similar cases occurred elsewhere, both in
+Rangoon, in Prome and in Moulmein.  A story got about the native
+quarter, and was fostered by some mad fakir, that the god Siva was
+reborn and that the cry was his call for victims; a ghastly story,
+which led to an outbreak of dacoity and gave the District
+Superintendent no end of trouble."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Was there anything unusual about the bodies?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They all developed marks after death, as though they had been
+strangled!  The marks were said all to possess a peculiar form, though
+it was not appreciable to my eye; and this, again, was declared to be
+the five heads of Siva."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Were the deaths confined to Europeans?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no.  Several Burmans and others died in the same way.  At first
+there was a theory that the victims had contracted leprosy and
+committed suicide as a result; but the medical evidence disproved that.
+The Call of Siva became a perfect nightmare throughout Burma."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you ever hear it again, before this evening?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes.  I heard it on the Upper Irrawaddy one clear, moonlight night,
+and a Colassie&mdash;a deck-hand&mdash;leaped from the top deck of the steamer
+aboard which I was traveling!  My God!  to think that the fiend
+Fu-Manchu has brought That to England!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But brought what, Smith?" I cried, in perplexity.  "What has he
+brought?  An evil spirit?  A mental disease?  What is it?  What CAN it
+be?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A new agent of death, Petrie!  Something born in a plague-spot of
+Burma&mdash;the home of much that is unclean and much that is inexplicable.
+Heaven grant that we be in time, and are able to save Guthrie."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap15"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XV
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+THE train was late, and as our cab turned out of Waterloo Station and
+began to ascend to the bridge, from a hundred steeples rang out the
+gongs of midnight, the bell of St. Paul's raised above them all to vie
+with the deep voice of Big Ben.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I looked out from the cab window across the river to where, towering
+above the Embankment, that place of a thousand tragedies, the light of
+some of London's greatest caravanserais formed a sort of minor
+constellation.  From the subdued blaze that showed the public
+supper-rooms I looked up to the hundreds of starry points marking the
+private apartments of those giant inns.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I thought how each twinkling window denoted the presence of some bird
+of passage, some wanderer temporarily abiding in our midst.  There,
+floor piled upon floor above the chattering throngs, were these less
+gregarious units, each something of a mystery to his fellow-guests,
+each in his separate cell; and each as remote from real human
+companionship as if that cell were fashioned, not in the bricks of
+London, but in the rocks of Hindustan!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In one of those rooms Graham Guthrie might at that moment be sleeping,
+all unaware that he would awake to the Call of Siva, to the summons of
+death.  As we neared the Strand, Smith stopped the cab, discharging the
+man outside Sotheby's auction-rooms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One of the doctor's watch-dogs may be in the foyer," he said
+thoughtfully, "and it might spoil everything if we were seen to go to
+Guthrie's rooms.  There must be a back entrance to the kitchens, and so
+on?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is," I replied quickly.  "I have seen the vans delivering there.
+But have we time?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes.  Lead on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We walked up the Strand and hurried westward.  Into that narrow court,
+with its iron posts and descending steps, upon which opens a well-known
+wine-cellar, we turned.  Then, going parallel with the Strand, but on
+the Embankment level, we ran round the back of the great hotel, and
+came to double doors which were open.  An arc lamp illuminated the
+interior and a number of men were at work among the casks, crates and
+packages stacked about the place.  We entered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hallo!" cried a man in a white overall, "where d'you think you're
+going?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith grasped him by the arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want to get to the public part of the hotel without being seen from
+the entrance hall," he said.  "Will you please lead the way?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here&mdash;" began the other, staring.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't waste time!" snapped my friend, in that tone of authority which
+he knew so well how to assume.  "It's a matter of life and death.  Lead
+the way, I say!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Police, sir?" asked the man civilly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Smith; "hurry!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Off went our guide without further demur.  Skirting sculleries,
+kitchens, laundries and engine-rooms, he led us through those
+mysterious labyrinths which have no existence for the guest above, but
+which contain the machinery that renders these modern khans the
+Aladdin's palaces they are.  On a second-floor landing we met a man in
+a tweed suit, to whom our cicerone presented us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Glad I met you, sir.  Two gentlemen from the police."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man regarded us haughtily with a suspicious smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who are you?" he asked.  "You're not from Scotland Yard, at any rate!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith pulled out a card and thrust it into the speaker's hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you are the hotel detective," he said, "take us without delay to
+Mr. Graham Guthrie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A marked change took place in the other's demeanor on glancing at the
+card in his hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Excuse me, sir," he said deferentially, "but, of course, I didn't know
+who I was speaking to.  We all have instructions to give you every
+assistance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is Mr. Guthrie in his room?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's been in his room for some time, sir.  You will want to get there
+without being seen?  This way.  We can join the lift on the third
+floor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Off we went again, with our new guide.  In the lift:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you noticed anything suspicious about the place to-night?" asked
+Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have!" was the startling reply.  "That accounts for your finding me
+where you did.  My usual post is in the lobby.  But about eleven
+o'clock, when the theater people began to come in I had a hazy sort of
+impression that someone or something slipped past in the
+crowd&mdash;something that had no business in the hotel."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We got out of the lift.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't quite follow you," said Smith.  "If you thought you saw
+something entering, you must have formed a more or less definite
+impression regarding it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's the funny part of the business," answered the man doggedly.  "I
+didn't!  But as I stood at the top of the stairs I could have sworn
+that there was something crawling up behind a party&mdash;two ladies and two
+gentlemen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A dog, for instance?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It didn't strike me as being a dog, sir.  Anyway, when the party
+passed me, there was nothing there.  Mind you, whatever it was, it
+hadn't come in by the front.  I have made inquiries everywhere, but
+without result." He stopped abruptly.  "No. 189&mdash;Mr. Guthrie's door,
+sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith knocked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hallo!" came a muffled voice; "what do you want?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Open the door!  Don't delay; it is important."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned to the hotel detective.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stay right there where you can watch the stairs and the lift," he
+instructed; "and note everyone and everything that passes this door.
+But whatever you see or hear, do nothing without my orders."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man moved off, and the door was opened.  Smith whispered in my ear:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Some creature of Dr. Fu-Manchu is in the hotel!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Graham Guthrie, British resident in North Bhutan, was a big,
+thick-set man&mdash;gray-haired and florid, with widely opened eyes of the
+true fighting blue, a bristling mustache and prominent shaggy brows.
+Nayland Smith introduced himself tersely, proffering his card and an
+open letter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Those are my credentials, Mr. Guthrie," he said; "so no doubt you will
+realize that the business which brings me and my friend, Dr. Petrie,
+here at such an hour is of the first importance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He switched off the light.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is no time for ceremony," he explained.  "It is now twenty-five
+minutes past twelve.  At half-past an attempt will be made upon your
+life!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Smith," said the other, who, arrayed in his pajamas, was seated on
+the edge of the bed, "you alarm me very greatly.  I may mention that I
+was advised of your presence in England this morning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you know anything respecting the person called Fu-Manchu&mdash;Dr.
+Fu-Manchu?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only what I was told to-day&mdash;that he is the agent of an advanced
+political group."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is opposed to his interests that you should return to Bhutan.  A
+more gullible agent would be preferable.  Therefore, unless you
+implicitly obey my instructions, you will never leave England!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Graham Guthrie breathed quickly.  I was growing more used to the gloom,
+and I could dimly discern him, his face turned towards Nayland Smith,
+whilst with his hand he clutched the bed-rail. Such a visit as ours, I
+think, must have shaken the nerve of any man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, Mr. Smith," he said, "surely I am safe enough here!  The place is
+full of American visitors at present, and I have had to be content with
+a room right at the top; so that the only danger I apprehend is that of
+fire."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is another danger," replied Smith.  "The fact that you are at
+the top of the building enhances that danger.  Do you recall anything
+of the mysterious epidemic which broke out in Rangoon in 1908&mdash;the
+deaths due to the Call of Siva?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I read of it in the Indian papers," said Guthrie uneasily.  "Suicides,
+were they not?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No!" snapped Smith.  "Murders!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a brief silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"From what I recall of the cases," said Guthrie, "that seems
+impossible.  In several instances the victims threw themselves from the
+windows of locked rooms&mdash;and the windows were quite inaccessible."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Exactly," replied Smith; and in the dim light his revolver gleamed
+dully, as he placed it on the small table beside the bed.  "Except that
+your door is unlocked, the conditions to-night are identical.  Silence,
+please, I hear a clock striking."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was Big Ben.  It struck the half-hour, leaving the stillness
+complete.  In that room, high above the activity which yet prevailed
+below, high above the supping crowds in the hotel, high above the
+starving crowds on the Embankment, a curious chill of isolation swept
+about me.  Again I realized how, in the very heart of the great
+metropolis, a man may be as far from aid as in the heart of a desert.
+I was glad that I was not alone in that room&mdash;marked with the
+death-mark of Fu-Manchu; and I am certain that Graham Guthrie welcomed
+his unexpected company.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I may have mentioned the fact before, but on this occasion it became so
+peculiarly evident to me that I am constrained to record it here&mdash;I
+refer to the sense of impending danger which invariably preceded a
+visit from Fu-Manchu. Even had I not known that an attempt was to be
+made that night, I should have realized it, as, strung to high tension,
+I waited in the darkness.  Some invisible herald went ahead of the
+dreadful Chinaman, proclaiming his coming to every nerve in one's body.
+It was like a breath of astral incense, announcing the presence of the
+priests of death.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A wail, low but singularly penetrating, falling in minor cadences to a
+new silence, came from somewhere close at hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My God!" hissed Guthrie, "what was that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Call of Siva," whispered Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't stir, for your life!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Guthrie was breathing hard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I knew that we were three; that the hotel detective was within hail;
+that there was a telephone in the room; that the traffic of the
+Embankment moved almost beneath us; but I knew, and am not ashamed to
+confess, that King Fear had icy fingers about my heart.  It was
+awful&mdash;that tense waiting&mdash;for&mdash;what?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Three taps sounded&mdash;very distinctly upon the window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Graham Guthrie started so as to shake the bed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's supernatural!" he muttered&mdash;all that was Celtic in his blood
+recoiling from the omen.  "Nothing human can reach that window!"
+"S-sh!" from Smith.  "Don't stir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The tapping was repeated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith softly crossed the room.  My heart was beating painfully.  He
+threw open the window.  Further inaction was impossible.  I joined him;
+and we looked out into the empty air.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't come too near, Petrie!" he warned over his shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One on either side of the open window, we stood and looked down at the
+moving Embankment lights, at the glitter of the Thames, at the
+silhouetted buildings on the farther bank, with the Shot Tower starting
+above them all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Three taps sounded on the panes above us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In all my dealings with Dr. Fu-Manchu I had had to face nothing so
+uncanny as this.  What Burmese ghoul had he loosed?  Was it outside, in
+the air?  Was it actually in the room?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't let me go, Petrie!" whispered Smith suddenly.  "Get a tight hold
+on me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That was the last straw; for I thought that some dreadful fascination
+was impelling my friend to hurl himself out!  Wildly I threw my arms
+about him, and Guthrie leaped forward to help.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith leaned from the window and looked up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One choking cry he gave&mdash;smothered, inarticulate&mdash;and I found him
+slipping from my grip&mdash;being drawn out of the window&mdash;drawn to his
+death!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hold him, Guthrie!" I gasped hoarsely.  "My God, he's going!  Hold
+him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My friend writhed in our grasp, and I saw him stretch his arm upward.
+The crack of his revolver came, and he collapsed on to the floor,
+carrying me with him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But as I fell I heard a scream above.  Smith's revolver went hurtling
+through the air, and, hard upon it, went a black shape&mdash;flashing past
+the open window into the gulf of the night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The light!  The light!"  I cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Guthrie ran and turned on the light.  Nayland Smith, his eyes starting
+from his head, his face swollen, lay plucking at a silken cord which
+showed tight about his throat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was a Thug!" screamed Guthrie.  "Get the rope off!  He's choking!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My hands a-twitch, I seized the strangling-cord.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A knife!  Quick!"  I cried.  "I have lost mine!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Guthrie ran to the dressing-table and passed me an open penknife.  I
+somehow forced the blade between the rope and Smith's swollen neck, and
+severed the deadly silken thing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith made a choking noise, and fell back, swooning in my arms.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+When, later, we stood looking down upon the mutilated thing which had
+been brought in from where it fell, Smith showed me a mark on the
+brow&mdash;close beside the wound where his bullet had entered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The mark of Kali," he said.  "The man was a phansigar&mdash;a religious
+strangler.  Since Fu-Manchu has dacoits in his service I might have
+expected that he would have Thugs.  A group of these fiends would seem
+to have fled into Burma; so that the mysterious epidemic in Rangoon was
+really an outbreak of thuggee&mdash;on slightly improved lines!  I had
+suspected something of the kind but, naturally, I had not looked for
+Thugs near Rangoon.  My unexpected resistance led the strangler to
+bungle the rope.  You have seen how it was fastened about my throat?
+That was unscientific.  The true method, as practiced by the group
+operating in Burma, was to throw the line about the victim's neck and
+jerk him from the window.  A man leaning from an open window is very
+nicely poised: it requires only a slight jerk to pitch him forward.  No
+loop was used, but a running line, which, as the victim fell, remained
+in the hand of the murderer.  No clew!  Therefore we see at once what
+commended the system to Fu-Manchu."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Graham Guthrie, very pale, stood looking down at the dead strangler.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I owe you my life, Mr. Smith," he said.  "If you had come five minutes
+later&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He grasped Smith's hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see," Guthrie continued, "no one thought of looking for a Thug in
+Burma!  And no one thought of the ROOF!  These fellows are as active as
+monkeys, and where an ordinary man would infallibly break his neck,
+they are entirely at home.  I might have chosen my room especially for
+the business!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He slipped in late this evening," said Smith.  "The hotel detective
+saw him, but these stranglers are as elusive as shadows, otherwise,
+despite their having changed the scene of their operations, not one
+could have survived."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Didn't you mention a case of this kind on the Irrawaddy?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," was the reply; "and I know of what you are thinking.  The
+steamers of the Irrawaddy flotilla have a corrugated-iron roof over the
+top deck.  The Thug must have been lying up there as the Colassie
+passed on the deck below."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, Smith, what is the motive of the Call?" I continued.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Partly religious," he explained, "and partly to wake the victims!  You
+are perhaps going to ask me how Dr. Fu-Manchu has obtained power over
+such people as phansigars?  I can only reply that Dr. Fu-Manchu has
+secret knowledge of which, so far, we know absolutely nothing; but,
+despite all, at last I begin to score."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You do," I agreed; "but your victory took you near to death."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I owe my life to you, Petrie," he said.  "Once to your strength of
+arm, and once to&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't speak of her, Smith," I interrupted.  "Dr. Fu-Manchu may have
+discovered the part she played!  In which event&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God help her!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap16"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVI
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+UPON the following day we were afoot again, and shortly at handgrips
+with the enemy.  In retrospect, that restless time offers a chaotic
+prospect, with no peaceful spot amid its turmoils.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All that was reposeful in nature seemed to have become an irony and a
+mockery to us&mdash;who knew how an evil demigod had his sacrificial altars
+amid our sweetest groves.  This idea ruled strongly in my mind upon
+that soft autumnal day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The net is closing in," said Nayland Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let us hope upon a big catch," I replied, with a laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Beyond where the Thames tided slumberously seaward showed the roofs of
+Royal Windsor, the castle towers showing through the autumn haze.  The
+peace of beautiful Thames-side was about us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was one of the few tangible clews upon which thus far we had
+chanced; but at last it seemed indeed that we were narrowing the
+resources of that enemy of the white race who was writing his name over
+England in characters of blood.  To capture Dr. Fu-Manchu we did not
+hope; but at least there was every promise of destroying one of the
+enemy's strongholds.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We had circled upon the map a tract of country cut by the Thames, with
+Windsor for its center.  Within that circle was the house from which
+miraculously we had escaped&mdash;a house used by the most highly organized
+group in the history of criminology.  So much we knew.  Even if we
+found the house, and this was likely enough, to find it vacated by
+Fu-Manchu and his mysterious servants we were prepared.  But it would
+be a base destroyed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We were working upon a methodical plan, and although our cooperators
+were invisible, these numbered no fewer than twelve&mdash;all of them
+experienced men.  Thus far we had drawn blank, but the place for which
+Smith and I were making now came clearly into view:  an old mansion
+situated in extensive walled grounds.  Leaving the river behind us, we
+turned sharply to the right along a lane flanked by a high wall.  On an
+open patch of ground, as we passed, I noted a gypsy caravan.  An old
+woman was seated on the steps, her wrinkled face bent, her chin resting
+in the palm of her hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I scarcely glanced at her, but pressed on, nor did I notice that my
+friend no longer was beside me.  I was all anxiety to come to some
+point from whence I might obtain a view of the house; all anxiety to
+know if this was the abode of our mysterious enemy&mdash;the place where he
+worked amid his weird company, where he bred his deadly scorpions and
+his bacilli, reared his poisonous fungi, from whence he dispatched his
+murder ministers.  Above all, perhaps, I wondered if this would prove
+to be the hiding-place of the beautiful slave girl who was such a
+potent factor in the Doctor's plans, but a two-edged sword which yet we
+hoped to turn upon Fu-Manchu. Even in the hands of a master, a woman's
+beauty is a dangerous weapon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A cry rang out behind me.  I turned quickly.  And a singular sight met
+my gaze.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith was engaged in a furious struggle with the old gypsy
+woman!  His long arms clasped about her, he was roughly dragging her
+out into the roadway, she fighting like a wild thing&mdash;silently,
+fiercely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith often surprised me, but at that sight, frankly, I thought that he
+was become bereft of reason.  I ran back; and I had almost reached the
+scene of this incredible contest, and Smith now was evidently hard put
+to it to hold his own when a man, swarthy, with big rings in his ears,
+leaped from the caravan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One quick glance he threw in our direction, and made off towards the
+river.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith twisted round upon me, never releasing his hold of the woman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"After him, Petrie!" he cried.  "After him.  Don't let him escape.
+It's a dacoit!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My brain in a confused whirl; my mind yet disposed to a belief that my
+friend had lost his senses, the word "dacoit" was sufficient.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I started down the road after the fleetly running man.  Never once did
+he glance behind him, so that he evidently had occasion to fear
+pursuit.  The dusty road rang beneath my flying footsteps.  That sense
+of fantasy, which claimed me often enough in those days of our struggle
+with the titanic genius whose victory meant the victory of the yellow
+races over the white, now had me fast in its grip again.  I was an
+actor in one of those dream-scenes of the grim Fu-Manchu drama.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Out over the grass and down to the river's brink ran the gypsy who was
+no gypsy, but one of that far more sinister brotherhood, the dacoits.
+I was close upon his heels.  But I was not prepared for him to leap in
+among the rushes at the margin of the stream; and seeing him do this I
+pulled up quickly.  Straight into the water he plunged; and I saw that
+he held some object in his hand.  He waded out; he dived; and as I
+gained the bank and looked to right and left he had vanished
+completely.  Only ever-widening rings showed where he had been. I had
+him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For directly he rose to the surface he would be visible from either
+bank, and with the police whistle which I carried I could, if
+necessary, summon one of the men in hiding across the stream.  I
+waited.  A wild-fowl floated serenely past, untroubled by this strange
+invasion of his precincts.  A full minute I waited.  From the lane
+behind me came Smith's voice:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't let him escape, Petrie!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Never lifting my eyes from the water, I waved my hand reassuringly.
+But still the dacoit did not rise.  I searched the surface in all
+directions as far as my eyes could reach; but no swimmer showed above
+it.  Then it was that I concluded he had dived too deeply, become
+entangled in the weeds and was drowned.  With a final glance to right
+and left and some feeling of awe at this sudden tragedy&mdash;this grim
+going out of a life at glorious noonday&mdash;I turned away.  Smith had the
+woman securely; but I had not taken five steps towards him when a faint
+splash behind warned me.  Instinctively I ducked.  From whence that
+saving instinct arose I cannot surmise, but to it I owed my life.  For
+as I rapidly lowered my head, something hummed past me, something that
+flew out over the grass bank, and fell with a jangle upon the dusty
+roadside.  A knife!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I turned and bounded back to the river's brink.  I heard a faint cry
+behind me, which could only have come from the gypsy woman.  Nothing
+disturbed the calm surface of the water.  The reach was lonely of
+rowers.  Out by the farther bank a girl was poling a punt along, and
+her white-clad figure was the only living thing that moved upon the
+river within the range of the most expert knife-thrower.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To say that I was nonplused is to say less than the truth; I was
+amazed.  That it was the dacoit who had shown me this murderous
+attention I could not doubt.  But where in Heaven's name WAS he?  He
+could not humanly have remained below water for so long; yet he
+certainly was not above, was not upon the surface, concealed amongst
+the reeds, nor hidden upon the bank.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There, in the bright sunshine, a consciousness of the eerie possessed
+me.  It was with an uncomfortable feeling that my phantom foe might be
+aiming a second knife at my back that I turned away and hastened
+towards Smith.  My fearful expectations were not realized, and I picked
+up the little weapon which had so narrowly missed me, and with it in my
+hand rejoined my friend.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was standing with one arm closely clasped about the apparently
+exhausted woman, and her dark eyes were fixed upon him with an
+extraordinary expression.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What does it mean, Smith?" I began.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he interrupted me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where is the dacoit?" he demanded rapidly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Since he seemingly possesses the attributes of a fish," I replied, "I
+cannot pretend to say."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The gypsy woman lifted her eyes to mine and laughed.  Her laughter was
+musical, not that of such an old hag as Smith held captive; it was
+familiar, too.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I started and looked closely into the wizened face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's tricked you," said Smith, an angry note in his voice.  "What is
+that you have in your hand?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I showed him the knife, and told him how it had come into my possession.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know," he rapped.  "I saw it.  He was in the water not three yards
+from where you stood.  You must have seen him.  Was there nothing
+visible?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The woman laughed again, and again I wondered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A wild-fowl," I added; "nothing else."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A wild-fowl," snapped Smith.  "If you will consult your recollections
+of the habits of wild-fowl you will see that this particular specimen
+was a RARA AVIS. It's an old trick, Petrie, but a good one, for it is
+used in decoying.  A dacoit's head was concealed in that wild-fowl!
+It's useless.  He has certainly made good his escape by now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smith," I said, somewhat crestfallen, "why are you detaining this
+gypsy woman?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gypsy woman!" he laughed, hugging her tightly as she made an impatient
+movement.  "Use your eyes, old man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He jerked the frowsy wig from her head, and beneath was a cloud of
+disordered hair that shimmered in the sunlight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A wet sponge will do the rest," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Into my eyes, widely opened in wonder, looked the dark eyes of the
+captive; and beneath the disguise I picked out the charming features of
+the slave girl.  There were tears on the whitened lashes, and she was
+submissive now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This time," said my friend hardly, "we have fairly captured her&mdash;and
+we will hold her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From somewhere up-stream came a faint call.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The dacoit!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith's lean body straightened; he stood alert, strung up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Another call answered, and a third responded.  Then followed the flatly
+shrill note of a police whistle, and I noted a column of black vapor
+rising beyond the wall, mounting straight to heaven as the smoke of a
+welcome offering.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The surrounded mansion was in flames!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Curse it!" rapped Smith.  "So this time we were right.  But, of
+course, he has had ample opportunity to remove his effects.  I knew
+that.  The man's daring is incredible.  He has given himself till the
+very last moment&mdash;and we blundered upon two of the outposts."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I lost one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No matter.  We have the other.  I expect no further arrests, and the
+house will have been so well fired by the Doctor's servants that
+nothing can save it.  I fear its ashes will afford us no clew, Petrie;
+but we have secured a lever which should serve to disturb Fu-Manchu's
+world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He glanced at the queer figure which hung submissively in his arms.
+She looked up proudly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You need not hold me so tight," she said, in her soft voice.  "I will
+come with you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That I moved amid singular happenings, you, who have borne with me thus
+far, have learned, and that I witnessed many curious scenes; but of the
+many such scenes in that race-drama wherein Nayland Smith and Dr.
+Fu-Manchu played the leading parts, I remember none more bizarre than
+the one at my rooms that afternoon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without delay, and without taking the Scotland Yard men into our
+confidence, we had hurried our prisoner back to London, for my friend's
+authority was supreme.  A strange trio we were, and one which excited
+no little comment; but the journey came to an end at last.  Now we were
+in my unpretentious sitting-room&mdash;the room wherein Smith first had
+unfolded to me the story of Dr. Fu-Manchu and of the great secret
+society which sought to upset the balance of the world&mdash;to place Europe
+and America beneath the scepter of Cathay.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I sat with my elbows upon the writing-table, my chin in my hands; Smith
+restlessly paced the floor, relighting his blackened briar a dozen
+times in as many minutes.  In the big arm-chair the pseudogypsy was
+curled up.  A brief toilet had converted the wizened old woman's face
+into that of a fascinatingly pretty girl.  Wildly picturesque she
+looked in her ragged Romany garb.  She held a cigarette in her fingers
+and watched us through lowered lashes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Seemingly, with true Oriental fatalism, she was quite reconciled to her
+fate, and ever and anon she would bestow upon me a glance from her
+beautiful eyes which few men, I say with confidence, could have
+sustained unmoved.  Though I could not be blind to the emotions of that
+passionate Eastern soul, yet I strove not to think of them.  Accomplice
+of an arch-murderer she might be; but she was dangerously lovely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That man who was with you," said Smith, suddenly turning upon her,
+"was in Burma up till quite recently.  He murdered a fisherman thirty
+miles above Prome only a month before I left.  The D.S.P. had placed a
+thousand rupees on his head.  Am I right?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl shrugged her shoulders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Suppose&mdash;What then?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Suppose I handed you over to the police?" suggested Smith.  But he
+spoke without conviction, for in the recent past we both had owed our
+lives to this girl.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As you please," she replied.  "The police would learn nothing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You do not belong to the Far East," my friend said abruptly.  "You may
+have Eastern blood in your veins, but you are no kin of Fu-Manchu."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is true," she admitted, and knocked the ash from her cigarette.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you tell me where to find Fu-Manchu?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She shrugged her shoulders again, glancing eloquently in my direction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith walked to the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must make out my report, Petrie," he said.  "Look after the
+prisoner."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And as the door closed softly behind him I knew what was expected of
+me; but, honestly, I shirked my responsibility.  What attitude should I
+adopt?  How should I go about my delicate task?  In a quandary, I stood
+watching the girl whom singular circumstances saw captive in my rooms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You do not think we would harm you?" I began awkwardly.  "No harm
+shall come to you.  Why will you not trust us?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She raised her brilliant eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of what avail has your protection been to some of those others," she
+said; "those others whom HE has sought for?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Alas!  it had been of none, and I knew it well.  I thought I grasped
+the drift of her words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean that if you speak, Fu-Manchu will find a way of killing you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of killing ME!" she flashed scornfully.  "Do I seem one to fear for
+myself?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then what do you fear?" I asked, in surprise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked at me oddly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When I was seized and sold for a slave," she answered slowly, "my
+sister was taken, too, and my brother&mdash;a child." She spoke the word
+with a tender intonation, and her slight accent rendered it the more
+soft.  "My sister died in the desert.  My brother lived.  Better, far
+better, that he had died, too."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her words impressed me intensely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of what are you speaking?" I questioned.  "You speak of slave-raids,
+of the desert.  Where did these things take place?  Of what country are
+you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Does it matter?" she questioned in turn.  "Of what country am I?  A
+slave has no country, no name."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No name!" I cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You may call me Karamaneh," she said.  "As Karamaneh I was sold to Dr.
+Fu-Manchu, and my brother also he purchased.  We were cheap at the
+price he paid."  She laughed shortly, wildly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But he has spent a lot of money to educate me.  My brother is all that
+is left to me in the world to love, and he is in the power of Dr.
+Fu-Manchu. You understand?  It is upon him the blow will fall.  You ask
+me to fight against Fu-Manchu. You talk of protection.  Did your
+protection save Sir Crichton Davey?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I shook my head sadly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You understand now why I cannot disobey my master's orders&mdash;why, if I
+would, I dare not betray him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I walked to the window and looked out.  How could I answer her
+arguments?  What could I say?  I heard the rustle of her ragged skirts,
+and she who called herself Karamaneh stood beside me.  She laid her
+hand upon my arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me go," she pleaded.  "He will kill him!  He will kill him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her voice shook with emotion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He cannot revenge himself upon your brother when you are in no way to
+blame," I said angrily.  "We arrested you; you are not here of your own
+free will."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She drew her breath sharply, clutching at my arm, and in her eyes I
+could read that she was forcing her mind to some arduous decision.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Listen."  She was speaking rapidly, nervously.  "If I help you to take
+Dr. Fu-Manchu&mdash;tell you where he is to be found ALONE&mdash;will you promise
+me, solemnly promise me, that you will immediately go to the place
+where I shall guide you and release my brother; that you will let us
+both go free?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will," I said, without hesitation.  "You may rest assured of it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But there is a condition," she added.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When I have told you where to capture him you must release me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I hesitated.  Smith often had accused me of weakness where this girl
+was concerned.  What now was my plain duty?  That she would utterly
+decline to speak under any circumstances unless it suited her to do so
+I felt assured.  If she spoke the truth, in her proposed bargain there
+was no personal element; her conduct I now viewed in a new light.
+Humanity, I thought, dictated that I accept her proposal; policy also.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I agree," I said, and looked into her eyes, which were aflame now with
+emotion, an excitement perhaps of anticipation, perhaps of fear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She laid her hands upon my shoulders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will be careful?" she said pleadingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For your sake," I replied, "I shall."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not for my sake."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then for your brother's."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No." Her voice had sunk to a whisper.  "For your own."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap17"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+A COOL breeze met us, blowing from the lower reaches of the Thames.
+Far behind us twinkled the dim lights of Low's Cottages, the last
+regular habitations abutting upon the marshes.  Between us and the
+cottages stretched half-a-mile of lush land through which at this
+season there were, however, numerous dry paths.  Before us the flats
+again, a dull, monotonous expanse beneath the moon, with the promise of
+the cool breeze that the river flowed round the bend ahead.  It was
+very quiet.  Only the sound of our footsteps, as Nayland Smith and I
+tramped steadily towards our goal, broke the stillness of that lonely
+place.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Not once but many times, within the last twenty minutes, I had thought
+that we were ill-advised to adventure alone upon the capture of the
+formidable Chinese doctor; but we were following out our compact with
+Karamaneh; and one of her stipulations had been that the police must
+not be acquainted with her share in the matter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A light came into view far ahead of us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's the light, Petrie," said Smith.  "If we keep that straight
+before us, according to our information we shall strike the hulk."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I grasped the revolver in my pocket, and the presence of the little
+weapon was curiously reassuring.  I have endeavored, perhaps in
+extenuation of my own fears, to explain how about Dr. Fu-Manchu there
+rested an atmosphere of horror, peculiar, unique.  He was not as other
+men.  The dread that he inspired in all with whom he came in contact,
+the terrors which he controlled and hurled at whomsoever cumbered his
+path, rendered him an object supremely sinister.  I despair of
+conveying to those who may read this account any but the coldest
+conception of the man's evil power.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith stopped suddenly and grasped my arm.  We stood listening.
+"What?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You heard nothing?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I shook my head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith was peering back over the marshes in his oddly alert way.  He
+turned to me, and his tanned face wore a peculiar expression.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't think it's a trap?" he jerked.  "We are trusting her
+blindly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Strange it may seem, but something within me rose in arms against the
+innuendo.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't," I said shortly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He nodded.  We pressed on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ten minutes' steady tramping brought us within sight of the Thames.
+Smith and I both had noticed how Fu-Manchu's activities centered always
+about the London river.  Undoubtedly it was his highway, his line of
+communication, along which he moved his mysterious forces.  The opium
+den off Shadwell Highway, the mansion upstream, at that hour a
+smoldering shell; now the hulk lying off the marshes.  Always he made
+his headquarters upon the river.  It was significant; and even if
+to-night's expedition should fail, this was a clew for our future
+guidance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bear to the right," directed Smith.  "We must reconnoiter before
+making our attack."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We took a path that led directly to the river bank.  Before us lay the
+gray expanse of water, and out upon it moved the busy shipping of the
+great mercantile city.  But this life of the river seemed widely
+removed from us.  The lonely spot where we stood had no kinship with
+human activity.  Its dreariness illuminated by the brilliant moon, it
+looked indeed a fit setting for an act in such a drama as that wherein
+we played our parts.  When I had lain in the East End opium den, when
+upon such another night as this I had looked out upon a peaceful
+Norfolk countryside, the same knowledge of aloofness, of utter
+detachment from the world of living men, had come to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Silently Smith stared out at the distant moving lights.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Karamaneh merely means a slave," he said irrelevantly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I made no comment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's the hulk," he added.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The bank upon which we stood dipped in mud slopes to the level of the
+running tide.  Seaward it rose higher, and by a narrow inlet&mdash;for we
+perceived that we were upon a kind of promontory&mdash;a rough pier showed.
+Beneath it was a shadowy shape in the patch of gloom which the moon
+threw far out upon the softly eddying water.  Only one dim light was
+visible amid this darkness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That will be the cabin," said Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Acting upon our prearranged plan, we turned and walked up on to the
+staging above the hulk.  A wooden ladder led out and down to the deck
+below, and was loosely lashed to a ring on the pier.  With every motion
+of the tidal waters the ladder rose and fell, its rings creaking
+harshly, against the crazy railing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How are we going to get down without being detected?" whispered Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We've got to risk it," I said grimly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without further words my friend climbed around on to the ladder and
+commenced to descend.  I waited until his head disappeared below the
+level, and, clumsily enough, prepared to follow him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The hulk at that moment giving an unusually heavy heave, I stumbled,
+and for one breathless moment looked down upon the glittering surface
+streaking the darkness beneath me.  My foot had slipped, and but that I
+had a firm grip upon the top rung, that instant, most probably, had
+marked the end of my share in the fight with Fu-Manchu. As it was I had
+a narrow escape.  I felt something slip from my hip pocket, but the
+weird creaking of the ladder, the groans of the laboring hulk, and the
+lapping of the waves about the staging drowned the sound of the splash
+as my revolver dropped into the river.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rather white-faced, I think, I joined Smith on the deck.  He had
+witnessed my accident, but&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We must risk it," he whispered in my ear.  "We dare not turn back now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He plunged into the semi-darkness, making for the cabin, I perforce
+following.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the bottom of the ladder we came fully into the light streaming out
+from the singular apartments at the entrance to which we found
+ourselves.  It was fitted up as a laboratory.  A glimpse I had of
+shelves loaded with jars and bottles, of a table strewn with scientific
+paraphernalia, with retorts, with tubes of extraordinary shapes,
+holding living organisms, and with instruments&mdash;some of them of a form
+unknown to my experience.  I saw too that books, papers and rolls of
+parchment littered the bare wooden floor.  Then Smith's voice rose
+above the confused sounds about me, incisive, commanding:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have you covered, Dr. Fu-Manchu!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For Fu-Manchu sat at the table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The picture that he presented at that moment is one which persistently
+clings in my memory.  In his long, yellow robe, his masklike,
+intellectual face bent forward amongst the riot of singular objects
+upon the table, his great, high brow gleaming in the light of the
+shaded lamp above him, and with the abnormal eyes, filmed and green,
+raised to us, he seemed a figure from the realms of delirium.  But,
+most amazing circumstance of all, he and his surroundings tallied,
+almost identically, with the dream-picture which had come to me as I
+lay chained in the cell!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Some of the large jars about the place held anatomy specimens.  A faint
+smell of opium hung in the air, and playing with the tassel of one of
+the cushions upon which, as upon a divan, Fu-Manchu was seated, leaped
+and chattered a little marmoset.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That was an electric moment.  I was prepared for anything&mdash;for anything
+except for what really happened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The doctor's wonderful, evil face betrayed no hint of emotion.  The
+lids flickered over the filmed eyes, and their greenness grew
+momentarily brighter, and filmed over again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Put up your hands!" rapped Smith, "and attempt no tricks." His voice
+quivered with excitement.  "The game's up, Fu-Manchu. Find something to
+tie him up with, Petrie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I moved forward to Smith's side, and was about to pass him in the
+narrow doorway.  The hulk moved beneath our feet like a living thing
+groaning, creaking&mdash;and the water lapped about the rotten woodwork with
+a sound infinitely dreary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Put up your hands!" ordered Smith imperatively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fu-Manchu slowly raised his hands, and a smile dawned upon the
+impassive features&mdash;a smile that had no mirth in it, only menace,
+revealing as it did his even, discolored teeth, but leaving the filmed
+eyes inanimate, dull, inhuman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He spoke softly, sibilantly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I would advise Dr. Petrie to glance behind him before he moves."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith's keen gray eyes never for a moment quitted the speaker.  The
+gleaming barrel moved not a hair's-breadth. But I glanced quickly over
+my shoulder&mdash;and stifled a cry of pure horror.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A wicked, pock-marked face, with wolfish fangs bared, and jaundiced
+eyes squinting obliquely into mine, was within two inches of me.  A
+lean, brown hand and arm, the great thews standing up like cords, held
+a crescent-shaped knife a fraction of an inch above my jugular vein.  A
+slight movement must have dispatched me; a sweep of the fearful weapon,
+I doubt not, would have severed my head from my body.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smith!" I whispered hoarsely, "don't look around.  For God's sake keep
+him covered.  But a dacoit has his knife at my throat!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, for the first time, Smith's hand trembled.  But his glance never
+wavered from the malignant, emotionless countenance of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+He clenched his teeth hard, so that the muscles stood out prominently
+upon his jaw.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I suppose that silence which followed my awful discovery prevailed but
+a few seconds.  To me those seconds were each a lingering death.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There, below, in that groaning hulk, I knew more of icy terror than any
+of our meetings with the murder-group had brought to me before; and
+through my brain throbbed a thought: the girl had betrayed us!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You supposed that I was alone?" suggested Fu-Manchu. "So I was."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yet no trace of fear had broken through the impassive yellow mask when
+we had entered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But my faithful servant followed you," he added.  "I thank him.  The
+honors, Mr. Smith, are mine, I think?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith made no reply.  I divined that he was thinking furiously.
+Fu-Manchu moved his hand to caress the marmoset, which had leaped
+playfully upon his shoulder, and crouched there gibing at us in a
+whistling voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't stir!" said Smith savagely.  "I warn you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fu-Manchu kept his hand raised.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May I ask you how you discovered my retreat?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This hulk has been watched since dawn," lied Smith brazenly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So?"  The Doctor's filmed eyes cleared for a moment.  "And to-day you
+compelled me to burn a house, and you have captured one of my people,
+too.  I congratulate you.  She would not betray me though lashed with
+scorpions."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The great gleaming knife was so near to my neck that a sheet of
+notepaper could scarcely have been slipped between blade and vein, I
+think; but my heart throbbed even more wildly when I heard those words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An impasse," said Fu-Manchu. "I have a proposal to make.  I assume
+that you would not accept my word for anything?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I would not," replied Smith promptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Therefore," pursued the Chinaman, and the occasional guttural alone
+marred his perfect English, "I must accept yours.  Of your resources
+outside this cabin I know nothing.  You, I take it, know as little of
+mine.  My Burmese friend and Doctor Petrie will lead the way, then; you
+and I will follow.  We will strike out across the marsh for, say, three
+hundred yards.  You will then place your pistol on the ground, pledging
+me your word to leave it there.  I shall further require your assurance
+that you will make no attempt upon me until I have retraced my steps.
+I and my good servant will withdraw, leaving you, at the expiration of
+the specified period, to act as you see fit.  Is it agreed?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith hesitated.  Then:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The dacoit must leave his knife also," he stipulated.  Fu-Manchu
+smiled his evil smile again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Agreed.  Shall I lead the way?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No!" rapped Smith.  "Petrie and the dacoit first; then you; I last."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A guttural word of command from Fu-Manchu, and we left the cabin, with
+its evil odors, its mortuary specimens, and its strange instruments,
+and in the order arranged mounted to the deck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It will be awkward on the ladder," said Fu-Manchu. "Dr. Petrie, I will
+accept your word to adhere to the terms."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I promise," I said, the words almost choking me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We mounted the rising and dipping ladder, all reached the pier, and
+strode out across the flats, the Chinaman always under close cover of
+Smith's revolver.  Round about our feet, now leaping ahead, now
+gamboling back, came and went the marmoset.  The dacoit, dressed solely
+in a dark loin-cloth, walked beside me, carrying his huge knife, and
+sometimes glancing at me with his blood-lustful eyes.  Never before, I
+venture to say, had an autumn moon lighted such a scene in that place.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here we part," said Fu-Manchu, and spoke another word to his follower.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man threw his knife upon the ground.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Search him, Petrie," directed Smith.  "He may have a second concealed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor consented; and I passed my hands over the man's scanty
+garments.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now search Fu-Manchu."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This also I did.  And never have I experienced a similar sense of
+revulsion from any human being.  I shuddered, as though I had touched a
+venomous reptile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith threw down his revolver.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I curse myself for an honorable fool," he said.  "No one could dispute
+my right to shoot you dead where you stand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Knowing him as I did, I could tell from the suppressed passion in
+Smith's voice that only by his unhesitating acceptance of my friend's
+word, and implicit faith in his keeping it, had Dr. Fu-Manchu escaped
+just retribution at that moment.  Fiend though he was, I admired his
+courage; for all this he, too, must have known.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor turned, and with the dacoit walked back.  Nayland Smith's
+next move filled me with surprise.  For just as, silently, I was
+thanking God for my escape, my friend began shedding his coat, collar,
+and waistcoat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pocket your valuables, and do the same," he muttered hoarsely.  "We
+have a poor chance but we are both fairly fit.  To-night, Petrie, we
+literally have to run for our lives."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We live in a peaceful age, wherein it falls to the lot of few men to
+owe their survival to their fleetness of foot.  At Smith's words I
+realized in a flash that such was to be our fate to-night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I have said that the hulk lay off a sort of promontory.  East and west,
+then, we had nothing to hope for.  To the south was Fu-Manchu; and even
+as, stripped of our heavier garments, we started to run northward, the
+weird signal of a dacoit rose on the night and was answered&mdash;was
+answered again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Three, at least," hissed Smith; "three armed dacoits.  Hopeless."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take the revolver," I cried.  "Smith, it's&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," he rapped, through clenched teeth.  "A servant of the Crown in
+the East makes his motto:  'Keep your word, though it break your neck!'
+I don't think we need fear it being used against us.  Fu-Manchu avoids
+noisy methods."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So back we ran, over the course by which, earlier, we had come.  It
+was, roughly, a mile to the first building&mdash;a deserted cottage&mdash;and
+another quarter of a mile to any that was occupied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Our chance of meeting a living soul, other than Fu-Manchu's dacoits,
+was practically nil.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At first we ran easily, for it was the second half-mile that would
+decide our fate.  The professional murderers who pursued us ran like
+panthers, I knew; and I dare not allow my mind to dwell upon those
+yellow figures with the curved, gleaming knives.  For a long time
+neither of us looked back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On we ran, and on&mdash;silently, doggedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then a hissing breath from Smith warned me what to expect.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Should I, too, look back?  Yes.  It was impossible to resist the horrid
+fascination.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I threw a quick glance over my shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And never while I live shall I forget what I saw.  Two of the pursuing
+dacoits had outdistanced their fellow (or fellows), and were actually
+within three hundred yards of us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+More like dreadful animals they looked than human beings, running bent
+forward, with their faces curiously uptilted.  The brilliant moonlight
+gleamed upon bared teeth, as I could see, even at that distance, even
+in that quick, agonized glance, and it gleamed upon the crescent-shaped
+knives.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As hard as you can go now," panted Smith.  "We must make an attempt to
+break into the empty cottage.  Only chance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I had never in my younger days been a notable runner; for Smith I
+cannot speak.  But I am confident that the next half-mile was done in
+time that would not have disgraced a crack man.  Not once again did
+either of us look back.  Yard upon yard we raced forward together.  My
+heart seemed to be bursting.  My leg muscles throbbed with pain.  At
+last, with the empty cottage in sight, it came to that pass with me
+when another three yards looks as unattainable as three miles.  Once I
+stumbled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My God!" came from Smith weakly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But I recovered myself.  Bare feet pattered close upon our heels, and
+panting breaths told how even Fu-Manchu's bloodhounds were hard put to
+it by the killing pace we had made.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smith," I whispered, "look in front.  Someone!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As through a red mist I had seen a dark shape detach itself from the
+shadows of the cottage, and merge into them again.  It could only be
+another dacoit; but Smith, not heeding, or not hearing, my faintly
+whispered words, crashed open the gate and hurled himself blindly at
+the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It burst open before him with a resounding boom, and he pitched forward
+into the interior darkness.  Flat upon the floor he lay, for as, with a
+last effort, I gained the threshold and dragged myself within, I almost
+fell over his recumbent body.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Madly I snatched at the door.  His foot held it open.  I kicked the
+foot away, and banged the door to.  As I turned, the leading dacoit,
+his eyes starting from their sockets, his face the face of a demon
+leaped wildly through the gateway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That Smith had burst the latch I felt assured, but by some divine
+accident my weak hands found the bolt.  With the last ounce of strength
+spared to me I thrust it home in the rusty socket&mdash;as a full six inches
+of shining steel split the middle panel and protruded above my head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I dropped, sprawling, beside my friend.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A terrific blow shattered every pane of glass in the solitary window,
+and one of the grinning animal faces looked in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sorry, old man," whispered Smith, and his voice was barely audible.
+Weakly he grasped my hand.  "My fault.  I shouldn't have let you come."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the corner of the room where the black shadows lay flicked a long
+tongue of flame.  Muffled, staccato, came the report.  And the yellow
+face at the window was blotted out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One wild cry, ending in a rattling gasp, told of a dacoit gone to his
+account.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A gray figure glided past me and was silhouetted against the broken
+window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again the pistol sent its message into the night, and again came the
+reply to tell how well and truly that message had been delivered.  In
+the stillness, intense by sharp contrast, the sound of bare soles
+pattering upon the path outside stole to me.  Two runners, I thought
+there were, so that four dacoits must have been upon our trail.  The
+room was full of pungent smoke.  I staggered to my feet as the gray
+figure with the revolver turned towards me.  Something familiar there
+was in that long, gray garment, and now I perceived why I had thought
+so.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was my gray rain-coat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Karamaneh," I whispered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Smith, with difficulty, supporting himself upright, and holding
+fast to the ledge beside the door, muttered something hoarsely, which
+sounded like "God bless her!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl, trembling now, placed her hands upon my shoulders with that
+quaint, pathetic gesture peculiarly her own.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I followed you," she said.  "Did you not know I should follow you?
+But I had to hide because of another who was following also.  I had but
+just reached this place when I saw you running towards me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She broke off and turned to Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is your pistol," she said naively.  "I found it in your bag.
+Will you please take it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took it without a word.  Perhaps he could not trust himself to speak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now go.  Hurry!" she said.  "You are not safe yet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have failed," she replied.  "I must go back to him.  There is no
+other way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Strangely sick at heart for a man who has just had a miraculous escape
+from death, I opened the door.  Coatless, disheveled figures, my friend
+and I stepped out into the moonlight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Hideous under the pale rays lay the two dead men, their glazed eyes
+upcast to the peace of the blue heavens.  Karamaneh had shot to kill,
+for both had bullets in their brains.  If God ever planned a more
+complex nature than hers&mdash;a nature more tumultuous with conflicting
+passions, I cannot conceive of it.  Yet her beauty was of the sweetest;
+and in some respects she had the heart of a child&mdash;this girl who could
+shoot so straight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We must send the police to-night," said Smith.  "Or the papers&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hurry," came the girl's voice commandingly from the darkness of the
+cottage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a singular situation.  My very soul rebelled against it.  But
+what could we do?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell us where we can communicate," began Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hurry.  I shall be suspected.  Do you want him to kill me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We moved away.  All was very still now, and the lights glimmered
+faintly ahead.  Not a wisp of cloud brushed the moon's disk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good-night, Karamaneh," I whispered softly.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap18"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVIII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+TO pursue further the adventure on the marshes would be a task at once
+useless and thankless.  In its actual and in its dramatic significance
+it concluded with our parting from Karamaneh.  And in that parting I
+learned what Shakespeare meant by "Sweet Sorrow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a world, I learned, upon the confines of which I stood, a
+world whose very existence hitherto had been unsuspected.  Not the
+least of the mysteries which peeped from the darkness was the mystery
+of the heart of Karamaneh.  I sought to forget her.  I sought to
+remember her.  Indeed, in the latter task I found one more congenial,
+yet, in the direction and extent of the ideas which it engendered, one
+that led me to a precipice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+East and West may not intermingle.  As a student of world-policies, as
+a physician, I admitted, could not deny, that truth.  Again, if
+Karamaneh were to be credited, she had come to Fu-Manchu a slave; had
+fallen into the hands of the raiders; had crossed the desert with the
+slave-drivers; had known the house of the slave-dealer. Could it be?
+With the fading of the crescent of Islam I had thought such things to
+have passed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But if it were so?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the mere thought of a girl so deliciously beautiful in the brutal
+power of slavers, I found myself grinding my teeth&mdash;closing my eyes in
+a futile attempt to blot out the pictures called up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, at such times, I would find myself discrediting her story.
+Again, I would find myself wondering, vaguely, why such problems
+persistently haunted my mind.  But, always, my heart had an answer.
+And I was a medical man, who sought to build up a family
+practice!&mdash;who, in short, a very little time ago, had thought himself
+past the hot follies of youth and entered upon that staid phase of life
+wherein the daily problems of the medical profession hold absolute sway
+and such seductive follies as dark eyes and red lips find&mdash;no
+place&mdash;are excluded!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But it is foreign from the purpose of this plain record to enlist
+sympathy for the recorder.  The topic upon which, here, I have ventured
+to touch was one fascinating enough to me; I cannot hope that it holds
+equal charm for any other.  Let us return to that which it is my duty
+to narrate and let us forget my brief digression.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It is a fact, singular, but true, that few Londoners know London.
+Under the guidance of my friend, Nayland Smith, I had learned, since
+his return from Burma, how there are haunts in the very heart of the
+metropolis whose existence is unsuspected by all but the few; places
+unknown even to the ubiquitous copy-hunting pressman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Into a quiet thoroughfare not two minutes' walk from the pulsing life
+of Leicester Square, Smith led the way.  Before a door sandwiched in
+between two dingy shop-fronts he paused and turned to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whatever you see or hear," he cautioned, "express no surprise."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A cab had dropped us at the corner.  We both wore dark suits and fez
+caps with black silk tassels.  My complexion had been artificially
+reduced to a shade resembling the deep tan of my friend's. He rang the
+bell beside the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Almost immediately it was opened by a negro woman&mdash;gross, hideously
+ugly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith uttered something in voluble Arabic.  As a linguist his
+attainments were a constant source of surprise.  The jargons of the
+East, Far and Near, he spoke as his mother tongue.  The woman
+immediately displayed the utmost servility, ushering us into an
+ill-lighted passage, with every evidence of profound respect.
+Following this passage, and passing an inner door, from beyond whence
+proceeded bursts of discordant music, we entered a little room bare of
+furniture, with coarse matting for mural decorations, and a patternless
+red carpet on the floor.  In a niche burned a common metal lamp.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The negress left us, and close upon her departure entered a very aged
+man with a long patriarchal beard, who greeted my friend with dignified
+courtesy.  Following a brief conversation, the aged Arab&mdash;for such he
+appeared to be&mdash;drew aside a strip of matting, revealing a dark recess.
+Placing his finger upon his lips, he silently invited us to enter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We did so, and the mat was dropped behind us.  The sounds of crude
+music were now much plainer, and as Smith slipped a little shutter
+aside I gave a start of surprise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Beyond lay a fairly large apartment, having divans or low seats around
+three of its walls.  These divans were occupied by a motley company of
+Turks, Egyptians, Greeks, and others; and I noted two Chinese.  Most of
+them smoked cigarettes, and some were drinking.  A girl was performing
+a sinuous dance upon the square carpet occupying the center of the
+floor, accompanied by a young negro woman upon a guitar and by several
+members of the assembly who clapped their hands to the music or hummed
+a low, monotonous melody.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Shortly after our entrance into the passage the dance terminated, and
+the dancer fled through a curtained door at the farther end of the
+room.  A buzz of conversation arose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is a sort of combined Wekaleh and place of entertainment for a
+certain class of Oriental residents in, or visiting, London," Smith
+whispered.  "The old gentleman who has just left us is the proprietor
+or host.  I have been here before on several occasions, but have always
+drawn blank."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was peering out eagerly into the strange clubroom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whom do you expect to find here?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is a recognized meeting-place," said Smith in my ear.  "It is
+almost a certainty that some of the Fu-Manchu group use it at times."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curiously I surveyed all these faces which were visible from the
+spy-hole.  My eyes rested particularly upon the two Chinamen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you recognize anyone?" I whispered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"S-sh!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith was craning his neck so as to command a sight of the doorway.  He
+obstructed my view, and only by his tense attitude and some subtle wave
+of excitement which he communicated to me did I know that a new arrival
+was entering.  The hum of conversation died away, and in the ensuing
+silence I heard the rustle of draperies.  The newcomer was a woman,
+then.  Fearful of making any noise I yet managed to get my eyes to the
+level of the shutter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A woman in an elegant, flame-colored opera cloak was crossing the floor
+and coming in the direction of the spot where we were concealed.  She
+wore a soft silk scarf about her head, a fold partly draped across her
+face.  A momentary view I had of her&mdash;and wildly incongruous she looked
+in that place&mdash;and she had disappeared from sight, having approached
+someone invisible who sat upon the divan immediately beneath our point
+of vantage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the way in which the company gazed towards her, I divined that she
+was no habitue of the place, but that her presence there was as greatly
+surprising to those in the room as it was to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whom could she be, this elegant lady who visited such a haunt&mdash;who, it
+would seem, was so anxious to disguise her identity, but who was
+dressed for a society function rather than for a midnight expedition of
+so unusual a character?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I began a whispered question, but Smith tugged at my arm to silence me.
+His excitement was intense.  Had his keener powers enabled him to
+recognize the unknown?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A faint but most peculiar perfume stole to my nostrils, a perfume which
+seemed to contain the very soul of Eastern mystery.  Only one woman
+known to me used that perfume&mdash;Karamaneh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then it was she!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At last my friend's vigilance had been rewarded.  Eagerly I bent
+forward.  Smith literally quivered in anticipation of a discovery.
+Again the strange perfume was wafted to our hiding-place; and, glancing
+neither to right nor left, I saw Karamaneh&mdash;for that it was she I no
+longer doubted&mdash;recross the room and disappear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The man she spoke to," hissed Smith.  "We must see him!  We must have
+him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He pulled the mat aside and stepped out into the anteroom.  It was
+empty.  Down the passage he led, and we were almost come to the door of
+the big room when it was thrown open and a man came rapidly out, opened
+the street door before Smith could reach him, and was gone, slamming it
+fast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I can swear that we were not four seconds behind him, but when we
+gained the street it was empty.  Our quarry had disappeared as if by
+magic.  A big car was just turning the corner towards Leicester Square.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is the girl," rapped Smith; "but where in Heaven's name is the
+man to whom she brought the message?  I would give a hundred pounds to
+know what business is afoot.  To think that we have had such an
+opportunity and have thrown it away!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Angry and nonplused he stood at the corner, looking in the direction of
+the crowded thoroughfare into which the car had been driven, tugging at
+the lobe of his ear, as was his habit in such moments of perplexity,
+and sharply clicking his teeth together.  I, too, was very thoughtful.
+Clews were few enough in those days of our war with that giant
+antagonist.  The mere thought that our trifling error of judgment
+tonight in tarrying a moment too long might mean the victory of
+Fu-Manchu, might mean the turning of the balance which a wise
+providence had adjusted between the white and yellow races, was
+appalling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To Smith and me, who knew something of the secret influences at work to
+overthrow the Indian Empire, to place, it might be, the whole of Europe
+and America beneath an Eastern rule, it seemed that a great yellow hand
+was stretched out over London.  Doctor Fu-Manchu was a menace to the
+civilized world.  Yet his very existence remained unsuspected by the
+millions whose fate he sought to command.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Into what dark scheme have we had a glimpse?" said Smith.  "What State
+secret is to be filched?  What faithful servant of the British Raj to
+be spirited away?  Upon whom now has Fu-Manchu set his death seal?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Karamaneh on this occasion may not have been acting as an emissary of
+the Doctor's."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I feel assured that she was, Petrie.  Of the many whom this yellow
+cloud may at any moment envelop, to which one did her message refer?
+The man's instructions were urgent.  Witness his hasty departure.
+Curse it!"  He dashed his right clenched fist into the palm of his left
+hand.  "I never had a glimpse of his face, first to last.  To think of
+the hours I have spent in that place, in anticipation of just such a
+meeting&mdash;only to bungle the opportunity when it arose!" Scarce heeding
+what course we followed, we had come now to Piccadilly Circus, and had
+walked out into the heart of the night's traffic.  I just dragged Smith
+aside in time to save him from the off-front wheel of a big Mercedes.
+Then the traffic was blocked, and we found ourselves dangerously penned
+in amidst the press of vehicles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Somehow we extricated ourselves, jeered at by taxi-drivers, who
+naturally took us for two simple Oriental visitors, and just before
+that impassable barrier the arm of a London policeman was lowered and
+the stream moved on a faint breath of perfume became perceptible to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The cabs and cars about us were actually beginning to move again, and
+there was nothing for it but a hasty retreat to the curb.  I could not
+pause to glance behind, but instinctively I knew that someone&mdash;someone
+who used that rare, fragrant essence&mdash;was leaning from the window of
+the car.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"ANDAMAN&mdash;SECOND!" floated a soft whisper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We gained the pavement as the pent-up traffic roared upon its way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith had not noticed the perfume worn by the unseen occupant of the
+car, had not detected the whispered words.  But I had no reason to
+doubt my senses, and I knew beyond question that Fu-Manchu's lovely
+slave, Karamaneh, had been within a yard of us, had recognized us, and
+had uttered those words for our guidance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On regaining my rooms, we devoted a whole hour to considering what
+"ANDAMAN&mdash;SECOND" could possibly mean.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hang it all!" cried Smith, "it might mean anything&mdash;the result of a
+race, for instance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He burst into one of his rare laughs, and began to stuff broadcut
+mixture into his briar.  I could see that he had no intention of
+turning in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can think of no one&mdash;no one of note&mdash;in London at present upon whom
+it is likely that Fu-Manchu would make an attempt," he said, "except
+ourselves."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We began methodically to go through the long list of names which we had
+compiled and to review our elaborate notes.  When, at last, I turned
+in, the night had given place to a new day.  But sleep evaded me, and
+"ANDAMAN&mdash;SECOND" danced like a mocking phantom through my brain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then I heard the telephone bell.  I heard Smith speaking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A minute afterwards he was in my room, his face very grim.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I knew as well as if I'd seen it with my own eyes that some black
+business was afoot last night," he said.  "And it was.  Within
+pistol-shot of us!  Someone has got at Frank Norris West.  Inspector
+Weymouth has just been on the 'phone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Norris West!" I cried, "the American aviator&mdash;and inventor&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Of the
+West aero-torpedo&mdash;yes.  He's been offering it to the English War
+Office, and they have delayed too long."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I got out of bed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you mean?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean that the potentialities have attracted the attention of Dr.
+Fu-Manchu!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Those words operated electrically.  I do not know how long I was in
+dressing, how long a time elapsed ere the cab for which Smith had
+'phoned arrived, how many precious minutes were lost upon the journey;
+but, in a nervous whirl, these things slipped into the past, like the
+telegraph poles seen from the window of an express, and, still in that
+tense state, we came upon the scene of this newest outrage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Norris West, whose lean, stoic face had latterly figured so often
+in the daily press, lay upon the floor in the little entrance hall of
+his chambers, flat upon his back, with the telephone receiver in his
+hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The outer door had been forced by the police.  They had had to remove a
+piece of the paneling to get at the bolt.  A medical man was leaning
+over the recumbent figure in the striped pajama suit, and
+Detective-Inspector Weymouth stood watching him as Smith and I entered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He has been heavily drugged," said the Doctor, sniffing at West's
+lips, "but I cannot say what drug has been used.  It isn't chloroform
+or anything of that nature.  He can safely be left to sleep it off, I
+think."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I agreed, after a brief examination.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's most extraordinary," said Weymouth.  "He rang up the Yard about
+an hour ago and said his chambers had been invaded by Chinamen.  Then
+the man at the 'phone plainly heard him fall.  When we got here his
+front door was bolted, as you've seen, and the windows are three floors
+up.  Nothing is disturbed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The plans of the aero-torpedo?" rapped Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I take it they are in the safe in his bedroom," replied the detective,
+"and that is locked all right.  I think he must have taken an overdose
+of something and had illusions.  But in case there was anything in what
+he mumbled (you could hardly understand him) I thought it as well to
+send for you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quite right," said Smith rapidly.  His eyes shone like steel.  "Lay
+him on the bed, Inspector."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was done, and my friend walked into the bedroom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Save that the bed was disordered, showing that West had been sleeping
+in it, there were no evidences of the extraordinary invasion mentioned
+by the drugged man.  It was a small room&mdash;the chambers were of that
+kind which are let furnished&mdash;and very neat.  A safe with a combination
+lock stood in a corner.  The window was open about a foot at the top.
+Smith tried the safe and found it fast.  He stood for a moment clicking
+his teeth together, by which I knew him to be perplexed.  He walked
+over to the window and threw it up.  We both looked out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see," came Weymouth's voice, "it is altogether too far from the
+court below for our cunning Chinese friends to have fixed a ladder with
+one of their bamboo rod arrangements.  And, even if they could get up
+there, it's too far down from the roof&mdash;two more stories&mdash;for them to
+have fixed it from there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith nodded thoughtfully, at the same time trying the strength of an
+iron bar which ran from side to side of the window-sill. Suddenly he
+stooped, with a sharp exclamation.  Bending over his shoulder I saw
+what it was that had attracted his attention.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clearly imprinted upon the dust-coated gray stone of the sill was a
+confused series of marks&mdash;tracks call them what you will.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith straightened himself and turned a wondering look upon me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it, Petrie?" he said amazedly.  "Some kind of bird has been
+here, and recently."  Inspector Weymouth in turn examined the marks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never saw bird tracks like these, Mr. Smith," he muttered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith was tugging at the lobe of his ear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," he returned reflectively; "come to think of it, neither did I."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He twisted around, looking at the man on the bed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you think it was all an illusion?" asked the detective.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What about those marks on the window-sill?" jerked Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He began restlessly pacing about the room, sometimes stopping before
+the locked safe and frequently glancing at Norris West.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly he walked out and briefly examined the other apartments, only
+to return again to the bedroom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Petrie," he said, "we are losing valuable time.  West must be aroused."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Inspector Weymouth stared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith turned to me impatiently.  The doctor summoned by the police had
+gone.  "Is there no means of arousing him, Petrie?" he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doubtless," I replied, "he could be revived if one but knew what drug
+he had taken."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My friend began his restless pacing again, and suddenly pounced upon a
+little phial of tabloids which had been hidden behind some books on a
+shelf near the bed.  He uttered a triumphant exclamation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"See what we have here, Petrie!" he directed, handing the phial to me.
+"It bears no label."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I crushed one of the tabloids in my palm and applied my tongue to the
+powder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Some preparation of chloral hydrate," I pronounced.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A sleeping draught?" suggested Smith eagerly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We might try," I said, and scribbled a formula upon a leaf of my
+notebook.  I asked Weymouth to send the man who accompanied him to call
+up the nearest chemist and procure the antidote.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+During the man's absence Smith stood contemplating the unconscious
+inventor, a peculiar expression upon his bronzed face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"ANDAMAN&mdash;SECOND," he muttered.  "Shall we find the key to the riddle
+here, I wonder?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Inspector Weymouth, who had concluded, I think, that the mysterious
+telephone call was due to mental aberration on the part of Norris West,
+was gnawing at his mustache impatiently when his assistant returned.  I
+administered the powerful restorative, and although, as later
+transpired, chloral was not responsible for West's condition, the
+antidote operated successfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Norris West struggled into a sitting position, and looked about him
+with haggard eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Chinamen!  The Chinamen!" he muttered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He sprang to his feet, glaring wildly at Smith and me, reeled, and
+almost fell.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is all right," I said, supporting him.  "I'm a doctor.  You have
+been unwell."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have the police come?" he burst out.  "The safe&mdash;try the safe!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's all right," said Inspector Weymouth.  "The safe is locked&mdash;unless
+someone else knows the combination, there's nothing to worry about."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No one else knows it," said West, and staggered unsteadily to the
+safe.  Clearly his mind was in a dazed condition, but, setting his jaw
+with a curious expression of grim determination, he collected his
+thoughts and opened the safe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He bent down, looking in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In some way the knowledge came to me that the curtain was about to rise
+on a new and surprising act in the Fu-Manchu drama.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God!" he whispered&mdash;we could scarcely hear him&mdash;"the plans are gone!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap19"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIX
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+I HAVE never seen a man quite so surprised as Inspector Weymouth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is absolutely incredible!" he said.  "There's only one door to
+your chambers.  We found it bolted from the inside."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," groaned West, pressing his hand to his forehead.  "I bolted it
+myself at eleven o'clock, when I came in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No human being could climb up or down to your windows.  The plans of
+the aero-torpedo were inside a safe."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I put them there myself," said West, "on returning from the War
+Office, and I had occasion to consult them after I had come in and
+bolted the door.  I returned them to the safe and locked it.  That it
+was still locked you saw for yourselves, and no one else in the world
+knows the combination."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But the plans have gone," said Weymouth.  "It's magic!  How was it
+done?  What happened last night, sir?  What did you mean when you rang
+us up?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith during this colloquy was pacing rapidly up and down the room.  He
+turned abruptly to the aviator.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Every fact you can remember, Mr. West, please," he said tersely; "and
+be as brief as you possibly can."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I came in, as I said," explained West, "about eleven o'clock and
+having made some notes relating to an interview arranged for this
+morning, I locked the plans in the safe and turned in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There was no one hidden anywhere in your chambers?" snapped Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There was not," replied West.  "I looked.  I invariably do.  Almost
+immediately, I went to sleep."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How many chloral tabloids did you take?" I interrupted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Norris West turned to me with a slow smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're cute, Doctor," he said.  "I took two.  It's a bad habit, but I
+can't sleep without.  They are specially made up for me by a firm in
+Philadelphia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How long sleep lasted, when it became filled with uncanny dreams, and
+when those dreams merged into reality, I do not know&mdash;shall never know,
+I suppose.  But out of the dreamless void a face came to
+me&mdash;closer&mdash;closer&mdash;and peered into mine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was in that curious condition wherein one knows that one is dreaming
+and seeks to awaken&mdash;to escape.  But a nightmare-like oppression held
+me.  So I must lie and gaze into the seared yellow face that hung over
+me, for it would drop so close that I could trace the cicatrized scar
+running from the left ear to the corner of the mouth, and drawing up
+the lip like the lip of a snarling cur.  I could look into the
+malignant, jaundiced eyes; I could hear the dim whispering of the
+distorted mouth&mdash;whispering that seemed to counsel something&mdash;something
+evil.  That whispering intimacy was indescribably repulsive.  Then the
+wicked yellow face would be withdrawn, and would recede until it became
+as a pin's head in the darkness far above me&mdash;almost like a glutinous,
+liquid thing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Somehow I got upon my feet, or dreamed I did&mdash;God knows where dreaming
+ended and reality began.  Gentlemen maybe you'll conclude I went mad
+last night, but as I stood holding on to the bedrail I heard the blood
+throbbing through my arteries with a noise like a screw-propeller. I
+started laughing.  The laughter issued from my lips with a shrill
+whistling sound that pierced me with physical pain and seemed to wake
+the echoes of the whole block.  I thought myself I was going mad, and I
+tried to command my will&mdash;to break the power of the chloral&mdash;for I
+concluded that I had accidentally taken an overdose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then the walls of my bedroom started to recede, till at last I stood
+holding on to a bed which had shrunk to the size of a doll's cot, in
+the middle of a room like Trafalgar Square!  That window yonder was
+such a long way off I could scarcely see it, but I could just detect a
+Chinaman&mdash;the owner of the evil yellow face&mdash;creeping through it.  He
+was followed by another, who was enormously tall&mdash;so tall that, as they
+came towards me (and it seemed to take them something like half-an-hour
+to cross this incredible apartment in my dream), the second Chinaman
+seemed to tower over me like a cypress-tree.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I looked up to his face&mdash;his wicked, hairless face.  Mr. Smith,
+whatever age I live to, I'll never forget that face I saw last
+night&mdash;or did I see it?  God knows!  The pointed chin, the great dome
+of a forehead, and the eyes&mdash;heavens above, the huge green eyes!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He shook like a sick man, and I glanced at Smith significantly.
+Inspector Weymouth was stroking his mustache, and his mingled
+expression of incredulity and curiosity was singular to behold.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The pumping of my blood," continued West, "seemed to be bursting my
+body; the room kept expanding and contracting.  One time the ceiling
+would be pressing down on my head, and the Chinamen&mdash;sometimes I
+thought there were two of them, sometimes twenty&mdash;became dwarfs; the
+next instant it shot up like the roof of a cathedral.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Can I be awake,' I whispered, 'or am I dreaming?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My whisper went sweeping in windy echoes about the walls, and was lost
+in the shadowy distances up under the invisible roof.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You are dreaming&mdash;yes.'  It was the Chinaman with the green eyes who
+was addressing me, and the words that he uttered appeared to occupy an
+immeasurable time in the utterance.  'But at will I can render the
+subjective objective.' I don't think I can have dreamed those singular
+words, gentlemen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And then he fixed the green eyes upon me&mdash;the blazing green eyes.  I
+made no attempt to move.  They seemed to be draining me of something
+vital&mdash;bleeding me of every drop of mental power.  The whole nightmare
+room grew green, and I felt that I was being absorbed into its
+greenness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can see what you think.  And even in my delirium&mdash;if it was
+delirium&mdash;I thought the same.  Now comes the climax of my
+experience&mdash;my vision&mdash;I don't know what to call it.  I SAW some WORDS
+issuing from my own mouth!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Inspector Weymouth coughed discreetly.  Smith whisked round upon him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This will be outside your experience, Inspector, I know," he said,
+"but Mr. Norris West's statement does not surprise me in the least.  I
+know to what the experience was due."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weymouth stared incredulously, but a dawning perception of the truth
+was come to me, too.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How I SAW a SOUND I just won't attempt to explain; I simply tell you I
+saw it.  Somehow I knew I had betrayed myself&mdash;given something away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You gave away the secret of the lock combination!" rapped Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Eh!" grunted Weymouth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But West went on hoarsely:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just before the blank came a name flashed before my eyes.  It was
+'Bayard Taylor.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At that I interrupted West.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I understand!" I cried.  "I understand!  Another name has just
+occurred to me, Mr. West&mdash;that of the Frenchman, Moreau."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have solved the mystery," said Smith.  "It was natural Mr. West
+should have thought of the American traveler, Bayard Taylor, though.
+Moreau's book is purely scientific.  He has probably never read it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I fought with the stupor that was overcoming me," continued West,
+"striving to associate that vaguely familiar name with the fantastic
+things through which I moved.  It seemed to me that the room was empty
+again.  I made for the hall, for the telephone.  I could scarcely drag
+my feet along.  It seemed to take me half-an-hour to get there.  I
+remember calling up Scotland Yard, and I remember no more."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a short, tense interval.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In some respects I was nonplused; but, frankly, I think Inspector
+Weymouth considered West insane.  Smith, his hands locked behind his
+back, stared out of the window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"ANDAMAN&mdash;SECOND" he said suddenly.  "Weymouth, when is the first train
+to Tilbury?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Five twenty-two from Fenchurch Street," replied the Scotland Yard man
+promptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Too late!" rapped my friend.  "Jump in a taxi and pick up two good men
+to leave for China at once!  Then go and charter a special to Tilbury
+to leave in twenty-five minutes.  Order another cab to wait outside for
+me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weymouth was palpably amazed, but Smith's tone was imperative.  The
+Inspector departed hastily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I stared at Smith, not comprehending what prompted this singular course.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now that you can think clearly, Mr. West," he said, "of what does your
+experience remind you?  The errors of perception regarding time; the
+idea of SEEING A SOUND; the illusion that the room alternately
+increased and diminished in size; your fit of laughter, and the
+recollection of the name Bayard Taylor.  Since evidently you are
+familiar with that author's work&mdash;'The Land of the Saracen,' is it
+not?&mdash;these symptoms of the attack should be familiar, I think."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Norris West pressed his hands to his evidently aching head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bayard Taylor's book," he said dully.  "Yes!&#8230; I know of what my
+brain sought to remind me&mdash;Taylor's account of his experience under
+hashish. Mr. Smith, someone doped me with hashish!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith nodded grimly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cannabis indica," I said&mdash;"Indian hemp.  That is what you were drugged
+with.  I have no doubt that now you experience a feeling of nausea and
+intense thirst, with aching in the muscles, particularly the deltoid.
+I think you must have taken at least fifteen grains."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith stopped his perambulations immediately in front of West, looking
+into his dulled eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Someone visited your chambers last night," he said slowly, "and for
+your chloral tabloids substituted some containing hashish, or perhaps
+not pure hashish.  Fu-Manchu is a profound chemist."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Norris West started.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Someone substituted&mdash;" he began.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Exactly," said Smith, looking at him keenly; "someone who was here
+yesterday.  Have you any idea whom it could have been?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+West hesitated.  "I had a visitor in the afternoon," he said, seemingly
+speaking the words unwillingly, "but&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A lady?" jerked Smith.  "I suggest that it was a lady."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+West nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're quite right," he admitted.  "I don't know how you arrived at
+the conclusion, but a lady whose acquaintance I made recently&mdash;a
+foreign lady."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Karamaneh!" snapped Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know what you mean in the least, but she came here&mdash;knowing
+this to be my present address&mdash;to ask me to protect her from a
+mysterious man who had followed her right from Charing Cross.  She said
+he was down in the lobby, and naturally, I asked her to wait here
+whilst I went and sent him about his business."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He laughed shortly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am over-old," he said, "to be guyed by a woman.  You spoke just now
+of someone called Fu-Manchu. Is that the crook I'm indebted to for the
+loss of my plans?  I've had attempts made by agents of two European
+governments, but a Chinaman is a novelty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This Chinaman," Smith assured him, "is the greatest novelty of his
+age.  You recognize your symptoms now from Bayard Taylor's account?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. West's statement," I said, "ran closely parallel with portions of
+Moreau's book on 'Hashish Hallucinations.' Only Fu-Manchu, I think,
+would have thought of employing Indian hemp.  I doubt, though, if it
+was pure Cannabis indica. At any rate, it acted as an opiate&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And drugged Mr. West," interrupted Smith, "sufficiently to enable
+Fu-Manchu to enter unobserved."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whilst it produced symptoms which rendered him an easy subject for the
+Doctor's influence.  It is difficult in this case to separate
+hallucination from reality, but I think, Mr. West, that Fu-Manchu must
+have exercised an hypnotic influence upon your drugged brain.  We have
+evidence that he dragged from you the secret of the combination."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God knows we have!" said West.  "But who is this Fu-Manchu, and
+how&mdash;how in the name of wonder did he get into my chambers?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith pulled out his watch.  "That," he said rapidly, "I cannot delay
+to explain if I'm to intercept the man who has the plans.  Come along,
+Petrie; we must be at Tilbury within the hour.  There is just a bare
+chance."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap20"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XX
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+IT was with my mind in a condition of unique perplexity that I hurried
+with Nayland Smith into the cab which waited and dashed off through the
+streets in which the busy life of London just stirred into being.  I
+suppose I need not say that I could penetrate no farther into this,
+Fu-Manchu's latest plot, than the drugging of Norris West with hashish?
+Of his having been so drugged with Indian hemp&mdash;that is, converted
+temporarily into a maniac&mdash;would have been evident to any medical man
+who had heard his statement and noted the distressing after-effects
+which conclusively pointed to Indian hemp poisoning.  Knowing something
+of the Chinese doctor's powers, I could understand that he might have
+extracted from West the secret of the combination by sheer force of
+will whilst the American was under the influence of the drug.  But I
+could not understand how Fu-Manchu had gained access to locked chambers
+on the third story of a building.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smith," I said, "those bird tracks on the window-sill&mdash;they furnish
+the key to a mystery which is puzzling me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They do," said Smith, glancing impatiently at his watch.  "Consult
+your memories of Dr. Fu-Manchu's habits&mdash;especially your memories of
+his pets."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I reviewed in my mind the creatures gruesome and terrible which
+surrounded the Chinaman&mdash;the scorpions, the bacteria, the noxious
+things which were the weapons wherewith he visited death upon
+whomsoever opposed the establishment of a potential Yellow Empire.  But
+no one of them could account for the imprints upon the dust of West's
+window-sill.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You puzzle me, Smith," I confessed.  "There is much in this
+extraordinary case that puzzles me.  I can think of nothing to account
+for the marks."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you thought of Fu-Manchu's marmoset?" asked Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The monkey!" I cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They were the footprints of a small ape," my friend continued.  "For a
+moment I was deceived as you were, and believed them to be the tracks
+of a large bird; but I have seen the footprints of apes before now, and
+a marmoset, though an American variety, I believe, is not unlike some
+of the apes of Burma."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am still in the dark," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is pure hypothesis," continued Smith, "but here is the theory&mdash;in
+lieu of a better one it covers the facts.  The marmoset&mdash;and it is
+contrary from the character of Fu-Manchu to keep any creature for mere
+amusement&mdash;is trained to perform certain duties.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You observed the waterspout running up beside the window; you observed
+the iron bar intended to prevent a window-cleaner from falling out?
+For an ape the climb from the court below to the sill above was a
+simple one.  He carried a cord, probably attached to his body.  He
+climbed on to the sill, over the bar, and climbed down again.  By means
+of this cord a rope was pulled up over the bar, by means of the rope
+one of those ladders of silk and bamboo.  One of the Doctor's servants
+ascended&mdash;probably to ascertain if the hashish had acted successfully.
+That was the yellow dream-face which West saw bending over him.  Then
+followed the Doctor, and to his giant will the drugged brain of West
+was a pliant instrument which he bent to his own ends.  The court would
+be deserted at that hour of the night, and, in any event, directly
+after the ascent the ladder probably was pulled up, only to be lowered
+again when West had revealed the secret of his own safe and Fu-Manchu
+had secured the plans.  The reclosing of the safe and the removing of
+the hashish tabloids, leaving no clew beyond the delirious ravings of a
+drug slave&mdash;for so anyone unacquainted with the East must have
+construed West's story&mdash;is particularly characteristic.  His own
+tabloids were returned, of course.  The sparing of his life alone is a
+refinement of art which points to a past master."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Karamaneh was the decoy again?" I said shortly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly.  Hers was the task to ascertain West's habits and to
+substitute the tabloids.  She it was who waited in the luxurious
+car&mdash;infinitely less likely to attract attention at that hour in that
+place than a modest taxi&mdash;and received the stolen plans.  She did her
+work well.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Poor Karamaneh; she had no alternative!  I said I would have given a
+hundred pounds for a sight of the messenger's face&mdash;the man to whom she
+handed them.  I would give a thousand now!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"ANDAMAN&mdash;SECOND," I said.  "What did she mean?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then it has not dawned upon you?" cried Smith excitedly, as the cab
+turned into the station.  "The ANDAMAN, of the Oriental Navigation
+Company's line, leaves Tilbury with the next tide for China ports.  Our
+man is a second-class passenger.  I am wiring to delay her departure,
+and the special should get us to the docks inside of forty minutes."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Very vividly I can reconstruct in my mind that dash to the docks
+through the early autumn morning.  My friend being invested with
+extraordinary powers from the highest authorities, by Inspector
+Weymouth's instructions the line had been cleared all the way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Something of the tremendous importance of Nayland Smith's mission came
+home to me as we hurried on to the platform, escorted by the
+station-master, and the five of us&mdash;for Weymouth had two other C.I.D.
+men with him&mdash;took our seats in the special.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Off we went on top speed, roaring through stations, where a glimpse
+might be had of wondering officials upon the platforms, for a special
+train was a novelty on the line.  All ordinary traffic arrangements
+were held up until we had passed through, and we reached Tilbury in
+time which I doubt not constituted a record.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There at the docks was the great liner, delayed in her passage to the
+Far East by the will of my royally empowered companion.  It was novel,
+and infinitely exciting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith?" said the captain interrogatively,
+when we were shown into his room, and looked from one to another and
+back to the telegraph form which he held in his hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The same, Captain," said my friend briskly.  "I shall not detain you a
+moment.  I am instructing the authorities at all ports east of Suez to
+apprehend one of your second-class passengers, should he leave the
+ship.  He is in possession of plans which practically belong to the
+British Government!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why not arrest him now?" asked the seaman bluntly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because I don't know him.  All second-class passengers' baggage will
+be searched as they land.  I am hoping something from that, if all else
+fails.  But I want you privately to instruct your stewards to watch any
+passenger of Oriental nationality, and to cooperate with the two
+Scotland Yard men who are joining you for the voyage.  I look to you to
+recover these plans, Captain."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will do my best," the captain assured him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, from amid the heterogeneous group on the dockside, we were
+watching the liner depart, and Nayland Smith's expression was a very
+singular one.  Inspector Weymouth stood with us, a badly puzzled man.
+Then occurred the extraordinary incident which to this day remains
+inexplicable, for, clearly heard by all three of us, a guttural voice
+said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Another victory for China, Mr. Nayland Smith!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I turned as though I had been stung.  Smith turned also.  My eyes
+passed from face to face of the group about us.  None was familiar.  No
+one apparently had moved away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the voice was the voice of DOCTOR FU-MANCHU.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As I write of it, now, I can appreciate the difference between that
+happening, as it appealed to us, and as it must appeal to you who
+merely read of it.  It is beyond my powers to convey the sense of the
+uncanny which the episode created.  Yet, even as I think of it, I feel
+again, though in lesser degree, the chill which seemed to creep through
+my veins that day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From my brief history of the wonderful and evil man who once walked, by
+the way unsuspected, in the midst of the people of England&mdash;near whom
+you, personally, may at some time unwittingly, have been&mdash;I am aware
+that much must be omitted.  I have no space for lengthy examinations of
+the many points but ill illuminated with which it is dotted.  This
+incident at the docks is but one such point.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Another is the singular vision which appeared to me whilst I lay in the
+cellar of the house near Windsor.  It has since struck me that it
+possessed peculiarities akin to those of a hashish hallucination.  Can
+it be that we were drugged on that occasion with Indian hemp?  Cannabis
+indica is a treacherous narcotic, as every medical man knows full well;
+but Fu-Manchu's knowledge of the drug was far in advance of our slow
+science.  West's experience proved so much.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I may have neglected opportunities&mdash;later, you shall judge if I did
+so&mdash;opportunities to glean for the West some of the strange knowledge
+of the secret East.  Perhaps, at a future time, I may rectify my
+errors.  Perhaps that wisdom&mdash;the wisdom stored up by Fu-Manchu&mdash;is
+lost forever.  There is, however, at least a bare possibility of its
+survival, in part; and I do not wholly despair of one day publishing a
+scientific sequel to this record of our dealings with the Chinese
+doctor.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap21"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXI
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+TIME wore on and seemingly brought us no nearer, or very little nearer,
+to our goal.  So carefully had my friend Nayland Smith excluded the
+matter from the press that, whilst public interest was much engaged
+with some of the events in the skein of mystery which he had come from
+Burma to unravel, outside the Secret Service and the special department
+of Scotland Yard few people recognized that the several murders,
+robberies and disappearances formed each a link in a chain; fewer still
+were aware that a baneful presence was in our midst, that a past master
+of the evil arts lay concealed somewhere in the metropolis; searched
+for by the keenest wits which the authorities could direct to the task,
+but eluding all&mdash;triumphant, contemptuous.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One link in that chain Smith himself for long failed to recognize.  Yet
+it was a big and important link.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Petrie," he said to me one morning, "listen to this:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'&#8230; In sight of Shanghai&mdash;a clear, dark night.  On board the deck of
+a junk passing close to seaward of the Andaman a blue flare started up.
+A minute later there was a cry of "Man overboard!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Mr. Lewin, the chief officer, who was in charge, stopped the engines.
+A boat was put out.  But no one was recovered.  There are sharks in
+these waters.  A fairly heavy sea was running.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Inquiry showed the missing man to be a James Edwards, second class,
+booked to Shanghai.  I think the name was assumed.  The man was some
+sort of Oriental, and we had had him under close observation.&#8230;'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's the end of their report," exclaimed Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He referred to the two C.I.D. men who had joined the Andaman at the
+moment of her departure from Tilbury.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He carefully lighted his pipe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"IS it a victory for China, Petrie?" he said softly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Until the great war reveals her secret resources&mdash;and I pray that the
+day be not in my time&mdash;we shall never know," I replied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith began striding up and down the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whose name," he jerked abruptly, "stands now at the head of our danger
+list?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He referred to a list which we had compiled of the notable men
+intervening between the evil genius who secretly had invaded London and
+the triumph of his cause&mdash;the triumph of the yellow races.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I glanced at our notes.  "Lord Southery," I replied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith tossed the morning paper across to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look," he said shortly.  "He's dead."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I read the account of the peer's death, and glanced at the long
+obituary notice; but no more than glanced at it.  He had but recently
+returned from the East, and now, after a short illness, had died from
+some affection of the heart.  There had been no intimation that his
+illness was of a serious nature, and even Smith, who watched over his
+flock&mdash;the flock threatened by the wolf, Fu-Manchu&mdash;with jealous zeal,
+had not suspected that the end was so near.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you think he died a natural death, Smith?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My friend reached across the table and rested the tip of a long finger
+upon one of the sub-headings to the account:
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+"SIR FRANK NARCOMBE SUMMONED TOO LATE."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"You see," said Smith, "Southery died during the night, but Sir Frank
+Narcombe, arriving a few minutes later, unhesitatingly pronounced death
+to be due to syncope, and seems to have noticed nothing suspicious."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I looked at him thoughtfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sir Frank is a great physician," I said slowly; "but we must remember
+he would be looking for nothing suspicious."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We must remember," rapped Smith, "that, if Dr. Fu-Manchu is
+responsible for Southery's death, except to the eye of an expert there
+would be nothing suspicious to see.  Fu-Manchu leaves no clews."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you going around?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith shrugged his shoulders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think not," he replied.  "Either a greater One than Fu-Manchu has
+taken Lord Southery, or the yellow doctor has done his work so well
+that no trace remains of his presence in the matter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Leaving his breakfast untasted, he wandered aimlessly about the room,
+littering the hearth with matches as he constantly relighted his pipe,
+which went out every few minutes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's no good, Petrie," he burst out suddenly; "it cannot be a
+coincidence.  We must go around and see him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An hour later we stood in the silent room, with its drawn blinds and
+its deathful atmosphere, looking down at the pale, intellectual face of
+Henry Stradwick, Lord Southery, the greatest engineer of his day.  The
+mind that lay behind that splendid brow had planned the construction of
+the railway for which Russia had paid so great a price, had conceived
+the scheme for the canal which, in the near future, was to bring two
+great continents, a full week's journey nearer one to the other.  But
+now it would plan no more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He had latterly developed symptoms of angina pectoris," explained the
+family physician; "but I had not anticipated a fatal termination so
+soon.  I was called about two o'clock this morning, and found Lord
+Southery in a dangerously exhausted condition.  I did all that was
+possible, and Sir Frank Narcombe was sent for.  But shortly before his
+arrival the patient expired."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I understand, Doctor, that you had been treating Lord Southery for
+angina pectoris?" I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," was the reply, "for some months."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You regard the circumstances of his end as entirely consistent with a
+death from that cause?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly.  Do you observe anything unusual yourself?  Sir Frank
+Narcombe quite agrees with me.  There is surely no room for doubt?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said Smith, tugging reflectively at the lobe of his left ear.
+"We do not question the accuracy of your diagnosis in any way, sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The physician seemed puzzled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But am I not right in supposing that you are connected with the
+police?" asked the physician.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Neither Dr. Petrie nor myself are in any way connected with the
+police," answered Smith.  "But, nevertheless, I look to you to regard
+our recent questions as confidential."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As we were leaving the house, hushed awesomely in deference to the
+unseen visitor who had touched Lord Southery with gray, cold fingers,
+Smith paused, detaining a black-coated man who passed us on the stairs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You were Lord Southery's valet?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man bowed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Were you in the room at the moment of his fatal seizure?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was, sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you see or hear anything unusual&mdash;anything unaccountable?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing, sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No strange sounds outside the house, for instance?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man shook his head, and Smith, taking my arm, passed out into the
+street.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps this business is making me imaginative," he said; "but there
+seems to be something tainting the air in yonder&mdash;something peculiar to
+houses whose doors bear the invisible death-mark of Fu-Manchu."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are right, Smith!" I cried.  "I hesitated to mention the matter,
+but I, too, have developed some other sense which warns me of the
+Doctor's presence.  Although there is not a scrap of confirmatory
+evidence, I am as sure that he has brought about Lord Southery's death
+as if I had seen him strike the blow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was in that torturing frame of mind&mdash;chained, helpless, in our
+ignorance, or by reason of the Chinaman's supernormal genius&mdash;that we
+lived throughout the ensuing days.  My friend began to look like a man
+consumed by a burning fever.  Yet, we could not act.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the growing dark of an evening shortly following I stood idly
+turning over some of the works exposed for sale outside a second-hand
+bookseller's in New Oxford Street.  One dealing with the secret
+societies of China struck me as being likely to prove instructive, and
+I was about to call the shopman when I was startled to feel a hand
+clutch my arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I turned around rapidly&mdash;and was looking into the darkly beautiful eyes
+of Karamaneh!  She&mdash;whom I had seen in so many guises&mdash;was dressed in a
+perfectly fitting walking habit, and had much of her wonderful hair
+concealed beneath a fashionable hat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She glanced about her apprehensively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quick!  Come round the corner.  I must speak to you," she said, her
+musical voice thrilling with excitement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I never was quite master of myself in her presence.  He must have been
+a man of ice who could have been, I think, for her beauty had all the
+bouquet of rarity; she was a mystery&mdash;and mystery adds charm to a
+woman.  Probably she should have been under arrest, but I know I would
+have risked much to save her from it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As we turned into a quiet thoroughfare she stopped and said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am in distress.  You have often asked me to enable you to capture
+Dr. Fu-Manchu. I am prepared to do so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I could scarcely believe that I heard right.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your brother&mdash;" I began.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She seized my arm entreatingly, looking into my eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are a doctor," she said.  "I want you to come and see him now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What!  Is he in London?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is at the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you would have me&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Accompany me there, yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith, I doubted not, would have counseled me against trusting
+my life in the hands of this girl with the pleading eyes.  Yet I did
+so, and with little hesitation; shortly we were traveling eastward in a
+closed cab.  Karamaneh was very silent, but always when I turned to her
+I found her big eyes fixed upon me with an expression in which there
+was pleading, in which there was sorrow, in which there was something
+else&mdash;something indefinable, yet strangely disturbing.  The cabman she
+had directed to drive to the lower end of the Commercial Road, the
+neighborhood of the new docks, and the scene of one of our early
+adventures with Dr. Fu-Manchu. The mantle of dusk had closed about the
+squalid activity of the East End streets as we neared our destination.
+Aliens of every shade of color were about us now, emerging from
+burrow-like alleys into the glare of the lamps upon the main road.  In
+the short space of the drive we had passed from the bright world of the
+West into the dubious underworld of the East.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I do not know that Karamaneh moved; but in sympathy, as we neared the
+abode of the sinister Chinaman, she crept nearer to me, and when the
+cab was discharged, and together we walked down a narrow turning
+leading riverward, she clung to me fearfully, hesitated, and even
+seemed upon the point of turning back.  But, overcoming her fear or
+repugnance, she led on, through a maze of alleyways and courts, wherein
+I hopelessly lost my bearings, so that it came home to me how wholly I
+was in the hands of this girl whose history was so full of shadows,
+whose real character was so inscrutable, whose beauty, whose charm
+truly might mask the cunning of a serpent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I spoke to her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"S-SH!" She laid her hand upon my arm, enjoining me to silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The high, drab brick wall of what looked like some part of a dock
+building loomed above us in the darkness, and the indescribable
+stenches of the lower Thames were borne to my nostrils through a
+gloomy, tunnel-like opening, beyond which whispered the river.  The
+muffled clangor of waterside activity was about us.  I heard a key
+grate in a lock, and Karamaneh drew me into the shadow of an open door,
+entered, and closed it behind her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For the first time I perceived, in contrast to the odors of the court
+without, the fragrance of the peculiar perfume which now I had come to
+associate with her.  Absolute darkness was about us, and by this
+perfume alone I knew that she was near to me, until her hand touched
+mine, and I was led along an uncarpeted passage and up an uncarpeted
+stair.  A second door was unlocked, and I found myself in an
+exquisitely furnished room, illuminated by the soft light of a shaded
+lamp which stood upon a low, inlaid table amidst a perfect ocean of
+silken cushions, strewn upon a Persian carpet, whose yellow richness
+was lost in the shadows beyond the circle of light.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Karamaneh raised a curtain draped before a doorway, and stood listening
+intently for a moment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The silence was unbroken.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then something stirred amid the wilderness of cushions, and two tiny
+bright eyes looked up at me.  Peering closely, I succeeded in
+distinguishing, crouched in that soft luxuriance, a little ape.  It was
+Dr. Fu-Manchu's marmoset.  "This way," whispered Karamaneh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Never, I thought, was a staid medical man committed to a more unwise
+enterprise, but so far I had gone, and no consideration of prudence
+could now be of avail.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The corridor beyond was thickly carpeted.  Following the direction of a
+faint light which gleamed ahead, it proved to extend as a balcony
+across one end of a spacious apartment.  Together we stood high up
+there in the shadows, and looked down upon such a scene as I never
+could have imagined to exist within many a mile of that district.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The place below was even more richly appointed than the room into which
+first we had come.  Here, as there, piles of cushions formed splashes
+of gaudy color about the floor.  Three lamps hung by chains from the
+ceiling, their light softened by rich silk shades.  One wall was almost
+entirely occupied by glass cases containing chemical apparatus, tubes,
+retorts and other less orthodox indications of Dr. Fu-Manchu's
+pursuits, whilst close against another lay the most extraordinary
+object of a sufficiently extraordinary room&mdash;a low couch, upon which
+was extended the motionless form of a boy.  In the light of a lamp
+which hung directly above him, his olive face showed an almost
+startling resemblance to that of Karamaneh&mdash;save that the girl's
+coloring was more delicate.  He had black, curly hair, which stood out
+prominently against the white covering upon which he lay, his hands
+crossed upon his breast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Transfixed with astonishment, I stood looking down upon him.  The
+wonders of the "Arabian Nights" were wonders no longer, for here, in
+East-End London, was a true magician's palace, lacking not its
+beautiful slave, lacking not its enchanted prince!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is Aziz, my brother," said Karamaneh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We passed down a stairway on to the floor of the apartment.  Karamaneh
+knelt and bent over the boy, stroking his hair and whispering to him
+lovingly.  I, too, bent over him; and I shall never forget the anxiety
+in the girl's eyes as she watched me eagerly whilst I made a brief
+examination.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Brief, indeed, for even ere I had touched him I knew that the comely
+shell held no spark of life.  But Karamaneh fondled the cold hands, and
+spoke softly in that Arabic tongue which long before I had divined must
+be her native language.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, as I remained silent, she turned and looked at me, read the truth
+in my eyes, and rose from her knees, stood rigidly upright, and
+clutched me tremblingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is not dead&mdash;he is NOT dead!" she whispered, and shook me as a
+child might, seeking to arouse me to a proper understanding.  "Oh, tell
+me he is not&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I cannot," I replied gently, "for indeed he is."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No!" she said, wild-eyed, and raising her hands to her face as though
+half distraught.  "You do not understand&mdash;yet you are a doctor.  You do
+not understand&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stopped, moaning to herself and looking from the handsome face of
+the boy to me.  It was pitiful; it was uncanny.  But sorrow for the
+girl predominated in my mind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then from somewhere I heard a sound which I had heard before in houses
+occupied by Dr. Fu-Manchu&mdash;that of a muffled gong.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quick!"  Karamaneh had me by the arm.  "Up!  He has returned!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She fled up the stairs to the balcony, I close at her heels.  The
+shadows veiled us, the thick carpet deadened the sound of our tread, or
+certainly we must have been detected by the man who entered the room we
+had just quitted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yellow-robed, immobile, the inhuman green eyes glittering catlike even,
+it seemed, before the light struck them, he threaded his way through
+the archipelago of cushions and bent over the couch of Aziz.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Karamaneh dragged me down on to my knees.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Watch!" she whispered.  "Watch!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dr. Fu-Manchu felt for the pulse of the boy whom a moment since I had
+pronounced dead, and, stepping to the tall glass case, took out a
+long-necked flask of chased gold, and from it, into a graduated glass,
+he poured some drops of an amber liquid wholly unfamiliar to me.  I
+watched him with all my eyes, and noted how high the liquid rose in the
+measure.  He charged a needle-syringe, and, bending again over Aziz,
+made an injection.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then all the wonders I had heard of this man became possible, and with
+an awe which any other physician who had examined Aziz must have felt,
+I admitted him a miracle-worker. For as I watched, all but breathless,
+the dead came to life!  The glow of health crept upon the olive
+cheek&mdash;the boy moved&mdash;he raised his hands above his head&mdash;he sat up,
+supported by the Chinese doctor!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fu-Manchu touched some hidden bell.  A hideous yellow man with a
+scarred face entered, carrying a tray upon which were a bowl containing
+some steaming fluid, apparently soup, what looked like oaten cakes, and
+a flask of red wine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the boy, exhibiting no more unusual symptoms than if he had just
+awakened from a normal sleep, commenced his repast, Karamaneh drew me
+gently along the passage into the room which we had first entered.  My
+heart leaped wildly as the marmoset bounded past us to drop hand over
+hand to the lower apartment in search of its master.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see," said Karamaneh, her voice quivering, "he is not dead!  But
+without Fu-Manchu he is dead to me.  How can I leave him when he holds
+the life of Aziz in his hand?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must get me that flask, or some of its contents," I directed.
+"But tell me, how does he produce the appearance of death?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I cannot tell you," she replied.  "I do not know.  It is something in
+the wine.  In another hour Aziz will be again as you saw him.  But
+see."  And, opening a little ebony box, she produced a phial half
+filled with the amber liquid.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good!" I said, and slipped it into my pocket.  "When will be the best
+time to seize Fu-Manchu and to restore your brother?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will let you know," she whispered, and, opening the door, pushed me
+hurriedly from the room.  "He is going away to-night to the north; but
+you must not come to-night. Quick!  Quick!  Along the passage.  He may
+call me at any moment."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So, with the phial in my pocket containing a potent preparation unknown
+to Western science, and with a last long look into the eyes of
+Karamaneh, I passed out into the narrow alley, out from the fragrant
+perfumes of that mystery house into the place of Thames-side stenches.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap22"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"WE must arrange for the house to be raided without delay," said Smith.
+"This time we are sure of our ally&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But we must keep our promise to her," I interrupted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can look after that, Petrie," my friend said.  "I will devote the
+whole of my attention to Dr. Fu-Manchu!" he added grimly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Up and down the room he paced, gripping the blackened briar between his
+teeth, so that the muscles stood out squarely upon his lean jaws.  The
+bronze which spoke of the Burmese sun enhanced the brightness of his
+gray eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What have I all along maintained?" he jerked, looking back at me
+across his shoulder&mdash;"that, although Karamaneh was one of the strongest
+weapons in the Doctor's armory, she was one which some day would be
+turned against him.  That day has dawned."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We must await word from her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quite so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He knocked out his pipe on the grate.  Then:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you any idea of the nature of the fluid in the phial?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not the slightest.  And I have none to spare for analytical purposes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith began stuffing mixture into the hot pipe-bowl, and
+dropping an almost equal quantity on the floor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I cannot rest, Petrie," he said.  "I am itching to get to work.  Yet,
+a false move, and&mdash;" He lighted his pipe, and stood staring from the
+window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall, of course, take a needle-syringe with me," I explained.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith made no reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I but knew the composition of the drug which produced the semblance
+of death," I continued, "my fame would long survive my ashes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My friend did not turn.  But:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She said it was something he put in the wine?" he jerked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the wine, yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Silence fell.  My thoughts reverted to Karamaneh, whom Dr. Fu-Manchu
+held in bonds stronger than any slave-chains. For, with Aziz, her
+brother, suspended between life and death, what could she do save obey
+the mandates of the cunning Chinaman?  What perverted genius was his!
+If that treasury of obscure wisdom which he, perhaps alone of living
+men, had rifled, could but be thrown open to the sick and suffering,
+the name of Dr. Fu-Manchu would rank with the golden ones in the
+history of healing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith suddenly turned, and the expression upon his face amazed
+me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look up the next train to L&mdash;!" he rapped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To L&mdash;?  What&mdash;?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's the Bradshaw.  We haven't a minute to waste."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In his voice was the imperative note I knew so well; in his eyes was
+the light which told of an urgent need for action&mdash;a portentous truth
+suddenly grasped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One in half-an-hour&mdash;the last."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We must catch it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No further word of explanation he vouchsafed, but darted off to dress;
+for he had spent the afternoon pacing the room in his dressing-gown and
+smoking without intermission.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Out and to the corner we hurried, and leaped into the first taxi upon
+the rank.  Smith enjoined the man to hasten, and we were off&mdash;all in
+that whirl of feverish activity which characterized my friend's
+movements in times of important action.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He sat glancing impatiently from the window and twitching at the lobe
+of his ear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know you will forgive me, old man," he said, "but there is a little
+problem which I am trying to work out in my mind.  Did you bring the
+things I mentioned?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Conversation lapsed, until, just as the cab turned into the station,
+Smith said:  "Should you consider Lord Southery to have been the first
+constructive engineer of his time, Petrie?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Undoubtedly," I replied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Greater than Von Homber, of Berlin?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Possibly not.  But Von Homber has been dead for three years."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Three years, is it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Roughly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah!"
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+We reached the station in time to secure a non-corridor compartment to
+ourselves, and to allow Smith leisure carefully to inspect the
+occupants of all the others, from the engine to the guard's van.  He
+was muffled up to the eyes, and he warned me to keep out of sight in
+the corner of the compartment.  In fact, his behavior had me bursting
+with curiosity.  The train having started:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't imagine, Petrie," said Smith "that I am trying to lead you
+blindfolded in order later to dazzle you with my perspicacity.  I am
+simply afraid that this may be a wild-goose chase.  The idea upon which
+I am acting does not seem to have struck you.  I wish it had.  The fact
+would argue in favor of its being sound."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At present I am hopelessly mystified."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, then, I will not bias you towards my view.  But just study the
+situation, and see if you can arrive at the reason for this sudden
+journey.  I shall be distinctly encouraged if you succeed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But I did not succeed, and since Smith obviously was unwilling to
+enlighten me, I pressed him no more.  The train stopped at Rugby, where
+he was engaged with the stationmaster in making some mysterious
+arrangements.  At L&mdash;, however, their object became plain, for a
+high-power car was awaiting us, and into this we hurried and ere the
+greater number of passengers had reached the platform were being driven
+off at headlong speed along the moon-bathed roads.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Twenty minutes' rapid traveling, and a white mansion leaped into the
+line of sight, standing out vividly against its woody backing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stradwick Hall," said Smith.  "The home of Lord Southery.  We are
+first&mdash;but Dr. Fu-Manchu was on the train."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then the truth dawned upon the gloom of my perplexity.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap23"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXIII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"YOUR extraordinary proposal fills me with horror, Mr. Smith!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sleek little man in the dress suit, who looked like a head waiter
+(but was the trusted legal adviser of the house of Southery) puffed at
+his cigar indignantly.  Nayland Smith, whose restless pacing had led
+him to the far end of the library, turned, a remote but virile figure,
+and looked back to where I stood by the open hearth with the solicitor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am in your hands, Mr. Henderson," he said, and advanced upon the
+latter, his gray eyes ablaze.  "Save for the heir, who is abroad on
+foreign service, you say there is no kin of Lord Southery to consider.
+The word rests with you.  If I am wrong, and you agree to my proposal,
+there is none whose susceptibilities will suffer&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My own, sir!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I am right, and you prevent me from acting, you become a murderer,
+Mr. Henderson."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The lawyer started, staring nervously up at Smith, who now towered over
+him menacingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord Southery was a lonely man," continued my friend.  "If I could
+have placed my proposition before one of his blood, I do not doubt what
+my answer had been.  Why do you hesitate?  Why do you experience this
+feeling of horror?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Henderson stared down into the fire.  His constitutionally ruddy
+face was pale.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is entirely irregular, Mr. Smith.  We have not the necessary
+powers&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith snapped his teeth together impatiently, snatching his watch from
+his pocket and glancing at it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am vested with the necessary powers.  I will give you a written
+order, sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The proceeding savors of paganism.  Such a course might be admissible
+in China, in Burma&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you weigh a life against such quibbles?  Do you suppose that,
+granting MY irresponsibility, Dr. Petrie would countenance such a thing
+if he doubted the necessity?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Henderson looked at me with pathetic hesitance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There are guests in the house&mdash;mourners who attended the ceremony
+to-day. They&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will never know, if we are in error," interrupted Smith.  "Good God!
+why do you delay?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You wish it to be kept secret?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You and I, Mr. Henderson, and Dr. Petrie will go now.  We require no
+other witnesses.  We are answerable only to our consciences."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The lawyer passed his hand across his damp brow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have never in my life been called upon to come to so momentous a
+decision in so short a time," he confessed.  But, aided by Smith's
+indomitable will, he made his decision.  As its result, we three,
+looking and feeling like conspirators, hurried across the park beneath
+a moon whose placidity was a rebuke to the turbulent passions which
+reared their strangle-growth in the garden of England.  Not a breath of
+wind stirred amid the leaves.  The calm of perfect night soothed
+everything to slumber.  Yet, if Smith were right (and I did not doubt
+him), the green eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu had looked upon the scene; and I
+found myself marveling that its beauty had not wilted up.  Even now the
+dread Chinaman must be near to us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Mr. Henderson unlocked the ancient iron gates he turned to Nayland
+Smith.  His face twitched oddly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Witness that I do this unwillingly," he said&mdash;"most unwillingly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mine be the responsibility," was the reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith's voice quivered, responsive to the nervous vitality pent up
+within that lean frame.  He stood motionless, listening&mdash;and I knew for
+whom he listened.  He peered about him to right and left&mdash;and I knew
+whom he expected but dreaded to see.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Above us now the trees looked down with a solemnity different from the
+aspect of the monarchs of the park, and the nearer we came to our
+journey's end the more somber and lowering bent the verdant arch&mdash;or so
+it seemed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By that path, patched now with pools of moonlight, Lord Southery had
+passed upon his bier, with the sun to light his going; by that path
+several generations of Stradwicks had gone to their last resting-place.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To the doors of the vault the moon rays found free access.  No branch,
+no leaf, intervened.  Mr. Henderson's face looked ghastly.  The keys
+which he carried rattled in his hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Light the lantern," he said unsteadily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith, who again had been peering suspiciously about into the
+shadows, struck a match and lighted the lantern which he carried.  He
+turned to the solicitor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be calm, Mr. Henderson," he said sternly.  "It is your plain duty to
+your client."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God be my witness that I doubt it," replied Henderson, and opened the
+door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We descended the steps.  The air beneath was damp and chill.  It
+touched us as with clammy fingers; and the sensation was not wholly
+physical.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before the narrow mansion which now sufficed Lord Southery, the great
+engineer whom kings had honored, Henderson reeled and clutched at me
+for support.  Smith and I had looked to him for no aid in our uncanny
+task, and rightly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With averted eyes he stood over by the steps of the tomb, whilst my
+friend and myself set to work.  In the pursuit of my profession I had
+undertaken labors as unpleasant, but never amid an environment such as
+this.  It seemed that generations of Stradwicks listened to each turn
+of every screw.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At last it was done, and the pallid face of Lord Southery questioned
+the intruding light.  Nayland Smith's hand was as steady as a rigid bar
+when he raised the lantern.  Later, I knew, there would be a sudden
+releasing of the tension of will&mdash;a reaction physical and mental&mdash;but
+not until his work was finished.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That my own hand was steady I ascribed to one thing
+solely&mdash;professional zeal.  For, under conditions which, in the event
+of failure and exposure, must have led to an unpleasant inquiry by the
+British Medical Association, I was about to attempt an experiment never
+before essayed by a physician of the white races.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Though I failed, though I succeeded, that it ever came before the
+B.M.A., or any other council, was improbable; in the former event, all
+but impossible.  But the knowledge that I was about to practice
+charlatanry, or what any one of my fellow-practitioners must have
+designated as such, was with me.  Yet so profound had my belief become
+in the extraordinary being whose existence was a danger to the world
+that I reveled in my immunity from official censure.  I was glad that
+it had fallen to my lot to take at least one step&mdash;though blindly&mdash;into
+the FUTURE of medical science.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So far as my skill bore me, Lord Southery was dead.  Unhesitatingly, I
+would have given a death certificate, save for two considerations.  The
+first, although his latest scheme ran contrary from the interests of
+Dr. Fu-Manchu, his genius, diverted into other channels, would serve
+the yellow group better than his death.  The second, I had seen the boy
+Aziz raised from a state as like death as this.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the phial of amber-hued liquid which I had with me, I charged the
+needle syringe.  I made the injection, and waited.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If he is really dead!" whispered Smith.  "It seems incredible that he
+can have survived for three days without food.  Yet I have known a
+fakir to go for a week."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Henderson groaned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Watch in hand, I stood observing the gray face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A second passed; another; a third.  In the fourth the miracle began.
+Over the seemingly cold clay crept the hue of pulsing life.  It came in
+waves&mdash;in waves which corresponded with the throbbing of the awakened
+heart; which swept fuller and stronger; which filled and quickened the
+chilled body.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As we rapidly freed the living man from the trappings of the dead one,
+Southery, uttering a stifled scream, sat up, looked about him with
+half-glazed eyes, and fell back.  "My God!" cried Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is all right," I said, and had time to note how my voice had
+assumed a professional tone.  "A little brandy from my flask is all
+that is necessary now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have two patients, Doctor," rapped my friend.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Henderson had fallen in a swoon to the floor of the vault.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quiet," whispered Smith; "HE is here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He extinguished the light.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I supported Lord Southery.  "What has happened?" he kept moaning.
+"Where am I?  Oh, God!  what has happened?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I strove to reassure him in a whisper, and placed my traveling coat
+about him.  The door at the top of the mausoleum steps we had reclosed
+but not relocked.  Now, as I upheld the man whom literally we had
+rescued from the grave, I heard the door reopen.  To aid Henderson I
+could make no move.  Smith was breathing hard beside me.  I dared not
+think what was about to happen, nor what its effects might be upon Lord
+Southery in his exhausted condition.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Through the Memphian dark of the tomb cut a spear of light, touching
+the last stone of the stairway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A guttural voice spoke some words rapidly, and I knew that Dr.
+Fu-Manchu stood at the head of the stairs.  Although I could not see my
+friend, I became aware that Nayland Smith had his revolver in his hand,
+and I reached into my pocket for mine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At last the cunning Chinaman was about to fall into a trap.  It would
+require all his genius, I thought, to save him to-night.  Unless his
+suspicions were aroused by the unlocked door, his capture was imminent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Someone was descending the steps.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In my right hand I held my revolver, and with my left arm about Lord
+Southery, I waited through ten such seconds of suspense as I have
+rarely known.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The spear of light plunged into the well of darkness again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lord Southery, Smith and myself were hidden by the angle of the wall;
+but full upon the purplish face of Mr. Henderson the beam shone.  In
+some way it penetrated to the murk in his mind; and he awakened from
+his swoon with a hoarse cry, struggled to his feet, and stood looking
+up the stair in a sort of frozen horror.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith was past him at a bound.  Something flashed towards him as the
+light was extinguished.  I saw him duck, and heard the knife ring upon
+the floor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I managed to move sufficiently to see at the top, as I fired up the
+stairs, the yellow face of Dr. Fu-Manchu, to see the gleaming,
+chatoyant eyes, greenly terrible, as they sought to pierce the gloom.
+A flying figure was racing up, three steps at a time (that of a brown
+man scantily clad). He stumbled and fell, by which I knew that he was
+hit; but went on again, Smith hard on his heels.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Henderson!" I cried, "relight the lantern and take charge of Lord
+Southery.  Here is my flask on the floor.  I rely upon you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith's revolver spoke again as I went bounding up the stair.  Black
+against the square of moonlight I saw him stagger, I saw him fall.  As
+he fell, for the third time, I heard the crack of his revolver.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Instantly I was at his side.  Somewhere along the black aisle beneath
+the trees receding footsteps pattered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you hurt, Smith?" I cried anxiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He got upon his feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He has a dacoit with him," he replied, and showed me the long curved
+knife which he held in his hand, a full inch of the blade bloodstained.
+"A near thing for me, Petrie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I heard the whir of a restarted motor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We have lost him," said Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But we have saved Lord Southery," I said.  "Fu-Manchu will credit us
+with a skill as great as his own."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We must get to the car," Smith muttered, "and try to overtake them.
+Ugh!  my left arm is useless."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It would be mere waste of time to attempt to overtake them," I argued,
+"for we have no idea in which direction they will proceed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have a very good idea," snapped Smith.  "Stradwick Hall is less than
+ten miles from the coast.  There is only one practicable means of
+conveying an unconscious man secretly from here to London."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You think he meant to take him from here to London?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Prior to shipping him to China; I think so.  His clearing-house is
+probably on the Thames."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A boat?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A yacht, presumably, is lying off the coast in readiness.  Fu-Manchu
+may even have designed to ship him direct to China."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lord Southery, a bizarre figure, my traveling coat wrapped about him,
+and supported by his solicitor, who was almost as pale as himself,
+emerged from the vault into the moonlight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is a triumph for you, Smith," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The throb of Fu-Manchu's car died into faintness and was lost in the
+night's silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only half a triumph," he replied.  "But we still have another
+chance&mdash;the raid on his house.  When will the word come from Karamaneh?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Southery spoke in a weak voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gentlemen," he said, "it seems I am raised from the dead."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the weirdest moment of the night wherein we heard that newly
+buried man speak from the mold of his tomb.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," replied Smith slowly, "and spared from the fate of Heaven alone
+knows how many men of genius.  The yellow society lacks a Southery, but
+that Dr. Fu-Manchu was in Germany three years ago I have reason to
+believe; so that, even without visiting the grave of your great
+Teutonic rival, who suddenly died at about that time, I venture to
+predict that they have a Von Homber.  And the futurist group in China
+knows how to MAKE men work!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap24"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXIV
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+FROM the rescue of Lord Southery my story bears me mercilessly on to
+other things.  I may not tarry, as more leisurely penmen, to round my
+incidents; they were not of my choosing.  I may not pause to make you
+better acquainted with the figure of my drama; its scheme is none of
+mine.  Often enough, in those days, I found a fitness in the lines of
+Omar:
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+We are no other than a moving show<BR>
+Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go<BR>
+Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held<BR>
+In Midnight by the Master of the Show.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+But "the Master of the Show," in this case, was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I have been asked many times since the days with which these records
+deal: Who WAS Dr. Fu-Manchu?  Let me confess here that my final answer
+must be postponed.  I can only indicate, at this place, the trend of my
+reasoning, and leave my reader to form whatever conclusion he pleases.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What group can we isolate and label as responsible for the overthrow of
+the Manchus?  The casual student of modern Chinese history will reply:
+"Young China."  This is unsatisfactory.  What do we mean by Young
+China?  In my own hearing Fu-Manchu had disclaimed, with scorn,
+association with the whole of that movement; and assuming that the name
+were not an assumed one, he clearly can have been no anti-Manchu, no
+Republican.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Chinese Republican is of the mandarin class, but of a new
+generation which veneers its Confucianism with Western polish.  These
+youthful and unbalanced reformers, in conjunction with older but no
+less ill-balanced provincial politicians, may be said to represent
+Young China.  Amid such turmoils as this we invariably look for, and
+invariably find, a Third Party.  In my opinion, Dr. Fu-Manchu was one
+of the leaders of such a party.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Another question often put to me was:  Where did the Doctor hide during
+the time that he pursued his operations in London?  This is more
+susceptible of explanation.  For a time Nayland Smith supposed, as I
+did myself, that the opium den adjacent to the old Ratcliff Highway was
+the Chinaman's base of operations; later we came to believe that the
+mansion near Windsor was his hiding-place, and later still, the hulk
+lying off the downstream flats.  But I think I can state with
+confidence that the spot which he had chosen for his home was neither
+of these, but the East End riverside building which I was the first to
+enter.  Of this I am all but sure; for the reason that it not only was
+the home of Fu-Manchu, of Karamaneh, and of her brother, Aziz, but the
+home of something else&mdash;of something which I shall speak of later.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dreadful tragedy (or series of tragedies) which attended the raid
+upon the place will always mark in my memory the supreme horror of a
+horrible case.  Let me endeavor to explain what occurred.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By the aid of Karamaneh, you have seen how we had located the whilom
+warehouse, which, from the exterior, was so drab and dreary, but which
+within was a place of wondrous luxury.  At the moment selected by our
+beautiful accomplice, Inspector Weymouth and a body of detectives
+entirely surrounded it; a river police launch lay off the wharf which
+opened from it on the river-side; and this upon a singularly black
+night, than which a better could not have been chosen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will fulfill your promise to me?" said Karamaneh, and looked up
+into my face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was enveloped in a big, loose cloak, and from the shadow of the
+hood her wonderful eyes gleamed out like stars.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you wish us to do?" asked Nayland Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You&mdash;and Dr. Petrie," she replied swiftly, "must enter first, and
+bring out Aziz.  Until he is safe&mdash;until he is out of that place&mdash;you
+are to make no attempt upon&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Upon Dr. Fu-Manchu?" interrupted Weymouth; for Karamaneh hesitated to
+pronounce the dreaded name, as she always did.  "But how can we be sure
+that there is no trap laid for us?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Scotland Yard man did not entirely share my confidence in the
+integrity of this Eastern girl whom he knew to have been a creature of
+the Chinaman's.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Aziz lies in the private room," she explained eagerly, her old accent
+more noticeable than usual.  "There is only one of the Burmese men in
+the house, and he&mdash;he dare not enter without orders!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But Fu-Manchu?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We have nothing to fear from him.  He will be your prisoner within ten
+minutes from now!  I have no time for words&mdash;you must believe!"  She
+stamped her foot impatiently.  "And the dacoit?" snapped Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He also."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think perhaps I'd better come in, too," said Weymouth slowly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Karamaneh shrugged her shoulders with quick impatience, and unlocked
+the door in the high brick wall which divided the gloomy, evil-smelling
+court from the luxurious apartments of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Make no noise," she warned.  And Smith and myself followed her along
+the uncarpeted passage beyond.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Inspector Weymouth, with a final word of instruction to his second in
+command, brought up the rear.  The door was reclosed; a few paces
+farther on a second was unlocked.  Passing through a small room,
+unfurnished, a farther passage led us to a balcony.  The transition was
+startling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Darkness was about us now, and silence:  a perfumed, slumberous
+darkness&mdash;a silence full of mystery.  For, beyond the walls of the
+apartment whereon we looked down waged the unceasing battle of sounds
+that is the hymn of the great industrial river.  About the scented
+confines which bounded us now floated the smoke-laden vapors of the
+Lower Thames.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the metallic but infinitely human clangor of dock-side life, from
+the unpleasant but homely odors which prevail where ships swallow in
+and belch out the concrete evidences of commercial prosperity, we had
+come into this incensed stillness, where one shaded lamp painted dim
+enlargements of its Chinese silk upon the nearer walls, and left the
+greater part of the room the darker for its contrast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nothing of the Thames-side activity&mdash;of the riveting and scraping&mdash;the
+bumping of bales&mdash;the bawling of orders&mdash;the hiss of steam&mdash;penetrated
+to this perfumed place.  In the pool of tinted light lay the deathlike
+figure of a dark-haired boy, Karamaneh's muffled form bending over him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At last I stand in the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu!" whispered Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Despite the girl's assurance, we knew that proximity to the sinister
+Chinaman must be fraught with danger.  We stood, not in the lion's den,
+but in the serpent's lair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the time when Nayland Smith had come from Burma in pursuit of this
+advance-guard of a cogent Yellow Peril, the face of Dr. Fu-Manchu
+rarely had been absent from my dreams day or night.  The millions might
+sleep in peace&mdash;the millions in whose cause we labored!&mdash;but we who
+knew the reality of the danger knew that a veritable octopus had
+fastened upon England&mdash;a yellow octopus whose head was that of Dr.
+Fu-Manchu, whose tentacles were dacoity, thuggee, modes of death,
+secret and swift, which in the darkness plucked men from life and left
+no clew behind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Karamaneh!" I called softly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The muffled form beneath the lamp turned so that the soft light fell
+upon the lovely face of the slave girl.  She who had been a pliant
+instrument in the hands of Fu-Manchu now was to be the means whereby
+society should be rid of him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She raised her finger warningly; then beckoned me to approach.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My feet sinking in the rich pile of the carpet, I came through the
+gloom of the great apartment in to the patch of light, and, Karamaneh
+beside me, stood looking down upon the boy.  It was Aziz, her brother;
+dead so far as Western lore had power to judge, but kept alive in that
+deathlike trance by the uncanny power of the Chinese doctor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be quick," she said; "be quick!  Awaken him!  I am afraid."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the case which I carried I took out a needle-syringe and a phial
+containing a small quantity of amber-hued liquid.  It was a drug not to
+be found in the British Pharmacopoeia.  Of its constitution I knew
+nothing.  Although I had had the phial in my possession for some days I
+had not dared to devote any of its precious contents to analytical
+purposes.  The amber drops spelled life for the boy Aziz, spelled
+success for the mission of Nayland Smith, spelled ruin for the fiendish
+Chinaman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I raised the white coverlet.  The boy, fully dressed, lay with his arms
+crossed upon his breast.  I discerned the mark of previous injections
+as, charging the syringe from the phial, I made what I hoped would be
+the last of such experiments upon him.  I would have given half of my
+small worldly possessions to have known the real nature of the drug
+which was now coursing through the veins of Aziz&mdash;which was tinting the
+grayed face with the olive tone of life; which, so far as my medical
+training bore me, was restoring the dead to life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But such was not the purpose of my visit.  I was come to remove from
+the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu the living chain which bound Karamaneh to
+him.  The boy alive and free, the Doctor's hold upon the slave girl
+would be broken.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My lovely companion, her hands convulsively clasped, knelt and devoured
+with her eyes the face of the boy who was passing through the most
+amazing physiological change in the history of therapeutics.  The
+peculiar perfume which she wore&mdash;which seemed to be a part of
+her&mdash;which always I associated with her&mdash;was faintly perceptible.
+Karamaneh was breathing rapidly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have nothing to fear," I whispered; "see, he is reviving.  In a
+few moments all will be well with him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The hanging lamp with its garishly colored shade swung gently above us,
+wafted, it seemed, by some draught which passed through the apartment.
+The boy's heavy lids began to quiver, and Karamaneh nervously clutched
+my arm, and held me so whilst we watched for the long-lashed eyes to
+open.  The stillness of the place was positively unnatural; it seemed
+inconceivable that all about us was the discordant activity of the
+commercial East End.  Indeed, this eerie silence was becoming
+oppressive; it began positively to appall me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Inspector Weymouth's wondering face peeped over my shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where is Dr. Fu-Manchu?" I whispered, as Nayland Smith in turn
+appeared beside me.  "I cannot understand the silence of the house&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look about," replied Karamaneh, never taking her eyes from the face of
+Aziz.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I peered around the shadowy walls.  Tall glass cases there were,
+shelves and niches:  where once, from the gallery above, I had seen the
+tubes and retorts, the jars of unfamiliar organisms, the books of
+unfamiliar lore, the impedimenta of the occult student and man of
+science&mdash;the visible evidences of Fu-Manchu's presence.
+Shelves&mdash;cases&mdash;niches&mdash;were bare.  Of the complicated appliances
+unknown to civilized laboratories, wherewith he pursued his strange
+experiments, of the tubes wherein he isolated the bacilli of
+unclassified diseases, of the yellow-bound volumes for a glimpse at
+which (had they known of their contents) the great men of Harley Street
+would have given a fortune&mdash;no trace remained.  The silken cushions;
+the inlaid tables; all were gone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The room was stripped, dismantled.  Had Fu-Manchu fled?  The silence
+assumed a new significance.  His dacoits and kindred ministers of death
+all must have fled, too.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have let him escape us!" I said rapidly.  "You promised to aid us
+to capture him&mdash;to send us a message&mdash;and you have delayed until&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," she said; "no!" and clutched at my arm again.  "Oh!  is he not
+reviving slowly?  Are you sure you have made no mistake?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her thoughts were all for the boy; and her solicitude touched me.  I
+again examined Aziz, the most remarkable patient of my busy
+professional career.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As I counted the strengthening pulse, he opened his dark eyes&mdash;which
+were so like the eyes of Karamaneh&mdash;and, with the girl's eager arms
+tightly about him, sat up, looking wonderingly around.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Karamaneh pressed her cheek to his, whispering loving words in that
+softly spoken Arabic which had first betrayed her nationality to
+Nayland Smith.  I handed her my flask, which I had filled with wine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My promise is fulfilled!" I said.  "You are free!  Now for Fu-Manchu!
+But first let us admit the police to this house; there is something
+uncanny in its stillness."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," she replied.  "First let my brother be taken out and placed in
+safety.  Will you carry him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She raised her face to that of Inspector Weymouth, upon which was
+written awe and wonder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The burly detective lifted the boy as tenderly as a woman, passed
+through the shadows to the stairway, ascended, and was swallowed up in
+the gloom.  Nayland Smith's eyes gleamed feverishly.  He turned to
+Karamaneh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are not playing with us?" he said harshly.  "We have done our
+part; it remains for you to do yours."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do not speak so loudly," the girl begged.  "HE is near us&mdash;and, oh,
+God, I fear him so!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where is he?" persisted my friend.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Karamaneh's eyes were glassy with fear now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must not touch him until the police are here," she said&mdash;but from
+the direction of her quick, agitated glances I knew that, her brother
+safe now, she feared for me, and for me alone.  Those glances sent my
+blood dancing; for Karamaneh was an Eastern jewel which any man of
+flesh and blood must have coveted had he known it to lie within his
+reach.  Her eyes were twin lakes of mystery which, more than once, I
+had known the desire to explore.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look&mdash;beyond that curtain"&mdash;her voice was barely audible&mdash;"but do not
+enter.  Even as he is, I fear him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her voice, her palpable agitation, prepared us for something
+extraordinary.  Tragedy and Fu-Manchu were never far apart.  Though we
+were two, and help was so near, we were in the abode of the most
+cunning murderer who ever came out of the East.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was with strangely mingled emotions that I crossed the thick carpet,
+Nayland Smith beside me, and drew aside the draperies concealing a
+door, to which Karamaneh had pointed.  Then, upon looking into the dim
+place beyond, all else save what it held was forgotten.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We looked upon a small, square room, the walls draped with fantastic
+Chinese tapestry, the floor strewn with cushions; and reclining in a
+corner, where the faint, blue light from a lamp, placed upon a low
+table, painted grotesque shadows about the cavernous face&mdash;was Dr.
+Fu-Manchu!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At sight of him my heart leaped&mdash;and seemed to suspend its functions,
+so intense was the horror which this man's presence inspired in me.  My
+hand clutching the curtain, I stood watching him.  The lids veiled the
+malignant green eyes, but the thin lips seemed to smile.  Then Smith
+silently pointed to the hand which held a little pipe.  A sickly
+perfume assailed my nostrils, and the explanation of the hushed
+silence, and the ease with which we had thus far executed our plan,
+came to me.  The cunning mind was torpid&mdash;lost in a brutish world of
+dreams.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fu-Manchu was in an opium sleep!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dim light traced out a network of tiny lines, which covered the
+yellow face from the pointed chin to the top of the great domed brow,
+and formed deep shadow pools in the hollows beneath his eyes.  At last
+we had triumphed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I could not determine the depth of his obscene trance; and mastering
+some of my repugnance, and forgetful of Karamaneh's warning, I was
+about to step forward into the room, loaded with its nauseating opium
+fumes, when a soft breath fanned my cheek.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do not go in!" came Karamaneh's warning voice&mdash;hushed&mdash;trembling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her little hand grasped my arm.  She drew Smith and myself back from
+the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is danger there!" she whispered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do not enter that room!  The police must reach him in some way&mdash;and
+drag him out!  Do not enter that room!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl's voice quivered hysterically; her eyes blazed into savage
+flame.  The fierce resentment born of dreadful wrongs was consuming her
+now; but fear of Fu-Manchu held her yet.  Inspector Weymouth came down
+the stairs and joined us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have sent the boy to Ryman's room at the station," he said.  "The
+divisional surgeon will look after him until you arrive, Dr. Petrie.
+All is ready now.  The launch is just off the wharf and every side of
+the place under observation.  Where's our man?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He drew a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and raised his eyebrows
+interrogatively.  The absence of sound&mdash;of any demonstration from the
+uncanny Chinaman whom he was there to arrest&mdash;puzzled him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith jerked his thumb toward the curtain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At that, and before we could utter a word, Weymouth stepped to the
+draped door.  He was a man who drove straight at his goal and saved
+reflections for subsequent leisure.  I think, moreover, that the
+atmosphere of the place (stripped as it was it retained its heavy,
+voluptuous perfume) had begun to get a hold upon him.  He was anxious
+to shake it off; to be up and doing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He pulled the curtain aside and stepped into the room.  Smith and I
+perforce followed him.  Just within the door the three of us stood
+looking across at the limp thing which had spread terror throughout the
+Eastern and Western world.  Helpless as Fu-Manchu was, he inspired
+terror now, though the giant intellect was inert&mdash;stupefied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the dimly lit apartment we had quitted I heard Karamaneh utter a
+stifled scream.  But it came too late.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As though cast up by a volcano, the silken cushions, the inlaid table
+with its blue-shaded lamp, the garish walls, the sprawling figure with
+the ghastly light playing upon its features&mdash;quivered, and shot upward!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So it seemed to me; though, in the ensuing instant I remembered, too
+late, a previous experience of the floors of Fu-Manchu's private
+apartments; I knew what had indeed befallen us.  A trap had been
+released beneath our feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I recall falling&mdash;but have no recollection of the end of my fall&mdash;of
+the shock marking the drop.  I only remember fighting for my life
+against a stifling something which had me by the throat.  I knew that I
+was being suffocated, but my hands met only the deathly emptiness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Into a poisonous well of darkness I sank.  I could not cry out.  I was
+helpless.  Of the fate of my companions I knew nothing&mdash;could surmise
+nothing.  Then&nbsp;&#8230; all consciousness ended.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap25"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXV
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+I WAS being carried along a dimly lighted, tunnel-like place, slung,
+sackwise, across the shoulder of a Burman.  He was not a big man, but
+he supported my considerable weight with apparent ease.  A deadly
+nausea held me, but the rough handling had served to restore me to
+consciousness.  My hands and feet were closely lashed.  I hung limply
+as a wet towel: I felt that this spark of tortured life which had
+flickered up in me must ere long finally become extinguished.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A fancy possessed me, in these the first moments of my restoration to
+the world of realities, that I had been smuggled into China; and as I
+swung head downward I told myself that the huge, puffy things which
+strewed the path were a species of giant toadstool, unfamiliar to me
+and possibly peculiar to whatever district of China I now was in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The air was hot, steamy, and loaded with a smell as of rotting
+vegetation.  I wondered why my bearer so scrupulously avoided touching
+any of the unwholesome-looking growths in passing through what seemed a
+succession of cellars, but steered a tortuous course among the bloated,
+unnatural shapes, lifting his bare brown feet with a catlike delicacy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He passed under a low arch, dropped me roughly to the ground and ran
+back.  Half stunned, I lay watching the agile brown body melt into the
+distances of the cellars.  Their walls and roof seemed to emit a faint,
+phosphorescent light.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Petrie!" came a weak voice from somewhere ahead.&#8230;  "Is that you,
+Petrie?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was Nayland Smith!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Smith!" I said, and strove to sit up.  But the intense nausea overcame
+me, so that I all but swooned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I heard his voice again, but could attach no meaning to the words which
+he uttered.  A sound of terrific blows reached my ears, too.  The
+Burman reappeared, bending under the heavy load which he bore.  For, as
+he picked his way through the bloated things which grew upon the floors
+of the cellars, I realized that he was carrying the inert body of
+Inspector Weymouth.  And I found time to compare the strength of the
+little brown man with that of a Nile beetle, which can raise many times
+its own weight.  Then, behind him, appeared a second figure, which
+immediately claimed the whole of my errant attention.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fu-Manchu!" hissed my friend, from the darkness which concealed him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was indeed none other than Fu-Manchu&mdash;the Fu-Manchu whom we had
+thought to be helpless.  The deeps of the Chinaman's cunning&mdash;the fine
+quality of his courage, were forced upon me as amazing facts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had assumed the appearance of a drugged opium-smoker so well as to
+dupe me&mdash;a medical man; so well as to dupe Karamaneh&mdash;whose experience
+of the noxious habit probably was greater than my own.  And, with the
+gallows dangling before him, he had waited&mdash;played the part of a
+lure&mdash;whilst a body of police actually surrounded the place!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I have since thought that the room probably was one which he actually
+used for opium debauches, and the device of the trap was intended to
+protect him during the comatose period.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now, holding a lantern above his head, the deviser of the trap
+whereinto we, mouselike, had blindly entered, came through the cellars,
+following the brown man who carried Weymouth.  The faint rays of the
+lantern (it apparently contained a candle) revealed a veritable forest
+of the gigantic fungi&mdash;poisonously colored&mdash;hideously swollen&mdash;climbing
+from the floor up the slimy walls&mdash;climbing like horrid parasites to
+such part of the arched roof as was visible to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fu-Manchu picked his way through the fungi ranks as daintily as though
+the distorted, tumid things had been viper-headed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The resounding blows which I had noted before, and which had never
+ceased, culminated in a splintering crash.  Dr. Fu-Manchu and his
+servant, who carried the apparently insensible detective, passed in
+under the arch, Fu-Manchu glancing back once along the passages.  The
+lantern he extinguished, or concealed; and whilst I waited, my mind
+dully surveying memories of all the threats which this uncanny being
+had uttered, a distant clamor came to my ears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, abruptly, it ceased.  Dr. Fu-Manchu had closed a heavy door; and
+to my surprise I perceived that the greater part of it was of glass.
+The will-o'-the-wisp glow which played around the fungi rendered the
+vista of the cellars faintly luminous, and visible to me from where I
+lay.  Fu-Manchu spoke softly.  His voice, its guttural note alternating
+with a sibilance on certain words, betrayed no traces of agitation.
+The man's unbroken calm had in it something inhuman.  For he had just
+perpetrated an act of daring unparalleled in my experience, and, in the
+clamor now shut out by the glass door I tardily recognized the entrance
+of the police into some barricaded part of the house&mdash;the coming of
+those who would save us&mdash;who would hold the Chinese doctor for the
+hangman!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have decided," he said deliberately, "that you are more worthy of my
+attention than I had formerly supposed.  A man who can solve the secret
+of the Golden Elixir (I had not solved it; I had merely stolen some)
+should be a valuable acquisition to my Council.  The extent of the
+plans of Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith and of the English Scotland
+Yard it is incumbent upon me to learn.  Therefore, gentlemen, you
+live&mdash;for the present!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you'll swing," came Weymouth's hoarse voice, "in the near future!
+You and all your yellow gang!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I trust not," was the placid reply.  "Most of my people are safe: some
+are shipped as lascars upon the liners; others have departed by
+different means.  Ah!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That last word was the only one indicative of excitement which had yet
+escaped him.  A disk of light danced among the brilliant poison hues of
+the passages&mdash;but no sound reached us; by which I knew that the glass
+door must fit almost hermetically.  It was much cooler here than in the
+place through which we had passed, and the nausea began to leave me, my
+brain to grow more clear.  Had I known what was to follow I should have
+cursed the lucidity of mind which now came to me; I should have prayed
+for oblivion&mdash;to be spared the sight of that which ensued.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's Logan!" cried Inspector Weymouth; and I could tell that he was
+struggling to free himself of his bonds.  From his voice it was evident
+that he, too, was recovering from the effects of the narcotic which had
+been administered to us all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Logan!" he cried.  "Logan!  This way&mdash;HELP!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the cry beat back upon us in that enclosed space and seemed to
+carry no farther than the invisible walls of our prison.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The door fits well," came Fu-Manchu's mocking voice.  "It is fortunate
+for us all that it is so.  This is my observation window, Dr. Petrie,
+and you are about to enjoy an unique opportunity of studying fungology.
+I have already drawn your attention to the anaesthetic properties of
+the lycoperdon, or common puff-ball. You may have recognized the fumes?
+The chamber into which you rashly precipitated yourselves was charged
+with them.  By a process of my own I have greatly enhanced the value of
+the puff-ball in this respect.  Your friend, Mr. Weymouth, proved the
+most obstinate subject; but he succumbed in fifteen seconds."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Logan!  Help!  HELP!  This way, man!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Something very like fear sounded in Weymouth's voice now.  Indeed, the
+situation was so uncanny that it almost seemed unreal.  A group of men
+had entered the farthermost cellars, led by one who bore an electric
+pocket-lamp. The hard, white ray danced from bloated gray fungi to
+others of nightmare shape, of dazzling, venomous brilliance.  The
+mocking, lecture-room voice continued:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Note the snowy growth upon the roof, Doctor.  Do not be deceived by
+its size.  It is a giant variety of my own culture and is of the order
+empusa. You, in England, are familiar with the death of the common
+house-fly&mdash;which is found attached to the window-pane by a coating of
+white mold.  I have developed the spores of this mold and have produced
+a giant species.  Observe the interesting effect of the strong light
+upon my orange and blue amanita fungus!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Hard beside me I heard Nayland Smith groan, Weymouth had become
+suddenly silent.  For my own part, I could have shrieked in pure
+horror.  FOR I KNEW WHAT WAS COMING. I realized in one agonized instant
+the significance of the dim lantern, of the careful progress through
+the subterranean fungi grove, of the care with which Fu-Manchu and his
+servant had avoided touching any of the growths.  I knew, now, that Dr.
+Fu-Manchu was the greatest fungologist the world had ever known; was a
+poisoner to whom the Borgias were as children&mdash;and I knew that the
+detectives blindly were walking into a valley of death.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then it began&mdash;the unnatural scene&mdash;the saturnalia of murder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Like so many bombs the brilliantly colored caps of the huge
+toadstool-like things alluded to by the Chinaman exploded, as the white
+ray sought them out in the darkness which alone preserved their
+existence.  A brownish cloud&mdash;I could not determine whether liquid or
+powdery&mdash;arose in the cellar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I tried to close my eyes&mdash;or to turn them away from the reeling forms
+of the men who were trapped in that poison-hole. It was useless:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I must look.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The bearer of the lamp had dropped it, but the dim, eerily illuminated
+gloom endured scarce a second.  A bright light sprang up&mdash;doubtless at
+the touch of the fiendish being who now resumed speech:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Observe the symptoms of delirium, Doctor!"  Out there, beyond the
+glass door, the unhappy victims were laughing&mdash;tearing their garments
+from their bodies&mdash;leaping&mdash;waving their arms&mdash;were become MANIACS!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We will now release the ripe spores of giant entpusa," continued the
+wicked voice.  "The air of the second cellar being super-charged with
+oxygen, they immediately germinate.  Ah!  it is a triumph!  That
+process is the scientific triumph of my life!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Like powdered snow the white spores fell from the roof, frosting the
+writhing shapes of the already poisoned men.  Before my horrified gaze,
+THE FUNGUS GREW; it spread from the head to the feet of those it
+touched; it enveloped them as in glittering shrouds.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They die like flies!" screamed Fu-Manchu, with a sudden febrile
+excitement; and I felt assured of something I had long suspected:  that
+that magnificent, perverted brain was the brain of a homicidal
+maniac&mdash;though Smith would never accept the theory.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is my fly-trap!" shrieked the Chinaman.  "And I am the god of
+destruction!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap26"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXVI
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+THE clammy touch of the mist revived me.  The culmination of the scene
+in the poison cellars, together with the effects of the fumes which I
+had inhaled again, had deprived me of consciousness.  Now I knew that I
+was afloat on the river.  I still was bound: furthermore, a cloth was
+wrapped tightly about my mouth, and I was secured to a ring in the deck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By moving my aching head to the left I could look down into the oily
+water; by moving it to the right I could catch a glimpse of the
+empurpled face of Inspector Weymouth, who, similarly bound and gagged,
+lay beside me, but only of the feet and legs of Nayland Smith.  For I
+could not turn my head sufficiently far to see more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We were aboard an electric launch.  I heard the hated guttural voice of
+Fu-Manchu, subdued now to its habitual calm, and my heart leaped to
+hear the voice that answered him.  It was that of Karamaneh.  His
+triumph was complete.  Clearly his plans for departure were complete;
+his slaughter of the police in the underground passages had been a
+final reckless demonstration of which the Chinaman's subtle cunning
+would have been incapable had he not known his escape from the country
+to be assured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What fate was in store for us?  How would he avenge himself upon the
+girl who had betrayed him to his enemies?  What portion awaited those
+enemies?  He seemed to have formed the singular determination to
+smuggle me into China&mdash;but what did he purpose in the case of Weymouth,
+and in the case of Nayland Smith?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All but silently we were feeling our way through the mist.  Astern died
+the clangor of dock and wharf into a remote discord.  Ahead hung the
+foggy curtain veiling the traffic of the great waterway; but through it
+broke the calling of sirens, the tinkling of bells.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The gentle movement of the screw ceased altogether.  The launch lay
+heaving slightly upon the swells.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A distant throbbing grew louder&mdash;and something advanced upon us through
+the haze.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A bell rang and muffled by the fog a voice proclaimed itself&mdash;a voice
+which I knew.  I felt Weymouth writhing impotently beside me; heard him
+mumbling incoherently; and I knew that he, too, had recognized the
+voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was that of Inspector Ryman of the river police and their launch was
+within biscuit-throw of that upon which we lay!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Hoy!  'Hoy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I trembled.  A feverish excitement claimed me.  They were hailing us.
+We carried no lights; but now&mdash;and ignoring the pain which shot from my
+spine to my skull I craned my neck to the left&mdash;the port light of the
+police launch glowed angrily through the mist.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was unable to utter any save mumbling sounds, and my companions were
+equally helpless.  It was a desperate position.  Had the police seen us
+or had they hailed at random?  The light drew nearer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Launch, 'hoy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They had seen us!  Fu-Manchu's guttural voice spoke shortly&mdash;and our
+screw began to revolve again; we leaped ahead into the bank of
+darkness.  Faint grew the light of the police launch&mdash;and was gone.
+But I heard Ryman's voice shouting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Full speed!" came faintly through the darkness.  "Port!  Port!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then the murk closed down, and with our friends far astern of us we
+were racing deeper into the fog banks&mdash;speeding seaward; though of this
+I was unable to judge at the time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On we raced, and on, sweeping over growing swells.  Once, a black,
+towering shape dropped down upon us.  Far above, lights blazed, bells
+rang, vague cries pierced the fog.  The launch pitched and rolled
+perilously, but weathered the wash of the liner which so nearly had
+concluded this episode.  It was such a journey as I had taken once
+before, early in our pursuit of the genius of the Yellow Peril; but
+this was infinitely more terrible; for now we were utterly in
+Fu-Manchu's power.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A voice mumbled in my ear.  I turned my bound-up face; and Inspector
+Weymouth raised his hands in the dimness and partly slipped the bandage
+from his mouth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've been working at the cords since we left those filthy cellars," he
+whispered.  "My wrists are all cut, but when I've got out a knife and
+freed my ankles&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith had kicked him with his bound feet.  The detective slipped the
+bandage back to position and placed his hands behind him again.  Dr.
+Fu-Manchu, wearing a heavy overcoat but no hat, came aft.  He was
+dragging Karamaneh by the wrists.  He seated himself on the cushions
+near to us, pulling the girl down beside him.  Now, I could see her
+face&mdash;and the expression in her beautiful eyes made me writhe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fu-Manchu was watching us, his discolored teeth faintly visible in the
+dim light, to which my eyes were becoming accustomed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dr. Petrie," he said, "you shall be my honored guest at my home in
+China.  You shall assist me to revolutionize chemistry.  Mr. Smith, I
+fear you know more of my plans than I had deemed it possible for you to
+have learned, and I am anxious to know if you have a confidant.  Where
+your memory fails you, and my files and wire jackets prove ineffectual,
+Inspector Weymouth's recollections may prove more accurate."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned to the cowering girl&mdash;who shrank away from him in pitiful,
+abject terror.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In my hands, Doctor," he continued, "I hold a needle charged with a
+rare culture.  It is the link between the bacilli and the fungi.  You
+have seemed to display an undue interest in the peach and pearl which
+render my Karamaneh so delightful, In the supple grace of her movements
+and the sparkle of her eyes.  You can never devote your whole mind to
+those studies which I have planned for you whilst such distractions
+exist.  A touch of this keen point, and the laughing Karamaneh becomes
+the shrieking hag&mdash;the maniacal, mowing&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, with an ox-like rush, Weymouth was upon him!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Karamaneh, wrought upon past endurance, with a sobbing cry, sank to the
+deck&mdash;and lay still.  I managed to writhe into a half-sitting posture,
+and Smith rolled aside as the detective and the Chinaman crashed down
+together.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weymouth had one big hand at the Doctor's yellow throat; with his left
+he grasped the Chinaman's right.  It held the needle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now, I could look along the length of the little craft, and, so far as
+it was possible to make out in the fog, only one other was aboard&mdash;the
+half-clad brown man who navigated her&mdash;and who had carried us through
+the cellars.  The murk had grown denser and now shut us in like a box.
+The throb of the motor&mdash;the hissing breath of the two who fought&mdash;with
+so much at issue&mdash;these sounds and the wash of the water alone broke
+the eerie stillness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By slow degrees, and with a reptilian agility horrible to watch,
+Fu-Manchu was neutralizing the advantage gained by Weymouth.  His
+clawish fingers were fast in the big man's throat; the right hand with
+its deadly needle was forcing down the left of his opponent.  He had
+been underneath, but now he was gaining the upper place.  His powers of
+physical endurance must have been truly marvelous.  His breath was
+whistling through his nostrils significantly, but Weymouth was palpably
+tiring.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The latter suddenly changed his tactics.  By a supreme effort, to which
+he was spurred, I think, by the growing proximity of the needle, he
+raised Fu-Manchu&mdash;by the throat and arm&mdash;and pitched him sideways.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Chinaman's grip did not relax, and the two wrestlers dropped, a
+writhing mass, upon the port cushions.  The launch heeled over, and my
+cry of horror was crushed back into my throat by the bandage.  For, as
+Fu-Manchu sought to extricate himself, he overbalanced&mdash;fell back&mdash;and,
+bearing Weymouth with him&mdash;slid into the river!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The mist swallowed them up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There are moments of which no man can recall his mental impressions,
+moments so acutely horrible that, mercifully, our memory retains
+nothing of the emotions they occasioned.  This was one of them.  A
+chaos ruled in my mind.  I had a vague belief that the Burman, forward,
+glanced back.  Then the course of the launch was changed.  How long
+intervened between the tragic end of that Gargantuan struggle and the
+time when a black wall leaped suddenly up before us I cannot pretend to
+state.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a sickening jerk we ran aground.  A loud explosion ensued, and I
+clearly remember seeing the brown man leap out into the fog&mdash;which was
+the last I saw of him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Water began to wash aboard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fully alive to our imminent peril, I fought with the cords that bound
+me; but I lacked poor Weymouth's strength of wrist, and I began to
+accept as a horrible and imminent possibility, a death from drowning,
+within six feet of the bank.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Beside me, Nayland Smith was straining and twisting.  I think his
+object was to touch Karamaneh, in the hope of arousing her.  Where he
+failed in his project, the inflowing water succeeded.  A silent prayer
+of thankfulness came from my very soul when I saw her stir&mdash;when I saw
+her raise her hands to her head&mdash;and saw the big, horror-bright eyes
+gleam through the mist veil.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap27"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXVII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+WE quitted the wrecked launch but a few seconds before her stern
+settled down into the river.  Where the mud-bank upon which we found
+ourselves was situated we had no idea.  But at least it was terra firma
+and we were free from Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith stood looking out towards the river.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My God!" he groaned.  "My God!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was thinking, as I was, of Weymouth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And when, an hour later, the police boat located us (on the mud-flats
+below Greenwich) and we heard that the toll of the poison cellars was
+eight men, we also heard news of our brave companion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Back there in the fog, sir," reported Inspector Ryman, who was in
+charge, and his voice was under poor command, "there was an uncanny
+howling, and peals of laughter that I'm going to dream about for
+weeks&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Karamaneh, who nestled beside me like a frightened child, shivered; and
+I knew that the needle had done its work, despite Weymouth's giant
+strength.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith swallowed noisily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pray God the river has that yellow Satan," he said.  "I would
+sacrifice a year of my life to see his rat's body on the end of a
+grappling-iron!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We were a sad party that steamed through the fog homeward that night.
+It seemed almost like deserting a staunch comrade to leave the spot&mdash;so
+nearly as we could locate it&mdash;where Weymouth had put up that last
+gallant fight.  Our helplessness was pathetic, and although, had the
+night been clear as crystal, I doubt if we could have acted otherwise,
+it came to me that this stinking murk was a new enemy which drove us
+back in coward retreat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But so many were the calls upon our activity, and so numerous the
+stimulants to our initiative in those times, that soon we had matter to
+relieve our minds from this stress of sorrow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was Karamaneh to be considered&mdash;Karamaneh and her brother.  A
+brief counsel was held, whereat it was decided that for the present
+they should be lodged at a hotel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall arrange," Smith whispered to me, for the girl was watching us,
+"to have the place patrolled night and day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You cannot suppose&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Petrie!  I cannot and dare not suppose Fu-Manchu dead until with my
+own eyes I have seen him so!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Accordingly we conveyed the beautiful Oriental girl and her brother
+away from that luxurious abode in its sordid setting.  I will not dwell
+upon the final scene in the poison cellars lest I be accused of
+accumulating horror for horror's sake.  Members of the fire brigade,
+helmed against contagion, brought out the bodies of the victims wrapped
+in their living shrouds.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From Karamaneh we learned much of Fu-Manchu, little of herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What am I?  Does my poor history matter&mdash;to anyone?" was her answer to
+questions respecting herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And she would droop her lashes over her dark eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dacoits whom the Chinaman had brought to England originally
+numbered seven, we learned.  As you, having followed me thus far, will
+be aware, we had thinned the ranks of the Burmans.  Probably only one
+now remained in England.  They had lived in a camp in the grounds of
+the house near Windsor (which, as we had learned at the time of its
+destruction, the Doctor had bought outright). The Thames had been his
+highway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Other members of the group had occupied quarters in various parts of
+the East End, where sailormen of all nationalities congregate.
+Shen-Yan's had been the East End headquarters.  He had employed the
+hulk from the time of his arrival, as a laboratory for a certain class
+of experiments undesirable in proximity to a place of residence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith asked the girl on one occasion if the Chinaman had had a
+private sea-going vessel, and she replied in the affirmative.  She had
+never been on board, however, had never even set eyes upon it, and
+could give us no information respecting its character.  It had sailed
+for China.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are sure," asked Smith keenly, "that it has actually left?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I understood so, and that we were to follow by another route."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It would have been difficult for Fu-Manchu to travel by a passenger
+boat?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I cannot say what were his plans."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In a state of singular uncertainty, then, readily to be understood, we
+passed the days following the tragedy which had deprived us of our
+fellow-worker.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Vividly I recall the scene at poor Weymouth's home, on the day that we
+visited it.  I then made the acquaintance of the Inspector's brother.
+Nayland Smith gave him a detailed account of the last scene.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Out there in the mist," he concluded wearily, "it all seemed very
+unreal."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish to God it had been!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Amen to that, Mr. Weymouth.  But your brother made a gallant finish.
+If ridding the world of Fu-Manchu were the only good deed to his
+credit, his life had been well spent."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+James Weymouth smoked awhile in thoughtful silence.  Though but four
+and a half miles S.S.E. of St. Paul's the quaint little cottage, with
+its rustic garden, shadowed by the tall trees which had so lined the
+village street before motor 'buses were, was a spot as peaceful and
+secluded as any in broad England.  But another shadow lay upon it
+to-day&mdash;chilling, fearful.  An incarnate evil had come out of the dim
+East and in its dying malevolence had touched this home.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There are two things I don't understand about it, sir," continued
+Weymouth.  "What was the meaning of the horrible laughter which the
+river police heard in the fog?  And where are the bodies?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Karamaneh, seated beside me, shuddered at the words.  Smith, whose
+restless spirit granted him little repose, paused in his aimless
+wanderings about the room and looked at her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In these latter days of his Augean labors to purge England of the
+unclean thing which had fastened upon her, my friend was more lean and
+nervous-looking than I had ever known him.  His long residence in Burma
+had rendered him spare and had burned his naturally dark skin to a
+coppery hue; but now his gray eyes had grown feverishly bright and his
+face so lean as at times to appear positively emaciated.  But I knew
+that he was as fit as ever.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This lady may be able to answer your first question," he said.  "She
+and her brother were for some time in the household of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+In fact, Mr. Weymouth, Karamaneh, as her name implies, was a slave."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weymouth glanced at the beautiful, troubled face with scarcely veiled
+distrust.  "You don't look as though you had come from China, miss," he
+said, with a sort of unwilling admiration.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do not come from China," replied Karamaneh.  "My father was a pure
+Bedawee.  But my history does not matter." (At times there was
+something imperious in her manner; and to this her musical accent added
+force.) "When your brave brother, Inspector Weymouth, and Dr.
+Fu-Manchu, were swallowed up by the river, Fu-Manchu held a poisoned
+needle in his hand.  The laughter meant that the needle had done its
+work.  Your brother had become mad!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weymouth turned aside to hide his emotion.  "What was on the needle?"
+he asked huskily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was something which he prepared from the venom of a kind of swamp
+adder," she answered.  "It produces madness, but not always death."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He would have had a poor chance," said Smith, "even had he been in
+complete possession of his senses.  At the time of the encounter we
+must have been some considerable distance from shore, and the fog was
+impenetrable."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But how do you account for the fact that neither of the bodies have
+been recovered?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ryman of the river police tells me that persons lost at that point are
+not always recovered&mdash;or not until a considerable time later."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a faint sound from the room above.  The news of that tragic
+happening out in the mist upon the Thames had prostrated poor Mrs.
+Weymouth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She hasn't been told half the truth," said her brother-in-law. "She
+doesn't know about&mdash;the poisoned needle.  What kind of fiend was this
+Dr. Fu-Manchu?" He burst out into a sudden blaze of furious resentment.
+"John never told me much, and you have let mighty little leak into the
+papers.  What was he?  Who was he?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Half he addressed the words to Smith, half to Karamaneh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dr. Fu-Manchu," replied the former, "was the ultimate expression of
+Chinese cunning; a phenomenon such as occurs but once in many
+generations.  He was a superman of incredible genius, who, had he
+willed, could have revolutionized science.  There is a superstition in
+some parts of China according to which, under certain peculiar
+conditions (one of which is proximity to a deserted burial-ground) an
+evil spirit of incredible age may enter unto the body of a new-born
+infant.  All my efforts thus far have not availed me to trace the
+genealogy of the man called Dr. Fu-Manchu. Even Karamaneh cannot help
+me in this.  But I have sometimes thought that he was a member of a
+certain very old Kiangsu family&mdash;and that the peculiar conditions I
+have mentioned prevailed at his birth!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith, observing our looks of amazement, laughed shortly, and quite
+mirthlessly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Poor old Weymouth!" he jerked.  "I suppose my labors are finished; but
+I am far from triumphant.  Is there any improvement in Mrs. Weymouth's
+condition?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very little," was the reply; "she has lain in a semi-conscious state
+since the news came.  No one had any idea she would take it so.  At one
+time we were afraid her brain was going.  She seemed to have delusions."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith spun round upon Weymouth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of what nature?" he asked rapidly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The other pulled nervously at his mustache.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My wife has been staying with her," he explained, "since&mdash;it happened;
+and for the last three nights poor John's widow has cried out at the
+same time&mdash;half-past two&mdash;that someone was knocking on the door."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What door?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That door yonder&mdash;the street door."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All our eyes turned in the direction indicated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"John often came home at half-past two from the Yard," continued
+Weymouth; "so we naturally thought poor Mary was wandering in her mind.
+But last night&mdash;and it's not to be wondered at&mdash;my wife couldn't sleep,
+and she was wide awake at half-past two."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith was standing before him, alert, bright-eyed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She heard it, too!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sun was streaming into the cozy little sitting-room; but I will
+confess that Weymouth's words chilled me uncannily.  Karamaneh laid her
+hand upon mine, in a quaint, childish fashion peculiarly her own.  Her
+hand was cold, but its touch thrilled me.  For Karamaneh was not a
+child, but a rarely beautiful girl&mdash;a pearl of the East such as many a
+monarch has fought for.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What then?" asked Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She was afraid to move&mdash;afraid to look from the window!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My friend turned and stared hard at me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A subjective hallucination, Petrie?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In all probability," I replied.  "You should arrange that your wife be
+relieved in her trying duties, Mr. Weymouth.  It is too great a strain
+for an inexperienced nurse."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap28"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+OF all that we had hoped for in our pursuit of Fu-Manchu how little had
+we accomplished.  Excepting Karamaneh and her brother (who were victims
+and not creatures of the Chinese doctor's) not one of the formidable
+group had fallen alive into our hands.  Dreadful crimes had marked
+Fu-Manchu's passage through the land.  Not one-half of the truth (and
+nothing of the later developments) had been made public.  Nayland
+Smith's authority was sufficient to control the press.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the absence of such a veto a veritable panic must have seized upon
+the entire country; for a monster&mdash;a thing more than humanly
+evil&mdash;existed in our midst.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Always Fu-Manchu's secret activities had centered about the great
+waterway.  There was much of poetic justice in his end; for the Thames
+had claimed him, who so long had used the stream as a highway for the
+passage to and fro for his secret forces.  Gone now were the yellow men
+who had been the instruments of his evil will; gone was the giant
+intellect which had controlled the complex murder machine.  Karamaneh,
+whose beauty he had used as a lure, at last was free, and no more with
+her smile would tempt men to death&mdash;that her brother might live.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Many there are, I doubt not, who will regard the Eastern girl with
+horror.  I ask their forgiveness in that I regarded her quite
+differently.  No man having seen her could have condemned her unheard.
+Many, having looked into her lovely eyes, had they found there what I
+found, must have forgiven her almost any crime.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That she valued human life but little was no matter for wonder.  Her
+nationality&mdash;her history&mdash;furnished adequate excuse for an attitude not
+condonable in a European equally cultured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But indeed let me confess that hers was a nature incomprehensible to me
+in some respects.  The soul of Karamaneh was a closed book to my
+short-sighted Western eyes.  But the body of Karamaneh was exquisite;
+her beauty of a kind that was a key to the most extravagant rhapsodies
+of Eastern poets.  Her eyes held a challenge wholly Oriental in its
+appeal; her lips, even in repose, were a taunt.  And, herein, East is
+West and West is East.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Finally, despite her lurid history, despite the scornful
+self-possession of which I knew her capable, she was an unprotected
+girl&mdash;in years, I believe, a mere child&mdash;whom Fate had cast in my way.
+At her request, we had booked passages for her brother and herself to
+Egypt.  The boat sailed in three days.  But Karamaneh's beautiful eyes
+were sad; often I detected tears on the black lashes.  Shall I endeavor
+to describe my own tumultuous, conflicting emotions?  It would be
+useless, since I know it to be impossible.  For in those dark eyes
+burned a fire I might not see; those silken lashes veiled a message I
+dared not read.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith was not blind to the facts of the complicated situation.
+I can truthfully assert that he was the only man of my acquaintance
+who, having come in contact with Karamaneh, had kept his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We endeavored to divert her mind from the recent tragedies by a round
+of amusements, though with poor Weymouth's body still at the mercy of
+unknown waters Smith and I made but a poor show of gayety; and I took a
+gloomy pride in the admiration which our lovely companion everywhere
+excited.  I learned, in those days, how rare a thing in nature is a
+really beautiful woman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One afternoon we found ourselves at an exhibition of water colors in
+Bond Street.  Karamaneh was intensely interested in the subjects of the
+drawings&mdash;which were entirely Egyptian.  As usual, she furnished matter
+for comment amongst the other visitors, as did the boy, Aziz, her
+brother, anew upon the world from his living grave in the house of Dr.
+Fu-Manchu.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly Aziz clutched at his sister's arm, whispering rapidly in
+Arabic.  I saw her peachlike color fade; saw her become pale and
+wild-eyed&mdash;the haunted Karamaneh of the old days.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She turned to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dr. Petrie&mdash;he says that Fu-Manchu is here!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith rapped out the question violently, turning in a flash
+from the picture which he was examining.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In this room!" she whispered glancing furtively, affrightedly about
+her.  "Something tells Aziz when HE is near&mdash;and I, too, feel strangely
+afraid.  Oh, can it be that he is not dead!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She held my arm tightly.  Her brother was searching the room with big,
+velvet black eyes.  I studied the faces of the several visitors; and
+Smith was staring about him with the old alert look, and tugging
+nervously at the lobe of his ear.  The name of the giant foe of the
+white race instantaneously had strung him up to a pitch of supreme
+intensity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Our united scrutinies discovered no figure which could have been that
+of the Chinese doctor.  Who could mistake that long, gaunt shape, with
+the high, mummy-like shoulders, and the indescribable gait, which I can
+only liken to that of an awkward cat?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, over the heads of a group of people who stood by the doorway, I
+saw Smith peering at someone&mdash;at someone who passed across the outer
+room.  Stepping aside, I, too, obtained a glimpse of this person.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As I saw him, he was a tall, old man, wearing a black Inverness coat
+and a rather shabby silk hat.  He had long white hair and a patriarchal
+beard, wore smoked glasses and walked slowly, leaning upon a stick.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith's gaunt face paled.  With a rapid glance at Karamaneh, he made
+off across the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Could it be Dr. Fu-Manchu?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Many days had passed since, already half-choked by Inspector Weymouth's
+iron grip, Fu-Manchu, before our own eyes, had been swallowed up by the
+Thames.  Even now men were seeking his body, and that of his last
+victim.  Nor had we left any stone unturned.  Acting upon information
+furnished by Karamaneh, the police had searched every known haunt of
+the murder group.  But everything pointed to the fact that the group
+was disbanded and dispersed; that the lord of strange deaths who had
+ruled it was no more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yet Smith was not satisfied.  Neither, let me confess, was I. Every
+port was watched; and in suspected districts a kind of house-to-house
+patrol had been instituted.  Unknown to the great public, in those days
+a secret war waged&mdash;a war in which all the available forces of the
+authorities took the field against one man!  But that one man was the
+evil of the East incarnate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When we rejoined him, Nayland Smith was talking to the commissionaire
+at the door.  He turned to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is Professor Jenner Monde," he said.  "The sergeant, here, knows
+him well."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The name of the celebrated Orientalist of course was familiar to me,
+although I had never before set eyes upon him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Professor was out East the last time I was there, sir," stated the
+commissionaire.  "I often used to see him.  But he's an eccentric old
+gentleman.  Seems to live in a world of his own.  He's recently back
+from China, I think."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith stood clicking his teeth together in irritable
+hesitation.  I heard Karamaneh sigh, and, looking at her, I saw that
+her cheeks were regaining their natural color.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She smiled in pathetic apology.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If he was here he is gone," she said.  "I am not afraid now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith thanked the commissionaire for his information and we quitted the
+gallery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Professor Jenner Monde," muttered my friend, "has lived so long in
+China as almost to be a Chinaman.  I have never met him&mdash;never seen
+him, before; but I wonder&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You wonder what, Smith?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wonder if he could possibly be an ally, of the Doctor's!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I stared at him in amazement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If we are to attach any importance to the incident at all," I said,
+"we must remember that the boy's impression&mdash;and Karamaneh's&mdash;was that
+Fu-Manchu was present in person."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I DO attach importance to the incident, Petrie; they are naturally
+sensitive to such impressions.  But I doubt if even the abnormal
+organization of Aziz could distinguish between the hidden presence of a
+creature of the Doctor's and that of the Doctor himself.  I shall make
+a point of calling upon Professor Jenner Monde."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Fate had ordained that much should happen ere Smith made his
+proposed call upon the Professor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Karamaneh and her brother safely lodged in their hotel (which was
+watched night and day by four men under Smith's orders), we returned to
+my quiet suburban rooms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"First," said Smith, "let us see what we can find out respecting
+Professor Monde."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He went to the telephone and called up New Scotland Yard.  There
+followed some little delay before the requisite information was
+obtained.  Finally, however, we learned that the Professor was
+something of a recluse, having few acquaintances, and fewer friends.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He lived alone in chambers in New Inn Court, Carey Street.  A charwoman
+did such cleaning as was considered necessary by the Professor, who
+employed no regular domestic.  When he was in London he might be seen
+fairly frequently at the British Museum, where his shabby figure was
+familiar to the officials.  When he was not in London&mdash;that is, during
+the greater part of each year&mdash;no one knew where he went.  He never
+left any address to which letters might be forwarded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How long has he been in London now?" asked Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So far as could be ascertained from New Inn Court (replied Scotland
+Yard) roughly a week.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My friend left the telephone and began restlessly to pace the room.
+The charred briar was produced and stuffed with that broad cut Latakia
+mixture of which Nayland Smith consumed close upon a pound a week.  He
+was one of those untidy smokers who leave tangled tufts hanging from
+the pipe-bowl and when they light up strew the floor with smoldering
+fragments.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A ringing came, and shortly afterwards a girl entered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. James Weymouth to see you, sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hullo!" rapped Smith.  "What's this?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weymouth entered, big and florid, and in some respects singularly like
+his brother, in others as singularly unlike.  Now, in his black suit,
+he was a somber figure; and in the blue eyes I read a fear suppressed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Smith," he began, "there's something uncanny going on at Maple
+Cottage."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith wheeled the big arm-chair forward.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sit down, Mr. Weymouth," he said.  "I am not entirely surprised.  But
+you have my attention.  What has occurred?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weymouth took a cigarette from the box which I proffered and poured out
+a peg of whisky.  His hand was not quite steady.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That knocking," he explained.  "It came again the night after you were
+there, and Mrs. Weymouth&mdash;my wife, I mean&mdash;felt that she couldn't spend
+another night there, alone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did she look out of the window?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, Doctor; she was afraid.  But I spent last night downstairs in the
+sitting-room&mdash;and <I>I</I> looked out!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took a gulp from his glass.  Nayland Smith, seated on the edge of
+the table, his extinguished pipe in his hand, was watching him keenly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll admit I didn't look out at once," Weymouth resumed.  "There was
+something so uncanny, gentlemen, in that knocking&mdash;knocking&mdash;in the
+dead of the night.  I thought"&mdash;his voice shook&mdash;"of poor Jack, lying
+somewhere amongst the slime of the river&mdash;and, oh, my God!  it came to
+me that it was Jack who was knocking&mdash;and I dare not think what
+he&mdash;what it&mdash;would look like!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He leaned forward, his chin in his hand.  For a few moments we were all
+silent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know I funked," he continued huskily.  "But when the wife came to
+the head of the stairs and whispered to me:  'There it is again.  What
+in heaven's name can it be'&mdash;I started to unbolt the door.  The
+knocking had stopped.  Everything was very still.  I heard Mary&mdash;HIS
+widow&mdash;sobbing, upstairs; that was all.  I opened the door, a little
+bit at a time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Pausing again, he cleared his throat, and went on:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was a bright night, and there was no one there&mdash;not a soul.  But
+somewhere down the lane, as I looked out into the porch, I heard most
+awful groans!  They got fainter and fainter.  Then&mdash;I could have sworn
+I heard SOMEONE LAUGHING!  My nerves cracked up at that; and I shut the
+door again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The narration of his weird experience revived something of the natural
+fear which it had occasioned.  He raised his glass, with unsteady hand,
+and drained it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith struck a match and relighted his pipe.  He began to pace the room
+again.  His eyes were literally on fire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Would it be possible to get Mrs. Weymouth out of the house before
+to-night?  Remove her to your place, for instance?" he asked abruptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weymouth looked up in surprise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She seems to be in a very low state," he replied.  He glanced at me.
+"Perhaps Dr. Petrie would give us an opinion?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will come and see her," I said.  "But what is your idea, Smith?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want to hear that knocking!" he rapped.  "But in what I may see fit
+to do I must not be handicapped by the presence of a sick woman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Her condition at any rate will admit of our administering an opiate,"
+I suggested.  "That would meet the situation?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good!" cried Smith.  He was intensely excited now.  "I rely upon you
+to arrange something, Petrie.  Mr. Weymouth"&mdash;he turned to our
+visitor&mdash;"I shall be with you this evening not later than twelve
+o'clock."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weymouth appeared to be greatly relieved.  I asked him to wait whilst I
+prepared a draught for the patient.  When he was gone:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you think this knocking means, Smith?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He tapped out his pipe on the side of the grate and began with nervous
+energy to refill it again from the dilapidated pouch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I dare not tell you what I hope, Petrie," he replied&mdash;"nor what I
+fear."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap29"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXIX
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+DUSK was falling when we made our way in the direction of Maple
+Cottage.  Nayland Smith appeared to be keenly interested in the
+character of the district.  A high and ancient wall bordered the road
+along which we walked for a considerable distance.  Later it gave place
+to a rickety fence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My friend peered through a gap in the latter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is quite an extensive estate here," he said, "not yet cut up by
+the builder.  It is well wooded on one side, and there appears to be a
+pool lower down."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The road was a quiet one, and we plainly heard the tread&mdash;quite
+unmistakable&mdash;of an approaching policeman.  Smith continued to peer
+through the hole in the fence, until the officer drew up level with us.
+Then:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Does this piece of ground extend down to the village, constable?" he
+inquired.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quite willing for a chat, the man stopped, and stood with his thumbs
+thrust in his belt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, sir.  They tell me three new roads will be made through it
+between here and the hill."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It must be a happy hunting ground for tramps?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've seen some suspicious-looking coves about at times.  But after
+dusk an army might be inside there and nobody would ever be the wiser."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Burglaries frequent in the houses backing on to it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no.  A favorite game in these parts is snatching loaves and
+bottles of milk from the doors, first thing, as they're delivered.
+There's been an extra lot of it lately.  My mate who relieves me has
+got special instructions to keep his eye open in the mornings!"  The
+man grinned.  "It wouldn't be a very big case even if he caught
+anybody!" "No," said Smith absently; "perhaps not.  Your business must
+be a dry one this warm weather.  Good-night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good-night, sir," replied the constable, richer by half-a-crown&mdash;"and
+thank you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith stared after him for a moment, tugging reflectively at the lobe
+of his ear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know that it wouldn't be a big case, after all," he murmured.
+"Come on, Petrie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Not another word did he speak, until we stood at the gate of Maple
+Cottage.  There a plain-clothes man was standing, evidently awaiting
+Smith.  He touched his hat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you found a suitable hiding-place?" asked my companion rapidly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, sir," was the reply.  "Kent&mdash;my mate&mdash;is there now.  You'll
+notice that he can't be seen from here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," agreed Smith, peering all about him.  "He can't. Where is he?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Behind the broken wall," explained the man, pointing.  "Through that
+ivy there's a clear view of the cottage door."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good.  Keep your eyes open.  If a messenger comes for me, he is to be
+intercepted, you understand.  No one must be allowed to disturb us.
+You will recognize the messenger.  He will be one of your fellows.
+Should he come&mdash;hoot three times, as much like an owl as you can."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We walked up to the porch of the cottage.  In response to Smith's
+ringing came James Weymouth, who seemed greatly relieved by our arrival.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"First," said my friend briskly, "you had better run up and see the
+patient."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Accordingly, I followed Weymouth upstairs and was admitted by his wife
+to a neat little bedroom where the grief-stricken woman lay, a wanly
+pathetic sight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you administer the draught, as directed?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. James Weymouth nodded.  She was a kindly looking woman, with the
+same dread haunting her hazel eyes as that which lurked in her
+husband's blue ones.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The patient was sleeping soundly.  Some whispered instructions I gave
+to the faithful nurse and descended to the sitting-room. It was a warm
+night, and Weymouth sat by the open window, smoking.  The dim light
+from the lamp on the table lent him an almost startling likeness to his
+brother; and for a moment I stood at the foot of the stairs scarce able
+to trust my reason.  Then he turned his face fully towards me, and the
+illusion was lost.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you think she is likely to wake, Doctor?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think not," I replied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith stood upon the rug before the hearth, swinging from one
+foot to the other, in his nervously restless way.  The room was foggy
+with the fumes of tobacco, for he, too, was smoking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At intervals of some five to ten minutes, his blackened briar (which I
+never knew him to clean or scrape) would go out.  I think Smith used
+more matches than any other smoker I have ever met, and he invariably
+carried three boxes in various pockets of his garments.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The tobacco habit is infectious, and, seating myself in an arm-chair, I
+lighted a cigarette.  For this dreary vigil I had come prepared with a
+bunch of rough notes, a writing-block, and a fountain pen.  I settled
+down to work upon my record of the Fu-Manchu case.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Silence fell upon Maple Cottage.  Save for the shuddering sigh which
+whispered through the over-hanging cedars and Smith's eternal
+match-striking, nothing was there to disturb me in my task.  Yet I
+could make little progress.  Between my mind and the chapter upon which
+I was at work a certain sentence persistently intruded itself.  It was
+as though an unseen hand held the written page closely before my eyes.
+This was the sentence:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Imagine a person, tall, lean, and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow
+like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long,
+magnetic eyes of the true cat-green: invest him with all the cruel
+cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant
+intellect&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dr. Fu-Manchu!  Fu-Manchu as Smith had described him to me on that
+night which now seemed so remotely distant&mdash;the night upon which I had
+learned of the existence of the wonderful and evil being born of that
+secret quickening which stirred in the womb of the yellow races.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Smith, for the ninth or tenth time, knocked out his pipe on a bar of
+the grate, the cuckoo clock in the kitchen proclaimed the hour.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Two," said James Weymouth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I abandoned my task, replacing notes and writing-block in the bag that
+I had with me.  Weymouth adjusted the lamp which had begun to smoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I tiptoed to the stairs and, stepping softly, ascended to the sick
+room.  All was quiet, and Mrs. Weymouth whispered to me that the
+patient still slept soundly.  I returned to find Nayland Smith pacing
+about the room in that state of suppressed excitement habitual with him
+in the approach of any crisis.  At a quarter past two the breeze
+dropped entirely, and such a stillness reigned all about us as I could
+not have supposed possible so near to the ever-throbbing heart of the
+great metropolis.  Plainly I could hear Weymouth's heavy breathing.  He
+sat at the window and looked out into the black shadows under the
+cedars.  Smith ceased his pacing and stood again on the rug very still.
+He was listening!  I doubt not we were all listening.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Some faint sound broke the impressive stillness, coming from the
+direction of the village street.  It was a vague, indefinite
+disturbance, brief, and upon it ensued a silence more marked than ever.
+Some minutes before, Smith had extinguished the lamp.  In the darkness
+I heard his teeth snap sharply together.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The call of an owl sounded very clearly three times.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I knew that to mean that a messenger had come; but from whence or
+bearing what tidings I knew not.  My friend's plans were
+incomprehensible to me, nor had I pressed him for any explanation of
+their nature, knowing him to be in that high-strung and somewhat
+irritable mood which claimed him at times of uncertainty&mdash;when he
+doubted the wisdom of his actions, the accuracy of his surmises.  He
+gave no sign.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Very faintly I heard a clock strike the half-hour. A soft breeze stole
+again through the branches above.  The wind I thought must be in a new
+quarter since I had not heard the clock before.  In so lonely a spot it
+was difficult to believe that the bell was that of St. Paul's. Yet such
+was the fact.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And hard upon the ringing followed another sound&mdash;a sound we all had
+expected, had waited for; but at whose coming no one of us, I think,
+retained complete mastery of himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Breaking up the silence in a manner that set my heart wildly leaping it
+came&mdash;an imperative knocking on the door!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My God!" groaned Weymouth&mdash;but he did not move from his position at
+the window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stand by, Petrie!" said Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He strode to the door&mdash;and threw it widely open.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I know I was very pale.  I think I cried out as I fell back&mdash;retreated
+with clenched hands from before THAT which stood on the threshold.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a wild, unkempt figure, with straggling beard, hideously staring
+eyes.  With its hands it clutched at its hair&mdash;at its chin; plucked at
+its mouth.  No moonlight touched the features of this unearthly
+visitant, but scanty as was the illumination we could see the gleaming
+teeth&mdash;and the wildly glaring eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It began to laugh&mdash;peal after peal&mdash;hideous and shrill.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nothing so terrifying had ever smote upon my ears.  I was palsied by
+the horror of the sound.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Nayland Smith pressed the button of an electric torch which he
+carried.  He directed the disk of white light fully upon the face in
+the doorway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, God!" cried Weymouth.  "It's John!"&mdash;and again and again: "Oh,
+God!  Oh, God!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Perhaps for the first time in my life I really believed (nay, I could
+not doubt) that a thing of another world stood before me.  I am ashamed
+to confess the extent of the horror that came upon me.  James Weymouth
+raised his hands, as if to thrust away from him that awful thing in the
+door.  He was babbling&mdash;prayers, I think, but wholly incoherent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hold him, Petrie!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith's voice was low.  (When we were past thought or intelligent
+action, he, dominant and cool, with that forced calm for which, a
+crisis over, he always paid so dearly, was thinking of the woman who
+slept above.)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He leaped forward; and in the instant that he grappled with the one who
+had knocked I knew the visitant for a man of flesh and blood&mdash;a man who
+shrieked and fought like a savage animal, foamed at the mouth and
+gnashed his teeth in horrid frenzy; knew him for a madman&mdash;knew him for
+the victim of Fu-Manchu&mdash;not dead, but living&mdash;for Inspector
+Weymouth&mdash;a maniac!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In a flash I realized all this and sprang to Smith's assistance.  There
+was a sound of racing footsteps and the men who had been watching
+outside came running into the porch.  A third was with them; and the
+five of us (for Weymouth's brother had not yet grasped the fact that a
+man and not a spirit shrieked and howled in our midst) clung to the
+infuriated madman, yet barely held our own with him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The syringe, Petrie!" gasped Smith.  "Quick!  You must manage to make
+an injection!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I extricated myself and raced into the cottage for my bag.  A
+hypodermic syringe ready charged I had brought with me at Smith's
+request.  Even in that thrilling moment I could find time to admire the
+wonderful foresight of my friend, who had divined what would
+befall&mdash;isolated the strange, pitiful truth from the chaotic
+circumstances which saw us at Maple Cottage that night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Let me not enlarge upon the end of the awful struggle.  At one time I
+despaired (we all despaired) of quieting the poor, demented creature.
+But at last it was done; and the gaunt, blood-stained savage whom we
+had known as Detective-Inspector Weymouth lay passive upon the couch in
+his own sitting-room. A great wonder possessed my mind for the genius
+of the uncanny being who with the scratch of a needle had made a brave
+and kindly man into this unclean, brutish thing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nayland Smith, gaunt and wild-eyed, and trembling yet with his
+tremendous exertions, turned to the man whom I knew to be the messenger
+from Scotland Yard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well?" he rapped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is arrested, sir," the detective reported.  "They have kept him at
+his chambers as you ordered."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Has she slept through it?" said Smith to me.  (I had just returned
+from a visit to the room above.) I nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is HE safe for an hour or two?"&mdash;indicating the figure on the couch.
+"For eight or ten," I replied grimly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come, then.  Our night's labors are not nearly complete."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap30"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXX
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+LATER was forthcoming evidence to show that poor Weymouth had lived a
+wild life, in hiding among the thick bushes of the tract of land which
+lay between the village and the suburb on the neighboring hill.
+Literally, he had returned to primitive savagery and some of his food
+had been that of the lower animals, though he had not scrupled to
+steal, as we learned when his lair was discovered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had hidden himself cunningly; but witnesses appeared who had seen
+him, in the dusk, and fled from him.  They never learned that the
+object of their fear was Inspector John Weymouth.  How, having escaped
+death in the Thames, he had crossed London unobserved, we never knew;
+but his trick of knocking upon his own door at half-past two each
+morning (a sort of dawning of sanity mysteriously linked with old
+custom) will be a familiar class of symptom to all students of
+alienation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I revert to the night when Smith solved the mystery of the knocking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In a car which he had in waiting at the end of the village we sped
+through the deserted streets to New Inn Court.  I, who had followed
+Nayland Smith through the failures and successes of his mission, knew
+that to-night he had surpassed himself; had justified the confidence
+placed in him by the highest authorities.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We were admitted to an untidy room&mdash;that of a student, a traveler and a
+crank&mdash;by a plain-clothes officer.  Amid picturesque and disordered
+fragments of a hundred ages, in a great carven chair placed before a
+towering statue of the Buddha, sat a hand-cuffed man.  His white hair
+and beard were patriarchal; his pose had great dignity.  But his
+expression was entirely masked by the smoked glasses which he wore.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Two other detectives were guarding the prisoner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We arrested Professor Jenner Monde as he came in, sir," reported the
+man who had opened the door.  "He has made no statement.  I hope there
+isn't a mistake."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope not," rapped Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He strode across the room.  He was consumed by a fever of excitement.
+Almost savagely, he tore away the beard, tore off the snowy wig dashed
+the smoked glasses upon the floor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A great, high brow was revealed, and green, malignant eyes, which fixed
+themselves upon him with an expression I never can forget.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+IT WAS DR. FU-MANCHU!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One intense moment of silence ensued&mdash;of silence which seemed to throb.
+Then:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What have you done with Professor Monde?" demanded Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dr. Fu-Manchu showed his even, yellow teeth in the singularly evil
+smile which I knew so well.  A manacled prisoner he sat as unruffled as
+a judge upon the bench.  In truth and in justice I am compelled to say
+that Fu-Manchu was absolutely fearless.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He has been detained in China," he replied, in smooth, sibilant
+tones&mdash;"by affairs of great urgency.  His well-known personality and
+ungregarious habits have served me well, here!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smith, I could see, was undetermined how to act; he stood tugging at
+his ear and glancing from the impassive Chinaman to the wondering
+detectives.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are we to do, sir?" one of them asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Leave Dr. Petrie and myself alone with the prisoner, until I call you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The three withdrew.  I divined now what was coming.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can you restore Weymouth's sanity?" rapped Smith abruptly.  "I cannot
+save you from the hangman, nor"&mdash;his fists clenched convulsively&mdash;"would
+I if I could; but&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fu-Manchu fixed his brilliant eyes upon him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Say no more, Mr. Smith," he interrupted; "you misunderstand me.  I do
+not quarrel with that, but what I have done from conviction and what I
+have done of necessity are separated&mdash;are seas apart.  The brave
+Inspector Weymouth I wounded with a poisoned needle, in self-defense;
+but I regret his condition as greatly as you do.  I respect such a man.
+There is an antidote to the poison of the needle."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Name it," said Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fu-Manchu smiled again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Useless," he replied.  "I alone can prepare it.  My secrets shall die
+with me.  I will make a sane man of Inspector Weymouth, but no one else
+shall be in the house but he and I."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It will be surrounded by police," interrupted Smith grimly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As you please," said Fu-Manchu. "Make your arrangements.  In that
+ebony case upon the table are the instruments for the cure.  Arrange
+for me to visit him where and when you will&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I distrust you utterly.  It is some trick," jerked Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dr. Fu-Manchu rose slowly and drew himself up to his great height.  His
+manacled hands could not rob him of the uncanny dignity which was his.
+He raised them above his head with a tragic gesture and fixed his
+piercing gaze upon Nayland Smith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The God of Cathay hear me," he said, with a deep, guttural note in his
+voice&mdash;"I swear&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The most awful visitor who ever threatened the peace of England, the
+end of the visit of Fu-Manchu was characteristic&mdash;terrible&mdash;inexplicable.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Strange to relate, I did not doubt that this weird being had conceived
+some kind of admiration or respect for the man to whom he had wrought
+so terrible an injury.  He was capable of such sentiments, for he
+entertained some similar one in regard to myself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A cottage farther down the village street than Weymouth's was vacant,
+and in the early dawn of that morning became the scene of outre
+happenings.  Poor Weymouth, still in a comatose condition, we removed
+there (Smith having secured the key from the astonished agent). I
+suppose so strange a specialist never visited a patient
+before&mdash;certainly not under such conditions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For into the cottage, which had been entirely surrounded by a ring of
+police, Dr. Fu-Manchu was admitted from the closed car in which, his
+work of healing complete, he was to be borne to prison&mdash;to death!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Law and justice were suspended by my royally empowered friend that the
+enemy of the white race might heal one of those who had hunted him down!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No curious audience was present, for sunrise was not yet come; no
+concourse of excited students followed the hand of the Master; but
+within that surrounded cottage was performed one of those miracles of
+science which in other circumstances had made the fame of Dr. Fu-Manchu
+to live forever.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Inspector Weymouth, dazed, disheveled, clutching his head as a man who
+has passed through the Valley of the Shadow&mdash;but sane&mdash;sane!&mdash;walked
+out into the porch!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked towards us&mdash;his eyes wild, but not with the fearsome wildness
+of insanity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Smith!" he cried&mdash;and staggered down the path&mdash;"Dr. Petrie!
+What&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There came a deafening explosion.  From EVERY visible window of the
+deserted cottage flames burst forth!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"QUICK!" Smith's voice rose almost to a scream&mdash;"into the house!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He raced up the path, past Inspector Weymouth, who stood swaying there
+like a drunken man.  I was close upon his heels.  Behind me came the
+police.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The door was impassable!  Already, it vomited a deathly heat, borne
+upon stifling fumes like those of the mouth of the Pit.  We burst a
+window.  The room within was a furnace!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My God!" cried someone.  "This is supernatural!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Listen!" cried another.  "Listen!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The crowd which a fire can conjure up at any hour of day or night, out
+of the void of nowhere, was gathering already.  But upon all descended
+a pall of silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the heat of the holocaust a voice proclaimed itself&mdash;a voice
+raised, not in anguish but in TRIUMPH!  It chanted barbarically&mdash;and
+was still.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The abnormal flames rose higher&mdash;leaping forth from every window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The alarm!" said Smith hoarsely.  "Call up the brigade!"
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+I come to the close of my chronicle, and feel that I betray a
+trust&mdash;the trust of my reader.  For having limned in the colors at my
+command the fiendish Chinese doctor, I am unable to conclude my task as
+I should desire, unable, with any consciousness of finality, to write
+Finis to the end of my narrative.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seems to me sometimes that my pen is but temporarily idle&mdash;that I
+have but dealt with a single phase of a movement having a hundred
+phases.  One sequel I hope for, and against all the promptings of logic
+and Western bias.  If my hope shall be realized I cannot, at this time,
+pretend to state.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The future, 'mid its many secrets, holds this precious one from me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I ask you then, to absolve me from the charge of ill completing my
+work; for any curiosity with which this narrative may leave the reader
+burdened is shared by the writer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With intent, I have rushed you from the chambers of Professor Jenner
+Monde to that closing episode at the deserted cottage; I have made the
+pace hot in order to impart to these last pages of my account something
+of the breathless scurry which characterized those happenings.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My canvas may seem sketchy:  it is my impression of the reality.  No
+hard details remain in my mind of the dealings of that night.
+Fu-Manchu arrested&mdash;Fu-Manchu, manacled, entering the cottage on his
+mission of healing; Weymouth, miraculously rendered sane, coming forth;
+the place in flames.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To a shell the cottage burned, with an incredible rapidity which
+pointed to some hidden agency; to a shell about ashes which held NO
+TRACE OF HUMAN BONES!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It has been asked of me:  Was there no possibility of Fu-Manchu's
+having eluded us in the ensuing confusion?  Was there no loophole of
+escape?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I reply, that so far as I was able to judge, a rat could scarce have
+quitted the building undetected.  Yet that Fu-Manchu had, in some
+incomprehensible manner and by some mysterious agency, produced those
+abnormal flames, I cannot doubt.  Did he voluntarily ignite his own
+funeral pyre?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As I write, there lies before me a soiled and creased sheet of vellum.
+It bears some lines traced in a cramped, peculiar, and all but
+illegible hand.  This fragment was found by Inspector Weymouth (to this
+day a man mentally sound) in a pocket of his ragged garments.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When it was written I leave you to judge.  How it came to be where
+Weymouth found it calls for no explanation:
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+"To Mr. Commissioner NAYLAND SMITH and Dr. PETRIE&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Greeting!  I am recalled home by One who may not be denied.  In much
+that I came to do I have failed.  Much that I have done I would undo;
+some little I have undone.  Out of fire I came&mdash;the smoldering fire of
+a thing one day to be a consuming flame; in fire I go.  Seek not my
+ashes.  I am the lord of the fires!  Farewell.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+"FU-MANCHU."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Who has been with me in my several meetings with the man who penned
+that message I leave to adjudge if it be the letter of a madman bent
+upon self-destruction by strange means, or the gibe of a
+preternaturally clever scientist and the most elusive being ever born
+of the land of mystery&mdash;China.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For the present, I can aid you no more in the forming of your verdict.
+A day may come though I pray it do not&mdash;when I shall be able to throw
+new light upon much that is dark in this matter.  That day, so far as I
+can judge, could only dawn in the event of the Chinaman's survival;
+therefore I pray that the veil be never lifted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But, as I have said, there is another sequel to this story which I can
+contemplate with a different countenance.  How, then, shall I conclude
+this very unsatisfactory account?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Shall I tell you, finally, of my parting with lovely, dark-eyed
+Karamaneh, on board the liner which was to bear her to Egypt?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No, let me, instead, conclude with the words of Nayland Smith:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>I</I> sail for Burma in a fortnight, Petrie.  I have leave to break my
+journey at the Ditch.  How would a run up the Nile fit your programme?
+Bit early for the season, but you might find something to amuse you!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, by Sax Rohmer
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, by Sax Rohmer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu
+
+Author: Sax Rohmer
+
+Release Date: May 24, 2008 [EBook #173]
+[Last updated: October 13, 2012]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INSIDIOUS DR. FU-MANCHU ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+This etext was updated by Stewart A. Levin of Englewood, CO.
+
+
+
+
+
+The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu
+
+
+by
+
+Sax Rohmer
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+"A GENTLEMAN to see you, Doctor."
+
+From across the common a clock sounded the half-hour.
+
+"Ten-thirty!" I said.  "A late visitor.  Show him up, if you please."
+
+I pushed my writing aside and tilted the lamp-shade, as footsteps
+sounded on the landing.  The next moment I had jumped to my feet, for a
+tall, lean man, with his square-cut, clean-shaven face sun-baked to the
+hue of coffee, entered and extended both hands, with a cry:
+
+"Good old Petrie!  Didn't expect me, I'll swear!"
+
+It was Nayland Smith--whom I had thought to be in Burma!
+
+"Smith," I said, and gripped his hands hard, "this is a delightful
+surprise!  Whatever--however--"
+
+"Excuse me, Petrie!" he broke in.  "Don't put it down to the sun!" And
+he put out the lamp, plunging the room into darkness.
+
+I was too surprised to speak.
+
+"No doubt you will think me mad," he continued, and, dimly, I could see
+him at the window, peering out into the road, "but before you are many
+hours older you will know that I have good reason to be cautious.  Ah,
+nothing suspicious!  Perhaps I am first this time."  And, stepping back
+to the writing-table he relighted the lamp.
+
+"Mysterious enough for you?" he laughed, and glanced at my unfinished
+MS.  "A story, eh?  From which I gather that the district is beastly
+healthy--what, Petrie?  Well, I can put some material in your way that,
+if sheer uncanny mystery is a marketable commodity, ought to make you
+independent of influenza and broken legs and shattered nerves and all
+the rest."
+
+I surveyed him doubtfully, but there was nothing in his appearance to
+justify me in supposing him to suffer from delusions.  His eyes were
+too bright, certainly, and a hardness now had crept over his face.  I
+got out the whisky and siphon, saying:
+
+"You have taken your leave early?"
+
+"I am not on leave," he replied, and slowly filled his pipe.  "I am on
+duty."
+
+"On duty!" I exclaimed.  "What, are you moved to London or something?"
+
+"I have got a roving commission, Petrie, and it doesn't rest with me
+where I am to-day nor where I shall be to-morrow."
+
+There was something ominous in the words, and, putting down my glass,
+its contents untasted, I faced round and looked him squarely in the
+eyes.  "Out with it!" I said.  "What is it all about?"
+
+Smith suddenly stood up and stripped off his coat.  Rolling back his
+left shirt-sleeve he revealed a wicked-looking wound in the fleshy part
+of the forearm.  It was quite healed, but curiously striated for an
+inch or so around.
+
+"Ever seen one like it?" he asked.
+
+"Not exactly," I confessed.  "It appears to have been deeply
+cauterized."
+
+"Right!  Very deeply!" he rapped.  "A barb steeped in the venom of a
+hamadryad went in there!"
+
+A shudder I could not repress ran coldly through me at mention of that
+most deadly of all the reptiles of the East.
+
+"There's only one treatment," he continued, rolling his sleeve down
+again, "and that's with a sharp knife, a match, and a broken cartridge.
+I lay on my back, raving, for three days afterwards, in a forest that
+stank with malaria, but I should have been lying there now if I had
+hesitated.  Here's the point.  It was not an accident!"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that it was a deliberate attempt on my life, and I am hard upon
+the tracks of the man who extracted that venom--patiently, drop by
+drop--from the poison-glands of the snake, who prepared that arrow, and
+who caused it to be shot at me."
+
+"What fiend is this?"
+
+"A fiend who, unless my calculations are at fault is now in London, and
+who regularly wars with pleasant weapons of that kind.  Petrie, I have
+traveled from Burma not in the interests of the British Government
+merely, but in the interests of the entire white race, and I honestly
+believe--though I pray I may be wrong--that its survival depends
+largely upon the success of my mission."
+
+To say that I was perplexed conveys no idea of the mental chaos created
+by these extraordinary statements, for into my humdrum suburban life
+Nayland Smith had brought fantasy of the wildest.  I did not know what
+to think, what to believe.
+
+"I am wasting precious time!" he rapped decisively, and, draining his
+glass, he stood up.  "I came straight to you, because you are the only
+man I dare to trust.  Except the big chief at headquarters, you are the
+only person in England, I hope, who knows that Nayland Smith has
+quitted Burma.  I must have someone with me, Petrie, all the time--it's
+imperative!  Can you put me up here, and spare a few days to the
+strangest business, I promise you, that ever was recorded in fact or
+fiction?"
+
+I agreed readily enough, for, unfortunately, my professional duties
+were not onerous.
+
+"Good man!" he cried, wringing my hand in his impetuous way.  "We start
+now."
+
+"What, to-night?"
+
+"To-night!  I had thought of turning in, I must admit.  I have not
+dared to sleep for forty-eight hours, except in fifteen-minute
+stretches.  But there is one move that must be made to-night and
+immediately.  I must warn Sir Crichton Davey."
+
+"Sir Crichton Davey--of the India--"
+
+"Petrie, he is a doomed man!  Unless he follows my instructions without
+question, without hesitation--before Heaven, nothing can save him!  I
+do not know when the blow will fall, how it will fall, nor from whence,
+but I know that my first duty is to warn him.  Let us walk down to the
+corner of the common and get a taxi."
+
+How strangely does the adventurous intrude upon the humdrum; for, when
+it intrudes at all, more often than not its intrusion is sudden and
+unlooked for.  To-day, we may seek for romance and fail to find it:
+unsought, it lies in wait for us at most prosaic corners of life's
+highway.
+
+The drive that night, though it divided the drably commonplace from the
+wildly bizarre--though it was the bridge between the ordinary and the
+outre--has left no impression upon my mind.  Into the heart of a weird
+mystery the cab bore me; and in reviewing my memories of those days I
+wonder that the busy thoroughfares through which we passed did not
+display before my eyes signs and portents--warnings.
+
+It was not so.  I recall nothing of the route and little of import that
+passed between us (we both were strangely silent, I think) until we
+were come to our journey's end.  Then:
+
+"What's this?" muttered my friend hoarsely.
+
+Constables were moving on a little crowd of curious idlers who pressed
+about the steps of Sir Crichton Davey's house and sought to peer in at
+the open door.  Without waiting for the cab to draw up to the curb,
+Nayland Smith recklessly leaped out and I followed close at his heels.
+
+"What has happened?" he demanded breathlessly of a constable.
+
+The latter glanced at him doubtfully, but something in his voice and
+bearing commanded respect.
+
+"Sir Crichton Davey has been killed, sir."
+
+Smith lurched back as though he had received a physical blow, and
+clutched my shoulder convulsively.  Beneath the heavy tan his face had
+blanched, and his eyes were set in a stare of horror.
+
+"My God!" he whispered.  "I am too late!"
+
+With clenched fists he turned and, pressing through the group of
+loungers, bounded up the steps.  In the hall a man who unmistakably was
+a Scotland Yard official stood talking to a footman.  Other members of
+the household were moving about, more or less aimlessly, and the chilly
+hand of King Fear had touched one and all, for, as they came and went,
+they glanced ever over their shoulders, as if each shadow cloaked a
+menace, and listened, as it seemed, for some sound which they dreaded
+to hear.  Smith strode up to the detective and showed him a card, upon
+glancing at which the Scotland Yard man said something in a low voice,
+and, nodding, touched his hat to Smith in a respectful manner.
+
+A few brief questions and answers, and, in gloomy silence, we followed
+the detective up the heavily carpeted stair, along a corridor lined
+with pictures and busts, and into a large library.  A group of people
+were in this room, and one, in whom I recognized Chalmers Cleeve, of
+Harley Street, was bending over a motionless form stretched upon a
+couch.  Another door communicated with a small study, and through the
+opening I could see a man on all fours examining the carpet.  The
+uncomfortable sense of hush, the group about the physician, the bizarre
+figure crawling, beetle-like, across the inner room, and the grim hub,
+around which all this ominous activity turned, made up a scene that
+etched itself indelibly on my mind.
+
+As we entered Dr. Cleeve straightened himself, frowning thoughtfully.
+
+"Frankly, I do not care to venture any opinion at present regarding the
+immediate cause of death," he said.  "Sir Crichton was addicted to
+cocaine, but there are indications which are not in accordance with
+cocaine-poisoning. I fear that only a post-mortem can establish the
+facts--if," he added, "we ever arrive at them.  A most mysterious case!"
+
+Smith stepping forward and engaging the famous pathologist in
+conversation, I seized the opportunity to examine Sir Crichton's body.
+
+The dead man was in evening dress, but wore an old smoking-jacket. He
+had been of spare but hardy build, with thin, aquiline features, which
+now were oddly puffy, as were his clenched hands.  I pushed back his
+sleeve, and saw the marks of the hypodermic syringe upon his left arm.
+Quite mechanically I turned my attention to the right arm.  It was
+unscarred, but on the back of the hand was a faint red mark, not unlike
+the imprint of painted lips.  I examined it closely, and even tried to
+rub it off, but it evidently was caused by some morbid process of local
+inflammation, if it were not a birthmark.
+
+Turning to a pale young man whom I had understood to be Sir Crichton's
+private secretary, I drew his attention to this mark, and inquired if
+it were constitutional.  "It is not, sir," answered Dr. Cleeve,
+overhearing my question.  "I have already made that inquiry.  Does it
+suggest anything to your mind?  I must confess that it affords me no
+assistance."
+
+"Nothing," I replied.  "It is most curious."
+
+"Excuse me, Mr. Burboyne," said Smith, now turning to the secretary,
+"but Inspector Weymouth will tell you that I act with authority.  I
+understand that Sir Crichton was--seized with illness in his study?"
+
+"Yes--at half-past ten.  I was working here in the library, and he
+inside, as was our custom."
+
+"The communicating door was kept closed?"
+
+"Yes, always.  It was open for a minute or less about ten-twenty-five,
+when a message came for Sir Crichton.  I took it in to him, and he then
+seemed in his usual health."
+
+"What was the message?"
+
+"I could not say.  It was brought by a district messenger, and he
+placed it beside him on the table.  It is there now, no doubt."
+
+"And at half-past ten?"
+
+"Sir Crichton suddenly burst open the door and threw himself, with a
+scream, into the library.  I ran to him but he waved me back.  His eyes
+were glaring horribly.  I had just reached his side when he fell,
+writhing, upon the floor.  He seemed past speech, but as I raised him
+and laid him upon the couch, he gasped something that sounded like 'The
+red hand!' Before I could get to bell or telephone he was dead!"
+
+Mr. Burboyne's voice shook as he spoke the words, and Smith seemed to
+find this evidence confusing.
+
+"You do not think he referred to the mark on his own hand?"
+
+"I think not.  From the direction of his last glance, I feel sure he
+referred to something in the study."
+
+"What did you do?"
+
+"Having summoned the servants, I ran into the study. But there was
+absolutely nothing unusual to be seen.  The windows were closed and
+fastened.  He worked with closed windows in the hottest weather.  There
+is no other door, for the study occupies the end of a narrow wing, so
+that no one could possibly have gained access to it, whilst I was in
+the library, unseen by me.  Had someone concealed himself in the study
+earlier in the evening--and I am convinced that it offers no
+hiding-place--he could only have come out again by passing through
+here."
+
+Nayland Smith tugged at the lobe of his left ear, as was his habit when
+meditating.
+
+"You had been at work here in this way for some time?"
+
+"Yes.  Sir Crichton was preparing an important book."
+
+"Had anything unusual occurred prior to this evening?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Burboyne, with evident perplexity; "though I attached
+no importance to it at the time.  Three nights ago Sir Crichton came
+out to me, and appeared very nervous; but at times his nerves--you
+know?  Well, on this occasion he asked me to search the study.  He had
+an idea that something was concealed there."
+
+"Some THING or someone?"
+
+"'Something' was the word he used.  I searched, but fruitlessly, and he
+seemed quite satisfied, and returned to his work."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Burboyne.  My friend and I would like a few minutes'
+private investigation in the study."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+SIR CRICHTON DAVEY'S study was a small one, and a glance sufficed to
+show that, as the secretary had said, it offered no hiding-place. It
+was heavily carpeted, and over-full of Burmese and Chinese ornaments
+and curios, and upon the mantelpiece stood several framed photographs
+which showed this to be the sanctum of a wealthy bachelor who was no
+misogynist.  A map of the Indian Empire occupied the larger part of one
+wall.  The grate was empty, for the weather was extremely warm, and a
+green-shaded lamp on the littered writing-table afforded the only
+light.  The air was stale, for both windows were closed and fastened.
+
+Smith immediately pounced upon a large, square envelope that lay beside
+the blotting-pad. Sir Crichton had not even troubled to open it, but my
+friend did so.  It contained a blank sheet of paper!
+
+"Smell!" he directed, handing the letter to me.  I raised it to my
+nostrils.  It was scented with some pungent perfume.
+
+"What is it?"  I asked.
+
+"It is a rather rare essential oil," was the reply, "which I have met
+with before, though never in Europe.  I begin to understand, Petrie."
+
+He tilted the lamp-shade and made a close examination of the scraps of
+paper, matches, and other debris that lay in the grate and on the
+hearth.  I took up a copper vase from the mantelpiece, and was
+examining it curiously, when he turned, a strange expression upon his
+face.
+
+"Put that back, old man," he said quietly.
+
+Much surprised, I did as he directed.
+
+"Don't touch anything in the room.  It may be dangerous."
+
+Something in the tone of his voice chilled me, and I hastily replaced
+the vase, and stood by the door of the study, watching him search,
+methodically, every inch of the room--behind the books, in all the
+ornaments, in table drawers, in cupboards, on shelves.
+
+"That will do," he said at last.  "There is nothing here and I have no
+time to search farther."
+
+We returned to the library.
+
+"Inspector Weymouth," said my friend, "I have a particular reason for
+asking that Sir Crichton's body be removed from this room at once and
+the library locked.  Let no one be admitted on any pretense whatever
+until you hear from me." It spoke volumes for the mysterious
+credentials borne by my friend that the man from Scotland Yard accepted
+his orders without demur, and, after a brief chat with Mr. Burboyne,
+Smith passed briskly downstairs.  In the hall a man who looked like a
+groom out of livery was waiting.
+
+"Are you Wills?" asked Smith.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"It was you who heard a cry of some kind at the rear of the house about
+the time of Sir Crichton's death?"
+
+"Yes, sir.  I was locking the garage door, and, happening to look up at
+the window of Sir Crichton's study, I saw him jump out of his chair.
+Where he used to sit at his writing, sir, you could see his shadow on
+the blind.  Next minute I heard a call out in the lane."
+
+"What kind of call?"
+
+The man, whom the uncanny happening clearly had frightened, seemed
+puzzled for a suitable description.
+
+"A sort of wail, sir," he said at last.  "I never heard anything like
+it before, and don't want to again."
+
+"Like this?" inquired Smith, and he uttered a low, wailing cry,
+impossible to describe.  Wills perceptibly shuddered; and, indeed, it
+was an eerie sound.
+
+"The same, sir, I think," he said, "but much louder."
+
+"That will do," said Smith, and I thought I detected a note of triumph
+in his voice.  "But stay!  Take us through to the back of the house."
+
+The man bowed and led the way, so that shortly we found ourselves in a
+small, paved courtyard.  It was a perfect summer's night, and the deep
+blue vault above was jeweled with myriads of starry points.  How
+impossible it seemed to reconcile that vast, eternal calm with the
+hideous passions and fiendish agencies which that night had loosed a
+soul upon the infinite.
+
+"Up yonder are the study windows, sir.  Over that wall on your left is
+the back lane from which the cry came, and beyond is Regent's Park."
+
+"Are the study windows visible from there?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir."
+
+"Who occupies the adjoining house?"
+
+"Major-General Platt-Houston, sir; but the family is out of town."
+
+"Those iron stairs are a means of communication between the domestic
+offices and the servants' quarters, I take it?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Then send someone to make my business known to the Major-General's
+housekeeper; I want to examine those stairs."
+
+Singular though my friend's proceedings appeared to me, I had ceased to
+wonder at anything.  Since Nayland Smith's arrival at my rooms I seemed
+to have been moving through the fitful phases of a nightmare.  My
+friend's account of how he came by the wound in his arm; the scene on
+our arrival at the house of Sir Crichton Davey; the secretary's story
+of the dying man's cry, "The red hand!"; the hidden perils of the
+study; the wail in the lane--all were fitter incidents of delirium than
+of sane reality.  So, when a white-faced butler made us known to a
+nervous old lady who proved to be the housekeeper of the next-door
+residence, I was not surprised at Smith's saying:
+
+"Lounge up and down outside, Petrie.  Everyone has cleared off now.  It
+is getting late.  Keep your eyes open and be on your guard.  I thought
+I had the start, but he is here before me, and, what is worse, he
+probably knows by now that I am here, too."
+
+With which he entered the house and left me out in the square, with
+leisure to think, to try to understand.
+
+The crowd which usually haunts the scene of a sensational crime had
+been cleared away, and it had been circulated that Sir Crichton had
+died from natural causes.  The intense heat having driven most of the
+residents out of town, practically I had the square to myself, and I
+gave myself up to a brief consideration of the mystery in which I so
+suddenly had found myself involved.
+
+By what agency had Sir Crichton met his death?  Did Nayland Smith know?
+I rather suspected that he did.  What was the hidden significance of
+the perfumed envelope?  Who was that mysterious personage whom Smith so
+evidently dreaded, who had attempted his life, who, presumably, had
+murdered Sir Crichton?  Sir Crichton Davey, during the time that he had
+held office in India, and during his long term of service at home, had
+earned the good will of all, British and native alike.  Who was his
+secret enemy?
+
+Something touched me lightly on the shoulder.
+
+I turned, with my heart fluttering like a child's. This night's work
+had imposed a severe strain even upon my callous nerves.
+
+A girl wrapped in a hooded opera-cloak stood at my elbow, and, as she
+glanced up at me, I thought that I never had seen a face so seductively
+lovely nor of so unusual a type.  With the skin of a perfect blonde,
+she had eyes and lashes as black as a Creole's, which, together with
+her full red lips, told me that this beautiful stranger, whose touch
+had so startled me, was not a child of our northern shores.
+
+"Forgive me," she said, speaking with an odd, pretty accent, and laying
+a slim hand, with jeweled fingers, confidingly upon my arm, "if I
+startled you.  But--is it true that Sir Crichton Davey has
+been--murdered?"
+
+I looked into her big, questioning eyes, a harsh suspicion laboring in
+my mind, but could read nothing in their mysterious depths--only I
+wondered anew at my questioner's beauty.  The grotesque idea
+momentarily possessed me that, were the bloom of her red lips due to
+art and not to nature, their kiss would leave--though not
+indelibly--just such a mark as I had seen upon the dead man's hand.
+But I dismissed the fantastic notion as bred of the night's horrors,
+and worthy only of a mediaeval legend.  No doubt she was some friend or
+acquaintance of Sir Crichton who lived close by.
+
+"I cannot say that he has been murdered," I replied, acting upon the
+latter supposition, and seeking to tell her what she asked as gently as
+possible.
+
+"But he is--Dead?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+She closed her eyes and uttered a low, moaning sound, swaying dizzily.
+Thinking she was about to swoon, I threw my arm round her shoulder to
+support her, but she smiled sadly, and pushed me gently away.
+
+"I am quite well, thank you," she said.
+
+"You are certain?  Let me walk with you until you feel quite sure of
+yourself."
+
+She shook her head, flashed a rapid glance at me with her beautiful
+eyes, and looked away in a sort of sorrowful embarrassment, for which I
+was entirely at a loss to account.  Suddenly she resumed:
+
+"I cannot let my name be mentioned in this dreadful matter, but--I
+think I have some information--for the police.  Will you give this
+to--whomever you think proper?"
+
+She handed me a sealed envelope, again met my eyes with one of her
+dazzling glances, and hurried away.  She had gone no more than ten or
+twelve yards, and I still was standing bewildered, watching her
+graceful, retreating figure, when she turned abruptly and came back.
+
+Without looking directly at me, but alternately glancing towards a
+distant corner of the square and towards the house of Major-General
+Platt-Houston, she made the following extraordinary request:
+
+"If you would do me a very great service, for which I always would be
+grateful,"--she glanced at me with passionate intentness--"when you
+have given my message to the proper person, leave him and do not go
+near him any more to-night!"
+
+Before I could find words to reply she gathered up her cloak and ran.
+Before I could determine whether or not to follow her (for her words
+had aroused anew all my worst suspicions) she had disappeared!  I heard
+the whir of a restarted motor at no great distance, and, in the instant
+that Nayland Smith came running down the steps, I knew that I had
+nodded at my post.
+
+"Smith!"  I cried as he joined me, "tell me what we must do!" And
+rapidly I acquainted him with the incident.
+
+My friend looked very grave; then a grim smile crept round his lips.
+
+"She was a big card to play," he said; "but he did not know that I held
+one to beat it."
+
+"What!  You know this girl!  Who is she?"
+
+"She is one of the finest weapons in the enemy's armory, Petrie.  But a
+woman is a two-edged sword, and treacherous.  To our great good
+fortune, she has formed a sudden predilection, characteristically
+Oriental, for yourself.  Oh, you may scoff, but it is evident.  She was
+employed to get this letter placed in my hands.  Give it to me."
+
+I did so.
+
+"She has succeeded.  Smell."
+
+He held the envelope under my nose, and, with a sudden sense of nausea,
+I recognized the strange perfume.
+
+"You know what this presaged in Sir Crichton's case?  Can you doubt any
+longer?  She did not want you to share my fate, Petrie."
+
+"Smith," I said unsteadily, "I have followed your lead blindly in this
+horrible business and have not pressed for an explanation, but I must
+insist before I go one step farther upon knowing what it all means."
+
+"Just a few steps farther," he rejoined; "as far as a cab.  We are
+hardly safe here.  Oh, you need not fear shots or knives.  The man
+whose servants are watching us now scorns to employ such clumsy,
+tell-tale weapons."
+
+Only three cabs were on the rank, and, as we entered the first,
+something hissed past my ear, missed both Smith and me by a miracle,
+and, passing over the roof of the taxi, presumably fell in the enclosed
+garden occupying the center of the square.
+
+"What was that?" I cried.
+
+"Get in--quickly!"  Smith rapped back.  "It was attempt number one!
+More than that I cannot say.  Don't let the man hear.  He has noticed
+nothing.  Pull up the window on your side, Petrie, and look out behind.
+Good!  We've started."
+
+The cab moved off with a metallic jerk, and I turned and looked back
+through the little window in the rear.
+
+"Someone has got into another cab.  It is following ours, I think."
+
+Nayland Smith lay back and laughed unmirthfully.
+
+"Petrie," he said, "if I escape alive from this business I shall know
+that I bear a charmed life."
+
+I made no reply, as he pulled out the dilapidated pouch and filled his
+pipe.
+
+"You have asked me to explain matters," he continued, "and I will do so
+to the best of my ability.  You no doubt wonder why a servant of the
+British Government, lately stationed in Burma, suddenly appears in
+London, in the character of a detective.  I am here, Petrie--and I bear
+credentials from the very highest sources--because, quite by accident,
+I came upon a clew.  Following it up, in the ordinary course of
+routine, I obtained evidence of the existence and malignant activity of
+a certain man.  At the present stage of the case I should not be
+justified in terming him the emissary of an Eastern Power, but I may
+say that representations are shortly to be made to that Power's
+ambassador in London."
+
+He paused and glanced back towards the pursuing cab.
+
+"There is little to fear until we arrive home," he said calmly.
+"Afterwards there is much.  To continue:  This man, whether a fanatic
+or a duly appointed agent, is, unquestionably, the most malign and
+formidable personality existing in the known world today.  He is a
+linguist who speaks with almost equal facility in any of the civilized
+languages, and in most of the barbaric.  He is an adept in all the arts
+and sciences which a great university could teach him.  He also is an
+adept in certain obscure arts and sciences which no university of
+to-day can teach.  He has the brains of any three men of genius.
+Petrie, he is a mental giant."
+
+"You amaze me!" I said.
+
+"As to his mission among men.  Why did M. Jules Furneaux fall dead in a
+Paris opera house?  Because of heart failure?  No!  Because his last
+speech had shown that he held the key to the secret of Tongking.  What
+became of the Grand Duke Stanislaus?  Elopement?  Suicide?  Nothing of
+the kind.  He alone was fully alive to Russia's growing peril.  He
+alone knew the truth about Mongolia.  Why was Sir Crichton Davey
+murdered?  Because, had the work he was engaged upon ever seen the
+light it would have shown him to be the only living Englishman who
+understood the importance of the Tibetan frontiers.  I say to you
+solemnly, Petrie, that these are but a few.  Is there a man who would
+arouse the West to a sense of the awakening of the East, who would
+teach the deaf to hear, the blind to see, that the millions only await
+their leader?  He will die.  And this is only one phase of the devilish
+campaign.  The others I can merely surmise."
+
+"But, Smith, this is almost incredible!  What perverted genius controls
+this awful secret movement?"
+
+"Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow
+like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long,
+magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel
+cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect,
+with all the resources of science past and present, with all the
+resources, if you will, of a wealthy government--which, however,
+already has denied all knowledge of his existence.  Imagine that awful
+being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril
+incarnate in one man."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+I SANK into an arm-chair in my rooms and gulped down a strong peg of
+brandy.
+
+"We have been followed here," I said.  "Why did you make no attempt to
+throw the pursuers off the track, to have them intercepted?"
+
+Smith laughed.
+
+"Useless, in the first place.  Wherever we went, HE would find us.  And
+of what use to arrest his creatures?  We could prove nothing against
+them.  Further, it is evident that an attempt is to be made upon my
+life to-night--and by the same means that proved so successful in the
+case of poor Sir Crichton."
+
+His square jaw grew truculently prominent, and he leapt stormily to his
+feet, shaking his clenched fists towards the window.
+
+"The villain!" he cried.  "The fiendishly clever villain!  I suspected
+that Sir Crichton was next, and I was right.  But I came too late,
+Petrie!  That hits me hard, old man.  To think that I knew and yet
+failed to save him!"
+
+He resumed his seat, smoking hard.
+
+"Fu-Manchu has made the blunder common to all men of unusual genius,"
+he said.  "He has underrated his adversary.  He has not given me credit
+for perceiving the meaning of the scented messages.  He has thrown away
+one powerful weapon--to get such a message into my hands--and he thinks
+that once safe within doors, I shall sleep, unsuspecting, and die as
+Sir Crichton died.  But without the indiscretion of your charming
+friend, I should have known what to expect when I receive her
+'information'--which by the way, consists of a blank sheet of paper."
+
+"Smith," I broke in, "who is she?"
+
+"She is either Fu-Manchu's daughter, his wife, or his slave.  I am
+inclined to believe the last, for she has no will but his will,
+except"--with a quizzical glance--"in a certain instance."
+
+"How can you jest with some awful thing--Heaven knows what--hanging
+over your head?  What is the meaning of these perfumed envelopes?  How
+did Sir Crichton die?"
+
+"He died of the Zayat Kiss.  Ask me what that is and I reply 'I do not
+know.'  The zayats are the Burmese caravanserais, or rest-houses. Along
+a certain route--upon which I set eyes, for the first and only time,
+upon Dr. Fu-Manchu--travelers who use them sometimes die as Sir
+Crichton died, with nothing to show the cause of death but a little
+mark upon the neck, face, or limb, which has earned, in those parts,
+the title of the 'Zayat Kiss.' The rest-houses along that route are
+shunned now.  I have my theory and I hope to prove it to-night, if I
+live.  It will be one more broken weapon in his fiendish armory, and it
+is thus, and thus only, that I can hope to crush him.  This was my
+principal reason for not enlightening Dr. Cleeve.  Even walls have ears
+where Fu-Manchu is concerned, so I feigned ignorance of the meaning of
+the mark, knowing that he would be almost certain to employ the same
+methods upon some other victim.  I wanted an opportunity to study the
+Zayat Kiss in operation, and I shall have one."
+
+"But the scented envelopes?"
+
+"In the swampy forests of the district I have referred to a rare
+species of orchid, almost green, and with a peculiar scent, is
+sometimes met with.  I recognized the heavy perfume at once.  I take it
+that the thing which kills the traveler is attracted by this orchid.
+You will notice that the perfume clings to whatever it touches.  I
+doubt if it can be washed off in the ordinary way.  After at least one
+unsuccessful attempt to kill Sir Crichton--you recall that he thought
+there was something concealed in his study on a previous
+occasion?--Fu-Manchu hit upon the perfumed envelopes.  He may have a
+supply of these green orchids in his possession--possibly to feed the
+creature."
+
+"What creature?  How could any kind of creature have got into Sir
+Crichton's room tonight?"
+
+"You no doubt observed that I examined the grate of the study.  I found
+a fair quantity of fallen soot.  I at once assumed, since it appeared
+to be the only means of entrance, that something has been dropped down;
+and I took it for granted that the thing, whatever it was, must still
+be concealed either in the study or in the library.  But when I had
+obtained the evidence of the groom, Wills, I perceived that the cry
+from the lane or from the park was a signal.  I noted that the
+movements of anyone seated at the study table were visible, in shadow,
+on the blind, and that the study occupied the corner of a two-storied
+wing and, therefore, had a short chimney.  What did the signal mean?
+That Sir Crichton had leaped up from his chair, and either had received
+the Zayat Kiss or had seen the thing which someone on the roof had
+lowered down the straight chimney.  It was the signal to withdraw that
+deadly thing.  By means of the iron stairway at the rear of
+Major-General Platt-Houston's, I quite easily, gained access to the
+roof above Sir Crichton's study--and I found this."
+
+Out from his pocket Nayland Smith drew a tangled piece of silk, mixed
+up with which were a brass ring and a number of unusually large-sized
+split-shot, nipped on in the manner usual on a fishing-line.
+
+"My theory proven," he resumed.  "Not anticipating a search on the
+roof, they had been careless.  This was to weight the line and to
+prevent the creature clinging to the walls of the chimney.  Directly it
+had dropped in the grate, however, by means of this ring I assume that
+the weighted line was withdrawn, and the thing was only held by one
+slender thread, which sufficed, though, to draw it back again when it
+had done its work.  It might have got tangled, of course, but they
+reckoned on its making straight up the carved leg of the writing-table
+for the prepared envelope.  From there to the hand of Sir
+Crichton--which, from having touched the envelope, would also be
+scented with the perfume--was a certain move."
+
+"My God!  How horrible!" I exclaimed, and glanced apprehensively into
+the dusky shadows of the room.  "What is your theory respecting this
+creature--what shape, what color--?"
+
+"It is something that moves rapidly and silently.  I will venture no
+more at present, but I think it works in the dark.  The study was dark,
+remember, save for the bright patch beneath the reading-lamp. I have
+observed that the rear of this house is ivy-covered right up to and
+above your bedroom.  Let us make ostentatious preparations to retire,
+and I think we may rely upon Fu-Manchu's servants to attempt my
+removal, at any rate--if not yours."
+
+"But, my dear fellow, it is a climb of thirty-five feet at the very
+least."
+
+"You remember the cry in the back lane?  It suggested something to me,
+and I tested my idea--successfully.  It was the cry of a dacoit.  Oh,
+dacoity, though quiescent, is by no means extinct.  Fu-Manchu has
+dacoits in his train, and probably it is one who operates the Zayat
+Kiss, since it was a dacoit who watched the window of the study this
+evening.  To such a man an ivy-covered wall is a grand staircase."
+
+The horrible events that followed are punctuated, in my mind, by the
+striking of a distant clock.  It is singular how trivialities thus
+assert themselves in moments of high tension.  I will proceed, then, by
+these punctuations, to the coming of the horror that it was written we
+should encounter.
+
+The clock across the common struck two.
+
+Having removed all traces of the scent of the orchid from our hands
+with a solution of ammonia Smith and I had followed the programme laid
+down.  It was an easy matter to reach the rear of the house, by simply
+climbing a fence, and we did not doubt that seeing the light go out in
+the front, our unseen watcher would proceed to the back.
+
+The room was a large one, and we had made up my camp-bed at one end,
+stuffing odds and ends under the clothes to lend the appearance of a
+sleeper, which device we also had adopted in the case of the larger
+bed.  The perfumed envelope lay upon a little coffee table in the
+center of the floor, and Smith, with an electric pocket lamp, a
+revolver, and a brassey beside him, sat on cushions in the shadow of
+the wardrobe.  I occupied a post between the windows.
+
+No unusual sound, so far, had disturbed the stillness of the night.
+Save for the muffled throb of the rare all-night cars passing the front
+of the house, our vigil had been a silent one.  The full moon had
+painted about the floor weird shadows of the clustering ivy, spreading
+the design gradually from the door, across the room, past the little
+table where the envelope lay, and finally to the foot of the bed.
+
+The distant clock struck a quarter-past two.
+
+A slight breeze stirred the ivy, and a new shadow added itself to the
+extreme edge of the moon's design.
+
+Something rose, inch by inch, above the sill of the westerly window.  I
+could see only its shadow, but a sharp, sibilant breath from Smith told
+me that he, from his post, could see the cause of the shadow.
+
+Every nerve in my body seemed to be strung tensely.  I was icy cold,
+expectant, and prepared for whatever horror was upon us.
+
+The shadow became stationary.  The dacoit was studying the interior of
+the room.
+
+Then it suddenly lengthened, and, craning my head to the left, I saw a
+lithe, black-clad form, surmounted by a Yellow face, sketchy in the
+moonlight, pressed against the window-panes!
+
+One thin, brown hand appeared over the edge of the lowered sash, which
+it grasped--and then another.  The man made absolutely no sound
+whatever.  The second hand disappeared--and reappeared.  It held a
+small, square box.  There was a very faint CLICK.
+
+The dacoit swung himself below the window with the agility of an ape,
+as, with a dull, muffled thud, SOMETHING dropped upon the carpet!
+
+"Stand still, for your life!" came Smith's voice, high-pitched.
+
+A beam of white leaped out across the room and played full upon the
+coffee-table in the center.
+
+Prepared as I was for something horrible, I know that I paled at sight
+of the thing that was running round the edge of the envelope.
+
+It was an insect, full six inches long, and of a vivid, venomous, red
+color!  It had something of the appearance of a great ant, with its
+long, quivering antennae and its febrile, horrible vitality; but it was
+proportionately longer of body and smaller of head, and had numberless
+rapidly moving legs.  In short, it was a giant centipede, apparently of
+the scolopendra group, but of a form quite new to me.
+
+These things I realized in one breathless instant; in the next--Smith
+had dashed the thing's poisonous life out with one straight, true blow
+of the golf club!
+
+I leaped to the window and threw it widely open, feeling a silk thread
+brush my hand as I did so.  A black shape was dropping, with incredible
+agility from branch to branch of the ivy, and, without once offering a
+mark for a revolver-shot, it merged into the shadows beneath the trees
+of the garden.  As I turned and switched on the light Nayland Smith
+dropped limply into a chair, leaning his head upon his hands.  Even
+that grim courage had been tried sorely.
+
+"Never mind the dacoit, Petrie," he said.  "Nemesis will know where to
+find him.  We know now what causes the mark of the Zayat Kiss.
+Therefore science is richer for our first brush with the enemy, and the
+enemy is poorer--unless he has any more unclassified centipedes.  I
+understand now something that has been puzzling me since I heard of
+it--Sir Crichton's stifled cry.  When we remember that he was almost
+past speech, it is reasonable to suppose that his cry was not 'The red
+hand!' but 'The red ANT!'  Petrie, to think that I failed, by less than
+an hour, to save him from such an end!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+"THE body of a lascar, dressed in the manner usual on the P. & O.
+boats, was recovered from the Thames off Tilbury by the river police at
+six A.M. this morning.  It is supposed that the man met with an
+accident in leaving his ship."
+
+Nayland Smith passed me the evening paper and pointed to the above
+paragraph.
+
+"For 'lascar' read 'dacoit,'" he said.  "Our visitor, who came by way
+of the ivy, fortunately for us, failed to follow his instructions.
+Also, he lost the centipede and left a clew behind him.  Dr. Fu-Manchu
+does not overlook such lapses."
+
+It was a sidelight upon the character of the awful being with whom we
+had to deal.  My very soul recoiled from bare consideration of the fate
+that would be ours if ever we fell into his hands.
+
+The telephone bell rang.  I went out and found that Inspector Weymouth
+of New Scotland Yard had called us up.
+
+"Will Mr. Nayland Smith please come to the Wapping River Police Station
+at once," was the message.
+
+Peaceful interludes were few enough throughout that wild pursuit.
+
+"It is certainly something important," said my friend; "and, if
+Fu-Manchu is at the bottom of it--as we must presume him to
+be--probably something ghastly."
+
+A brief survey of the time-tables showed us that there were no trains
+to serve our haste.  We accordingly chartered a cab and proceeded east.
+
+Smith, throughout the journey, talked entertainingly about his work in
+Burma.  Of intent, I think, he avoided any reference to the
+circumstances which first had brought him in contact with the sinister
+genius of the Yellow Movement.  His talk was rather of the sunshine of
+the East than of its shadows.
+
+But the drive concluded--and all too soon.  In a silence which neither
+of us seemed disposed to break, we entered the police depot, and
+followed an officer who received us into the room where Weymouth waited.
+
+The inspector greeted us briefly, nodding toward the table.
+
+"Poor Cadby, the most promising lad at the Yard," he said; and his
+usually gruff voice had softened strangely.
+
+Smith struck his right fist into the palm of his left hand and swore
+under his breath, striding up and down the neat little room.  No one
+spoke for a moment, and in the silence I could hear the whispering of
+the Thames outside--of the Thames which had so many strange secrets to
+tell, and now was burdened with another.
+
+The body lay prone upon the deal table--this latest of the river's
+dead--dressed in rough sailor garb, and, to all outward seeming, a
+seaman of nondescript nationality--such as is no stranger in Wapping
+and Shadwell.  His dark, curly hair clung clammily about the brown
+forehead; his skin was stained, they told me.  He wore a gold ring in
+one ear, and three fingers of the left hand were missing.
+
+"It was almost the same with Mason."  The river police inspector was
+speaking.  "A week ago, on a Wednesday, he went off in his own time on
+some funny business down St. George's way--and Thursday night the
+ten-o'clock boat got the grapnel on him off Hanover Hole.  His first
+two fingers on the right hand were clean gone, and his left hand was
+mutilated frightfully."
+
+He paused and glanced at Smith.
+
+"That lascar, too," he continued, "that you came down to see, sir; you
+remember his hands?"
+
+Smith nodded.
+
+"He was not a lascar," he said shortly.  "He was a dacoit."
+
+Silence fell again.
+
+I turned to the array of objects lying on the table--those which had
+been found in Cadby's clothing.  None of them were noteworthy, except
+that which had been found thrust into the loose neck of his shirt.
+This last it was which had led the police to send for Nayland Smith,
+for it constituted the first clew which had come to light pointing to
+the authors of these mysterious tragedies.
+
+It was a Chinese pigtail.  That alone was sufficiently remarkable; but
+it was rendered more so by the fact that the plaited queue was a false
+one being attached to a most ingenious bald wig.
+
+"You're sure it wasn't part of a Chinese make-up?" questioned Weymouth,
+his eye on the strange relic.  "Cadby was clever at disguise."
+
+Smith snatched the wig from my hands with a certain irritation, and
+tried to fit it on the dead detective.
+
+"Too small by inches!" he jerked.  "And look how it's padded in the
+crown.  This thing was made for a most abnormal head."
+
+He threw it down, and fell to pacing the room again.
+
+"Where did you find him--exactly?" he asked.
+
+"Limehouse Reach--under Commercial Dock Pier--exactly an hour ago."
+
+"And you last saw him at eight o'clock last night?"--to Weymouth.
+
+"Eight to a quarter past."
+
+"You think he has been dead nearly twenty-four hours, Petrie?"
+
+"Roughly, twenty-four hours," I replied.
+
+"Then, we know that he was on the track of the Fu-Manchu group, that he
+followed up some clew which led him to the neighborhood of old Ratcliff
+Highway, and that he died the same night.  You are sure that is where
+he was going?"
+
+"Yes," said Weymouth; "He was jealous of giving anything away, poor
+chap; it meant a big lift for him if he pulled the case off.  But he
+gave me to understand that he expected to spend last night in that
+district.  He left the Yard about eight, as I've said, to go to his
+rooms, and dress for the job."
+
+"Did he keep any record of his cases?"
+
+"Of course!  He was most particular.  Cadby was a man with ambitions,
+sir!  You'll want to see his book.  Wait while I get his address; it's
+somewhere in Brixton."
+
+He went to the telephone, and Inspector Ryman covered up the dead man's
+face.
+
+Nayland Smith was palpably excited.
+
+"He almost succeeded where we have failed, Petrie," he said.  "There is
+no doubt in my mind that he was hot on the track of Fu-Manchu!  Poor
+Mason had probably blundered on the scent, too, and he met with a
+similar fate.  Without other evidence, the fact that they both died in
+the same way as the dacoit would be conclusive, for we know that
+Fu-Manchu killed the dacoit!"
+
+"What is the meaning of the mutilated hands, Smith?"
+
+"God knows!  Cadby's death was from drowning, you say?"
+
+"There are no other marks of violence."
+
+"But he was a very strong swimmer, Doctor," interrupted Inspector
+Ryman.  "Why, he pulled off the quarter-mile championship at the
+Crystal Palace last year!  Cadby wasn't a man easy to drown.  And as
+for Mason, he was an R.N.R., and like a fish in the water!"
+
+Smith shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
+
+"Let us hope that one day we shall know how they died," he said simply.
+
+Weymouth returned from the telephone.
+
+"The address is No.--Cold Harbor Lane," he reported.  "I shall not be
+able to come along, but you can't miss it; it's close by the Brixton
+Police Station.  There's no family, fortunately; he was quite alone in
+the world.  His case-book isn't in the American desk, which you'll find
+in his sitting-room; it's in the cupboard in the corner--top shelf.
+Here are his keys, all intact.  I think this is the cupboard key."
+
+Smith nodded.
+
+"Come on, Petrie," he said.  "We haven't a second to waste."
+
+Our cab was waiting, and in a few seconds we were speeding along
+Wapping High Street.  We had gone no more than a few hundred yards, I
+think, when Smith suddenly slapped his open hand down on his knee.
+
+"That pigtail!" he cried.  "I have left it behind!  We must have it,
+Petrie!  Stop!  Stop!"
+
+The cab was pulled up, and Smith alighted.
+
+"Don't wait for me," he directed hurriedly.  "Here, take Weymouth's
+card.  Remember where he said the book was?  It's all we want.  Come
+straight on to Scotland Yard and meet me there."
+
+"But Smith," I protested, "a few minutes can make no difference!"
+
+"Can't it!" he snapped.  "Do you suppose Fu-Manchu is going to leave
+evidence like that lying about?  It's a thousand to one he has it
+already, but there is just a bare chance."
+
+It was a new aspect of the situation and one that afforded no room for
+comment; and so lost in thought did I become that the cab was outside
+the house for which I was bound ere I realized that we had quitted the
+purlieus of Wapping.  Yet I had had leisure to review the whole troop
+of events which had crowded my life since the return of Nayland Smith
+from Burma.  Mentally, I had looked again upon the dead Sir Crichton
+Davey, and with Smith had waited in the dark for the dreadful thing
+that had killed him.  Now, with those remorseless memories jostling in
+my mind, I was entering the house of Fu-Manchu's last victim, and the
+shadow of that giant evil seemed to be upon it like a palpable cloud.
+
+Cadby's old landlady greeted me with a queer mixture of fear and
+embarrassment in her manner.
+
+"I am Dr. Petrie," I said, "and I regret that I bring bad news
+respecting Mr. Cadby."
+
+"Oh, sir!" she cried.  "Don't tell me that anything has happened to
+him!" And divining something of the mission on which I was come, for
+such sad duty often falls to the lot of the medical man: "Oh, the poor,
+brave lad!"
+
+Indeed, I respected the dead man's memory more than ever from that
+hour, since the sorrow of the worthy old soul was quite pathetic, and
+spoke eloquently for the unhappy cause of it.
+
+"There was a terrible wailing at the back of the house last night,
+Doctor, and I heard it again to-night, a second before you knocked.
+Poor lad!  It was the same when his mother died."
+
+At the moment I paid little attention to her words, for such beliefs
+are common, unfortunately; but when she was sufficiently composed I
+went on to explain what I thought necessary.  And now the old lady's
+embarrassment took precedence of her sorrow, and presently the truth
+came out:
+
+"There's a--young lady--in his rooms, sir."
+
+I started.  This might mean little or might mean much.
+
+"She came and waited for him last night, Doctor--from ten until
+half-past--and this morning again.  She came the third time about an
+hour ago, and has been upstairs since."
+
+"Do you know her, Mrs. Dolan?"
+
+Mrs. Dolan grew embarrassed again.
+
+"Well, Doctor," she said, wiping her eyes the while, "I DO.  And God
+knows he was a good lad, and I like a mother to him; but she is not the
+girl I should have liked a son of mine to take up with."
+
+At any other time, this would have been amusing; now, it might be
+serious.  Mrs. Dolan's account of the wailing became suddenly
+significant, for perhaps it meant that one of Fu-Manchu's dacoit
+followers was watching the house, to give warning of any stranger's
+approach!  Warning to whom?  It was unlikely that I should forget the
+dark eyes of another of Fu-Manchu's servants.  Was that lure of men
+even now in the house, completing her evil work?
+
+"I should never have allowed her in his rooms--" began Mrs. Dolan
+again.  Then there was an interruption.
+
+A soft rustling reached my ears--intimately feminine.  The girl was
+stealing down!
+
+I leaped out into the hall, and she turned and fled blindly before
+me--back up the stairs!  Taking three steps at a time, I followed her,
+bounded into the room above almost at her heels, and stood with my back
+to the door.
+
+She cowered against the desk by the window, a slim figure in a clinging
+silk gown, which alone explained Mrs. Dolan's distrust.  The gaslight
+was turned very low, and her hat shadowed her face, but could not hide
+its startling beauty, could not mar the brilliancy of the skin, nor dim
+the wonderful eyes of this modern Delilah.  For it was she!
+
+"So I came in time," I said grimly, and turned the key in the lock.
+
+"Oh!" she panted at that, and stood facing me, leaning back with her
+jewel-laden hands clutching the desk edge.
+
+"Give me whatever you have removed from here," I said sternly, "and
+then prepare to accompany me."
+
+She took a step forward, her eyes wide with fear, her lips parted.
+
+"I have taken nothing," she said.  Her breast was heaving tumultuously.
+"Oh, let me go!  Please, let me go!"  And impulsively she threw herself
+forward, pressing clasped hands against my shoulder and looking up into
+my face with passionate, pleading eyes.
+
+It is with some shame that I confess how her charm enveloped me like a
+magic cloud.  Unfamiliar with the complex Oriental temperament, I had
+laughed at Nayland Smith when he had spoken of this girl's infatuation.
+"Love in the East," he had said, "is like the conjurer's mango-tree; it
+is born, grows and flowers at the touch of a hand." Now, in those
+pleading eyes I read confirmation of his words.  Her clothes or her
+hair exhaled a faint perfume.  Like all Fu-Manchu's servants, she was
+perfectly chosen for her peculiar duties.  Her beauty was wholly
+intoxicating.
+
+But I thrust her away.
+
+"You have no claim to mercy," I said.  "Do not count upon any.  What
+have you taken from here?"
+
+She grasped the lapels of my coat.
+
+"I will tell you all I can--all I dare," she panted eagerly, fearfully.
+"I should know how to deal with your friend, but with you I am lost!
+If you could only understand you would not be so cruel."  Her slight
+accent added charm to the musical voice.  "I am not free, as your
+English women are.  What I do I must do, for it is the will of my
+master, and I am only a slave.  Ah, you are not a man if you can give
+me to the police.  You have no heart if you can forget that I tried to
+save you once."
+
+I had feared that plea, for, in her own Oriental fashion, she certainly
+had tried to save me from a deadly peril once--at the expense of my
+friend.  But I had feared the plea, for I did not know how to meet it.
+How could I give her up, perhaps to stand her trial for murder?  And
+now I fell silent, and she saw why I was silent.
+
+"I may deserve no mercy; I may be even as bad as you think; but what
+have YOU to do with the police?  It is not your work to hound a woman
+to death.  Could you ever look another woman in the eyes--one that you
+loved, and know that she trusted you--if you had done such a thing?
+Ah, I have no friend in all the world, or I should not be here.  Do not
+be my enemy, my judge, and make me worse than I am; be my friend, and
+save me--from HIM." The tremulous lips were close to mine, her breath
+fanned my cheek.  "Have mercy on me."
+
+At that moment I honestly would have given half of my worldly
+possessions to have been spared the decision which I knew I must come
+to.  After all, what proof had I that she was a willing accomplice of
+Dr. Fu-Manchu?  Furthermore, she was an Oriental, and her code must
+necessarily be different from mine.  Irreconcilable as the thing may be
+with Western ideas, Nayland Smith had really told me that he believed
+the girl to be a slave.  Then there remained that other reason why I
+loathed the idea of becoming her captor.  It was almost tantamount to
+betrayal!  Must I soil my hands with such work?
+
+Thus--I suppose--her seductive beauty argued against my sense of right.
+The jeweled fingers grasped my shoulders nervously, and her slim body
+quivered against mine as she watched me, with all her soul in her eyes,
+in an abandonment of pleading despair.  Then I remembered the fate of
+the man in whose room we stood.
+
+"You lured Cadby to his death," I said, and shook her off.
+
+"No, no!" she cried wildly, clutching at me.  "No, I swear by the holy
+name I did not!  I did not!  I watched him, spied upon him--yes!  But,
+listen: it was because he would not be warned that he met his death.  I
+could not save him!  Ah, I am not so bad as that.  I will tell you.  I
+have taken his notebook and torn out the last pages and burnt them.
+Look!  in the grate.  The book was too big to steal away.  I came twice
+and could not find it.  There, will you let me go?"
+
+"If you will tell me where and how to seize Dr. Fu-Manchu--yes."
+
+Her hands dropped and she took a backward step.  A new terror was to be
+read in her face.
+
+"I dare not!  I dare not!"
+
+"Then you would--if you dared?"
+
+She was watching me intently.
+
+"Not if YOU would go to find him," she said.
+
+And, with all that I thought her to be, the stern servant of justice
+that I would have had myself, I felt the hot blood leap to my cheek at
+all which the words implied.  She grasped my arm.
+
+"Could you hide me from him if I came to you, and told you all I know?"
+
+"The authorities--"
+
+"Ah!"  Her expression changed.  "They can put me on the rack if they
+choose, but never one word would I speak--never one little word."
+
+She threw up her head scornfully.  Then the proud glance softened again.
+
+"But I will speak for you."
+
+Closer she came, and closer, until she could whisper in my ear.
+
+"Hide me from your police, from HIM, from everybody, and I will no
+longer be his slave."
+
+My heart was beating with painful rapidity.  I had not counted on this
+warring with a woman; moreover, it was harder than I could have dreamt
+of.  For some time I had been aware that by the charm of her
+personality and the art of her pleading she had brought me down from my
+judgment seat--had made it all but impossible for me to give her up to
+justice.  Now, I was disarmed--but in a quandary.  What should I do?
+What COULD I do?  I turned away from her and walked to the hearth, in
+which some paper ash lay and yet emitted a faint smell.
+
+Not more than ten seconds elapsed, I am confident, from the time that I
+stepped across the room until I glanced back.  But she had gone!
+
+As I leapt to the door the key turned gently from the outside.
+
+"Ma 'alesh!" came her soft whisper; "but I am afraid to trust you--yet.
+Be comforted, for there is one near who would have killed you had I
+wished it.  Remember, I will come to you whenever you will take me and
+hide me."
+
+Light footsteps pattered down the stairs.  I heard a stifled cry from
+Mrs. Dolan as the mysterious visitor ran past her.  The front door
+opened and closed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+"Shen-Yan's is a dope-shop in one of the burrows off the old Ratcliff
+Highway," said Inspector Weymouth.
+
+"'Singapore Charlie's,' they call it.  It's a center for some of the
+Chinese societies, I believe, but all sorts of opium-smokers use it.
+There have never been any complaints that I know of.  I don't
+understand this."
+
+We stood in his room at New Scotland Yard, bending over a sheet of
+foolscap upon which were arranged some burned fragments from poor
+Cadby's grate, for so hurriedly had the girl done her work that
+combustion had not been complete.
+
+"What do we make of this?" said Smith.  "'. . . Hunchback . . . lascar
+went up . . . unlike others . . . not return . . . till Shen-Yan'
+(there is no doubt about the name, I think) 'turned me out . . . booming
+sound . . . lascar in . . . mortuary I could ident . . . not for days,
+or suspici . . . Tuesday night in a different make . . . snatch
+. . . pigtail . . .'"
+
+"The pigtail again!" rapped Weymouth.
+
+"She evidently burned the torn-out pages all together," continued
+Smith.  "They lay flat, and this was in the middle.  I see the hand of
+retributive justice in that, Inspector.  Now we have a reference to a
+hunchback, and what follows amounts to this: A lascar (amongst several
+other persons) went up somewhere--presumably upstairs--at Shen-Yan's,
+and did not come down again.  Cadby, who was there disguised, noted a
+booming sound.  Later, he identified the lascar in some mortuary.  We
+have no means of fixing the date of this visit to Shen-Yan's, but I
+feel inclined to put down the 'lascar' as the dacoit who was murdered
+by Fu-Manchu!  It is sheer supposition, however.  But that Cadby meant
+to pay another visit to the place in a different 'make-up' or disguise,
+is evident, and that the Tuesday night proposed was last night is a
+reasonable deduction.  The reference to a pigtail is principally
+interesting because of what was found on Cadby's body."
+
+Inspector Weymouth nodded affirmatively, and Smith glanced at his watch.
+
+"Exactly ten-twenty-three," he said.  "I will trouble you, Inspector,
+for the freedom of your fancy wardrobe.  There is time to spend an hour
+in the company of Shen-Yan's opium friends."
+
+Weymouth raised his eyebrows.
+
+"It might be risky.  What about an official visit?"
+
+Nayland Smith laughed.
+
+"Worse than useless!  By your own showing, the place is open to
+inspection.  No; guile against guile!  We are dealing with a Chinaman,
+with the incarnate essence of Eastern subtlety, with the most
+stupendous genius that the modern Orient has produced."
+
+"I don't believe in disguises," said Weymouth, with a certain
+truculence.  "It's mostly played out, that game, and generally leads to
+failure.  Still, if you're determined, sir, there's an end of it.
+Foster will make your face up.  What disguise do you propose to adopt?"
+
+"A sort of Dago seaman, I think; something like poor Cadby.  I can rely
+on my knowledge of the brutes, if I am sure of my disguise."
+
+"You are forgetting me, Smith," I said.
+
+He turned to me quickly.
+
+"Petrie," he replied, "it is MY business, unfortunately, but it is no
+sort of hobby."
+
+"You mean that you can no longer rely upon me?" I said angrily.
+
+Smith grasped my hand, and met my rather frigid stare with a look of
+real concern on his gaunt, bronzed face.
+
+"My dear old chap," he answered, "that was really unkind.  You know
+that I meant something totally different."
+
+"It's all right, Smith;" I said, immediately ashamed of my choler, and
+wrung his hand heartily.  "I can pretend to smoke opium as well as
+another.  I shall be going, too, Inspector."
+
+As a result of this little passage of words, some twenty minutes later
+two dangerous-looking seafaring ruffians entered a waiting cab,
+accompanied by Inspector Weymouth, and were driven off into the
+wilderness of London's night.  In this theatrical business there was,
+to my mind, something ridiculous--almost childish--and I could have
+laughed heartily had it not been that grim tragedy lurked so near to
+farce.
+
+The mere recollection that somewhere at our journey's end Fu-Manchu
+awaited us was sufficient to sober my reflections--Fu-Manchu, who, with
+all the powers represented by Nayland Smith pitted against him, pursued
+his dark schemes triumphantly, and lurked in hiding within this very
+area which was so sedulously patrolled--Fu-Manchu, whom I had never
+seen, but whose name stood for horrors indefinable!  Perhaps I was
+destined to meet the terrible Chinese doctor to-night.
+
+I ceased to pursue a train of thought which promised to lead to morbid
+depths, and directed my attention to what Smith was saying.
+
+"We will drop down from Wapping and reconnoiter, as you say the place
+is close to the riverside.  Then you can put us ashore somewhere below.
+Ryman can keep the launch close to the back of the premises, and your
+fellows will be hanging about near the front, near enough to hear the
+whistle."
+
+"Yes," assented Weymouth; "I've arranged for that.  If you are
+suspected, you shall give the alarm?"
+
+"I don't know," said Smith thoughtfully.  "Even in that event I might
+wait awhile."
+
+"Don't wait too long," advised the Inspector.  "We shouldn't be much
+wiser if your next appearance was on the end of a grapnel, somewhere
+down Greenwich Reach, with half your fingers missing."
+
+The cab pulled up outside the river police depot, and Smith and I
+entered without delay, four shabby-looking fellows who had been seated
+in the office springing up to salute the Inspector, who followed us in.
+
+"Guthrie and Lisle," he said briskly, "get along and find a dark corner
+which commands the door of Singapore Charlie's off the old Highway.
+You look the dirtiest of the troupe, Guthrie; you might drop asleep on
+the pavement, and Lisle can argue with you about getting home.  Don't
+move till you hear the whistle inside or have my orders, and note
+everybody that goes in and comes out.  You other two belong to this
+division?"
+
+The C.I.D. men having departed, the remaining pair saluted again.
+
+"Well, you're on special duty to-night. You've been prompt, but don't
+stick your chests out so much.  Do you know of a back way to
+Shen-Yan's?"
+
+The men looked at one another, and both shook their heads.
+
+"There's an empty shop nearly opposite, sir," replied one of them.  "I
+know a broken window at the back where we could climb in.  Then we
+could get through to the front and watch from there."
+
+"Good!" cried the Inspector.  "See you are not spotted, though; and if
+you hear the whistle, don't mind doing a bit of damage, but be inside
+Shen-Yan's like lightning.  Otherwise, wait for orders."
+
+Inspector Ryman came in, glancing at the clock.
+
+"Launch is waiting," he said.
+
+"Right," replied Smith thoughtfully.  "I am half afraid, though, that
+the recent alarms may have scared our quarry--your man, Mason, and then
+Cadby.  Against which we have that, so far as he is likely to know,
+there has been no clew pointing to this opium den.  Remember, he thinks
+Cadby's notes are destroyed."
+
+"The whole business is an utter mystery to me," confessed Ryman.  "I'm
+told that there's some dangerous Chinese devil hiding somewhere in
+London, and that you expect to find him at Shen-Yan's. Supposing he
+uses that place, which is possible, how do you know he's there
+to-night?"
+
+"I don't," said Smith; "but it is the first clew we have had pointing
+to one of his haunts, and time means precious lives where Dr. Fu-Manchu
+is concerned."
+
+"Who is he, sir, exactly, this Dr. Fu-Manchu?"
+
+"I have only the vaguest idea, Inspector; but he is no ordinary
+criminal.  He is the greatest genius which the powers of evil have put
+on earth for centuries.  He has the backing of a political group whose
+wealth is enormous, and his mission in Europe is to PAVE THE WAY!  Do
+you follow me?  He is the advance-agent of a movement so epoch-making
+that not one Britisher, and not one American, in fifty thousand has
+ever dreamed of it."
+
+Ryman stared, but made no reply, and we went out, passing down to the
+breakwater and boarding the waiting launch.  With her crew of three,
+the party numbered seven that swung out into the Pool, and, clearing
+the pier, drew in again and hugged the murky shore.
+
+The night had been clear enough hitherto, but now came scudding
+rainbanks to curtain the crescent moon, and anon to unveil her again
+and show the muddy swirls about us.  The view was not extensive from
+the launch.  Sometimes a deepening of the near shadows would tell of a
+moored barge, or lights high above our heads mark the deck of a large
+vessel.  In the floods of moonlight gaunt shapes towered above; in the
+ensuing darkness only the oily glitter of the tide occupied the
+foreground of the night-piece.
+
+The Surrey shore was a broken wall of blackness, patched with lights
+about which moved hazy suggestions of human activity.  The bank we were
+following offered a prospect even more gloomy--a dense, dark mass, amid
+which, sometimes, mysterious half-tones told of a dock gate, or sudden
+high lights leapt flaring to the eye.
+
+Then, out of the mystery ahead, a green light grew and crept down upon
+us.  A giant shape loomed up, and frowned crushingly upon the little
+craft.  A blaze of light, the jangle of a bell, and it was past.  We
+were dancing in the wash of one of the Scotch steamers, and the murk
+had fallen again.
+
+Discords of remote activity rose above the more intimate throbbing of
+our screw, and we seemed a pigmy company floating past the workshops of
+Brobdingnagian toilers.  The chill of the near water communicated
+itself to me, and I felt the protection of my shabby garments
+inadequate against it.
+
+Far over on the Surrey shore a blue light--vaporous,
+mysterious--flicked translucent tongues against the night's curtain.
+It was a weird, elusive flame, leaping, wavering, magically changing
+from blue to a yellowed violet, rising, falling.
+
+"Only a gasworks," came Smith's voice, and I knew that he, too, had
+been watching those elfin fires.  "But it always reminds me of a
+Mexican teocalli, and the altar of sacrifice."
+
+The simile was apt, but gruesome.  I thought of Dr. Fu-Manchu and the
+severed fingers, and could not repress a shudder.
+
+"On your left, past the wooden pier!  Not where the lamp is--beyond
+that; next to the dark, square building--Shen-Yan's."
+
+It was Inspector Ryman speaking.
+
+"Drop us somewhere handy, then," replied Smith, "and lie close in, with
+your ears wide open.  We may have to run for it, so don't go far away."
+
+From the tone of his voice I knew that the night mystery of the Thames
+had claimed at least one other victim.
+
+"Dead slow," came Ryman's order.  "We'll put in to the Stone Stairs."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+A SEEMINGLY drunken voice was droning from a neighboring alleyway as
+Smith lurched in hulking fashion to the door of a little shop above
+which, crudely painted, were the words:
+
+
+"SHEN-YAN, Barber."
+
+
+I shuffled along behind him, and had time to note the box of studs,
+German shaving tackle and rolls of twist which lay untidily in the
+window ere Smith kicked the door open, clattered down three wooden
+steps, and pulled himself up with a jerk, seizing my arm for support.
+
+We stood in a bare and very dirty room, which could only claim kinship
+with a civilized shaving-saloon by virtue of the grimy towel thrown
+across the back of the solitary chair.  A Yiddish theatrical bill of
+some kind, illustrated, adorned one of the walls, and another bill, in
+what may have been Chinese, completed the decorations.  From behind a
+curtain heavily brocaded with filth a little Chinaman appeared, dressed
+in a loose smock, black trousers and thick-soled slippers, and,
+advancing, shook his head vigorously.
+
+"No shavee--no shavee," he chattered, simian fashion, squinting from
+one to the other of us with his twinkling eyes.  "Too late!  Shuttee
+shop!"
+
+"Don't you come none of it wi' me!" roared Smith, in a voice of amazing
+gruffness, and shook an artificially dirtied fist under the Chinaman's
+nose.  "Get inside and gimme an' my mate a couple o' pipes.  Smokee
+pipe, you yellow scum--savvy?"
+
+My friend bent forward and glared into the other's eyes with a
+vindictiveness that amazed me, unfamiliar as I was with this form of
+gentle persuasion.
+
+"Kop 'old o' that," he said, and thrust a coin into the Chinaman's
+yellow paw.  "Keep me waitin' an' I'll pull the dam' shop down,
+Charlie.  You can lay to it."
+
+"No hab got pipee--" began the other.
+
+Smith raised his fist, and Yan capitulated.
+
+"Allee lightee," he said.  "Full up--no loom.  You come see."
+
+He dived behind the dirty curtain, Smith and I following, and ran up a
+dark stair.  The next moment I found myself in an atmosphere which was
+literally poisonous.  It was all but unbreathable, being loaded with
+opium fumes.  Never before had I experienced anything like it.  Every
+breath was an effort.  A tin oil-lamp on a box in the middle of the
+floor dimly illuminated the horrible place, about the walls of which
+ten or twelve bunks were ranged and all of them occupied.  Most of the
+occupants were lying motionless, but one or two were squatting in their
+bunks noisily sucking at the little metal pipes.  These had not yet
+attained to the opium-smoker's Nirvana.
+
+"No loom--samee tella you," said Shen-Yan, complacently testing Smith's
+shilling with his yellow, decayed teeth.
+
+Smith walked to a corner and dropped cross-legged, on the floor,
+pulling me down with him.
+
+"Two pipe quick," he said.  "Plenty room.  Two piecee pipe--or plenty
+heap trouble."
+
+A dreary voice from one of the bunks came:
+
+"Give 'im a pipe, Charlie, curse yer!  an' stop 'is palaver."
+
+Yan performed a curious little shrug, rather of the back than of the
+shoulders, and shuffled to the box which bore the smoky lamp.  Holding
+a needle in the flame, he dipped it, when red-hot, into an old cocoa
+tin, and withdrew it with a bead of opium adhering to the end.  Slowly
+roasting this over the lamp, he dropped it into the bowl of the metal
+pipe which he held ready, where it burned with a spirituous blue flame.
+
+"Pass it over," said Smith huskily, and rose on his knees with the
+assumed eagerness of a slave to the drug.
+
+Yan handed him the pipe, which he promptly put to his lips, and
+prepared another for me.
+
+"Whatever you do, don't inhale any," came Smith's whispered injunction.
+
+It was with a sense of nausea greater even than that occasioned by the
+disgusting atmosphere of the den that I took the pipe and pretended to
+smoke.  Taking my cue from my friend, I allowed my head gradually to
+sink lower and lower, until, within a few minutes, I sprawled sideways
+on the floor, Smith lying close beside me.
+
+"The ship's sinkin'," droned a voice from one of the bunks.  "Look at
+the rats."
+
+Yan had noiselessly withdrawn, and I experienced a curious sense of
+isolation from my fellows--from the whole of the Western world.  My
+throat was parched with the fumes, my head ached.  The vicious
+atmosphere seemed contaminating.  I was as one dropped--
+
+Somewhere East of Suez, where the best is like the worst, And there
+ain't no Ten Commandments and a man can raise a thirst.
+
+Smith began to whisper softly.
+
+"We have carried it through successfully so far," he said.  "I don't
+know if you have observed it, but there is a stair just behind you,
+half concealed by a ragged curtain.  We are near that, and well in the
+dark.  I have seen nothing suspicious so far--or nothing much.  But if
+there was anything going forward it would no doubt be delayed until we
+new arrivals were well doped.  S-SH!"
+
+He pressed my arm to emphasize the warning.  Through my half-closed
+eyes I perceived a shadowy form near the curtain to which he had
+referred.  I lay like a log, but my muscles were tensed nervously.
+
+The shadow materialized as the figure moved forward into the room with
+a curiously lithe movement.
+
+The smoky lamp in the middle of the place afforded scant illumination,
+serving only to indicate sprawling shapes--here an extended hand, brown
+or yellow, there a sketchy, corpse-like face; whilst from all about
+rose obscene sighings and murmurings in far-away voices--an uncanny,
+animal chorus.  It was like a glimpse of the Inferno seen by some
+Chinese Dante.  But so close to us stood the newcomer that I was able
+to make out a ghastly parchment face, with small, oblique eyes, and a
+misshapen head crowned with a coiled pigtail, surmounting a slight,
+hunched body.  There was something unnatural, inhuman, about that
+masklike face, and something repulsive in the bent shape and the long,
+yellow hands clasped one upon the other.
+
+Fu-Manchu, from Smith's account, in no way resembled this crouching
+apparition with the death's-head countenance and lithe movements; but
+an instinct of some kind told me that we were on the right scent--that
+this was one of the doctor's servants.  How I came to that conclusion,
+I cannot explain; but with no doubt in my mind that this was a member
+of the formidable murder group, I saw the yellow man creep nearer,
+nearer, silently, bent and peering.
+
+He was watching us.
+
+Of another circumstance I became aware, and a disquieting circumstance.
+There were fewer murmurings and sighings from the surrounding bunks.
+The presence of the crouching figure had created a sudden semi-silence
+in the den, which could only mean that some of the supposed
+opium-smokers had merely feigned coma and the approach of coma.
+
+Nayland Smith lay like a dead man, and trusting to the darkness, I,
+too, lay prone and still, but watched the evil face bending lower and
+lower, until it came within a few inches of my own.  I completely
+closed my eyes.
+
+Delicate fingers touched my right eyelid.  Divining what was coming, I
+rolled my eyes up, as the lid was adroitly lifted and lowered again.
+The man moved away.
+
+I had saved the situation!  And noting anew the hush about me--a hush
+in which I fancied many pairs of ears listened--I was glad.  For just a
+moment I realized fully how, with the place watched back and front, we
+yet were cut off, were in the hands of Far Easterns, to some extent in
+the power of members of that most inscrutably mysterious race, the
+Chinese.
+
+"Good," whispered Smith at my side.  "I don't think I could have done
+it.  He took me on trust after that.  My God!  what an awful face.
+Petrie, it's the hunchback of Cadby's notes.  Ah, I thought so.  Do you
+see that?"
+
+I turned my eyes round as far as was possible.  A man had scrambled
+down from one of the bunks and was following the bent figure across the
+room.
+
+They passed around us quietly, the little yellow man leading, with his
+curious, lithe gait, and the other, an impassive Chinaman, following.
+The curtain was raised, and I heard footsteps receding on the stairs.
+
+"Don't stir," whispered Smith.
+
+An intense excitement was clearly upon him, and he communicated it to
+me.  Who was the occupant of the room above?
+
+Footsteps on the stair, and the Chinaman reappeared, recrossed the
+floor, and went out.  The little, bent man went over to another bunk,
+this time leading up the stair one who looked like a lascar.
+
+"Did you see his right hand?" whispered Smith.  "A dacoit!  They come
+here to report and to take orders.  Petrie, Dr. Fu-Manchu is up there."
+
+"What shall we do?"--softly.
+
+"Wait.  Then we must try to rush the stairs.  It would be futile to
+bring in the police first.  He is sure to have some other exit.  I will
+give the word while the little yellow devil is down here.  You are
+nearer and will have to go first, but if the hunchback follows, I can
+then deal with him."
+
+Our whispered colloquy was interrupted by the return of the dacoit, who
+recrossed the room as the Chinaman had done, and immediately took his
+departure.  A third man, whom Smith identified as a Malay, ascended the
+mysterious stairs, descended, and went out; and a fourth, whose
+nationality it was impossible to determine, followed.  Then, as the
+softly moving usher crossed to a bunk on the right of the outer door--
+
+"Up you go, Petrie," cried Smith, for further delay was dangerous and
+further dissimulation useless.
+
+I leaped to my feet.  Snatching my revolver from the pocket of the
+rough jacket I wore, I bounded to the stair and went blundering up in
+complete darkness.  A chorus of brutish cries clamored from behind,
+with a muffled scream rising above them all.  But Nayland Smith was
+close behind as I raced along a covered gangway, in a purer air, and at
+my heels when I crashed open a door at the end and almost fell into the
+room beyond.
+
+What I saw were merely a dirty table, with some odds and ends upon it
+of which I was too excited to take note, an oil-lamp swung by a brass
+chain above, and a man sitting behind the table.  But from the moment
+that my gaze rested upon the one who sat there, I think if the place
+had been an Aladdin's palace I should have had no eyes for any of its
+wonders.
+
+He wore a plain yellow robe, of a hue almost identical with that of his
+smooth, hairless countenance.  His hands were large, long and bony, and
+he held them knuckles upward, and rested his pointed chin upon their
+thinness.  He had a great, high brow, crowned with sparse,
+neutral-colored hair.
+
+Of his face, as it looked out at me over the dirty table, I despair of
+writing convincingly.  It was that of an archangel of evil, and it was
+wholly dominated by the most uncanny eyes that ever reflected a human
+soul, for they were narrow and long, very slightly oblique, and of a
+brilliant green.  But their unique horror lay in a certain filminess
+(it made me think of the membrana nictitans in a bird) which, obscuring
+them as I threw wide the door, seemed to lift as I actually passed the
+threshold, revealing the eyes in all their brilliant iridescence.
+
+I know that I stopped dead, one foot within the room, for the malignant
+force of the man was something surpassing my experience.  He was
+surprised by this sudden intrusion--yes, but no trace of fear showed
+upon that wonderful face, only a sort of pitying contempt.  And, as I
+paused, he rose slowly to his feet, never removing his gaze from mine.
+
+"IT'S FU-MANCHU!" cried Smith over my shoulder, in a voice that was
+almost a scream.  "IT'S FU-MANCHU!  Cover him!  Shoot him dead if--"
+
+The conclusion of that sentence I never heard.
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu reached down beside the table, and the floor slipped from
+under me.
+
+One last glimpse I had of the fixed green eyes, and with a scream I was
+unable to repress I dropped, dropped, dropped, and plunged into icy
+water, which closed over my head.
+
+Vaguely I had seen a spurt of flame, had heard another cry following my
+own, a booming sound (the trap), the flat note of a police whistle.
+But when I rose to the surface impenetrable darkness enveloped me; I
+was spitting filthy, oily liquid from my mouth, and fighting down the
+black terror that had me by the throat--terror of the darkness about
+me, of the unknown depths beneath me, of the pit into which I was cast
+amid stifling stenches and the lapping of tidal water.
+
+"Smith!" I cried. . . . "Help!  Help!"
+
+My voice seemed to beat back upon me, yet I was about to cry out again,
+when, mustering all my presence of mind and all my failing courage, I
+recognized that I had better employment of my energies, and began to
+swim straight ahead, desperately determined to face all the horrors of
+this place--to die hard if die I must.
+
+A drop of liquid fire fell through the darkness and hissed into the
+water beside me!
+
+I felt that, despite my resolution, I was going mad.
+
+Another fiery drop--and another!
+
+I touched a rotting wooden post and slimy timbers.  I had reached one
+bound of my watery prison.  More fire fell from above, and the scream
+of hysteria quivered, unuttered, in my throat.
+
+Keeping myself afloat with increasing difficulty in my heavy garments,
+I threw my head back and raised my eyes.
+
+No more drops fell, and no more drops would fall; but it was merely a
+question of time for the floor to collapse.  For it was beginning to
+emit a dull, red glow.
+
+The room above me was in flames!
+
+It was drops of burning oil from the lamp, finding passage through the
+cracks in the crazy flooring, which had fallen about me--for the death
+trap had reclosed, I suppose, mechanically.
+
+My saturated garments were dragging me down, and now I could hear the
+flames hungrily eating into the ancient rottenness overhead.  Shortly
+that cauldron would be loosed upon my head.  The glow of the flames
+grew brighter . . . and showed me the half-rotten piles upholding the
+building, showed me the tidal mark upon the slime-coated walls--showed
+me that there was no escape!
+
+By some subterranean duct the foul place was fed from the Thames.  By
+that duct, with the outgoing tide, my body would pass, in the wake of
+Mason, Cadby, and many another victim!
+
+Rusty iron rungs were affixed to one of the walls communicating with a
+trap--but the bottom three were missing!
+
+Brighter and brighter grew the awesome light the light of what should
+be my funeral pyre--reddening the oily water and adding a new dread to
+the whispering, clammy horror of the pit.  But something it showed
+me . . . a projecting beam a few feet above the water . . . and directly
+below the iron ladder!
+
+"Merciful Heaven!" I breathed.  "Have I the strength?"
+
+A desire for laughter claimed me with sudden, all but irresistible
+force.  I knew what it portended and fought it down--grimly, sternly.
+
+My garments weighed upon me like a suit of mail; with my chest aching
+dully, my veins throbbing to bursting, I forced tired muscles to work,
+and, every stroke an agony, approached the beam.  Nearer I swam
+. . . nearer.  Its shadow fell black upon the water, which now had all
+the seeming of a pool of blood.  Confused sounds--a remote uproar--came
+to my ears.  I was nearly spent . . . I was in the shadow of the beam!  If
+I could throw up one arm. . .
+
+A shrill scream sounded far above me!
+
+"Petrie!  Petrie!"  (That voice must be Smith's!)  "Don't touch the
+beam!  For God's sake DON'T TOUCH THE BEAM!  Keep afloat another few
+seconds and I can get to you!"
+
+Another few seconds!  Was that possible?
+
+I managed to turn, to raise my throbbing head; and I saw the strangest
+sight which that night yet had offered.
+
+Nayland Smith stood upon the lowest iron rung . . . supported by the
+hideous, crook-backed Chinaman, who stood upon the rung above!
+
+"I can't reach him!"
+
+It was as Smith hissed the words despairingly that I looked up--and saw
+the Chinaman snatch at his coiled pigtail and pull it off!  With it
+came the wig to which it was attached; and the ghastly yellow mask,
+deprived of its fastenings, fell from position!  "Here!  Here!  Be
+quick!  Oh!  be quick!  You can lower this to him!  Be quick!  Be
+quick!"
+
+A cloud of hair came falling about the slim shoulders as the speaker
+bent to pass this strange lifeline to Smith; and I think it was my
+wonder at knowing her for the girl whom that day I had surprised in
+Cadby's rooms which saved my life.
+
+For I not only kept afloat, but kept my gaze upturned to that
+beautiful, flushed face, and my eyes fixed upon hers--which were wild
+with fear . . . for me!
+
+Smith, by some contortion, got the false queue into my grasp, and I,
+with the strength of desperation, by that means seized hold upon the
+lowest rung.  With my friend's arm round me I realized that exhaustion
+was even nearer than I had supposed.  My last distinct memory is of the
+bursting of the floor above and the big burning joist hissing into the
+pool beneath us.  Its fiery passage, striated with light, disclosed two
+sword blades, riveted, edges up along the top of the beam which I had
+striven to reach.
+
+"The severed fingers--" I said; and swooned.
+
+How Smith got me through the trap I do not know--nor how we made our
+way through the smoke and flames of the narrow passage it opened upon.
+My next recollection is of sitting up, with my friend's arm supporting
+me and Inspector Ryman holding a glass to my lips.
+
+A bright glare dazzled my eyes.  A crowd surged about us, and a clangor
+and shouting drew momentarily nearer.
+
+"It's the engines coming," explained Smith, seeing my bewilderment.
+"Shen-Yan's is in flames.  It was your shot, as you fell through the
+trap, broke the oil-lamp."
+
+"Is everybody out?"
+
+"So far as we know."
+
+"Fu-Manchu?"
+
+Smith shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"No one has seen him.  There was some door at the back--"
+
+"Do you think he may--"
+
+"No," he said tensely.  "Not until I see him lying dead before me shall
+I believe it."
+
+Then memory resumed its sway.  I struggled to my feet.
+
+"Smith, where is she?" I cried.  "Where is she?"
+
+"I don't know," he answered.
+
+"She's given us the slip, Doctor," said Inspector Weymouth, as a
+fire-engine came swinging round the corner of the narrow lane.  "So has
+Mr. Singapore Charlie--and, I'm afraid, somebody else.  We've got six
+or eight all-sorts, some awake and some asleep, but I suppose we shall
+have to let 'em go again.  Mr. Smith tells me that the girl was
+disguised as a Chinaman.  I expect that's why she managed to slip away."
+
+I recalled how I had been dragged from the pit by the false queue, how
+the strange discovery which had brought death to poor Cadby had brought
+life to me, and I seemed to remember, too, that Smith had dropped it as
+he threw his arm about me on the ladder.  Her mask the girl might have
+retained, but her wig, I felt certain, had been dropped into the water.
+
+It was later that night, when the brigade still were playing upon the
+blackened shell of what had been Shen-Yan's opium-shop, and Smith and I
+were speeding away in a cab from the scene of God knows how many
+crimes, that I had an idea.
+
+"Smith," I said, "did you bring the pigtail with you that was found on
+Cadby?"
+
+"Yes.  I had hoped to meet the owner."
+
+"Have you got it now?"
+
+"No. I met the owner."
+
+I thrust my hands deep into the pockets of the big pea-jacket lent to
+me by Inspector Ryman, leaning back in my corner.
+
+"We shall never really excel at this business," continued Nayland
+Smith.  "We are far too sentimental.  I knew what it meant to us,
+Petrie, what it meant to the world, but I hadn't the heart.  I owed her
+your life--I had to square the account."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+NIGHT fell on Redmoat.  I glanced from the window at the nocturne in
+silver and green which lay beneath me.  To the west of the shrubbery,
+with its broken canopy of elms and beyond the copper beech which marked
+the center of its mazes, a gap offered a glimpse of the Waverney where
+it swept into a broad.  Faint bird-calls floated over the water.
+These, with the whisper of leaves, alone claimed the ear.
+
+Ideal rural peace, and the music of an English summer evening; but to
+my eyes, every shadow holding fantastic terrors; to my ears, every
+sound a signal of dread.  For the deathful hand of Fu-Manchu was
+stretched over Redmoat, at any hour to loose strange, Oriental horrors
+upon its inmates.
+
+"Well," said Nayland Smith, joining me at the window, "we had dared to
+hope him dead, but we know now that he lives!"
+
+The Rev. J. D. Eltham coughed nervously, and I turned, leaning my elbow
+upon the table, and studied the play of expression upon the refined,
+sensitive face of the clergyman.
+
+"You think I acted rightly in sending for you, Mr. Smith?"
+
+Nayland Smith smoked furiously.
+
+"Mr. Eltham," he replied, "you see in me a man groping in the dark.  I
+am to-day no nearer to the conclusion of my mission than upon the day
+when I left Mandalay.  You offer me a clew; I am here.  Your affair, I
+believe, stands thus: A series of attempted burglaries, or something of
+the kind, has alarmed your household.  Yesterday, returning from London
+with your daughter, you were both drugged in some way and, occupying a
+compartment to yourselves, you both slept.  Your daughter awoke, and
+saw someone else in the carriage--a yellow-faced man who held a case of
+instruments in his hands."
+
+"Yes; I was, of course, unable to enter into particulars over the
+telephone.  The man was standing by one of the windows.  Directly he
+observed that my daughter was awake, he stepped towards her."
+
+"What did he do with the case in his hands?"
+
+"She did not notice--or did not mention having noticed.  In fact, as
+was natural, she was so frightened that she recalls nothing more,
+beyond the fact that she strove to arouse me, without succeeding, felt
+hands grasp her shoulders--and swooned."
+
+"But someone used the emergency cord, and stopped the train."
+
+"Greba has no recollection of having done so."
+
+"Hm!  Of course, no yellow-faced man was on the train.  When did you
+awake?"
+
+"I was aroused by the guard, but only when he had repeatedly shaken me."
+
+"Upon reaching Great Yarmouth you immediately called up Scotland Yard?
+You acted very wisely, sir.  How long were you in China?"
+
+Mr. Eltham's start of surprise was almost comical.
+
+"It is perhaps not strange that you should be aware of my residence in
+China, Mr. Smith," he said; "but my not having mentioned it may seem
+so.  The fact is"--his sensitive face flushed in palpable
+embarrassment--"I left China under what I may term an episcopal cloud.
+I have lived in retirement ever since.  Unwittingly--I solemnly declare
+to you, Mr. Smith, unwittingly--I stirred up certain deep-seated
+prejudices in my endeavors to do my duty--my duty.  I think you asked
+me how long I was in China?  I was there from 1896 until 1900--four
+years."
+
+"I recall the circumstances, Mr. Eltham," said Smith, with an odd note
+in his voice.  "I have been endeavoring to think where I had come
+across the name, and a moment ago I remembered.  I am happy to have met
+you, sir."
+
+The clergyman blushed again like a girl, and slightly inclined his
+head, with its scanty fair hair.
+
+"Has Redmoat, as its name implies, a moat round it?  I was unable to
+see in the dusk."
+
+"It remains.  Redmoat--a corruption of Round Moat--was formerly a
+priory, disestablished by the eighth Henry in 1536." His pedantic
+manner was quaint at times. "But the moat is no longer flooded. In
+fact, we grow cabbages in part of it. If you refer to the strategic
+strength of the place"--he smiled, but his manner was embarrassed
+again--"it is considerable. I have barbed wire fencing, and--other
+arrangements. You see, it is a lonely spot," he added apologetically.
+"And now, if you will excuse me, we will resume these gruesome
+inquiries after the more pleasant affairs of dinner."
+
+He left us.
+
+"Who is our host?" I asked, as the door closed.
+
+Smith smiled.
+
+"You are wondering what caused the 'episcopal cloud?'" he suggested.
+"Well, the deep-seated prejudices which our reverend friend stirred up
+culminated in the Boxer Risings."
+
+"Good heavens, Smith!" I said; for I could not reconcile the diffident
+personality of the clergyman with the memories which those words
+awakened.
+
+"He evidently should be on our danger list," my friend continued
+quickly; "but he has so completely effaced himself of recent years that
+I think it probable that someone else has only just recalled his
+existence to mind.  The Rev. J. D. Eltham, my dear Petrie, though he
+may be a poor hand at saving souls, at any rate, has saved a score of
+Christian women from death--and worse."
+
+"J. D. Eltham--" I began.
+
+"Is 'Parson Dan'!" rapped Smith, "the 'Fighting Missionary,' the man
+who with a garrison of a dozen cripples and a German doctor held the
+hospital at Nan-Yang against two hundred Boxers.  That's who the Rev.
+J. D. Eltham is!  But what is he up to, now, I have yet to find out.
+He is keeping something back--something which has made him an object of
+interest to Young China!"
+
+During dinner the matters responsible for our presence there did not
+hold priority in the conversation.  In fact, this, for the most part,
+consisted in light talk of books and theaters.
+
+Greba Eltham, the clergyman's daughter, was a charming young hostess,
+and she, with Vernon Denby, Mr. Eltham's nephew, completed the party.
+No doubt the girl's presence, in part, at any rate, led us to refrain
+from the subject uppermost in our minds.
+
+These little pools of calm dotted along the torrential course of the
+circumstances which were bearing my friend and me onward to unknown
+issues form pleasant, sunny spots in my dark recollections.
+
+So I shall always remember, with pleasure, that dinner-party at
+Redmoat, in the old-world dining-room; it was so very peaceful, so
+almost grotesquely calm.  For I, within my very bones, felt it to be
+the calm before the storm.  When, later, we men passed to the library,
+we seemed to leave that atmosphere behind us.
+
+"Redmoat," said the Rev. J. D. Eltham, "has latterly become the theater
+of strange doings."
+
+He stood on the hearth-rug. A shaded lamp upon the big table and
+candles in ancient sconces upon the mantelpiece afforded dim
+illumination.  Mr. Eltham's nephew, Vernon Denby, lolled smoking on the
+window-seat, and I sat near to him.  Nayland Smith paced restlessly up
+and down the room.
+
+"Some months ago, almost a year," continued the clergyman, "a
+burglarious attempt was made upon the house.  There was an arrest, and
+the man confessed that he had been tempted by my collection." He waved
+his hand vaguely towards the several cabinets about the shadowed room.
+
+"It was shortly afterwards that I allowed my hobby for--playing at
+forts to run away with me."  He smiled an apology.  "I virtually
+fortified Redmoat--against trespassers of any kind, I mean.  You have
+seen that the house stands upon a kind of large mound.  This is
+artificial, being the buried ruins of a Roman outwork; a portion of the
+ancient castrum." Again he waved indicatively, this time toward the
+window.
+
+"When it was a priory it was completely isolated and defended by its
+environing moat.  Today it is completely surrounded by barbed-wire
+fencing.  Below this fence, on the east, is a narrow stream, a
+tributary of the Waverney; on the north and west, the high road, but
+nearly twenty feet below, the banks being perpendicular.  On the south
+is the remaining part of the moat--now my kitchen garden; but from
+there up to the level of the house is nearly twenty feet again, and the
+barbed wire must also be counted with.
+
+"The entrance, as you know, is by the way of a kind of cutting.  There
+is a gate at the foot of the steps (they are some of the original steps
+of the priory, Dr. Petrie), and another gate at the head."
+
+He paused, and smiled around upon us boyishly.
+
+"My secret defenses remain to be mentioned," he resumed; and, opening a
+cupboard, he pointed to a row of batteries, with a number of electric
+bells upon the wall behind.  "The more vulnerable spots are connected
+at night with these bells," he said triumphantly.  "Any attempt to
+scale the barbed wire or to force either gate would set two or more of
+these ringing.  A stray cow raised one false alarm," he added, "and a
+careless rook threw us into a perfect panic on another occasion."
+
+He was so boyish--so nervously brisk and acutely sensitive--that it was
+difficult to see in him the hero of the Nan-Yang hospital.  I could
+only suppose that he had treated the Boxers' raid in the same spirit
+wherein he met would-be trespassers within the precincts of Redmoat.
+It had been an escapade, of which he was afterwards ashamed, as,
+faintly, he was ashamed of his "fortifications."  "But," rapped Smith,
+"it was not the visit of the burglar which prompted these elaborate
+precautions."
+
+Mr. Eltham coughed nervously.
+
+"I am aware," he said, "that having invoked official aid, I must be
+perfectly frank with you, Mr. Smith.  It was the burglar who was
+responsible for my continuing the wire fence all round the grounds, but
+the electrical contrivance followed, later, as a result of several
+disturbed nights.  My servants grew uneasy about someone who came, they
+said, after dusk.  No one could describe this nocturnal visitor, but
+certainly we found traces.  I must admit that.
+
+"Then--I received what I may term a warning.  My position is a peculiar
+one--a peculiar one.  My daughter, too, saw this prowling person, over
+by the Roman castrum, and described him as a yellow man.  It was the
+incident in the train following closely upon this other, which led me
+to speak to the police, little as I desired to--er--court publicity."
+
+Nayland Smith walked to a window, and looked out across the sloping
+lawn to where the shadows of the shrubbery lay.  A dog was howling
+dismally somewhere.
+
+"Your defenses are not impregnable, after all, then?" he jerked.  "On
+our way up this evening Mr. Denby was telling us about the death of his
+collie a few nights ago."
+
+The clergyman's face clouded.
+
+"That, certainly, was alarming," he confessed.
+
+"I had been in London for a few days, and during my absence Vernon came
+down, bringing the dog with him.  On the night of his arrival it ran,
+barking, into the shrubbery yonder, and did not come out.  He went to
+look for it with a lantern, and found it lying among the bushes, quite
+dead.  The poor creature had been dreadfully beaten about the head."
+
+"The gates were locked," Denby interrupted, "and no one could have got
+out of the grounds without a ladder and someone to assist him.  But
+there was no sign of a living thing about.  Edwards and I searched
+every corner."
+
+"How long has that other dog taken to howling?" inquired Smith.
+
+"Only since Rex's death," said Denby quickly.
+
+"It is my mastiff," explained the clergyman, "and he is confined in the
+yard.  He is never allowed on this side of the house."
+
+Nayland Smith wandered aimlessly about the library.
+
+"I am sorry to have to press you, Mr. Eltham," he said, "but what was
+the nature of the warning to which you referred, and from whom did it
+come?"
+
+Mr. Eltham hesitated for a long time.
+
+"I have been so unfortunate," he said at last, "in my previous efforts,
+that I feel assured of your hostile criticism when I tell you that I am
+contemplating an immediate return to Ho-Nan!"
+
+Smith jumped round upon him as though moved by a spring.
+
+"Then you are going back to Nan-Yang?" he cried.  "Now I understand!
+Why have you not told me before?  That is the key for which I have
+vainly been seeking.  Your troubles date from the time of your decision
+to return?"
+
+"Yes, I must admit it," confessed the clergyman diffidently.
+
+"And your warning came from China?"
+
+"It did."
+
+"From a Chinaman?"
+
+"From the Mandarin, Yen-Sun-Yat."
+
+"Yen-Sun-Yat!  My good sir!  He warned you to abandon your visit?  And
+you reject his advice?  Listen to me."  Smith was intensely excited
+now, his eyes bright, his lean figure curiously strung up, alert.  "The
+Mandarin Yen-Sun-Yat is one of the seven!"
+
+"I do not follow you, Mr. Smith."
+
+"No, sir.  China to-day is not the China of '98.  It is a huge secret
+machine, and Ho-Nan one of its most important wheels!  But if, as I
+understand, this official is a friend of yours, believe me, he has
+saved your life!  You would be a dead man now if it were not for your
+friend in China!  My dear sir, you must accept his counsel."
+
+Then, for the first time since I had made his acquaintance, "Parson
+Dan" showed through the surface of the Rev. J. D. Eltham.
+
+"No, sir!" replied the clergyman--and the change in his voice was
+startling.  "I am called to Nan-Yang. Only One may deter my going."
+
+The admixture of deep spiritual reverence with intense truculence in
+his voice was dissimilar from anything I ever had heard.
+
+"Then only One can protect you," cried Smith, "for, by Heaven, no MAN
+will be able to do so!  Your presence in Ho-Nan can do no possible good
+at present.  It must do harm.  Your experience in 1900 should be fresh
+in your memory."
+
+"Hard words, Mr. Smith."
+
+"The class of missionary work which you favor, sir, is injurious to
+international peace.  At the present moment, Ho-Nan is a barrel of
+gunpowder; you would be the lighted match.  I do not willingly stand
+between any man and what he chooses to consider his duty, but I insist
+that you abandon your visit to the interior of China!"
+
+"You insist, Mr. Smith?"
+
+"As your guest, I regret the necessity for reminding you that I hold
+authority to enforce it."
+
+Denby fidgeted uneasily.  The tone of the conversation was growing
+harsh and the atmosphere of the library portentous with brewing storms.
+
+There was a short, silent interval.
+
+"This is what I had feared and expected," said the clergyman.  "This
+was my reason for not seeking official protection."
+
+"The phantom Yellow Peril," said Nayland Smith, "to-day materializes
+under the very eyes of the Western world."
+
+"The 'Yellow Peril'!"
+
+"You scoff, sir, and so do others.  We take the proffered right hand of
+friendship nor inquire if the hidden left holds a knife!  The peace of
+the world is at stake, Mr. Eltham.  Unknowingly, you tamper with
+tremendous issues."
+
+Mr. Eltham drew a deep breath, thrusting both hands in his pockets.
+
+"You are painfully frank, Mr. Smith," he said; "but I like you for it.
+I will reconsider my position and talk this matter over again with you
+to-morrow."
+
+Thus, then, the storm blew over.  Yet I had never experienced such an
+overwhelming sense of imminent peril--of a sinister presence--as
+oppressed me at that moment.  The very atmosphere of Redmoat was
+impregnated with Eastern devilry; it loaded the air like some evil
+perfume.  And then, through the silence, cut a throbbing scream--the
+scream of a woman in direst fear.
+
+"My God, it's Greba!" whispered Mr. Eltham.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+IN what order we dashed down to the drawing-room I cannot recall.  But
+none was before me when I leaped over the threshold and saw Miss Eltham
+prone by the French windows.
+
+These were closed and bolted, and she lay with hands outstretched in
+the alcove which they formed.  I bent over her.  Nayland Smith was at
+my elbow.
+
+"Get my bag" I said.  "She has swooned.  It is nothing serious."
+
+Her father, pale and wide-eyed, hovered about me, muttering
+incoherently; but I managed to reassure him; and his gratitude when, I
+having administered a simple restorative, the girl sighed shudderingly
+and opened her eyes, was quite pathetic.
+
+I would permit no questioning at that time, and on her father's arm she
+retired to her own rooms.
+
+It was some fifteen minutes later that her message was brought to me.
+I followed the maid to a quaint little octagonal apartment, and Greba
+Eltham stood before me, the candlelight caressing the soft curves of
+her face and gleaming in the meshes of her rich brown hair.
+
+When she had answered my first question she hesitated in pretty
+confusion.
+
+"We are anxious to know what alarmed you, Miss Eltham."
+
+She bit her lip and glanced with apprehension towards the window.
+
+"I am almost afraid to tell father," she began rapidly.  "He will think
+me imaginative, but you have been so kind.  It was two green eyes!  Oh!
+Dr. Petrie, they looked up at me from the steps leading to the lawn.
+And they shone like the eyes of a cat."
+
+The words thrilled me strangely.
+
+"Are you sure it was not a cat, Miss Eltham?"
+
+"The eyes were too large, Dr. Petrie.  There was something dreadful,
+most dreadful, in their appearance.  I feel foolish and silly for
+having fainted, twice in two days!  But the suspense is telling upon
+me, I suppose.  Father thinks"--she was becoming charmingly
+confidential, as a woman often will with a tactful physician--"that
+shut up here we are safe from--whatever threatens us." I noted, with
+concern, a repetition of the nervous shudder.  "But since our return
+someone else has been in Redmoat!"
+
+"Whatever do you mean, Miss Eltham?"
+
+"Oh!  I don't quite know what I do mean, Dr. Petrie.  What does it ALL
+mean?  Vernon has been explaining to me that some awful Chinaman is
+seeking the life of Mr. Nayland Smith.  But if the same man wants to
+kill my father, why has he not done so?"
+
+"I am afraid you puzzle me."
+
+"Of course, I must do so.  But--the man in the train.  He could have
+killed us both quite easily!  And--last night someone was in father's
+room."
+
+"In his room!"
+
+"I could not sleep, and I heard something moving.  My room is the next
+one.  I knocked on the wall and woke father.  There was nothing; so I
+said it was the howling of the dog that had frightened me."
+
+"How could anyone get into his room?"
+
+"I cannot imagine.  But I am not sure it was a man."
+
+"Miss Eltham, you alarm me.  What do you suspect?"
+
+"You must think me hysterical and silly, but whilst father and I have
+been away from Redmoat perhaps the usual precautions have been
+neglected.  Is there any creature, any large creature, which could
+climb up the wall to the window?  Do you know of anything with a long,
+thin body?"
+
+For a moment I offered no reply, studying the girl's pretty face, her
+eager, blue-gray eyes widely opened and fixed upon mine.  She was not
+of the neurotic type, with her clear complexion and sun-kissed neck;
+her arms, healthily toned by exposure to the country airs, were rounded
+and firm, and she had the agile shape of a young Diana with none of the
+anaemic languor which breeds morbid dreams.  She was frightened; yes,
+who would not have been?  But the mere idea of this thing which she
+believed to be in Redmoat, without the apparition of the green eyes,
+must have prostrated a victim of "nerves."
+
+"Have you seen such a creature, Miss Eltham?"
+
+She hesitated again, glancing down and pressing her finger-tips
+together.
+
+"As father awoke and called out to know why I knocked, I glanced from
+my window.  The moonlight threw half the lawn into shadow, and just
+disappearing in this shadow was something--something of a brown color,
+marked with sections!"
+
+"What size and shape?"
+
+"It moved so quickly I could form no idea of its shape; but I saw quite
+six feet of it flash across the grass!"
+
+"Did you hear anything?"
+
+"A swishing sound in the shrubbery, then nothing more."
+
+She met my eyes expectantly.  Her confidence in my powers of
+understanding and sympathy was gratifying, though I knew that I but
+occupied the position of a father-confessor.
+
+"Have you any idea," I said, "how it came about that you awoke in the
+train yesterday whilst your father did not?"
+
+"We had coffee at a refreshment-room; it must have been drugged in some
+way.  I scarcely tasted mine, the flavor was so awful; but father is an
+old traveler and drank the whole of his cupful!"
+
+Mr. Eltham's voice called from below.
+
+"Dr. Petrie," said the girl quickly, "what do you think they want to do
+to him?"
+
+"Ah!" I replied, "I wish I knew that."
+
+"Will you think over what I have told you?  For I do assure you there
+is something here in Redmoat--something that comes and goes in spite of
+father's 'fortifications'?  Caesar knows there is.  Listen to him.  He
+drags at his chain so that I wonder he does not break it."
+
+As we passed downstairs the howling of the mastiff sounded eerily
+through the house, as did the clank-clank of the tightening chain as he
+threw the weight of his big body upon it.
+
+I sat in Smith's room that night for some time, he pacing the floor
+smoking and talking.
+
+"Eltham has influential Chinese friends," he said; "but they dare not
+have him in Nan-Yang at present.  He knows the country as he knows
+Norfolk; he would see things!
+
+"His precautions here have baffled the enemy, I think.  The attempt in
+the train points to an anxiety to waste no opportunity.  But whilst
+Eltham was absent (he was getting his outfit in London, by the way)
+they have been fixing some second string to their fiddle here.  In case
+no opportunity offered before he returned, they provided for getting at
+him here!"
+
+"But how, Smith?"
+
+"That's the mystery.  But the dead dog in the shrubbery is significant."
+
+"Do you think some emissary of Fu-Manchu is actually inside the moat?"
+
+"It's impossible, Petrie.  You are thinking of secret passages, and so
+forth.  There are none.  Eltham has measured up every foot of the
+place.  There isn't a rathole left unaccounted for; and as for a tunnel
+under the moat, the house stands on a solid mass of Roman masonry, a
+former camp of Hadrian's time.  I have seen a very old plan of the
+Round Moat Priory as it was called.  There is no entrance and no exit
+save by the steps.  So how was the dog killed?"
+
+I knocked out my pipe on a bar of the grate.
+
+"We are in the thick of it here," I said.
+
+"We are always in the thick of it," replied Smith.  "Our danger is no
+greater in Norfolk than in London.  But what do they want to do?  That
+man in the train with the case of instruments--WHAT instruments?  Then
+the apparition of the green eyes to-night. Can they have been the eyes
+of Fu-Manchu?  Is some peculiarly unique outrage contemplated--something
+calling for the presence of the master?"
+
+"He may have to prevent Eltham's leaving England without killing him."
+
+"Quite so.  He probably has instructions to be merciful.  But God help
+the victim of Chinese mercy!"
+
+I went to my own room then.  But I did not even undress, refilling my
+pipe and seating myself at the open window.  Having looked upon the
+awful Chinese doctor, the memory of his face, with its filmed green
+eyes, could never leave me.  The idea that he might be near at that
+moment was a poor narcotic.
+
+The howling and baying of the mastiff was almost continuous.
+
+When all else in Redmoat was still the dog's mournful note yet rose on
+the night with something menacing in it.  I sat looking out across the
+sloping turf to where the shrubbery showed as a black island in a green
+sea.  The moon swam in a cloudless sky, and the air was warm and
+fragrant with country scents.
+
+It was in the shrubbery that Denby's collie had met his mysterious
+death--that the thing seen by Miss Eltham had disappeared.  What
+uncanny secret did it hold?
+
+Caesar became silent.
+
+As the stopping of a clock will sometimes awaken a sleeper, the abrupt
+cessation of that distant howling, to which I had grown accustomed, now
+recalled me from a world of gloomy imaginings.
+
+I glanced at my watch in the moonlight.  It was twelve minutes past
+midnight.
+
+As I replaced it the dog suddenly burst out afresh, but now in a tone
+of sheer anger.  He was alternately howling and snarling in a way that
+sounded new to me.  The crashes, as he leapt to the end of his chain,
+shook the building in which he was confined.  It was as I stood up to
+lean from the window and commanded a view of the corner of the house
+that he broke loose.
+
+With a hoarse bay he took that decisive leap, and I heard his heavy
+body fall against the wooden wall.  There followed a strange, guttural
+cry . . . and the growling of the dog died away at the rear of the house.
+He was out!  But that guttural note had not come from the throat of a
+dog.  Of what was he in pursuit?
+
+At which point his mysterious quarry entered the shrubbery I do not
+know.  I only know that I saw absolutely nothing, until Caesar's lithe
+shape was streaked across the lawn, and the great creature went
+crashing into the undergrowth.
+
+Then a faint sound above and to my right told me that I was not the
+only spectator of the scene.  I leaned farther from the window.
+
+"Is that you, Miss Eltham?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, Dr. Petrie!" she said.  "I am so glad you are awake.  Can we do
+nothing to help?  Caesar will be killed."
+
+"Did you see what he went after?"
+
+"No," she called back, and drew her breath sharply.
+
+For a strange figure went racing across the grass.  It was that of a
+man in a blue dressing-gown, who held a lantern high before him, and a
+revolver in his right hand.  Coincident with my recognition of Mr.
+Eltham he leaped, plunging into the shrubbery in the wake of the dog.
+
+But the night held yet another surprise; for Nayland Smith's voice came:
+
+"Come back!  Come back, Eltham!"
+
+I ran out into the passage and downstairs.  The front door was open.  A
+terrible conflict waged in the shrubbery, between the mastiff and
+something else.  Passing round to the lawn, I met Smith fully dressed.
+He just had dropped from a first-floor window.
+
+"The man is mad!" he snapped.  "Heaven knows what lurks there!  He
+should not have gone alone!"
+
+Together we ran towards the dancing light of Eltham's lantern.  The
+sounds of conflict ceased suddenly.  Stumbling over stumps and lashed
+by low-sweeping branches, we struggled forward to where the clergyman
+knelt amongst the bushes.  He glanced up with tears in his eyes, as was
+revealed by the dim light.
+
+"Look!" he cried.
+
+The body of the dog lay at his feet.
+
+It was pitiable to think that the fearless brute should have met his
+death in such a fashion, and when I bent and examined him I was glad to
+find traces of life.
+
+"Drag him out.  He is not dead," I said.
+
+"And hurry," rapped Smith, peering about him right and left.
+
+So we three hurried from that haunted place, dragging the dog with us.
+We were not molested.  No sound disturbed the now perfect stillness.
+
+By the lawn edge we came upon Denby, half dressed; and almost
+immediately Edwards the gardener also appeared.  The white faces of the
+house servants showed at one window, and Miss Eltham called to me from
+her room:
+
+"Is he dead?"
+
+"No," I replied; "only stunned."
+
+We carried the dog round to the yard, and I examined his head.  It had
+been struck by some heavy blunt instrument, but the skull was not
+broken.  It is hard to kill a mastiff.
+
+"Will you attend to him, Doctor?" asked Eltham.  "We must see that the
+villain does not escape."
+
+His face was grim and set.  This was a different man from the diffident
+clergyman we knew:  this was "Parson Dan" again.
+
+I accepted the care of the canine patient, and Eltham with the others
+went off for more lights to search the shrubbery.  As I was washing a
+bad wound between the mastiff's ears, Miss Eltham joined me.  It was
+the sound of her voice, I think, rather than my more scientific
+ministration, which recalled Caesar to life.  For, as she entered, his
+tail wagged feebly, and a moment later he struggled to his feet--one of
+which was injured.
+
+Having provided for his immediate needs, I left him in charge of his
+young mistress and joined the search party.  They had entered the
+shrubbery from four points and drawn blank.
+
+"There is absolutely nothing there, and no one can possibly have left
+the grounds," said Eltham amazedly.
+
+We stood on the lawn looking at one another, Nayland Smith, angry but
+thoughtful, tugging at the lobe of his left ear, as was his habit in
+moments of perplexity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+WITH the first coming of light, Eltham, Smith and I tested the
+electrical contrivances from every point.  They were in perfect order.
+It became more and more incomprehensible how anyone could have entered
+and quitted Redmoat during the night.  The barbed-wire fencing was
+intact, and bore no signs of having been tampered with.
+
+Smith and I undertook an exhaustive examination of the shrubbery.
+
+At the spot where we had found the dog, some five paces to the west of
+the copper beech, the grass and weeds were trampled and the surrounding
+laurels and rhododendrons bore evidence of a struggle, but no human
+footprint could be found.
+
+"The ground is dry," said Smith.  "We cannot expect much."
+
+"In my opinion," I said, "someone tried to get at Caesar; his presence
+is dangerous.  And in his rage he broke loose."
+
+"I think so, too," agreed Smith.  "But why did this person make for
+here?  And how, having mastered the dog, get out of Redmoat?  I am open
+to admit the possibility of someone's getting in during the day whilst
+the gates are open, and hiding until dusk.  But how in the name of all
+that's wonderful does he GET OUT?  He must possess the attributes of a
+bird."
+
+I thought of Greba Eltham's statements, reminding my friend of her
+description of the thing which she had seen passing into this strangely
+haunted shrubbery.
+
+"That line of speculation soon takes us out of our depth, Petrie," he
+said.  "Let us stick to what we can understand, and that may help us to
+a clearer idea of what, at present, is incomprehensible.  My view of
+the case to date stands thus:
+
+"(1) Eltham, having rashly decided to return to the interior of China,
+is warned by an official whose friendship he has won in some way to
+stay in England.
+
+"(2) I know this official for one of the Yellow group represented in
+England by Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+"(3) Several attempts, of which we know but little, to get at Eltham
+are frustrated, presumably by his curious 'defenses.' An attempt in a
+train fails owing to Miss Eltham's distaste for refreshment-room
+coffee.  An attempt here fails owing to her insomnia.
+
+"(4) During Eltham's absence from Redmoat certain preparations are made
+for his return.  These lead to:
+
+"(a) The death of Denby's collie;
+
+"(b) The things heard and seen by Miss Eltham;
+
+"(c) The things heard and seen by us all last night.
+
+"So that the clearing up of my fourth point--id est, the discovery of
+the nature of these preparations--becomes our immediate concern.  The
+prime object of these preparations, Petrie, was to enable someone to
+gain access to Eltham's room.  The other events are incidental.  The
+dogs HAD to be got rid of, for instance; and there is no doubt that
+Miss Eltham's wakefulness saved her father a second time."
+
+"But from what?  For Heaven's sake, from what?"
+
+Smith glanced about into the light-patched shadows.
+
+"From a visit by someone--perhaps by Fu-Manchu himself," he said in a
+hushed voice.  "The object of that visit I hope we may never learn; for
+that would mean that it had been achieved."
+
+"Smith," I said, "I do not altogether understand you; but do you think
+he has some incredible creature hidden here somewhere?  It would be
+like him."
+
+"I begin to suspect the most formidable creature in the known world to
+be hidden here.  I believe Fu-Manchu is somewhere inside Redmoat!"
+
+Our conversation was interrupted at this point by Denby, who came to
+report that he had examined the moat, the roadside, and the bank of the
+stream, but found no footprints or clew of any kind.
+
+"No one left the grounds of Redmoat last night, I think," he said.  And
+his voice had awe in it.
+
+That day dragged slowly on.  A party of us scoured the neighborhood for
+traces of strangers, examining every foot of the Roman ruin hard by;
+but vainly.
+
+"May not your presence here induce Fu-Manchu to abandon his plans?" I
+asked Smith.
+
+"I think not," he replied.  "You see, unless we can prevail upon him,
+Eltham sails in a fortnight.  So the Doctor has no time to waste.
+Furthermore, I have an idea that his arrangements are of such a
+character that they MUST go forward.  He might turn aside, of course,
+to assassinate me, if opportunity arose!  But we know, from experience,
+that he permits nothing to interfere with his schemes."
+
+There are few states, I suppose, which exact so severe a toll from
+one's nervous system as the ANTICIPATION of calamity.
+
+All anticipation is keener, be it of joy or pain, than the reality
+whereof it is a mental forecast; but that inactive waiting at Redmoat,
+for the blow which we knew full well to be pending exceeded in its
+nerve taxation, anything I hitherto had experienced.
+
+I felt as one bound upon an Aztec altar, with the priest's obsidian
+knife raised above my breast!
+
+Secret and malign forces throbbed about us; forces against which we had
+no armor.  Dreadful as it was, I count it a mercy that the climax was
+reached so quickly.  And it came suddenly enough; for there in that
+quiet Norfolk home we found ourselves at hand grips with one of the
+mysterious horrors which characterized the operations of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+It was upon us before we realized it.  There is no incidental music to
+the dramas of real life.
+
+As we sat on the little terrace in the creeping twilight, I remember
+thinking how the peace of the scene gave the lie to my fears that we
+bordered upon tragic things.  Then Caesar, who had been a docile
+patient all day, began howling again; and I saw Greba Eltham shudder.
+
+I caught Smith's eye, and was about to propose our retirement indoors,
+when the party was broken up in more turbulent fashion.  I suppose it
+was the presence of the girl which prompted Denby to the rash act, a
+desire personally to distinguish himself.  But, as I recalled
+afterwards, his gaze had rarely left the shrubbery since dusk, save to
+seek her face, and now he leaped wildly to his feet, overturning his
+chair, and dashed across the grass to the trees.
+
+"Did you see it?" he yelled.  "Did you see it?"
+
+He evidently carried a revolver.  For from the edge of the shrubbery a
+shot sounded, and in the flash we saw Denby with the weapon raised.
+
+"Greba, go in and fasten the windows," cried Eltham.  "Mr. Smith, will
+you enter the bushes from the west.  Dr. Petrie, east.  Edwards,
+Edwards--" And he was off across the lawn with the nervous activity of
+a cat.
+
+As I made off in an opposite direction I heard the gardener's voice
+from the lower gate, and I saw Eltham's plan.  It was to surround the
+shrubbery.
+
+Two more shots and two flashes from the dense heart of greenwood.  Then
+a loud cry--I thought, from Denby--and a second, muffled one.
+
+Following--silence, only broken by the howling of the mastiff.
+
+I sprinted through the rose garden, leaped heedlessly over a bed of
+geranium and heliotrope, and plunged in among the bushes and under the
+elms.  Away on the left I heard Edwards shouting, and Eltham's
+answering voice.
+
+"Denby!" I cried, and yet louder:  "Denby!"
+
+But the silence fell again.
+
+Dusk was upon Redmoat now, but from sitting in the twilight my eyes had
+grown accustomed to gloom, and I could see fairly well what lay before
+me.  Not daring to think what might lurk above, below, around me, I
+pressed on into the midst of the thicket.
+
+"Vernon!" came Eltham's voice from one side.
+
+"Bear more to the right, Edwards," I heard Nayland Smith cry directly
+ahead of me.
+
+With an eerie and indescribable sensation of impending disaster upon
+me, I thrust my way through to a gray patch which marked a break in the
+elmen roof.  At the foot of the copper beech I almost fell over Eltham.
+Then Smith plunged into view.  Lastly, Edwards the gardener rounded a
+big rhododendron and completed the party.
+
+We stood quite still for a moment.
+
+A faint breeze whispered through the beech leaves.
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+I cannot remember who put it into words; I was too dazed with amazement
+to notice.  Then Eltham began shouting:
+
+"Vernon!  Vernon!  VERNON!"
+
+His voice pitched higher upon each repetition.  There was something
+horrible about that vain calling, under the whispering beech, with
+shrubs banked about us cloaking God alone could know what.
+
+From the back of the house came Caesar's faint reply.
+
+"Quick!  Lights!" rapped Smith.  "Every lamp you have!"
+
+Off we went, dodging laurels and privets, and poured out on to the
+lawn, a disordered company.  Eltham's face was deathly pale, and his
+jaw set hard.  He met my eye.
+
+"God forgive me!" he said.  "I could do murder to-night!"
+
+He was a man composed of strange perplexities.
+
+It seemed an age before the lights were found.  But at last we returned
+to the bushes, really after a very brief delay; and ten minutes
+sufficed us to explore the entire shrubbery, for it was not extensive.
+We found his revolver, but there was no one there--nothing.
+
+When we all stood again on the lawn, I thought that I had never seen
+Smith so haggard.
+
+"What in Heaven's name can we do?" he muttered.  "What does it mean?"
+
+He expected no answer; for there was none to offer one.
+
+"Search!  Everywhere," said Eltham hoarsely.
+
+He ran off into the rose garden, and began beating about among the
+flowers like a madman, muttering:  "Vernon!  Vernon!"  For close upon
+an hour we all searched.  We searched every square yard, I think,
+within the wire fencing, and found no trace.  Miss Eltham slipped out
+in the confusion, and joined with the rest of us in that frantic hunt.
+Some of the servants assisted too.
+
+It was a group terrified and awestricken which came together again on
+the terrace.  One and then another would give up, until only Eltham and
+Smith were missing.  Then they came back together from examining the
+steps to the lower gate.
+
+Eltham dropped on to a rustic seat, and sank his head in his hands.
+
+Nayland Smith paced up and down like a newly caged animal, snapping his
+teeth together and tugging at his ear.
+
+Possessed by some sudden idea, or pressed to action by his tumultuous
+thoughts, he snatched up a lantern and strode silently off across the
+grass and to the shrubbery once more.  I followed him.  I think his
+idea was that he might surprise anyone who lurked there.  He surprised
+himself, and all of us.
+
+For right at the margin he tripped and fell flat.  I ran to him.
+
+He had fallen over the body of Denby, which lay there!
+
+Denby had not been there a few moments before, and how he came to be
+there now we dared not conjecture.  Mr. Eltham joined us, uttered one
+short, dry sob, and dropped upon his knees.  Then we were carrying
+Denby back to the house, with the mastiff howling a marche funebre.
+
+We laid him on the grass where it sloped down from the terrace.
+Nayland Smith's haggard face was terrible.  But the stark horror of the
+thing inspired him to that, which conceived earlier, had saved Denby.
+Twisting suddenly to Eltham, he roared in a voice audible beyond the
+river:
+
+"Heavens!  we are fools!  LOOSE THE DOG!"
+
+"But the dog--" I began.
+
+Smith clapped his hand over my mouth.
+
+"I know he's crippled," he whispered.  "But if anything human lurks
+there, the dog will lead us to it.  If a MAN is there, he will fly!
+Why did we not think of it before.  Fools, fools!"  He raised his voice
+again.  "Keep him on leash, Edwards.  He will lead us."
+
+The scheme succeeded.
+
+Edwards barely had started on his errand when bells began ringing
+inside the house.
+
+"Wait!" snapped Eltham, and rushed indoors.
+
+A moment later he was out again, his eyes gleaming madly.  "Above the
+moat," he panted.  And we were off en masse round the edge of the trees.
+
+It was dark above the moat; but not so dark as to prevent our seeing a
+narrow ladder of thin bamboo joints and silken cord hanging by two
+hooks from the top of the twelve-foot wire fence.  There was no sound.
+
+"He's out!" screamed Eltham.  "Down the steps!"
+
+We all ran our best and swiftest.  But Eltham outran us.  Like a fury
+he tore at bolts and bars, and like a fury sprang out into the road.
+Straight and white it showed to the acclivity by the Roman ruin.  But
+no living thing moved upon it.  The distant baying of the dog was borne
+to our ears.
+
+"Curse it!  he's crippled," hissed Smith.  "Without him, as well pursue
+a shadow!"
+
+
+A few hours later the shrubbery yielded up its secret, a simple one
+enough: A big cask sunk in a pit, with a laurel shrub cunningly affixed
+to its movable lid, which was further disguised with tufts of grass.  A
+slender bamboo-jointed rod lay near the fence.  It had a hook on the
+top, and was evidently used for attaching the ladder.
+
+"It was the end of this ladder which Miss Eltham saw," said Smith, "as
+he trailed it behind him into the shrubbery when she interrupted him in
+her fathers room.  He and whomever he had with him doubtless slipped in
+during the daytime--whilst Eltham was absent in London--bringing the
+prepared cask and all necessary implements with them.  They concealed
+themselves somewhere--probably in the shrubbery--and during the night
+made the cache.  The excavated earth would be disposed of on the
+flower-beds; the dummy bush they probably had ready.  You see, the
+problem of getting IN was never a big one.  But owing to the 'defenses'
+it was impossible (whilst Eltham was in residence at any rate) to get
+OUT after dark.  For Fu-Manchu's purposes, then, a working-base INSIDE
+Redmoat was essential.  His servant--for he needed assistance--must
+have been in hiding somewhere outside; Heaven knows where!  During the
+day they could come or go by the gates, as we have already noted."
+
+"You think it was the Doctor himself?"
+
+"It seems possible.  Who else has eyes like the eyes Miss Eltham saw
+from the window last night?"
+
+Then remains to tell the nature of the outrage whereby Fu-Manchu had
+planned to prevent Eltham's leaving England for China.  This we learned
+from Denby.  For Denby was not dead.
+
+It was easy to divine that he had stumbled upon the fiendish visitor at
+the very entrance to his burrow; had been stunned (judging from the
+evidence, with a sand-bag), and dragged down into the cache--to which
+he must have lain in such dangerous proximity as to render detection of
+the dummy bush possible in removing him.  The quickest expedient, then,
+had been to draw him beneath.  When the search of the shrubbery was
+concluded, his body had been borne to the edge of the bushes and laid
+where we found it.
+
+Why his life had been spared, I cannot conjecture, but provision had
+been made against his recovering consciousness and revealing the secret
+of the shrubbery.  The ruse of releasing the mastiff alone had
+terminated the visit of the unbidden guest within Redmoat.
+
+Denby made a very slow recovery; and, even when convalescent,
+consciously added not one fact to those we already had collated; his
+memory had completely deserted him!
+
+This, in my opinion, as in those of the several specialists consulted,
+was due, not to the blow on the head, but to the presence, slightly
+below and to the right of the first cervical curve of the spine, of a
+minute puncture--undoubtedly caused by a hypodermic syringe.  Then,
+unconsciously, poor Denby furnished the last link in the chain; for
+undoubtedly, by means of this operation, Fu-Manchu had designed to
+efface from Eltham's mind his plans of return to Ho-Nan.
+
+The nature of the fluid which could produce such mental symptoms was a
+mystery--a mystery which defied Western science: one of the many
+strange secrets of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+SINCE Nayland Smith's return from Burma I had rarely taken up a paper
+without coming upon evidences of that seething which had cast up Dr.
+Fu-Manchu. Whether, hitherto, such items had escaped my attention or
+had seemed to demand no particular notice, or whether they now became
+increasingly numerous, I was unable to determine.
+
+One evening, some little time after our sojourn in Norfolk, in glancing
+through a number of papers which I had brought in with me, I chanced
+upon no fewer than four items of news bearing more or less directly
+upon the grim business which engaged my friend and I.
+
+No white man, I honestly believe, appreciates the unemotional cruelty
+of the Chinese.  Throughout the time that Dr. Fu-Manchu remained in
+England, the press preserved a uniform silence upon the subject of his
+existence.  This was due to Nayland Smith.  But, as a result, I feel
+assured that my account of the Chinaman's deeds will, in many quarters,
+meet with an incredulous reception.
+
+I had been at work, earlier in the evening, upon the opening chapters
+of this chronicle, and I had realized how difficult it would be for my
+reader, amid secure and cozy surroundings, to credit any human being
+with a callous villainy great enough to conceive and to put into
+execution such a death pest as that directed against Sir Crichton Davey.
+
+One would expect God's worst man to shrink from employing--against
+however vile an enemy--such an instrument as the Zayat Kiss.  So
+thinking, my eye was caught by the following:--
+
+
+EXPRESS CORRESPONDENT
+
+NEW YORK.
+
+"Secret service men of the United States Government are searching the
+South Sea Islands for a certain Hawaiian from the island of Maui, who,
+it is believed, has been selling poisonous scorpions to Chinese in
+Honolulu anxious to get rid of their children.
+
+"Infanticide, by scorpion and otherwise, among the Chinese, has
+increased so terribly that the authorities have started a searching
+inquiry, which has led to the hunt for the scorpion dealer of Maui.
+
+"Practically all the babies that die mysteriously are unwanted girls,
+and in nearly every case the parents promptly ascribe the death to the
+bite of a scorpion, and are ready to produce some more or less
+poisonous insect in support of the statement.
+
+"The authorities have no doubt that infanticide by scorpion bite is a
+growing practice, and orders have been given to hunt down the scorpion
+dealer at any cost."
+
+
+Is it any matter for wonder that such a people had produced a
+Fu-Manchu?  I pasted the cutting into a scrap-book, determined that, if
+I lived to publish my account of those days, I would quote it therein
+as casting a sidelight upon Chinese character.
+
+A Reuter message to The Globe and a paragraph in The Star also
+furnished work for my scissors.  Here were evidences of the deep-seated
+unrest, the secret turmoil, which manifested itself so far from its
+center as peaceful England in the person of the sinister Doctor.
+
+
+"HONG KONG, Friday.
+
+"Li Hon Hung, the Chinaman who fired at the Governor yesterday, was
+charged before the magistrate with shooting at him with intent to kill,
+which is equivalent to attempted murder.  The prisoner, who was not
+defended, pleaded guilty.  The Assistant Crown Solicitor, who
+prosecuted, asked for a remand until Monday, which was granted.
+
+"Snapshots taken by the spectators of the outrage yesterday disclosed
+the presence of an accomplice, also armed with a revolver.  It is
+reported that this man, who was arrested last night, was in possession
+of incriminating documentary evidence."
+
+
+Later.
+
+"Examination of the documents found on Li Hon Hung's accomplice has
+disclosed the fact that both men were well financed by the Canton Triad
+Society, the directors of which had enjoined the assassination of Sir
+F. M. or Mr. C. S., the Colonial Secretary.  In a report prepared by
+the accomplice for dispatch to Canton, also found on his person, he
+expressed regret that the attempt had failed."--Reuter.
+
+"It is officially reported in St. Petersburg that a force of Chinese
+soldiers and villagers surrounded the house of a Russian subject named
+Said Effendi, near Khotan, in Chinese Turkestan.
+
+"They fired at the house and set it in flames.  There were in the house
+about 100 Russians, many of whom were killed.
+
+"The Russian Government has instructed its Minister at Peking to make
+the most vigorous representations on the subject."--Reuter.
+
+
+Finally, in a Personal Column, I found the following:--
+
+"HO-NAN. Have abandoned visit.--ELTHAM."
+
+
+I had just pasted it into my book when Nayland Smith came in and threw
+himself into an arm-chair, facing me across the table.  I showed him
+the cutting.
+
+"I am glad, for Eltham's sake--and for the girl's," was his comment.
+"But it marks another victory for Fu-Manchu!  Just Heaven!  Why is
+retribution delayed!"
+
+Smith's darkly tanned face had grown leaner than ever since he had
+begun his fight with the most uncanny opponent, I suppose, against whom
+a man ever had pitted himself. He stood up and began restlessly to pace
+the room, furiously stuffing tobacco into his briar.
+
+"I have seen Sir Lionel Barton," he said abruptly; "and, to put the
+whole thing in a nutshell, he has laughed at me!  During the months
+that I have been wondering where he had gone to he has been somewhere
+in Egypt.  He certainly bears a charmed life, for on the evidence of
+his letter to The Times he has seen things in Tibet which Fu-Manchu
+would have the West blind to; in fact, I think he has found a new
+keyhole to the gate of the Indian Empire!"
+
+Long ago we had placed the name of Sir Lionel Barton upon the list of
+those whose lives stood between Fu-Manchu and the attainment of his
+end.  Orientalist and explorer, the fearless traveler who first had
+penetrated to Lhassa, who thrice, as a pilgrim, had entered forbidden
+Mecca, he now had turned his attention again to Tibet--thereby signing
+his own death-warrant.
+
+"That he has reached England alive is a hopeful sign?" I suggested.
+
+Smith shook his head, and lighted the blackened briar.
+
+"England at present is the web," he replied.  "The spider will be
+waiting.  Petrie, I sometimes despair.  Sir Lionel is an impossible man
+to shepherd.  You ought to see his house at Finchley.  A low, squat
+place completely hemmed in by trees.  Damp as a swamp; smells like a
+jungle.  Everything topsy-turvy. He only arrived to-day, and he is
+working and eating (and sleeping I expect), in a study that looks like
+an earthquake at Sotheby's auction-rooms. The rest of the house is half
+a menagerie and half a circus.  He has a Bedouin groom, a Chinese
+body-servant, and Heaven only knows what other strange people!"
+
+"Chinese!"
+
+"Yes, I saw him; a squinting Cantonese he calls Kwee.  I don't like
+him.  Also, there is a secretary known as Strozza, who has an
+unpleasant face.  He is a fine linguist, I understand, and is engaged
+upon the Spanish notes for Barton's forthcoming book on the Mayapan
+temples.  By the way, all Sir Lionel's baggage disappeared from the
+landing-stage--including his Tibetan notes."
+
+"Significant!"
+
+"Of course.  But he argues that he has crossed Tibet from the Kuen-Lun
+to the Himalayas without being assassinated, and therefore that it is
+unlikely he will meet with that fate in London.  I left him dictating
+the book from memory, at the rate of about two hundred words a minute."
+
+"He is wasting no time."
+
+"Wasting time!  In addition to the Yucatan book and the work on Tibet,
+he has to read a paper at the Institute next week about some tomb he
+has unearthed in Egypt.  As I came away, a van drove up from the docks
+and a couple of fellows delivered a sarcophagus as big as a boat.  It
+is unique, according to Sir Lionel, and will go to the British Museum
+after he has examined it.  The man crams six months' work into six
+weeks; then he is off again."
+
+"What do you propose to do?"
+
+"What CAN I do?  I know that Fu-Manchu will make an attempt upon him.
+I cannot doubt it.  Ugh!  that house gave me the shudders.  No
+sunlight, I'll swear, Petrie, can ever penetrate to the rooms, and when
+I arrived this afternoon clouds of gnats floated like motes wherever a
+stray beam filtered through the trees of the avenue.  There's a steamy
+smell about the place that is almost malarious, and the whole of the
+west front is covered with a sort of monkey-creeper, which he has
+imported at some time or other.  It has a close, exotic perfume that is
+quite in the picture.  I tell you, the place was made for murder."
+
+"Have you taken any precautions?"
+
+"I called at Scotland Yard and sent a man down to watch the house,
+but--"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
+
+"What is Sir Lionel like?"
+
+"A madman, Petrie.  A tall, massive man, wearing a dirty dressing-gown
+of neutral color; a man with untidy gray hair and a bristling mustache,
+keen blue eyes, and a brown skin; who wears a short beard or rarely
+shaves--I don't know which.  I left him striding about among the
+thousand and one curiosities of that incredible room, picking his way
+through his antique furniture, works of reference, manuscripts,
+mummies, spears, pottery and what not--sometimes kicking a book from
+his course, or stumbling over a stuffed crocodile or a Mexican
+mask--alternately dictating and conversing.  Phew!"
+
+For some time we were silent.
+
+"Smith" I said, "we are making no headway in this business.  With all
+the forces arrayed against him, Fu-Manchu still eludes us, still
+pursues his devilish, inscrutable way."
+
+Nayland Smith nodded.
+
+"And we don't know all," he said.  "We mark such and such a man as one
+alive to the Yellow Peril, and we warn him--if we have time.  Perhaps
+he escapes; perhaps he does not.  But what do we know, Petrie, of those
+others who may die every week by his murderous agency?  We cannot know
+EVERYONE who has read the riddle of China.  I never see a report of
+someone found drowned, of an apparent suicide, of a sudden, though
+seemingly natural death, without wondering.  I tell you, Fu-Manchu is
+omnipresent; his tentacles embrace everything.  I said that Sir Lionel
+must bear a charmed life.  The fact that WE are alive is a miracle."
+
+He glanced at his watch.
+
+"Nearly eleven," he said.  "But sleep seems a waste of time--apart from
+its dangers."
+
+We heard a bell ring.  A few moments later followed a knock at the room
+door.
+
+"Come in!" I cried.
+
+A girl entered with a telegram addressed to Smith.  His jaw looked very
+square in the lamplight, and his eyes shone like steel as he took it
+from her and opened the envelope.  He glanced at the form, stood up and
+passed it to me, reaching for his hat, which lay upon my writing-table.
+
+"God help us, Petrie!" he said.
+
+This was the message:
+
+
+"Sir Lionel Barton murdered.  Meet me at his house at once.--WEYMOUTH,
+INSPECTOR."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+ALTHOUGH we avoided all unnecessary delay, it was close upon midnight
+when our cab swung round into a darkly shadowed avenue, at the farther
+end of which, as seen through a tunnel, the moonlight glittered upon
+the windows of Rowan House, Sir Lionel Barton's home.
+
+Stepping out before the porch of the long, squat building, I saw that
+it was banked in, as Smith had said, by trees and shrubs.  The facade
+showed mantled in the strange exotic creeper which he had mentioned,
+and the air was pungent with an odor of decaying vegetation, with which
+mingled the heavy perfume of the little nocturnal red flowers which
+bloomed luxuriantly upon the creeper.
+
+The place looked a veritable wilderness, and when we were admitted to
+the hall by Inspector Weymouth I saw that the interior was in keeping
+with the exterior, for the hall was constructed from the model of some
+apartment in an Assyrian temple, and the squat columns, the low seats,
+the hangings, all were eloquent of neglect, being thickly dust-coated.
+The musty smell, too, was almost as pronounced here as outside, beneath
+the trees.
+
+To a library, whose contents overflowed in many literary torrents upon
+the floor, the detective conducted us.
+
+"Good heavens!" I cried, "what's that?"
+
+Something leaped from the top of the bookcase, ambled silently across
+the littered carpet, and passed from the library like a golden streak.
+I stood looking after it with startled eyes.  Inspector Weymouth
+laughed dryly.
+
+"It's a young puma, or a civet-cat, or something, Doctor," he said.
+"This house is full of surprises--and mysteries."
+
+His voice was not quite steady, I thought, and he carefully closed the
+door ere proceeding further.
+
+"Where is he?" asked Nayland Smith harshly.  "How was it done?"
+
+Weymouth sat down and lighted a cigar which I offered him.
+
+"I thought you would like to hear what led up to it--so far as we
+know--before seeing him?"
+
+Smith nodded.
+
+"Well," continued the Inspector, "the man you arranged to send down
+from the Yard got here all right and took up a post in the road
+outside, where he could command a good view of the gates.  He saw and
+heard nothing, until going on for half-past ten, when a young lady
+turned up and went in."
+
+"A young lady?"
+
+"Miss Edmonds, Sir Lionel's shorthand typist.  She had found, after
+getting home, that her bag, with her purse in, was missing, and she
+came back to see if she had left it here.  She gave the alarm.  My man
+heard the row from the road and came in.  Then he ran out and rang us
+up.  I immediately wired for you."
+
+"He heard the row, you say.  What row?"
+
+"Miss Edmonds went into violent hysterics!"
+
+Smith was pacing the room now in tense excitement.
+
+"Describe what he saw when he came in."
+
+"He saw a negro footman--there isn't an Englishman in the house--trying
+to pacify the girl out in the hall yonder, and a Malay and another
+colored man beating their foreheads and howling.  There was no sense to
+be got out of any of them, so he started to investigate for himself.
+He had taken the bearings of the place earlier in the evening, and from
+the light in a window on the ground floor had located the study; so he
+set out to look for the door.  When he found it, it was locked from the
+inside."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He went out and round to the window.  There's no blind, and from the
+shrubbery you can see into the lumber-room known as the study.  He
+looked in, as apparently Miss Edmonds had done before him.  What he saw
+accounted for her hysterics."
+
+Both Smith and I were hanging upon his words.
+
+"All amongst the rubbish on the floor a big Egyptian mummy case was
+lying on its side, and face downwards, with his arms thrown across it,
+lay Sir Lionel Barton."
+
+"My God!  Yes.  Go on."
+
+"There was only a shaded reading-lamp alight, and it stood on a chair,
+shining right down on him; it made a patch of light on the floor, you
+understand."  The Inspector indicated its extent with his hands.
+"Well, as the man smashed the glass and got the window open, and was
+just climbing in, he saw something else, so he says."
+
+He paused.
+
+"What did he see?" demanded Smith shortly.
+
+"A sort of GREEN MIST, sir.  He says it seemed to be alive.  It moved
+over the floor, about a foot from the ground, going away from him and
+towards a curtain at the other end of the study."
+
+Nayland Smith fixed his eyes upon the speaker.
+
+"Where did he first see this green mist?"
+
+"He says, Mr. Smith, that he thinks it came from the mummy case."
+
+"Yes; go on."
+
+"It is to his credit that he climbed into the room after seeing a thing
+like that.  He did.  He turned the body over, and Sir Lionel looked
+horrible.  He was quite dead.  Then Croxted--that's the man's
+name--went over to this curtain.  There was a glass door--shut.  He
+opened it, and it gave on a conservatory--a place stacked from the
+tiled floor to the glass roof with more rubbish.  It was dark inside,
+but enough light came from the study--it's really a drawing-room, by
+the way--as he'd turned all the lamps on, to give him another glimpse
+of this green, crawling mist.  There are three steps to go down.  On
+the steps lay a dead Chinaman."
+
+"A dead Chinaman!"
+
+"A dead CHINAMAN."
+
+"Doctor seen them?" rapped Smith.
+
+"Yes; a local man.  He was out of his depth, I could see.  Contradicted
+himself three times.  But there's no need for another opinion--until we
+get the coroner's."
+
+"And Croxted?"
+
+"Croxted was taken ill, Mr. Smith, and had to be sent home in a cab."
+
+"What ails him?"
+
+Detective-Inspector Weymouth raised his eyebrows and carefully knocked
+the ash from his cigar.
+
+"He held out until I came, gave me the story, and then fainted right
+away.  He said that something in the conservatory seemed to get him by
+the throat."
+
+"Did he mean that literally?"
+
+"I couldn't say.  We had to send the girl home, too, of course."
+
+Nayland Smith was pulling thoughtfully at the lobe of his left ear.
+
+"Got any theory?" he jerked.
+
+Weymouth shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Not one that includes the green mist," he said.  "Shall we go in now?"
+
+We crossed the Assyrian hall, where the members of that strange
+household were gathered in a panic-stricken group.  They numbered four.
+Two of them were negroes, and two Easterns of some kind.  I missed the
+Chinaman, Kwee, of whom Smith had spoken, and the Italian secretary;
+and from the way in which my friend peered about the shadows of the
+hall I divined that he, too, wondered at their absence.  We entered Sir
+Lionel's study--an apartment which I despair of describing.
+
+Nayland Smith's words, "an earthquake at Sotheby's auction-rooms,"
+leaped to my mind at once; for the place was simply stacked with
+curious litter--loot of Africa, Mexico and Persia.  In a clearing by
+the hearth a gas stove stood upon a packing-case, and about it lay a
+number of utensils for camp cookery.  The odor of rotting vegetation,
+mingled with the insistent perfume of the strange night-blooming
+flowers, was borne in through the open window.
+
+In the center of the floor, beside an overturned sarcophagus, lay a
+figure in a neutral-colored dressing-gown, face downwards, and arms
+thrust forward and over the side of the ancient Egyptian mummy case.
+
+My friend advanced and knelt beside the dead man.
+
+"Good God!"
+
+Smith sprang upright and turned with an extraordinary expression to
+Inspector Weymouth.
+
+"You do not know Sir Lionel Barton by sight?" he rapped.
+
+"No," began Weymouth, "but--"
+
+"This is not Sir Lionel.  This is Strozza, the secretary."
+
+"What!" shouted Weymouth.
+
+"Where is the other--the Chinaman--quick!" cried Smith.
+
+"I have had him left where he was found--on the conservatory steps,"
+said the Inspector.
+
+Smith ran across the room to where, beyond the open door, a glimpse
+might be obtained of stacked-up curiosities.  Holding back the curtain
+to allow more light to penetrate, he bent forward over a crumpled-up
+figure which lay upon the steps below.
+
+"It is!" he cried aloud.  "It is Sir Lionel's servant, Kwee."
+
+Weymouth and I looked at one another across the body of the Italian;
+then our eyes turned together to where my friend, grim-faced, stood
+over the dead Chinaman.  A breeze whispered through the leaves; a great
+wave of exotic perfume swept from the open window towards the curtained
+doorway.
+
+It was a breath of the East--that stretched out a yellow hand to the
+West.  It was symbolic of the subtle, intangible power manifested in
+Dr. Fu-Manchu, as Nayland Smith--lean, agile, bronzed with the suns of
+Burma, was symbolic of the clean British efficiency which sought to
+combat the insidious enemy.
+
+"One thing is evident," said Smith:  "no one in the house, Strozza
+excepted, knew that Sir Lionel was absent."
+
+"How do you arrive at that?" asked Weymouth.
+
+"The servants, in the hall, are bewailing him as dead.  If they had
+seen him go out they would know that it must be someone else who lies
+here."
+
+"What about the Chinaman?"
+
+"Since there is no other means of entrance to the conservatory save
+through the study, Kwee must have hidden himself there at some time
+when his master was absent from the room."
+
+"Croxted found the communicating door closed.  What killed the
+Chinaman?"
+
+"Both Miss Edmonds and Croxted found the study door locked from the
+inside.  What killed Strozza?" retorted Smith.
+
+"You will have noted," continued the Inspector, "that the secretary is
+wearing Sir Lionel's dressing-gown. It was seeing him in that, as she
+looked in at the window, which led Miss Edmonds to mistake him for her
+employer--and consequently to put us on the wrong scent."
+
+"He wore it in order that anybody looking in at the window would be
+sure to make that mistake," rapped Smith.
+
+"Why?" I asked.
+
+"Because he came here for a felonious purpose.  See."  Smith stooped
+and took up several tools from the litter on the floor.  "There lies
+the lid.  He came to open the sarcophagus.  It contained the mummy of
+some notable person who flourished under Meneptah II; and Sir Lionel
+told me that a number of valuable ornaments and jewels probably were
+secreted amongst the wrappings.  He proposed to open the thing and to
+submit the entire contents to examination to-night. He evidently
+changed his mind--fortunately for himself."
+
+I ran my fingers through my hair in perplexity.
+
+"Then what has become of the mummy?"
+
+Nayland Smith laughed dryly.
+
+"It has vanished in the form of a green vapor apparently," he said.
+"Look at Strozza's face."
+
+He turned the body over, and, used as I was to such spectacles, the
+contorted features of the Italian filled me with horror, so--suggestive
+were they of a death more than ordinarily violent.  I pulled aside the
+dressing-gown and searched the body for marks, but failed to find any.
+Nayland Smith crossed the room, and, assisted by the detective, carried
+Kwee, the Chinaman, into the study and laid him fully in the light.
+His puckered yellow face presented a sight even more awful than the
+other, and his blue lips were drawn back, exposing both upper and lower
+teeth.  There were no marks of violence, but his limbs, like Strozza's,
+had been tortured during his mortal struggles into unnatural postures.
+
+The breeze was growing higher, and pungent odor-waves from the damp
+shrubbery, bearing, too, the oppressive sweetness of the creeping
+plant, swept constantly through the open window.  Inspector Weymouth
+carefully relighted his cigar.
+
+"I'm with you this far, Mr. Smith," he said.  "Strozza, knowing Sir
+Lionel to be absent, locked himself in here to rifle the mummy case,
+for Croxted, entering by way of the window, found the key on the
+inside.  Strozza didn't know that the Chinaman was hidden in the
+conservatory--"
+
+"And Kwee did not dare to show himself, because he too was there for
+some mysterious reason of his own," interrupted Smith.
+
+"Having got the lid off, something,--somebody--"
+
+"Suppose we say the mummy?"
+
+Weymouth laughed uneasily.
+
+"Well, sir, something that vanished from a locked room without opening
+the door or the window killed Strozza."
+
+"And something which, having killed Strozza, next killed the Chinaman,
+apparently without troubling to open the door behind which he lay
+concealed," Smith continued.  "For once in a way, Inspector, Dr.
+Fu-Manchu has employed an ally which even his giant will was incapable
+entirely to subjugate.  What blind force--what terrific agent of
+death--had he confined in that sarcophagus!"
+
+"You think this is the work of Fu-Manchu?" I said.  "If you are
+correct, his power indeed is more than human."
+
+Something in my voice, I suppose, brought Smith right about.  He
+surveyed me curiously.
+
+"Can you doubt it?  The presence of a concealed Chinaman surely is
+sufficient.  Kwee, I feel assured, was one of the murder group, though
+probably he had only recently entered that mysterious service.  He is
+unarmed, or I should feel disposed to think that his part was to
+assassinate Sir Lionel whilst, unsuspecting the presence of a hidden
+enemy, he was at work here.  Strozza's opening the sarcophagus clearly
+spoiled the scheme."
+
+"And led to the death--"
+
+"Of a servant of Fu-Manchu. Yes.  I am at a loss to account for that."
+
+"Do you think that the sarcophagus entered into the scheme, Smith?"
+
+My friend looked at me in evident perplexity.
+
+"You mean that its arrival at the time when a creature of the
+Doctor--Kwee--was concealed here, may have been a coincidence?"
+
+I nodded; and Smith bent over the sarcophagus, curiously examining the
+garish paintings with which it was decorated inside and out.  It lay
+sideways upon the floor, and seizing it by its edge, he turned it over.
+
+"Heavy," he muttered; "but Strozza must have capsized it as he fell.
+He would not have laid it on its side to remove the lid.  Hallo!"
+
+He bent farther forward, catching at a piece of twine, and out of the
+mummy case pulled a rubber stopper or "cork."
+
+"This was stuck in a hole level with the floor of the thing," he said.
+"Ugh!  it has a disgusting smell."
+
+I took it from his hands, and was about to examine it, when a loud
+voice sounded outside in the hall.  The door was thrown open, and a big
+man, who, despite the warmth of the weather, wore a fur-lined overcoat,
+rushed impetuously into the room.
+
+"Sir Lionel!" cried Smith eagerly.  "I warned you!  And see, you have
+had a very narrow escape."
+
+Sir Lionel Barton glanced at what lay upon the floor, then from Smith
+to myself, and from me to Inspector Weymouth.  He dropped into one of
+the few chairs unstacked with books.
+
+"Mr. Smith," he said, with emotion, "what does this mean?  Tell
+me--quickly."
+
+In brief terms Smith detailed the happenings of the night--or so much
+as he knew of them.  Sir Lionel Barton listened, sitting quite still
+the while--an unusual repose in a man of such evidently tremendous
+nervous activity.
+
+"He came for the jewels," he said slowly, when Smith was finished; and
+his eyes turned to the body of the dead Italian.  "I was wrong to
+submit him to the temptation.  God knows what Kwee was doing in hiding.
+Perhaps he had come to murder me, as you surmise, Mr. Smith, though I
+find it hard to believe.  But--I don't think this is the handiwork of
+your Chinese doctor." He fixed his gaze upon the sarcophagus.
+
+Smith stared at him in surprise.  "What do you mean, Sir Lionel?"
+
+The famous traveler continued to look towards the sarcophagus with
+something in his blue eyes that might have been dread.
+
+"I received a wire from Professor Rembold to-night," he continued.
+"You were correct in supposing that no one but Strozza knew of my
+absence.  I dressed hurriedly and met the professor at the Traveler's.
+He knew that I was to read a paper next week upon"--again he looked
+toward the mummy case--"the tomb of Mekara; and he knew that the
+sarcophagus had been brought, untouched, to England.  He begged me not
+to open it."
+
+Nayland Smith was studying the speaker's face.
+
+"What reason did he give for so extraordinary a request?" he asked.
+
+Sir Lionel Barton hesitated.
+
+"One," he replied at last, "which amused me--at the time.  I must
+inform you that Mekara--whose tomb my agent had discovered during my
+absence in Tibet, and to enter which I broke my return journey to
+Alexandria--was a high priest and first prophet of Amen--under the
+Pharaoh of the Exodus; in short, one of the magicians who contested in
+magic arts with Moses.  I thought the discovery unique, until Professor
+Rembold furnished me with some curious particulars respecting the death
+of M. Page le Roi, the French Egyptologist--particulars new to me."
+
+We listened in growing surprise, scarcely knowing to what this tended.
+
+"M. le Roi," continued Barton, "discovered, but kept secret, the tomb
+of Amenti--another of this particular brotherhood.  It appears that he
+opened the mummy case on the spot--these priests were of royal line,
+and are buried in the valley of Biban-le-Moluk. His Fellah and Arab
+servants deserted him for some reason--on seeing the mummy case--and he
+was found dead, apparently strangled, beside it.  The matter was hushed
+up by the Egyptian Government.  Rembold could not explain why.  But he
+begged of me not to open the sarcophagus of Mekara."
+
+A silence fell.
+
+The strange facts regarding the sudden death of Page le Roi, which I
+now heard for the first time, had impressed me unpleasantly, coming
+from a man of Sir Lionel Barton's experience and reputation.
+
+"How long had it lain in the docks?" jerked Smith.
+
+"For two days, I believe.  I am not a superstitious man, Mr. Smith, but
+neither is Professor Rembold, and now that I know the facts respecting
+Page le Roi, I can find it in my heart to thank God that I did not
+see . . . whatever came out of that sarcophagus."
+
+Nayland Smith stared him hard in the face.  "I am glad you did not, Sir
+Lionel," he said; "for whatever the priest Mekara has to do with the
+matter, by means of his sarcophagus, Dr. Fu-Manchu has made his first
+attempt upon your life.  He has failed, but I hope you will accompany
+me from here to a hotel.  He will not fail twice."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+IT was the night following that of the double tragedy at Rowan House.
+Nayland Smith, with Inspector Weymouth, was engaged in some mysterious
+inquiry at the docks, and I had remained at home to resume my strange
+chronicle.  And--why should I not confess it?--my memories had
+frightened me.
+
+I was arranging my notes respecting the case of Sir Lionel Barton.
+They were hopelessly incomplete.  For instance, I had jotted down the
+following queries:--(1) Did any true parallel exist between the death
+of M. Page le Roi and the death of Kwee, the Chinaman, and of Strozza?
+(2) What had become of the mummy of Mekara?  (3) How had the murderer
+escaped from a locked room?  (4) What was the purpose of the rubber
+stopper?  (5) Why was Kwee hiding in the conservatory?  (6) Was the
+green mist a mere subjective hallucination--a figment of Croxted's
+imagination--or had he actually seen it?
+
+Until these questions were satisfactorily answered, further progress
+was impossible.  Nayland Smith frankly admitted that he was out of his
+depth.  "It looks, on the face of it, more like a case for the
+Psychical Research people than for a plain Civil Servant, lately of
+Mandalay," he had said only that morning.
+
+"Sir Lionel Barton really believes that supernatural agencies were
+brought into operation by the opening of the high priest's coffin.  For
+my part, even if I believed the same, I should still maintain that Dr.
+Fu-Manchu controlled those manifestations.  But reason it out for
+yourself and see if we arrive at any common center.  Don't work so much
+upon the datum of the green mist, but keep to the FACTS which are
+established."
+
+I commenced to knock out my pipe in the ash-tray; then paused, pipe in
+hand.  The house was quite still, for my landlady and all the small
+household were out.
+
+Above the noise of the passing tramcar I thought I had heard the hall
+door open.  In the ensuing silence I sat and listened.
+
+Not a sound.  Stay!  I slipped my hand into the table drawer, took out
+my revolver, and stood up.
+
+There WAS a sound.  Someone or something was creeping upstairs in the
+dark!
+
+Familiar with the ghastly media employed by the Chinaman, I was seized
+with an impulse to leap to the door, shut and lock it.  But the
+rustling sound proceeded, now, from immediately outside my partially
+opened door.  I had not the time to close it; knowing somewhat of the
+horrors at the command of Fu-Manchu, I had not the courage to open it.
+My heart leaping wildly, and my eyes upon that bar of darkness with its
+gruesome potentialities, I waited--waited for whatever was to come.
+Perhaps twelve seconds passed in silence.
+
+"Who's there?" I cried.  "Answer, or I fire!"
+
+"Ah!  no," came a soft voice, thrillingly musical.  "Put it down--that
+pistol.  Quick!  I must speak to you."
+
+The door was pushed open, and there entered a slim figure wrapped in a
+hooded cloak.  My hand fell, and I stood, stricken to silence, looking
+into the beautiful dark eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu's messenger--if her own
+statement could be credited, slave.  On two occasions this girl, whose
+association with the Doctor was one of the most profound mysteries of
+the case, had risked--I cannot say what; unnameable punishment,
+perhaps--to save me from death; in both cases from a terrible death.
+For what was she come now?
+
+Her lips slightly parted, she stood, holding her cloak about her, and
+watching me with great passionate eyes.
+
+"How--" I began.
+
+But she shook her head impatiently.
+
+"HE has a duplicate key of the house door," was her amazing statement.
+"I have never betrayed a secret of my master before, but you must
+arrange to replace the lock."
+
+She came forward and rested her slim hands confidingly upon my
+shoulders.  "I have come again to ask you to take me away from him,"
+she said simply.
+
+And she lifted her face to me.
+
+Her words struck a chord in my heart which sang with strange music,
+with music so barbaric that, frankly, I blushed to find it harmony.
+Have I said that she was beautiful?  It can convey no faint conception
+of her.  With her pure, fair skin, eyes like the velvet darkness of the
+East, and red lips so tremulously near to mine, she was the most
+seductively lovely creature I ever had looked upon.  In that electric
+moment my heart went out in sympathy to every man who had bartered
+honor, country, all for a woman's kiss.
+
+"I will see that you are placed under proper protection," I said
+firmly, but my voice was not quite my own.  "It is quite absurd to talk
+of slavery here in England.  You are a free agent, or you could not be
+here now.  Dr. Fu-Manchu cannot control your actions."
+
+"Ah!" she cried, casting back her head scornfully, and releasing a
+cloud of hair, through whose softness gleamed a jeweled head-dress.
+"No?  He cannot?  Do you know what it means to have been a slave?
+Here, in your free England, do you know what it means--the razzia, the
+desert journey, the whips of the drivers, the house of the dealer, the
+shame.  Bah!"
+
+How beautiful she was in her indignation!
+
+"Slavery is put down, you imagine, perhaps?  You do not believe that
+to-day--TO-DAY--twenty-five English sovereigns will buy a Galla girl,
+who is brown, and"--whisper--"two hundred and fifty a Circassian, who
+is white.  No, there is no slavery!  So!  Then what am I?"
+
+She threw open her cloak, and it is a literal fact that I rubbed my
+eyes, half believing that I dreamed.  For beneath, she was arrayed in
+gossamer silk which more than indicated the perfect lines of her slim
+shape; wore a jeweled girdle and barbaric ornaments; was a figure fit
+for the walled gardens of Stamboul--a figure amazing, incomprehensible,
+in the prosaic setting of my rooms.
+
+"To-night I had no time to make myself an English miss," she said,
+wrapping her cloak quickly about her.  "You see me as I am."  Her
+garments exhaled a faint perfume, and it reminded me of another meeting
+I had had with her.  I looked into the challenging eyes.
+
+"Your request is but a pretense," I said.  "Why do you keep the secrets
+of that man, when they mean death to so many?"
+
+"Death!  I have seen my own sister die of fever in the desert--seen her
+thrown like carrion into a hole in the sand.  I have seen men flogged
+until they prayed for death as a boon.  I have known the lash myself.
+Death!  What does it matter?"
+
+She shocked me inexpressibly.  Enveloped in her cloak again, and with
+only her slight accent to betray her, it was dreadful to hear such
+words from a girl who, save for her singular type of beauty, might have
+been a cultured European.
+
+"Prove, then, that you really wish to leave this man's service.  Tell
+me what killed Strozza and the Chinaman," I said.
+
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"I do not know that.  But if you will carry me off"--she clutched me
+nervously--"so that I am helpless, lock me up so that I cannot escape,
+beat me, if you like, I will tell you all I do know.  While he is my
+master I will never betray him.  Tear me from him--by force, do you
+understand, BY FORCE, and my lips will be sealed no longer.  Ah!  but
+you do not understand, with your 'proper authorities'--your police.
+Police!  Ah, I have said enough."
+
+A clock across the common began to strike.  The girl started and laid
+her hands upon my shoulders again.  There were tears glittering among
+the curved black lashes.
+
+"You do not understand," she whispered.  "Oh, will you never understand
+and release me from him!  I must go.  Already I have remained too long.
+Listen.  Go out without delay.  Remain out--at a hotel, where you will,
+but do not stay here."
+
+"And Nayland Smith?"
+
+"What is he to me, this Nayland Smith?  Ah, why will you not unseal my
+lips?  You are in danger--you hear me, in danger!  Go away from here
+to-night."
+
+She dropped her hands and ran from the room.  In the open doorway she
+turned, stamping her foot passionately.
+
+"You have hands and arms," she cried, "and yet you let me go.  Be
+warned, then; fly from here--" She broke off with something that
+sounded like a sob.
+
+I made no move to stay her--this beautiful accomplice of the
+arch-murderer, Fu-Manchu. I heard her light footsteps pattering down
+the stairs, I heard her open and close the door--the door of which Dr.
+Fu-Manchu held the key.  Still I stood where she had parted from me,
+and was so standing when a key grated in the lock and Nayland Smith
+came running up.
+
+"Did you see her?" I began.
+
+But his face showed that he had not done so, and rapidly I told him of
+my strange visitor, of her words, of her warning.
+
+"How can she have passed through London in that costume?" I cried in
+bewilderment.  "Where can she have come from?"
+
+Smith shrugged his shoulders and began to stuff broad-cut mixture into
+the familiar cracked briar.
+
+"She might have traveled in a car or in a cab," he said; "and
+undoubtedly she came direct from the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu.  You
+should have detained her, Petrie.  It is the third time we have had
+that woman in our power, the third time we have let her go free."
+
+"Smith," I replied, "I couldn't. She came of her own free will to give
+me a warning.  She disarms me."
+
+"Because you can see she is in love with you?" he suggested, and burst
+into one of his rare laughs when the angry flush rose to my cheek.
+"She is, Petrie why pretend to be blind to it?  You don't know the
+Oriental mind as I do; but I quite understand the girl's position.  She
+fears the English authorities, but would submit to capture by you!  If
+you would only seize her by the hair, drag her to some cellar, hurl her
+down and stand over her with a whip, she would tell you everything she
+knows, and salve her strange Eastern conscience with the reflection
+that speech was forced from her.  I am not joking; it is so, I assure
+you.  And she would adore you for your savagery, deeming you forceful
+and strong!"
+
+"Smith," I said, "be serious.  You know what her warning meant before."
+
+"I can guess what it means now," he rapped.  "Hallo!"
+
+Someone was furiously ringing the bell.
+
+"No one at home?" said my friend.  "I will go.  I think I know what it
+is."
+
+A few minutes later he returned, carrying a large square package.
+
+"From Weymouth," he explained, "by district messenger.  I left him
+behind at the docks, and he arranged to forward any evidence which
+subsequently he found.  This will be fragments of the mummy."
+
+"What!  You think the mummy was abstracted?"
+
+"Yes, at the docks.  I am sure of it; and somebody else was in the
+sarcophagus when it reached Rowan House.  A sarcophagus, I find, is
+practically airtight, so that the use of the rubber stopper becomes
+evident--ventilation.  How this person killed Strozza I have yet to
+learn."
+
+"Also, how he escaped from a locked room.  And what about the green
+mist?"
+
+Nayland Smith spread his hands in a characteristic gesture.
+
+"The green mist, Petrie, can be explained in several ways.  Remember,
+we have only one man's word that it existed.  It is at best a confusing
+datum to which we must not attach a factitious importance."
+
+He threw the wrappings on the floor and tugged at a twine loop in the
+lid of the square box, which now stood upon the table.  Suddenly the
+lid came away, bringing with it a lead lining, such as is usual in
+tea-chests. This lining was partially attached to one side of the box,
+so that the action of removing the lid at once raised and tilted it.
+
+Then happened a singular thing.
+
+Out over the table billowed a sort of yellowish-green cloud--an oily
+vapor--and an inspiration, it was nothing less, born of a memory and of
+some words of my beautiful visitor, came to me.
+
+"RUN, SMITH!" I screamed.  "The door! the door, for your life!
+Fu-Manchu sent that box!"  I threw my arms round him.  As he bent
+forward the moving vapor rose almost to his nostrils.  I dragged him
+back and all but pitched him out on to the landing.  We entered my
+bedroom, and there, as I turned on the light, I saw that Smith's tanned
+face was unusually drawn, and touched with pallor.
+
+"It is a poisonous gas!" I said hoarsely; "in many respects identical
+with chlorine, but having unique properties which prove it to be
+something else--God and Fu-Manchu, alone know what!  It is the fumes of
+chlorine that kill the men in the bleaching powder works.  We have been
+blind--I particularly.  Don't you see?  There was no one in the
+sarcophagus, Smith, but there was enough of that fearful stuff to have
+suffocated a regiment!"
+
+Smith clenched his fists convulsively.
+
+"My God!" he said, "how can I hope to deal with the author of such a
+scheme?  I see the whole plan.  He did not reckon on the mummy case
+being overturned, and Kwee's part was to remove the plug with the aid
+of the string--after Sir Lionel had been suffocated.  The gas, I take
+it, is heavier than air."
+
+"Chlorine gas has a specific gravity of 2.470," I said; "two and a half
+times heavier than air.  You can pour it from jar to jar like a
+liquid--if you are wearing a chemist's mask.  In these respects this
+stuff appears to be similar; the points of difference would not
+interest you.  The sarcophagus would have emptied through the vent, and
+the gas have dispersed, with no clew remaining--except the smell."
+
+"I did smell it, Petrie, on the stopper, but, of course, was unfamiliar
+with it.  You may remember that you were prevented from doing so by the
+arrival of Sir Lionel?  The scent of those infernal flowers must
+partially have drowned it, too.  Poor, misguided Strozza inhaled the
+stuff, capsized the case in his fall, and all the gas--"
+
+"Went pouring under the conservatory door, and down the steps, where
+Kwee was crouching.  Croxted's breaking the window created sufficient
+draught to disperse what little remained.  It will have settled on the
+floor now.  I will go and open both windows."
+
+Nayland raised his haggard face.
+
+"He evidently made more than was necessary to dispatch Sir Lionel
+Barton," he said; "and contemptuously--you note the attitude,
+Petrie?--contemptuously devoted the surplus to me.  His contempt is
+justified.  I am a child striving to cope with a mental giant.  It is
+by no wit of mine that Dr. Fu-Manchu scores a double failure."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+I WILL tell you, now of a strange dream which I dreamed, and of the
+stranger things to which I awakened.  Since, out of a blank--a
+void--this vision burst in upon my mind, I cannot do better than relate
+it, without preamble.  It was thus:
+
+I dreamed that I lay writhing on the floor in agony indescribable.  My
+veins were filled with liquid fire, and but that stygian darkness was
+about me, I told myself that I must have seen the smoke arising from my
+burning body.
+
+This, I thought, was death.
+
+Then, a cooling shower descended upon me, soaked through skin and
+tissue to the tortured arteries and quenched the fire within.  Panting,
+but free from pain, I lay--exhausted.
+
+Strength gradually returning to me, I tried to rise; but the carpet
+felt so singularly soft that it offered me no foothold.  I waded and
+plunged like a swimmer treading water; and all about me rose
+impenetrable walls of darkness, darkness all but palpable.  I wondered
+why I could not see the windows.  The horrible idea flashed to my mind
+that I was become blind!
+
+Somehow I got upon my feet, and stood swaying dizzily.  I became aware
+of a heavy perfume, and knew it for some kind of incense.
+
+Then--a dim light was born, at an immeasurable distance away.  It grew
+steadily in brilliance.  It spread like a bluish-red stain--like a
+liquid.  It lapped up the darkness and spread throughout the room.
+
+But this was not my room!  Nor was it any room known to me.
+
+It was an apartment of such size that its dimensions filled me with a
+kind of awe such as I never had known:  the awe of walled vastness.
+Its immense extent produced a sensation of sound.  Its hugeness had a
+distinct NOTE.
+
+Tapestries covered the four walls.  There was no door visible.  These
+tapestries were magnificently figured with golden dragons; and as the
+serpentine bodies gleamed and shimmered in the increasing radiance,
+each dragon, I thought, intertwined its glittering coils more closely
+with those of another.  The carpet was of such richness that I stood
+knee-deep in its pile.  And this, too, was fashioned all over with
+golden dragons; and they seemed to glide about amid the shadows of the
+design--stealthily.
+
+At the farther end of the hall--for hall it was--a huge table with
+dragons' legs stood solitary amid the luxuriance of the carpet.  It
+bore scintillating globes, and tubes that held living organisms, and
+books of a size and in such bindings as I never had imagined, with
+instruments of a type unknown to Western science--a heterogeneous
+litter quite indescribable, which overflowed on to the floor, forming
+an amazing oasis in a dragon-haunted desert of carpet.  A lamp hung
+above this table, suspended by golden chains from the ceiling--which
+was so lofty that, following the chains upward, my gaze lost itself in
+the purple shadows above.
+
+In a chair piled high with dragon-covered cushions a man sat behind
+this table.  The light from the swinging lamp fell fully upon one side
+of his face, as he leaned forward amid the jumble of weird objects, and
+left the other side in purplish shadow.  From a plain brass bowl upon
+the corner of the huge table smoke writhed aloft and at times partially
+obscured that dreadful face.
+
+From the instant that my eyes were drawn to the table and to the man
+who sat there, neither the incredible extent of the room, nor the
+nightmare fashion of its mural decorations, could reclaim my attention.
+I had eyes only for him.
+
+For it was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
+
+Something of the delirium which had seemed to fill my veins with fire,
+to people the walls with dragons, and to plunge me knee-deep in the
+carpet, left me.  Those dreadful, filmed green eyes acted somewhat like
+a cold douche.  I knew, without removing my gaze from the still face,
+that the walls no longer lived, but were merely draped in exquisite
+Chinese dragon tapestry.  The rich carpet beneath my feet ceased to be
+as a jungle and became a normal carpet--extraordinarily rich, but
+merely a carpet.  But the sense of vastness nevertheless remained, with
+the uncomfortable knowledge that the things upon the table and
+overflowing about it were all, or nearly all, of a fashion strange to
+me.
+
+Then, and almost instantaneously, the comparative sanity which I had
+temporarily experienced began to slip from me again; for the smoke
+faintly penciled through the air--from the burning perfume on the
+table--grew in volume, thickened, and wafted towards me in a cloud of
+gray horror.  It enveloped me, clammily.  Dimly, through its oily
+wreaths, I saw the immobile yellow face of Fu-Manchu. And my stupefied
+brain acclaimed him a sorcerer, against whom unwittingly we had pitted
+our poor human wits.  The green eyes showed filmy through the fog.  An
+intense pain shot through my lower limbs, and, catching my breath, I
+looked down.  As I did so, the points of the red slippers which I
+dreamed that I wore increased in length, curled sinuously upward,
+twined about my throat and choked the breath from my body!
+
+Came an interval, and then a dawning like consciousness; but it was a
+false consciousness, since it brought with it the idea that my head lay
+softly pillowed and that a woman's hand caressed my throbbing forehead.
+Confusedly, as though in the remote past, I recalled a kiss--and the
+recollection thrilled me strangely.  Dreamily content I lay, and a
+voice stole to my ears:
+
+"They are killing him!  they are killing him!  Oh!  do you not
+understand?" In my dazed condition, I thought that it was I who had
+died, and that this musical girl-voice was communicating to me the fact
+of my own dissolution.
+
+But I was conscious of no interest in the matter.
+
+For hours and hours, I thought, that soothing hand caressed me.  I
+never once raised my heavy lids, until there came a resounding crash
+that seemed to set my very bones vibrating--a metallic, jangling crash,
+as the fall of heavy chains.  I thought that, then, I half opened my
+eyes, and that in the dimness I had a fleeting glimpse of a figure clad
+in gossamer silk, with arms covered with barbaric bangles and slim
+ankles surrounded by gold bands.  The girl was gone, even as I told
+myself that she was an houri, and that I, though a Christian, had been
+consigned by some error to the paradise of Mohammed.
+
+Then--a complete blank.
+
+
+My head throbbed madly; my brain seemed to be clogged--inert; and
+though my first, feeble movement was followed by the rattle of a chain,
+some moments more elapsed ere I realized that the chain was fastened to
+a steel collar--that the steel collar was clasped about my neck.
+
+I moaned weakly.
+
+"Smith!" I muttered, "Where are you?  Smith!"
+
+On to my knees I struggled, and the pain on the top of my skull grew
+all but insupportable.  It was coming back to me now; how Nayland Smith
+and I had started for the hotel to warn Graham Guthrie; how, as we
+passed up the steps from the Embankment and into Essex Street, we saw
+the big motor standing before the door of one of the offices.  I could
+recall coming up level with the car--a modern limousine; but my mind
+retained no impression of our having passed it--only a vague memory of
+a rush of footsteps--a blow.  Then, my vision of the hall of dragons,
+and now this real awakening to a worse reality.
+
+Groping in the darkness, my hands touched a body that lay close beside
+me.  My fingers sought and found the throat, sought and found the steel
+collar about it.
+
+"Smith," I groaned; and I shook the still form.  "Smith, old man--speak
+to me!  Smith!"
+
+Could he be dead?  Was this the end of his gallant fight with Dr.
+Fu-Manchu and the murder group?  If so, what did the future hold for
+me--what had I to face?
+
+He stirred beneath my trembling hands.
+
+"Thank God!"  I muttered, and I cannot deny that my joy was tainted
+with selfishness.  For, waking in that impenetrable darkness, and yet
+obsessed with the dream I had dreamed, I had known what fear meant, at
+the realization that alone, chained, I must face the dreadful Chinese
+doctor in the flesh.  Smith began incoherent mutterings.
+
+"Sand-bagged! . . . Look out, Petrie! . . . He has us at last! . . .
+Oh, Heavens!" . . . He struggled on to his knees, clutching at my hand.
+
+"All right, old man," I said.  "We are both alive!  So let's be
+thankful."
+
+A moment's silence, a groan, then:
+
+"Petrie, I have dragged you into this.  God forgive me--"
+
+"Dry up, Smith," I said slowly.  "I'm not a child.  There is no
+question of being dragged into the matter.  I'm here; and if I can be
+of any use, I'm glad I am here!"
+
+He grasped my hand.
+
+"There were two Chinese, in European clothes--lord, how my head
+throbs!--in that office door.  They sand-bagged us, Petrie--think of
+it!--in broad daylight, within hail of the Strand!  We were rushed into
+the car--and it was all over, before--" His voice grew faint.  "God!
+they gave me an awful knock!"
+
+"Why have we been spared, Smith?  Do you think he is saving us for--"
+
+"Don't, Petrie!  If you had been in China, if you had seen what I have
+seen--"
+
+Footsteps sounded on the flagged passage.  A blade of light crept
+across the floor towards us.  My brain was growing clearer.  The place
+had a damp, earthen smell.  It was slimy--some noisome cellar.  A door
+was thrown open and a man entered, carrying a lantern.  Its light
+showed my surmise to be accurate, showed the slime-coated walls of a
+dungeon some fifteen feet square--shone upon the long yellow robe of
+the man who stood watching us, upon the malignant, intellectual
+countenance.
+
+It was Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+At last they were face to face--the head of the great Yellow Movement,
+and the man who fought on behalf of the entire white race.  How can I
+paint the individual who now stood before us--perhaps the greatest
+genius of modern times?
+
+Of him it had been fitly said that he had a brow like Shakespeare and a
+face like Satan.  Something serpentine, hypnotic, was in his very
+presence.  Smith drew one sharp breath, and was silent.  Together,
+chained to the wall, two mediaeval captives, living mockeries of our
+boasted modern security, we crouched before Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+He came forward with an indescribable gait, cat-like yet awkward,
+carrying his high shoulders almost hunched.  He placed the lantern in a
+niche in the wall, never turning away the reptilian gaze of those eyes
+which must haunt my dreams forever.  They possessed a viridescence
+which hitherto I had supposed possible only in the eye of the cat--and
+the film intermittently clouded their brightness--but I can speak of
+them no more.
+
+I had never supposed, prior to meeting Dr. Fu-Manchu, that so intense a
+force of malignancy could radiate--from any human being.  He spoke.
+His English was perfect, though at times his words were oddly chosen;
+his delivery alternately was guttural and sibilant.
+
+"Mr. Smith and Dr. Petrie, your interference with my plans has gone too
+far.  I have seriously turned my attention to you."
+
+He displayed his teeth, small and evenly separated, but discolored in a
+way that was familiar to me.  I studied his eyes with a new
+professional interest, which even the extremity of our danger could not
+wholly banish.  Their greenness seemed to be of the iris; the pupil was
+oddly contracted--a pin-point.
+
+Smith leaned his back against the wall with assumed indifference.
+
+"You have presumed," continued Fu-Manchu, "to meddle with a
+world-change. Poor spiders--caught in the wheels of the inevitable!
+You have linked my name with the futility of the Young China
+Movement--the name of Fu-Manchu!  Mr. Smith, you are an incompetent
+meddler--I despise you!  Dr. Petrie, you are a fool--I am sorry for
+you!"
+
+He rested one bony hand on his hip, narrowing the long eyes as he
+looked down on us.  The purposeful cruelty of the man was inherent; it
+was entirely untheatrical.  Still Smith remained silent.
+
+"So I am determined to remove you from the scene of your blunders!"
+added Fu-Manchu.
+
+"Opium will very shortly do the same for you!" I rapped at him savagely.
+
+Without emotion he turned the narrowed eyes upon me.
+
+"That is a matter of opinion, Doctor," he said.  "You may have lacked
+the opportunities which have been mine for studying that subject--and
+in any event I shall not be privileged to enjoy your advice in the
+future."
+
+"You will not long outlive me," I replied.  "And our deaths will not
+profit you, incidentally; because--" Smith's foot touched mine.
+
+"Because?" inquired Fu-Manchu softly.
+
+"Ah!  Mr. Smith is so prudent!  He is thinking that I have FILES!" He
+pronounced the word in a way that made me shudder.  "Mr. Smith has seen
+a WIRE JACKET!  Have you ever seen a wire jacket?  As a surgeon its
+functions would interest you!"
+
+I stifled a cry that rose to my lips; for, with a shrill whistling
+sound, a small shape came bounding into the dimly lit vault, then shot
+upward.  A marmoset landed on the shoulder of Dr. Fu-Manchu and peered
+grotesquely into the dreadful yellow face.  The Doctor raised his bony
+hand and fondled the little creature, crooning to it.
+
+"One of my pets, Mr. Smith," he said, suddenly opening his eyes fully
+so that they blazed like green lamps.  "I have others, equally useful.
+My scorpions--have you met my scorpions?  No?  My pythons and
+hamadryads?  Then there are my fungi and my tiny allies, the bacilli.
+I have a collection in my laboratory quite unique.  Have you ever
+visited Molokai, the leper island, Doctor?  No?  But Mr. Nayland Smith
+will be familiar with the asylum at Rangoon!  And we must not forget my
+black spiders, with their diamond eyes--my spiders, that sit in the
+dark and watch--then leap!"
+
+He raised his lean hands, so that the sleeve of the robe fell back to
+the elbow, and the ape dropped, chattering, to the floor and ran from
+the cellar.
+
+"O God of Cathay!" he cried, "by what death shall these die--these
+miserable ones who would bind thine Empire, which is boundless!"
+
+Like some priest of Tezcat he stood, his eyes upraised to the roof, his
+lean body quivering--a sight to shock the most unimpressionable mind.
+
+"He is mad!" I whispered to Smith.  "God help us, the man is a
+dangerous homicidal maniac!"
+
+Nayland Smith's tanned face was very drawn, but he shook his head
+grimly.
+
+"Dangerous, yes, I agree," he muttered; "his existence is a danger to
+the entire white race which, now, we are powerless to avert."
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu recovered himself, took up the lantern and, turning
+abruptly, walked to the door, with his awkward, yet feline gait.  At
+the threshold be looked back.
+
+"You would have warned Mr. Graham Guthrie?" he said, in a soft voice.
+"To-night, at half-past twelve, Mr. Graham Guthrie dies!"
+
+Smith sat silent and motionless, his eyes fixed upon the speaker.
+
+"You were in Rangoon in 1908?" continued Dr. Fu-Manchu--"you remember
+the Call?"
+
+From somewhere above us--I could not determine the exact
+direction--came a low, wailing cry, an uncanny thing of falling
+cadences, which, in that dismal vault, with the sinister yellow-robed
+figure at the door, seemed to pour ice into my veins.  Its effect upon
+Smith was truly extraordinary.  His face showed grayly in the faint
+light, and I heard him draw a hissing breath through clenched teeth.
+
+"It calls for you!" said Fu-Manchu. "At half-past twelve it calls for
+Graham Guthrie!"
+
+The door closed and darkness mantled us again.
+
+"Smith," I said, "what was that?"  The horrors about us were playing
+havoc with my nerves.
+
+"It was the Call of Siva!" replied Smith hoarsely.
+
+"What is it?  Who uttered it?  What does it mean?"
+
+"I don't know what it is, Petrie, nor who utters it.  But it means
+death!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+THERE may be some who could have lain, chained to that noisome cell,
+and felt no fear--no dread of what the blackness might hold.  I confess
+that I am not one of these.  I knew that Nayland Smith and I stood in
+the path of the most stupendous genius who in the world's history had
+devoted his intellect to crime.  I knew that the enormous wealth of the
+political group backing Dr. Fu-Manchu rendered him a menace to Europe
+and to America greater than that of the plague.  He was a scientist
+trained at a great university--an explorer of nature's secrets, who had
+gone farther into the unknown, I suppose, than any living man.  His
+mission was to remove all obstacles--human obstacles--from the path of
+that secret movement which was progressing in the Far East.  Smith and
+I were two such obstacles; and of all the horrible devices at his
+command, I wondered, and my tortured brain refused to leave the
+subject, by which of them were we doomed to be dispatched?
+
+Even at that very moment some venomous centipede might be wriggling
+towards me over the slime of the stones, some poisonous spider be
+preparing to drop from the roof!  Fu-Manchu might have released a
+serpent in the cellar, or the air be alive with microbes of a loathsome
+disease!
+
+"Smith," I said, scarcely recognizing my own voice, "I can't bear this
+suspense.  He intends to kill us, that is certain, but--"
+
+"Don't worry," came the reply; "he intends to learn our plans first."
+
+"You mean--?"
+
+"You heard him speak of his files and of his wire jacket?"
+
+"Oh, my God!" I groaned; "can this be England?"
+
+Smith laughed dryly, and I heard him fumbling with the steel collar
+about his neck.
+
+"I have one great hope," he said, "since you share my captivity, but we
+must neglect no minor chance.  Try with your pocket-knife if you can
+force the lock.  I am trying to break this one."
+
+Truth to tell, the idea had not entered my half-dazed mind, but I
+immediately acted upon my friend's suggestion, setting to work with the
+small blade of my knife.  I was so engaged, and, having snapped one
+blade, was about to open another, when a sound arrested me.  It came
+from beneath my feet.
+
+"Smith," I whispered, "listen!"
+
+The scraping and clicking which told of Smith's efforts ceased.
+Motionless, we sat in that humid darkness and listened.
+
+Something was moving beneath the stones of the cellar.  I held my
+breath; every nerve in my body was strung up.
+
+A line of light showed a few feet from where we lay.  It
+widened--became an oblong.  A trap was lifted, and within a yard of me,
+there rose a dimly seen head.  Horror I had expected--and death, or
+worse.  Instead, I saw a lovely face, crowned with a disordered mass of
+curling hair; I saw a white arm upholding the stone slab, a shapely arm
+clasped about the elbow by a broad gold bangle.
+
+The girl climbed into the cellar and placed the lantern on the stone
+floor.  In the dim light she was unreal--a figure from an opium vision,
+with her clinging silk draperies and garish jewelry, with her feet
+encased in little red slippers.  In short, this was the houri of my
+vision, materialized.  It was difficult to believe that we were in
+modern, up-to-date England; easy to dream that we were the captives of
+a caliph, in a dungeon in old Bagdad.
+
+"My prayers are answered," said Smith softly.  "She has come to save
+YOU."
+
+"S-sh!" warned the girl, and her wonderful eyes opened widely,
+fearfully.  "A sound and he will kill us all."
+
+She bent over me; a key jarred in the lock which had broken my
+penknife--and the collar was off.  As I rose to my feet the girl turned
+and released Smith.  She raised the lantern above the trap, and signed
+to us to descend the wooden steps which its light revealed.
+
+"Your knife," she whispered to me.  "Leave it on the floor.  He will
+think you forced the locks.  Down!  Quickly!"
+
+Nayland Smith, stepping gingerly, disappeared into the darkness.  I
+rapidly followed.  Last of all came our mysterious friend, a gold band
+about one of her ankles gleaming in the rays of the lantern which she
+carried.  We stood in a low-arched passage.
+
+"Tie your handkerchiefs over your eyes and do exactly as I tell you,"
+she ordered.
+
+Neither of us hesitated to obey her.  Blind-folded, I allowed her to
+lead me, and Smith rested his hand upon my shoulder.  In that order we
+proceeded, and came to stone steps, which we ascended.
+
+"Keep to the wall on the left," came a whisper.  "There is danger on
+the right."
+
+With my free hand I felt for and found the wall, and we pressed
+forward.  The atmosphere of the place through which we were passing was
+steamy, and loaded with an odor like that of exotic plant life.  But a
+faint animal scent crept to my nostrils, too, and there was a subdued
+stir about me, infinitely suggestive--mysterious.
+
+Now my feet sank in a soft carpet, and a curtain brushed my shoulder.
+A gong sounded.  We stopped.
+
+The din of distant drumming came to my ears.
+
+"Where in Heaven's name are we?" hissed Smith in my ear; "that is a
+tom-tom!"
+
+"S-sh!  S-sh!"
+
+The little hand grasping mine quivered nervously.  We were near a door
+or a window, for a breath of perfume was wafted through the air; and it
+reminded me of my other meetings with the beautiful woman who was now
+leading us from the house of Fu-Manchu; who, with her own lips, had
+told me that she was his slave.  Through the horrible phantasmagoria
+she flitted--a seductive vision, her piquant loveliness standing out
+richly in its black setting of murder and devilry.  Not once, but a
+thousand times, I had tried to reason out the nature of the tie which
+bound her to the sinister Doctor.
+
+Silence fell.
+
+"Quick!  This way!"
+
+Down a thickly carpeted stair we went.  Our guide opened a door, and
+led us along a passage.  Another door was opened; and we were in the
+open air.  But the girl never tarried, pulling me along a graveled
+path, with a fresh breeze blowing in my face, and along until,
+unmistakably, I stood upon the river bank.  Now, planking creaked to
+our tread; and looking downward beneath the handkerchief, I saw the
+gleam of water beneath my feet.
+
+"Be careful!"  I was warned, and found myself stepping into a narrow
+boat--a punt.
+
+Nayland Smith followed, and the girl pushed the punt off and poled out
+into the stream.
+
+"Don't speak!" she directed.
+
+My brain was fevered; I scarce knew if I dreamed and was waking, or if
+the reality ended with my imprisonment in the clammy cellar and this
+silent escape, blindfolded, upon the river with a girl for our guide
+who might have stepped out of the pages of "The Arabian Nights" were
+fantasy--the mockery of sleep.
+
+Indeed, I began seriously to doubt if this stream whereon we floated,
+whose waters plashed and tinkled about us, were the Thames, the Tigris,
+or the Styx.
+
+The punt touched a bank.
+
+"You will hear a clock strike in a few minutes," said the girl, with
+her soft, charming accent, "but I rely upon your honor not to remove
+the handkerchiefs until then.  You owe me this."
+
+"We do!" said Smith fervently.
+
+I heard him scrambling to the bank, and a moment later a soft hand was
+placed in mine, and I, too, was guided on to terra firma.  Arrived on
+the bank, I still held the girl's hand, drawing her towards me.
+
+"You must not go back," I whispered.  "We will take care of you.  You
+must not return to that place."
+
+"Let me go!" she said.  "When, once, I asked you to take me from him,
+you spoke of police protection; that was your answer, police
+protection!  You would let them lock me up--imprison me--and make me
+betray him!  For what?  For what?"  She wrenched herself free.  "How
+little you understand me.  Never mind.  Perhaps one day you will know!
+Until the clock strikes!"
+
+She was gone.  I heard the creak of the punt, the drip of the water
+from the pole.  Fainter it grew, and fainter.
+
+"What is her secret?" muttered Smith, beside me.  "Why does she cling
+to that monster?"
+
+The distant sound died away entirely.  A clock began to strike; it
+struck the half-hour. In an instant my handkerchief was off, and so was
+Smith's. We stood upon a towing-path. Away to the left the moon shone
+upon the towers and battlements of an ancient fortress.
+
+It was Windsor Castle.
+
+"Half-past ten," cried Smith.  "Two hours to save Graham Guthrie!"
+
+We had exactly fourteen minutes in which to catch the last train to
+Waterloo; and we caught it.  But I sank into a corner of the
+compartment in a state bordering upon collapse.  Neither of us, I
+think, could have managed another twenty yards.  With a lesser stake
+than a human life at issue, I doubt if we should have attempted that
+dash to Windsor station.
+
+"Due at Waterloo at eleven-fifty-one," panted Smith.  "That gives us
+thirty-nine minutes to get to the other side of the river and reach his
+hotel."
+
+"Where in Heaven's name is that house situated?  Did we come up or down
+stream?"
+
+"I couldn't determine.  But at any rate, it stands close to the
+riverside.  It should be merely a question of time to identify it.  I
+shall set Scotland Yard to work immediately; but I am hoping for
+nothing.  Our escape will warn him."
+
+I said no more for a time, sitting wiping the perspiration from my
+forehead and watching my friend load his cracked briar with the
+broadcut Latakia mixture.
+
+"Smith," I said at last, "what was that horrible wailing we heard, and
+what did Fu-Manchu mean when he referred to Rangoon?  I noticed how it
+affected you."
+
+My friend nodded and lighted his pipe.
+
+"There was a ghastly business there in 1908 or early in 1909," he
+replied:  "an utterly mysterious epidemic.  And this beastly wailing
+was associated with it."
+
+"In what way?  And what do you mean by an epidemic?"
+
+"It began, I believe, at the Palace Mansions Hotel, in the cantonments.
+A young American, whose name I cannot recall, was staying there on
+business connected with some new iron buildings.  One night he went to
+his room, locked the door, and jumped out of the window into the
+courtyard.  Broke his neck, of course."
+
+"Suicide?"
+
+"Apparently.  But there were singular features in the case.  For
+instance, his revolver lay beside him, fully loaded!"
+
+"In the courtyard?"
+
+"In the courtyard!"
+
+"Was it murder by any chance?"
+
+Smith shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"His door was found locked from the inside; had to be broken in."
+
+"But the wailing business?"
+
+"That began later, or was only noticed later.  A French doctor, named
+Lafitte, died in exactly the same way."
+
+"At the same place?"
+
+"At the same hotel; but he occupied a different room.  Here is the
+extraordinary part of the affair:  a friend shared the room with him,
+and actually saw him go!"
+
+"Saw him leap from the window?"
+
+"Yes.  The friend--an Englishman--was aroused by the uncanny wailing.
+I was in Rangoon at the time, so that I know more of the case of
+Lafitte than of that of the American.  I spoke to the man about it
+personally.  He was an electrical engineer, Edward Martin, and he told
+me that the cry seemed to come from above him."
+
+"It seemed to come from above when we heard it at Fu-Manchu's house."
+
+"Martin sat up in bed, it was a clear moonlight night--the sort of
+moonlight you get in Burma.  Lafitte, for some reason, had just gone to
+the window.  His friend saw him look out.  The next moment with a
+dreadful scream, he threw himself forward--and crashed down into the
+courtyard!"
+
+"What then?"
+
+"Martin ran to the window and looked down.  Lafitte's scream had
+aroused the place, of course.  But there was absolutely nothing to
+account for the occurrence.  There was no balcony, no ledge, by means
+of which anyone could reach the window."
+
+"But how did you come to recognize the cry?"
+
+"I stopped at the Palace Mansions for some time; and one night this
+uncanny howling aroused me.  I heard it quite distinctly, and am never
+likely to forget it.  It was followed by a hoarse yell.  The man in the
+next room, an orchid hunter, had gone the same way as the others!"
+
+"Did you change your quarters?"
+
+"No. Fortunately for the reputation of the hotel--a first-class
+establishment--several similar cases occurred elsewhere, both in
+Rangoon, in Prome and in Moulmein.  A story got about the native
+quarter, and was fostered by some mad fakir, that the god Siva was
+reborn and that the cry was his call for victims; a ghastly story,
+which led to an outbreak of dacoity and gave the District
+Superintendent no end of trouble."
+
+"Was there anything unusual about the bodies?"
+
+"They all developed marks after death, as though they had been
+strangled!  The marks were said all to possess a peculiar form, though
+it was not appreciable to my eye; and this, again, was declared to be
+the five heads of Siva."
+
+"Were the deaths confined to Europeans?"
+
+"Oh, no.  Several Burmans and others died in the same way.  At first
+there was a theory that the victims had contracted leprosy and
+committed suicide as a result; but the medical evidence disproved that.
+The Call of Siva became a perfect nightmare throughout Burma."
+
+"Did you ever hear it again, before this evening?"
+
+"Yes.  I heard it on the Upper Irrawaddy one clear, moonlight night,
+and a Colassie--a deck-hand--leaped from the top deck of the steamer
+aboard which I was traveling!  My God!  to think that the fiend
+Fu-Manchu has brought That to England!"
+
+"But brought what, Smith?" I cried, in perplexity.  "What has he
+brought?  An evil spirit?  A mental disease?  What is it?  What CAN it
+be?"
+
+"A new agent of death, Petrie!  Something born in a plague-spot of
+Burma--the home of much that is unclean and much that is inexplicable.
+Heaven grant that we be in time, and are able to save Guthrie."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+THE train was late, and as our cab turned out of Waterloo Station and
+began to ascend to the bridge, from a hundred steeples rang out the
+gongs of midnight, the bell of St. Paul's raised above them all to vie
+with the deep voice of Big Ben.
+
+I looked out from the cab window across the river to where, towering
+above the Embankment, that place of a thousand tragedies, the light of
+some of London's greatest caravanserais formed a sort of minor
+constellation.  From the subdued blaze that showed the public
+supper-rooms I looked up to the hundreds of starry points marking the
+private apartments of those giant inns.
+
+I thought how each twinkling window denoted the presence of some bird
+of passage, some wanderer temporarily abiding in our midst.  There,
+floor piled upon floor above the chattering throngs, were these less
+gregarious units, each something of a mystery to his fellow-guests,
+each in his separate cell; and each as remote from real human
+companionship as if that cell were fashioned, not in the bricks of
+London, but in the rocks of Hindustan!
+
+In one of those rooms Graham Guthrie might at that moment be sleeping,
+all unaware that he would awake to the Call of Siva, to the summons of
+death.  As we neared the Strand, Smith stopped the cab, discharging the
+man outside Sotheby's auction-rooms.
+
+"One of the doctor's watch-dogs may be in the foyer," he said
+thoughtfully, "and it might spoil everything if we were seen to go to
+Guthrie's rooms.  There must be a back entrance to the kitchens, and so
+on?"
+
+"There is," I replied quickly.  "I have seen the vans delivering there.
+But have we time?"
+
+"Yes.  Lead on."
+
+We walked up the Strand and hurried westward.  Into that narrow court,
+with its iron posts and descending steps, upon which opens a well-known
+wine-cellar, we turned.  Then, going parallel with the Strand, but on
+the Embankment level, we ran round the back of the great hotel, and
+came to double doors which were open.  An arc lamp illuminated the
+interior and a number of men were at work among the casks, crates and
+packages stacked about the place.  We entered.
+
+"Hallo!" cried a man in a white overall, "where d'you think you're
+going?"
+
+Smith grasped him by the arm.
+
+"I want to get to the public part of the hotel without being seen from
+the entrance hall," he said.  "Will you please lead the way?"
+
+"Here--" began the other, staring.
+
+"Don't waste time!" snapped my friend, in that tone of authority which
+he knew so well how to assume.  "It's a matter of life and death.  Lead
+the way, I say!"
+
+"Police, sir?" asked the man civilly.
+
+"Yes," said Smith; "hurry!"
+
+Off went our guide without further demur.  Skirting sculleries,
+kitchens, laundries and engine-rooms, he led us through those
+mysterious labyrinths which have no existence for the guest above, but
+which contain the machinery that renders these modern khans the
+Aladdin's palaces they are.  On a second-floor landing we met a man in
+a tweed suit, to whom our cicerone presented us.
+
+"Glad I met you, sir.  Two gentlemen from the police."
+
+The man regarded us haughtily with a suspicious smile.
+
+"Who are you?" he asked.  "You're not from Scotland Yard, at any rate!"
+
+Smith pulled out a card and thrust it into the speaker's hand.
+
+"If you are the hotel detective," he said, "take us without delay to
+Mr. Graham Guthrie."
+
+A marked change took place in the other's demeanor on glancing at the
+card in his hand.
+
+"Excuse me, sir," he said deferentially, "but, of course, I didn't know
+who I was speaking to.  We all have instructions to give you every
+assistance."
+
+"Is Mr. Guthrie in his room?"
+
+"He's been in his room for some time, sir.  You will want to get there
+without being seen?  This way.  We can join the lift on the third
+floor."
+
+Off we went again, with our new guide.  In the lift:
+
+"Have you noticed anything suspicious about the place to-night?" asked
+Smith.
+
+"I have!" was the startling reply.  "That accounts for your finding me
+where you did.  My usual post is in the lobby.  But about eleven
+o'clock, when the theater people began to come in I had a hazy sort of
+impression that someone or something slipped past in the
+crowd--something that had no business in the hotel."
+
+We got out of the lift.
+
+"I don't quite follow you," said Smith.  "If you thought you saw
+something entering, you must have formed a more or less definite
+impression regarding it."
+
+"That's the funny part of the business," answered the man doggedly.  "I
+didn't!  But as I stood at the top of the stairs I could have sworn
+that there was something crawling up behind a party--two ladies and two
+gentlemen."
+
+"A dog, for instance?"
+
+"It didn't strike me as being a dog, sir.  Anyway, when the party
+passed me, there was nothing there.  Mind you, whatever it was, it
+hadn't come in by the front.  I have made inquiries everywhere, but
+without result." He stopped abruptly.  "No. 189--Mr. Guthrie's door,
+sir."
+
+Smith knocked.
+
+"Hallo!" came a muffled voice; "what do you want?"
+
+"Open the door!  Don't delay; it is important."
+
+He turned to the hotel detective.
+
+"Stay right there where you can watch the stairs and the lift," he
+instructed; "and note everyone and everything that passes this door.
+But whatever you see or hear, do nothing without my orders."
+
+The man moved off, and the door was opened.  Smith whispered in my ear:
+
+"Some creature of Dr. Fu-Manchu is in the hotel!"
+
+Mr. Graham Guthrie, British resident in North Bhutan, was a big,
+thick-set man--gray-haired and florid, with widely opened eyes of the
+true fighting blue, a bristling mustache and prominent shaggy brows.
+Nayland Smith introduced himself tersely, proffering his card and an
+open letter.
+
+"Those are my credentials, Mr. Guthrie," he said; "so no doubt you will
+realize that the business which brings me and my friend, Dr. Petrie,
+here at such an hour is of the first importance."
+
+He switched off the light.
+
+"There is no time for ceremony," he explained.  "It is now twenty-five
+minutes past twelve.  At half-past an attempt will be made upon your
+life!"
+
+"Mr. Smith," said the other, who, arrayed in his pajamas, was seated on
+the edge of the bed, "you alarm me very greatly.  I may mention that I
+was advised of your presence in England this morning."
+
+"Do you know anything respecting the person called Fu-Manchu--Dr.
+Fu-Manchu?"
+
+"Only what I was told to-day--that he is the agent of an advanced
+political group."
+
+"It is opposed to his interests that you should return to Bhutan.  A
+more gullible agent would be preferable.  Therefore, unless you
+implicitly obey my instructions, you will never leave England!"
+
+Graham Guthrie breathed quickly.  I was growing more used to the gloom,
+and I could dimly discern him, his face turned towards Nayland Smith,
+whilst with his hand he clutched the bed-rail. Such a visit as ours, I
+think, must have shaken the nerve of any man.
+
+"But, Mr. Smith," he said, "surely I am safe enough here!  The place is
+full of American visitors at present, and I have had to be content with
+a room right at the top; so that the only danger I apprehend is that of
+fire."
+
+"There is another danger," replied Smith.  "The fact that you are at
+the top of the building enhances that danger.  Do you recall anything
+of the mysterious epidemic which broke out in Rangoon in 1908--the
+deaths due to the Call of Siva?"
+
+"I read of it in the Indian papers," said Guthrie uneasily.  "Suicides,
+were they not?"
+
+"No!" snapped Smith.  "Murders!"
+
+There was a brief silence.
+
+"From what I recall of the cases," said Guthrie, "that seems
+impossible.  In several instances the victims threw themselves from the
+windows of locked rooms--and the windows were quite inaccessible."
+
+"Exactly," replied Smith; and in the dim light his revolver gleamed
+dully, as he placed it on the small table beside the bed.  "Except that
+your door is unlocked, the conditions to-night are identical.  Silence,
+please, I hear a clock striking."
+
+It was Big Ben.  It struck the half-hour, leaving the stillness
+complete.  In that room, high above the activity which yet prevailed
+below, high above the supping crowds in the hotel, high above the
+starving crowds on the Embankment, a curious chill of isolation swept
+about me.  Again I realized how, in the very heart of the great
+metropolis, a man may be as far from aid as in the heart of a desert.
+I was glad that I was not alone in that room--marked with the
+death-mark of Fu-Manchu; and I am certain that Graham Guthrie welcomed
+his unexpected company.
+
+I may have mentioned the fact before, but on this occasion it became so
+peculiarly evident to me that I am constrained to record it here--I
+refer to the sense of impending danger which invariably preceded a
+visit from Fu-Manchu. Even had I not known that an attempt was to be
+made that night, I should have realized it, as, strung to high tension,
+I waited in the darkness.  Some invisible herald went ahead of the
+dreadful Chinaman, proclaiming his coming to every nerve in one's body.
+It was like a breath of astral incense, announcing the presence of the
+priests of death.
+
+A wail, low but singularly penetrating, falling in minor cadences to a
+new silence, came from somewhere close at hand.
+
+"My God!" hissed Guthrie, "what was that?"
+
+"The Call of Siva," whispered Smith.
+
+"Don't stir, for your life!"
+
+Guthrie was breathing hard.
+
+I knew that we were three; that the hotel detective was within hail;
+that there was a telephone in the room; that the traffic of the
+Embankment moved almost beneath us; but I knew, and am not ashamed to
+confess, that King Fear had icy fingers about my heart.  It was
+awful--that tense waiting--for--what?
+
+Three taps sounded--very distinctly upon the window.
+
+Graham Guthrie started so as to shake the bed.
+
+"It's supernatural!" he muttered--all that was Celtic in his blood
+recoiling from the omen.  "Nothing human can reach that window!"
+"S-sh!" from Smith.  "Don't stir."
+
+The tapping was repeated.
+
+Smith softly crossed the room.  My heart was beating painfully.  He
+threw open the window.  Further inaction was impossible.  I joined him;
+and we looked out into the empty air.
+
+"Don't come too near, Petrie!" he warned over his shoulder.
+
+One on either side of the open window, we stood and looked down at the
+moving Embankment lights, at the glitter of the Thames, at the
+silhouetted buildings on the farther bank, with the Shot Tower starting
+above them all.
+
+Three taps sounded on the panes above us.
+
+In all my dealings with Dr. Fu-Manchu I had had to face nothing so
+uncanny as this.  What Burmese ghoul had he loosed?  Was it outside, in
+the air?  Was it actually in the room?
+
+"Don't let me go, Petrie!" whispered Smith suddenly.  "Get a tight hold
+on me!"
+
+That was the last straw; for I thought that some dreadful fascination
+was impelling my friend to hurl himself out!  Wildly I threw my arms
+about him, and Guthrie leaped forward to help.
+
+Smith leaned from the window and looked up.
+
+One choking cry he gave--smothered, inarticulate--and I found him
+slipping from my grip--being drawn out of the window--drawn to his
+death!
+
+"Hold him, Guthrie!" I gasped hoarsely.  "My God, he's going!  Hold
+him!"
+
+My friend writhed in our grasp, and I saw him stretch his arm upward.
+The crack of his revolver came, and he collapsed on to the floor,
+carrying me with him.
+
+But as I fell I heard a scream above.  Smith's revolver went hurtling
+through the air, and, hard upon it, went a black shape--flashing past
+the open window into the gulf of the night.
+
+"The light!  The light!"  I cried.
+
+Guthrie ran and turned on the light.  Nayland Smith, his eyes starting
+from his head, his face swollen, lay plucking at a silken cord which
+showed tight about his throat.
+
+"It was a Thug!" screamed Guthrie.  "Get the rope off!  He's choking!"
+
+My hands a-twitch, I seized the strangling-cord.
+
+"A knife!  Quick!"  I cried.  "I have lost mine!"
+
+Guthrie ran to the dressing-table and passed me an open penknife.  I
+somehow forced the blade between the rope and Smith's swollen neck, and
+severed the deadly silken thing.
+
+Smith made a choking noise, and fell back, swooning in my arms.
+
+
+When, later, we stood looking down upon the mutilated thing which had
+been brought in from where it fell, Smith showed me a mark on the
+brow--close beside the wound where his bullet had entered.
+
+"The mark of Kali," he said.  "The man was a phansigar--a religious
+strangler.  Since Fu-Manchu has dacoits in his service I might have
+expected that he would have Thugs.  A group of these fiends would seem
+to have fled into Burma; so that the mysterious epidemic in Rangoon was
+really an outbreak of thuggee--on slightly improved lines!  I had
+suspected something of the kind but, naturally, I had not looked for
+Thugs near Rangoon.  My unexpected resistance led the strangler to
+bungle the rope.  You have seen how it was fastened about my throat?
+That was unscientific.  The true method, as practiced by the group
+operating in Burma, was to throw the line about the victim's neck and
+jerk him from the window.  A man leaning from an open window is very
+nicely poised: it requires only a slight jerk to pitch him forward.  No
+loop was used, but a running line, which, as the victim fell, remained
+in the hand of the murderer.  No clew!  Therefore we see at once what
+commended the system to Fu-Manchu."
+
+Graham Guthrie, very pale, stood looking down at the dead strangler.
+
+"I owe you my life, Mr. Smith," he said.  "If you had come five minutes
+later--"
+
+He grasped Smith's hand.
+
+"You see," Guthrie continued, "no one thought of looking for a Thug in
+Burma!  And no one thought of the ROOF!  These fellows are as active as
+monkeys, and where an ordinary man would infallibly break his neck,
+they are entirely at home.  I might have chosen my room especially for
+the business!"
+
+"He slipped in late this evening," said Smith.  "The hotel detective
+saw him, but these stranglers are as elusive as shadows, otherwise,
+despite their having changed the scene of their operations, not one
+could have survived."
+
+"Didn't you mention a case of this kind on the Irrawaddy?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," was the reply; "and I know of what you are thinking.  The
+steamers of the Irrawaddy flotilla have a corrugated-iron roof over the
+top deck.  The Thug must have been lying up there as the Colassie
+passed on the deck below."
+
+"But, Smith, what is the motive of the Call?" I continued.
+
+"Partly religious," he explained, "and partly to wake the victims!  You
+are perhaps going to ask me how Dr. Fu-Manchu has obtained power over
+such people as phansigars?  I can only reply that Dr. Fu-Manchu has
+secret knowledge of which, so far, we know absolutely nothing; but,
+despite all, at last I begin to score."
+
+"You do," I agreed; "but your victory took you near to death."
+
+"I owe my life to you, Petrie," he said.  "Once to your strength of
+arm, and once to--"
+
+"Don't speak of her, Smith," I interrupted.  "Dr. Fu-Manchu may have
+discovered the part she played!  In which event--"
+
+"God help her!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+UPON the following day we were afoot again, and shortly at handgrips
+with the enemy.  In retrospect, that restless time offers a chaotic
+prospect, with no peaceful spot amid its turmoils.
+
+All that was reposeful in nature seemed to have become an irony and a
+mockery to us--who knew how an evil demigod had his sacrificial altars
+amid our sweetest groves.  This idea ruled strongly in my mind upon
+that soft autumnal day.
+
+"The net is closing in," said Nayland Smith.
+
+"Let us hope upon a big catch," I replied, with a laugh.
+
+Beyond where the Thames tided slumberously seaward showed the roofs of
+Royal Windsor, the castle towers showing through the autumn haze.  The
+peace of beautiful Thames-side was about us.
+
+This was one of the few tangible clews upon which thus far we had
+chanced; but at last it seemed indeed that we were narrowing the
+resources of that enemy of the white race who was writing his name over
+England in characters of blood.  To capture Dr. Fu-Manchu we did not
+hope; but at least there was every promise of destroying one of the
+enemy's strongholds.
+
+We had circled upon the map a tract of country cut by the Thames, with
+Windsor for its center.  Within that circle was the house from which
+miraculously we had escaped--a house used by the most highly organized
+group in the history of criminology.  So much we knew.  Even if we
+found the house, and this was likely enough, to find it vacated by
+Fu-Manchu and his mysterious servants we were prepared.  But it would
+be a base destroyed.
+
+We were working upon a methodical plan, and although our cooperators
+were invisible, these numbered no fewer than twelve--all of them
+experienced men.  Thus far we had drawn blank, but the place for which
+Smith and I were making now came clearly into view:  an old mansion
+situated in extensive walled grounds.  Leaving the river behind us, we
+turned sharply to the right along a lane flanked by a high wall.  On an
+open patch of ground, as we passed, I noted a gypsy caravan.  An old
+woman was seated on the steps, her wrinkled face bent, her chin resting
+in the palm of her hand.
+
+I scarcely glanced at her, but pressed on, nor did I notice that my
+friend no longer was beside me.  I was all anxiety to come to some
+point from whence I might obtain a view of the house; all anxiety to
+know if this was the abode of our mysterious enemy--the place where he
+worked amid his weird company, where he bred his deadly scorpions and
+his bacilli, reared his poisonous fungi, from whence he dispatched his
+murder ministers.  Above all, perhaps, I wondered if this would prove
+to be the hiding-place of the beautiful slave girl who was such a
+potent factor in the Doctor's plans, but a two-edged sword which yet we
+hoped to turn upon Fu-Manchu. Even in the hands of a master, a woman's
+beauty is a dangerous weapon.
+
+A cry rang out behind me.  I turned quickly.  And a singular sight met
+my gaze.
+
+Nayland Smith was engaged in a furious struggle with the old gypsy
+woman!  His long arms clasped about her, he was roughly dragging her
+out into the roadway, she fighting like a wild thing--silently,
+fiercely.
+
+Smith often surprised me, but at that sight, frankly, I thought that he
+was become bereft of reason.  I ran back; and I had almost reached the
+scene of this incredible contest, and Smith now was evidently hard put
+to it to hold his own when a man, swarthy, with big rings in his ears,
+leaped from the caravan.
+
+One quick glance he threw in our direction, and made off towards the
+river.
+
+Smith twisted round upon me, never releasing his hold of the woman.
+
+"After him, Petrie!" he cried.  "After him.  Don't let him escape.
+It's a dacoit!"
+
+My brain in a confused whirl; my mind yet disposed to a belief that my
+friend had lost his senses, the word "dacoit" was sufficient.
+
+I started down the road after the fleetly running man.  Never once did
+he glance behind him, so that he evidently had occasion to fear
+pursuit.  The dusty road rang beneath my flying footsteps.  That sense
+of fantasy, which claimed me often enough in those days of our struggle
+with the titanic genius whose victory meant the victory of the yellow
+races over the white, now had me fast in its grip again.  I was an
+actor in one of those dream-scenes of the grim Fu-Manchu drama.
+
+Out over the grass and down to the river's brink ran the gypsy who was
+no gypsy, but one of that far more sinister brotherhood, the dacoits.
+I was close upon his heels.  But I was not prepared for him to leap in
+among the rushes at the margin of the stream; and seeing him do this I
+pulled up quickly.  Straight into the water he plunged; and I saw that
+he held some object in his hand.  He waded out; he dived; and as I
+gained the bank and looked to right and left he had vanished
+completely.  Only ever-widening rings showed where he had been. I had
+him.
+
+For directly he rose to the surface he would be visible from either
+bank, and with the police whistle which I carried I could, if
+necessary, summon one of the men in hiding across the stream.  I
+waited.  A wild-fowl floated serenely past, untroubled by this strange
+invasion of his precincts.  A full minute I waited.  From the lane
+behind me came Smith's voice:
+
+"Don't let him escape, Petrie!"
+
+Never lifting my eyes from the water, I waved my hand reassuringly.
+But still the dacoit did not rise.  I searched the surface in all
+directions as far as my eyes could reach; but no swimmer showed above
+it.  Then it was that I concluded he had dived too deeply, become
+entangled in the weeds and was drowned.  With a final glance to right
+and left and some feeling of awe at this sudden tragedy--this grim
+going out of a life at glorious noonday--I turned away.  Smith had the
+woman securely; but I had not taken five steps towards him when a faint
+splash behind warned me.  Instinctively I ducked.  From whence that
+saving instinct arose I cannot surmise, but to it I owed my life.  For
+as I rapidly lowered my head, something hummed past me, something that
+flew out over the grass bank, and fell with a jangle upon the dusty
+roadside.  A knife!
+
+I turned and bounded back to the river's brink.  I heard a faint cry
+behind me, which could only have come from the gypsy woman.  Nothing
+disturbed the calm surface of the water.  The reach was lonely of
+rowers.  Out by the farther bank a girl was poling a punt along, and
+her white-clad figure was the only living thing that moved upon the
+river within the range of the most expert knife-thrower.
+
+To say that I was nonplused is to say less than the truth; I was
+amazed.  That it was the dacoit who had shown me this murderous
+attention I could not doubt.  But where in Heaven's name WAS he?  He
+could not humanly have remained below water for so long; yet he
+certainly was not above, was not upon the surface, concealed amongst
+the reeds, nor hidden upon the bank.
+
+There, in the bright sunshine, a consciousness of the eerie possessed
+me.  It was with an uncomfortable feeling that my phantom foe might be
+aiming a second knife at my back that I turned away and hastened
+towards Smith.  My fearful expectations were not realized, and I picked
+up the little weapon which had so narrowly missed me, and with it in my
+hand rejoined my friend.
+
+He was standing with one arm closely clasped about the apparently
+exhausted woman, and her dark eyes were fixed upon him with an
+extraordinary expression.
+
+"What does it mean, Smith?" I began.
+
+But he interrupted me.
+
+"Where is the dacoit?" he demanded rapidly.
+
+"Since he seemingly possesses the attributes of a fish," I replied, "I
+cannot pretend to say."
+
+The gypsy woman lifted her eyes to mine and laughed.  Her laughter was
+musical, not that of such an old hag as Smith held captive; it was
+familiar, too.
+
+I started and looked closely into the wizened face.
+
+"He's tricked you," said Smith, an angry note in his voice.  "What is
+that you have in your hand?"
+
+I showed him the knife, and told him how it had come into my possession.
+
+"I know," he rapped.  "I saw it.  He was in the water not three yards
+from where you stood.  You must have seen him.  Was there nothing
+visible?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+The woman laughed again, and again I wondered.
+
+"A wild-fowl," I added; "nothing else."
+
+"A wild-fowl," snapped Smith.  "If you will consult your recollections
+of the habits of wild-fowl you will see that this particular specimen
+was a RARA AVIS. It's an old trick, Petrie, but a good one, for it is
+used in decoying.  A dacoit's head was concealed in that wild-fowl!
+It's useless.  He has certainly made good his escape by now."
+
+"Smith," I said, somewhat crestfallen, "why are you detaining this
+gypsy woman?"
+
+"Gypsy woman!" he laughed, hugging her tightly as she made an impatient
+movement.  "Use your eyes, old man."
+
+He jerked the frowsy wig from her head, and beneath was a cloud of
+disordered hair that shimmered in the sunlight.
+
+"A wet sponge will do the rest," he said.
+
+Into my eyes, widely opened in wonder, looked the dark eyes of the
+captive; and beneath the disguise I picked out the charming features of
+the slave girl.  There were tears on the whitened lashes, and she was
+submissive now.
+
+"This time," said my friend hardly, "we have fairly captured her--and
+we will hold her."
+
+From somewhere up-stream came a faint call.
+
+"The dacoit!"
+
+Nayland Smith's lean body straightened; he stood alert, strung up.
+
+Another call answered, and a third responded.  Then followed the flatly
+shrill note of a police whistle, and I noted a column of black vapor
+rising beyond the wall, mounting straight to heaven as the smoke of a
+welcome offering.
+
+The surrounded mansion was in flames!
+
+"Curse it!" rapped Smith.  "So this time we were right.  But, of
+course, he has had ample opportunity to remove his effects.  I knew
+that.  The man's daring is incredible.  He has given himself till the
+very last moment--and we blundered upon two of the outposts."
+
+"I lost one."
+
+"No matter.  We have the other.  I expect no further arrests, and the
+house will have been so well fired by the Doctor's servants that
+nothing can save it.  I fear its ashes will afford us no clew, Petrie;
+but we have secured a lever which should serve to disturb Fu-Manchu's
+world."
+
+He glanced at the queer figure which hung submissively in his arms.
+She looked up proudly.
+
+"You need not hold me so tight," she said, in her soft voice.  "I will
+come with you."
+
+That I moved amid singular happenings, you, who have borne with me thus
+far, have learned, and that I witnessed many curious scenes; but of the
+many such scenes in that race-drama wherein Nayland Smith and Dr.
+Fu-Manchu played the leading parts, I remember none more bizarre than
+the one at my rooms that afternoon.
+
+Without delay, and without taking the Scotland Yard men into our
+confidence, we had hurried our prisoner back to London, for my friend's
+authority was supreme.  A strange trio we were, and one which excited
+no little comment; but the journey came to an end at last.  Now we were
+in my unpretentious sitting-room--the room wherein Smith first had
+unfolded to me the story of Dr. Fu-Manchu and of the great secret
+society which sought to upset the balance of the world--to place Europe
+and America beneath the scepter of Cathay.
+
+I sat with my elbows upon the writing-table, my chin in my hands; Smith
+restlessly paced the floor, relighting his blackened briar a dozen
+times in as many minutes.  In the big arm-chair the pseudogypsy was
+curled up.  A brief toilet had converted the wizened old woman's face
+into that of a fascinatingly pretty girl.  Wildly picturesque she
+looked in her ragged Romany garb.  She held a cigarette in her fingers
+and watched us through lowered lashes.
+
+Seemingly, with true Oriental fatalism, she was quite reconciled to her
+fate, and ever and anon she would bestow upon me a glance from her
+beautiful eyes which few men, I say with confidence, could have
+sustained unmoved.  Though I could not be blind to the emotions of that
+passionate Eastern soul, yet I strove not to think of them.  Accomplice
+of an arch-murderer she might be; but she was dangerously lovely.
+
+"That man who was with you," said Smith, suddenly turning upon her,
+"was in Burma up till quite recently.  He murdered a fisherman thirty
+miles above Prome only a month before I left.  The D.S.P. had placed a
+thousand rupees on his head.  Am I right?"
+
+The girl shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Suppose--What then?" she asked.
+
+"Suppose I handed you over to the police?" suggested Smith.  But he
+spoke without conviction, for in the recent past we both had owed our
+lives to this girl.
+
+"As you please," she replied.  "The police would learn nothing."
+
+"You do not belong to the Far East," my friend said abruptly.  "You may
+have Eastern blood in your veins, but you are no kin of Fu-Manchu."
+
+"That is true," she admitted, and knocked the ash from her cigarette.
+
+"Will you tell me where to find Fu-Manchu?"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders again, glancing eloquently in my direction.
+
+Smith walked to the door.
+
+"I must make out my report, Petrie," he said.  "Look after the
+prisoner."
+
+And as the door closed softly behind him I knew what was expected of
+me; but, honestly, I shirked my responsibility.  What attitude should I
+adopt?  How should I go about my delicate task?  In a quandary, I stood
+watching the girl whom singular circumstances saw captive in my rooms.
+
+"You do not think we would harm you?" I began awkwardly.  "No harm
+shall come to you.  Why will you not trust us?"
+
+She raised her brilliant eyes.
+
+"Of what avail has your protection been to some of those others," she
+said; "those others whom HE has sought for?"
+
+Alas!  it had been of none, and I knew it well.  I thought I grasped
+the drift of her words.
+
+"You mean that if you speak, Fu-Manchu will find a way of killing you?"
+
+"Of killing ME!" she flashed scornfully.  "Do I seem one to fear for
+myself?"
+
+"Then what do you fear?" I asked, in surprise.
+
+She looked at me oddly.
+
+"When I was seized and sold for a slave," she answered slowly, "my
+sister was taken, too, and my brother--a child." She spoke the word
+with a tender intonation, and her slight accent rendered it the more
+soft.  "My sister died in the desert.  My brother lived.  Better, far
+better, that he had died, too."
+
+Her words impressed me intensely.
+
+"Of what are you speaking?" I questioned.  "You speak of slave-raids,
+of the desert.  Where did these things take place?  Of what country are
+you?"
+
+"Does it matter?" she questioned in turn.  "Of what country am I?  A
+slave has no country, no name."
+
+"No name!" I cried.
+
+"You may call me Karamaneh," she said.  "As Karamaneh I was sold to Dr.
+Fu-Manchu, and my brother also he purchased.  We were cheap at the
+price he paid."  She laughed shortly, wildly.
+
+"But he has spent a lot of money to educate me.  My brother is all that
+is left to me in the world to love, and he is in the power of Dr.
+Fu-Manchu. You understand?  It is upon him the blow will fall.  You ask
+me to fight against Fu-Manchu. You talk of protection.  Did your
+protection save Sir Crichton Davey?"
+
+I shook my head sadly.
+
+"You understand now why I cannot disobey my master's orders--why, if I
+would, I dare not betray him."
+
+I walked to the window and looked out.  How could I answer her
+arguments?  What could I say?  I heard the rustle of her ragged skirts,
+and she who called herself Karamaneh stood beside me.  She laid her
+hand upon my arm.
+
+"Let me go," she pleaded.  "He will kill him!  He will kill him!"
+
+Her voice shook with emotion.
+
+"He cannot revenge himself upon your brother when you are in no way to
+blame," I said angrily.  "We arrested you; you are not here of your own
+free will."
+
+She drew her breath sharply, clutching at my arm, and in her eyes I
+could read that she was forcing her mind to some arduous decision.
+
+"Listen."  She was speaking rapidly, nervously.  "If I help you to take
+Dr. Fu-Manchu--tell you where he is to be found ALONE--will you promise
+me, solemnly promise me, that you will immediately go to the place
+where I shall guide you and release my brother; that you will let us
+both go free?"
+
+"I will," I said, without hesitation.  "You may rest assured of it."
+
+"But there is a condition," she added.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"When I have told you where to capture him you must release me."
+
+I hesitated.  Smith often had accused me of weakness where this girl
+was concerned.  What now was my plain duty?  That she would utterly
+decline to speak under any circumstances unless it suited her to do so
+I felt assured.  If she spoke the truth, in her proposed bargain there
+was no personal element; her conduct I now viewed in a new light.
+Humanity, I thought, dictated that I accept her proposal; policy also.
+
+"I agree," I said, and looked into her eyes, which were aflame now with
+emotion, an excitement perhaps of anticipation, perhaps of fear.
+
+She laid her hands upon my shoulders.
+
+"You will be careful?" she said pleadingly.
+
+"For your sake," I replied, "I shall."
+
+"Not for my sake."
+
+"Then for your brother's."
+
+"No." Her voice had sunk to a whisper.  "For your own."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+A COOL breeze met us, blowing from the lower reaches of the Thames.
+Far behind us twinkled the dim lights of Low's Cottages, the last
+regular habitations abutting upon the marshes.  Between us and the
+cottages stretched half-a-mile of lush land through which at this
+season there were, however, numerous dry paths.  Before us the flats
+again, a dull, monotonous expanse beneath the moon, with the promise of
+the cool breeze that the river flowed round the bend ahead.  It was
+very quiet.  Only the sound of our footsteps, as Nayland Smith and I
+tramped steadily towards our goal, broke the stillness of that lonely
+place.
+
+Not once but many times, within the last twenty minutes, I had thought
+that we were ill-advised to adventure alone upon the capture of the
+formidable Chinese doctor; but we were following out our compact with
+Karamaneh; and one of her stipulations had been that the police must
+not be acquainted with her share in the matter.
+
+A light came into view far ahead of us.
+
+"That's the light, Petrie," said Smith.  "If we keep that straight
+before us, according to our information we shall strike the hulk."
+
+I grasped the revolver in my pocket, and the presence of the little
+weapon was curiously reassuring.  I have endeavored, perhaps in
+extenuation of my own fears, to explain how about Dr. Fu-Manchu there
+rested an atmosphere of horror, peculiar, unique.  He was not as other
+men.  The dread that he inspired in all with whom he came in contact,
+the terrors which he controlled and hurled at whomsoever cumbered his
+path, rendered him an object supremely sinister.  I despair of
+conveying to those who may read this account any but the coldest
+conception of the man's evil power.
+
+Smith stopped suddenly and grasped my arm.  We stood listening.
+"What?" I asked.
+
+"You heard nothing?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+Smith was peering back over the marshes in his oddly alert way.  He
+turned to me, and his tanned face wore a peculiar expression.
+
+"You don't think it's a trap?" he jerked.  "We are trusting her
+blindly."
+
+Strange it may seem, but something within me rose in arms against the
+innuendo.
+
+"I don't," I said shortly.
+
+He nodded.  We pressed on.
+
+Ten minutes' steady tramping brought us within sight of the Thames.
+Smith and I both had noticed how Fu-Manchu's activities centered always
+about the London river.  Undoubtedly it was his highway, his line of
+communication, along which he moved his mysterious forces.  The opium
+den off Shadwell Highway, the mansion upstream, at that hour a
+smoldering shell; now the hulk lying off the marshes.  Always he made
+his headquarters upon the river.  It was significant; and even if
+to-night's expedition should fail, this was a clew for our future
+guidance.
+
+"Bear to the right," directed Smith.  "We must reconnoiter before
+making our attack."
+
+We took a path that led directly to the river bank.  Before us lay the
+gray expanse of water, and out upon it moved the busy shipping of the
+great mercantile city.  But this life of the river seemed widely
+removed from us.  The lonely spot where we stood had no kinship with
+human activity.  Its dreariness illuminated by the brilliant moon, it
+looked indeed a fit setting for an act in such a drama as that wherein
+we played our parts.  When I had lain in the East End opium den, when
+upon such another night as this I had looked out upon a peaceful
+Norfolk countryside, the same knowledge of aloofness, of utter
+detachment from the world of living men, had come to me.
+
+Silently Smith stared out at the distant moving lights.
+
+"Karamaneh merely means a slave," he said irrelevantly.
+
+I made no comment.
+
+"There's the hulk," he added.
+
+The bank upon which we stood dipped in mud slopes to the level of the
+running tide.  Seaward it rose higher, and by a narrow inlet--for we
+perceived that we were upon a kind of promontory--a rough pier showed.
+Beneath it was a shadowy shape in the patch of gloom which the moon
+threw far out upon the softly eddying water.  Only one dim light was
+visible amid this darkness.
+
+"That will be the cabin," said Smith.
+
+Acting upon our prearranged plan, we turned and walked up on to the
+staging above the hulk.  A wooden ladder led out and down to the deck
+below, and was loosely lashed to a ring on the pier.  With every motion
+of the tidal waters the ladder rose and fell, its rings creaking
+harshly, against the crazy railing.
+
+"How are we going to get down without being detected?" whispered Smith.
+
+"We've got to risk it," I said grimly.
+
+Without further words my friend climbed around on to the ladder and
+commenced to descend.  I waited until his head disappeared below the
+level, and, clumsily enough, prepared to follow him.
+
+The hulk at that moment giving an unusually heavy heave, I stumbled,
+and for one breathless moment looked down upon the glittering surface
+streaking the darkness beneath me.  My foot had slipped, and but that I
+had a firm grip upon the top rung, that instant, most probably, had
+marked the end of my share in the fight with Fu-Manchu. As it was I had
+a narrow escape.  I felt something slip from my hip pocket, but the
+weird creaking of the ladder, the groans of the laboring hulk, and the
+lapping of the waves about the staging drowned the sound of the splash
+as my revolver dropped into the river.
+
+Rather white-faced, I think, I joined Smith on the deck.  He had
+witnessed my accident, but--
+
+"We must risk it," he whispered in my ear.  "We dare not turn back now."
+
+He plunged into the semi-darkness, making for the cabin, I perforce
+following.
+
+At the bottom of the ladder we came fully into the light streaming out
+from the singular apartments at the entrance to which we found
+ourselves.  It was fitted up as a laboratory.  A glimpse I had of
+shelves loaded with jars and bottles, of a table strewn with scientific
+paraphernalia, with retorts, with tubes of extraordinary shapes,
+holding living organisms, and with instruments--some of them of a form
+unknown to my experience.  I saw too that books, papers and rolls of
+parchment littered the bare wooden floor.  Then Smith's voice rose
+above the confused sounds about me, incisive, commanding:
+
+"I have you covered, Dr. Fu-Manchu!"
+
+For Fu-Manchu sat at the table.
+
+The picture that he presented at that moment is one which persistently
+clings in my memory.  In his long, yellow robe, his masklike,
+intellectual face bent forward amongst the riot of singular objects
+upon the table, his great, high brow gleaming in the light of the
+shaded lamp above him, and with the abnormal eyes, filmed and green,
+raised to us, he seemed a figure from the realms of delirium.  But,
+most amazing circumstance of all, he and his surroundings tallied,
+almost identically, with the dream-picture which had come to me as I
+lay chained in the cell!
+
+Some of the large jars about the place held anatomy specimens.  A faint
+smell of opium hung in the air, and playing with the tassel of one of
+the cushions upon which, as upon a divan, Fu-Manchu was seated, leaped
+and chattered a little marmoset.
+
+That was an electric moment.  I was prepared for anything--for anything
+except for what really happened.
+
+The doctor's wonderful, evil face betrayed no hint of emotion.  The
+lids flickered over the filmed eyes, and their greenness grew
+momentarily brighter, and filmed over again.
+
+"Put up your hands!" rapped Smith, "and attempt no tricks." His voice
+quivered with excitement.  "The game's up, Fu-Manchu. Find something to
+tie him up with, Petrie."
+
+I moved forward to Smith's side, and was about to pass him in the
+narrow doorway.  The hulk moved beneath our feet like a living thing
+groaning, creaking--and the water lapped about the rotten woodwork with
+a sound infinitely dreary.
+
+"Put up your hands!" ordered Smith imperatively.
+
+Fu-Manchu slowly raised his hands, and a smile dawned upon the
+impassive features--a smile that had no mirth in it, only menace,
+revealing as it did his even, discolored teeth, but leaving the filmed
+eyes inanimate, dull, inhuman.
+
+He spoke softly, sibilantly.
+
+"I would advise Dr. Petrie to glance behind him before he moves."
+
+Smith's keen gray eyes never for a moment quitted the speaker.  The
+gleaming barrel moved not a hair's-breadth. But I glanced quickly over
+my shoulder--and stifled a cry of pure horror.
+
+A wicked, pock-marked face, with wolfish fangs bared, and jaundiced
+eyes squinting obliquely into mine, was within two inches of me.  A
+lean, brown hand and arm, the great thews standing up like cords, held
+a crescent-shaped knife a fraction of an inch above my jugular vein.  A
+slight movement must have dispatched me; a sweep of the fearful weapon,
+I doubt not, would have severed my head from my body.
+
+"Smith!" I whispered hoarsely, "don't look around.  For God's sake keep
+him covered.  But a dacoit has his knife at my throat!"
+
+Then, for the first time, Smith's hand trembled.  But his glance never
+wavered from the malignant, emotionless countenance of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+He clenched his teeth hard, so that the muscles stood out prominently
+upon his jaw.
+
+I suppose that silence which followed my awful discovery prevailed but
+a few seconds.  To me those seconds were each a lingering death.
+
+There, below, in that groaning hulk, I knew more of icy terror than any
+of our meetings with the murder-group had brought to me before; and
+through my brain throbbed a thought: the girl had betrayed us!
+
+"You supposed that I was alone?" suggested Fu-Manchu. "So I was."
+
+Yet no trace of fear had broken through the impassive yellow mask when
+we had entered.
+
+"But my faithful servant followed you," he added.  "I thank him.  The
+honors, Mr. Smith, are mine, I think?"
+
+Smith made no reply.  I divined that he was thinking furiously.
+Fu-Manchu moved his hand to caress the marmoset, which had leaped
+playfully upon his shoulder, and crouched there gibing at us in a
+whistling voice.
+
+"Don't stir!" said Smith savagely.  "I warn you!"
+
+Fu-Manchu kept his hand raised.
+
+"May I ask you how you discovered my retreat?" he asked.
+
+"This hulk has been watched since dawn," lied Smith brazenly.
+
+"So?"  The Doctor's filmed eyes cleared for a moment.  "And to-day you
+compelled me to burn a house, and you have captured one of my people,
+too.  I congratulate you.  She would not betray me though lashed with
+scorpions."
+
+The great gleaming knife was so near to my neck that a sheet of
+notepaper could scarcely have been slipped between blade and vein, I
+think; but my heart throbbed even more wildly when I heard those words.
+
+"An impasse," said Fu-Manchu. "I have a proposal to make.  I assume
+that you would not accept my word for anything?"
+
+"I would not," replied Smith promptly.
+
+"Therefore," pursued the Chinaman, and the occasional guttural alone
+marred his perfect English, "I must accept yours.  Of your resources
+outside this cabin I know nothing.  You, I take it, know as little of
+mine.  My Burmese friend and Doctor Petrie will lead the way, then; you
+and I will follow.  We will strike out across the marsh for, say, three
+hundred yards.  You will then place your pistol on the ground, pledging
+me your word to leave it there.  I shall further require your assurance
+that you will make no attempt upon me until I have retraced my steps.
+I and my good servant will withdraw, leaving you, at the expiration of
+the specified period, to act as you see fit.  Is it agreed?"
+
+Smith hesitated.  Then:
+
+"The dacoit must leave his knife also," he stipulated.  Fu-Manchu
+smiled his evil smile again.
+
+"Agreed.  Shall I lead the way?"
+
+"No!" rapped Smith.  "Petrie and the dacoit first; then you; I last."
+
+A guttural word of command from Fu-Manchu, and we left the cabin, with
+its evil odors, its mortuary specimens, and its strange instruments,
+and in the order arranged mounted to the deck.
+
+"It will be awkward on the ladder," said Fu-Manchu. "Dr. Petrie, I will
+accept your word to adhere to the terms."
+
+"I promise," I said, the words almost choking me.
+
+We mounted the rising and dipping ladder, all reached the pier, and
+strode out across the flats, the Chinaman always under close cover of
+Smith's revolver.  Round about our feet, now leaping ahead, now
+gamboling back, came and went the marmoset.  The dacoit, dressed solely
+in a dark loin-cloth, walked beside me, carrying his huge knife, and
+sometimes glancing at me with his blood-lustful eyes.  Never before, I
+venture to say, had an autumn moon lighted such a scene in that place.
+
+"Here we part," said Fu-Manchu, and spoke another word to his follower.
+
+The man threw his knife upon the ground.
+
+"Search him, Petrie," directed Smith.  "He may have a second concealed."
+
+The Doctor consented; and I passed my hands over the man's scanty
+garments.
+
+"Now search Fu-Manchu."
+
+This also I did.  And never have I experienced a similar sense of
+revulsion from any human being.  I shuddered, as though I had touched a
+venomous reptile.
+
+Smith threw down his revolver.
+
+"I curse myself for an honorable fool," he said.  "No one could dispute
+my right to shoot you dead where you stand."
+
+Knowing him as I did, I could tell from the suppressed passion in
+Smith's voice that only by his unhesitating acceptance of my friend's
+word, and implicit faith in his keeping it, had Dr. Fu-Manchu escaped
+just retribution at that moment.  Fiend though he was, I admired his
+courage; for all this he, too, must have known.
+
+The Doctor turned, and with the dacoit walked back.  Nayland Smith's
+next move filled me with surprise.  For just as, silently, I was
+thanking God for my escape, my friend began shedding his coat, collar,
+and waistcoat.
+
+"Pocket your valuables, and do the same," he muttered hoarsely.  "We
+have a poor chance but we are both fairly fit.  To-night, Petrie, we
+literally have to run for our lives."
+
+We live in a peaceful age, wherein it falls to the lot of few men to
+owe their survival to their fleetness of foot.  At Smith's words I
+realized in a flash that such was to be our fate to-night.
+
+I have said that the hulk lay off a sort of promontory.  East and west,
+then, we had nothing to hope for.  To the south was Fu-Manchu; and even
+as, stripped of our heavier garments, we started to run northward, the
+weird signal of a dacoit rose on the night and was answered--was
+answered again.
+
+"Three, at least," hissed Smith; "three armed dacoits.  Hopeless."
+
+"Take the revolver," I cried.  "Smith, it's--"
+
+"No," he rapped, through clenched teeth.  "A servant of the Crown in
+the East makes his motto:  'Keep your word, though it break your neck!'
+I don't think we need fear it being used against us.  Fu-Manchu avoids
+noisy methods."
+
+So back we ran, over the course by which, earlier, we had come.  It
+was, roughly, a mile to the first building--a deserted cottage--and
+another quarter of a mile to any that was occupied.
+
+Our chance of meeting a living soul, other than Fu-Manchu's dacoits,
+was practically nil.
+
+At first we ran easily, for it was the second half-mile that would
+decide our fate.  The professional murderers who pursued us ran like
+panthers, I knew; and I dare not allow my mind to dwell upon those
+yellow figures with the curved, gleaming knives.  For a long time
+neither of us looked back.
+
+On we ran, and on--silently, doggedly.
+
+Then a hissing breath from Smith warned me what to expect.
+
+Should I, too, look back?  Yes.  It was impossible to resist the horrid
+fascination.
+
+I threw a quick glance over my shoulder.
+
+And never while I live shall I forget what I saw.  Two of the pursuing
+dacoits had outdistanced their fellow (or fellows), and were actually
+within three hundred yards of us.
+
+More like dreadful animals they looked than human beings, running bent
+forward, with their faces curiously uptilted.  The brilliant moonlight
+gleamed upon bared teeth, as I could see, even at that distance, even
+in that quick, agonized glance, and it gleamed upon the crescent-shaped
+knives.
+
+"As hard as you can go now," panted Smith.  "We must make an attempt to
+break into the empty cottage.  Only chance."
+
+I had never in my younger days been a notable runner; for Smith I
+cannot speak.  But I am confident that the next half-mile was done in
+time that would not have disgraced a crack man.  Not once again did
+either of us look back.  Yard upon yard we raced forward together.  My
+heart seemed to be bursting.  My leg muscles throbbed with pain.  At
+last, with the empty cottage in sight, it came to that pass with me
+when another three yards looks as unattainable as three miles.  Once I
+stumbled.
+
+"My God!" came from Smith weakly.
+
+But I recovered myself.  Bare feet pattered close upon our heels, and
+panting breaths told how even Fu-Manchu's bloodhounds were hard put to
+it by the killing pace we had made.
+
+"Smith," I whispered, "look in front.  Someone!"
+
+As through a red mist I had seen a dark shape detach itself from the
+shadows of the cottage, and merge into them again.  It could only be
+another dacoit; but Smith, not heeding, or not hearing, my faintly
+whispered words, crashed open the gate and hurled himself blindly at
+the door.
+
+It burst open before him with a resounding boom, and he pitched forward
+into the interior darkness.  Flat upon the floor he lay, for as, with a
+last effort, I gained the threshold and dragged myself within, I almost
+fell over his recumbent body.
+
+Madly I snatched at the door.  His foot held it open.  I kicked the
+foot away, and banged the door to.  As I turned, the leading dacoit,
+his eyes starting from their sockets, his face the face of a demon
+leaped wildly through the gateway.
+
+That Smith had burst the latch I felt assured, but by some divine
+accident my weak hands found the bolt.  With the last ounce of strength
+spared to me I thrust it home in the rusty socket--as a full six inches
+of shining steel split the middle panel and protruded above my head.
+
+I dropped, sprawling, beside my friend.
+
+A terrific blow shattered every pane of glass in the solitary window,
+and one of the grinning animal faces looked in.
+
+"Sorry, old man," whispered Smith, and his voice was barely audible.
+Weakly he grasped my hand.  "My fault.  I shouldn't have let you come."
+
+From the corner of the room where the black shadows lay flicked a long
+tongue of flame.  Muffled, staccato, came the report.  And the yellow
+face at the window was blotted out.
+
+One wild cry, ending in a rattling gasp, told of a dacoit gone to his
+account.
+
+A gray figure glided past me and was silhouetted against the broken
+window.
+
+Again the pistol sent its message into the night, and again came the
+reply to tell how well and truly that message had been delivered.  In
+the stillness, intense by sharp contrast, the sound of bare soles
+pattering upon the path outside stole to me.  Two runners, I thought
+there were, so that four dacoits must have been upon our trail.  The
+room was full of pungent smoke.  I staggered to my feet as the gray
+figure with the revolver turned towards me.  Something familiar there
+was in that long, gray garment, and now I perceived why I had thought
+so.
+
+It was my gray rain-coat.
+
+"Karamaneh," I whispered.
+
+And Smith, with difficulty, supporting himself upright, and holding
+fast to the ledge beside the door, muttered something hoarsely, which
+sounded like "God bless her!"
+
+The girl, trembling now, placed her hands upon my shoulders with that
+quaint, pathetic gesture peculiarly her own.
+
+"I followed you," she said.  "Did you not know I should follow you?
+But I had to hide because of another who was following also.  I had but
+just reached this place when I saw you running towards me."
+
+She broke off and turned to Smith.
+
+"This is your pistol," she said naively.  "I found it in your bag.
+Will you please take it!"
+
+He took it without a word.  Perhaps he could not trust himself to speak.
+
+"Now go.  Hurry!" she said.  "You are not safe yet."
+
+"But you?" I asked.
+
+"You have failed," she replied.  "I must go back to him.  There is no
+other way."
+
+Strangely sick at heart for a man who has just had a miraculous escape
+from death, I opened the door.  Coatless, disheveled figures, my friend
+and I stepped out into the moonlight.
+
+Hideous under the pale rays lay the two dead men, their glazed eyes
+upcast to the peace of the blue heavens.  Karamaneh had shot to kill,
+for both had bullets in their brains.  If God ever planned a more
+complex nature than hers--a nature more tumultuous with conflicting
+passions, I cannot conceive of it.  Yet her beauty was of the sweetest;
+and in some respects she had the heart of a child--this girl who could
+shoot so straight.
+
+"We must send the police to-night," said Smith.  "Or the papers--"
+
+"Hurry," came the girl's voice commandingly from the darkness of the
+cottage.
+
+It was a singular situation.  My very soul rebelled against it.  But
+what could we do?
+
+"Tell us where we can communicate," began Smith.
+
+"Hurry.  I shall be suspected.  Do you want him to kill me!"
+
+We moved away.  All was very still now, and the lights glimmered
+faintly ahead.  Not a wisp of cloud brushed the moon's disk.
+
+"Good-night, Karamaneh," I whispered softly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+TO pursue further the adventure on the marshes would be a task at once
+useless and thankless.  In its actual and in its dramatic significance
+it concluded with our parting from Karamaneh.  And in that parting I
+learned what Shakespeare meant by "Sweet Sorrow."
+
+There was a world, I learned, upon the confines of which I stood, a
+world whose very existence hitherto had been unsuspected.  Not the
+least of the mysteries which peeped from the darkness was the mystery
+of the heart of Karamaneh.  I sought to forget her.  I sought to
+remember her.  Indeed, in the latter task I found one more congenial,
+yet, in the direction and extent of the ideas which it engendered, one
+that led me to a precipice.
+
+East and West may not intermingle.  As a student of world-policies, as
+a physician, I admitted, could not deny, that truth.  Again, if
+Karamaneh were to be credited, she had come to Fu-Manchu a slave; had
+fallen into the hands of the raiders; had crossed the desert with the
+slave-drivers; had known the house of the slave-dealer. Could it be?
+With the fading of the crescent of Islam I had thought such things to
+have passed.
+
+But if it were so?
+
+At the mere thought of a girl so deliciously beautiful in the brutal
+power of slavers, I found myself grinding my teeth--closing my eyes in
+a futile attempt to blot out the pictures called up.
+
+Then, at such times, I would find myself discrediting her story.
+Again, I would find myself wondering, vaguely, why such problems
+persistently haunted my mind.  But, always, my heart had an answer.
+And I was a medical man, who sought to build up a family
+practice!--who, in short, a very little time ago, had thought himself
+past the hot follies of youth and entered upon that staid phase of life
+wherein the daily problems of the medical profession hold absolute sway
+and such seductive follies as dark eyes and red lips find--no
+place--are excluded!
+
+But it is foreign from the purpose of this plain record to enlist
+sympathy for the recorder.  The topic upon which, here, I have ventured
+to touch was one fascinating enough to me; I cannot hope that it holds
+equal charm for any other.  Let us return to that which it is my duty
+to narrate and let us forget my brief digression.
+
+It is a fact, singular, but true, that few Londoners know London.
+Under the guidance of my friend, Nayland Smith, I had learned, since
+his return from Burma, how there are haunts in the very heart of the
+metropolis whose existence is unsuspected by all but the few; places
+unknown even to the ubiquitous copy-hunting pressman.
+
+Into a quiet thoroughfare not two minutes' walk from the pulsing life
+of Leicester Square, Smith led the way.  Before a door sandwiched in
+between two dingy shop-fronts he paused and turned to me.
+
+"Whatever you see or hear," he cautioned, "express no surprise."
+
+A cab had dropped us at the corner.  We both wore dark suits and fez
+caps with black silk tassels.  My complexion had been artificially
+reduced to a shade resembling the deep tan of my friend's. He rang the
+bell beside the door.
+
+Almost immediately it was opened by a negro woman--gross, hideously
+ugly.
+
+Smith uttered something in voluble Arabic.  As a linguist his
+attainments were a constant source of surprise.  The jargons of the
+East, Far and Near, he spoke as his mother tongue.  The woman
+immediately displayed the utmost servility, ushering us into an
+ill-lighted passage, with every evidence of profound respect.
+Following this passage, and passing an inner door, from beyond whence
+proceeded bursts of discordant music, we entered a little room bare of
+furniture, with coarse matting for mural decorations, and a patternless
+red carpet on the floor.  In a niche burned a common metal lamp.
+
+The negress left us, and close upon her departure entered a very aged
+man with a long patriarchal beard, who greeted my friend with dignified
+courtesy.  Following a brief conversation, the aged Arab--for such he
+appeared to be--drew aside a strip of matting, revealing a dark recess.
+Placing his finger upon his lips, he silently invited us to enter.
+
+We did so, and the mat was dropped behind us.  The sounds of crude
+music were now much plainer, and as Smith slipped a little shutter
+aside I gave a start of surprise.
+
+Beyond lay a fairly large apartment, having divans or low seats around
+three of its walls.  These divans were occupied by a motley company of
+Turks, Egyptians, Greeks, and others; and I noted two Chinese.  Most of
+them smoked cigarettes, and some were drinking.  A girl was performing
+a sinuous dance upon the square carpet occupying the center of the
+floor, accompanied by a young negro woman upon a guitar and by several
+members of the assembly who clapped their hands to the music or hummed
+a low, monotonous melody.
+
+Shortly after our entrance into the passage the dance terminated, and
+the dancer fled through a curtained door at the farther end of the
+room.  A buzz of conversation arose.
+
+"It is a sort of combined Wekaleh and place of entertainment for a
+certain class of Oriental residents in, or visiting, London," Smith
+whispered.  "The old gentleman who has just left us is the proprietor
+or host.  I have been here before on several occasions, but have always
+drawn blank."
+
+He was peering out eagerly into the strange clubroom.
+
+"Whom do you expect to find here?" I asked.
+
+"It is a recognized meeting-place," said Smith in my ear.  "It is
+almost a certainty that some of the Fu-Manchu group use it at times."
+
+Curiously I surveyed all these faces which were visible from the
+spy-hole.  My eyes rested particularly upon the two Chinamen.
+
+"Do you recognize anyone?" I whispered.
+
+"S-sh!"
+
+Smith was craning his neck so as to command a sight of the doorway.  He
+obstructed my view, and only by his tense attitude and some subtle wave
+of excitement which he communicated to me did I know that a new arrival
+was entering.  The hum of conversation died away, and in the ensuing
+silence I heard the rustle of draperies.  The newcomer was a woman,
+then.  Fearful of making any noise I yet managed to get my eyes to the
+level of the shutter.
+
+A woman in an elegant, flame-colored opera cloak was crossing the floor
+and coming in the direction of the spot where we were concealed.  She
+wore a soft silk scarf about her head, a fold partly draped across her
+face.  A momentary view I had of her--and wildly incongruous she looked
+in that place--and she had disappeared from sight, having approached
+someone invisible who sat upon the divan immediately beneath our point
+of vantage.
+
+From the way in which the company gazed towards her, I divined that she
+was no habitue of the place, but that her presence there was as greatly
+surprising to those in the room as it was to me.
+
+Whom could she be, this elegant lady who visited such a haunt--who, it
+would seem, was so anxious to disguise her identity, but who was
+dressed for a society function rather than for a midnight expedition of
+so unusual a character?
+
+I began a whispered question, but Smith tugged at my arm to silence me.
+His excitement was intense.  Had his keener powers enabled him to
+recognize the unknown?
+
+A faint but most peculiar perfume stole to my nostrils, a perfume which
+seemed to contain the very soul of Eastern mystery.  Only one woman
+known to me used that perfume--Karamaneh.
+
+Then it was she!
+
+At last my friend's vigilance had been rewarded.  Eagerly I bent
+forward.  Smith literally quivered in anticipation of a discovery.
+Again the strange perfume was wafted to our hiding-place; and, glancing
+neither to right nor left, I saw Karamaneh--for that it was she I no
+longer doubted--recross the room and disappear.
+
+"The man she spoke to," hissed Smith.  "We must see him!  We must have
+him!"
+
+He pulled the mat aside and stepped out into the anteroom.  It was
+empty.  Down the passage he led, and we were almost come to the door of
+the big room when it was thrown open and a man came rapidly out, opened
+the street door before Smith could reach him, and was gone, slamming it
+fast.
+
+I can swear that we were not four seconds behind him, but when we
+gained the street it was empty.  Our quarry had disappeared as if by
+magic.  A big car was just turning the corner towards Leicester Square.
+
+"That is the girl," rapped Smith; "but where in Heaven's name is the
+man to whom she brought the message?  I would give a hundred pounds to
+know what business is afoot.  To think that we have had such an
+opportunity and have thrown it away!"
+
+Angry and nonplused he stood at the corner, looking in the direction of
+the crowded thoroughfare into which the car had been driven, tugging at
+the lobe of his ear, as was his habit in such moments of perplexity,
+and sharply clicking his teeth together.  I, too, was very thoughtful.
+Clews were few enough in those days of our war with that giant
+antagonist.  The mere thought that our trifling error of judgment
+tonight in tarrying a moment too long might mean the victory of
+Fu-Manchu, might mean the turning of the balance which a wise
+providence had adjusted between the white and yellow races, was
+appalling.
+
+To Smith and me, who knew something of the secret influences at work to
+overthrow the Indian Empire, to place, it might be, the whole of Europe
+and America beneath an Eastern rule, it seemed that a great yellow hand
+was stretched out over London.  Doctor Fu-Manchu was a menace to the
+civilized world.  Yet his very existence remained unsuspected by the
+millions whose fate he sought to command.
+
+"Into what dark scheme have we had a glimpse?" said Smith.  "What State
+secret is to be filched?  What faithful servant of the British Raj to
+be spirited away?  Upon whom now has Fu-Manchu set his death seal?"
+
+"Karamaneh on this occasion may not have been acting as an emissary of
+the Doctor's."
+
+"I feel assured that she was, Petrie.  Of the many whom this yellow
+cloud may at any moment envelop, to which one did her message refer?
+The man's instructions were urgent.  Witness his hasty departure.
+Curse it!"  He dashed his right clenched fist into the palm of his left
+hand.  "I never had a glimpse of his face, first to last.  To think of
+the hours I have spent in that place, in anticipation of just such a
+meeting--only to bungle the opportunity when it arose!" Scarce heeding
+what course we followed, we had come now to Piccadilly Circus, and had
+walked out into the heart of the night's traffic.  I just dragged Smith
+aside in time to save him from the off-front wheel of a big Mercedes.
+Then the traffic was blocked, and we found ourselves dangerously penned
+in amidst the press of vehicles.
+
+Somehow we extricated ourselves, jeered at by taxi-drivers, who
+naturally took us for two simple Oriental visitors, and just before
+that impassable barrier the arm of a London policeman was lowered and
+the stream moved on a faint breath of perfume became perceptible to me.
+
+The cabs and cars about us were actually beginning to move again, and
+there was nothing for it but a hasty retreat to the curb.  I could not
+pause to glance behind, but instinctively I knew that someone--someone
+who used that rare, fragrant essence--was leaning from the window of
+the car.
+
+"ANDAMAN--SECOND!" floated a soft whisper.
+
+We gained the pavement as the pent-up traffic roared upon its way.
+
+Smith had not noticed the perfume worn by the unseen occupant of the
+car, had not detected the whispered words.  But I had no reason to
+doubt my senses, and I knew beyond question that Fu-Manchu's lovely
+slave, Karamaneh, had been within a yard of us, had recognized us, and
+had uttered those words for our guidance.
+
+On regaining my rooms, we devoted a whole hour to considering what
+"ANDAMAN--SECOND" could possibly mean.
+
+"Hang it all!" cried Smith, "it might mean anything--the result of a
+race, for instance."
+
+He burst into one of his rare laughs, and began to stuff broadcut
+mixture into his briar.  I could see that he had no intention of
+turning in.
+
+"I can think of no one--no one of note--in London at present upon whom
+it is likely that Fu-Manchu would make an attempt," he said, "except
+ourselves."
+
+We began methodically to go through the long list of names which we had
+compiled and to review our elaborate notes.  When, at last, I turned
+in, the night had given place to a new day.  But sleep evaded me, and
+"ANDAMAN--SECOND" danced like a mocking phantom through my brain.
+
+Then I heard the telephone bell.  I heard Smith speaking.
+
+A minute afterwards he was in my room, his face very grim.
+
+"I knew as well as if I'd seen it with my own eyes that some black
+business was afoot last night," he said.  "And it was.  Within
+pistol-shot of us!  Someone has got at Frank Norris West.  Inspector
+Weymouth has just been on the 'phone."
+
+"Norris West!" I cried, "the American aviator--and inventor--"
+
+"Of the West aero-torpedo--yes.  He's been offering it to the English
+War Office, and they have delayed too long."
+
+I got out of bed.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that the potentialities have attracted the attention of Dr.
+Fu-Manchu!"
+
+Those words operated electrically.  I do not know how long I was in
+dressing, how long a time elapsed ere the cab for which Smith had
+'phoned arrived, how many precious minutes were lost upon the journey;
+but, in a nervous whirl, these things slipped into the past, like the
+telegraph poles seen from the window of an express, and, still in that
+tense state, we came upon the scene of this newest outrage.
+
+Mr. Norris West, whose lean, stoic face had latterly figured so often
+in the daily press, lay upon the floor in the little entrance hall of
+his chambers, flat upon his back, with the telephone receiver in his
+hand.
+
+The outer door had been forced by the police.  They had had to remove a
+piece of the paneling to get at the bolt.  A medical man was leaning
+over the recumbent figure in the striped pajama suit, and
+Detective-Inspector Weymouth stood watching him as Smith and I entered.
+
+"He has been heavily drugged," said the Doctor, sniffing at West's
+lips, "but I cannot say what drug has been used.  It isn't chloroform
+or anything of that nature.  He can safely be left to sleep it off, I
+think."
+
+I agreed, after a brief examination.
+
+"It's most extraordinary," said Weymouth.  "He rang up the Yard about
+an hour ago and said his chambers had been invaded by Chinamen.  Then
+the man at the 'phone plainly heard him fall.  When we got here his
+front door was bolted, as you've seen, and the windows are three floors
+up.  Nothing is disturbed."
+
+"The plans of the aero-torpedo?" rapped Smith.
+
+"I take it they are in the safe in his bedroom," replied the detective,
+"and that is locked all right.  I think he must have taken an overdose
+of something and had illusions.  But in case there was anything in what
+he mumbled (you could hardly understand him) I thought it as well to
+send for you."
+
+"Quite right," said Smith rapidly.  His eyes shone like steel.  "Lay
+him on the bed, Inspector."
+
+It was done, and my friend walked into the bedroom.
+
+Save that the bed was disordered, showing that West had been sleeping
+in it, there were no evidences of the extraordinary invasion mentioned
+by the drugged man.  It was a small room--the chambers were of that
+kind which are let furnished--and very neat.  A safe with a combination
+lock stood in a corner.  The window was open about a foot at the top.
+Smith tried the safe and found it fast.  He stood for a moment clicking
+his teeth together, by which I knew him to be perplexed.  He walked
+over to the window and threw it up.  We both looked out.
+
+"You see," came Weymouth's voice, "it is altogether too far from the
+court below for our cunning Chinese friends to have fixed a ladder with
+one of their bamboo rod arrangements.  And, even if they could get up
+there, it's too far down from the roof--two more stories--for them to
+have fixed it from there."
+
+Smith nodded thoughtfully, at the same time trying the strength of an
+iron bar which ran from side to side of the window-sill. Suddenly he
+stooped, with a sharp exclamation.  Bending over his shoulder I saw
+what it was that had attracted his attention.
+
+Clearly imprinted upon the dust-coated gray stone of the sill was a
+confused series of marks--tracks call them what you will.
+
+Smith straightened himself and turned a wondering look upon me.
+
+"What is it, Petrie?" he said amazedly.  "Some kind of bird has been
+here, and recently."  Inspector Weymouth in turn examined the marks.
+
+"I never saw bird tracks like these, Mr. Smith," he muttered.
+
+Smith was tugging at the lobe of his ear.
+
+"No," he returned reflectively; "come to think of it, neither did I."
+
+He twisted around, looking at the man on the bed.
+
+"Do you think it was all an illusion?" asked the detective.
+
+"What about those marks on the window-sill?" jerked Smith.
+
+He began restlessly pacing about the room, sometimes stopping before
+the locked safe and frequently glancing at Norris West.
+
+Suddenly he walked out and briefly examined the other apartments, only
+to return again to the bedroom.
+
+"Petrie," he said, "we are losing valuable time.  West must be aroused."
+
+Inspector Weymouth stared.
+
+Smith turned to me impatiently.  The doctor summoned by the police had
+gone.  "Is there no means of arousing him, Petrie?" he said.
+
+"Doubtless," I replied, "he could be revived if one but knew what drug
+he had taken."
+
+My friend began his restless pacing again, and suddenly pounced upon a
+little phial of tabloids which had been hidden behind some books on a
+shelf near the bed.  He uttered a triumphant exclamation.
+
+"See what we have here, Petrie!" he directed, handing the phial to me.
+"It bears no label."
+
+I crushed one of the tabloids in my palm and applied my tongue to the
+powder.
+
+"Some preparation of chloral hydrate," I pronounced.
+
+"A sleeping draught?" suggested Smith eagerly.
+
+"We might try," I said, and scribbled a formula upon a leaf of my
+notebook.  I asked Weymouth to send the man who accompanied him to call
+up the nearest chemist and procure the antidote.
+
+During the man's absence Smith stood contemplating the unconscious
+inventor, a peculiar expression upon his bronzed face.
+
+"ANDAMAN--SECOND," he muttered.  "Shall we find the key to the riddle
+here, I wonder?"
+
+Inspector Weymouth, who had concluded, I think, that the mysterious
+telephone call was due to mental aberration on the part of Norris West,
+was gnawing at his mustache impatiently when his assistant returned.  I
+administered the powerful restorative, and although, as later
+transpired, chloral was not responsible for West's condition, the
+antidote operated successfully.
+
+Norris West struggled into a sitting position, and looked about him
+with haggard eyes.
+
+"The Chinamen!  The Chinamen!" he muttered.
+
+He sprang to his feet, glaring wildly at Smith and me, reeled, and
+almost fell.
+
+"It is all right," I said, supporting him.  "I'm a doctor.  You have
+been unwell."
+
+"Have the police come?" he burst out.  "The safe--try the safe!"
+
+"It's all right," said Inspector Weymouth.  "The safe is locked--unless
+someone else knows the combination, there's nothing to worry about."
+
+"No one else knows it," said West, and staggered unsteadily to the
+safe.  Clearly his mind was in a dazed condition, but, setting his jaw
+with a curious expression of grim determination, he collected his
+thoughts and opened the safe.
+
+He bent down, looking in.
+
+In some way the knowledge came to me that the curtain was about to rise
+on a new and surprising act in the Fu-Manchu drama.
+
+"God!" he whispered--we could scarcely hear him--"the plans are gone!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+I HAVE never seen a man quite so surprised as Inspector Weymouth.
+
+"This is absolutely incredible!" he said.  "There's only one door to
+your chambers.  We found it bolted from the inside."
+
+"Yes," groaned West, pressing his hand to his forehead.  "I bolted it
+myself at eleven o'clock, when I came in."
+
+"No human being could climb up or down to your windows.  The plans of
+the aero-torpedo were inside a safe."
+
+"I put them there myself," said West, "on returning from the War
+Office, and I had occasion to consult them after I had come in and
+bolted the door.  I returned them to the safe and locked it.  That it
+was still locked you saw for yourselves, and no one else in the world
+knows the combination."
+
+"But the plans have gone," said Weymouth.  "It's magic!  How was it
+done?  What happened last night, sir?  What did you mean when you rang
+us up?"
+
+Smith during this colloquy was pacing rapidly up and down the room.  He
+turned abruptly to the aviator.
+
+"Every fact you can remember, Mr. West, please," he said tersely; "and
+be as brief as you possibly can."
+
+"I came in, as I said," explained West, "about eleven o'clock and
+having made some notes relating to an interview arranged for this
+morning, I locked the plans in the safe and turned in."
+
+"There was no one hidden anywhere in your chambers?" snapped Smith.
+
+"There was not," replied West.  "I looked.  I invariably do.  Almost
+immediately, I went to sleep."
+
+"How many chloral tabloids did you take?" I interrupted.
+
+Norris West turned to me with a slow smile.
+
+"You're cute, Doctor," he said.  "I took two.  It's a bad habit, but I
+can't sleep without.  They are specially made up for me by a firm in
+Philadelphia."
+
+"How long sleep lasted, when it became filled with uncanny dreams, and
+when those dreams merged into reality, I do not know--shall never know,
+I suppose.  But out of the dreamless void a face came to
+me--closer--closer--and peered into mine.
+
+"I was in that curious condition wherein one knows that one is dreaming
+and seeks to awaken--to escape.  But a nightmare-like oppression held
+me.  So I must lie and gaze into the seared yellow face that hung over
+me, for it would drop so close that I could trace the cicatrized scar
+running from the left ear to the corner of the mouth, and drawing up
+the lip like the lip of a snarling cur.  I could look into the
+malignant, jaundiced eyes; I could hear the dim whispering of the
+distorted mouth--whispering that seemed to counsel something--something
+evil.  That whispering intimacy was indescribably repulsive.  Then the
+wicked yellow face would be withdrawn, and would recede until it became
+as a pin's head in the darkness far above me--almost like a glutinous,
+liquid thing.
+
+"Somehow I got upon my feet, or dreamed I did--God knows where dreaming
+ended and reality began.  Gentlemen maybe you'll conclude I went mad
+last night, but as I stood holding on to the bedrail I heard the blood
+throbbing through my arteries with a noise like a screw-propeller. I
+started laughing.  The laughter issued from my lips with a shrill
+whistling sound that pierced me with physical pain and seemed to wake
+the echoes of the whole block.  I thought myself I was going mad, and I
+tried to command my will--to break the power of the chloral--for I
+concluded that I had accidentally taken an overdose.
+
+"Then the walls of my bedroom started to recede, till at last I stood
+holding on to a bed which had shrunk to the size of a doll's cot, in
+the middle of a room like Trafalgar Square!  That window yonder was
+such a long way off I could scarcely see it, but I could just detect a
+Chinaman--the owner of the evil yellow face--creeping through it.  He
+was followed by another, who was enormously tall--so tall that, as they
+came towards me (and it seemed to take them something like half-an-hour
+to cross this incredible apartment in my dream), the second Chinaman
+seemed to tower over me like a cypress-tree.
+
+"I looked up to his face--his wicked, hairless face.  Mr. Smith,
+whatever age I live to, I'll never forget that face I saw last
+night--or did I see it?  God knows!  The pointed chin, the great dome
+of a forehead, and the eyes--heavens above, the huge green eyes!"
+
+He shook like a sick man, and I glanced at Smith significantly.
+Inspector Weymouth was stroking his mustache, and his mingled
+expression of incredulity and curiosity was singular to behold.
+
+"The pumping of my blood," continued West, "seemed to be bursting my
+body; the room kept expanding and contracting.  One time the ceiling
+would be pressing down on my head, and the Chinamen--sometimes I
+thought there were two of them, sometimes twenty--became dwarfs; the
+next instant it shot up like the roof of a cathedral.
+
+"'Can I be awake,' I whispered, 'or am I dreaming?'
+
+"My whisper went sweeping in windy echoes about the walls, and was lost
+in the shadowy distances up under the invisible roof.
+
+"'You are dreaming--yes.'  It was the Chinaman with the green eyes who
+was addressing me, and the words that he uttered appeared to occupy an
+immeasurable time in the utterance.  'But at will I can render the
+subjective objective.' I don't think I can have dreamed those singular
+words, gentlemen.
+
+"And then he fixed the green eyes upon me--the blazing green eyes.  I
+made no attempt to move.  They seemed to be draining me of something
+vital--bleeding me of every drop of mental power.  The whole nightmare
+room grew green, and I felt that I was being absorbed into its
+greenness.
+
+"I can see what you think.  And even in my delirium--if it was
+delirium--I thought the same.  Now comes the climax of my
+experience--my vision--I don't know what to call it.  I SAW some WORDS
+issuing from my own mouth!"
+
+Inspector Weymouth coughed discreetly.  Smith whisked round upon him.
+
+"This will be outside your experience, Inspector, I know," he said,
+"but Mr. Norris West's statement does not surprise me in the least.  I
+know to what the experience was due."
+
+Weymouth stared incredulously, but a dawning perception of the truth
+was come to me, too.
+
+"How I SAW a SOUND I just won't attempt to explain; I simply tell you I
+saw it.  Somehow I knew I had betrayed myself--given something away."
+
+"You gave away the secret of the lock combination!" rapped Smith.
+
+"Eh!" grunted Weymouth.
+
+But West went on hoarsely:
+
+"Just before the blank came a name flashed before my eyes.  It was
+'Bayard Taylor.'"
+
+At that I interrupted West.
+
+"I understand!" I cried.  "I understand!  Another name has just
+occurred to me, Mr. West--that of the Frenchman, Moreau."
+
+"You have solved the mystery," said Smith.  "It was natural Mr. West
+should have thought of the American traveler, Bayard Taylor, though.
+Moreau's book is purely scientific.  He has probably never read it."
+
+"I fought with the stupor that was overcoming me," continued West,
+"striving to associate that vaguely familiar name with the fantastic
+things through which I moved.  It seemed to me that the room was empty
+again.  I made for the hall, for the telephone.  I could scarcely drag
+my feet along.  It seemed to take me half-an-hour to get there.  I
+remember calling up Scotland Yard, and I remember no more."
+
+There was a short, tense interval.
+
+In some respects I was nonplused; but, frankly, I think Inspector
+Weymouth considered West insane.  Smith, his hands locked behind his
+back, stared out of the window.
+
+"ANDAMAN--SECOND" he said suddenly.  "Weymouth, when is the first train
+to Tilbury?"
+
+"Five twenty-two from Fenchurch Street," replied the Scotland Yard man
+promptly.
+
+"Too late!" rapped my friend.  "Jump in a taxi and pick up two good men
+to leave for China at once!  Then go and charter a special to Tilbury
+to leave in twenty-five minutes.  Order another cab to wait outside for
+me."
+
+Weymouth was palpably amazed, but Smith's tone was imperative.  The
+Inspector departed hastily.
+
+I stared at Smith, not comprehending what prompted this singular course.
+
+"Now that you can think clearly, Mr. West," he said, "of what does your
+experience remind you?  The errors of perception regarding time; the
+idea of SEEING A SOUND; the illusion that the room alternately
+increased and diminished in size; your fit of laughter, and the
+recollection of the name Bayard Taylor.  Since evidently you are
+familiar with that author's work--'The Land of the Saracen,' is it
+not?--these symptoms of the attack should be familiar, I think."
+
+Norris West pressed his hands to his evidently aching head.
+
+"Bayard Taylor's book," he said dully.  "Yes! . . . I know of what my
+brain sought to remind me--Taylor's account of his experience under
+hashish. Mr. Smith, someone doped me with hashish!"
+
+Smith nodded grimly.
+
+"Cannabis indica," I said--"Indian hemp.  That is what you were drugged
+with.  I have no doubt that now you experience a feeling of nausea and
+intense thirst, with aching in the muscles, particularly the deltoid.
+I think you must have taken at least fifteen grains."
+
+Smith stopped his perambulations immediately in front of West, looking
+into his dulled eyes.
+
+"Someone visited your chambers last night," he said slowly, "and for
+your chloral tabloids substituted some containing hashish, or perhaps
+not pure hashish.  Fu-Manchu is a profound chemist."
+
+Norris West started.
+
+"Someone substituted--" he began.
+
+"Exactly," said Smith, looking at him keenly; "someone who was here
+yesterday.  Have you any idea whom it could have been?"
+
+West hesitated.  "I had a visitor in the afternoon," he said, seemingly
+speaking the words unwillingly, "but--"
+
+"A lady?" jerked Smith.  "I suggest that it was a lady."
+
+West nodded.
+
+"You're quite right," he admitted.  "I don't know how you arrived at
+the conclusion, but a lady whose acquaintance I made recently--a
+foreign lady."
+
+"Karamaneh!" snapped Smith.
+
+"I don't know what you mean in the least, but she came here--knowing
+this to be my present address--to ask me to protect her from a
+mysterious man who had followed her right from Charing Cross.  She said
+he was down in the lobby, and naturally, I asked her to wait here
+whilst I went and sent him about his business."
+
+He laughed shortly.
+
+"I am over-old," he said, "to be guyed by a woman.  You spoke just now
+of someone called Fu-Manchu. Is that the crook I'm indebted to for the
+loss of my plans?  I've had attempts made by agents of two European
+governments, but a Chinaman is a novelty."
+
+"This Chinaman," Smith assured him, "is the greatest novelty of his
+age.  You recognize your symptoms now from Bayard Taylor's account?"
+
+"Mr. West's statement," I said, "ran closely parallel with portions of
+Moreau's book on 'Hashish Hallucinations.' Only Fu-Manchu, I think,
+would have thought of employing Indian hemp.  I doubt, though, if it
+was pure Cannabis indica. At any rate, it acted as an opiate--"
+
+"And drugged Mr. West," interrupted Smith, "sufficiently to enable
+Fu-Manchu to enter unobserved."
+
+"Whilst it produced symptoms which rendered him an easy subject for the
+Doctor's influence.  It is difficult in this case to separate
+hallucination from reality, but I think, Mr. West, that Fu-Manchu must
+have exercised an hypnotic influence upon your drugged brain.  We have
+evidence that he dragged from you the secret of the combination."
+
+"God knows we have!" said West.  "But who is this Fu-Manchu, and
+how--how in the name of wonder did he get into my chambers?"
+
+Smith pulled out his watch.  "That," he said rapidly, "I cannot delay
+to explain if I'm to intercept the man who has the plans.  Come along,
+Petrie; we must be at Tilbury within the hour.  There is just a bare
+chance."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+IT was with my mind in a condition of unique perplexity that I hurried
+with Nayland Smith into the cab which waited and dashed off through the
+streets in which the busy life of London just stirred into being.  I
+suppose I need not say that I could penetrate no farther into this,
+Fu-Manchu's latest plot, than the drugging of Norris West with hashish?
+Of his having been so drugged with Indian hemp--that is, converted
+temporarily into a maniac--would have been evident to any medical man
+who had heard his statement and noted the distressing after-effects
+which conclusively pointed to Indian hemp poisoning.  Knowing something
+of the Chinese doctor's powers, I could understand that he might have
+extracted from West the secret of the combination by sheer force of
+will whilst the American was under the influence of the drug.  But I
+could not understand how Fu-Manchu had gained access to locked chambers
+on the third story of a building.
+
+"Smith," I said, "those bird tracks on the window-sill--they furnish
+the key to a mystery which is puzzling me."
+
+"They do," said Smith, glancing impatiently at his watch.  "Consult
+your memories of Dr. Fu-Manchu's habits--especially your memories of
+his pets."
+
+I reviewed in my mind the creatures gruesome and terrible which
+surrounded the Chinaman--the scorpions, the bacteria, the noxious
+things which were the weapons wherewith he visited death upon
+whomsoever opposed the establishment of a potential Yellow Empire.  But
+no one of them could account for the imprints upon the dust of West's
+window-sill.
+
+"You puzzle me, Smith," I confessed.  "There is much in this
+extraordinary case that puzzles me.  I can think of nothing to account
+for the marks."
+
+"Have you thought of Fu-Manchu's marmoset?" asked Smith.
+
+"The monkey!" I cried.
+
+"They were the footprints of a small ape," my friend continued.  "For a
+moment I was deceived as you were, and believed them to be the tracks
+of a large bird; but I have seen the footprints of apes before now, and
+a marmoset, though an American variety, I believe, is not unlike some
+of the apes of Burma."
+
+"I am still in the dark," I said.
+
+"It is pure hypothesis," continued Smith, "but here is the theory--in
+lieu of a better one it covers the facts.  The marmoset--and it is
+contrary from the character of Fu-Manchu to keep any creature for mere
+amusement--is trained to perform certain duties.
+
+"You observed the waterspout running up beside the window; you observed
+the iron bar intended to prevent a window-cleaner from falling out?
+For an ape the climb from the court below to the sill above was a
+simple one.  He carried a cord, probably attached to his body.  He
+climbed on to the sill, over the bar, and climbed down again.  By means
+of this cord a rope was pulled up over the bar, by means of the rope
+one of those ladders of silk and bamboo.  One of the Doctor's servants
+ascended--probably to ascertain if the hashish had acted successfully.
+That was the yellow dream-face which West saw bending over him.  Then
+followed the Doctor, and to his giant will the drugged brain of West
+was a pliant instrument which he bent to his own ends.  The court would
+be deserted at that hour of the night, and, in any event, directly
+after the ascent the ladder probably was pulled up, only to be lowered
+again when West had revealed the secret of his own safe and Fu-Manchu
+had secured the plans.  The reclosing of the safe and the removing of
+the hashish tabloids, leaving no clew beyond the delirious ravings of a
+drug slave--for so anyone unacquainted with the East must have
+construed West's story--is particularly characteristic.  His own
+tabloids were returned, of course.  The sparing of his life alone is a
+refinement of art which points to a past master."
+
+"Karamaneh was the decoy again?" I said shortly.
+
+"Certainly.  Hers was the task to ascertain West's habits and to
+substitute the tabloids.  She it was who waited in the luxurious
+car--infinitely less likely to attract attention at that hour in that
+place than a modest taxi--and received the stolen plans.  She did her
+work well.
+
+"Poor Karamaneh; she had no alternative!  I said I would have given a
+hundred pounds for a sight of the messenger's face--the man to whom she
+handed them.  I would give a thousand now!"
+
+"ANDAMAN--SECOND," I said.  "What did she mean?"
+
+"Then it has not dawned upon you?" cried Smith excitedly, as the cab
+turned into the station.  "The ANDAMAN, of the Oriental Navigation
+Company's line, leaves Tilbury with the next tide for China ports.  Our
+man is a second-class passenger.  I am wiring to delay her departure,
+and the special should get us to the docks inside of forty minutes."
+
+
+Very vividly I can reconstruct in my mind that dash to the docks
+through the early autumn morning.  My friend being invested with
+extraordinary powers from the highest authorities, by Inspector
+Weymouth's instructions the line had been cleared all the way.
+
+Something of the tremendous importance of Nayland Smith's mission came
+home to me as we hurried on to the platform, escorted by the
+station-master, and the five of us--for Weymouth had two other C.I.D.
+men with him--took our seats in the special.
+
+Off we went on top speed, roaring through stations, where a glimpse
+might be had of wondering officials upon the platforms, for a special
+train was a novelty on the line.  All ordinary traffic arrangements
+were held up until we had passed through, and we reached Tilbury in
+time which I doubt not constituted a record.
+
+There at the docks was the great liner, delayed in her passage to the
+Far East by the will of my royally empowered companion.  It was novel,
+and infinitely exciting.
+
+"Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith?" said the captain interrogatively,
+when we were shown into his room, and looked from one to another and
+back to the telegraph form which he held in his hand.
+
+"The same, Captain," said my friend briskly.  "I shall not detain you a
+moment.  I am instructing the authorities at all ports east of Suez to
+apprehend one of your second-class passengers, should he leave the
+ship.  He is in possession of plans which practically belong to the
+British Government!"
+
+"Why not arrest him now?" asked the seaman bluntly.
+
+"Because I don't know him.  All second-class passengers' baggage will
+be searched as they land.  I am hoping something from that, if all else
+fails.  But I want you privately to instruct your stewards to watch any
+passenger of Oriental nationality, and to cooperate with the two
+Scotland Yard men who are joining you for the voyage.  I look to you to
+recover these plans, Captain."
+
+"I will do my best," the captain assured him.
+
+Then, from amid the heterogeneous group on the dockside, we were
+watching the liner depart, and Nayland Smith's expression was a very
+singular one.  Inspector Weymouth stood with us, a badly puzzled man.
+Then occurred the extraordinary incident which to this day remains
+inexplicable, for, clearly heard by all three of us, a guttural voice
+said:
+
+"Another victory for China, Mr. Nayland Smith!"
+
+I turned as though I had been stung.  Smith turned also.  My eyes
+passed from face to face of the group about us.  None was familiar.  No
+one apparently had moved away.
+
+But the voice was the voice of DOCTOR FU-MANCHU.
+
+As I write of it, now, I can appreciate the difference between that
+happening, as it appealed to us, and as it must appeal to you who
+merely read of it.  It is beyond my powers to convey the sense of the
+uncanny which the episode created.  Yet, even as I think of it, I feel
+again, though in lesser degree, the chill which seemed to creep through
+my veins that day.
+
+From my brief history of the wonderful and evil man who once walked, by
+the way unsuspected, in the midst of the people of England--near whom
+you, personally, may at some time unwittingly, have been--I am aware
+that much must be omitted.  I have no space for lengthy examinations of
+the many points but ill illuminated with which it is dotted.  This
+incident at the docks is but one such point.
+
+Another is the singular vision which appeared to me whilst I lay in the
+cellar of the house near Windsor.  It has since struck me that it
+possessed peculiarities akin to those of a hashish hallucination.  Can
+it be that we were drugged on that occasion with Indian hemp?  Cannabis
+indica is a treacherous narcotic, as every medical man knows full well;
+but Fu-Manchu's knowledge of the drug was far in advance of our slow
+science.  West's experience proved so much.
+
+I may have neglected opportunities--later, you shall judge if I did
+so--opportunities to glean for the West some of the strange knowledge
+of the secret East.  Perhaps, at a future time, I may rectify my
+errors.  Perhaps that wisdom--the wisdom stored up by Fu-Manchu--is
+lost forever.  There is, however, at least a bare possibility of its
+survival, in part; and I do not wholly despair of one day publishing a
+scientific sequel to this record of our dealings with the Chinese
+doctor.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+TIME wore on and seemingly brought us no nearer, or very little nearer,
+to our goal.  So carefully had my friend Nayland Smith excluded the
+matter from the press that, whilst public interest was much engaged
+with some of the events in the skein of mystery which he had come from
+Burma to unravel, outside the Secret Service and the special department
+of Scotland Yard few people recognized that the several murders,
+robberies and disappearances formed each a link in a chain; fewer still
+were aware that a baneful presence was in our midst, that a past master
+of the evil arts lay concealed somewhere in the metropolis; searched
+for by the keenest wits which the authorities could direct to the task,
+but eluding all--triumphant, contemptuous.
+
+One link in that chain Smith himself for long failed to recognize.  Yet
+it was a big and important link.
+
+"Petrie," he said to me one morning, "listen to this:
+
+"'. . . In sight of Shanghai--a clear, dark night.  On board the deck of
+a junk passing close to seaward of the Andaman a blue flare started up.
+A minute later there was a cry of "Man overboard!"
+
+"'Mr. Lewin, the chief officer, who was in charge, stopped the engines.
+A boat was put out.  But no one was recovered.  There are sharks in
+these waters.  A fairly heavy sea was running.
+
+"'Inquiry showed the missing man to be a James Edwards, second class,
+booked to Shanghai.  I think the name was assumed.  The man was some
+sort of Oriental, and we had had him under close observation. . . .'"
+
+"That's the end of their report," exclaimed Smith.
+
+He referred to the two C.I.D. men who had joined the Andaman at the
+moment of her departure from Tilbury.
+
+He carefully lighted his pipe.
+
+"IS it a victory for China, Petrie?" he said softly.
+
+"Until the great war reveals her secret resources--and I pray that the
+day be not in my time--we shall never know," I replied.
+
+Smith began striding up and down the room.
+
+"Whose name," he jerked abruptly, "stands now at the head of our danger
+list?"
+
+He referred to a list which we had compiled of the notable men
+intervening between the evil genius who secretly had invaded London and
+the triumph of his cause--the triumph of the yellow races.
+
+I glanced at our notes.  "Lord Southery," I replied.
+
+Smith tossed the morning paper across to me.
+
+"Look," he said shortly.  "He's dead."
+
+I read the account of the peer's death, and glanced at the long
+obituary notice; but no more than glanced at it.  He had but recently
+returned from the East, and now, after a short illness, had died from
+some affection of the heart.  There had been no intimation that his
+illness was of a serious nature, and even Smith, who watched over his
+flock--the flock threatened by the wolf, Fu-Manchu--with jealous zeal,
+had not suspected that the end was so near.
+
+"Do you think he died a natural death, Smith?" I asked.
+
+My friend reached across the table and rested the tip of a long finger
+upon one of the sub-headings to the account:
+
+
+"SIR FRANK NARCOMBE SUMMONED TOO LATE."
+
+
+"You see," said Smith, "Southery died during the night, but Sir Frank
+Narcombe, arriving a few minutes later, unhesitatingly pronounced death
+to be due to syncope, and seems to have noticed nothing suspicious."
+
+I looked at him thoughtfully.
+
+"Sir Frank is a great physician," I said slowly; "but we must remember
+he would be looking for nothing suspicious."
+
+"We must remember," rapped Smith, "that, if Dr. Fu-Manchu is
+responsible for Southery's death, except to the eye of an expert there
+would be nothing suspicious to see.  Fu-Manchu leaves no clews."
+
+"Are you going around?" I asked.
+
+Smith shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I think not," he replied.  "Either a greater One than Fu-Manchu has
+taken Lord Southery, or the yellow doctor has done his work so well
+that no trace remains of his presence in the matter."
+
+Leaving his breakfast untasted, he wandered aimlessly about the room,
+littering the hearth with matches as he constantly relighted his pipe,
+which went out every few minutes.
+
+"It's no good, Petrie," he burst out suddenly; "it cannot be a
+coincidence.  We must go around and see him."
+
+An hour later we stood in the silent room, with its drawn blinds and
+its deathful atmosphere, looking down at the pale, intellectual face of
+Henry Stradwick, Lord Southery, the greatest engineer of his day.  The
+mind that lay behind that splendid brow had planned the construction of
+the railway for which Russia had paid so great a price, had conceived
+the scheme for the canal which, in the near future, was to bring two
+great continents, a full week's journey nearer one to the other.  But
+now it would plan no more.
+
+"He had latterly developed symptoms of angina pectoris," explained the
+family physician; "but I had not anticipated a fatal termination so
+soon.  I was called about two o'clock this morning, and found Lord
+Southery in a dangerously exhausted condition.  I did all that was
+possible, and Sir Frank Narcombe was sent for.  But shortly before his
+arrival the patient expired."
+
+"I understand, Doctor, that you had been treating Lord Southery for
+angina pectoris?" I said.
+
+"Yes," was the reply, "for some months."
+
+"You regard the circumstances of his end as entirely consistent with a
+death from that cause?"
+
+"Certainly.  Do you observe anything unusual yourself?  Sir Frank
+Narcombe quite agrees with me.  There is surely no room for doubt?"
+
+"No," said Smith, tugging reflectively at the lobe of his left ear.
+"We do not question the accuracy of your diagnosis in any way, sir."
+
+The physician seemed puzzled.
+
+"But am I not right in supposing that you are connected with the
+police?" asked the physician.
+
+"Neither Dr. Petrie nor myself are in any way connected with the
+police," answered Smith.  "But, nevertheless, I look to you to regard
+our recent questions as confidential."
+
+As we were leaving the house, hushed awesomely in deference to the
+unseen visitor who had touched Lord Southery with gray, cold fingers,
+Smith paused, detaining a black-coated man who passed us on the stairs.
+
+"You were Lord Southery's valet?"
+
+The man bowed.
+
+"Were you in the room at the moment of his fatal seizure?"
+
+"I was, sir."
+
+"Did you see or hear anything unusual--anything unaccountable?"
+
+"Nothing, sir."
+
+"No strange sounds outside the house, for instance?"
+
+The man shook his head, and Smith, taking my arm, passed out into the
+street.
+
+"Perhaps this business is making me imaginative," he said; "but there
+seems to be something tainting the air in yonder--something peculiar to
+houses whose doors bear the invisible death-mark of Fu-Manchu."
+
+"You are right, Smith!" I cried.  "I hesitated to mention the matter,
+but I, too, have developed some other sense which warns me of the
+Doctor's presence.  Although there is not a scrap of confirmatory
+evidence, I am as sure that he has brought about Lord Southery's death
+as if I had seen him strike the blow."
+
+It was in that torturing frame of mind--chained, helpless, in our
+ignorance, or by reason of the Chinaman's supernormal genius--that we
+lived throughout the ensuing days.  My friend began to look like a man
+consumed by a burning fever.  Yet, we could not act.
+
+In the growing dark of an evening shortly following I stood idly
+turning over some of the works exposed for sale outside a second-hand
+bookseller's in New Oxford Street.  One dealing with the secret
+societies of China struck me as being likely to prove instructive, and
+I was about to call the shopman when I was startled to feel a hand
+clutch my arm.
+
+I turned around rapidly--and was looking into the darkly beautiful eyes
+of Karamaneh!  She--whom I had seen in so many guises--was dressed in a
+perfectly fitting walking habit, and had much of her wonderful hair
+concealed beneath a fashionable hat.
+
+She glanced about her apprehensively.
+
+"Quick!  Come round the corner.  I must speak to you," she said, her
+musical voice thrilling with excitement.
+
+I never was quite master of myself in her presence.  He must have been
+a man of ice who could have been, I think, for her beauty had all the
+bouquet of rarity; she was a mystery--and mystery adds charm to a
+woman.  Probably she should have been under arrest, but I know I would
+have risked much to save her from it.
+
+As we turned into a quiet thoroughfare she stopped and said:
+
+"I am in distress.  You have often asked me to enable you to capture
+Dr. Fu-Manchu. I am prepared to do so."
+
+I could scarcely believe that I heard right.
+
+"Your brother--" I began.
+
+She seized my arm entreatingly, looking into my eyes.
+
+"You are a doctor," she said.  "I want you to come and see him now."
+
+"What!  Is he in London?"
+
+"He is at the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu."
+
+"And you would have me--"
+
+"Accompany me there, yes."
+
+Nayland Smith, I doubted not, would have counseled me against trusting
+my life in the hands of this girl with the pleading eyes.  Yet I did
+so, and with little hesitation; shortly we were traveling eastward in a
+closed cab.  Karamaneh was very silent, but always when I turned to her
+I found her big eyes fixed upon me with an expression in which there
+was pleading, in which there was sorrow, in which there was something
+else--something indefinable, yet strangely disturbing.  The cabman she
+had directed to drive to the lower end of the Commercial Road, the
+neighborhood of the new docks, and the scene of one of our early
+adventures with Dr. Fu-Manchu. The mantle of dusk had closed about the
+squalid activity of the East End streets as we neared our destination.
+Aliens of every shade of color were about us now, emerging from
+burrow-like alleys into the glare of the lamps upon the main road.  In
+the short space of the drive we had passed from the bright world of the
+West into the dubious underworld of the East.
+
+I do not know that Karamaneh moved; but in sympathy, as we neared the
+abode of the sinister Chinaman, she crept nearer to me, and when the
+cab was discharged, and together we walked down a narrow turning
+leading riverward, she clung to me fearfully, hesitated, and even
+seemed upon the point of turning back.  But, overcoming her fear or
+repugnance, she led on, through a maze of alleyways and courts, wherein
+I hopelessly lost my bearings, so that it came home to me how wholly I
+was in the hands of this girl whose history was so full of shadows,
+whose real character was so inscrutable, whose beauty, whose charm
+truly might mask the cunning of a serpent.
+
+I spoke to her.
+
+"S-SH!" She laid her hand upon my arm, enjoining me to silence.
+
+The high, drab brick wall of what looked like some part of a dock
+building loomed above us in the darkness, and the indescribable
+stenches of the lower Thames were borne to my nostrils through a
+gloomy, tunnel-like opening, beyond which whispered the river.  The
+muffled clangor of waterside activity was about us.  I heard a key
+grate in a lock, and Karamaneh drew me into the shadow of an open door,
+entered, and closed it behind her.
+
+For the first time I perceived, in contrast to the odors of the court
+without, the fragrance of the peculiar perfume which now I had come to
+associate with her.  Absolute darkness was about us, and by this
+perfume alone I knew that she was near to me, until her hand touched
+mine, and I was led along an uncarpeted passage and up an uncarpeted
+stair.  A second door was unlocked, and I found myself in an
+exquisitely furnished room, illuminated by the soft light of a shaded
+lamp which stood upon a low, inlaid table amidst a perfect ocean of
+silken cushions, strewn upon a Persian carpet, whose yellow richness
+was lost in the shadows beyond the circle of light.
+
+Karamaneh raised a curtain draped before a doorway, and stood listening
+intently for a moment.
+
+The silence was unbroken.
+
+Then something stirred amid the wilderness of cushions, and two tiny
+bright eyes looked up at me.  Peering closely, I succeeded in
+distinguishing, crouched in that soft luxuriance, a little ape.  It was
+Dr. Fu-Manchu's marmoset.  "This way," whispered Karamaneh.
+
+Never, I thought, was a staid medical man committed to a more unwise
+enterprise, but so far I had gone, and no consideration of prudence
+could now be of avail.
+
+The corridor beyond was thickly carpeted.  Following the direction of a
+faint light which gleamed ahead, it proved to extend as a balcony
+across one end of a spacious apartment.  Together we stood high up
+there in the shadows, and looked down upon such a scene as I never
+could have imagined to exist within many a mile of that district.
+
+The place below was even more richly appointed than the room into which
+first we had come.  Here, as there, piles of cushions formed splashes
+of gaudy color about the floor.  Three lamps hung by chains from the
+ceiling, their light softened by rich silk shades.  One wall was almost
+entirely occupied by glass cases containing chemical apparatus, tubes,
+retorts and other less orthodox indications of Dr. Fu-Manchu's
+pursuits, whilst close against another lay the most extraordinary
+object of a sufficiently extraordinary room--a low couch, upon which
+was extended the motionless form of a boy.  In the light of a lamp
+which hung directly above him, his olive face showed an almost
+startling resemblance to that of Karamaneh--save that the girl's
+coloring was more delicate.  He had black, curly hair, which stood out
+prominently against the white covering upon which he lay, his hands
+crossed upon his breast.
+
+Transfixed with astonishment, I stood looking down upon him.  The
+wonders of the "Arabian Nights" were wonders no longer, for here, in
+East-End London, was a true magician's palace, lacking not its
+beautiful slave, lacking not its enchanted prince!
+
+"It is Aziz, my brother," said Karamaneh.
+
+We passed down a stairway on to the floor of the apartment.  Karamaneh
+knelt and bent over the boy, stroking his hair and whispering to him
+lovingly.  I, too, bent over him; and I shall never forget the anxiety
+in the girl's eyes as she watched me eagerly whilst I made a brief
+examination.
+
+Brief, indeed, for even ere I had touched him I knew that the comely
+shell held no spark of life.  But Karamaneh fondled the cold hands, and
+spoke softly in that Arabic tongue which long before I had divined must
+be her native language.
+
+Then, as I remained silent, she turned and looked at me, read the truth
+in my eyes, and rose from her knees, stood rigidly upright, and
+clutched me tremblingly.
+
+"He is not dead--he is NOT dead!" she whispered, and shook me as a
+child might, seeking to arouse me to a proper understanding.  "Oh, tell
+me he is not--"
+
+"I cannot," I replied gently, "for indeed he is."
+
+"No!" she said, wild-eyed, and raising her hands to her face as though
+half distraught.  "You do not understand--yet you are a doctor.  You do
+not understand--"
+
+She stopped, moaning to herself and looking from the handsome face of
+the boy to me.  It was pitiful; it was uncanny.  But sorrow for the
+girl predominated in my mind.
+
+Then from somewhere I heard a sound which I had heard before in houses
+occupied by Dr. Fu-Manchu--that of a muffled gong.
+
+"Quick!"  Karamaneh had me by the arm.  "Up!  He has returned!"
+
+She fled up the stairs to the balcony, I close at her heels.  The
+shadows veiled us, the thick carpet deadened the sound of our tread, or
+certainly we must have been detected by the man who entered the room we
+had just quitted.
+
+It was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
+
+Yellow-robed, immobile, the inhuman green eyes glittering catlike even,
+it seemed, before the light struck them, he threaded his way through
+the archipelago of cushions and bent over the couch of Aziz.
+
+Karamaneh dragged me down on to my knees.
+
+"Watch!" she whispered.  "Watch!"
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu felt for the pulse of the boy whom a moment since I had
+pronounced dead, and, stepping to the tall glass case, took out a
+long-necked flask of chased gold, and from it, into a graduated glass,
+he poured some drops of an amber liquid wholly unfamiliar to me.  I
+watched him with all my eyes, and noted how high the liquid rose in the
+measure.  He charged a needle-syringe, and, bending again over Aziz,
+made an injection.
+
+Then all the wonders I had heard of this man became possible, and with
+an awe which any other physician who had examined Aziz must have felt,
+I admitted him a miracle-worker. For as I watched, all but breathless,
+the dead came to life!  The glow of health crept upon the olive
+cheek--the boy moved--he raised his hands above his head--he sat up,
+supported by the Chinese doctor!
+
+Fu-Manchu touched some hidden bell.  A hideous yellow man with a
+scarred face entered, carrying a tray upon which were a bowl containing
+some steaming fluid, apparently soup, what looked like oaten cakes, and
+a flask of red wine.
+
+As the boy, exhibiting no more unusual symptoms than if he had just
+awakened from a normal sleep, commenced his repast, Karamaneh drew me
+gently along the passage into the room which we had first entered.  My
+heart leaped wildly as the marmoset bounded past us to drop hand over
+hand to the lower apartment in search of its master.
+
+"You see," said Karamaneh, her voice quivering, "he is not dead!  But
+without Fu-Manchu he is dead to me.  How can I leave him when he holds
+the life of Aziz in his hand?"
+
+"You must get me that flask, or some of its contents," I directed.
+"But tell me, how does he produce the appearance of death?"
+
+"I cannot tell you," she replied.  "I do not know.  It is something in
+the wine.  In another hour Aziz will be again as you saw him.  But
+see."  And, opening a little ebony box, she produced a phial half
+filled with the amber liquid.
+
+"Good!" I said, and slipped it into my pocket.  "When will be the best
+time to seize Fu-Manchu and to restore your brother?"
+
+"I will let you know," she whispered, and, opening the door, pushed me
+hurriedly from the room.  "He is going away to-night to the north; but
+you must not come to-night. Quick!  Quick!  Along the passage.  He may
+call me at any moment."
+
+So, with the phial in my pocket containing a potent preparation unknown
+to Western science, and with a last long look into the eyes of
+Karamaneh, I passed out into the narrow alley, out from the fragrant
+perfumes of that mystery house into the place of Thames-side stenches.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+"WE must arrange for the house to be raided without delay," said Smith.
+"This time we are sure of our ally--"
+
+"But we must keep our promise to her," I interrupted.
+
+"You can look after that, Petrie," my friend said.  "I will devote the
+whole of my attention to Dr. Fu-Manchu!" he added grimly.
+
+Up and down the room he paced, gripping the blackened briar between his
+teeth, so that the muscles stood out squarely upon his lean jaws.  The
+bronze which spoke of the Burmese sun enhanced the brightness of his
+gray eyes.
+
+"What have I all along maintained?" he jerked, looking back at me
+across his shoulder--"that, although Karamaneh was one of the strongest
+weapons in the Doctor's armory, she was one which some day would be
+turned against him.  That day has dawned."
+
+"We must await word from her."
+
+"Quite so."
+
+He knocked out his pipe on the grate.  Then:
+
+"Have you any idea of the nature of the fluid in the phial?"
+
+"Not the slightest.  And I have none to spare for analytical purposes."
+
+Nayland Smith began stuffing mixture into the hot pipe-bowl, and
+dropping an almost equal quantity on the floor.
+
+"I cannot rest, Petrie," he said.  "I am itching to get to work.  Yet,
+a false move, and--" He lighted his pipe, and stood staring from the
+window.
+
+"I shall, of course, take a needle-syringe with me," I explained.
+
+Smith made no reply.
+
+"If I but knew the composition of the drug which produced the semblance
+of death," I continued, "my fame would long survive my ashes."
+
+My friend did not turn.  But:
+
+"She said it was something he put in the wine?" he jerked.
+
+"In the wine, yes."
+
+Silence fell.  My thoughts reverted to Karamaneh, whom Dr. Fu-Manchu
+held in bonds stronger than any slave-chains. For, with Aziz, her
+brother, suspended between life and death, what could she do save obey
+the mandates of the cunning Chinaman?  What perverted genius was his!
+If that treasury of obscure wisdom which he, perhaps alone of living
+men, had rifled, could but be thrown open to the sick and suffering,
+the name of Dr. Fu-Manchu would rank with the golden ones in the
+history of healing.
+
+Nayland Smith suddenly turned, and the expression upon his face amazed
+me.
+
+"Look up the next train to L--!" he rapped.
+
+"To L--?  What--?"
+
+"There's the Bradshaw.  We haven't a minute to waste."
+
+In his voice was the imperative note I knew so well; in his eyes was
+the light which told of an urgent need for action--a portentous truth
+suddenly grasped.
+
+"One in half-an-hour--the last."
+
+"We must catch it."
+
+No further word of explanation he vouchsafed, but darted off to dress;
+for he had spent the afternoon pacing the room in his dressing-gown and
+smoking without intermission.
+
+Out and to the corner we hurried, and leaped into the first taxi upon
+the rank.  Smith enjoined the man to hasten, and we were off--all in
+that whirl of feverish activity which characterized my friend's
+movements in times of important action.
+
+He sat glancing impatiently from the window and twitching at the lobe
+of his ear.
+
+"I know you will forgive me, old man," he said, "but there is a little
+problem which I am trying to work out in my mind.  Did you bring the
+things I mentioned?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Conversation lapsed, until, just as the cab turned into the station,
+Smith said:  "Should you consider Lord Southery to have been the first
+constructive engineer of his time, Petrie?"
+
+"Undoubtedly," I replied.
+
+"Greater than Von Homber, of Berlin?"
+
+"Possibly not.  But Von Homber has been dead for three years."
+
+"Three years, is it?"
+
+"Roughly."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+
+We reached the station in time to secure a non-corridor compartment to
+ourselves, and to allow Smith leisure carefully to inspect the
+occupants of all the others, from the engine to the guard's van.  He
+was muffled up to the eyes, and he warned me to keep out of sight in
+the corner of the compartment.  In fact, his behavior had me bursting
+with curiosity.  The train having started:
+
+"Don't imagine, Petrie," said Smith "that I am trying to lead you
+blindfolded in order later to dazzle you with my perspicacity.  I am
+simply afraid that this may be a wild-goose chase.  The idea upon which
+I am acting does not seem to have struck you.  I wish it had.  The fact
+would argue in favor of its being sound."
+
+"At present I am hopelessly mystified."
+
+"Well, then, I will not bias you towards my view.  But just study the
+situation, and see if you can arrive at the reason for this sudden
+journey.  I shall be distinctly encouraged if you succeed."
+
+But I did not succeed, and since Smith obviously was unwilling to
+enlighten me, I pressed him no more.  The train stopped at Rugby, where
+he was engaged with the stationmaster in making some mysterious
+arrangements.  At L--, however, their object became plain, for a
+high-power car was awaiting us, and into this we hurried and ere the
+greater number of passengers had reached the platform were being driven
+off at headlong speed along the moon-bathed roads.
+
+Twenty minutes' rapid traveling, and a white mansion leaped into the
+line of sight, standing out vividly against its woody backing.
+
+"Stradwick Hall," said Smith.  "The home of Lord Southery.  We are
+first--but Dr. Fu-Manchu was on the train."
+
+Then the truth dawned upon the gloom of my perplexity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+"YOUR extraordinary proposal fills me with horror, Mr. Smith!"
+
+The sleek little man in the dress suit, who looked like a head waiter
+(but was the trusted legal adviser of the house of Southery) puffed at
+his cigar indignantly.  Nayland Smith, whose restless pacing had led
+him to the far end of the library, turned, a remote but virile figure,
+and looked back to where I stood by the open hearth with the solicitor.
+
+"I am in your hands, Mr. Henderson," he said, and advanced upon the
+latter, his gray eyes ablaze.  "Save for the heir, who is abroad on
+foreign service, you say there is no kin of Lord Southery to consider.
+The word rests with you.  If I am wrong, and you agree to my proposal,
+there is none whose susceptibilities will suffer--"
+
+"My own, sir!"
+
+"If I am right, and you prevent me from acting, you become a murderer,
+Mr. Henderson."
+
+The lawyer started, staring nervously up at Smith, who now towered over
+him menacingly.
+
+"Lord Southery was a lonely man," continued my friend.  "If I could
+have placed my proposition before one of his blood, I do not doubt what
+my answer had been.  Why do you hesitate?  Why do you experience this
+feeling of horror?"
+
+Mr. Henderson stared down into the fire.  His constitutionally ruddy
+face was pale.
+
+"It is entirely irregular, Mr. Smith.  We have not the necessary
+powers--"
+
+Smith snapped his teeth together impatiently, snatching his watch from
+his pocket and glancing at it.
+
+"I am vested with the necessary powers.  I will give you a written
+order, sir."
+
+"The proceeding savors of paganism.  Such a course might be admissible
+in China, in Burma--"
+
+"Do you weigh a life against such quibbles?  Do you suppose that,
+granting MY irresponsibility, Dr. Petrie would countenance such a thing
+if he doubted the necessity?"
+
+Mr. Henderson looked at me with pathetic hesitance.
+
+"There are guests in the house--mourners who attended the ceremony
+to-day. They--"
+
+"Will never know, if we are in error," interrupted Smith.  "Good God!
+why do you delay?"
+
+"You wish it to be kept secret?"
+
+"You and I, Mr. Henderson, and Dr. Petrie will go now.  We require no
+other witnesses.  We are answerable only to our consciences."
+
+The lawyer passed his hand across his damp brow.
+
+"I have never in my life been called upon to come to so momentous a
+decision in so short a time," he confessed.  But, aided by Smith's
+indomitable will, he made his decision.  As its result, we three,
+looking and feeling like conspirators, hurried across the park beneath
+a moon whose placidity was a rebuke to the turbulent passions which
+reared their strangle-growth in the garden of England.  Not a breath of
+wind stirred amid the leaves.  The calm of perfect night soothed
+everything to slumber.  Yet, if Smith were right (and I did not doubt
+him), the green eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu had looked upon the scene; and I
+found myself marveling that its beauty had not wilted up.  Even now the
+dread Chinaman must be near to us.
+
+As Mr. Henderson unlocked the ancient iron gates he turned to Nayland
+Smith.  His face twitched oddly.
+
+"Witness that I do this unwillingly," he said--"most unwillingly."
+
+"Mine be the responsibility," was the reply.
+
+Smith's voice quivered, responsive to the nervous vitality pent up
+within that lean frame.  He stood motionless, listening--and I knew for
+whom he listened.  He peered about him to right and left--and I knew
+whom he expected but dreaded to see.
+
+Above us now the trees looked down with a solemnity different from the
+aspect of the monarchs of the park, and the nearer we came to our
+journey's end the more somber and lowering bent the verdant arch--or so
+it seemed.
+
+By that path, patched now with pools of moonlight, Lord Southery had
+passed upon his bier, with the sun to light his going; by that path
+several generations of Stradwicks had gone to their last resting-place.
+
+To the doors of the vault the moon rays found free access.  No branch,
+no leaf, intervened.  Mr. Henderson's face looked ghastly.  The keys
+which he carried rattled in his hand.
+
+"Light the lantern," he said unsteadily.
+
+Nayland Smith, who again had been peering suspiciously about into the
+shadows, struck a match and lighted the lantern which he carried.  He
+turned to the solicitor.
+
+"Be calm, Mr. Henderson," he said sternly.  "It is your plain duty to
+your client."
+
+"God be my witness that I doubt it," replied Henderson, and opened the
+door.
+
+We descended the steps.  The air beneath was damp and chill.  It
+touched us as with clammy fingers; and the sensation was not wholly
+physical.
+
+Before the narrow mansion which now sufficed Lord Southery, the great
+engineer whom kings had honored, Henderson reeled and clutched at me
+for support.  Smith and I had looked to him for no aid in our uncanny
+task, and rightly.
+
+With averted eyes he stood over by the steps of the tomb, whilst my
+friend and myself set to work.  In the pursuit of my profession I had
+undertaken labors as unpleasant, but never amid an environment such as
+this.  It seemed that generations of Stradwicks listened to each turn
+of every screw.
+
+At last it was done, and the pallid face of Lord Southery questioned
+the intruding light.  Nayland Smith's hand was as steady as a rigid bar
+when he raised the lantern.  Later, I knew, there would be a sudden
+releasing of the tension of will--a reaction physical and mental--but
+not until his work was finished.
+
+That my own hand was steady I ascribed to one thing
+solely--professional zeal.  For, under conditions which, in the event
+of failure and exposure, must have led to an unpleasant inquiry by the
+British Medical Association, I was about to attempt an experiment never
+before essayed by a physician of the white races.
+
+Though I failed, though I succeeded, that it ever came before the
+B.M.A., or any other council, was improbable; in the former event, all
+but impossible.  But the knowledge that I was about to practice
+charlatanry, or what any one of my fellow-practitioners must have
+designated as such, was with me.  Yet so profound had my belief become
+in the extraordinary being whose existence was a danger to the world
+that I reveled in my immunity from official censure.  I was glad that
+it had fallen to my lot to take at least one step--though blindly--into
+the FUTURE of medical science.
+
+So far as my skill bore me, Lord Southery was dead.  Unhesitatingly, I
+would have given a death certificate, save for two considerations.  The
+first, although his latest scheme ran contrary from the interests of
+Dr. Fu-Manchu, his genius, diverted into other channels, would serve
+the yellow group better than his death.  The second, I had seen the boy
+Aziz raised from a state as like death as this.
+
+From the phial of amber-hued liquid which I had with me, I charged the
+needle syringe.  I made the injection, and waited.
+
+"If he is really dead!" whispered Smith.  "It seems incredible that he
+can have survived for three days without food.  Yet I have known a
+fakir to go for a week."
+
+Mr. Henderson groaned.
+
+Watch in hand, I stood observing the gray face.
+
+A second passed; another; a third.  In the fourth the miracle began.
+Over the seemingly cold clay crept the hue of pulsing life.  It came in
+waves--in waves which corresponded with the throbbing of the awakened
+heart; which swept fuller and stronger; which filled and quickened the
+chilled body.
+
+As we rapidly freed the living man from the trappings of the dead one,
+Southery, uttering a stifled scream, sat up, looked about him with
+half-glazed eyes, and fell back.  "My God!" cried Smith.
+
+"It is all right," I said, and had time to note how my voice had
+assumed a professional tone.  "A little brandy from my flask is all
+that is necessary now."
+
+"You have two patients, Doctor," rapped my friend.
+
+Mr. Henderson had fallen in a swoon to the floor of the vault.
+
+"Quiet," whispered Smith; "HE is here."
+
+He extinguished the light.
+
+I supported Lord Southery.  "What has happened?" he kept moaning.
+"Where am I?  Oh, God!  what has happened?"
+
+I strove to reassure him in a whisper, and placed my traveling coat
+about him.  The door at the top of the mausoleum steps we had reclosed
+but not relocked.  Now, as I upheld the man whom literally we had
+rescued from the grave, I heard the door reopen.  To aid Henderson I
+could make no move.  Smith was breathing hard beside me.  I dared not
+think what was about to happen, nor what its effects might be upon Lord
+Southery in his exhausted condition.
+
+Through the Memphian dark of the tomb cut a spear of light, touching
+the last stone of the stairway.
+
+A guttural voice spoke some words rapidly, and I knew that Dr.
+Fu-Manchu stood at the head of the stairs.  Although I could not see my
+friend, I became aware that Nayland Smith had his revolver in his hand,
+and I reached into my pocket for mine.
+
+At last the cunning Chinaman was about to fall into a trap.  It would
+require all his genius, I thought, to save him to-night.  Unless his
+suspicions were aroused by the unlocked door, his capture was imminent.
+
+Someone was descending the steps.
+
+In my right hand I held my revolver, and with my left arm about Lord
+Southery, I waited through ten such seconds of suspense as I have
+rarely known.
+
+The spear of light plunged into the well of darkness again.
+
+Lord Southery, Smith and myself were hidden by the angle of the wall;
+but full upon the purplish face of Mr. Henderson the beam shone.  In
+some way it penetrated to the murk in his mind; and he awakened from
+his swoon with a hoarse cry, struggled to his feet, and stood looking
+up the stair in a sort of frozen horror.
+
+Smith was past him at a bound.  Something flashed towards him as the
+light was extinguished.  I saw him duck, and heard the knife ring upon
+the floor.
+
+I managed to move sufficiently to see at the top, as I fired up the
+stairs, the yellow face of Dr. Fu-Manchu, to see the gleaming,
+chatoyant eyes, greenly terrible, as they sought to pierce the gloom.
+A flying figure was racing up, three steps at a time (that of a brown
+man scantily clad). He stumbled and fell, by which I knew that he was
+hit; but went on again, Smith hard on his heels.
+
+"Mr. Henderson!" I cried, "relight the lantern and take charge of Lord
+Southery.  Here is my flask on the floor.  I rely upon you."
+
+Smith's revolver spoke again as I went bounding up the stair.  Black
+against the square of moonlight I saw him stagger, I saw him fall.  As
+he fell, for the third time, I heard the crack of his revolver.
+
+Instantly I was at his side.  Somewhere along the black aisle beneath
+the trees receding footsteps pattered.
+
+"Are you hurt, Smith?" I cried anxiously.
+
+He got upon his feet.
+
+"He has a dacoit with him," he replied, and showed me the long curved
+knife which he held in his hand, a full inch of the blade bloodstained.
+"A near thing for me, Petrie."
+
+I heard the whir of a restarted motor.
+
+"We have lost him," said Smith.
+
+"But we have saved Lord Southery," I said.  "Fu-Manchu will credit us
+with a skill as great as his own."
+
+"We must get to the car," Smith muttered, "and try to overtake them.
+Ugh!  my left arm is useless."
+
+"It would be mere waste of time to attempt to overtake them," I argued,
+"for we have no idea in which direction they will proceed."
+
+"I have a very good idea," snapped Smith.  "Stradwick Hall is less than
+ten miles from the coast.  There is only one practicable means of
+conveying an unconscious man secretly from here to London."
+
+"You think he meant to take him from here to London?"
+
+"Prior to shipping him to China; I think so.  His clearing-house is
+probably on the Thames."
+
+"A boat?"
+
+"A yacht, presumably, is lying off the coast in readiness.  Fu-Manchu
+may even have designed to ship him direct to China."
+
+Lord Southery, a bizarre figure, my traveling coat wrapped about him,
+and supported by his solicitor, who was almost as pale as himself,
+emerged from the vault into the moonlight.
+
+"This is a triumph for you, Smith," I said.
+
+The throb of Fu-Manchu's car died into faintness and was lost in the
+night's silence.
+
+"Only half a triumph," he replied.  "But we still have another
+chance--the raid on his house.  When will the word come from Karamaneh?"
+
+Southery spoke in a weak voice.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, "it seems I am raised from the dead."
+
+It was the weirdest moment of the night wherein we heard that newly
+buried man speak from the mold of his tomb.
+
+"Yes," replied Smith slowly, "and spared from the fate of Heaven alone
+knows how many men of genius.  The yellow society lacks a Southery, but
+that Dr. Fu-Manchu was in Germany three years ago I have reason to
+believe; so that, even without visiting the grave of your great
+Teutonic rival, who suddenly died at about that time, I venture to
+predict that they have a Von Homber.  And the futurist group in China
+knows how to MAKE men work!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+FROM the rescue of Lord Southery my story bears me mercilessly on to
+other things.  I may not tarry, as more leisurely penmen, to round my
+incidents; they were not of my choosing.  I may not pause to make you
+better acquainted with the figure of my drama; its scheme is none of
+mine.  Often enough, in those days, I found a fitness in the lines of
+Omar:
+
+
+    We are no other than a moving show
+    Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
+    Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held
+    In Midnight by the Master of the Show.
+
+
+But "the Master of the Show," in this case, was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
+
+I have been asked many times since the days with which these records
+deal: Who WAS Dr. Fu-Manchu?  Let me confess here that my final answer
+must be postponed.  I can only indicate, at this place, the trend of my
+reasoning, and leave my reader to form whatever conclusion he pleases.
+
+What group can we isolate and label as responsible for the overthrow of
+the Manchus?  The casual student of modern Chinese history will reply:
+"Young China."  This is unsatisfactory.  What do we mean by Young
+China?  In my own hearing Fu-Manchu had disclaimed, with scorn,
+association with the whole of that movement; and assuming that the name
+were not an assumed one, he clearly can have been no anti-Manchu, no
+Republican.
+
+The Chinese Republican is of the mandarin class, but of a new
+generation which veneers its Confucianism with Western polish.  These
+youthful and unbalanced reformers, in conjunction with older but no
+less ill-balanced provincial politicians, may be said to represent
+Young China.  Amid such turmoils as this we invariably look for, and
+invariably find, a Third Party.  In my opinion, Dr. Fu-Manchu was one
+of the leaders of such a party.
+
+Another question often put to me was:  Where did the Doctor hide during
+the time that he pursued his operations in London?  This is more
+susceptible of explanation.  For a time Nayland Smith supposed, as I
+did myself, that the opium den adjacent to the old Ratcliff Highway was
+the Chinaman's base of operations; later we came to believe that the
+mansion near Windsor was his hiding-place, and later still, the hulk
+lying off the downstream flats.  But I think I can state with
+confidence that the spot which he had chosen for his home was neither
+of these, but the East End riverside building which I was the first to
+enter.  Of this I am all but sure; for the reason that it not only was
+the home of Fu-Manchu, of Karamaneh, and of her brother, Aziz, but the
+home of something else--of something which I shall speak of later.
+
+The dreadful tragedy (or series of tragedies) which attended the raid
+upon the place will always mark in my memory the supreme horror of a
+horrible case.  Let me endeavor to explain what occurred.
+
+By the aid of Karamaneh, you have seen how we had located the whilom
+warehouse, which, from the exterior, was so drab and dreary, but which
+within was a place of wondrous luxury.  At the moment selected by our
+beautiful accomplice, Inspector Weymouth and a body of detectives
+entirely surrounded it; a river police launch lay off the wharf which
+opened from it on the river-side; and this upon a singularly black
+night, than which a better could not have been chosen.
+
+"You will fulfill your promise to me?" said Karamaneh, and looked up
+into my face.
+
+She was enveloped in a big, loose cloak, and from the shadow of the
+hood her wonderful eyes gleamed out like stars.
+
+"What do you wish us to do?" asked Nayland Smith.
+
+"You--and Dr. Petrie," she replied swiftly, "must enter first, and
+bring out Aziz.  Until he is safe--until he is out of that place--you
+are to make no attempt upon--"
+
+"Upon Dr. Fu-Manchu?" interrupted Weymouth; for Karamaneh hesitated to
+pronounce the dreaded name, as she always did.  "But how can we be sure
+that there is no trap laid for us?"
+
+The Scotland Yard man did not entirely share my confidence in the
+integrity of this Eastern girl whom he knew to have been a creature of
+the Chinaman's.
+
+"Aziz lies in the private room," she explained eagerly, her old accent
+more noticeable than usual.  "There is only one of the Burmese men in
+the house, and he--he dare not enter without orders!"
+
+"But Fu-Manchu?"
+
+"We have nothing to fear from him.  He will be your prisoner within ten
+minutes from now!  I have no time for words--you must believe!"  She
+stamped her foot impatiently.  "And the dacoit?" snapped Smith.
+
+"He also."
+
+"I think perhaps I'd better come in, too," said Weymouth slowly.
+
+Karamaneh shrugged her shoulders with quick impatience, and unlocked
+the door in the high brick wall which divided the gloomy, evil-smelling
+court from the luxurious apartments of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+"Make no noise," she warned.  And Smith and myself followed her along
+the uncarpeted passage beyond.
+
+Inspector Weymouth, with a final word of instruction to his second in
+command, brought up the rear.  The door was reclosed; a few paces
+farther on a second was unlocked.  Passing through a small room,
+unfurnished, a farther passage led us to a balcony.  The transition was
+startling.
+
+Darkness was about us now, and silence:  a perfumed, slumberous
+darkness--a silence full of mystery.  For, beyond the walls of the
+apartment whereon we looked down waged the unceasing battle of sounds
+that is the hymn of the great industrial river.  About the scented
+confines which bounded us now floated the smoke-laden vapors of the
+Lower Thames.
+
+From the metallic but infinitely human clangor of dock-side life, from
+the unpleasant but homely odors which prevail where ships swallow in
+and belch out the concrete evidences of commercial prosperity, we had
+come into this incensed stillness, where one shaded lamp painted dim
+enlargements of its Chinese silk upon the nearer walls, and left the
+greater part of the room the darker for its contrast.
+
+Nothing of the Thames-side activity--of the riveting and scraping--the
+bumping of bales--the bawling of orders--the hiss of steam--penetrated
+to this perfumed place.  In the pool of tinted light lay the deathlike
+figure of a dark-haired boy, Karamaneh's muffled form bending over him.
+
+"At last I stand in the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu!" whispered Smith.
+
+Despite the girl's assurance, we knew that proximity to the sinister
+Chinaman must be fraught with danger.  We stood, not in the lion's den,
+but in the serpent's lair.
+
+From the time when Nayland Smith had come from Burma in pursuit of this
+advance-guard of a cogent Yellow Peril, the face of Dr. Fu-Manchu
+rarely had been absent from my dreams day or night.  The millions might
+sleep in peace--the millions in whose cause we labored!--but we who
+knew the reality of the danger knew that a veritable octopus had
+fastened upon England--a yellow octopus whose head was that of Dr.
+Fu-Manchu, whose tentacles were dacoity, thuggee, modes of death,
+secret and swift, which in the darkness plucked men from life and left
+no clew behind.
+
+"Karamaneh!" I called softly.
+
+The muffled form beneath the lamp turned so that the soft light fell
+upon the lovely face of the slave girl.  She who had been a pliant
+instrument in the hands of Fu-Manchu now was to be the means whereby
+society should be rid of him.
+
+She raised her finger warningly; then beckoned me to approach.
+
+My feet sinking in the rich pile of the carpet, I came through the
+gloom of the great apartment in to the patch of light, and, Karamaneh
+beside me, stood looking down upon the boy.  It was Aziz, her brother;
+dead so far as Western lore had power to judge, but kept alive in that
+deathlike trance by the uncanny power of the Chinese doctor.
+
+"Be quick," she said; "be quick!  Awaken him!  I am afraid."
+
+From the case which I carried I took out a needle-syringe and a phial
+containing a small quantity of amber-hued liquid.  It was a drug not to
+be found in the British Pharmacopoeia.  Of its constitution I knew
+nothing.  Although I had had the phial in my possession for some days I
+had not dared to devote any of its precious contents to analytical
+purposes.  The amber drops spelled life for the boy Aziz, spelled
+success for the mission of Nayland Smith, spelled ruin for the fiendish
+Chinaman.
+
+I raised the white coverlet.  The boy, fully dressed, lay with his arms
+crossed upon his breast.  I discerned the mark of previous injections
+as, charging the syringe from the phial, I made what I hoped would be
+the last of such experiments upon him.  I would have given half of my
+small worldly possessions to have known the real nature of the drug
+which was now coursing through the veins of Aziz--which was tinting the
+grayed face with the olive tone of life; which, so far as my medical
+training bore me, was restoring the dead to life.
+
+But such was not the purpose of my visit.  I was come to remove from
+the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu the living chain which bound Karamaneh to
+him.  The boy alive and free, the Doctor's hold upon the slave girl
+would be broken.
+
+My lovely companion, her hands convulsively clasped, knelt and devoured
+with her eyes the face of the boy who was passing through the most
+amazing physiological change in the history of therapeutics.  The
+peculiar perfume which she wore--which seemed to be a part of
+her--which always I associated with her--was faintly perceptible.
+Karamaneh was breathing rapidly.
+
+"You have nothing to fear," I whispered; "see, he is reviving.  In a
+few moments all will be well with him."
+
+The hanging lamp with its garishly colored shade swung gently above us,
+wafted, it seemed, by some draught which passed through the apartment.
+The boy's heavy lids began to quiver, and Karamaneh nervously clutched
+my arm, and held me so whilst we watched for the long-lashed eyes to
+open.  The stillness of the place was positively unnatural; it seemed
+inconceivable that all about us was the discordant activity of the
+commercial East End.  Indeed, this eerie silence was becoming
+oppressive; it began positively to appall me.
+
+Inspector Weymouth's wondering face peeped over my shoulder.
+
+"Where is Dr. Fu-Manchu?" I whispered, as Nayland Smith in turn
+appeared beside me.  "I cannot understand the silence of the house--"
+
+"Look about," replied Karamaneh, never taking her eyes from the face of
+Aziz.
+
+I peered around the shadowy walls.  Tall glass cases there were,
+shelves and niches:  where once, from the gallery above, I had seen the
+tubes and retorts, the jars of unfamiliar organisms, the books of
+unfamiliar lore, the impedimenta of the occult student and man of
+science--the visible evidences of Fu-Manchu's presence.
+Shelves--cases--niches--were bare.  Of the complicated appliances
+unknown to civilized laboratories, wherewith he pursued his strange
+experiments, of the tubes wherein he isolated the bacilli of
+unclassified diseases, of the yellow-bound volumes for a glimpse at
+which (had they known of their contents) the great men of Harley Street
+would have given a fortune--no trace remained.  The silken cushions;
+the inlaid tables; all were gone.
+
+The room was stripped, dismantled.  Had Fu-Manchu fled?  The silence
+assumed a new significance.  His dacoits and kindred ministers of death
+all must have fled, too.
+
+"You have let him escape us!" I said rapidly.  "You promised to aid us
+to capture him--to send us a message--and you have delayed until--"
+
+"No," she said; "no!" and clutched at my arm again.  "Oh!  is he not
+reviving slowly?  Are you sure you have made no mistake?"
+
+Her thoughts were all for the boy; and her solicitude touched me.  I
+again examined Aziz, the most remarkable patient of my busy
+professional career.
+
+As I counted the strengthening pulse, he opened his dark eyes--which
+were so like the eyes of Karamaneh--and, with the girl's eager arms
+tightly about him, sat up, looking wonderingly around.
+
+Karamaneh pressed her cheek to his, whispering loving words in that
+softly spoken Arabic which had first betrayed her nationality to
+Nayland Smith.  I handed her my flask, which I had filled with wine.
+
+"My promise is fulfilled!" I said.  "You are free!  Now for Fu-Manchu!
+But first let us admit the police to this house; there is something
+uncanny in its stillness."
+
+"No," she replied.  "First let my brother be taken out and placed in
+safety.  Will you carry him?"
+
+She raised her face to that of Inspector Weymouth, upon which was
+written awe and wonder.
+
+The burly detective lifted the boy as tenderly as a woman, passed
+through the shadows to the stairway, ascended, and was swallowed up in
+the gloom.  Nayland Smith's eyes gleamed feverishly.  He turned to
+Karamaneh.
+
+"You are not playing with us?" he said harshly.  "We have done our
+part; it remains for you to do yours."
+
+"Do not speak so loudly," the girl begged.  "HE is near us--and, oh,
+God, I fear him so!"
+
+"Where is he?" persisted my friend.
+
+Karamaneh's eyes were glassy with fear now.
+
+"You must not touch him until the police are here," she said--but from
+the direction of her quick, agitated glances I knew that, her brother
+safe now, she feared for me, and for me alone.  Those glances sent my
+blood dancing; for Karamaneh was an Eastern jewel which any man of
+flesh and blood must have coveted had he known it to lie within his
+reach.  Her eyes were twin lakes of mystery which, more than once, I
+had known the desire to explore.
+
+"Look--beyond that curtain"--her voice was barely audible--"but do not
+enter.  Even as he is, I fear him."
+
+Her voice, her palpable agitation, prepared us for something
+extraordinary.  Tragedy and Fu-Manchu were never far apart.  Though we
+were two, and help was so near, we were in the abode of the most
+cunning murderer who ever came out of the East.
+
+It was with strangely mingled emotions that I crossed the thick carpet,
+Nayland Smith beside me, and drew aside the draperies concealing a
+door, to which Karamaneh had pointed.  Then, upon looking into the dim
+place beyond, all else save what it held was forgotten.
+
+We looked upon a small, square room, the walls draped with fantastic
+Chinese tapestry, the floor strewn with cushions; and reclining in a
+corner, where the faint, blue light from a lamp, placed upon a low
+table, painted grotesque shadows about the cavernous face--was Dr.
+Fu-Manchu!
+
+At sight of him my heart leaped--and seemed to suspend its functions,
+so intense was the horror which this man's presence inspired in me.  My
+hand clutching the curtain, I stood watching him.  The lids veiled the
+malignant green eyes, but the thin lips seemed to smile.  Then Smith
+silently pointed to the hand which held a little pipe.  A sickly
+perfume assailed my nostrils, and the explanation of the hushed
+silence, and the ease with which we had thus far executed our plan,
+came to me.  The cunning mind was torpid--lost in a brutish world of
+dreams.
+
+Fu-Manchu was in an opium sleep!
+
+The dim light traced out a network of tiny lines, which covered the
+yellow face from the pointed chin to the top of the great domed brow,
+and formed deep shadow pools in the hollows beneath his eyes.  At last
+we had triumphed.
+
+I could not determine the depth of his obscene trance; and mastering
+some of my repugnance, and forgetful of Karamaneh's warning, I was
+about to step forward into the room, loaded with its nauseating opium
+fumes, when a soft breath fanned my cheek.
+
+"Do not go in!" came Karamaneh's warning voice--hushed--trembling.
+
+Her little hand grasped my arm.  She drew Smith and myself back from
+the door.
+
+"There is danger there!" she whispered.
+
+"Do not enter that room!  The police must reach him in some way--and
+drag him out!  Do not enter that room!"
+
+The girl's voice quivered hysterically; her eyes blazed into savage
+flame.  The fierce resentment born of dreadful wrongs was consuming her
+now; but fear of Fu-Manchu held her yet.  Inspector Weymouth came down
+the stairs and joined us.
+
+"I have sent the boy to Ryman's room at the station," he said.  "The
+divisional surgeon will look after him until you arrive, Dr. Petrie.
+All is ready now.  The launch is just off the wharf and every side of
+the place under observation.  Where's our man?"
+
+He drew a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and raised his eyebrows
+interrogatively.  The absence of sound--of any demonstration from the
+uncanny Chinaman whom he was there to arrest--puzzled him.
+
+Nayland Smith jerked his thumb toward the curtain.
+
+At that, and before we could utter a word, Weymouth stepped to the
+draped door.  He was a man who drove straight at his goal and saved
+reflections for subsequent leisure.  I think, moreover, that the
+atmosphere of the place (stripped as it was it retained its heavy,
+voluptuous perfume) had begun to get a hold upon him.  He was anxious
+to shake it off; to be up and doing.
+
+He pulled the curtain aside and stepped into the room.  Smith and I
+perforce followed him.  Just within the door the three of us stood
+looking across at the limp thing which had spread terror throughout the
+Eastern and Western world.  Helpless as Fu-Manchu was, he inspired
+terror now, though the giant intellect was inert--stupefied.
+
+In the dimly lit apartment we had quitted I heard Karamaneh utter a
+stifled scream.  But it came too late.
+
+As though cast up by a volcano, the silken cushions, the inlaid table
+with its blue-shaded lamp, the garish walls, the sprawling figure with
+the ghastly light playing upon its features--quivered, and shot upward!
+
+So it seemed to me; though, in the ensuing instant I remembered, too
+late, a previous experience of the floors of Fu-Manchu's private
+apartments; I knew what had indeed befallen us.  A trap had been
+released beneath our feet.
+
+I recall falling--but have no recollection of the end of my fall--of
+the shock marking the drop.  I only remember fighting for my life
+against a stifling something which had me by the throat.  I knew that I
+was being suffocated, but my hands met only the deathly emptiness.
+
+Into a poisonous well of darkness I sank.  I could not cry out.  I was
+helpless.  Of the fate of my companions I knew nothing--could surmise
+nothing.  Then . . . all consciousness ended.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+I WAS being carried along a dimly lighted, tunnel-like place, slung,
+sackwise, across the shoulder of a Burman.  He was not a big man, but
+he supported my considerable weight with apparent ease.  A deadly
+nausea held me, but the rough handling had served to restore me to
+consciousness.  My hands and feet were closely lashed.  I hung limply
+as a wet towel: I felt that this spark of tortured life which had
+flickered up in me must ere long finally become extinguished.
+
+A fancy possessed me, in these the first moments of my restoration to
+the world of realities, that I had been smuggled into China; and as I
+swung head downward I told myself that the huge, puffy things which
+strewed the path were a species of giant toadstool, unfamiliar to me
+and possibly peculiar to whatever district of China I now was in.
+
+The air was hot, steamy, and loaded with a smell as of rotting
+vegetation.  I wondered why my bearer so scrupulously avoided touching
+any of the unwholesome-looking growths in passing through what seemed a
+succession of cellars, but steered a tortuous course among the bloated,
+unnatural shapes, lifting his bare brown feet with a catlike delicacy.
+
+He passed under a low arch, dropped me roughly to the ground and ran
+back.  Half stunned, I lay watching the agile brown body melt into the
+distances of the cellars.  Their walls and roof seemed to emit a faint,
+phosphorescent light.
+
+"Petrie!" came a weak voice from somewhere ahead. . . .  "Is that you,
+Petrie?"
+
+It was Nayland Smith!
+
+"Smith!" I said, and strove to sit up.  But the intense nausea overcame
+me, so that I all but swooned.
+
+I heard his voice again, but could attach no meaning to the words which
+he uttered.  A sound of terrific blows reached my ears, too.  The
+Burman reappeared, bending under the heavy load which he bore.  For, as
+he picked his way through the bloated things which grew upon the floors
+of the cellars, I realized that he was carrying the inert body of
+Inspector Weymouth.  And I found time to compare the strength of the
+little brown man with that of a Nile beetle, which can raise many times
+its own weight.  Then, behind him, appeared a second figure, which
+immediately claimed the whole of my errant attention.
+
+"Fu-Manchu!" hissed my friend, from the darkness which concealed him.
+
+It was indeed none other than Fu-Manchu--the Fu-Manchu whom we had
+thought to be helpless.  The deeps of the Chinaman's cunning--the fine
+quality of his courage, were forced upon me as amazing facts.
+
+He had assumed the appearance of a drugged opium-smoker so well as to
+dupe me--a medical man; so well as to dupe Karamaneh--whose experience
+of the noxious habit probably was greater than my own.  And, with the
+gallows dangling before him, he had waited--played the part of a
+lure--whilst a body of police actually surrounded the place!
+
+I have since thought that the room probably was one which he actually
+used for opium debauches, and the device of the trap was intended to
+protect him during the comatose period.
+
+Now, holding a lantern above his head, the deviser of the trap
+whereinto we, mouselike, had blindly entered, came through the cellars,
+following the brown man who carried Weymouth.  The faint rays of the
+lantern (it apparently contained a candle) revealed a veritable forest
+of the gigantic fungi--poisonously colored--hideously swollen--climbing
+from the floor up the slimy walls--climbing like horrid parasites to
+such part of the arched roof as was visible to me.
+
+Fu-Manchu picked his way through the fungi ranks as daintily as though
+the distorted, tumid things had been viper-headed.
+
+The resounding blows which I had noted before, and which had never
+ceased, culminated in a splintering crash.  Dr. Fu-Manchu and his
+servant, who carried the apparently insensible detective, passed in
+under the arch, Fu-Manchu glancing back once along the passages.  The
+lantern he extinguished, or concealed; and whilst I waited, my mind
+dully surveying memories of all the threats which this uncanny being
+had uttered, a distant clamor came to my ears.
+
+Then, abruptly, it ceased.  Dr. Fu-Manchu had closed a heavy door; and
+to my surprise I perceived that the greater part of it was of glass.
+The will-o'-the-wisp glow which played around the fungi rendered the
+vista of the cellars faintly luminous, and visible to me from where I
+lay.  Fu-Manchu spoke softly.  His voice, its guttural note alternating
+with a sibilance on certain words, betrayed no traces of agitation.
+The man's unbroken calm had in it something inhuman.  For he had just
+perpetrated an act of daring unparalleled in my experience, and, in the
+clamor now shut out by the glass door I tardily recognized the entrance
+of the police into some barricaded part of the house--the coming of
+those who would save us--who would hold the Chinese doctor for the
+hangman!
+
+"I have decided," he said deliberately, "that you are more worthy of my
+attention than I had formerly supposed.  A man who can solve the secret
+of the Golden Elixir (I had not solved it; I had merely stolen some)
+should be a valuable acquisition to my Council.  The extent of the
+plans of Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith and of the English Scotland
+Yard it is incumbent upon me to learn.  Therefore, gentlemen, you
+live--for the present!"
+
+"And you'll swing," came Weymouth's hoarse voice, "in the near future!
+You and all your yellow gang!"
+
+"I trust not," was the placid reply.  "Most of my people are safe: some
+are shipped as lascars upon the liners; others have departed by
+different means.  Ah!"
+
+That last word was the only one indicative of excitement which had yet
+escaped him.  A disk of light danced among the brilliant poison hues of
+the passages--but no sound reached us; by which I knew that the glass
+door must fit almost hermetically.  It was much cooler here than in the
+place through which we had passed, and the nausea began to leave me, my
+brain to grow more clear.  Had I known what was to follow I should have
+cursed the lucidity of mind which now came to me; I should have prayed
+for oblivion--to be spared the sight of that which ensued.
+
+"It's Logan!" cried Inspector Weymouth; and I could tell that he was
+struggling to free himself of his bonds.  From his voice it was evident
+that he, too, was recovering from the effects of the narcotic which had
+been administered to us all.
+
+"Logan!" he cried.  "Logan!  This way--HELP!"
+
+But the cry beat back upon us in that enclosed space and seemed to
+carry no farther than the invisible walls of our prison.
+
+"The door fits well," came Fu-Manchu's mocking voice.  "It is fortunate
+for us all that it is so.  This is my observation window, Dr. Petrie,
+and you are about to enjoy an unique opportunity of studying fungology.
+I have already drawn your attention to the anaesthetic properties of
+the lycoperdon, or common puff-ball. You may have recognized the fumes?
+The chamber into which you rashly precipitated yourselves was charged
+with them.  By a process of my own I have greatly enhanced the value of
+the puff-ball in this respect.  Your friend, Mr. Weymouth, proved the
+most obstinate subject; but he succumbed in fifteen seconds."
+
+"Logan!  Help!  HELP!  This way, man!"
+
+Something very like fear sounded in Weymouth's voice now.  Indeed, the
+situation was so uncanny that it almost seemed unreal.  A group of men
+had entered the farthermost cellars, led by one who bore an electric
+pocket-lamp. The hard, white ray danced from bloated gray fungi to
+others of nightmare shape, of dazzling, venomous brilliance.  The
+mocking, lecture-room voice continued:
+
+"Note the snowy growth upon the roof, Doctor.  Do not be deceived by
+its size.  It is a giant variety of my own culture and is of the order
+empusa. You, in England, are familiar with the death of the common
+house-fly--which is found attached to the window-pane by a coating of
+white mold.  I have developed the spores of this mold and have produced
+a giant species.  Observe the interesting effect of the strong light
+upon my orange and blue amanita fungus!"
+
+Hard beside me I heard Nayland Smith groan, Weymouth had become
+suddenly silent.  For my own part, I could have shrieked in pure
+horror.  FOR I KNEW WHAT WAS COMING. I realized in one agonized instant
+the significance of the dim lantern, of the careful progress through
+the subterranean fungi grove, of the care with which Fu-Manchu and his
+servant had avoided touching any of the growths.  I knew, now, that Dr.
+Fu-Manchu was the greatest fungologist the world had ever known; was a
+poisoner to whom the Borgias were as children--and I knew that the
+detectives blindly were walking into a valley of death.
+
+Then it began--the unnatural scene--the saturnalia of murder.
+
+Like so many bombs the brilliantly colored caps of the huge
+toadstool-like things alluded to by the Chinaman exploded, as the white
+ray sought them out in the darkness which alone preserved their
+existence.  A brownish cloud--I could not determine whether liquid or
+powdery--arose in the cellar.
+
+I tried to close my eyes--or to turn them away from the reeling forms
+of the men who were trapped in that poison-hole. It was useless:
+
+I must look.
+
+The bearer of the lamp had dropped it, but the dim, eerily illuminated
+gloom endured scarce a second.  A bright light sprang up--doubtless at
+the touch of the fiendish being who now resumed speech:
+
+"Observe the symptoms of delirium, Doctor!"  Out there, beyond the
+glass door, the unhappy victims were laughing--tearing their garments
+from their bodies--leaping--waving their arms--were become MANIACS!
+
+"We will now release the ripe spores of giant entpusa," continued the
+wicked voice.  "The air of the second cellar being super-charged with
+oxygen, they immediately germinate.  Ah!  it is a triumph!  That
+process is the scientific triumph of my life!"
+
+Like powdered snow the white spores fell from the roof, frosting the
+writhing shapes of the already poisoned men.  Before my horrified gaze,
+THE FUNGUS GREW; it spread from the head to the feet of those it
+touched; it enveloped them as in glittering shrouds. . . .
+
+"They die like flies!" screamed Fu-Manchu, with a sudden febrile
+excitement; and I felt assured of something I had long suspected:  that
+that magnificent, perverted brain was the brain of a homicidal
+maniac--though Smith would never accept the theory.
+
+"It is my fly-trap!" shrieked the Chinaman.  "And I am the god of
+destruction!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+THE clammy touch of the mist revived me.  The culmination of the scene
+in the poison cellars, together with the effects of the fumes which I
+had inhaled again, had deprived me of consciousness.  Now I knew that I
+was afloat on the river.  I still was bound: furthermore, a cloth was
+wrapped tightly about my mouth, and I was secured to a ring in the deck.
+
+By moving my aching head to the left I could look down into the oily
+water; by moving it to the right I could catch a glimpse of the
+empurpled face of Inspector Weymouth, who, similarly bound and gagged,
+lay beside me, but only of the feet and legs of Nayland Smith.  For I
+could not turn my head sufficiently far to see more.
+
+We were aboard an electric launch.  I heard the hated guttural voice of
+Fu-Manchu, subdued now to its habitual calm, and my heart leaped to
+hear the voice that answered him.  It was that of Karamaneh.  His
+triumph was complete.  Clearly his plans for departure were complete;
+his slaughter of the police in the underground passages had been a
+final reckless demonstration of which the Chinaman's subtle cunning
+would have been incapable had he not known his escape from the country
+to be assured.
+
+What fate was in store for us?  How would he avenge himself upon the
+girl who had betrayed him to his enemies?  What portion awaited those
+enemies?  He seemed to have formed the singular determination to
+smuggle me into China--but what did he purpose in the case of Weymouth,
+and in the case of Nayland Smith?
+
+All but silently we were feeling our way through the mist.  Astern died
+the clangor of dock and wharf into a remote discord.  Ahead hung the
+foggy curtain veiling the traffic of the great waterway; but through it
+broke the calling of sirens, the tinkling of bells.
+
+The gentle movement of the screw ceased altogether.  The launch lay
+heaving slightly upon the swells.
+
+A distant throbbing grew louder--and something advanced upon us through
+the haze.
+
+A bell rang and muffled by the fog a voice proclaimed itself--a voice
+which I knew.  I felt Weymouth writhing impotently beside me; heard him
+mumbling incoherently; and I knew that he, too, had recognized the
+voice.
+
+It was that of Inspector Ryman of the river police and their launch was
+within biscuit-throw of that upon which we lay!
+
+"'Hoy!  'Hoy!"
+
+I trembled.  A feverish excitement claimed me.  They were hailing us.
+We carried no lights; but now--and ignoring the pain which shot from my
+spine to my skull I craned my neck to the left--the port light of the
+police launch glowed angrily through the mist.
+
+I was unable to utter any save mumbling sounds, and my companions were
+equally helpless.  It was a desperate position.  Had the police seen us
+or had they hailed at random?  The light drew nearer.
+
+"Launch, 'hoy!"
+
+They had seen us!  Fu-Manchu's guttural voice spoke shortly--and our
+screw began to revolve again; we leaped ahead into the bank of
+darkness.  Faint grew the light of the police launch--and was gone.
+But I heard Ryman's voice shouting.
+
+"Full speed!" came faintly through the darkness.  "Port!  Port!"
+
+Then the murk closed down, and with our friends far astern of us we
+were racing deeper into the fog banks--speeding seaward; though of this
+I was unable to judge at the time.
+
+On we raced, and on, sweeping over growing swells.  Once, a black,
+towering shape dropped down upon us.  Far above, lights blazed, bells
+rang, vague cries pierced the fog.  The launch pitched and rolled
+perilously, but weathered the wash of the liner which so nearly had
+concluded this episode.  It was such a journey as I had taken once
+before, early in our pursuit of the genius of the Yellow Peril; but
+this was infinitely more terrible; for now we were utterly in
+Fu-Manchu's power.
+
+A voice mumbled in my ear.  I turned my bound-up face; and Inspector
+Weymouth raised his hands in the dimness and partly slipped the bandage
+from his mouth.
+
+"I've been working at the cords since we left those filthy cellars," he
+whispered.  "My wrists are all cut, but when I've got out a knife and
+freed my ankles--"
+
+Smith had kicked him with his bound feet.  The detective slipped the
+bandage back to position and placed his hands behind him again.  Dr.
+Fu-Manchu, wearing a heavy overcoat but no hat, came aft.  He was
+dragging Karamaneh by the wrists.  He seated himself on the cushions
+near to us, pulling the girl down beside him.  Now, I could see her
+face--and the expression in her beautiful eyes made me writhe.
+
+Fu-Manchu was watching us, his discolored teeth faintly visible in the
+dim light, to which my eyes were becoming accustomed.
+
+"Dr. Petrie," he said, "you shall be my honored guest at my home in
+China.  You shall assist me to revolutionize chemistry.  Mr. Smith, I
+fear you know more of my plans than I had deemed it possible for you to
+have learned, and I am anxious to know if you have a confidant.  Where
+your memory fails you, and my files and wire jackets prove ineffectual,
+Inspector Weymouth's recollections may prove more accurate."
+
+He turned to the cowering girl--who shrank away from him in pitiful,
+abject terror.
+
+"In my hands, Doctor," he continued, "I hold a needle charged with a
+rare culture.  It is the link between the bacilli and the fungi.  You
+have seemed to display an undue interest in the peach and pearl which
+render my Karamaneh so delightful, In the supple grace of her movements
+and the sparkle of her eyes.  You can never devote your whole mind to
+those studies which I have planned for you whilst such distractions
+exist.  A touch of this keen point, and the laughing Karamaneh becomes
+the shrieking hag--the maniacal, mowing--"
+
+Then, with an ox-like rush, Weymouth was upon him!
+
+Karamaneh, wrought upon past endurance, with a sobbing cry, sank to the
+deck--and lay still.  I managed to writhe into a half-sitting posture,
+and Smith rolled aside as the detective and the Chinaman crashed down
+together.
+
+Weymouth had one big hand at the Doctor's yellow throat; with his left
+he grasped the Chinaman's right.  It held the needle.
+
+Now, I could look along the length of the little craft, and, so far as
+it was possible to make out in the fog, only one other was aboard--the
+half-clad brown man who navigated her--and who had carried us through
+the cellars.  The murk had grown denser and now shut us in like a box.
+The throb of the motor--the hissing breath of the two who fought--with
+so much at issue--these sounds and the wash of the water alone broke
+the eerie stillness.
+
+By slow degrees, and with a reptilian agility horrible to watch,
+Fu-Manchu was neutralizing the advantage gained by Weymouth.  His
+clawish fingers were fast in the big man's throat; the right hand with
+its deadly needle was forcing down the left of his opponent.  He had
+been underneath, but now he was gaining the upper place.  His powers of
+physical endurance must have been truly marvelous.  His breath was
+whistling through his nostrils significantly, but Weymouth was palpably
+tiring.
+
+The latter suddenly changed his tactics.  By a supreme effort, to which
+he was spurred, I think, by the growing proximity of the needle, he
+raised Fu-Manchu--by the throat and arm--and pitched him sideways.
+
+The Chinaman's grip did not relax, and the two wrestlers dropped, a
+writhing mass, upon the port cushions.  The launch heeled over, and my
+cry of horror was crushed back into my throat by the bandage.  For, as
+Fu-Manchu sought to extricate himself, he overbalanced--fell back--and,
+bearing Weymouth with him--slid into the river!
+
+The mist swallowed them up.
+
+There are moments of which no man can recall his mental impressions,
+moments so acutely horrible that, mercifully, our memory retains
+nothing of the emotions they occasioned.  This was one of them.  A
+chaos ruled in my mind.  I had a vague belief that the Burman, forward,
+glanced back.  Then the course of the launch was changed.  How long
+intervened between the tragic end of that Gargantuan struggle and the
+time when a black wall leaped suddenly up before us I cannot pretend to
+state.
+
+With a sickening jerk we ran aground.  A loud explosion ensued, and I
+clearly remember seeing the brown man leap out into the fog--which was
+the last I saw of him.
+
+Water began to wash aboard.
+
+Fully alive to our imminent peril, I fought with the cords that bound
+me; but I lacked poor Weymouth's strength of wrist, and I began to
+accept as a horrible and imminent possibility, a death from drowning,
+within six feet of the bank.
+
+Beside me, Nayland Smith was straining and twisting.  I think his
+object was to touch Karamaneh, in the hope of arousing her.  Where he
+failed in his project, the inflowing water succeeded.  A silent prayer
+of thankfulness came from my very soul when I saw her stir--when I saw
+her raise her hands to her head--and saw the big, horror-bright eyes
+gleam through the mist veil.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+WE quitted the wrecked launch but a few seconds before her stern
+settled down into the river.  Where the mud-bank upon which we found
+ourselves was situated we had no idea.  But at least it was terra firma
+and we were free from Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+Smith stood looking out towards the river.
+
+"My God!" he groaned.  "My God!"
+
+He was thinking, as I was, of Weymouth.
+
+And when, an hour later, the police boat located us (on the mud-flats
+below Greenwich) and we heard that the toll of the poison cellars was
+eight men, we also heard news of our brave companion.
+
+"Back there in the fog, sir," reported Inspector Ryman, who was in
+charge, and his voice was under poor command, "there was an uncanny
+howling, and peals of laughter that I'm going to dream about for
+weeks--"
+
+Karamaneh, who nestled beside me like a frightened child, shivered; and
+I knew that the needle had done its work, despite Weymouth's giant
+strength.
+
+Smith swallowed noisily.
+
+"Pray God the river has that yellow Satan," he said.  "I would
+sacrifice a year of my life to see his rat's body on the end of a
+grappling-iron!"
+
+We were a sad party that steamed through the fog homeward that night.
+It seemed almost like deserting a staunch comrade to leave the spot--so
+nearly as we could locate it--where Weymouth had put up that last
+gallant fight.  Our helplessness was pathetic, and although, had the
+night been clear as crystal, I doubt if we could have acted otherwise,
+it came to me that this stinking murk was a new enemy which drove us
+back in coward retreat.
+
+But so many were the calls upon our activity, and so numerous the
+stimulants to our initiative in those times, that soon we had matter to
+relieve our minds from this stress of sorrow.
+
+There was Karamaneh to be considered--Karamaneh and her brother.  A
+brief counsel was held, whereat it was decided that for the present
+they should be lodged at a hotel.
+
+"I shall arrange," Smith whispered to me, for the girl was watching us,
+"to have the place patrolled night and day."
+
+"You cannot suppose--"
+
+"Petrie!  I cannot and dare not suppose Fu-Manchu dead until with my
+own eyes I have seen him so!"
+
+Accordingly we conveyed the beautiful Oriental girl and her brother
+away from that luxurious abode in its sordid setting.  I will not dwell
+upon the final scene in the poison cellars lest I be accused of
+accumulating horror for horror's sake.  Members of the fire brigade,
+helmed against contagion, brought out the bodies of the victims wrapped
+in their living shrouds. . . .
+
+From Karamaneh we learned much of Fu-Manchu, little of herself.
+
+"What am I?  Does my poor history matter--to anyone?" was her answer to
+questions respecting herself.
+
+And she would droop her lashes over her dark eyes.
+
+The dacoits whom the Chinaman had brought to England originally
+numbered seven, we learned.  As you, having followed me thus far, will
+be aware, we had thinned the ranks of the Burmans.  Probably only one
+now remained in England.  They had lived in a camp in the grounds of
+the house near Windsor (which, as we had learned at the time of its
+destruction, the Doctor had bought outright). The Thames had been his
+highway.
+
+Other members of the group had occupied quarters in various parts of
+the East End, where sailormen of all nationalities congregate.
+Shen-Yan's had been the East End headquarters.  He had employed the
+hulk from the time of his arrival, as a laboratory for a certain class
+of experiments undesirable in proximity to a place of residence.
+
+Nayland Smith asked the girl on one occasion if the Chinaman had had a
+private sea-going vessel, and she replied in the affirmative.  She had
+never been on board, however, had never even set eyes upon it, and
+could give us no information respecting its character.  It had sailed
+for China.
+
+"You are sure," asked Smith keenly, "that it has actually left?"
+
+"I understood so, and that we were to follow by another route."
+
+"It would have been difficult for Fu-Manchu to travel by a passenger
+boat?"
+
+"I cannot say what were his plans."
+
+In a state of singular uncertainty, then, readily to be understood, we
+passed the days following the tragedy which had deprived us of our
+fellow-worker.
+
+Vividly I recall the scene at poor Weymouth's home, on the day that we
+visited it.  I then made the acquaintance of the Inspector's brother.
+Nayland Smith gave him a detailed account of the last scene.
+
+"Out there in the mist," he concluded wearily, "it all seemed very
+unreal."
+
+"I wish to God it had been!"
+
+"Amen to that, Mr. Weymouth.  But your brother made a gallant finish.
+If ridding the world of Fu-Manchu were the only good deed to his
+credit, his life had been well spent."
+
+James Weymouth smoked awhile in thoughtful silence.  Though but four
+and a half miles S.S.E. of St. Paul's the quaint little cottage, with
+its rustic garden, shadowed by the tall trees which had so lined the
+village street before motor 'buses were, was a spot as peaceful and
+secluded as any in broad England.  But another shadow lay upon it
+to-day--chilling, fearful.  An incarnate evil had come out of the dim
+East and in its dying malevolence had touched this home.
+
+"There are two things I don't understand about it, sir," continued
+Weymouth.  "What was the meaning of the horrible laughter which the
+river police heard in the fog?  And where are the bodies?"
+
+Karamaneh, seated beside me, shuddered at the words.  Smith, whose
+restless spirit granted him little repose, paused in his aimless
+wanderings about the room and looked at her.
+
+In these latter days of his Augean labors to purge England of the
+unclean thing which had fastened upon her, my friend was more lean and
+nervous-looking than I had ever known him.  His long residence in Burma
+had rendered him spare and had burned his naturally dark skin to a
+coppery hue; but now his gray eyes had grown feverishly bright and his
+face so lean as at times to appear positively emaciated.  But I knew
+that he was as fit as ever.
+
+"This lady may be able to answer your first question," he said.  "She
+and her brother were for some time in the household of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+In fact, Mr. Weymouth, Karamaneh, as her name implies, was a slave."
+
+Weymouth glanced at the beautiful, troubled face with scarcely veiled
+distrust.  "You don't look as though you had come from China, miss," he
+said, with a sort of unwilling admiration.
+
+"I do not come from China," replied Karamaneh.  "My father was a pure
+Bedawee.  But my history does not matter." (At times there was
+something imperious in her manner; and to this her musical accent added
+force.) "When your brave brother, Inspector Weymouth, and Dr.
+Fu-Manchu, were swallowed up by the river, Fu-Manchu held a poisoned
+needle in his hand.  The laughter meant that the needle had done its
+work.  Your brother had become mad!"
+
+Weymouth turned aside to hide his emotion.  "What was on the needle?"
+he asked huskily.
+
+"It was something which he prepared from the venom of a kind of swamp
+adder," she answered.  "It produces madness, but not always death."
+
+"He would have had a poor chance," said Smith, "even had he been in
+complete possession of his senses.  At the time of the encounter we
+must have been some considerable distance from shore, and the fog was
+impenetrable."
+
+"But how do you account for the fact that neither of the bodies have
+been recovered?"
+
+"Ryman of the river police tells me that persons lost at that point are
+not always recovered--or not until a considerable time later."
+
+There was a faint sound from the room above.  The news of that tragic
+happening out in the mist upon the Thames had prostrated poor Mrs.
+Weymouth.
+
+"She hasn't been told half the truth," said her brother-in-law. "She
+doesn't know about--the poisoned needle.  What kind of fiend was this
+Dr. Fu-Manchu?" He burst out into a sudden blaze of furious resentment.
+"John never told me much, and you have let mighty little leak into the
+papers.  What was he?  Who was he?"
+
+Half he addressed the words to Smith, half to Karamaneh.
+
+"Dr. Fu-Manchu," replied the former, "was the ultimate expression of
+Chinese cunning; a phenomenon such as occurs but once in many
+generations.  He was a superman of incredible genius, who, had he
+willed, could have revolutionized science.  There is a superstition in
+some parts of China according to which, under certain peculiar
+conditions (one of which is proximity to a deserted burial-ground) an
+evil spirit of incredible age may enter unto the body of a new-born
+infant.  All my efforts thus far have not availed me to trace the
+genealogy of the man called Dr. Fu-Manchu. Even Karamaneh cannot help
+me in this.  But I have sometimes thought that he was a member of a
+certain very old Kiangsu family--and that the peculiar conditions I
+have mentioned prevailed at his birth!"
+
+Smith, observing our looks of amazement, laughed shortly, and quite
+mirthlessly.
+
+"Poor old Weymouth!" he jerked.  "I suppose my labors are finished; but
+I am far from triumphant.  Is there any improvement in Mrs. Weymouth's
+condition?"
+
+"Very little," was the reply; "she has lain in a semi-conscious state
+since the news came.  No one had any idea she would take it so.  At one
+time we were afraid her brain was going.  She seemed to have delusions."
+
+Smith spun round upon Weymouth.
+
+"Of what nature?" he asked rapidly.
+
+The other pulled nervously at his mustache.
+
+"My wife has been staying with her," he explained, "since--it happened;
+and for the last three nights poor John's widow has cried out at the
+same time--half-past two--that someone was knocking on the door."
+
+"What door?"
+
+"That door yonder--the street door."
+
+All our eyes turned in the direction indicated.
+
+"John often came home at half-past two from the Yard," continued
+Weymouth; "so we naturally thought poor Mary was wandering in her mind.
+But last night--and it's not to be wondered at--my wife couldn't sleep,
+and she was wide awake at half-past two."
+
+"Well?"
+
+Nayland Smith was standing before him, alert, bright-eyed.
+
+"She heard it, too!"
+
+The sun was streaming into the cozy little sitting-room; but I will
+confess that Weymouth's words chilled me uncannily.  Karamaneh laid her
+hand upon mine, in a quaint, childish fashion peculiarly her own.  Her
+hand was cold, but its touch thrilled me.  For Karamaneh was not a
+child, but a rarely beautiful girl--a pearl of the East such as many a
+monarch has fought for.
+
+"What then?" asked Smith.
+
+"She was afraid to move--afraid to look from the window!"
+
+My friend turned and stared hard at me.
+
+"A subjective hallucination, Petrie?"
+
+"In all probability," I replied.  "You should arrange that your wife be
+relieved in her trying duties, Mr. Weymouth.  It is too great a strain
+for an inexperienced nurse."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+OF all that we had hoped for in our pursuit of Fu-Manchu how little had
+we accomplished.  Excepting Karamaneh and her brother (who were victims
+and not creatures of the Chinese doctor's) not one of the formidable
+group had fallen alive into our hands.  Dreadful crimes had marked
+Fu-Manchu's passage through the land.  Not one-half of the truth (and
+nothing of the later developments) had been made public.  Nayland
+Smith's authority was sufficient to control the press.
+
+In the absence of such a veto a veritable panic must have seized upon
+the entire country; for a monster--a thing more than humanly
+evil--existed in our midst.
+
+Always Fu-Manchu's secret activities had centered about the great
+waterway.  There was much of poetic justice in his end; for the Thames
+had claimed him, who so long had used the stream as a highway for the
+passage to and fro for his secret forces.  Gone now were the yellow men
+who had been the instruments of his evil will; gone was the giant
+intellect which had controlled the complex murder machine.  Karamaneh,
+whose beauty he had used as a lure, at last was free, and no more with
+her smile would tempt men to death--that her brother might live.
+
+Many there are, I doubt not, who will regard the Eastern girl with
+horror.  I ask their forgiveness in that I regarded her quite
+differently.  No man having seen her could have condemned her unheard.
+Many, having looked into her lovely eyes, had they found there what I
+found, must have forgiven her almost any crime.
+
+That she valued human life but little was no matter for wonder.  Her
+nationality--her history--furnished adequate excuse for an attitude not
+condonable in a European equally cultured.
+
+But indeed let me confess that hers was a nature incomprehensible to me
+in some respects.  The soul of Karamaneh was a closed book to my
+short-sighted Western eyes.  But the body of Karamaneh was exquisite;
+her beauty of a kind that was a key to the most extravagant rhapsodies
+of Eastern poets.  Her eyes held a challenge wholly Oriental in its
+appeal; her lips, even in repose, were a taunt.  And, herein, East is
+West and West is East.
+
+Finally, despite her lurid history, despite the scornful
+self-possession of which I knew her capable, she was an unprotected
+girl--in years, I believe, a mere child--whom Fate had cast in my way.
+At her request, we had booked passages for her brother and herself to
+Egypt.  The boat sailed in three days.  But Karamaneh's beautiful eyes
+were sad; often I detected tears on the black lashes.  Shall I endeavor
+to describe my own tumultuous, conflicting emotions?  It would be
+useless, since I know it to be impossible.  For in those dark eyes
+burned a fire I might not see; those silken lashes veiled a message I
+dared not read.
+
+Nayland Smith was not blind to the facts of the complicated situation.
+I can truthfully assert that he was the only man of my acquaintance
+who, having come in contact with Karamaneh, had kept his head.
+
+We endeavored to divert her mind from the recent tragedies by a round
+of amusements, though with poor Weymouth's body still at the mercy of
+unknown waters Smith and I made but a poor show of gayety; and I took a
+gloomy pride in the admiration which our lovely companion everywhere
+excited.  I learned, in those days, how rare a thing in nature is a
+really beautiful woman.
+
+One afternoon we found ourselves at an exhibition of water colors in
+Bond Street.  Karamaneh was intensely interested in the subjects of the
+drawings--which were entirely Egyptian.  As usual, she furnished matter
+for comment amongst the other visitors, as did the boy, Aziz, her
+brother, anew upon the world from his living grave in the house of Dr.
+Fu-Manchu.
+
+Suddenly Aziz clutched at his sister's arm, whispering rapidly in
+Arabic.  I saw her peachlike color fade; saw her become pale and
+wild-eyed--the haunted Karamaneh of the old days.
+
+She turned to me.
+
+"Dr. Petrie--he says that Fu-Manchu is here!"
+
+"Where?"
+
+Nayland Smith rapped out the question violently, turning in a flash
+from the picture which he was examining.
+
+"In this room!" she whispered glancing furtively, affrightedly about
+her.  "Something tells Aziz when HE is near--and I, too, feel strangely
+afraid.  Oh, can it be that he is not dead!"
+
+She held my arm tightly.  Her brother was searching the room with big,
+velvet black eyes.  I studied the faces of the several visitors; and
+Smith was staring about him with the old alert look, and tugging
+nervously at the lobe of his ear.  The name of the giant foe of the
+white race instantaneously had strung him up to a pitch of supreme
+intensity.
+
+Our united scrutinies discovered no figure which could have been that
+of the Chinese doctor.  Who could mistake that long, gaunt shape, with
+the high, mummy-like shoulders, and the indescribable gait, which I can
+only liken to that of an awkward cat?
+
+Then, over the heads of a group of people who stood by the doorway, I
+saw Smith peering at someone--at someone who passed across the outer
+room.  Stepping aside, I, too, obtained a glimpse of this person.
+
+As I saw him, he was a tall, old man, wearing a black Inverness coat
+and a rather shabby silk hat.  He had long white hair and a patriarchal
+beard, wore smoked glasses and walked slowly, leaning upon a stick.
+
+Smith's gaunt face paled.  With a rapid glance at Karamaneh, he made
+off across the room.
+
+Could it be Dr. Fu-Manchu?
+
+Many days had passed since, already half-choked by Inspector Weymouth's
+iron grip, Fu-Manchu, before our own eyes, had been swallowed up by the
+Thames.  Even now men were seeking his body, and that of his last
+victim.  Nor had we left any stone unturned.  Acting upon information
+furnished by Karamaneh, the police had searched every known haunt of
+the murder group.  But everything pointed to the fact that the group
+was disbanded and dispersed; that the lord of strange deaths who had
+ruled it was no more.
+
+Yet Smith was not satisfied.  Neither, let me confess, was I. Every
+port was watched; and in suspected districts a kind of house-to-house
+patrol had been instituted.  Unknown to the great public, in those days
+a secret war waged--a war in which all the available forces of the
+authorities took the field against one man!  But that one man was the
+evil of the East incarnate.
+
+When we rejoined him, Nayland Smith was talking to the commissionaire
+at the door.  He turned to me.
+
+"That is Professor Jenner Monde," he said.  "The sergeant, here, knows
+him well."
+
+The name of the celebrated Orientalist of course was familiar to me,
+although I had never before set eyes upon him.
+
+"The Professor was out East the last time I was there, sir," stated the
+commissionaire.  "I often used to see him.  But he's an eccentric old
+gentleman.  Seems to live in a world of his own.  He's recently back
+from China, I think."
+
+Nayland Smith stood clicking his teeth together in irritable
+hesitation.  I heard Karamaneh sigh, and, looking at her, I saw that
+her cheeks were regaining their natural color.
+
+She smiled in pathetic apology.
+
+"If he was here he is gone," she said.  "I am not afraid now."
+
+Smith thanked the commissionaire for his information and we quitted the
+gallery.
+
+"Professor Jenner Monde," muttered my friend, "has lived so long in
+China as almost to be a Chinaman.  I have never met him--never seen
+him, before; but I wonder--"
+
+"You wonder what, Smith?"
+
+"I wonder if he could possibly be an ally, of the Doctor's!"
+
+I stared at him in amazement.
+
+"If we are to attach any importance to the incident at all," I said,
+"we must remember that the boy's impression--and Karamaneh's--was that
+Fu-Manchu was present in person."
+
+"I DO attach importance to the incident, Petrie; they are naturally
+sensitive to such impressions.  But I doubt if even the abnormal
+organization of Aziz could distinguish between the hidden presence of a
+creature of the Doctor's and that of the Doctor himself.  I shall make
+a point of calling upon Professor Jenner Monde."
+
+But Fate had ordained that much should happen ere Smith made his
+proposed call upon the Professor.
+
+Karamaneh and her brother safely lodged in their hotel (which was
+watched night and day by four men under Smith's orders), we returned to
+my quiet suburban rooms.
+
+"First," said Smith, "let us see what we can find out respecting
+Professor Monde."
+
+He went to the telephone and called up New Scotland Yard.  There
+followed some little delay before the requisite information was
+obtained.  Finally, however, we learned that the Professor was
+something of a recluse, having few acquaintances, and fewer friends.
+
+He lived alone in chambers in New Inn Court, Carey Street.  A charwoman
+did such cleaning as was considered necessary by the Professor, who
+employed no regular domestic.  When he was in London he might be seen
+fairly frequently at the British Museum, where his shabby figure was
+familiar to the officials.  When he was not in London--that is, during
+the greater part of each year--no one knew where he went.  He never
+left any address to which letters might be forwarded.
+
+"How long has he been in London now?" asked Smith.
+
+So far as could be ascertained from New Inn Court (replied Scotland
+Yard) roughly a week.
+
+My friend left the telephone and began restlessly to pace the room.
+The charred briar was produced and stuffed with that broad cut Latakia
+mixture of which Nayland Smith consumed close upon a pound a week.  He
+was one of those untidy smokers who leave tangled tufts hanging from
+the pipe-bowl and when they light up strew the floor with smoldering
+fragments.
+
+A ringing came, and shortly afterwards a girl entered.
+
+"Mr. James Weymouth to see you, sir."
+
+"Hullo!" rapped Smith.  "What's this?"
+
+Weymouth entered, big and florid, and in some respects singularly like
+his brother, in others as singularly unlike.  Now, in his black suit,
+he was a somber figure; and in the blue eyes I read a fear suppressed.
+
+"Mr. Smith," he began, "there's something uncanny going on at Maple
+Cottage."
+
+Smith wheeled the big arm-chair forward.
+
+"Sit down, Mr. Weymouth," he said.  "I am not entirely surprised.  But
+you have my attention.  What has occurred?"
+
+Weymouth took a cigarette from the box which I proffered and poured out
+a peg of whisky.  His hand was not quite steady.
+
+"That knocking," he explained.  "It came again the night after you were
+there, and Mrs. Weymouth--my wife, I mean--felt that she couldn't spend
+another night there, alone."
+
+"Did she look out of the window?" I asked.
+
+"No, Doctor; she was afraid.  But I spent last night downstairs in the
+sitting-room--and _I_ looked out!"
+
+He took a gulp from his glass.  Nayland Smith, seated on the edge of
+the table, his extinguished pipe in his hand, was watching him keenly.
+
+"I'll admit I didn't look out at once," Weymouth resumed.  "There was
+something so uncanny, gentlemen, in that knocking--knocking--in the
+dead of the night.  I thought"--his voice shook--"of poor Jack, lying
+somewhere amongst the slime of the river--and, oh, my God!  it came to
+me that it was Jack who was knocking--and I dare not think what
+he--what it--would look like!"
+
+He leaned forward, his chin in his hand.  For a few moments we were all
+silent.
+
+"I know I funked," he continued huskily.  "But when the wife came to
+the head of the stairs and whispered to me:  'There it is again.  What
+in heaven's name can it be'--I started to unbolt the door.  The
+knocking had stopped.  Everything was very still.  I heard Mary--HIS
+widow--sobbing, upstairs; that was all.  I opened the door, a little
+bit at a time."
+
+Pausing again, he cleared his throat, and went on:
+
+"It was a bright night, and there was no one there--not a soul.  But
+somewhere down the lane, as I looked out into the porch, I heard most
+awful groans!  They got fainter and fainter.  Then--I could have sworn
+I heard SOMEONE LAUGHING!  My nerves cracked up at that; and I shut the
+door again."
+
+The narration of his weird experience revived something of the natural
+fear which it had occasioned.  He raised his glass, with unsteady hand,
+and drained it.
+
+Smith struck a match and relighted his pipe.  He began to pace the room
+again.  His eyes were literally on fire.
+
+"Would it be possible to get Mrs. Weymouth out of the house before
+to-night?  Remove her to your place, for instance?" he asked abruptly.
+
+Weymouth looked up in surprise.
+
+"She seems to be in a very low state," he replied.  He glanced at me.
+"Perhaps Dr. Petrie would give us an opinion?"
+
+"I will come and see her," I said.  "But what is your idea, Smith?"
+
+"I want to hear that knocking!" he rapped.  "But in what I may see fit
+to do I must not be handicapped by the presence of a sick woman."
+
+"Her condition at any rate will admit of our administering an opiate,"
+I suggested.  "That would meet the situation?"
+
+"Good!" cried Smith.  He was intensely excited now.  "I rely upon you
+to arrange something, Petrie.  Mr. Weymouth"--he turned to our
+visitor--"I shall be with you this evening not later than twelve
+o'clock."
+
+Weymouth appeared to be greatly relieved.  I asked him to wait whilst I
+prepared a draught for the patient.  When he was gone:
+
+"What do you think this knocking means, Smith?" I asked.
+
+He tapped out his pipe on the side of the grate and began with nervous
+energy to refill it again from the dilapidated pouch.
+
+"I dare not tell you what I hope, Petrie," he replied--"nor what I
+fear."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+DUSK was falling when we made our way in the direction of Maple
+Cottage.  Nayland Smith appeared to be keenly interested in the
+character of the district.  A high and ancient wall bordered the road
+along which we walked for a considerable distance.  Later it gave place
+to a rickety fence.
+
+My friend peered through a gap in the latter.
+
+"There is quite an extensive estate here," he said, "not yet cut up by
+the builder.  It is well wooded on one side, and there appears to be a
+pool lower down."
+
+The road was a quiet one, and we plainly heard the tread--quite
+unmistakable--of an approaching policeman.  Smith continued to peer
+through the hole in the fence, until the officer drew up level with us.
+Then:
+
+"Does this piece of ground extend down to the village, constable?" he
+inquired.
+
+Quite willing for a chat, the man stopped, and stood with his thumbs
+thrust in his belt.
+
+"Yes, sir.  They tell me three new roads will be made through it
+between here and the hill."
+
+"It must be a happy hunting ground for tramps?"
+
+"I've seen some suspicious-looking coves about at times.  But after
+dusk an army might be inside there and nobody would ever be the wiser."
+
+"Burglaries frequent in the houses backing on to it?"
+
+"Oh, no.  A favorite game in these parts is snatching loaves and
+bottles of milk from the doors, first thing, as they're delivered.
+There's been an extra lot of it lately.  My mate who relieves me has
+got special instructions to keep his eye open in the mornings!"  The
+man grinned.  "It wouldn't be a very big case even if he caught
+anybody!" "No," said Smith absently; "perhaps not.  Your business must
+be a dry one this warm weather.  Good-night."
+
+"Good-night, sir," replied the constable, richer by half-a-crown--"and
+thank you."
+
+Smith stared after him for a moment, tugging reflectively at the lobe
+of his ear.
+
+"I don't know that it wouldn't be a big case, after all," he murmured.
+"Come on, Petrie."
+
+Not another word did he speak, until we stood at the gate of Maple
+Cottage.  There a plain-clothes man was standing, evidently awaiting
+Smith.  He touched his hat.
+
+"Have you found a suitable hiding-place?" asked my companion rapidly.
+
+"Yes, sir," was the reply.  "Kent--my mate--is there now.  You'll
+notice that he can't be seen from here."
+
+"No," agreed Smith, peering all about him.  "He can't. Where is he?"
+
+"Behind the broken wall," explained the man, pointing.  "Through that
+ivy there's a clear view of the cottage door."
+
+"Good.  Keep your eyes open.  If a messenger comes for me, he is to be
+intercepted, you understand.  No one must be allowed to disturb us.
+You will recognize the messenger.  He will be one of your fellows.
+Should he come--hoot three times, as much like an owl as you can."
+
+We walked up to the porch of the cottage.  In response to Smith's
+ringing came James Weymouth, who seemed greatly relieved by our arrival.
+
+"First," said my friend briskly, "you had better run up and see the
+patient."
+
+Accordingly, I followed Weymouth upstairs and was admitted by his wife
+to a neat little bedroom where the grief-stricken woman lay, a wanly
+pathetic sight.
+
+"Did you administer the draught, as directed?" I asked.
+
+Mrs. James Weymouth nodded.  She was a kindly looking woman, with the
+same dread haunting her hazel eyes as that which lurked in her
+husband's blue ones.
+
+The patient was sleeping soundly.  Some whispered instructions I gave
+to the faithful nurse and descended to the sitting-room. It was a warm
+night, and Weymouth sat by the open window, smoking.  The dim light
+from the lamp on the table lent him an almost startling likeness to his
+brother; and for a moment I stood at the foot of the stairs scarce able
+to trust my reason.  Then he turned his face fully towards me, and the
+illusion was lost.
+
+"Do you think she is likely to wake, Doctor?" he asked.
+
+"I think not," I replied.
+
+Nayland Smith stood upon the rug before the hearth, swinging from one
+foot to the other, in his nervously restless way.  The room was foggy
+with the fumes of tobacco, for he, too, was smoking.
+
+At intervals of some five to ten minutes, his blackened briar (which I
+never knew him to clean or scrape) would go out.  I think Smith used
+more matches than any other smoker I have ever met, and he invariably
+carried three boxes in various pockets of his garments.
+
+The tobacco habit is infectious, and, seating myself in an arm-chair, I
+lighted a cigarette.  For this dreary vigil I had come prepared with a
+bunch of rough notes, a writing-block, and a fountain pen.  I settled
+down to work upon my record of the Fu-Manchu case.
+
+Silence fell upon Maple Cottage.  Save for the shuddering sigh which
+whispered through the over-hanging cedars and Smith's eternal
+match-striking, nothing was there to disturb me in my task.  Yet I
+could make little progress.  Between my mind and the chapter upon which
+I was at work a certain sentence persistently intruded itself.  It was
+as though an unseen hand held the written page closely before my eyes.
+This was the sentence:
+
+"Imagine a person, tall, lean, and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow
+like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long,
+magnetic eyes of the true cat-green: invest him with all the cruel
+cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant
+intellect. . ."
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu!  Fu-Manchu as Smith had described him to me on that
+night which now seemed so remotely distant--the night upon which I had
+learned of the existence of the wonderful and evil being born of that
+secret quickening which stirred in the womb of the yellow races.
+
+As Smith, for the ninth or tenth time, knocked out his pipe on a bar of
+the grate, the cuckoo clock in the kitchen proclaimed the hour.
+
+"Two," said James Weymouth.
+
+I abandoned my task, replacing notes and writing-block in the bag that
+I had with me.  Weymouth adjusted the lamp which had begun to smoke.
+
+I tiptoed to the stairs and, stepping softly, ascended to the sick
+room.  All was quiet, and Mrs. Weymouth whispered to me that the
+patient still slept soundly.  I returned to find Nayland Smith pacing
+about the room in that state of suppressed excitement habitual with him
+in the approach of any crisis.  At a quarter past two the breeze
+dropped entirely, and such a stillness reigned all about us as I could
+not have supposed possible so near to the ever-throbbing heart of the
+great metropolis.  Plainly I could hear Weymouth's heavy breathing.  He
+sat at the window and looked out into the black shadows under the
+cedars.  Smith ceased his pacing and stood again on the rug very still.
+He was listening!  I doubt not we were all listening.
+
+Some faint sound broke the impressive stillness, coming from the
+direction of the village street.  It was a vague, indefinite
+disturbance, brief, and upon it ensued a silence more marked than ever.
+Some minutes before, Smith had extinguished the lamp.  In the darkness
+I heard his teeth snap sharply together.
+
+The call of an owl sounded very clearly three times.
+
+I knew that to mean that a messenger had come; but from whence or
+bearing what tidings I knew not.  My friend's plans were
+incomprehensible to me, nor had I pressed him for any explanation of
+their nature, knowing him to be in that high-strung and somewhat
+irritable mood which claimed him at times of uncertainty--when he
+doubted the wisdom of his actions, the accuracy of his surmises.  He
+gave no sign.
+
+Very faintly I heard a clock strike the half-hour. A soft breeze stole
+again through the branches above.  The wind I thought must be in a new
+quarter since I had not heard the clock before.  In so lonely a spot it
+was difficult to believe that the bell was that of St. Paul's. Yet such
+was the fact.
+
+And hard upon the ringing followed another sound--a sound we all had
+expected, had waited for; but at whose coming no one of us, I think,
+retained complete mastery of himself.
+
+Breaking up the silence in a manner that set my heart wildly leaping it
+came--an imperative knocking on the door!
+
+"My God!" groaned Weymouth--but he did not move from his position at
+the window.
+
+"Stand by, Petrie!" said Smith.
+
+He strode to the door--and threw it widely open.
+
+I know I was very pale.  I think I cried out as I fell back--retreated
+with clenched hands from before THAT which stood on the threshold.
+
+It was a wild, unkempt figure, with straggling beard, hideously staring
+eyes.  With its hands it clutched at its hair--at its chin; plucked at
+its mouth.  No moonlight touched the features of this unearthly
+visitant, but scanty as was the illumination we could see the gleaming
+teeth--and the wildly glaring eyes.
+
+It began to laugh--peal after peal--hideous and shrill.
+
+Nothing so terrifying had ever smote upon my ears.  I was palsied by
+the horror of the sound.
+
+Then Nayland Smith pressed the button of an electric torch which he
+carried.  He directed the disk of white light fully upon the face in
+the doorway.
+
+"Oh, God!" cried Weymouth.  "It's John!"--and again and again: "Oh,
+God!  Oh, God!"
+
+Perhaps for the first time in my life I really believed (nay, I could
+not doubt) that a thing of another world stood before me.  I am ashamed
+to confess the extent of the horror that came upon me.  James Weymouth
+raised his hands, as if to thrust away from him that awful thing in the
+door.  He was babbling--prayers, I think, but wholly incoherent.
+
+"Hold him, Petrie!"
+
+Smith's voice was low.  (When we were past thought or intelligent
+action, he, dominant and cool, with that forced calm for which, a
+crisis over, he always paid so dearly, was thinking of the woman who
+slept above.)
+
+He leaped forward; and in the instant that he grappled with the one who
+had knocked I knew the visitant for a man of flesh and blood--a man who
+shrieked and fought like a savage animal, foamed at the mouth and
+gnashed his teeth in horrid frenzy; knew him for a madman--knew him for
+the victim of Fu-Manchu--not dead, but living--for Inspector
+Weymouth--a maniac!
+
+In a flash I realized all this and sprang to Smith's assistance.  There
+was a sound of racing footsteps and the men who had been watching
+outside came running into the porch.  A third was with them; and the
+five of us (for Weymouth's brother had not yet grasped the fact that a
+man and not a spirit shrieked and howled in our midst) clung to the
+infuriated madman, yet barely held our own with him.
+
+"The syringe, Petrie!" gasped Smith.  "Quick!  You must manage to make
+an injection!"
+
+I extricated myself and raced into the cottage for my bag.  A
+hypodermic syringe ready charged I had brought with me at Smith's
+request.  Even in that thrilling moment I could find time to admire the
+wonderful foresight of my friend, who had divined what would
+befall--isolated the strange, pitiful truth from the chaotic
+circumstances which saw us at Maple Cottage that night.
+
+Let me not enlarge upon the end of the awful struggle.  At one time I
+despaired (we all despaired) of quieting the poor, demented creature.
+But at last it was done; and the gaunt, blood-stained savage whom we
+had known as Detective-Inspector Weymouth lay passive upon the couch in
+his own sitting-room. A great wonder possessed my mind for the genius
+of the uncanny being who with the scratch of a needle had made a brave
+and kindly man into this unclean, brutish thing.
+
+Nayland Smith, gaunt and wild-eyed, and trembling yet with his
+tremendous exertions, turned to the man whom I knew to be the messenger
+from Scotland Yard.
+
+"Well?" he rapped.
+
+"He is arrested, sir," the detective reported.  "They have kept him at
+his chambers as you ordered."
+
+"Has she slept through it?" said Smith to me.  (I had just returned
+from a visit to the room above.) I nodded.
+
+"Is HE safe for an hour or two?"--indicating the figure on the couch.
+"For eight or ten," I replied grimly.
+
+"Come, then.  Our night's labors are not nearly complete."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+LATER was forthcoming evidence to show that poor Weymouth had lived a
+wild life, in hiding among the thick bushes of the tract of land which
+lay between the village and the suburb on the neighboring hill.
+Literally, he had returned to primitive savagery and some of his food
+had been that of the lower animals, though he had not scrupled to
+steal, as we learned when his lair was discovered.
+
+He had hidden himself cunningly; but witnesses appeared who had seen
+him, in the dusk, and fled from him.  They never learned that the
+object of their fear was Inspector John Weymouth.  How, having escaped
+death in the Thames, he had crossed London unobserved, we never knew;
+but his trick of knocking upon his own door at half-past two each
+morning (a sort of dawning of sanity mysteriously linked with old
+custom) will be a familiar class of symptom to all students of
+alienation.
+
+I revert to the night when Smith solved the mystery of the knocking.
+
+In a car which he had in waiting at the end of the village we sped
+through the deserted streets to New Inn Court.  I, who had followed
+Nayland Smith through the failures and successes of his mission, knew
+that to-night he had surpassed himself; had justified the confidence
+placed in him by the highest authorities.
+
+We were admitted to an untidy room--that of a student, a traveler and a
+crank--by a plain-clothes officer.  Amid picturesque and disordered
+fragments of a hundred ages, in a great carven chair placed before a
+towering statue of the Buddha, sat a hand-cuffed man.  His white hair
+and beard were patriarchal; his pose had great dignity.  But his
+expression was entirely masked by the smoked glasses which he wore.
+
+Two other detectives were guarding the prisoner.
+
+"We arrested Professor Jenner Monde as he came in, sir," reported the
+man who had opened the door.  "He has made no statement.  I hope there
+isn't a mistake."
+
+"I hope not," rapped Smith.
+
+He strode across the room.  He was consumed by a fever of excitement.
+Almost savagely, he tore away the beard, tore off the snowy wig dashed
+the smoked glasses upon the floor.
+
+A great, high brow was revealed, and green, malignant eyes, which fixed
+themselves upon him with an expression I never can forget.
+
+IT WAS DR. FU-MANCHU!
+
+One intense moment of silence ensued--of silence which seemed to throb.
+Then:
+
+"What have you done with Professor Monde?" demanded Smith.
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu showed his even, yellow teeth in the singularly evil
+smile which I knew so well.  A manacled prisoner he sat as unruffled as
+a judge upon the bench.  In truth and in justice I am compelled to say
+that Fu-Manchu was absolutely fearless.
+
+"He has been detained in China," he replied, in smooth, sibilant
+tones--"by affairs of great urgency.  His well-known personality and
+ungregarious habits have served me well, here!"
+
+Smith, I could see, was undetermined how to act; he stood tugging at
+his ear and glancing from the impassive Chinaman to the wondering
+detectives.
+
+"What are we to do, sir?" one of them asked.
+
+"Leave Dr. Petrie and myself alone with the prisoner, until I call you."
+
+The three withdrew.  I divined now what was coming.
+
+"Can you restore Weymouth's sanity?" rapped Smith abruptly.  "I cannot
+save you from the hangman, nor"--his fists clenched convulsively--"would
+I if I could; but--"
+
+Fu-Manchu fixed his brilliant eyes upon him.
+
+"Say no more, Mr. Smith," he interrupted; "you misunderstand me.  I do
+not quarrel with that, but what I have done from conviction and what I
+have done of necessity are separated--are seas apart.  The brave
+Inspector Weymouth I wounded with a poisoned needle, in self-defense;
+but I regret his condition as greatly as you do.  I respect such a man.
+There is an antidote to the poison of the needle."
+
+"Name it," said Smith.
+
+Fu-Manchu smiled again.
+
+"Useless," he replied.  "I alone can prepare it.  My secrets shall die
+with me.  I will make a sane man of Inspector Weymouth, but no one else
+shall be in the house but he and I."
+
+"It will be surrounded by police," interrupted Smith grimly.
+
+"As you please," said Fu-Manchu. "Make your arrangements.  In that
+ebony case upon the table are the instruments for the cure.  Arrange
+for me to visit him where and when you will--"
+
+"I distrust you utterly.  It is some trick," jerked Smith.
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu rose slowly and drew himself up to his great height.  His
+manacled hands could not rob him of the uncanny dignity which was his.
+He raised them above his head with a tragic gesture and fixed his
+piercing gaze upon Nayland Smith.
+
+"The God of Cathay hear me," he said, with a deep, guttural note in his
+voice--"I swear--"
+
+
+The most awful visitor who ever threatened the peace of England, the
+end of the visit of Fu-Manchu was characteristic--terrible--inexplicable.
+
+Strange to relate, I did not doubt that this weird being had conceived
+some kind of admiration or respect for the man to whom he had wrought
+so terrible an injury.  He was capable of such sentiments, for he
+entertained some similar one in regard to myself.
+
+A cottage farther down the village street than Weymouth's was vacant,
+and in the early dawn of that morning became the scene of outre
+happenings.  Poor Weymouth, still in a comatose condition, we removed
+there (Smith having secured the key from the astonished agent). I
+suppose so strange a specialist never visited a patient
+before--certainly not under such conditions.
+
+For into the cottage, which had been entirely surrounded by a ring of
+police, Dr. Fu-Manchu was admitted from the closed car in which, his
+work of healing complete, he was to be borne to prison--to death!
+
+Law and justice were suspended by my royally empowered friend that the
+enemy of the white race might heal one of those who had hunted him down!
+
+No curious audience was present, for sunrise was not yet come; no
+concourse of excited students followed the hand of the Master; but
+within that surrounded cottage was performed one of those miracles of
+science which in other circumstances had made the fame of Dr. Fu-Manchu
+to live forever.
+
+Inspector Weymouth, dazed, disheveled, clutching his head as a man who
+has passed through the Valley of the Shadow--but sane--sane!--walked
+out into the porch!
+
+He looked towards us--his eyes wild, but not with the fearsome wildness
+of insanity.
+
+"Mr. Smith!" he cried--and staggered down the path--"Dr. Petrie!
+What--"
+
+There came a deafening explosion.  From EVERY visible window of the
+deserted cottage flames burst forth!
+
+"QUICK!" Smith's voice rose almost to a scream--"into the house!"
+
+He raced up the path, past Inspector Weymouth, who stood swaying there
+like a drunken man.  I was close upon his heels.  Behind me came the
+police.
+
+The door was impassable!  Already, it vomited a deathly heat, borne
+upon stifling fumes like those of the mouth of the Pit.  We burst a
+window.  The room within was a furnace!
+
+"My God!" cried someone.  "This is supernatural!"
+
+"Listen!" cried another.  "Listen!"
+
+The crowd which a fire can conjure up at any hour of day or night, out
+of the void of nowhere, was gathering already.  But upon all descended
+a pall of silence.
+
+From the heat of the holocaust a voice proclaimed itself--a voice
+raised, not in anguish but in TRIUMPH!  It chanted barbarically--and
+was still.
+
+The abnormal flames rose higher--leaping forth from every window.
+
+"The alarm!" said Smith hoarsely.  "Call up the brigade!"
+
+
+I come to the close of my chronicle, and feel that I betray a
+trust--the trust of my reader.  For having limned in the colors at my
+command the fiendish Chinese doctor, I am unable to conclude my task as
+I should desire, unable, with any consciousness of finality, to write
+Finis to the end of my narrative.
+
+It seems to me sometimes that my pen is but temporarily idle--that I
+have but dealt with a single phase of a movement having a hundred
+phases.  One sequel I hope for, and against all the promptings of logic
+and Western bias.  If my hope shall be realized I cannot, at this time,
+pretend to state.
+
+The future, 'mid its many secrets, holds this precious one from me.
+
+I ask you then, to absolve me from the charge of ill completing my
+work; for any curiosity with which this narrative may leave the reader
+burdened is shared by the writer.
+
+With intent, I have rushed you from the chambers of Professor Jenner
+Monde to that closing episode at the deserted cottage; I have made the
+pace hot in order to impart to these last pages of my account something
+of the breathless scurry which characterized those happenings.
+
+My canvas may seem sketchy:  it is my impression of the reality.  No
+hard details remain in my mind of the dealings of that night.
+Fu-Manchu arrested--Fu-Manchu, manacled, entering the cottage on his
+mission of healing; Weymouth, miraculously rendered sane, coming forth;
+the place in flames.
+
+And then?
+
+To a shell the cottage burned, with an incredible rapidity which
+pointed to some hidden agency; to a shell about ashes which held NO
+TRACE OF HUMAN BONES!
+
+It has been asked of me:  Was there no possibility of Fu-Manchu's
+having eluded us in the ensuing confusion?  Was there no loophole of
+escape?
+
+I reply, that so far as I was able to judge, a rat could scarce have
+quitted the building undetected.  Yet that Fu-Manchu had, in some
+incomprehensible manner and by some mysterious agency, produced those
+abnormal flames, I cannot doubt.  Did he voluntarily ignite his own
+funeral pyre?
+
+As I write, there lies before me a soiled and creased sheet of vellum.
+It bears some lines traced in a cramped, peculiar, and all but
+illegible hand.  This fragment was found by Inspector Weymouth (to this
+day a man mentally sound) in a pocket of his ragged garments.
+
+When it was written I leave you to judge.  How it came to be where
+Weymouth found it calls for no explanation:
+
+
+"To Mr. Commissioner NAYLAND SMITH and Dr. PETRIE--
+
+"Greeting!  I am recalled home by One who may not be denied.  In much
+that I came to do I have failed.  Much that I have done I would undo;
+some little I have undone.  Out of fire I came--the smoldering fire of
+a thing one day to be a consuming flame; in fire I go.  Seek not my
+ashes.  I am the lord of the fires!  Farewell.
+
+"FU-MANCHU."
+
+
+Who has been with me in my several meetings with the man who penned
+that message I leave to adjudge if it be the letter of a madman bent
+upon self-destruction by strange means, or the gibe of a
+preternaturally clever scientist and the most elusive being ever born
+of the land of mystery--China.
+
+For the present, I can aid you no more in the forming of your verdict.
+A day may come though I pray it do not--when I shall be able to throw
+new light upon much that is dark in this matter.  That day, so far as I
+can judge, could only dawn in the event of the Chinaman's survival;
+therefore I pray that the veil be never lifted.
+
+But, as I have said, there is another sequel to this story which I can
+contemplate with a different countenance.  How, then, shall I conclude
+this very unsatisfactory account?
+
+Shall I tell you, finally, of my parting with lovely, dark-eyed
+Karamaneh, on board the liner which was to bear her to Egypt?
+
+No, let me, instead, conclude with the words of Nayland Smith:
+
+"_I_ sail for Burma in a fortnight, Petrie.  I have leave to break my
+journey at the Ditch.  How would a run up the Nile fit your programme?
+Bit early for the season, but you might find something to amuse you!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, by Sax Rohmer
+
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