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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Hand Of 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 Hand Of Fu-Manchu
+       Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor
+
+
+Author: Sax Rohmer
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 10, 2006  [eBook #17959]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAND OF FU-MANCHU***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Lisa Miller
+
+
+
+THE HAND OF FU-MANCHU
+
+Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor
+
+by
+
+SAX ROHMER
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE HAND OF FU MANCHU
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE TRAVELER FROM TIBET
+
+
+"Who's there?" I called sharply.
+
+I turned and looked across the room. The window had been widely opened
+when I entered, and a faint fog haze hung in the apartment, seeming to
+veil the light of the shaded lamp. I watched the closed door intently,
+expecting every moment to see the knob turn. But nothing happened.
+
+"Who's there?" I cried again, and, crossing the room, I threw open the
+door.
+
+The long corridor without, lighted only by one inhospitable lamp at a
+remote end, showed choked and yellowed with this same fog so
+characteristic of London in November. But nothing moved to right nor
+left of me. The New Louvre Hotel was in some respects yet incomplete,
+and the long passage in which I stood, despite its marble facings, had
+no air of comfort or good cheer; palatial it was, but inhospitable.
+
+I returned to the room, reclosing the door behind me, then for some
+five minutes or more I stood listening for a repetition of that
+mysterious sound, as of something that both dragged and tapped, which
+already had arrested my attention. My vigilance went unrewarded. I
+had closed the window to exclude the yellow mist, but subconsciously I
+was aware of its encircling presence, walling me in, and now I found
+myself in such a silence as I had known in deserts but could scarce
+have deemed possible in fog-bound London, in the heart of the world's
+metropolis, with the traffic of the Strand below me upon one side and
+the restless life of the river upon the other.
+
+It was easy to conclude that I had been mistaken, that my nervous
+system was somewhat overwrought as a result of my hurried return from
+Cairo--from Cairo where I had left behind me many a fondly cherished
+hope. I addressed myself again to the task of unpacking my
+steamer-trunk and was so engaged when again a sound in the corridor
+outside brought me upright with a jerk.
+
+A quick footstep approached the door, and there came a muffled rapping
+upon the panel.
+
+This time I asked no question, but leapt across the room and threw the
+door open. Nayland Smith stood before me, muffled up in a heavy
+traveling coat, and with his hat pulled down over his brows.
+
+"At last!" I cried, as my friend stepped in and quickly reclosed the
+door.
+
+Smith threw his hat upon the settee, stripped off the great-coat, and
+pulling out his pipe began to load it in feverish haste.
+
+"Well," I said, standing amid the litter cast out from the trunk, and
+watching him eagerly, "what's afoot?"
+
+Nayland Smith lighted his pipe, carelessly dropping the match-end upon
+the floor at his feet.
+
+"God knows what _is_ afoot this time, Petrie!" he replied. "You and I
+have lived no commonplace lives; Dr. Fu-Manchu has seen to that; but
+if I am to believe what the Chief has told me to-day, even stranger
+things are ahead of us!"
+
+I stared at him wonder-stricken.
+
+"That is almost incredible," I said; "terror can have no darker
+meaning than that which Dr. Fu-Manchu gave to it. Fu-Manchu is dead,
+so what have we to fear?"
+
+"We have to fear," replied Smith, throwing himself into a corner of
+the settee, "the Si-Fan!"
+
+I continued to stare, uncomprehendingly.
+
+"The Si-Fan----"
+
+"I always knew and you always knew," interrupted Smith in his short,
+decisive manner, "that Fu-Manchu, genius that he was, remained
+nevertheless the servant of another or others. He was not the head of
+that organization which dealt in wholesale murder, which aimed at
+upsetting the balance of the world. I even knew the name of one, a
+certain mandarin, and member of the Sublime Order of the White Peacock,
+who was his immediate superior. I had never dared to guess at the
+identity of what I may term the Head Center."
+
+He ceased speaking, and sat gripping his pipe grimly between his teeth,
+whilst I stood staring at him almost fatuously. Then--
+
+"Evidently you have much to tell me," I said, with forced calm.
+
+I drew up a chair beside the settee and was about to sit down.
+
+"Suppose you bolt the door," jerked my friend.
+
+I nodded, entirely comprehending, crossed the room and shot the little
+nickel bolt into its socket.
+
+"Now," said Smith as I took my seat, "the story is a fragmentary one
+in which there are many gaps. Let us see what we know. It seems that
+the despatch which led to my sudden recall (and incidentally yours)
+from Egypt to London and which only reached me as I was on the point
+of embarking at Suez for Rangoon, was prompted by the arrival here of
+Sir Gregory Hale, whilom attaché at the British Embassy, Peking. So
+much, you will remember, was conveyed in my instructions."
+
+"Quite so."
+
+"Furthermore, I was instructed, you'll remember, to put up at the New
+Louvre Hotel; therefore you came here and engaged this suite whilst I
+reported to the chief. A stranger business is before us, Petrie, I
+verily believe, than any we have known hitherto. In the first place,
+Sir Gregory Hale is here----"
+
+"Here?"
+
+"In the New Louvre Hotel. I ascertained on the way up, but not by
+direct inquiry, that he occupies a suite similar to this, and
+incidentally on the same floor."
+
+"His report to the India Office, whatever its nature, must have been
+a sensational one."
+
+"He has made no report to the India Office."
+
+"What! made no report?"
+
+"He has not entered any office whatever, nor will he receive any
+representative. He's been playing at Robinson Crusoe in a private
+suite here for close upon a fortnight--_id est_ since the time of his
+arrival in London!"
+
+I suppose my growing perplexity was plainly visible, for Smith
+suddenly burst out with his short, boyish laugh.
+
+"Oh! I told you it was a strange business," he cried.
+
+"Is he mad?"
+
+Nayland Smith's gaiety left him; he became suddenly stern and grim.
+
+"Either mad, Petrie, stark raving mad, or the savior of the Indian
+Empire--perhaps of all Western civilization. Listen. Sir Gregory Hale,
+whom I know slightly and who honors me, apparently, with a belief that
+I am the only man in Europe worthy of his confidence, resigned his
+appointment at Peking some time ago, and set out upon a private
+expedition to the Mongolian frontier with the avowed intention of
+visiting some place in the Gobi Desert. From the time that he actually
+crossed the frontier he disappeared for nearly six months, to reappear
+again suddenly and dramatically in London. He buried himself in this
+hotel, refusing all visitors and only advising the authorities of his
+return by telephone. He demanded that _I_ should be sent to see him;
+and--despite his eccentric methods--so great is the Chief's faith in
+Sir Gregory's knowledge of matters Far Eastern, that behold, here I am."
+
+He broke off abruptly and sat in an attitude of tense listening. Then--
+
+"Do you hear anything, Petrie?" he rapped.
+
+"A sort of tapping?" I inquired, listening intently myself the while.
+
+Smith nodded his head rapidly.
+
+We both listened for some time, Smith with his head bent slightly
+forward and his pipe held in his hands; I with my gaze upon the bolted
+door. A faint mist still hung in the room, and once I thought I
+detected a slight sound from the bedroom beyond, which was in darkness.
+Smith noted me turn my head, and for a moment the pair of us stared
+into the gap of the doorway. But the silence was complete.
+
+"You have told me neither much nor little, Smith," I said, resuming
+for some reason, in a hushed voice. "Who or what is this Si-Fan at
+whose existence you hint?"
+
+Nayland Smith smiled grimly.
+
+"Possibly the real and hitherto unsolved riddle of Tibet, Petrie," he
+replied--"a mystery concealed from the world behind the veil of
+Lamaism." He stood up abruptly, glancing at a scrap of paper which he
+took from his pocket--"Suite Number 14a," he said. "Come along! We have
+not a moment to waste. Let us make our presence known to Sir Gregory--
+the man who has dared to raise that veil."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE MAN WITH THE LIMP
+
+
+"Lock the door!" said Smith significantly, as we stepped into the
+corridor.
+
+I did so and had turned to join my friend when, to the accompaniment
+of a sort of hysterical muttering, a door further along, and on the
+opposite side of the corridor, was suddenly thrown open, and a man
+whose face showed ghastly white in the light of the solitary lamp
+beyond, literally hurled himself out. He perceived Smith and myself
+immediately. Throwing one glance back over his shoulder he came
+tottering forward to meet us.
+
+"My God! I can't stand it any longer!" he babbled, and threw himself
+upon Smith, who was foremost, clutching pitifully at him for support.
+"Come and see him, sir--for Heaven's sake come in! I think he's dying;
+and he's going mad. I never disobeyed an order in my life before, but
+I can't help myself--I can't help myself!"
+
+"Brace up!" I cried, seizing him by the shoulders as, still clutching
+at Nayland Smith, he turned his ghastly face to me. "Who are you, and
+what's your trouble?"
+
+"I'm Beeton, Sir Gregory Hale's man."
+
+Smith started visibly, and his gaunt, tanned face seemed to me to have
+grown perceptively paler.
+
+"Come on, Petrie!" he snapped. "There's some devilry here."
+
+Thrusting Beeton aside he rushed in at the open door--upon which, as I
+followed him, I had time to note the number, 14a. It communicated with
+a suite of rooms almost identical with our own. The sitting-room was
+empty and in the utmost disorder, but from the direction of the
+principal bedroom came a most horrible mumbling and gurgling sound--a
+sound utterly indescribable. For one instant we hesitated at the
+threshold--hesitated to face the horror beyond; then almost side by
+side we came into the bedroom....
+
+Only one of the two lamps was alight--that above the bed; and on the
+bed a man lay writhing. He was incredibly gaunt, so that the suit of
+tropical twill which he wore hung upon him in folds, showing if such
+evidence were necessary, how terribly he was fallen away from his
+constitutional habit. He wore a beard of at least ten days' growth,
+which served to accentuate the cavitous hollowness of his face. His
+eyes seemed starting from their sockets as he lay upon his back
+uttering inarticulate sounds and plucking with skinny fingers at his
+lips.
+
+Smith bent forward peering into the wasted face; and then started back
+with a suppressed cry.
+
+"Merciful God! can it be Hale?" he muttered. "What does it mean? what
+does it mean?"
+
+I ran to the opposite side of the bed, and placing my arms under the
+writhing man, raised him and propped a pillow at his back. He
+continued to babble, rolling his eyes from side to side hideously;
+then by degrees they seemed to become less glazed, and a light of
+returning sanity entered them. They became fixed; and they were fixed
+upon Nayland Smith, who bending over the bed, was watching Sir Gregory
+(for Sir Gregory I concluded this pitiable wreck to be) with an
+expression upon his face compound of many emotions.
+
+"A glass of water," I said, catching the glance of the man Beeton,
+who stood trembling at the open doorway.
+
+Spilling a liberal quantity upon the carpet, Beeton ultimately
+succeeded in conveying the glass to me. Hale, never taking his gaze
+from Smith, gulped a little of the water and then thrust my hand away.
+As I turned to place the tumbler upon a small table the resumed the
+wordless babbling, and now, with his index finger, pointed to his
+mouth.
+
+"He has lost the power of speech!" whispered Smith.
+
+"He was stricken dumb, gentlemen, ten minutes ago," said Beeton in a
+trembling voice. "He dropped off to sleep out there on the floor, and
+I brought him in here and laid him on the bed. When he woke up he was
+like that!"
+
+The man on the bed ceased his inchoate babbling and now, gulping
+noisily, began to make quick nervous movements with his hands.
+
+"He wants to write something," said Smith in a low voice. "Quick! hold
+him up!" He thrust his notebook, open at a blank page, before the man
+whose movement were numbered, and placed a pencil in the shaking
+right hand.
+
+Faintly and unevenly Sir Gregory commenced to write--whilst I
+supported him. Across the bent shoulders Smith silently questioned me,
+and my reply was a negative shake of the head.
+
+The lamp above the bed was swaying as if in a heavy draught; I
+remembered that it had been swaying as we entered. There was no fog in
+the room, but already from the bleak corridor outside it was entering;
+murky, yellow clouds steaming in at the open door. Save for the gulping
+of the dying man, and the sobbing breaths of Beeton, there was no
+sound. Six irregular lines Sir Gregory Hale scrawled upon the page;
+then suddenly his body became a dead weight in my arms. Gently I laid
+him back upon the pillows, gently his finger from the notebook, and,
+my head almost touching Smith's as we both craned forward over the
+page, read, with great difficulty, the following:--
+
+  "Guard my diary.... Tibetan frontier ... Key of India. Beware man ...
+  with the limp. Yellow ... rising.   Watch Tibet ... the _Si-Fan_...."
+
+From somewhere outside the room, whether above or below I could not be
+sure, came a faint, dragging sound, accompanied by a _tap--tap--tap_....
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+"SAKYA MUNI"
+
+
+The faint disturbance faded into silence again. Across the dead man's
+body I met Smith's gaze. Faint wreaths of fog floated in from the
+outer room. Beeton clutched the foot of the bed, and the structure
+shook in sympathy with his wild trembling. That was the only sound
+now; there was absolutely nothing physical so far as my memory serves
+to signalize the coming of the brown man.
+
+Yet, stealthy as his approach had been, something must have warned us.
+For suddenly, with one accord, we three turned upon the bed, and
+stared out into the room from which the fog wreaths floated in.
+
+Beeton stood nearest to the door, but, although he turned, he did not
+go out, but with a smothered cry crouched back against the bed. Smith
+it was who moved first, then I followed, and close upon his heels
+burst into the disordered sitting-room. The outer door had been closed
+but not bolted, and what with the tinted light, diffused through the
+silken Japanese shade, and the presence of fog in the room, I was
+almost tempted to believe myself the victim of a delusion. What I saw
+or thought I saw was this:--
+
+A tall screen stood immediately inside the door, and around its end,
+like some materialization of the choking mist, glided a lithe, yellow
+figure, a slim, crouching figure, wearing a sort of loose robe. An
+impression I had of jet-black hair, protruding from beneath a little
+cap, of finely chiseled features and great, luminous eyes, then, with
+no sound to tell of a door opened or shut, the apparition was gone.
+
+"You saw him, Petrie!--you saw him!" cried Smith.
+
+In three bounds he was across the room, had tossed the screen aside
+and thrown open the door. Out he sprang into the yellow haze of the
+corridor, tripped, and, uttering a cry of pain, fell sprawling upon
+the marble floor. Hot with apprehension I joined him, but he looked
+up with a wry smile and began furiously rubbing his left shin.
+
+"A queer trick, Petrie," he said, rising to his feet; "but
+nevertheless effective."
+
+He pointed to the object which had occasioned his fall. It was a small
+metal chest, evidently of very considerable weight, and it stood
+immediately outside the door of Number 14a.
+
+"That was what he came for, sir! That was what he came for! You were
+too quick for him!"
+
+Beeton stood behind us, his horror-bright eyes fixed upon the box.
+
+"Eh?" rapped Smith, turning upon him.
+
+"That's what Sir Gregory brought to England," the man ran on almost
+hysterically; "that's what he's been guarding this past two weeks,
+night and day, crouching over it with a loaded pistol. That's what
+cost him his life, sir. He's had no peace, day or night, since he
+got it...."
+
+We were inside the room again now, Smith bearing the coffer in his
+arms, and still the man ran on:
+
+"He's never slept for more than an hour at a time, that I know of, for
+weeks past. Since the day we came here he hasn't spoken to another
+living soul, and he's lain there on the floor at night with his head
+on that brass box, and sat watching over it all day."
+
+"'Beeton!' he'd cry out, perhaps in the middle of the night--'Beeton--
+do you hear that damned woman!' But although I'd begun to think I
+could hear something, I believe it was the constant strain working on
+my nerves and nothing else at all.
+
+"Then he was always listening out for some one he called 'the man with
+the limp.' Five and six times a night he'd have me up to listen with
+him. 'There he goes, Beeton!' he'd whisper, crouching with his ear
+pressed flat to the door. 'Do you hear him dragging himself along?'
+
+"God knows how I've stood it as I have; for I've known no peace since
+we left China. Once we got here I thought it would be better, but it's
+been worse.
+
+"Gentlemen have come (from the India Office, I believe), but he would
+not see them. Said he would see no one but Mr. Nayland Smith. He had
+never lain in his bed until to-night, but what with taking no proper
+food nor sleep, and some secret trouble that was killing him by inches,
+he collapsed altogether a while ago, and I carried him in and laid him
+on the bed as I told you. Now he's dead--now he's dead."
+
+Beeton leant up against the mantelpiece and buried his face in his
+hands, whilst his shoulders shook convulsively. He had evidently been
+greatly attached to his master, and I found something very pathetic in
+this breakdown of a physically strong man. Smith laid his hands upon
+his shoulders.
+
+"You have passed through a very trying ordeal," he said, "and no man
+could have done his duty better; but forces beyond your control have
+proved too strong for you. I am Nayland Smith."
+
+The man spun around with a surprising expression of relief upon his
+pale face.
+
+"So that whatever can be done," continued my friend, "to carry out
+your master's wishes, will be done now. Rely upon it. Go into your
+room and lie down until we call you."
+
+"Thank you, sir, and thank God you are here," said Beeton dazedly, and
+with one hand raised to his head he went, obediently, to the smaller
+bedroom and disappeared within.
+
+"Now, Petrie," rapped Smith, glancing around the littered floor,
+"since I am empowered to deal with this matter as I see fit, and since
+you are a medical man, we can devote the next half-hour, at any rate,
+to a strictly confidential inquiry into this most perplexing case. I
+propose that you examine the body for any evidences that may assist
+you determining the cause of death, whilst I make a few inquiries here."
+
+I nodded, without speaking, and went into the bedroom. It contained not
+one solitary item of the dead man's belongings, and in every way bore
+out Beeton's statement that Sir Gregory had never inhabited it. I bent
+over Hale, as he lay fully dressed upon the bed.
+
+Saving the singularity of the symptom which had immediately preceded
+death--viz., the paralysis of the muscles of articulation--I should
+have felt disposed to ascribe his end to sheer inanition; and a
+cursory examination brought to light nothing contradictory to that
+view. Not being prepared to proceed further in the matter at the moment
+I was about to rejoin Smith, whom I could hear rummaging about amongst
+the litter of the outer room, when I made a curious discovery.
+
+Lying in a fold of the disordered bed linen were a few petals of some
+kind of blossom, three of them still attached to a fragment of slender
+stalk.
+
+I collected the tiny petals, mechanically, and held them in the palm
+of my hand studying them for some moments before the mystery of their
+presence there became fully appreciable to me. Then I began to wonder.
+The petals (which I was disposed to class as belonging to some species
+of _Curcas_ or Physic Nut), though bruised, were fresh, and therefore
+could not have been in the room for many hours. How had they been
+introduced, and by whom? Above all, what could their presence there
+at that time portend?
+
+"Smith," I called, and walked towards the door carrying the mysterious
+fragments in my palm. "Look what I have found upon the bed."
+
+Nayland Smith, who was bending over an open despatch case which he had
+placed upon a chair, turned--and his glance fell upon the petals and
+tiny piece of stem.
+
+I think I have never seen so sudden a change of expression take place
+in the face of any man. Even in that imperfect light I saw him blanch.
+I saw a hard glitter come into his eyes. He spoke, evenly, but hoarsely:
+
+"Put those things down----there, on the table; anywhere."
+
+I obeyed him without demur; for something in his manner had chilled me
+with foreboding.
+
+"You did not break that stalk?"
+
+"No. I found it as you see it."
+
+"Have you smelled the petals?"
+
+I shook my head. Thereupon, having his eyes fixed upon me with the
+strangest expression in their gray depths, Nayland Smith said a
+singular thing.
+
+"Pronounce, slowly, the words _Sākya Mūni,_'" he directed.
+
+I stared at him, scarce crediting my senses; but----
+
+"I mean it!" he rapped. "Do as I tell you."
+
+"Sākya Mūni," I said, in ever increasing wonder.
+
+Smith laughed unmirthfully.
+
+"Go into the bathroom and thoroughly wash your hands," was his next
+order. "Renew the water at least three times." As I turned to fulfill
+his instructions, for I doubted no longer his deadly earnestness:
+"Beeton!" he called.
+
+Beeton, very white-faced and shaky, came out from the bedroom as I
+entered the bathroom, and whist I proceeded carefully to cleanse my
+hands I heard Smith interrogating him.
+
+"Have any flowers been brought into the room today, Beeton?"
+
+"Flowers, sir? Certainly not. Nothing has ever been brought in here
+but what I have brought myself."
+
+"You are certain of that?"
+
+"Positive."
+
+"Who brought up the meals, then?"
+
+"If you'll look into my room here, sir, you'll see that I have enough
+tinned and bottled stuff to last us for weeks. Sir Gregory sent me out
+to buy it on the day we arrived. No one else had left or entered these
+rooms until you came to-night."
+
+I returned to find Nayland Smith standing tugging at the lobe of his
+left ear in evident perplexity. He turned to me.
+
+"I find my hands over full," he said. "Will you oblige me by
+telephoning for Inspector Weymouth? Also, I should be glad if you
+would ask M. Samarkan, the manager, to see me here immediately."
+
+As I was about to quit the room--
+
+"Not a word of our suspicions to M. Samarkan," he added; "not a word
+about the brass box."
+
+I was far along the corridor ere I remembered that which, remembered
+earlier, had saved me the journey. There was a telephone in every suite.
+However, I was not indisposed to avail myself of an opportunity for a
+few moments' undisturbed reflection, and, avoiding the lift, I
+descended by the broad, marble staircase.
+
+To what strange adventure were we committed? What did the brass coffer
+contain which Sir Gregory had guarded night and day? Something
+associated in some way with Tibet, something which he believed to be
+"the key of India" and which had brought in its train, presumably,
+the sinister "man with a limp."
+
+Who was the "man with the limp"? What was the Si-Fan? Lastly, by what
+conceivable means could the flower, which my friend evidently regarded
+with extreme horror, have been introduced into Hale's room, and why
+had I been required to pronounce the words "Sākya Mūni"?
+
+So ran my reflections--at random and to no clear end; and, as is often
+the case in such circumstances, my steps bore them company; so that
+all at once I became aware that instead of having gained the lobby of
+the hotel, I had taken some wrong turning and was in a part of the
+building entirely unfamiliar to me.
+
+A long corridor of the inevitable white marble extended far behind me.
+I had evidently traversed it. Before me was a heavily curtained archway.
+Irritably, I pulled the curtain aside, learnt that it masked a
+glass-paneled door, opened this door--and found myself in a small
+court, dimly lighted and redolent of some pungent, incense-like perfume.
+
+One step forward I took, then pulled up abruptly. A sound had come to
+my ears. From a second curtained doorway, close to my right hand, it
+came--a sound of muffled _tapping_, together with that of something
+which dragged upon the floor.
+
+Within my brain the words seemed audibly to form: "The man with
+the limp!"
+
+I sprang to the door; I had my hand upon the drapery ... when a woman
+stepped out, barring the way!
+
+No impression, not even a vague one, did I form of her costume, save
+that she wore a green silk shawl, embroidered with raised white
+figures of birds, thrown over her head and shoulders and draped in
+such fashion that part of her face was concealed. I was transfixed
+by the vindictive glare of her eyes, of her huge dark eyes.
+
+They were ablaze with anger--but it was not this expression within
+them which struck me so forcibly as the fact that they were in some
+way familiar.
+
+Motionless, we faced one another. Then--
+
+"You go away," said the woman--at the same time extending her arms
+across the doorway as barriers to my progress.
+
+Her voice had a husky intonation; her hands and arms, which were bare
+and of old ivory hue, were laden with barbaric jewelry, much of it
+tawdry silverware of the bazaars. Clearly she was a half-caste of some
+kind, probably a Eurasian.
+
+I hesitated. The sounds of dragging and tapping had ceased. But the
+presence of this grotesque Oriental figure only increased my anxiety
+to pass the doorway. I looked steadily into the black eyes; they looked
+into mine unflinchingly.
+
+"You go away, please," repeated the woman, raising her right hand and
+pointing to the door whereby I had entered. "These private rooms. What
+you doing here?"
+
+Her words, despite her broken English, served to recall to me the fact
+that I was, beyond doubt, a trespasser! By what right did I presume to
+force my way into other people's apartments?
+
+"There is some one in there whom I must see," I said, realizing,
+however, that my chance of doing so was poor.
+
+"You see nobody," she snapped back uncompromisingly. "You go away!"
+
+She took a step towards me, continuing to point to the door. Where had
+I previously encountered the glance of those splendid, savage eyes?
+
+So engaged was I with this taunting, partial memory, and so sure, if
+the woman would but uncover her face, of instantly recognizing her,
+that still I hesitated. Whereupon, glancing rapidly over her shoulder
+into whatever place lay beyond the curtained doorway, she suddenly
+stepped back and vanished, drawing the curtains to with an angry jerk.
+
+I heard her retiring footsteps; then came a loud bang. If her object
+in intercepting me had been to cover the slow retreat of some one she
+had succeeded.
+
+Recognizing that I had cut a truly sorry figure in the encounter, I
+retraced my steps.
+
+By what route I ultimately regained the main staircase I have no idea;
+for my mind was busy with that taunting memory of the two dark eyes
+looking out from the folds of the green embroidered shawl. Where, and
+when, had I met their glance before?
+
+To that problem I sought an answer in vain.
+
+The message despatched to New Scotland Yard, I found M. Samarkan, long
+famous as a _māitre d' hōtel_ in Cairo, and now host of London's
+newest and most palatial _khan_. Portly, and wearing a gray imperial,
+M. Samarkan had the manners of a courtier, and the smile of a true Greek.
+
+I told him what was necessary, and no more, desiring him to go to
+suite 14a without delay and also without arousing unnecessary
+attention. I dropped no hint of foul play, but M. Samarkan expressed
+profound (and professional) regret that so distinguished, though
+unprofitable, a patron should have selected the New Louvre, thus
+early in its history, as the terminus of his career.
+
+"By the way," I said, "have you Oriental guests with you, at the moment?"
+
+"No, monsieur," he assured me.
+
+"Not a certain Oriental lady?" I persisted.
+
+M. Samarkan slowly shook his head.
+
+"Possibly monsieur has seen one of the _ayahs?_ There are several
+Anglo-Indian families resident in the New Louvre at present."
+
+An _ayah?_ It was just possible, of course. Yet ...
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE FLOWER OF SILENCE
+
+
+"We are dealing now," said Nayland Smith, pacing restlessly up and
+down our sitting-room, "not, as of old, with Dr. Fu-Manchu, but with
+an entirely unknown quantity--the Si-Fan."
+
+"For Heaven's sake!" I cried, "what is the Si-Fan?"
+
+"The greatest mystery of the mysterious East, Petrie. Think. You know,
+as I know, that a malignant being, Dr. Fu-Manchu, was for some time
+in England, engaged in 'paving the way' (I believe those words were
+my own) for nothing less than a giant Yellow Empire. That dream is
+what millions of Europeans and Americans term 'the Yellow Peril! Very
+good. Such an empire needs must have----"
+
+"An emperor!"
+
+Nayland Smith stopped his restless pacing immediately in front of me.
+
+"Why not an _empress_, Petrie!" he rapped.
+
+His words were something of a verbal thunderbolt; I found myself at
+loss for any suitable reply.
+
+"You will perhaps remind me," he continued rapidly, "of the lowly place
+held by women in the East. I can cite notable exceptions, ancient and
+modern. In fact, a moment's consideration by a hypothetical body of
+Eastern dynast-makers not of an emperor but of an empress. Finally,
+there is a persistent tradition throughout the Far East that such a
+woman will one day rule over the known peoples. I was assured some
+years ago, by a very learned pundit, that a princess of incalculably
+ancient lineage, residing in some secret monastery in Tartary or Tibet,
+was to be the future empress of the world. I believe this tradition,
+or the extensive group who seek to keep it alive and potent, to be
+what is called the Si-Fan!"
+
+I was past greater amazement; but--
+
+"This lady can be no longer young, then?" I asked.
+
+"On the contrary, Petrie, she remains always young and beautiful by
+means of a continuous series of reincarnations; also she thus
+conserves the collated wisdom of many ages. In short, she is the
+archetype of Lamaism. The real secret of Lama celibacy is the existence
+of this immaculate ruler, of whom the Grand Lama is merely a high
+priest. She has, as attendants, maidens of good family, selected for
+their personal charms, and rendered dumb in order that they may never
+report what they see and hear."
+
+"Smith!" I cried, "this is utterly incredible!"
+
+"Her body slaves are not only mute, but blind; for it is death to look
+upon her beauty unveiled."
+
+I stood up impatiently.
+
+"You are amusing yourself," I said.
+
+Nayland Smith clapped his hands upon my shoulders, in his own
+impulsive fashion, and looked earnestly into my eyes.
+
+"Forgive me, old man," he said, "if I have related all these fantastic
+particulars as though I gave them credence. Much of this is legendary,
+I know, some of it mere superstition, but--I am serious now, Petrie--
+_part of it is true_."
+
+I stared at the square-cut, sun-tanned face; and no trace of a smile
+lurked about that grim mouth. "Such a woman may actually exist, Petrie,
+only in legend; but, nevertheless, she forms the head center of that
+giant conspiracy in which the activities of Dr. Fu-Manchu were merely
+a part. Hale blundered on to this stupendous business; and from what I
+have gathered from Beeton and what I have seen for myself, it is
+evident that in yonder coffer"--he pointed to the brass chest standing
+hard by--"Hale got hold of something indispensable to the success of
+this vast Yellow conspiracy. That he was followed here, to the very
+hotel, by agents of this mystic Unknown is evident. But," he added
+grimly, "they have failed in their object!"
+
+A thousand outrageous possibilities fought for precedence in my mind.
+
+"Smith!" I cried, "the half-caste woman whom I saw in the hotel ..."
+
+Nayland Smith shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Probably, as M. Samarkan suggests, an _ayah!_" he said; but there was
+an odd note in his voice and an odd look in his eyes.
+
+"Then again, I am almost certain that Hale's warning concerning 'the
+man with the limp' was no empty one. Shall you open the brass chest?"
+
+"At present, decidedly _no_. Hale's fate renders his warning one that
+I dare not neglect. For I was with him when he died; and they cannot
+know how much _I_ know. How did he die? How did he die? How was the
+Flower of Silence introduced into his closely guarded room?"
+
+"The Flower of Silence?"
+
+Smith laughed shortly and unmirthfully.
+
+"I was once sent for," he said, "during the time that I was stationed
+in Upper Burma, to see a stranger--a sort of itinerant Buddhist priest,
+so I understood, who had desired to communicate some message to me
+personally. He was dying--in a dirty hut on the outskirts of Manipur,
+up in the hills. When I arrived I say at a glance that the man was a
+Tibetan monk. He must have crossed the river and come down through
+Assam; but the nature of his message I never knew. He had lost the
+power of speech! He was gurgling, inarticulate, just like poor Hale.
+A few moments after my arrival he breathed his last. The fellow who
+had guided me to the place bent over him--I shall always remember the
+scene--then fell back as though he had stepped upon an adder.
+
+"'He holds the Flower Silence in his hand!' he cried--'the Si-Fan! the
+Si-Fan!'--and bolted from the hut."
+
+"When I went to examine the dead man, sure enough he held in one hand
+a little crumpled spray of flowers. I did not touch it with my fingers
+naturally, but I managed to loop a piece of twine around the stem,
+and by that means I gingerly removed the flowers and carried them to
+an orchid-hunter of my acquaintance who chanced to be visiting Manipur.
+
+"Grahame--that was my orchid man's name--pronounced the specimen to be
+an unclassified species of _jatropha;_ belonging to the _Curcas_
+family. He discovered a sort of hollow thorn, almost like a fang,
+amongst the blooms, but was unable to surmise the nature of its
+functions. He extracted enough of a certain fixed oil from the flowers,
+however, to have poisoned the pair of us!"
+
+"Probably the breaking of a bloom ..."
+
+"Ejects some of this acrid oil through the thorn? Practically the
+uncanny thing stings when it is hurt? That is my own idea, Petrie. And
+I can understand how these Eastern fanatics accept their sentence--
+silence and death--when they have deserved it, at the hands of their
+mysterious organization, and commit this novel form of _hara-kiri_.
+But I shall not sleep soundly with that brass coffer in my possession
+until I know by what means Sir Gregory was induced to touch a Flower
+of Silence, and by what means it was placed in his room!"
+
+"But, Smith, why did you direct me to-night to repeat the words,
+'Sākya Mūni'?"
+
+Smith smiled in a very grim fashion.
+
+"It was after the episode I have just related that I made the
+acquaintance of that pundit, some of whose statements I have already
+quoted for your enlightenment. He admitted that the Flower of Silence
+was an instrument frequently employed by a certain group, adding that,
+according to some authorities, one who had touched the flower might
+escape death by immediately pronouncing the sacred name of Buddha. He
+was no fanatic himself, however, and, marking my incredulity, he
+explained that the truth was this;--
+
+"No one whose powers of speech were imperfect could possibly pronounce
+correctly the words 'Sākya Mūni.' Therefore, since the first
+effects of this damnable thing is instantly to tie the tongue, the
+uttering of the sacred name of Buddha becomes practically a test
+whereby the victim my learn whether the venom has entered his system
+or not!"
+
+I repressed a shudder. An atmosphere of horror seemed to be enveloping
+us, foglike.
+
+"Smith," I said slowly, "we must be on our guard," for at last I had
+run to earth that elusive memory. "Unless I am strangely mistaken,
+the 'man' who so mysteriously entered Hale's room and the supposed
+_ayah_ whom I met downstairs are one and the same. Two, at least, of
+the Yellow group are actually here in the New Louvre!"
+
+The light of the shaded lamp shone down upon the brass coffer on the
+table beside me. The fog seemed to have cleared from the room somewhat,
+but since in the midnight stillness I could detect the muffled sounds
+of sirens from the river and the reports of fog signals from the
+railways, I concluded that the night was not yet wholly clear of the
+choking mist. In accordance with a pre-arranged scheme we had decided
+to guard "the key of India" (whatever it might be) turn and turn about
+through the night. In a word--we feared to sleep unguarded. Now my
+watch informed me that four o'clock approached, at which hour I was
+to arouse Smith and retire to sleep to my own bedroom.
+
+Nothing had disturbed my vigil--that is, nothing definite. True once,
+about half an hour earlier, I had thought I heard the dragging and
+tapping sound from somewhere up above me; but since the corridor
+overhead was unfinished and none of the rooms opening upon it yet
+habitable, I concluded that I had been mistaken. The stairway at the
+end of our corridor, which communicated with that above, was still
+blocked with bags of cement and slabs of marble, in fact.
+
+Faintly to my ears came the booming of London's clocks, beating out
+the hour of four. But still I sat beside the mysterious coffer,
+indisposed to awaken my friend any sooner than was necessary,
+particularly since I felt in no way sleepy myself.
+
+I was to learn a lesson that night: the lesson of strict adherence to
+a compact. I had arranged to awaken Nayland Smith at four; and because
+I dallied, determined to finish my pipe ere entering his bedroom,
+almost it happened that Fate placed it beyond my power ever to awaken
+him again.
+
+At ten minutes past four, amid a stillness so intense that the
+creaking of my slippers seemed a loud disturbance, I crossed the room
+and pushed open the door of Smith's bedroom. It was in darkness, but
+as I entered I depressed the switch immediately inside the door,
+lighting the lamp which swung form the center of the ceiling.
+
+Glancing towards the bed, I immediately perceived that there was
+something different in its aspect, but at first I found this
+difference difficult to define. I stood for a moment in doubt. Then
+I realized the nature of the change which had taken place.
+
+A lamp hung above the bed, attached to a movable fitting, which
+enabled it to be raised or lowered at the pleasure of the occupant.
+When Smith had retired he was in no reading mood, and he had not even
+lighted the reading-lamp, but had left it pushed high up against the
+ceiling.
+
+It was the position of this lamp which had changed. For now it swung
+so low over the pillow that the silken fringe of the shade almost
+touched my friend's face as he lay soundly asleep with one
+lean brown hand outstretched upon the coverlet.
+
+I stood in the doorway staring, mystified, at this phenomenon; I might
+have stood there without intervening, until intervention had been too
+late, were it not that, glancing upward toward the wooden block from
+which ordinarily the pendant hung, I perceived that no block was
+visible, but only a round, black cavity from which the white flex
+supporting the lamp swung out.
+
+Then, uttering a horse cry which rose unbidden to my lips, I sprang
+wildly across the room ... for now I had seen something else!
+
+Attached to one of the four silken tassels which ornamented the
+lamp-shade, so as almost to rest upon the cheek of the sleeping man,
+was a little corymb of bloom ... the _Flower of Silence!_
+
+Grasping the shade with my left hand I seized the flex with my right,
+and as Smith sprang upright in bed, eyes wildly glaring, I wrenched
+with all my might. Upward my gaze was set; and I glimpsed a yellow
+hand, with long, pointed finger nails. There came a loud resounding
+snap; an electric spark spat venomously from the circular opening
+above the bed; and, with the cord and lamp still fast in my grip, I
+went rolling across the carpet--as the other lamp became instantly
+extinguished.
+
+Dimly I perceived Smith, arrayed in pyjamas, jumping out upon the
+opposite side of the bed.
+
+"Petrie, Petrie!" he cried, "where are you? what has happened?"
+
+A laugh, little short of hysterical, escaped me. I gathered myself up
+and made for the lighted sitting-room.
+
+"Quick, Smith!" I said--but I did not recognize my own voice. "Quick--
+come out of that room."
+
+I crossed to the settee, and shaking in every limb, sank down upon it.
+Nayland Smith, still wild-eyed, and his face a mask of bewilderment,
+came out of the bedroom and stood watching me.
+
+"For God's sake what has happened, Petrie?" he demanded, and began
+clutching at the lobe of his left ear and looking all about the room
+dazedly.
+
+"The Flower of Silence!" I said; "some one has been at work in the top
+corridor.... Heaven knows when, for since we engaged these rooms we
+have not been much away from them ... the same device as in the case
+of poor Hale.... You would have tried to brush the thing away ..."
+
+A light of understanding began to dawn in my friend's eyes. He drew
+himself stiffly upright, and in a loud, harsh voice uttered the words:
+"Sākya Mūni"--and again: "Sākya Mūni."
+
+"Thank God!" I said shakily. "I was not too late."
+
+Nayland Smith, with much rattling of glass, poured out two stiff pegs
+from the decanter. Then--
+
+"_Ssh!_what's that?" he whispered.
+
+He stood, tense, listening, his head cast slightly to one side.
+
+A very faint sound of shuffling and tapping was perceptible, coming,
+as I thought, from the incomplete stairway communicating with the upper
+corridor.
+
+"The man with the limp!" whispered Smith.
+
+He bounded to the door and actually had one hand upon the bolt, when
+he turned, and fixed his gaze upon the brass box.
+
+"No!" he snapped; "there are occasions when prudence should rule.
+Neither of us must leave these rooms to-night!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+JOHN KI'S
+
+
+"What is the meaning of Si-Fan?" asked Detective-sergeant Fletcher.
+
+He stood looking from the window at the prospect below; at the trees
+bordering the winding embankment; at the ancient monolith which for
+unnumbered ages had looked across desert sands to the Nile, and now
+looked down upon another river of many mysteries. The view seemed to
+absorb his attention. He spoke without turning his head.
+
+Nayland Smith laughed shortly.
+
+"The Si-Fan are the natives of Eastern Tibet," he replied.
+
+"But the term has some other significance, sir?" said the detective;
+his words were more of an assertion than a query.
+
+"It has," replied my friend grimly. "I believe it to be the name, or
+perhaps the sigil, of an extensive secret society with branches
+stretching out into every corner of the Orient."
+
+We were silent for awhile. Inspector Weymouth, who sat in a chair near
+the window, glanced appreciatively at the back of his subordinate, who
+still stood looking out. Detective-sergeant Fletcher was one of
+Scotland Yard's coming men. He had information of the first importance
+to communicate, and Nayland Smith had delayed his departure upon an
+urgent errand in order to meet him.
+
+"Your case to date, Mr. Smith," continued Fletcher, remaining with
+hands locked behind him, staring from the window, "reads something like
+this, I believe: A brass box, locked, contents unknown, has come into
+your possession. It stands now upon the table there. It was brought
+from Tibet by a man who evidently thought that it  had something to
+do with the Si-Fan. He is dead, possibly by the agency of members of
+this group. No arrests have been made. You know that there are people
+here in London who are anxious to regain the box. You have theories
+respecting the identity of some of them, but there are practically no
+facts."
+
+Nayland Smith nodded his head.
+
+"Exactly!" he snapped.
+
+"Inspector Weymouth, here," continued Fletcher, "has put me in
+possession of such facts as are known to him, and I believe that I
+have had the good fortune to chance upon a valuable one."
+
+"You interest me, Sergeant Fletcher," said Smith. "What is the nature
+of this clue?"
+
+"I will tell you," replied the other, and turned briskly upon his heel
+to  face us.
+
+He had a dark, clean-shaven face, rather sallow complexion, and
+deep-set, searching eyes. There was decision in the square, cleft chin
+and strong character in the cleanly chiseled features. His manner was
+alert.
+
+"I have specialized in Chinese crime," he said; "much of my time is
+spent amongst our Asiatic visitors. I am fairly familiar with the
+Easterns who use the port of London, and I have a number of useful
+acquaintances among them."
+
+Nayland Smith nodded. Beyond doubt Detective-sergeant Fletcher knew
+his business.
+
+"To my lasting regret," Fletcher continued, "I never met the late Dr.
+Fu-Manchu. I understand, sir, that you believe him to have been a high
+official of this dangerous society? However, I think we may get in
+touch with some other notabilities; for instance, I'm told that one
+of the people you're looking for has been described as 'the man with
+the limp'?"
+
+Smith, who had been about to relight his pipe, dropped the match on
+the carpet and set his foot upon it. His eyes shone like steel.
+
+"'The man with the limp,'" he said, and slowly rose to his feet--"what
+do you know of the man with the limp?"
+
+Fletcher's face flushed slightly; his words had proved more dramatic
+than he had anticipated.
+
+"There's a place down Shadwell way," he replied, "of which, no doubt,
+you  will have heard; it has no official title, but it is known to
+habitués as the Joy-Shop...."
+
+Inspector Weymouth stood up, his burly figure towering over that of
+his slighter confrčre.
+
+"I don't think you know John Ki's, Mr. Smith," he said. "We keep all
+those places pretty well patrolled, and until this present business
+cropped up, John's establishment had never given us any trouble."
+
+"What is this Joy-Shop?" I asked.
+
+"A resort of shady characters, mostly Asiatics," replied Weymouth.
+"It's a gambling-house, an unlicensed drinking-shop, and even worse--
+but it's more use to us open than it would be shut."
+
+"It is one of my regular jobs to keep an eye on the visitors to the
+Joy-Shop," continued Fletcher. "I have many acquaintances who use the
+place. Needless to add, they don't know my real business! Well,
+lately several of them have asked me if I know who the man is that
+hobbles about the place with two sticks. Everybody seems to have
+heard him, but no one has seen him."
+
+Nayland Smith began to pace the floor restlessly.
+
+"I have heard him myself," added Fletcher, "but never managed to get
+so much as a glimpse of him.  When I learnt about this Si-Fan mystery,
+I realized that he might very possibly be the man for whom you're
+looking--and a golden opportunity has cropped up for you to visit the
+Joy-Shop, and, if our luck remains in, to get a peep behind the scenes."
+
+"I am all attention," snapped Smith.
+
+"A woman called Zarmi has recently put in an appearance at the
+Joy-Shop. Roughly speaking, she turned up at about the same time as
+the unseen man with the limp...."
+
+Nayland Smith's eyes were blazing with suppressed excitement; he was
+pacing quickly up and down the floor, tugging at the lobe of his left
+ear.
+
+"She is--different in some way from any other woman I have ever seen
+in the place. She's a Eurasian and good-looking, after a tigerish
+fashion. I have done my best"--he smiled slightly--"to get in her good
+books, and up to a point I've succeeded. I was there last night, and
+Zarmi asked me if I knew what she called a 'strong feller.'
+
+"'These,' she informed me, contemptuously referring to the rest of the
+company, 'are poor weak Johnnies!'
+
+"I had nothing definite in view at the time, for I had not then heard
+about your return to London, but I thought it might lead to something
+anyway, so I promised to bring a friend along to-night. I don't know
+what we're wanted to do, but ..."
+
+"Count on me!" snapped Smith. "I will leave all details to you and to
+Weymouth, and I will be at New Scotland Yard this evening in time to
+adopt a suitable disguise. Petrie"--he turned impetuously to me--"I
+fear I shall have to go without you; but I shall be in safe company,
+as you see, and doubtless Weymouth can find you a part in his portion
+of the evening's program."
+
+He glanced at his watch.
+
+"Ah! I must be off. If you will oblige me, Petrie, by putting the
+brass box into my smaller portmanteau, whilst I slip my coat on,
+perhaps Weymouth, on his way out, will be good enough to order a taxi.
+I shall venture to breathe again once our unpleasant charge is safely
+deposited in the bank vaults!"
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE SI-FAN MOVE
+
+
+A slight drizzling rain was falling as Smith entered the cab which
+the hall-porter had summoned. The brown bag in his hand contained the
+brass box which actually was responsible for our presence in London.
+The last glimpse I had of him through the glass of the closed window
+showed him striking a match to light his pipe--which he rarely allowed
+to grow cool.
+
+Oppressed with an unaccountable weariness of spirit, I stood within
+the lobby looking out upon the grayness of London in November. A
+slight mental effort was sufficient to blot out that drab prospect and
+to conjure up before my mind's eye a balcony overlooking the Nile--a
+glimpse of dusty palms, a white wall overgrown with purple blossoms,
+and above all the dazzling vault of Egypt. Upon the balcony my
+imagination painted a figure, limning it with loving details, the
+figure of Kāramaneh; and I thought that her glorious eyes would be
+sorrowful and her lips perhaps a little tremulous, as, her arms resting
+upon the rail of the balcony, she looked out across the smiling river
+to the domes and minarets of Cairo--and beyond, into the hazy distance;
+seeing me in dreary, rain-swept London, as I saw her, at Gezīra
+beneath the cloudless sky of Egypt.
+
+From these tender but mournful reflections I aroused myself, almost
+angrily, and set off through the muddy streets towards Charing Cross;
+for I was availing myself of the opportunity to call upon Dr. Murray,
+who had purchased my small suburban practice when (finally, as I
+thought at the time) I had left London.
+
+This matter occupied me for the greater part of the afternoon, and I
+returned to the New Louvre Hotel shortly after five, and seeing no one
+in the lobby whom I knew, proceeded immediately to our apartment.
+Nayland Smith was not there, and having made some changes in my attire
+I descended again and inquired if he had left any message for me.
+
+The booking-clerk informed me that Smith had not returned; therefore I
+resigned myself to wait. I purchased an evening paper and settled down
+in the lounge where I had an uninterrupted view of the entrance doors.
+The dinner hour approached, but still my friend failed to put in an
+appearance. Becoming impatient, I entered a call-box and rang up
+Inspector Weymouth.
+
+Smith had not been to Scotland Yard, nor had they received any message
+from him. Perhaps it would appear that there was little cause for alarm
+in this, but I, familiar with my friend's punctual and exact habits,
+became strangely uneasy. I did not wish to make myself ridiculous,
+but growing restlessness impelled me to institute inquiries regarding
+the cabman who had driven my friend. The result of these was to
+increase rather than to allay my fears.
+
+The man was a stranger to the hall-porter, and he was not one of the
+taximen who habitually stood upon the neighboring rank; no one seemed
+to have noticed the number of the cab.
+
+And now my mind began to play with strange doubts and fears. The driver,
+I recollected, had been a small, dark man, possessing remarkably
+well-cut olive-hued features. Had he not worn spectacles he would
+indeed have been handsome, in an effeminate fashion.
+
+I was almost certain, by this time, that he had not been an Englishman;
+I was almost certain that some catastrophe had befallen Smith. Our
+ceaseless vigilance had been momentarily relaxed--and this was the
+result!
+
+At some large bank branches there is a resident messenger. Even
+granting that such was the case in the present instance, I doubted if
+the man could help me, unless, as was possible, he chanced to be
+familiar with my friend's appearance, and had actually seen him there
+that day. I determined, at any rate, to make the attempt; reentering
+the call-box, I asked for the bank's number.
+
+There proved to be a resident messenger, who, after a time, replied to
+my call. He knew Nayland Smith very well by sight, and as he had been
+on duty in the public office of the bank at the time that Smith should
+have arrived, he assured me that my friend had not been there that day!
+
+"Besides, sir," he said, "you say he came to deposit valuables of some
+kind here?"
+
+"Yes, yes!" I cried eagerly.
+
+"I take all such things down on the lift to the vaults at night, sir,
+under the supervision of the assistant manager--and I can assure you
+that nothing of the kind has been left with us to-day."
+
+I stepped out of the call-box unsteadily. Indeed, I clutched at the
+door for support.
+
+"What is the meaning of Si-Fan?" Detective-sergeant Fletcher had asked
+that morning. None of us could answer him; none of us knew. With a
+haze seeming to dance between my eyes and the active life in the lobby
+before me, I realized that the Si-Fan--that unseen, sinister power--
+had reached out and plucked my friend from the very midst of this
+noisy life about me, into its own mysterious, deathly silence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+CHINATOWN
+
+
+"It's no easy matter," said Inspector Weymouth, "to patrol the vicinity
+of John Ki's Joy-Shop without their getting wind of it. The entrance,
+as you'll see, is a long, narrow rat-hole of a street running at right
+angles to the Thames. There's no point, so far as I know, from which
+the yard can be overlooked; and the back is on a narrow cutting
+belonging to a disused mill."
+
+I paid little attention to his words. Disguised beyond all chance of
+recognition even by one intimate with my appearance, I was all
+impatience to set out. I had taken Smith's place in the night's
+program; for, every possible source of information having been tapped
+in vain, I now hoped against hope that some clue to the fate of my poor
+friend might be obtained at the Chinese den which he had designed to
+visit with Fletcher.
+
+The latter, who presented a strange picture in his make-up as a sort
+of half-caste sailor, stared doubtfully at the Inspector; then--
+
+"The River Police cutter," he said, "can drop down on the tide and lie
+off under the Surrey bank. There's a vacant wharf facing the end of
+the street and we can slip through and show a light there, to let you
+know we've arrived. You reply in the same way. If there's any
+trouble, I shall blaze away with this"--he showed the butt of a
+Service revolver protruding from his hip pocket--"and you can be
+ashore in no time."
+
+The plan had one thing to commend it, viz., that no one could devise
+another. Therefore it was adopted, and five minutes later a taxi-cab
+swung out of the Yard containing Inspector Weymouth and two ruffianly
+looking companions--myself and Fletcher.
+
+Any zest with which, at another time, I might have entered upon such
+an expedition, was absent now. I bore with me a gnawing anxiety and
+sorrow that precluded all conversation on my part, save monosyllabic
+replies, to questions that I comprehended but vaguely.
+
+At the River Police Depot we found Inspector Ryman, an old acquaintance,
+awaiting us. Weymouth had telephoned from Scotland Yard.
+
+"I've got a motor-boat at the breakwater," said Ryman, nodding to
+Fletcher, and staring hard at me.
+
+Weymouth laughed shortly.
+
+"Evidently you don't recognize Dr. Petrie!" he said.
+
+"Eh!" cried Ryman--"Dr. Petrie! why, good heavens, Doctor, I should
+never have known you in a month of Bank holidays! What's afoot,
+then?"--and he turned to Weymouth, eyebrows raised interrogatively.
+
+"It's the Fu-Manchu business again, Ryman."
+
+"Fu-Manchu! But I thought the Fu-Manchu case was off the books long
+ago? It was always a mystery to me; never a word in the papers; and
+we as much in the dark as everybody else--but didn't I hear that the
+Chinaman, Fu-Manchu, was dead?"
+
+Weymouth nodded.
+
+"Some of his friends seem to be very much alive, though" he said.
+"It appears that Fu-Manchu, for all his genius--and there's no denying
+he was a genius, Ryman--was only the agent of somebody altogether
+bigger."
+
+Ryman whistled softly.
+
+"Has the real head of affairs arrived, then?"
+
+"We find we are up against what is known as the Si-Fan."
+
+At that it came to the inevitable, unanswerable question.
+
+"What is the Si-Fan?"
+
+I laughed, but my laughter was not mirthful. Inspector Weymouth shook
+his head.
+
+"Perhaps Mr. Nayland Smith could tell you that," he replied; "for the
+Si-Fan got him to-day!"
+
+"Got him!" cried Ryman.
+
+"Absolutely! He's vanished! And Fletcher here has found out that John
+Ki's place is in some way connected with this business."
+
+I interrupted--impatiently, I fear.
+
+"Then let us set out, Inspector," I said, "for it seems to me that we
+are wasting precious time--and you know what that may mean." I turned
+to Fletcher. "Where is this place situated, exactly? How do we proceed?"
+
+"The cab can take us part of the way," he replied, "and we shall have
+to walk the rest. Patrons of John's don't turn up in taxis, as a rule!"
+
+"Then let us be off," I said, and made for the door.
+
+"Don't forget the signal!" Weymouth cried after me, "and don't venture
+into the place until you've received our reply...."
+
+But I was already outside, Fletcher following; and a moment later we
+were both in the cab and off into a maze of tortuous streets toward
+John Ki's Joy-Shop.
+
+With the coming of nightfall the rain had ceased, but the sky remained
+heavily overcast and the air was filled with clammy mist. It was a
+night to arouse longings for Southern skies; and when, discharging
+the cabman, we set out afoot along a muddy and ill-lighted
+thoroughfare bordered on either side by high brick walls, their
+monotony occasionally broken by gateways, I felt that the load of
+depression which had settled upon my shoulders must ere long bear me
+down.
+
+Sounds of shunting upon some railway siding came to my ears; train
+whistles and fog signals hooted and boomed. River sounds there were,
+too, for we were close beside the Thames, that gray old stream which
+has borne upon its bier many a poor victim of underground London. The
+sky glowed sullenly red above.
+
+"There's the Joy-Shop, along on the left," said Fletcher, breaking in
+upon my reflections. "You'll notice a faint light; it's shining out
+through the open door. Then, here is the wharf."
+
+He began fumbling with the fastenings of a dilapidated gateway beside
+which we were standing; and a moment later--
+
+"All right--slip through," he said.
+
+I followed him through the narrow gap which the ruinous state of the
+gates had enabled him to force, and found myself looking under a low
+arch, with the Thames beyond, and a few hazy lights coming and going
+on the opposite bank.
+
+"Go steady!" warned Fletcher. "It's only a few paces to the edge of
+the wharf."
+
+I heard him taking a box of matches from his pocket.
+
+"Here is my electric lamp," I said. "It will serve the purpose better."
+
+"Good," muttered my companion. "Show a light down here, so that we
+can find our way."
+
+With the aid of the lamp we found our way out on to the rotting
+timbers of the crazy structure. The mist hung denser over the river,
+but through it, as through a dirty gauze curtain, it was possible
+to discern some of the greater lights on the opposite shore. These,
+without exception, however, showed high up upon the fog curtain;
+along the water level lay a belt of darkness.
+
+"Let me give them the signal," said Fletcher, shivering slightly and
+taking the lamp from my hand.
+
+He flashed the light two or three times. Then we both stood watching
+the belt of darkness that followed the Surrey shore. The tide lapped
+upon the timbers supporting the wharf and little whispers and gurgling
+sounds stole up from beneath our feet. Once there was a faint splash
+from somewhere below and behind us.
+
+"There goes a rat," said Fletcher vaguely, and without taking his gaze
+from the darkness under the distant shore. "It's gone into the cutting
+at the back of John Ki's."
+
+He ceased speaking and flashed the lamp again several times. Then, all
+at once out of the murky darkness into which we were peering, looked
+a little eye of light--once, twice, thrice it winked at us from low
+down upon the oily water; then was gone.
+
+"It's Weymouth with the cutter," said Fletcher; "they are ready ...
+now for Jon Ki's."
+
+We stumbled back up the slight acclivity beneath the archway to the
+street, leaving the ruinous gates as we had found them. Into the
+uninviting little alley immediately opposite we plunged, and where
+the faint yellow luminance showed upon the muddy path before us,
+Fletcher paused a moment, whispering to me warningly.
+
+"Don't speak if you can help it," he said; "if you do, mumble any old
+jargon in any language you like, and throw in plenty of cursing!"
+
+He grasped me by the arm, and I found myself crossing the threshold of
+the Joy-Shop--I found myself in a meanly furnished room no more than
+twelve feet square and very low ceiled, smelling strongly of paraffin
+oil. The few items of furniture which it contained were but dimly
+discernible in the light of a common tin lamp which stood upon a
+packing-case at the head of what looked like cellar steps.
+
+Abruptly, I pulled up; for this stuffy little den did not correspond
+with pre-conceived ideas of the place for which we were bound. I was
+about to speak when Fletcher nipped my arm--and out from the shadows
+behind the packing-case a little bent figure arose!
+
+I started violently, for I had had no idea that another was in the
+room. The apparition proved to be a Chinaman, and judging from what I
+could see of him, a very old Chinaman, his bent figure attired in a
+blue smock. His eyes were almost invisible amidst an intricate map of
+wrinkles which covered his yellow face.
+
+"Evening, John," said Fletcher--and, pulling me with him, he made for
+the head of the steps.
+
+As I came abreast of the packing-case, the Chinaman lifted the lamp
+and directed its light fully upon my face.
+
+Great as was the faith which I reposed in my make-up, a doubt and a
+tremor disturbed me now, as I found myself thus scrutinized by those
+cunning old eyes looking out from the mask-like, apish face. For the
+first time the Chinaman spoke.
+
+"You blinger fliend, Charlie?" he squeaked in a thin, piping voice.
+
+"Him play piecee card," replied Fletcher briefly. "Good fellow, plenty
+much money."
+
+He descended the steps, still holding my arm, and I perforce followed
+him. Apparently John's scrutiny and Fletcher's explanation respecting
+me, together had proved satisfactory; for the lamp was replaced upon
+the lid of the packing-case, and the little bent figure dropped down
+again into the shadows from which it had emerged.
+
+"Allee lightee," I heard faintly as I stumbled downward in the wake
+of Fletcher.
+
+I had expected to find myself in a cellar, but instead discovered that
+we were in a small square court with the mist of the night about us
+again. On a doorstep facing us stood a duplicate of the lamp upon the
+box upstairs. Evidently this was designed to indicate the portals of
+the Joy-Shop, for Fletcher pushed open the door, whose threshold
+accommodated the lamp, and the light of the place beyond shone out
+into our faces. We entered and my companion closed the door behind us.
+
+Before me I perceived a long low room lighted by flaming gas-burners,
+the jets hissing and spluttering in the draught from the door, for
+they were entirely innocent of shades or mantles. Wooden tables,
+their surfaces stained with the marks of countless wet glasses, were
+ranged about the place, café fashion; and many of these tables
+accommodated groups, of nondescript nationality for the most part.
+One or two there were in a distant corner who were unmistakably
+Chinamen; but my slight acquaintance with the races of the East did
+not enable me to classify the greater number of those whom I now saw
+about me. There were several unattractive-looking women present.
+
+Fletcher walked up the center of the place, exchanging nods of
+recognition with two hang-dog poker-players, and I was pleased to note
+that our advent had apparently failed to attract the slightest
+attention. Through an opening on the right-hand side of the room, near
+the top, I looked into a smaller apartment, occupied exclusively by
+Chinese. They were playing some kind of roulette and another game
+which seemed wholly to absorb their interest. I ventured no more than
+a glance, then passed on with my companion.
+
+"_Fan-tan!_" he whispered in my ear.
+
+Other forms of gambling were in progress at some of the tables; and
+now Fletcher silently drew my attention to yet a third dimly lighted
+apartment--this opening out from the left-hand corner of the
+principal room. The atmosphere of the latter was sufficiently
+abominable; indeed, the stench was appalling; but a wave of choking
+vapor met me as I paused for a moment at the threshold of this inner
+sanctuary. I formed but the vaguest impression of its interior; the
+smell was sufficient. This annex was evidently reserved for
+opium-smokers.
+
+Fletcher sat down at a small table near by, and I took a common wooden
+chair which he thrust forward with his foot. I was looking around at
+the sordid scene, filled with a bitter sense of my own impotency to
+aid my missing friend, when that occurred which set my heart beating
+wildly at once with hope and excitement. Fletcher must have seen
+something of this in my attitude, for--
+
+"Don't forget what I told you," he whispered. "Be cautious!--be very
+cautious!..."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+ZARMI OF THE JOY-SHOP
+
+
+Down the center of the room came a girl carrying the only ornamental
+object which thus far I  had seen in the Joy-Shop; a large Oriental
+brass tray. She was a figure which must have formed a center of
+interest in any place, trebly so, then, in such a place as this. Her
+costume consisted in a series of incongruities, whilst the entire
+effect was barbaric and by no means unpicturesque. She wore high-heeled
+red slippers, and, as her short gauzy skirt rendered amply evident,
+black silk stockings. A brilliantly colored Oriental scarf was wound
+around her waist and knotted in front, its tasseled ends swinging
+girdle fashion. A sort of chemise--like the _'anteree_ of Egyptian
+women--completed her costume, if I except a number of barbaric
+ornaments, some of them of silver, with which her hands and arms
+were bedecked.
+
+But strange as was the girl's attire, it was to her face that my gaze
+was drawn irresistibly. Evidently, like most of those around us, she
+was some kind of half-caste; but, unlike them, she was wickedly
+handsome. I use the adverb _wickedly_ with deliberation; for the
+pallidly dusky, oval face, with the full red lips, between which rested
+a large yellow cigarette, and the half-closed almond-shaped eyes,
+possessed a beauty which might have appealed to an artist of one of
+the modern perverted schools, but which filled me less with admiration
+than horror. For I _knew_ her--I recognized her, from a past, brief
+meeting; I knew her, beyond all possibility of doubt, to be one of
+the Si-Fan group!
+
+This strange creature, tossing back her jet-black, frizzy hair, which
+was entirely innocent of any binding or ornament, advanced along the
+room towards us, making unhesitatingly for our table, and carrying her
+lithe body with the grace of a _Ghįzeeyeh_.
+
+I glanced at Fletcher across the table.
+
+"Zarmi!" he whispered.
+
+Again I raised my eyes to the face which now was close to mine, and
+became aware that I was trembling with excitement....
+
+Heavens! why did enlightenment come too late! Either I was the victim
+of an odd delusion, or Zarmi had been the driver of the cab in which
+Nayland Smith had left the New Louvre Hotel!
+
+Zarmi place the brass tray upon the table and bent down, resting her
+elbows upon it, her hands upturned and her chin nestling in her palms.
+The smoke from the cigarette, now held in her fingers, mingled with
+her disheveled hair. She looked fully into my face, a long, searching
+look; then her lips parted in the slow, voluptuous smile of the
+Orient. Without moving her head she turned the wonderful eyes (rendered
+doubly luminous by the _kohl_ with which her lashes and lids were
+darkened) upon Fletcher.
+
+"What you and your strong friend drinking?" she said softly.
+
+Her voice possessed a faint husky note which betrayed her Eastern
+parentage, yet it had in it the siren lure which is the ancient
+heritage of the Eastern woman--a heritage more ancient than the tribe
+of the _Ghāzeeyeh_, to one of whom I had mentally likened Zarmi.
+
+"Same thing," replied Fletcher promptly; and raising his hand, he
+idly toyed with a huge gold ear-ring which she wore.
+
+Still resting her elbows upon the table and bending down between us,
+Zarmi turned her slumbering, half-closed black eyes again upon me,
+then slowly, languishingly, upon Fletcher. She replaced the yellow
+cigarette between her lips. He continued to toy with the ear-ring.
+
+Suddenly the girl sprang upright, and from its hiding-place within
+the silken scarf, plucked out a Malay _krīs_ with a richly jeweled
+hilt. Her eyes now widely opened and blazing, she struck at my
+companion!
+
+I half rose from my chair, stifling a cry of horror; but Fletcher,
+regarding her fixedly, never moved ... and Zarmi stayed her hand just
+as the point of the dagger had reached his throat!
+
+"You see," she whispered softly but intensely, "how soon I can kill
+you."
+
+Ere I had overcome the amazement and horror with which her action
+had filled me, she had suddenly clutched me by the shoulder, and,
+turning from Fletcher, had the point of the _krīs_ at _my_ throat!
+
+"You, too!" she whispered, "you too!"
+
+Lower and lower she bent, the needle point of the weapon pricking my
+skin, until her beautiful, evil face almost touched mine. Then,
+miraculously, the fire died out of her eyes; they half closed again
+and became languishing, luresome _Ghāzeeyeh_ eyes. She laughed softly,
+wickedly, and puffed cigarette smoke into my face.
+
+Thrusting her dagger into her waist-belt, and snatching up the brass
+tray, she swayed down the room, chanting some barbaric song in her
+husky Eastern voice.
+
+I inhaled deeply and glanced across at my companion. Beneath the
+make-up with which I had stained my skin, I knew that I had grown
+more than a little pale.
+
+"Fletcher!" I whispered, "we are on the eve of a great discovery--that
+girl ..."
+
+I broke off, and clutching the table with both hands, sat listening
+intently. From the room behind me, the opium-room, whose entrance was
+less than two paces from where we sat, came a sound of dragging and
+tapping! Slowly, cautiously, I began to turn my head; when a sudden
+outburst of simian chattering from the _fan-tan_ players drowned that
+other sinister sound.
+
+"You heard it, Doctor!" hissed Fletcher.
+
+"The man with the limp!" I said hoarsely; "he is in there! Fletcher!
+I am utterly confused. I believe this place to hold the key to the
+whole mystery, I believe ..."
+
+Fletcher gave me a warning glance--and, turning anew, I saw Zarmi
+approaching with her sinuous gait, carrying two glasses and jug upon
+the ornate tray. These she set down upon the table; then stood
+spinning the salver cleverly upon the point of her index finger and
+watching us through half-closed eyes.
+
+My companion took out some loose coins, but the girl thrust the
+proffered payment aside with her disengaged hand, the salver still
+whirling upon the upraised finger of the other.
+
+"Presently you pay for drink," she said. "You do something for me--eh?"
+
+"Yep," replied Fletcher nonchalantly, watering the rum in the
+tumblers. "What time?"
+
+"Presently I tell you. You stay here. This one a strong feller?"--
+indicating myself.
+
+"Sure," drawled Fletcher; "strong as a mule he is."
+
+"All right. I give him one little kiss if he good boy!"
+
+Tossing the tray in the air she caught it, rested its edge upon her
+hip, turned, and walked away down the room, puffing her cigarette.
+
+"Listen," I said, bending across the table, "it was Zarmi who drove
+the cab that came for Nayland Smith to-day!"
+
+"My God!" whispered Fletcher, "then it was nothing less than the hand
+of Providence that brought us here to-night. Yes! I know how you feel,
+Doctor!--but we must play our cards as they're dealt to us. We must
+wait--wait."
+
+Out from the den of the opium-smokers came Zarmi, one hand resting
+upon her hip and the other uplifted, a smoldering yellow cigarette
+held between the first and second fingers. With a movement of her
+eyes she summoned us to join her, then turned and disappeared again
+through the low doorway.
+
+The time for action was arrived--we were to see behind the scenes of
+the Joy-Shop! Our chance to revenge poor Smith even if we could not
+save him. I became conscious of an inward and suppressed excitement;
+surreptitiously I felt the hilt of the Browning pistol in my pocket.
+The shadow of the dead Fu-Manchu seemed to be upon me. God! how I
+loathed and feared that memory!
+
+"We can make no plans," I whispered to Fletcher, as together we rose
+from the table; "we must be guided by circumstance."
+
+In order to enter the little room laden with those sickly opium fumes
+we had to lower our heads. Two steps led down into the place, which
+was so dark that I hesitated, momentarily, peering about me.
+
+Apparently some four of five persons squatted and lay in the darkness
+about me. Some were couched upon rough wooden shelves ranged around
+the walls, others sprawled upon the floor, in the center whereof, upon
+a small tea-chest, stood a smoky brass lamp. The room and its
+occupants alike were indeterminate, sketchy; its deadly atmosphere
+seemed to be suffocating me. A sort of choking sound came from one of
+the bunks; a vague, obscene murmuring filled the whole place
+revoltingly.
+
+Zarmi stood at the further end, her lithe figure silhouetted against
+the vague light coming through an open doorway. I saw her raise her
+hand, beckoning to us.
+
+Circling around the chest supporting the lamp we crossed the foul
+den and found ourselves in a narrow, dim passage-way, but in cleaner
+air.
+
+"Come," said Zarmi, extending her long, slim hand to me.
+
+I took it, solely for guidance in the gloom, and she immediately drew
+my arm about her waist, leant back against my shoulder and, raising
+her pouted red lips, blew a cloud of tobacco smoke fully into my eyes!
+
+Momentarily blinded, I drew back with a muttered exclamation.
+Suspecting what I did of this tigerish half-caste, I could almost have
+found it in my heart to return her savage pleasantries with interest.
+
+As I raised my hands to my burning eyes, Fletcher uttered a sharp cry
+of pain. I turned in time to see the girl touch him lightly on the
+neck with the burning tip of her cigarette.
+
+"You jealous, eh, Charlie?" she said. "But I love you, too--see! Come
+along, you strong fellers...."
+
+And away she went along the passage, swaying her hips lithely and
+glancing back over her shoulders in smiling coquetry.
+
+Tears were still streaming from my eyes when I found myself standing
+in a sort of rough shed, stone-paved, and containing a variety of
+nondescript rubbish. A lantern stood upon the floor; and beside it ...
+
+The place seemed to be swimming around me, the stone floor to be
+heaving beneath my feet....
+
+Beside the lantern stood a wooden chest, some six feet long, and
+having strong rope handles at either end. Evidently the chest had but
+recently been nailed up. As Zarmi touched it lightly with the pointed
+toe of her little red slipper I clutched at Fletcher for support.
+
+Fletcher grasped my arm in a vice-like grip. To him, too, had come
+the ghastly conviction--the gruesome thought that neither of us dared
+to name.
+
+It was Nayland Smith's coffin that we were to carry!
+
+"Through here," came dimly to my ears, "and then I tell you what to
+do...."
+
+Coolness returned to me, suddenly, unaccountably. I doubted not for an
+instant that the best friend I had in the world lay dead there at the
+feet of the hellish girl who called herself Zarmi, and I knew since it
+was she, disguised, who had driven him to his doom, that she must have
+been actively concerned in his murder.
+
+But, I argued, although the damp night air was pouring in through the
+door which Zarmi now held open, although sound of Thames-side activity
+came stealing to my ears, we were yet within the walls of the Joy-Shop,
+with a score or more Asiatic ruffians at the woman's beck and call....
+
+With perfect truth I can state that I retain not even a shadowy
+recollection of aiding Fletcher to move the chest out on to the brink
+of the cutting--for it was upon this that the door directly opened.
+The mist had grown denser, and except a glimpse of slowly moving water
+beneath me, I could discern little of our surrounding.
+
+So much I saw by the light of a lantern which stood in the stern of a
+boat. In the bows of this boat I was vaguely aware of the presence of
+a crouched figure enveloped in rugs--vaguely aware that two filmy
+eyes regarded me out of the darkness. A man who looked like a lascar
+stood upright in the stern.
+
+I must have been acting like a man in a stupor; for I was aroused to
+the realities by the contact of a burning cigarette with the lobe of
+my right ear!
+
+"Hurry, quick, strong feller!" said Zarmi softly.
+
+At that it seemed as though some fine nerve of my brain, already
+strained to utmost tension, snapped. I turned, with a wild,
+inarticulate cry, my fists raised frenziedly above my head.
+
+"You fiend!" I shrieked at the mocking Eurasian, "you yellow fiend of
+hell!"
+
+I was beside myself, insane. Zarmi fell back a step, flashing a glance
+from my own contorted face to that, now pale even beneath its artificial
+tan, of Fletcher.
+
+I snatched the pistol from my pocket, and for one fateful moment the
+lust of slaying claimed my mind.... Then I turned towards the river,
+and, raising the Browning, fired shot after shot in the air.
+
+"Weymouth!" I cried. "Weymouth!"
+
+A sharp hissing sound came from behind me; a short, muffled cry ...
+and something descended, crushing, upon my skull. Like a wild cat
+Zarmi hurled herself past me and leapt into the boat. One glimpse I
+had of her pallidly dusky face, of her blazing black eyes, and the
+boat was thrust off into the waterway ... was swallowed up in the mist.
+
+I turned, dizzily, to see Fletcher sinking to his knees, one hand
+clutching his breast.
+
+"She got me ... with the knife," he whispered. "But ... don't worry ...
+look to yourself, and ..._him_...."
+
+He pointed, weakly--then collapsed at my feet. I threw myself upon
+the wooden chest with a fierce, sobbing cry.
+
+"Smith, Smith!" I babbled, and knew myself no better, in my sorrow,
+than an hysterical woman. "Smith, dear old man! speak to me! speak
+to me!..."
+
+Outraged emotion overcame me utterly, and with my arms thrown across
+the box, I slipped into unconsciousness.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+FU-MANCHU
+
+
+Many poignant recollections are mine, more of them bitter than sweet;
+but no one of them all can compare with the memory of that moment of
+my awakening.
+
+Weymouth was supporting me, and my throat still tingled from the
+effects of the brandy which he had forced between my teeth from his
+flask. My heart was beating irregularly; my mind yet partly inert.
+With something compound of horror and hope I lay staring at one who
+was anxiously bending over the Inspector's shoulder, watching me.
+
+_It was Nayland Smith._
+
+A whole hour of silence seemed to pass, ere speech became possible;
+then--
+
+"Smith!" I whispered, "are you ..."
+
+Smith grasped my outstretched, questing hand, grasped it firmly,
+warmly; and I saw his gray eyes to be dim in the light of the several
+lanterns around us.
+
+"Am I alive?" he said. "Dear old Petrie! Thanks to you, I am not only
+alive, but free!"
+
+My head was buzzing like a hive of bees, but I managed, aided by
+Weymouth, to struggle to my feet. Muffled sounds of shouting and
+scuffling reached me. Two men in the uniform of the Thames Police were
+carrying a limp body in at the low doorway communicating with the
+infernal Joy-Shop.
+
+"It's Fletcher," said Weymouth, noting the anxiety expressed in my
+face. "His missing lady friend has given him a nasty wound, but he'll
+pull round all right."
+
+"Thank God for that," I replied, clutched my aching head. "I don't
+know what weapon she employed in my case, but it narrowly missed
+achieving her purpose."
+
+My eyes, throughout, were turned upon Smith, for his presence there,
+still seemed to me miraculous.
+
+"Smith," I said, "for Heaven's sake enlighten me! I never doubted
+that you were ..."
+
+"In the wooden chest!" concluded Smith grimly, "Look!"
+
+He pointed to something that lay behind me. I turned, and saw the box
+which had occasioned me such anguish. The top had been wrenched off
+and the contents exposed to view. It was filled with a variety of gold
+ornaments, cups, vases, silks, and barbaric brocaded raiment; it might
+well have contained the loot of a cathedral. Inspector Weymouth
+laughed gruffly at my surprise.
+
+"What is it?" I asked, in a voice of amazement.
+
+"It's the treasure of the Si-Fan, I presume," rapped Smith. "Where it
+has come from and where it was going to, it must be my immediate
+business to ascertain."
+
+"Then you ..."
+
+"I was lying, bound and gagged, upon one of the upper shelves in the
+opium-den! I heard you and Fletcher arrive. I saw you pass through
+later with that she-devil who drove the cab to-day ..."
+
+"Then the cab ..."
+
+"The windows were fastened, unopenable, and some anaesthetic was
+injected into the interior through a tube--that speaking-tube. I know
+nothing further, except that our plans must have leaked out in some
+mysterious fashion. Petrie, my suspicions point to high quarters. The
+Si-Fan score thus far, for unless the search now in progress brings
+it to light, we must conclude that they have the brass coffer."
+
+He was interrupted by a sudden loud crying of his name.
+
+"Mr. Nayland Smith!" came from somewhere within the Joy-Shop. "This
+way, sir!"
+
+Off he went, in his quick, impetuous manner, whilst I stood there,
+none too steadily, wondering what discovery this outcry portended.
+I had not long to wait. Out by the low doorway come Smith, a grimly
+triumphant smile upon his face, carrying the missing brass coffer!
+
+He set it down upon the planking before me.
+
+"John Ki," he said, "who was also on the missing list, had dragged
+the thing out of the cellar where it was hidden, and in another minute
+must have slipped away with it. Detective Deacon saw the light shining
+through a crack in the floor. I shall never forget the look John gave
+us when we came upon him, as, lamp in hand, he bent over the precious
+chest."
+
+"Shall you open it now?"
+
+"No." He glanced at me oddly. "I shall have it valued in the morning
+by Messrs. Meyerstein."
+
+He was keeping something back; I was sure of it.
+
+"Smith," I said suddenly, "the man with the limp! I heard him in the
+place where you were confined! Did you ..."
+
+Nayland Smith clicked his teeth together sharply, looking straightly
+and grimly into my eyes.
+
+"I _saw_ him!" he replied slowly; "and unless the effects of the
+anaesthetic had not wholly worn off ..."
+
+"Well!" I cried.
+
+"The man with the limp is _Dr. Fu-Manchu!_"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE TŪLUN-NŪR CHEST
+
+
+"This box," said Mr. Meyerstein, bending attentively over the carven
+brass coffer upon the table, "is certainly of considerable value, and
+possibly almost unique."
+
+Nayland Smith glanced across at me with a slight smile. Mr. Meyerstein
+ran one fat finger tenderly across the heavily embossed figures, which,
+like barnacles, encrusted the sides and lid of the weird curio which
+we had summoned him to appraise.
+
+"What do you think, Lewison?" he added, glancing over his shoulder at
+the clerk who accompanied him.
+
+Lewison, whose flaxen hair and light blue eyes almost served to mask
+his Semitic origin, shrugged his shoulders in a fashion incongruous
+in one of his complexion, though characteristic in one of his name.
+
+"It is as you say, Mr. Meyerstein, an example of early Tūlun-Nūr
+work," he said. "It may be sixteenth century or even earlier. The
+Kūren treasure-chest in the Hague Collection has points of
+similarity, but the workmanship of this specimen is infinitely finer."
+
+"In a word, gentlemen," snapped Nayland Smith, rising from the
+arm-chair in which he had been sitting, and beginning restlessly to
+pace the room, "in a word, you would be prepared to make me a
+substantial offer for this box?"
+
+Mr. Meyerstein, his shrewd eyes twinkling behind the pebbles of his
+pince-nez, straightened himself slowly, turned in the ponderous manner
+of a fat man, and readjusted the pince-nez upon his nose. He cleared
+his throat.
+
+"I have not yet seen the interior of the box, Mr. Smith," he said.
+
+Smith paused in his perambulation of the carpet and stared hard at
+the celebrated art dealer.
+
+"Unfortunately," he replied, "the key is missing."
+
+"Ah!" cried the assistant, Lewison, excitedly, "you are mistaken, sir!
+Coffers of this description and workmanship are nearly always
+complicated conjuring tricks; they rarely open by any such rational
+means as lock and key. For instance, the Kūren treasure-chest to
+which I referred, opens by an intricate process involving the pressing
+of certain knobs in the design, and the turning of others."
+
+"It was ultimately opened," said Mr. Meyerstein, with a faint note of
+professional envy in his voice, "by one of Christie's experts."
+
+"Does my memory mislead me," I interrupted, "or was it not regarding
+the possession of the chest to which you refer, that the celebrated
+case of 'Hague versus Jacobs' arose?"
+
+"You are quite right, Dr. Petrie," said Meyerstein, turning to me.
+"The original owner, a member of the Younghusband Expedition, had been
+unable to open the chest. When opened at Christie's it proved to
+contain jewels and other valuables. It was a curious case, wasn't it,
+Lewison?" turning to his clerk.
+
+"Very," agreed the other absently; then--"Have you endeavored to open
+this box, Mr. Smith?"
+
+Nayland Smith shook his head grimly.
+
+"From its weight," said Meyerstein, "I am inclined to think that the
+contents might prove of interest. With your permission I will
+endeavor to open it."
+
+Nayland Smith, tugging reflectively at the lobe of his left ear, stood
+looking at the expert. Then--
+
+"I do not care to attempt it at present," he said.
+
+Meyerstein and his clerk stared at the speaker in surprise.
+
+"But you would be mad," cried the former, "if you accepted an offer for
+the box, whilst ignorant of the nature of its contents."
+
+"But I have invited no offer," said Smith. "I do not propose to sell."
+
+Meyerstein adjusted his pince-nez again.
+
+"I am a business man," he said, "and I will make a business proposal:
+A hundred guineas for the box, cash down, and our commission to be ten
+per cent on the proceeds of the contents. You must remember," raising
+a fat forefinger to check Smith, who was about to interrupt him, "that
+it may be necessary to force the box in order to open it, thereby
+decreasing its market value and making it a bad bargain at a hundred
+guineas."
+
+Nayland Smith met my gaze across the room; again a slight smile
+crossed the lean, tanned face.
+
+"I can only reply, Mr. Meyerstein," he said, "in this way: if I desire
+to place the box on the market, you shall have first refusal, and the
+same applies to the contents, if any. For the moment if you will send
+me a note of your fee, I shall be obliged." He raised his hand with a
+conclusive gesture. "I am not prepared to discuss the question of sale
+any further at present, Mr. Meyerstein."
+
+At that the dealer bowed, took up his hat from the table, and prepared
+to depart. Lewison opened the door and stood aside.
+
+"Good morning, gentlemen," said Meyerstein.
+
+As Lewison was about to follow him--
+
+"Since you do not intend to open the box," he said, turning, his hand
+upon the door knob, "have you any idea of its contents?"
+
+"None," replied Smith; "but with my present inadequate knowledge of
+its history, I do not care to open it."
+
+Lewison smiled skeptically.
+
+"Probably you know best," he said, bowed to us both, and retired.
+
+When the door was closed--
+
+"You see, Petrie," said Smith, beginning to stuff tobacco into his
+briar, "if we are ever short of funds, here's something"--pointing to
+the Tūlun-Nūr box upon the table--"which would retrieve our fallen
+fortunes."
+
+He uttered one of his rare, boyish laughs, and began to pace the
+carpet again, his gaze always set upon our strange treasure. What did
+it contain?
+
+The manner in which it had come into our possession suggested that it
+might contain something of the utmost value to the Yellow group. For
+we knew the house of John Ki to be, if not the head-quarters, certainly
+a meeting-place of the mysterious organization the Si-Fan; we knew
+that Dr. Fu-Manchu used the place--Dr. Fu-Manchu, the uncanny being
+whose existence seemingly proved him immune from natural laws, a
+deathless incarnation of evil.
+
+My gaze set upon the box, I wondered anew what strange, dark secrets
+it held; I wondered how many murders and crimes greater than murder
+blackened its history.
+
+"Smith," I said suddenly, "now that the mystery of the absence of a
+key-hole is explained, I am sorely tempted to essay the task of
+opening the coffer. I think it might help us to a solution of the
+whole mystery."
+
+"And I think otherwise!" interrupted my friend grimly. "In a word,
+Petrie, I look upon this box as a sort of hostage by means of which--
+who knows--we might one day buy our lives from the enemy.
+I have a sort of fancy, call it superstition if you will, that
+nothing--not even our miraculous good luck--could save us if once
+we ravished its secret."
+
+I stared at him amazedly; this was a new phase in his character.
+
+"I am conscious of something almost like a spiritual unrest," he
+continued. "Formerly you were endowed with a capacity for divining
+the presence of Fu-Manchu or his agents. Some such second-sight would
+appear to have visited me now, and it directs me forcibly to avoid
+opening the box."
+
+His steps as he paced the floor grew more and more rapid. He
+relighted his pipe, which had gone out as usual, and tossed the
+match-end into the hearth.
+
+"To-morrow," he said, "I shall lodge the coffer in a place of greater
+security. Come along, Petrie, Weymouth is expecting us at Scotland Yard."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+IN THE FOG
+
+
+"But, Smith," I began, as my friend hurried me along the corridor, "you
+are not going to leave the box unguarded?"
+
+Nayland Smith tugged at my arm, and, glancing at him, I saw him
+frowningly shake his head. Utterly mystified, I nevertheless
+understood that for some reason he desired me to preserve silence for
+the present. Accordingly I said no more until the lift brought us down
+into the lobby and we had passed out from the New Louvre Hotel,
+crossed the busy thoroughfare and entered the buffet of an
+establishment not far distant. My friend having ordered cocktails--
+
+"And now perhaps you will explain to me the reason for your mysterious
+behavior?" said I.
+
+Smith, placing my glass before me, glanced about him to right and left,
+and having satisfied himself that his words could not be overheard--
+
+"Petrie," he whispered, "I believe we are spied upon at the New Louvre."
+
+"What!"
+
+"There are spies of the Si-Fan--of Fu-Manchu--amongst the hotel
+servants! We have good reason to believe that Dr. Fu-Manchu at one
+time was actually in the building, and we have been compelled to draw
+attention to the state of the electric fitting in our apartments, which
+enables any one in the corridor above to spy upon us."
+
+"Then why do you stay?"
+
+"For a very good reason, Petrie, and the same that prompts me to
+retain the Tūlun-Nūr box in my own possession rather than to deposit
+it in the strong-room of my bank."
+
+"I begin to understand."
+
+"I trust you do, Petrie; it is fairly obvious. Probably the plan is a
+perilous one, but I hope, by laying myself open to attack, to
+apprehend the enemy--perhaps to make an important capture."
+
+Setting down my glass, I stared in silence at Smith.
+
+"I will anticipate your remark," he said, smiling dryly. "I am aware
+that I am not entitled to expose _you_ to these dangers. It is _my_
+duty and I must perform it as best I can; you, as a volunteer, are
+perfectly entitled to withdraw."
+
+As I continued silently to stare at him, his expression changed; the
+gray eyes grew less steely, and presently, clapping his hand upon my
+shoulder in his impulsive way--
+
+"Petrie!" he cried, "you know I had no intention of hurting your
+feelings, but in the circumstances it was impossible for me to say less."
+
+"You have said enough, Smith," I replied shortly. "I beg of you to say
+no more."
+
+He gripped my shoulder hard, then plunged his hand into his pocket and
+pulled out the blackened pipe.
+
+"We see it through together, then, though God knows whither it will
+lead us."
+
+"In the first place," I interrupted, "since you have left the chest
+unguarded----"
+
+"I locked the door."
+
+"What is a mere lock where Fu-Manchu is concerned?"
+
+Nayland Smith laughed almost gaily.
+
+"Really, Petrie," he cried, "sometimes I cannot believe that you mean
+me to take you seriously. Inspector Weymouth has engaged the room
+immediately facing our door, and no one can enter or leave the suite
+unseen by him."
+
+"Inspector Weymouth?"
+
+"Oh! for once he has stooped to a disguise: spectacles, and a muffler
+which covers his face right up to the tip of his nose. Add to this a
+prodigious overcoat and an asthmatic cough, and you have a picture of
+Mr. Jonathan Martin, the occupant of room No. 239."
+
+I could not repress a smile upon hearing this description.
+
+"No. 239," continued Smith, "contains two beds, and Mr. Martin's
+friend will be joining him there this evening."
+
+Meeting my friend's questioning glance, I nodded comprehendingly.
+
+"Then what part do _I_ play?"
+
+"Ostensibly we both leave town this evening," he explained; "but I
+have a scheme whereby you will be enabled to remain behind. We shall
+thus have one watcher inside and two out."
+
+"It seems almost absurd," I said incredulously, "to expect any member
+of the Yellow group to attempt anything in a huge hotel like the New
+Louvre, here in the heart of London!"
+
+Nayland Smith, having lighted his pipe, stretched his arms and stared
+me straight in the face.
+
+"Has Fu-Manchu never attempted outrage, murder, in the heart of London
+before?" he snapped.
+
+The words were sufficient. Remembering black episodes of the past (one
+at least of them had occurred not a thousand yards from the very spot
+upon which we now stood), I knew that I had spoken folly.
+
+Certain arrangements were made then, including a visit to Scotland
+Yard; and a plan--though it sounds anomalous--at once elaborate and
+simple, was put into execution in the dusk of the evening.
+
+London remained in the grip of fog, and when we passed along the
+corridor communicating with our apartments, faint streaks of yellow
+vapor showed in the light of the lamp suspended at the further end.
+I knew that Nayland Smith suspected the presence of some spying
+contrivance in our rooms, although I was unable to conjecture how this
+could have been managed without the connivance of the management. In
+pursuance of his idea, however, he extinguished the lights a moment
+before we actually quitted the suite. Just within the door he helped
+me to remove the somewhat conspicuous check traveling-coat which I
+wore. With this upon his arm he opened the door and stepped out into
+the corridor.
+
+As the door slammed upon his exit, I heard him cry: "Come along,
+Petrie! we have barely five minutes to catch our train."
+
+Detective Carter of New Scotland Yard had joined him at the threshold,
+and muffled up in the gray traveling-coat was now hurrying with Smith
+along the corridor and out of the hotel. Carter, in build and features,
+was not unlike me, and I did not doubt that any one who might be
+spying upon our movements would be deceived by this device.
+
+In the darkness of the apartment I stood listening to the retreating
+footsteps in the corridor. A sense of loneliness and danger assailed
+me. I knew that Inspector Weymouth was watching and listening from the
+room immediately opposite; that he held Smith's key; that I could
+summon him to my assistance, if necessary, in a matter of seconds.
+
+Yet, contemplating the vigil that lay before me in silence and
+darkness, I cannot pretend that my frame of mind was buoyant. I could
+not smoke; I must make no sound.
+
+As pre-arranged, I cautiously removed my boots, and as cautiously
+tiptoed across the carpet and seated myself in an arm-chair. I
+determined there to await the arrival of Mr. Jonathan Martin's friend,
+which I knew could not now be long delayed.
+
+The clocks were striking eleven when he arrived, and in the perfect
+stillness of that upper corridor. I heard the bustle which heralded
+his approach, heard the rap upon the door opposite, followed by a
+muffled "Come in" from Weymouth. Then, as the door was opened, I heard
+the sound of a wheezy cough.
+
+A strange cracked voice (which, nevertheless, I recognized for Smith's)
+cried, "Hullo, Martin!--cough no better?"
+
+Upon that the door was closed again, and as the retreating footsteps
+of the servant died away, complete silence--that peculiar silence
+which comes with fog--descended once more upon the upper part of the
+New Louvre Hotel.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE VISITANT
+
+
+That first hour of watching, waiting, and listening in the lonely
+quietude passed drearily; and with the passage of every quarter--
+signalized by London's muffled clocks--my mood became increasingly
+morbid. I peopled the silent rooms opening out of that wherein I sat,
+with stealthy, murderous figures; my imagination painted hideous
+yellow faces upon the draperies, twitching yellow hands protruding
+from this crevice and that. A score of times I started nervously,
+thinking I heard the pad of bare feet upon the floor behind me, the
+suppressed breathing of some deathly approach.
+
+Since nothing occurred to justify these tremors, this apprehensive
+mood passed; I realized that I was growing cramped and stiff, that
+unconsciously I had been sitting with my muscles nervously tensed.
+The window was open a foot or so at the top and the blind was drawn;
+but so accustomed were my eyes now to peering through the darkness,
+that I could plainly discern the yellow oblong of the window, and
+though very vaguely, some of the appointments of the room--the
+Chesterfield against one wall, the lamp-shade above my head, the
+table with the Tūlun-Nūr box upon it.
+
+There was fog in the room, and it was growing damply chill, for we
+had extinguished the electric heater some hours before. Very few
+sounds penetrated from outside. Twice or perhaps thrice people passed
+along the corridor, going to their rooms; but, as I knew, the greater
+number of the rooms along that corridor were unoccupied.
+
+From the Embankment far below me, and from the river, faint noises
+came at long intervals it is true; the muffled hooting of motors, and
+yet fainter ringing of bells. Fog signals boomed distantly, and train
+whistles shrieked, remote and unreal. I determined to enter my bedroom,
+and, risking any sound which I might make, to lie down upon the bed.
+
+I rose carefully and carried this plan into execution. I would have
+given much for a smoke, although my throat was parched; and almost any
+drink would have been nectar. But although my hopes (or my fears) of
+an intruder had left me, I determined to stick to the rules of the
+game as laid down. Therefore I neither smoked nor drank, but carefully
+extended my weary limbs upon the coverlet, and telling myself that I
+could guard our strange treasure as well from there as from elsewhere
+... slipped off into a profound sleep.
+
+Nothing approaching in acute and sustained horror to the moment when
+next I opened my eyes exists in all my memories of those days.
+
+In the first place I was aroused by the shaking of the bed. It was
+quivering beneath me as though an earthquake disturbed the very
+foundations of the building. I sprang upright and into full
+consciousness of my lapse.... My hands clutching the coverlet on
+either side of me, I sat staring, staring, staring ... at _that_ which
+peered at me over the foot of the bed.
+
+I knew that I had slept at my post; I was convinced that I was now
+widely awake; yet I _dared_ not admit to myself that what I saw was
+other than a product of my imagination. I dared not admit the physical
+quivering of the bed, for I could not, with sanity, believe its cause
+to be anything human. But what I saw, yet could not credit seeing,
+was this:
+
+A ghostly white face, which seemed to glisten in some faint reflected
+light from the sitting-room beyond, peered over the bedrail; gibbered
+at me demoniacally. With quivering hands this night-mare horror, which
+had intruded where I believed human intrusion to be all but impossible,
+clutched the bed-posts so that the frame of the structure shook and
+faintly rattled....
+
+My heart leapt wildly in my breast, then seemed to suspend its
+pulsations and to grow icily cold. My whole body became chilled
+horrifically. My scalp tingled: I felt that I must either cry out or
+become stark, raving mad!
+
+For this clammily white face, those staring eyes, that wordless
+gibbering, and the shaking, shaking, shaking of the bed in the clutch
+of the nameless visitant--prevailed, refused to disperse like the evil
+dream I had hoped it all to be; manifested itself, indubitably, as
+something tangible--objective....
+
+Outraged reason deprived me of coherent speech. Past the clammy white
+face I could see the sitting-room illuminated by a faint light; I
+could even see the Tūlun-Nūr box upon the table immediately opposite
+the door.
+
+The thing which shook the bed was actual, existent--to be counted with!
+
+Further and further I drew myself away from it, until I crouched close
+up against the head of the bed. Then, as the thing reeled aside, and--
+merciful Heaven!--made as if to come around and approach me yet closer,
+I uttered a hoarse cry and hurled myself out upon the floor and on the
+side remote from that pallid horror which I thought was pursuing me.
+
+I heard a dull thud ... and the thing disappeared from my view, yet--
+and remembering the supreme terror of that visitation I am not ashamed
+to confess it--I dared not move from the spot upon which I stood, I
+dared not make to pass that which lay between me and the door.
+
+"Smith!" I cried, but my voice was little more than a hoarse whisper--
+"Smith! Weymouth!"
+
+The words became clearer and louder as I proceeded, so that the last--
+"Weymouth!"--was uttered in a sort of falsetto scream.
+
+A door burst open upon the other side of the corridor. A key was
+inserted in the lock of the door. Into the dimly lighted arch which
+divided the bed-room from the sitting-room, sprang the figure of
+Nayland Smith!
+
+"Petrie! Petrie!" he called--and I saw him standing there looking from
+left to right.
+
+Then, ere I could reply, he turned, and his gaze fell upon whatever
+lay upon the floor at the foot of the bed.
+
+"My God!" he whispered--and sprang into the room.
+
+"Smith! Smith!" I cried, "what is it? what is it?"
+
+He turned in a flash, as Weymouth entered at his heels, saw me, and
+fell back a step; then looked again down at the floor.
+
+"God's mercy!" he whispered, "I thought it was you--I thought it was
+you!"
+
+Trembling violently, my mind a feverish chaos, I moved to the foot of
+the bed and looked down at what lay there.
+
+"Turn up the light!" snapped Smith.
+
+Weymouth reached for the switch, and the room became illuminated
+suddenly.
+
+Prone upon the carpet, hands outstretched and nails dug deeply into
+the pile of the fabric, lay a dark-haired man having his head twisted
+sideways so that the face showed a ghastly pallid profile against the
+rich colorings upon which it rested. He wore no coat, but a sort of
+dark gray shirt and black trousers. To add to the incongruity of his
+attire, his feet were clad in drab-colored shoes, rubber-soled.
+
+I stood, one hand raised to my head, looking down upon him, and
+gradually regaining control of myself. Weymouth, perceiving something
+of my condition, silently passed his flask to me; and I gladly availed
+myself of this.
+
+"How in Heaven's name did he get in?" I whispered.
+
+"How, indeed!" said Weymouth, staring about him with wondering eyes.
+
+Both he and Smith had discarded their disguises; and, a bewildered
+trio, we stood looking down upon the man at our feet. Suddenly Smith
+dropped to his knees and turned him flat upon his back. Composure was
+nearly restored to me, and I knelt upon the other side of the
+white-faced creature whose presence there seemed so utterly outside
+the realm of possibility, and examined him with a consuming and fearful
+interest; for it was palpable that, if not already dead, he was dying
+rapidly.
+
+He was a slightly built man, and the first discovery that I made was
+a curious one. What I had mistaken for dark hair was a wig! The short
+black mustache which he wore was also factitious.
+
+"Look at this!" I cried.
+
+"I am looking," snapped Smith.
+
+He suddenly stood up, and entering the room beyond, turned on the
+light there. I saw him staring at the Tūlun-Nūr box, and I knew what
+had been in his mind. But the box, undisturbed, stood upon the table
+as we had left it. I saw Smith tugging irritably at the lobe of his
+ear, and staring from the box towards the man beside whom I knelt.
+
+"For God's sake, what does it man?" said Inspector Weymouth in a voice
+hushed with wonder. "How did he get in? What did he come for?--and
+what has happened to him?"
+
+"As to what has happened to him," I replied, "unfortunately I cannot
+tell you. I only know that unless something can be done his end is not
+far off."
+
+"Shall we lay him on the bed?"
+
+I nodded, and together we raised the slight figure and placed it upon
+the bed where so recently I had lain.
+
+As we did so, the man suddenly opened his eyes, which were glazed with
+delirium. He tore himself from our grip, sat bolt upright, and
+holding his hands, fingers outstretched, before his face, stared at
+them frenziedly.
+
+"The golden pomegranates!" he shrieked, and a slight froth appeared on
+his blanched lips. "The golden pomegranates!"
+
+He laughed madly, and fell back inert.
+
+"He's dead!" whispered Weymouth; "he's dead!"
+
+Hard upon his words came a cry from Smith:
+
+"Quick! Petrie!--Weymouth!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE ROOM BELOW
+
+
+I ran into the sitting-room, to discover Nayland Smith craning out of
+the now widely opened window. The blind had been drawn up, I did not
+know by whom; and, leaning out beside my friend, I was in time to
+perceive some bright object moving down the gray stone wall. Almost
+instantly it disappeared from sight in the yellow banks below.
+
+Smith leapt around in a whirl of excitement.
+
+"Come in, Petrie!" he cried, seizing my arm. "You remain here,
+Weymouth; don't leave these rooms whatever happens!"
+
+We ran out into the corridor. For my own part I had not the vaguest
+idea what we were about. My mind was not yet fully recovered from the
+frightful shock which it had sustained; and the strange words of the
+dying man--"the golden pomegranates"--had increased my mental
+confusion. Smith apparently had not heard them, for he remained grimly
+silent, as side by side we raced down the marble stairs to the
+corridor immediately below our own.
+
+Although, amid the hideous turmoil to which I had awakened, I had
+noted nothing of the hour, evidently the night was far advanced. Not a
+soul was to be seen from end to end of the vast corridor in which we
+stood ... until on the right-hand side and about half-way along, a
+door opened and a woman came out hurriedly, carrying a small hand-bag.
+
+She wore a veil, so that her features were but vaguely distinguished,
+but her every movement was agitated; and this agitation perceptibly
+increased when, turning, she perceived the two of us bearing down
+upon her.
+
+Nayland Smith, who had been audibly counting the doors along the
+corridor as we passed them, seized the woman's arm without ceremony,
+and pulled her into the apartment she had been on the point of
+quitting, closing the door behind us as we entered.
+
+"Smith!" I began, "for Heaven's sake what are you about?"
+
+"You shall see, Petrie!" he snapped.
+
+He released the woman's arm, and pointing to an arm-chair near by--
+
+"Be seated," he said sternly.
+
+Speechless with amazement, I stood, with my back to the door, watching
+this singular scene. Our captive, who wore a smart walking costume and
+whose appearance was indicative of elegance and culture, so far had
+uttered no word of protest, no cry.
+
+Now, whilst Smith stood rigidly pointing to the chair, she seated
+herself with something very like composure and placed the leather bag
+upon the floor beside her. The room in which I found myself was one of
+a suite almost identical with our own, but from what I had gathered in
+a hasty glance around, it bore no signs of recent tenancy. The window
+was widely opened, and upon the floor lay a strange-looking contrivance
+apparently made of aluminum. A large grip, open, stood beside it, and
+from this some portions of a black coat and other garments protruded.
+
+"Now, madame," said Nayland Smith, "will you be good enough to raise
+your veil?"
+
+Silently, unprotestingly, the woman obeyed him, raising her gloved
+hands and lifting the veil from her face.
+
+The features revealed were handsome in a hard fashion, but heavily
+made-up. Our captive was younger than I had hitherto supposed; a
+blonde; her hair artificially reduced to the so-called Titian tint.
+But, despite her youth, her eyes, with the blackened lashes, were full
+of a world weariness. Now she smiled cynically.
+
+"Are you satisfied," she said, speaking unemotionally, "or," holding
+up her wrists, "would you like to handcuff me?"
+
+Nayland Smith, glancing from the open grip and the appliance beside it
+to the face of the speaker, began clicking his teeth together, whereby
+I knew him to be perplexed. Then he stared across at me.
+
+"You appear bemused, Petrie," he said, with a certain irritation. "Is
+this what mystifies you?"
+
+Stooping, he picked up the metal contrivance, and almost savagely
+jerked open the top section. It was a telescopic ladder, and more
+ingeniously designed than anything of the kind I had seen before.
+There was a sort of clamp attached to the base, and two sharply pointed
+hooks at the top.
+
+"For reaching windows on an upper floor," snapped my friend, dropping
+the thing with a clatter upon the carpet. "An American device which
+forms part of the equipment of the modern hotel thief!"
+
+He seemed to be disappointed--fiercely disappointed; and I found his
+attitude inexplicable. He turned to the woman--who sat regarding him
+with that fixed cynical smile.
+
+"Who are you?" he demanded; "and what business have you with the Si-Fan?"
+
+The woman's eyes opened more widely, and the smile disappeared from
+her face.
+
+"The Si-Fan!" she repeated slowly. "I don't know what you mean,
+Inspector."
+
+"I am not an Inspector," snapped Smith, "and you know it well enough.
+You have one chance--your last. To whom were you to deliver the box?
+when and where?"
+
+But the blue eyes remained upraised to the grim tanned face with a
+look of wonder in them, which, if assumed, marked the woman a
+consummate actress.
+
+"Who are you?" she asked in a low voice, "and what are you talking
+about?"
+
+Inactive, I stood by the door watching my friend, and his face was a
+fruitful study in perplexity. He seemed upon the point of an angry
+outburst, then, staring intently into the questioning eyes upraised
+to his, he checked the words he would have uttered and began to click
+his teeth together again.
+
+"You are some servant of Dr. Fu-Manchu!" he said.
+
+The girl frowned with a bewilderment which I could have sworn was not
+assumed. Then--
+
+"You said I had one chance a moment ago," she replied. "But if you
+referred to my answering any of your questions, it is no chance at
+all. We have gone under, and I know it. I am not complaining; it's
+all in the game. There's a clear enough case against us, and I am
+sorry"--suddenly, unexpectedly, her eyes became filled with tears,
+which coursed down her cheeks, leaving little wakes of blackness from
+the make-up upon her lashes. Her lips trembled, and her voice shook.
+"I am sorry I let him do it. He'd never done anything--not anything
+big like this--before, and he never would have done if he had not
+met me...."
+
+The look of perplexity upon Smith's face was increasing with every
+word that the girl uttered.
+
+"You don't seem to know me," she continued, her emotion growing
+momentarily greater, "and I don't know you; but they will know me at
+Bow Street. I urged him to do it, when he told me about the box to-day
+at lunch. He said that if it contained half as much as the Kūren
+treasure-chest, we could sail for America and be on the straight all
+the rest of our lives...."
+
+And now something which had hitherto been puzzling me became suddenly
+evident. I had not removed the wig worn by the dead man, but I knew
+that he had fair hair, and when in his last moments he had opened his
+eyes, there had been in the contorted face something faintly familiar.
+
+"Smith!" I cried excitedly, "it is Lewison, Meyerstein's clerk! Don't
+you understand? don't you understand?"
+
+Smith brought his teeth together with a snap and stared me hard in
+the face.
+
+"I do, Petrie. I have been following a false scent. I do!"
+
+The girl in the chair was now sobbing convulsively.
+
+"He was tempted by the possibility of the box containing treasure," I
+ran on, "and his acquaintance with this--lady--who is evidently no
+stranger to felonious operations, led him to make the attempt with her
+assistance. But"--I found myself confronted by a new problem--"what
+caused his death?"
+
+"His ... _death_!"
+
+As a wild, hysterical shriek the words smote upon my ears. I turned,
+to see the girl rise, tottering, from her seat. She began groping in
+front of her, blindly, as though a darkness had descended.
+
+"You did not say he was dead?" she whispered, "not dead!--not ..."
+
+The words were lost in a wild peal of laughter. Clutching at her
+throat she swayed and would have fallen had I not caught her in my
+arms. As I laid her insensible upon the settee I met Smith's glance.
+
+"I think I know that, too, Petrie," he said gravely.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE GOLDEN POMEGRANATES
+
+
+"What was it that he cried out?" demanded Nayland Smith abruptly. "I
+was in the sitting-room and it sounded to me like 'pomegranates'!"
+
+We were bending over Lewison; for now, the wig removed, Lewison it
+proved unmistakably to be, despite the puffy and pallid face.
+
+"He said 'the golden pomegranates,'" I replied, and laughed harshly.
+"They were words of delirium and cannot possibly have any bearing
+upon the manner of his death."
+
+"I disagree."
+
+He strode out into the sitting-room.
+
+Weymouth was below, supervising the removal of the unhappy prisoner,
+and together Smith and I stood looking down at the brass box. Suddenly--
+
+"I propose to attempt to open it," said my friend.
+
+His words came as a complete surprise.
+
+"For what reason?--and why have you so suddenly changed your mind?"
+
+"For a reason which I hope will presently become evident," he said;
+"and as to my change of mind, unless I am greatly mistaken, the wily
+old Chinaman from whom I wrested this treasure was infinitely more
+clever than I gave him credit for being!"
+
+Through the open window came faintly to my ears the chiming of Big Ben.
+The hour was a quarter to two. London's pulse was dimmed now, and
+around about us that great city slept as soundly as it ever sleeps.
+Other sounds came vaguely through the fog, and beside Nayland Smith
+I sat and watched him at work upon the Tūlun-Nūr box.
+
+Every knob of the intricate design he pushed, pulled and twisted; but
+without result. The night wore on, and just before three o'clock
+Inspector Weymouth knocked upon the door. I admitted him, and side by
+side the two of us stood watching Smith patiently pursuing his task.
+
+All conversation had ceased, when, just as the muted booming of
+London's clocks reached my ears again and Weymouth pulled out his
+watch, there came a faint click ... and I saw that Smith had raised
+the lid of the coffer!
+
+Weymouth and I sprang forward with one accord, and over Smith's
+shoulders peered into the interior. There was a second lid of some
+dull, black wood, apparently of great age, and fastened to it so as
+to form knobs or handles was an exquisitely carved pair of _golden
+pomegranates!_
+
+"They are to raise the wooden lid, Mr. Smith!" cried Weymouth eagerly.
+
+"Look! there is a hollow in each to accommodate the fingers!"
+
+"Aren't you going to open it?" I demanded excitedly--"aren't you going
+to open it?"
+
+"Might I invite you to accompany me into the bedroom yonder for a
+moment?" he replied in a tome of studied reserve. "You also, Weymouth?"
+
+Smith leading, we entered the room where the dead man lay stretched
+upon the bed.
+
+"Note the appearance of his fingers," directed Nayland Smith.
+
+I examined the peculiarity to which Smith had drawn my attention. The
+dead man's fingers were swollen extraordinarily, the index finger of
+either hand especially being oddly discolored, as though bruised from
+the nail upward. I looked again at the ghastly face, then, repressing
+a shudder, for the sight was one not good to look upon, I turned to
+Smith, who was watching me expectantly with his keen, steely eyes.
+
+From his pocket the took out a knife containing a number of implements,
+amongst them a hook-like contrivance.
+
+"Have you a button-hook, Petrie," he asked, "or anything of that nature?"
+
+"How will this do?" said the Inspector, and he produced a pair of
+handcuffs. "They were not wanted," he added significantly.
+
+"Better still," declared Smith.
+
+Reclosing his knife, he took the handcuffs from Weymouth, and,
+returning to the sitting-room, opened them widely and inserted two
+steel points in the hollows of the golden pomegranates. He pulled.
+There was a faint sound of moving mechanism and the wooden lid lifted,
+revealing the interior of the coffer. It contained three long bars of
+lead--and nothing else!
+
+Supporting the lid with the handcuffs--
+
+"Just pull the light over here, Petrie," said Smith.
+
+I did as he directed.
+
+"Look into these two cavities where one is expected to thrust one's
+fingers!"
+
+Weymouth and I craned forward so that our heads came into contact.
+
+"My God!" whispered the Inspector, "we know now what killed him!"
+
+Visible, in either little cavity against the edge of the steel
+handcuff, was the point of a needle, which evidently worked in an
+exquisitely made socket through which the action of raising the lid
+caused it to protrude. Underneath the lid, midway between the two
+pomegranates, as I saw by slowly moving the lamp, was a little
+receptacle of metal communicating with the base of the hollow needles.
+
+The action of lifting the lid not only protruded the points but also
+operated the hypodermic syringe!
+
+"Note," snapped Smith--but his voice was slightly hoarse.
+
+He removed the points of the bracelets. The box immediately reclosed
+with no other sound than a faint click.
+
+"God forgive him," said Smith, glancing toward the other room, "for
+he died in my stead!--and Dr. Fu-Manchu scores an undeserved failure!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+ZARMI REAPPEARS
+
+
+"Come in!" I cried.
+
+The door opened and a page-boy entered.
+
+"A cable for Dr. Petrie."
+
+I started up from my chair. A thousand possibilities--some of a sort
+to bring dread to my heart--instantly occurred to me. I tore open the
+envelope and, as one does, glanced first at the name of the sender.
+
+It was signed "Kāramaneh!"
+
+"Smith!" I said hoarsely, glancing over the massage, "Kāramaneh is on
+her way to England. She arrives by the _Nicobar_ to-morrow!"
+
+"Eh?" cried Nayland Smith, in turn leaping to his feet. "She had no
+right to come alone, unless----"
+
+The boy, open-mouthed, was listening to our conversation, and I
+hastily thrust a coin into his hand and dismissed him. As the door
+closed--
+
+"Unless what, Smith?" I said, looking my friend squarely in the eyes.
+
+"Unless she has learnt something, or--is flying away from some one!"
+
+My mind set in a whirl of hopes and fears, longings and dreads.
+
+"What do you mean, Smith?" I asked. "This is the place of danger, as
+we know to our cost; she was safe in Egypt."
+
+Nayland Smith commenced one of his restless perambulations, glancing
+at me from time to time and frequently tugging at the lobe of his ear.
+
+"_Was_ she safe in Egypt?" he rapped. "We are dealing, remember, with
+the Si-Fan, which, if I am not mistaken, is a sort of Eleusinian
+Mystery holding some kind of dominion over the eastern mind, and
+boasting initiates throughout the Orient. It is almost certain that
+there is an Egyptian branch, or group--call it what you will--of the
+damnable organization."
+
+"But Dr. Fu-Manchu----"
+
+"Dr. Fu-Manchu--for he lives, Petrie! my own eyes bear witness to the
+fact--Dr. Fu-Manchu is a sort of delegate from the headquarters. His
+prodigious genius will readily enable him to keep in touch with every
+branch of the movement, East and West."
+
+He paused to knock out his pipe into an ashtray and to watch me for
+some moments in silence.
+
+"He may have instructed his Cairo agents," he added significantly.
+
+"God grant she get to England in safety," I whispered. "Smith! can we
+make no move to round up the devils who defy us, here in the very
+heart of civilized England? Listen. You will not have forgotten the
+wild-cat Eurasian Zarmi?"
+
+Smith nodded. "I recall the lady perfectly!" he snapped.
+
+"Unless my imagination has been playing me tricks, I have seen her
+twice within the last few days--once in the neighborhood of this hotel
+and once in a cab in Piccadilly."
+
+"You mentioned the matter at the time," said Smith shortly; "but
+although I made inquiries, as you remember, nothing came of them."
+
+"Nevertheless, I don't think I was mistaken. I feel in my very bones
+that the Yellow hand of Fu-Manchu is about to stretch out again. If
+only we could apprehend Zarmi."
+
+Nayland Smith lighted his pipe with care.
+
+"If only we could, Petrie!" he said; "but, damn it!"--he dashed his
+left fist into the palm of his right hand--"we are doomed to remain
+inactive. We can only await the arrival of Kāramaneh and see if she
+has anything to tell us. I must admit that there are certain theories
+of my own which I haven't yet had an opportunity of testing. Perhaps
+in the near future such an opportunity may arise."
+
+How soon that opportunity was to arise neither of us suspected then;
+but Fate is a merry trickster, and even as we spoke of these matters
+events were brewing which were to lead us along strange paths.
+
+With such glad anticipations as my pen cannot describe, their gladness
+not unmixed with fear, I retired to rest that night, scarcely
+expecting to sleep, so eager was I for the morrow. The musical voice
+of Kāramaneh seemed to ring in my ears; I seemed to feel the touch
+of her soft hands and to detect, as I drifted into the borderland
+betwixt reality and slumber, that faint, exquisite perfume which from
+the first moment of my meeting with the beautiful Eastern girl, had
+become to me inseparable from her personality.
+
+It seemed that sleep had but just claimed me when I was awakened by
+some one roughly shaking my shoulder. I sprang upright, my mind alert
+to sudden danger. The room looked yellow and dismal, illuminated as it
+was by a cold light of dawn which crept through the window and with
+which competed the luminance of the electric lamps.
+
+Nayland Smith stood at my bedside, partially dressed!
+
+"Wake up, Petrie!" he cried; "you instincts serve you better than my
+reasoning. Hell's afoot, old man! Even as you predicted it, perhaps in
+that same hour, the yellow fiends were at work!"
+
+"What, Smith, what!" I said, leaping out of bed; "you don't mean----"
+
+"Not that, old man," he replied, clapping his hand upon my shoulder;
+"there is no further news of _her_, but Weymouth is waiting outside.
+Sir Baldwin Frazer has disappeared!"
+
+I rubbed my eyes hard and sought to clear my mind of the vapors of
+sleep.
+
+"Sir Baldwin Frazer!" I said, "of Half-Moon Street? But what----"
+
+"God knows _what_," snapped Smith; "but our old friend Zarmi, or so it
+would appear, bore him off last night, and he has completely vanished,
+leaving practically no trace behind."
+
+Only a few sleeping servants were about as we descended the marble
+stairs to the lobby of the hotel where Weymouth was awaiting us.
+
+"I have a cab outside from the Yard," he said. "I came straight here
+to fetch you before going on to Half-Moon Street."
+
+"Quite right!" snapped Smith; "but you are sure the cab is from the
+Yard? I have had painful experience of strange cabs recently!"
+
+"You can trust this one," said Weymouth, smiling slightly. "It has
+carried me to the scene of many a crime."
+
+"Hem!" said Smith--"a dubious recommendation."
+
+We entered the waiting vehicle and soon were passing through the
+nearly deserted streets of London. Only those workers whose toils
+began with the dawn were afoot at that early hour, and in the misty
+gray light the streets had an unfamiliar look and wore an aspect of
+sadness in ill accord with the sentiments which now were stirring
+within me. For whatever might be the fate of the famous mental
+specialist, whatever the mystery before us--even though Dr. Fu-Manchu
+himself, malignantly active, threatened our safety--Kāramaneh would
+be with me again that day--Kāramaneh, my beautiful wife to be!
+
+So selfishly occupied was I with these reflections that I paid little
+heed to the words of Weymouth, who was acquainting Nayland Smith with
+the facts bearing upon the mysterious disappearance of Sir Baldwin
+Frazer. Indeed, I was almost entirely ignorant upon the subject when
+the cab pulled up before the surgeon's house in Half-Moon Street.
+
+Here, where all else spoke of a city yet sleeping or but newly
+awakened, was wild unrest and excitement. Several servants were
+hovering about the hall eager to glean any scrap of information that
+might be obtainable; wide-eyed and curious, if not a little fearful.
+In the somber dining-room with its heavy oak furniture and gleaming
+silver, Sir Baldwin's secretary awaited us. He was a young man,
+fair-haired, clean-shaven and alert; but a real and ever-present
+anxiety could be read in his eyes.
+
+"I am sorry," he began, "to have been the cause of disturbing you at
+so early an hour, particularly since this mysterious affair may prove
+to have no connection with the matters which I understand are at
+present engaging your attention."
+
+Nayland Smith raised his hand deprecatingly.
+
+"We are prepared, Mr. Logan," he replied, "to travel to the uttermost
+ends of the earth at all times, if by doing so we can obtain even a
+meager clue to the enigma which baffles us."
+
+"I should not have disturbed Mr. Smith," said Weymouth, "if I had not
+been pretty sure that there was Chinese devilry at work here: nor
+should I have told you as much as I have, Mr. Logan," he added, a
+humorous twinkle creeping into his blue eyes, "if I had thought you
+could not be of use to us in unraveling our case!"
+
+"I quite understand that," said Logan, "and now, since you have voted
+for the story first and refreshments afterward, let me tell you what
+little I know of the matter."
+
+"Be as brief as you can," snapped Nayland Smith, starting up from the
+chair in which he had been seated and beginning restlessly to pace
+the floor before the open fireplace--"as brief as is consistent with
+clarity. We have learnt in the past that an hour or less sometimes
+means the difference between----"
+
+He paused, glancing at Sir Baldwin's secretary.
+
+"Between life and death," he added.
+
+Mr. Logan started perceptibly.
+
+"You alarm me, Mr. Smith," he declared; "for I can conceive of no
+earthly manner in which this mysterious Eastern organization of which
+Inspector Weymouth speaks, could profit by the death of Sir Baldwin."
+
+Nayland Smith suddenly turned and stared grimly at the speaker.
+
+"I call it death," he said harshly, "to be carried off to the interior
+of China, to be made a mere slave, having no will but the great and
+evil man who already--already, mark you!--has actually accomplished
+such things."
+
+"But Sir Baldwin----"
+
+"Sir Baldwin Frazer," snapped Smith, "is the undisputed head of his
+particular branch of surgery. Dr. Fu-Manchu may have what he deems
+useful employment for such skill as his. But," glancing at the clock,
+"we are wasting time. Your story, Mr. Logan."
+
+"It was about half-past twelve last night," began the secretary,
+closing his eyes as if he were concentrating his mind upon certain
+past events, "when a woman came here and inquired for Sir Baldwin.
+The butler informed her that Sir Baldwin was entertaining friends and
+that he could receive no professional visitors until the morning.
+She was so insistent, however, absolutely declining to go away, that
+I was sent for--I have rooms in the house--and I came down to interview
+her in the library."
+
+"Be very accurate, Mr. Logan," interrupted Smith, "in your description
+of this visitor."
+
+"I shall do my best," pursued Logan, closing his eyes again in
+concentrated thought. "She wore evening dress, of a fantastic kind,
+markedly Oriental in character, and had large gold rings in her ears.
+A green embroidered shawl, with raised figures of white birds as a
+design, took the place of a cloak. It was certainly of Eastern
+workmanship, possibly Arab; and she wore it about her shoulders with
+one corner thrown over her head--again, something like a _burnous_. She
+was extremely dark, had jet-black, frizzy hair and very remarkable
+eyes, the finest of their type I have ever seen. She possessed beauty
+of a sort, of course, but without being exactly vulgar, it was what I
+may term _ostentatious;_ and as I entered the library I found myself
+at a loss to define her exact place in society--you understand what
+I mean?"
+
+We all nodded comprehendingly and awaited with intense interest the
+resumption of the story. Mr. Logan had vividly described the Eurasian
+Zarmi, the creature of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+"When the woman addressed me," he continued, "my surmise that she was
+some kind of half-caste, probably a Eurasian, was confirmed by her
+broken English. I shall not be misunderstood"--a slight embarrassment
+became perceptible in his manner--"if I say that the visitor quite
+openly tried to bewitch me; and since we are all human, you will
+perhaps condone my conduct when I add that she succeeded, in a measure,
+inasmuch as I consented to speak to Sir Baldwin, although he was
+actually playing bridge at the time.
+
+"Either my eloquence, or, to put it bluntly, the extraordinary fee
+which the woman offered, resulted in Sir Baldwin's agreeing to abandon
+his friends and accompany the visitor in a cab which was waiting to
+see the patient."
+
+"And who was the patient?" rapped Smith.
+
+"According to the woman's account, the patient was her mother, who
+had met with a street accident a week before. She gave the name of
+the consultant who had been called in, and who, she stated, had
+advised the opinion of Sir Baldwin. She represented that the matter
+was urgent, and that it might be necessary to perform an operation
+immediately in order to save the patient's life."
+
+"But surely," I interrupted, in surprise, "Sir Baldwin did not take
+his instruments?"
+
+"He took his case with him--yes," replied Logan; "for he in turn
+yielded to the appeals of the visitor. The very last words that I
+heard him speak as he left the house were to assure her that no such
+operation could be undertaken at such short notice in that way."
+
+Logan paused, looking around at us a little wearily.
+
+"And what aroused your suspicions?" said Smith.
+
+"My suspicions were aroused at the very moment of Sir Baldwin's
+departure, for as I came out onto the steps with him I noticed a
+singular thing."
+
+"And that was?" snapped Smith.
+
+"Directly Sir Baldwin had entered the cab the woman got out," replied
+Logan with some excitement in his manner, "and reclosing the door
+took her seat beside the driver of the vehicle--which immediately
+moved off."
+
+Nayland Smith glanced significantly at me.
+
+"The cab trick again, Petrie!" he said; "scarcely a doubt of it." Then,
+to Logan: "Anything else?"
+
+"This," replied the secretary: "I thought, although I could not be
+sure, that the face of Sir Baldwin peered out of the window for a
+moment as the cab moved away from the house, and that there was
+strange expression upon it, almost a look of horror. But of course as
+there was no light in the cab and the only illumination was that from
+the open door, I could not be sure."
+
+"And now tell Mr. Smith," said Weymouth, "how you got confirmation of
+your fears."
+
+"I felt very uneasy in my mind," continued Logan, "for the whole
+thing was so irregular, and I could not rid my memory of the idea of
+Sir Baldwin's face looking out from the cab window. Therefore I rang
+up the consultant whose name our visitor had mentioned."
+
+"Yes?" cried Smith eagerly.
+
+"He knew nothing whatever of the matter," said Logan, "and had no such
+case upon his books! That of course put me in a dreadful state of mind,
+but I was naturally anxious to avoid making a fool of myself and
+therefore I waited for some hours before mentioning my suspicions to
+any one. But when the morning came and no message was received I
+determined to communicate with Scotland Yard. The rest of the mystery
+it is for you, gentlemen, to unravel."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+I TRACK ZARMI
+
+
+"What does it mean?" said Nayland Smith wearily, looking at me through
+the haze of tobacco smoke which lay between us. "A well-known man like
+Sir Baldwin Frazer is decoyed away--undoubtedly by the woman Zarmi;
+and up to the present moment not so much as a trace of him can be
+found. It is mortifying to think that with all the facilities of New
+Scotland Yard at our disposal we cannot trace that damnable cab! We
+cannot find the headquarters of the group--we cannot _move!_ To sit
+here inactive whilst Sir Baldwin Frazer--God knows for what purpose!--
+is perhaps being smuggled out of the country, is maddening--maddening!"
+Then, glancing quickly across to me: "To think ..."
+
+I rose from my chair, head averted. A tragedy had befallen me which
+completely overshadowed all other affairs, great and small. Indeed,
+its poignancy was not yet come to its most acute stage; the news was
+too recent for that. It had numbed my mind; dulled the pulsing life
+within me.
+
+The s.s._Nicobar_, of the Oriental Navigation Line, had arrived at
+Tilbury at the scheduled time. My heart leaping joyously in my bosom,
+I had hurried on board to meet Kāramaneh....
+
+I have sustained some cruel blows in my life; but I can state with
+candor that this which now befell me was by far the greatest and the
+most crushing I had ever been called upon to bear; a calamity dwarfing
+all others which I could imagine.
+
+She had left the ship at Southampton--and had vanished completely.
+
+"Poor old Petrie," said Smith, and clapped his hands upon my shoulders
+in his impulsive sympathetic way. "Don't give up hope! We are not
+going to be beaten!"
+
+"Smith," I interrupted bitterly, "what chance have we? what chance
+have we? We know no more than a child unborn where these people have
+their hiding-place, and we haven't a shadow of a clue to guide us to it."
+
+His hands resting upon my shoulders and his gray eyes looking
+straightly into mine.
+
+"I can only repeat, old man," said my friend, "don't abandon hope. I
+must leave you for an hour or so, and, when I return, possibly I may
+have some news."
+
+For long enough after Smith's departure I sat there, companioned only
+by wretched reflections; then, further inaction seemed impossible; to
+move, to be up and doing, to be seeking, questing, became an
+imperative necessity. Muffled in a heavy traveling coat I went out
+into the wet and dismal night, having no other plan in mind than that
+of walking on through the rain-swept streets, on and always on, in an
+attempt, vain enough, to escape from the deadly thoughts that pursued
+me.
+
+Without having the slightest idea that I had done so, I must have
+walked along the Strand, crossed Trafalgar Square, proceeded up the
+Haymarket to Piccadilly Circus, and commenced to trudge along at the
+Oriental rugs displayed in Messrs. Liberty's window, when an incident
+aroused me from the apathy of sorrow in which I was sunken.
+
+"Tell the cab feller to drive to the north side of Wandsworth Common,"
+said a woman's voice--a voice speaking in broken English, a voice
+which electrified me, had me alert and watchful in a moment.
+
+I turned, as the speaker, entering a taxi-cab that was drawn up by the
+pavement, gave these directions to the door-porter, who with open
+umbrella was in attendance. Just one glimpse I had of her as she
+stepped into the cab, but it was sufficient. Indeed, the voice had
+been sufficient; but that sinuous shape and that lithe swaying movement
+of the hips removed all doubt.
+
+It was Zarmi!
+
+As the cab moved off I ran out into the middle of the road, where
+there was a rank, and sprang into the first taxi waiting there.
+
+"Follow the cab ahead!" I cried to the man, my voice quivering with
+excitement. "Look! you can see the number! There can be no mistake. But
+don't lose it for your life! It's worth a sovereign to you!"
+
+The man, warming to my mood, cranked his engine rapidly and sprang to
+the wheel. I was wild with excitement now, and fearful lest the cab
+ahead should have disappeared; but fortune seemingly was with me for
+once, and I was not twenty yards behind when Zarmi's cab turned the
+first corner ahead. Through the gloomy street, which appeared to be
+populated solely by streaming umbrellas, we went. I could scarcely
+keep my seat; every nerve in my body seemed to be dancing--twitching.
+Eternally I was peering ahead; and when, leaving the well-lighted West
+End thoroughfares, we came to the comparatively gloomy streets of the
+suburbs, a hundred times I thought we had lost the track. But always
+in the pool of light cast by some friendly lamp, I would see the
+quarry again speeding on before us.
+
+At a lonely spot bordering the common the vehicle which contained
+Zarmi stopped. I snatched up the speaking-tube.
+
+"Drive on," I cried, "and pull up somewhere beyond! Not too far!"
+
+The man obeyed, and presently I found myself standing in what was now
+become a steady downpour, looking back at the headlights of the other
+cab. I gave the driver his promised reward.
+
+"Wait for ten minutes," I directed; "then if I have not returned, you
+need wait no longer."
+
+I strode along the muddy, unpaved path, to the spot where the cab, now
+discharged, was being slowly backed away into the road. The figure of
+Zarmi, unmistakable by reason of the lithe carriage, was crossing in
+the direction of a path which seemingly led across the common. I
+followed at a discreet distance. Realizing the tremendous potentialities
+of this rencontre I seemed to rise to the occasion; my brain became
+alert and clear; every faculty was at its brightest. And I felt
+serenely confident of my ability to make the most of the situation.
+
+Zarmi went on and on along the lonely path. Not another pedestrian was
+in sight, and the rain walled in the pair of us. Where comfort-loving
+humanity sought shelter from the inclement weather, we two moved out
+there in the storm, linked by a common enmity.
+
+I have said that my every faculty was keen, and have spoken of my
+confidence in my own alertness. My condition, as a matter of fact,
+must have been otherwise, and this belief in my powers merely
+symptomatic of the fever which consumed me; for, as I was to learn,
+I had failed to take the first elementary precaution necessary in
+such case. I, who tracked another, had not counted upon being tracked
+myself! ...
+
+A bag or sack, reeking of some sickly perfume, was dropped silently,
+accurately, over my head from behind; it was drawn closely about my
+throat. One muffled shriek, strangely compound of fear and execration,
+I uttered. I was stifling, choking ... I staggered--and fell....
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+I MEET DR. FU-MANCHU
+
+
+My next impression was of a splitting headache, which, as memory
+remounted its throne, brought up a train of recollections. I found
+myself to be seated upon a heavy wooden bench set flat against a wall,
+which was covered with a kind of straw matting. My hands were firmly
+tied behind me. In the first agony of that reawakening I became aware
+of two things.
+
+I was in an operating-room, for the most conspicuous item of its
+furniture was an operating-table! Shaded lamps were suspended above
+it; and instruments, antiseptics, dressings, etc., were arranged upon
+a glass-topped table beside it. Secondly, I had a companion.
+
+Seated upon a similar bench on the other side of the room, was a
+heavily built man, his dark hair splashed with gray, as were his
+short, neatly trimmed beard and mustache. He, too, was pinioned; and
+he stared across the table with a glare in which a sort of stupefied
+wonderment predominated, but which was not free from terror.
+
+It was Sir Baldwin Frazer!
+
+"Sir Baldwin!" I muttered, moistening my parched lips with my tongue--
+"Sir Baldwin!--how----"
+
+"It is Dr. Petrie, is it not?" he said, his voice husky with emotion.
+"Dr. Petrie!--my dear sir, in mercy tell me--what does this mean? I
+have been kidnaped--drugged; made the victim of an inconceivable
+outrage at the very door of my own house...."
+
+I stood up unsteadily.
+
+"Sir Baldwin," I interrupted, "you ask me what it means. It means that
+we are in the hands of Dr. Fu-Manchu!"
+
+Sir Baldwin stared at me wildly; his face was white and drawn with
+anxiety.
+
+"Dr. Fu-Manchu!" he said; "but my dear sir, this name conveys nothing
+to me--nothing!" His manner momentarily was growing more distrait.
+"Since my captivity began I have been given the use of a singular
+suite of rooms in this place, and received, I must confess, every
+possible attention. I have been waited upon by the she-devil who
+lured me here, but not one word other than a species of coarse
+badinage has she spoken to me. At times I have been tempted to
+believe that the fate which frequently befalls the specialist had
+befallen me? You understand?"
+
+"I quite understand," I replied dully. "There have been times in the
+past when I, too, have doubted my sanity in my dealings with the group
+who now hold us in their power."
+
+"But," reiterated the other, his voice rising higher and higher,
+"what does it mean, my dear sir? It is incredible--fantastic! Even
+now I find it difficult to disabuse my mind of that old, haunting
+idea."
+
+"Disabuse it at once, Sir Baldwin," I said bitterly. "The facts are
+as you see them; the explanation, at any rate in your own case, is
+quite beyond me. I was tracked ..."
+
+"Hush! some one is coming!"
+
+We both turned and stared at an opening before which hung a sort of
+gaudily embroidered mat, as the sound of dragging footsteps,
+accompanied by a heavy tapping, announced the approach of _some one_.
+
+The mat was pulled aside by Zarmi. She turned her head, flashing
+around the apartment a glance of her black eyes, then held the
+drapery aside to admit the entrance of another....
+
+Supporting himself by the aid of two heavy walking sticks and
+painfully dragging his gaunt frame along, _Dr. Fu-Manchu entered!_
+
+I think I have never experienced in my life a sensation identical to
+that which now possessed me. Although Nayland Smith had declared that
+Fu-Manchu was alive, yet I would have sworn upon oath before any
+jury summonable that he was dead; for with my own eyes I had seen
+the bullet enter his skull. Now, whilst I crouched against the
+matting-covered wall, teeth tightly clenched and my very hair
+quivering upon my scalp, he dragged himself laboriously across the
+room, the sticks going _tap--tap--tap_ upon the floor, and the tall
+body, enveloped in a yellow robe, bent grotesquely, gruesomely, with
+every effort which he made. He wore a surgical bandage about his
+skull and its presence seemed to accentuate the height of the great
+domelike brow, to throw into more evil prominence the wonderful,
+Satanic countenance of the man. His filmed eyes turning to right and
+left, he dragged himself to a wooden chair that stood beside the
+operating-table and sank down upon it, breathing sibilantly,
+exhaustedly.
+
+Zarmi dropped the curtain and stood before it. She had discarded the
+dripping overall which she had been wearing when I had followed her
+across the common, and now stood before me with her black, frizzy
+hair unconfined and her beautiful, wicked face uplifted in a sort of
+cynical triumph. The big gold rings in her ears glittered strangely
+in the light of the electric lamps. She wore a garment which looked
+like a silken shawl wrapped about her in a wildly picturesque
+fashion, and, her hands upon her hips, leant back against the curtain
+glancing defiantly from Sir Baldwin to myself.
+
+Those moments of silence which followed the entrance of the Chinese
+Doctor live in my memory and must live there for ever. Only the
+labored breathing of Fu-Manchu disturbed the stillness of the place.
+Not a sound penetrated to the room, no one uttered a word; then--
+
+"Sir Baldwin Frazer." began Fu-Manchu in that indescribable voice,
+alternating between the sibilant and the guttural, "you were promised
+a certain fee for your services by my servant who summoned you. It
+shall be paid and the gift of my personal gratitude be added to it."
+
+He turned himself with difficulty to address Sir Baldwin; and it
+became apparent to me that he was almost completely paralyzed down
+one side of his body. Some little use he could make of his hand and
+arm, for he still clutched the heavy carven stick, but the right side
+of his face was completely immobile; and rarely had I seen anything
+more ghastly than the effect produced upon that wonderful, Satanic
+countenance. The mouth, from the center of the thin lips, opened only
+to the left, as he spoke; in a word, seen in profile from where I sat,
+or rather crouched, it was the face of a dead man.
+
+Sir Baldwin Frazer uttered no word, but, crouching upon the bench
+even as I crouched, stared--horror written upon every lineament--at
+Dr. Fu-Manchu. The latter continued:--
+
+"Your experience, Sir Baldwin, will enable you readily to diagnose my
+symptoms. Owing to the passage of a bullet along a portion of the
+third left frontal into the postero-parietal convolution--upon which,
+from its lodgment in the skull, it continues to press--hemiplegia of
+the right side has supervened. Aphasia is present also...."
+
+The effort of speech was ghastly. Beads of perspiration dewed
+Fu-Manchu's brow, and I marveled at the iron will of the man, whereby
+alone he forced his half-numbed brain to perform its function. He
+seemed to select his words elaborately and by this monstrous effort
+of will to compel his partially paralyzed tongue to utter them. Some
+of the syllables were slurred; but nevertheless distinguishable. It
+was a demonstration of sheer _Force_ unlike any I had witnessed, and
+it impressed me unforgettably.
+
+"The removal of this injurious particle," he continued, "would be an
+operation which I myself could undertake to perform successfully upon
+another. It is a matter of some delicacy as you, Sir Baldwin, and"--
+slowly, horribly, turning the half-dead and half-living head towards
+me--"you, Dr. Petrie, will appreciate. In the event of clumsy surgery,
+death may supervene; failing this, permanent hemiplegia--or"--the
+film lifted from the green eyes, and for a moment they flickered with
+transient horror--"idiocy! Any one of three of my pupils whom I might
+name could perform this operation with ease, but their services are
+not available. Only one English surgeon occurred to me in this
+connection, and you, Sir Baldwin"--again he slowly turned his head--
+"were he. Dr. Petrie will act as anaesthetist, and, your duties
+completed, you shall return to your home richer by the amount
+stipulated. I have suitably prepared myself for the operation, and I
+can assure you of the soundness of my heart. I may advise you, Dr.
+Petrie"--again turning to me--"that my constitution is inured to the
+use of opium. You will make due allowance for this. Mr. Li-King-Su,
+a graduate of Canton, will act as dresser."
+
+He turned laboriously to Zarmi. She clapped her hands and held the
+curtain aside. A perfectly immobile Chinaman, whose age I was unable
+to guess, and who wore a white overall, entered, bowed composedly to
+Frazer and myself and began in a matter-of-fact way to prepare the
+dressings.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+QUEEN OF HEARTS
+
+
+"Sir Baldwin Frazer," said Fu-Manchu, interrupting a wild outburst
+from the former, "your refusal is dictated by insufficient knowledge
+of your surroundings. You find yourself in a place strange to you, a
+place to which no clue can lead your friends; in the absolute power
+of a man--myself--who knows no law other than his own and that of
+those associated with him. Virtually, Sir Baldwin, you stand in
+China; and in China we know how to _exact_ obedience. You will not
+refuse, for Dr. Petrie will tell you something of my _wire-jackets_
+and my _files_...."
+
+I saw Sir Baldwin Frazer blanch. He could not know what I knew of the
+significance of those words--"my wire-jackets, my files"--but perhaps
+something of my own horror communicated itself to him.
+
+"You will not _refuse_" continued Fu-Manchu softly; "my only fear for
+you is that the operation my prove unsuccessful! In that event not
+even my own great clemency could save you, for by virtue of your
+failure I should be powerless to intervene." He paused for some
+moments, staring directly at the surgeon. "There are those within
+sound of my voice," he added sibilantly, "who would flay you alive in
+the lamentable event of your failure, who would cast your flayed
+body"--he paused, waving one quivering fist above his head, "to the
+rats--to the rats!"
+
+Sir Baldwin's forehead was bathed in perspiration now. It was an
+incredible and a gruesome situation, a nightmare become reality. But,
+whatever my own case, I could see that Sir Baldwin Frazer was
+convinced, I could see that his consent would no longer be withheld.
+
+"You, my dear friend," said Fu-Manchu, turning to me and resuming his
+studied and painful composure of manner, "will also consent...."
+
+Within my heart of hearts I could not doubt him; I knew that my
+courage was not of a quality high enough to sustain the frightful
+ordeals summoned up before my imagination by those words--"my files,
+my wire-jackets!"
+
+"In the event, however, of any little obstinancy,"  he added,
+"another will plead with you."
+
+A chill like that of death descended upon me--as, for the second
+time, Zarmi clapped her hands, pulled the curtain aside ... and
+Kāramaneh was thrust into the room!
+
+        *        *        *        *        *        *        *
+
+There comes a blank in my recollections. Long after Kāramaneh had
+been plucked out again by the two muscular brown hands which clutched
+her shoulders from the darkness beyond the doorway, I seemed to see
+her standing there, in her close-fitting traveling dress. Her hair
+was unbound, disheveled, her lovely face pale to the lips--and her
+eyes, her glorious, terror-bright eyes, looked fully into mine....
+
+Not a word did she utter, and I was stricken dumb as one who has
+plucked the Flower of Silence. Only those wondrous eyes seemed to
+look into my soul, searing, consuming me.
+
+Fu-Manchu had been speaking for some time ere my brain began again
+to record his words.
+
+"----and this magnanimity," came dully to my ears, "extends to you,
+Dr. Petrie, because of my esteem. I have little cause to love
+Kāramaneh"--his voice quivered furiously--"but she can yet be of
+use to me, and I would not harm a hair of her beautiful head--except
+in the event of your obstinacy. Shall we then determine your
+immediate future upon the turn of a card, as the gamester within me,
+within every one of my race, suggests?
+
+"Yes, yes!" came hoarsely.
+
+I fought mentally to restore myself to a full knowledge of what was
+happening, and I realized that the last words had come from the lips
+of Sir Baldwin Frazer.
+
+"Dr. Petrie," Frazer said, still in the same hoarse and unnatural
+voice, "what else can we do? At least take the chance of recovering
+your freedom, for how otherwise can you hope to serve--your friend...."
+
+"God knows!" I said dully; "do as you wish"--and cared not to what I
+had agreed.
+
+Plunging his hand beneath his white overall, the Chinaman who had been
+referred to as Li-King-Su calmly produced a pack of cards,
+unemotionally shuffled them and extended the pack to me.
+
+I shook my head grimly, for my hands were tied. Picking up a lancet
+from the table, the Chinaman cut the cords which bound me, and again
+extended the pack. I took a card and laid it on my knee without even
+glancing at it. Fu-Manchu, with his left hand, in turn selected a
+card, looked at it and then turned its face towards me.
+
+"It would seem, Dr. Petrie," he said calmly, "that you are fated to
+remain here as my guest. You will have the felicity of residing
+beneath the same roof with Kāramaneh."
+
+The card was the Knave of Diamonds.
+
+Conscious of a sudden excitement, I snatched up the card from my
+knee. It was the Queen of Hearts! For a moment I tasted exultation,
+then I tossed it upon the floor. I was not fool enough to suppose
+that the Chinese Doctor would pay his debt of honor and release me.
+
+"Your star above mine," said Fu-Manchu, his calm unruffled. "I place
+myself in your hands, Sir Baldwin."
+
+Assisted by his unemotional compatriot, Fu-Manchu discarded the
+yellow robe, revealing himself in a white singlet in all his gaunt
+ugliness, and extended his frame upon the operating-table.
+
+Li-King-Su ignited the large lamp over the head of the table, and
+from his case took out a trephine.
+
+        *        *        *        *        *        *        *
+
+"Other points for your guidance from my own considerable store of
+experience"--Fu-Manchu was speaking--"are written out clearly in the
+notebook which lies upon the table...."
+
+His voice, now, was toneless, emotionless, as though his part in the
+critical operation about to be performed were that of a spectator. No
+trace of nervousness, of fear, could I discern; his pulse was
+practically normal.
+
+How I shuddered as I touched his yellow skin! how my very soul rose
+up in revolt! ...
+
+        *        *        *        *        *        *        *
+
+"There is the bullet!--quick! ... Steady, Petrie!"
+
+Sir Baldwin Frazer, keen, cool, deft, was metamorphosed, was the
+enthusiastic, brilliant surgeon whom I knew and revered, and another
+than the nerveless captive who, but a few minutes ago, had stared,
+panic-stricken, at Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+Although I had met him once or twice professionally, I had never
+hitherto seen him operate; and his method was little short of
+miraculous. It was stimulating, inspiring. With unerring touch he
+whittled madness, death, from the very throne of reason, of life.
+
+Now was the crucial moment of his task ... and, with its coming, every
+light in the room suddenly failed--went out!
+
+"My God!" whispered Frazer, in the darkness, "quick! quick! lights!
+a match!--a candle!--something, anything!"
+
+There came a faint click, and a beam of white light was directed,
+steadily, upon the patient's skull. Li-King-Su--unmoved--held an
+electric torch in his hand!
+
+Frazer and I set to work, in a fierce battle to fend off Death, who
+already outstretched his pinions over the insensible man--to fend off
+Death from the arch-murderer, the enemy of the white races, who lay
+there at our mercy! ...
+
+        *        *        *        *        *        *         *
+
+"It seems you want a pick-me-up!" said Zarmi. Sir Baldwin Frazer
+collapsed into the cane arm-chair. Only a matting curtain separated us
+from the room wherein he had successfully performed perhaps the most
+wonderful operation of his career.
+
+"I could not have lasted out another thirty seconds, Petrie!" he
+whispered. "The events which led up to it had exhausted my nerves and
+I had no reserve to call upon. If that last ..."
+
+He broke off, the sentence uncompleted, and eagerly seized the tumbler
+containing brandy and soda, which the beautiful, wicked-eyed Eurasian
+passed to him. She turned, and prepared a drink for me, with the
+insolent _insouciance_ which had never deserted her.
+
+I emptied the tumbler at a draught.
+
+Even as I set the glass down I realized, too late, that it was the
+first drink I had ever permitted to pass my lips within an abode of
+Dr. Fu-Manchu....
+
+I started to my feet.
+
+"Frazer!" I muttered--"we've been drugged! we ..."
+
+"You sit down," came Zarmi's husky voice, and I felt her hands upon
+my breast, pushing me back into my seat. "You very tired ... you go
+to sleep...."
+
+        *        *        *        *        *        *        *
+
+"Petrie! Dr. Petrie!"
+
+The words broke in through the curtain of unconsciousness. I strove
+to arouse myself. I felt cold and wet. I opened my eyes--and the world
+seemed to be swimming dizzily about me. Then a hand grasped my arm,
+roughly.
+
+"Brace up! Brace up, Petrie--and thank God you are alive! ..."
+
+I was sitting beside Sir Baldwin Frazer on a wooden bench, under a
+leafless tree, from the ghostly limbs whereof rain trickled down upon
+me! In the gray light, which, I thought, must be the light of dawn,
+I discerned other trees about us and an open expanse, tree-dotted,
+stretching into the misty grayness.
+
+"Where are we?" I muttered--"where ..."
+
+"Unless I am greatly mistaken," replied my bedraggled companion, "and
+I don't think I am, for I attended a consultation in this neighborhood
+less than a week ago, we somewhere on the west side of Wandsworth
+Common!"
+
+He ceased speaking; then uttered a suppressed cry. There came a
+jangling of coins, and dimly I saw him to be staring at a canvas bag
+of money which he held.
+
+"Merciful heavens!" he said, "am I mad--or did I _really_ perform that
+operation? And can this be my fee? ..."
+
+I laughed loudly, wildly, plunging my wet, cold hands into the pockets
+of my rain-soaked overcoat. In one of them, my fingers came in contact
+with a piece of cardboard. It had an unfamiliar feel, and I pulled it
+out, peering at it in the dim light.
+
+"Well, I'm damned!" muttered Frazer--"then I'm not mad, after all!"
+
+It was the Queen of Hearts!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+"ZAGAZIG"
+
+
+Fully two weeks elapsed ere Nayland Smith's arduous labors at last met
+with a slight reward. For a moment, the curtain of mystery surrounding
+the Si-Fan was lifted, and we had a glimpse of that organization's
+elaborate mechanism. I cannot better commence my relation of the
+episodes associated with the Zagazig's cryptogram than from the moment
+when I found myself bending over a prostrate form extended upon the
+table in the Inspector's room at the River Police Depōt. It was that
+of a man who looked like a Lascar, who wore an ill-fitting slop-shop
+suit of blue, soaked and stained and clinging hideously to his body.
+His dank black hair was streaked upon his low brow; and his face,
+although it was notable for a sort of evil leer, had assumed in death
+another and more dreadful expression.
+
+Asphyxiation had accounted for his end beyond doubt, but there were
+marks about his throat of clutching fingers, his tongue protruded,
+and the look in the dead eyes was appalling.
+
+"He was amongst the piles upholding the old wharf at the back of the
+Joy-Shop?" said Smith tersely, turning to the police officer in charge.
+
+"Exactly" was the reply. "The in-coming tide had jammed him right up
+under a cross-beam."
+
+"What time was that?'
+
+"Well, at high tide last night. Hewson, returning with the ten o'clock
+boat, noticed the moonlight glittering upon the knife."
+
+The knife to which the Inspector referred possessed a long curved
+blade of a kind with which I had become terribly familiar in the past.
+The dead man still clutched the hilt of the weapon in his right hand,
+and it now lay with the blade resting crosswise upon his breast. I
+stared in a fascinated way at this mysterious and tragic flotsam of
+old Thames.
+
+Glancing up, I found Nayland Smith's gray eyes watching me.
+
+"You see the mark, Petrie?" he snapped.
+
+I nodded. The dead man upon the table was a Burmese dacoit!
+
+"What do you make of it?" I said slowly.
+
+"At the moment," replied Smith, "I scarcely know what to make of it.
+You are agreed with the divisional surgeon that the man--unquestionably
+a dacoit--died, not from drowning, but from strangulation. From
+evidence we have heard, it would appear that the encounter which
+resulted in the body being hurled in the river, actually took place
+upon the wharf-end beneath which he was found. And we know that a place
+formerly used by the Si-Fan group--in other words, by Dr. Fu-Manchu--
+adjoins the wharf. I am tempted to believe that this"--he nodded
+towards the ghastly and sinister object upon the table--"was a servant
+of the Chinese Doctor. In other words, we see before us one whom
+Fu-Manchu has rebuked for some shortcoming."
+
+I shuddered coldly. Familiar as I should have been with the methods of
+the dread Chinaman, with his callous disregard of human suffering, of
+human life, of human law, I could not reconcile my ideas--the ideas
+of a modern, ordinary middle-class practitioner--with these Far Eastern
+devilries which were taking place in London.
+
+Even now I sometimes found myself doubting the reality of the whole
+thing; found myself reviewing the history of the Eastern doctor and
+of the horrible group of murderers surrounding him, with an incredulity
+almost unbelievable in one who had been actually in contact not only
+with the servants of the Chinaman, but with the sinister Fu-Manchu
+himself. Then, to restore me to grips with reality, would come the
+thought of Kāramaneh, of the beautiful girl whose love had brought
+me seemingly endless sorrow and whose love for me had brought her once
+again into the power of that mysterious, implacable being.
+
+This thought was enough. With its coming, fantasy vanished; and I knew
+that the dead dacoit, his great curved knife yet clutched in his hand,
+the Yellow menace hanging over London, over England, over the
+civilized world, the absence, the heart-breaking absence, of
+Kāramaneh--all were real, all were true, all were part of my life.
+
+Nayland Smith was standing staring vaguely before him and tugging at
+the lobe of his left ear.
+
+"Come along!" he snapped suddenly. "We have no more to learn here:
+the clue to the mystery must be sought elsewhere."
+
+There was that in his manner whereby I knew that his thoughts were far
+away, as we filed out from the River Police Depōt to the cab which
+awaited us. Pulling from his overcoat pocket a copy of a daily paper--
+
+"Have you seen this, Weymouth?" he demanded.
+
+With a long, nervous index finger he indicated a paragraph on the front
+page which appeared under the heading of "Personal." Weymouth bent
+frowningly over the paper, holding it close to his eyes, for this was
+a gloomy morning and the light in the cab was poor.
+
+"Such things don't enter into my sphere, Mr. Smith," he replied, "but
+no doubt the proper department at the Yard have seen it."
+
+"I _know_ they have seen it!" snapped Smith; "but they have also been
+unable to read it!"
+
+Weymouth looked up in surprise.
+
+"Indeed," he said. "You are interested in this, then?"
+
+"Very! Have you any suggestion to offer respecting it?"
+
+Moving from my seat I, also, bent over the paper and read, in growing
+astonishment, the following:--
+
+ZAGAZIG-Z,-a-g-a;-z:-_I_-g,a,-a,ag-_a_,z;-
+        I;-g:z-a-g-A-z;i-:g;-Z,,-a;-gg-_-z-i;-
+        G;-z-,a-g-:a-Z__I_;-g:-z-a-g;-a-:Z-,i-g:
+        z,a-g,-a:z,i-g.
+
+"This is utterly incomprehensible! It can be nothing but some foolish
+practical joke! It consists merely of the word 'Zagazig' repeated six
+or seven times--which can have no possible significance!"
+
+"Can't it!" snapped Smith.
+
+"Well," I said, "what has Zagazig to do with Fu-Manchu, or to do with
+us?"
+
+"Zagazig, my dear Petrie, is a very unsavory Arab town in Lower Egypt,
+as you know!"
+
+He returned the paper to the pocket of his over-coat, and, noting my
+bewildered glance, burst into one of his sudden laughs.
+
+"You think I am talking nonsense," he said; "but, as a matter of fact,
+that message in the paper has been puzzling me since it appeared--
+yesterday morning--and at last I think I see the light."
+
+He pulled out his pipe and began rapidly to load it.
+
+"I have been growing careless of late, Petrie," he continued; and no
+hint of merriment remained in his voice. His gaunt face was drawn
+grimly, and his eyes glittered like steel. "In future I must avoid
+going out alone at night as much as possible."
+
+Inspector Weymouth was staring at Smith in a puzzled way; and certainly
+I was every whit as mystified as he.
+
+"I am disposed to believe," said my friend, in his rapid, incisive way,
+"that the dacoit met his end at the hands of a tall man, possibly dark
+and almost certainly clean-shaven. If this missing personage wears, on
+chilly nights, a long tweed traveling coat and affects soft gray hats
+of the Stetson pattern, I shall not be surprised."
+
+Weymouth stared at me in frank bewilderment.
+
+"By the way, Inspector," added Smith, a sudden gleam of inspiration
+entering his keen eyes--"did I not see that the s.s._Andaman_ arrived
+recently?"
+
+"The Oriental Navigation Company's boat?" inquired Weymouth in a
+hopeless tone. "Yes. She docked yesterday evening."
+
+"If Jack Forsyth is still chief officer, I shall look him up,"
+declared Smith. "You recall his brother, Petrie?"
+
+"Naturally; since he was done to death in my presence," I replied;
+for the words awoke memories of one of Dr. Fu-Manchu's most ghastly
+crimes, always associated in my mind with the cry of a night-hawk.
+
+"The divine afflatus should never be neglected," announced Nayland
+Smith didactically, "wild though its promptings may seem."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE NOTE ON THE DOOR
+
+
+I saw little of Nayland Smith for the remainder of that day.
+Presumably he was following those "promptings" to which he had
+referred, though I was unable to conjecture whither they were leading
+him. Then, towards dusk he arrived in a perfect whirl, figuratively
+sweeping me off my feet.
+
+"Get your coat on, Petrie!" he cried; "you forget that we have a most
+urgent appointment!"
+
+Beyond doubt I had forgotten that we had any appointment whatever that
+evening, and some surprise must have shown upon my face, for--
+
+"Really you are becoming very forgetful!" my friend continued. "You
+know we can no longer trust the 'phone. I have to leave certain
+instructions for Weymouth at the rendezvous!"
+
+There was a hidden significance in his manner, and, my memory harking
+back to an adventure which we had shared in the past, I suddenly
+glimpsed the depths of my own stupidity.
+
+He suspected the presence of an eavesdropper! Yes! incredible though
+it might appear, we were spied upon in the New Louvre; agents of the
+Si-Fan, of Dr. Fu-Manchu, were actually within the walls of the great
+hotel!
+
+We hurried out into the corridor, and descended by the lift to the
+lobby. M. Samarkan, long famous as _māitre d'hōtel_ of one of Cairo's
+fashionable _khans_, and now principal of the New Louvre, greeted us
+with true Greek courtesy. He trusted that we should be present at
+some charitable function or other to be held at the hotel on the
+following evening.
+
+"If possible, M. Samarkan--if possible," said Smith. "We have many
+demands upon our time." Then, abruptly, to me: "Come, Petrie, we will
+walk as far as Charing Cross and take a cab from the rank there."
+
+"The hall-porter can call you a cab," said M. Samarkan, solicitous for
+the comfort of his guests.
+
+"Thanks," snapped Smith; "we prefer to walk a little way."
+
+Passing along the Strand, he took my arm, and speaking close to my ear--
+
+"That place is alive with spies, Petrie," he said; "or if there are
+only a few of them they are remarkably efficient!"
+
+Not another word could I get from him, although I was eager enough to
+talk; since one dearer to me than all else in the world was in the
+hands of the damnable organization we knew as the Si-Fan; until,
+arrived at Charing Cross, he walked out to the cab rank, and--
+
+"Jump in!" he snapped.
+
+He opened the door of the first cab on the rank.
+
+"Drive to J---- Street, Kennington," he directed the man.
+
+In something of a mental stupor I entered and found myself seated
+beside Smith. The cab made off towards Trafalgar Square, then swung
+around into Whitehall.
+
+"Look behind!" cried Smith, intense excitement expressed in his voice--
+"look behind!"
+
+I turned and peered through the little square window.
+
+The cab which had stood second upon the rank was closely following us!
+
+"We are tracked!" snapped my companion. "If further evidence were
+necessary of the fact that our every movement is watched, here it is!"
+
+I turned to him, momentarily at a loss for words; then--
+
+"Was this the object of our journey?" I said. "Your reference to a
+'rendezvous' was presumably addressed to a hypothetical spy?
+
+"Partly," he replied. "I have a plan, as you will see in a moment."
+
+I looked again from the window in the rear of the cab. We were now
+passing between the House of Lords and the back of Westminster Abbey ...
+and fifty yards behind us the  pursuing cab was crossing from
+Whitehall! A great excitement grew up within me, and a great curiosity
+respecting the identity of our pursuer.
+
+"What is the place for which we are bound, Smith?" I said rapidly.
+
+"It is a house which I chanced to notice a few days ago, and I marked
+it as useful for such a purpose as our present one. You will see what
+I mean when we arrive."
+
+On we went, following the course of the river, then turned over
+Vauxhall Bridge and on down Vauxhall Bridge Road into a very dreary
+neighborhood where gasometers formed the notable feature of the
+landscape.
+
+"That's the Oval just beyond," said Smith suddenly, "and--here we are."
+
+In a narrow _cul de sac_ which apparently communicated with the
+boundary of the famous cricket ground, the cabman pulled up. Smith
+jumped out and paid the fare.
+
+"Pull back to that court with the iron posts," he directed the man,
+"and wait there for me." Then: "Come on, Petrie!" he snapped.
+
+Side by side we entered the wooden gate of a small detached house, or
+more properly cottage, and passed up the tiled path towards a sort of
+side entrance which apparently gave access to the tiny garden. At this
+moment I became aware of two things; the first, that the house was an
+empty one, and the second, that some one--some one who had quitted the
+second cab (which I had heard pull up at no great distance behind us)
+was approaching stealthily along the dark and uninviting street,
+walking upon the opposite pavement and taking advantage of the shadow
+of a high wooden fence which skirted it for some distance.
+
+Smith pushed the gate open, and I found myself in a narrow passageway
+in almost complete darkness. But my friend walked confidently forward,
+turned the angle of the building and entered the miniature wilderness
+which once had been a garden.
+
+"In here, Petrie!" he whispered.
+
+He seized me by the arm, pushed open a door and thrust me forward down
+two stone steps into absolute darkness.
+
+"Walk straight ahead!" he directed, still in the same intense whisper,
+"and you will find a locked door having a broken panel. Watch through
+the opening for any one who may enter the room beyond, but see that
+your presence is not detected. Whatever I say or do, don't stir until
+I actually rejoin you."
+
+He stepped back across the floor and was gone. One glimpse I had of
+him, silhouetted against the faint light of the open door, then the
+door was gently closed, and I was left alone in the empty house.
+
+Smith's  methods frequently surprised me, but always in the past I had
+found that they were dictated by sound reasons. I had no doubt that an
+emergency unknown to me dictated his present course, but it was with
+my mind in a wildly confused condition, that I groped for and found
+the door with the broken panel and that I stood there in the complete
+darkness of the deserted house listening.
+
+I can well appreciate how the blind develop an unusually keen sense of
+hearing; for there, in the blackness, which (at first) was entirely
+unrelieved by any speck of light, I became aware of the fact, by dint
+of tense listening, that Smith was retiring by means of some gateway
+at the upper end of the little garden, and I became aware of the fact
+that a lane or court, with which this gateway communicated, gave
+access to the main road.
+
+Faintly, I heard our discharged cab backing out from the _cul de sac_;
+then, from some nearer place, came Smith's voice speaking loudly.
+
+"Come along, Petrie!" he cried; "there is no occasion for us to wait.
+Weymouth will see the note pinned on the door."
+
+I started--and was about to stumble back across the room, when, as my
+mind began to work more clearly, I realized that the words had been
+spoken as a ruse--a favorite device of Nayland Smith's.
+
+Rigidly I stood there, and continued to listen.
+
+"All right, cabman!" came more distantly now; "back to the New Louvre--
+jump in, Petrie!"
+
+The cab went rattling away ... as a faint light became perceptible in
+the room beyond the broken panel.
+
+Hitherto I had been able to detect the presence of this panel only by
+my sense of touch and by means of a faint draught which blew through
+it; now it suddenly became clearly perceptible. I found myself looking
+into what was evidently the principal room of the house--a dreary
+apartment with tatters of paper hanging from the walls and litter of
+all sorts lying about upon the floor and in the rusty fireplace.
+
+Some one had partly raised the front window and opened the shutters.
+A patch of moonlight shone down upon the floor immediately below my
+hiding-place and furthermore enabled me vaguely to discern the disorder
+of the room.
+
+A bulky figure showed silhouetted against the dirty panes. It was that
+of a man who, leaning upon the window sill, was peering intently in.
+Silently he had approached, and silently had raised the sash and
+opened the shutters.
+
+For thirty seconds or more he stood so, moving his head from right to
+left ... and I watched him through the broken panel, almost holding my
+breath with suspense. Then, fully raising the window, the man stepped
+into the room, and, first reclosing the shutters, suddenly flashed the
+light of an electric lamp all about the place. I was enabled to
+discern him more clearly, this mysterious spy who had tracked us from
+the moment that we had left the hotel.
+
+He was a man of portly build wearing a heavy fur-lined overcoat and
+having a soft felt hat, the brim turned down so as to shade the upper
+part of his face. Moreover, he wore his fur collar turned up, which
+served further to disguise him, since it concealed the greater part
+of his chin. But the eyes which now were searching every corner of
+the room, the alert, dark eyes, were strangely familiar. The black
+mustache, the clear-cut, aquiline nose, confirmed the impression.
+
+Our follower was M. Samarkan, manager of the New Louvre.
+
+I suppressed a gasp of astonishment. Small wonder that our plans had
+leaked out. This was a momentous discovery indeed.
+
+And as I watched the portly Greek who was not only one of the most
+celebrated _māitres d'hōtel_ in Europe, but also a creature of Dr.
+Fu-Manchu, he cast the light of his electric lamp upon a note attached
+by means of a drawing-pin to the inside of the room door. I
+immediately divined that my friend must have pinned the note in its
+place earlier in the day; even at that distance I recognized Smith's
+neat, illegible writing.
+
+Samarkan quickly scanned the message scribbled upon the white page;
+then, exhibiting an agility uncommon in a man of his bulk, he threw
+open the shutters again, having first replaced his lamp in his pocket,
+climbed out into the little front garden, reclosed the window, and
+disappeared!
+
+A moment I stood, lost to my surroundings, plunged in a sea of
+wonderment concerning the damnable organization which, its tentacles
+extending I knew not whither, since new and unexpected limbs were ever
+coming to light, sought no less a goal than Yellow dominion of the
+world! I reflected how one man--Nayland Smith--alone stood between
+this powerful group and the realization of their project ... when I
+was aroused by a hand grasping my arm in the darkness!
+
+I uttered a short cry, of which I was instantly ashamed, for Nayland
+Smith's voice came:--
+
+"I startled you, eh, Petrie?"
+
+"Smith," I said, "how long have you been standing there?"
+
+"I only returned in time to see our Fenimore Cooper friend retreating
+through the window," he replied; "but no doubt you had a good look at
+him?"
+
+"I had!" I answered eagerly. "It was Samarkan!"
+
+"I thought so! I have suspected as much for a long time."
+
+"Was this the object of our visit here?"
+
+"It was one of the objects," admitted Nayland Smith evasively.
+
+From some place not far distant came the sound of a restarted engine.
+
+"The other," he added, "was this: to enable M. Samarkan to read the
+note which I had pinned upon the door!"
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE SECOND MESSAGE
+
+
+"Here you are, Petrie," said Nayland Smith--and he tossed across the
+table the folded copy of a morning paper. "This may assist you in your
+study of the first Zagazig message."
+
+I set down my cup and turned my attention to the "Personal" column on
+the front page of the journal. A paragraph appeared therein conceived
+as follows:--
+
+ZAGAZIG-_Z_-a-g-_a_;-z:-I:-_g_;z-a,g;-
+  A-,_z_;_i_:_G_,-z:_a_;_g_-A,z-_i_;-gz
+  _A_;_g_aZ-_i_;_g_-:a z i g
+
+I stared across at my friend in extreme bewilderment.
+
+"But, Smith!" I cried, "these messages are utterly meaningless!"
+
+"Not at all," he rapped back. "Scotland Yard thought they were
+meaningless at first, and I must admit that they suggested nothing to
+me for a long time; but the dead dacoit was the clue to the first,
+Petrie, and the note pinned upon the door of the house near the Oval
+is the clue to the second."
+
+Stupidly I continued to stare at him until he broke into a grim smile.
+
+"Surely you understand?" he said. "You remember where the dead Burman
+was found?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"You know the street along which, ordinarily, one would approach the
+wharf?"
+
+"Three Colt Street?"
+
+"Three Colt Street, exactly. Well, on the night that the Burman met
+his end I had an appointment in Three Colt Street with Weymouth. The
+appointment was made by 'phone, from the New Louvre! My cab broke down
+and I never arrived. I discovered later that Weymouth had received a
+telegram purporting to come from me, putting off the engagement."
+
+"I am aware of all this!"
+
+Nayland Smith burst into a loud laugh.
+
+"But _still_ you are fogged!" he cried. "Then I'm hanged if I'll pilot
+you any farther! You have all the facts before you. There lies the
+first Zagazig message; here is the second; and you know the context of
+the note pinned upon the door? It read, if you remember, 'Remove
+patrol from Joy-Shop neighborhood. Have a theory. Wish to visit place
+alone on Monday night after one o'clock.'"
+
+
+"Smith," I said dully, "I have a heavy stake upon this murderous game."
+
+His manner changed instantly; the tanned face grew grim and hard, but
+the steely eyes softened strangely. He bent over me, clapping his hands
+upon my shoulders.
+
+"I know it, old man," he replied; "and because it may serve to keep
+your mind busy during hours when otherwise it would be engaged with
+profitless sorrows, I invite you to puzzle out this business for
+yourself. You have nothing else to do until late to-night, and you can
+work undisturbed, here, at any rate!"
+
+His words referred to the fact that, without surrendering our suite at
+the New Louvre Hotel, we had gone upon a visit, of indefinite duration,
+to a mythical friend; and now were quartered in furnished chambers
+adjoining Fleet Street.
+
+We had remained at the New Louvre long enough to secure confirmation
+of our belief that a creature of Fu-Manchu spied upon us there; and
+now we only awaited the termination of the night's affair to take
+such steps as Smith might consider politic in regard to the sardonic
+Greek who presided over London's newest and most palatial hotel.
+
+Smith setting out for New Scotland Yard in order to make certain final
+arrangements in connection with the business of the night, I began
+closely to study the mysterious Zagazig messages, determined not to be
+beaten, and remembering the words of Edgar Allan Poe--the strange
+genius to whom we are indebted for the first workable system of
+deciphering cryptograms: "It may well be doubted whether human
+ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human ingenuity
+may not, by proper application, resolve."
+
+The first conclusion to which I was borne was this: that the letters
+comprising the word "Zagazig" were designed merely to confuse the
+reader, and might be neglected; since, occurring as they did in regular
+sequence, they could possess no significance. I became quite excited
+upon making the discovery that the _punctuation marks_ varied in
+almost every case!
+
+I immediately assumed that these constituted the cipher; and, seeking
+for my key-letter, _e_ (that which most frequently occurs in the
+English language), I found the sign of a full-stop to appear more
+frequently than any other in the first message, namely ten times,
+although it only occurred thrice in the second. Nevertheless, I was
+hopeful ... until I discovered that in two cases it appeared three
+times _in succession!_
+
+There is no word in English, nor, so far as I am aware, in any language,
+where this occurs, either in regard to _e_ or any other letter!
+
+
+That unfortunate discovery seemed so wholly to destroy the very theory
+upon which I relied, that I almost abandoned my investigation there
+and then. Indeed, I doubt if I ever should have proceeded were it not
+that by a piece of pure guesswork I blundered on to a clue.
+
+I observed that certain letters, at irregularly occurring intervals,
+were set in capital, and I divided up the message into corresponding
+sections, in the hope that th capitals might indicate the
+commencements of words. This accomplished, I set out upon a series
+of guesses, basing these upon Smith's assurance that the death of the
+dacoit afforded a clue to the first message and the note which he
+(Smith) had pinned upon the door a clue to the second.
+
+Such being my system--if I can honor my random attempts with the
+title--I take little credit to myself for the fortunate result. In
+short, I determined (although _e_ twice occurred where _r_ should have
+been!) that the first message from the thirteenth letter, onwards to
+the twenty-seventh (_id est:_ _I;_g:-zagAz;i-;_g_;_-Z_,-a;-_g_azi;-)
+read:--
+
+_"Three Colt Street."_
+
+Endeavoring, now, to eliminate the _e_ where _r_ should appear, I made
+another discovery. The presence of a letter in _italics_ altered the
+value of the sign which followed it!
+
+From that point onward the task became child's-play, and I should
+merely render this account tedious if I entered into further details.
+Both messages commenced with the name "Smith" as I early perceived,
+and half an hour of close study gave me the complete sentences, thus:--
+
+1. _Smith passing Three Colt Street twelve-thirty Wednesday._
+
+2. _Smith going Joy-Shop after one Monday._
+
+The word "Zagazig" was completed, always, and did not necessarily
+terminate with the last letter occurring in the cryptographic message.
+A subsequent inspection of this curious code has enabled Nayland
+Smith, by a process of simple deduction, to compile the entire alphabet
+employed by Dr. Fu-Manchu's agent, Samarkan, in communicating with his
+awful superior. With a little patience, any one of my readers my achieve
+the same result (and I should be pleased to hear from those who succeed!).
+
+This, then was the outcome of my labors; and although it enlightened me
+to some extent, I realized that I still had much to learn.
+
+The dacoit, apparently, had met his death at the very hour when Nayland
+Smith should have been passing along Three Colt Street--a thoroughfare
+with an unsavory reputation. Who had killed him?
+
+To-night, Samarkan advised the Chinese doctor, Smith would again be in
+the same dangerous neighborhood. A strange thrill of excitement swept
+through me. I glanced at my watch. Yes! It was time for me to repair,
+secretly, to my post. For I, too, had business on the borders of
+Chinatown to-night.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE SECRET OF THE WHARF
+
+
+I sat in the evil-smelling little room with its low, blackened ceiling,
+and strove to avoid making the slightest noise; but the crazy boards
+creaked beneath me with every movement. The moon hung low in an almost
+cloudless sky; for, following the spell of damp and foggy weather, a
+fall in temperature had taken place, and there was a frosty snap in
+the air to-night.
+
+Through the open window the moonlight poured in and spilled its pure
+luminance upon the filthy floor; but I kept religiously within the
+shadows, so posted, however, that I could command an uninterrupted
+view of the street from the point where it crossed the creek to that
+where it terminated at the gates of the deserted wharf.
+
+Above and below me the crazy building formerly known as the Joy-Shop
+and once the nightly resort of the Asiatic riff-raff from the docks--
+was silent, save for the squealing and scuffling of the rats. The
+melancholy lapping of the water frequently reached my ears, and a more
+or less continuous din from the wharves and workshops upon the further
+bank of the Thames; but in the narrow, dingy streets immediately
+surrounding the house, quietude reigned and no solitary footstep
+disturbed it.
+
+Once, looking down in the direction of the bridge, I gave a great
+start, for a black patch of shadow moved swiftly across the path and
+merged into the other shadows bordering a high wall. My heart leapt
+momentarily, then, in another instant, the explanation of the mystery
+became apparent--in the presence of a gaunt and prowling cat. Bestowing
+a suspicious glance upward in my direction, the animal slunk away toward
+the path bordering the cutting.
+
+By a devious route amid ghostly gasometers I had crept to my post in
+the early dusk, before the moon was risen, and already I was heartily
+weary of my passive part in the affair of the night. I had never before
+appreciated the multitudinous sounds, all of them weird and many of
+them horrible, which are within the compass of those great black rats
+who find their way to England with cargoes from Russia and elsewhere.
+From the rafters above my head, from the wall recesses about me, from
+the floor beneath my feet, proceeded a continuous and nerve-shattering
+concert, an unholy symphony which seemingly accompanied the eternal
+dance of the rats.
+
+Sometimes a faint splash from below would tell of one of the revelers
+taking the water, but save for the more distant throbbing of riverside
+industry, and rarer note of shipping, the mad discords of this rat
+saturnalia alone claimed the ear.
+
+The hour was nigh now, when matters should begin to develop. I
+followed the chimes from the clock of some church nearby--I have never
+learnt its name; and was conscious of a thrill of excitement when
+they warned me that the hour was actually arrived....
+
+A strange figure appeared noiselessly, from I knew not where, and
+stood fully within view upon the bridge crossing the cutting, peering
+to right and left, in an attitude of listening. It was the figure of
+a bedraggled old woman, gray-haired, and carrying a large bundle tied
+up in what appeared to be a red shawl. Of her face I could see little,
+since it was shaded by the brim of her black bonnet, but she rested
+her bundle upon the low wall of the bridge, and to my intense
+surprise, sat down upon it!
+
+She evidently intended to remain there.
+
+I drew back further into the darkness; for the presence of this
+singular old woman at such a place, and at that hour, could not well
+be accidental. I was convinced that the first actor in the drama had
+already taken the stage. Whether I was mistaken or not must shortly
+appear.
+
+Crisp footsteps sounded upon the roadway; distantly, and from my
+left. Nearer they approached and nearer. I saw the old woman, in the
+shadow of the wall, glance once rapidly in the direction of the
+approaching pedestrian. For some occult reason, the chorus of the
+rats was stilled. Only that firm and regular tread broke the intimate
+silence of the dreary spot.
+
+Now the pedestrian came within my range of sight. It was Nayland Smith!
+
+He wore a long tweed overcoat with which I was familiar, and a soft
+felt hat, the brim pulled down all around in a fashion characteristic
+of him, and probably acquired during the years spent beneath the
+merciless sun of Burma. He carried a heavy walking-cane which I knew
+to be a formidable weapon that he could wield to good effect. But,
+despite the stillness about me, a stillness which had reigned
+uninterruptedly (save for the _danse macabre_ of the rats) since the
+coming of dusk, some voice within, ignoring these physical evidences
+of solitude, spoke urgently of lurking assassins; of murderous
+Easterns armed with those curved knives which sometimes flashed
+before my eyes in dreams; of a deathly menace which hid in the
+shadows about me, in the many shadows cloaking the holes and corners
+of the ramshackle building, draping arches, crannies and portals to
+which the moonlight could not penetrate.
+
+He was abreast of the Joy-Shop now, and in sight of the ominous old
+witch huddled upon the bridge. He pulled up suddenly and stood
+looking at her. Coincident with his doing so, she began to moan and
+sway her body to right and left as if in pain; then--
+
+"Kind gentleman," she whined in a sing-song voice, "thank God you came
+this way to help a poor old woman."
+
+"What is the matter?" said Smith tersely, approaching her.
+
+I clenched my fists. I could have cried out; I was indeed hard put to
+it to refrain from crying out--from warning him. But his injunctions
+had been explicit, and I restrained myself by a great effort,
+preserving silence and crouching there at the window, but with every
+muscle tensed and a desire for action strong upon me.
+
+"I tripped up on a rough stone, sir," whined the old creature, "and
+here I've been sitting waiting for a policeman or someone to help me,
+for more than an hour, I have."
+
+Smith stood looking down at her, his arms behind him, and in one
+gloved hand swinging the cane.
+
+"Where do you live, then?" he asked.
+
+"Not a hundred steps from here, kind gentleman," she replied in the
+monotonous voice; "but I can't move my left foot. It's only just
+through the gates yonder."
+
+"What!" snapped Smith, "on the wharf?"
+
+"They let me have a room in the old building until it's let," she
+explained. "Be helping a poor old woman, and God bless you."
+
+"Come along, then!"
+
+Stooping, Smith placed his arm around her shoulders, and assisted her
+to her feet. She groaned as if in great pain, but gripped her red
+bundle, and leaning heavily upon the supporting arm, hobbled off
+across the bridge in the direction of the wharf gates at the end of
+the lane.
+
+Now at last a little action became possible, and having seen my friend
+push open one of the gates and assist the old woman to enter, I crept
+rapidly across the crazy floor, found the doorway, and, with little
+noise, for I wore rubber-soled shoes, stole down the stairs into what
+had formerly been the reception-room of the Joy-Shop, the malodorous
+sanctum of the old Chinaman, John Ki.
+
+Utter darkness prevailed there, but momentarily flicking the light of
+a pocket-lamp upon the floor before me, I discovered the further steps
+that were to be negotiated, and descended into the square yard which
+gave access to the path skirting the creek.
+
+The moonlight drew a sharp line of shadow along the wall of the house
+above me, but the yard itself was a well of darkness. I stumbled under
+the rotting brick archway, and stepped gingerly upon the muddy path
+that I must follow. One hand pressed to the damp wall, I worked my way
+cautiously along, for a false step had precipitated me into the foul
+water of the creek. In this fashion and still enveloped by dense
+shadows, I reached the angle of the building. Then--at risk of being
+perceived, for the wharf and the river both were bathed in moonlight--
+I peered along to the left....
+
+Out onto the paved pathway communicating with the wharf came Smith,
+shepherding his tottering charge. I was too far away to hear any
+conversation that might take place between the two, but, unless Smith
+gave the pre-arranged signal, I must approach no closer. Thus, as one
+sees a drama upon the screen, I saw what now occurred--occurred with
+dramatic, lightning swiftness.
+
+Releasing Smith's arm, the old woman suddenly stepped back ... at the
+instant that another figure, a repellent figure which approached,
+stooping, apish, with a sort of loping gait, crossed from some spot
+invisible to me, and sprang like a wild animal upon Smith's back!
+
+It was a Chinaman, wearing a short loose garment of the smock pattern,
+and having his head bare, so that I could see his pigtail coiled upon
+his yellow crown. That he carried a cord, I perceived in the instant
+of his spring, and that he had whipped it about Smith's throat with
+unerring dexterity was evidenced by the one, short, strangled cry that
+came from my friend's lips.
+
+Then Smith was down, prone upon the crazy planking, with the ape-like
+figure of the Chinaman perched between his shoulders--bending forward--
+the wicked yellow fingers at work, tightening--tightening--tightening
+the strangling-cord!
+
+Uttering a loud cry of horror, I went racing along the gangway which
+projected actually over the moving Thames waters, and gained the wharf.
+But, swift as I had been, another had been swifter!
+
+A tall figure (despite the brilliant moon, I doubted the evidence of
+my sight), wearing a tweed overcoat and a soft felt hat with the brim
+turned down, sprang up, from nowhere as it seemed, swooped upon the
+horrible figure squatting, simianesque, between Smith's shoulder-blades,
+and grasped him by the neck.
+
+I pulled up shortly, one foot set upon the wharf. The new-comer was
+the double of Nayland Smith!
+
+Seemingly exerting no effort whatever, he lifted the strangler in that
+remorseless grasp, so that the Chinaman's hands, after one quick
+convulsive upward movement, hung limply beside him like the paws of a
+rat in the grip of a terrier.
+
+"You damned murderous swine!" I heard in a repressed, savage undertone.
+"The knife failed, so now the cord has an innings! Go after your pal!"
+
+Releasing one hand from the neck of the limp figure, the speaker
+grasped the Chinaman by his loose, smock-like garment, swung him back,
+once--a mighty swing--and hurled him far out into the river as one
+might hurl a sack of rubbish!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+ARREST OF SAMARKAN
+
+
+"As the high gods willed it," explained Nayland Smith, tenderly
+massaging his throat, "Mr. Forsyth, having just left the docks,
+chanced to pass along Three Colt Street on Wednesday night at exactly
+the hour that _I_ was expected! The resemblance between us is rather
+marked and the coincidence of dress completed the illusion. That
+devilish Eurasian woman, Zarmi, who has escaped us again--of course
+you recognized her?--made a very natural mistake. Mr. Forsyth, however,
+made no mistake!"
+
+I glanced at the chief officer of the _Andaman_, who sat in an armchair
+in our new chambers, contentedly smoking a black cheroot.
+
+"Heaven has blessed me with a pair of useful hands!" said the seaman,
+grimly, extending his horny palms. "I've an old score against those
+yellow swine; poor George and I were twins."
+
+He referred to his brother who had been foully done to death by one of
+the creatures of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+"It beats me how Mr. Smith got on the track!" he added.
+
+"Pure inspiration!" murmured Nayland Smith, glancing aside from the
+siphon wherewith he now was busy. "The divine afflatus--and the same
+whereby Petrie solved the Zagazig cryptogram!"
+
+"But," concluded Forsyth, "I am indebted to you for an opportunity of
+meeting the Chinese strangler, and sending him to join the Burmese
+knife expert!"
+
+Such, then, were the episodes that led to the arrest of M. Samarkan,
+and my duty as narrator of these strange matters now bears me on to
+the morning when Nayland Smith was hastily summoned to the prison into
+which the villainous Greek had been cast.
+
+We were shown immediately into the Governor's room and were invited by
+that much disturbed official to be seated. The news which he had to
+impart was sufficiently startling.
+
+Samarkan was dead.
+
+"I have Warder Morrison's statement here," said Colonel Warrington,
+"if you will be good enough to read it----"
+
+Nayland Smith rose abruptly, and began to pace up and down the little
+office. Through the open window I had a glimpse of a stooping figure
+in convict garb, engaged in liming the flower-beds of the prison
+Governor's garden.
+
+"I should like to see this Warder Morrison personally," snapped my
+friend.
+
+"Very good," replied the Governor, pressing a bell-push placed close
+beside his table.
+
+A man entered, to stand rigidly at attention just within the doorway.
+
+"Send Morrison here," ordered Colonel Warrington.
+
+The man saluted and withdrew. As the door was reclosed, the Colonel
+sat drumming his fingers upon the table, Nayland Smith walked
+restlessly about tugging at the lobe of his ear, and I absently
+watched the convict gardener pursuing his toils. Shortly, sounded a
+rap at the door, and--
+
+"Come in," cried Colonel Warrington.
+
+A man wearing warder's uniform appeared, saluted the Governor, and
+stood glancing uneasily from the Colonel to Smith. The latter had
+now ceased his perambulations, and, one elbow resting upon the
+mantelpiece, was staring at Morrison--his penetrating gray eyes as
+hard as steel. Colonel Warrington twisted his chair around, fixing
+his monocle more closely in its place. He had the wiry white mustache
+and fiery red face of the old-style Anglo-Indian officer.
+
+"Morrison," he said, "Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith has some
+questions to put to you."
+
+The man's uneasiness palpably was growing by leaps and bounds. He was
+a tall and intelligent-looking fellow of military build, though spare
+for his height and of an unhealthy complexion. His eyes were curiously
+dull, and their pupils interested me, professionally, from the very
+moment of his entrance.
+
+"You were in charge of the prisoner Samarkan?" began Smith harshly.
+
+"Yes, sir," Morrison replied.
+
+"Were you the first to learn of his death?"
+
+"I was, sir. I looked through the grille in the door and saw him lying
+on the floor of the cell."
+
+"What time was it?"
+
+"Half-past four A.M."
+
+"What did you do?"
+
+"I went into the cell and then sent for the head warder."
+
+"You realized at once that Samarkan was dead?"
+
+"At once, yes."
+
+"Were you surprised?"
+
+Nayland Smith subtly changed the tone of his voice in asking the last
+question, and it was evident that the veiled significance of the words
+was not lost upon Morrison.
+
+"Well, sir," he began, and cleared his throat nervously.
+
+"Yes, or no!" snapped Smith.
+
+Morrison still hesitated, and I saw his underlip twitch. Nayland Smith,
+taking two long strides, stood immediately in front of him, glaring
+grimly into his face.
+
+"This is your chance," he said emphatically; "I shall not give you
+another. You had met Samarkan before?"
+
+Morrison hung his head for a moment, clenching and unclenching his
+fists; then he looked up swiftly, and the light of a new resolution
+was in his eyes.
+
+"I'll take the chance, sir," he said, speaking with some emotion, "and
+I hope, sir"--turning momentarily to Colonel Warrington--"that you'll
+be as lenient as you can; for I didn't know there was any harm in what
+I did."
+
+"Don't expect any leniency from me!" cried the Colonel. "If there has
+been a breach of discipline there will be punishment, rely upon it!"
+
+"I admit the breach of discipline," pursued the man doggedly; "but I
+want to say, here and now, that I've no more idea than anybody else
+how the----"
+
+Smith snapped his fingers irritably.
+
+"The facts--the facts!" he demanded. "What you _don't_ know cannot
+help us!"
+
+"Well, sir," said Morrison, clearing his throat again, "when the
+prisoner, Samarkan, was admitted, and I put him safely into his cell,
+he told me that he suffered from heart trouble, that he'd had an
+attack when he was arrested and that he thought he was threatened
+with another, which might kill him----"
+
+"One moment," interrupted Smith, "is this confirmed by the police
+officer who made the arrest?"
+
+"It is, sir," replied Colonel Warrington, swinging his chair around
+and consulting some papers upon his table. "The prisoner was overcome
+by faintness when the officer showed him the warrant and asked to be
+given some cognac from the decanter which stood in his room. This was
+administered, and he then entered the cab which the officer had
+waiting. He was taken to Bow Street, remanded, and brought here in
+accordance with some one's instructions."
+
+"_My instructions_" said Smith. "Go on, Morrison."
+
+"He told me," continued Morrison more steadily, "that he suffered from
+something that sounded to me like apoplexy."
+
+"Catalepsy!" I suggested, for I was beginning to see light.
+
+"That's it, sir! He said he was afraid of being buried alive! He asked
+me, as a favor, if he should die in prison to go to a friend of his
+and get a syringe with which to inject some stuff that would do away
+with all chance of his coming to life again after burial."
+
+"You had no right to talk to the prisoner!" roared Colonel Warrington.
+
+"I know that, sir, but you'll admit that the circumstances were peculiar.
+Anyway, he died in the night, sure enough, and from heart failure,
+according to the doctor. I managed to get a couple of hours leave in
+the evening, and I went and fetched the syringe and a little tube of
+yellow stuff."
+
+"Do you understand, Petrie?" cried Nayland Smith, his eyes blazing
+with excitement. "Do you understand?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"It's more than I do, sir," continued Morrison, "but as I was
+explaining, I brought the little syringe back with me and I filled it
+from the tube. The body was lying in the mortuary, which you've seen,
+and the door not being locked, it was easy for me to slip in there for
+a moment. I didn't fancy the job, but it was soon done. I threw the
+syringe and the tube over the wall into the lane outside, as I'd been
+told to do.
+
+"What part of the wall?" asked Smith.
+
+"Behind the mortuary."
+
+"That's where they were waiting!" I cried excitedly. "The building
+used as a mortuary is quite isolated, and it would not be a difficult
+matter for some one hiding in the lane outside to throw one of those
+ladders of silk and bamboo across the top of the wall."
+
+"But, my good sir," interrupted the Governor irascibly, "whilst I
+admit the possibility to which you allude, I do not admit that a dead
+man, and a heavy one at that, can be carried up a ladder of silk and
+bamboo! Yet, on the evidence of my own eyes, the body of the prisoner,
+Samarkan, was removed from the mortuary last night!"
+
+Smith signaled to me to pursue the subject no further; and indeed I
+realized that it would have been no easy matter to render the amazing
+truth evident to a man of the Colonel's type of mind. But to me the
+facts of the case were now clear enough.
+
+That Fu-Manchu possessed a preparation for producing artificial
+catalepsy, of a sort indistinguishable from death, I was well aware.
+A dose of this unknown drug had doubtless been contained in the cognac
+(if, indeed, the decanter had held cognac) that the prisoner had drunk
+at the time of his arrest. The "yellow stuff" spoken of by Morrison I
+recognized as the antidote (another secret of the brilliant Chinese
+doctor), a portion of which I had once, some years before, actually
+had in my possession. The "dead man" had not been carried up the
+ladder; he had climbed up!
+
+"Now, Morrison," snapped Nayland Smith, "you have acted wisely thus
+far. Make a clean breast of it. How much were you paid for the job?"
+
+"Twenty pounds, sir" answered the man promptly, "and I'd have done it
+for less, because I could see no harm in it, the prisoner being dead,
+and this his last request."
+
+"And who paid you?"
+
+Now we were come to the nub of the matter, as the change in the man's
+face revealed. He hesitated momentarily, and Colonel Warrington
+brought his fist down on the table with a bang. Morrison made a sort
+of gesture of resignation at that, and--
+
+"When I was in the Army, sir, stationed at Cairo," he said slowly, "I
+regret to confess that I formed a drug habit."
+
+"Opium?" snapped Smith.
+
+"No, sir, hashish."
+
+"Good God! Go on."
+
+"There's a place in Soho, just off Frith Street, where hashish is
+supplied, and I go there sometimes. Mr. Samarkan used to come, and
+bring people with him--from the New Louvre Hotel, I believe. That's
+where I met him."
+
+"The exact address?" demanded Smith.
+
+"Café de l'Egypte. But the hashish is only sold upstairs, and no one
+is allowed up that isn't known personally to Ismail."
+
+"Who is this Ismail?"
+
+"The proprietor of the café. He's a Greek Jew of Salonica. An old
+woman used to attend to the customers upstairs, but during the last
+few months a young one has sometimes taken her place."
+
+"What is she like?" I asked eagerly.
+
+"She has very fine eyes, and that's about all I can tell you, sir,
+because she wears a yashmak. Last night there were two women there,
+both veiled, though."
+
+"Two women!"
+
+Hope and fear entered my heart. That Kāramaneh was again in the
+power of the Chinese Doctor I knew to my sorrow. Could it be that
+the Café de l'Egypte was the place of her captivity?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+CAFÉ DE L'EGYPTE
+
+
+I could see that Nayland Smith counted the escape of the prisoner but
+a trivial matter by comparison with the discovery to which it had led
+us. That the Soho café should prove to be, if not the headquarters at
+least a regular resort of Dr. Fu-Manchu, was not too much to hope. The
+usefulness of such a haunt was evident enough, since it might
+conveniently be employed as a place of rendezvous for Orientals--and
+furthermore enable the cunning Chinaman to establish relations with
+persons likely to prove of service to him.
+
+Formerly, he had used an East End opium den for this purpose, and,
+later, the resort known as the Joy-Shop. Soho, hitherto, had remained
+outside the radius of his activity, but that he should have embraced
+it at last was not surprising; for Soho is the Montmartre of London
+and a land of many secrets.
+
+"Why," demanded Nayland Smith, "have I never been told of the existence
+of this place?"
+
+"That's simple enough," answered Inspector Weymouth. "Although we knew
+of this Café de l'Egypte, we have never had the slightest trouble
+there. It's a Bohemian resort, where members of the French Colony,
+some of the Chelsea art people, professional models, and others of
+that sort, foregather at night. I've been there myself as a matter of
+fact, and I've seen people well known in the artistic world come in.
+It has much the same clientele as, say, the Café Royal, with a rather
+heavier sprinkling of Hindu students, Japanese, and so forth. It's
+celebrated for Turkish coffee."
+
+"What do you know of this Ismail?"
+
+"Nothing much. He's a Levantine Jew."
+
+"And something more!" added Smith, surveying himself in the mirror,
+and turning to nod his satisfaction to the well-known perruquier whose
+services are sometimes requisitioned by the police authorities.
+
+We were ready for our visit to the Café de l'Egypte, and Smith having
+deemed it inadvisable that we should appear there openly, we had been
+transformed, under the adroit manipulation of Foster, into a pair of
+Futurists oddly unlike our actual selves. No wigs, no false mustaches
+had been employed; a change of costume and a few deft touches of some
+water-color paint had rendered us unrecognizable by our most intimate
+friends.
+
+It was all very fantastic, very reminiscent of Christmas charades, but
+the farce had a grim, murderous undercurrent; the life of one dearer
+to me than life itself hung upon our success; the swamping of the White
+world by Yellow hordes might well be the price of our failure.
+
+Weymouth left us at the corner of Frith Street. This was no more than
+a reconnaissance, but--
+
+"I shall be within hail if I'm wanted," said the burly detective; and
+although we stood not in Chinatown but in the heart of Bohemian London,
+with popular restaurants about us, I was glad to know that we had so
+stanch an ally in reserve.
+
+The shadow of the great Chinaman was upon me. That strange,
+subconscious voice, with which I had become familiar in the past,
+awoke within me to-night. Not by logic, but by prescience, I knew that
+the Yellow doctor was near.
+
+Two minutes walk brought us to the door of the café. The upper half
+was of glass, neatly curtained, as were the windows on either side of
+it; and above the establishment appeared the words: "Café de l'Egypte."
+Between the second and third word was inserted a gilded device
+representing the crescent of Islām.
+
+We entered. On our right was a room furnished with marble-topped
+tables, cane-seated chairs and plush-covered lounges set against the
+walls. The air was heavy with tobacco smoke; evidently the café was
+full, although the night was young.
+
+Smith immediately made for the upper end of the room. It was not large,
+and at first glance I thought that there was no vacant place. Presently,
+however, I espied two unoccupied chairs; and these we took, finding
+ourselves facing a pale, bespectacled young man, with long, fair hair
+and faded eyes, whose companion, a bold brunette, was smoking one of
+the largest cigarettes I had ever seen, in a gold and amber cigar-holder.
+
+A very commonplace Swiss waiter took our orders for coffee, and we
+began discreetly to survey our surroundings. The only touch of Oriental
+color thus far perceptible in the café de l'Egypte was provided by a
+red-capped Egyptian behind a narrow counter, who presided over the
+coffee pots. The patrons of the establishment were in every way typical
+of Soho, and in the bulk differed not at all from those of the better
+known café restaurants.
+
+There were several Easterns present; but Smith, having given each of
+them a searching glance, turned to me with a slight shrug of
+disappointment. Coffee being placed before us, we sat sipping the thick,
+sugary beverage, smoking cigarettes and vainly seeking for some clue
+to guide us to the inner sanctuary consecrated to hashish. It was
+maddening to think that Kāramaneh might be somewhere concealed in
+the building, whilst I sat there, inert amongst this gathering whose
+conversation was of abnormalities in art, music, and literature.
+
+Then, suddenly, the pale young man seated opposite paid his bill, and
+with a word of farewell to his companion, went out of the café. He
+did not make his exit by the door through which we entered, but passed
+up the crowded room to the counter whereat the Egyptian presided. From
+some place hidden in the rear, emerged a black-haired, swarthy man,
+with whom the other exchanged a few words. The pale young artist raised
+his wide-brimmed hat, and was gone--through a curtained doorway on the
+left of the counter.
+
+As he opened it, I had a glimpse of a narrow court beyond; then the
+door was closed again ... and I found myself thinking of the peculiar
+eyes of the departed visitor. Even through the thick pebbles of his
+spectacles, although for some reason I had thought little of the
+matter at the time, his oddly contracted pupils were noticeable. As
+the girl, in turn, rose and left the café--but by the ordinary
+door--I turned to Smith.
+
+"That man ..." I began, and paused.
+
+Smith was watching covertly, a Hindu seated at a neighboring table,
+who was about to settle his bill. Standing up, the Hindu made for the
+coffee counter, the swarthy man appeared out of the background--and
+the Asiatic visitor went out by the door opening into the court.
+
+One quick glance Smith gave me, and raised his hand for the waiter.
+A few minutes later we were out in the street again.
+
+"We must find our way to that court!" snapped my friend. "Let us try
+back, I noted a sort of alley-way which we passed just before reaching
+the café."
+
+"You think the hashish den is in some adjoining building?"
+
+"I don't know where it is, Petrie, but I know the way to it!"
+
+Into a narrow, gloomy court we plunged, hemmed in by high walls, and
+followed it for ten yards or more. An even narrower and less inviting
+turning revealed itself on the left. We pursued our way, and presently
+found ourselves at the back of the Café de l'Egypte.
+
+"There's the door," I said.
+
+It opened into a tiny cul de sac, flanked by dilapidated hoardings,
+and no other door of any kind was visible in the vicinity. Nayland
+Smith stood tugging at the lobe of his ear almost savagely.
+
+"Where the devil do they go?" he whispered.
+
+Even as he spoke the words, came a gleam of light through the upper
+curtained part of the door, and I distinctly saw the figure of a man
+in silhouette.
+
+"Stand back!" snapped Smith.
+
+We crouched back against the dirty wall of the court, and watched a
+strange thing happen. The back door of the Café de l'Egypte opened
+outward, simultaneously a door, hitherto invisible, set at right
+angles in the hoarding adjoining, opened _inward!_
+
+A man emerged from the café and entered the secret doorway. As he did
+so, the café door swung back ... and closed the door in the hoarding!
+
+"Very good!" muttered Nayland Smith. "Our friend Ismail, behind the
+counter, moves some lever which causes the opening of one door
+automatically to open the other. Failing his kindly offices, the second
+exit from the Café de l'Egypte is innocent enough. Now--what is the
+next move?"
+
+"I have an idea, Smith!" I cried. "According to Morrison, the place in
+which the hashish may be obtained has no windows but is lighted from
+above. No doubt it was built for a studio and has a glass roof.
+Therefore----"
+
+"Come along!" snapped Smith, grasping my arm; "you have solved the
+difficulty, Petrie."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE HOUSE OF HASHISH
+
+
+Along the leads from Frith Street we worked our perilous way. From the
+top landing of a French restaurant we had gained access, by means of
+a trap, to the roof of the building. Now, the busy streets of Soho were
+below me, and I clung dizzily to telephone standards and smoke stacks,
+rarely venturing to glance downward upon the cosmopolitan throng,
+surging, dwarfish, in the lighted depths.
+
+Sometimes the bulky figure of Inspector Weymouth would loom up
+grotesquely against the star-sprinkled blue, as he paused to take
+breath; the next moment Nayland Smith would be leading the way again,
+and I would find myself contemplating some sheer well of blackness,
+with nausea threatening me because it had to be negotiated.
+
+None of these gaps were more than a long stride from side to side; but
+the sense of depth conveyed in the muffled voices and dimmed footsteps
+from the pavements far below was almost overpowering. Indeed, I am
+convinced that for my part I should never have essayed that nightmare
+journey were it not that the musical voice of Kāramaneh seemed to be
+calling to me, her little white hands to be seeking mine, blindly, in
+the darkness.
+
+That we were close to a haunt of the dreadful Chinamen I was
+persuaded; therefore my hatred and my love cooperated to lend me a
+coolness and address which otherwise I must have lacked.
+
+"Hullo!" cried Smith, who was leading--"what now?"
+
+We had crept along the crown of a sloping roof and were confronted by
+the blank wall of a building which rose a story higher than that
+adjoining it. It was crowned by an iron railing, showing blackly
+against the sky. I paused, breathing heavily, and seated astride that
+dizzy perch. Weymouth was immediately behind me, and--
+
+"It's the Café de l'Egypte, Mr. Smith!" he said, "If you'll look up,
+you'll see the reflection of the lights shining through the glass roof."
+
+Vaguely I discerned Nayland Smith rising to his feet.
+
+"Be careful!" I said. "For God's sake don't slip!"
+
+"Take my hand," he snapped energetically.
+
+I stretched forward and grasped his hand. As I did so, he slid down
+the slope on the right, away from the street, and hung perilously for
+a moment over the very cul de sac upon which the secret door opened.
+
+"Good!" he muttered "There is, as I had hoped, a window lighting the
+top of the staircase. Ssh!--ssh!"
+
+His grip upon my hand tightened; and there aloft, above the teemful
+streets of Soho, I sat listening ... whilst very faint and muffled
+footsteps sounded upon an uncarpeted stair, a door banged, and all
+was silent again, save for the ceaseless turmoil far below.
+
+"Sit tight, and catch!" rapped Smith.
+
+Into my extended hands he swung his boots, fastened together by the
+laces! Then, ere I could frame any protest, he disengaged his hand
+from mine, and pressing his body close against the angle of the
+building, worked his way around to the staircase window, which was
+invisible from where I crouched.
+
+"Heavens!" muttered Weymouth, close to my ear, "I can never travel
+that road!"
+
+"Nor I!" was my scarcely audible answer.
+
+In a anguish of fearful anticipation I listened for the cry and the
+dull thud which should proclaim the fate of my intrepid friend; but
+no such sounds came to me. Some thirty seconds passed in this fashion,
+when a subdued call from above caused me to start and look aloft.
+
+Nayland Smith was peering down from the railing on the roof.
+
+"Mind your head!" he warned--and over the rail swung the end of a
+light wooden ladder, lowering it until it rested upon the crest
+astride of which I sat.
+
+"Up you come!--then Weymouth!"
+
+Whilst Smith held the top firmly, I climbed up rung by rung, not
+daring to think of what lay below.
+
+My relief when at last I grasped the railing, climbed over, and found
+myself upon a wooden platform, was truly inexpressible.
+
+"Come on, Weymouth!" rapped Nayland Smith. "This ladder has to be
+lowered back down the trap before another visitor arrives!"
+
+Taking short, staccato breaths at every step, Inspector Weymouth
+ascended, ungainly, that frail and moving stair. Arrived beside me,
+he wiped the perspiration from his face and forehead.
+
+"I wouldn't do it again for a hundred pounds!" he said hoarsely.
+
+"You don't have to!" snapped Smith.
+
+Back he hauled the ladder, shouldered it, and stepping to a square
+opening in one corner of the rickety platform, lowered it cautiously
+down.
+
+"Have you a knife with a corkscrew in it?" he demanded.
+
+Weymouth had one, which he produced. Nayland Smith screwed it into
+the weather-worn frame, and by that means reclosed the trapdoor
+softly, then--
+
+"Look," he said, "there is the house of hashish!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+"THE DEMON'S SELF"
+
+
+Through the glass panes of the skylight I looked down upon a scene so
+bizarre that my actual environment became blotted out, and I was
+mentally translated to Cairo--to that quarter of Cairo immediately
+surrounding the famous Square of the Fountain--to those indescribable
+streets, wherefrom arises the perfume of deathless evil, wherein, to
+the wailing, luresome music of the reed pipe, painted dancing-girls
+sway in the wild abandon of dances that were ancient when Thebes was
+the City of a Hundred Gates; I seemed to stand again in el Wasr.
+
+The room below was rectangular, and around three of the walls were
+divans strewn with garish cushions, whilst highly colored Eastern rugs
+were spread about the floor. Four lamps swung on chains, two from
+either of the beams which traversed the apartment. They were fine
+examples of native perforated brasswork.
+
+Upon the divans some eight or nine men were seated, fully half of whom
+were Orientals or half-castes. Before each stood a little inlaid table
+bearing a brass tray; and upon the trays were various boxes, some
+apparently containing sweetmeats, other cigarettes. One or two of the
+visitors smoked curious, long-stemmed pipes and sipped coffee.
+
+Even as I leaned from the platform, surveying that incredible scene
+(incredible in a street of Soho), another devotee of hashish entered--
+a tall, distinguished-looking man, wearing a light coat over his
+evening dress.
+
+"Gad!" whispered Smith, beside me--"Sir Byngham Pyne of the India
+Office! You see, Petrie! You see! This place is a lure. My God! ..."
+
+He broke off, as I clutched wildly at his arm.
+
+The last arrival having taken his seat in a corner of the divan, two
+heavy curtains draped before an opening at one end of the room parted,
+and a girl came out, carrying a tray such as already reposed before
+each of the other men in the room.
+
+She wore a dress of dark lilac-colored gauze, banded about with gold
+tissue and embroidered with gold thread and pearls; and around her
+shoulders floated, so ethereally that she seemed to move in a violet
+cloud; a scarf of Delhi muslin. A white yashmak trimmed with gold
+tissue concealed the lower part of her face.
+
+My heart throbbed wildly; I seemed to be choking. By the wonderful
+hair alone I must have known her, by the great, brilliant eyes, by
+the shape of those slim white ankles, by every movement of that
+exquisite form. It was Kāramaneh!
+
+I sprang madly back from the rail ... and Smith had my arm in an iron
+grip.
+
+"Where are you going?" he snapped.
+
+"Where am I going?" I cried. "Do you think--"
+
+"What do you propose to do?" he interrupted harshly. "Do you know so
+little of the resources of Dr. Fu-Manchu that you would throw yourself
+blindly into that den? Damn it all, man! I know what you suffer!--but
+wait--wait. We must not act rashly; our plans must be well considered."
+
+He drew me back to my former post and clapped his hand on my shoulder
+sympathetically. Clutching the rail like a man frenzied, as indeed I
+was, I looked down into that infamous den again, striving hard for
+composure.
+
+Kāramaneh listlessly placed the tray upon the little table before Sir
+Byngham Pyne and withdrew without vouchsafing him a single glance in
+acknowledgment of his unconcealed admiration.
+
+A moment later, above the dim clamor of London far below, there crept
+to my ears a sound which completed the magical quality of the scene,
+rendering that sky platform on a roof of Soho a magical carpet bearing
+me to the golden Orient. This sound was the wailing of a reed pipe.
+
+"The company is complete," murmured Smith. "I had expected this."
+
+Again the curtains parted, and a _ghazeeyeh_ glided out into the room.
+She wore a white dress, clinging closely to her figure from shoulders
+to hips, where it was clasped by an ornate girdle, and a skirt of
+sky-blue gauze which clothed her as Io was clothed of old. Her arms
+were covered with gold bangles, and gold bands were clasped about her
+ankles. Her jet-black, frizzy hair was unconfined and without
+ornament, and she wore a sort of highly colored scarf so arranged that
+it effectually concealed the greater part of her face, but served to
+accentuated the brightness of the great flashing eyes. She had
+unmistakable beauty of a sort, but how different from the sweet
+witchery of Kāramaneh!
+
+With a bold, swinging grace she walked down the center of the room,
+swaying her arms from side to side and snapping her fingers.
+
+"Zarmi!" exclaimed Smith.
+
+But his exclamation was unnecessary, for already I had recognized the
+evil Eurasian who was so efficient a servant of the Chinese doctor.
+
+The wailing of the pipes continued, and now faintly I could detect the
+throbbing of a _darabūkeh._ This was el Wasr indeed. The dance
+commenced, its every phase followed eagerly by the motley clientele
+of the hashish house. Zarmi danced with an insolent nonchalance that
+nevertheless displayed her barbaric beauty to greatest advantage. She
+was lithe as a serpent, graceful as a young panther, another Lamia
+come to damn the souls of men with those arts denounced in a long dead
+age by Apolonius of Tyana.
+
+  "She seemed, at once, some penanced lady elf,
+   Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self...."
+
+Entranced against my will, I watched the Eurasian until, the barbaric
+dance completed, she ran from the room, and the curtains concealed her
+from view. How my mind was torn between hope and fear that I should
+see Kāramaneh again! How I longed for one more glimpse of her, yet
+loathed the thought of her presence in that infamous house.
+
+She was a captive; of that there could be no doubt, a captive in the
+hands of the giant criminal whose wiles were endless, whose resources
+were boundless, whose intense cunning had enabled him, for years, to
+weave his nefarious plots in the very heart of civilization, and
+remain immune. Suddenly--
+
+"That woman is a sorceress!" muttered Nayland Smith. "There is about
+her something serpentine, at once repelling and fascinating. It would
+be of interest, Petrie, to learn what State secrets have been filched
+from the brains of habitues of this den, and interesting to know from
+what unsuspected spy-hole Fu-Manchu views his nightly catch. If ..."
+
+His voice died away, in a most curious fashion. I have since thought
+that here was a case of true telepathy. For, as Smith spoke of
+Fu-Manchu's spy-hole, the idea leapt instantly to my mind that _this_
+was it--this strange platform upon which we stood!
+
+I drew back from the rail, turned, stared at Smith. I read in his
+face that our suspicions were identical. Then--
+
+"Look! Look!" whispered Weymouth.
+
+He was gazing at the trapdoor--which was slowly rising; inch by inch ...
+inch by inch ... Fascinatedly, raptly, we all gazed. A head appeared
+in the opening--and some vague, reflected light revealed two long,
+narrow, slightly oblique eyes watching us. They were brilliantly green.
+
+"By God!" came in a mighty roar from Weymouth. "It's Dr. Fu-Manchu!"
+
+As one man we leapt for the trap. It dropped, with a resounding bang--
+and I distinctly heard a bolt shot home.
+
+A gutteral voice--the unmistakable, unforgettable voice of Fu-Manchu--
+sounded dimly from below. I turned and sprang back to the rail of the
+platform, peering down into the hashish house. The occupants of the
+divans were making for the curtained doorway. Some, who seemed to be
+in a state of stupor, were being assisted by the others and by the
+man, Ismail, who had now appeared upon the scene.
+
+Of Kāramaneh, Zarmi, or Fu-Manchu there was no sign.
+
+Suddenly, the lights were extinguished.
+
+"This is maddening!" cried Nayland Smith--"maddening! No doubt they
+have some other exit, some hiding-place--and they are slipping through
+our hands!"
+
+Inspector Weymouth blew a shrill blast upon his whistle, and Smith,
+running to the rail of the platform, began to shatter the panes of the
+skylight with his foot.
+
+"That's hopeless, sir!" cried Weymouth. "You'd be torn to pieces on
+the jagged glass."
+
+Smith desisted, with a savage exclamation, and stood beating his right
+fist into the palm of his left hand, and glaring madly at the Scotland
+Yard man.
+
+"I know I'm to blame," admitted Weymouth; "but the words were out
+before I knew I'd spoken. Ah!"--as an answering whistle came from
+somewhere in the street below. "But will they ever find us?"
+
+He blew again shrilly. Several whistles replied ... and a wisp of smoke
+floated up from the shattered pane of the skylight.
+
+"I can smell _petrol_!" muttered Weymouth.
+
+An ever-increasing roar, not unlike that of an approaching storm at
+sea, came from the streets beneath. Whistles skirled, remotely and
+intimately, and sometimes one voice, sometimes another, would detach
+itself from this stormy background with weird effect. Somewhere deep
+in the bowels of the hashish house there went on ceaselessly a
+splintering and crashing as though a determined assault were being
+made upon a door. A light shone up through the skylight.
+
+Back once more to the rail I sprang, looked down into the room below--
+and saw a sight never to be forgotten.
+
+Passing from divan to curtained door, from piles of cushions to
+stacked-up tables, and bearing a flaming torch hastily improvised out
+of a roll of newspaper, was Dr. Fu-Manchu. Everything inflammable in
+the place had been soaked with petrol, and, his gaunt, yellow face
+lighted by the evergrowing conflagration, so that truly it seemed not
+the face of a man, but that of a demon of the hells, the Chinese
+doctor ignited point after point....
+
+"Smith!" I screamed, "we are trapped! that fiend means to burn us alive!"
+
+"And the place will flare like matchwood! It's touch and go this time,
+Petrie! To drop to the sloping roof underneath would mean almost
+certain death on the pavement...."
+
+I dragged my pistol from my pocket and began wildly to fire shot after
+shot into the holocaust below. But the awful Chinaman had escaped--
+probably by some secret exit reserved for his own use; for certainly
+he must have known that escape into the court was now cut off.
+
+Flames were beginning to hiss through the skylight. A tremendous
+crackling and crashing told of the glass destroyed. Smoke spurted up
+through the cracks of the boarding upon which we stood--and a great
+shout came from the crowd in the streets....
+
+In the distance--a long, long way off, it seemed--was born a new note
+in the stormy human symphony. It grew in volume, it seemed to be
+sweeping down upon us--nearer--nearer--nearer. Now it was in the
+streets immediately adjoining the Café de l'Egypte ... and now,
+blessed sound! it culminated in a mighty surging cheer.
+
+"The fire-engines," said Weymouth coolly--and raised himself on to the
+lower rail, for the platform was growing uncomfortably hot.
+
+Tongues of fire licked out, venomously, from beneath my feet. I leapt
+for the railing in turn, and sat astride it ... as one end of the
+flooring burst into flame.
+
+The heat from the blazing room above which we hung suspended was now
+all but insupportable, and the fumes threatened to stifle us. My head
+seemed to be bursting; my throat and lungs were consumed by internal
+fires.
+
+"Merciful heavens!" whispered Smith. "Will they reach us in time?"
+
+"Not if they don't get here within the next thirty seconds!" answered
+Weymouth grimly--and changed his position, in order to avoid a tongue
+of flame that hungrily sought to reach him.
+
+Nayland Smith turned and looked me squarely in the eyes. Words
+trembled on his tongue; but those words were never spoken ... for a
+brass helmet appeared suddenly out of the smoke banks, followed almost
+immediately by a second....
+
+"Quick, sir! this way! Jump! I'll catch you!"
+
+Exactly what followed I never knew; but there was a mighty burst of
+cheering, a sense of tension released, and it became a task less
+agonizing to breathe.
+
+Feeling very dazed, I found myself in the heart of a huge, excited
+crowd, with Weymouth beside me, and Nayland Smith holding my arm.
+Vaguely, I heard;--
+
+"They have the man Ismail, but ..."
+
+A hollow crash drowned the end of the sentence. A shower of sparks
+shot up into the night's darkness high above our heads.
+
+"That's the platform gone!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+ROOM WITH THE GOLDEN DOOR
+
+
+One night early in the following week I sat at work upon my notes
+dealing with our almost miraculous escape from the blazing hashish
+house when the clock of St. Paul's began to strike midnight.
+
+I paused in my work, leaning back wearily and wondering what detained
+Nayland Smith so late. Some friends from Burma had carried him off to
+a theater, and in their good company I had thought him safe enough;
+yet, with the omnipresent menace of Fu-Manchu hanging over our heads,
+always I doubted, always I feared, if my friend should chance to be
+delayed abroad at night.
+
+What a world of unreality was mine, in those days! Jostling, as I did,
+commonplace folk in commonplace surroundings, I yet knew myself removed
+from them, knew myself all but alone in my knowledge of the great and
+evil man, whose presence in England had diverted my life into these
+strange channels.
+
+But, despite of all my knowledge, and despite the infinitely greater
+knowledge and wider experience of Nayland Smith, what did I know, what
+did he know, of the strange organization called the Si-Fan, and of its
+most formidable member, Dr. Fu-Manchu?
+
+Where did the dreadful Chinaman hide, with his murderers, his poisons,
+and his nameless death agents? What roof in broad England sheltered
+Kāramaneh, the companion of my dreams, the desire of every waking hour?
+
+I uttered a sigh of despair, when, to my unbounded astonishment, there
+came a loud rap upon the window pane!
+
+Leaping up, I crossed to the window, threw it widely open and leant out,
+looking down into the court below. It was deserted. In no other window
+visible to me was any light to be seen, and no living thing moved in
+the shadows beneath. The clamor of Fleet Street's diminishing traffic
+came dimly to my ears; the last stroke from St. Paul's quivered through
+the night.
+
+What was the meaning of the sound which had disturbed me? Surely I
+could not have imagined it? Yet, right, left, above and below, from the
+cloisteresque shadows on the east of the court to the blank wall of the
+building on the west, no living thing stirred.
+
+Quietly, I reclosed the window, and stood by it for a moment listening.
+Nothing occurred, and I returned to the writing-table, puzzled but in
+no sense alarmed. I resumed the seemingly interminable record of the
+Si-Fan mysteries, and I had just taken up my pen, when ... two loud
+raps sounded upon the pane behind me.
+
+In a trice I was at the window, had thrown it open, and was craning
+out. Practical joking was not characteristic of Nayland Smith, and I
+knew of none other likely to take such a liberty. As before, the court
+below proved to be empty....
+
+Some one was softly rapping at the door of the chambers!
+
+I turned swiftly from the open window; and now, came _fear_.
+Momentarily, the icy finger of panic touched me, for I thought myself
+invested upon all sides. Who could this late caller be, this midnight
+visitor who rapped, ghostly, in preference to ringing the bell?
+
+From the table drawer I took out a Browning pistol, slipped it into my
+pocket and crossed to the narrow hallway. It was in darkness, but I
+depressed the switch, lighting the lamp. Toward the closed door I looked
+--as the soft rapping was repeated.
+
+I advanced; then hesitated, and, strung up to a keen pitch of fearful
+anticipation, stood there in doubt. The silence remained unbroken for
+the space, perhaps of half a minute. Then again came the ghostly rapping.
+
+"Who's there?" I cried loudly.
+
+Nothing stirred outside the door, and still I hesitated. To some who
+read, my hesitancy may brand me childishly timid; but I, who had met
+many of the dreadful creatures of Dr. Fu-Manchu, had good reason to
+fear whomsoever or whatsoever rapped at midnight upon my door. Was I
+likely to forget the great half-human ape, with the strength of four
+lusty men, which once he had loosed upon us?--had I not cause to
+remember his Burmese dacoits and Chinese stranglers?
+
+No, I had just cause for dread, as I fully recognized when, snatching
+the pistol from my pocket, I strode forward, flung wide the door, and
+stood peering out into the black gulf of the stairhead.
+
+Nothing, no one, appeared!
+
+Conscious of a longing to cry out--if only that the sound of my own
+voice might reassure me--I stood listening. The silence was complete.
+
+"Who's there?" I cried again, and loudly enough to arrest the attention
+of the occupant of the chambers opposite if he chanced to be at home.
+
+None replied; and finding this phantom silence more nerve-racking than
+any clamor, I stepped outside the door--and my heart gave a great leap,
+then seemed to remain inert, in my breast....
+
+Right and left of me, upon either side of the doorway, stood a dim
+figure: I had walked deliberately into a trap!
+
+The shock of the discovery paralyzed my mind for one instant. In the
+next, and with the sinister pair closing swiftly upon me, I stepped
+back--I stepped into the arms of some third assailant, who must have
+entered the chambers by way of the open window and silently crept up
+behind me!
+
+So much I realized, and no more. A bag, reeking of some hashish-like
+perfume, was clapped over my head and pressed firmly against mouth
+and nostrils. I felt myself to be stifling--dying--and dropping into
+a bottomless pit.
+
+When I opened my eyes I failed for some time to realize that I was
+conscious in the true sense of the word, that I was really awake.
+
+I sat upon a bench covered with a red carpet, in a fair-sized room,
+very simply furnished, in the Chinese manner, but having a two-leaved,
+gilded door, which was shut. At the further end of this apartment was
+a dais some three feet high, also carpeted with red, and upon it was
+placed a very large cushion covered with a tiger skin.
+
+Seated cross-legged upon the cushion was a Chinaman of most majestic
+appearance. His countenance was truly noble and gracious and he was
+dressed in a yellow robe lined with marten-fur. His hair, which was
+thickly splashed with gray, was confined upon the top of his head by
+three golden combs, and a large diamond was suspended from his left
+ear. A pearl-embroidered black cap, surmounted by the red coral ball
+denoting the mandarin's rank, lay upon a second smaller cushion
+beside him.
+
+Leaning back against the wall, I stared at his personage with a
+dreadful fixity, for I counted him the figment of a disarranged mind.
+But palpably he remained before me, fanning himself complacently, and
+watching me with every mark of kindly interest. Evidently perceiving
+that I was fully alive to my surroundings, the Chinaman addressed a
+remark to me in a tongue quite unfamiliar.
+
+I shook my head dazedly.
+
+"Ah," he commented in French, "you do not speak my language."
+
+"I do not," I answered, also in French, "but since it seems we have
+one common tongue, what is the meaning of the outrage to which I have
+been subjected, and who are you?"
+
+As I spoke the words I rose to my feet, but was immediately attacked
+by vertigo, which compelled me to resume my seat upon the bench.
+
+"Compose yourself," said the Chinaman, taking a pinch of snuff from a
+silver vase which stood convenient to his hand. "I have been compelled
+to adopt certain measures in order to bring about this interview. In
+China, such measures are not unusual, but I recognize that they are
+out of accordance with your English ideas."
+
+"Emphatically they are!" I replied.
+
+The placid manner of this singularly imposing old man rendered proper
+resentment difficult. A sense of futility, and of unreality, claimed
+me; I felt that this was a dream-world, governed by dream-laws.
+
+"You have good reason," he continued, calmly raising the pinch of
+snuff to his nostrils, "good reason to distrust all that is Chinese.
+Therefore, when I despatched my servants to your abode (knowing you
+to be alone) I instructed them to observe every law of courtesy,
+compatible with the Sure Invitation. Hence, I pray you, absolve me,
+for I intended no offense."
+
+Words failed me altogether; wonder succeeded wonder! What was coming?
+What did it all mean?
+
+"I have selected you, rather than Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith,"
+continued the mandarin, "as the recipient of those secrets which I am
+about to impart, for the reason that your friend might possibly be
+acquainted with my appearance. I will confess there was a time when I
+must have regarded you with animosity, as one who sought the
+destruction of the most ancient and potent organization in the world--
+the Si-Fan."
+
+As he uttered the words he raised his right hand and touched his
+forehead, his mouth, and finally his breast--a gesture reminiscent of
+that employed by Moslems.
+
+"But my first task is to assure you," he resumed, "that the activities
+of that Order are in no way inimical to yourself, your country or your
+King. The extensive ramifications of the Order have recently been
+employed by a certain Dr. Fu-Manchu for his own ends, and, since he
+was (I admit it) a high official, a schism has been created in our
+ranks. Exactly a month ago, sentence of death was passed upon him by
+the Sublime Prince, and since I myself must return immediately to China,
+I look to Mr. Nayland Smith to carry out that sentence."
+
+I said nothing; I remained bereft of the power of speech.
+
+"The Si-Fan," he added, repeating the gesture with his hand, "disown
+Dr. Fu-Manchu and his servants; do with them what you will. In this
+envelope"--he held up a sealed package--"is information which should
+prove helpful to Mr. Smith. I have now a request to make. You were
+conveyed here in the garments which your wore at the time that my
+servants called upon you." (I was hatless and wore red leathern
+slippers.) "An overcoat and a hat can doubtless be found to suit you,
+temporarily, and my request is that you close your eyes until
+permission is given to open them."
+
+Is there any one of my readers in doubt respecting my reception of
+this proposal? Remember my situation, remember the bizarre happening
+that had led up to it; remember, too, ere judging me, that whilst I
+could not doubt the unseen presence of Chinamen unnumbered surrounding
+that strange apartment with the golden door, I had not the remotest
+clue to guide me in determining where it was situated. Since the
+duration of my unconsciousness was immeasurable, the place in which I
+found myself might have been anywhere, within say, thirty miles of
+Fleet Street!
+
+"I agree," I said.
+
+The mandarin bowed composedly.
+
+"Kindly close your eyes, Dr. Petrie," he requested, "and fear nothing.
+No danger threatens you."
+
+I obeyed. Instantly sounded the note of a gong, and I became aware
+that the golden door was open. A soft voice, evidently that of a
+cultured Chinaman, spoke quite close to my ear--
+
+"Keep your eyes tightly closed, please, and I will help you on with
+this coat. The envelope you will find in the pocket and here is a
+tweed cap. Now take my hand."
+
+Wearing the borrowed garments, I was led from the room, along a
+passage, down a flight of thickly carpeted stairs, and so out of the
+house into the street. Faint evidences of remote traffic reached my
+ears as I was assisted into a car and placed in a cushioned corner.
+The car moved off, proceeded for some distance; then--
+
+"Allow me to help you to descend," said the soft voice. "You may open
+your eyes in thirty seconds."
+
+I was assisted from the step on to the pavement--and I heard the car
+being driven back. Having slowly counted thirty I opened my eyes, and
+looked about me. This, and not the fevered moment when first I had
+looked upon the room with the golden door, seemed to be my true
+awakening, for about me was comprehensible world, the homely streets
+of London, with deserted Portland Place stretching away on the one
+hand and a glimpse of midnight Regent Street obtainable on the other!
+The clock of the neighboring church struck one.
+
+My mind yet dull with wonder of it all, I walked on to Oxford Circus
+and there obtained a taxicab, in which I drove to Fleet Street.
+Discharging the man, I passed quickly under the time worn archway
+into the court and approached our stair. Indeed, I was about to ascend
+when some one came racing down and almost knocked me over.
+
+"Petrie! Petrie! Thank God you're safe!"
+
+It was Nayland Smith, his eyes blazing with excitement, as I could
+see by the dim light of the lamp near the archway, and his hands, as
+he clapped them upon my shoulders, quivering tensely.
+
+"Petrie!" he ran on impulsively, and speaking with extraordinary
+rapidly, "I was detained by a most ingenious trick and arrived only
+five minutes ago, to find you missing, the window wide open, and signs
+of hooks, evidently to support a rope ladder, having been attached
+to the ledge."
+
+"But where were you going?"
+
+"Weymouth has just rung up. We have indisputable proof that the
+mandarin Ki-Ming, whom I had believed to be dead, and whom I know for
+a high official of the Si-Fan, is actually in London! It's neck or
+nothing this time, Petrie! I'm going straight to Portland Place!"
+
+"To the Chinese Legation?"
+
+"Exactly!"
+
+"Perhaps I can save you a journey," I said slowly. "I have just come
+from there!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE MANDARIN KI-MING
+
+
+Nayland Smith strode up and down the little sitting-room, tugging
+almost savagely at the lobe of his left ear. To-night his increasing
+grayness was very perceptible, and with his feverishly bright eyes
+staring straightly before him, he looked haggard and ill, despite the
+deceptive tan of his skin.
+
+"Petrie," he began in his abrupt fashion, "I am losing confidence in
+myself."
+
+"Why?" I asked in surprise.
+
+"I hardly know; but for some occult reason I feel afraid."
+
+"Afraid?"
+
+"Exactly; afraid. There is some deep mystery here that I cannot fathom.
+In the first place, if they had really meant you to remain ignorant of
+the place at which the episodes described by you occurred, they would
+scarcely have dropped you at the end of Portland Place."
+
+"You mean ...?"
+
+"I mean that I don't believe you were taken to the Chinese Legation at
+all. Undoubtedly you saw the mandarin Ki-Ming; I recognize him from
+your description."
+
+"You have met him, then?"
+
+"No; but I know those who have. He is undoubtedly a very dangerous man,
+and it is just possible----"
+
+He hesitated, glancing at me strangely.
+
+"It is just possible," he continued musingly, "that his presence
+marks the beginning of the end. Fu-Manchu's health may be permanently
+impaired, and Ki-Ming may have superceded him."
+
+"But, if what you suspect, Smith, be only partly true, with what
+object was I seized and carried to that singular interview? What was
+the meaning of the whole solemn farce?"
+
+"Its meaning remains to be discovered," he answered; "but that the
+mandarin is amicably disposed I refuse to believe. You may dismiss the
+idea. In dealing with Ki-Ming we are to all intents and purposes
+dealing with Fu-Manchu. To me, this man's presence means one thing: we
+are about to be subjected to attempts along slightly different lines."
+
+I was completely puzzled by Smith's tone.
+
+"You evidently know more of this man, Ki-Ming, than you have yet
+explained to me," I said.
+
+Nayland Smith pulled out the blackened briar and began rapidly to
+load it.
+
+"He is a graduate," he replied, "of the Lama College, or monastery, of
+Rache-Churān.
+
+"This does not enlighten me."
+
+Having got his pipe going well--
+
+"What do you know of animal magnetism?" snapped Smith.
+
+The question seemed so wildly irrelevant that I stared at him in
+silence for some moments. Then--
+
+"Certain powers sometimes grouped under that head are recognized in
+every hospital to-day," I answered shortly.
+
+"Quite so. And the monastery of Rache-Churān is entirely devoted to
+the study of the subject."
+
+"Do you mean that that gentle old man----"
+
+"Petrie, a certain M. Sokoloff, a Russian gentleman whose acquaintance
+I made in Mandalay, related to me an episode that took place at the
+house of the mandarin Ki-Ming in Canton. It actually occurrd in the
+presence of M. Sokoloff, and therefore is worthy of your close attention.
+
+"He had had certain transactions with Ki-Ming, and at their conclusion
+received an invitation to dine with the mandarin. The entertainment
+took place in a sort of loggia or open pavilion, immediately in front
+of which was an ornamental lake, with numerous waterlilies growing
+upon its surface. One of the servants, I think his name was Li,
+dropped a silver bowl containing orange-flower water for pouring upon
+the hands, and some of the contents lightly sprinkled M. Sokoloff's
+garments.
+
+"Ki-Ming spoke no word of rebuke, Petrie; he merely _looked_ at Li,
+with those deceptive, gazelle-like eyes. Li, according to my
+acquaintance account, began to make palpable and increasingly anxious
+attempts to look anywhere rather than into the mild eyes of his
+implacable master. M. Sokoloff, who, up to that moment, had
+entertained similar views to your own respecting his host, regarded
+this unmoving stare of Ki-Ming's as a sort of kindly, because silent,
+reprimand. The behavior of the unhappy Li very speedily served to
+disabuse his mind of that delusion.
+
+"Petrie--the man grew livid, his whole body began to twitch and shake
+as though an ague had attacked him; and his eyes protruded hideously
+from their sockets! M. Sokoloff assured me that he _felt_ himself
+turning pale--when Ki-Ming, very slowly, raised his right hand and
+pointed to the pond.
+
+"Li began to pant as though engaged in a life and death struggle with
+a physically superior antagonist. He clutched at the posts of the
+loggia with frenzied hands and a bloody froth came to his lips. He
+began to move backward, step by step, step by step, all the time
+striving, with might and main, to _prevent_ himself from doing so!
+His eyes were set rigidly upon Ki-Ming, like the eyes of a rabbit
+fascinated by a python. Ki-Ming continued to point.
+
+"Right to the brink of the lake the man retreated, and there, for one
+dreadful moment, he paused and uttered a sort of groaning sob. Then,
+clenching his fists frenziedly, he stepped back into the water and
+immediately sank among the lilies. Ki-Ming continued to gaze fixedly--
+at the spot where bubbles were rising; and presently up came the livid
+face of the drowning man, still having those glazed eyes turned,
+immovably, upon the mandarin. For nearly five seconds that hideous,
+distorted face gazed from amid the mass of blooms, then it sank
+again ... and rose no more."
+
+"What!" I cried, "do you mean to tell me----"
+
+"Ki-Ming struck a gong. Another servant appeared with a fresh bowl of
+water; and the mandarin calmly resumed his dinner!"
+
+I drew a deep breath and raised my hand to my head.
+
+"It is almost unbelievable," I said. "But what completely passes my
+comprehension is his allowing me to depart unscathed, having once held
+me in his power. Why the long harangue and the pose of friendship?
+
+"That point is not so difficult."
+
+"What!"
+
+"That does not surprise me in the least. You may recollect that Dr.
+Fu-Manchu entertains for you an undoubted affection, distinctly Chinese
+in its character, but nevertheless an affection! There is no intention
+of assassinating _you_, Petrie; _I_ am the selected victim."
+
+I started up.
+
+"Smith! what do you mean? What danger, other than that which has
+threatened us for over two years, threatens us to-night?"
+
+"Now you come to the point which _does_ puzzle me. I believe I stated
+awhile ago that I was afraid. You have placed your finger upon the
+cause of my fear. _What_ threatens us to-night?"
+
+He spoke the words in such a fashion that they seemed physically to
+chill me. The shadows of the room grew menacing; the very silence
+became horrible. I longed with a terrible longing for company, for the
+strength that is in numbers; I would have had the place full to
+overflowing--for it seemed that we two, condemned by the mysterious
+organization called the Si-Fan, were at that moment surrounded by the
+entire arsenal of horrors at the command of Dr. Fu-Manchu. I broke
+that morbid silence. My voice had assumed an unnatural tone.
+
+"Why do you dread this man, Ki-Ming, so much?"
+
+"Because he must be aware that I know he is in London."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Dr. Fu-Manchu has no official status. Long ago, his Legation denied
+all knowledge of his existence. But the mandarin Ki-Ming is known to
+every diplomat in Europe, Asia and American almost. Only _I_, and now
+yourself, know that he is a high official of the Si-Fan; Ki-Ming is
+aware that I know. Why, therefore, does he risk his neck in London?"
+
+"He relies upon his national cunning."
+
+"Petrie, he is aware that I hold evidence to hang him, either here or
+in China! He relies upon one thing; upon striking first and striking
+surely. Why is he so confident? I do not know. Therefore I am afraid."
+
+Again a cold shudder ran icily through me. A piece of coal dropped
+lower into the dying fire--and my heart leapt wildly. Then, in a flash,
+I remembered something.
+
+"Smith!" I cried, "the letter! We have not looked at the letter."
+
+Nayland Smith laid his pipe upon the mantelpiece and smiled grimly.
+From his pocket he took out square piece of paper, and thrust it close
+under my eyes.
+
+"I remembered it as I passed your borrowed garment--which bear no
+maker's name--on my way to the bedroom for matches," he said.
+
+The paper was covered with Chinese characters!
+
+"What does it mean?" I demanded breathlessly.
+
+Smith uttered a short, mirthless laugh.
+
+"It states that an attempt of a particularly dangerous nature is to be
+made upon my life to-night, and it recommends me to guard the door,
+and advises that you watch the window overlooking the court, and keep
+your pistol ready for instant employment." He stared at me oddly. "How
+should you act in the circumstances, Petrie?"
+
+"I should strongly distrust such advice. Yet--what else can we _do?_"
+
+"There are several alternatives, but I prefer to follow the advice of
+Ki-Ming."
+
+The clock of St. Paul's chimed the half-hour: half-past two.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+LAMA SORCERY
+
+
+From my post in the chair by the window I could see two sides of the
+court below; that immediately opposite, with the entrance to some
+chambers situated there, and that on the right, with the cloisteresque
+arches beyond which lay a maze of old-world passages and stairs
+whereby one who knew the tortuous navigation might come ultimately
+to the Embankment.
+
+It was this side of the court which lay in deepest shadow. By altering
+my position quite slightly I could command a view of the arched
+entrance on the left with its pale lamp in an iron bracket above, and
+of the high blank wall whose otherwise unbroken expanse it interrupted.
+All was very still; only on occasions the passing of a vehicle along
+Fleet Street would break the silence.
+
+The nature of the danger that threatened I was wholly unable to
+surmise. Since, my pistol on the table beside me, I sat on guard at
+the window, and Smith, also armed, watched the outer door, it was not
+apparent by what agency the shadowy enemy could hope to come at us.
+
+Something strange I had detected in Nayland Smith's manner, however,
+which had induced me to believe that he suspected, if he did not know,
+what form of menace hung over us in the darkness. One thing in
+particular was puzzling me extremely: if Smith doubted the good faith
+of the sender of the message, why had he acted upon it?
+
+Thus my mind worked--in endless and profitless cycles--whilst my eyes
+were ever searching the shadows below me.
+
+And, as I watched, wondering vaguely why Smith at his post was so
+silent, presently I became aware of the presence of a slim figure
+over by the arches on the right. This discovery did not come suddenly,
+nor did it surprise me; I merely observed without being conscious of
+any great interest in the matter, that some one was standing in the
+court below, looking up at me where I sat.
+
+I cannot hope to explain my state of mind at that moment, to render
+understandable by contrast with the cold fear which had visited me so
+recently, the utter apathy of my mental attitude. To this day I cannot
+recapture the mood--and for a very good reason, though one that was
+not apparent to me at the time.
+
+It was the Eurasian girl Zarmi, who was standing there, looking up at
+the window! Silently I watched her. Why was I silent?--why did I not
+warn Smith of the presence of one of Dr. Fu-Manchu's servants? I
+cannot explain, although later, the strangeness of my behavior may
+become in some measure understandable.
+
+Zarmi raised her hand, beckoning to me, then stepped back, revealing
+the presence of a companion, hitherto masked by the dense shadows that
+lay under the arches. This second watcher moved slowly forward, and I
+perceived him to be none other than the mandarin Ki-Ming.
+
+This I noted with interest, but with a sort of _impersonal_ interest,
+as I might have watched the entrance of a character upon the stage of
+a theater. Despite the feeble light, I could see his benign
+countenance very clearly; but, far from being excited, a dreamy
+contentment possessed me; I actually found myself hoping that Smith
+would not intrude upon my reverie!
+
+What a fascinating pageant it had been--the Fu-Manchu drama--from the
+moment that I had first set eyes upon the Yellow doctor. Again I seemed
+to be enacting my part in that scene, two years ago and more, when I
+had burst into the bare room above Shen-Yan's opium den and had stood
+face to face with Dr. Fu-Manchu. He wore a plain yellow robe, its hue
+almost identical with that of his gaunt, hairless face; his elbows
+rested upon the dirty table and his pointed chin upon his long,
+bony hands.
+
+Into those uncanny eyes I stared, those eyes, long, narrow, and
+slightly oblique, their brilliant, catlike greenness sometimes horribly
+filmed, like the eyes of some grotesque bird....
+
+Thus it began; and from this point I was carried on, step by step
+through every episode, great and small. It  was such a retrospect as
+passes through the mind of one drowning.
+
+With a vividness that was terrible yet exquisite, I saw Kāramaneh, my
+lost love; I saw her first wrapped in a hooded opera-cloak, with her
+flower-like face and glorious dark eyes raised to me; I saw her in the
+gauzy Eastern raiment of a slave-girl, and I saw her in the dress of
+a gipsy.
+
+Through moments sweet and bitter I lived again, through hours of
+suspense and days of ceaseless watching; through the long months of
+that first summer when my unhappy love came to me, and on, on,
+interminably on. For years I lived again beneath that ghastly Yellow
+cloud. I searched throughout the land of Egypt for Kāramaneh and knew
+once more the sorrow of losing her. Time ceased to exist for me.
+
+Then, at the end of these strenuous years, I came at last to my
+meeting with Ki-Ming in the room with the golden door. At this point
+my visionary adventures took a new turn. I sat again upon the
+red-covered couch and listened, half stupefied, to the placid speech
+of the mandarin. Again I came under the spell of his singular
+personality, and again, closing my eyes, I consented to be led from
+the room.
+
+But, having crossed the threshold, a sudden awful doubt passed through
+my mind, arrow-like. The hand that held my arm was bony and clawish;
+I could detect the presence of incredibly long finger nails--nails
+long as those of some buried vampire of the black ages!
+
+Choking down a cry of horror, I opened my eyes--heedless of the
+promise given but a few moments earlier--and looked into the face of
+my guide.
+
+It was Dr. Fu-Manchu!...
+
+Never, dreaming or waking, have I known a sensation identical with
+that which now clutched my heart; I thought that it must be death.
+For ages, untold ages--aeons longer than the world has known--I looked
+into that still, awful face, into those unnatural green eyes. I jerked
+my hand free from the Chinaman's clutch and sprang back.
+
+As I did so, I became miraculously translated from the threshold of
+the room with the golden door to our chambers in the court adjoining
+Fleet Street; I came into full possession of my faculties (or believed
+so at the time); I realized that I had nodded at my post, that I had
+dreamed a strange dream ... but I realized something else. A ghoulish
+presence was in the room.
+
+Snatching up my pistol from the table I turned. Like some evil jinn of
+Arabian lore, Dr. Fu-Manchu, surrounded by a slight mist, stood
+looking at me!
+
+Instantly I raised the pistol, leveled it steadily at the high,
+dome-like brow--and fired! There could be no possibility of missing at
+such short range, no possibility whatever ... and in the very instant
+of pulling the trigger the mist cleared, the lineaments of Dr.
+Fu-Manchu melted magically. This was not the Chinese doctor who stood
+before me, at whose skull I still was pointing the deadly little
+weapon, into whose brain I had fired the bullet; _it was Nayland
+Smith!_
+
+Ki-Ming, by means of the unholy arts of the Lamas of Rache-Churān,
+had caused my to murder my best friend!
+
+"Smith!" I whispered huskily--"God forgive me, what have I done? What
+have I done?"
+
+I stepped forward to support him ere he fell; but utter oblivion
+closed down upon me, and I knew no more.
+
+        *        *        *        *        *        *        *
+
+"He will do quite well now." said a voice that seemed to come from a
+vast distance. "The effects of the drug will have entirely worn off
+when he wakes, except that there may be nausea, and possibly muscular
+pain for a time."
+
+I opened my eyes; they were throbbing agonizingly. I lay in bed, and
+beside me stood Murdoch McCabe, the famous toxicological expert from
+Charing Cross Hospital--and Nayland Smith!
+
+"Ah, that's better!" cried McCabe cheerily. "Here--drink this."
+
+I drank from the glass which he raised to my lips. I was too weak for
+speech, too weak for wonder. Nayland Smith, his face gray and drawn in
+the cold light of early morning, watched me anxiously. McCabe in a
+matter of fact way that acted upon me like a welcome tonic, put several
+purely medical questions, which at first by dint of a great effort,
+but, with ever-increasing ease, I answered.
+
+"Yes," he said musingly at last. "Of course it is all but impossible
+to speak with certainty, but I am disposed to think that you have been
+drugged with some preparation of hashish. The most likely is that
+known in Eastern countries as _maagūn_ or _barsh_, composed of equal
+parts of _cannabis indica_ and opium, with hellebore and two other
+constituents, which vary according to the purpose which the _maagūn_
+is intended to serve. This renders the subject particularly open to
+subjective hallucination, and a pliable instrument in the hands of a
+hypnotic operator, for instance."
+
+"You see, old man?" cried Smith eagerly. "You see?"
+
+But I shook my head weakly.
+
+"I shot you," I said. "It is impossible that I could have missed."
+
+"Mr. Smith has placed me in possession of the facts," interrupted
+McCabe, "and I can outline with reasonable certainty what took place.
+Of course, it's all very amazing, utterly fantastic in fact, but I
+have met with almost parallel cases in Egypt, in India, and elsewhere
+in the East: never in London, I'll confess. You see, Dr. Petrie, you
+were taken into the presence of a very accomplished hypnotist, having
+been previously prepared by a stiff administration of _maagūn_.
+You are doubtless familiar with the remarkable experiments in
+psycho-therapeutics conducted at the Salpźtrier in Paris, and you
+will readily understand me when I say that, prior to your recovering
+consciousness in the presence of the mandarin Ki-Ming, you had
+received your hypnotic instructions.
+
+"These were to be put into execution either at a certain time (duly
+impressed upon your drugged mind) or at a given signal...."
+
+"It was a signal," snapped Smith. "Ki-Ming stood in the court below
+and looked up at the window," I objected.
+
+"In that event," snapped Smith, "he would have spoken softly, through
+the letter-box of the door!"
+
+"You immediately resumed your interrupted trance," continued McCabe,
+"and by hypnotic suggestion impressed upon you earlier in the evening,
+you were ingeniously led up to a point at which, under what delusion
+I know not, you fired at Mr. Smith. I had the privilege of studying an
+almost parallel case in Simla, where an officer was fatally stabbed by
+his _khitmatgar_ (a most faithful servant) acting under the hypnotic
+prompting of a certain _fakīr_ whom the officer had been unwise
+enough to chastise. The _fakīr_ paid for the crime with his life, I
+may add. The _khitmatgar_ shot him, ten minutes later."
+
+"I had no chance at Ki-Ming," snapped Smith. "He vanished like a
+shadow. But has has played his big card and lost! Henceforth he is a
+hunted man; and he knows it! Oh!" he cried, seeing me watching him in
+bewilderment, "I suspected some Lama trickery, old man, and I stuck
+closely to the arrangements proposed by the mandarin, but kept you
+under careful observation!"
+
+"But, Smith--I shot you! It was impossible to miss!"
+
+"I agree. But do you recall the _report?_"
+
+"The report? I was too dazed, too horrified, by the discovery of what
+I had done...."
+
+"There was no report, Petrie. I am not entirely a stranger to
+Indo-Chinese jugglery, and you had a very strange look in your eyes.
+Therefore I took the precaution of unloading your Browning!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+MEDUSA
+
+
+Legal business, connected with the estate of a distant relative,
+deceased, necessitated my sudden departure from London, within
+twenty-four hours of the events just narrated; and at a time when
+London was for me the center of the universe. The business being
+terminated--and in a manner financially satisfactory to myself--I
+discovered that with luck I could just catch the fast train back.
+Amid a perfect whirl of hotel porters and taxi-drivers worthy of
+Nayland Smith I departed for the station ... to arrive at the
+entrance to the platform at the exact moment that the guard raised
+his green flag!
+
+"Too late, sir! Stand back, if you please!"
+
+The ticket-collector at the barrier thrust out his arm to stay me. The
+London express was moving from the platform. But my determination to
+travel by that train and by no other over-rode all obstacles; If I
+missed it, I should be forced to wait until the following morning.
+
+I leapt past the barrier, completely taking the man by surprise, and
+went racing up the platform. Many arms were outstretched to detain me,
+and the gray-bearded guard stood fully in my path; but I dodged them
+all, collided with and upset a gigantic negro who wore a chauffeur's
+uniform--and found myself level with a first-class compartment; the
+window was open.
+
+Amid a chorus of excited voices, I tossed my bag in at the window,
+leapt upon the footboard and turned the handle. Although the entrance
+to the tunnel was perilously near now, I managed to wrench the door
+open and to swing myself into the carriage. Then, by means of the
+strap, I reclosed the door in the nick of time, and sank, panting,
+upon the seat. I had a vague impression that the black chauffeur,
+having recovered himself, had raced after me to the uttermost point
+of the platform, but, my end achieved, I was callously indifferent to
+the outrageous means thereto which I seen fit to employ. The express
+dashed into the tunnel. I uttered a great sigh of relief.
+
+With Kāramaneh in the hands of the Si-Fan, this journey to the north
+had indeed been undertaken with the utmost reluctance. Nayland Smith
+had written to me once during my brief absence, and his letter had
+inspired a yet keener desire to be back and at grips with the Yellow
+group; for he had hinted broadly that a tangible clue to the
+whereabouts of the Si-Fan head-quarters had at last been secured.
+
+Now I learnt that I had a traveling companion--a woman. She was seated
+in the further, opposite corner, wore a long, loose motor-coat, which
+could not altogether conceal the fine lines of her lithe figure, and a
+thick veil hid her face. A motive for the excited behavior of the
+negro chauffeur suggested itself to my mind; a label; "Engaged," was
+pasted to the window!
+
+I glanced across the compartment. Through the closely woven veil the
+woman was watching me. An apology clearly was called for.
+
+"Madame," I said, "I hope you will forgive this unfortunate intrusion;
+but it was vitally important that I should not miss the London train."
+
+She bowed, very slightly, very coldly--and turned her head aside.
+
+The rebuff was as unmistakable as my offense was irremediable. Nor did
+I feel justified in resenting it. Therefore, endeavoring to dismiss
+the matter from my mind, I placed my bag upon the rack, and unfolding
+the newspaper with which I was provided, tried to interest myself in
+the doings of the world at large.
+
+My attempt proved not altogether successful; strive how I would, my
+thoughts persistently reverted to the Si-Fan, the evil, secret society
+who held in their power one dearer to me than all the rest of the
+world; to Dr. Fu-Manchu, the genius who darkly controlled my destiny;
+and to Nayland Smith, the barrier between the White races and the
+devouring tide of the Yellow.
+
+Sighing again, involuntarily, I glanced up ... to meet the gaze of a
+pair of wonderful eyes.
+
+Never, in my experience, had I seen their like. The dark eyes of
+Kāramaneh were wonderful and beautiful, the eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu
+sinister and wholly unforgettable; but the eyes of this woman were
+incredible. Their glance was all but insupportable; the were the eyes
+of a Medusa!
+
+Since I had met; in the not distant past, the soft gaze of Ki-Ming,
+the mandarin whose phenomenal hypnotic powers rendered him capable of
+transcending the achievements of the celebrated Cagliostro, I knew
+much of the power of the human eye. But these were unlike any human
+eyes I had ever known.
+
+Long, almond-shaped, bordered by heavy jet-black lashes, arched over
+by finely penciled brows, their strange brilliancy, as of a fire
+within, was utterly uncanny. They were the eyes of some beautiful
+wild creature rather than those of a woman.
+
+Their possessor had now thrown back her motor-veil, revealing a face
+Orientally dark and perfectly oval, with a clustering mass of dull
+gold hair, small, aquiline nose and full, red lips. Her weird eyes met
+mine for an instant, and then the long lashes drooped quickly, as she
+leant back against the cushions, with a graceful languor suggestive of
+the East rather than of the West.
+
+Her long coat had fallen partly open, and I saw, with surprise, that
+it was lined with leopard-skin. One hand was ungloved, and lay on the
+arm-rest--a slim hand of the hue of old ivory, with a strange, ancient
+ring upon the index finger.
+
+This woman obviously was not a European, and I experienced great
+difficulty in determining with what Asiatic nation she could claim
+kinship. In point of fact I had never seen another who remotely
+resembled her; she was a fit employer for the gigantic negro with whom
+I had collided on the platform.
+
+I tried to laugh at myself, staring from the window at the moon-bathed
+landscape; but the strange personality of my solitary companion would
+not be denied, and I looked quickly in her direction--in time to
+detect her glancing away; in time to experience the uncanny
+fascination of her gaze.
+
+The long slim hand attracted my attention again, the green stone in the
+ring affording a startling contrast against the dull cream of the skin.
+
+Whether the woman's personality, or a vague perfume of which I became
+aware, were responsible, I found myself thinking of a flower-bedecked
+shrine, wherefrom arose the smoke of incense to some pagan god.
+
+In vain I told myself that my frame of mind was contemptible, that I
+should be ashamed of such weakness. Station after station was left
+behind, as the express sped through moonlit England towards the smoky
+metropolis. Assured that I was being furtively watched, I became more
+and more uneasy.
+
+It was with a distinct sense of effort that I withheld my gaze,
+forcing myself to look out of the window. When, having reasoned
+against the mad ideas that sought to obsess me, I glanced again across
+the compartment, I perceived, with inexpressible relief, that my
+companion had lowered her veil.
+
+She kept it lowered throughout the remainder of the journey; yet
+during the hour that ensued I continued to experience sensations of
+which I have never since been able to think without a thrill of fear.
+It seemed that I had thrust myself, not into a commonplace railway
+compartment, but into a Cumaean cavern.
+
+If only I could have addressed this utterly mysterious stranger, have
+uttered some word of commonplace, I felt that the spell might have
+been broken. But, for some occult reason, in no way associated with
+my first rebuff, I found myself tongue-tied; I sustained, for an hour
+(the longest I had ever known), a silent watch and ward over my reason;
+I seemed to be repelling, fighting against, some subtle power that
+sought to flood my brain, swamp my individuality, and enslave me to
+another's will.
+
+In what degree this was actual, and in what due to a mind overwrought
+from endless conflict with the Yellow group, I know not to this day,
+but you who read these records of our giant struggle with Fu-Manchu
+and his satellites shall presently judge for yourselves.
+
+When, at last, the brakes were applied, and the pillars and platforms
+of the great terminus glided into view, how welcome was the smoky
+glare, how welcome the muffled roar of busy London!
+
+A huge negro--the double of the man I had overthrown--opened the door
+of the compartment, bestowing upon me a glance in which enmity and
+amazement were oddly blended, and the woman, drawing the cloak about
+her graceful figure, stood up composedly.
+
+She reached for a small leather case on the rack, and her loose sleeve
+fell back, to reveal a bare arm--soft, perfectly molded, of the even
+hue of old ivory. Just below the elbow a strange-looking snake bangle
+clasped the warm-flesh; the eyes; dull green, seemed to hold a
+slumbering fire--a spark--a spark of living light.
+
+Then--she was gone!
+
+"Thank Heaven!" I muttered, and felt like another Dante emerging from
+the Hades.
+
+As I passed out of the station, I had a fleeting glimpse of a gray
+figure stepping into a big car, driven by a black chauffeur.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+THE MARMOSET
+
+
+Half-past twelve was striking as I came out of the terminus, buttoning
+up my overcoat, and pulling my soft hat firmly down upon my head,
+started to walk to Hyde Park Corner.
+
+I had declined the services of the several taxi-drivers who had
+accosted me and had determined to walk a part of the distance homeward,
+in order to check the fever of excitement which consumed me.
+
+Already I was ashamed of the strange fears which had been mine during
+the journey, but I wanted to reflect, to conquer my mood, and the
+midnight solitude of the land of Squares which lay between me and Hyde
+Park appealed quite irresistibly.
+
+There is a distinct pleasure to be derived from a solitary walk through
+London, in the small hours of an April morning, provided one is so
+situated as to be capable of enjoying it. To appreciate the solitude
+and mystery of the sleeping city, a certain sense of prosperity--a
+knowledge that one is immune from the necessity of being abroad at
+that hour--is requisite. The tramp, the night policeman and the
+coffee-stall keeper know more of London by night than most people--but
+of the romance of the dark hours they know little. Romance succumbs
+before necessity.
+
+I had good reason to be keenly alive to the aroma of mystery which
+pervades the most commonplace thoroughfare after the hum of the
+traffic has subsided--when the rare pedestrian and the rarer cab alone
+traverse the deserted highway. With more intimate cares seeking to
+claim my mind, it was good to tramp along the echoing, empty streets
+and to indulge in imaginative speculation regarding the strange
+things that night must shroud in every big city. I have known the
+solitude of deserts, but the solitude of London is equally fascinating.
+
+He whose business or pleasure had led him to traverse the route which
+was mine on this memorable night must have observed how each of the
+squares composing that residential chain which links the outer with
+the inner Society has a popular and an exclusive side. The angle used
+by vehicular traffic in crossing the square from corner to corner
+invariably is rich in a crop of black board bearing house-agent's
+announcements.
+
+In the shadow of such a board I paused, taking out my case an
+leisurely selecting a cigar. So many of the houses in the southwest
+angle were unoccupied, that I found myself taking quite an interest
+in one a little way ahead; from the hall door and from the long
+conservatory over the porch light streamed out.
+
+Excepting these illuminations, there was no light elsewhere in the
+square to show which houses were inhabited and which vacant. I might
+have stood in a street of Pompeii or Thebes--a street of the dead past.
+I permitted my imagination to dwell upon this idea as I fumbled for
+matches and gazed about me. I wondered if a day would come when some
+savant of a future land, in a future age, should stand where I stood
+and endeavor to reconstruct, from the crumbling ruins, this typical
+London square. A slight breeze set the hatchet-board creaking above
+my head, as I held my gloved hands about the pine-vesta.
+
+At that moment some one or something whistled close beside me!
+
+I turned, in a flash, dropping the match upon the pavement. There was
+no lamp near the spot whereat I stood, and the gateway and porch of
+the deserted residence seemed to be empty. I stood there peering in
+the direction from which the mysterious whistle had come.
+
+The drone of a taxicab, approaching from the north, increased in
+volume, as the vehicle came spinning around the angle of the square,
+passed me, and went droning on its way. I watched it swing around
+the distant corner ... and, in the new stillness, the whistle was
+repeated!
+
+This time the sound chilled me. The whistle was pitched in a curious,
+inhuman key, and it possessed a mocking note that was strangely uncanny.
+
+Listening intently and peering towards the porch of the empty house,
+I struck a second match, pushed the iron gate open and made for the
+steps, sheltering the feeble flame with upraised hand. As I did so,
+the whistle was again repeated, but from some spot further away, to
+the left of the porch, and from low down upon the ground.
+
+Just as I glimpsed something moving under the lee of the porch,
+the match was blown out, for I was hampered by the handbag which I
+carried. Thus reminded of its presence, however, I recollected that
+my pocket-lamp was in it. Quickly opening the bag, I took out the
+lamp, and, passing around the corner of the steps, directed a ray of
+light into the narrow passage which communicated with the rear of
+the building.
+
+Half-way along the passage, looking back at me over its shoulder, and
+whistling angrily, was a little marmoset!
+
+I pulled up as sharply as though the point of a sword had been held at
+my throat. One marmoset is sufficiently like another to deceive the
+ordinary observer, but unless I was permitting a not unnatural
+prejudice to influence my opinion, this particular specimen was the
+pet of Dr. Fu-Manchu!
+
+Excitement, not untinged with fear, began to grow up within me. Hyde
+Park was no far cry, this was near to the heart of social London; yet,
+somewhere close at hand, it might be, watching me as I stood--lurked,
+perhaps, the great and evil being who dreamed of overthrowing the
+entire white race!
+
+With a grotesque grimace and a final, chattering whistle, the little
+creature leapt away out of the beam of light cast by my lamp. Its
+sudden disappearance brought me to my senses and reminded me of my
+plain duty. I set off along the passage briskly, arrived at a small,
+square yard ... and was just in time to see the ape leap into a
+well-like opening before a basement window. I stepped to the brink,
+directing the light down into the well.
+
+I saw a collection of rotten leaves, waste paper, and miscellaneous
+rubbish--but the marmoset was not visible. Then I perceived that
+practically all the glass in the window had been broken. A sound of
+shrill chattering reached me from the blackness of the underground
+apartment.
+
+Again I hesitated. What did the darkness mask?
+
+The note of a distant motor-horn rose clearly above the vague throbbing
+which is the only silence known to the town-dweller.
+
+Gripping the unlighted cigar between my teeth, I placed my bag upon
+the ground and dropped into the well before the broken window. To raise
+the sash was a simple matter, and, having accomplished it, I inspected
+the room within.
+
+The light showed a large kitchen, with torn wall-paper and decorator's
+litter strewn about the floor, a whitewash pail in one corner, and
+nothing else.
+
+I climbed in, and, taking from my pocket the Browning pistol without
+which I had never traveled since the return of the dreadful Chinaman
+to England, I crossed to the door, which was ajar, and looked out into
+the passage beyond.
+
+Stifling an exclamation, I fell back a step. Two gleaming eyes stared
+straightly into mine!
+
+The next moment I had forced a laugh to my lips ... as the marmoset
+turned and went gamboling up the stairs. The house was profoundly
+silent. I crossed the passage and followed the creature, which now was
+proceeding, I thought, with more of a set purpose.
+
+Out into a spacious and deserted hallway it led me, where my cautious
+footsteps echoed eerily, and ghostly faces seemed to peer down upon me
+from the galleries above. I should have liked to have unbarred the
+street door, in order to have opened a safe line of retreat in the
+event of its being required, but the marmoset suddenly sprang up the
+main stairway at a great speed, and went racing around the gallery
+overhead toward the front of the house.
+
+Determined, if possible, to keep the creature in view, I started in
+pursuit. Up the uncarpeted stairs I went, and, from the rail of the
+landing, looked down into the blackness of the hallway apprehensively.
+Nothing stirred below. The marmoset had disappeared between the
+half-opened leaves of a large folding door. Casting the beam of light
+ahead of me I followed. I found myself in a long, lofty apartment,
+evidently a drawing-room.
+
+Of the quarry I could detect no sign; but the only other door of the
+room was closed; therefore, since the creature had entered, it must,
+I argued, undoubtedly be concealed somewhere in the apartment.
+Flashing the light about to right and left, I presently perceived that
+a conservatory (no doubt facing on the square) ran parallel with one
+side of the room. French windows gave access to either end of it; and
+it was through one of these, which was slightly open, that the
+questioning ray had intruded.
+
+I stepped into the conservatory. Linen blinds covered the windows, but
+a faint light from outside found access to the bare, tiled apartment.
+Ten paces on my right, from an aperture once closed by a square wooden
+panel that now lay upon the floor, the marmoset was grimacing at me.
+
+Realizing that the ray of my lamp must be visible through the blinds
+from outside, I extinguished it ... and, a moving silhouette against a
+faintly luminous square, I could clearly distinguish the marmoset
+watching me.
+
+There was a light in the room beyond!
+
+The marmoset disappeared--and I became aware of a faint, incense-like
+perfume. Where had I met with it before? Nothing disturbed the silence
+of the empty house wherein I stood; yet I hesitated for several seconds
+to pursue the chase further. The realization came to me that the hole
+in the wall communicated with the conservatory of the corner house in
+the square, the house with the lighted windows.
+
+Determined to see the thing through, I discarded my overcoat--and
+crawled through the gap. The smell of burning perfume became almost
+overpowering, as I stood upright, to find myself almost touching
+curtains of some semi-transparent golden fabric draped in the door
+between the conservatory and the drawing-room.
+
+Cautiously, inch by inch, I approached my eyes to the slight gap in
+the draperies, as, from somewhere in the house below, sounded the
+clangor of a brazen gong. Seven times its ominous note boomed out. I
+shrank back into my sanctuary; the incense seemed to be stifling me.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+SHRINE OF SEVEN LAMPS
+
+
+Never can I forget that nightmare apartment, that efreet's hall. It
+was identical in shape with the room of the adjoining house through
+which I had come, but its walls were draped in somber black and a
+dead black carpet covered the entire floor. A golden curtain--similar
+to that which concealed me--broke the somber expanse of the end wall
+to my right, and the door directly opposite my hiding-place was closed.
+
+Across the gold curtain, wrought in glittering black, were seven
+characters, apparently Chinese; before it, supported upon seven ebony
+pedestals, burned seven golden lamps; whilst, dotted about the black
+carpet, were seven gold-lacquered stools, each having a black cushion
+set before it. There was no sign of the marmoset; the incredible room
+of black and gold was quite empty, with a sort of stark emptiness that
+seemed to oppress my soul.
+
+Close upon the booming of the gong followed a sound of many footsteps
+and a buzz of subdued conversation. Keeping well back in the welcome
+shadow I watched, with bated breath, the opening of the door
+immediately opposite.
+
+The outer sides of its leaves proved to be of gold, and one glimpse of
+the room beyond awoke a latent memory and gave it positive form. I had
+been in this house before; it was in that room with the golden door
+that I had had my memorable interview with the mandarin Ki-Ming! My
+excitement grew more and more intense.
+
+Singly, and in small groups, a number of Orientals came in. All wore
+European, or semi-European garments, but I was enabled to identify two
+for Chinamen, two for Hindus and three for Burmans. Other Asiatics
+there were, also, whose exact place among the Eastern races I could
+not determine; there was at least one Egyptian and there were several
+Eurasians; no women were present.
+
+Standing grouped just within the open door, the gathering of Orientals
+kept up a ceaseless buzz of subdued conversation; then, abruptly,
+stark silence fell, and through a lane of bowed heads, Ki-Ming, the
+famous Chinese diplomat, entered, smiling blandly, and took his seat
+upon one of the seven golden stools. He wore the picturesque yellow
+robe, trimmed with marten fur, which I had seen once before, and he
+placed his pearl-encircled cap, surmounted by the coral ball denoting
+his rank, upon the black cushion beside him.
+
+Almost immediately afterward entered a second and even more striking
+figure. It was that of a Lama monk! He was received with the same
+marks of deference which had been accorded the mandarin; and he
+seated himself upon another of the golden stools.
+
+Silence, a moment of hushed expectancy, and ... yellow-robed, immobile,
+his wonderful, evil face emaciated by illness, but his long, magnetic
+eyes blazing greenly, as though not a soul but an elemental spirit
+dwelt within that gaunt, high-shouldered body, Dr. Fu-Manchu entered,
+slowly, leaning upon a heavy stick!
+
+The realities seemed to be slipping from me; I could not believe that
+I looked upon a material world. This had been a night of wonders,
+having no place in the life of a sane, modern man, but belonging to
+the days of the jinn and the Arabian necromancers.
+
+Fu-Manchu was greeted by a universal raising of hands, but in complete
+silence. He also wore a cap surmounted by a coral ball, and this he
+placed upon one of the black cushions set before a golden stool. Then,
+resting heavily upon his stick, he began to speak--in French!
+
+As on listens to a dream-voice, I listened to that, alternately
+gutteral and sibilant, of the terrible Chinese doctor. He was
+defending himself! With what he was charged by his sinister brethren
+I knew not nor could I gather from his words, but that he was
+rendering account of his stewardship became unmistakable. Scarce
+crediting my senses, I heard him unfold to his listeners details of
+crimes successfully perpetrated, and with the results of some of these
+I was but too familiar; other there were in the ghastly catalogue
+which had been accomplished secretly. Then my blood froze with horror.
+My own name was mentioned--and that of Nayland Smith! We two stood in
+the way of the coming of one whom he called the Lady of the Si-Fan,
+in the way of Asiatic supremacy.
+
+A fantastic legend once mentioned to me by Smith, of some woman
+cherished in a secret fastness of Hindustan who was destined one day
+to rule the world, now appeared, to my benumbed senses, to be the
+unquestioned creed of the murderous, cosmopolitan group known as the
+Si-Fan! At every mention of her name all heads were bowed in reverence.
+
+Dr. Fu-Manchu spoke without the slightest trace of excitement; he
+assured his auditors of his fidelity to their cause and proposed to
+prove to them that he enjoyed the complete confidence of the Lady of
+the Si-Fan.
+
+And with every moment that passed the giant intellect of the speaker
+became more and more apparent. Years ago Nayland Smith had asssure me
+that Dr. Fu-Manchu was a linguist who spoke with almost equal facility
+in any of th civilized languages and in most of the barbaric; now the
+truth of this was demonstrated. For, following some passage which
+might be susceptible of misconstruction, Fu-Manchu would turn slightly,
+and elucidate his remarks, addressing a Chinaman in Chinese, a Hindu
+in Hindustanee, or an Egyptian in Arabic.
+
+His auditors were swayed by the magnetic personality of the speaker,
+as reeds by a breeze; and now I became aware of a curious
+circumstance. Either because they and I viewed the character of this
+great and evil man from a widely dissimilar aspect, or because, my
+presence being unknown to him, I remained outside the radius of his
+power, it seemed to me that these members of the evidently vast
+organization known as the Si-Fan were dupes, to a man, of the Chinese
+orator! It seemed to me that he used them as an instrument, playing
+upon their obvious fanaticism, string by string, as a player upon an
+Eastern harp, and all the time weaving harmonies to suit some giant,
+incredible scheme of his own--a scheme over and beyond any of which
+they had dreamed, in the fruition whereof they had no part--of the
+true nature and composition of which they had no comprehension.
+
+"Not since the day of the first Yuan Emperor," said Fu-Manchu
+sibilantly, "has Our Lady of the Si-Fan--to look upon upon whom,
+unveiled, is death--crossed the sacred borders. To-day I am a man
+supremely happy and honored above my deserts. You shall all partake
+with me of that happiness, that honor...."
+
+Again the gong sounded seven times, and a sort of magnetic thrill
+seemed to pass throughout the room. There followed a faint, musical
+sound, like the tinkle of a silver bell.
+
+All heads were lowered, but all eyes upturned to the golden curtain.
+Literally holding my breath, in those moments of intense expectancy,
+I watched the draperies parted from the center and pulled aside by
+unseen agency.
+
+A black covered dais was revealed, bearing an ebony chair. And seated
+in the chair, enveloped from head to feet in a shimmering white veil,
+was a woman. A sound like a great sigh arose from the gathering. The
+woman rose slowly to her feet, and raised her arms, which were
+exquisitely formed, and of the uniform hue of old ivory, so that the
+veil fell back to her shoulders, revealing the green snake bangle
+which she wore. She extended her long, slim hands as if in benediction;
+the silver bell sounded ... and the curtain dropped again, entirely
+obscuring the dais!
+
+Frankly, I thought myself mad; for this "lady of the Si-Fan" was none
+other than my mysterious traveling companion! This was some solemn farce
+with which Fu-Manchu sought to impress his fanatical dupes. And he had
+succeeded; they were inspired, their eyes blazed. Here were men capable
+of any crime in the name of the Si-Fan!
+
+Every face within my ken I had studied individually, and now slowly
+and cautiously I changed my position, so that a group of three members
+standing immediately to the right of the door came into view. One of
+them--a tall, spare, and closely bearded man whom I took for some kind
+of Hindu--had removed his gaze from the dais and was glancing
+furtively all about him. Once he looked in my direction, and my heart
+leapt high, then seemed to stop its pulsing.
+
+An overpowering consciousness of my danger came to me; a dim
+envisioning of what appalling fate would be mine in the event of
+discovery. As those piercing eyes were turned away again, I drew back,
+step my step.
+
+Dropping upon my knees, I began to feel for the gap in the
+conservatory wall. The desire to depart from the house of the Si-Fan
+was become urgent. Once safely away, I could take the necessary steps
+to ensure the apprehension of the entire group. What a triumph would
+be mine!
+
+I found the opening without much difficulty and crept through into the
+empty house. The vague light which penetrated the linen blinds served
+to show me the length of the empty, tiled apartment. I had actually
+reached the French window giving access to the drawing-room, when--the
+skirl of a police whistle split the stillness ... and the sound came
+from the house which I had just quitted!
+
+To write that I was amazed were to achieve the banal. Rigid with
+wonderment I stood, and clutched at the open window. So I was standing,
+a man of stone, when the voice, the high-pitched, imperious,
+unmistakable voice of _Nayland Smith,_ followed sharply upon the skirl
+of the whistle:--
+
+"Watch those French windows, Weymouth! I can hold the door!"
+
+Like a lightning flash it came to me that the tall Hindu had been none
+other than Smith disguised. From the square outside came a sudden
+turmoil, a sound of racing feet, of smashing glass, of doors burst
+forcibly open. Palpably, the place was surrounded; this was an
+organized raid.
+
+Irresolute, I stood there in the semi-gloom--inactive from amaze of it
+all--whilst sounds of a tremendous struggle proceeded from the square
+gap in the partition.
+
+"Lights!" rose a cry, in Smith's voice again--"they have cut the
+wires!"
+
+At that I came to my senses. Plunging my hand into my pocket, I
+snatched out the electric lamp ... and stepped back quickly into the
+utter gloom of the room behind me.
+
+Some one was crawling through the aperture into the conservatory!
+
+As I watched I saw him, in the dim light, stoop to replace the movable
+panel. Then, tapping upon the tiled floor as he walked, the fugitive
+approached me. He was but three paces from the French window when I
+pressed the button of my lamp and directed its ray fully upon his face.
+
+"Hands up!" I said breathlessly. "I have you covered, Dr. Fu-Manchu!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+AN ANTI-CLIMAX
+
+
+One hour later I stood in the entrance hall of our chambers in the
+court adjoining Fleet Street. Some one who had come racing up the
+stairs, now had inserted a key in the lock. Open swung the door--and
+Nayland Smith entered, in a perfect whirl of excitement.
+
+"Petrie! Petrie!" he cried, and seized both my hands--"you have missed
+a night of nights! Man alive! we have the whole gang--the great Ki-Ming
+included!" His eyes were blazing. "Weymouth has made no fewer than
+twenty-five arrests, some of the prisoners being well-known Orientals.
+It will be the devil's own work to keep it all quiet, but Scotland
+Yard has already advised the Press."
+
+"Congratulations, old man," I said, and looked him squarely in the eyes.
+
+Something there must have been in my glance at variance with the
+spoken words. His expression changed; he grasped my shoulder.
+
+"_She_ was not there," he said, "but please God, we'll find her now.
+It's only a question of time."
+
+But, even as he spoke, the old, haunted look was creeping back into the
+lean face. He gave me a rapid glance; then:--
+
+"I might as well make a clean breast of it," he rapped. "Fu-Manchu
+escaped! Furthermore, when we got lights, the woman had vanished, too."
+
+"The woman!"
+
+"There was a woman at this strange gathering, Petrie. Heaven only
+knows who she really is. According to Fu-Manchu she is that woman of
+mystery concerning whose existence strange stories are current in the
+East; the future Empress of a universal empire! But of course I
+decline to accept the story, Petrie! if ever the Yellow races overran
+Europe, I am in no doubt respecting the identity of the person who
+would ascend the throne of the world!"
+
+"Nor I, Smith!" I cried excitedly. "Good God! he holds them all in the
+palm of his hand! He has welded together the fanatics of every creed
+of the East into a giant weapon for his personal use! Small wonder
+that he is so formidable. But, Smith--_who_ is that woman?"
+
+"Petrie!" he said slowly, and I knew that I had betrayed my secret,
+"Petrie--where did you learn all this?"
+
+I returned his steady gaze.
+
+"I was present at the meeting of the Si-Fan," I replied steadily.
+
+"What? What? _You_ were present?"
+
+"I was present! Listen, and I will explain."
+
+Standing there in the hallway I related, as briefly as possible, the
+astounding events of the night. As I told of the woman in the train--
+
+"That confirms my impression that Fu-Manchu was imposing upon the
+others!" he snapped. "I cannot conceive of a woman recluse from some
+Lamaserie, surrounded by silent attendants and trained for her exalted
+destiny in the way that the legendary veiled woman of Tibet is said to
+be trained, traveling alone in an English railway carriage! Did you
+observe, Petrie, if her eyes were _oblique_ at all?"
+
+"They did not strike me as being oblique. Why do you ask?"
+
+"Because I strongly suspect that we have to do with none other than
+Fu-Manchu's daughter! But go on."
+
+"By heavens, Smith! You may be right! I had no idea that a Chinese
+woman could possess such features."
+
+"She may not have a Chinese mother; furthermore, there are pretty women
+in China as well as in other countries; also, there are hair dyes and
+cosmetics. But for Heaven's sake go on!"
+
+I continued my all but incredible narrative; came to the point where I
+discovered the straying marmoset and entered the empty house, without
+provoking any comment from my listener. He stared at me with something
+very like surprised admiration when I related how I had become an
+unseen spectator of that singular meeting.
+
+"And I though I had achieved the triumph of my life in gaining
+admission and smuggling Weymouth and Carter into the roof, armed with
+hooks and rope-ladders!" he murmured.
+
+Now I came to the moment when, having withdrawn into the empty house,
+I had heard the police whistle and had heard Smith's voice; I came to
+the moment when I had found myself face to face with Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+Nayland Smith's eyes were on fire now; he literally quivered with
+excitement, when--
+
+"_Ssh!_ what's that?" he whispered, and grasped my arm. "I heard
+something move in the sitting-room, Petrie!"
+
+"It was a coal dropping from the grate, perhaps," I said--and rapidly
+continued my story, telling how, with my pistol to his head, I had
+forced the Chinese doctor to descend into the hallway of the empty
+house.
+
+"Yes, yes," snapped Smith. "For God's sake go on, man! What have you
+done with him? Where is he?"
+
+I clearly detected a movement myself immediately behind the half-open
+door of the sitting-room. Smith started and stared intently across my
+shoulder at the doorway; then his gaze shifted and became fixed upon
+my face.
+
+"He bought his life from me, Smith."
+
+Never can I forget the change that came over my friend's tanned
+features at those words; never can I forget the pang that I suffered
+to see it. The fire died out of his eyes and he seemed to grow old and
+weary in a moment. None too steadily I went on:--
+
+"He offered a price that I could not resist, Smith. Try to forgive me,
+if you can. I know that I have done a dastardly thing, but--perhaps a
+day may come in your own life when you will understand. He descended
+with me to a cellar under the empty house, in which some one was
+locked. Had I arrested Fu-Manchu this poor captive must have died there
+of starvation; for no one would ever have suspected that the place had
+an occupant...."
+
+The door of the sitting-room was thrown open, and, wearing my
+great-coat over the bizarre costume in which I had found her, with her
+bare ankles and little red slippers peeping grotesquely from below,
+and her wonderful cloud of hair rippling over the turned-up collar,
+Kāramaneh came out!
+
+Her great dark eyes were raised to Nayland Smith's with such an appeal
+in them--an appeal for _me_--that emotion took me by the throat and
+had me speechless. I could not look at either of them; I turned aside
+and stared into the lighted sitting-room.
+
+How long I stood so God knows, and I never shall; but suddenly I found
+my hand seized in a vice-like grip, I looked around ... and Smith,
+holding my fingers fast in that iron grasp, had his left arm about
+Kāramaneh's shoulders, and his gray eyes were strangely soft, whilst
+hers were hidden behind her upraised hands.
+
+"Good old Petrie!" said Smith hoarsely. "Wake up, man; we have to get
+her to a hotel before they all close, remember. _I_ understand, old
+man. That day came in my life long years ago!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+GRAYWATER PARK
+
+
+"This is a singular situation in which we find ourselves," I said,
+"and one that I'm bound to admit I don't appreciate."
+
+Nayland Smith stretched his long legs, and lay back in his chair.
+
+"The sudden illness of Sir Lionel is certainly very disturbing," he
+replied, "and had there been any possibility of returning to London
+to-night, I should certainly have availed myself of it, Petrie. I
+share your misgivings. We are intruders at a time like this."
+
+He stared at me keenly, blowing a wreath of smoke from his lips, and
+then directing his attention to the cone of ash which crowned his
+cigar. I glanced, and not for the first time, toward the quaint old
+doorway which gave access to a certain corridor. Then--
+
+"Apart from the feeling that we intrude," I continued slowly, "there
+is a certain sense of unrest."
+
+"Yes," snapped Smith, sitting suddenly upright--"yes! You experience
+this? Good! You are happily sensitive to this type of impression,
+Petrie, and therefore quite as useful to me as a cat is useful to a
+physical investigator."
+
+He laughed in his quick, breezy fashion.
+
+"You will appreciate my meaning," he added; "therefore I offer no
+excuse for the analogy. Of course, the circumstances, as we know them,
+may be responsible for this consciousness of unrest. We are neither of
+us likely to forget the attempt upon the life of Sir Lionel Barton two
+years ago or more. Our attitude toward sudden illness is scarcely that
+of impartial observers."
+
+"I suppose not," I admitted, glancing yet again at the still vacant
+doorway by the foot of the stairs, which now the twilight was draping
+in mysterious shadows.
+
+Indeed, our position was a curious one. A welcome invitation from our
+old friend, Sir Lionel Barton, the world-famous explorer, had come at
+a time when a spell of repose, a glimpse of sea and awakening
+countryside, and a breath of fair, untainted air were very desirable.
+The position of Kāramaneh, who accompanied us, was sufficiently
+unconventional already, but the presence of Mrs. Oram, the dignified
+housekeeper, had rendered possible her visit to this bachelor
+establishment. In fact it was largely in the interests of the girl's
+health that we had accepted.
+
+On our arrival at Graywater Park we had learnt that our host had been
+stricken down an hour earlier by sudden illness. The exact nature of
+his seizure I had thus far been unable to learn; but a local doctor,
+who had left the Park barely ten minutes before our advent, had
+strictly forbidden visitors to the sick-room. Sir Lionel's man,
+Kennedy, who had served him in many strange spots in the world, was
+in attendance.
+
+So much we had gathered from Homopoulo, the Greek butler (Sir Lionel's
+household had ever been eccentric). Furthermore, we learned that there
+was no London train that night and no accommodation in the neighboring
+village.
+
+"Sir Lionel urgently requests you to remain," the butler had assured
+us, in his flawless, monotonous English. "He trusts that you will not
+be dull, and hopes to be able to see you to-morrow and to make plans
+for your entertainment."
+
+A ghostly, gray shape glided across the darkened hall--and was gone. I
+started involuntarily. Then remote, fearsome, came muted howling to
+echo through the ancient apartments of Graywater Park. Nayland Smith
+laughed.
+
+"That was the civet cat, Petrie!" he said. "I was startled, for a
+moment, until the lamentations of the leopard family reminded me of
+the fact that Sir Lionel had transferred his menagerie to Graywater!"
+
+Truly, this was a singular household. In turn, Graywater Park had been
+a fortress, a monastery, and a manor-house. Now, in the extensive
+crypt below the former chapel, in an atmosphere artificially raised
+to a suitably stuffy temperature, were housed the strange pets brought
+by our eccentric host from distant lands. In one cage was an African
+lioness, a beautiful and powerful beast, docile as a cat. Housed
+under other arches were two surly hyenas, goats from the White Nile,
+and an antelope of Kordofan. In a stable opening upon the garden were
+a pair of beautiful desert gazelles, and near to them, two cranes and
+a marabout. The leopards, whose howling now disturbed the night, were
+in a large, cell-like cage immediately below the spot where of old the
+chapel alter had stood.
+
+And here were we an odd party in odd environment. I sought to make out
+the time by my watch, but the growing dusk rendered it impossible.
+Then, unheralded by any sound, Kāramaneh entered by the door which
+during the past twenty minutes had been the focus of my gaze. The
+gathering darkness precluded the possibility of my observing with
+certainty, but I think a soft blush stole to her cheeks as those
+glorious dark eyes rested upon me.
+
+The beauty of Kāramaneh was not of the typed which is enhanced by
+artificial lighting; it was the beauty of the palm and the pomegranate
+blossom, the beauty which flowers beneath merciless suns, which expands,
+like the lotus, under the skies of the East. But there, in the dusk,
+as she came towards me, she looked exquisitely lovely, and graceful
+with the grace of the desert gazelles which I had seen earlier in the
+evening. I cannot describe her dress; I only know that she seemed very
+wonderful--so wonderful that a pang; almost of terror, smote my heart,
+because such sweetness should belong to _me_.
+
+And then, from the shadows masking the other side of the old hall,
+emerged the black figure of Homopoulo, and our odd trio obediently
+paced into the somber dining-room.
+
+A large lamp burned in the center of the table; a shaded candle was
+placed before each diner; and the subdued light made play upon the
+snowy napery and fine old silver without dispersing the gloom about
+us. Indeed, if anything, it seemed to render it more remarkable, and
+the table became a lighted oasis in the desert of the huge apartment.
+One could barely discern the suits of armor and trophies which
+ornamented the paneled walls; and I never failed to start nervously
+when the butler appeared, somber and silent, at my elbow.
+
+Sir Lionel Barton's _penchant_ for strange visitors, of which we had
+had experience in the past, was exemplified in the person of Homopoulo.
+I gathered that the butler (who, I must admit, seemed thoroughly to
+comprehend his duties) had entered the service of Sir Lionel during
+the time that the latter was pursuing his celebrated excavations upon
+the traditional site of the Daedalian Labyrinth in Crete. It was
+during this expedition that the death of a distant relative had made
+him master of Graywater Park; and the event seemingly had inspired the
+eccentric baronet to engage a suitable factotum.
+
+His usual retinue of Malay footmen, Hindu grooms and Chinese cooks,
+was missing apparently, and the rest of the household, including the
+charming old housekeeper, had been at the Park for periods varying
+from five to five-and-twenty years. I must admit that I welcomed the
+fact; my tastes are essentially insular.
+
+But the untimely illness of our host had cast a shadow upon the party.
+I found myself speaking in a church-whisper, whilst Kāramaneh was
+quite silent. That curious dinner party in the shadow desert of the
+huge apartment frequently recurs in my memories of those days because
+of the uncanny happening which terminated it.
+
+Nayland Smith, who palpably had been as ill at ease as myself, and who
+had not escaped the contagious habit of speaking in a hushed whisper,
+suddenly began, in a loud and cheery manner, to tell us something of
+the history of Graywater Park, which in his methodical way he had
+looked up. It was a desperate revolt, on the part of his strenuous
+spirit, against the phantom of gloom which threatened to obsess us all.
+
+Parts of the house, it appeared, were of very great age, although
+successive owners had added portions. There were fascinating
+traditions connected with the place; secret rooms walled up since the
+Middle Ages, a private stair whose entrance, though undiscoverable,
+was said to be somewhere in the orchard to the west of the ancient
+chapel. It had been built by an ancestor of Sir Lionel who had
+flourished in the reign of the eighth Henry. At this point in his
+reminiscences (Smith had an astonishing memory where recondite facts
+were concerned) there came an interruption.
+
+The smooth voice of the butler almost made me leap from my chair, as
+he spoke out of the shadows immediately behind me.
+
+"The '45 port, sir," he said--and proceeded to place a crusted bottle
+upon the table. "Sir Lionel desires me to say that he is with you in
+spirit and that he proposes the health of Dr. Petrie and his fiancée',
+whom he hopes to have the pleasure of meeting in the morning."
+
+Truly it was a singular situation, and I am unlikely ever to forget
+the scene as the three of us solemnly rose to our feet and drank our
+host's toast, thus proposed by proxy, under the eye of Homopoulo, who
+stood a shadowy figure in the background.
+
+The ceremony solemnly performed and the gloomy butler having departed
+with a suitable message to Sir Lionel--
+
+"I was about to tell you," resumed Nayland Smith, with a gaiety
+palpably forced, "of the traditional ghost of Graywater Park. He is a
+black clad priest, said to be the Spanish chaplain of the owner of the
+Park in the early days of the Reformation. Owing to some little
+misunderstanding with His Majesty's commissioners, this unfortunate
+churchman met with an untimely death, and his shade is said to haunt
+the secret room--the site of which is unknown--and to clamor upon the
+door, and upon the walls of the private stair."
+
+I thought the subject rather ill chosen, but recognized that my friend
+was talking more or less at random and in desperation; indeed, failing
+his reminiscences of Graywater Park, I think the demon of silence must
+have conquered us completely.
+
+"Presumably," I said, unconsciously speaking as though I feared the
+sound of my own voice, "this Spanish priest was confined at some time
+in the famous hidden chamber?"
+
+"He was supposed to know the secret of a hoard of church property, and
+tradition has it, that he was put to the question in some gloomy
+dungeon ..."
+
+He ceased abruptly; in fact the effect was that which must have
+resulted had the speaker been suddenly stricken down. But the deadly
+silence which ensued was instantly interrupted. My heart seemed to
+be clutched as though by fingers of ice; a stark and supernatural
+horror held me riveted in my chair.
+
+For as though Nayland Smith's words had been heard by the ghostly
+inhabitant of Graywater Park, as though the tortured priest sought
+once more release from his age-long sufferings--there came echoing,
+hollowly and remotely, as if from a subterranean cavern, the sound
+of _knocking_.
+
+From whence it actually proceeded I was wholly unable to determine.
+At one time it seemed to surround us, as though not one but a hundred
+prisoners were beating upon the paneled walls of the huge, ancient
+apartment.
+
+Faintly, so faintly, that I could not be sure if I heard aright,
+there came, too, a stifled cry. Louder grew the the frantic beating
+and louder ... then it ceased abruptly.
+
+"Merciful God!" I whispered--"what was it? What was it?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+THE EAST TOWER
+
+
+With a cigarette between my lips I sat at the open window, looking
+out upon the skeleton trees of the orchard; for the buds of early
+spring were only just beginning to proclaim themselves.
+
+The idea of sleep was far from my mind. The attractive modern
+furniture of the room could not deprive the paneled walls of the musty
+antiquity which was their birthright. This solitary window deeply set
+and overlooking the orchard upon which the secret stair was said to
+open, struck a note of more remote antiquity, casting back beyond the
+carousing days of the Stuart monarchs to the troublous time of the
+Middle Ages.
+
+An air of ghostly evil had seemed to arise like a miasma within the
+house from the moment that we had been disturbed by the unaccountable
+rapping. It was at a late hour that we had separated, and none of us,
+I think, welcomed the breaking up of our little party. Mrs. Oram, the
+housekeeper, had been closely questioned by Smith--for Homopoulo, as a
+new-comer, could not be expected to know anything of the history of
+Graywater Park. The old lady admitted the existence of the tradition
+which Nayland Smith had in some way unearthed, but assured us that
+never, in her time, had the uneasy spirit declared himself. She was
+ignorant (or, like the excellent retainer that she was, professed to
+be ignorant) of the location of the historic chamber and staircase.
+
+
+As for Homopoulo, hitherto so irreproachably imperturbable, I had
+rarely seen a man in such a state of passive panic. His dark face was
+blanched to the hue of dirty parchment and his forehead dewed with
+cold perspiration. I mentally predicted an early resignation in the
+household of Sir Lionel Barton. Homopoulo might be an excellent butler,
+but his superstitious Greek nature was clearly incapable of sustaining
+existence beneath the same roof with a family ghost, hoary though the
+specter's antiquity might be.
+
+Where the skeleton shadows of the fruit trees lay beneath me on the
+fresh green turf my fancy persistently fashioned a black-clad figure
+flitting from tree to tree. Sleep indeed was impossible. Once I
+thought I detected the howling of the distant leopards.
+
+Somewhere on the floor above me, Nayland Smith, I knew, at that moment
+would be restlessly pacing his room, the exact situation of which I
+could not identify, because of the quaint, rambling passages whereby
+one approached it. It was in regard to Kāramaneh, however, that my
+misgivings were the keenest. Already her position had been strange
+enough, in those unfamiliar surroundings, but what tremors must have
+been hers now in the still watches of the night, following the ghostly
+manifestations which had so dramatically interrupted Nayland Smith's
+story, I dared not imagine. She had been allotted an apartment
+somewhere upon the ground floor, and Mrs. Oram, whose motherly
+interest in the girl had touched me deeply, had gone with her to her
+room, where no doubt her presence had done much to restore the girl's
+courage.
+
+Graywater Park stood upon a well-wooded slope, and, to the southwest,
+starting above the trees almost like a giant Spanish priest, showed a
+solitary tower. With a vague and indefinite interest I watched it. It
+was Monkswell, an uninhabited place belonging to Sir Lionel's estate
+and dating, in part, to the days of King John. Flicking the ash from
+my cigarette, I studied the ancient tower wondering idly what deeds
+had had their setting within its shadows, since the Angevin monarch,
+in whose reign it saw the light, had signed the Magna Charta.
+
+This was a perfect night, and very still. Nothing stirred, within or
+without Greywater Park. Yet I was conscious of a definite disquietude
+which I could only suppose to be ascribable to the weird events of
+the evening, but which seemed rather to increase than to diminish.
+
+I tossed the end of my cigarette out into the darkness, determined to
+turn in, although I had never felt more wide awake in my life. One
+parting glance I cast into the skeleton orchard and was on the point
+of standing up, when--although no breezed stirred--a shower of ivy
+leaves rained down upon my head!
+
+Brushing them away irritably, I looked up--and a second shower dropped
+fully upon my face and filled my eyes with dust. I drew back, checking
+an exclamation. What with the depth of the embrasure, due to the great
+thickness of the wall, and the leafy tangle above the window, I could
+see for no great distance  up the face of the building; but a faint
+sound of rustling and stumbling  which proceeded from somewhere above
+me proclaimed that some one, or something, was climbing either up or
+down the wall of the corner tower in which I was housed!
+
+Partially removing the dust from my smarting eyes, I returned to the
+embrasure, and stepping from the chair on to the deep ledge, I grasped
+the corner of the quaint, diamond-paned window, which I had opened to
+its fullest extent, and craned forth.
+
+Now I could see the ivy-grown battlements surmounting the tower (the
+east wing, in which my room was situated, was the oldest part of
+Graywater Park). Sharply outlined against the cloudless sky they
+showed ... and the black silhouette of a man's head and shoulders
+leant over directly above me!
+
+I drew back sharply. The climber, I thought, had not seen me, although
+he was evidently peering down at my window. What did it mean?
+
+As I crouched in the embrasure, a sudden giddiness assailed me, which
+at first I ascribed to a sympathetic nervous action due to having seen
+the man poised there at that dizzy height. But it increased, I swayed
+forward, and clutched at the wall to save myself. A deadly nausea
+overcame me ... and a deadly doubt leapt to my mind.
+
+In the past, Sir Lionel Barton had had spies in his household; what
+if the dark-faced Greek, Homopoulo, were another of these? I thought
+of the '45 port, of the ghostly rapping; and I thought of the man who
+crouched upon the roof of the tower above my open window.
+
+My symptoms now were unmistakable; my head throbbed and my vision grew
+imperfect; there had to be an opiate in the wine!
+
+I almost fell back into the room. Supporting myself by means of the
+chair, the chest of drawers, and finally, the bed-rail, I got to my
+grip, and with weakening fingers, extracted the little medicine-chest
+which was invariably my traveling companion.
+
+        *        *        *        *        *        *
+
+Grimly pitting my will against the drug, but still trembling weakly
+from the result of the treatment, internal and subcutaneous, which I
+had adopted, I staggered to the door out into the corridor and up the
+narrow, winding stairs to Smith's room. I carried an electric
+pocket-lamp, and by its light I found my way to the triangular,
+paneled landing.
+
+I tried the handle. As I had expected, the door was locked. I beat
+upon it with my fist.
+
+"Smith!" I cried--"Smith!"
+
+There was no reply.
+
+Again I clamored; awaking ancient echoes within the rooms and all
+about me. But nothing moved and no answering voice rewarded my efforts;
+the other rooms were seemingly unoccupied, and Smith--was drugged!
+
+My senses in disorder, and a mist dancing before my eyes, I went
+stumbling down into the lower corridor. At the door of my own room I
+paused; a new fact had suddenly been revealed to me, a fact which the
+mazy windings of the corridors had hitherto led me to overlook. Smith's
+room was also in the east tower, and must be directly above mine!
+
+"My God!" I whispered, thinking of the climber--"he has been murdered!"
+
+I staggered into my room and clutched at the bed-rail to support
+myself, for my legs threatened to collapse beneath me. How should I
+act? That we were victims of a cunning plot, that the deathful Si-Fan
+had at last wreaked its vengeance upon Nayland Smith I could not doubt.
+
+My brain reeled, and a weakness, mental and physical, threatened to
+conquer me completely. Indeed, I think I must have succumbed, sapped
+as my strength had been by the drug administered to me, if the sound
+of a creaking stair had not arrested my attention and by the menace
+which it conveyed afforded a new stimulus.
+
+Some one was creeping down from the landing above--coming to my room!
+The creatures of the Yellow doctor, having despatched Nayland Smith,
+were approaching stealthily, stair by stair, to deal with _me!_
+
+From my grip I took out the Browning pistol. The Chinese doctor's
+servants should have a warm reception. I burned to avenge my friend,
+who I was persuaded, lay murdered in the room above. I partially
+closed the door and took up a post immediately behind it. Nearer came
+the stealthy footsteps--nearer.... Now the one who approached had
+turned the angle of the passage....
+
+Within sight of my door he seemed to stop; a shaft of white light
+crept through the opening, across the floor and on to the wall beyond.
+A moment it remained so--then was gone. The room became plunged in
+darkness.
+
+Gripping the Browning with nervous fingers I waited, listening
+intently; but the silence remained unbroken. My gaze set upon the spot
+where the head of this midnight visitant might be expected to appear,
+I almost held my breath during the ensuing moments of frightful
+suspense.
+
+The door was opening; slowly--slowly--by almost imperceptible degrees.
+I held the pistol pointed rigidly before me and my gaze remained fixed
+intently on the dimly seen opening. I suppose I acted as ninety-nine
+men out of a hundred would have done in like case. Nothing appeared.
+
+Then a voice--a voice that seemed to come from somewhere under the
+floor snapped:--
+
+"Good God! it's Petrie!"
+
+I dropped my gaze instantly ... and there, looking up at me from the
+floor at my feet, I vaguely discerned the outline of a human head!
+
+"Smith!" I whispered.
+
+Nayland Smith--for indeed it was none other--stood up and entered the
+room.
+
+"Thank God you are safe, old man," he said. "But in waiting for one
+who is stealthily entering a room, don't, as you love me, take it for
+granted that he will enter _upright_. I could have shot you from the
+floor with ease! But, mercifully, even in the darkness, I recognized
+your Arab slippers!"
+
+"Smith," I said, my heart beating wildly, "I thought you were drugged--
+murdered. The port contained an opiate."
+
+"I guessed as much!" snapped Smith. "But despite the excellent tuition
+of Dr. Fu-Manchu, I am still childishly trustful; and the fact that I
+did not partake of the crusted '45 was not due to any suspicions which
+I entertained at that time."
+
+"But, Smith, I saw you drink some port."
+
+"I regret to contradict you, Petrie, but you must be aware that the
+state of my liver--due to a long residence in Burma--does not permit
+me to indulge in the luxury of port. My share of the '45 now reposes
+amid the moss in the tulip-bowl, which you may remember decorated the
+dining table! Not desiring to appear churlish, by means of a simple
+feat of legerdemain I drank your health and future happiness in claret!
+
+"For God's sake what is going on, Smith? Some one climbed from your
+window."
+
+"I climbed from my window!"
+
+"What!" I said dazedly--"it was you! But what does it all mean?
+Kāramaneh----"
+
+"It is for her I fear, Petrie, now. We have not a moment to waste!"
+
+He made for the door.
+
+"Sir Lionel must be warned at all cost!" I cried.
+
+"Impossible!" snapped Smith.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Sir Lionel has disappeared!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+THE DUNGEON
+
+
+We were out in the corridor now, Smith showing the way with the light
+of his electric pocket-lamp. My mind was clear enough, but I felt as
+weak as a child.
+
+"You look positively ghastly, old man," rapped Smith, "which is no
+matter for wonder. I have yet to learn how it happened that you are
+not lying insensible, or dead, as a result of the drugged wine. When
+I heard some one moving in your room, it never occurred to me that it
+was _you_."
+
+"Smith," I said--"the house seems as still as death."
+
+"You, Kāramaneh, and myself are the only occupants of the east wing.
+Homopoulo saw to that."
+
+"Then he----"
+
+"He is a member of the Si-Fan, a creature of Dr. Fu-Manchu--yes,
+beyond all doubt! Sir Lionel is unfortunate--as ever--in his choice
+of servants. I blame my own stupidity entirely, Petrie; and I pray
+that my enlightenment has not come too late."
+
+"What does it all mean?--what have you learnt?"
+
+"Mind these three steps," warned Smith, glancing back. "I found my
+mind persistently dwelling upon the matter of that weird rapping,
+Petrie, and I recollected the situation of Sir Lionel's room, on the
+southeast front. A brief inspection revealed the fact that, by means
+of a kindly branch of ivy, I could reach the roof of the east tower
+from my window."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"One may walk from there along the roof of the southeast front, and
+by lying face downwards at the point where it projects above the main
+entrance look into Sir Lionel's room!"
+
+"I saw you go!"
+
+"I feared that some one was watching me, but that it was you I had
+never supposed. Neither Barton nor his man are in that room, Petrie!
+They have been spirited away! This is Kāramaneh's door."
+
+He grasped me by the arm, at the same time directing the light upon a
+closed door before which we stood. I raised my fist and beat upon the
+panels; then, every muscle tensed and my heart throbbing wildly, I
+listened for the girl's voice.
+
+Not a sound broke that deathly stillness except the beating of my own
+heart, which, I thought, must surely be audible to my companion.
+Frantically I hurled myself against the stubborn oak, but Smith thrust
+me back.
+
+"Useless, Petrie!" he said--"useless. This room is in the base of the
+east tower, yours is above it and mine at the top. The corridors
+approaching the three floors deceive one, but the fact remains. I have
+no positive evidence, but I would wager all I possess that there is a
+stair in the thickness of the wall, and hidden doors in the paneling
+of the three apartments. The Yellow group has somehow obtained
+possession of a plan of the historic secret passages and chambers of
+Graywater Park. Homopoulo is the spy in the household; and Sir Lionel,
+with his man Kennedy, was removed directly the invitation to us had
+been posted. The group will know by now that we have escaped them, but
+Kāramaneh ..."
+
+"Smith!" I groaned, "Smith! What can we do? What has befallen her? ..."
+
+"This way!" he snapped. "We are not beaten yet!"
+
+"We must arouse the servants!"
+
+"Why? It would be sheer waste of priceless time. There are only three
+men who actually sleep in the house (excepting Homopoulo) and these
+are in the northwest wing. No, Petrie; we must rely upon ourselves."
+
+He was racing recklessly along the tortuous corridors and up the oddly
+placed stairways of that old-world building. My anguish had reinforced
+the atropine which I had employed as an antidote to the opiate in the
+wine, and now my blood, that had coursed sluggishly, leapt through my
+veins like fire and I burned with a passionate anger.
+
+Into a large and untidy bedroom we burst. Books and papers littered
+about the floor; curios, ranging from mummied cats and ibises to
+Turkish yataghans and Zulu assegais, surrounded the place in riotous
+disorder. Beyond doubt this was the apartment of Sir Lionel Barton.
+A lamp burned upon a table near to the disordered bed, and a
+discolored Greek statuette of Orpheus lay overturned on the carpet
+close beside it.
+
+"Homopoulo was on the point of leaving this room at the moment that I
+peered in at the window," said Smith, breathing heavily. "From here
+there is another entrance to the secret passages. Have your pistol
+ready."
+
+He stepped across the disordered room to a little alcove near the foot
+of the bed, directing the ray of the pocket-lamp upon the small,
+square paneling.
+
+"Ah!" he cried, a note of triumph in his voice--"he has left the door
+ajar! A visit of inspection was not anticipated to-night, Petrie!
+Thank God for an Indian liver and a suspicious mind."
+
+He disappeared into a yawning cavity which now I perceived to exist in
+the wall. I hurried after him, and found myself upon roughly fashioned
+stone steps in a very low and narrow descending passage. Over his
+shoulder--
+
+"Note the direction," said Smith breathlessly. "We shall presently
+find ourselves at the base of the east tower."
+
+Down we went and down, the ray of the electric lamp always showing
+more steps ahead, until at last these terminated in a level, arched
+passage, curving sharply to the right. Two paces more brought us to a
+doorway, less, than four feet high, approached by two wide steps. A
+blackened door, having a most cumbersome and complicated lock, showed
+in the recess.
+
+Nayland Smith bent and examined the mechanism intently.
+
+"Freshly oiled!" he commented. "You know into whose room it opens?"
+
+Well enough I knew, and, detecting that faint, haunting perfume which
+spoke of the dainty personality of Kāramaneh, my anger blazed up
+anew. Came a faint sound of metal grating upon metal, and Smith pulled
+open the door, which turned outward upon the steps, and bent further
+forward, sweeping the ray of light about the room beyond.
+
+"Empty, of course!" he muttered. "Now for the base of these damned
+nocturnal operations."
+
+He descended the steps and began to flash the light all about the
+arched passageway wherein we stood.
+
+"The present dining-room of Graywater Park lies almost due south of
+this spot," he mused. "Suppose we try back."
+
+We retraced our steps to the foot of the stair. In the wall on their
+left was an opening, low down against the floor and little more than
+three feet high; it reminded me of some of the entrances to those
+seemingly interminable passages whereby one approaches the sepulchral
+chambers of the Egyptian Pyramids.
+
+"Now for it!" snapped Smith. "Follow me closely."
+
+Down he dropped, and, having the lamp thrust out before him, began to
+crawl into the tunnel. As his heels disappeared, and only a faint light
+outlined the opening, I dropped upon all fours in turn, and began
+laboriously to drag myself along behind him. The atmosphere was damp,
+chilly, and evil-smelling; therefore, at the end of some ten or twelve
+yards of this serpentine crawling, when I saw Smith, ahead of me, to
+be standing erect, I uttered a stifled exclamation of relief. The
+thought of Kāramaneh having been dragged through this noisome hole
+was one I dared not dwell upon.
+
+A long, narrow passage now opened up, its end invisible from where we
+stood. Smith hurried forward. For the first thirty of forty paces the
+roof was formed of massive stone slabs; then its character changed;
+the passage became lower, and one was compelled frequently to lower the
+head in order to avoid the oaken beams which crossed it.
+
+"We are passing under the dining-room," said Smith. "It was from here
+the sound of beating first came!"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I have built up a theory, which remains to be proved, Petrie. In my
+opinion a captive of the Yellow group escaped to-night and sought to
+summon assistance, but was discovered and overpowered."
+
+"Sir Lionel?"
+
+"Sir Lionel, or Kennedy--yes, I believe so."
+
+Enlightenment came to me, and I understood the pitiable condition into
+which the Greek butler had been thrown by the phenomenon of the
+ghostly knocking. But Smith hurried on, and suddenly I saw that the
+passage had entered upon a sharp declivity; and now both roof and
+walls were composed of crumbling brickwork. Smith pulled up, and thrust
+back a hand to detain me.
+
+"_Ssh!_" he hissed, and grasped my arm.
+
+Silent, intently still, we stood and listened. The sound of a guttural
+voice was clearly distinguishable from somewhere close at hand!
+
+Smith extinguished the lamp. A faint luminance proclaimed itself
+directly ahead. Still grasping my arm, Smith began slowly to advance
+toward the light. One--two--three--four--five paces we crept onward ...
+and I found myself looking through an archway into a medieval
+torture-chamber!
+
+Only a part of the place was visible to me, but its character was
+unmistakable. Leg-irons, boots and thumb-screws hung in racks upon
+the fungi-covered wall. A massive, iron-studded door was open at the
+further end of the chamber, and on the threshold stood Homopoulo,
+holding a lantern in his hand.
+
+Even as I saw him, he stepped through, followed by on of those short,
+thick-set Burmans of whom Dr. Fu-Manchu had a number among his
+entourage; they were members of the villainous robber bands notorious
+in India as the dacoits. Over one broad shoulder, slung sackwise, the
+dacoit carried a girl clad in scanty white drapery....
+
+Madness seized me, the madness of sorrow and impotent wrath. For, with
+Kāramaneh being borne off before my eyes, I dared not fire at her
+abductors lest I should strike _her_!
+
+Nayland Smith uttered a loud cry, and together we hurled ourselves
+into the chamber. Heedless of what, of whom, else it might shelter,
+we sprang for the group in the distant doorway. A memory is mine of
+the dark, white face of Homopoulo, peering, wild-eyed, over the
+lantern, of the slim, white-clad form of the lovely captive seeming to
+fade into the obscurity of th passage beyond.
+
+Then, with bleeding knuckles, with wild imprecations bubbling from my
+lips, I was battering upon the mighty door--which had been slammed in
+my face at the very instant that I had gained it.
+
+"Brace up, man!--Brace up!" cried Smith, and in his strenuous, grimly
+purposeful fashion, he shouldered me away from the door. "A battering
+ram could not force that timber; we must seek another way!"
+
+I staggered, weakly, back into the room. Hand raised to my head, I
+looked about me. A lantern stood in a niche in one wall, weirdly
+illuminating that place of ghastly memories; there were braziers,
+branding-irons, with other instruments dear to the Black Ages, about
+me--and gagged, chained side by side against the opposite wall, lay
+Sir Lionel Barton and another man unknown to me!
+
+Already Nayland Smith was bending over the intrepid explorer, whose
+fierce blue eyes glared out from the sun-tanned face madly, whose
+gray hair and mustache literally bristled with rage long repressed.
+I choked down the emotions that boiled and seethed within me, and
+sought to release the second captive, a stockily-built, clean-shaven
+man. First I removed the length of toweling which was tied firmly
+over his mouth; and--
+
+"Thank you, sir," he said composedly. "The keys of these irons are on
+the ledge there beside the lantern. I broke the first ring I was
+chained to, but the Yellow devils overhauled me, all manacled as I
+was, half-way along the passage before I could attract your attention,
+and fixed me up to another and stronger ring!"
+
+Ere he had finished speaking, the keys were in my hands, and I had
+unlocked the gyves from both the captives. Sir Lionel Barton, his gag
+removed, unloosed a torrent of pent-up wrath.
+
+"The hell-fiends drugged me!" he shouted. "That black villain Homopoulo
+doctored my tea! I woke in this damnable cell, the secret of which has
+been lost for generations!" He turned blazing blue eyes upon Kennedy.
+"How did _you_ come to be trapped?" he demanded unreasonably. "I
+credited you with a modicum of brains!"
+
+"Homopoulo came running from your room, sir, and told me you were
+taken suddenly ill and that a doctor must be summoned without delay."
+
+"Well, well, you fool!"
+
+"Dr. Hamilton was away, sir."
+
+"A false call beyond doubt!" snapped Smith.
+
+"Therefore I went for the new doctor, Dr. Magnus, in the village. He
+came at once and I showed him up to your room. He sent Mrs. Oram out,
+leaving only Homopoulo and myself there, except yourself."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Sandbagged!" explained the man nonchalantly. "Dr. Magnus, who is some
+kind of dago, is evidently one of the gang."
+
+"Sir Lionel!" cried Smith--"where does the passage lead to beyond
+that doorway?
+
+"God knows!" was the answer, which dashed my last hope to the ground.
+"I have no more idea than yourself. Perhaps ..."
+
+He ceased speaking. A sound had interrupted him, which, in those grim
+surroundings, lighted by the solitary lantern, translated my thoughts
+magically to Ancient Rome, to the Rome of Tigellinus, to the dungeons
+of Nero's Circus. Echoing eerily along the secret passages it came--
+the roaring and snarling of the lioness and the leopards.
+
+Nayland Smith clapped his hand to his brow and stared at me almost
+frenziedly, then--
+
+"God guard her!" he whispered. "Either their plans, wherever they got
+them, are inaccurate, or in their panic they have mistaken the way." ...
+Wild cries now were mingling with the snarling of the beasts....
+"They have blundered into the old crypt!"
+
+How we got out of the secret labyrinth of Graywater Park into the
+grounds and around the angle of the west wing to the ivy-grown,
+pointed door, where once the chapel had bee, I do not know. Light
+seemed to spring up about me, and half-clad servants to appear out of
+the void. Temporarily I was insane.
+
+Sir Lionel Barton was behaving like a madman too, and like a madman he
+tore at the ancient bolts and precipitated himself into the stone-paved
+cloister barred with the moon-cast shadows of the Norman pillars. From
+behind the iron bars of the home of the leopards came now a fearsome
+growling and scuffling.
+
+Smith held the light with a steady hand, whilst Kennedy forced the
+heavy bolts of the crypt door.
+
+In leapt the fearless baronet among his savage pets, and in the ray
+of light from the electric lamp I saw that which turned my sick with
+horror. Prone beside a yawning gap in the floor lay Homopoulo, his
+throat torn indescribably and his white shirt-front smothered in
+blood. A black leopard, having its fore-paws upon the dead man's
+breast, turned blazing eyes upon us; a second crouched beside him.
+
+Heaped up in a corner of the place, amongst the straw and litter of
+the lair, lay the Burmese dacoit, his sinewy fingers embedded in the
+throat of the third and largest leopard--which was dead--whilst the
+creature's gleaming fangs were buried in the tattered flesh of the
+man's shoulder.
+
+Upon the straw beside the two, her slim, bare arms outstretched and
+her head pillowed upon them, so that her rippling hair completely
+concealed her face, lay Kāramaneh....
+
+In a trice Barton leapt upon the great beast standing over Homopoulo,
+had him by the back of the neck and held him in his powerful hands
+whining with fear and helpless as a rat in the grip of a terrier. The
+second leopard fled into the inner lair.
+
+So much I visualized in a flash; then all faded, and I knelt alone
+beside her whose life was my life, in a world grown suddenly empty
+and still.
+
+Through long hours of agony I lived, hours contained within the span
+of seconds, the beloved head resting against my shoulder, whilst I
+searched for signs of life and dreaded to find ghastly wounds.... At
+first I could not credit the miracle; I could not receive the wondrous
+truth.
+
+Kāramaneh was quite uninjured and deep in drugged slumber!
+
+"The leopards thought her dead," whispered Smith brokenly, "and never
+touched her!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+THREE NIGHTS LATER
+
+
+"Listen!" cried Sir Lionel Barton.
+
+He stood upon the black rug before the massive, carven mantelpiece, a
+huge man in an appropriately huge setting.
+
+I checked the words on my lips, and listened intently. Within
+Graywater Park all was still, for the hour was late. Outside, the
+rain was descending in a deluge, its continuous roar drowning any
+other sound that might have been discernible. Then, above it, I
+detected a noise that at first I found difficult to define.
+
+"The howling of the leopards!" I suggested.
+
+Sir Lionel shook his tawny head with impatience. Then, the sound
+growing louder, suddenly I knew it for what it was.
+
+"Some one shouting!" I exclaimed--"some one who rides a galloping
+horse!"
+
+"Coming here!" added Sir Lionel. "Hark! he is at the door!"
+
+A bell rang furiously, again and again sending its brazen clangor
+echoing through the great apartments and passages of Graywater.
+
+"There goes Kennedy."
+
+Above the sibilant roaring of the rain I could hear some one releasing
+heavy bolts and bars. The servants had long since retired, as also had
+Kāramaneh; but Sir Lionel's man remained wakeful and alert.
+
+Sir Lionel made for the door, and I, standing up, was about to follow
+him, when Kennedy appeared, in his wake a bedraggled groom, hatless,
+and pale to the lips. His frightened eyes looked from face to face.
+
+"Dr. Petrie?" he gasped interrogatively.
+
+"Yes!" I said, a sudden dread assailing me. "What is it?"
+
+"Gad! it's Hamilton's man!" cried Barton.
+
+"Mr. Nayland Smith, sir," continued the groom brokenly--and all my
+fears were realized. "He's been attacked, sir, on the road from the
+station, and Dr. Hamilton, to whose house he was carried----"
+
+"Kennedy!" shouted Sir Lionel, "get the Rolls-Royce out! Put your
+horse up here, my man, and come with us!"
+
+He turned abruptly ... as the groom, grasping at the wall, fell
+heavily to the floor.
+
+"Good God!" I cried--"What's the matter with him?"
+
+I bent over the prostrate man, making a rapid examination.
+
+"His head! A nasty blow. Give me a hand, Sir Lionel; we must get him
+on to a couch."
+
+The unconscious man was laid upon a Chesterfield, and, ably assisted
+by the explorer, who was used to coping with such hurts as this, I
+attended to him as best I could. One of the men-servants had been
+aroused, and, just as he appeared in the doorway, I had the
+satisfaction of seeing Dr. Hamilton's groom open his eyes, and look
+about him, dazedly.
+
+"Quick," I said. "Tell me--what hurt you?"
+
+The man raised his hand to his head and groaned feebly.
+
+"Something came _whizzing_, sir," he answered. "There was no report,
+and I saw nothing. I don't know what it can have been----"
+
+"Where did this attack take place?"
+
+"Between here and the village, sir; just by the coppice at the
+cross-roads on top of Raddon Hill."
+
+"You had better remain here for the present," I said, and gave a few
+words of instruction to the man whom we had aroused.
+
+"This way," cried Barton, who had rushed out of the room, his huge
+frame reappearing in the door-way; "the car is ready."
+
+My mind filled with dreadful apprehensions, I passed out on to the
+carriage sweep. Sir Lionel was already at the wheel.
+
+"Jump in, Kennedy," he said, when I had taken a seat beside him; and
+the man sprang into the car.
+
+Away we shot, up the narrow lane, lurched hard on the bend--and were
+off at ever growing speed toward the hills, where a long climb
+awaited the car.
+
+The head-light picked out the straight road before us, and Barton
+increased the pace, regardless of regulations, until the growing slope
+made itself felt and the speed grew gradually less; above the
+throbbing of the motor, I could hear, now, the rain in the
+overhanging trees.
+
+I peered through the darkness, up the road, wondering if we were near
+to the spot where the mysterious attack had been made upon Dr.
+Hamilton's groom. I decided that we were just passing the place, and
+to confirm my opinion, at that moment Sir Lionel swung the car around
+suddenly, and plunged headlong into the black mouth of a narrow lane.
+
+Hitherto, the roads had been fair, but now the jolting and swaying
+became very pronounced.
+
+"Beastly road!" shouted Barton--"and stiff gradient!"
+
+I nodded.
+
+That part of the way which was visible in front had the appearance of
+a muddy cataract, through which we must force a path.
+
+Then, as abruptly as it had commenced, the rain ceased; and at almost
+the same moment came an angry cry from behind.
+
+The canvas hood made it impossible to see clearly in the car, but,
+turning quickly, I perceived Kennedy, with his cap off, rubbing his
+close-cropped skull. He was cursing volubly.
+
+"What is it, Kennedy?
+
+"Somebody sniping!" cried the man. "Lucky for me I had my cap on!"
+
+"Eh, sniping?" said Barton, glancing over his shoulder. "What d'you
+mean? A stone, was it?"
+
+"No, sir," answered Kennedy. "I don't know what it was--but it wasn't
+a stone."
+
+"Hurt much?" I asked.
+
+"No, sir! nothing at all." But there was a note of fear in the man's
+voice--fear of the unknown.
+
+Something struck the hood with a dull drum-like thud.
+
+"There's another, sir!" cried Kennedy. "There's some one following us!"
+
+"Can you see any one?" came the reply. "I thought I saw something
+then, about twenty yards behind. It's so dark."
+
+"Try a shot!" I said, passing my Browning to Kennedy.
+
+The next moment, the crack of the little weapon sounded sharply, and I
+thought I detected a vague, answering cry.
+
+"See anything?" came from Barton.
+
+Neither Kennedy nor I made reply; for we were both looking back down
+the hill. Momentarily, the moon had peeped from the cloud-banks, and
+where, three hundreds yards behind, the bordering trees were few, a
+patch of dim light spread across the muddy road--and melted away as a
+new blackness gathered.
+
+But, in the  brief space, three figures had shown, only for an instant--
+but long enough for us both to see that they were those of three gaunt
+men, seemingly clad in scanty garments. What weapons they employed I
+could not conjecture; but we were pursued by three of Dr. Fu-Manchu's
+dacoits!
+
+Barton growled something savagely, and ran the car to the left of the
+road, as the gates of Dr. Hamilton's house came in sight.
+
+A servant was there, ready to throw them open; and Sir Lionel swung
+around on to the drive, and drove ahead, up the elm avenue to where the
+light streamed through the open door on to the wet gravel. The house
+was a blaze of lights, every window visible being illuminated; and Mrs.
+Hamilton stood in the porch to greet us.
+
+"Doctor Petrie?" she asked, nervously, as we descended.
+
+"I am he," I said. "How is Mr. Smith?"
+
+"Still insensible," was the reply.
+
+Passing a knot of servants who stood at the foot of the stairs like a
+little flock of frightened sheep--we made our way into the room where
+my poor friend lay.
+
+Dr. Hamilton, a gray-haired man of military bearing, greeted Sir
+Lionel, and the latter made me known to my fellow practitioner, who
+grasped my hand, and then went straight to the bedside, tilting the
+lampshade to throw the light directly upon the patient.
+
+Nayland Smith lay with his arms outside the coverlet and his fists
+tightly clenched. His thin, tanned face wore a grayish hue, and a
+white bandage was about his head. He breathed stentoriously.
+
+"We can only wait," said Dr. Hamilton, "and trust that there will be
+no complications."
+
+I clenched my fists involuntarily, but, speaking no word, turned and
+passed from the room.
+
+Downstairs in Dr. Hamilton's study was the man who had found Nayland
+Smith.
+
+"We don't know when it was done, sir," he said, answering my first
+question. "Staples and me stumbled on him in the dusk, just by the big
+beech--a good quarter-mile from the village. I don't know how long
+he'd laid there, but it must have been for some time, as the last
+rain arrived an hour earlier. No, sir, he hadn't been robbed; his
+money and watch were on him but his pocketbook lay open beside him;--
+though, funny as it seems, there were three five-pound notes in it!"
+
+"Do you understand, Petrie?" cried Sir Lionel. "Smith evidently
+obtained a copy of the old plan of the secret passages of Graywater
+and Monkswell, sooner than he expected, and determined to return
+to-night. They left him for dead, having robbed him of the plans!"
+
+"But the attack on Dr. Hamilton's man?"
+
+"Fu-Manchu clearly tried to prevent communication with us to-night! He
+is playing for time. Depend on it, Petrie, the hour of his departure
+draws near and he is afraid of being trapped at the last moment."
+
+He began taking huge strides up and down the room, forcibly reminding
+me of a caged lion.
+
+"To think," I said bitterly, "that all our efforts have failed to
+discover the secret----"
+
+"The secret of my own property!" roared Barton--"and one known to
+that damned, cunning Chinese devil!"
+
+"And in all probability now known also to Smith----"
+
+"And he cannot speak! ..."
+
+"_Who_ cannot speak?" demanded a hoarse voice.
+
+I turned in a flash, unable to credit my senses--and there, holding
+weakly to the doorpost, stood Nayland Smith!
+
+"Smith!" I cried reproachfully--"you should not have left your room!"
+
+He sank into an arm-chair, assisted by Dr. Hamilton.
+
+"My skull is fortunately thick!" he replied, a ghostly smile playing
+around the corners of his mouth--"and it was a physical impossibility
+for me to remain inert considering that Dr. Fu-Manchu proposes to
+leave England to-night!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+THE MONK'S PLAN
+
+
+"My inquiries in the Manuscript Room of the British Museum," said
+Nayland Smith, his voice momentarily growing stronger and some of the
+old fire creeping back into his eyes, "have proved entirely successful."
+
+Sir Lionel Barton, Dr. Hamilton, and myself hung upon every word; and
+often I fond myself glancing at the old-fashioned clock on the
+doctor's mantel-piece.
+
+"We had very definite proof," continued Smith, "of the fact that
+Fu-Manchu and company were conversant with that elaborate system of
+secret rooms and passages which forms a veritable labyrinth, in, about,
+and beneath Graywater Park. Some of the passages we explored. That
+Sir Lionel should be ignorant of the system was not strange,
+considering that he had but recently inherited the property, and that
+the former owner, his kinsman, regarded the secret as lost. A
+starting-point was discovered, however, in the old work on haunted
+manors unearthed in the library, as you remember. There was a
+reference, in the chapter dealing with Graywater, so a certain monkish
+manuscript said to repose in the national collection and to contain a
+plan of these passages and stairways.
+
+"The Keeper of the Manuscripts at the Museum very courteously assisted
+me in my inquiries, and the ancient parchment was placed in my hands.
+Sure enough, it contained a carefully executed drawing of the hidden
+ways of Graywater, the work of a monk in the distant days when
+Graywater was a priory. This monk, I may add--a certain Brother Anselm--
+afterwards became Abbot of Graywater."
+
+"Very interesting!" cried sir Lionel loudly; "very interesting indeed."
+
+"I copied the plan," resumed Smith, "with elaborate care. That labor,
+unfortunately, was wasted, in part, at least. Then, in order to
+confirm my suspicions on the point, I endeavored to ascertain if the
+monk's MS. had been asked for at the Museum recently. The Keeper of
+the Manuscripts could not recall that any student had handled the work,
+prior to my own visit, during the past ten years.
+
+"This was disappointing, and I was tempted to conclude that Fu-Manchu
+had blundered on to the secret in some other way, when the Assistant
+Keeper of Manuscripts put in an appearance. From him I obtained
+confirmation of my theory. Three months ago a Greek gentleman--possibly,
+Sir Lionel, your late butler, Homopoulo--obtained permission to consult
+the MS., claiming to be engaged upon a paper for some review or another.
+
+"At any rate, the fact was sufficient. Quite evidently, a servant of
+Fu-Manchu had obtained a copy of the plan--and this within a day or
+so of the death of Mr. Brangholme Burton--whose heir, Sir Lionel, you
+were! I became daily impressed anew with the omniscience, the
+incredible genius, of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+
+"The scheme which we know of to compass the death, or captivity, of
+our three selves and Kāramaneh was put into operation, and failed.
+But, with its failure, the utility of the secret chambers was by no
+means terminated. The local legend, according to which a passage
+exists, linking Graywater and Monkswell, is confirmed by the monk's
+plan."
+
+"What?" cried Sir Lionel, springing to his feet--"a passage between
+the Park and the old tower! My dear sir, it's impossible! Such a
+passage would have to pass under the River Starn! It's only a narrow
+stream, I know, but----"
+
+"It _does_, or _did_, pass under the River Starn!" said Nayland Smith
+coolly. "That it is still practicable I do not assert; what interests
+me is the spot at which it terminates."
+
+He plunged his hand into the pocket of the light overcoat which he
+wore over the borrowed suit of pyjamas in which the kindly Dr. Hamilton
+had clothed him. He was seeking his pipe!
+
+"Have a cigar, Smith!" cried Sir Lionel, proffering his case--"if you
+_must_ smoke; although I think our medical friends frowning!"
+
+Nayland Smith took a cigar, bit off the end, and lighted up. He began
+to surround himself with odorous clouds, to his evident satisfaction.
+
+"To resume," he said; "the Spanish priest who was persecuted at
+Graywater in early Reformation days and whose tortured spirit is said
+to haunt the Park, held the secret of this passage, and of the
+subterranean chamber in Monkswell, to which it led. His confession--
+which resulted in his death at the stake!--enabled the commissioners
+to recover from his chamber a quantity of church ornaments. For these
+facts I am indebted to the author of the work on haunted manors.
+
+"Our inquiry at this point touches upon things sinister and
+incomprehensible. In a word, although the passage and a part of the
+underground room are of unknown antiquity, it appears certain that
+they were improved and enlarged by one of the abbots of Monkswell--at
+a date much later than Brother Anselm's abbotship--and the place was
+converted to a secret chapel----"
+
+"A _secret_ chapel!" said Dr. Hamilton.
+
+"Exactly. This was at a time in English history when the horrible
+cult of Asmodeus spread from the Rhine monasteries and gained
+proselytes in many religious houses of England. In this secret chapel,
+wretched Churchmen, seduced to the abominable views of the abbot,
+celebrated the Black Mass!"
+
+"My God!" I whispered--"small wonder that the place is reputed to be
+haunted!"
+
+"Small wonder," cried Nayland Smith, with all his old nervous vigor,
+"that Dr. Fu-Manchu selected it as an ideal retreat in times of danger!"
+
+"What! the chapel?" roared Sir Lionel.
+
+"Beyond doubt! Well knowing the penalty of discovery, those old
+devil-worshipers had chosen a temple from which they could escape in
+an emergency. There is a short stair from the chamber into the cave
+which, as you may know, exists in the cliff adjoining Monkswell."
+
+Smith's eyes were blazing now, and he was on his feet, pacing the
+floor, an odd figure, with his bandaged skull and inadequate garments,
+biting on the already extinguished cigar as though it had been a pipe.
+
+"Returning to our rooms, Petrie," he went on rapidly, "who should I run
+into but Summers! You remember Summers, the Suez Canal pilot whom you
+met at Ismailia two years ago? He brought the yacht through the Canal,
+from Suez, on which I suspect Ki-Ming came to England. She is a big
+boat--used to be on the Port Said and Jaffa route before a wealthy
+Chinaman acquired her--through an Egyptian agent--for his personal use.
+
+"All the crews, Summers told me, were Asiatics, and little groups of
+natives lined the Canal and performed obeisances as the vessel passed.
+Undoubtedly they had that woman on board, Petrie, the Lady of the
+Si-Fan, who escaped, together with Fu-Manchu, when we raided the
+meeting in London! Like a fool I came racing back here without
+advising you; and, all alone, my mind occupied with the tremendous
+import of these discoveries, started, long after dusk, to walk to
+Graywater Park."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders whimsically, and raised one hand to his
+bandaged head.
+
+"Fu-Manchu employs weapons both of the future and of the past," he
+said. "My movements had been watched, of course; I was mad. Some one,
+probably a dacoit, laid me low with a ball of clay propelled form a
+sling of the Ancient Persian pattern! I actually saw him ... then saw,
+and knew, no more!
+
+"Smith!" I cried--whilst Sir Lionel Barton and Dr. Hamilton stared at
+one another, dumbfounded--"you think _he_ is on the point of flying
+from England----"
+
+"The Chinese yacht, _Chanak-Kampo,_ is lying two miles off the coast
+and in the sight of the tower of Monkswell!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+THE SHADOW ARMY
+
+
+The scene of our return to Graywater Park is destined to live in my
+memory for ever. The storm, of which the violet rainfall had been a
+prelude, gathered blackly over the hills. Ebon clouds lowered upon us
+as we came racing to the gates. Then the big car was spinning around
+the carriage sweep, amid a deathly stillness of Nature indescribably
+gloomy and ominous. I  have said, a stillness of nature; but, as
+Kennedy leapt out and ran up the steps to the door, from the distant
+cages wherein Sire Lionel kept his collection of rare beasts proceeded
+the angry howling of the leopards and such a wild succession of roars
+from the African lioness that I stared at our eccentric host
+questioningly.
+
+"It's the gathering storm," he explained. "These creatures are
+peculiarly susceptible to atmospheric disturbances."
+
+Now the door was thrown open, and, standing in the lighted hall,
+a picture fair to look upon in her dainty kimono and little red,
+high-heeled slippers, stood Kāramaneh!
+
+I was beside her in a moment; for the lovely face was pale and there
+was a wildness in her eyes which alarmed me.
+
+"_He_ is somewhere near!" she whispered, clinging to me. "Some great
+danger threatens. Where have you been?--what has happened?"
+
+"Smith was attacked on his way back from London," I replied. "But, as
+you see, he is quite recovered. We are in no danger; and I insist that
+you go back to bed. We shall tell you all about it in the morning."
+
+Rebellion blazed up in her wonderful eyes instantly--and as quickly
+was gone, leaving them exquisitely bright. Two tears, like twin pearls,
+hung upon the curved black lashes. It made my blood course faster to
+watch this lovely Eastern girl conquering the barbaric impulses that
+sometimes flamed up within, her, because _I_ willed it; indeed this was
+a miracle that I never tired of witnessing.
+
+Mrs. Oram, the white-haired housekeeper, placed her arm in motherly
+fashion about the girl's slim waist.
+
+"She wants to stay in my room until the trouble is all over," she said
+in her refined, sweet voice.
+
+"You are very good, Mrs. Oram," I replied. "Take care of her."
+
+One long, reassuring glance I gave Kāramaneh, then turned and
+followed Smith and Sir Lionel up the winding oak stair. Kennedy came
+close behind me, carrying one of the acetylene head-lamps of the car.
+And--
+
+"Just listen to the lioness, sir!" he whispered. "It's not the
+gathering storm that's making her so restless. Jungle beasts grow
+quiet, as a rule, when there's thunder about."
+
+The snarling of the great creature was plainly audible, distant though
+we were from her cage.
+
+"Through your room, Barton!" snapped Nayland Smith, when we gained the
+top corridor.
+
+He was his old, masterful self once more, and his voice was vibrant
+with that suppressed excitement which I knew well. Into the disorderly
+sleeping apartment of the baronet we hurried, and Smith made for the
+recess near the bed which concealed a door in the paneling.
+
+"Cautiously here!" cried Smith. "Follow immediately behind me, Kennedy,
+and throw the beam ahead. Hold the lamp well to the left."
+
+In we filed, into that ancient passage which had figured in many a
+black deed but had never served the ends of a more evil plotter than
+the awful Chinaman who so recently had rediscovered it.
+
+Down we marched, and down, but not to the base of the tower, as I had
+anticipated. At a point which I judged to be about level with the
+first floor of the house, Smith--who had been audibly counting the
+steps--paused, and began to examine the seemingly unbroken masonry
+of the wall.
+
+"We have to remember," he muttered, "that this passage may be blocked
+up or otherwise impassable, and that Fu-Manchu may know of another
+entrance. Furthermore, since the plan is lost, I have to rely upon
+my memory for the exact position of the door."
+
+He was feeling about in the crevices between the stone blocks of which
+the wall was constructed.
+
+"Twenty-one steps," he muttered; "I feel certain."
+
+Suddenly it seemed that his quest had proved successful.
+
+"Ah!" he cried--"the ring!"
+
+I saw that he had drawn out a large iron ring from some crevice in
+which it had been concealed.
+
+"Stand back, Kennedy!" he warned.
+
+Kennedy moved on to a lower step--as Smith, bringing all his weight
+to bear upon the ring, turned the huge stone slab upon its hidden
+pivot, so that it fell back upon the stair with a reverberating boom.
+
+We all pressed forward to peer into the black cavity. Kennedy moving
+the light, a square well was revealed, not more than three feet across.
+Foot-holes were cut at intervals down the further side.
+
+"H'm!" said Smith--"I was hardly prepared for this. The method of
+descent that occurs to me is to lean back against one side and trust
+one's weight entirely to the foot-holes on the other. A shaft appeared
+in the plan, I remember, but I had formed no theory respecting the
+means provided for descending it. Tilt the lamp forward, Kennedy.
+Good! I can see the floor of the passage below; only about fifteen
+feet or so down."
+
+He stretched his foot across, placed it in the niche and began to
+descend.
+
+"Kennedy next!" came his muffled voice, "with the lamp. Its light will
+enable you others to see the way."
+
+Down went Kennedy without hesitation, the lamp swung from his right
+arm.
+
+"I will bring up the rear," said Sir Lionel Barton.
+
+Whereupon I descended. I had climbed down about half-way when, from
+below, came a loud cry, a sound of scuffling, and a savage exclamation
+from Smith. Then----
+
+"We're right, Petrie! This passage was recently used by Fu-Manchu!"
+
+I gained the bottom of the well, and found myself standing in the
+entrance to an arched passage. Kennedy was directing the light of the
+lamp down upon the floor.
+
+"You see, the door was guarded" said Nayland Smith.
+
+"What!"
+
+"Puff adder!" he snapped, and indicated a small snake whose head was
+crushed beneath his heel.
+
+Sir Lionel now joined us; and, a silent quartette, we stood staring
+from the dead reptile into the damp and evil-smelling tunnel. A
+distant muttering and rumbling rolled, echoing awesomely along it.
+
+"For Heaven's sake what was that, sir?" whispered Kennedy.
+
+"It was the thunder," answered Nayland Smith. "The storm is breaking
+over the hills. Steady with the lamp, my man."
+
+We had proceeded for some three hundred yards, and, according to my
+calculation, were clear of the orchard of Graywater Park and close to
+the fringe of trees beyond; I was taking note of the curious old
+brickwork of the passage, when--
+
+"Look out, sir!" cried Kennedy--and the light began dancing madly.
+"Just under your feet! Now it's up the wall!--mind your hand, Dr.
+Petrie!"
+
+The lamp was turned, and, since it shone fully into my face,
+temporarily blinded me.
+
+"On the roof over your head, Barton!"--this from Nayland Smith. "What
+can we kill it with?"
+
+Now my sight was restored to me, and looking back along the passage,
+I saw, clinging to an irregularity in the moldy wall, the most
+gigantic scorpion I had ever set eyes upon! It was fully as large as
+my open hand.
+
+Kennedy and Nayland Smith were stealthily retracing their steps, the
+former keeping the light directed upon the hideous insect, which now
+began running about with that horrible, febrile activity characteristic
+of the species. Suddenly came a sharp, staccato report.... Sir Lionel
+had scored a hit with his Browning pistol.
+
+In waves of sound, the report went booming along the passage. The lamp,
+as I have said, was turned in order to shine back upon us, rendering
+the tunnel ahead a mere black mouth--a veritable inferno, held by
+inhuman guards. Into that black cavern I stared, gloomily fascinated
+by the onward rolling sound storm; into that blackness I looked ...
+to feel my scalp tingle horrifically, to know the crowning horror of
+the horrible journey.
+
+The blackness was spangled with watching, diamond eyes!--with tiny
+insect eyes that moved; upon the floor, upon the walls, upon the
+ceiling! A choking cry rose to my lips.
+
+"Smith! Barton! for God's sake, look! The place is _alive_ with
+scorpions!"
+
+Around we all came, panic plucking at our hearts, around swept the
+beam of the big lamp; and there, retreating before the light, went a
+veritable army of venomous creatures! I counted no fewer than three of
+the giant red centipedes whose poisonous touch, called "the zayat kiss,"
+is certain death; several species of scorpion were represented; and
+some kind of bloated, unwieldy spider, so gross of body that its short,
+hairy legs could scarce support it, crawled, hideous, almost at my feet.
+
+What other monstrosities of the insect kingdom were included in that
+obscene host I know not; my skin tingled from head to feet; I
+experienced a sensation as if a million venomous things already clung
+to me--unclean things bred in the malarial jungles of Burma, in the
+corpse-tainted mud of China's rivers, in the fever spots of that
+darkest East from which Fu-Manchu recruited his shadow army.
+
+I was perilously near to losing my nerve when the crisp, incisive
+tones of Nayland Smith's voice came to stimulate me like a cold douche.
+
+"This wanton sacrifice of horrors speaks eloquently of a forlorn hope!
+Sweep the walls with light, Kennedy; all those filthy things are
+nocturnal and they will retreat before us as we advance."
+
+His words proved true. Occasioning a sort of _rustling_ sound--a faint
+sibilance indescribably loathsome--the creatures gray and black and
+red darted off along the passage. One by one, as we proceeded, they
+crept into holes and crevices of the ancient walls, sometimes singly,
+sometimes in pairs--the pairs locked together in deadly embrace.
+
+"They cannot live long in this cold atmosphere," cried Smith. "Many of
+ them will kill one another--and we can safely leave the rest to the
+British climate. But see that none of them drops upon you in passing."
+
+Thus we pursued our nightmare march, on through that valley of horror.
+Colder grew the atmosphere and colder. Again the thunder boomed out
+above us, seeming to shake the roof of the tunnel fiercely, as with
+Titan hands. A sound of falling water, audible for some time, now
+grew so loud that conversation became difficult. All the insects had
+disappeared.
+
+"We are approaching the River Starn!" roared Sir Lionel. "Note the dip
+of the passage and the wet walls!"
+
+"Note the type of brickwork!" shouted Smith.
+
+Largely as a sedative to the feverish excitement which consumed me, I
+forced myself to study the construction of the tunnel; and I became
+aware of an astonishing circumstance. Partly the walls were natural,
+a narrow cavern traversing the bed of rock which upcropped on this
+portion of the estate, but partly, if my scanty knowledge of
+archaeology did not betray me, they were _Phoenician!_
+
+"This stretch of passage," came another roar from Sir Lionel, "dates
+back to Roman days or even earlier! By God! It's almost incredible!"
+
+And now Smith and Kennedy, who lid, were up to their knees in a
+running tide. An icy shower-bath drenched us from above; ahead was a
+solid wall of falling water. Again, and louder, nearer, boomed and
+rattled the thunder; its mighty voice was almost lost in the roar of
+that subterranean cataract. Nayland Smith, using his hands as a
+megaphone, cried;--
+
+"Failing the evidence that others have passed this way, I should not
+dare to risk it! But the river is less than forty feet wide at the
+point below Monkswell; a dozen paces should see us through the worst!"
+
+I attempted no reply. I will frankly admit that the prospect appalled
+me. But, bracing himself up as one does preparatory to a high dive,
+Smith, nodding to Kennedy to proceed, plunged into the cataract ahead....
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+THE BLACK CHAPEL
+
+
+Of how we achieved that twelve or fifteen yards below the rocky bed of
+the stream the Powers that lent us strength and fortitude alone hold
+record. Gasping for breath, drenched, almost reconciled to the end
+which I thought was come--I found myself standing at the foot of a
+steep flight of stairs roughly hewn in the living rock.
+
+Beside me, the extinguished lamp still grasped in his hand, leant
+Kennedy, panting wildly and clutching at the uneven wall. Sir Lionel
+Barton had sunk exhausted upon the bottom step, and Nayland Smith was
+standing near him, looking up the stairs. From an arched doorway at
+their head light streamed forth!
+
+Immediately behind me, in the dark place where the waters roared,
+opened a fissure in the rock, and into it poured the miniature
+cataract; I understood now the phenomenon of minor whirlpools for
+which the little river above was famous. Such were my impressions of
+that brief breathing-space; then--
+
+"Have your pistols ready!" cried Smith. "Leave the lamp, Kennedy. It
+can serve us no further."
+
+Mustering all the reserve that remained to us, we went, pell-mell, a
+wild, bedraggled company, up that ancient stair and poured into the
+room above....
+
+One glance showed us that this was indeed the chapel of Asmodeus, the
+shrine of Satan where the Black Mass had been sung in the Middle Ages.
+The stone altar remained, together with certain Latin inscriptions cut
+in the wall. Fu-Manchu's last home in England had been within a temple
+of his only Master.
+
+Save for nondescript litter, evidencing a hasty departure of the
+occupants, and a ship's lantern burning upon the altar, the chapel was
+unfurnished. Nothing menaced us, but the thunder hollowly crashed far
+above. To cover his retreat, Fu-Manchu had relied upon the noxious
+host in the passage and upon the wall of water. Silent, motionless, we
+four stood looking down at that which lay upon the floor of the unholy
+place.
+
+In a pool of blood was stretched the Eurasian girl, Zarmi. Her
+picturesque finery was reft into tatters and her bare throat and arms
+were covered with weals and bruises occasioned by ruthless, clutching
+fingers. Of her face, which had been notable for a sort of devilish
+beauty, I cannot write; it was the awful face of one who had did from
+strangulation.
+
+Beside her, with a Malay _krīs_ in his heart--a little, jeweled weapon
+that I had often seen in Zarmi's hand--sprawled the obese Greek,
+Samarkan, a member of the Si-Fan group and sometime manager of a great
+London hotel!
+
+It was ghastly, it was infinitely horrible, that tragedy of which the
+story can never be known, never be written; that fiendish fight to the
+death in the black chapel of Asmodeus.
+
+"We are too late!" said Nayland Smith. "The stair behind the altar!"
+
+He snatched up the lantern. Directly behind the stone altar was a
+narrow, pointed doorway. From the depths with which it communicated
+proceeded vague, awesome sounds, as of waves breaking in some vast
+cavern....
+
+We were more than half-way down the stair when, above the muffled
+roaring of the thunder, I distinctly heard the voice of _Dr. Fu-Manchu!_
+
+"My God!" shouted Smith, "perhaps they are trapped! The cave is only
+navigable at low tide and in calm weather!"
+
+We literally fell down the remaining steps ... and were almost
+precipitated into the water!
+
+The light of the lantern showed a lofty cavern tapering away to a
+point at its remote end, pear-fashion. The throbbing of an engine
+and churning of a screw became audible. There was a faint smell of
+petrol.
+
+"Shoot! shoot!"--the frenzied voice was that of Sir Lionel--"Look!
+they can just get through! ..."
+
+_Crack! Crack! Crack!_
+
+Nayland Smith's Browning spat death across the cave. Then followed the
+report of Barton's pistol; then those of mine and Kennedy's.
+
+A small motor-boat was creeping cautiously out under a low, natural
+archway which evidently gave access to the sea! Since the tide was
+incoming, a few minutes more of delay had rendered the passage of the
+cavern impossible....
+
+The boat disappeared.
+
+"We are not beaten!" snapped Nayland Smith. "The _Chanak-Kampo_ will
+be seized in the Channel!"
+
+        *        *        *        *        *        *        *
+
+"There were formerly steps, in the side of the well from which this
+place takes its name," declared Nayland Smith dully. "This was the
+means of access to the secret chapel employed by the devil-worshipers."
+
+"The top of the well (alleged to be the deepest in England)," said
+Sir Lionel, "is among a tangle of weeds close by the ruined tower."
+
+Smith, ascending three stone steps, swung the lantern out over the
+yawning pit below; then he stared long and fixedly upwards.
+
+Both thunder and rain had ceased; but even in those gloomy depths we
+could hear the coming of the tempest which followed upon that
+memorable storm.
+
+"The steps are here," reported Smith; "but without the aid of a rope
+from above, I doubt if they are climbable."
+
+"It's that or the way we came, sir!" said Kennedy. "I was five years
+at sea in wind-jammers. Let me swarm up and go for a rope to the Park."
+
+"Can you do it?" demanded Smith. "Come and look!"
+
+Kennedy craned from the opening, staring upward and downward; then--
+
+"I can do it, sir," he said quietly.
+
+Removing his boots and socks, he swung himself out from the opening
+into the well and was gone.
+
+        *        *        *        *        *        *        *
+
+The story of Fu-Manchu, and of the organization called the Si-Fan which
+he employed as a means to further his own vast projects, is almost told.
+
+Kennedy accomplished the perilous climb to the lip of the well, and
+sped barefooted to Graywater Park for ropes. By means of these we all
+escaped from the strange chapel of the devil-worshipers. Of how we
+arranged for the removal of the bodies which lay in the place I need
+not write. My record advances twenty-four hours.
+
+The great storm which burst over England in the never-to-be-forgotten
+spring when Fu-Manchu fled our shores has become historical. There
+were no fewer than twenty shipwrecks during the day and night that it
+raged.
+
+Imprisoned by the elements in Graywater Park, we listened to the wind
+howling with the voice of a million demons around the ancient manor,
+to the creatures of Sir Lionel's collection swelling the unholy
+discord. Then came the news that there was a big steamer on the Pinion
+Rocks--that the lifeboat could not reach her.
+
+As though it were but yesterday I can see us, Sir Lionel Barton,
+Nayland Smith and I, hurrying down into the little cove which
+sheltered the fishing-village; fighting our way against the power of
+the tempest....
+
+Thrice we saw the rockets split the inky curtain of the storm; thrice
+saw the gallant lifeboat crew essay to put their frail craft out to
+sea ... thrice the mighty rollers hurled them contemptuously back....
+
+Dawn--a gray, eerie dawn--was creeping ghostly over the iron-bound
+shore, when the fragments of wreckage began to drift in. Such are the
+currents upon those coasts that bodies are rarely recovered from
+wrecks on the cruel Pinion Rocks.
+
+In the dim light I bent over a battered and torn mass of timber--that
+once had been the bow of a boat; and in letters of black and gold I
+read: "S. Y. _Chanak-Kampo."_
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAND OF FU-MANCHU***
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