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Title: The Hand of Fu-Manchu

Author: Sax Rohmer

Release date: March 10, 2006 [eBook #17959]
                Most recently updated: May 23, 2024

Language: English

Credits: E-text prepared by Lisa Miller


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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 _Sâkya Mûni,_'" he directed.

I stared at him, scarce crediting my senses; but----

"I mean it!" he rapped. "Do as I tell you."

"Sâkya Mûni," 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 "Sâkya Mûni"?

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 _mâitre d' hôtel_ 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,
'Sâkya Mûni'?"

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 'Sâkya Mûni.' 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:
"Sâkya Mûni"--and again: "Sâkya Mûni."

"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 confrère.

"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 Kâramaneh; 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 Gezîra
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 _Gházeeyeh_.

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 _Ghâzeeyeh_, 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 _krîs_ 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 _krîs_ 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 _Ghâzeeyeh_ 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 TÛLUN-NÛR 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 Tûlun-Nûr
work," he said. "It may be sixteenth century or even earlier. The
Kûren 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 Kûren 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 Tûlun-Nûr 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 Tûlun-Nûr 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 Tûlun-Nûr 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 Tûlun-Nûr 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 Tûlun-Nûr 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 Kûren
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 Tûlun-Nûr 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 "Kâramaneh!"

"Smith!" I said hoarsely, glancing over the massage, "Kâramaneh 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 Kâramaneh 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 Kâramaneh 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; "your 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--Kâramaneh would
be with me again that day--Kâramaneh, 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 Kâramaneh....

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
Kâramaneh was thrust into the room!

        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

There comes a blank in my recollections. Long after Kâramaneh 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
Kâramaneh"--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 Kâramaneh."

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 Depôt. 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 Kâramaneh, 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
Kâramaneh--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 Depôt 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 _mâitre d'hôtel_ 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 _mâitres d'hôtel_ 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 Kâramaneh 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 Islâm.

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 Kâramaneh 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 Kâramaneh 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 Kâramaneh!

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.

Kâramaneh 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 Kâramaneh!

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 _darabûkeh._ 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 Kâramaneh 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 Kâramaneh, 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
Kâramaneh, 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-Churân.

"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-Churân 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 America 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 Kâramaneh, 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 Kâramaneh 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-Churân,
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 _maagûn_ 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 _maagûn_
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 _maagûn_.
You are doubtless familiar with the remarkable experiments in
psycho-therapeutics conducted at the Salpêtrier 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 _fakîr_ whom the officer had been unwise
enough to chastise. The _fakîr_ 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 Kâramaneh 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
Kâramaneh 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 asssured 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,
Kâramaneh 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
Kâramaneh'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 Kâramaneh, 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, Kâramaneh 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 Kâramaneh was not of the type 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 Kâramaneh 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 Kâramaneh, 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?
Kâramaneh----"

"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, Kâramaneh, 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 Kâramaneh'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
Kâramaneh ..."

"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 Kâramaneh, 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 Kâramaneh 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
Kâramaneh 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 the 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 been, 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 Kâramaneh....

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.

Kâramaneh 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
Kâramaneh; 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 Kâramaneh 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 Sir 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 Kâramaneh!

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 Kâramaneh, 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 _krîs_ 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."_




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