The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu ............................................................................................................................1

Sax Rohmer ..............................................................................................................................................1

I pushed my writing aside and tilted the lampshade, as footsteps sounded on the landing. The next moment I

had jumped to my feet, for a tall, lean man, with his squarecut, cleanshaven face sunbaked to the hue of

"Smith," I said, and gripped his hands hard, "this is a delightful surprise! Whateverhowever"

"Excuse me, Petrie!" he broke in. "Don't put it down to the sun!" And he put out the lamp, plunging the room

"No doubt you will think me mad," he continued, and, dimly, I could see him at the window, peering out into

the road, "but before you are many hours older you will know that I have good reason to be cautious. Ah,

nothing suspicious! Perhaps I am first this time." And, stepping back to the writingtable he relighted the

"Mysterious enough for you?" he laughed, and glanced at my unfinished MS. "A story, eh? From which I

gather that the district is beastly healthy what, Petrie? Well, I can put some material in your way that, if

sheer uncanny mystery is a marketable commodity, ought to make you independent of influenza and broken

I surveyed him doubtfully, but there was nothing in his appearance to justify me in supposing him to suffer

from delusions. His eyes were too bright, certainly, and a hardness now had crept over his face. I got out the

"I have got a roving commission, Petrie, and it doesn't rest with me where I am today nor where I shall be

There was something ominous in the words, and, putting down my glass, its contents untasted, I faced round

and looked him squarely in the eyes. "Out with it!" I said. "What is it all about?"

Smith suddenly stood up and stripped off his coat. Rolling back his left shirtsleeve he revealed a

wickedlooking wound in the fleshy part of the forearm. It was quite healed, but curiously striated for an inch

"Right! Very deeply!" he rapped. "A barb steeped in the venom of a hamadryad went in there!"

A shudder I could not repress ran coldly through me at mention of that most deadly of all the reptiles of the

"There's only one treatment," he continued, rolling his sleeve down again, "and that's with a sharp knife, a

match, and a broken cartridge. I lay on my back, raving, for three days afterwards, in a forest that stank with

malaria, but I should have been lying there now if I had hesitated. Here's the point. It was not an accident!"

"I mean that it was a deliberate attempt on my life, and I am hard upon the tracks of the man who extracted

that venompatiently, drop by drop from the poisonglands of the snake, who prepared that arrow, and

"A fiend who, unless my calculations are at fault is now in London, and who regularly wars with pleasant

weapons of that kind. Petrie, I have traveled from Burma not in the interests of the British Government

merely, but in the interests of the entire white race, and I honestly believe though I pray I may be

To say that I was perplexed conveys no idea of the mental chaos created by these extraordinary statements,

for into my humdrum suburban life Nayland Smith had brought fantasy of the wildest. I did not know what to

"I am wasting precious time!" he rapped decisively, and, draining his glass, he stood up. "I came straight to

you, because you are the only man I dare to trust. Except the big chief at headquarters, you are the only

person in England, I hope, who knows that Nayland Smith has quitted Burma. I must have someone with me,

Petrie, all the timeit's imperative! Can you put me up here, and spare a few days to the strangest business, I

I agreed readily enough, for, unfortunately, my professional duties were not onerous.

"Tonight! I had thought of turning in, I must admit. I have not dared to sleep for fortyeight hours, except in

fifteenminute stretches. But there is one move that must be made tonight and immediately. I must warn Sir

"Petrie, he is a doomed man! Unless he follows my instructions without question, without hesitationbefore

Heaven, nothing can save him! I do not know when the blow will fall, how it will fall, nor from whence, but I

know that my first duty is to warn him. Let us walk down to the corner of the common and get a taxi."

How strangely does the adventurous intrude upon the humdrum; for, when it intrudes at all, more often than

not its intrusion is sudden and unlooked for. Today, we may seek for romance and fail to find it: unsought, it

The drive that night, though it divided the drably commonplace from the wildly bizarrethough it was the

bridge between the ordinary and the outrehas left no impression upon my mind. Into the heart of a weird

mystery the cab bore me; and in reviewing my memories of those days I wonder that the busy thoroughfares

through which we passed did not display before my eyes signs and portentswarnings.

It was not so. I recall nothing of the route and little of import that passed between us (we both were strangely

Constables were moving on a little crowd of curious idlers who pressed about the steps of Sir Crichton

Davey's house and sought to peer in at the open door. Without waiting for the cab to draw up to the curb,

The latter glanced at him doubtfully, but something in his voice and bearing commanded respect.

Smith lurched back as though he had received a physical blow, and clutched my shoulder convulsively.

Beneath the heavy tan his face had blanched, and his eyes were set in a stare of horror.

With clenched fists he turned and, pressing through the group of loungers, bounded up the steps. In the hall a

man who unmistakably was a Scotland Yard official stood talking to a footman. Other members of the

household were moving about, more or less aimlessly, and the chilly hand of King Fear had touched one and

all, for, as they came and went, they glanced ever over their shoulders, as if each shadow cloaked a menace,

and listened, as it seemed, for some sound which they dreaded to hear. Smith strode up to the detective and

showed him a card, upon glancing at which the Scotland Yard man said something in a low voice, and,

A few brief questions and answers, and, in gloomy silence, we followed the detective up the heavily carpeted

stair, along a corridor lined with pictures and busts, and into a large library. A group of people were in this

room, and one, in whom I recognized Chalmers Cleeve, of Harley Street, was bending over a motionless form

stretched upon a couch. Another door communicated with a small study, and through the opening I could see

a man on all fours examining the carpet. The uncomfortable sense of hush, the group about the physician, the

bizarre figure crawling, beetlelike, across the inner room, and the grim hub, around which all this ominous

"Frankly, I do not care to venture any opinion at present regarding the immediate cause of death," he said.

"Sir Crichton was addicted to cocaine, but there are indications which are not in accordance with

cocainepoisoning. I fear that only a postmortem can establish the factsif," he added, "we ever arrive at

Smith stepping forward and engaging the famous pathologist in conversation, I seized the opportunity to

The dead man was in evening dress, but wore an old smokingjacket. He had been of spare but hardy build,

with thin, aquiline features, which now were oddly puffy, as were his clenched hands. I pushed back his

sleeve, and saw the marks of the hypodermic syringe upon his left arm. Quite mechanically I turned my

attention to the right arm. It was unscarred, but on the back of the hand was a faint red mark, not unlike the

imprint of painted lips. I examined it closely, and even tried to rub it off, but it evidently was caused by some

Turning to a pale young man whom I had understood to be Sir Crichton's private secretary, I drew his

attention to this mark, and inquired if it were constitutional. "It is not, sir," answered Dr. Cleeve, overhearing

my question. "I have already made that inquiry. Does it suggest anything to your mind? I must confess that it

"Excuse me, Mr. Burboyne," said Smith, now turning to the secretary, "but Inspector Weymouth will tell you

that I act with authority. I understand that Sir Crichton wasseized with illness in his study?"

"Yesat halfpast ten. I was working here in the library, and he inside, as was our custom."

"Yes, always. It was open for a minute or less about tentwentyfive, when a message came for Sir Crichton.

"I could not say. it was brought by a district messenger, and he placed it beside him on the table. It is there

"Sir Crichton suddenly burst open the door and threw himself, with a scream, into the library. I ran to him but

he waved me back. His eyes were glaring horribly. I had just reached his side when he fell, writhing, upon the

floor. He seemed past speech, but as I raised him and laid him upon the couch, he gasped something that

sounded like `The red hand!' Before I could get to bell or telephone he was dead!"

Mr. Burboyne's voice shook as he spoke the words, and Smith seemed to find this evidence confusing.

"I think not. From the direction of his last glance, I feel sure he referred to something in the study."

"What did you do? Having summoned the servants, I ran into the study. But there was absolutely nothing

unusual to be seen. The windows were closed and fastened. He worked with closed windows in the hottest

weather. There is no other door, for the study occupies the end of a narrow wing, so that no one could

possibly have gained access to it, whilst I was in the library, unseen by me. Had someone concealed himself

in the study earlier in the eveningand I am convinced that it offers no hidingplace he could only have

Nayland Smith tugged at the lobe of his left ear, as was his habit when meditating.

"Yes," said Mr. Burboyne, with evident perplexity; "though I attached no importance to it at the time. Three

nights ago Sir Crichton came out to me, and appeared very nervous; but at times his nerves you know?

Well, on this occasion he asked me to search the study. He had an idea that something was concealed there."

"`Something' was the word he used. I searched, but fruitlessly, and he seemed quite satisfied, and returned to

"Thank you, Mr. Burboyne. My friend and I would like a few minutes' private investigation in the study."

SIR CRICHTON DAVEY'S study was a small one, and a glance sufficed to show that, as the secretary had

said, it offered no hidingplace. It was heavily carpeted, and overfull of Burmese and Chinese ornaments

and curios, and upon the mantelpiece stood several framed photographs which showed this to be the sanctum

of a wealthy bachelor who was no misogynist. A map of the Indian Empire occupied the larger part of one

wall. The grate was empty, for the weather was extremely warm, and a greenshaded lamp on the littered

writingtable afforded the only light. The air was stale, for both windows were closed and fastened.

Smith immediately pounced upon a large, square envelope that lay beside the blottingpad. Sir Crichton had

not even troubled to open it, but my friend did so. It contained a blank sheet of paper!

"Smell!" he directed, handing the letter to me. I raised it to my nostrils. It was scented with some pungent

"It is a rather rare essential oil," was the reply, "which I have met with before, though never in Europe. I

He tilted the lampshade and made a close examination of the scraps of paper, matches, and other debris that

lay in the grate and on the hearth. I took up a copper vase from the mantelpiece, and was examining it

Something in the tone of his voice chilled me, and I hastily replaced the vase, and stood by the door of the

study, watching him search, methodically, every inch of the room behind the books, in all the ornaments,

"That will do," he said at last. "There is nothing here and I have no time to search farther."

"Inspector Weymouth," said my friend, "I have a particular reason for asking that Sir Crichton's body be

removed from this room at once and the library locked. Let no one be admitted on any pretense whatever

until you hear from me." It spoke volumes for the mysterious credentials borne by my friend that the man

from Scotland Yard accepted his orders without demur, and, after a brief chat with Mr. Burboyne, Smith

passed briskly downstairs. In the hall a man who looked like a groom out of livery was waiting.

"It was you who heard a cry of some kind at the rear of the house about the time of Sir Crichton's death?"

"Yes, sir. I was locking the garage door, and, happening to look up at the window of Sir Crichton's study, I

saw him jump out of his chair. Where he used to sit at his writing, sir, you could see his shadow on the blind.

The man, whom the uncanny happening clearly had frightened, seemed puzzled for a suitable description.

"A sort of wail, sir," he said at last. "I never heard anything like it before, and don't want to again."

"Like this?" inquired Smith, and he uttered a low, wailing cry, impossible to describe. Wills perceptibly

"That will do," said Smith, and I thought I detected a note of triumph in his voice. "But stay! Take us through

The man bowed and led the way, so that shortly we found ourselves in a small, paved courtyard. It was a

perfect summer's night, and the deep blue vault above was jeweled with myriads of starry points. How

impossible it seemed to reconcile that vast, eternal calm with the hideous passions and fiendish agencies

"Up yonder are the study windows, sir. Over that wall on your left is the back lane from which the cry came,

"Those iron stairs are a means of communication between the domestic offices and the servants' quarters, I

"Then send someone to make my business known the MajorGeneral's housekeeper; I want to examine those

Singular though my friend's proceedings appeared to me, I had ceased to wonder at anything. Since Nayland

Smith's arrival at my rooms I seemed to have been moving through the fitful phases of a nightmare. My

friend's account of how he came by the wound in his arm; the scene on our arrival at the house of Sir

Crichton Davey; the secretary's story of the dying man's cry, "The red hand!"; the hidden perils of the study;

the wail in the lane all were fitter incidents of delirium than of sane reality. So, when a whitefaced butler

made us known to a nervous old lady who proved to be the housekeeper of the nextdoor residence, I was not

"Lounge up and down outside, Petrie. Everyone has cleared off now. It is getting late. Keep your eyes open

and be on your guard. I thought I had the start, but he is here before me, and, what is worse, he probably

With which he entered the house and left me out in the square, with leisure to think, to try to understand.

The crowd which usually haunts the scene of a sensational crime had been cleared away, and it had been

circulated that Sir Crichton had died from natural causes. The intense heat having driven most of the residents

out of town, practically I had the square to myself, and I gave myself up to a brief consideration of the

By what agency had Sir Crichton met his death? Did Nayland Smith know? I rather suspected that he did.

What was the hidden significance of the perfumed envelope? Who was that mysterious personage whom

Smith so evidently dreaded, who had attempted his life, who, presumably, had murdered Sir Crichton? Sir

Crichton Davey, during the time that he had held office in India, and during his long term of service at home,

had earned the good will of all, British and native alike. Who was his secret enemy?

I turned, with my heart fluttering like a child's. This night's work had imposed a severe strain even upon my

A girl wrapped in a hooded operacloak stood at my elbow, and, as she glanced up at me, I thought that I

never had seen a face so seductively lovely nor of so unusual a type. With the skin of a perfect blonde, she

had eyes and lashes as black as a Creole's, which, together with her full red lips, told me that this beautiful

stranger, whose touch had so startled me, was not a child of our northern shores.

"Forgive me," she said, speaking with an odd, pretty accent, and laying a slim hand, with jeweled fingers,

confidingly upon my arm, "if I startled you. Butis it true that Sir Crichton Davey has beenmurdered?"

I looked into her big, questioning eyes, a harsh suspicion laboring in my mind, but could read nothing in their

mysterious depths only I wondered anew at my questioner's beauty. The grotesque idea momentarily

possessed me that, were the bloom of her red lips due to art and not to nature, their kiss would leave

though not indeliblyjust such a mark as I had seen upon the dead man's hand. But I dismissed the fantastic

notion as bred of the night's horrors, and worthy only of a mediaeval legend. No doubt she was some friend

"I cannot say that he has been murdered," I replied, acting upon the latter supposition, and seeking to tell her

She closed her eyes and uttered a low, moaning sound, swaying dizzily. Thinking she was about to swoon, I

threw my arm round her shoulder to support her, but she smiled sadly, and pushed me gently away.

She shook her head, flashed a rapid glance at me with her beautiful eyes, and looked away in a sort of

sorrowful embarrassment, for which I was entirely at a loss to account. Suddenly she resumed:

"I cannot let my name be mentioned in this dreadful matter, butI think I have some informationfor the

She handed me a sealed envelope, again met my eyes with one of her dazzling glances, and hurried away.

She had gone no more than ten or twelve yards, and I still was standing bewildered, watching her graceful,

Without looking directly at me, but alternately glancing towards a distant corner of the square and towards

the house of MajorGeneral PlattHouston, she made the following extraordinary request:

"If you would do me a very great service, for which I always would be grateful,"she glanced at me with

passionate intentness"when you have given my message to the proper person, leave him and do not go

Before I could find words to reply she gathered up her cloak and ran. Before I could determine whether or not

to follow her (for her words had aroused anew all my worst suspicions) she had disappeared! I heard the whir

of a restarted motor at no great distance, and, in the instant that Nayland Smith came running down the steps,

"Smith!" I cried as he joined me, "tell me what we must do!" And rapidly I acquainted him with the incident.

"She was a big card to play," he said; "but he did not know that I held one to beat it."

"She is one of the finest weapons in the enemy's armory, Petrie. But a woman is a twoedged sword, and

treacherous. To our great good fortune, she has formed a sudden predilection, characteristically Oriental, for

yourself. Oh, you may scoff, but it is evident. She was employed to get this letter placed in my hands. Give it

He held the envelope under my nose, and, with a sudden sense of nausea, I recognized the strange perfume.

"You know what this presaged in Sir Crichton's case? Can you doubt any longer? She did not want you to

"Smith," I said unsteadily, "I have followed your lead blindly in this horrible business and have not pressed

for an explanation, but I must insist before I go one step farther upon knowing what it all means."

"Just a few steps farther," he rejoined; "as far as a cab. We are hardly safe here. Oh, you need not fear shots

or knives. The man whose servants are watching us now scorns to employ such clumsy, telltale weapons."

Only three cabs were on the rank, and, as we entered the first, something hissed past my ear. missed both

Smith and me by a miracle, and, passing over the roof of the taxi, presumably fell in the enclosed garden

"Get inquickly!" Smith rapped back. "It was attempt number one! More than that I cannot say. Don't let

the man hear. He has noticed nothing. Pull up the window on your side, Petrie, and look out behind. Good!

The cab moved off with a metallic jerk, and I turned and looked back through the little window in the rear.

"Petrie," he said, "if I escape alive from this business I shall know that I bear a charmed life."

"You have asked me to explain matters," he continued, "and I will do so to the best of my ability. You no

doubt wonder why a servant of the British Government, lately stationed in Burma, suddenly appears in

London, in the character of a detective. I am here, Petrieand I bear credentials from the very highest

sourcesbecause, quite by accident, I came upon a clew. Following it up, in the ordinary course of routine, I

obtained evidence of the existence and malignant activity of a certain man. At the present stage of the case I

should not be justified in terming him the emissary of an Eastern Power, but I may say that representations

"There is little to fear until we arrive home," he said calmly. "Afterwards there is much. To continue: This

man, whether a fanatic or a duly appointed agent, is, unquestionably, the most malign and formidable

personality existing in the known world today. He is a linguist who speaks with almost equal facility in any

of the civilized languages, and in most of the barbaric. He is an adept in all the arts and sciences which a

great university could teach him. He also is an adept in certain obscure arts and sciences which no university

of today can teach. He has the brains of any three men of genius. Petrie, he is a mental giant."

"As to his mission among men. Why did M. Jules Furneaux fall dead in a Paris opera house? Because of heart

failure? No! Because his last speech had shown that he held the key to the secret of Tongking. What became

of the Grand Duke Stanislaus? Elopement? Suicide? Nothing of the kind. He alone was fully alive to Russia's

growing peril. He alone knew the truth about Mongolia. Why was Sir Crichton Davey murdered? Because,

had the work he was engaged upon ever seen the light it would have shown him to be the only living

Englishman who understood the importance of the Tibetan frontiers. I say to you solemnly, Petrie, that these

are but a few. Is there a man who would arouse the West to a sense of the awakening of the East, who would

teach the deaf to hear, the blind to see, that the millions only await their leader? He will die. And this is only

"But, Smith, this is almost incredible! What perverted genius controls this awful secret movement?"

"Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, highshouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan,

a closeshaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true catgreen. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of

an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present,

with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government which, however, already has denied all

knowledge of his existence. Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. FuManchu, the

"We have been followed here," I said. "Why did you make no attempt to throw the pursuers off the track, to

"Useless, in the first place. Wherever we went, HE would find us. And of what use to arrest his creatures? We

could prove nothing against them. Further, it is evident that an attempt is to be made upon my life tonight

and by the same means that proved so successful in the case of poor Sir Crichton."

His square jaw grew truculently prominent, and he leapt stormily to his feet, shaking his clenched fists

"The villain!" he cried. "The fiendishly clever villain! I suspected that Sir Crichton was next, and I was right.

But I came too late, Petrie! That hits me hard, old man. To think that I knew and yet failed to save him!"

"FuManchu has made the blunder common to all men of unusual genius," he said. "He has underrated his

adversary. He has not given me credit for perceiving the meaning of the scented messages. He has thrown

away one powerful weaponto get such a message into my handsand he thinks that once safe within

doors, I shall sleep, unsuspecting, and die as Sir Crichton died. But without the indiscretion of your charming

friend, I should have known what to expect when I receive her `information' which by the way, consists of

"She is either FuManchu's daughter, his wife, or his slave. I am inclined to believe the last, for she has no

"How can you jest with some awful thingHeaven knows what hanging over your head? What is the

"He died of the Zayat Kiss. Ask me what that is and I reply 'I do not know.' The zayats are the Burmese

caravanserais, or resthouses. Along a certain routeupon which I set eyes, for the first and only time, upon

Dr. FuManchutravelers who use them sometimes die as Sir Crichton died, with nothing to show the cause

of death but a little mark upon the neck, face, or limb, which has earned, in those parts, the title of the `Zayat

Kiss.' The resthouses along that route are shunned now. I have my theory and I hope to prove it tonight, if

I live. It will be one more broken weapon in his fiendish armory, and it is thus, and thus only, that I can hope

to crush him. This was my principal reason for not enlightening Dr. Cleeve. Even walls have ears where

FuManchu is concerned, so I feigned ignorance of the meaning of the mark, knowing that he would be

almost certain to employ the same methods upon some other victim. I wanted an opportunity to study the

"In the swampy forests of the district I have referred to a rare species of orchid, almost green, and with a

peculiar scent, is sometimes met with. I recognized the heavy perfume at once. I take it that the thing which

kills the traveler is attracted by this orchid. You will notice that the perfume clings to whatever it touches. I

doubt if it can be washed off in the ordinary way. After at least one unsuccessful attempt to kill Sir

Crichton you recall that he thought there was something concealed in his study on a previous

occasion?FuManchu hit upon the perfumed envelopes. He may have a supply of these green orchids in

"What creature? How could any kind of creature have got into Sir Crichton's room tonight?"

"You no doubt observed that I examined the grate of the study. I found a fair quantity of fallen soot. I at once

assumed, since it appeared to be the only means of entrance, that something has been dropped down; and I

took it for granted that the thing, whatever it was, must still be concealed either in the study or in the library.

But when I had obtained the evidence of the groom, Wills, I perceived that the cry from the lane or from the

park was a signal. I noted that the movements of anyone seated at the study table were visible, in shadow, on

the blind, and that the study occupied the corner of a twostoried wing and, therefore, had a short chimney.

What did the signal mean? That Sir Crichton had leaped up from his chair, and either had received the Zayat

Kiss or had seen the thing which someone on the roof had lowered down the straight chimney. It was the

signal to withdraw that deadly thing. By means of the iron stairway at the rear of MajorGeneral

PlattHouston's, I quite easily, gained access to the roof above Sir Crichton's study and I found this."

Out from his pocket Nayland Smith drew a tangled piece of silk, mixed up with which were a brass ring and a

number of unusually largesized splitshot, nipped on in the manner usual on a fishingline.

"My theory proven," he resumed. "Not anticipating a search on the roof, they had been careless. This was to

weight the line and to prevent the creature clinging to the walls of the chimney. Directly it had dropped in the

grate, however, by means of this ring I assume that the weighted line was withdrawn, and the thing was only

held by one slender thread, which sufficed, though, to draw it back again when it had done its work. lt might

have got tangled, of course, but they reckoned on its making straight up the carved leg of the writingtable

for the prepared envelope. From there to the hand of Sir Crichtonwhich, from having touched the

"My God! How horrible!" I exclaimed, and glanced apprehensively into the dusky shadows of the room.

"It is something that moves rapidly and silently. I will venture no more at present, but I think it works in the

dark. The study was dark, remember, save for the bright patch beneath the readinglamp. I have observed

that the rear of this house is ivycovered right up to and above your bedroom. Let us make ostentatious

preparations to retire, and I think we may rely upon FuManchu's servants to attempt my removal, at any

"You remember the cry in the back lane? It suggested something to me, and I tested my ideasuccessfully.

It was the cry of a dacoit. Oh, dacoity, though quiescent, is by no means extinct. FuManchu has dacoits in

his train, and probably it is one who operates the Zayat Kiss, since it was a dacoit who watched the window

of the study this evening. To such a man an ivycovered wall is a grand staircase."

The horrible events that followed are punctuated, in my mind, by the striking of a distant clock. It is singular

how trivialities thus assert themselves in moments of high tension. I will proceed, then, by these

punctuations, to the coming of the horror that it was written we should encounter.

Having removed all traces of the scent of the orchid from our hands with a solution of ammonia Smith and I

had followed the programme laid down. It was an easy matter to reach the rear of the house, by simply

climbing a fence, and we did not doubt that seeing the light go out in the front, our unseen watcher would

The room was a large one, and we had made up my campbed at one end, stuffing odds and ends under the

clothes to lend the appearance of a sleeper, which device we also had adopted in the case of the larger bed.

The perfumed envelope lay upon a little coffee table in the center of the floor, and Smith, with an electric

pocket lamp, a revolver, and a brassey beside him, sat on cushions in the shadow of the wardrobe. I occupied

No unusual sound, so far, had disturbed the stillness of the night. Save for the muffled throb of the rare

allnight cars passing the front of the house, our vigil had been a silent one. The full moon bad painted about

the floor weird shadows of the clustering ivy, spreading the design gradually from the door, across the room,

past the little table where the envelope lay, and finally to the foot of the bed.

A slight breeze stirred the ivy, and a new shadow added itself to the extreme edge of the moon's design.

Something rose, inch by inch, above the sill of the westerly window. I could see only its shadow, but a sharp,

sibilant breath from Smith told me that he, from his post, could see the cause of the shadow.

Every nerve in my body seemed to be strung tensely. I was icy cold, expectant, and prepared for whatever

Then it suddenly lengthened, and, craning my head to the left, I saw a lithe, blackclad form, surmounted by

One thin, brown hand appeared over the edge of the lowered sash, which it graspedand then another. The

man made absolutely no sound whatever. The second hand disappearedand reappeared. It held a small,

The dacoit swung himself below the window with the agility of an ape, as, with a dull, muffled thud,

A beam of white leaped out across the room and played full upon the coffeetable in the center.

Prepared as I was for something horrible, I know that I paled at sight of the thing that was running round the

It was an insect, full six inches long, and of a vivid, venomous, red color! It had something of the appearance

of a great ant, with its long, quivering antennae and its febrile, horrible vitality; but it was proportionately

longer of body and smaller of head, and had numberless rapidly moving legs. In short, it was a giant

These things I realized in one breathless instant; in the next Smith had dashed the thing's poisonous life out

I leaped to the window and threw it widely open, feeling a silk thread brush my hand as I did so. A black

shape was dropping, with incredible agility from branch to branch of the ivy, and, without once offering a

mark for a revolvershot, it merged into the shadows beneath the trees of the garden. As I turned and

switched on the light Nayland Smith dropped limply into a chair, leaning his head upon his hands. Even that

"Never mind the dacoit, Petrie," he said. "Nemesis will know where to find him. We know now what causes

the mark of the Zayat Kiss. Therefore science is richer for our first brush with the enemy, and the enemy is

poorerunless he has any more unclassified centipedes. I understand now something that has been puzzling

me since I heard of it Sir Crichton's stifled cry. When we remember that he was almost past speech, it is

reasonable to suppose that his cry was not `The red hand!' but `The red ANT! Petrie, to think that I failed, by

"THE body of a lascar, dressed in the manner usual on the P. & O. boats, was recovered from the Thames off

Tilbury by the river police at six A.M. this morning. It is supposed that the man met with an accident in

"For `lascar' read `dacoit,'" he said. "Our visitor, who came by way of the ivy, fortunately for us, failed to

follow his instructions. Also, he lost the centipede and left a clew behind him. Dr. FuManchu does not

It was a sidelight upon the character of the awful being with whom we had to deal. My very soul recoiled

from bare consideration of the fate that would be ours if ever we fell into his hands.

The telephone bell rang. I went out and found that Inspector Weymouth of New Scotland Yard had called us

"Will Mr. Nayland Smith please come to the Wapping River Police Station at once," was the message.

"It is certainly something important," said my friend; "and, if FuManchu is at the bottom of itas we must

A brief survey of the timetables showed us that there were no trains to serve our haste. We accordingly

Smith, throughout the journey, talked entertainingly about his work in Burma. Of intent, I think, he avoided

any reference to the circumstances which first had brought him in contact with the sinister genius of the

Yellow Movement. His talk was rather of the sunshine of the East than of its shadows.

But the drive concludedand all too soon. In a silence which neither of us seemed disposed to break, we

entered the police depot, and followed an officer who received us into the room where Weymouth waited.

"Poor Cadby, the most promising lad at the Yard," he said; and his usually gruff voice had softened strangely.

Smith struck his right fist into the palm of his left hand and swore under his breath, striding up and down the

neat little room. No one spoke for a moment, and in the silence I could hear the whispering of the Thames

outsideof the Thames which had so many strange secrets to tell, and now was burdened with another.

The body lay prone upon the deal tablethis latest of the river's dead dressed in rough sailor garb, and, to

all outward seeming, a seaman of nondescript nationalitysuch as is no stranger in Wapping and Shadwell.

His dark, curly hair clung clammily about the brown forehead; his skin was stained, they told me. He wore a

"It was almost the same with Mason." The river police inspector was speaking. "A week ago, on a

Wednesday, he went off in his own time on some funny business down St. George's wayand Thursday

night the teno'clock boat got the grapnel on him off Hanover Hole. His first two fingers on the right hand

"That lascar, too," he continued, "that you came down to see, sir; you remember his hands?"

I turned to the array of objects lying on the tablethose which had been found in Cadby's clothing. None of

them were noteworthy, except that which had been found thrust into the loose neck of his shirt. This last it

was which had led the police to send for Nayland Smith, for it constituted the first clew which had come to

It was a Chinese pigtail. That alone was sufficiently remarkable; but it was rendered more so by the fact that

"You're sure it wasn't part of a Chinese makeup?" questioned Weymouth, his eye on the strange relic.

Smith snatched the wig from my hands with a certain irritation, and tried to fit it on the dead detective.

"Too small by inches!" he jerked. "And look how it's padded in the crown. This thing was made for a most

"Then, we know that he was on the track of the FuManchu group, that he followed up some clew which led

him to the neighborhood of old Ratcliff Highway, and that he died the same night. You are sure that is where

"Yes," said Weymouth; "He was jealous of giving anything away, poor chap; it meant a big lift for him if he

pulled the case off. But he gave me to understand that he expected to spend last night in that district. He left

"Of course! He was most particular. Cadby was a man with ambitions, sir! You'll want to see his book. Wait

"He almost succeeded where we have failed, Petrie," he said. "There is no doubt in my mind that he was hot

on the track of FuManchu! Poor Mason had probably blundered on the scent, too, and he met with a similar

fate. Without other evidence, the fact that they both died in the same way as the dacoit would be conclusive,

"But he was a very strong swimmer, Doctor," interrupted Inspector Ryman. "Why, he pulled off the

quartermile championship at the Crystal Palace last year! Cadby wasn't a man easy to drown. And as for

"The address is No.Cold Harbor Lane," he reported. "I shall not be able to come along, but you can't miss

it; it's close by the Brixton Police Station. There's no family, fortunately; he was quite alone in the world. His

casebook isn't in the American desk, which you'll find in his sittingroom; it's in the cupboard in the

cornertop shelf. Here are his keys, all intact. I think this is the cupboard key."

Our cab was waiting, and in a few seconds we were speeding along Wapping High Street. We had gone no

more than a few hundred yards, I think, when Smith suddenly slapped his open hand down on his knee.

"That pigtail!" he cried. "I have left it behind! We must have it, Petrie! Stop! Stop!"

"Don't wait for me," he directed hurriedly. "Here, take Weymouth's card. Remember where he said the book

"Can't it!" he snapped. "Do you suppose FuManchu is going to leave evidence like that lying about? It's a

It was a new aspect of the situation and one that afforded no room for comment; and so lost in thought did I

become that the cab was outside the house for which I was bound ere I realized that we had quitted the

purlieus of Wapping. Yet I had had leisure to review the whole troop of events which had crowded my life

since the return of Nayland Smith from Burma. Mentally, I had looked again upon the dead Sir Crichton

Davey, and with Smith had waited in the dark for the dreadful thing that had killed him. Now, with those

remorseless memories jostling in my mind, I was entering the house of FuManchu's last victim, and the

Cadby's old landlady greeted me with a queer mixture of fear and embarrassment in her manner.

"I am Dr. Petrie," I said, "and I regret that I bring bad news respecting Mr. Cadby."

"Oh, sir!" she cried. "Don't tell me that anything has happened to him!" And divining something of the

mission on which I was come, for such sad duty often falls to the lot of the medical man: "Oh, the poor, brave

Indeed, I respected the dead man's memory more than ever from that hour, since the sorrow of the worthy old

"There was a terrible wailing at the back of the house last night, Doctor, and I heard it again tonight, a

At the moment I paid little attention to her words, for such beliefs are common, unfortunately; but when she

was sufficiently composed I went on to explain what I thought necessary. And now the old lady's

"She came and waited for him last night, Doctorfrom ten until halfpast and this morning again. She

"Well, Doctor," she said, wiping her eyes the while, "I DO. And God knows he was a good lad, and I like a

mother to him; but she is not the girl I should have liked a son of mine to take up with."

At any other time, this would have been amusing; now, it might be serious. Mrs. Dolan's account of the

wailing became suddenly significant, for perhaps it meant that one of FuManchu's dacoit followers was

watching the house, to give warning of any stranger's approach! Warning to whom? It was unlikely that I

should forget the dark eyes of another of FuManchu's servants. Was that lure of men even now in the house,

"I should never have allowed her in his rooms" began Mrs. Dolan again. Then there was an interruption.

I leaped out into the hall, and she turned and fled blindly before me back up the stairs! Taking three steps

at a time, I followed her, bounded into the room above almost at her heels, and stood with my back to the

She cowered against the desk by the window, a slim figure in a clinging silk gown, which alone explained

Mrs. Dolan's distrust. The gaslight was turned very low, and her hat shadowed her face, but could not hide its

startling, beauty, could not mar the brilliancy of the skin, nor dim the wonderful eyes of this modern Delilah.

"Oh!" she panted at that, and stood facing me, leaning back with her jewelladen hands clutching the desk

"Give me whatever you have removed from here," I said sternly, "and then prepare to accompany me."

"I have taken nothing," she said. her breast was heaving tumultuously. "Oh, let me go! Please, let me go!"

And impulsively she threw herself forward, pressing clasped hands against my shoulder and looking up into

It is with some shame that I confess how her charm enveloped me like a magic cloud. Unfamiliar with the

complex Oriental temperament, I had laughed at Nayland Smith when he had spoken of this girl's infatuation.

"Love in the East," he had said, "is like the conjurer's mangotree; it is born, grows and flowers at the touch

of a hand." Now, in those pleading eyes I read confirmation of his words. Her clothes or her hair exhaled a

faint perfume. Like all FuManchu's servants, she was perfectly chosen for her peculiar duties. Her beauty

"You have no claim to mercy," I said. "Do not count upon any. What have you taken from here?"

"I will tell you all I canall I dare," she panted eagerly, fearfully. "I should know how to deal with your

friend, but with you I am lost! If you could only understand you would not be so cruel." Her slight accent

added charm to the musical voice. "I am not free, as your English women are. What I do I must do, for it is

the will of my master, and I am only a slave. Ah, you are not a man if you can give me to the police. You

I had feared that plea, for, in her own Oriental fashion, she certainly had tried to save me from a deadly peril

onceat the expense of my friend. But I had feared the plea, for I did not know how to meet it. How could I

give her up, perhaps to stand her trial for murder? And now I fell silent, and she saw why I was silent.

"I may deserve no mercy; I may be even as bad as you think; but what have YOU to do with the police? It is

not your work to hound a woman to death. Could you ever look another woman in the eyesone that you

loved, and know that she trusted youif you had done such a thing? Ah, I have no friend in all the world, or

I should not be here. Do not be my enemy, my judge, and make me worse than I am; be my friend, and save

mefrom HIM." The tremulous lips were close to mine, her breath fanned my cheek. "Have mercy on me."

At that moment I honestly would have given half of my worldly possessions to have been spared the decision

which I knew I must come to. After all, what proof had I that she was a willing accomplice of Dr.

FuManchu? Furthermore, she was an Oriental, and her code must necessarily be different from mine.

Irreconcilable as the thing may be with Western ideas, Nayland Smith had really told me that he believed the

girl to be a slave. Then there remained that other reason why I loathed the idea of becoming her captor. It was

ThusI supposeher seductive beauty argued against my sense of right. The jeweled fingers grasped my

shoulders nervously, and her slim body quivered against mine as she watched me, with all her soul in her

eyes, in an abandonment of pleading despair. Then I remembered the fate of the man in whose room we

"No, no!" she cried wildly, clutching at me. "No, I swear by the holy name I did not! I did not! I watched

him, spied upon himyes! But, listen: it was because he would not be warned that he met his death. I could

not save him! Ah, I am not so bad as that. I will tell you. I have taken his notebook and torn out the last pages

and burnt them. Look! in the grate. The book was too big to steal away. I came twice and could not find it.

Her hands dropped and she took a backward step. A new terror was to be read in her face.

And, with all that I thought her to be, the stern servant of justice that I would have had myself, I felt the hot

"Ah!" Her expression changed. "They can put me on the rack if they choose, but never one word would I

"Hide me from your police, from HIM, from everybody, and I will no longer be his slave."

My heart was beating with painful rapidity. I had not counted on this warring with a woman; moreover, it was

harder than I could have dreamt of. For some time I had been aware that by the charm of her personality and

the art of her pleading she bad brought me down from my judgment seat had made it all but impossible for

me to give her up to justice. Now, I was disarmedbut in a quandary. What should I do? What COULD I

do? I turned away from her and walked to the hearth, in which some paper ash lay and yet emitted a faint

Not more than ten seconds elapsed, I am confident, from the time that I stepped across the room until I

"Ma 'alesh!" came her soft whisper; "but I am afraid to trust youyet. Be comforted, for there is one near

who would have killed you had I wished it. Remember, I will come to you whenever you will take me and

Light footsteps pattered down the stairs. I heard a stifled cry from Mrs. Dolan as the mysterious visitor ran

"ShenYan's is a dopeshop in one of the burrows off the old Ratcliff Highway," said Inspector Weymouth.

"`Singapore Charlie's,' they call it. It's a center for some of the Chinese societies, I believe, but all sorts of

opiumsmokers use it. There have never been any complaints that I know of. I don't understand this."

We stood in his room at New Scotland Yard, bending over a sheet of foolscap upon which were arranged

some burned fragments from poor Cadby's grate, for so hurriedly had the girl done her work that combustion

"What do we make of this?" said Smith. "`. . .Hunchback. . .lascar went up. . .unlike others. . .not return. . .till

ShenYan' (there is no doubt about the name, I think) `turned me out. . . booming sound. . .lascar in. .

.mortuary I could ident. . . not for days, or suspici. . .Tuesday night in a different make . . .snatch. . .pigtail. .

"She evidently burned the tornout pages all together," continued Smith. "They lay flat, and this was in the

middle. I see the band of retributive justice in that, Inspector. Now we have a reference to a hunchback, and

what follows amounts to this: A lascar (amongst several other persons) went up somewhere presumably

upstairsat ShenYan's, and did not come down again. Cadby, who was there disguised, noted a booming

sound. Later, he identified the lascar in some mortuary. We have no means of fixing the date of this visit to

ShenYan's, but I feel inclined to put down the `lascar' as the dacoit who was murdered by FuManchu! It is

sheer supposition, however. But that Cadby meant to pay another visit to the place in a different `makeup' or

disguise, is evident, and that the Tuesday night proposed was last night is a reasonable deduction. The

reference to a pigtail is principally interesting because of what was found on Cadby's body."

"Exactly tentwentythree," he said. "I will trouble you, Inspector, for the freedom of your fancy wardrobe.

"Worse than useless! By your own showing, the place is open to inspection. No; guile against guile! We are

dealing with a Chinaman, with the incarnate essence of Eastern subtlety, with the most stupendous genius

"I don't believe in disguises," said Weymouth, with a certain truculence. "It's mostly played out, that game,

and generally leads to failure. Still, if you're determined, sir, there's an end of it. Foster will make your face

"A sort of Dago seaman, I think; something like poor Cadby. I can rely on my knowledge of the brutes, if I

"Petrie," he replied, "it is MY business, unfortunately, but it is no sort of hobby."

Smith grasped my hand, and met my rather frigid stare with a look of real concern on his gaunt, bronzed face.

"My dear old chap," he answered, "that was really unkind. You know that I meant something totally

"It's all right, Smith;" I said, immediately ashamed of my choler, and wrung his hand heartily. "I can pretend

As a result of this little passage of words, some twenty minutes later two dangerouslooking seafaring

ruffians entered a waiting cab, accompanied by Inspector Weymouth, and were driven off into the wilderness

of London's night. In this theatrical business there was, to my mind, something ridiculousalmost

childish and I could have laughed heartily had it not been that grim tragedy lurked so near to farce.

The mere recollection that somewhere at our journey's end FuManchu awaited us was sufficient to sober my

reflectionsFuManchu, who, with all the powers represented by Nayland Smith pitted against him,

pursued his dark schemes triumphantly, and lurked in hiding within this very area which was so sedulously

patrolledFuManchu, whom I had never seen, but whose name stood for horrors indefinable! Perhaps I

I ceased to pursue a train of thought which promised to lead to morbid depths, and directed my attention to

"We will drop down from Wapping and reconnoiter, as you say the place is close to the riverside. Then you

can put us ashore somewhere below. Ryman can keep the launch close to the back of the premises, and your

"Yes," assented Weymouth; "I've arranged for that. If you are suspected, you shall give the alarm?"

"I don't know," said Smith thoughtfully. "Even in that event I might wait awhile."

"Don't wait too long," advised the Inspector. "We shouldn't be much wiser if your next appearance was on the

end of a grapnel, somewhere down Greenwich Reach, with half your fingers missing."

The cab pulled up outside the river police depot, and Smith and I entered without delay, four shabbylooking

fellows who had been seated in the office springing up to salute the Inspector, who followed us in.

"Guthrie and Lisle," he said briskly, "get along and find a dark corner which commands the door of

Singapore Charlie's off the old Highway. You look the dirtiest of the troupe, Guthrie; you might drop asleep

on the pavement, and Lisle can argue with you about getting home. Don't move till you hear the whistle

inside or have my orders, and note everybody that goes in and comes out. You other two belong to this

"Well, you're on special duty tonight. You've been prompt, but don't stick your chests out so much. Do you

"There's an empty shop nearly opposite, sir," replied one of them. "I know a broken window at the back

where we could climb in. Then we could get through to the front and watch from there."

"Good!" cried the Inspector. "See you are not spotted, though; and if you hear the whistle, don't mind doing a

bit of damage, but be inside ShenYan's like lightning. Otherwise, wait for orders."

"Right," replied Smith thoughtfully. "I am half afraid, though, that the recent alarms may have scared our

quarryyour man, Mason, and then Cadby. Against which we have that, so far as he is likely to know, there

has been no clew pointing to this opium den. Remember, he thinks Cadby's notes are destroyed."

"The whole business is an utter mystery to me," confessed Ryman. "I'm told that there's some dangerous

Chinese devil hiding somewhere in London, and that you expect to find him at ShenYan's. Supposing he

"I don't," said Smith; "but it is the first clew we have had pointing to one of his haunts, and time means

"I have only the vaguest idea, Inspector; but he is no ordinary criminal. He is the greatest genius which the

powers of evil have put on earth for centuries. He has the backing of a political group whose wealth is

enormous, and his mission in Europe is to PAVE THE WAY! Do you follow me? He is the advanceagent of

a movement so epochmaking that not one Britisher, and not one American, in fifty thousand has ever

Ryman stared, but made no reply, and we went out, passing down to the breakwater and boarding the waiting

launch. With her crew of three, the party numbered seven that swung out into the Pool, and, clearing the pier,

The night had been clear enough hitherto, but now came scudding rainbanks to curtain the crescent moon,

and anon to unveil her again and show the muddy swirls about us. The view was not extensive from the

launch. Sometimes a deepening of the near shadows would tell of a moored barge, or lights high above our

heads mark the deck of a large vessel. In the floods of moonlight gaunt shapes towered above; in the ensuing

darkness only the oily glitter of the tide occupied the foreground of the nightpiece.

The Surrey shore was a broken wall of blackness, patched with lights about which moved hazy suggestions of

human activity. The bank we were following offered a prospect even more gloomy a dense, dark mass,

amid which, sometimes, mysterious halftones told of a dock gate, or sudden high lights leapt flaring to the

Then, out of the mystery ahead, a green light grew and crept down upon us. A giant shape loomed up, and

frowned crushingly upon the little craft. A blaze of light, the jangle of a bell, and it was past. We were

dancing in the wash of one of the Scotch steamers, and the murk had fallen again.

Discords of remote activity rose above the more intimate throbbing of our screw, and we seemed a pigmy

company floating past the workshops of Brobdingnagian toilers. The chill of the near water communicated

itself to me, and I felt the protection of my shabby garments inadequate against it.

Far over on the Surrey shore a blue lightvaporous, mysterious flicked translucent tongues against the

night's curtain. It was a weird, elusive flame, leaping, wavering, magically changing from blue to a yellowed

"Only a gasworks," came Smith's voice, and I knew that he, too, had been watching those elfin fires. "But it

The simile was apt, but gruesome. I thought of Dr. FuManchu and the severed fingers, and could not repress

"On your left, past the wooden pier! Not where the lamp is beyond that; next to the dark, square

"Drop us somewhere handy, then," replied Smith, "and lie close in, with your ears wide open. We may have

From the tone of his voice I knew that the night mystery of the Thames had claimed at least one other victim.

A SEEMINGLY drunken voice was droning from a neighboring alleyway as Smith lurched in hulking

fashion to the door of a little shop above which, crudely painted, were the words:

I shuffled along behind him, and had time to note the box of studs, German shaving tackle and rolls of twist

which lay untidily in the window ere Smith kicked the door open, clattered down three wooden steps, and

We stood in a bare and very dirty room, which could only claim kinship with a civilized shavingsaloon by

virtue of the grimy towel thrown across the back of the solitary chair. A Yiddish theatrical bill of some kind,

illustrated, adorned one of the walls, and another bill, in what may have been Chinese, completed the

decorations. From behind a curtain heavily brocaded with filth a little Chinaman appeared, dressed in a loose

smock, black trousers and thicksoled slippers, and, advancing, shook his head vigorously.

"No shaveeno shavee," he chattered, simian fashion, squinting from one to the other of us with his

"Don't you come none of it wi' me!" roared Smith, in a voice of amazing gruffness, and shook an artificially

dirtied fist under the Chinaman's nose. "Get inside and gimme an' my mate a couple o' pipes. Smokee pipe,

My friend bent forward and glared into the other's eyes with a vindictiveness that amazed me, unfamiliar as I

"Kop 'old o' that," he said, and thrust a coin into the Chinaman's yellow paw. "Keep me waitin' an' I'll pull the

He dived behind the dirty curtain, Smith and I following, and ran up a dark stair. The next moment I found

myself in an atmosphere which was literally poisonous. It was all but unbreathable, being loaded with opium

fumes. Never before had I experienced anything like it. Every breath was an effort. A tin oillamp on a box

in the middle of the floor dimly illuminated the horrible place, about the walls of which ten or twelve bunks

were ranged and all of them occupied. Most of the occupants were lying motionless, but one or two were

squatting in their bunks noisily sucking at the little metal pipes. These had not yet attained to the

"No loomsamee tella you," said ShenYan, complacently testing Smith's shilling with his yellow, decayed

Smith walked to a corner and dropped crosslegged, on the floor, pulling me down with him.

"Two pipe quick," he said. "Plenty room. Two piecee pipe or plenty heap trouble."

Yan performed a curious little shrug, rather of the back than of the shoulders, and shuffled to the box which

bore the smoky lamp. Holding a needle in the flame, he dipped it, when redhot, into an old cocoa tin, and

withdrew it with a bead of opium adhering to the end. Slowly roasting this over the lamp, he dropped it into

the bowl of the metal pipe which he held ready, where it burned with a spirituous blue flame.

"Pass it over," said Smith huskily, and rose on his knees with the assumed eagerness of a slave to the drug.

Yan handed him the pipe, which he promptly put to his lips, and prepared another for me.

It was with a sense of nausea greater even than that occasioned by the disgusting atmosphere of the den that I

took the pipe and pretended to smoke. Taking my cue from my friend, I allowed my head gradually to sink

lower and lower, until, within a few minutes, I sprawled sideways on the floor, Smith lying close beside me.

Yan had noiselessly withdrawn, and I experienced a curious sense of isolation from my fellowsfrom the

whole of the Western world. My throat was parched with the fumes, my head ached. The vicious atmosphere

Somewhere East of Suez, where the best is like the worst, And there ain't no Ten Commandments and a man

"We have carried it through successfully so far," he said. "I don't know if you have observed it, but there is a

stair just behind you, half concealed by a ragged curtain. We are near that, and well in the dark. I have seen

nothing suspicious so faror nothing much. But if there was anything going forward it would no doubt be

He pressed my arm to emphasize the warning. Through my halfclosed eyes I perceived a shadowy form

near the curtain to which he had referred. I lay like a log, but my muscles were tensed nervously.

The shadow materialized as the figure moved forward into the room with a curiously lithe movement.

The smoky lamp in the middle of the place afforded scant illumination, serving only to indicate sprawling

shapes here an extended hand, brown or yellow, there a sketchy, corpselike face; whilst from all about

rose obscene sighings and murmurings in faraway voicesan uncanny, animal chorus. It was like a

glimpse of the Inferno seen by some Chinese Dante. But so close to us stood the newcomer that I was able to

make out a ghastly parchment face, with small, oblique eyes, and a misshapen head crowned with a coiled

pigtail, surmounting a slight, hunched body. There was something unnatural, inhuman, about that masklike

face, and something repulsive in the bent shape and the long, yellow hands clasped one upon the other.

FuManchu, from Smith's account, in no way resembled this crouching apparition with the death'shead

countenance and lithe movements; but an instinct of some kind told me that we were on the right scent that

this was one of the doctor's servants. How I came to that conclusion, I cannot explain; but with no doubt in

my mind that this was a member of the formidable murder group, I saw the yellow man creep nearer, nearer,

Of another circumstance I became aware, and a disquieting circumstance. There were fewer murmurings and

sighings from the surrounding bunks. The presence of the crouching figure had created a sudden

semisilence in the den, which could only mean that some of the supposed opiumsmokers had merely

Nayland Smith lay like a dead man, and trusting to the darkness, I, too, lay prone and still, but watched the

evil face bending lower and lower, until it came within a few inches of my own. I completely closed my eyes.

Delicate fingers touched my right eyelid. Divining what was coming, I rolled my eyes up, as the lid was

I had saved the situation! And noting anew the hush about me a hush in which I fancied many pairs of ears

listenedI was glad. For just a moment I realized fully how, with the place watched back and front, we yet

were cut off, were in the hands of Far Easterns, to some extent in the power of members of that most

"Good," whispered Smith at my side. "I don't think I could have done it. He took me on trust after that. My

God! what an awful face. Petrie, it's the hunchback of Cadby's notes. Ah, I thought so. Do you see that?"

I turned my eyes round as far as was possible. A man had scrambled down from one of the bunks and was

They passed around us quietly, the little yellow man leading, with his curious, lithe gait, and the other, an

impassive Chinaman, following. The curtain was raised, and I heard footsteps receding on the stairs.

An intense excitement was clearly upon him, and he communicated it to me. Who was the occupant of the

Footsteps on the stair, and the Chinaman reappeared, recrossed the floor, and went out. The little, bent man

went over to another bunk, this time leading up the stair one who looked like a lascar.

"Did you see his right hand?" whispered Smith. "A dacoit! They come here to report and to take orders.

"Wait. Then we must try to rush the stairs. It would be futile to bring in the police first. He is sure to have

some other exit. I will give the word while the little yellow devil is down here. You are nearer and will have

Our whispered colloquy was interrupted by the return of the dacoit, who recrossed the room as the Chinaman

had done, and immediately took his departure. A third man, whom Smith identified as a Malay, ascended the

mysterious stairs, descended, and went out; and a fourth, whose nationality it was impossible to determine,

followed. Then, as the softly moving usher crossed to a bunk on the right of the outer door

"Up you go, Petrie," cried Smith, for further delay was dangerous and further dissimulation useless.

I leaped to my feet. Snatching my revolver from the pocket of the rough jacket I wore, I bounded to the stair

and went blundering up in complete darkness. A chorus of brutish cries clamored from behind, with a

muffled scream rising above them all. But Nayland Smith was close behind as I raced along a covered

gangway, in a purer air, and at my heels when I crashed open a door at the end and almost fell into the room

What I saw were merely a dirty table, with some odds and ends upon it of which I was too excited to take

note, an oillamp swung by a brass chain above, and a man sitting behind the table. But from the moment

that my gaze rested upon the one who sat there, I think if the place had been an Aladdin's palace I should

He wore a plain yellow robe, of a hue almost identical with that of his smooth, hairless countenance. His

hands were large, long and bony, and he held them knuckles upward, and rested his pointed chin upon their

Of his face, as it looked out at me over the dirty table, I despair of writing convincingly. It was that of an

archangel of evil, and it was wholly dominated by the most uncanny eyes that ever reflected a human soul,

for they were narrow and long, very slightly oblique, and of a brilliant green. But their unique horror lay in a

certain filminess (it made me think of the membrana nictitans in a bird) which, obscuring them as I threw

wide the door, seemed to lift as I actually passed the threshold, revealing the eyes in all their brilliant

I know that I stopped dead, one foot within the room, for the malignant force of the man was something

surpassing my experience. He was surprised by this sudden intrusionyes, but no trace of fear showed upon

that wonderful face, only a sort of pitying contempt. And, as I paused, he rose slowly to his feet, never

"IT'S FUMANCHU!" cried Smith over my shoulder, in a voice that was almost a scream. "IT'S

Dr. FuManchu reached down beside the table, and the floor slipped from under me.

One last glimpse I had of the fixed green eyes, and with a scream I was unable to repress I dropped, dropped,

Vaguely I had seen a spurt of flame, had heard another cry following my own, a booming sound (the trap),

the flat note of a police whistle. But when I rose to the surface impenetrable darkness enveloped me; I was

spitting filthy, oily liquid from my mouth, and fighting down the black terror that had me by the

throatterror of the darkness about me, of the unknown depths beneath me, of the pit into which I was cast

My voice seemed to beat back upon me, yet I was about to cry out again, when, mustering all my presence of

mind and all my failing courage, I recognized that I had better employment of my energies, and began to

swim straight ahead, desperately determined to face all the horrors of this place to die hard if die I must.

A drop of liquid fire fell through the darkness and hissed into the water beside me!

I touched a rotting wooden post and slimy timbers. I had reached one bound of my watery prison. More fire

Keeping myself afloat with increasing difficulty in my heavy garments, I threw my head back and raised my

No more drops fell, and no more drops would fall; but it was merely a question of time for the floor to

It was drops of burning oil from the lamp, finding passage through the cracks in the crazy flooring, which had

My saturated garments were dragging me down, and now I could hear the flames hungrily eating into the

ancient rottenness overhead. Shortly that cauldron would be loosed upon my head. The glow of the flames

grew brighter. . .and showed me the halfrotten piles upholding the building, showed me the tidal mark upon

By some subterranean duct the foul place was fed from the Thames. By that duct, with the outgoing tide, my

Rusty iron rungs were affixed to one of the walls communicating with a trap but the bottom three were

Brighter and brighter grew the awesome light the light of what should be my funeral pyrereddening the

oily water and adding a new dread to the whispering, clammy horror of the pit. But something it showed me. .

.a projecting beam a few feet above the water. . .and directly below the iron ladder!

A desire for laughter claimed me with sudden, all but irresistible force. I knew what it portended and fought it

My garments weighed upon me like a suit of mail; with my chest aching dully, my veins throbbing to

bursting, I forced tired muscles to work, and, every stroke an agony, approached the beam. Nearer I swam. .

.nearer. Its shadow fell black upon the water, which now had all the seeming of a pool of blood. Confused

soundsa remote uproarcame to my ears. I was nearly spent. . .I was in the shadow of the beam! If I

"Petrie! Petrie!" (That voice must be Smith's!) "Don't touch the beam! For God's sake DON'T TOUCH THE

I managed to turn, to raise my throbbing head; and I saw the strangest sight which that night yet had offered.

Nayland Smith stood upon the lowest iron rung. . .supported by the hideous, crookbacked Chinaman, who

It was as Smith hissed the words despairingly that I looked up and saw the Chinaman snatch at his coiled

pigtail and pull it off! With it came the wig to which it was attached; and the ghastly yellow mask, deprived

of its fastenings, fell from position! "Here! Here! Be quick! Oh! be quick! You can lower this to him! Be

A cloud of hair came falling about the slim shoulders as the speaker bent to pass this strange lifeline to Smith;

and I think it was my wonder at knowing her for the girl whom that day I had surprised in Cadby's rooms

For I not only kept afloat, but kept my gaze upturned to that beautiful, flushed face, and my eyes fixed upon

Smith, by some contortion, got the false queue into my grasp, and I, with the strength of desperation, by that

means seized hold upon the lowest rung. With my friend's arm round me I realized that exhaustion was even

nearer than I had supposed. My last distinct memory is of the bursting of the floor above and the big burning

joist hissing into the pool beneath us. Its fiery passage, striated with light, disclosed two sword blades,

How Smith got me through the trap I do not knownor how we made our way through the smoke and

flames of the narrow passage it opened upon. My next recollection is of sitting up, with my friend's arm

A bright glare dazzled my eyes. A crowd surged about us, and a clangor and shouting drew momentarily

"It's the engines coming," explained Smith, seeing my bewilderment. "ShenYan's is in flames. It was your

"No," he said tensely. "Not until I see him lying dead before me shall I believe it."

"She's given us the slip, Doctor," said Inspector Weymouth, as a fireengine came swinging round the corner

of the narrow lane. "So has Mr. Singapore Charlieand, I'm afraid, somebody else. We've got six or eight

allsorts, some awake and some asleep, but I suppose we shall have to let 'em go again. Mr. Smith tells me

that the girl was disguised as a Chinaman. I expect that's why she managed to slip away."

I recalled how I had been dragged from the pit by the false queue, how the strange discovery which had

brought death to poor Cadby had brought life to me, and I seemed to remember, too, that Smith had dropped

it as he threw his arm about me on the ladder. Her mask the girl might have retained, but her wig, I felt

It was later that night, when the brigade still were playing, upon the blackened shell of what had been

ShenYan's opiumshop, and Smith and I were speeding away in a cab from the scene of God knows how

I thrust my hands deep into the pockets of the big peajacket lent to me by Inspector Ryman, leaning back in

"We shall never really excel at this business," continued Nayland Smith. "We are far too sentimental. I knew

what it meant to us, Petrie, what it meant to the world, but I hadn't the heart. I owed her your life I had to

NIGHT fell on Redmoat. I glanced from the window at the nocturne in silver and green which lay beneath

me. To the west of the shrubbery, with its broken canopy of elms and beyond the copper beech which marked

the center of its mazes, a gap offered a glimpse of the Waverney where it swept into a broad. Faint birdcalls

floated over the water. These, with the whisper of leaves, alone claimed the ear.

Ideal rural peace, and the music of an English summer evening; but to my eyes, every shadow holding

fantastic terrors; to my ears, every sound a signal of dread. For the deathful hand of FuManchu was

stretched over Redmoat, at any hour to loose strange, Oriental horrors upon its inmates.

"Well," said Nayland Smith, joining me at the window, "we had dared to hope him dead, but we know now

The Rev. J. D. Eltham coughed nervously, and I turned, leaning my elbow upon the table, and studied the

"Mr. Eltham," he replied, "you see in me a man groping in the dark. I am today no nearer to the conclusion

of my mission than upon the day when I left Mandalay. You offer me a clew; I am here. Your affair, I

believe, stands thus: A series of attempted burglaries, or something of the kind, has alarmed your household.

Yesterday, returning from London with your daughter, you were both drugged in some way and, occupying a

compartment to yourselves, you both slept. Your daughter awoke, and saw someone else in the carriage a

"Yes; I was, of course, unable to enter into particulars over the telephone. The man was standing by one of

the windows. Directly he observed that my daughter was awake, he stepped towards her."

"She did not noticeor did not mention having noticed. In fact, as was natural, she was so frightened that

she recalls nothing more, beyond the fact that she strove to arouse me, without succeeding, felt hands grasp

"Upon reaching Great Yarmouth you immediately called up Scotland Yard? You acted very wisely, sir. How

"It is perhaps not strange that you should be aware of my residence in China, Mr. Smith," he said; "but my

not having mentioned it may seem so. The fact is"his sensitive face flushed in palpable embarrassment

"I left China under what I may term an episcopal cloud. I have lived in retirement ever since. UnwittinglyI

solemnly declare to you, Mr. Smith, unwittinglyI stirred up certain deepseated prejudices in my

endeavors to do my dutymy duty. I think you asked me how long I was in China? I was there from 1896

"I recall the circumstances, Mr. Eltham," said Smith, with an odd note in his voice. "I have been endeavoring

to think where I had come across the name, and a moment ago I remembered. I am happy to have met you,

The clergyman blushed again like a girl, and slightly inclined his head, with its scanty fair hair.

"Has Redmoat, as its name implies, a moat round it? I was unable to see in the dusk." "It remains.

Redmoata corruption of Round Moat was formerly a priory, disestablished by the eighth Henry in

1536." His pedantic manner was quaint at times. "But the moat is no longer flooded. In fact, we grow

cabbages in part of it. If you refer to the strategic strength of the place"he smiled, but his manner was

embarrassed again"it is considerable. I have barbed wire fencing, andother arrangements. You see, it is

a lonely spot," he added apologetically. "And now, if you will excuse me, we will resume these gruesome

"You are wondering what caused the `episcopal cloud?'" he suggested. "Well, the deepseated prejudices

"Good heavens, Smith!" I said; for I could not reconcile the diffident personality of the clergyman with the

"He evidently should be on our danger list," my friend continued quickly; "but he has so completely effaced

himself of recent years that I think it probable that someone else has only just recalled his existence to mind.

The Rev. J. D. Eltham, my dear Petrie, though he may be a poor hand at saving souls, at any rate, has saved a

"Is `Parson Dan'!" rapped Smith, "the `Fighting Missionary,' the man who with a garrison of a dozen cripples

and a German doctor held the hospital at NanYang against two hundred Boxers. That's who the Rev. J. D.

Eltham is! But what is he up to, now, I have yet to find out. He is keeping something back something

During dinner the matters responsible for our presence there did not hold priority in the conversation. In fact,

Greba Eltham, the clergyman's daughter, was a charming young hostess, and she, with Vernon Denby, Mr.

Eltham's nephew, completed the party. No doubt the girl's presence, in part, at any rate, led us to refrain from

These little pools of calm dotted along the torrential course of the circumstances which were bearing my

friend and I onward to unknown issues form pleasant, sunny spots in my dark recollections.

So I shall always remember, with pleasure, that dinnerparty at Redmoat, in the oldworld diningroom; it

was so very peaceful, so almost grotesquely calm. For I, within my very bones, felt it to be the calm before

the storm. When, later, we men passed to the library, we seemed to leave that atmosphere behind us.

"Redmoat," said the Rev. J. D. Eltham, "has latterly become the theater of strange doings."

He stood on the hearthrug. A shaded lamp upon the big table and candles in ancient sconces upon the

mantelpiece afforded dim illumination. Mr. Eltham's nephew, Vernon Denby, lolled smoking on the

windowseat, and I sat near to him. Nayland Smith paced restlessly up and down the room.

"Some mouths ago, almost a year," continued the clergyman, "a burglarious attempt was made upon the

house. There was an arrest, and the man confessed that he had been tempted by my collection." He waved his

"It was shortly afterwards that I allowed my hobby for playing at forts to run away with me." He smiled an

apology. "I virtually fortified Redmoatagainst trespassers of any kind, I mean. You have seen that the

house stands upon a kind of large mound. This is artificial, being the buried ruins of a Roman outwork; a

portion of the ancient castrum." Again he waved indicatively, this time toward the window.

"When it was a priory it was completely isolated and defended by its environing moat. Today it is completely

surrounded by barbedwire fencing. Below this fence, on the east, is a narrow stream, a tributary of the

Waverney; on the north and west, the high road, but nearly twenty feet below, the banks being perpendicular.

On the south is the remaining part of the moatnow my kitchen garden; but from there up to the level of the

house is nearly twenty feet again, and the barbed wire must also be counted with.

"The entrance, as you know, is by the way of a kind of cutting. There is a gate at the foot of the steps (they

are some of the original steps of the priory, Dr. Petrie), and another gate at the head."

"My secret defenses remain to be mentioned," he resumed; and, opening a cupboard, he pointed to a row of

batteries, with a number of electric bells upon the wall behind. "The more vulnerable spots are connected at

night with these bells," he said triumphantly. "Any attempt to scale the barbed wire or to force either gate

would set two or more of these ringing. A stray cow raised one false alarm," he added, "and a careless rook

He was so boyishso nervously brisk and acutely sensitive that it was difficult to see in him the hero of

the NanYang hospital. I could only suppose that he had treated the Boxers' raid in the same spirit wherein he

met wouldbe trespassers within the precincts of Redmoat. It had been an escapade, of which he was

afterwards ashamed, as, faintly, he was ashamed of his "fortifications." "But," rapped Smith, "it was not the

"I am aware," he said, "that having invoked official aid, I must be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Smith. It was

the burglar who was responsible for my continuing the wire fence all round the grounds, but the electrical

contrivance followed, later, as a result of several disturbed nights. My servants grew uneasy about someone

who came, they said, after dusk. No one could describe this nocturnal visitor, but certainly we found traces. I

"ThenI received what I may term a warning. My position is a peculiar one a peculiar one. My daughter,

too, saw this prowling, person, over by the Roman castrum, and described him as a yellow man. It was the

incident in the train following closely upon this other, which led me to speak to the police, little as I desired

Nayland Smith walked to a window, and looked out across the sloping lawn to where the shadows of the

"Your defenses are not impregnable, after all, then?" he jerked. "On our way up this evening Mr. Denby was

"I had been in London for a few days, and during my absence Vernon came down, bringing the dog with him.

On the night of his arrival it ran, barking, into the shrubbery yonder, and did not come out. He went to look

for it with a lantern, and found it lying among the bushes, quite dead. The poor creature had been dreadfully

"The gates were locked," Denby interrupted, "and no one could have got out of the grounds without a ladder

and someone to assist him. But there was so sign of a living thing about. Edwards and I searched every

"It is my mastiff," explained the clergyman, "and he is confined in the yard. He is never allowed on this side

"I am sorry to have to press you, Mr. Eltham," he said, "but what was the nature of the warning to which you

"I have been so unfortunate," he said at last, "in my previous efforts, that I feel assured of your hostile

criticism when I tell you that I am contemplating an immediate return to HoNan!"

"Then you are going back to NanYang?" he cried. "Now I understand! Why have you not told me before?

That is the key for which I have vainly been seeking. Your troubles date from the time of your decision to

"YenSunYat! My good sir! He warned you to abandon your visit? And you reject his advice? Listen to

me." Smith was intensely excited now, his eyes bright, his lean figure curiously strung up, alert. "The

"No, sir. China today is not the China of '98. It is a huge secret machine, and HoNan one of its most

important wheels! But if, as I understand, this official is a friend of yours, believe me, he has saved your life!

You would be a dead man now if it were not for your friend in China! My dear sir, you must accept his

Then, for the first time since I had made his acquaintance, "Parson Dan" showed through the surface of the

"No, sir!" replied the clergymanand the change in his voice was startling. "I am called to NanYang. Only

The admixture of deep spiritual reverence with intense truculence in his voice was dissimilar from anything I

"Then only One can protect you," cried Smith, "for, by Heaven, no MAN will be able to do so! Your

presence in HoNan can do no possible good at present. It must do harm. Your experience in 1900 should be

"The class of missionary work which you favor, sir, is injurious to international peace. At the present

moment, HoNan is a barrel of gunpowder; you would be the lighted match. I do not willingly stand between

any man and what he chooses to consider his duty, but I insist that you abandon your visit to the interior of

Denby fidgeted uneasily. The tone of the conversation was growing harsh and the atmosphere of the library

"This is what I had feared and expected," said the clergyman. "This was my reason for not seeking official

"The phantom Yellow Peril," said Nayland Smith, "today materializes under the very eyes of the Western

"You scoff, sir, and so do others. We take the proffered right hand of friendship nor inquire if the hidden left

holds a knife! The peace of the world is at stake, Mr. Eltham. Unknowingly, you tamper with tremendous

"You are painfully frank, Mr. Smith," he said; "but I like you for it. I will reconsider my position and talk this

Thus, then, the storm blew over. Yet I had never experienced such an overwhelming sense of imminent

peril of a sinister presenceas oppressed me at that moment. The very atmosphere of Redmoat was

impregnated with Eastern devilry; it loaded the air like some evil perfume. And then, through the silence, cut

IN what order we dashed down to the drawingroom I cannot recall. But none was before me when I leaped

These were closed and bolted, and she lay with hands outstretched in the alcove which they formed. I bent

Her father, pale and wideeyed, hovered about me, muttering incoherently; but I managed to reassure him;

and his gratitude when, I having administered a simple restorative, the girl sighed shudderingly and opened

I would permit no questioning at that time, and on her father's arm she retired to her own rooms.

It was some fifteen minutes later that her message was brought to me. I followed the maid to a quaint little

octagonal apartment, and Greba Eltham stood before me, the candlelight caressing the soft curves of her face

"I am almost afraid to tell father," she began rapidly. "He will think me imaginative, but you have been so

kind. It was two green eyes! Oh! Dr. Petrie, they looked up at me from the steps leading to the lawn. And

"The eyes were too large, Dr. Petrie. There was something dreadful, most dreadful, in their appearance. I feel

foolish and silly for having fainted, twice in two days! But the suspense is telling upon me, I suppose. Father

thinks"she was becoming charmingly confidential, as a woman often will with a tactful physician"that

shut up here we are safe fromwhatever threatens us." I noted, with concern, a repetition of the nervous

"Oh! I don't quite know what I do mean, Dr. Petrie. What does it ALL mean? Vernon has been explaining to

me that some awful Chinaman is seeking the life of Mr. Nayland Smith. But if the same man wants to kill my

"Of course, I must do so. Butthe man in the train. He could have killed us both quite easily! Andlast

"I could not sleep, and I heard something moving. My room is the next one. I knocked on the wall and woke

father. There was nothing; so I said it was the howling of the dog that had frightened me."

"You must think me hysterical and silly, but whilst father and I have been away from Redmoat perhaps the

usual precautions have been neglected. Is there any creature, any large creature, which could climb up the

For a moment I offered no reply, studying the girl's pretty face, her eager, bluegray eyes widely opened and

fixed upon mine. She was not of the neurotic type, with her clear complexion and sunkissed neck; her arms,

healthily toned by exposure to the country airs, were rounded and firm, and she had the agile shape of a

young Diana with none of the anaemic languor which breeds morbid dreams. She was frightened; yes, who

would not have been? But the mere idea of this thing which she believed to be in Redmoat, without the

"As father awoke and called out to know why I knocked, I glanced from my window. The moonlight threw

half the lawn into shadow, and just disappearing in this shadow was something something of a brown

"It moved so quickly I could form no idea of its shape; but I saw quite six feet of it flash across the grass!"

She met my eyes expectantly. Her confidence in my powers of understanding and sympathy was gratifying,

"Have you any idea," I said, "how it came about that you awoke in the train yesterday whilst your father did

"We had coffee at a refreshmentroom; it must have been drugged in some way. I scarcely tasted mine, the

flavor was so awful; but father is an old traveler and drank the whole of his cupful!"

"Dr. Petrie," said the girl quickly, "what do you think they want to do to him?"

"Will you think over what I have told you? For I do assure you there is something here in

Redmoatsomething that comes and goes in spite of father's `fortifications'? Caesar knows there is. Listen

As we passed downstairs the howling of the mastiff sounded eerily through the house, as did the clankclank

I sat in Smith's room that night for some time, he pacing the floor smoking and talking.

"Eltham has influential Chinese friends," he said; "but they dare not have him in NanYang at present. He

"His precautions here have baffled the enemy, I think. The attempt in the train points to an anxiety to waste

no opportunity. But whilst Eltham was absent (he was getting his outfit in London, by the way) they have

been fixing some second string to their fiddle here. In case no opportunity offered before he returned, they

"It's impossible, Petrie. You are thinking of secret passages, and so forth. There are none. Eltham has

measured up every foot of the place. There isn't a rathole left unaccounted for; and as for a tunnel under the

moat, the house stands on a solid mass of Roman masonry, a former camp of Hadrian's time. I have seen a

very old plan of the Round Moat Priory as it was called. There is no entrance and no exit save by the steps.

"We are always in the thick of it," replied Smith. "Our danger is no greater in Norfolk than in London. But

what do they want to do? That man in the train with the case of instrumentsWHAT instruments? Then the

apparition of the green eyes tonight. Can they have been the eyes of FuManchu? Is some peculiarly unique

"Quite so. He probably has instructions to be merciful. But God help the victim of Chinese mercy!"

I went to my own room then. But I did not even undress, refilling my pipe and seating myself at the open

window. Having looked upon the awful Chinese doctor, the memory of his face, with its filmed green eyes,

could never leave me. The idea that he might be near at that moment was a poor narcotic.

When all else in Redmoat was still the dog's mournful note yet rose on the night with something menacing in

it. I sat looking out across the sloping turf to where the shrubbery showed as a black island in a green sea.

The moon swam in a cloudless sky, and the air was warm and fragrant with country scents.

It was in the shrubbery that Denby's collie had met his mysterious death that the thing seen by Miss

As the stopping of a clock will sometimes awaken a sleeper, the abrupt cessation of that distant howling, to

which I had grown accustomed, now recalled me from a world of gloomy imaginings.

As I replaced it the dog suddenly burst out afresh, but now in a tone of sheer anger. He was alternately

howling and snarling in a way that sounded new to me. The crashes, as he leapt to the end of his chain, shook

the building in which he was confined. It was as I stood up to lean from the window and commanded a view

With a hoarse bay he took that decisive leap, and I heard his heavy body fall against the wooden wall. There

followed a strange, guttural cry. . .and the growling of the dog died away at the rear of the house. He was out!

But that guttural note had not come from the throat of a dog. Of what was he in pursuit?

At which point his mysterious quarry entered the shrubbery I do not know. I only know that I saw absolutely

nothing, until Caesar's lithe shape was streaked across the lawn, and the great creature went crashing into the

Then a faint sound above and to my right told me that I was not the only spectator of the scene. I leaned

"Oh, Dr. Petrie!" she said. "I am so glad you are awake. Can we do nothing to help? Caesar will be killed."

For a strange figure went racing across the grass. It was that of a man in a blue dressinggown, who held a

lantern high before him, and a revolver in his right hand. Coincident with my recognition of Mr. Eltham he

I ran out into the passage and downstairs. The front door was open. A terrible conflict waged in the

shrubbery, between the mastiff and something else. Passing round to the lawn, I met Smith fully dressed. He

"The man is mad!" he snapped. "Heaven knows what lurks there! He should not have gone alone!"

Together we ran towards the dancing light of Eltham's lantern. The sounds of conflict ceased suddenly.

Stumbling over stumps and lashed by lowsweeping branches, we struggled forward to where the clergyman

knelt amongst the bushes. He glanced up with tears in his eyes, as was revealed by the dim light.

It was pitiable to think that the fearless brute should have met his death in such a fashion, and when I bent

So we three hurried from that haunted place, dragging the dog with us. We were not molested. No sound

By the lawn edge we came upon Denby, half dressed; and almost immediately Edwards the gardener also

appeared. The white faces of the house servants showed at one window, and Miss Eltham called to me from

We carried the dog round to the yard, and I examined his head. It had been struck by some heavy blunt

"Will you attend to him, Doctor?" asked Eltham. "We must see that the villain does not escape."

His face was grim and set. This was a different man from the diffident clergyman we knew: this was "Parson

I accepted the care of the canine patient, and Eltham with the others went off for more lights to search the

shrubbery. As I was washing a bad wound between the mastiff's ears, Miss Eltham joined me. It was the

sound of her voice, I think, rather than my more scientific ministration, which recalled Caesar to life. For, as

she entered, his tail wagged feebly, and a moment later he struggled to his feet one of which was injured.

Having provided for his immediate needs, I left him in charge of his young mistress and joined the search

"There is absolutely nothing there, and no one can possibly have left the grounds," said Eltham amazedly.

We stood on the lawn looking at one another, Nayland Smith, angry but thoughtful, tugging at the lobe of his

WITH the first coming of light, Eltham, Smith and I tested the electrical contrivances from every point. They

were in perfect order. It became more and more incomprehensible how anyone could have entered and

quitted Redmoat during the night. The barbedwire fencing was intact, and bore no signs of having been

At the spot where we had found the dog, some five paces to the west of the copper beech, the grass and

weeds were trampled and the surrounding laurels and rhododendrons bore evidence of a struggle, but no

"In my opinion," I said, "someone tried to get at Caesar; his presence is dangerous. And in his rage he broke

"I think so, too," agreed Smith. "But why did this person make for here? And how, having mastered the dog,

get out of Redmoat? I am open to admit the possibility of someone's getting in during the day whilst the gates

are open, and hiding until dusk. But how in the name of all that's wonderful does he GET OUT? He must

I thought of Greba Eltham's statements, reminding my friend of her description of the thing which she had

"That line of speculation soon takes us out of our depth, Petrie," he said. "Let us stick to what we can

understand, and that may help us to a clearer idea of what, at present, is incomprehensible. My view of the

"(1) Eltham, having rashly decided to return to the interior of China, is warned by an official whose

"(2) I know this official for one of the Yellow group represented in England by Dr. FuManchu.

"(3) Several attempts, of which we know but little, to get at Eltham are frustrated, presumably by his curious

`defenses.' An attempt in a train fails owing to Miss Eltham's distaste for refreshmentroom coffee. An

"(4) During Eltham's absence from Redmoat certain preparations are made for his return. These lead to:

"So that the clearing up of my fourth pointid est, the discovery of the nature of these

preparationsbecomes our immediate concern. The prime object of these preparations, Petrie, was to enable

someone to gain access to Eltham's room. The other events are incidental. The dogs HAD to be got rid of, for

instance; and there is no doubt that Miss Eltham's wakefulness saved her father a second time."

"From a visit by someoneperhaps by FuManchu himself," he said in a hushed voice. "The object of that

visit I hope we may never learn; for that would mean that it had been achieved."

"Smith," I said, "I do not altogether understand you; but do you think he has some incredible creature hidden

"I begin to suspect the most formidable creature in the known world to be hidden here. I believe FuManchu

Our conversation was interrupted at this point by Denby, who came to report that he had examined the moat,

the roadside, and the bank of the stream, but found no footprints or clew of any kind.

"No one left the grounds of Redmoat last night, I think," he said. And his voice had awe in it.

That day dragged slowly on. A party of us scoured the neighborhood for traces of strangers, examining every

"May not your presence here induce FuManchu to abandon his plans?" I asked Smith.

"I think not," he replied. "You see, unless we can prevail upon him, Eltham sails in a fortnight. So the Doctor

has no time to waste. Furthermore, I have an idea that his arrangements are of such a character that they

MUST go forward. He might turn aside, of course, to assassinate me, if opportunity arose! But we know,

There are few states, I suppose, which exact so severe a toll from one's nervous system as the

All anticipation is keener, be it of joy or pain, than the reality whereof it is a mental forecast; but that inactive

waiting at Redmoat, for the blow which we knew full well to be pending exceeded in its nerve taxation,

I felt as one bound upon an Aztec altar, with the priest's obsidian knife raised above my breast!

Secret and malign forces throbbed about us; forces against which we had no armor. Dreadful as it was, I

count it a mercy that the climax was reached so quickly. And it came suddenly enough; for there in that quiet

Norfolk home we found ourselves at hand grips with one of the mysterious horrors which characterized the

operations of Dr. FuManchu. It was upon us before we realized it. There is no incidental music to the

As we sat on the little terrace in the creeping twilight, I remember thinking how the peace of the scene gave

the lie to my fears that we bordered upon tragic things. Then Caesar, who had been a docile patient all day,

I caught Smith's eye, and was about to propose our retirement indoors, when the party was broken up in more

turbulent fashion. I suppose it was the presence of the girl which prompted Denby to the rash act, a desire

personally to distinguish himself. But, as I recalled afterwards, his gaze had rarely left the shrubbery since

dusk, save to seek her face, and now he leaped wildly to his feet, overturning his chair, and dashed across the

He evidently carried a revolver. For from the edge of the shrubbery a shot sounded, and in the flash we saw

"Greba, go in and fasten the windows," cried Eltham. "Mr. Smith, will you enter the bushes from the west.

Dr. Petrie, east. Edwards, Edwards" And he was off across the lawn with the nervous activity of a cat.

As I made off in an opposite direction I heard the gardener's voice from the lower gate, and I saw Eltham's

Two more shots and two flashes from the dense heart of greenwood. Then a loud cryI thought, from

I sprinted through the rose garden, leaped heedlessly over a bed of geranium and heliotrope, and plunged in

among the bushes and under the elms. Away on the left I heard Edwards shouting, and Eltham's answering

Dusk was upon Redmoat now, but from sitting in the twilight my eyes had grown accustomed to gloom, and I

could see fairly well what lay before me. Not daring to think what might lurk above, below, around me, I

"Bear more to the right, Edwards," I heard Nayland Smith cry directly ahead of me.

With an eerie and indescribable sensation of impending disaster upon me, I thrust my way through to a gray

patch which marked a break in the elmen roof. At the foot of the copper beech I almost fell over Eltham.

Then Smith plunged into view. Lastly, Edwards the gardener rounded a big rhododendron and completed the

I cannot remember who put it into words; I was too dazed with amazement to notice. Then Eltham began

His voice pitched higher upon each repetition. There was something horrible about that vain calling, under

the whispering beech, with shrubs banked about us cloaking God alone could know what.

Off we went, dodging laurels and privets, and poured out on to the lawn, a disordered company. Eltham's face

It seemed an age before the lights were found. But at last we returned to the bushes, really after a very brief

delay; and ten minutes sufficed us to explore the entire shrubbery, for it was not extensive. We found his

When we all stood again on the lawn, I thought that I had never seen Smith so haggard.

He ran off into the rose garden, and began beating about among the flowers like a madman, muttering:

"Vernon! Vernon!" For close upon an hour we all searched. We searched every square yard, I think, within

the wire fencing, and found no trace. Miss Eltham slipped out in the confusion, and joined with the rest of us

It was a group terrified and awestricken which came together again on the terrace. One and then another

would give up, until only Eltham and Smith were missing. Then they came back together from examining the

Nayland Smith paced up and down like a newly caged animal, snapping his teeth together and tugging at his

Possessed by some sudden idea, or pressed to action by his tumultuous thoughts, he snatched up a lantern and

strode silently off across the grass and to the shrubbery once more. I followed him. I think his idea was that

Denby had not been there a few moments before, and how he came to be there now we dared not conjecture.

Mr. Eltham joined us, uttered one short, dry sob, and dropped upon his knees. Then we were carrying Denby

We laid him on the grass where it sloped down from the terrace. Nayland Smith's haggard face was terrible.

But the stark horror of the thing inspired him to that, which conceived earlier, had saved Denby. Twisting

"I know he's crippled," he whispered. "But if anything human lurks there, the dog will lead us to it. If a MAN

is there, he will fly! Why did we not think of it before. Fools, fools!" He raised his voice again. "Keep him on

Edwards barely had started on his errand when bells began ridging inside the house.

A moment later he was out again, his eyes gleaming madly. "Above the moat," he panted. And we were off

It was dark above the moat; but not so dark as to prevent our seeing a narrow ladder of thin bamboo joints

and silken cord hanging by two hooks from the top of the twelvefoot wire fence. There was no sound.

We all ran our best and swiftest. But Eltham outran us. Like a fury he tore at bolts and bars, and like a fury

sprang out into the road. Straight and white it showed to the acclivity by the Roman ruin. But no living thing

"Curse it! he's crippled," hissed Smith. "Without him, as well pursue a shadow!"

A few hours later the shrubbery yielded up its secret, a simple one enough: A big cask sunk in a pit, with a

laurel shrub cunningly affixed to its movable lid, which was further disguised with tufts of grass. A slender

bamboojointed rod lay near the fence. It had a hook on the top, and was evidently used for attaching the

"It was the end of this ladder which Miss Eltham saw," said Smith, "as he trailed it behind him into the

shrubbery when she interrupted him in her fathers room. He and whomever he had with him doubtless

slipped in during the daytimewhilst Eltham was absent in London bringing the prepared cask and all

necessary implements with them. They concealed themselves somewhereprobably in the shrubbery and

during the night made the cache. The excavated earth would be disposed of on the flowerbeds; the dummy

bush they probably had ready. You see, the problem of getting IN was never a big one. But owing to the

`defenses' it was impossible (whilst Eltham was in residence at any rate) to get OUT after dark. For

FuManchu's purposes, then, a workingbase INSIDE Redmoat was essential. His servantfor he needed

assistance must have been in hiding somewhere outside; Heaven knows where! During the day they could

"It seems possible. Whom else has eyes like the eyes Miss Eltham saw from the window last night?"

Then remains to tell the nature of the outrage whereby FuManchu had planned to prevent Eltham's leaving

It was easy to divine that he had stumbled upon the fiendish visitor at the very entrance to his burrow; had

been stunned (judging from the evidence, with a sandbag), and dragged down into the cacheto which he

must have lain in such dangerous proximity as to render detection of the dummy bush possible in removing

him. The quickest expedient, then, had been to draw him beneath. When the search of the shrubbery was

concluded, his body had been borne to the edge of the bushes and laid where we found it.

Why his life had been spared, I cannot conjecture, but provision had been made against his recovering

consciousness and revealing the secret of the shrubbery. The ruse of releasing the mastiff alone had

Denby made a very slow recovery; and, even when convalescent, consciously added not one fact to those we

This, in my opinion, as in those of the several specialists consulted, was due, not to the blow on the head, but

to the presence, slightly below and to the right of the first cervical curve of the spine, of a minute

punctureundoubtedly caused by a hypodermic syringe. Then, unconsciously, poor Denby furnished the last

link in the chain; for undoubtedly, by means of this operation, FuManchu had designed to efface from

The nature of the fluid which could produce such mental symptoms was a mysterya mystery which defied

SINCE Nayland Smith's return from Burma I had rarely taken up a paper without coming upon evidences of

that seething which had cast up Dr. FuManchu. Whether, hitherto, such items had escaped my attention or

had seemed to demand no particular notice, or whether they now became increasingly numerous, I was

One evening, some little time after our sojourn in Norfolk, in glancing through a number of papers which I

had brought in with me, I chanced upon no fewer than four items of news bearing more or less directly upon

No white man, I honestly believe, appreciates the unemotional cruelty of the Chinese. Throughout the time

that Dr. FuManchu remained in England, the press preserved a uniform silence upon the subject of his

existence. This was due to Nayland Smith. But, as a result, I feel assured that my account of the Chinaman's

I had been at work, earlier in the evening, upon the opening chapters of this chronicle, and I had realized how

difficult it would be for my reader, amid secure and cozy surroundings, to credit any human being, with a

callous villainy great enough to conceive and to put into execution such a death pest as that directed against

One would expect God's worst man to shrink from employing against however vile an enemysuch an

"Secret service men of the United States Government are searching the South Sea Islands for a certain

Hawaiian from the island of Maui, who, it is believed, has been selling poisonous scorpions to Chinese in

"Infanticide, by scorpion and otherwise, among the Chinese, has increased so terribly that the authorities have

started a searching inquiry, which has led to the hunt for the scorpion dealer of Maui.

"Practically all the babies that die mysteriously are unwanted girls, and in nearly every case the parents

promptly ascribe the death to the bite of a scorpion, and are ready to produce some more or less poisonous

"The authorities have no doubt that infanticide by scorpion bite is a growing practice, and orders have been

Is it any matter for wonder that such a people had produced a FuManchu? I pasted the cutting into a

scrapbook, determined that, if I lived to publish my account of those days, I would quote it therein as

A Reuter message to The Globe and a paragraph in The Star also furnished work for my scissors. Here were

evidences of the deepseated unrest, the secret turmoil, which manifested itself so far from its center as

"Li Hon Hung, the Chinaman who fired at the Governor yesterday, was charged before the magistrate with

shooting at him with intent to kill, which is equivalent to attempted murder. The prisoner, who was not

defended, pleaded guilty. The Assistant Crown Solicitor, who prosecuted, asked for a remand until Monday,

"Snapshots taken by the spectators of the outrage yesterday disclosed the presence of an accomplice, also

armed with a revolver. It is reported that this man, who was arrested last night, was in possession of

"Examination of the documents found on Li Hon Hung's accomplice has disclosed the fact that both men

were well financed by the Canton Triad Society, the directors of which had enjoined the assassination of Sir

F. M. or Mr. C. S., the Colonial Secretary. In a report prepared by the accomplice for dispatch to Canton, also

"It is officially reported in St. Petersburg that a force of Chinese soldiers and villagers surrounded the house

"They fired at the house and set it in flames. There were in the house about 100 Russians, many of whom

"The Russian Government has instructed its Minister at Peking to make the most vigorous representations on

I had just pasted it into my book when Nayland Smith came in and threw himself into an armchair, facing

"I am glad, for Eltham's sakeand for the girl's," was his comment. "But it marks another victory for

Smith's darkly tanned face had grown leaner than ever since he bad begun his fight with the most uncanny

opponent, I suppose, against whom a man ever had pitted himself. He stood up and began restlessly to pace

"I have seen Sir Lionel Barton," he said abruptly; "and, to put the whole thing in a nutshell, he has laughed at

me! During the months that I have been wondering where he had gone to he has been somewhere in Egypt.

He certainly bears a charmed life, for on the evidence of his letter to The Times he has seen things in Tibet

which FuManchu would have the West blind to; in fact, I think he has found a new keyhole to the gate of

Long ago we had placed the name of Sir Lionel Barton upon the list of those whose lives stood between

FuManchu and the attainment of his end. Orientalist and explorer, the fearless traveler who first had

penetrated to Lhassa, who thrice, as a pilgrim, had entered forbidden Mecca, he now had turned his attention

"England at present is the web," he replied. "The spider will be waiting. Petrie, I sometimes despair. Sir

Lionel is an impossible man to shepherd. You ought to see his house at Finchley. A low, squat place

completely hemmed in by trees. Damp as a swamp; smells like a jungle. Everything topsyturvy. He only

arrived today, and he is working and eating (and sleeping I expect), in a study that looks like an earthquake

at Sotheby's auctionrooms. The rest of the house is half a menagerie and half a circus. He has a Bedouin

"Yes, I saw him; a squinting Cantonese he calls Kwee. I don't like him. Also, there is a secretary known as

Strozza, who has an unpleasant face. He is a fine linguist, I understand, and is engaged upon the Spanish

notes for Barton's forthcoming book on the Mayapan temples. By the way, all Sir Lionel's baggage

"Of course. But he argues that he has crossed Tibet from the KuenLun to the Himalayas without being

assassinated, and therefore that it is unlikely he will meet with that fate in London. I left him dictating the

"Wasting time! In addition to the Yucatan book and the work on Tibet, he has to read a paper at the Institute

next week about some tomb he has unearthed in Egypt. As I came away, a van drove up from the docks and a

couple of fellows delivered a sarcophagus as big as a boat. It is unique, according to Sir Lionel, and will go to

the British Museum after he has examined it. The man crams six months' work into six weeks; then he is off

"What CAN I do? I know that FuManchu will make an attempt upon him. I cannot doubt it. Ugh! that house

gave me the shudders. No sunlight, I'll swear, Petrie, can ever penetrate to the rooms, and when I arrived this

afternoon clouds of gnats floated like motes wherever a stray beam filtered through the trees of the avenue.

There's a steamy smell about the place that is almost malarious, and the whole of the west front is covered

with a sort of monkeycreeper, which he has imported at some time or other. It has a close, exotic perfume

"A madman, Petrie. A tall, massive man, wearing a dirty dressinggown of neutral color; a man with untidy

gray hair and a bristling mustache, keen blue eyes, and a brown skin; who wears a short beard or rarely

shavesI don't know which. I left him striding about among the thousand and one curiosities of that

incredible room, picking his way through his antique furniture, works of reference, manuscripts, mummies,

spears, pottery and what notsometimes kicking a book from his course, or stumbling over a stuffed

"Smith" I said, "we are making no headway in this business. With all the forces arrayed against him,

"And we don't know all," he said. "We mark such and such a man as one alive to the Yellow Peril, and we

warn himif we have time. Perhaps he escapes; perhaps he does not. But what do we know, Petrie, of those

others who may die every week by his murderous agency? We cannot know EVERYONE who has read the

riddle of China. I never see a report of someone found drowned, of an apparent suicide, of a sudden, though

seemingly natural death, without wondering. I tell you, FuManchu is omnipresent; his tentacles embrace

everything. I said that Sir Lionel must bear a charmed life. The fact that WE are alive is a miracle."

"Nearly eleven," he said. "But sleep seems a waste of time apart from its dangers."

A girl entered with a telegram addressed to Smith. His jaw looked very square in the lamplight, and his eyes

shone like steel as he took it from her and opened the envelope. He glanced at the form, stood up and passed

ALTHOUGH we avoided all unnecessary delay, it was close upon midnight when our cab swung round into

a darkly shadowed avenue, at the farther end of which, as seen through a tunnel, the moonlight glittered upon

Stepping out before the porch of the long, squat building, I saw that it was banked in, as Smith had said, by

trees and shrubs. The facade showed mantled in the strange exotic creeper which he had mentioned, and the

air was pungent with an odor of decaying vegetation, with which mingled the heavy perfume of the little

The place looked a veritable wilderness, and when we were admitted to the hall by Inspector Weymouth I

saw that the interior was in keeping with the exterior, for the hall was constructed from the model of some

apartment in an Assyrian temple, and the squat columns, the low seats, the hangings, all were eloquent of

neglect, being thickly dustcoated. The musty smell, too, was almost as pronounced here as outside, beneath

To a library, whose contents overflowed in many literary torrents upon the floor, the detective conducted us.

Something leaped from the top of the bookcase, ambled silently across the littered carpet, and passed from

the library like a golden streak. I stood looking after it with startled eyes. Inspector Weymouth laughed dryly.

"It's a young puma, or a civetcat, or something, Doctor," he said. "This house is full of surprisesand

His voice was not quite steady, I thought, and he carefully closed the door ere proceeding further.

"I thought you would like to hear what led up to itso far as we know before seeing him?"

"Well," continued the Inspector, "the man you arranged to send down from the Yard got here all right and

took up a post in the road outside, where he could command a good view of the gates. He saw and heard

nothing, until going on for halfpast ten, when a young lady turned up and went in."

"Miss Edmonds, Sir Lionel's shorthand typist. She had found, after getting home, that her bag, with her purse

in, was missing, and she came back to see if she had left it here. She gave the alarm. My man heard the row

from the road and came in. Then he ran out and rang us up. I immediately wired for you."

"He saw a negro footmanthere isn't an Englishman in the house trying to pacify the girl out in the hall

yonder, and a Malay and another colored man beating their foreheads and howling. There was no sense to be

got out of any of them, so he started to investigate for himself. He had taken the bearings of the place earlier

in the evening, and from the light in a window on the ground floor had located the study; so he set out to look

"He went out and round to the window. There's no blind, and from the shrubbery you can see into the

lumberroom known as the study. He looked in, as apparently Miss Edmonds had done before him. What he

"All amongst the rubbish on the floor a big Egyptian mummy case was lying on its side, and face downwards,

"There was only a shaded readinglamp alight, and it stood on a chair, shining right down on him; it made a

patch of light on the floor, you understand." The Inspector indicated its extent with his bands. "Well, as the

man smashed the glass and got the window open, and was just climbing in, he saw something else, so he

"A sort of GREEN MIST, sir. He says it seemed to be alive. It moved over the floor, about a foot from the

ground, going away from him and towards a curtain at the other end of the study."

"It is to his credit that he climbed into the room after seeing a thing like that. He did. He turned the body over,

and Sir Lionel looked horrible. He was quite dead. Then Croxtedthat's the man's namewent over to this

curtain. There was a glass doorshut. He opened it, and it gave on a conservatorya place stacked from the

tiled floor to the glass roof with more rubbish. It was dark inside, but enough light came from the studyit's

really a drawingroom, by the way as he'd turned all the lamps on, to give him another glimpse of this

green, crawling mist. There are three steps to go down. On the steps lay a dead Chinaman."

"Yes; a local man. He was out of his depth, I could see. Contradicted himself three times. But there's no need

DetectiveInspector Weymouth raised his eyebrows and carefully knocked the ash from his cigar.

"He held out until I came, gave me the story, and then fainted right away. He said that something in the

We crossed the Assyrian hall, where the members of that strange household were gathered in a

panicstricken group. They numbered four. Two of them were negroes, and two Easterns of some kind. I

missed the Chinaman, Kwee, of whom Smith had spoken, and the Italian secretary; and from the way in

which my friend peered about the shadows of the hall I divined that he, too, wondered at their absence. We

Nayland Smith's words, "an earthquake at Sotheby's auctionrooms," leaped to my mind at once; for the

place was simply stacked with curious litterloot of Africa, Mexico and Persia. In a clearing by the hearth a

gas stove stood upon a packingcase, and about it lay a number of utensils for camp cookery. The odor of

rotting vegetation, mingled with the insistent perfume of the strange nightblooming flowers, was borne in

In the center of the floor, beside an overturned sarcophagus, lay a figure in a neutralcolored dressinggown,

face downwards, and arms thrust forward and over the side of the ancient Egyptian mummy case.

Smith sprang upright and turned with an extraordinary expression to Inspector Weymouth.

"I have had him left where he was foundon the conservatory steps," said the Inspector.

Smith ran across the room to where, beyond the open door, a glimpse might be obtained of stackedup

curiosities. Holding back the curtain to allow more light to penetrate, he bent forward over a crumpledup

Weymouth and I looked at one another across the body of the Italian; then our eyes turned together to where

my friend, grimfaced, stood over the dead Chinaman. A breeze whispered through the leaves; a great wave

It was a breath of the Eastthat stretched out a yellow hand to the West. It was symbolic of the subtle,

intangible power manifested in Dr. FuManchu, as Nayland Smithlean, agile, bronzed with the suns of

Burma, was symbolic of the clean British efficiency which sought to combat the insidious enemy.

"One thing is evident," said Smith: "no one in the house, Strozza excepted, knew that Sir Lionel was absent."

"The servants, in the hall, are bewailing him as dead. If they had seen him go out they would know that it

"Since there is no other means of entrance to the conservatory save through the study, Kwee must have

"Both Miss Edmonds and Croxted found the study door locked from the inside. What killed Strozza?"

"You will have noted," continued the Inspector, "that the secretary is wearing Sir Lionel's dressinggown. It

was seeing him in that, as she looked in at the window, which led Miss Edmonds to mistake him for her

"He wore it in order that anybody looking in at the window would be sure to make that mistake," rapped

"Because he came here for a felonious purpose. See." Smith stooped and took up several tools from the litter

on the floor. "There lies the lid. He came to open the sarcophagus. It contained the mummy of some notable

person who flourished under Meneptah II; and Sir Lionel told me that a number of valuable ornaments and

jewels probably were secreted amongst the wrappings. He proposed to open the thing and to submit the entire

contents to examination tonight. He evidently changed his mind fortunately for himself."

"It has vanished in the form of a green vapor apparently," he said. "Look at Strozza's face."

He turned the body over, and, used as I was to such spectacles, the contorted features of the Italian filled me

with horror, so suggestive were they of a death more than ordinarily violent. I pulled aside the

dressinggown and searched the body for marks, but failed to find any. Nayland Smith crossed the room,

and, assisted by the detective, carried Kwee, the Chinaman, into the study and laid him fully in the light. His

puckered yellow face presented a sight even more awful than the other, and his blue lips were drawn back,

exposing both upper and lower teeth. There were no marks of violence, but his limbs, like Strozza's, had been

The breeze was growing higher, and pungent odorwaves from the damp shrubbery, bearing, too, the

oppressive sweetness of the creeping, plant, swept constantly through the open window. Inspector Weymouth

"I'm with you this far, Mr. Smith," he said. "Strozza, knowing Sir Lionel to be absent, locked himself in here

to rifle the mummy case, for Croxted, entering by way of the window, found the key on the inside. Strozza

"And Kwee did not dare to show himself, because he too was there for some mysterious reason of his own,"

"Well, sir, something that vanished from a locked room without opening the door or the window killed

"And something which, having killed Strozza, next killed the Chinaman, apparently without troubling to open

the door behind which he lay concealed," Smith continued. "For once in a way, Inspector, Dr. FuManchu

has employed an ally which even his giant will was incapable entirely to subjugate. What blind forcewhat

"You think this is the work of FuManchu?" I said. "If you are correct, his power indeed is more than

Something in my voice, I suppose, brought Smith right about. He surveyed me curiously.

"Can you doubt it? The presence of a concealed Chinaman surely is sufficient. Kwee, I feel assured, was one

of the murder group, though probably he had only recently entered that mysterious service. He is unarmed, or

I should feel disposed to think that his part was to assassinate Sir Lionel whilst, unsuspecting the presence of

a hidden enemy, he was at work here. Strozza's opening the sarcophagus clearly spoiled the scheme."

"You mean that its arrival at the time when a creature of the Doctor Kweewas concealed here, may have

I nodded; and Smith bent over the sarcophagus, curiously examining the garish paintings with which it was

decorated inside and out. It lay sideways upon the floor, and seizing it by its edge, he turned it over.

"Heavy," he muttered; "but Strozza must have capsized it as he fell. He would not have laid it on its side to

He bent farther forward, catching at a piece of twine, and out of the mummy case pulled a rubber stopper or

"This was stuck in a hole level with the floor of the thing," he said. "Ugh! it has a disgusting smell."

I took it from his hands, and was about to examine it, when a loud voice sounded outside in the hall. The door

was thrown open, and a big man, who, despite the warmth of the weather, wore a furlined overcoat, rushed

"Sir Lionel!" cried Smith eagerly. "I warned you! And see, you have had a very narrow escape."

Sir Lionel Barton glanced at what lay upon the floor, then from Smith to myself, and from me to Inspector

In brief terms Smith detailed the happenings of the night or so much as he knew of them. Sir Lionel Barton

listened, sitting quite still the whilean unusual repose in a man of such evidently tremendous nervous

"He came for the jewels," he said slowly, when Smith was finished; and his eyes turned to the body of the

dead Italian. "I was wrong to submit him to the temptation. God knows what Kwee was doing in hiding.

Perhaps he had come to murder me, as you surmise, Mr. Smith, though I find it hard to believe. ButI don't

think this is the handiwork of your Chinese doctor." He fixed his gaze upon the sarcophagus.

The famous traveler continued to look towards the sarcophagus with something in his blue eyes that might

"I received a wire from Professor Rembold tonight," he continued. "You were correct in supposing that no

one but Strozza knew of my absence. I dressed hurriedly and met the professor at the Traveler's. He knew

that I was to read a paper next week upon" again he looked toward the mummy case"the tomb of

Mekara; and he knew that the sarcophagus had been brought, untouched, to England. He begged me not to

"One," he replied at last, "which amused meat the time. I must inform you that Mekarawhose tomb my

agent had discovered during my absence in Tibet, and to enter which I broke my return journey to

Alexandria was a high priest and first prophet of Amenunder the Pharaoh of the Exodus; in short, one of

the magicians who contested in magic arts with Moses. I thought the discovery unique, until Professor

Rembold furnished me with some curious particulars respecting the death of M. Page le Roi, the French

"M. le Roi," continued Barton, "discovered, but kept secret, the tomb of Amentianother of this particular

brotherhood. It appears that he opened the mummy case on the spot these priests were of royal line, and

are buried in the valley of BibanleMoluk. His Fellah and Arab servants deserted him for some reasonon

seeing the mummy caseand he was found dead, apparently strangled, beside it. The matter was hushed up

by the Egyptian Government. Rembold could not explain why. But he begged of me not to open the

The strange facts regarding the sudden death of Page le Roi, which I now heard for the first time, had

impressed me unpleasantly, coming from a man of Sir Lionel Barton's experience and reputation.

"For two days, I believe. I am not a superstitious man, Mr. Smith, but neither is Professor Rembold, and now

that I know the facts respecting Page le Roi, I can find it in my heart to thank God that I did not see. .

Nayland Smith stared him hard in the face. "I am glad you did not, Sir Lionel," he said; "for whatever the

priest Mekara has to do with the matter, by means of his sarcophagus, Dr. FuManchu has made his first

attempt upon your life. He has failed, but I hope you will accompany me from here to a hotel. He will not fail

IT was the night following that of the double tragedy at Rowan House. Nayland Smith, with Inspector

Weymouth, was engaged in some mysterious inquiry at the docks, and I had remained at home to resume my

strange chronicle. Andwhy should I not confess it?my memories had frightened me.

I was arranging my notes respecting the case of Sir Lionel Barton. They were hopelessly incomplete. For

instance, I had jotted down the following queries:(1) Did any true parallel exist between the death of M.

Page le Roi and the death of Kwee, the Chinaman, and of Strozza? (2) What had become of the mummy of

Mekara? (3) How had the murderer escaped from a locked room? (4) What was the purpose of the rubber

stopper? (5) Why was Kwee hiding in the conservatory? (6) Was the green mist a mere subjective

Until these questions were satisfactorily answered, further progress was impossible. Nayland Smith frankly

admitted that he was out of his depth. "It looks, on the face of it, more like a case for the Psychical Research

people than for a plain Civil Servant, lately of Mandalay," he had said only that morning.

"Sir Lionel Barton really believes that supernatural agencies were brought into operation by the opening of

the high priest's coffin. For my part, even if I believed the same, I should still maintain that Dr. FuManchu

controlled those manifestations. But reason it out for yourself and see if we arrive at any common center.

Don't work so much upon the datum of the green mist, but keep to the FACTS which are established."

I commenced to knock out my pipe in the ashtray; then paused, pipe in hand. The house was quite still, for

Above the noise of the passing tramcar I thought I had heard the hall door open. In the ensuing silence I sat

Not a sound. Stay! I slipped my hand into the table drawer, took out my revolver, and stood up.

Familiar with the ghastly media employed by the Chinaman, I was seized with an impulse to leap to the door,

shut and lock it. But the rustling sound proceeded, now, from immediately outside my partially opened door.

I had not the time to close it; knowing somewhat of the horrors at the command of FuManchu, I had not the

courage to open it. My heart leaping wildly, and my eyes upon that bar of darkness with its gruesome

potentialities, I waitedwaited for whatever was to come. Perhaps twelve seconds passed in silence.

"Ah! no," came a soft voice, thrillingly musical. "Put it down that pistol. Quick! I must speak to you."

The door was pushed open, and there entered a slim figure wrapped in a hooded cloak. My hand fell, and I

stood, stricken to silence, looking into the beautiful dark eyes of Dr. FuManchu's messenger if her own

statement could be credited, slave. On two occasions this girl, whose association with the Doctor was one of

the most profound mysteries of the case, had riskedI cannot say what; unnameable punishment,

perhapsto save me from death; in both cases from a terrible death. For what was she come now?

Her lips slightly parted, she stood, holding her cloak about her, and watching me with great passionate eyes.

"HE has a duplicate key of the house door," was her amazing statement. "I have never betrayed a secret of my

She came forward and rested her slim hands confidingly upon my shoulders. "I have come again to ask you to

Her words struck a chord in my heart which sang with strange music, with music so barbaric that, frankly, I

blushed to find it harmony. Have I said that she was beautiful? It can convey no faint conception of her. With

her pure, fair skin, eyes like the velvet darkness of the East, and red lips so tremulously near to mine, she was

the most seductively lovely creature I ever had looked upon. In that electric moment my heart went out in

"I will see that you are placed under proper protection," I said firmly, but my voice was not quite my own. "It

is quite absurd to talk of slavery here in England. You are a free agent, or you could not be here now. Dr.

"Ah!" she cried, casting back her head scornfully, and releasing a cloud of hair, through whose softness

gleamed a jeweled headdress. "No? He cannot? Do you know what it means to have been a slave? Here, in

your free England, do you know what it meansthe razzia, the desert journey, the whips of the drivers, the

"Slavery is put down, you imagine, perhaps? You do not believe that todayTODAYtwentyfive

English sovereigns will buy a Galla girl, who is brown, and"whisper"two hundred and fifty a

She threw open her cloak, and it is a literal fact that I rubbed my eyes, half believing that I dreamed. For

beneath, she was arrayed in gossamer silk which more than indicated the perfect lines of her slim shape; wore

a jeweled girdle and barbaric ornaments; was a figure fit for the walled gardens of Stamboula figure

"Tonight I had no time to make myself an English miss," she said, wrapping her cloak quickly about her.

"You see me as I am." Her garments exhaled a faint perfume, and it reminded me of another meeting I had

"Your request is but a pretense," I said. "Why do you keep the secrets of that man, when they mean death to

"Death! I have seen my own sister die of fever in the desert seen her thrown like carrion into a hole in the

sand. I have seen men flogged until they prayed for death as a boon. I have known the lash myself. Death!

She shocked me inexpressibly. Enveloped in her cloak again, and with only her slight accent to betray her, it

was dreadful to hear such words from a girl who, save for her singular type of beauty, might have been a

"Prove, then, that you really wish to leave this man's service. Tell me what killed Strozza and the Chinaman,"

"I do not know that. But if you will carry me off"she clutched me nervously"so that I am helpless, lock

me up so that I cannot escape, beat me, if you like, I will tell you all I do know. While he is my master I will

never betray him. Tear me from himby force, do you understand, BY FORCE, and my lips will be sealed

no longer. Ah! but you do not understand, with your `proper authorities' your police. Police! Ah, I have

A clock across the common began to strike. The girl started and laid her hands upon my shoulders again.

"You do not understand," she whispered. "Oh, will you never understand and release me from him! I must go.

Already I have remained too long. Listen. Go out without delay. Remain outat a hotel, where you will, but

"What is he to me, this Nayland Smith? Ah, why will you not unseal my lips? You are in dangeryou hear

She dropped her hands and ran from the room. In the open doorway she turned, stamping her foot

"You have hands and arms," she cried, "and yet you let me go. Be warned, then; fly from here" She broke

I made no move to stay herthis beautiful accomplice of the archmurderer, FuManchu. I heard her light

footsteps paltering down the stairs, I heard her open and close the doorthe door of which Dr. FuManchu

held the key. Still I stood where she had parted from me, and was so standing when a key grated in the lock

But his face showed that he had not done so, and rapidly I told him of my strange visitor, of her words, of her

"How can she have passed through London in that costume?" I cried in bewilderment. "Where can she have

Smith shrugged his shoulders and began to stuff broadcut mixture into the familiar cracked briar.

"She might have traveled in a car or in a cab," he said; "and undoubtedly she came direct from the house of

Dr. FuManchu. You should have detained her, Petrie. It is the third time we have had that woman in our

"Smith," I replied, "I couldn't. She came of her own free will to give me a warning. She disarms me."

"Because you can see she is in love with you?" he suggested, and burst into one of his rare laughs when the

angry flush rose to my cheek. "She is, Petrie why pretend to be blind to it? You don't know the Oriental mind

as I do; but I quite understand the girl's position. She fears the English authorities, but would submit to

capture by you! If you would only seize her by the hair, drag her to some cellar, hurl her down and stand over

her with a whip, she would tell you everything she knows, and salve her strange Eastern conscience with the

reflection that speech was forced from her. I am not joking; it is so, I assure you. And she would adore you

"From Weymouth," he explained, "by district messenger. I left him behind at the docks, and he arranged to

forward any evidence which subsequently he found. This will be fragments of the mummy."

"Yes, at the docks. I am sure of it; and somebody else was in the sarcophagus when it reached Rowan House.

A sarcophagus, I find, is practically airtight, so that the use of the rubber stopper becomes

"The green mist, Petrie, can be explained in several ways. Remember, we have only one man's word that it

existed. It is at best a confusing datum to which we must not attach a fictitious importance."

He threw the wrappings on the floor and tugged at a twine loop in the lid of the square box, which now stood

upon the table. Suddenly the lid came away, bringing with it a lead lining, such as is usual in teachests. This

lining was partially attached to one side of the box, so that the action of removing the lid at once raised and

Out over the table billowed a sort of yellowishgreen cloud an oily vaporand an inspiration, it was

nothing less, born of a memory and of some words of my beautiful visitor, came to me.

"RUN, SMITH!" I screamed. "The door! the door, for your life! FuManchu sent that box!" I threw my arms

round him. As he bent forward the moving vapor rose almost to his nostrils. I dragged him back and all but

pitched him out on to the landing. We entered my bedroom, and there, as I turned on the light, I saw that

"It is a poisonous gas!" I said hoarsely; "in many respects identical with chlorine, but having unique

properties which prove it to be something elseGod and FuManchu, alone know what! It is the fumes of

chlorine that kill the men in the bleaching powder works. We have been blindI particularly. Don't you see?

There was no one in the sarcophagus, Smith, but there was enough of that fearful stuff to have suffocated a

"My God!" he said, "how can I hope to deal with the author of such a scheme? I see the whole plan. He did

not reckon on the mummy case being overturned, and Kwee's part was to remove the plug with the aid of the

stringafter Sir Lionel had been suffocated. The gas, I take it, is heavier than air."

"Chlorine gas has a specific gravity of 2.470," I said; "two and a half times heavier than air. You can pour it

from jar to jar like a liquidif you are wearing a chemist's mask. In these respects this stuff appears to be

similar; the points of difference would not interest you. The sarcophagus would have emptied through the

"I did smell it, Petrie, on the stopper, but, of course, was unfamiliar with it. You may remember that you were

prevented from doing so by the arrival of Sir Lionel? The scent of those infernal flowers must partially have

drowned it, too. Poor, misguided Strozza inhaled the stuff, capsized the case in his fall, and all the gas"

"Went pouring under the conservatory door, and down the steps, where Kwee was crouching. Croxted's

breaking the window created sufficient draught to disperse what little remained. It will have settled on the

"He evidently made more than was necessary to dispatch Sir Lionel Barton," he said; "and

contemptuouslyyou note the attitude, Petrie? contemptuously devoted the surplus to me. His contempt

is justified. I am a child striving to cope with a mental giant. It is by no wit of mine that Dr. FuManchu

I WILL tell you, now of a strange dream which I dreamed, and of the stranger things to which I awakened.

Since, out of a blanka voidthis vision burst in upon my mind, I cannot do better than relate it, without

I dreamed that I lay writhing on the floor in agony indescribable. My veins were filled with liquid fire, and

but that stygian darkness was about me, I told myself that I must have seen the smoke arising from my

Then, a cooling shower descended upon me, soaked through skin and tissue to the tortured arteries and

Strength gradually returning to me, I tried to rise; but the carpet felt so singularly soft that it offered me no

foothold. I waded and plunged like a swimmer treading water; and all about me rose impenetrable walls of

darkness, darkness all but palpable. I wondered why I could not see the windows. The horrible idea flashed to

Somehow I got upon my feet, and stood swaying dizzily. I became aware of a heavy perfume, and knew it for

Thena dim light was born, at an immeasurable distance away. It grew steadily in brilliance. It spread like a

bluishred stain like a liquid. It lapped up the darkness and spread throughout the room.

It was an apartment of such size that its dimensions filled me with a kind of awe such as I never had known:

the awe of walled vastness. Its immense extent produced a sensation of sound. Its hugeness had a distinct

Tapestries covered the four walls. There was no door visible. These tapestries were magnificently figured

with golden dragons; and as the serpentine bodies gleamed and shimmered in the increasing radiance, each

dragon, I thought, intertwined its glittering coils more closely with those of another. The carpet was of such

richness that I stood kneedeep in its pile. And this, too, was fashioned all over with golden dragons; and

At the farther end of the hallfor hall it wasa huge table with dragons' legs stood solitary amid the

luxuriance of the carpet. It bore scintillating globes, and tubes that held living organisms, and books of a size

and in such bindings as I never had imagined, with instruments of a type unknown to Western sciencea

heterogeneous litter quite indescribable, which overflowed on to the floor, forming an amazing oasis in a

dragonhaunted desert of carpet. A lamp hung above this table, suspended by golden chains from the

ceilingwhich was so lofty that, following the chains upward, my gaze lost itself in the purple shadows

In a chair piled high with dragoncovered cushions a man sat behind this table. The light from the swinging

lamp fell fully upon one side of his face, as he leaned forward amid the jumble of weird objects, and left the

other side in purplish shadow. From a plain brass bowl upon the corner of the huge table smoke writhed aloft

From the instant that my eyes were drawn to the table and to the man who sat there, neither the incredible

extent of the room, nor the nightmare fashion of its mural decorations, could reclaim my attention. I had eyes

Something of the delirium which had seemed to fill my veins with fire, to people the walls with dragons, and

to plunge me kneedeep in the carpet, left me. Those dreadful, filmed green eyes acted somewhat like a cold

douche. I knew, without removing my gaze from the still face, that the walls no longer lived, but were merely

draped in exquisite Chinese dragon tapestry. The rich carpet beneath my feet ceased to be as a jungle and

became a normal carpetextraordinarily rich, but merely a carpet. But the sense of vastness nevertheless

remained, with the uncomfortable knowledge that the things upon the table and overflowing about it were all,

Then, and almost instantaneously, the comparative sanity which I had temporarily experienced began to slip

from me again; for the smoke faintly penciled through the airfrom the burning perfume on the table

grew in volume, thickened, and wafted towards me in a cloud of gray horror. It enveloped me, clammily.

Dimly, through its oily wreaths, I saw the immobile yellow face of FuManchu. And my stupefied brain

acclaimed him a sorcerer, against whom unwittingly we had pitted our poor human wits. The green eyes

showed filmy through the fog. An intense pain shot through my lower limbs, and, catching my breath, I

looked down. As I did so, the points of the red slippers which I dreamed that I wore increased in length,

curled sinuously upward, twined about my throat and choked the breath from my body!

Came an interval, and then a dawning like consciousness; but it was a false consciousness, since it brought

with it the idea that my head lay softly pillowed and that a woman's hand caressed my throbbing forehead.

Confusedly, as though in the remote past, I recalled a kissand the recollection thrilled me strangely.

"They are killing him! they are killing him! Oh! do you not understand?" In my dazed condition, I thought

that it was I who had died, and that this musical girlvoice was communicating to me the fact of my own

For hours and hours, I thought, that soothing hand caressed me. I never once raised my heavy lids, until there

came a resounding crash that seemed to set my very bones vibratinga metallic, jangling crash, as the fall of

heavy chains. I thought that, then, I half opened my eyes, and that in the dimness I had a fleeting glimpse of a

figure clad in gossamer silk, with arms covered with barbaric bangles and slim ankles surrounded by gold

bands. The girl was gone, even as I told myself that she was an houri, and that I, though a Christian, had been

My head throbbed madly; my brain seemed to be cloggedinert; and though my first, feeble movement was

followed by the rattle of a chain, some moments more elapsed ere I realized that the chain was fastened to a

On to my knees I struggled, and the pain on the top of my skull grew all but insupportable. It was coming

back to me now; how Nayland Smith and I had started for the hotel to warn Graham Guthrie; how, as we

passed up the steps from the Embankment and into Essex Street, we saw the big motor standing before the

door of one of the offices. I could recall coming up level with the cara modern limousine; but my mind

retained no impression of our having passed it only a vague memory of a rush of footstepsa blow. Then,

my vision of the hall of dragons, and now this real awakening to a worse reality.

Groping in the darkness, my hands touched a body that lay close beside me. My fingers sought and found the

"Smith," I groaned; and I shook the still form. "Smith, old man speak to me! Smith!"

Could he be dead? Was this the end of his gallant fight with Dr. FuManchu and the murder group? If so,

"Thank God!" I muttered, and I cannot deny that my joy was tainted with selfishness. For, waking in that

impenetrable darkness, and yet obsessed with the dream I had dreamed, I had known what fear meant, at the

realization that alone, chained, I must face the dreadful Chinese doctor in the flesh. Smith began incoherent

"Sandbagged!. . .Look out, Petrie!. . .He has us at last!. . .Oh, Heavens!" . . .He struggled on to his knees,

"Dry up, Smith," I said slowly. "I'm not a child. There is no question of being dragged into the matter. I'm

"There were two Chinese, in European clotheslord, how my head throbs! in that office door. They

sandbagged us, Petriethink of it! in broad daylight, within hail of the Strand! We were rushed into the

carand it was all over, before" His voice grew faint. "God! they gave me an awful knock!"

Footsteps sounded on the flagged passage. A blade of light crept across the floor towards us. My brain was

growing clearer. The place had a damp, earthen smell. It was slimysome noisome cellar. A door was

thrown open and a man entered, carrying a lantern. Its light showed my surmise to be accurate, showed the

slimecoated walls of a dungeon some fifteen feet square shone upon the long yellow robe of the man who

At last they were face to facethe head of the great Yellow Movement, and the man who fought on behalf

of the entire white race. How can I paint the individual who now stood before us perhaps the greatest

Of him it Had been fitly said that he had a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan. Something

serpentine, hypnotic, was in his very presence. Smith drew one sharp breath, and was silent. Together,

chained to the wall, two mediaeval captives, living mockeries of our boasted modern security, we crouched

He came forward with an indescribable gait, catlike yet awkward, carrying his high shoulders almost

hunched. He placed the lantern in a niche in the wall, never turning away the reptilian gaze of those eyes

which must haunt my dreams forever. They possessed a viridescence which hitherto I had supposed possible

only in the eye of the catand the film intermittently clouded their brightness but I can speak of them no

I had never supposed, prior to meeting Dr. FuManchu, that so intense a force of malignancy could

radiatefrom any human being. He spoke. His English was perfect, though at times his words were oddly

"Mr. Smith and Dr. Petrie, your interference with my plans has gone too far. I have seriously turned my

He displayed his teeth, small and evenly separated, but discolored in a way that was familiar to me. I studied

his eyes with a new professional interest, which even the extremity of our danger could not wholly banish.

Their greenness seemed to be of the iris; the pupil was oddly contracteda pinpoint.

"You have presumed," continued FuManchu, "to meddle with a worldchange. Poor spiderscaught in the

wheels of the inevitable! You have linked my name with the futility of the Young China Movement the

name of FuManchu! Mr. Smith, you are an incompetent meddler I despise you! Dr. Petrie, you are a

He rested one bony hand on his hip, narrowing the long eyes as he looked down on us. The purposeful cruelty

of the man was inherent; it was entirely untheatrical. Still Smith remained silent.

"So I am determined to remove you from the scene of your blunders!" added FuManchu.

"That is a matter of opinion, Doctor," he said. "You may have lacked the opportunities which have been mine

for studying that subject and in any event I shall not be privileged to enjoy your advice in the future."

"You will not long outlive me," I replied. "And our deaths will not profit you, incidentally; because"

"Ah! Mr. Smith is so prudent! He is thinking that I have FILES!" He pronounced the word in a way that

made me shudder. "Mr. Smith has seen a WIRE JACKET! Have you ever seen a wire jacket? As a surgeon

I stifled a cry that rose to my lips; for, with a shrill whistling sound, a small shape came bounding into the

dimly lit vault, then shot upward. A marmoset landed on the shoulder of Dr. FuManchu and peered

grotesquely into the dreadful yellow face. The Doctor raised his bony hand and fondled the little creature,

"One of my pets, Mr. Smith," he said, suddenly opening his eyes fully so that they blazed like green lamps. "I

have others, equally useful. My scorpionshave you met my scorpions? No? My pythons and hamadryads?

Then there are my fungi and my tiny allies, the bacilli. I have a collection in my laboratory quite unique.

Have you ever visited Molokai, the leper island, Doctor? No? But Mr. Nayland Smith will be familiar with

the asylum at Rangoon! And we must not forget my black spiders, with their diamond eyes my spiders,

He raised his lean hands, so that the sleeve of the robe fell back to the elbow, and the ape dropped, chattering,

"O God of Cathay!" he cried, "by what death shall these die these miserable ones who would bind thine

Like some priest of Tezcat he stood, his eyes upraised to the roof, his lean body quiveringa sight to shock

"He is mad!" I whispered to Smith. "God help us, the man is a dangerous homicidal maniac!"

"Dangerous, yes, I agree," he muttered; "his existence is a danger to the entire white race which, now, we are

Dr. FuManchu recovered himself, took up the lantern and, turning abruptly, walked to the door, with his

"You would have warned Mr. Graham Guthrie?" he said, in a soft voice. "Tonight, at halfpast twelve, Mr.

From somewhere above usI could not determine the exact direction came a low, wailing cry, an

uncanny thing of falling cadences, which, in that dismal vault, with the sinister yellowrobed figure at the

door, seemed to pour ice into my veins. Its effect upon Smith was truly extraordinary. His face showed grayly

in the faint light, and I heard him draw a hissing breath through clenched teeth.

"It calls for you!" said FuManchu. "At halfpast twelve it calls for Graham Guthrie!"

"Smith," I said, "what was that?" The horrors about us were playing havoc with my nerves.

THERE may be some who could have lain, chained to that noisome cell, and felt no fearno dread of what

the blackness might hold. I confess that I am not one of these. I knew that Nayland Smith and I stood in the

path of the most stupendous genius who in the world's history had devoted his intellect to crime. I knew that

the enormous wealth of the political group backing Dr. FuManchu rendered him a menace to Europe and to

America greater than that of the plague. He was a scientist trained at a great universityan explorer of

nature's secrets, who had gone farther into the unknown, I suppose, than any living man. His mission was to

remove all obstacleshuman obstacles from the path of that secret movement which was progressing in

the Far East. Smith and I were two such obstacles; and of all the horrible devices at his command, I

wondered, and my tortured brain refused to leave the subject, by which of them were we doomed to be

Even at that very moment some venomous centipede might be wriggling towards me over the slime of the

stones, some poisonous spider be preparing to drop from the roof! FuManchu might have released a serpent

"Smith," I said, scarcely recognizing my own voice, "I can't bear this suspense. He intends to kill us, that is

Smith laughed dryly, and I heard him fumbling with the steel collar about his neck.

"I have one great hope," he said, "since you share my captivity, but we must neglect no minor chance. Try

with your pocketknife if you can force the lock. I am trying to break this one."

Truth to tell, the idea had not entered my halfdazed mind, but I immediately acted upon my friend's

suggestion, setting to work with the small blade of my knife. I was so engaged, and, having snapped one

blade, was about to open another, when a sound arrested me. It came from beneath my feet.

The scraping and clicking which told of Smith's efforts ceased. Motionless, we sat in that humid darkness and

Something was moving beneath the stones of the cellar. I held my breath; every nerve in my body was strung

A line of light showed a few feet from where we lay. It widenedbecame an oblong. A trap was lifted, and

within a yard of me, there rose a dimly seen head. Horror I had expectedand death, or worse. Instead, I saw

a lovely face, crowned with a disordered mass of curling hair; I saw a white arm upholding the stone slab, a

The girl climbed into the cellar and placed the lantern on the stone floor. In the dim light she was unreala

figure from an opium vision, with her clinging silk draperies and garish jewelry, with her feet encased in little

red slippers. In short, this was the houri of my vision, materialized. It was difficult to believe that we were in

modern, uptodate England; easy to dream that we were the captives of a caliph, in a dungeon in old

"Ssh!" warned the girl, and her wonderful eyes opened widely, fearfully. "A sound and he will kill us all."

She bent over me; a key jarred in the lock which had broken my penknife and the collar was off. As I rose

to my feet the girl turned and released Smith. She raised the lantern above the trap, and signed to us to

"Your knife," she whispered to me. "Leave it on the floor. He will think you forced the locks. Down!

Nayland Smith, stepping gingerly, disappeared into the darkness. I rapidly followed. Last of all came our

mysterious friend, a gold band about one of her ankles gleaming in the rays of the lantern which she carried.

"Tie your handkerchiefs over your eyes and do exactly as I tell you," she ordered.

Neither of us hesitated to obey her. Blindfolded, I allowed her to lead me, and Smith rested his hand upon

my shoulder. In that order we proceeded, and came to stone steps, which we ascended.

With my free hand I felt for and found the wall, and we pressed forward. The atmosphere of the place

through which we were passing was steamy, and loaded with an odor like that of exotic plant life. But a faint

animal scent crept to my nostrils, too, and there was a subdued stir about me, infinitely

Now my feet sank in a soft carpet, and a curtain brushed my shoulder. A gong sounded. We stopped.

The little hand grasping mine quivered nervously. We were near a door or a window, for a breath of perfume

was wafted through the air; and it reminded me of my other meetings with the beautiful woman who was now

leading us from the house of FuManchu; who, with her own lips, had told me that she was his slave.

Through the horrible phantasmagoria she flitteda seductive vision, her piquant loveliness standing out

richly in its black setting of murder and devilry. Not once, but a thousand times, I had tried to reason out the

Down a thickly carpeted stair we went. Our guide opened a door, and led us along a passage. Another door

was opened; and we were in the open air. But the girl never tarried, pulling me along a graveled path, with a

fresh breeze blowing in my face, and along until, unmistakably, I stood upon the river bank. Now, planking

creaked to our tread; and looking downward beneath the handkerchief, I saw the gleam of water beneath my

Nayland Smith followed, and the girl pushed the punt off and poled out into the stream.

My brain was fevered; I scarce knew if I dreamed and was waking, or if the reality ended with my

imprisonment in the clammy cellar and this silent escape, blindfolded, upon the river with a girl for our guide

who might have stepped out of the pages of "The Arabian Nights" were fantasythe mockery of sleep.

Indeed, I began seriously to doubt if this stream whereon we floated, whose waters plashed and tinkled about

"You will hear a clock strike in a few minutes," said the girl, with her soft, charming accent, "but I rely upon

I heard him scrambling to the bank, and a moment later a soft hand was placed in mine, and I, too, was

guided on to terra firma. Arrived on the bank, I still held the girl's hand, drawing her towards me.

"You must not go back," I whispered. "We will take care of you. You must not return to that place."

"Let me go!" she said. "When, once, I asked you to take me from him, you spoke of police protection; that

was your answer, police protection! You would let them lock me upimprison meand make me betray

him! For what? For what?" She wrenched herself free. "How little you understand me. Never mind. Perhaps

She was gone. I heard the creak of the punt, the drip of the water from the pole. Fainter it grew, and fainter.

"What is her secret?" muttered Smith, beside me. "Why does she cling to that monster?"

The distant sound died away entirely. A clock began to strike; it struck the halfhour. In an instant my

handkerchief was off, and so was Smith's. We stood upon a towingpath. Away to the left the moon shone

We had exactly fourteen minutes in which to catch the last train to Waterloo; and we caught it. But I sank

into a corner of the compartment in a state bordering upon collapse. Neither of us, I think, could have

managed another twenty yards. With a lesser stake than a human life at issue, I doubt if we should have

"Due at Waterloo at elevenfiftyone," panted Smith. "That gives us thirtynine minutes to get to the other

"I couldn't determine. But at any rate, it stands close to the riverside. It should be merely a question of time to

identify it. I shall set Scotland Yard to work immediately; but I am hoping for nothing. Our escape will warn

I said no more for a time, sitting wiping the perspiration from my forehead and watching my friend load his

"Smith," I said at last, "what was that horrible wailing we heard, and what did FuManchu mean when he

"There was a ghastly business there in 1908 or early in 1909," he replied: "an utterly mysterious epidemic.

"It began, I believe, at the Palace Mansions Hotel, in the cantonments. A young American, whose name I

cannot recall, was staying there on business connected with some new iron buildings. One night he went to

his room, locked the door, and jumped out of the window into the courtyard. Broke his neck, of course."

"Apparently. But there were singular features in the case. For instance, his revolver lay beside him, fully

"That began later, or was only noticed later. A French doctor, named Lafitte, died in exactly the same way."

"At the same hotel; but he occupied a different room. Here is the extraordinary part of the affair: a friend

"Yes. The friendan Englishmanwas aroused by the uncanny wailing. I was in Rangoon at the time, so

that I know more of the case of Lafitte than of that of the American. I spoke to the man about it personally.

He was an electrical engineer, Edward Martin, and he told me that the cry seemed to come from above him."

"Martin sat up in bed, it was a clear moonlight night the sort of moonlight you get in Burma. Lafitte, for

some reason, had just gone to the window. His friend saw him look out. The next moment with a dreadful

"Martin ran to the window and looked down. Lafitte's scream had aroused the place, of course. But there was

absolutely nothing to account for the occurrence. There was no balcony, no ledge, by means of which anyone

"I stopped at the Palace Mansions for some time; and one night this uncanny howling aroused me. I heard it

quite distinctly, and am never likely to forget it. It was followed by a hoarse yell. The man in the next room,

"No. Fortunately for the reputation of the hotela firstclass establishment several similar cases occurred

elsewhere, both in Rangoon, in Prome and in Moulmein. A story got about the native quarter, and was

fostered by some mad fakir, that the god Siva was reborn and that the cry was his call for victims; a ghastly

story, which led to an outbreak of dacoity and gave the District Superintendent no end of trouble."

"They all developed marks after death, as though they had been strangled! The marks were said all to possess

a peculiar form, though it was not appreciable to my eye; and this, again, was declared to be the five heads of

"Oh, no. Several Burmans and others died in the same way. At first there was a theory that the victims had

contracted leprosy and committed suicide as a result; but the medical evidence disproved that. The Call of

"Yes. I beard it on the Upper Irrawaddy one clear, moonlight night, and a Colassiea deckhandleaped

from the top deck of the steamer aboard which I was traveling! My God! to think that the fiend FuManchu

"But brought what, Smith?" I cried, in perplexity. "What has he brought? An evil spirit? A mental disease?

"A new agent of death, Petrie! Something born in a plaguespot of Burma the home of much that is

unclean and much that is inexplicable. Heaven grant that we be in time, and are able to save Guthrie."

THE train was late, and as our cab turned out of Waterloo Station and began to ascend to the bridge, from a

hundred steeples rang out the gongs of midnight, the bell of St. Paul's raised above them all to vie with the

I looked out from the cab window across the river to where, towering above the Embankment, that place of a

thousand tragedies, the light of some of London's greatest caravanserais formed a sort of minor constellation.

From the subdued blaze that showed the public supperrooms I looked up to the hundreds of starry points

I thought how each twinkling window denoted the presence of some bird of passage, some wanderer

temporarily abiding in our midst. There, floor piled upon floor above the chattering throngs, were these less

gregarious units, each something of a mystery to his fellowguests, each in his separate cell; and each as

remote from real human companionship as if that cell were fashioned, not in the bricks of London, but in the

In one of those rooms Graham Guthrie might at that moment be sleeping, all unaware that he would awake to

the Call of Siva, to the summons of death. As we neared the Strand, Smith stopped the cab, discharging the

"One of the doctor's watchdogs may be in the foyer," he said thoughtfully, "and it might spoil everything if

we were seen to go to Guthrie's rooms. There must be a back entrance to the kitchens, and so on?"

"There is," I replied quickly. "I have seen the vans delivering there. But have we time?"

We walked up the Strand and hurried westward. Into that narrow court, with its iron posts and descending

steps, upon which opens a wellknown winecellar, we turned. Then, going parallel with the Strand, but on

the Embankment level, we ran round the back of the great hotel, and came to double doors which were open.

An arc lamp illuminated the interior and a number of men were at work among the casks, crates and packages

"I want to get to the public part of the hotel without being seen from the entrance hall," he said. "Will you

"Don't waste time!" snapped my friend, in that tone of authority which he knew so well how to assume. "It's a

Off went our guide without further demur. Skirting sculleries, kitchens, laundries and enginerooms, he led

us through those mysterious labyrinths which have no existence for the guest above, but which contain the

machinery that renders these modern khans the Aladdin's palaces they are. On a secondfloor landing we met

"If you are the hotel detective," he said, "take us without delay to Mr. Graham Guthrie."

A marked change took place in the other's demeanor on glancing at the card in his hand.

"Excuse me, sir," he said deferentially, "but, of course, I didn't know who I was speaking to. We all have

"He's been in his room for some time, sir. You will want to get there without being seen? This way. We can

"I have!" was the startling reply. "That accounts for your finding me where you did. My usual post is in the

lobby. But about eleven o'clock, when the theater people began to come in I had a hazy sort of impression

that someone or something slipped past in the crowdsomething that had no business in the hotel."

"I don't quite follow you," said Smith. "If you thought you saw something entering, you must have formed a

"That's the funny part of the business," answered the man doggedly. "I didn't! But as I stood at the top of the

stairs I could have sworn that there was something crawling up behind a party two ladies and two

"It didn't strike me as being a dog, sir. Anyway, when the party passed me, there was nothing there. Mind

you, whatever it was, it hadn't come in by the front. I have made inquiries everywhere, but without result."

"Stay right there where you can watch the stairs and the lift," he instructed; "and note everyone and

everything that passes this door. But whatever you see or hear, do nothing without my orders."

Mr. Graham Guthrie, British resident in North Bhutan, was a big, thickset mangrayhaired and florid,

with widely opened eyes of the true fighting blue, a bristling mustache and prominent shaggy brows. Nayland

"Those are my credentials, Mr. Guthrie," he said; "so no doubt you will realize that the business which brings

"There is no time for ceremony," he explained. "It is now twentyfive minutes past twelve. At halfpast an

"Mr. Smith," said the other, who, arrayed in his pajamas, was seated on the edge of the bed, "you alarm me

very greatly. I may mention that I was advised of your presence in England this morning."

"Only what I was told todaythat he is the agent of an advanced political group."

"It is opposed to his interests that you should return to Bhutan. A more gullible agent would be preferable.

Therefore, unless you implicitly obey my instructions, you will never leave England!"

Graham Guthrie breathed quickly. I was growing more used to the gloom, and I could dimly discern him, his

face turned towards Nayland Smith, whilst with his hand he clutched the bedrail. Such a visit as ours, I

"But, Mr. Smith," he said, "surely I am safe enough here! The place is full of American visitors at present,

and I have had to be content with a room right at the top; so that the only danger I apprehend is that of fire."

"There is another danger," replied Smith. "The fact that you are at the top of the building enhances that

danger. Do you recall anything of the mysterious epidemic which broke out in Rangoon in 1908the deaths

"I read of it in the Indian papers," said Guthrie uneasily. "Suicides, were they not?" "No!" snapped Smith.

"From what I recall of the cases," said Guthrie, "that seems impossible. In several instances the victims threw

themselves from the windows of locked roomsand the windows were quite inaccessible."

"Exactly," replied Smith; and in the dim light his revolver gleamed dully, as he placed it on the small table

beside the bed. "Except that your door is unlocked, the conditions tonight are identical. Silence, please, I

It was Big Ben. It struck the halfhour, leaving the stillness complete. In that room, high above the activity

which yet prevailed below, high above the supping crowds in the hotel, high above the starving crowds on the

Embankment, a curious chill of isolation swept about me. Again I realized how, in the very heart of the great

metropolis, a man may be as far from aid as in the heart of a desert. I was glad that I was not alone in that

roommarked with the deathmark of FuManchu; and I am certain that Graham Guthrie welcomed his

I may have mentioned the fact before, but on this occasion it became so peculiarly evident to me that I am

constrained to record it here I refer to the sense of impending danger which invariably preceded a visit

from FuManchu. Even had I not known that an attempt was to be made that night, I should have realized it,

as, strung to high tension, I waited in the darkness. Some invisible herald went ahead of the dreadful

Chinaman, proclaiming his coming to every nerve in one's body. It was like a breath of astral incense,

A wail, low but singularly penetrating, falling in minor cadences to a new silence, came from somewhere

I knew that we were three; that the hotel detective was within hail; that there was a telephone in the room;

that the traffic of the Embankment moved almost beneath us; but I knew, and am not ashamed to confess, that

King Fear had icy fingers about my heart. It was awfulthat tense waitingforwhat?

"It's supernatural!" he mutteredall that was Celtic in his blood recoiling from the omen. "Nothing human

Smith softly crossed the room. My heart was beating painfully. He threw open the window. Further inaction

One on either side of the open window, we stood and looked down at the moving Embankment lights, at the

glitter of the Thames, at the silhouetted buildings on the farther bank, with the Shot Tower starting above

In all my dealings with Dr. FuManchu I had had to face nothing so uncanny as this. What Burmese ghoul

That was the last straw; for I thought that some dreadful fascination was impelling my friend to hurl himself

One choking cry he gavesmothered, inarticulateand I found him slipping from my gripbeing drawn

My friend writhed in our grasp, and I saw him stretch his arm upward. The crack of his revolver came, and he

But as I fell I heard a scream above. Smith's revolver went hurtling through the air, and, hard upon it, went a

Guthrie ran and turned on the light. Nayland Smith, his eyes starting from his head, his face swollen, lay

Guthrie ran to the dressingtable and passed me an open penknife. I somehow forced the blade between the

When, later, we stood looking down upon the mutilated thing which had been brought in from where it fell,

Smith showed me a mark on the brow close beside the wound where his bullet had entered.

"The mark of Kali," he said. "The man was a phansigar a religious strangler. Since FuManchu has dacoits

in his service I might have expected that he would have Thugs. A group of these fiends would seem to have

fled into Burma; so that the mysterious epidemic in Rangoon was really an outbreak of thuggeeon slightly

improved lines! I had suspected something of the kind but, naturally, I had not looked for Thugs near

Rangoon. My unexpected resistance led the strangler to bungle the rope. You have seen how it was fastened

about my throat? That was unscientific. The true method, as practiced by the group operating in Burma, was

to throw the line about the victim's neck and jerk him from the window. A man leaning from an open window

is very nicely poised: it requires only a slight jerk to pitch him forward. No loop was used, but a running line,

which, as the victim fell, remained in the hand of the murderer. No clew! Therefore we see at once what

"You see," Guthrie continued, "no one thought of looking for a Thug in Burma! And no one thought of the

ROOF! These fellows are as active as monkeys, and where an ordinary man would infallibly break his neck,

they are entirely at home. I might have chosen my room especially for the business!"

"He slipped in late this evening," said Smith. "The hotel detective saw him, but these stranglers are as elusive

as shadows, otherwise, despite their having changed the scene of their operations, not one could have

"Yes," was the reply; "and I know of what you are thinking. The steamers of the Irrawaddy flotilla have a

corrugatediron roof over the top deck. The Thug must have been lying up there as the Colassie passed on

"Partly religious," he explained, "and partly to wake the victims! You are perhaps going to ask me how Dr.

FuManchu has obtained power over such people as phansigars? I can only reply that Dr. FuManchu has

secret knowledge of which, so far, we know absolutely nothing; but, despite all, at last I begin to score."

"I owe my life to you, Petrie," he said. "Once to your strength of arm, and once to"

"Don't speak of her, Smith," I interrupted. "Dr. FuManchu may have discovered the part she played! In

UPON the following day we were afoot again, and shortly at handgrips with the enemy. In retrospect, that

restless time offers a chaotic prospect, with no peaceful spot amid its turmoils.

All that was reposeful in nature seemed to have become an irony and a mockery to uswho knew how an

evil demigod had his sacrificial altars amid our sweetest groves. This idea ruled strongly in my mind upon

Beyond where the Thames tided slumberously seaward showed the roofs of Royal Windsor, the castle towers

showing through the autumn haze. The peace of beautiful Thamesside was about us.

This was one of the few tangible clews upon which thus far we had chanced; but at last it seemed indeed that

we were narrowing the resources of that enemy of the white race who was writing his name over England in

characters of blood. To capture Dr. FuManchu we did not hope; but at least there was every promise of

We had circled upon the map a tract of country cut by the Thames, with Windsor for its center. Within that

circle was the house from which miraculously we had escapeda house used by the most highly organized

group in the history of criminology. So much we knew. Even if we found the house, and this was likely

enough, to find it vacated by FuManchu and his mysterious servants we were prepared. But it would be a

We were working upon a methodical plan, and although our cooperators were invisible, these numbered no

fewer than twelveall of them experienced men. Thus far we had drawn blank, but the place for which

Smith and I were making now came clearly into view: an old mansion situated in extensive walled grounds.

Leaving the river behind us, we turned sharply to the right along a lane flanked by a high wall. On an open

patch of ground, as we passed, I noted a gypsy caravan. An old woman was seated on the steps, her wrinkled

I scarcely glanced at her, but pressed on, nor did I notice that my friend no longer was beside me. I was all

anxiety to come to some point from whence I might obtain a view of the house; all anxiety to know if this

was the abode of our mysterious enemythe place where he worked amid his weird company, where he bred

his deadly scorpions and his bacilli, reared his poisonous fungi, from whence he dispatched his murder

ministers. Above all, perhaps, I wondered if this would prove to be the hidingplace of the beautiful slave

girl who was such a potent factor in the Doctor's plans, but a twoedged sword which yet we hoped to turn

upon FuManchu. Even in the hands of a master, a woman's beauty is a dangerous weapon.

Nayland Smith was engaged in a furious struggle with the old gypsy woman! His long arms clasped about

her, he was roughly dragging her out into the roadway, she fighting like a wild thingsilently, fiercely.

Smith often surprised me, but at that sight, frankly, I thought that he was become bereft of reason. I ran back;

and I had almost reached the scene of this incredible contest, and Smith now was evidently hard put to it to

hold his own when a man, swarthy, with big rings in his ears, leaped from the caravan.

"After him, Petrie!" he cried. "After him. Don't let him escape. It's a dacoit!"

My brain in a confused whirl; my mind yet disposed to a belief that my friend had lost his senses, the word

I started down the road after the fleetly running man. Never once did he glance behind him, so that he

evidently had occasion to fear pursuit. The dusty road rang beneath my flying footsteps. That sense of

fantasy, which claimed me often enough in those days of our struggle with the titantic genius whose victory

meant the victory of the yellow races over the white, now had me fast in its grip again. I was an actor in one

Out over the grass and down to the river's brink ran the gypsy who was no gypsy, but one of that far more

sinister brotherhood, the dacoits. I was close upon his heels. But I was not prepared for him to leap in among

the rushes at the margin of the stream; and seeing him do this I pulled up quickly. Straight into the water he

plunged; and I saw that he held some object in his hand. He waded out; he dived; and as I gained the bank

and looked to right and left he had vanished completely. Only everwidening rings showed where he had

For directly he rose to the surface he would be visible from either bank, and with the police whistle which I

carried I could, if necessary, summon one of the men in hiding across the stream. I waited. A wildfowl

floated serenely past, untroubled by this strange invasion of his precincts. A full minute I waited. From the

Never lifting my eyes from the water, I waved my hand reassuringly. But still the dacoit did not rise. I

searched the surface in all directions as far as my eyes could reach; but no swimmer showed above it. Then it

was that I concluded he had dived too deeply, become entangled in the weeds and was drowned. With a final

glance to right and left and some feeling of awe at this sudden tragedy this grim going out of a life at

glorious noondayI turned away. Smith had the woman securely; but I had not taken five steps towards him

when a faint splash behind warned me. Instinctively I ducked. From whence that saving instinct arose I

cannot surmise, but to it I owed my life. For as I rapidly lowered my head, something hummed past me,

something that flew out over the grass bank, and fell with a jangle upon the dusty roadside. A knife!

I turned and bounded back to the river's brink. I heard a faint cry behind me, which could only have come

from the gypsy woman. Nothing disturbed the calm surface of the water. The reach was lonely of rowers. Out

by the farther bank a girl was poling a punt along, and her whiteclad figure was the only living thing that

To say that I was nonplused is to say less than the truth; I was amazed. That it was the dacoit who had shown

me this murderous attention I could not doubt. But where in Heaven's name WAS he? He could not humanly

have remained below water for so long; yet he certainly was not above, was not upon the surface, concealed

There, in the bright sunshine, a consciousness of the eerie possessed me. It was with an uncomfortable feeling

that my phantom foe might be aiming a second knife at my back that I turned away and hastened towards

Smith. My fearful expectations were not realized, and I picked up the little weapon which had so narrowly

He was standing with one arm closely clasped about the apparently exhausted woman, and her dark eyes

"Since he seemingly possesses the attributes of a fish," I replied, "I cannot pretend to say."

The gypsy woman lifted her eyes to mine and laughed. Her laughter was musical, not that of such an old hag

"He's tricked you," said Smith, an angry note in his voice. "What is that you have in your hand?"

"I know," he rapped. "I saw it. He was in the water not three yards from where you stood. You must have

"A wildfowl," snapped Smith. "If you will consult your recollections of the habits of wildfowl you will see

that this particular specimen was a RARA AVIS. It's an old trick, Petrie, but a good one, for it is used in

decoying. A dacoit's head was concealed in that wildfowl! It's useless. He has certainly made good his

"Smith," I said, somewhat crestfallen, "why are you detaining this gypsy woman?"

"Gypsy woman!" he laughed, hugging her tightly as she made an impatient movement. "Use your eyes, old

He jerked the frowsy wig from her head, and beneath was a cloud of disordered hair that shimmered in the

Into my eyes, widely opened in wonder, looked the dark eyes of the captive; and beneath the disguise I

picked out the charming features of the slave girl. There were tears on the whitened lashes, and she was

"This time," said my friend hardly, "we have fairly captured her and we will hold her."

Another call answered, and a third responded. Then followed the flatly shrill note of a police whistle, and I

noted a column of black vapor rising beyond the wall, mounting straight to heaven as the smoke of a

"Curse it!" rapped Smith. "So this time we were right. But, of course, he has had ample opportunity to

remove his effects. I knew that. The man's daring is incredible. He has given himself till the very last

"No matter. We have the other. I expect no further arrests, and the house will have been so well fired by the

Doctor's servants that nothing can save it. I fear its ashes will afford us no clew, Petrie; but we have secured a

He glanced at the queer figure which hung submissively in his arms. She looked up proudly.

"You need not hold me so tight," she said, in her soft voice. "I will come with you."

That I moved amid singular happenings, you, who have borne with me thus far, have learned, and that I

witnessed many curious scenes; but of the many such scenes in that racedrama wherein Nayland Smith and

Dr. FuManchu played the leading parts, I remember none more bizarre than the one at my rooms that

Without delay, and without taking the Scotland Yard men into our confidence, we had hurried our prisoner

back to London, for my friend's authority was supreme. A strange trio we were, and one which excited no

little comment; but the journey came to an end at last. Now we were in my unpretentious sittingroom the

room wherein Smith first had unfolded to me the story of Dr. FuManchu and of the great secret society

which sought to upset the balance of the worldto place Europe and America beneath the scepter of Cathay.

I sat with my elbows upon the writingtable, my chin in my hands; Smith restlessly paced the floor,

relighting his blackened briar a dozen times in as many minutes. In the big armchair the pseudogypsy was

curled up. A brief toilet had converted the wizened old woman's face into that of a fascinatingly pretty girl.

Wildly picturesque she looked in her ragged Romany garb. She held a cigarette in her fingers and watched us

Seemingly, with true Oriental fatalism, she was quite reconciled to her fate, and ever and anon she would

bestow upon me a glance from her beautiful eyes which few men, I say with confidence, could have sustained

unmoved. Though I could not be blind to the emotions of that passionate Eastern soul, yet I strove not to

think of them. Accomplice of an archmurderer she might be; but she was dangerously lovely.

"That man who was with you," said Smith, suddenly turning upon her, "was in Burma up till quite recently.

He murdered a fisherman thirty miles above Prome only a mouth before I left. The D.S.P. had placed a

"Suppose I handed you over to the police?" suggested Smith. But he spoke without conviction, for in the

"You do not belong to the Far East," my friend said abruptly. "You may have Eastern blood in your veins, but

And as the door closed softly behind him I knew what was expected of me; but, honestly, I shirked my

responsibility. What attitude should I adopt? How should I go about my delicate task? In a quandary, I stood

"You do not think we would harm you?" I began awkwardly. "No harm shall come to you. Why will you not

"Of what avail has your protection been to some of those others," she said; "those others whom HE has

Alas! it had been of none, and I knew it well. I thought I grasped the drift of her words.

"When I was seized and sold for a slave," she answered slowly, "my sister was taken, too, and my brothera

child." She spoke the word with a tender intonation, and her slight accent rendered it the more soft. "My

sister died in the desert. My brother lived. Better, far better, that he had died, too."

"Of what are you speaking?" I questioned. "You speak of slaveraids, of the desert. Where did these things

"Does it matter?" she questioned in turn. "Of what country am I? A slave has no country, no name."

"You may call me Karamaneh," she said. "As Karamaneh I was sold to Dr. FuManchu, and my brother also

"But he has spent a lot of money to educate me. My brother is all that is left to me in the world to love, and he

is in the power of Dr. FuManchu. You understand? It is upon him the blow will fall. You ask me to fight

against FuManchu. You talk of protection. Did your protection save Sir Crichton Davey?"

"You understand now why I cannot disobey my master's orderswhy, if I would, I dare not betray him."

I walked to the window and looked out. How could I answer her arguments? What could I say? I heard the

rustle of her ragged skirts, and she who called herself Karamaneh stood beside me. She laid her hand upon

"He cannot revenge himself upon your brother when you are in no way to blame," I said angrily. "We

She drew her breath sharply, clutching at my arm, and in her eyes I could read that she was forcing her mind

"Listen." She was speaking rapidly, nervously. "If I help you to take Dr. FuManchutell you where he is to

be found ALONE will you promise me, solemnly promise me, that you will immediately go to the place

where I shall guide you and release my brother; that you will let us both go free?"

I hesitated. Smith often had accused me of weakness where this girl was concerned. What now was my plain

duty? That she would utterly decline to speak under any circumstances unless it suited her to do so I felt

assured. If she spoke the truth, in her proposed bargain there was no personal element; her conduct I now

viewed in a new light. Humanity, I thought, dictated that I accept her proposal; policy also.

"I agree," I said, and looked into her eyes, which were aflame now with emotion, an excitement perhaps of

A COOL breeze met us, blowing from the lower reaches of the Thames. Far behind us twinkled the dim

lights of Low's Cottages, the last regular habitations abutting upon the marshes. Between us and the cottages

stretched halfamile of lush land through which at this season there were, however, numerous dry paths.

Before us the flats again, a dull, monotonous expanse beneath the moon, with the promise of the cool breeze

that the river flowed round the bend ahead. It was very quiet. Only the sound of our footsteps, as Nayland

Smith and I tramped steadily towards our goal, broke the stillness of that lonely place.

Not once but many times, within the last twenty minutes, I had thought that we were illadvised to adventure

alone upon the capture of the formidable Chinese doctor; but we were following out our compact with

Karamaneh; and one of her stipulations had been that the police must not be acquainted with her share in the

"That's the light, Petrie," said Smith. "If we keep that straight before us, according to our information we shall

I grasped the revolver in my pocket, and the presence of the little weapon was curiously reassuring. I have

endeavored, perhaps in extenuation of my own fears, to explain how about Dr. FuManchu there rested an

atmosphere of horror, peculiar, unique. He was not as other men. The dread that he inspired in all with whom

he came in contact, the terrors which he controlled and hurled at whomsoever cumbered his path, rendered

him an object supremely sinister. I despair of conveying to those who may read this account any but the

Smith was peering back over the marshes in his oddly alert way. He turned to me, and his tanned face wore a

Ten minutes' steady tramping brought us within sight of the Thames. Smith and I both had noticed how

FuManchu's activities centered always about the London river. Undoubtedly it was his highway, his line of

communication, along which he moved his mysterious forces. The opium den off Shadwell Highway, the

mansion upstream, at that hour a smoldering shell; now the hulk lying off the marshes. Always he made his

headquarters upon the river. It was significant; and even if tonight's expedition should fail, this was a clew

"Bear to the right," directed Smith. "We must reconnoiter before making our attack."

We took a path that led directly to the river bank. Before us lay the gray expanse of water, and out upon it

moved the busy shipping of the great mercantile city. But this life of the river seemed widely removed from

us. The lonely spot where we stood had no kinship with human activity. Its dreariness illuminated by the

brilliant moon, it looked indeed a fit setting for an act in such a drama as that wherein we played our parts.

When I had lain in the East End opium den, when upon such another night as this I had looked out upon a

peaceful Norfolk countryside, the same knowledge of aloofness, of utter detachment from the world of living

The bank upon which we stood dipped in mud slopes to the level of the running tide. Seaward it rose higher,

and by a narrow inlet for we perceived that we were upon a kind of promontory a rough pier showed.

Beneath it was a shadowy shape in the patch of gloom which the moon threw far out upon the softly eddying

Acting upon our prearranged plan, we turned and walked up on to the staging above the hulk. A wooden

ladder led out and down to the deck below, and was loosely lashed to a ring on the pier. With every motion of

the tidal waters the ladder rose and fell, its rings creaking harshly, against the crazy railing.

Without further words my friend climbed around on to the ladder and commenced to descend. I waited until

his head disappeared below the level, and, clumsily enough, prepared to follow him.

The hulk at that moment giving an unusually heavy heave, I stumbled, and for one breathless moment looked

down upon the glittering surface streaking the darkness beneath me. My foot had slipped, and but that I had a

firm grip upon the top rung, that instant, most probably, had marked the end of my share in the fight with

FuManchu. As it was I had a narrow escape. I felt something slip from my hip pocket, but the weird

creaking of the ladder, the groans of the laboring hulk, and the lapping of the waves about the staging

Rather, whitefaced, I think, I joined Smith on the deck. He had witnessed my accident, but

At the bottom of the ladder we came fully into the light streaming out from the singular apartments at the

entrance to which we found ourselves. It was fitted up as a laboratory. A glimpse I had of shelves loaded with

jars and bottles, of a table strewn with scientific paraphernalia, with retorts, with tubes of extraordinary

shapes, holding living organisms, and with instrumentssome of them of a form unknown to my experience.

I saw too that books, papers and rolls of parchment littered the bare wooden floor. Then Smith's voice rose

The picture that he presented at that moment is one which persistently clings in my memory. In his long,

yellow robe, his masklike, intellectual face bent forward amongst the riot of singular objects upon the table,

his great, high brow gleaming in the light of the shaded lamp above him, and with the abnormal eyes, filmed

and green, raised to us, he seemed a figure from the realms of delirium. But, most amazing circumstance of

all, he and his surroundings tallied, almost identically, with the dreampicture which had come to me as I lay

Some of the large jars about the place held anatomy specimens. A faint smell of opium hung in the air, and

playing with the tassel of one of the cushions upon which, as upon a divan, FuManchu was seated, leaped

That was an electric moment. I was prepared for anything for anything except for what really happened.

The doctor's wonderful, evil face betrayed no hint of emotion. The lids flickered over the filmed eyes, and

"Put up your hands!" rapped Smith, "and attempt no tricks." His voice quivered with excitement. "The game's

I moved forward to Smith's side, and was about to pass him in the narrow doorway. The hulk moved beneath

our feet like a living thing groaning, creakingand the water lapped about the rotten woodwork with a sound

FuManchu slowly raised his hands, and a smile dawned upon the impassive featuresa smile that had no

mirth in it, only menace, revealing as it did his even, discolored teeth, but leaving the filmed eyes inanimate,

Smith's keen gray eyes never for a moment quitted the speaker. The gleaming barrel moved not a

hair'sbreadth. But I glanced quickly over my shoulderand stifled a cry of pure horror.

A wicked, pockmarked face, with wolfish fangs bared, and jaundiced eyes squinting obliquely into mine,

was within two inches of me. A lean, brown hand and arm, the great thews standing up like cords, held a

crescentshaped knife a fraction of an inch above my jugular vein. A slight movement must have dispatched

me; a sweep of the fearful weapon, I doubt not, would have severed my head from my body.

"Smith!" I whispered hoarsely, "don't look around. For God's sake keep him covered. But a dacoit has his

Then, for the first time, Smith's hand trembled. But his glance never wavered from the malignant,

emotionless countenance of Dr. FuManchu. He clenched his teeth hard, so that the muscles stood out

I suppose that silence which followed my awful discovery prevailed but a few seconds. To me those seconds

There, below, in that groaning hulk, I knew more of icy terror than any of our meetings with the

murdergroup had brought to me before; and through my brain throbbed a thought: the girl had betrayed us!

Yet no trace of fear had broken through the impassive yellow mask when we had entered.

"But my faithful servant followed you," he added. "I thank him. The honors, Mr. Smith, are mine, I think?"

Smith made no reply. I divined that he was thinking furiously. FuManchu moved his hand to caress the

marmoset, which had leaped playfully upon his shoulder, and crouched there gibing at us in a whistling

"So?" The Doctor's filmed eyes cleared for a moment. "And today you compelled me to burn a house, and

you have captured one of my people, too. I congratulate you. She would not betray me though lashed with

The great gleaming knife was so near to my neck that a sheet of notepaper could scarcely have been slipped

between blade and vein, I think; but my heart throbbed even more wildly when I heard those words.

"An impasse," said FuManchu. "I have a proposal to make. I assume that you would not accept my word for

"Therefore," pursued the Chinaman, and the occasional guttural alone marred his perfect English, "I must

accept yours. Of your resources outside this cabin I know nothing. You, I take it, know as little of mine. My

Burmese friend and Doctor Petrie will lead the way, then; you and I will follow. We will strike out across the

marsh for, say, three hundred yards. You will then place your pistol on the ground, pledging me your word to

leave it there. I shall further require your assurance that you will make no attempt upon me until I have

retraced my steps. I and my good servant will withdraw, leaving you, at the expiration of the specified period,

"The dacoit must leave his knife also," he stipulated. FuManchu smiled his evil smile again.

A guttural word of command from FuManchu, and we left the cabin, with its evil odors, its mortuary

specimens, and its strange instruments, and in the order arranged mounted to the deck.

"It will be awkward on the ladder," said FuManchu. "Dr. Petrie, I will accept your word to adhere to the

We mounted the rising and dipping ladder, all reached the pier, and strode out across the flats, the Chinaman

always under close cover of Smith's revolver. Round about our feet, now leaping ahead, now gamboling

back, came and went the marmoset. The dacoit, dressed solely in a dark loincloth, walked beside me,

carrying his huge knife, and sometimes glancing at me with his bloodlustful eyes. Never before, I venture to

This also I did. And never have I experienced a similar sense of revulsion from any human being. I

"I curse myself for an honorable fool," he said. "No one could dispute my right to shoot you dead where you

Knowing him as I did, I could tell from the suppressed passion in Smith's voice that only by his unhesitating

acceptance of my friend's word, and implicit faith in his keeping it, had Dr. FuManchu escaped just

retribution at that moment. Fiend though he was, I admired his courage; for all this he, too, must have known.

The Doctor turned, and with the dacoit walked back. Nayland Smith's next move filled me with surprise. For

just as, silently, I was thanking God for my escape, my friend began shedding his coat, collar and waistcoat.

"Pocket your valuables, and do the same," he muttered hoarsely. "We have a poor chances but we are both

We live in a peaceful age, wherein it falls to the lot of few men to owe their survival to their fleetness of foot.

I have said that the hulk lay off a sort of promontory. East and west, then, we had nothing to hope for. To the

south was FuManchu; and even as, stripped of our heavier garments, we started to run northward, the weird

"No," he rapped, through clenched teeth. "A servant of the Crown in the East makes his motto: `Keep your

word, though it break your neck!' I don't think we need fear it being used against us. FuManchu avoids

So back we ran, over the course by which, earlier, we had come. It was, roughly, a mile to the first

buildinga deserted cottage and another quarter of a mile to any that was occupied.

Our chance of meeting a living soul, other than FuManchu's dacoits, was practically nil.

At first we ran easily, for it was the second halfmile that would decide our fate. The professional murderers

who pursued us ran like panthers, I knew; and I dare not allow my mind to dwell upon those yellow figures

Should I, too, look back? Yes. It was impossible to resist the horrid fascination.

And never while I live shall I forget what I saw. Two of the pursuing dacoits had outdistanced their fellow (or

More like dreadful animals they looked than human beings, running bent forward, with their faces curiously

uptilted. The brilliant moonlight gleamed upon bared teeth, as I could see, even at that distance, even in that

"As hard as you can go now," panted Smith. "We must make an attempt to break into the empty cottage. Only

I had never in my younger days been a notable runner; for Smith I cannot speak. But I am confident that the

next halfmile was done in time that would not have disgraced a crack man. Not once again did either of us

look back. Yard upon yard we raced forward together. My heart seemed to be bursting. My leg muscles

throbbed with pain. At last, with the empty cottage in sight, it came to that pass with me when another three

But I recovered myself. Bare feet pattered close upon our heels, and panting breaths told how even

As through a red mist I had seen a dark shape detach itself from the shadows of the cottage, and merge into

them again. It could only be another dacoit; but Smith, not heeding, or not hearing, my faintly whispered

It burst open before him with a resounding boom, and he pitched forward into the interior darkness. Flat upon

the floor he lay, for as, with a last effort, I gained the threshold and dragged myself within, I almost fell over

Madly I snatched at the door. His foot held it open. I kicked the foot away, and banged the door to. As I

turned, the leading dacoit, his eyes starting from their sockets, his face the face of a demon leaped wildly

That Smith had burst the latch I felt assured, but by some divine accident my weak hands found the bolt.

With the last ounce of strength spared to me I thrust it home in the rusty socket as a full six inches of

A terrific blow shattered every pane of glass in the solitary window, and one of the grinning animal faces

"Sorry, old man," whispered Smith, and his voice was barely audible. Weakly he grasped my hand. "My

From the corner of the room where the black shadows lay flicked a long tongue of flame. Muffled, staccato,

Again the pistol sent its message into the night, and again came the reply to tell how well and truly that

message had been delivered. In the stillness, intense by sharp contrast, the sound of bare soles pattering upon

the path outside stole to me. Two runners, I thought there were, so that four dacoits must have been upon our

trail. The room was full of pungent smoke. I staggered to my feet as the gray figure with the revolver turned

towards me. Something familiar there was in that long, gray garment, and now I perceived why I had thought

And Smith, with difficulty, supporting himself upright, and holding fast to the ledge beside the door,

The girl, trembling now, placed her hands upon my shoulders with that quaint, pathetic gesture peculiarly her

"I followed you," she said. "Did you not know I should follow you? But I had to hide because of another who

was following also. I had but just reached this place when I saw you running towards me."

"This is your pistol," she said naively. "I found it in your bag. Will you please take it!"

Strangely sick at heart for a man who has just had a miraculous escape from death, I opened the door.

Hideous under the pale rays lay the two dead men, their glazed eyes upcast to the peace of the blue heavens.

Karamaneh had shot to kill, for both had bullets in their brains. If God ever planned a more complex nature

than hersa nature more tumultuous with conflicting passions, I cannot conceive of it. Yet her beauty was of

the sweetest; and in some respects she had the heart of a childthis girl who could shoot so straight.

It was a singular situation. My very soul rebelled against it. But what could we do?

We moved away. All was very still now, and the lights glimmered faintly ahead. Not a wisp of cloud brushed

TO pursue further the adventure on the marshes would be a task at once useless and thankless. In its actual

and in its dramatic significance it concluded with our parting from Karamaneh. And in that parting I learned

There was a world, I learned, upon the confines of which I stood, a world whose very existence hitherto had

been unsuspected. Not the least of the mysteries which peeped from the darkness was the mystery of the heart

of Karamaneh. I sought to forget her. I sought to remember her. Indeed, in the latter task I found one more

congenial, yet, in the direction and extent of the ideas which it engendered, one that led me to a precipice.

East and West may not intermingle. As a student of worldpolicies, as a physician, I admitted, could not

deny, that truth. Again, if Karamaneh were to be credited, she had come to FuManchu a slave; had fallen

into the hands of the raiders; had crossed the desert with the slavedrivers; had known the house of the

slavedealer. Could it be? With the fading of the crescent of Islam I had thought such things to have passed.

At the mere thought of a girl so deliciously beautiful in the brutal power of slavers, I found myself grinding

Then, at such times, I would find myself discrediting her story. Again, I would find myself wondering,

vaguely, why such problems persistently haunted my mind. But, always, my heart had an answer. And I was

a medical man, who sought to build up a family practice! who, in short, a very little time ago, had thought

himself past the hot follies of youth and entered upon that staid phase of life wherein the daily problems of

the medical profession hold absolute sway and such seductive follies as dark eyes and red lips find no

But it is foreign from the purpose of this plain record to enlist sympathy for the recorder. The topic upon

which, here, I have ventured to touch was one fascinating enough to me; I cannot hope that it holds equal

charm for any other. Let us return to that which it is my duty to narrate and let us forget my brief digression.

It is a fact, singular, but true, that few Londoners know London. Under the guidance of my friend, Nayland

Smith, I had learned, since his return from Burma, how there are haunts in the very heart of the metropolis

whose existence is unsuspected by all but the few; places unknown even to the ubiquitous copyhunting

Into a quiet thoroughfare not two minutes' walk from the pulsing life of Leicester Square, Smith led the way.

Before a door sandwiched in between two dingy shopfronts he paused and turned to me.

A cab had dropped us at the corner. We both wore dark suits and fez caps with black silk tassels. My

complexion had been artificially reduced to a shade resembling the deep tan of my friend's. He rang the bell

Smith uttered something in voluble Arabic. As a linguist his attainments were a constant source of surprise.

The jargons of the East, Far and Near, he spoke as his mother tongue. The woman immediately displayed the

utmost servility, ushering us into an illlighted passage, with every evidence of profound respect. Following

this passage, and passing an inner door, from beyond whence proceeded bursts of discordant music, we

entered a little room bare of furniture, with coarse matting for mural decorations, and a patternless red carpet

The negress left us, and close upon her departure entered a very aged man with a long patriarchal beard, who

greeted my friend with dignified courtesy. Following a brief conversation, the aged Arabfor such he

appeared to be drew aside a strip of matting, revealing a dark recess. Placing his finger upon his lips, he

We did so, and the mat was dropped behind us. The sounds of crude music were now much plainer, and as

Beyond lay a fairly large apartment, having divans or low seats around three of its walls. These divans were

occupied by a motley company of Turks, Egyptians, Greeks, and others; and I noted two Chinese. Most of

them smoked cigarettes, and some were drinking. A girl was performing a sinuous dance upon the square

carpet occupying the center of the floor, accompanied by a young negro woman upon a guitar and by several

members of the assembly who clapped their hands to the music or hummed a low, monotonous melody.

Shortly after our entrance into the passage the dance terminated, and the dancer fled through a curtained door

"It is a sort of combined Wekaleh and place of entertainment for a certain class of Oriental residents in, or

visiting, London," Smith whispered. "The old gentleman who has just left us is the proprietor or host. I have

"It is a recognized meetingplace," said Smith in my ear. "It is almost a certainty that some of the

Curiously I surveyed all these faces which were visible from the spyhole. My eyes rested particularly upon

Smith was craning his neck so as to command a sight of the doorway. He obstructed my view, and only by

his tense attitude and some subtle wave of excitement which he communicated to me did I know that a new

arrival was entering. The hum of conversation died away, and in the ensuing silence I heard the rustle of

draperies. The newcomer was a woman, then. Fearful of making any noise I yet managed to get my eyes to

A woman in an elegant, flamecolored opera cloak was crossing the floor and coming in the direction of the

spot where we were concealed. She wore a soft silk scarf about her head, a fold partly draped across her face.

A momentary view I had of herand wildly incongruous she looked in that placeand she had disappeared

from sight, having approached someone invisible who sat upon the divan immediately beneath our point of

From the way in which the company gazed towards her, I divined that she was no habitue of the place, but

that her presence there was as greatly surprising to those in the room as it was to me.

Whom could she be, this elegant lady who visited such a haunt who, it would seem, was so anxious to

disguise her identity, but who was dressed for a society function rather than for a midnight expedition of so

I began a whispered question, but Smith tugged at my arm to silence me. His excitement was intense. Had his

A faint but most peculiar perfume stole to my nostrils, a perfume which seemed to contain the very soul of

At last my friend's vigilance had been rewarded. Eagerly I bent forward. Smith literally quivered in

anticipation of a discovery. Again the strange perfume was wafted to our hidingplace; and, glancing neither

to right nor left, I saw Karamanehfor that it was she I no longer doubted recross the room and disappear.

He pulled the mat aside and stepped out into the anteroom. It was empty. Down the passage he led, and we

were almost come to the door of the big room when it was thrown open and a man came rapidly out, opened

I can swear that we were not four seconds behind him, but when we gained the street it was empty. Our

quarry had disappeared as if by magic. A big car was just turning the corner towards Leicester Square.

"That is the girl," rapped Smith; "but where in Heaven's name is the man to whom she brought the message? I

would give a hundred pounds to know what business is afoot. To think that we have had such an opportunity

Angry and nonplused he stood at the corner, looking in the direction of the crowded thoroughfare into which

the car had been driven, tugging at the lobe of his ear, as was his habit in such moments of perplexity, and

sharply clicking his teeth together. I, too, was very thoughtful. Clews were few enough in those days of our

war with that giant antagonist. The mere thought that our trifling error of judgment tonight in tarrying a

moment too long might mean the victory of FuManchu, might mean the turning of the balance which a wise

To Smith and me, who knew something of the secret influences at work to overthrow the Indian Empire, to

place, it might be, the whole of Europe and America beneath an Eastern rule, it seemed that a great yellow

hand was stretched out over London. Doctor FuManchu was a menace to the civilized world. Yet his very

"Into what dark scheme have we had a glimpse?" said Smith. "What State secret is to be filched? What

faithful servant of the British Raj to be spirited away? Upon whom now has FuManchu set his death seal?"

"Karamaneh on this occasion may not have been acting as an emissary of the Doctor's."

"I feel assured that she was, Petrie. Of the many whom this yellow cloud may at any moment envelop, to

which one did her message refer? The man's instructions were urgent. Witness his hasty departure. Curse it!"

He dashed his right clenched fist into the palm of his left hand. "I never had a glimpse of his face, first to last.

To think of the hours I have spent in that place, in anticipation of just such a meetingonly to bungle the

opportunity when it arose!" Scarce heeding what course we followed, we had come now to Piccadilly Circus,

and had walked out into the heart of the night's traffic. I just dragged Smith aside in time to save him from the

offfront wheel of a big Mercedes. Then the traffic was blocked, and we found ourselves dangerously penned

Somehow we extricated ourselves, jeered at by taxidrivers, who naturally took us for two simple Oriental

visitors, and just before that impassable barrier the arm of a London policeman was lowered and the stream

The cabs and cars about us were actually beginning to move again, and there was nothing for it but a hasty

retreat to the curb. I could not pause to glance behind, but instinctively I knew that someonesomeone who

Smith had not noticed the perfume worn by the unseen occupant of the car, had not detected the whispered

words. But I had no reason to doubt my senses, and I knew beyond question that FuManchu's lovely slave,

Karamaneh, had been within a yard of us, had recognized us, and had uttered those words for our guidance.

On regaining my rooms, we devoted a whole hour to considering what "ANDAMANSECOND" could

"Hang it all!" cried Smith, "it might mean anything the result of a race, for instance."

He burst into one of his rare laughs, and began to stuff broadcut mixture into his briar. I could see that he had

"I can think of no oneno one of notein London at present upon whom it is likely that FuManchu would

We began methodically to go through the long list of names which we had compiled and to review our

elaborate notes. When, at last, I turned in, the night had given place to a new day. But sleep evaded me, and

"I knew as well as if I'd seen it with my own eyes that some black business was afoot last night," he said.

"And it was. Within pistolshot of us! Someone has got at Frank Norris West. Inspector Weymouth has just

"Norris West!" I cried, "the American aviatorand inventor" "Of the West aerotorpedoyes. He's been

Those words operated electrically. I do not know how long I was in dressing, how long a time elapsed ere the

cab for which Smith had 'phoned arrived, how many precious minutes were lost upon the journey; but, in a

nervous whirl, these things slipped into the past, like the telegraph poles seen from the window of an express,

Mr. Norris West, whose lean, stoic face had latterly figured so often in the daily press, lay upon the floor in

the little entrance hall of his chambers, flat upon his back, with the telephone receiver in his hand.

The outer door had been forced by the police. They had had to remove a piece of the paneling to get at the

bolt. A medical man was leaning over the recumbent figure in the striped pajama suit, and

"He has been heavily drugged," said the Doctor, sniffing at West's lips, "but I cannot say what drug has been

used. It isn't chloroform or anything of that nature. He can safely be left to sleep it off, I think."

"It's most extraordinary," said Weymouth. "He rang up the Yard about an hour ago and said his chambers had

been invaded by Chinamen. Then the man at the 'phone plainly heard him fall. When we got here his front

door was bolted, as you've seen, and the windows are three floors up. Nothing is disturbed."

"I take it they are in the safe in his bedroom," replied the detective, "and that is locked all right. I think he

must have taken an overdose of something and had illusions. But in case there was anything in what he

mumbled (you could hardly understand him) I thought it as well to send for you."

"Quite right," said Smith rapidly. His eyes shone like steel. "Lay him on the bed, Inspector."

Save that the bed was disordered, showing that West had been sleeping in it, there were no evidences of the

extraordinary invasion mentioned by the drugged man. It was a small room the chambers were of that kind

which are let furnishedand very neat. A safe with a combination lock stood in a corner. The window was

open about a foot at the top. Smith tried the safe and found it fast. He stood for a moment clicking his teeth

together, by which I knew him to be perplexed. He walked over to the window and threw it up. We both

"You see," came Weymouth's voice, "it is altogether too far from the court below for our cunning Chinese

friends to have fixed a ladder with one of their bamboo rod arrangements. And, even if they could get up

there, it's too far down from the rooftwo more stories for them to have fixed it from there."

Smith nodded thoughtfully, at the same time trying the strength of an iron bar which ran from side to side of

the windowsill. Suddenly he stooped, with a sharp exclamation. Bending over his shoulder I saw what it

Clearly imprinted upon the dustcoated gray stone of the sill was a confused series of markstracks call

"What is it, Petrie?" he said amazedly. "Some kind of bird has been here, and recently." Inspector Weymouth

He began restlessly pacing about the room, sometimes stopping before the locked safe and frequently

Suddenly he walked out and briefly examined the other apartments, only to return again to the bedroom.

Smith turned to me impatiently. The doctor summoned by the police had gone. "Is there no means of arousing

"Doubtless," I replied, "he could be revived if one but knew what drug he had taken."

My friend began his restless pacing again, and suddenly pounced upon a little phial of tabloids which had

been hidden behind some books on a shelf near the bed. He uttered a triumphant exclamation.

"See what we have here, Petrie!" he directed, handing the phial to me. "It bears no label."

"We might try," I said, and scribbled a formula upon a leaf of my notebook. I asked Weymouth to send the

man who accompanied him to call up the nearest chemist and procure the antidote.

During the man's absence Smith stood contemplating the unconscious inventor, a peculiar expression upon

"ANDAMANSECOND," he muttered. "Shall we find the key to the riddle here, I wonder?"

Inspector Weymouth, who had concluded, I think, that the mysterious telephone call was due to mental

aberration on the part of Norris West, was gnawing at his mustache impatiently when his assistant returned. I

administered the powerful restorative, and although, as later transpired, chloral was not responsible for West's

Norris West struggled into a sitting position, and looked about him with haggard eyes.

"It is all right," I said, supporting him. "I'm a doctor. You have been unwell."

"It's all right," said Inspector Weymouth. "The safe is locked unless someone else knows the combination,

"No one else knows it," said West, and staggered unsteadily to the safe. Clearly his mind was in a dazed

condition, but, setting his jaw with a curious expression of grim determination, he collected his thoughts and

In some way the knowledge came to me that the curtain was about to rise on a new and surprising act in the

"This is absolutely incredible!" he said. "There's only one door to your chambers. We found it bolted from the

"Yes," groaned West, pressing his hand to his forehead. "I bolted it myself at eleven o'clock, when I came

"No human being could climb up or down to your windows. The plans of the aerotorpedo were inside a

"I put them there myself," said West, "on returning from the War Office, and I had occasion to consult them

after I had come in and bolted the door. I returned them to the safe and locked it. That it was still locked you

"But the plans have gone," said Weymouth. "It's magic! How was it done? What happened last night, sir?

Smith during this colloquy was pacing rapidly up and down the room. He turned abruptly to the aviator.

"Every fact you can remember, Mr. West, please," he said tersely; "and be as brief as you possibly can."

"I came in, as I said," explained West "about eleven o'clock and having made some notes relating to an

interview arranged for this morning, I locked the plans in the safe and turned in."

"There was not," replied West. "I looked. I invariably do. Almost immediately, I went to sleep."

"You're cute, Doctor," he said. "I took two. It's a bad habit, but I can't sleep without. They are specially made

"How long sleep lasted, when it became filled with uncanny dreams, and when those dreams merged into

reality, I do not know shall never know, I suppose. But out of the dreamless void a face came to

"I was in that curious condition wherein one knows that one is dreaming and seeks to awakento escape.

But a nightmarelike oppression held me. So I must lie and gaze into the seared yellow face that hung over

me, for it would drop so close that I could trace the cicatrized scar running from the left ear to the corner of

the mouth, and drawing up the lip like the lip of a snarling cur. I could look into the malignant, jaundiced

eyes; I could hear the dim whispering of the distorted mouth whispering that seemed to counsel

somethingsomething evil. That whispering intimacy was indescribably repulsive. Then the wicked yellow

face would be withdrawn, and would recede until it became as a pin's head in the darkness far above me

"Somehow I got upon my feet, or dreamed I didGod knows where dreaming ended and reality began.

Gentlemen maybe you'll conclude I went mad last night, but as I stood holding on to the bedrail I heard the

blood throbbing through my arteries with a noise like a screwpropeller. I started laughing. The laughter

issued from my lips with a shrill whistling sound that pierced me with physical pain and seemed to wake the

echoes of the whole block. I thought myself I was going mad, and I tried to command my will to break the

"Then the walls of my bedroom started to recede, till at last I stood holding on to a bed which had shrunk to

the size of a doll's cot, in the middle of a room like Trafalgar Square! That window yonder was such a long

way off I could scarcely see it, but I could just defect a Chinamanthe owner of the evil yellow

facecreeping through it. He was followed by another, who was enormously tallso tall that, as they came

towards me (and it seemed to take them something like halfanhour to cross this incredible apartment in my

"I looked up to his facehis wicked, hairless face. Mr. Smith, whatever age I live to, I'll never forget that

face I saw last nightor did I see it? God knows! The pointed chin, the great dome of a forehead, and the

He shook like a sick man, and I glanced at Smith significantly. Inspector Weymouth was stroking his

mustache, and his mingled expression of incredulity and curiosity was singular to behold.

"The pumping of my blood," continued West, "seemed to be bursting my body; the room kept expanding and

contracting. One time the ceiling would be pressing down on my head, and the Chinamensometimes I

thought there were two of them, sometimes twentybecame dwarfs; the next instant it shot up like the roof

"My whisper went sweeping in windy echoes about the walls, and was lost in the shadowy distances up under

"`You are dreamingyes.' It was the Chinaman with the green eyes who was addressing me, and the words

that he uttered appeared to occupy an immeasurable time in the utterance. 'But at will I can render the

subjective objective.' I don't think I can have dreamed those singular words, gentlemen. "And then he fixed

the green eyes upon methe blazing green eyes. I made no attempt to move. They seemed to be draining me

of something vitalbleeding me of every drop of mental power. The whole nightmare room grew green, and

"I can see what you think. And even in my delirium if it was deliriumI thought the same. Now comes

the climax of my experiencemy visionI don't know what to call it. I SAW some WORDS issuing from

"This will be outside your experience, Inspector, I know," he said, "but Mr. Norris West's statement does not

Weymouth stared incredulously, but a dawning perception of the truth was come to me, too.

"How I SAW a SOUND I just won't attempt to explain; I simply tell you I saw it. Somehow I knew I had

"Just before the blank came a name flashed before my eyes. It was `Bayard Taylor.'"

"I understand!" I cried. "I understand! Another name has just occurred to me, Mr. Westthat of the

"You have solved the mystery," said Smith. "It was natural Mr. West should have thought of the American

traveler, Bayard Taylor, though. Moreau's book is purely scientific. He has probably never read it."

"I fought with the stupor that was overcoming me," continued West, "striving to associate that vaguely

familiar name with the fantastic things through which I moved. It seemed to me that the room was empty

again. I made for the hall, for the telephone. I could scarcely drag my feet along. It seemed to take me

halfanhour to get there. I remember calling up Scotland Yard, and I remember no more."

In some respects I was nonplused; but, frankly, I think Inspector Weymouth considered West insane. Smith,

"ANDAMANSECOND" he said suddenly. "Weymouth, when is the first train to Tilbury?"

"Too late!" rapped my friend. "Jump in a taxi and pick up two good men to leave for China at once! Then go

and charter a special to Tilbury to leave in twentyfive minutes. Order another cab to wait outside for me."

Weymouth was palpably amazed, but Smith's tone was imperative. The Inspector departed hastily.

"Now that you can think clearly, Mr. West," he said, "of what does your experience remind you? The errors

of perception regarding time; the idea of SEEING A SOUND; the illusion that the room alternately increased

and diminished in size; your fit of laughter, and the recollection of the name Bayard Taylor. Since evidently

you are familiar with that author's work 'The Land of the Saracen,' is it not?these symptoms of the

"Bayard Taylor's book," he said dully. "Yes!. . .I know of what my brain sought to remind meTaylor's

account of his experience under hashish. Mr. Smith, someone doped me with hashish!"

"Cannabis indica," I said"Indian hemp. That is what you were drugged with. I have no doubt that now you

experience a feeling of nausea and intense thirst, with aching in the muscles, particularly the deltoid. I think

Smith stopped his perambulations immediately in front of West, looking into his dulled eyes.

"Someone visited your chambers last night," he said slowly, "and for your chloral tabloids substituted some

containing hashish, or perhaps not pure hashish. FuManchu is a profound chemist."

"Exactly," said Smith, looking at him keenly; "someone who was here yesterday. Have you any idea whom it

West hesitated. "I had a visitor in the afternoon," he said, seemingly speaking the words unwillingly, "but"

"You're quite right," he admitted. "I don't know how you arrived at the conclusion, but a lady whose

"I don't know what you mean in the least, but she came here knowing this to be my present addressto

ask me to protect her from a mysterious man who had followed her right from Charing Cross. She said he

was down in the lobby, and naturally, I asked her to wait here whilst I went and sent him about his business."

"I am overold," he said, "to be guyed by a woman. You spoke just now of someone called FuManchu. Is

that the crook I'm indebted to for the loss of my plans? I've had attempts made by agents of two European

"This Chinaman," Smith assured him, "is the greatest novelty of his age. You recognize your symptoms now

"Mr. West's statement," I said, "ran closely parallel with portions of Moreau's book on `Hashish

Hallucinations.' Only FuManchu, I think, would have thought of employing Indian hemp. I doubt, though, if

"And drugged Mr. West," interrupted Smith, "sufficiently to enable FuManchu to enter unobserved."

"Whilst it produced symptoms which rendered him an easy subject for the Doctor's influence. It is difficult in

this case to separate hallucination from reality, but I think, Mr. West, that FuManchu must have exercised

an hypnotic influence upon your drugged brain. We have evidence that he dragged from you the secret of the

"God knows we have!" said West. "But who is this FuManchu, and how how in the name of wonder did

Smith pulled out his watch. "That," he said rapidly, "I cannot delay to explain if I'm to intercept the man who

has the plans. Come along, Petrie; we must be at Tilbury within the hour. There is just a bare chance."

IT was with my mind in a condition of unique perplexity that I hurried with Nayland Smith into the cab

which waited and dashed off through the streets in which the busy life of London just stirred into being. I

suppose I need not say that I could penetrate no farther into this, FuManchu's latest plot, than the drugging

of Norris West with hashish? Of his having been so drugged with Indian hempthat is, converted

temporarily into a maniacwould have been evident to any medical man who had heard his statement and

noted the distressing aftereffects which conclusively pointed to Indian hemp poisoning. Knowing something

of the Chinese doctor's powers, I could understand that he might have extracted from West the secret of the

combination by sheer force of will whilst the American was under the influence of the drug. But I could not

understand how FuManchu had gained access to locked chambers on the third story of a building.

"Smith," I said, "those bird tracks on the windowsill they furnish the key to a mystery which is puzzling

"They do," said Smith, glancing impatiently at his watch. "Consult your memories of Dr. FuManchu's

I reviewed in my mind the creatures gruesome and terrible which surrounded the Chinamanthe scorpions,

the bacteria, the noxious things which were the weapons wherewith he visited death upon whomsoever

opposed the establishment of a potential Yellow Empire. But no one of them could account for the imprints

"You puzzle me, Smith," I confessed. "There is much in this extraordinary case that puzzles me. I can think

"They were the footprints of a small ape," my friend continued. "For a moment I was deceived as you were,

and believed them to be the tracks of a large bird; but I have seen the footprints of apes before now, and a

marmoset, though an American variety, I believe, is not unlike some of the apes of Burma."

"It is pure hypothesis," continued Smith, "but here is the theory in lieu of a better one it covers the facts.

The marmoset and it is contrary from the character of FuManchu to keep any creature for mere

"You observed the waterspout running up beside the window; you observed the iron bar intended to prevent a

windowcleaner from falling out? For an ape the climb from the court below to the sill above was a simple

one. He carried a cord, probably attached to his body. He climbed on to the sill, over the bar, and climbed

down again. By means of this cord a rope was pulled up over the bar, by means of the rope one of those

ladders of silk and bamboo. One of the Doctor's servants ascendedprobably to ascertain if the hashish had

acted successfully. That was the yellow dreamface which West saw bending over him. Then followed the

Doctor, and to his giant will the drugged brain of West was a pliant instrument which he bent to his own

ends. The court would be deserted at that hour of the night, and, in any event, directly after the ascent the

ladder probably was pulled up, only to be lowered again when West had revealed the secret of his own safe

and FuManchu had secured the plans. The reclosing of the safe and the removing of the hashish tabloids,

leaving no clew beyond the delirious ravings of a drug slave for so anyone unacquainted with the East

must have construed West's storyis particularly characteristic. His own tabloids were returned, of course.

The sparing of his life alone is a refinement of art which points to a past master."

"Certainly. Hers was the task to ascertain West's habits and to substitute the tabloids. She it was who waited

in the luxurious car infinitely less likely to attract attention at that hour in that place than a modest

"Poor Karamaneh; she had no alternative! I said I would have given a hundred pounds for a sight of the

"Then it has not dawned upon you?" cried Smith excitedly, as the cab turned into the station. "The

ANDAMAN, of the Oriental Navigation Company's line, leaves Tilbury with the next tide for China ports.

Our man is a secondclass passenger. I am wiring to delay her departure, and the special should get us to the

Very vividly I can reconstruct in my mind that dash to the docks through the early autumn morning. My

friend being invested with extraordinary powers from the highest authorities, by Inspector Weymouth's

Something of the tremendous importance of Nayland Smith's mission came home to me as we hurried on to

the platform, escorted by the stationmaster, and the five of usfor Weymouth had two other C.I.D. men

Off we went on top speed, roaring through stations, where a glimpse might be had of wondering officials

upon the platforms, for a special train was a novelty on the line. All ordinary traffic arrangements were held

up until we had passed through, and we reached Tilbury in time which I doubt not constituted a record.

There at the docks was the great liner, delayed in her passage to the Far East by the will of my royally

"Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith?" said the captain interrogatively, when we were shown into his room,

and looked from one to another and back to the telegraph form which he held in his hand.

"The same, Captain," said my friend briskly. "I shall not detain you a moment. I am instructing the authorities

at all ports east of Suez to apprehend one of your secondclass passengers, should he leave the ship. He is in

possession of plans which practically belong to the British Government?" "Why not arrest him now?" asked

"Because I don't know him. All secondclass passengers' baggage will be searched as they land. I am hoping

something from that, if all else fails. But I want you privately to instruct your stewards to watch any

passenger of Oriental nationality, and to cooperate with the two Scotland Yard men who are joining you for

Then, from amid the heterogeneous group on the dockside, we were watching the liner depart, and Nayland

Smith's expression was a very singular one. Inspector Weymouth stood with us, a badly puzzled man. Then

occurred the extraordinary incident which to this day remains inexplicable, for, clearly heard by all three of

I turned as though I had been stung. Smith turned also. My eyes passed from face to face of the group about

As I write of it, now, I can appreciate the difference between that happening, as it appealed to us, and as it

must appeal to you who merely read of it. It is beyond my powers to convey the sense of the uncanny which

the episode created. Yet, even as I think of it, I feel again, though in lesser degree, the chill which seemed to

From my brief history of the wonderful and evil man who once walked, by the way unsuspected, in the midst

of the people of England near whom you, personally, may at some time unwittingly, have been I am

aware that much must be omitted. I have no space for lengthy examinations of the many points but ill

illuminated with which it is dotted. This incident at the docks is but one such point.

Another is the singular vision which appeared to me whilst I lay in the cellar of the house near Windsor. It

has since struck me that it possessed peculiarities akin to those of a hashish hallucination. Can it be that we

were drugged on that occasion with Indian hemp? Cannabis indica is a treacherous narcotic, as every medical

man knows full well; but FuManchu's knowledge of the drug was far in advance of our slow science. West's

I may have neglected opportunitieslater, you shall judge if I did so opportunities to glean for the West

some of the strange knowledge of the secret East. Perhaps, at a future time, I may rectify my errors. Perhaps

that wisdomthe wisdom stored up by FuManchuis lost forever. There is, however, at least a bare

possibility of its survival, in part; and I do not wholly despair of one day publishing a scientific sequel to this

TIME wore on and seemingly brought us no nearer, or very little nearer, to our goal. So carefully had my

friend Nayland Smith excluded the matter from the press that, whilst public interest was much engaged with

some of the events in the skein of mystery which he had come from Burma to unravel, outside the Secret

Service and the special department of Scotland Yard few people recognized that the several murders,

robberies and disappearances formed each a link in a chain; fewer still were aware that a baneful presence

was in our midst, that a past master of the evil arts lay concealed somewhere in the metropolis; searched for

by the keenest wits which the authorities could direct to the task, but eluding alltriumphant, contemptuous.

One link in that chain Smith himself for long failed to recognize. Yet it was a big and important link.

"`. . .In sight of Shanghaia clear, dark night. On board the deck of a junk passing close to seaward of the

Andaman a blue flare started up. A minute later there was a cry of "Man overboard!"

"`Mr. Lewin, the chief officer, who was in charge, stopped the engines. A boat was put out. But no one was

"`Inquiry showed the missing man to be a James Edwards, second class, booked to Shanghai. I think the

name was assumed. The man was some sort of Oriental, and we had had him under close observation. . . .'"

He referred to the two C.I.D. men who had joined the Andaman at the moment of her departure from Tilbury.

"Until the great war reveals her secret resourcesand I pray that the day be not in my timewe shall never

He referred to a list which we had compiled of the notable men intervening between the evil genius who

secretly had invaded London and the triumph of his causethe triumph of the yellow races.

I read the account of the peer's death, and glanced at the long obituary notice; but no more than glanced at it.

He had but recently returned from the East, and now, after a short illness, had died from some affection of the

heart. There had been no intimation that his illness was of a serious nature, and even Smith, who watched

over his flock the flock threatened by the wolf, FuManchuwith jealous zeal, had not suspected that the

My friend reached across the table and rested the tip of a long ringer upon one of the subheadings to the

"You see," said Smith, "Southery died during the night, but Sir Frank Narcombe, arriving a few minutes later,

unhesitatingly pronounced death to be due to syncope, and seems to have noticed nothing suspicious."

"Sir Frank is a great physician," I said slowly; "but we must remember he would be looking for nothing

"We must remember," rapped Smith, "that, if Dr. FuManchu is responsible for Southery's death, except to

the eye of an expert there would be nothing suspicious to see. FuManchu leaves no clews."

"I think not," he replied. "Either a greater One than FuManchu has taken Lord Southery, or the yellow

doctor has done his work so well that no trace remains of his presence in the matter."

Leaving his breakfast untasted, he wandered aimlessly about the room, littering the hearth with matches as he

"It's no good, Petrie," he burst out suddenly; "it cannot be a coincidence. We must go around and see him."

An hour later we stood in the silent room, with its drawn blinds and its deathful atmosphere, looking down at

the pale, intellectual face of Henry Stradwick, Lord Southery, the greatest engineer of his day. The mind that

lay behind that splendid brow had planned the construction of the railway for which Russia had paid so great

a price, had conceived the scheme for the canal which, in the near future, was to bring two great continents, a

"He had latterly developed symptoms of angina pectoris," explained the family physician; "but I had not

anticipated a fatal termination so soon. I was called about two o'clock this morning, and found Lord Southery

in a dangerously exhausted condition. I did all that was possible, and Sir Frank Narcombe was sent for. But

"I understand, Doctor, that you had been treating Lord Southery for angina pectoris?" I said.

"You regard the circumstances of his end as entirely consistent with a death from that cause?"

"Certainly. Do you observe anything unusual yourself? Sir Frank Narcombe quite agrees with me. There is

"No," said Smith, tugging reflectively at the lobe of his left ear. "We do not question the accuracy of your

"But am I not right in supposing that you are connected with the police?" asked the physician.

"Neither Dr. Petrie nor myself are in any way connected with the police," answered Smith. "But,

As we were leaving the house, hushed awesomely in deference to the unseen visitor who had touched Lord

Southery with gray, cold fingers, Smith paused, detaining a blackcoated man who passed us on the stairs.

"Perhaps this business is making me imaginative," he said; "but there seems to be something tainting the air

in yonder something peculiar to houses whose doors bear the invisible deathmark of FuManchu."

"You are right, Smith!" I cried. "I hesitated to mention the matter, but I, too, have developed some other

sense which warns me of the Doctor's presence. Although there is not a scrap of confirmatory evidence, I am

as sure that he has brought about Lord Southery's death as if I had seen him strike the blow."

It was in that torturing frame of mindchained, helpless, in our ignorance, or by reason of the Chinaman's

supernormal geniusthat we lived throughout the ensuing days. My friend began to look like a man

In the growing dark of an evening shortly following I stood idly turning over some of the works exposed for

sale outside a secondhand bookseller's in New Oxford Street. One dealing with the secret societies of China

struck me as being likely to prove instructive, and I was about to call the shopman when I was startled to feel

I turned around rapidlyand was looking into the darkly beautiful eyes of Karamaneh! Shewhom I had

seen in so many guises was dressed in a perfectly fitting walking habit, and had much of her wonderful

"Quick! Come round the corner. I must speak to you," she said, her musical voice thrilling with excitement.

I never was quite master of myself in her presence. He must have been a man of ice who could have been, I

think for her beauty had all the bouquet of rarity; she was a mysteryand mystery adds charm to a woman.

Probably she should have been under arrest, but I know I would have risked much to save her from it.

"I am in distress. You have often asked me to enable you to capture Dr. FuManchu. I am prepared to do so."

Nayland Smith, I doubted not, would have counseled me against trusting my life in the hands of this girl with

the pleading eyes. Yet I did so, and with little hesitation; shortly we were traveling eastward in a closed cab.

Karamaneh was very silent, but always when I turned to her I found her big eyes fixed upon me with an

expression in which there was pleading, in which there was sorrow, in which there was something

elsesomething indefinable, yet strangely disturbing. The cabman she had directed to drive to the lower end

of the Commercial Road, the neighborhood of the new docks, and the scene of one of our early adventures

with Dr. FuManchu. The mantle of dusk had closed about the squalid activity of the East End streets as we

neared our destination. Aliens of every shade of color were about us now, emerging from burrowlike alleys

into the glare of the lamps upon the main road. In the short space of the drive we had passed from the bright

I do not know that Karamaneh moved; but in sympathy, as we neared the abode of the sinister Chinaman, she

crept nearer to me, and when the cab was discharged, and together we walked down a narrow turning leading

riverward, she clung to me fearfully, hesitated, and even seemed upon the point of turning back. But,

overcoming her fear or repugnance, she led on, through a maze of alleyways and courts, wherein I hopelessly

lost my bearings, so that it came home to me how wholly I was in the hands of this girl whose history was so

full of shadows, whose real character was so inscrutable, whose beauty, whose charm truly might mask the

The high, drab brick wall of what looked like some part of a dock building loomed above us in the darkness,

and the indescribable stenches of the lower Thames were borne to my nostrils through a gloomy, tunnellike

opening, beyond which whispered the river. The muffled clangor of waterside activity was about us. I heard a

key grate in a lock, and Karamaneh drew me into the shadow of an open door, entered, and closed it behind

For the first time I perceived, in contrast to the odors of the court without, the fragrance of the peculiar

perfume which now I had come to associate with her. Absolute darkness was about us, and by this perfume

alone I knew that she, was near to me, until her hand touched mine, and I was led along an uncarpeted

passage and up an uncarpeted stair. A second door was unlocked, and I found myself in an exquisitely

furnished room, illuminated by the soft light of a shaded lamp which stood upon a low, inlaid table amidst a

perfect ocean of silken cushions, strewn upon a Persian carpet, whose yellow richness was lost in the

Karamaneh raised a curtain draped before a doorway, and stood listening intently for a moment.

Then something stirred amid the wilderness of cushions, and two tiny bright eyes looked up at me. Peering

closely, I succeeded in distinguishing, crouched in that soft luxuriance, a little ape. It was Dr. FuManchu's

Never, I thought, was a staid medical man committed to a more unwise enterprise, but so far I had gone, and

The corridor beyond was thickly carpeted. Following the direction of a faint light which gleamed ahead, it

proved to extend as a balcony across one end of a spacious apartment. Together we stood high up there in the

shadows, and looked down upon such a scene as I never could have imagined to exist within many a mile of

The place below was even more richly appointed than the room into which first we had come. Here, as there,

piles of cushions formed splashes of gaudy color about the floor. Three lamps hung by chains from the

ceiling, their light softened by rich silk shades. One wall was almost entirely occupied by glass cases

containing chemical apparatus, tubes, retorts and other less orthodox indications of Dr. FuManchu's

pursuits, whilst close against another lay the most extraordinary object of a sufficiently extraordinary room

a low couch, upon which was extended the motionless form of a boy. In the light of a lamp which hung

directly above him, his olive face showed an almost startling resemblance to that of Karamaneh save that

the girl's coloring was more delicate. He had black, curly hair, which stood out prominently against the white

Transfixed with astonishment, I stood looking down upon him. The wonders of the "Arabian Nights" were

wonders no longer, for here, in EastEnd London, was a true magician's palace, lacking not its beautiful slave

We passed down a stairway on to the floor of the apartment. Karamaneh knelt and bent over the boy, stroking

his hair and whispering to him lovingly. I, too, bent over him; and I shall never forget the anxiety in the girl's

Brief, indeed, for even ere I had touched him I knew that the comely shell held no spark of life. But

Karamaneh fondled the cold hands, and spoke softly in that Arabic tongue which long before I had divined

Then, as I remained silent, she turned and looked at me, read the truth in my eyes, and rose from her knees,

"He is not deadhe is NOT dead!" she whispered, and shook me as a child might, seeking to arouse me to a

"No!" she said, wildeyed, and raising her hands to her face as though half distraught. "You do not

She stopped, moaning to herself and looking from the handsome face of the boy to me. It was pitiful; it was

Then from somewhere I heard a sound which I had heard before in houses occupied by Dr.

She fled up the stairs to the balcony, I close at her heels. The shadows veiled us, the thick carpet deadened the

sound of our tread, or certainly we must have been detected by the man who entered the room we had just

Yellowrobed, immobile, the inhuman green eyes glittering catlike even, it seemed, before the light struck

them, he threaded his way through the archipelago of cushions and bent over the couch of Aziz.

Dr. FuManchu felt for the pulse of the boy whom a moment since I had pronounced dead, and, stepping to

the tall glass case, took out a longnecked flask of chased gold, and from it, into a graduated glass, he poured

some drops of an amber liquid wholly unfamiliar to me. I watched him with all my eyes, and noted how high

the liquid rose in the measure. He charged a needlesyringe, and, bending again over Aziz, made an

Then all the wonders I had heard of this man became possible, and with an awe which any other physician

who had examined Aziz must have felt, I admitted him a miracleworker. For as I watched, all but breathless,

the dead came to life! The glow of health crept upon the olive cheekthe boy moved he raised his hands

FuManchu touched some hidden bell. A hideous yellow man with a scarred face entered, carrying a tray

upon which were a bowl containing some steaming fluid, apparently soup, what looked like oaten cakes, and

As the boy, exhibiting no more unusual symptoms than if he had just awakened from a normal sleep,

commenced his repast, Karamaneh drew me gently along the passage into the room which we had first

entered. My heart leaped wildly as the marmoset bounded past us to drop hand over hand to the lower

"You see," said Karamaneh, her voice quivering, "he is not dead! But without FuManchu he is dead to me.

"You must get me that flask, or some of its contents," I directed. "But tell me, how does he produce the

"I cannot tell you," she replied. "I do not know. It is something in the wine. In another hour Aziz will be

again as you saw him. But see." And, opening a little ebony box, she produced a phial half filled with the

"Good!" I said, and slipped it into my pocket. "When will be the best time to seize FuManchu and to restore

"I will let you know," she whispered, and, opening the door, pushed me hurriedly from the room. "He is

going away tonight to the north; but you must not come tonight. Quick! Quick! Along the passage. He may

So, with the phial in my pocket containing a potent preparation unknown to Western science, and with a last

long look into the eyes of Karamaneh, I passed out into the narrow alley, out from the fragrant perfumes of

"WE must arrange for the house to be raided without delay," said Smith. "This time we are sure of our

"You can look after that, Petrie," my friend said. "I will devote the whole of my attention to Dr.

Up and down the room he paced, gripping the blackened briar between his teeth, so that the muscles stood out

squarely upon his lean jaws. The bronze which spoke of the Burmese sun enhanced the brightness of his gray

"What have I all along maintained?" he jerked, looking back at me across his shoulder"that, although

Karamaneh was one of the strongest weapons in the Doctor's armory, she was one which some day would be

Nayland Smith began stuffing mixture into the hot pipebowl, and dropping an almost equal quantity on the

"I cannot rest, Petrie," he said. "I am itching to get to work. Yet, a false move, and" He lighted his pipe,

"If I but knew the composition of the drug which produced the semblance of death," I continued, "my fame

Silence fell. My thoughts reverted to Karamaneh, whom Dr. FuManchu held in bonds stronger than any

slavechains. For, with Aziz, her brother, suspended between life and death, what could she do save obey the

mandates of the cunning Chinaman? What perverted genius was his! If that treasury of obscure wisdom

which he, perhaps alone of living men, had rifled, could but be thrown open to the sick and suffering, the

In his voice was the imperative note I knew so well; in his eyes was the light which told of an urgent need for

No further word of explanation he vouchsafed, but darted off to dress; for he had spent the afternoon pacing

Out and to the corner we hurried, and leaped into the first taxi upon the rank. Smith enjoined the man to

hasten, and we were off all in that whirl of feverish activity which characterized my friend's movements in

He sat glancing impatiently from the window and twitching at the lobe of his ear.

"I know you will forgive me, old man," he said, "but there is a little problem which I am trying to work out in

Conversation lapsed, until, just as the cab turned into the station, Smith said: "Should you consider Lord

We reached the station in time to secure a noncorridor compartment to ourselves, and to allow Smith leisure

carefully to inspect the occupants of all the others, from the engine to the guard's van. He was muffled up to

the eyes, and he warned me to keep out of sight in the corner of the compartment. In fact, his behavior had

"Don't imagine, Petrie," said Smith "that I am trying to lead you blindfolded in order later to dazzle you with

my perspicacity. I am simply afraid that this may be a wildgoose chase. The idea upon which I am acting

does not seem to have struck you. I wish it had. The fact would argue in favor of its being, sound."

"Well, then, I will not bias you towards my view. But just study the situation, and see if you can arrive at the

reason for this sudden journey. I shall be distinctly encouraged if you succeed."

But I did not succeed, and since Smith obviously was unwilling to enlighten me, I pressed him no more. The

train stopped at Rugby, where he was engaged with the stationmaster in making some mysterious

arrangements. At L, however, their object became plain, for a highpower car was awaiting us, and into

this we hurried and ere the greater number of passengers had reached the platform were being driven off at

Twenty minutes' rapid traveling, and a white mansion leaped into the line of sight, standing out vividly

"Stradwick Hall," said Smith. "The home of Lord Southery. We are firstbut Dr. FuManchu was on the

The sleek little man in the dress suit, who looked like a head waiter (but was the trusted legal adviser of the

house of Southery) puffed at his cigar indignantly. Nayland Smith, whose restless pacing had led him to the

far end of the library, turned, a remote but virile figure, and looked back to where I stood by the open hearth

"I am in your hands, Mr. Henderson," he said, and advanced upon the latter, his gray eyes ablaze. "Save for

the heir, who is abroad on foreign service, you say there is no kin of Lord Southery to consider. The word

rests with you. If I am wrong, and you agree to my proposal, there is none whose susceptibilities will

"If I am right, and you prevent me from acting, you become a murderer, Mr. Henderson."

The lawyer started, staring nervously up at Smith, who now towered over him menacingly.

"Lord Southery was a lonely man," continued my friend. "If I could have placed my proposition before one of

his blood, I do not doubt what my answer had been. Why do you hesitate? Why do you experience this

Mr. Henderson stared down into the fire. His constitutionally ruddy face was pale.

Smith snapped his teeth together impatiently, snatching his watch from his pocket and glancing at it.

"The proceeding savors of paganism. Such a course might be admissible in China, in Burma"

"Do you weigh a life against such quibbles? Do you suppose that, granting MY irresponsibility, Dr. Petrie

"Will never know, if we are in error," interrupted Smith. "Good God! why do you delay?"

"You and I, Mr. Henderson, and Dr. Petrie will go now. We require no other witnesses. We are answerable

"I have never in my life been called upon to come to so momentous a decision in so short a time," he

confessed. But, aided by Smith's indomitable will, he made his decision. As its result, we three, looking and

feeling like conspirators, hurried across the park beneath a moon whose placidity was a rebuke to the

turbulent passions which reared their stranglegrowth in the garden of England. Not a breath of wind stirred

amid the leaves. The calm of perfect night soothed everything to slumber. Yet, if Smith were right (and I did

not doubt him), the green eyes of Dr. FuManchu had looked upon the scene; and I found myself marveling

that its beauty had not wilted up. Even now the dread Chinaman must be near to us.

As Mr. Henderson unlocked the ancient iron gates he turned to Nayland Smith. His face twitched oddly.

Smith's voice quivered, responsive to the nervous vitality pent up within that lean frame. He stood

motionless, listeningand I knew for whom he listened. He peered about him to right and left and I knew

Above us now the trees looked down with a solemnity different from the aspect of the monarchs of the park,

and the nearer we came to our journey's end the more somber and lowering bent the verdant arch or so it

By that path, patched now with pools of moonlight, Lord Southery had passed upon his bier, with the sun to

light his going; by that path several generations of Stradwicks had gone to their last restingplace.

To the doors of the vault the moon rays found free access. No branch, no leaf, intervened. Mr. Henderson's

Nayland Smith, who again had been peering suspiciously about into the shadows, struck a match and lighted

"Be calm, Mr. Henderson," he said sternly. "It is your plain duty to your client."

We descended the steps. The air beneath was damp and chill. It touched us as with clammy fingers; and the

Before the narrow mansion which now sufficed Lord Southery, the great engineer whom kings had honored,

Henderson reeled and clutched at me for support. Smith and I had looked to him for no aid in our uncanny

With averted eyes he stood over by the steps of the tomb, whilst my friend and myself set to work. In the

pursuit of my profession I had undertaken labors as unpleasant, but never amid an environment such as this.

At last it was done, and the pallid face of Lord Southery questioned the intruding light. Nayland Smith's hand

was as steady as a rigid bar when he raised the lantern. Later, I knew, there would be a sudden releasing of

the tension of willa reaction physical and mental but not until his work was finished.

That my own hand was steady I ascribed to one thing solely professional zeal. For, under conditions

which, in the event of failure and exposure, must have led to an unpleasant inquiry by the British Medical

Association, I was about to attempt an experiment never before essayed by a physician of the white races.

Though I failed, though I succeeded, that it ever came before the B.M.A., or any other council, was

improbable; in the former event, all but impossible. But the knowledge that I was about to practice

charlatanry, or what any one of my fellowpractitioners must have designated as such, was with me. Yet so

profound had my belief become in the extraordinary being whose existence was a danger to the world that I

reveled in my immunity from official censure. I was glad that it had fallen to my lot to take at least one

So far as my skill bore me, Lord Southery was dead. Unhesitatingly, I would have given a death certificate,

save for two considerations. The first, although his latest scheme ran contrary from the interests of Dr.

FuManchu, his genius, diverted into other channels, would serve the yellow group better than his death. The

From the phial of amberhued liquid which I had with me, I charged the needle syringe. I made the injection,

"If he is really dead!" whispered Smith. "It seems incredible that he can have survived for three days without

A second passed; another; a third. In the fourth the miracle began. Over the seemingly cold clay crept the hue

of pulsing life. It came in wavesin waves which corresponded with the throbbing of the awakened heart;

As we rapidly freed the living man from the trappings of the dead one, Southery, uttering a stifled scream, sat

up, looked about him with halfglazed eyes, and fell back. "My God!" cried Smith.

"It is all right," I said, and had time to note how my voice had assumed a professional tone. "A little brandy

I supported Lord Southery. "What has happened?" he kept moaning. "Where am I? Oh, God! what has

I strove to reassure him in a whisper, and placed my traveling coat about him. The door at the top of the

mausoleum steps we had reclosed but not relocked. Now, as I upheld the man whom literally we had rescued

from the grave, I heard the door reopen. To aid Henderson I could make no move. Smith was breathing hard

beside me. I dared not think what was about to happen, nor what its effects might be upon Lord Southery in

Through the Memphian dark of the tomb cut a spear of light, touching the last stone of the stairway.

A guttural voice spoke some words rapidly, and I knew that Dr. FuManchu stood at the head of the stairs.

Although I could not see my friend, I became aware that Nayland Smith had his revolver in his hand, and I

At last the cunning Chinaman was about to fall into a trap. It would require all his genius, I thought, to save

him tonight. Unless his suspicions were aroused by the unlocked door, his capture was imminent.

In my right hand I held my revolver, and with my left arm about Lord Southery, I waited through ten such

Lord Southery, Smith and myself were hidden by the angle of the wall; but full upon the purplish face of Mr.

Henderson the beam shone. In some way it penetrated to the murk in his mind; and he awakened from his

swoon with a hoarse cry, struggled to his feet, and stood looking up the stair in a sort of frozen horror.

Smith was past him at a bound. Something flashed towards him as the light was extinguished. I saw him

I managed to move sufficiently to see at the top, as I fired up the stairs, the yellow face of Dr. FuManchu, to

see the gleaming, chatoyant eyes, greenly terrible, as they sought to pierce the gloom. A flying figure was

racing up, three steps at a time (that of a brown man scantily clad). He stumbled and fell, by which I knew

"Mr. Henderson!" I cried, "relight the lantern and take charge of Lord Southery. Here is my flask on the floor.

Smith's revolver spoke again as I went bounding up the stair. Black against the square of moonlight I saw him

stagger, I saw him fall. As he fell, for the third time, I heard the crack of his revolver.

Instantly I was at his side. Somewhere along the black aisle beneath the trees receding footsteps pattered.

"He has a dacoit with him," he replied, and showed me the long curved knife which he held in his hand, a full

"But we have saved Lord Southery," I said. "FuManchu will credit us with a skill as great as his own."

"We must get to the car," Smith muttered, "and try to overtake them. Ugh! my left arm is useless."

"It would be mere waste of time to attempt to overtake them," I argued, "for we have no idea in which

"I have a very good idea," snapped Smith. "Stradwick Hall is less than ten miles from the coast. There is only

one practicable means of conveying an unconscious man secretly from here to London."

"Prior to shipping him to China; I think so. His clearinghouse is probably on the Thames."

"A yacht, presumably, is lying off the coast in readiness. FuManchu may even have designed to ship him

Lord Southery, a bizarre figure, my traveling coat wrapped about him, and supported by his solicitor, who

The throb of FuManchu's car died into faintness and was lost in the night's silence.

"Only half a triumph," he replied. "But we still have another chance the raid on his house. When will the

It was the weirdest moment of the night wherein we heard that newly buried man speak from the mold of his

"Yes," replied Smith slowly, "and spared from the fate of Heaven alone knows how many men of genius. The

yellow society lacks a Southery, but that Dr. FuManchu was in Germany three years ago I have reason to

believe; so that, even without visiting the grave of your great Teutonic rival, who suddenly died at about that

time, I venture to predict that they have a Von Homber. And the futurist group in China knows how to

FROM the rescue of Lord Southery my story bears me mercilessly on to other things. I may not tarry, as

more leisurely penmen, to round my incidents; they were not of my choosing. I may not pause to make you

better acquainted with the figure of my drama; its scheme is none of mine. Often enough, in those days, I

Of Magic Shadowshapes that come and go Round with the Sunillumined Lantern held In Midnight by the

I have been asked many times since the days with which these records deal: Who WAS Dr. FuManchu? Let

me confess here that my final answer must be postponed. I can only indicate, at this place, the trend of my

What group can we isolate and label as responsible for the overthrow of the Manchus? The casual student of

modern Chinese history will reply: "Young China." This is unsatisfactory. What do we mean by Young

China? In my own hearing FuManchu had disclaimed, with scorn, association with the whole of that

movement; and assuming that the name were not an assumed one, he clearly can have been no antiManchu,

The Chinese Republican is of the mandarin class, but of a new generation which veneers its Confucianism

with Western polish. These youthful and unbalanced reformers, in conjunction with older but no less

illbalanced provincial politicians, may be said to represent Young China. Amid such turmoils as this we

invariably look for, and invariably find, a Third Party. In my opinion, Dr. FuManchu was one of the leaders

Another question often put to me was: Where did the Doctor hide during the time that he pursued his

operations in London? This is more susceptible of explanation. For a time Nayland Smith supposed, as I did

myself, that the opium den adjacent to the old Ratcliff Highway was the Chinaman's base of operations; later

we came to believe that the mansion near Windsor was his hidingplace, and later still, the hulk lying off the

downstream flats. But I think I can state with confidence that the spot which he had chosen for his home was

neither of these, but the East End riverside building which I was the first to enter. Of this I am all but sure; for

the reason that it not only was the home of FuManchu, of Karamaneh, and of her brother, Aziz, but the

The dreadful tragedy (or series of tragedies) which attended the raid upon the place will always mark in my

memory the supreme horror of a horrible case. Let me endeavor to explain what occurred.

By the aid of Karamaneh, you have seen how we had located the whilom warehouse, which, from the

exterior, was so drab and dreary, but which within was a place of wondrous luxury. At the moment selected

by our beautiful accomplice, Inspector Weymouth and a body of detectives entirely surrounded it; a river

police launch lay off the wharf which opened from it on the riverside; and this upon a singularly black night,

"You will fulfill your promise to me?" said Karamaneh, and looked up into my face.

She was enveloped in a big, loose cloak, and from the shadow of the hood her wonderful eyes gleamed out

"Youand Dr. Petrie," she replied swiftly, "must enter first, and bring out Aziz. Until he is safeuntil he is

"Upon Dr. FuManchu?" interrupted Weymouth; for Karamaneh hesitated to pronounce the dreaded name, as

The Scotland Yard man did not entirely share my confidence in the integrity of this Eastern girl whom he

"Aziz lies in the private room," she explained eagerly, her old accent more noticeable than usual. "There is

only one of the Burmese men in the house, and hehe dare not enter without orders!"

"We have nothing to fear from him. He will be your prisoner within ten minutes from now! I have no time for

words you must believe!" She stamped her foot impatiently. "And the dacoit?" snapped Smith.

Karamaneh shrugged her shoulders with quick impatience, and unlocked the door in the high brick wall

which divided the gloomy, evilsmelling court from the luxurious apartments of Dr. FuManchu.

"Make no noise," she warned. And Smith and myself followed her along the uncarpeted passage beyond.

Inspector Weymouth, with a final word of instruction to his second in command, brought up the rear. The

door was reclosed; a few paces farther on a second was unlocked. Passing through a small room, unfurnished,

Darkness was about us now, and silence: a perfumed, slumberous darkness a silence full of mystery. For,

beyond the walls of the apartment whereon we looked down waged the unceasing battle of sounds that is the

hymn of the great industrial river. About the scented confines which bounded us now floated the

From the metallic but infinitely human clangor of dockside life, from the unpleasant but homely odors

which prevail where ships swallow in and belch out the concrete evidences of commercial prosperity, we had

come into this incensed stillness, where one shaded lamp painted dim enlargements of its Chinese silk upon

the nearer walls, and left the greater part of the room the darker for its contrast.

Nothing of the Thamesside activityof the riveting and scraping the bumping of balesthe bawling of

ordersthe hiss of steam penetrated to this perfumed place. In the pool of tinted light lay the deathlike

Despite the girl's assurance, we knew that proximity to the sinister Chinaman must be fraught with danger.

From the time when Nayland Smith had come from Burma in pursuit of this advanceguard of a cogent

Yellow Peril, the face of Dr. FuManchu rarely had been absent from my dreams day or night. The millions

might sleep in peacethe millions in whose cause we labored!but we who knew the reality of the danger

knew that a veritable octopus had fastened upon England a yellow octopus whose head was that of Dr.

FuManchu, whose tentacles were dacoity, thuggee, modes of death, secret and swift, which in the darkness

The muffled form beneath the lamp turned so that the soft light fell upon the lovely face of the slave girl. She

who had been a pliant instrument in the hands of FuManchu now was to be the means whereby society

My feet sinking in the rich pile of the carpet, I came through the gloom of the great apartment in to the patch

of light, and, Karamaneh beside me, stood looking down upon the boy. It was Aziz, her brother; dead so far

as Western lore had power to judge, but kept alive in that deathlike trance by the uncanny power of the

From the case which I carried I took out a needlesyringe and a phial containing a small quantity of

amberhued liquid. It was a drug not to be found in the British Pharmacopoeia. Of its constitution I knew

nothing. Although I had had the phial in my possession for some days I had not dared to devote any of its

precious contents to analytical purposes. The amber drops spelled life for the boy Aziz, spelled success for

I raised the white coverlet. The boy, fully dressed, lay with his arms crossed upon his breast. I discerned the

mark of previous injections as, charging the syringe from the phial, I made what I hoped would be the last of

such experiments upon him. I would have given half of my small worldly possessions to have known the real

nature of the drug which was now coursing through the veins of Azizwhich was tinting the grayed face

with the olive tone of life; which, so far as my medical training bore me, was restoring the dead to life.

But such was not the purpose of my visit. I was come to remove from the house of Dr. FuManchu the living

chain which bound Karamaneh to him. The boy alive and free, the Doctor's hold upon the slave girl would be

My lovely companion, her hands convulsively clasped, knelt and devoured with her eyes the face of the boy

who was passing through the most amazing physiological change in the history of therapeutics. The peculiar

perfume which she worewhich seemed to be a part of her which always I associated with herwas

"You have nothing to fear," I whispered; "see, he is reviving. In a few moments all will be well with him."

The hanging lamp with its garishly colored shade swung gently above us, wafted, it seemed, by some draught

which passed through the apartment. The boy's heavy lids began to quiver, and Karamaneh nervously

clutched my arm, and held me so whilst we watched for the longlashed eyes to open. The stillness of the

place was positively unnatural; it seemed inconceivable that all about us was the discordant activity of the

commercial East End. Indeed, this eerie silence was becoming oppressive; it began positively to appall me.

"Where is Dr. FuManchu?" I whispered, as Nayland Smith in turn appeared beside me. "I cannot understand

I peered around the shadowy walls. Tall glass cases there were, shelves and niches: where once, from the

gallery above, I had seen the tubes and retorts, the jars of unfamiliar organisms, the books of unfamiliar lore,

the impedimenta of the occult student and man of sciencethe visible evidences of FuManchu's presence.

Shelvescasesnicheswere bare. Of the complicated appliances unknown to civilized laboratories,

wherewith he pursued his strange experiments, of the tubes wherein he isolated the bacilli of unclassified

diseases, of the yellowbound volumes for a glimpse at which (had they known of their contents) the great

men of Harley Street would have given a fortuneno trace remained. The silken cushions; the inlaid tables;

The room was stripped, dismantled. Had FuManchu fled? The silence assumed a new significance. His

"You have let him escape us!" I said rapidly. "You promised to aid us to capture himto send us a

"No," she said; "no!" and clutched at my arm again. "Oh! is he not reviving slowly? Are you sure you have

Her thoughts were all for the boy; and her solicitude touched me. I again examined Aziz, the most remarkable

As I counted the strengthening pulse, he opened his dark eyes which were so like the eyes of

Karamanehand, with the girl's eager arms tightly about him, sat up, looking wonderingly around.

Karamaneh pressed her cheek to his, whispering loving words in that softly spoken Arabic which had first

betrayed her nationality to Nayland Smith. I handed her my flask, which I had filled with wine.

"My promise is fulfilled!" I said. "You are free! Now for FuManchu! But first let us admit the police to this

"No," she replied. "First let my brother be taken out and placed in safety. Will you carry him?"

She raised her face to that of Inspector Weymouth, upon which was written awe and wonder.

The burly detective lifted the boy as tenderly as a woman, passed through the shadows to the stairway,

ascended, and was swallowed up in the gloom. Nayland Smith's eyes gleamed feverishly. He turned to

"You are not playing with us?" he said harshly. "We have done our part; it remains for you to do yours."

"Do not speak so loudly," the girl begged. "HE is near us and, oh, God, I fear him so!"

"You must not touch him until the police are here," she said but from the direction of her quick, agitated

glances I knew that, her brother safe now, she feared for me, and for me alone. Those glances sent my blood

dancing; for Karamaneh was an Eastern jewel which any man of flesh and blood must have coveted had he

known it to lie within his reach. Her eyes were twin lakes of mystery which, more than once, I had known the

"Lookbeyond that curtain"her voice was barely audible"but do not enter. Even as he is, I fear him."

Her voice, her palpable agitation, prepared us for something extraordinary. Tragedy and FuManchu were

never far apart. Though we were two, and help was so near, we were in the abode of the most cunning

It was with strangely mingled emotions that I crossed the thick carpet, Nayland Smith beside me, and drew

aside the draperies concealing a door, to which Karamaneh had pointed. Then, upon looking into the dim

We looked upon a small, square room, the walls draped with fantastic Chinese tapestry, the floor strewn with

cushions; and reclining in a corner, where the faint, blue light from a lamp, placed upon a low table, painted

At sight of him my heart leapedand seemed to suspend its functions, so intense was the horror which this

man's presence inspired in me. My hand clutching the curtain, I stood watching him. The lids veiled the

malignant green eyes, but the thin lips seemed to smile. Then Smith silently pointed to the hand which held a

little pipe. A sickly perfume assailed my nostrils, and the explanation of the hushed silence, and the ease with

which we had thus far executed our plan, came to me. The cunning mind was torpid lost in a brutish world

The dim light traced out a network of tiny lines, which covered the yellow face from the pointed chin to the

top of the great domed brow, and formed deep shadow pools in the hollows beneath his eyes. At last we had

I could not determine the depth of his obscene trance; and mastering some of my repugnance, and forgetful of

Karamaneh's warning, I was about to step forward into the room, loaded with its nauseating opium fumes,

"Do not enter that room! The police must reach him in some way and drag him out! Do not enter that

The girl's voice quivered hysterically; her eyes blazed into savage flame. The fierce resentment born of

dreadful wrongs was consuming her now; but fear of FuManchu held her yet. Inspector Weymouth came

"I have sent the boy to Ryman's room at the station," he said. "The divisional surgeon will look after him until

you arrive, Dr. Petrie. All is ready now. The launch is just off the wharf and every side of the place under

He drew a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and raised his eyebrows interrogatively. The absence of sound

of any demonstration from the uncanny Chinaman whom he was there to arrestpuzzled him.

At that, and before we could utter a word, Weymouth stepped to the draped door. He was a man who drove

straight at his goal and saved reflections for subsequent leisure. I think, moreover, that the atmosphere of the

place (stripped as it was it retained its heavy, voluptuous perfume) had begun to get a hold upon him. He was

He pulled the curtain aside and stepped into the room. Smith and I perforce followed him. Just within the

door the three of us stood looking across at the limp thing which had spread terror throughout the Eastern and

Western world. Helpless as FuManchu was, he inspired terror now, though the giant intellect was

In the dimly lit apartment we had quitted I heard Karamaneh utter a stifled scream. But it came too late.

As though cast up by a volcano, the silken cushions, the inlaid table with its blueshaded lamp, the garish

walls, the sprawling figure with the ghastly light playing upon its featuresquivered, and shot upward!

So it seemed to me; though, in the ensuing instant I remembered, too late, a previous experience of the floors

of FuManchu's private apartments; I knew what had indeed befallen us. A trap had been released beneath

I recall fallingbut have no recollection of the end of my fall of the shock marking the drop. I only

remember fighting for my life against a stifling something which had me by the throat. I knew that I was

Into a poisonous well of darkness I sank. I could not cry out. I was helpless. Of the fate of my companions I

I WAS being carried along a dimly lighted, tunnellike place, slung, sackwise, across the shoulder of a

Burman. He was not a big man, but he supported my considerable weight with apparent ease. A deadly

nausea held me, but the rough handling had served to restore me to consciousness. My hands and feet were

closely lashed. I hung limply as a wet towel: I felt that this spark of tortured life which had flickered up in me

A fancy possessed me, in these the first moments of my restoration to the world of realities, that I had been

smuggled into China; and as I swung head downward I told myself that the huge, puffy things which strewed

the path were a species of giant toadstool, unfamiliar to me and possibly peculiar to whatever district of

The air was hot, steamy, and loaded with a smell as of rotting vegetation. I wondered why my bearer so

scrupulously avoided touching any of the unwholesomelooking growths in passing through what seemed a

succession of cellars, but steered a tortuous course among the bloated, unnatural shapes, lifting his bare

He passed under a low arch, dropped me roughly to the ground and ran back. Half stunned, I lay watching the

agile brown body melt into the distances of the cellars. Their walls and roof seemed to emit a faint,

"Smith!" I said, and strove to sit up. But the intense nausea overcame me, so that I all but swooned.

I heard his voice again, but could attach no meaning to the words which he uttered. A sound of terrific blows

reached my ears, too. The Burman reappeared, bending under the heavy load which he bore. For, as he picked

his way through the bloated things which grew upon the floors of the cellars, I realized that he was carrying

the inert body of Inspector Weymouth. And I found time to compare the strength of the little brown man with

that of a Nile beetle, which can raise many times its own weight. Then, behind him, appeared a second figure,

It was indeed none other than FuManchuthe FuManchu whom we had thought to be helpless. The deeps

of the Chinaman's cunning the fine quality of his courage, were forced upon me as amazing facts.

He had assumed the appearance of a drugged opiumsmoker so well as to dupe mea medical man; so well

as to dupe Karamaneh whose experience of the noxious habit probably was greater than my own. And,

with the gallows dangling before him, he had waited played the part of a lurewhilst a body of police

I have since thought that the room probably was one which he actually used for opium debauches, and the

Now, holding a lantern above his head, the deviser of the trap whereinto we, mouselike, had blindly entered,

came through the cellars, following the brown man who carried Weymouth. The faint rays of the lantern (it

apparently contained a candle) revealed a veritable forest of the gigantic fungipoisonously colored

hideously swollenclimbing from the floor up the slimy walls climbing like horrid parasites to such part

FuManchu picked his way through the fungi ranks as daintily as though the distorted, tumid things had been

The resounding blows which I had noted before, and which had never ceased, culminated in a splintering

crash. Dr. FuManchu and his servant, who carried the apparently insensible detective, passed in under the

arch, FuManchu glancing back once along the passages. The lantern he extinguished, or concealed; and

whilst I waited, my mind dully surveying, memories of all the threats which this uncanny being had uttered, a

Then, abruptly, it ceased. Dr. FuManchu had closed a heavy door; and to my surprise I perceived that the

greater part of it was of glass. The willo'thewisp glow which played around the fungi rendered the vista

of the cellars faintly luminous, and visible to me from where I lay. FuManchu spoke softly. His voice, its

guttural note alternating with a sibilance on certain words, betrayed no traces of agitation. The man's

unbroken calm had in it something inhuman. For he had just perpetrated an act of daring unparalleled in my

experience, and, in the clamor now shut out by the glass door I tardily recognized the entrance of the police

into some barricaded part of the house the coming of those who would save uswho would hold the

"I have decided," he said deliberately, "that you are more worthy of my attention than I had formerly

supposed. A man who can solve the secret of the Golden Elixir (I had not solved it; I had merely stolen some)

should be a valuable acquisition to my Council. The extent of the plans of Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith

and of the English Scotland Yard it is incumbent upon me to learn. Therefore, gentlemen, you livefor the

"And you'll swing," came Weymouth's hoarse voice, "in the near future! You and all your yellow gang!"

"I trust not," was the placid reply. "Most of my people are safe: some are shipped as lascars upon the liners;

That last word was the only one indicative of excitement which had yet escaped him. A disk of light danced

among the brilliant poison hues of the passagesbut no sound reached us; by which I knew that the glass

door must fit almost hermetically. It was much cooler here than in the place through which we had passed,

and the nausea began to leave me, my brain to grow more clear. Had I known what was to follow I should

have cursed the lucidity of mind which now came to me; I should have prayed for oblivion to be spared the

"It's Logan!" cried Inspector Weymouth; and I could tell that he was struggling to free himself of his bonds.

From his voice it was evident that he, too, was recovering from the effects of the narcotic which had been

But the cry beat back upon us in that enclosed space and seemed to carry no farther than the invisible walls of

"The door fits well," came FuManchu's mocking voice. "It is fortunate for us all that it is so. This is my

observation window, Dr. Petrie, and you are about to enjoy an unique opportunity of studying fungology. I

have already drawn your attention to the anaesthetic properties of the lycoperdon, or common puffball. You

may have recognized the fumes? The chamber into which you rashly precipitated yourselves was charged

with them. By a process of my own I have greatly enhanced the value of the puffball in this respect. Your

friend, Mr. Weymouth, proved the most obstinate subject; but he succumbed in fifteen seconds."

Something very like fear sounded in Weymouth's voice now. Indeed, the situation was so uncanny that it

almost seemed unreal. A group of men had entered the farthermost cellars, led by one who bore an electric

pocketlamp. The hard, white ray danced from bloated gray fungi to others of nightmare shape, of dazzling,

"Note the snowy growth upon the roof, Doctor. Do not be deceived by its size. It is a giant variety of my own

culture and is of the order empusa. You, in England, are familiar with the death of the common housefly

which is found attached to the windowpane by a coating of white mold. I have developed the spores of this

mold and have produced a giant species. Observe the interesting effect of the strong light upon my orange

Hard beside me I heard Nayland Smith groan, Weymouth had become suddenly silent. For my own part, I

could have shrieked in pure horror. FOR I KNEW WHAT WAS COMING. I realized in one agonized instant

the significance of the dim lantern, of the careful progress through the subterranean fungi grove, of the care

with which FuManchu and his servant had avoided touching any of the growths. I knew, now, that Dr.

FuManchu was the greatest fungologist the world had ever known; was a poisoner to whom the Borgias

were as childrenand I knew that the detectives blindly were walking into a valley of death.

Like so many bombs the brilliantly colored caps of the huge toadstoollike things alluded to by the

Chinaman exploded, as the white ray sought them out in the darkness which alone preserved their existence.

A brownish cloudI could not determine whether liquid or powdery arose in the cellar.

I tried to close my eyesor to turn them away from the reeling forms of the men who were trapped in that

The bearer of the lamp had dropped it, but the dim, eerily illuminated gloom endured scarce a second. A

bright light sprang updoubtless at the touch of the fiendish being who now resumed speech:

"Observe the symptoms of delirium, Doctor!" Out there, beyond the glass door, the unhappy victims were

laughing tearing their garments from their bodiesleapingwaving their arms were become

"We will now release the ripe spores of giant entpusa," continued the wicked voice. "The air of the second

cellar being supercharged with oxygen, they immediately germinate. Ah! it is a triumph! That process is the

Like powdered snow the white spores fell from the roof, frosting the writhing shapes of the already poisoned

men. Before my horrified gaze, THE FUNGUS GREW; it spread from the head to the, feet of those it

"They die like flies!" screamed FuManchu, with a sudden febrile excitement; and I felt assured of something

I had long suspected: that that magnificent, perverted brain was the brain of a homicidal maniacthough

THE clammy touch of the mist revived me. The culmination of the scene in the poison cellars, together with

the effects of the fumes which I had inhaled again, had deprived me of consciousness. Now I knew that I was

afloat on the river. I still was bound: furthermore, a cloth was wrapped tightly about my mouth, and I was

By moving my aching head to the left I could look down into the oily water; by moving it to the right I could

catch a glimpse of the empurpled face of Inspector Weymouth, who, similarly bound and gagged, lay beside

me, but only of the feet and legs of Nayland Smith. For I could not turn my head sufficiently far to see more.

We were aboard an electric launch. I heard the hated guttural voice of FuManchu, subdued now to its

habitual calm, and my heart leaped to hear the voice that answered him. It was that of Karamaneh. His

triumph was complete. Clearly his plans for departure were complete; his slaughter of the police in the

underground passages had been a final reckless demonstration of which the Chinaman's subtle cunning would

What fate was in store for us? How would he avenge himself upon the girl who had betrayed him to his

enemies? What portion awaited those enemies? He seemed to have formed the singular determination to

smuggle me into China but what did he purpose in the case of Weymouth, and in the case of Nayland

All but silently we were feeling our way through the mist. Astern died the clangor of dock and wharf into a

remote discord. Ahead hung the foggy curtain veiling the traffic of the great waterway; but through it broke

The gentle movement of the screw ceased altogether. The launch lay heaving slightly upon the swells.

A bell rang and muffled by the fog a voice proclaimed itself a voice which I knew. I felt Weymouth

writhing impotently beside me; heard him mumbling incoherently; and I knew that he, too, had recognized

It was that of Inspector Ryman of the river police and their launch was within biscuitthrow of that upon

I trembled. A feverish excitement claimed me. They were hailing us. We carried no lights; but nowand

ignoring the pain which shot from my spine to my skull I craned my neck to the leftthe port light of the

I was unable to utter any save mumbling sounds, and my companions were equally helpless. It was a

desperate position. Had the police seen us or had they hailed at random? The light drew nearer.

They had seen us! FuManchu's guttural voice spoke shortly and our screw began to revolve again; we

leaped ahead into the bank of darkness. Faint grew the light of the police launchand was gone. But I heard

Then the murk closed down, and with our friends far astern of us we were racing deeper into the fog

On we raced, and on, sweeping over growing swells. Once, a black, towering shape dropped down upon us.

Far above, lights blazed, bells rang, vague cries pierced the fog. The launch pitched and rolled perilously, but

weathered the wash of the liner which so nearly had concluded this episode. It was such a journey as I had

taken once before, early in our pursuit of the genius of the Yellow Peril; but this was infinitely more terrible;

A voice mumbled in my ear. I turned my boundup face; and Inspector Weymouth raised his hands in the

"I've been working at the cords since we left those filthy cellars," he whispered. "My wrists are all cut, but

Smith had kicked him with his bound feet. The detective slipped the bandage back to position and placed his

hands behind him again. Dr. FuManchu, wearing a heavy overcoat but no hat, came aft. He was dragging

Karamaneh by the wrists. He seated himself on the cushions near to us, pulling the girl down beside him.

Now, I could see her faceand the expression in her beautiful eyes made me writhe.

FuManchu was watching us, his discolored teeth faintly visible in the dim light, to which my eyes were

"Dr. Petrie," he said, "you shall be my honored guest at my home in China. You shall assist me to

revolutionize chemistry. Mr. Smith, I fear you know more of my plans than I had deemed it possible for you

to have learned, and I am anxious to know if you have a confidant. Where your memory fails you, and my

files and wire jackets prove ineffectual, Inspector Weymouth's recollections may prove more accurate."

He turned to the cowering girlwho shrank away from him in pitiful, abject terror.

"In my hands, Doctor," he continued, "I hold a needle charged with a rare culture. It is the link between the

bacilli and the fungi. You have seemed to display an undue interest in the peach and pearl which render my

Karamaneh so delightful, In the supple grace of her movements and the sparkle of her eyes. You can never

devote your whole mind to those studies which I have planned for you whilst such distractions exist. A touch

of this keen point, and the laughing Karamaneh becomes the shrieking hagthe maniacal, mowing"

Karamaneh, wrought upon past endurance, with a sobbing cry, sank to the deck and lay still. I managed to

writhe into a halfsitting posture, and Smith rolled aside as the detective and the Chinaman crashed down

Weymouth had one big hand at the Doctor's yellow throat; with his left he grasped the Chinaman's right. It

Now, I could look along, the length of the little craft, and, so far as it was possible to make out in the fog,

only one other was aboard the halfclad brown man who navigated herand who had carried us through

the cellars. The murk had grown denser and now shut us in like a box. The throb of the motorthe hissing

breath of the two who fought with so much at issuethese sounds and the wash of the water alone broke

By slow degrees, and with a reptilian agility horrible to watch, FuManchu was neutralizing the advantage

gained by Weymouth. His clawish fingers were fast in the big man's throat; the right hand with its deadly

needle was forcing down the left of his opponent. He had been underneath, but now he was gaining the upper

place. His powers of physical endurance must have been truly marvelous. His breath was whistling through

The latter suddenly changed his tactics. By a supreme effort, to which he was spurred, I think, by the growing

proximity of the needle, he raised FuManchuby the throat and arm and pitched him sideways.

The Chinaman's grip did not relax, and the two wrestlers dropped, a writhing mass, upon the port cushions.

The launch heeled over, and my cry of horror was crushed back into my throat by the bandage. For, as

FuManchu sought to extricate himself, he overbalanced fell backand, bearing Weymouth with

There are moments of which no man can recall his mental impressions, moments so acutely horrible that,

mercifully, our memory retains nothing of the emotions they occasioned. This was one of them. A chaos

ruled in my mind. I had a vague belief that the Burman, forward, glanced back. Then the course of the launch

was changed. How long intervened between the tragic end of that Gargantuan struggle and the time when a

With a sickening jerk we ran aground. A loud explosion ensued, and I clearly remember seeing the brown

Fully alive to our imminent peril, I fought with the cords that bound me; but I lacked poor Weymouth's

strength of wrist, and I began to accept as a horrible and imminent possibility, a death from drowning, within

Beside me, Nayland Smith was straining and twisting. I think his object was to touch Karamaneh, in the hope

of arousing her. Where he failed in his project, the inflowing water succeeded. A silent prayer of thankfulness

came from my very soul when I saw her stirwhen I saw her raise her hands to her head and saw the big,

WE quitted the wrecked launch but a few seconds before her stern settled down into the river. Where the

mudbank upon which we found ourselves was situated we had no idea. But at least it was terra firma and we

And when, an hour later, the police boat located us (on the mudflats below Greenwich) and we heard that

the toll of the poison cellars was eight men, we also heard news of our brave companion.

"Back there in the fog, sir," reported Inspector Ryman, who was in charge, and his voice was under poor

command, "there was an uncanny howling, and peals of laughter that I'm going to dream about for weeks"

Karamaneh, who nestled beside me like a frightened child, shivered; and I knew that the needle had done its

"Pray God the river has that yellow Satan," he said. "I would sacrifice a year of my life to see his rat's body

We were a sad party that steamed through the fog homeward that night. It seemed almost like deserting a

staunch comrade to leave the spotso nearly as we could locate itwhere Weymouth had put up that last

gallant fight. Our helplessness was pathetic, and although, had the night been clear as crystal, I doubt if we

could have acted otherwise, it came to me that this stinking murk was a new enemy which drove us back in

But so many were the calls upon our activity, and so numerous the stimulants to our initiative in those times,

There was Karamaneh to be consideredKaramaneh and her brother. A brief counsel was held, whereat it

"I shall arrange," Smith whispered to me, for the girl was watching us, "to have the place patrolled night and

"Petrie! I cannot and dare not suppose FuManchu dead until with my own eyes I have seen him so!"

Accordingly we conveyed the beautiful Oriental girl and her brother away from that luxurious abode in its

sordid setting. I will not dwell upon the final scene in the poison cellars lest I be accused of accumulating

horror for horror's sake. Members of the fire brigade, helmed against contagion, brought out the bodies of the

"What am I? Does my poor history matterto anyone?" was her answer to questions respecting herself.

The dacoits whom the Chinaman had brought to England originally numbered seven, we learned. As you,

having followed me thus far, will be aware, we had thinned the ranks of the Burmans. Probably only one now

remained in England. They had lived in a camp in the grounds of the house near Windsor (which, as we had

learned at the time of its destruction, the Doctor had bought outright). The Thames had been his highway.

Other members of the group had occupied quarters in various parts of the East End, where sailormen of all

nationalities congregate. ShenYan's had been the East End headquarters. He had employed the hulk from

the time of his arrival, as a laboratory for a certain class of experiments undesirable in proximity to a place of

Nayland Smith asked the girl on one occasion if the Chinaman had had a private seagoing vessel, and she

replied in the affirmative. She had never been on board, however, had never even set eyes upon it, and could

In a state of singular uncertainty, then, readily to be understood, we passed the days following the tragedy

Vividly I recall the scene at poor Weymouth's home, on the day that we visited it. I then made the

acquaintance of the Inspector's brother. Nayland Smith gave him a detailed account of the last scene.

"Amen to that, Mr. Weymouth. But your brother made a gallant finish. If ridding the world of FuManchu

James Weymouth smoked awhile in thoughtful silence. Though but four and a half miles S.S.E. of St. Paul's

the quaint little cottage, with its rustic garden, shadowed by the tall trees which had so lined the village street

before motor 'buses were, was a spot as peaceful and secluded as any in broad England. But another shadow

lay upon it todaychilling, fearful. An incarnate evil had come out of the dim East and in its dying

"There are two things I don't understand about it, sir," continued Weymouth. "What was the meaning of the

horrible laughter which the river police heard in the fog? And where are the bodies?"

Karamaneh, seated beside me, shuddered at the words. Smith, whose restless spirit granted him little repose,

In these latter days of his Augean labors to purge England of the unclean thing which had fastened upon her,

my friend was more lean and nervouslooking than I had ever known him. His long residence in Burma had

rendered him spare and had burned his naturally dark skin to a coppery hue; but now his gray eyes had grown

feverishly bright and his face so lean as at times to appear positively emaciated. But I knew that he was as fit

"This lady may be able to answer your first question," he said. "She and her brother were for some time in the

household of Dr. FuManchu. In fact, Mr. Weymouth, Karamaneh, as her name implies, was a slave."

Weymouth glanced at the beautiful, troubled face with scarcely veiled distrust. "You don't look as though you

"I do not come from China," replied Karamaneh. "My father was a pure Bedawee. But my history does not

matter." (At times there was something imperious in her manner; and to this her musical accent added force.)

"When your brave brother, Inspector Weymouth, and Dr. FuManchu, were swallowed up by the river,

FuManchu held a poisoned needle in his hand. The laughter meant that the needle had done its work. Your

Weymouth turned aside to hide his emotion. "What was on the needle?" he asked huskily.

"It was something which he prepared from the venom of a kind of swamp adder," she answered. "It produces

"He would have had a poor chance," said Smith, "even had he been in complete possession of his senses. At

the time of the encounter we must have been some considerable distance from shore, and the fog was

"But how do you account for the fact that neither of the bodies have been recovered?"

"Ryman of the river police tells me that persons lost at that point are not always recoveredor not until a

There was a faint sound from the room above. The news of that tragic happening out in the mist upon the

"She hasn't been told half the truth," said her brotherinlaw. "She doesn't know aboutthe poisoned

needle. What kind of fiend was this Dr. FuManchu?" He burst out into a sudden blaze of furious resentment.

"John never told me much, and you have let mighty little leak into the papers. What was he? Who was he?"

"Dr. FuManchu," replied the former, "was the ultimate expression of Chinese cunning; a phenomenon such

as occurs but once in many generations. He was a superman of incredible genius, who, had he willed, could

have revolutionized science. There is a superstition in some parts of China according to which, under certain

peculiar conditions (one of which is proximity to a deserted burialground) an evil spirit of incredible age

may enter unto the body of a newborn infant. All my efforts thus far have not availed me to trace the

genealogy of the man called Dr. FuManchu. Even Karamaneh cannot help me in this. But I have sometimes

thought that he was a member of a certain very old Kiangsu familyand that the peculiar conditions I have

Smith, observing our looks of amazement, laughed shortly, and quite mirthlessly.

"Poor old Weymouth!" he jerked. "I suppose my labors are finished; but I am far from triumphant. Is there

"Very little," was the reply; "she has lain in a semiconscious state since the news came. No one had any idea

she would take it so. At one time we were afraid her brain was going. She seemed to have delusions."

"My wife has been staying with her," he explained, "sinceit happened; and for the last three nights poor

John's widow has cried out at the same timehalfpast twothat someone was knocking on the door."

"John often came home at halfpast two from the Yard," continued Weymouth; "so we naturally thought

poor Mary was wandering in her mind. But last nightand it's not to be wondered atmy wife couldn't

The sun was streaming into the cozy little sittingroom; but I will confess that Weymouth's words chilled me

uncannily. Karamaneh laid her hand upon mine, in a quaint, childish fashion peculiarly her own. Her hand

was cold, but its touch thrilled me. For Karamaneh was not a child, but a rarely beautiful girl a pearl of the

"In all probability," I replied. "You should arrange that your wife be relieved in her trying duties, Mr.

OF all that we had hoped for in our pursuit of FuManchu how little had we accomplished. Excepting

Karamaneh and her brother (who were victims and not creatures of the Chinese doctor's) not one of the

formidable group had fallen alive into our hands. Dreadful crimes had marked FuManchu's passage through

the land. Not onehalf of the truth (and nothing of the later developments) had been made public. Nayland

In the absence of such a veto a veritable panic must have seized upon the entire country; for a monstera

Always FuManchu's secret activities had centered about the great waterway. There was much of poetic

justice in his end; for the Thames had claimed him, who so long had used the stream as a highway for the

passage to and fro for his secret forces. Gone now were the yellow men who had been the instruments of his

evil will; gone was the giant intellect which had controlled the complex murder machine. Karamaneh, whose

beauty he had used as a lure, at last was free, and no more with her smile would tempt men to death that

Many there are, I doubt not, who will regard the Eastern girl with horror. I ask their forgiveness in that I

regarded her quite differently. No man having seen her could have condemned her unheard. Many, having

looked into her lovely eyes, had they found there what I found, must have forgiven her almost any crime.

That she valued human life but little was no matter for wonder. Her nationalityher historyfurnished

But indeed let me confess that hers was a nature incomprehensible to me in some respects. The soul of

Karamaneh was a closed book to my shortsighted Western eyes. But the body of Karamaneh was exquisite;

her beauty of a kind that was a key to the most extravagant rhapsodies of Eastern poets. Her eyes held a

challenge wholly Oriental in its appeal; her lips, even in repose, were a taunt. And, herein, East is West and

Finally, despite her lurid history, despite the scornful selfpossession of which I knew her capable, she was

an unprotected girl in years, I believe, a mere childwhom Fate had cast in my way. At her request, we

had booked passages for her brother and herself to Egypt. The boat sailed in three days. But Karamaneh's

beautiful eyes were sad; often I detected tears on the black lashes. Shall I endeavor to describe my own

tumultuous, conflicting emotions? It would be useless, since I know it to be impossible. For in those dark

eyes burned a fire I might not see; those silken lashes veiled a message I dared not read.

Nayland Smith was not blind to the facts of the complicated situation. I can truthfully assert that he was the

only man of my acquaintance who, having come in contact with Karamaneh, had kept his head.

We endeavored to divert her mind from the recent tragedies by a round of amusements, though with poor

Weymouth's body still at the mercy of unknown waters Smith and I made but a poor show of gayety; and I

took a gloomy pride in the admiration which our lovely companion everywhere excited. I learned, in those

One afternoon we found ourselves at an exhibition of water colors in Bond Street. Karamaneh was intensely

interested in the subjects of the drawingswhich were entirely Egyptian. As usual, she furnished matter for

comment amongst the other visitors, as did the boy, Aziz, her brother, anew upon the world from his living

Suddenly Aziz clutched at his sister's arm, whispering rapidly in Arabic. I saw her peachlike color fade; saw

Nayland Smith rapped out the question violently, turning in a flash from the picture which he was examining.

"In this room!" she whispered glancing furtively, affrightedly about her. "Something tells Aziz when HE is

She held my arm tightly. Her brother was searching the room with big, velvet black eyes. I studied the faces

of the several visitors; and Smith was staring about him with the old alert look, and tugging nervously at the

lobe of his ear. The name of the giant foe of the white race instantaneously had strung him up to a pitch of

Our united scrutinies discovered no figure which could have been that of the Chinese doctor. Who could

mistake that long, gaunt shape, with the high, mummylike shoulders, and the indescribable gait, which I can

Then, over the heads of a group of people who stood by the doorway, I saw Smith peering at someoneat

someone who passed across the outer room. Stepping aside, I, too, obtained a glimpse of this person.

As I saw him, he was a tall, old man, wearing a black Inverness coat and a rather shabby silk hat. He had long

white hair and a patriarchal beard, wore smoked glasses and walked slowly, leaning upon a stick.

Smith's gaunt face paled. With a rapid glance at Karamaneh, he made off across the room.

Many days had passed since, already halfchoked by Inspector Weymouth's iron grip, FuManchu, before

our own eyes, had been swallowed up by the Thames. Even now men were seeking his body, and that of his

last victim. Nor had we left any stone unturned. Acting upon information furnished by Karamaneh, the police

had searched every known haunt of the murder group. But everything pointed to the fact that the group was

disbanded and dispersed; that the lord of strange deaths who had ruled it was no more.

Yet Smith was not satisfied. Neither, let me confess, was I. Every port was watched; and in suspected

districts a kind of housetohouse patrol had been instituted. Unknown to the great public, in those days a

secret war waged a war in which all the available forces of the authorities took the field against one man!

When we rejoined him, Nayland Smith was talking to the commissionaire at the door. He turned to me.

"That is Professor Jenner Monde," he said. "The sergeant, here, knows him well."

The name of the celebrated Orientalist of course was familiar to me, although I had never before set eyes

"The Professor was out East the last time I was there, sir," stated the commissionaire. "I often used to see

him. But he's an eccentric old gentleman. Seems to live in a world of his own. He's recently back from China,

Nayland Smith stood clicking his teeth together in irritable hesitation. I heard Karamaneh sigh, and, looking

Smith thanked the commissionaire for his information and we quitted the gallery.

"Professor Jenner Monde," muttered my friend, "has lived so long in China as almost to be a Chinaman. I

"If we are to attach any importance to the incident at all," I said, "we must remember that the boy's

"I DO attach importance to the incident, Petrie; they are naturally sensitive to such impressions. But I doubt if

even the abnormal organization of Aziz could distinguish between the hidden presence of a creature of the

Doctor's and that of the Doctor himself. I shall make a point of calling upon Professor Jenner Monde."

But Fate had ordained that much should happen ere Smith made his proposed call upon the Professor.

Karamaneh and her brother safely lodged in their hotel (which was watched night and day by four men under

"First," said Smith, "let us see what we can find out respecting Professor Monde."

He went to the telephone and called up New Scotland Yard. There followed some little delay before the

requisite information was obtained. Finally, however, we learned that the Professor was something of a

He lived alone in chambers in New Inn Court, Carey Street. A charwoman did such cleaning as was

considered necessary by the Professor, who employed no regular domestic. When he was in London he might

be seen fairly frequently at the British Museum, where his shabby figure was familiar to the officials. When

he was not in Londonthat is, during the greater part of each yearno one knew where he went. He never

So far as could be ascertained from New Inn Court (replied Scotland Yard) roughly a week.

My friend left the telephone and began restlessly to pace the room. The charred briar was produced and

stuffed with that broad cut Latakia mixture of which Nayland Smith consumed close upon a pound a week.

He was one of those untidy smokers who leave tangled tufts hanging from the pipebowl and when they light

Weymouth entered, big and florid, and in some respects singularly like his brother, in others as singularly

unlike. Now, in his black suit, he was a somber figure; and in the blue eyes I read a fear suppressed.

"Sit down, Mr. Weymouth," he said. "I am not entirely surprised. But you have my attention. What has

Weymouth took a cigarette from the box which I proffered and poured out a peg of whisky. His hand was not

"That knocking," he explained. "It came again the night after you were there, and Mrs. Weymouthmy wife,

I mean felt that she couldn't spend another night there, alone" "Did she look out of the window?" I asked.

"No, Doctor; she was afraid. But I spent last night downstairs in the sittingroomand I looked out!"

He took a gulp from his glass. Nayland Smith, seated on the edge of the table, his extinguished pipe in his

"I'll admit I didn't look out at once," Weymouth resumed. "There was something so uncanny, gentlemen, in

that knocking knockingin the dead of the night. I thought"his voice shook"of poor Jack, lying

somewhere amongst the slime of the riverand, oh, my God! it came to me that it was Jack who was

"I know I funked," he continued huskily. "But when the wife came to the head of the stairs and whispered to

me: `There it is again. What in heaven's name can it be'I started to unbolt the door. The knocking had

stopped. Everything was very still. I heard MaryHIS widowsobbing, upstairs; that was all. I opened the

"It was a bright night, and there was no one therenot a soul. But somewhere down the lane, as I looked out

into the porch, I heard most awful groans! They got fainter and fainter. ThenI could have sworn I heard

The narration of his weird experience revived something of the natural fear which it had occasioned. He

Smith struck a match and relighted his pipe. He began to pace the room again. His eyes were literally on fire.

"Would it be possible to get Mrs. Weymouth out of the house before tonight? Remove her to your place, for

"She seems to be in a very low state," he replied. He glanced at me. "Perhaps Dr. Petrie would give us an

"I want to hear that knocking!" he rapped. "But in what I may see fit to do I must not be handicapped by the

"Her condition at any rate will admit of our administering an opiate," I suggested. "That would meet the

"Good!" cried Smith. He was intensely excited now. "I rely upon you to arrange something, Petrie. Mr.

Weymouth" he turned to our visitor"I shall be with you this evening not later than twelve o'clock."

Weymouth appeared to be greatly relieved. I asked him to wait whilst I prepared a drought for the patient.

He tapped out his pipe on the side of the grate and began with nervous energy to refill it again from the

DUSK was falling when we made our way in the direction of Maple Cottage. Nayland Smith appeared to be

keenly interested in the character of the district. A high and ancient wall bordered the road along which we

"There is quite an extensive estate here," he said, "not yet cut up by the builder. It is well wooded on one side,

The road was a quiet one, and we plainly heard the tread quite unmistakableof an approaching

policeman. Smith continued to peer through the hole in the fence, until the officer drew up level with us.

Quite willing for a chat, the man stopped, and stood with his thumbs thrust in his belt.

"Yes, sir. They tell me three new roads will be made through it between here and the hill."

"I've seen some suspiciouslooking coves about at times. But after dusk an army might be inside there and

"Oh, no. A favorite game in these parts is snatching loaves and bottles of milk from the doors, first thing, as

they're delivered. There's been an extra lot of it lately. My mate who relieves me has got special instructions

to keep his eye open in the mornings!" The man grinned. "It wouldn't be a very big case even if he caught

anybody!" "No," said Smith absently; "perhaps not. Your business must be a dry one this warm weather.

Smith stared after him for a moment, tugging reflectively at the lobe of his ear.

"I don't know that it wouldn't be a big case, after all," he murmured. "Come on, Petrie."

Not another word did he speak, until we stood at the gate of Maple Cottage. There a plainclothes man was

"Yes, sir," was the reply. "Kentmy mateis there now. You'll notice that he can't be seen from here."

"Behind the broken wall," explained the man, pointing. "Through that ivy there's a clear view of the cottage

"Good. Keep your eyes open. If a messenger comes for me, he is to be intercepted, you understand. No one

must be allowed to disturb us. You will recognize the messenger. He will be one of your fellows. Should he

We walked up to the porch of the cottage. In response to Smith's ringing came James Weymouth, who

Accordingly, I followed Weymouth upstairs and was admitted by his wife to a neat little bedroom where the

Mrs. James Weymouth nodded. She was a kindly looking woman, with the same dread haunting her hazel

The patient was sleeping soundly. Some whispered instructions I gave to the faithful nurse and descended to

the sittingroom. It was a warm night, and Weymouth sat by the open window, smoking. The dim light from

the lamp on the table lent him an almost startling likeness to his brother; and for a moment I stood at the foot

of the stairs scarce able to trust my reason. Then he turned his face fully towards me, and the illusion was

Nayland Smith stood upon the rug before the hearth, swinging from one foot to the other, in his nervously

restless way. The room was foggy with the fumes of tobacco, for he, too, was smoking.

At intervals of some five to ten minutes, his blackened briar (which I never knew him to clean or scrape)

would go out. I think Smith used more matches than any other smoker I have ever met, and he invariably

The tobacco habit is infectious, and, seating myself in an armchair, I lighted a cigarette. For this dreary vigil

I had come prepared with a bunch of rough notes, a writingblock, and a fountain pen. I settled down to work

Silence fell upon Maple Cottage. Save for the shuddering sigh which whispered through the overhanging

cedars and Smith's eternal matchstriking, nothing was there to disturb me in my task. Yet I could make little

progress. Between my mind and the chapter upon which I was at work a certain sentence persistently intruded

itself. It was as though an unseen hand held the written page closely before my eyes. This was the sentence:

"Imagine a person, tall, lean, and feline, highshouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan,

a closeshaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true catgreen: invest him with all the cruel cunning of

Dr. FuManchu! FuManchu as Smith had described him to me on that night which now seemed so remotely

distantthe night upon which I had learned of the existence of the wonderful and evil being born of that

As Smith, for the ninth or tenth time, knocked out his pipe on a bar of the grate, the cuckoo clock in the

I abandoned my task, replacing notes and writingblock in the bag that I had with me. Weymouth adjusted

I tiptoed to the stairs and, stepping softly, ascended to the sick room. All was quiet, and Mrs. Weymouth

whispered to me that the patient still slept soundly. I returned to find Nayland Smith pacing about the room in

that state of suppressed excitement habitual with him in the approach of any crisis. At a quarter past two the

breeze dropped entirely, and such a stillness reigned all about us as I could not have supposed possible so

near to the everthrobbing heart of the great metropolis. Plainly I could hear Weymouth's heavy breathing.

He sat at the window and looked out into the black shadows under the cedars. Smith ceased his pacing and

stood again on the rug very still. He was listening! I doubt not we were all listening.

Some faint sound broke the impressive stillness, coming from the direction of the village street. It was a

vague, indefinite disturbance, brief, and upon it ensued a silence more marked than ever. Some minutes

before, Smith had extinguished the lamp. In the darkness I heard his teeth snap sharply together.

I knew that to mean that a messenger had come; but from whence or bearing what tidings I knew not. My

friend's plans were incomprehensible to me, nor had I pressed him for any explanation of their nature,

knowing him to be in that highstrung and somewhat irritable mood which claimed him at times of

uncertaintywhen he doubted the wisdom of his actions, the accuracy of his surmises. He gave no sign.

Very faintly I heard a clock strike the halfhour. A soft breeze stole again through the branches above. The

wind I thought must be in a new quarter since I had not heard the clock before. In so lonely a spot it was

difficult to believe that the bell was that of St. Paul's. Yet such was the fact.

And hard upon the ringing followed another sounda sound we all had expected, had waited for; but at

Breaking up the silence in a manner that set my heart wildly leaping it came an imperative knocking on the

I know I was very pale. I think I cried out as I fell back retreated with clenched hands from before THAT

It was a wild, unkempt figure, with straggling beard, hideously staring eyes. With its hands it clutched at its

hairat its chin; plucked at its mouth. No moonlight touched the features of this unearthly visitant, but

scanty as was the illumination we could see the gleaming teeth and the wildly glaring eyes.

Nothing so terrifying had ever smote upon my ears. I was palsied by the horror of the sound.

Then Nayland Smith pressed the button of an electric torch which he carried. He directed the disk of white

Perhaps for the first time in my life I really believed (nay, I could not doubt) that a thing of another world

stood before me. I am ashamed to confess the extent of the horror that came upon me. James Weymouth

raised his hands, as if to thrust away from him that awful thing in the door. He was babblingprayers, I

Smith's voice was low. (When we were past thought or intelligent action, he, dominant and cool, with that

forced calm for which, a crisis over, he always paid so dearly, was thinking of the woman who slept above.)

He leaped forward; and in the instant that he grappled with the one who had knocked I knew the visitant for a

man of flesh and blooda man who shrieked and fought like a savage animal, foamed at the mouth and

gnashed his teeth in horrid frenzy; knew him for a madmanknew him for the victim of FuManchu not

In a flash I realized all this and sprang to Smith's assistance. There was a sound of racing footsteps and the

men who had been watching outside came running into the porch. A third was with them; and the five of us

(for Weymouth's brother had not yet grasped the fact that a man and not a spirit shrieked and howled in our

"The syringe, Petrie!" gasped Smith. "Quick! You must manage to make an injection!"

I extricated myself and raced into the cottage for my bag. A hypodermic syringe ready charged I had brought

with me at Smith's request. Even in that thrilling moment I could find time to admire the wonderful foresight

of my friend, who had divined what would befallisolated the strange, pitiful truth from the chaotic

Let me not enlarge upon the end of the awful struggle. At one time I despaired (we all despaired) of quieting

the poor, demented creature. But at last it was done; and the gaunt, bloodstained savage whom we had

known as DetectiveInspector Weymouth lay passive upon the couch in his own sittingroom. A great

wonder possessed my mind for the genius of the uncanny being who with the scratch of a needle had made a

Nayland Smith, gaunt and wildeyed, and trembling yet with his tremendous exertions, turned to the man

"He is arrested, sir," the detective reported. "They have kept him at his chambers as you ordered."

"Has she slept through it?" said Smith to me. (I had just returned from a visit to the room above.) I nodded.

"Is HE safe for an hour or two?"indicating the figure on the couch. "For eight or ten," I replied grimly.

LATER was forthcoming evidence to show that poor Weymouth had lived a wild life, in hiding among the

thick bushes of the tract of land which lay between the village and the suburb on the neighboring hill.

Literally, he had returned to primitive savagery and some of his food had been that of the lower animals,

though he had not scrupled to steal, as we learned when his lair was discovered.

He had hidden himself cunningly; but witnesses appeared who had seen him, in the dusk, and fled from him.

They never learned that the object of their fear was Inspector John Weymouth. How, having escaped death in

the Thames, he had crossed London unobserved, we never knew; but his trick of knocking upon his own door

at halfpast two each morning (a sort of dawning of sanity mysteriously linked with old custom) will be a

In a car which he had in waiting at the end of the village we sped through the deserted streets to New Inn

Court. I, who had followed Nayland Smith through the failures and successes of his mission, knew that

tonight he had surpassed himself; had justified the confidence placed in him by the highest authorities.

We were admitted to an untidy roomthat of a student, a traveler and a crankby a plainclothes officer.

Amid picturesque and disordered fragments of a hundred ages, in a great carven chair placed before a

towering statue of the Buddha, sat a handcuffed man. His white hair and beard were patriarchal; his pose

had great dignity. But his expression was entirely masked by the smoked glasses which he wore.

"We arrested Professor Jenner Monde as he came in, sir," reported the man who had opened the door. "He

He strode across the room. He was consumed by a fever of excitement. Almost savagely, he tore away the

A great, high brow was revealed, and green, malignant eyes, which fixed themselves upon him with an

Dr. FuManchu showed his even, yellow teeth in the singularly evil smile which I knew so well. A manacled

prisoner he sat as unruffled as a judge upon the bench. In truth and in justice I am compelled to say that

"He has been detained in China," he replied, in smooth, sibilant tones"by affairs of great urgency. His

Smith, I could see, was undetermined how to act; he stood tugging at his ear and glancing from the impassive

"Can you restore Weymouth's sanity?" rapped Smith abruptly. "I cannot save you from the hangman,

"Say no more, Mr. Smith," he interrupted; "you misunderstand me. I do not quarrel with that, but what I have

done from conviction and what I have done of necessity are separatedare seas apart. The brave Inspector

Weymouth I wounded with a poisoned needle, in selfdefense; but I regret his condition as greatly as you do.

"Useless," he replied. "I alone can prepare it. My secrets shall die with me. I will make a sane man of

"As you please," said FuManchu. "Make your arrangements. In that ebony case upon the table are the

Dr. FuManchu rose slowly and drew himself up to his great height. His manacled hands could not rob him

of the uncanny dignity which was his. He raised them above his head with a tragic gesture and fixed his

"The God of Cathay bear me," he said, with a deep, guttural note in his voice"I swear"

The most awful visitor who ever threatened the peace of England, the end of the visit of FuManchu was

Strange to relate, I did not doubt that this weird being had conceived some kind of admiration or respect for

the man to whom he had wrought so terrible an injury. He was capable of such sentiments, for he entertained

A cottage farther down the village street than Weymouth's was vacant, and in the early dawn of that morning

became the scene of outre happenings. Poor Weymouth, still in a comatose condition, we removed there

(Smith having secured the key from the astonished agent). I suppose so strange a specialist never visited a

For into the cottage, which had been entirely surrounded by a ring of police, Dr. FuManchu was admitted

from the closed car in which, his work of healing complete, he was to be borne to prisonto death!

Law and justice were suspended by my royally empowered friend that the enemy of the white race might heal

No curious audience was present, for sunrise was not yet come; no concourse of excited students followed the

hand of the Master; but within that surrounded cottage was performed one of those miracles of science which

Inspector Weymouth, dazed, disheveled, clutching his head as a man who has passed through the Valley of

He looked towards ushis eyes wild, but not with the fearsome wildness of insanity.

There came a deafening explosion. From EVERY visible window of the deserted cottage flames burst forth!

He raced up the path, past Inspector Weymouth, who stood swaying there like a drunken man. I was close

The door was impassable! Already, it vomited a deathly heat, borne upon stifling fumes like those of the

The crowd which a fire can conjure up at any hour of day or night, out of the void of nowhere, was gathering

From the heat of the holocaust a voice proclaimed itselfa voice raised, not in anguish but in TRIUMPH! It

I come to the close of my chronicle, and feel that I betray a trust the trust of my reader. For having limned

in the colors at my command the fiendish Chinese doctor, I am unable to conclude my task as I should desire,

unable, with any consciousness of finality, to write Finis to the end of my narrative.

It seems to me sometimes that my pen is but temporarily idlethat I have but dealt with a single phase of a

movement having a hundred phases. One sequel I hope for, and against all the promptings of logic and

Western bias. If my hope shall be realized I cannot, at this time, pretend to state.

I ask you then, to absolve me from the charge of ill completing my work; for any curiosity with which this

With intent, I have rushed you from the chambers of Professor Jenner Monde to that closing episode at the

deserted cottage; I have made the pace hot in order to impart to these last pages of my account something of

My canvas may seem sketchy: it is my impression of the reality. No hard details remain in my mind of the

dealings of that night. FuManchu arrestedFuManchu, manacled, entering the cottage on his mission of

healing; Weymouth, miraculously rendered sane, coming forth; the place in flames.

To a shell the cottage burned, with an incredible rapidity which pointed to some hidden agency; to a shell

It has been asked of me: Was there no possibility of FuManchu's having eluded us in the ensuing confusion?

I reply, that so far as I was able to judge, a rat could scarce have quitted the building undetected. Yet that

FuManchu had, in some incomprehensible manner and by some mysterious agency, produced those

abnormal flames, I cannot doubt. Did he voluntarily ignite his own funeral pyre?

As I write, there lies before me a soiled and creased sheet of vellum. It bears some lines traced in a cramped,

peculiar, and all but illegible hand. This fragment was found by Inspector Weymouth (to this day a man

When it was written I leave you to judge. How it came to be where Weymouth found it calls for no

"Greeting! I am recalled home by One who may not be denied. In much that I came to do I have failed. Much

that I have done I would undo; some little I have undone. Out of fire I camethe smoldering fire of a thing

one day to be a consuming flame; in fire I go. Seek not my ashes. I am the lord of the fires! Farewell.

Who has been with me in my several meetings with the man who penned that message I leave to adjudge if it

be the letter of a madman bent upon selfdestruction by strange means, or the gibe of a preternaturally clever

For the present, I can aid you no more in the forming of your verdict. A day may come though I pray it do

notwhen I shall be able to throw new light upon much that is dark in this matter. That day, so far as I can

judge, could only dawn in the event of the Chinaman's survival; therefore I pray that the veil be never lifted.

But, as I have said, there is another sequel to this story which I can contemplate with a different countenance.

Shall I tell you, finally, of my parting with lovely, darkeyed Karamaneh, on board the liner which was to

"I sail for Burma in a fortnight, Petrie. I have leave to break my journey at the Ditch. How would a run up the

Nile fit your programme? Bit early for the season, but you might find something to amuse you!