Miska paused, as if to collect her ideas, but continued almost
immediately.

"He wore a plain yellow robe and had a little black cap on his head.
His face, his wonderful evil face I can never forget, and his eyes--I
fear you will think I exaggerate--but his eyes were green as emeralds!
He fixed them upon me.

"'This,' said Fo-Hi, 'is Miska.'

"The other Chinaman continued to regard me with those dreadful eyes;
then:

"'You have chosen well.' he said, turned and slowly went out again.

"I thank God that I have never seen him since, for his dreadful face
haunted my dreams for long afterwards. But I have learned of him, and
I know that next to Fo-Hi he is the most dangerous being in the known
world. He has invented horrible things--poisons and instruments, which
I cannot describe because I have never seen them; but I have seen ...
some of their effects."

She paused, overcome with the horror of her memories.

"What is the name of this other man?" asked Stuart eagerly. Miska
glanced at him rapidly.

"Oh, do not ask me questions, please!" she pleaded. "I will tell you
all I can, all I dare; what I do not tell you I cannot tell you--and
this is one of the things I dare not tell. He is a Chinese scientist
and, I have heard, the greatest genius in the whole world, but I can
say no more--yet."

"Is he still alive--this man?"

"I do not know that. If he is alive, he is in China--at some secret
palace in the province of Ho-Nan, which is the headquarters of what
is called the 'Sublime Order.' I have never been there, but there are
Europeans there, as well as Orientals."

"What! in the company of these fiends!"

"It is useless to ask me--oh! indeed, I would tell you if I could, but
I cannot! Let me go on from the time when I saw Fo-Hi in Cairo. He
told me that I was a member of an organization dating back to remote
antiquity which was destined to rule all the races of mankind--the
Celestial age he called their coming triumph. Something which they had
lacked in order to achieve success had been supplied by the dreadful
man who had entered the room and expressed his approval of me.

"For many years they had been at work in Europe, secretly, as well as
in the East. I understood that they had acquired a quantity of
valuable information of some kind by means of a system of opium-houses
situated in the principal capitals of the world and directed by Fo-Hi
and a number of Chinese assistants. Fo-Hi had remained in China