You ought to see his house at Finchley. A low, squat
place completely hemmed in by trees. Damp as a swamp; smells like a
jungle. Everything topsy-turvy. He only arrived to-day, and he is
working and eating (and sleeping I expect), in a study that looks like
an earthquake at Sotheby's auction-rooms. The rest of the house is half
a menagerie and half a circus. He has a Bedouin groom, a Chinese
body-servant, and Heaven only knows what other strange people!"

"Chinese!"

"Yes, I saw him; a squinting Cantonese he calls Kwee. I don't like
him. Also, there is a secretary known as Strozza, who has an
unpleasant face. He is a fine linguist, I understand, and is engaged
upon the Spanish notes for Barton's forthcoming book on the Mayapan
temples. By the way, all Sir Lionel's baggage disappeared from the
landing-stage--including his Tibetan notes."

"Significant!"

"Of course. But he argues that he has crossed Tibet from the Kuen-Lun
to the Himalayas without being assassinated, and therefore that it is
unlikely he will meet with that fate in London. I left him dictating
the book from memory, at the rate of about two hundred words a minute."

"He is wasting no time."

"Wasting time! In addition to the Yucatan book and the work on Tibet,
he has to read a paper at the Institute next week about some tomb he
has unearthed in Egypt. As I came away, a van drove up from the docks
and a couple of fellows delivered a sarcophagus as big as a boat. It
is unique, according to Sir Lionel, and will go to the British Museum
after he has examined it. The man crams six months' work into six
weeks; then he is off again."

"What do you propose to do?"

"What CAN I do? I know that Fu-Manchu will make an attempt upon him.
I cannot doubt it. Ugh! that house gave me the shudders. No
sunlight, I'll swear, Petrie, can ever penetrate to the rooms, and when
I arrived this afternoon clouds of gnats floated like motes wherever a
stray beam filtered through the trees of the avenue. There's a steamy
smell about the place that is almost malarious, and the whole of the
west front is covered with a sort of monkey-creeper, which he has
imported at some time or other. It has a close, exotic perfume that is
quite in the picture. I tell you, the place was made for murder."

"Have you taken any precautions?"

"I called at Scotland Yard and sent a man down to watch the house,
but--"

He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

"What is Sir