ble. He has given himself till the
very last moment--and we blundered upon two of the outposts."

"I lost one."

"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 lever which should serve to disturb Fu-Manchu's
world."

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 race-drama wherein Nayland Smith and Dr.
Fu-Manchu played the leading parts, I remember none more bizarre than
the one at my rooms that afternoon.

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 sitting-room--the room wherein Smith first had
unfolded to me the story of Dr. Fu-Manchu and of the great secret
society which sought to upset the balance of the world--to place Europe
and America beneath the scepter of Cathay.

I sat with my elbows upon the writing-table, my chin in my hands; Smith
restlessly paced the floor, relighting his blackened briar a dozen
times in as many minutes. In the big arm-chair 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 through lowered lashes.

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 arch-murderer 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 onl