I think."

Norris West pressed his hands to his evidently aching head.

"Bayard Taylor's book," he said dully. "Yes! . . . I know of what my
brain sought to remind me--Taylor's account of his experience under
hashish. Mr. Smith, someone doped me with hashish!"

Smith nodded grimly.

"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 you must have taken at least fifteen grains."

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. Fu-Manchu is a profound chemist."

Norris West started.

"Someone substituted--" he began.

"Exactly," said Smith, looking at him keenly; "someone who was here
yesterday. Have you any idea whom it could have been?"

West hesitated. "I had a visitor in the afternoon," he said, seemingly
speaking the words unwillingly, "but--"

"A lady?" jerked Smith. "I suggest that it was a lady."

West nodded.

"You're quite right," he admitted. "I don't know how you arrived at
the conclusion, but a lady whose acquaintance I made recently--a
foreign lady."

"Karamaneh!" snapped Smith.

"I don't know what you mean in the least, but she came here--knowing
this to be my present address--to 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."

He laughed shortly.

"I am over-old," he said, "to be guyed by a woman. You spoke just now
of someone called Fu-Manchu. Is that the crook I'm indebted to for the
loss of my plans? I've had attempts made by agents of two European
governments, but a Chinaman is a novelty."

"This Chinaman," Smith assured him, "is the greatest novelty of his
age. You recognize your symptoms now from Bayard Taylor's account?"

"Mr. West's statement," I said, "ran closely parallel with portions of
Moreau's book on 'Hashish Hallucinations.' Only Fu-Manchu, I think,
would have thought of employing Indian hemp. I doubt, though, if it
was pure Cannabis indica. At any rate, it acted as an opiate--"

"And drugged Mr. West," interrupted Smith, "s