he 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 cunning of a serpent.

I spoke to her.

"S-SH!" She laid her hand upon my arm, enjoining me to silence.

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, tunnel-like 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 her.

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 shadows beyond the circle of light.

Karamaneh raised a curtain draped before a doorway, and stood listening
intently for a moment.

The silence was unbroken.

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. Fu-Manchu's marmoset. "This way," whispered Karamaneh.

Never, I thought, was a staid medical man committed to a more unwise
enterprise, but so far I had gone, and no consideration of prudence
could now be of avail.

The corridor beyond was thickly carpeted. Following the direction of a
faint light which gleamed ahead, it proved to extend as a balcony