h, from the exterior, was so drab and dreary, but which
within was a place of wondrous luxury. At the moment selected by our
beautiful accomplice, Inspector Weymouth and a body of detectives
entirely surrounded it; a river police launch lay off the wharf which
opened from it on the river-side; and this upon a singularly black
night, than which a better could not have been chosen.

"You will fulfill your promise to me?" said Karamaneh, and looked up
into my face.

She was enveloped in a big, loose cloak, and from the shadow of the
hood her wonderful eyes gleamed out like stars.

"What do you wish us to do?" asked Nayland Smith.

"You--and Dr. Petrie," she replied swiftly, "must enter first, and
bring out Aziz. Until he is safe--until he is out of that place--you
are to make no attempt upon--"

"Upon Dr. Fu-Manchu?" interrupted Weymouth; for Karamaneh hesitated to
pronounce the dreaded name, as she always did. "But how can we be sure
that there is no trap laid for us?"

The Scotland Yard man did not entirely share my confidence in the
integrity of this Eastern girl whom he knew to have been a creature of
the Chinaman's.

"Aziz lies in the private room," she explained eagerly, her old accent
more noticeable than usual. "There is only one of the Burmese men in
the house, and he--he dare not enter without orders!"

"But Fu-Manchu?"

"We have nothing to fear from him. He will be your prisoner within ten
minutes from now! I have no time for words--you must believe!" She
stamped her foot impatiently. "And the dacoit?" snapped Smith.

"He also."

"I think perhaps I'd better come in, too," said Weymouth slowly.

Karamaneh shrugged her shoulders with quick impatience, and unlocked
the door in the high brick wall which divided the gloomy, evil-smelling
court from the luxurious apartments of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

"Make no noise," she warned. And Smith and myself followed her along
the uncarpeted passage beyond.

Inspector Weymouth, with a final word of instruction to his second in
command, brought up the rear. The door was reclosed; a few paces
farther on a second was unlocked. Passing through a small room,
unfurnished, a farther passage led us to a balcony. The transition was
startling.

Darkness was about us now, and silence: a perfumed, slumberous
darkness--a silence full of mystery. For, beyond the walls of the
apartment whereon we looked down waged the unceasing battle of sounds
that is the hymn of t