nd time to compare the strength of the
little brown man with that of a Nile beetle, which can raise many times
its own weight. Then, behind him, appeared a second figure, which
immediately claimed the whole of my errant attention.

"Fu-Manchu!" hissed my friend, from the darkness which concealed him.

It was indeed none other than Fu-Manchu--the Fu-Manchu whom we had
thought to be helpless. The deeps of the Chinaman's cunning--the fine
quality of his courage, were forced upon me as amazing facts.

He had assumed the appearance of a drugged opium-smoker so well as to
dupe me--a medical man; so well as to dupe Karamaneh--whose experience
of the noxious habit probably was greater than my own. And, with the
gallows dangling before him, he had waited--played the part of a
lure--whilst a body of police actually surrounded the place!

I have since thought that the room probably was one which he actually
used for opium debauches, and the device of the trap was intended to
protect him during the comatose period.

Now, holding a lantern above his head, the deviser of the trap
whereinto we, mouselike, had blindly entered, came through the cellars,
following the brown man who carried Weymouth. The faint rays of the
lantern (it apparently contained a candle) revealed a veritable forest
of the gigantic fungi--poisonously colored--hideously swollen--climbing
from the floor up the slimy walls--climbing like horrid parasites to
such part of the arched roof as was visible to me.

Fu-Manchu picked his way through the fungi ranks as daintily as though
the distorted, tumid things had been viper-headed.

The resounding blows which I had noted before, and which had never
ceased, culminated in a splintering crash. Dr. Fu-Manchu and his
servant, who carried the apparently insensible detective, passed in
under the arch, Fu-Manchu glancing back once along the passages. The
lantern he extinguished, or concealed; and whilst I waited, my mind
dully surveying memories of all the threats which this uncanny being
had uttered, a distant clamor came to my ears.

Then, abruptly, it ceased. Dr. Fu-Manchu had closed a heavy door; and
to my surprise I perceived that the greater part of it was of glass.
The will-o'-the-wisp glow which played around the fungi rendered the
vista of the cellars faintly luminous, and visible to me from where I
lay. Fu-Manchu spoke softly. His voice, its guttural note alternating
with a sibilance on certain words,