come pale and
wild-eyed--the haunted Karamaneh of the old days.

She turned to me.

"Dr. Petrie--he says that Fu-Manchu is here!"

"Where?"

Nayland Smith rapped out the question violently, turning in a flash
from the picture which he was examining.

"In this room!" she whispered glancing furtively, affrightedly about
her. "Something tells Aziz when HE is near--and I, too, feel strangely
afraid. Oh, can it be that he is not dead!"

She held my arm tightly. Her brother was searching the room with big,
velvet black eyes. I studied the faces of the several visitors; and
Smith was staring about him with the old alert look, and tugging
nervously at the lobe of his ear. The name of the giant foe of the
white race instantaneously had strung him up to a pitch of supreme
intensity.

Our united scrutinies discovered no figure which could have been that
of the Chinese doctor. Who could mistake that long, gaunt shape, with
the high, mummy-like shoulders, and the indescribable gait, which I can
only liken to that of an awkward cat?

Then, over the heads of a group of people who stood by the doorway, I
saw Smith peering at someone--at someone who passed across the outer
room. Stepping aside, I, too, obtained a glimpse of this person.

As I saw him, he was a tall, old man, wearing a black Inverness coat
and a rather shabby silk hat. He had long white hair and a patriarchal
beard, wore smoked glasses and walked slowly, leaning upon a stick.

Smith's gaunt face paled. With a rapid glance at Karamaneh, he made
off across the room.

Could it be Dr. Fu-Manchu?

Many days had passed since, already half-choked by Inspector Weymouth's
iron grip, Fu-Manchu, before our own eyes, had been swallowed up by the
Thames. Even now men were seeking his body, and that of his last
victim. Nor had we left any stone unturned. Acting upon information
furnished by Karamaneh, the police had searched every known haunt of
the murder group. But everything pointed to the fact that the group
was disbanded and dispersed; that the lord of strange deaths who had
ruled it was no more.

Yet Smith was not satisfied. Neither, let me confess, was I. Every
port was watched; and in suspected districts a kind of house-to-house
patrol had been instituted. Unknown to the great public, in those days
a secret war waged--a war in which all the available forces of the
authorities took the field against one man! But that one man was the
evil of the