h had been entirely surrounded by a ring of
police, Dr. Fu-Manchu was admitted from the closed car in which, his
work of healing complete, he was to be borne to prison--to death!

Law and justice were suspended by my royally empowered friend that the
enemy of the white race might heal one of those who had hunted him down!

No curious audience was present, for sunrise was not yet come; no
concourse of excited students followed the hand of the Master; but
within that surrounded cottage was performed one of those miracles of
science which in other circumstances had made the fame of Dr. Fu-Manchu
to live forever.

Inspector Weymouth, dazed, disheveled, clutching his head as a man who
has passed through the Valley of the Shadow--but sane--sane!--walked
out into the porch!

He looked towards us--his eyes wild, but not with the fearsome wildness
of insanity.

"Mr. Smith!" he cried--and staggered down the path--"Dr. Petrie!
What--"

There came a deafening explosion. From EVERY visible window of the
deserted cottage flames burst forth!

"QUICK!" Smith's voice rose almost to a scream--"into the house!"

He raced up the path, past Inspector Weymouth, who stood swaying there
like a drunken man. I was close upon his heels. Behind me came the
police.

The door was impassable! Already, it vomited a deathly heat, borne
upon stifling fumes like those of the mouth of the Pit. We burst a
window. The room within was a furnace!

"My God!" cried someone. "This is supernatural!"

"Listen!" cried another. "Listen!"

The crowd which a fire can conjure up at any hour of day or night, out
of the void of nowhere, was gathering already. But upon all descended
a pall of silence.

From the heat of the holocaust a voice proclaimed itself--a voice
raised, not in anguish but in TRIUMPH! It chanted barbarically--and
was still.

The abnormal flames rose higher--leaping forth from every window.

"The alarm!" said Smith hoarsely. "Call up the brigade!"

I come to the close of my chronicle, and feel that I betray a
trust--the trust of my reader. For having limned in the colors at my
command the fiendish Chinese doctor, I am unable to conclude my task as
I should desire, unable, with any consciousness of finality, to write
Finis to the end of my narrative.

It seems to me sometimes that my pen is but temporarily idle--that I
have but dealt with a single phase of a movement having a hundred
phases. One sequel I hope for, a