nd against all the promptings of logic
and Western bias. If my hope shall be realized I cannot, at this time,
pretend to state.

The future, 'mid its many secrets, holds this precious one from me.

I ask you then, to absolve me from the charge of ill completing my
work; for any curiosity with which this narrative may leave the reader
burdened is shared by the writer.

With intent, I have rushed you from the chambers of Professor Jenner
Monde to that closing episode at the deserted cottage; I have made the
pace hot in order to impart to these last pages of my account something
of the breathless scurry which characterized those happenings.

My canvas may seem sketchy: it is my impression of the reality. No
hard details remain in my mind of the dealings of that night.
Fu-Manchu arrested--Fu-Manchu, manacled, entering the cottage on his
mission of healing; Weymouth, miraculously rendered sane, coming forth;
the place in flames.

And then?

To a shell the cottage burned, with an incredible rapidity which
pointed to some hidden agency; to a shell about ashes which held NO
TRACE OF HUMAN BONES!

It has been asked of me: Was there no possibility of Fu-Manchu's
having eluded us in the ensuing confusion? Was there no loophole of
escape?

I reply, that so far as I was able to judge, a rat could scarce have
quitted the building undetected. Yet that Fu-Manchu had, in some
incomprehensible manner and by some mysterious agency, produced those
abnormal flames, I cannot doubt. Did he voluntarily ignite his own
funeral pyre?

As I write, there lies before me a soiled and creased sheet of vellum.
It bears some lines traced in a cramped, peculiar, and all but
illegible hand. This fragment was found by Inspector Weymouth (to this
day a man mentally sound) in a pocket of his ragged garments.

When it was written I leave you to judge. How it came to be where
Weymouth found it calls for no explanation:

"To Mr. Commissioner NAYLAND SMITH and Dr. PETRIE--

"Greeting! I am recalled home by One who may not be denied. In much
that I came to do I have failed. Much that I have done I would undo;
some little I have undone. Out of fire I came--the smoldering fire of
a thing one day to be a consuming flame; in fire I go. Seek not my
ashes. I am the lord of the fires! Farewell.

"FU-MANCHU."

Who has been with me in my several meetings with the man who penned
that message I leave to adjudge if it be the letter of a