path which seemingly led across the common. I
followed at a discreet distance. Realizing the tremendous potentialities
of this rencontre I seemed to rise to the occasion; my brain became
alert and clear; every faculty was at its brightest. And I felt
serenely confident of my ability to make the most of the situation.

Zarmi went on and on along the lonely path. Not another pedestrian was
in sight, and the rain walled in the pair of us. Where comfort-loving
humanity sought shelter from the inclement weather, we two moved out
there in the storm, linked by a common enmity.

I have said that my every faculty was keen, and have spoken of my
confidence in my own alertness. My condition, as a matter of fact,
must have been otherwise, and this belief in my powers merely
symptomatic of the fever which consumed me; for, as I was to learn,
I had failed to take the first elementary precaution necessary in
such case. I, who tracked another, had not counted upon being tracked
myself! ...

A bag or sack, reeking of some sickly perfume, was dropped silently,
accurately, over my head from behind; it was drawn closely about my
throat. One muffled shriek, strangely compound of fear and execration,
I uttered. I was stifling, choking ... I staggered--and fell....

CHAPTER XVII

I MEET DR. FU-MANCHU

My next impression was of a splitting headache, which, as memory
remounted its throne, brought up a train of recollections. I found
myself to be seated upon a heavy wooden bench set flat against a wall,
which was covered with a kind of straw matting. My hands were firmly
tied behind me. In the first agony of that reawakening I became aware
of two things.

I was in an operating-room, for the most conspicuous item of its
furniture was an operating-table! Shaded lamps were suspended above
it; and instruments, antiseptics, dressings, etc., were arranged upon
a glass-topped table beside it. Secondly, I had a companion.

Seated upon a similar bench on the other side of the room, was a
heavily built man, his dark hair splashed with gray, as were his
short, neatly trimmed beard and mustache. He, too, was pinioned; and
he stared across the table with a glare in which a sort of stupefied
wonderment predominated, but which was not free from terror.

It was Sir Baldwin Frazer!

"Sir Baldwin!" I muttered, moistening my parched lips with my tongue--
"Sir Baldwin!--how----"

"It is Dr. Petrie, is it not?" he said, his voice husky with emot