uous labors at last met
with a slight reward. For a moment, the curtain of mystery surrounding
the Si-Fan was lifted, and we had a glimpse of that organization's
elaborate mechanism. I cannot better commence my relation of the
episodes associated with the Zagazig's cryptogram than from the moment
when I found myself bending over a prostrate form extended upon the
table in the Inspector's room at the River Police Depot. It was that
of a man who looked like a Lascar, who wore an ill-fitting slop-shop
suit of blue, soaked and stained and clinging hideously to his body.
His dank black hair was streaked upon his low brow; and his face,
although it was notable for a sort of evil leer, had assumed in death
another and more dreadful expression.

Asphyxiation had accounted for his end beyond doubt, but there were
marks about his throat of clutching fingers, his tongue protruded,
and the look in the dead eyes was appalling.

"He was amongst the piles upholding the old wharf at the back of the
Joy-Shop?" said Smith tersely, turning to the police officer in charge.

"Exactly" was the reply. "The in-coming tide had jammed him right up
under a cross-beam."

"What time was that?'

"Well, at high tide last night. Hewson, returning with the ten o'clock
boat, noticed the moonlight glittering upon the knife."

The knife to which the Inspector referred possessed a long curved
blade of a kind with which I had become terribly familiar in the past.
The dead man still clutched the hilt of the weapon in his right hand,
and it now lay with the blade resting crosswise upon his breast. I
stared in a fascinated way at this mysterious and tragic flotsam of
old Thames.

Glancing up, I found Nayland Smith's gray eyes watching me.

"You see the mark, Petrie?" he snapped.

I nodded. The dead man upon the table was a Burmese dacoit!

"What do you make of it?" I said slowly.

"At the moment," replied Smith, "I scarcely know what to make of it.
You are agreed with the divisional surgeon that the man--unquestionably
a dacoit--died, not from drowning, but from strangulation. From
evidence we have heard, it would appear that the encounter which
resulted in the body being hurled in the river, actually took place
upon the wharf-end beneath which he was found. And we know that a place
formerly used by the Si-Fan group--in other words, by Dr. Fu-Manchu--
adjoins the wharf. I am tempted to believe that this"--he nodded
towards the ghastly and siniste