I came into full possession of my faculties (or believed
so at the time); I realized that I had nodded at my post, that I had
dreamed a strange dream ... but I realized something else. A ghoulish
presence was in the room.

Snatching up my pistol from the table I turned. Like some evil jinn of
Arabian lore, Dr. Fu-Manchu, surrounded by a slight mist, stood
looking at me!

Instantly I raised the pistol, leveled it steadily at the high,
dome-like brow--and fired! There could be no possibility of missing at
such short range, no possibility whatever ... and in the very instant
of pulling the trigger the mist cleared, the lineaments of Dr.
Fu-Manchu melted magically. This was not the Chinese doctor who stood
before me, at whose skull I still was pointing the deadly little
weapon, into whose brain I had fired the bullet; _it was Nayland
Smith!_

Ki-Ming, by means of the unholy arts of the Lamas of Rache-Churan,
had caused my to murder my best friend!

"Smith!" I whispered huskily--"God forgive me, what have I done? What
have I done?"

I stepped forward to support him ere he fell; but utter oblivion
closed down upon me, and I knew no more.

* * * * * * *

"He will do quite well now." said a voice that seemed to come from a
vast distance. "The effects of the drug will have entirely worn off
when he wakes, except that there may be nausea, and possibly muscular
pain for a time."

I opened my eyes; they were throbbing agonizingly. I lay in bed, and
beside me stood Murdoch McCabe, the famous toxicological expert from
Charing Cross Hospital--and Nayland Smith!

"Ah, that's better!" cried McCabe cheerily. "Here--drink this."

I drank from the glass which he raised to my lips. I was too weak for
speech, too weak for wonder. Nayland Smith, his face gray and drawn in
the cold light of early morning, watched me anxiously. McCabe in a
matter of fact way that acted upon me like a welcome tonic, put several
purely medical questions, which at first by dint of a great effort,
but, with ever-increasing ease, I answered.

"Yes," he said musingly at last. "Of course it is all but impossible
to speak with certainty, but I am disposed to think that you have been
drugged with some preparation of hashish. The most likely is that
known in Eastern countries as _maagun_ or _barsh_, composed of equal
parts of _cannabis indica_ and opium, with hellebore and two other
constituents, which var