ty
house.

"Yes, yes," snapped Smith. "For God's sake go on, man! What have you
done with him? Where is he?"

I clearly detected a movement myself immediately behind the half-open
door of the sitting-room. Smith started and stared intently across my
shoulder at the doorway; then his gaze shifted and became fixed upon
my face.

"He bought his life from me, Smith."

Never can I forget the change that came over my friend's tanned
features at those words; never can I forget the pang that I suffered
to see it. The fire died out of his eyes and he seemed to grow old and
weary in a moment. None too steadily I went on:--

"He offered a price that I could not resist, Smith. Try to forgive me,
if you can. I know that I have done a dastardly thing, but--perhaps a
day may come in your own life when you will understand. He descended
with me to a cellar under the empty house, in which some one was
locked. Had I arrested Fu-Manchu this poor captive must have died there
of starvation; for no one would ever have suspected that the place had
an occupant...."

The door of the sitting-room was thrown open, and, wearing my
great-coat over the bizarre costume in which I had found her, with her
bare ankles and little red slippers peeping grotesquely from below,
and her wonderful cloud of hair rippling over the turned-up collar,
Karamaneh came out!

Her great dark eyes were raised to Nayland Smith's with such an appeal
in them--an appeal for _me_--that emotion took me by the throat and
had me speechless. I could not look at either of them; I turned aside
and stared into the lighted sitting-room.

How long I stood so God knows, and I never shall; but suddenly I found
my hand seized in a vice-like grip, I looked around ... and Smith,
holding my fingers fast in that iron grasp, had his left arm about
Karamaneh's shoulders, and his gray eyes were strangely soft, whilst
hers were hidden behind her upraised hands.

"Good old Petrie!" said Smith hoarsely. "Wake up, man; we have to get
her to a hotel before they all close, remember. _I_ understand, old
man. That day came in my life long years ago!"

CHAPTER XXXIV

GRAYWATER PARK

"This is a singular situation in which we find ourselves," I said,
"and one that I'm bound to admit I don't appreciate."

Nayland Smith stretched his long legs, and lay back in his chair.

"The sudden illness of Sir Lionel is certainly very disturbing," he
replied, "and had there been any possibility