the
light streamed through the open door on to the wet gravel. The house
was a blaze of lights, every window visible being illuminated; and Mrs.
Hamilton stood in the porch to greet us.

"Doctor Petrie?" she asked, nervously, as we descended.

"I am he," I said. "How is Mr. Smith?"

"Still insensible," was the reply.

Passing a knot of servants who stood at the foot of the stairs like a
little flock of frightened sheep--we made our way into the room where
my poor friend lay.

Dr. Hamilton, a gray-haired man of military bearing, greeted Sir
Lionel, and the latter made me known to my fellow practitioner, who
grasped my hand, and then went straight to the bedside, tilting the
lampshade to throw the light directly upon the patient.

Nayland Smith lay with his arms outside the coverlet and his fists
tightly clenched. His thin, tanned face wore a grayish hue, and a
white bandage was about his head. He breathed stentoriously.

"We can only wait," said Dr. Hamilton, "and trust that there will be
no complications."

I clenched my fists involuntarily, but, speaking no word, turned and
passed from the room.

Downstairs in Dr. Hamilton's study was the man who had found Nayland
Smith.

"We don't know when it was done, sir," he said, answering my first
question. "Staples and me stumbled on him in the dusk, just by the big
beech--a good quarter-mile from the village. I don't know how long
he'd laid there, but it must have been for some time, as the last
rain arrived an hour earlier. No, sir, he hadn't been robbed; his
money and watch were on him but his pocketbook lay open beside him;--
though, funny as it seems, there were three five-pound notes in it!"

"Do you understand, Petrie?" cried Sir Lionel. "Smith evidently
obtained a copy of the old plan of the secret passages of Graywater
and Monkswell, sooner than he expected, and determined to return
to-night. They left him for dead, having robbed him of the plans!"

"But the attack on Dr. Hamilton's man?"

"Fu-Manchu clearly tried to prevent communication with us to-night! He
is playing for time. Depend on it, Petrie, the hour of his departure
draws near and he is afraid of being trapped at the last moment."

He began taking huge strides up and down the room, forcibly reminding
me of a caged lion.

"To think," I said bitterly, "that all our efforts have failed to
discover the secret----"

"The secret of my own property!" roared Barton--"and one known to
that damne