if you will send
me a note of your fee, I shall be obliged." He raised his hand with a
conclusive gesture. "I am not prepared to discuss the question of sale
any further at present, Mr. Meyerstein."

At that the dealer bowed, took up his hat from the table, and prepared
to depart. Lewison opened the door and stood aside.

"Good morning, gentlemen," said Meyerstein.

As Lewison was about to follow him--

"Since you do not intend to open the box," he said, turning, his hand
upon the door knob, "have you any idea of its contents?"

"None," replied Smith; "but with my present inadequate knowledge of
its history, I do not care to open it."

Lewison smiled skeptically.

"Probably you know best," he said, bowed to us both, and retired.

When the door was closed--

"You see, Petrie," said Smith, beginning to stuff tobacco into his
briar, "if we are ever short of funds, here's something"--pointing to
the Tulun-Nur box upon the table--"which would retrieve our fallen
fortunes."

He uttered one of his rare, boyish laughs, and began to pace the
carpet again, his gaze always set upon our strange treasure. What did
it contain?

The manner in which it had come into our possession suggested that it
might contain something of the utmost value to the Yellow group. For
we knew the house of John Ki to be, if not the head-quarters, certainly
a meeting-place of the mysterious organization the Si-Fan; we knew
that Dr. Fu-Manchu used the place--Dr. Fu-Manchu, the uncanny being
whose existence seemingly proved him immune from natural laws, a
deathless incarnation of evil.

My gaze set upon the box, I wondered anew what strange, dark secrets
it held; I wondered how many murders and crimes greater than murder
blackened its history.

"Smith," I said suddenly, "now that the mystery of the absence of a
key-hole is explained, I am sorely tempted to essay the task of
opening the coffer. I think it might help us to a solution of the
whole mystery."

"And I think otherwise!" interrupted my friend grimly. "In a word,
Petrie, I look upon this box as a sort of hostage by means of which--
who knows--we might one day buy our lives from the enemy.
I have a sort of fancy, call it superstition if you will, that
nothing--not even our miraculous good luck--could save us if once
we ravished its secret."

I stared at him amazedly; this was a new phase in his character.

"I am conscious of something almost like a spiritual unrest," he
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