lso--there was no sign of Mr.
Nayland Smith, and no sign of the American Burke, who had led him to
the place."

"Is it certain that they went there?"

"Two C.I.D. men, who were shadowing, actually saw the pair of them
enter. A signal had been arranged, but it was never given; and at
about half-past four the place was raided."

"Surely some arrests were made?"

"But there was no evidence!" cried Ryman. "Every inch of the
rat-burrow was searched. The Chinese gentleman who posed as the
proprietor of what he claimed to be a respectable lodging-house,
offered every facility to the police. What could we do?"

"I take it that the place is being watched?"

"Certainly," said Ryman. "Both from the river and from the shore. Oh!
they are not there! God knows where they are, but they are not
_there_!"

I stood for a moment in silence, endeavouring to determine my course;
then, telling Ryman that I hoped to see him later, I walked out slowly
into the rain and mist, and nodding to the taxi-driver to proceed to
our original destination, I re-entered the cab.

As we moved off, the lights of the River Police depot were swallowed
up in the humid murk, and again I found myself being carried through
the darkness of those narrow streets, which, like a maze, hold secret
within their Labyrinth mysteries great, and at least as foul, as that
of Parsiphae.

The marketing centres I had left far behind me; to my right stretched
the broken range of riverside buildings, and beyond them flowed the
Thames, a stream heavily burdened with secrets as ever were Tiber or
Tigris. On my left, occasional flickering lights broke through the
mist, for the most part the lights of taverns; and saving these rents
in the veil, the darkness was punctuated with nothing but the faint
and yellow luminance of the street lamps.

Ahead was a black mouth, which promised to swallow me up as it had
swallowed up my friend.

In short, what with my lowered condition, and consequent frame of
mind, and what with the traditions, for me inseparable from that
gloomy quarter of London, I was in the grip of a shadowy menace which
at any moment might become tangible--I perceived, in the most
commonplace objects, the yellow hand of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

When the cab stopped in a place of utter darkness, I aroused myself
with an effort, opened the door, and stepped out into the mud of a
narrow lane. A high brick wall frowned upon me from one side, and,
dimly perceptible, there