lars of this
surprising event in Rangoon which properly marked the opening of the
Chinaman's second campaign. Smith looked in at the door on his way
out, but seeing me thus engaged, did not disturb me.

I think I have made it sufficiently evident in these records that my
practice was not an extensive one, and my hour for receiving patients
arrived and passed with only two professional interruptions.

My task concluded, I glanced at the clock, and determined to devote
the remainder of the evening to a little private investigation of my
own. From Nayland Smith I had preserved the matter a secret, largely
because I feared his ridicule; but I had by no means forgotten that I
had seen, or had strongly imagined that I had seen, Karamaneh--that
beautiful anomaly who (in modern London) asserted herself to be a
slave--in the shop of an antique dealer not a hundred yards from the
British Museum!

A theory was forming in my brain, which I was burningly anxious to put
to the test. I remembered how, two years before, I had met Karamaneh
near to this same spot; and I had heard Inspector Weymouth assert
positively that Fu-Manchu's headquarters were no longer in the East
End, as of yore. There seemed to me to be a distinct probability that
a suitable centre had been established for his reception in this
place, so much less likely to be suspected by the authorities. Perhaps
I attached too great a value to what may have been a delusion; perhaps
my theory rested upon no more solid foundation than the belief that I
had seen Karamaneh in the shop of the curio dealer. If her appearance
there should prove to have been imaginary, the structure of my theory
would be shattered at its base. To-night I should test my premises,
and upon the result of my investigations determine my future action.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE SILVER BUDDHA

Museum Street certainly did not seem a likely spot for Dr. Fu-Manchu
to establish himself, yet, unless my imagination had strangely
deceived me, from the window of the antique dealer who traded under
the name of J. Salaman, those wonderful eyes of Karamaneh, like the
velvet midnight of the Orient, had looked out at me.

As I paced slowly along the pavement toward that lighted window, my
heart was beating far from normally, and I cursed the folly which,
despite all, refused to die, but lingered on, poisoning my life.
Comparative quiet reigned in Museum Street, at no time a busy
thoroughfare, and, excepting