here, buried fully two inches in the woodwork, it stuck, and
still clutching the hilt, I looked to the right and across the room--I
looked to the curtained doorway.

Fu-Manchu, with one long, claw-like hand upon the top of the first
gate, was bending over the trap, but his brilliant green eyes were
turned in the same direction as my own--upon the curtained doorway.

Upright within it, her beautiful face as pale as death, but her great
eyes blazing with a sort of splendid madness, stood Karamaneh!

She looked, not at the tortured man, not at me, but fully at Dr.
Fu-Manchu. One hand clutched the trembling draperies; now she suddenly
raised the other, so that the jewels on her white arm glittered in the
light of the lamp above the door. She held my Browning pistol!
Fu-Manchu sprang upright, inhaling sibilantly, as Karamaneh pointed
the pistol point-blank at his high skull and fired....

I saw a little red streak appear, up by the neutral-coloured hair,
under the black cap. I became as a detached intelligence, unlinked
with the corporeal, looking down upon a thing which for some reason I
had never thought to witness.

Fu-Manchu threw up both arms, so that the sleeves of the green robe
fell back to the elbows. He clutched at his head and the black cap
fell behind him. He began to utter short, guttural cries; he swayed
backward--to the right--to the left--then lurched forward right across
the cage. There he lay, writhing, for a moment, his baneful eyes
turned up, revealing the whites; and the great grey rats, released,
began leaping about the room. Two shot like grey streaks past the slim
figure in the doorway, one darted behind the chair to which I was
lashed, and the fourth ran all around against the wall.... Fu-Manchu,
prostrate across the overturned cage, lay still, his massive head
sagging downward.

I experienced a mental repetition of my adventure in the earlier
evening--I was dropping, dropping, dropping into some bottomless pit ...
warm arms were about my neck; and burning kisses upon my lips.

CHAPTER XXX

THE CALL OF THE EAST

I seemed to haul myself back out of the pit of unconsciousness by the
aid of two little hands which clasped my own. I uttered a sigh that
was almost a sob, and opened my eyes.

I was sitting in the big red-leathern armchair in my own study ... and
a lovely but truly bizarre figure, in a harem dress, was kneeling on
the carpet at my feet; so that my first sight of the world