which may prove more disastrous than
any attempt made upon us by Fu-Manchu in life. Some fiendish member of
the murder group is on board the ship. We must, as always, meet guile
with guile. There must be no appeal to the Captain, no public
examination of passengers and crew. One attempt has failed; I do not
doubt that others will be made. At present, you will enact the role of
physician-in-attendance upon Karamaneh, and will put it about for whom
it may interest that a slight return of her nervous trouble is causing
her to pass uneasy nights. I can safely leave this part of the case to
you, I think?"

I nodded rapidly.

"I haven't troubled to make inquiries," added Smith, "but I think it
probable that the regulation respecting closed ports will come into
operation immediately we have passed the Straits, or at any rate
immediately there is any likelihood of bad weather."

"You mean--"

"I mean that no alteration should be made in our habits. A second
attempt along similar lines is to be apprehended--to-night. After that
we may begin to look out for a new danger."

"I pray we may avoid it," I said fervently.

As I entered the saloon for breakfast in the morning, I was subjected
to solicitous inquiries from Mrs. Prior, the gossip of the ship. Her
room adjoined Karamaneh's, and she had been one of the passengers
aroused by the girl's cries in the night. Strictly adhering to my
role, I explained that my patient was threatened with a second nervous
breakdown, and was subject to vivid and disturbing dreams. One or two
other inquiries I met in the same way, ere escaping to the corner
table reserved to us.

That iron-bound code of conduct which rules the Anglo-Indian, in the
first days of the voyage had threatened to ostracise Karamaneh and
Aziz, by reason of the Eastern blood to which their brilliant but
peculiar type of beauty bore witness. Smith's attitude, however--and,
in a Burmese Commissioner, it constituted something of a law--had done
much to break down the barriers; the extraordinary beauty of the girl
had done the rest. So that now, far from finding themselves shunned,
the society of Karamaneh and her romantic-looking brother was
universally courted. The last inquiry that morning, respecting my
interesting patient, came from the Bishop of Damascus, a benevolent
old gentleman whose ancestry was not wholly innocent of Oriental
strains, and who sat at a table immediately behind me. As I settled
down to my porr