was assassinated
in his own garden, in Nan-Yang, one day last week."

CHAPTER VIII

DR. FU-MANCHU STRIKES

Together we marched down the slope of the quiet, suburban avenue; to
take pause before a small, detached house displaying the hatchet
boards of the estate agent. Here we found unkempt laurel bushes, and
acacias run riot, from which arboreal tangle protruded the notice: "To
be Let or Sold."

Smith, with an alert glance to right and left, pushed open the wooden
gate and drew me in upon the gravel path. Darkness mantled all; for
the nearest street lamp was fully twenty yards beyond.

From the miniature jungle bordering the path, a soft whistle sounded.

"Is that Carter?" called Smith sharply.

A shadowy figure uprose, and vaguely I made it out for that of a man
in the unobtrusive blue serge which is the undress uniform of the
Force.

"Well?" rapped my companion.

"Mr. Slattin returned ten minutes ago, sir," reported the constable.
"He came in a cab which he dismissed--"

"He has not left again?"

"A few minutes after his return," the man continued, "another cab came
up, and a lady alighted."

"A lady!"

"The same, sir, that has called upon him before."

"Smith!" I whispered, plucking at his arm--"is it--?"

He half turned, nodding his head; and my heart began to throb
foolishly. For now the manner of Slattin's campaign suddenly was
revealed to me. In our operations against the Chinese murder-group two
years before, we had had an ally in the enemy's camp--Karamaneh, the
beautiful slave, whose presence in those happenings of the past had
coloured the sometimes sordid drama with the opulence of old Arabia;
who had seemed a fitting figure for the romances of Bagdad during the
Caliphate--Karamaneh, whom I had thought sincere, whose inscrutable
Eastern soul I had presumed, fatuously, to have laid bare and
analysed.

Now once again she was plying her old trade of go-between; professing
to reveal the secrets of Dr. Pu-Manchu, and all the time--I could not
doubt it--inveigling men into the net of this awful fisher.

Yesterday, I had been her dupe; yesterday, I had rejoiced in my
captivity. To-day, I was not the favoured one; to-day I had not been
selected recipient of her confidences--confidences sweet, seductive,
deadly: but Abel Slattin, a plausible rogue, who, in justice, should
be immured in Sing Sing, was chosen out, was enslaved by those lovely
mysterious eyes, was taking to his soul the