approach must be unknown to my
companion--and I knew that it was impossible for me to advise him of it
unseen by the dreaded visitor.

A third time the dark patch--the hand of one who, ghostly, silent, was
creeping down into the hallway--vanished and reappeared on a level with
my eyes. Then a vague shape became visible; no more than a blur upon the
dim design of the wall-paper... and Nayland Smith got his first sight of
the stranger.

The clock on the mantelpiece boomed out the half-hour.

At that, such was my state (I blush to relate it) I uttered a faint cry!

It ended all secrecy--that hysterical weakness of mine. It might have
frustrated our hopes; that it did not do so was in no measure due to me.
But in a sort of passionate whirl, the ensuing events moved swiftly.

Smith hesitated not one instant. With a panther-like leap he hurled
himself into the hall.

"The lights, Petrie!" he cried--"the lights! The switch is near the
street-door!"

I clenched my fists in a swift effort to regain control of my
treacherous nerves, and, bounding past Smith, and past the foot of the
stair, I reached out my hand to the switch, the situation of which,
fortunately, I knew.

Around I came, in response to a shrill cry from behind me--an inhuman
cry, less a cry than the shriek of some enraged animal....

With his left foot upon the first stair, Nayland Smith stood, his lean
body bent perilously backward, his arms rigidly thrust out, and his
sinewy fingers gripping the throat of an almost naked man--a man whose
brown body glistened unctuously, whose shaven head was apish low, whose
bloodshot eyes were the eyes of a mad dog! His teeth, upper and lower,
were bared; they glistened, they gnashed, and a froth was on his lips.
With both his hands, he clutched a heavy stick, and once--twice, he
brought it down upon Nayland Smith's head!

I leaped forward to my friend's aid; but as though the blows had been
those of a feather, he stood like some figure of archaic statuary, nor
for an instant relaxed the death grip which he had upon his adversary's
throat.

Thrusting my way up the stairs, I wrenched the stick from the hand of
the dacoit--for in this glistening brown man, I recognized one of that
deadly brotherhood who hailed Dr. Fu-Manchu their Lord and Master.

* * * * *

I cannot dwell upon the end of that encounter; I cannot hope to make
acceptable to my readers an account of how Nayl