my end was come. And, raising my hands to my throat,
I found it to be swollen and inflamed. Then the floor upon which I lay
seemed to be rocking like the deck of a ship, and I glided back again
into a place of darkness and forgetfulness.

My second awakening was heralded by a returning sense of smell; for I
became conscious of a faint, exquisite perfume.

It brought me to my senses as nothing else could have done, and I sat
upright with a hoarse cry. I could have distinguished that perfume amid
a thousand others, could have marked it apart from the rest in a scent
bazaar. For me it had one meaning, and one meaning only--Karamaneh.

She was near to me, or had been near to me!

And in the first moments of my awakening, I groped about in the darkness
blindly seeking her.

Then my swollen throat and throbbing head, together with my utter
inability to move my neck even slightly, reminded me of the facts as
they were. I knew in that bitter moment that Karamaneh was no longer my
friend; but, for all her beauty and charm, was the most heartless, the
most fiendish creature in the service of Dr. Fu-Manchu. I groaned aloud
in my despair and misery.

Something stirred, near to me in the room, and set my nerves creeping
with a new apprehension. I became fully alive to the possibilities of
the darkness.

To my certain knowledge, Dr. Fu-Manchu at this time had been in England
for fully three months, which meant that by now he must be equipped with
all the instruments of destruction, animate and inanimate, which dread
experience had taught me to associate with him.

Now, as I crouched there in that dark apartment listening for a
repetition of the sound, I scarcely dared to conjecture what might have
occasioned it, but my imagination peopled the place with reptiles which
writhed upon the floor, with tarantulas and other deadly insects which
crept upon the walls, which might drop upon me from the ceiling at any
moment.

Then, since nothing stirred about me, I ventured to move, turning my
shoulders, for I was unable to move my aching head; and I looked in the
direction from which a faint, very faint, light proceeded.

A regular tapping sound now began to attract my attention, and, having
turned about, I perceived that behind me was a broken window, in places
patched with brown paper; the corner of one sheet of paper was detached,
and the rain trickled down upon it with a rhythmical sound.

In a flash I realized that I lay in