ed. "Yes,
it's empty. Lend a hand."

We grasped the empty crate, and between us, set it up on a solid
pedestal of casks. Then Smith mounted to this observation platform and I
scrambled up beside him, and looked down upon the lane outside.

It terminated as Smith had foreseen at a wharf gate some six feet to
the right of our post. Piled up in the lane beneath us, against the
warehouse door, was a stack of empty casks. Beyond, over the way, was a
kind of ramshackle building that had possibly been a dwelling-house at
some time. Bills were stuck in the ground-floor window indicating that
the three floors were to let as offices; so much was discernible in that
reflected moonlight.

I could hear the tide, lapping upon the wharf, could feel the chill from
the river and hear the vague noises which, night nor day, never cease
upon the great commercial waterway.

"Down!" whispered Smith. "Make no noise! I suspected it. They heard the
car following!"

I obeyed, clutching at him for support; for I was suddenly dizzy, and my
heart was leaping wildly--furiously.

"You saw her?" he whispered.

Saw her! yes, I had seen her! And my poor dream-world was toppling about
me, its cities, ashes and its fairness, dust.

Peering from the window, her great eyes wondrous in the moonlight and
her red lips parted, hair gleaming like burnished foam and her anxious
gaze set upon the corner of the lane--was Karamaneh... Karamaneh whom
once we had rescued from the house of this fiendish Chinese doctor;
Karamaneh who had been our ally; in fruitless quest of whom,--when, too
late, I realized how empty my life was become--I had wasted what little
of the world's goods I possessed;--Karamaneh!

"Poor old Petrie," murmured Smith--"I knew, but I hadn't the heart--He
has her again--God knows by what chains he holds her. But she's only
a woman, old boy, and women are very much alike--very much alike from
Charing Cross to Pagoda Road."

He rested his hand on my shoulder for a moment; I am ashamed to confess
that I was trembling; then, clenching my teeth with that mechanical
physical effort which often accompanies a mental one, I swallowed the
bitter draught of Nayland Smith's philosophy. He was raising himself, to
peer, cautiously, over the top of the door. I did likewise.

The window from which the girl had looked was nearly on a level with our
eyes, and as I raised my head above the woodwork, I quite distinctly
saw her go out of the room. The doo