e step--and the hungry mire had
fastened upon my foot, almost tripping me.

"Lost the path!"

We stopped dead. The falling rain walled us in. I dared not move, for I
knew that the mire, the devouring mire, stretched, eager, close about
my feet. We were both waiting for the next flash of lightning, I think,
but, before it came, out of the darkness ahead of us rose a cry that
sometimes rings in my ears to this hour. Yet it was no more than a
repetition of that which had called to us, deathfully, awhile before.

"Help! help! for God's sake help! Quick! I am sinking..."

Nayland Smith grasped my arm furiously.

"We dare not move, Petrie--we dare not move!" he breathed. "It's God's
justice--visible for once."

Then came the lightning; and--ignoring a splitting crash behind us--we
both looked ahead, over the mire.

Just on the edge of the venomous green path, not thirty yards away, I
saw the head and shoulders and upstretched, appealing arms of Van Roon.
Even as the lightning flickered and we saw him, he was gone; with one
last, long, drawn-out cry, horribly like the mournful wail of a sea
gull, he was gone!

That eerie light died, and in the instant before the sound of the
thunder came shatteringly, we turned about... in time to see Cragmire
Tower, a blacker silhouette against the night, topple and fall! A
red glow began to be perceptible above the building. The thunder came
booming through the caverns of space. Nayland Smith lowered his wet face
close to mine and shouted in my ear:

"Kegan Van Roon never returned from China. It was a trap. Those were two
creatures of Dr. Fu-Manchu..."

The thunder died away, hollowly, echoing over the distant sea...

"That light on the moor to-night?"

"You have not learned the Morse Code, Petrie. It was a signal, and it
read:--S M I T H... SOS."

"Well?"

"I took the chance, as you know. And it was Karamaneh! She knew of the
plot to bury us in the mire. She had followed from London, but could do
nothing until dusk. God forgive me if I've misjudged her--for we owe her
our lives to-night."

Flames were bursting up from the building beside the ruin of the ancient
tower which had faced the storms of countless ages only to succumb at
last. The lightning literally had cloven it in twain.

"The mulatto?..."

Again the lightning flashed, and we saw the path and began to retrace
our steps. Nayland Smith turned to me; his face was very grim in that
unearthly light, and his eye