the mesh.
There was blood--

"God in heaven!" screamed Smith frenziedly--"they have the wire-jacket
on him! Shoot down that damned Chinaman, Petrie! Shoot! Shoot!"

Lithely as a cat the man with the knife leaped around--but I raised the
Browning, and deliberately--with a cool deliberation that came to me
suddenly--shot him through the head. I saw his oblique eyes turn up to
the whites; I saw the mark squarely between his brows; and with no word
nor cry he sank to his knees and toppled forward with one yellow hand
beneath him and one outstretched, clutching--clutching--convulsively.
His pigtail came unfastened and began to uncoil, slowly, like a snake.

I handed the pistol to Smith; I was perfectly cool, now; and I leaped
forward, took up the bloody knife from the floor and cut Eltham's
lashings. He sank into my arms.

"Praise God," he murmured, weakly. "He is more merciful to me than
perhaps I deserve. Unscrew... the jacket, Petrie... I think ... I was
very near to.... weakening. Praise the good God, Who... gave me...
fortitude..."

I got the screw of the accursed thing loosened, but the act of removing
the jacket was too agonizing for Eltham--man of iron though he was. I
laid him swooning on the floor.

"Where is Fu-Manchu?"

Nayland Smith, from just within the door, threw out the query in a tone
of stark amaze. I stood up--I could do nothing more for the poor victim
at the moment--and looked about me. The room was innocent of furniture,
save for heaps of rubbish on the floor, and a tin oil-lamp hung, on
the wall. The dead Chinaman lay close beside Smith. There was no second
door, the one window was barred, and from this room we had heard the
voice, the unmistakable, unforgettable voice, of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

But Dr. Fu-Manchu was not there!

Neither of us could accept the fact for a moment; we stood there,
looking from the dead man to the tortured man who only swooned, in a
state of helpless incredulity.

Then the explanation flashed upon us both, simultaneously, and with a
cry of baffled rage Smith leaped along the passage to the second door.
It was wide open. I stood at his elbow when he swept its emptiness with
the ray of his pocket-lamp.

There was a speaking-tube fixed between the two rooms!

Smith literally ground his teeth.

"Yet, Petrie," he said, "we have learnt something. Fu-Manchu had
evidently promised Eltham his life if he would divulge the name of
his correspondent. He meant to keep his wor