gue and elusive memory. Coming
to the top floor, I opened the door of a front bedroom and was surprised
to find the interior in darkness.

"Smith!" I called.

"Come here and watch!" was the terse response. Nayland Smith was sitting
in the dark at the open window and peering out across the common. Even
as I saw him, a dim silhouette, I could detect that tensity in his
attitude which told of high-strung nerves.

I joined him.

"What is it?" I said, curiously.

"I don't know. Watch that clump of elms."

His masterful voice had the dry tone in it betokening excitement. I
leaned on the ledge beside him and looked out. The blaze of stars almost
compensated for the absence of the moon and the night had a quality of
stillness that made for awe. This was a tropical summer, and the common,
with its dancing lights dotted irregularly about it, had an unfamiliar
look to-night. The clump of nine elms showed as a dense and irregular
mass, lacking detail.

Such moods as that which now claimed my friend are magnetic. I had no
thought of the night's beauty, for it only served to remind me that
somewhere amid London's millions was lurking an uncanny being, whose
life was a mystery, whose very existence was a scientific miracle.

"Where's your patient?" rapped Smith.

His abrupt query diverted my thoughts into a new channel. No footstep
disturbed the silence of the highroad; where was my patient?

I craned from the window. Smith grabbed my arm.

"Don't lean out," he said.

I drew back, glancing at him surprisedly.

"For Heaven's sake, why not?"

"I'll tell you presently, Petrie. Did you see him?"

"I did, and I can't make out what he is doing. He seems to have remained
standing at the gate for some reason."

"He has seen it!" snapped Smith. "Watch those elms."

His hand remained upon my arm, gripping it nervously. Shall I say that
I was surprised? I can say it with truth. But I shall add that I was
thrilled, eerily; for this subdued excitement and alert watching of
Smith could only mean one thing:

Fu-Manchu!

And that was enough to set me watching as keenly as he; to set me
listening; not only for sounds outside the house but for sounds within.
Doubts, suspicions, dreads, heaped themselves up in my mind. Why was
Forsyth standing there at the gate? I had never seen him before, to
my knowledge, yet there was something oddly reminiscent about the man.
Could it be that his visit formed part of a plot? Yet his wound ha