recapture with the aid--"

I stopped.

"Go on," said Nayland Smith, turning the ray to the left, "what did she
have in the basket?"

"Valerian," I replied mechanically.

The ray rested upon the lithe creature that I had shot down.

It was a black cat!

"A cat will go through fire and water for valerian," said Smith; "but I
got first innings this morning with fish and milk! I had recognized the
imprints under the trees for those of a cat, and I knew, that if a cat
had been released here it would still be hiding in the neighborhood,
probably in the bushes. I finally located a cat, sure enough, and
came for bait! I laid my trap, for the animal was too frightened to be
approachable, and then shot it; I had to. That yellow fiend used the
light as a decoy. The branch which killed him jutted out over the path
at a spot where an opening in the foliage above allowed some moon rays
to penetrate. Directly the victim stood beneath, the Chinaman uttered
his bird cry; the one below looked up, and the cat, previously held
silent and helpless in the leather sack, was dropped accurately upon his
head!"

"But"--I was growing confused.

Smith stooped lower.

"The cat's claws are sheathed now," he said; "but if you could examine
them you would find that they are coated with a shining black substance.
Only Fu-Manchu knows what that substance is, Petrie, but you and I know
what it can do!"

CHAPTER VII. ENTER MR. ABEL SLATTIN

"I don't blame you!" rapped Nayland Smith. "Suppose we say, then, a
thousand pounds if you show us the present hiding-place of Fu-Manchu,
the payment to be in no way subject to whether we profit by your
information or not?"

Abel Slattin shrugged his shoulders, racially, and returned to the
armchair which he had just quitted. He reseated himself, placing his hat
and cane upon my writing-table.

"A little agreement in black and white?" he suggested smoothly.

Smith raised himself up out of the white cane chair, and, bending
forward over a corner of the table, scribbled busily upon a sheet of
notepaper with my fountain-pen.

The while he did so, I covertly studied our visitor. He lay back in
the armchair, his heavy eyelids lowered deceptively. He was a thought
overdressed--a big man, dark-haired and well groomed, who toyed with a
monocle most unsuitable to his type. During the preceding conversation,
I had been vaguely surprised to note Mr. Abel Slattin's marked American
accent.

Sometimes, wh