 CHAPTER XIX I cannot conceive that any mortal ever attained to anything like an intimacy with Dr. Fu Man Chu. I cannot believe that any man could ever grow used to his presence, could ever cease to fear him. I suppose I had set eyes upon Fu Man Chu some five or six times prior to this occasion, and now he was dressed in the manner which I always associated with him, probably because it was thus I first saw him. He wore a plain yellow robe and, with his pointed chin resting upon his bosom, he looked down at me, revealing a great expanse of the marvellous brow with its sparse, neutral-colored hair. Never in my experience have I known such force to dwell in the glance of any human eye as dwelt in that of this uncanny being. His singular affliction, if affliction it were, the film or slight membrane which sometimes obscured the oblique eyes, was particularly evident at the moment that I crossed the threshold, but now as I looked up at Dr. Fu Man Chu it lifted, revealing the eyes and all their emerald greenness. The idea of physical attack upon this incredible being seemed childish, inadequate, but following that first instant of stupefaction I forced myself to advance upon him. A dull crushing blow descended on the top of my skull and I became oblivious of all things. My return to consciousness was accompanied by tremendous pains in my head, whereby from previous experience I knew that a sandbag had been used against me by someone in the shop, presumably the immobile shopman. This awakening was accompanied by none of those hazy doubts respecting previous events and present surroundings which are the usual symptoms of revival from sudden unconsciousness. Even before I opened my eyes, before I had more than a partial command of my senses, I knew that with my wrists handcuffed behind me. I lay in a room which was also occupied by Dr. Fu Man Chu. This absolute certainty of the Chinaman's presence was evidenced, not by my senses, but only by an inner consciousness, and the same that always awoken to life at the approach not only of Fu Man Chu in person, but of certain of his uncanny servants. A faint perfume hung in the air about me. I do not mean that of any essence or of any incense, but rather the smell which is suffused by oriental furniture, by oriental draperies, the indefinable but unmistakable perfume of the East. Thus London has a distinct smell of its own, so has Paris, whilst the difference between Marseille and Suez, for instance, is even more marked. Now the atmosphere surrounding me was eastern, but not of the East that I knew. Rather it was far eastern. Perhaps I do not make myself very clear. But to me there was a mysterious significance in that perfumed atmosphere. I opened my eyes. I lay upon a long, low city in a fairly large room which was furnished as I had anticipated in an absolutely oriental fashion. The two windows were so screened as to have lost, from the interior point of view, all resemblance to European windows, and the whole structure of the room had been altered in conformity, bearing out my idea that the place had been prepared for Foumanchu's reception some time before his actual return. I doubted if East or West a duplicate of that singular apartment could be found. The end in which I lay was, as I have said, typical of an eastern house, and a large ornate lantern hung from the ceiling almost directly above me. The further end of the room was occupied by tall cases, some of them containing books, but the majority filled with scientific paraphernalia, rows of flasks and jars, frames of test tubes, retorts, scales, and other objects of the laboratory. At a large and very finely carved table sat Dr. Foumanchu, a yellow and faded volume opened before him, and some dark red fluid almost like blood, bubbling in a test tube which he held over the flame of a Bunsen burner. The enormously long nail of his right index finger rested upon the opened page of the book to which he seemed constantly to refer, dividing his attention between the volume, the contents of the test tube, and the progress of a second experiment, or possibly a part of the same, which was taking place upon another corner of the littered table. A huge glass retort, the bulb was fully two feet in diameter, fitted with an libig's condenser rested in a metal frame, and within the bulb, floating in an oily substance, was a fungus some six inches high, shaped like a toadstool, but of a brilliant and venomous orange colour. Three flat tubes of light were so arranged as to cast violet rays upward into the retort, and the receiver, wherein condensed the product of this strange experiment, contained some drops of a red fluid which may have been identical to that boiling in the test tube. These things I perceived at a glance, then the filmy eyes of Dr. Fu Manchu were raised from the book, turned in my direction, and all else was forgotten. I regret, came the sibilant voice, that unpleasant measures were necessary, but hesitation would have been fatal. I trust Dr. Petrie that you suffer no inconvenience. To this speech no reply was possible, and I attempted none. You have long been aware of my estimate for your acquirements, continued the Chinaman, his voice occasionally touching deep guttural notes, and you will appreciate the pleasure with which visit affords me. I kneel at the feet of my silver buddha. I look to you when you shall have overcome your prejudices, due to ignorance of my true motives, you assist me in establishing that intellectual control which is destined to be the new world force. I bear you no mowers of your ancient enmity, and even now. He waved one yellow hand toward the retort. I am conducting an experiment, designed to convert you from your misunderstanding, and to adjust your perspective. Quite unemotionally he spoke, then turned again to his book, his test tube and retort, in the most matter-of-fact way imaginable. I do not think the most frenzied outburst on his part, the most fiendish threats, could have produced such effect upon me as those cold and carefully calculated words, spoken in that unique voice which rang about the room sibilantly. In its tones, in the glance of the green eyes, in the very pose of the gaunt high-shouldered body, there was power-force. I counted myself lost, and in view of the doctor's words studied the progress of the experiment with frightful interest, but a few moments sufficed in which to realise that, for all my training I knew as little of chemistry, of chemistry as understood by this man's genius, as a junior student in surgery knows of tropining. The process in operation was a complete mystery to me, the means and ends alike incomprehensible. Thus, in the heavy silence of that room a silence only broken by the regular bubbling from the test tube, I found my attention straying from the table to the other objects surrounding it, and at one of them my gaze stopped and remained chained with horror. It was a glass jar, some five feet in height, and filled with viscous fluid of a light amber colour. Out of this peered a hideous dog-like face, low-browed with pointed ears, and a nose almost hoggishly flat. By the death grin of the face the gleaming fangs were revealed, and the body, the long yellow-gray body, rested or seen to rest, upon short, malformed legs, whilst one long limp arm the right, hung down straightly in the preservative. The left arm had been severed above the elbow. Fu Man Shu, finding his experiment to be proceeding favourably, lifted his eyes to me again. You are interested in my poor Sinocephalite, he said, and his eyes were filmed like the eyes of one afflicted with cataract. He was a devoted servant, Dr. Petrie, but the lower influences in his genealogy sometimes conquered. Then he got out of hand, and at last he was so ungrateful toward those who had educated him that in one of those paroxysms of his he attacked and called a most faithful barman, one of my oldest followers. Fu Man Shu returned to his experiment. Not the slightest emotion had he exhibited thus far, but had chatted with me as any other scientist might chat with a friend who casually visits his laboratory. The horror of the thing was playing havoc with my own composure, however. There I lay, fettered, in the same room with this man, whose existence was a menace to the entire white race, whilst placidly he pursued an experiment designed if his own words were believable. To cut me off from my kind, to wreak some change, psychological or physiological, I knew not to place me, it might be, upon a level with such brute things as that which now hung half-floating in the glass jar. Something I knew of the history of that ghastly specimen, that thing neither man nor ape, for within my own knowledge had it not attempted the life of Naelyn Smith, and was it not I who, with an axe, had maimed it in the instant of one of its last slayings? Of these things Dr. Fu Man Shu was well aware, so that his placid speech was doubly, trebly horrible in my ears. I sought furtively to move my arms, only to realize that, as I had anticipated, the handcuffs were chained to a ring in the wall behind me. The establishments of Dr. Fu Man Shu were always well provided with such contrivances as these. I uttered a short harsh laugh. Fu Man Shu stood up slowly from the table, and placing the test tube in a rack, stood the latter carefully upon a shelf at his side. I am happy to find your ends such good a humor, he said softly. Other affairs call me, and in my absence that profound knowledge of chemistry, of which I have had evidence in the past, will enable you to follow with intelligent interest the action of these violent rays upon this exceptional affine specimen of Siberian Amanita muscaria. At some future time, possibly, when you are my guest in China, which country I am now making arrangements for you to visit, I shall discuss with you some lesser known properties of this species. And I may say that one of your first asks, when you commence your duties as assistant admirer of our victory in Jiangsu, will be to conduct a series of 12 experiments which I have outlined into other potentialities of this unique fungus. He walked quietly to a curtain doorway with his cat-like yet awkward gait, lifted the drapery, and with a slight nod in my direction, went out of the room. End of Chapter 19. How long I lay there alone I had no means of computing. My mind was busy with many matters, but principally concerned with my fate in the immediate future. The Dr. Fu Manchu entertained for me a singular kind of regard I had had evidence before. He had formed the erroneous opinion that I was an advanced scientist who could be of use to him in his experiments, and I was aware that he cherished a project of transporting me to some place in China where his principle laboratory was situated. I was convinced that the principle laboratory was He had formed the erroneous opinion that I was an advanced scientist who could be of use to him in his experiments, and I was aware that he cherished a project of transporting me to some place in China where his principal laboratory was situated. Respecting the means which he proposed to employ, I was unlikely to forget that this man, who had penetrated further along certain by-ways of science than seemed humanly possible, undoubtedly was master of a process for producing artificial catalepsy. It was my lot, then, to be packed in a chest to all intents and purposes a dead man for the time being, and dispatched to the interior of China. What a fool I had been, to think that I had learned nothing from my long and dreadful experience of the methods of Dr. Fu Manchu, to think that I had come alone in quest of him that, leaving no trace behind me, I had deliberately penetrated to his secret abode. I have said that my wrists were manacled behind me, that manacles being attached to a chain fastened in the wall, I now contrived with extreme difficulty to reverse the position of my hands, that is to say I climbed backward through the loop formed by my fettered arms, so that instead of there being locked behind me, they were now locked in front. Then I began to examine the fetters, learning, as I had anticipated, that they fastened with a lock. I sat gazing at the steel bracelets in the light of the lamp which swung over my head, and it became apparent to me that I had gained little by my contortion. A slight noise disturbed these unpleasant reveries. It was nothing less than the rattling of keys. For a moment I wondered if I had heard a right, or if the sound portended the coming of some servant of the doctor who was locking up the establishment for the night. The jangling sound was repeated, and in such a way that I could not suppose it to be accidental, someone was deliberately rattling a small bunch of keys in an adjoining room, and now my heart leaped wildly, then seemed to stand still. With a low whistling cry a little gray shape shot through the doorway by which Fu Manchu had retired, and rolled like a ball of fluff blown by the wind, completely under the table which bore the weird scientific appliances of the Chinaman. The advent of the gray object was accompanied by a further rattling of keys. My fear left me, and a mighty anxiety took its place. This creature which now crouched chattering at me from beneath the big table was Fu Manchu's marmoset, and in the intervals of its chattering and grimacing it nibbled speculatively at the keys upon a ring which it clutched in its tiny hands. Key after key it sampled in this manner, evincing a growing dissatisfaction with the uncrackable nature of its find. One of those keys might be that of the handcuffs. I could not believe that the torches of tantalus were greater than were mine at this moment. In all my hopes of rescue or release I had included nothing so strange, so improbable as this. A sort of awe possessed me, for if by this means the key which should release me should come into my possession, how ever again could I doubt a beneficent providence. But there were not yet in my possession moreover the key of the handcuffs might not be amongst the bunch. Were there no means whereby I could induce the marmoset to approach me? Whilst I racked my brains for some scheme the little animal took the matter out of my hands, tossing the ring with its jangling contents a yard or so across the carpet in my direction, it leaped in pursuit, picked up the ring, whirled it over its head and then threw a complete somersault around it. Now it snatched up the keys again, and holding them close to its ear rattled them furiously. Finally with an incredible spring it leaped onto the chain supporting the lamp above my head, and with a garish shade swinging and spinning wildly, clung there looking down at me like an acrobat on a trapeze, the tiny bluish face completely framed in grotesque whiskers, enhanced the illusion of an acrobatic comedian. Never for a moment did it release its hold upon the key ring. My suspense now was intolerable, I feared to move lest, alarming the marmoset it should run off, taking the keys with it. So as I lay there, looking up at the little creature swinging above me, the second wonder of the night came to pass. A voice that I could never forget, strive how I would, a voice that haunted my dreams by night, and for which by day I was ever listening, cried out from some adjoining room. Ta'alahina, it called, ta'alahina peko! It was Karamina. The effect upon the marmoset was instantaneous, down came the bunch of keys upon one side of the shade almost falling on my head, and down leaped the ape upon the other. In two leaps it had traversed the room and had vanished through the curtain doorway. If ever I had need of coolness it was now, the slightest mistake would be fatal. The keys had slipped from the mattress of the divan, and now lay just beyond the reach of my fingers. Rapidly I changed my position and sought without undue noise to move the keys with my foot. I had actually succeeded in sliding them back onto the mattress, when, unheralded by any audible footstep, Karamina came through the doorway, holding the marmoset in her arms. She wore a dress of fragile muslin material, and out from its folds protruded one silk-stocking'd foot, resting in a high-heeled red shoe. For a moment she stood watching me with a sort of enforced composure, then her glance strayed to the keys lying upon the floor. Suddenly, and with her eyes fixed again upon my face, she crossed the room, stooped, and took up the key-ring. It was one of the poignant moments of my life, for by that simple act all my hopes had been shattered. Any poor lingering doubt that I may have had left me now. Had the slightest spark of friendship animated the bosom of Karamina, most certainly she would have overlooked the presence of the keys, and of the keys which represented my one hope of escape from the clutches of the fiendish Chinaman. There is a silence more eloquent than words. For half a minute or more Karamina stood watching me, forcing herself to watch me, and I looked up at her with a concentrated gaze in which rage and reproach must have been strangely mingled. What eye she had, of that blackly lustrous sort nearly always associated with unusually dark complexions, but Karamina's complexion was peach-like, or rather of an exquisite and delicate fairness which reminded me of the petal of a rose. By some I had been accused of raving about this girl's beauty, but only by those who had not met her, for indeed she was astonishingly lovely. At last her eyes fell, the long lashes drooped upon her cheeks. She turned and walked slowly to the chair in which Shfumanchu had sat. Placing the keys upon the table amid the scientific litter, she rested one dimpled elbow upon the yellow page of the book, and with her chin and her palm a gain directed upon me that enigmatic gaze. I dared not think of the past, of the past in which this beautiful, treacherous girl had played a part, yet watching her I could not believe even now that she was false. My state was truly a pitiable one. I could have cried out in sheer anguish. With her long lashes partly lowered she watched me a while, then spoke, and her voice was music which seemed to mock me. Every inflection of that elusive accent reopened lancet-like the ancient wound. Why do you look at me so, she said, almost in a whisper? By what right do you reproach me? Have you ever offered me friendship, that I should repay you with friendship? When first you come to the house where I was by the river came to save someone from, there was the familiar hesitation which always preceded the name of Shfumanchu. From him you treated me as your enemy, although I would have been your friend. There was appeal in the soft voice, but I laughed mockingly and threw myself back upon the divan. Karamina stretched out her hands toward me, and I shall never forget the expression which flashed into those glorious eyes, but seeing me intolerant of her appeal she drew back and quickly turned her head aside. Even in this hour of extremity of impotent wrath I could find no contempt in my heart for her feeble hypocrisy. With all the old wonder I watched that exquisite profile, and Karamina's very deceitfulness was a salve. For had she not cared she would not have attempted it. Suddenly she stood up, taking the keys in her hands, and approached me. Not by word, no by look, she said quietly. Have you asked me for my friendship? But because I cannot bear you to think of me as you do, I will prove that I am not the hypocrite and the liar you think me. You will not trust me. But I will trust you. I looked up into her eyes and knew a pagan joy when they faltered before my searching gaze. She threw herself upon her knees beside me, and the faint exquisite perfume inseparable from my memories of her became perceptible, and seemed as too old to intoxicate me. The lock clicked, and I was free. Karamina rose swiftly to her feet as I stood upright and outstretched my cramped arms. For one delirious moment her bewitching face was close to mine, and the dictates of madness almost ruled. But I clenched my teeth and turned sharply aside. I could not trust myself to speak. With Fu Manchu's marmoset again gambling before her she walked to the curtain doorway into the room beyond. It was in darkness, but I could see the slave girl in front of me, a slim silhouette, as she walked to a screened window, and opening the screen in the manner of a folding door, also through open the window. Look! She whispered. I crept forward and stood beside her. I found myself looking down into Museum Street from a first floor window. The late traffic still passed along New Oxford Street on the left, but not a solitary figure was visible to the right as far as I could see, and that was nearly to the railings of the museum. Immediately opposite, in one of the flats which I had noticed earlier in the evening, another window was opened. I turned, and in the reflected lights or caramina held a cord in her hand. Our eyes met in the semi-darkness. She began to haul the cord into the window, and looking upward I perceived that it was looped in some way over the telegraph cables which crossed the street at that point. It was a slender cord, and it appeared to be passed across the joint in the cables almost immediately above the centre of the roadway. As it was hauled in, a second and stronger line attached to it was pulled in turn over the cables, and then seen by the window. Caramina twisted a length of it around a metal bracket fastened in the wall, and placed a light wooden cross-bar in my hand. Make sure that there is no one in the street, she said, craning out and looking to right and left, then swing across. The length of a rope is just sufficient to enable you to swing through the open window opposite, and there is a mattress inside to drop upon. But release the bar immediately, or you may be dragged back. The door of the room in which you will find yourself is unlocked, and you have only to walk down the stairs, and out into the street. I peered at the cross-bar in my hand, then looked hard at the girl beside me. I missed something of the old fire of her nature. She was very subdued to-night. "'Thank you, Caramina,' I said softly. She suppressed a little cry as I spoke her name, and drew back into the shadows. "'I believe you are my friend,' I said, but I cannot understand. Won't you help me to understand?' I took her unresisting hand and drew her toward me. My very soul seemed to thrill at the contact of her life-body. She was trembling wildly and seemed to be trying to speak, but although her lips framed the words, no sound followed. Suddenly comprehension came to me. I looked down into the street, hitherto deserted, and into the upturned face of Fu Manchu. Wearing a heavy fur-collared coat, and with his yellow malignant countenance grotesquely horrible beneath the shade of a large tweed motorcap, he stood motionless, looking up at me. That he had seen me, I could not doubt. But had he seen my companion? In a choking whisper Caramina answered my unspoken question. He has not seen me. I have done much for you. Do and return a small thing for me. Save my life. She dragged me back from the window and fled across the room to the weird laboratory where I had lain captive. Throwing herself upon the divan, she held out her white wrists and glanced significantly at the manacles. Lock them upon me! She said rapidly. Quick! Quick! Great, as was my mental disturbance, I managed to grasp the purpose of this device. The very extremity of my danger found me cool. I fastened the manacles, which so recently had confined my own wrists upon the slim wrists of Caramina. A faint and muffled disturbance, doubly ominous, because there was nothing to proclaim its nature, reached me from some place below on the ground floor. Dye something around my mouth, directed Caramina with nervous rapidity, and as I began to look about me, dare a strip from my dress, she said. Do not hesitate. Be quick! Be quick! I seized the flimsy muslin and tore off half a yard or so from the hem of the skirt. The voice of Dr. Fu Manchu became audible. He was speaking rapidly, sibilantly, and evidently was approaching, would be upon me in a matter of moments. I fastened the strip of fabric over the girl's mouth and tied it behind, experiencing a pang half pleasurable and half fearful, as I found my hands in contact with the foamy luxuriance of her hair. Dr. Fu Manchu was entering the room immediately beyond. Snatching up the bunch of keys, I turned and ran. For in another instant my retreat would be cut off. As I burst once more into the darkened room, I became aware that a door on the further side of it was open, and framed in the opening was the tall, high-shouldered figure of the Chinaman, still enveloped in his fur coat and wearing the grotesque cap. As I saw him, so he perceived me, and as I sprang to the window he advanced, I turned desperately and hurled the bunch of keys with all my force into the dimly seen face. Only because they possessed a chatoyant quality of their own, as I had often suspected, or by reason of the light reflected through the open window, the green eyes gleamed upon me vividly like those of a giant cat. One short, guttural exclamation paid tribute to the accuracy of my aim. Then I had the crossbar in my hand. I threw one leg across the sill, and dire as was my extremity, hesitated for an instant, air trusting myself to the flight. A vice-like grip fastened upon my left ankle. Hazily I became aware that the dark room was flooded with figures. The whole yellow gang were upon me. The entire murder group composed of units recruited from the darkest place of the east. I have never counted myself a man of resource, and have always envied Nalen Smith his possession of that quality, in him extraordinarily developed, that on this occasion the gods were kind to me, and I resorted to the only device, perhaps, which could have saved me. Without releasing my hold upon the crossbar, I clutched at the ledge with the fingers of both hands, and swung back into the room my right leg, which was already across the sill. With all my strength I kicked out. My heel came in contact, in sickening contact with a human head, beyond doubt that I had split the skull of the man who held me. The grip upon my ankle was released automatically, and now, consigning all my weight to the rope, I slipped forward as a diver across the broad ledge, and found myself sweeping through the night like a winged thing. The line, as Karamina had assured me, was of well-judged length. Down I swept to within six or seven feet of the street level, then up, at ever decreasing speed, toward the vague oblong of the open window beyond. I hope I have been successful, in some measure, in portraying the varied emotions which it was my lot to experience that night, and it may well seem that nothing more exquisite could remain for me. Yet it was written otherwise, for as I swept up to my goal describing the inevitable arc which I had no power to check, I saw that one awaited me. Crouching forward half out of the open window was a Burmese Dacquot, a cross-eyed leering being whom I well remember to have encountered two years before in my dealings with Dr. Fu Manchu. One bare, sinewy arm held rigidly at right angles before his breast, he clutched a long curved knife and waited, waited, for the critical moment when my throat should be at his mercy. I have said that a strange coolness had come to my aid, even now it did not fail me, and so incalculably rapid are the workings of the human mind that I remember complimenting myself upon an achievement which Smith himself could not have and this in the immeasurable interval which intervened between the commencement of my upward swing and my arrival on a level with the window. I threw my body back and thrust my feet forward, as my legs went through the opening and acute pain in one calf told me that I was not to escape scatheless from the night's melle, but the Dacquot went rolling over in the darkness of the room as helpless in face of that ramrod stroke as the various infant. Back I swept upon my trapeze, a sight to have induced any passing citizen to question his sanity. With might and main I sought to check the swing of the pendulum, for if I should come within reach of the window behind, I doubted not that other knives awaited me. It was no difficult feat, and I succeeded in checking my flight, swinging there above Museum Street, I could even appreciate, so lucid was my mind, the ludicrous element of the situation. I dropped. My wounded leg almost failed me, and greatly shaken, but with no other serious damage, I picked myself up from the dust of the roadway. It was a mockery of fate that the problem which Naylen Smith had set me to solve should have been solved thus, for I could not doubt that by means of the branch of a tall tree or some other suitable object situated opposite to Smith's house in Rangoon, Karamina had made her escape as to-night I had made mine. And from the acute pain in my calf I knew that the Dacquot's knife had bitten deeply, by reason of the fact that a warm liquid was trickling down into my boot. Like any drunkard I stood there in the middle of the road looking up at the vacant window where the Dacquot had been, and up at the window above the shop of J. Salomon where I knew Fu Manchu to be. But for some reason the latter window had been closed or almost closed, and as I stood there this reason became apparent to me. The sound of running footsteps came from the direction of New Oxford Street. I turned to see two policemen bearing down upon me. This was a time for quick decisions and prompt action. I weighed all the circumstances and the balance and made the last vital choice of the night. I turned and ran towards the British Museum as though the worst of Fu Manchu's creatures and not my allies the police were at my heels. No one else was in sight, but as I whirled into the square the red lamp of a slowly retreating taxi became visible some hundred yards to the left. My leg was paining me greatly, but the nature of the wound did not interfere with my progress. Therefore I continued my headlong career, and ere the police had reached the end of Museum Street I had my hand upon the door handle of the cab, for the fates being persistently kind to me. The vehicle was for hire. Dr. Cleaves, Harley Street, I shouted at the man, drive like hell, it's an urgent case. I leaped into the cab. In five seconds from the time that I slammed the door and dropped back panting upon the cushions we were speeding westward toward the house of the famous pathologist, thereby throwing the police hopelessly off the track. Faintly to my ears came the purr of a police whistle. The taximan evidently did not hear the significant sound. Merciful providence had rung down the curtain, but a night my role in the yellow drama was finished. CHAPTER XXI less than two hours later in Spanish, Inspector Weymouth and a party of men from Scotland Yard raided the house in Museum Street. They found the stock of J. Salomon practically intact, and, in the strangely appointed rooms above, every evidence of a hasty outgoing. But of the instruments, drugs, and other laboratory paraphernalia not one item remained. I would gladly have given my income for a year to have gained possession of the books alone for, beyond all shadow of doubt, I knew them to contain formula calculated to revolutionise the science of medicine. Exhausted physically and mentally, and with my mind a whispering gallery of conjectures, it were needless for me to mention whom respecting, I turned in, gratefully, having patched up the slight wound in my calf. I seemed scarcely to have closed my eyes when Naelyn Smith was shaking me into wakefulness. You were probably tired out, he said, but your crazy expedition of last night entitles you to no sympathy. Read this. There is a train in an hour. We will reserve a compartment, and you can resume your interrupted slumbers in a corner seat. As I struggled upright in bed, rubbing my eyes sleepily, Smith handed me the daily telegraph, pointing to the following paragraph upon the literary page. Messer's M. announced that they will publish shortly the long-delayed works of Keegan von Rune, the celebrated American traveller, Orientalist and psychic investigator, dealing with his recent inquiries in China. It will be remembered that Mr. van Rune undertook to motor from Canton to Siberia last winter, but met with unforeseen difficulties in the province of Honan. He fell into the hands of a body of fanatics, and was fortunate to escape with his life. His book will deal in particular with his experiences in Honan, and some sensational revelations regarding the awakening of that most mysterious race, the Chinese, for reasons of his own, he has decided to remain in England until the completion of his book, which will be published simultaneously in New York and London, and has leased Craigmeyer Tower, Somersetshire, in which romantic and historical residence he will collate his notes and prepare for the world a work earmarked as a classic, even before it is published. I glanced up from the paper to find Smith's eyes fixed upon me inquiringly. From what I have been able to learn, he said evenly, we should reach Seoul with a decent luck, just before dusk. As he turned and quitted the room without another word, I realised in a flash the purport of our mission. I understood my friend's ominous calm, but toking suppressed excitement. The fates were with us, or so it seemed, and whereas we had not hoped to gain Seoul before sunset, as a matter of fact the autumn afternoon was in its most glorious phase as we left the little village, with its old-time host story behind us, and set out in an easterly direction, with the Bristol Channel far away on our left and a gently sloping upland on our right. The crooked high street practically constituted the entire hamlet of Seoul, and the inn, the Wagoners, was the last house in the street. Now as we followed the ribbon of Moorpath to the top of the rise, we could stand and look back upon the way we had come, and although we had covered fully a mile of ground, it was possible to detect the sunlight gleaming now and then upon the guilt lettering of the inn sign as it swayed in the breeze. The day had been unpleasantly warm, but was relieved by this same sea breeze, which, although but slight, had in it the tang of the broad Atlantic. Behind us then the footpath sloped down to Seoul, unpeopled by any living thing. Eastern northeast swelled the monotony of the moor right out to the hazy distance where the sky began, and the sea remotely lay hidden. West fell the gentle gradient from the top of the slope which we had mounted, and here, as far as the eye could reach, the country had an appearance suggested of a huge and dried up lake. This idea was borne out by an odd blotchiness, for sometimes there would be half a mile or more of seeming moorland, then a sharply defined change, or so it seemed sharply defined from that bird's eye point of view. A vivid greenness marked these changes which merged into a done-colored smudge and the gain into the brilliant green, then the moor would begin once more. "'That'll me tour of Glastonbury, I suppose,' said Smith, suddenly peering through his field-glasses in an easterly direction, and yonder, unless I'm greatly mistaken, is a crag-mild hour. Seeing my eyes with my hand, I also looked ahead and saw the place for which we were bound, one of those round towers more common in Ireland, which some authorities have declared to be of Phoenician origin. Ramoshackle buildings clustered untidily about its base, and to it a sort of tongue of that oddly venomous green which patched the lowlands, shot out and seemed almost to reach the tower base. The land, for miles around, was as flat as the palm of my hand, saving certain hummocks, lesser tours and irregular piles of boulders which dotted its expanse, hills and uplands there were in the hazy distance, forming a sort of mighty inland bay, which I doubt it not in some past age had been covered by the sea. Even in the brilliant sunlight the place had something of a mournful aspect, looking like a great dried-up pool into which the children of giants had to carelessly cast stones. We met no living soul upon the moor. With a crag-mild tower about a quarter of a mile off, Mith paused again, and raising his powerful glasses swept the visible landscape. Not a sign, Mithry, he said softly, yet. Dropping the glasses back into their case, my companion began to tug at his left ear. Have we been overconfident, he said, narrowing his eyes in that speculative fashion? No less than three times I have had the idea that something or someone has just dropped out of sight behind me as I focused on what do you mean, Smith? Are we? He glanced about him as though the vastness were peopled with listening Chinaman. Followed. Silently we looked into each other's eyes, each seeking for the dread which neither had named. Then, come on, Petrie, said Smith, grasping my arm, and at quick-march we were off again. Crag-mild tower stood upon a very slight eminence, and what had looked like a green tongue from the moorland slopes above was in fact a creek flanked by lush land, which here found its way to the sea. The house which we were come to visit consisted in a low two-story building, joining the ancient tower on the east with two smaller outbuildings. There was a miniature kitchen-garden and a few stunted fruit-trees in the northwest corner, the whole being surrounded by a grey stone wall. The shadow of the tower fell sharply across the path which ran up almost alongside of it. We were both extremely worn by reason of our long and rapid walk on that hot day, and this shade should have been grateful to us. In short, I find it difficult to account for the unwelcome chill which I experienced at the moment that I found myself at the foot of the time-warren monument. I know that we both pulled up sharply and looked at one another as though acted upon by some mutual disturbance, but not a sound broke the stillness save a remote murmuring until a solitary seagull rose in the air and circled directly over the tower, uttering its mournful and unmusical cry. Slowly to my mind sprang the lines of the poem. Far from all brother-men, in the weird of the fen, with God's creatures I bide, mid the birds that I ken, where the winds of a tree, where the hymn of the sea brings a message of peace from the ocean to me. Not a soul was visible about the premises, there was no sound of human activity and no dog barked. Nail and smith drew a long breath, glanced back along the way we had come, and went on following the wall. I beside him until we came to the gate. It was unfastened, and we walked up the stone path through a wilderness of weeds. Four windows of the house were visible, two on the ground floor and two above. Those on the ground floor were heavily boarded up. Those above, though glazed, boasted neither blinds nor curtains. Craigmire Tower showed not the slightest evidence of tenancy. We mounted three steps and stood before a tremendously massive oaken door. An iron bell-pull, ancient and rusty, hung on the right of the door, and smith, giving me an odd glance, seized the ring, and tugged it. From somewhere within the building answered a mournful clanger, a cracked and toneless jangle which, seeming to echo through empty apartments, sought and found an exit apparently by way of one of the openings in the round tower, for it was from above our heads that the noise came to us. It died away, that eerie ringing, that clanging so dismal that it could chill my heart even then with the bright sunlight streaming down out of the blue. It awoke no other response than the mournful cry of the seagull circling over our heads. Silence fell. We looked at one another, and we were both about to express a mutual doubt when, unheralded by any unfastening of bolts or bars, the oaken door was opened, and a huge mulatto dressed in white stood there regarding us. I started nervously, for the apparition was so unexpected, but Nailen smith, without evidence of surprise, thrust a card into the man's hand. Take my card to Mr. Van Roon, and say that I wish to see him on important business, he directed, authoritatively. The mulatto bowed, and retired. His white figure seemed to be swallowed up by the darkness within, for beyond the patch of uncarpeted floor revealed by the peeping sunlight was a barn-like place of densest shadow. I was about to speak, but smith laid his hand upon my arm warningly, as, out from the shadows the mulatto returned, he stood on the right of the door and bowed again. Be pleased to enter, he said, in his harsh, negro voice. Mr. Van Roon will see you. The gladness of the sun could no longer stir me, a chill and a sense of foreboding bore me company, as beside nail and smith I entered Cragmire Tower. The return of Dr. Fu Manchu by Sachs Romer. Chapter 22 The Mulatto The room in which Van Roon received us was roughly of the shape of an old-fashioned keyhole, one end if it occupied the base of the tower, upon which the remainder had evidently been built. In many respects it was a singular room, but the feature which caused me the greatest amazement was this, it had no windows. In the deep alcove form by the tower sat Van Roon at a littered table, upon which stood an oil reading lamp, being shaded of the Victoria pattern, to furnish the entire illumination of the apartment. That book-shelves lined the rectangular portion of this strange study I divined, although that end of the place was dark as a catacomb. The walls were wood-panelled, and the ceiling was oak-beamed. A small book-shelf and tumble-down cabinet stood upon either side of the table, and the celebrated American author and traveller lay propped up in a long split cane chair. He wore smoked glasses and had a clean shaven olive face, with a profusion of jet-black hair. He was garbed in a dirty red dressing-gown, and a perfect fog of cigar-smoke hung in the room. He did not rise to greet us, but merely extended his right hand between two fingers, whereof he held Smith's card. "'You'll excuse the seeming discolourcy of an invalid gentleman,' he said, "'but I'm suffering for an undue temerity of the interior of China.' He waved his hand vaguely, and I saw that two rough-deal chairs stood near the table. Smith and I seated ourselves, and my friend, leaning his elbow upon the table, looked fixedly at the face of the man whom we had come from London to visit. Although comparatively unfamiliar to the British public, the name of Van Roon was well known in American literary circles, for he enjoyed in the United States a reputation somewhat similar to that which had rendered the name of our mutual friend, William L. Barton, a household ward in England. It was Van Roon who, following the footsteps of Madame Blvatsky, had sought out the haunts of the fabled mohatmahs and the Himalayas, and Van Roon who had essayed to explore the fever swamps of Yucatan in quest of the secret of lost Atlantis. Lastly, it was Van Roon who, in an overland car specially built for him by a celebrated American firm, had undertaken the journey across China. I studied the olive face with curiosity. Its natural impassivity was so greatly increased by the presence of the coloured spectacles, that my study was as profitless as if I had scrutinised the face of a carbon buddha. The mulatto had withdrawn, and in an atmosphere of gloom and tobacco smoke, Smith and I sat staring, perhaps rather rudely, at the object of our visit to the West Country. Mr. Van Roon began my friend abruptly. You all no doubt have seen this paragraph, it appeared in this morning's Daily Telegraph. He stood up, and taking out the cutting from his notebook, placed it on the table. I have seen this, yes, said Van Roon, revealing a row of even white teeth and a rapid smile. Is it to this paragraph that I owe the pleasure of seeing you here? The paragraph appeared in this morning's Issue, replied Smith. An hour from the time of seeing it, my friend Dr. Petrie and I were entrained for Bridgewater. Your visit delights me, gentlemen, and I should be ungrateful to question its cause, but frankly I am at a loss to understand why you should have honoured me thus. I am a poor host, God knows, for what with my tortured limb, a legacy from the Chinese devils, whose secrets I surprised, and my semi-blindness, due to the same cause, I am at sorry company. Nail and Smith held up his right hand deprecatingly. Van Roon tended a box of cigars and clapped his hands, whereupon the mulatto entered. I can see you have a story to tell me, Mr. Smith, he said. Therefore I suggest whisky and soda, or you might prefer tea, as it's nearly tea time. Smith and I chose the former refreshment, and the soft-footed half-breed having departed upon his errand, my companion, leaning forward earnestly across the littered table, outlined for Van Roon the story of Dr. Fu Manchu, the great and malign being whose mission at England at that moment was none other than the stoppage of just such information as our host was appearing to give to the world. There is a giant conspiracy, Mr. Van Roon, he said, which had its birth in this very province of Honan, from which you were so fortunate to escape alive. Whatever its scope or limitations, a great secret society is established among the Yellow Races. It means the China, which has slumbered for so many generations, now stirs in that age-long sleep. I need not tell you how much more it means this seething in the pot. In a word, interrupted Van Roon, pushing Smith's glass across the table, you would say, that your life is not worth that, replied Smith, snapping his fingers before the other's face. A very impressive silence fell. I watched Van Roon curiously as he sat propped up amongst his cushions, his smooth face ghastly in the green light from the lampshade. He held the stump of a cigar between his teeth, but apparently unnoticed by him. It had long since gone out. Smith, out of the shadows, was watching him, too, then. Your information is very disturbing, said the American. I am more disposed to credit your statement because I am all too painfully aware of the existence of such a group as you mention in China, but that they had an agent here in England is something I had never conjectured. In seeking out this solitary residence, I have unwittingly done much to assist their designs. But, my dear Mr. Smith, I am very remiss. Of course you will remain to-night, and I trust for some days to come. Smith glanced rapidly across at me and then turned again to our host. It seems like forcing our company upon you, he said. But in your own interests I think it would be best to do as you are good enough to suggest. I hope and believe that our arrival here has not been noticed by the enemy, and therefore it will be well if we remain concealed as much as possible for the present until we have settled upon some plan. Hey, Gar, shall go to the station for your baggage, said the American rapidly, and clapped his hands his usual signal to the mulatto. Whilst the latter was receiving his orders, I noticed Nailan Smith watching him closely, and when he had departed, how long has that man been in your service? snapped my friend. Van Rune peered blindly through his smoked glasses. For some years, he replied, he was with me in India and in China. Where did you engage him? Actually, in St. Kitt's. Hmm, muttered Smith, and automatically he took out and began to fill his pipe. I can offer you no company but my own, gentlemen, continued Van Rune, but unless it interferes with your plans you may find the surrounding district of interest and worthy of inspection between now and dinner time. By the way, I think I can promise you a quite satisfactory meal for Hagar as a model chef. A walk would be enjoyable, said Smith, but dangerous. Ah, perhaps you are right. Evidently you apprehend some attempt upon me. At any moment. To one in my crippled condition an alarming outlook, however, I place myself unreservedly in your hands. But really you must not leave this interesting district before you have made the acquaintance of some of its historical spots. To me, as stooped as I am in what I may term the lore of the odd, it is a veritable wonderland, almost as interesting in its way as the caves and jungles of Hindustan depicted by Madame Blavatsky. His high-pitched voice and a certain laboured intonation, not quite so characteristically American as was his accent, rose even higher. He spoke with the fire of the enthusiast. When I learned that Kregmar Tower was vacant, he continued, I leaked at the chance. Excuse the metaphor from a lame man. This is a ghost hunter's paradise. The tower itself is of unknown origin, though probably Phoenician and the house traditionally sheltered Dr. McCloy, the necromancer, after his flight from the persecution of James of Scotland. Then, to add to its interest, its borders on Sejmor, the scene of the Buddy Battle during the Monmouth Rising, where at a thousand were slain in the field. And it is a local legend that the unhappy Duke and his staff may be seen on stormy nights, crossing the path which skirts the mire after which this building is named, with flaming torches held aloft. Mealy marsh lights, I take it, interjected Smith, gripping his pipe hard between his teeth. In your practical mind naturally seeks a practical explanation, smiled Van Roon, that I, myself, have other theories. Then, in addition to the charms of Sejmor, haunted Sejmor, on a fine day it is, quite possible to see the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey from here, and Glastonbury Abbey, as you may know, is closely bound up with a history of alchemy. It was in the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey that the adept Kelly, companion of Dr. D, discovered in the reign of Elizabeth the famous caskets of St. Dunstan, containing two tinctures, and so he ran on, enumerating the odd charms of his residence, charms which, for my part, I did not find appealing. Finally, we cannot presume further upon your kindness, said Nalen Smith, standing up. No doubt we can amuse ourselves in the neighborhood of the house until the return of your servant. Look upon Craigmire Tower as your own gentlemen, cried Van Roon. Most of the rooms are unfurnished and the garden is a wilderness, but the structure of the brickwork in the tower may interest you archeologically, and the view across the moor is at least as fine as any in the neighborhood. So, with his brilliant smile and a gesture of one thin yellow hand, the crippled traveller made us free of his odd dwelling. As I passed out from the room close at Smith's heels, I glanced back, I cannot say why. Van Roon was already bending over his papers in his green-shadowed sanctuary, and the light shining down upon his smoked glasses created the odd illusion that he was looking over the tops of the lenses, and not down at the table as his attitude suggested. However, it was probably ascribable to the weird cheer or skewer of the scene, although it gave the seated figure an oddly malignant appearance, and I passed out through the utter darkness of the outer room to the front door. Smith opening it, I was conscious of surprise to find dusk come to meet darkness where I had looked for sunlight. The silver wisps which had raced along the horizon as we came to Craigmire Tower had been harbingers of other and heavier banks. A stormy sunset smeared crimson streaks across the skyline, where a great range of clouds, like the oily smoke of a city burning, was banked, mountain-topping mountain, and lighted from below by this angry red. As we came down the steps and out by the gate, I turned and looked across the moor behind us. A sort of reflection from this distant blaze and crimson the whole landscape, the inland bay glowed sullenly as if internal fires and not-reflected light were at work, a scene both wild and majestic. Nalyn Smith was staring up at the cone-like top of the ancient tower in a curious speculative fashion. Under the influence of our host's conversation, I had forgotten the reasonless dread which had touched me at the moment of our arrival. But now, with the red light blazing over Sedgemore, as if in memory of the blood which had been shed there, and with a tower of unknown origin looming above me, I became very uncomfortable again. Nor did I envy Van Roon, his eerie residence. The proximity of a tower of any kind at night makes in some inexplicable way for all, and to-night there were other agents, too. "'What's that?' snapped Smith, suddenly grasping my arm. He was peering southward toward the distant hamlet and starting violently at his words and the sudden grasp of his hand. I too stared in that direction. "'We were followed, Petrie,' he almost whispered. "'I never got a sight of our follower that I swear we were followed. "'Look, there's something moving over yonder.' Together we stood staring into the dusk, then Smith burst abruptly into one of his rare laughs and clapped me upon the shoulder. "'It's Hagar, the mulatto,' he cried, and our grips. That extraordinary American with his tales of witch-lights and haunted abbeys has been playing the devil with our nerves. Together we waited by the gate until the half-cast appeared on the bend of the path of the grip in either hand. He was a great muscular fellow with a stoic face, and for the purpose of visiting Saul, presumably, he had doffed his white raiment and now wore a sort of livery with a peaked cap. Smith watched him enter the house, then, "'I wonder where Van Rune obtains his provisions,' and so forth, he muttered. "'It's odd they knew nothing about the new tenant of Kragmaratara at the Wagoness.' There came a sort of sudden expectancy into his manner, for which I found myself at a loss to account. He turned his gaze inland and stood there, tugging at his left ear and clicking his teeth together. He stared at me, and his eyes looked very bright in the dusk, for a sort of red glow from the sunset touched them, and he spoke no word, merely taking my arm and leading me off on a rambling walk around and about the house. Now they spoke a word until we stood at the gate of Kragmaratara again. Then, "'I swear now that we were followed here today,' muttered Smith. The lofty place immediately within the doorway proved in the light of a lamp now fixed in an iron bracket, to be a square entrance-hole meagrely furnished. The closed study-door faced the entrance, and on the left of it ascended an open staircase up which the mulatto led the way. We found ourselves on the floor above, in a corridor traversing the house from back to front. An apartment on the immediate left was indicated by the mulatto as that allotted to Smith. It was a room of fair size, furnished quite simply, but boasting a wardrobe cupboard, then Smith's grip stood beside the white enameled bed. I glanced around and then prepared to follow the man who had awaited me in the doorway. He still wore his dark livery, and as I followed the light, broad-shouldered figure along the corridor, I found myself considering critically his breadth of shoulder and the extraordinary thickness of his neck. I have repeatedly spoken of a sort of foreboding and elusive stirring in the depths of my being, of which I became conscious at certain times in my dealings with Dr. Fu Manchu and his murderous servants. This sensation, or something akin to it, claimed me now, unaccountably, and as I stood looking into the neat bedroom on the same side of the corridor, but at the extreme end wherein I was to sleep. A voiceless warning urged me to return. A kind of childish panic came fluttering about my heart, a dread of entering the room of allowing the mulatto to come behind me. Doubtless this was no more than a subconscious product of my observations respecting his abnormal breadth of shoulder, but whatever the origin of the impulse, I found myself unable to disobey it. Therefore I merely nodded, turned on my heel, and went back to Smith's room. I closed the door, then turned to face Smith, who stood regarding me. Smith, I said, that man sends cold water trickling down my spine. Still regarding me fixedly, my friend nodded his head. You are curiously sensitive to this sort of thing, he replied slowly. I have noticed it before as a useful capacity. I don't like the look of the man myself. The fact that he's been in Van Roon's employ for some years goes for nothing. We are neither of us likely to forget Qui, the Chinese servant of Sir Lionel Barton. It's quite possible that Fu Manchu has corrupted this man as he corrupted the other. Then he's quite possible. His voice trailed off into silence, and we stood looking across the room with unseeing eyes meditating deeply. It was quite dark now outside as I could see through the uncurtained window, which opened upon the dreary expanse stretching out to haunted Sedgemoor. Two candles were burning upon the dressing table. They were, but recently lighted, and so intense was the stillness that I could distinctly hear the spluttering of one of the wicks, which was damp. Without giving the slightest warning of his intention, Smith suddenly made two strides forward, stretched out his long arms, and snuffed a pair of candles in a twinkling. The room became plunged in impenetrable darkness. Not a word, Petrie! whispered my companion. I moved cautiously to join him, but as I did so, perceived that he was moving too. Vaguely against the window I perceived him silhouetted. He was looking out across the moor, and— See! See! he hissed. With my heart thumping furiously in my breast, I bent over him, and for the second time since our coming to Craigmire Tower, my thoughts flew to the Fenman. There are shades in the Fen, ghosts of women and men, who have sinned and died, but are living again. Over the waters they tread, with their lanterns of dread, and they peer in the pools, in the pools of the dead. A light was dancing out upon the moor, a witch-light that came and went unaccountably up and down, in and out, now clearly visible, now masked in the darkness. Lock the door, snapped my companion, if there's a key. I crept across the room and fumbled for a moment, then. There is no key, I reported. Then wedged the chair under the knob and let no one enter until I return, he said, amazingly. With that he opened the window to its fullest extent, threw his leg over the sill, and went creeping along a wide concrete ledge, in which ran a leaded gutter in the direction of the tower on the right. Not pausing to follow his instructions, respecting the chair, I craned out of the window, watching his progress, and wondering with what sudden madness he was bitten. Indeed, I could not credit my senses, could not believe that I heard and saw a right. Yet there out in the darkness on the moor moved the will of the wisp, and ten yards along the gutter crept my friend, like a great gaunt cat. Unknown to me he must have respected the route by daylight, for now I saw his design. The ledge terminated only where it met the ancient wall of the tower, and it was possible for an agile climber to step from it to the ledge of the unglazed window some four feet below, and to scramble from that point to the stone fence, and thence on to the path by which we had come from soul. This difficult operation Naelyn Smith successfully performed, and, to my unbounded amazement, went racing into the darkness toward the dancing lights, headlong, like a madman. The night swallowed him up, and between my wonder and my fear my hands trembled so violently that I could scare support myself where I rested with my full weight upon the sill. I seem now to be moving through the fevered phases of a nightmare. Around and below me Cragmire Tower was profoundly silent, but a faint odor of cookery was now perceptible. Outside from the night came a faint whispering as of the distant sea, but no moon and no stars relieved the impenetrable blackness. Only out over the moor the mysterious light still danced and moved. One, two, three, four, five minutes passed. The light vanished and did not appear again. Five more age-long minutes elapsed in absolute silence, whilst I peered into the darkness of the night and listened every nerve in my body tense for the return of Naelyn Smith. Yet two more minutes, which embraced an agony of suspense passed in the same fashion, then a shadowy form grew phantom-esque out of the gloom a moment more, and I distinctly heard the heavy breathing of a man nearly spent, and saw my friend scrambling up toward the black embrasure in the tower. His voice came huskily, pantingly, creep along and lend me a hand, Petrie. I am nearly winded. I crept through the window, steadied my quivering nerves by an effort of the will, and reached the end of the ledge in time to take Smith's extended hand and to draw him up beside me against the wall of the tower. He was shaking with his exertions and must have fallen, I think, without my assistance. Inside the room again, Quick! Light the candles! he breathed, hoarsely. Did any one come? No one. Nothing. Having expended several matches in vain for my fingers twitched nervously, I ultimately succeeded in relighting the candles. Get along to your room, directed Smith. Your apprehensions are unfounded at the moment, but you may as well leave both doors wide open. I looked into his face. It was very drawn and grim, and his brow was wet with perspiration. But his eyes had the fighting glint, and I knew that we were upon the eve of strange happenings. Chapter 23 A Cry on the Moor Of the events intervening between this moment and that when death called to us out of the night, I have the haziest recollections. An excellent dinner was served in the bleak and gloomy dining room by the mulatto, and the crippled author was carried to the head of the table by this same herculean attendant as lightly as though he had but the weight of a child. Van Rune talked continuously, revealing a deep knowledge of all sorts of obscure matters, and in the brief intervals, Nalen Smith talked also with almost feverish rapidity. Plans for the future were discussed. I can recall no one of them. I could not stifle my queer sentiments in regard to the mulatto, and every time I found him behind my chair I was hard put to repress a shudder. In this fashion the strange evening passed, and at the accompaniment of distant muttering thunder we two guests retired to our chambers in Cragmire Tower. Smith had contrived to give me my instructions in a whisper, and five minutes after entering my own room I had snuffed the candles, slipped a wedge which he had given me under the door, crept out through the window onto the gutted ledge, and joined Smith in his room. He too had extinguished his candles, and the place was in darkness. As I climbed in he grasped my wrist to silence me, and turned me forcibly toward the window. Listen! he said. I turned and looked out upon a prospect which had been a fit setting for the witch seen in Macbeth. Thunder clouds hung low over the moor, but through them ran a sort of chasm or rift, allowing a bar of lurid light to stretch across the drear from east to west a sort of lane walled by darkness. There came a remote murmuring as of a troubled sea, a hushed and distant chorus, and sometimes in upon it broke the drums of heaven, in the west lightning flickered, though but faintly, intermittently. Then came the call. Out of the blackness of the moor it came, wild and distant. Help! Help! Smith! I whispered. What is it? What? Mr. Smith! came the agonised cry. Nailen Smith! Help! For God's sake! Quick Smith! I cried. Quick man! It's Van Rune. He's been dragged out. They are murdering him. Nailen Smith held me in a vice-like grip, silent, unmoved. Louder and more agonised came the cry for aid, and I became more than ever certain that it was poor Van Rune who uttered it. Mr. Smith! The Dr. Beatry! For God's sake, come! Or it will be too late. Smith! I said, turning furiously upon my friend, if you are going to remain here whilst murder is done, I am not. My blood boiled now with hot resentment. It was incredible, inhuman, that we should remain there inert, whilst a fellow man and our host to boot was being done to death out there in the darkness. I exerted all my strength to break away, but although my efforts told upon him, as his loud breathing revealed, Nailen Smith clung to me tenaciously. Had my hands been free in my fury I could have struck him, for the pitiable cries growing fainter now told their own tale. Then Smith spoke, shortly and angrily, breathing hard between the words, Be quiet, you fool! he snapped. It's little less than an insult, Beatry, to think me capable of refusing help where help is needed. Like a cold douche his words acted. In that instant I knew myself a fool. You remember the call of Siva, he said, thrusting me away irritably, two years ago, and what it meant to those who obeyed it? You might have told me. Told you? You would have been through the window before I uttered two words. I realised the truth of his assertion and the justness of his anger. Forgive me, old man, I said, very crestfallen, and my impulse was a natural one, you'll admit. You must remember that I've been trained never to refuse aid when aid is asked. Shut up, Petrie, he growled. Forget it. The cries had ceased now entirely, and a peel of thunder louder than any yet echoed over distant Sedgemoor. A chasm of light splitting the heavens closed in, leaving the night wholly black. Don't talk, Rep Smith, act. You wedged your door? Yes. Good. Get into that cupboard, have your browning ready, and keep the door very slightly ajar. He was in that mood of repressed fever which I knew, and which always communicated itself to me. I spoke no through the word, but stepped into the wardrobe, indicated, and drew the door nearly shut. The recess just accommodated me, and through the aperture I could see the bed vaguely, the open window and part of the opposite wall. I saw Smith cross the floor as a mighty clap of thunder boomed over the house, a gleam of lightning flickered through the gloom. I saw the bed for a moment, distinctly, and it appeared to me that Smith lay there in, with the sheets pulled up over his head. The light was gone, and I could hear big drops of rain pattering upon the leaden gutter below the open window. My mood was strange, detached, and characterised by vagueness, that Van Roon lay dead upon the moor I was convinced, and, although I recognised that it must be a sufficient one, I could not even dimly divine the reason why we had refrained from lending him aid. To have failed to save him, knowing his peril would have been bad enough to have refused, I thought, was shameful. Better to have shared his fate. Yet! The downpour was increasing, and beating now a regular tattoo upon the gutterway, then splitting the oblong of greater blackness which marked the casement, quivered dazzlingly another flash of lightning, in which I saw the bed again, with that impression of Smith curled up in it. The blinding light died out, came the crash of thunder, harsh and fearsome, more imminently above the tower than ever. The building seemed to shake. Coming as they did, horror and the wrath of heaven together, suddenly, crashingly, black and angry after the fairness of the day, these happenings and their settings must have terrorised the stoutest heart, that somehow I seemed detached, as I have said, and set apart from the world of events, a spectator. Even when a vague yellow light crept across the room from the direction of the door and flickered unsteadily on the bed, I remained unmoved to a certain degree, although passively alive to the significance of the incident. I realised that the ultimate issue was at hand, but either because I was emotionally exhausted or from some other cause, the pending climax failed to disturb me. Going on tiptoe, in stockinged feet, across my field of vision, passed Keegan Van Roon. He was in his shirtsleaves and held a lighted candle in one hand, whilst with the other he shaded it against the draught from the window. He was a cripple no longer, and the smoked glasses were discarded. Most of the light, at the moment when I first saw him, shone upon his thin olive face, and at sight of his eyes much of the mystery of Cragmire Tower was resolved. For they were oblique, very slightly, but nevertheless unmistakably oblique. Though highly educated and possibly an American citizen, Van Roon was a Chinaman. Upon the picture of his face as I saw it then, I do not care to dwell. It lacked the unique horror of Dr. Fu Manchu's unforgettable countenance, but possessed a sort of animal malignancy which the latter lacked. He approached within three or four feet of the bed, peering, peering, then with a timidity which spoke well for Naylon Smith's reputation, paused and beckoned to someone who evidently stood in the doorway behind him. As he did so, I noted that the legs of his trousers were caked with greenish-brown mud nearly up to the knees. The huge mulatto, silent-footed, crossed to the bed in three strides. He was stripped to the waist, and accepting some few professional athletes, I had never seen a torso to compare with that which, brown and glistening, now bent over Naylon Smith. The muscular development was simply enormous. The man had a neck like a column, and the fuse around his back and shoulders were like ivy tentacles, wreathing some gnarled oak. Whilst Van Roon, his evil gaze upon the bed, held the candle aloft, the mulatto with a curious preparatory writhing movement of the mighty shoulders, lowered his outstretched fingers to the disordered bed linen. I pushed open the cupboard door and thrust out the browning, as I did so a dramatic thing happened. A tall gaunt figure shot suddenly upright from the bed. It was Naylon Smith. Upraised in his hand he held a heavy walking cane. I knew the handle to be leaded, and I could judge of the force with which he wielded it by the fact that it cut the air with a keen swishing sound. It descended upon the back of the mulatto's skull with a sickening thud, and the great brown body dropped inert upon the padded bed, in which not Smith, but his grip proposed. There was no word, no cry. Then shoot, Petrie! Shoot the fiend! Shoot! Van Roon, dropping the candle in the falling gleam of which I saw the whites of the oblique eyes turned and leaped from the room with the agility of a wild cat. The ensuing darkness was split by a streak of lightning, and there was Naylon Smith scrambling around the foot of the bed and making for the door in hot pursuit. We gained it almost together. Smith had dropped the cane and now held his pistol in his hand. Together we fired into the chasm of the corridor and in a flash saw Van Roon hurling himself down the stairs. He went silently in his stockinged feet, and our own clatter was drowned by the awful booming of the thunder which now burst over us again. Crack! Crack! Crack! Three times our pistol spat venomously after the flying figure. Then we had crossed the hall below and were in the wilderness of the night with the rain descending upon us in sheets. Vaguely I saw the white shirt sleeves of the fugitive near the corner of the stone fence. A moment he hesitated then darted away inland, not towards Saul, but toward the moor and the cup of the inland bay. Steady, Petrie, steady! cried Naylon Smith. He ran, panting beside me. It is the path to the mire. He breathed sibilantly between every few words. It was out there that he hoped to lure us with a cry for help. A great blaze of lightning illuminated the landscape as far as the eye could see. Ahead of us a flying shape, hair, lank, and glistening in the downpour followed a faint path skirting that green tongue of morass which we had noted from the upland. It was Keegan Van Roon. He glanced over his shoulder, showing a yellow, terror-stricken face we were gaining upon him. Darkness fell and the thunder cracked and boomed as though the very moor was splitting about us. Another fifty yards, Petrie, breathed Naylon Smith, and after that its uncharted ground. On we went through the rain and the darkness then. Slow up! Slow up! cried Smith. It feels soft. Indeed already I had made one false 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 a while before. Help! Help! For God's sake help! Quick! I am sinking! Naylon 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. Evening 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 seagull, 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 black silhouette against the night topple and fall. The red glow began to be perceptible above the building. The thunder came booming through the caverns of space. Naylon Smith lowered his wet face close to mine and shouted in my ear. Keegan Van Roon never returned from China. It was a trap. Those were two creatures of Dr. Fu Manchu. The thunder died away, hollily echoing over the distant sea. That light on the moor tonight? You have not learned Morse code, Petrie. It was a signal, and it read S-M-I-T-H-S-O-S. Well, I took the chance, as you know, and it was Caramina. She knew of the plot to Barius in the mire. She had followed us from London, but could do nothing until dusk. God forgive me if I misjudged her, for we owe her our lives tonight. 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. Naylon Smith turned to me, and his face was very grim in that unearthly light, and his eyes shone like steel. I killed him, Petrie, as I meant to do. From out over Sedgemore it came, cracking and rolling and booming towards us, swelling in volume to a stupendous climax, that awful laughter of Jove, the destroyer of Cragmire Tower. End of Chapter 23. Recording by Elaine Twettle, Stirling, Ontario. Chapter 24 of The Return of Dr. Fumanchou. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Elaine Twettle. The Return of Dr. Fumanchou by Sachs Romer. Chapter 24. Story of the Gables. In looking over my notes dealing with the second phase of Dr. Fumanchou's activities in England, I find that one of the worst hours of my life was associated with the singular and seemingly inconsequent adventure of the fiery hand. I shall deal with it in this place, begging you to bear with me if I seem to digress. Inspector Weymouth called one morning, shortly after the Van Rune episode, and entered upon a surprising account of a visit to a house at Hampstead, which enjoyed the sinister reputation of being uninhabitable. But in what way does the case enter into your province? inquired Naylon Smith, idly tapping out his pipe on a bar of the great. We had not long finished breakfast, but from an early hour Smith had been at his eternal smoking, which only the advent of the meal had interrupted. Well, replied the Inspector, who occupied a big-armed chair near the window. I was sent to look into it, I suppose, because I had nothing better to do at the moment. Ah! joked Smith, glancing over his shoulder. The ejaculation had availed significance, for our quest of Dr. Fumanchou had come to an abrupt termination by reason of the fact that all trace of that malignant genius and of the group surrounding him had vanished with the destruction of Craig Meyer Tower. The house is called the Gables, continued the Scotland Yardman, and I knew I was on a wild goose chase from the first. Why? snapped Smith. Because I was there before, six months ago or so, just before your present return to England, and I knew what to expect. Smith looked up with some faint dawning of interest perceptible in his manner. I was unaware, he said with a slight smile, that the cleaning up of haunted houses came within the jurisdiction of Scotland Yard. I am learning something. In the ordinary way, replied the big man, good-humidly it doesn't, but a sudden death always excites suspicion, and a sudden death, I said, glancing up, you didn't explain the ghost had killed anyone. I'm afraid I'm a poor hand at yarn-spinning, Dr., said Weymouth, turning his blue twinkling eyes in my direction. Two people have died at the Gables within the last six months. You begin to interest me, declared Smith, and there came something of the old eager look into his gaunt face, as having lighted his pipe, he tossed the match-end into the hearth. I had hope for some little excitement myself, confessed the inspector. This dead end, with not a ghost of a clue to the whereabouts of the yellow fiend, has been getting on my nerves. Naelyn Smith grunted sympathetically. Although Dr. Fu Manchu has been in England for some months now, continued Weymouth, I have never set eyes upon him. The house we raided in Museum Street proved to be empty, in a word I am wasting my time. So I volunteered to run up to Hampstead to look into the matter of the Gables, principally as a distraction. It's a queer business, but more in the psychical research society's line than mine, I'm afraid. Still, if there were no Dr. Fu Manchu it might be of interest to you and to you, Dr. Petrie, because it illustrates the fact that, given the right sort of subject, death can be brought about without any elaborate mechanism, such as our Chinese friends employ. You interest me more and more, declared Smith, stretching himself in the long white cane-risk chair. Two men, both fairly sound, except that the first one had an asthmatic heart, have died at the Gables without anyone laying a finger upon them. Oh, there was no juggle-ray. They weren't poisoned, or bitten by venomous insects, or suffocated, or anything like that. They just died of fear, stark fear. With my elders resting upon the table-cover and my chin in my hands, I was listening attentively now, and Naelyn Smith, a big cushion behind his head, was watching the speaker with a keen and speculative look in those steely eyes of his. You imply that Dr. Fu Manchu has something to learn from the Gables? He jerked. Weymouth nodded stolidly. I can't work up anything like amazement in these days, continued the latter. Every other case seemed stale and hackneyed alongside the case. But I must confess that when the Gables came on the books of the Yard the second time, I began to wonder. I thought there might be some tangible clue, some link connecting the two victims. Perhaps some evidence of robbery, or of revenge, or some sort of motive. In short, I hoped to find evidence of human agency at work, but, as before, I was disappointed. It's a legitimate case of a haunted house, then, said Smith. Yes, we find them occasionally these uninhabitable places where there is something malignant and harmful to human life, but something that you cannot arrest, that you cannot hope to bring into court. Ah! replied Smith slowly. I suppose you are right. There are historic instances, of course. Glamis Castle and Spedlands Tower in Scotland. Peel Castle, out of man, with its more dew. The Grey Lady, Rainham Hall, the headless horses of Caster, the Wesley Ghost of Epworth Rectory, and others. But I have never come in personal contact with such a case, and if I did I should feel very humiliated to have to confess that there was an agency which could produce a physical result, death, but which was immune from physical retaliation. Weymouth nodded his head again. I might feel a bit sour about it, too, he replied, if it were not that I haven't much pride left in these days, considering the show of physical retaliation I have made against Dr. Fu Man Zhu. A home thrust, Weymouth, snapped Naelyn Smith, with one of those rare boyish laughs of his, who were children to that Chinese doctor-inspector, to that weird product of a weird people who are as old and evil as the pyramids are old and mystery. But what about the Gables? Well, it's an uncanny place. You have mentioned Glamour's castle a moment ago, and it's possible to understand an old stronghold like that, being haunted. But the Gables was only built about 1870, it's quite modern house. It was built for a wealthy Quaker family, and they occupied it uninterruptedly, and apparently without anything unusual occurring for over forty years. Then a result were Mr. Madison, and Mr. Madison died there six months ago. Madison, said Smith sharply, staring across at Weymouth. What was he? Where did he come from? He was a retired tea-planter from Colombo, replied the inspector. There was a link with the East, certainly, if that's what you were thinking, and it was this fact which interested me at the time, and which led me to waste precious days and nights on the case, that there was no mortal connection between this liverish individual and the schemes of Dr. Fu Man Zhu. I'm certain of that. And how did he die, I asked, interestingly. He just died in his chair one evening, in the room which he used as a library. It was his custom to sit there every night, when there were no visitors, reading, until twelve o'clock or later. He was a bachelor, and his household consisted of a cook, a housemaid, and a man who had been with him for thirty years, I believe. At the time of Mr. Madison's death, his household had recently been deprived of two of its members. The cook and housemaid both resigned one morning, giving as their reason the fact that the place was haunted. In what way? I interviewed the precious pair at the time, and they told me absurd and various tales about dark figures wandering around the corridors, and bending over them in bed at night, whispering, when their chief trouble was a continuous ringing of bells about the house. Bells! They said that it became unbearable. Night and day there were bells ringing all over the house. At any rate they went, and for three or four days the Gables was occupied, only by Mr. Madison and his man, whose name was Stevens. I interviewed the latter also, and he was an altogether more reliable witness, a decent, steady sort of man, whose story impressed me very much at the time. Did he confirm the ringing? He swore to it, a sort of jangle, sometimes up in the air, near the ceilings, and sometimes under the floor, like the shaking of silver bells. Nalyn Smith stood up abruptly and began to pace the room, leaving great trails of blue-gray smoke behind him. Your story is sufficiently interesting, Inspector. He declared, even to divert my mind from the eternal contemplation of the Fu Manju problem. This would appear to be distinctly a case of an astral bell, such as we sometimes hear of in India. It was Stevens, continued Weymouth, who found Mr. Madison. He, Stevens, had been out on business connected with the household arrangements, and at about eleven o'clock he returned, letting himself in with a key. There was a light in the library, and, getting no response to his knocking, Stevens entered. He found his master sitting bolt upright in a chair, clutching the arms with rigid fingers and staring straight before him with a look of such frightful horror on his face, that Stevens positively ran from the room and out of the house. Mr. Madison was stone dead. When a doctor, who lives at no great distance away, came and examined him, he could find no trace of violence, whatever. He had apparently died of fright, to judge from the expression on his face. Anything else? Only this. I learned indirectly that the last member of the Quaker family to occupy the house had apparently witnessed the apparition which had led to his vacating the place. I got the story from the wife of a man who had been employed as a guard near there at the time. The apparition, which he witnessed in the hallway, if I remember rightly, took the form of a sort of luminous hand clutching a long curved knife. Oh, Heavens, cried Smith, and laughed shortly. That's quite in order. This gentleman told no one of the occurrence until after he had left the house, no doubt in order that the place should not acquire an evil reputation. Most of the original furniture remained, and Mr. Madison took the house furnished. I don't think there can be any doubt that what killed him was fear at seeing a repetition. Of the fiery hand, concluded Smith, quite so. Well, I examined the gables pretty closely, and with another Scotland yard-mad spent a night in the empty house. We saw nothing, but once very faintly we heard the ringing of bells. Smith spun around upon him rapidly. You can swear to that, he snapped. I can swear to it, declared Weymouth stolidly. It seemed to be over our heads. We were sitting in the dining-room. Then it was gone, and we heard nothing more whatever of an unusual nature. Following the death of Mr. Madison, the gables remained empty until a while ago, when a French gentleman named Lejay leased it. Furnished? Yes, nothing was removed. Who kept the place in order? A married couple living in the neighbourhood undertook to do so. The man attended to the lawn and so forth, and the woman came once a week, I believe, to clean up the house. And Lejay? He came in only last week, having leased the house for six months. His family were to have joined him in a day or two, and he, with the aid of the pair I have just mentioned, and assisted by a French servant he brought over with him, was putting the place in order. At about twelve o'clock on Friday night, this servant ran into a neighbouring house screaming, The Tharréand! And when at last a constable arrived, and a frightened group went up to the avenue to the gables, they found Mr. Lejay dead in the avenue, near the steps just outside the hall door. He had the same face of horror. What a tale for the press, snapped Smith. The owner has managed to keep it quiet so far, but this time I think it will leak into the press, yes. There was a short silence then. Have you been down to the gables again? I was there on Saturday, but there's not a scrap of evidence. The man undoubtedly died of fright in the same way as Madison. The place ought to be pulled down. It's unholy. Unholy is the word, I said. I never heard anything like it. This Monsieur Lejay had no enemies. There could be no possible motive. None-whatever. He was a businessman from Marseille, and his affairs necessitated his remaining in or near London for some considerable time. Therefore he decided to make his headquarters here temporarily, and leased the gables without intention. Naelyn Smith was pacing the floor with increasing rapidity. He was tugging at the lobe of his left ear, and his pipe had long since gone out. CHAPTER XXV. THE BELLS. I started to my feet as a tall, bearded man swung open the door and hurled himself impetuously into the room. He wore a silk hat, which fitted him very ill, and a black frock coat, which did not fit him at all. It's all right, Petrie, cried the apparition, I've leased the gables. It was Naelyn Smith. I stared at him in amazement. The first time I have employed a disguise, continued my friend rapidly, since the memorable episode of the false pigtail. He threw a small brown leather grip upon the floor. In case you should care to visit the house, Petrie, I have brought these things. My tenancy commences tonight. Two days had elapsed, and I had entirely forgotten the strange story of the gables which Inspector Weymouth had related to us. Evidently it was otherwise with my friend, and utterly at a loss for an explanation of his singular behaviour, I stooped mechanically and opened the grip. It contained an odd assortment of garments, and among other things several grey wigs, and a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. Kneeling there with this strange litter about me, I looked up amazedly. Naelyn Smith, with the unsuitable silk hat set right upon the back of his head, was pacing the room excitedly, his fuming pipe protruding from the tangle of factitious beard. You see, Petrie, he began again rapidly. I did not entirely trust the agent. I have leased the house in the name of Professor Maxden. But Smith, I cried, what possible reason can there be for disguise? There is every reason, he snapped. Why, should you interest yourself in the gables? Does no explanation occur to you? And whatever, to me, the whole thing's max of stark lunacy. Then you won't come? I've never stuck at anything, Smith, I replied, however undignified, when it has seemed that my presence could be of the slightest use. As I rose to my feet, Smith stepped in front of me, and the steely gray eyes shone out strangely from the altered face. He clapped his hands upon my shoulders. If I assure you that your presence is necessary to my safety, he said, that if you fail me, I must seek another companion. Will you come? Instinctively I knew that he was keeping something back, and I was conscious of some resentment, but nevertheless my reply was a foregone conclusion, and, with the borrowed appearance of an extremely untidy old man, I crept guiltily out of my house that evening, and into the cab which Smith had waiting. The gables was a roomy and rambling place, lying back a considerable distance from the road. A semicircular drive gave access to the door, and so densely wooded was the ground, that for the most part the drive was practically a tunnel, a verdant tunnel. A hybric wall concealed the building from the point of view of any one on the roadway, but either horn of the crescent drive terminated at a heavy wrought iron gateway. Smith discharged the cab at the corner of the narrow and winding road upon which the gables fronted. It was walled in on both sides, on the left the wall being broken by tradesman's entrances to the houses fronting upon another street, and on the right following uninterruptedly the grounds of the gables, as we came to the gate, nothing now, said Smith, pointing into the darkness of the road before us, except a couple of studios until one comes to the heath. He inserted the key in the lock of the gate and swung it creakingly open. I looked back into the black arch of the avenue, thought of the haunted residence that lay hidden somewhere beyond, of those who had died in it, especially of the one who had died there under the trees, and found myself out of love with the business of the night. Come on, said Naelyn Smith, briskly holding the gate open. There should be a fire in the library and refreshments if the charwoman has followed instructions. I heard the great gate clang, too, behind us. Even had there been any moon, and there was none, I doubted if more than a patch or two of light could have penetrated there. The darkness was extraordinary. Nothing broke it, and I think Smith must have found his way by the aid of some sixth sense. At any rate I saw nothing of the house until I stood some five paces from the steps leading up to the porch. A light was burning in the hallway, but dimly and inhospitably, of the facade of the building I could perceive little. When we entered the hall and the door was closed behind us, I began wondering anew what purpose my friend hoped to serve by a vigil in this haunted place. There was a light in the library, the door of which was a jar, and on a large table were decanters, a siphon, and some biscuits and sandwiches. A large grip stood upon the floor also. For some reason, which was a mystery to me, Smith had decided that we must assume false names whilst under the roof of the gables, and— Now, Pierce, he said, a whisky and soda before we look around. The proposal was welcome enough, for I felt strangely dispirited, and to tell the truth in my strange disguise not a little ridiculous. All my nerves, no doubt, were highly strung, but my sense of hearing unusually acute, for I went in momentary expectation of some uncanny happening. I had not long to wait. As I raised the glass to my lips and glanced across the table at my friend, I heard the first faint sound heralding the coming of the bells. It did not seem to proceed from anywhere within the library, but from some distant room far away overhead. A musical sound it was, but breaking in upon the silence of that ill-oamened house, its music was the music of terror. In a faint and very sweet cascade it rippled, a ringing as of tiny silver bells. I set down my glass upon the table, and rising slowly from the chair in which I had been seated, stared fixedly at my companion, who was staring with equal fixity at me. I could see that I had not been deluded. Nailand Smith had heard the ringing, too. The ghosts waste no time, he said softly. This is not new to me. I spent an hour here last night, and heard the same sound. I glanced hastily around the room. It was furnished as a library, and contained a considerable collection of works, principally novels. I was unable to judge of the outlook, for the two lofty windows were draped with heavy purple curtains that were drawn close. A silk-shaded lamp swung from the centre of the ceiling, and immediately over the table by which I stood. There was much shadow about the room, and now I glanced apprehensively about me, but especially toward the open door. In that breathless suspense of listening we stood a while then. There it is again, whispered Smith, tensely. The ringing of bells was repeated, and seemingly much nearer to us. In fact it appeared to come from somewhere above, up near the ceiling of the room in which we stood. Simultaneously we looked up, then Smith laughed shortly. Instinctive, I suppose, he snapped, but what do we expect to see in the air? The musical sound now grew in volume. The first tiny peel seemed to be reinforced by others, and by others again, until the air around us was filled with the pealings of those invisible bell-ringers. Although, as I have said, the sound was rather musical than horrible, it was, on the other hand, so utterly unaccountable, as to touch the supreme heights of the uncanny. I could not doubt that our presence had attracted these unseen-ringers to the room in which we stood, and I knew quite well that I was growing pale. This was the room in which at least one unhappy occupant of the gables had died of fear. I recognised the fact that, if this mere overture were going to affect my nerves to such an extent, I could not hope to survive the ordeal of the night. A great effort was called for. I emptied my glass at a gulp and stared across the table at Nalen Smith of the sort of defiance. He was standing very upright and motionless, but his eyes were turning right and left, searching every visible corner of the big room. Good, he said, in a very loud voice, the terrorising power of the unknown is boundless, but we must not get in the grip of panic, or we could not hope to remain in this house ten minutes. I nodded without speaking. Then Smith to my amazement suddenly began to speak in a loud voice, a marked contrast to that almost a whispering which he'd spoken formally. My dear Pierce, he cried, do you hear the ringing of bells? Clearly the latter words were spoken for the benefit of the unseen intelligence controlling these manifestations, and although I regarded such finesse as somewhat wasted, I followed my friend's lead and replied in a voice as loud as his own. Distinctly, Professor! Silence followed my words, a silence in which both stood watchful and listening. Then, very faintly, I seemed to detect the silver ringing receding away through distant rooms. Finally it became inaudible, and in the stillness of the gables I could distinctly hear my companion breathing. For fully ten minutes we too remained thus, each momentarily expecting a repetition of the ringing, or the coming of some new and more sinister manifestation. But we heard nothing, and saw nothing. That grip, and don't stir till I come back, hissed Smith in my ear. He turned and walked out of the library, his boots creaking very loudly in that awe-inspiring silence. Standing beside the table I watched the open door for his return, crushing down a dread that another form than his might suddenly appear there. I could hear him moving from room to room, and presently as I waited in hushed, tense watchfulness, he came in, depositing the grip upon the table. His eyes were gleaning feverishly. Well, how's his haunted purse? he cried. But no ghost ever frightened me. Come, I will show you your room.