contents to examination to-night. He evidently
changed his mind--fortunately for himself."

I ran my fingers through my hair in perplexity.

"Then what has become of the mummy?"

Nayland Smith laughed dryly.

"It has vanished in the form of a green vapor apparently," he said.
"Look at Strozza's face."

He turned the body over, and, used as I was to such spectacles, the
contorted features of the Italian filled me with horror, so--suggestive
were they of a death more than ordinarily violent. I pulled aside the
dressing-gown and searched the body for marks, but failed to find any.
Nayland Smith crossed the room, and, assisted by the detective, carried
Kwee, the Chinaman, into the study and laid him fully in the light.
His puckered yellow face presented a sight even more awful than the
other, and his blue lips were drawn back, exposing both upper and lower
teeth. There were no marks of violence, but his limbs, like Strozza's,
had been tortured during his mortal struggles into unnatural postures.

The breeze was growing higher, and pungent odor-waves from the damp
shrubbery, bearing, too, the oppressive sweetness of the creeping
plant, swept constantly through the open window. Inspector Weymouth
carefully relighted his cigar.

"I'm with you this far, Mr. Smith," he said. "Strozza, knowing Sir
Lionel to be absent, locked himself in here to rifle the mummy case,
for Croxted, entering by way of the window, found the key on the
inside. Strozza didn't know that the Chinaman was hidden in the
conservatory--"

"And Kwee did not dare to show himself, because he too was there for
some mysterious reason of his own," interrupted Smith.

"Having got the lid off, something,--somebody--"

"Suppose we say the mummy?"

Weymouth laughed uneasily.

"Well, sir, something that vanished from a locked room without opening
the door or the window killed Strozza."

"And something which, having killed Strozza, next killed the Chinaman,
apparently without troubling to open the door behind which he lay
concealed," Smith continued. "For once in a way, Inspector, Dr.
Fu-Manchu has employed an ally which even his giant will was incapable
entirely to subjugate. What blind force--what terrific agent of
death--had he confined in that sarcophagus!"

"You think this is the work of Fu-Manchu?" I said. "If you are
correct, his power indeed is more than human."

Something in my voice, I suppose, brought Smith right about. He
surveyed