otection," I said
firmly, but my voice was not quite my own. "It is quite absurd to talk
of slavery here in England. You are a free agent, or you could not be
here now. Dr. Fu-Manchu cannot control your actions."

"Ah!" she cried, casting back her head scornfully, and releasing a
cloud of hair, through whose softness gleamed a jeweled head-dress.
"No? He cannot? Do you know what it means to have been a slave?
Here, in your free England, do you know what it means--the razzia, the
desert journey, the whips of the drivers, the house of the dealer, the
shame. Bah!"

How beautiful she was in her indignation!

"Slavery is put down, you imagine, perhaps? You do not believe that
to-day--TO-DAY--twenty-five English sovereigns will buy a Galla girl,
who is brown, and"--whisper--"two hundred and fifty a Circassian, who
is white. No, there is no slavery! So! Then what am I?"

She threw open her cloak, and it is a literal fact that I rubbed my
eyes, half believing that I dreamed. For beneath, she was arrayed in
gossamer silk which more than indicated the perfect lines of her slim
shape; wore a jeweled girdle and barbaric ornaments; was a figure fit
for the walled gardens of Stamboul--a figure amazing, incomprehensible,
in the prosaic setting of my rooms.

"To-night I had no time to make myself an English miss," she said,
wrapping her cloak quickly about her. "You see me as I am." Her
garments exhaled a faint perfume, and it reminded me of another meeting
I had had with her. I looked into the challenging eyes.

"Your request is but a pretense," I said. "Why do you keep the secrets
of that man, when they mean death to so many?"

"Death! I have seen my own sister die of fever in the desert--seen her
thrown like carrion into a hole in the sand. I have seen men flogged
until they prayed for death as a boon. I have known the lash myself.
Death! What does it matter?"

She shocked me inexpressibly. Enveloped in her cloak again, and with
only her slight accent to betray her, it was dreadful to hear such
words from a girl who, save for her singular type of beauty, might have
been a cultured European.

"Prove, then, that you really wish to leave this man's service. Tell
me what killed Strozza and the Chinaman," I said.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"I do not know that. But if you will carry me off"--she clutched me
nervously--"so that I am helpless, lock me up so that I cannot escape,
beat me, if you like, I