will tell you all I do know. While he is my
master I will never betray him. Tear me from him--by force, do you
understand, BY FORCE, and my lips will be sealed no longer. Ah! but
you do not understand, with your 'proper authorities'--your police.
Police! Ah, I have said enough."

A clock across the common began to strike. The girl started and laid
her hands upon my shoulders again. There were tears glittering among
the curved black lashes.

"You do not understand," she whispered. "Oh, will you never understand
and release me from him! I must go. Already I have remained too long.
Listen. Go out without delay. Remain out--at a hotel, where you will,
but do not stay here."

"And Nayland Smith?"

"What is he to me, this Nayland Smith? Ah, why will you not unseal my
lips? You are in danger--you hear me, in danger! Go away from here
to-night."

She dropped her hands and ran from the room. In the open doorway she
turned, stamping her foot passionately.

"You have hands and arms," she cried, "and yet you let me go. Be
warned, then; fly from here--" She broke off with something that
sounded like a sob.

I made no move to stay her--this beautiful accomplice of the
arch-murderer, Fu-Manchu. I heard her light footsteps pattering down
the stairs, I heard her open and close the door--the door of which Dr.
Fu-Manchu held the key. Still I stood where she had parted from me,
and was so standing when a key grated in the lock and Nayland Smith
came running up.

"Did you see her?" I began.

But his face showed that he had not done so, and rapidly I told him of
my strange visitor, of her words, of her warning.

"How can she have passed through London in that costume?" I cried in
bewilderment. "Where can she have come from?"

Smith shrugged his shoulders and began to stuff broad-cut mixture into
the familiar cracked briar.

"She might have traveled in a car or in a cab," he said; "and
undoubtedly she came direct from the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu. You
should have detained her, Petrie. It is the third time we have had
that woman in our power, the third time we have let her go free."

"Smith," I replied, "I couldn't. She came of her own free will to give
me a warning. She disarms me."

"Because you can see she is in love with you?" he suggested, and burst
into one of his rare laughs when the angry flush rose to my cheek.
"She is, Petrie why pretend to be blind to it? You don't know the
Oriental mind as