of falling
cadences, which, in that dismal vault, with the sinister yellow-robed
figure at the door, seemed to pour ice into my veins. Its effect upon
Smith was truly extraordinary. His face showed grayly in the faint
light, and I heard him draw a hissing breath through clenched teeth.

"It calls for you!" said Fu-Manchu. "At half-past twelve it calls for
Graham Guthrie!"

The door closed and darkness mantled us again.

"Smith," I said, "what was that?" The horrors about us were playing
havoc with my nerves.

"It was the Call of Siva!" replied Smith hoarsely.

"What is it? Who uttered it? What does it mean?"

"I don't know what it is, Petrie, nor who utters it. But it means
death!"

CHAPTER XIV

THERE may be some who could have lain, chained to that noisome cell,
and felt no fear--no dread of what the blackness might hold. I confess
that I am not one of these. I knew that Nayland Smith and I stood in
the path of the most stupendous genius who in the world's history had
devoted his intellect to crime. I knew that the enormous wealth of the
political group backing Dr. Fu-Manchu rendered him a menace to Europe
and to America greater than that of the plague. He was a scientist
trained at a great university--an explorer of nature's secrets, who had
gone farther into the unknown, I suppose, than any living man. His
mission was to remove all obstacles--human obstacles--from the path of
that secret movement which was progressing in the Far East. Smith and
I were two such obstacles; and of all the horrible devices at his
command, I wondered, and my tortured brain refused to leave the
subject, by which of them were we doomed to be dispatched?

Even at that very moment some venomous centipede might be wriggling
towards me over the slime of the stones, some poisonous spider be
preparing to drop from the roof! Fu-Manchu might have released a
serpent in the cellar, or the air be alive with microbes of a loathsome
disease!

"Smith," I said, scarcely recognizing my own voice, "I can't bear this
suspense. He intends to kill us, that is certain, but--"

"Don't worry," came the reply; "he intends to learn our plans first."

"You mean--?"

"You heard him speak of his files and of his wire jacket?"

"Oh, my God!" I groaned; "can this be England?"

Smith laughed dryly, and I heard him fumbling with the steel collar
about his neck.

"I have one great hope," he said, "since you share my captivity, but