no ledge, by means
of which anyone could reach the window."

"But how did you come to recognize the cry?"

"I stopped at the Palace Mansions for some time; and one night this
uncanny howling aroused me. I heard it quite distinctly, and am never
likely to forget it. It was followed by a hoarse yell. The man in the
next room, an orchid hunter, had gone the same way as the others!"

"Did you change your quarters?"

"No. Fortunately for the reputation of the hotel--a first-class
establishment--several similar cases occurred elsewhere, both in
Rangoon, in Prome and in Moulmein. A story got about the native
quarter, and was fostered by some mad fakir, that the god Siva was
reborn and that the cry was his call for victims; a ghastly story,
which led to an outbreak of dacoity and gave the District
Superintendent no end of trouble."

"Was there anything unusual about the bodies?"

"They all developed marks after death, as though they had been
strangled! The marks were said all to possess a peculiar form, though
it was not appreciable to my eye; and this, again, was declared to be
the five heads of Siva."

"Were the deaths confined to Europeans?"

"Oh, no. Several Burmans and others died in the same way. At first
there was a theory that the victims had contracted leprosy and
committed suicide as a result; but the medical evidence disproved that.
The Call of Siva became a perfect nightmare throughout Burma."

"Did you ever hear it again, before this evening?"

"Yes. I heard it on the Upper Irrawaddy one clear, moonlight night,
and a Colassie--a deck-hand--leaped from the top deck of the steamer
aboard which I was traveling! My God! to think that the fiend
Fu-Manchu has brought That to England!"

"But brought what, Smith?" I cried, in perplexity. "What has he
brought? An evil spirit? A mental disease? What is it? What CAN it
be?"

"A new agent of death, Petrie! Something born in a plague-spot of
Burma--the home of much that is unclean and much that is inexplicable.
Heaven grant that we be in time, and are able to save Guthrie."

CHAPTER XV

THE train was late, and as our cab turned out of Waterloo Station and
began to ascend to the bridge, from a hundred steeples rang out the
gongs of midnight, the bell of St. Paul's raised above them all to vie
with the deep voice of Big Ben.

I looked out from the cab window across the river to where, towering
above the Embankment, that place of a thousa