y a mouth before I left. The D.S.P. had placed a
thousand rupees on his head. Am I right?"

The girl shrugged her shoulders.

"Suppose--What then?" she asked.

"Suppose I handed you over to the police?" suggested Smith. But he
spoke without conviction, for in the recent past we both had owed our
lives to this girl.

"As you please," she replied. "The police would learn nothing."

"You do not belong to the Far East," my friend said abruptly. "You may
have Eastern blood in your veins, but you are no kin of Fu-Manchu."

"That is true," she admitted, and knocked the ash from her cigarette.

"Will you tell me where to find Fu-Manchu?"

She shrugged her shoulders again, glancing eloquently in my direction.

Smith walked to the door.

"I must make out my report, Petrie," he said. "Look after the
prisoner."

And as the door closed softly behind him I knew what was expected of
me; but, honestly, I shirked my responsibility. What attitude should I
adopt? How should I go about my delicate task? In a quandary, I stood
watching the girl whom singular circumstances saw captive in my rooms.

"You do not think we would harm you?" I began awkwardly. "No harm
shall come to you. Why will you not trust us?"

She raised her brilliant eyes.

"Of what avail has your protection been to some of those others," she
said; "those others whom HE has sought for?"

Alas! it had been of none, and I knew it well. I thought I grasped
the drift of her words.

"You mean that if you speak, Fu-Manchu will find a way of killing you?"

"Of killing ME!" she flashed scornfully. "Do I seem one to fear for
myself?"

"Then what do you fear?" I asked, in surprise.

She looked at me oddly.

"When I was seized and sold for a slave," she answered slowly, "my
sister was taken, too, and my brother--a child." She spoke the word
with a tender intonation, and her slight accent rendered it the more
soft. "My sister died in the desert. My brother lived. Better, far
better, that he had died, too."

Her words impressed me intensely.

"Of what are you speaking?" I questioned. "You speak of slave-raids,
of the desert. Where did these things take place? Of what country are
you?"

"Does it matter?" she questioned in turn. "Of what country am I? A
slave has no country, no name."

"No name!" I cried.

"You may call me Karamaneh," she said. "As Karamaneh I was sold to Dr.
Fu-Manchu, and my brother also he purchased. We were chea