ing at us in a
whistling voice.

"Don't stir!" said Smith savagely. "I warn you!"

Fu-Manchu kept his hand raised.

"May I ask you how you discovered my retreat?" he asked.

"This hulk has been watched since dawn," lied Smith brazenly.

"So?" The Doctor's filmed eyes cleared for a moment. "And to-day you
compelled me to burn a house, and you have captured one of my people,
too. I congratulate you. She would not betray me though lashed with
scorpions."

The great gleaming knife was so near to my neck that a sheet of
notepaper could scarcely have been slipped between blade and vein, I
think; but my heart throbbed even more wildly when I heard those words.

"An impasse," said Fu-Manchu. "I have a proposal to make. I assume
that you would not accept my word for anything?"

"I would not," replied Smith promptly.

"Therefore," pursued the Chinaman, and the occasional guttural alone
marred his perfect English, "I must accept yours. Of your resources
outside this cabin I know nothing. You, I take it, know as little of
mine. My Burmese friend and Doctor Petrie will lead the way, then; you
and I will follow. We will strike out across the marsh for, say, three
hundred yards. You will then place your pistol on the ground, pledging
me your word to leave it there. I shall further require your assurance
that you will make no attempt upon me until I have retraced my steps.
I and my good servant will withdraw, leaving you, at the expiration of
the specified period, to act as you see fit. Is it agreed?"

Smith hesitated. Then:

"The dacoit must leave his knife also," he stipulated. Fu-Manchu
smiled his evil smile again.

"Agreed. Shall I lead the way?"

"No!" rapped Smith. "Petrie and the dacoit first; then you; I last."

A guttural word of command from Fu-Manchu, and we left the cabin, with
its evil odors, its mortuary specimens, and its strange instruments,
and in the order arranged mounted to the deck.

"It will be awkward on the ladder," said Fu-Manchu. "Dr. Petrie, I will
accept your word to adhere to the terms."

"I promise," I said, the words almost choking me.

We mounted the rising and dipping ladder, all reached the pier, and
strode out across the flats, the Chinaman always under close cover of
Smith's revolver. Round about our feet, now leaping ahead, now
gamboling back, came and went the marmoset. The dacoit, dressed solely
in a dark loin-cloth, walked beside me, carrying his huge knife