e room. "What is your theory respecting this
creature--what shape, what color--?"

"It is something that moves rapidly and silently. I will venture no
more at present, but I think it works in the dark. The study was dark,
remember, save for the bright patch beneath the reading-lamp. I have
observed that the rear of this house is ivy-covered right up to and
above your bedroom. Let us make ostentatious preparations to retire,
and I think we may rely upon Fu-Manchu's servants to attempt my
removal, at any rate--if not yours."

"But, my dear fellow, it is a climb of thirty-five feet at the very
least."

"You remember the cry in the back lane? It suggested something to me,
and I tested my idea--successfully. It was the cry of a dacoit. Oh,
dacoity, though quiescent, is by no means extinct. Fu-Manchu has
dacoits in his train, and probably it is one who operates the Zayat
Kiss, since it was a dacoit who watched the window of the study this
evening. To such a man an ivy-covered wall is a grand staircase."

The horrible events that followed are punctuated, in my mind, by the
striking of a distant clock. It is singular how trivialities thus
assert themselves in moments of high tension. I will proceed, then, by
these punctuations, to the coming of the horror that it was written we
should encounter.

The clock across the common struck two.

Having removed all traces of the scent of the orchid from our hands
with a solution of ammonia Smith and I had followed the programme laid
down. It was an easy matter to reach the rear of the house, by simply
climbing a fence, and we did not doubt that seeing the light go out in
the front, our unseen watcher would proceed to the back.

The room was a large one, and we had made up my camp-bed at one end,
stuffing odds and ends under the clothes to lend the appearance of a
sleeper, which device we also had adopted in the case of the larger
bed. The perfumed envelope lay upon a little coffee table in the
center of the floor, and Smith, with an electric pocket lamp, a
revolver, and a brassey beside him, sat on cushions in the shadow of
the wardrobe. I occupied a post between the windows.

No unusual sound, so far, had disturbed the stillness of the night.
Save for the muffled throb of the rare all-night cars passing the front
of the house, our vigil had been a silent one. The full moon had
painted about the floor weird shadows of the clustering ivy, spreading
the design grad