when I saw
her raise her hands to her head--and saw the big, horror-bright eyes
gleam through the mist veil.

CHAPTER XXVII

WE quitted the wrecked launch but a few seconds before her stern
settled down into the river. Where the mud-bank upon which we found
ourselves was situated we had no idea. But at least it was terra firma
and we were free from Dr. Fu-Manchu.

Smith stood looking out towards the river.

"My God!" he groaned. "My God!"

He was thinking, as I was, of Weymouth.

And when, an hour later, the police boat located us (on the mud-flats
below Greenwich) and we heard that the toll of the poison cellars was
eight men, we also heard news of our brave companion.

"Back there in the fog, sir," reported Inspector Ryman, who was in
charge, and his voice was under poor command, "there was an uncanny
howling, and peals of laughter that I'm going to dream about for
weeks--"

Karamaneh, who nestled beside me like a frightened child, shivered; and
I knew that the needle had done its work, despite Weymouth's giant
strength.

Smith swallowed noisily.

"Pray God the river has that yellow Satan," he said. "I would
sacrifice a year of my life to see his rat's body on the end of a
grappling-iron!"

We were a sad party that steamed through the fog homeward that night.
It seemed almost like deserting a staunch comrade to leave the spot--so
nearly as we could locate it--where Weymouth had put up that last
gallant fight. Our helplessness was pathetic, and although, had the
night been clear as crystal, I doubt if we could have acted otherwise,
it came to me that this stinking murk was a new enemy which drove us
back in coward retreat.

But so many were the calls upon our activity, and so numerous the
stimulants to our initiative in those times, that soon we had matter to
relieve our minds from this stress of sorrow.

There was Karamaneh to be considered--Karamaneh and her brother. A
brief counsel was held, whereat it was decided that for the present
they should be lodged at a hotel.

"I shall arrange," Smith whispered to me, for the girl was watching us,
"to have the place patrolled night and day."

"You cannot suppose--"

"Petrie! I cannot and dare not suppose Fu-Manchu dead until with my
own eyes I have seen him so!"

Accordingly we conveyed the beautiful Oriental girl and her brother
away from that luxurious abode in its sordid setting. I will not dwell
upon the final scene in the poison c