rings in far-away voices--an uncanny,
animal chorus. It was like a glimpse of the Inferno seen by some
Chinese Dante. But so close to us stood the newcomer that I was able
to make out a ghastly parchment face, with small, oblique eyes, and a
misshapen head crowned with a coiled pigtail, surmounting a slight,
hunched body. There was something unnatural, inhuman, about that
masklike face, and something repulsive in the bent shape and the long,
yellow hands clasped one upon the other.

Fu-Manchu, from Smith's account, in no way resembled this crouching
apparition with the death's-head countenance and lithe movements; but
an instinct of some kind told me that we were on the right scent--that
this was one of the doctor's servants. How I came to that conclusion,
I cannot explain; but with no doubt in my mind that this was a member
of the formidable murder group, I saw the yellow man creep nearer,
nearer, silently, bent and peering.

He was watching us.

Of another circumstance I became aware, and a disquieting circumstance.
There were fewer murmurings and sighings from the surrounding bunks.
The presence of the crouching figure had created a sudden semi-silence
in the den, which could only mean that some of the supposed
opium-smokers had merely feigned coma and the approach of coma.

Nayland Smith lay like a dead man, and trusting to the darkness, I,
too, lay prone and still, but watched the evil face bending lower and
lower, until it came within a few inches of my own. I completely
closed my eyes.

Delicate fingers touched my right eyelid. Divining what was coming, I
rolled my eyes up, as the lid was adroitly lifted and lowered again.
The man moved away.

I had saved the situation! And noting anew the hush about me--a hush
in which I fancied many pairs of ears listened--I was glad. For just a
moment I realized fully how, with the place watched back and front, we
yet were cut off, were in the hands of Far Easterns, to some extent in
the power of members of that most inscrutably mysterious race, the
Chinese.

"Good," whispered Smith at my side. "I don't think I could have done
it. He took me on trust after that. My God! what an awful face.
Petrie, it's the hunchback of Cadby's notes. Ah, I thought so. Do you
see that?"

I turned my eyes round as far as was possible. A man had scrambled
down from one of the bunks and was following the bent figure across the
room.

They passed around us quietly, the l