our feet from the nearest window.

I suppose the question was written in my face; for, as I turned again
to Smith, who, having struggled upright, was still fingering his
injured throat ruefully--"God only knows, Petrie!" he said; "no human
arm could have reached me...."

For us, the night was ended so far as sleep was concerned. Arrayed in
his dressing-gown, Smith sat in the white cane chair in my study with
a glass of brandy and water beside him, and (despite my official
prohibition) with the cracked briar, which had sent up its incense in
many strange and dark places of the East and which yet survived to
perfume these prosy rooms in suburban London, between his teeth. I
stood with my elbow resting upon the mantelpiece looking down at him
where he sat.

"By God! Petrie," he said, yet again, with his fingers straying gently
over the surface of his throat, "that was a narrow shave--a damned
narrow shave!"

"Narrower than perhaps you appreciate, old man," I replied. "You were
a most unusual shade of blue when I found you...."

"I managed," said Smith evenly, "to tear those clutching fingers away
for a moment and to give a cry for help. It was only for a moment,
though. Petrie! they were fingers of steel--of steel!"

"The bed...." I began.

"I know that," rapped Smith. "I shouldn't have been sleeping in it,
had it been within reach of the window; but, knowing that the Doctor
avoids noisy methods, I had thought myself fairly safe so long as I
made it impossible for any one actually to enter the room...."

"I have always insisted, Smith," I cried, "that there was danger! What
of poisoned darts? What of the damnable reptiles and insects which
form part of the armoury of Fu-Manchu?"

"Familiarity breeds contempt, I suppose," he replied. "But as it
happened, none of those agents was employed. The very menace that I
sought to avoid reached me somehow. It would almost seem that Dr.
Fu-Manchu deliberately accepted the challenge of those screwed up
windows! Hang it all, Petrie! one cannot sleep in a room hermetically
sealed in weather like this! It's positively Burmese; and although I
can stand tropical heat, curiously enough the heat of London gets me
down almost immediately."

"The humidity; that's easily understood. But you'll have to put up
with it in the future. After nightfall our windows must be closed
entirely, Smith."

Nayland Smith knocked out his pipe upon the side of the fireplace. The
bowl sizzled furiou