sly, but without delay he stuffed broad-cut mixture
into the hot pipe, dropping a liberal quantity upon the carpet during
the process. He raised his eyes to me, and his face was very grim.

"Petrie," he said, striking a match on the heel of his slipper, "the
resources of Dr. Fu-Manchu are by no means exhausted. Before we quit
this room it is up to us to come to a decision upon a certain point."
He got his pipe well alight. "What kind of thing, what unnatural,
distorted creature, laid hands upon my throat to-night? I owe my life,
primarily, to you, old man, but secondarily, to the fact that I was
awakened, just before the attack, by the creature's _coughing_--by its
vile, high pitched _coughing_...."

I glanced around at the books upon my shelves. Often enough, following
some outrage by the brilliant, Chinese doctor whose genius was
directed to the discovery of new and unique death agents, we had
obtained a clue in those works of a scientific nature which bulk
largely in the library of a medical man. There are creatures, there
are drugs, which, ordinarily innocuous, may be so employed as to
become inimical to human life; and in the distorting of nature, in the
disturbing of balances and the diverting of beneficent forces into
strange and dangerous channels, Dr. Fu-Manchu excelled. I had known
him to enlarge, by artificial culture, a minute species of fungus so
as to render it a powerful agent capable of attacking man; his
knowledge of venomous insects has probably never been paralleled in
the history of the world; whilst, in the sphere of pure toxicology, he
had, and has, no rival: the Borgias were children by comparison. But,
look where I would, think how I might, no adequate explanation of this
latest outrage seemed possible along normal lines.

"There's the clue," said Nayland Smith, pointing to a little ash-tray
upon the table near by. "Follow it if you can."

But I could not.

"As I have explained," continued my friend, "I was awakened by a sound
of coughing; then came a death grip on my throat, and instinctively my
hands shot out in search of my attacker. I could not reach him; my
hands came in contact with nothing palpable. Therefore I clutched at
the fingers which were dug into my windpipe, and found them to be
small--as the marks show--and _hairy_. I managed to give that first
cry for help, and with all my strength I tried to unfasten the grip
that was throttling the life out of me. At last I contrived to m