es projected from their sockets
horribly. Mastering my repugnance, I seized the hideous piece of
bleeding anatomy and strove to release it. It defied all my efforts;
in death it was as implacable as in life. I took a knife from my
pocket, and, tendon by tendon, cut away that uncanny grip from Burke's
throat....

But my labour was in vain. Burke was dead!

I think I failed to realize this for some time. My clothes were
sticking clammily to my body; I was bathed in perspiration, and,
shaking furiously, I clutched at the edge of the window, avoiding the
bloody patch upon the ledge, and looked out over the roofs to where,
in the more distant plantations, I could hear excited voices. What had
been the meaning of that scream which I had heard but to which in my
frantic state of mind I had paid comparatively little attention?

There was a great stirring all about me.

"Smith!" I cried from the window; "Smith, for mercy's sake where are
you?"

Footsteps came racing up the stairs. Behind me the door burst open and
Nayland Smith stumbled into the room.

"God!" he said, and started back in the doorway.

"Have you got it, Smith?" I demanded hoarsely. "In sanity's name what
is it--_what is it?_"

"Come downstairs," replied Smith quietly, "and see for yourself." He
turned his head aside from the bed.

Very unsteadily I followed him down the stairs and through the
rambling old house out into the stone-paved courtyard. There were
figures moving at the end of a long alleyway between the glass houses,
and one, carrying a lantern, stooped over something which lay upon the
ground.

"That's Burke's cousin with the lantern," whispered Smith, in my ear;
"don't tell him yet."

I nodded, and we hurried up to join the group. I found myself looking
down at one of those thickset Burmans whom I always associated with
Fu-Manchu's activities. He lay quite flat, face downward; but the back
of his head was a shapeless blood-clotted mass, and a heavy
stock-whip, the butt end ghastly because of the blood and hair which
clung to it, lay beside him. I started back appalled as Smith caught
my arm.

"_It_ turned on its keeper!" he hissed in my ear. "I wounded it twice
from below, and you severed one arm; in its insensate fury, its
unreasoning malignity, it returned--and there lies its second
victim...."

"Then...."

"It's gone, Petrie! It has the strength of four men even now. Look!"

He stooped, and from the clenched left hand of the d