the
East that I knew; rather it was Far Eastern. Perhaps I do not make
myself very clear, but to me there was a mysterious significance in
that perfumed atmosphere. I opened my eyes.

I lay upon a long low settee, in a fairly large room which was
furnished, as I had anticipated, in an absolutely Oriental fashion.
The two windows were so screened as to have lost, from the interior
point of view, all resemblance to European windows, and the whole
structure of the room had been altered in conformity, bearing out my
idea that the place had been prepared for Fu-Manchu's reception some
time before his actual return. I doubt if, East or West, a duplicate
of that singular apartment could be found.

The end in which I lay was, as I have said, typical of an Eastern
house, and a large, ornate lantern hung from the ceiling almost
directly above me. The farther end of the room was occupied by tall
cases, some of them containing books, but the majority filled with
scientific paraphernalia: rows of flasks and jars, frames of
test-tubes, retorts, scales, and other objects of the laboratory. At a
large and very finely carved table sat Dr. Fu-Manchu, a yellow and
faded volume open before him, and some dark red fluid, almost like
blood, bubbling in a test-tube which he held over the flame of a
Bunsen-burner.

The enormously long nail of his right index finger rested upon the
opened page of the book, to which he seemed constantly to refer,
dividing his attention between the volume, the contents of the
test-tube, and the progress of a second experiment, or possibly a part
of the same, which was taking place upon another corner of the
littered table.

A huge glass retort (the bulb was fully two feet in diameter), fitted
with a Liebig's Condenser, rested in a metal frame, and within the
bulb, floating in an oily substance, was a fungus some six inches
high, shaped like a toadstool, but of a brilliant and venomous orange
colour. Three flat tubes of light were so arranged as to cast violet
rays upward into the retort, and the receiver, wherein condensed the
product of this strange experiment, contained some drops of a red
fluid which may have been identical with that boiling in the
test-tube.

These things I perceived at a glance; then the filmy eyes of Dr.
Fu-Manchu were raised from the book, turned in my direction, and all
else was forgotten.

"I regret," came the sibilant voice, "that unpleasant measures were
necessary, but hesita