made for awe. This was a tropical summer,
and the common, with its dancing lights dotted irregularly about it,
had an unfamiliar look to-night. The clump of nine elms showed as a
dense and irregular mass, lacking detail.

Such moods as that which now claimed my friend are magnetic. I had no
thought of the night's beauty, for it only served to remind me that
somewhere amid London's millions was lurking an uncanny being, whose
life was a mystery, whose very existence was a scientific miracle.

"Where's your patient?" rapped Smith.

His abrupt query diverted my thoughts into a new channel. No footstep
disturbed the silence of the high-road. Where _was_ my patient?

I craned from the window. Smith grabbed my arm.

"Don't lean out," he said.

I drew back, glancing at him surprisedly.

"For Heaven's sake, why not?"

"I'll tell you presently, Petrie. Did you see him?"

"I did, and I can't make out what he is doing. He seems to have
remained standing at the gate for some reason."

"He has seen it!" snapped Smith. "Watch those elms."

His hand remained upon my arm, gripping it nervously. Shall I say that
I was surprised? I can say it with truth. But I shall add that I was
thrilled, eerily; for this subdued excitement and alert watching of
Smith's could only mean one thing:

Fu-Manchu!

And that was enough to set me watching as keenly as he; to set me
listening, not only for sounds outside the house but for sounds
within. Doubts, suspicions, dreads heaped themselves up in my mind.
Why was Forsyth standing there at the gate? I had never seen him
before, to my knowledge, yet there was something oddly reminiscent
about the man. Could it be that his visit formed part of a plot? Yet
his wound had been genuine enough. Thus my mind worked, feverishly;
such was the effect of an unspoken thought--Fu-Manchu.

Nayland Smith's grip tightened on my arm.

"There it is again, Petrie!" he whispered. "Look, look!"

His words were wholly unnecessary. I, too, had seen it; a wonderful
and uncanny sight. Out of the darkness under the elms, low down upon
the ground, grew a vaporous blue light. It flared up, elfinish, then
began to ascend. Like an igneous phantom, a witch flame, it rose,
higher, higher, higher, to what I adjudged to be some twelve feet or
more from the ground. Then, high in the air, it died away again as it
had come!

"For God's sake, Smith, what was it?"

"Don't ask me, Petrie. I have seen it twice. We--"

He