hed in Egypt with Nayland
Smith, did you not?"

I nodded.

"Contradict me if I am wrong," he continued; "but my impression is
that you were searching for the girl--the girl--Karamaneh, I think
she was called?"

"Yes," I replied shortly; "but we could find no trace--no trace."

"You--er--were interested?"

"More than I knew," I replied, "until I realized that I had--lost
her."

"I never met Karamaneh, but from your account, and from others, she
was quite unusually--"

"She was very beautiful," I said, and stood up, for I was anxious to
terminate that phase of the conversation.

Eltham regarded me sympathetically; he knew something of my search
with Nayland Smith for the dark-eyed Eastern girl who had brought
romance into my drab life; he knew that I treasured my memories of her
as I loathed and abhorred those of the fiendish, brilliant Chinese
doctor who had been her master.

Eltham began to pace up and down the rug, his pipe bubbling furiously;
and something in the way he carried his head reminded me momentarily
of Nayland Smith. Certainly, between this pink-faced clergyman, with
his deceptively mild appearance, and the gaunt, bronzed and
steely-eyed Burmese commissioner, there was externally little in
common; but it was some little nervous trick in his carriage that
conjured up through the smoke-haze one distant summer evening when
Smith had paced that very room as Eltham paced it now, when before my
startled eyes he had rung up the curtain upon the savage drama in
which, though I little suspected it then, Fate had cast me for a
leading role.

I wondered if Eltham's thoughts ran parallel with mine. My own were
centred upon the unforgettable figure of the murderous Chinaman. These
words, exactly as Smith had used them, seemed once again to sound in
my ears: "Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered,
with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven
skull and long magnetic eyes of the true cat green. Invest him with
all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race accumulated in one
giant intellect, with all the resources of science, past and present,
and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the 'Yellow Peril'
incarnate in one man."

This visit of Eltham's no doubt was responsible for my mood; for this
singular clergyman had played his part in the drama of two years ago.

"I should like to see Smith again," he said suddenly; "it seems a pity
that a man like that sh