llowed up Nayland
Smith.

Ceaselessly I peered to right and left, searching amid that rain-soaked
company for any face known to me. Whom I expected to find there, I know
not, but I should have counted it no matter for surprise had I detected
amid that ungracious ugliness the beautiful face of Karamaneh the
Eastern slave-girl, the leering yellow face of a Burmese dacoit, the
gaunt, bronzed features of Nayland Smith; a hundred times I almost
believed that I had seen the ruddy countenance of Inspector Weymouth,
and once (at which instant my heart seemed to stand still) I suffered
from the singular delusion that the oblique green eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu
peered out from the shadows between two stalls.

It was mere phantasy, of course, the sick imaginings of a mind
overwrought. I had not slept and had scarcely tasted food for more
than thirty hours; for, following up a faint clue supplied by Burke,
Slattin's man, and, like his master, an ex-officer of New York Police,
my friend, Nayland Smith, on the previous evening had set out in quest
of some obscene den where the man called Shen-Yan--former keeper of an
opium-shop--was now said to be in hiding.

Shen-Yan we knew to be a creature of the Chinese doctor, and only a most
urgent call had prevented me from joining Smith upon this promising,
though hazardous expedition.

At any rate, Fate willing it so, he had gone without me; and
now--although Inspector Weymouth, assisted by a number of C. I. D. men,
was sweeping the district about me--to the time of my departure nothing
whatever had been heard of Smith. The ordeal of waiting finally had
proved too great to be borne. With no definite idea of what I proposed
to do, I had thrown myself into the search, filled with such dreadful
apprehensions as I hope never again to experience.

I did not know the exact situation of the place to which Smith was gone,
for owing to the urgent case which I have mentioned, I had been absent
at the time of his departure; nor could Scotland Yard enlighten me
upon this point. Weymouth was in charge of the case--under Smith's
direction--and since the inspector had left the Yard, early that
morning, he had disappeared as completely as Smith, no report having
been received from him.

As my driver turned into the black mouth of a narrow, ill-lighted
street, and the glare and clamor of the greater thoroughfare died behind
me, I sank into the corner of the cab burdened with such a sense of
desolation as