before Weymouth raided the gaming-house.
Oh! I don't know how they smuggled us away with the police watching the
place; but my presence here is sufficient evidence of the fact. Are you
armed?"

"No; my pistol was in my raincoat, which is missing."

In the dim light from the broken window, I could see Smith tugging
reflectively at the lobe of his left ear.

"I am without arms, too," he mused. "We might escape from the window--"

"It's a long drop!"

"Ah! I imagined so. If only I had a pistol, or a revolver--"

"What should you do?"

"I should present myself before the important meeting, which, I am
assured, is being held somewhere in this building; and to-night would
see the end of my struggle with the Fu-Manchu group--the end of the
whole Yellow menace! For not only is Fu-Manchu here, Petrie, with all
his gang of assassins, but he whom I believe to be the real head of the
group--a certain mandarin--is here also!"

CHAPTER XIII. THE SACRED ORDER

Smith stepped quietly across the room and tried the door. It proved to
be unlocked, and an instant later, we were both outside in the passage.
Coincident with our arrival there, arose a sudden outcry from some place
at the westward end. A high-pitched, grating voice, in which guttural
notes alternated with a serpent-like hissing, was raised in anger.

"Dr. Fu-Manchu!" whispered Smith, grasping my arm.

Indeed, it was the unmistakable voice of the Chinaman, raised
hysterically in one of those outbursts which in the past I had diagnosed
as symptomatic of dangerous mania.

The voice rose to a scream, the scream of some angry animal rather than
anything human. Then, chokingly, it ceased. Another short sharp cry
followed--but not in the voice of Fu-Manchu--a dull groan, and the sound
of a fall.

With Smith still grasping my wrist, I shrank back into the doorway, as
something that looked in the darkness like a great ball of fluff came
rapidly along the passage toward me. Just at my feet the thing stopped
and I made it out for a small animal. The tiny, gleaming eyes looked up
at me, and, chattering wickedly, the creature bounded past and was lost
from view.

It was Dr. Fu-Manchu's marmoset.

Smith dragged me back into the room which we had just left. As he partly
reclosed the door, I heard the clapping of hands. In a condition of
most dreadful suspense, we waited; until a new, ominous sound proclaimed
itself. Some heavy body was being dragged into the passage. I