nted the windows being raised or
lowered further.

It was a precaution adopted after long experience of the servants of Dr.
Fu-Manchu.

Now, as I stood looking from the half-strangled man upon the bed to
those screwed-up windows, the fact came home to my mind that this
precaution had proved futile. I thought of the thing which I had likened
to a feather boa; and I looked at the swollen weals made by clutching
fingers upon the throat of Nayland Smith.

The bed stood fully four feet from the nearest window.

I suppose the question was written in my face; for, as I turned again
to Smith, who, having struggled upright, was still fingering his injured
throat ruefully:

"God only knows, Petrie!" he said; "no human arm could have reached
me..."

For us, the night was ended so far as sleep was concerned. Arrayed in
his dressing-gown, Smith sat in the white cane chair in my study with
a glass of brandy-and-water beside him, and (despite my official
prohibition) with the cracked briar which had sent up its incense in
many strange and dark places of the East and which yet survived to
perfume these prosy rooms in suburban London, steaming between his
teeth. I stood with my elbow resting upon the mantelpiece looking down
at him where he sat.

"By God! Petrie," he said, yet again, with his fingers straying gently
over the surface of his throat, "that was a narrow shave--a damned
narrow shave!"

"Narrower than perhaps you appreciate, old man," I replied. "You were a
most unusual shade of blue when I found you..."

"I managed," said Smith evenly, "to tear those clutching fingers away
for a moment and to give a cry for help. It was only for a moment,
though. Petrie! they were fingers of steel--of steel!"

"The bed," I began...

"I know that," rapped Smith. "I shouldn't have been sleeping in it, had
it been within reach of the window; but, knowing that the doctor avoids
noisy methods, I had thought myself fairly safe so long as I made it
impossible for any one actually to enter the room..."

"I have always insisted, Smith," I cried, "that there was danger! What
of poisoned darts? What of the damnable reptiles and insects which form
part of the armory of Fu-Manchu?"

"Familiarity breeds contempt, I suppose," he replied. "But as it
happened none of those agents was employed. The very menace that I
sought to avoid reached me somehow. It would almost seem that Dr.
Fu-Manchu deliberately accepted the challenge of those screw