a sound
of coughing; then came a death grip on my throat, and instinctively my
hands shot out in search of my attacker. I could not reach him; my
hands came in contact with nothing palpable. Therefore I clutched at the
fingers which were dug into my windpipe, and found them to be small--as
the marks show--and hairy. I managed to give that first cry for
help, then with all my strength I tried to unfasten the grip that was
throttling the life out of me. At last I contrived to move one of the
hands, and I called out again, though not so loudly. Then both the hands
were back again; I was weakening; but I clawed like a madman at the
thin, hairy arms of the strangling thing, and with a blood-red mist
dancing before my eyes, I seemed to be whirling madly round and round
until all became a blank. Evidently I used my nails pretty freely--and
there's the trophy."

For the twentieth time, I should think, I carried the ash-tray in my
hand and laid it immediately under the table-lamp in order to examine
its contents. In the little brass bowl lay a blood-stained fragment of
grayish hair attached to a tatter of skin. This fragment of epidermis
had an odd bluish tinge, and the attached hair was much darker at the
roots than elsewhere. Saving its singular color, it might have been
torn from the forearm of a very hirsute human; but although my thoughts
wandered unfettered, north, south, east and west; although, knowing the
resources of Fu-Manchu, I considered all the recognized Mongolian
types, and, in quest of hirsute mankind, even roamed far north among
the blubbering Esquimo; although I glanced at Australasia, at Central
Africa, and passed in mental review the dark places of the Congo,
nowhere in the known world, nowhere in the history of the human species,
could I come upon a type of man answering to the description suggested
by our strange clue.

Nayland Smith was watching me curiously as I bent over the little brass
ash-tray.

"You are puzzled," he rapped in his short way.

"So am I--utterly puzzled. Fu-Manchu's gallery of monstrosities clearly
has become reinforced; for even if we identified the type, we should not
be in sight of our explanation."

"You mean," I began...

"Fully four feet from the window, Petrie, and that window but a few
inches open! Look"--he bent forward, resting his chest against the
table, and stretched out his hand toward me. "You have a rule there;
just measure."

Setting down the ash-tray, I ope