sy girl with whom he had a short
conversation one day, over the fence which divides his cousin's flower
plantations from the lane adjoining."

"Gipsy girl!" I whispered, glancing rapidly at Smith.

"I think you are right, Doctor," said Weymouth with his slow smile; "it
was Karamaneh. She asked him the way to somewhere or other and got him
to write it upon a loose page of his notebook, so that she should not
forget it."

"You hear that, Petrie?" rapped Smith.

"I hear it," I replied, "but I don't see any special significance in the
fact."

"I do!" rapped Smith; "I didn't sit up the greater part of last night
thrashing my weary brains for nothing! But I am going to the British
Museum to-day, to confirm a certain suspicion." He turned to Weymouth.
"Did Burke go back?" he demanded abruptly.

"He returned hidden under the empty boxes," was the reply. "Oh! you
never saw a man in such a funk in all your life!"

"He may have good reasons," I said.

"He has good reasons!" replied Nayland Smith grimly; "if that man really
possesses information inimical to the safety of Fu-Manchu, he can only
escape doom by means of a miracle similar to that which has hitherto
protected you and me."

"Burke insists," said Weymouth at this point, "that something comes
almost every night after dusk, slinking about the house--it's an old
farmhouse, I understand; and on two or three occasions he has been
awakened (fortunately for him he is a light sleeper) by sounds of
coughing immediately outside his window. He is a man who sleeps with a
pistol under his pillow, and more than once, on running to the window,
he has had a vague glimpse of some creature leaping down from the tiles
of the roof, which slopes up to his room, into the flower beds below..."

"Creature!" said Smith, his gray eyes ablaze now--"you said creature!"

"I used the word deliberately," replied Weymouth, "because Burke seems
to have the idea that it goes on all fours."

There was a short and rather strained silence. Then:

"In descending a sloping roof," I suggested, "a human being would
probably employ his hands as well as his feet."

"Quite so," agreed the inspector. "I am merely reporting the impression
of Burke."

"Has he heard no other sound?" rapped Smith; "one like the cracking of
dry branches, for instance?"

"He made no mention of it," replied Weymouth, staring.

"And what is the plan?"

"One of his cousin's vans," said Weymouth, with his slight smile,