as Smith caught my arm.

"It turned on its keeper!" he hissed in my ear. "I wounded it twice from
below, and you severed one arm; in its insensate fury, its unreasoning
malignity, it returned--and there lies its second victim..."

"Then..."

"It's gone, Petrie! It has the strength of four men even now. Look!"

He stooped, and from the clenched left hand of the dead Burman,
extracted a piece of paper and opened it.

"Hold the lantern a moment," he said.

In the yellow light he glanced at the scrap of paper.

"As I expected--a leaf of Burke's notebook; it worked by scent." He
turned to me with an odd expression in his gray eyes. "I wonder what
piece of my personal property Fu-Manchu has pilfered," he said, "in
order to enable it to sleuth me?"

He met the gaze of the man holding the lantern.

"Perhaps you had better return to the house," he said, looking him
squarely in the eyes.

The other's face blanched.

"You don't mean, sir--you don't mean..."

"Brace up!" said Smith, laying his hand upon his shoulder. "Remember--he
chose to play with fire!"

One wild look the man cast from Smith to me, then went off, staggering,
toward the farm.

"Smith," I began...

He turned to me with an impatient gesture.

"Weymouth has driven into Upminster," he snapped; "and the whole
district will be scoured before morning. They probably motored here, but
the sounds of the shots will have enabled whoever was with the car to
make good his escape. And exhausted from loss of blood, its capture is
only a matter of time, Petrie."

CHAPTER XVII. ONE DAY IN RANGOON

Nayland Smith returned from the telephone. Nearly twenty-four hours had
elapsed since the awful death of Burke.

"No news, Petrie," he said, shortly. "It must have crept into some
inaccessible hole to die."

I glanced up from my notes. Smith settled into the white cane armchair,
and began to surround himself with clouds of aromatic smoke. I took up
a half-sheet of foolscap covered with penciled writing in my friend's
cramped characters, and transcribed the following, in order to complete
my account of the latest Fu-Manchu outrage:

"The Amharun, a Semitic tribe allied to the Falashas, who have
been settled for many generations in the southern province of Shoa
(Abyssinia) have been regarded as unclean and outcast, apparently since
the days of Menelek--son of Suleyman and the Queen of Sheba--from whom
they claim descent. Apart from their custom of eating mea