But release the
bar immediately, or you may be dragged back. The door of the room in
which you will find yourself is unlocked, and you have only to walk down
the stairs and out into the street."

I peered at the crossbar in my hand, then looked hard at the girl beside
me. I missed something of the old fire of her nature; she was very
subdued, tonight.

"Thank you, Karamaneh," I said, softly.

She suppressed a little cry as I spoke her name, and drew back into the
shadows.

"I believe you are my friend," I said, "but I cannot understand. Won't
you help me to understand?"

I took her unresisting hand, and drew her toward me. My very soul seemed
to thrill at the contact of her lithe body...

She was trembling wildly and seemed to be trying to speak, but although
her lips framed the words no sound followed. Suddenly comprehension came
to me. I looked down into the street, hitherto deserted... and into the
upturned face of Fu-Manchu.

Wearing a heavy fur-collared coat, and with his yellow, malignant
countenance grotesquely horrible beneath the shade of a large tweed
motor cap, he stood motionless, looking up at me. That he had seen me, I
could not doubt; but had he seen my companion?

In a choking whisper Karamaneh answered my unspoken question.

"He has not seen me! I have done much for you; do in return a small
thing for me. Save my life!"

She dragged me back from the window and fled across the room to the
weird laboratory where I had lain captive. Throwing herself upon the
divan, she held out her white wrists and glanced significantly at the
manacles.

"Lock them upon me!" she said, rapidly. "Quick! quick!"

Great as was my mental disturbance, I managed to grasp the purpose of
this device. The very extremity of my danger found me cool. I fastened
the manacles, which so recently had confined my own wrists, upon the
slim wrists of Karamaneh. A faint and muffled disturbance, doubly
ominous because there was nothing to proclaim its nature, reached me
from some place below, on the ground floor.

"Tie something around my mouth!" directed Karamaneh with nervous
rapidity. As I began to look about me:--"Tear a strip from my dress,"
she said; "do not hesitate--be quick! be quick!"

I seized the flimsy muslin and tore off half a yard or so from the hem
of the skirt. The voice of Dr Fu-Manchu became audible. He was speaking
rapidly, sibilantly, and evidently was approaching--would be upon me
in a matter of moment