em everywhere, and they answer 'yes.' Oh, Smith Pasha!"--he
stepped forward and impulsively seized both Smith's hands--"You know
where she is--take me to her!"

Smith's face was a study in perplexity, now. In the past we had
befriended the young Aziz, and it was hard to look upon him in the light
of an enemy. Yet had we not equally befriended his sister?--and she...

At last Smith glanced across at me where I stood just within the
doorway.

"What do you make of it, Petrie?" he said harshly. "Personally I take
it to mean that our plans have leaked out." He sprang suddenly back from
Aziz and I saw his glance traveling rapidly over the slight figure as if
in quest of concealed arms. "I take it to be a trap!"

A moment he stood so, regarding him, and despite my well-grounded
distrust of the Oriental character, I could have sworn that the
expression of pained surprise upon the youth's face was not simulated
but real. Even Smith, I think, began to share my view; for suddenly
he threw himself into the white cane rest-chair, and, still fixedly
regarding Aziz:

"Perhaps I have wronged you," he said. "If I have, you shall know the
reason presently. Tell your own story!"

There was a pathetic humidity in the velvet eyes of Aziz--eyes so like
those others that were ever looking into mine in dreams--as glancing
from Smith to me he began, hands outstretched, characteristically, palms
upward and fingers curling, to tell in broken English the story of his
search for Karamaneh...

"It was Fu-Manchu, my kind gentlemen--it was the hakim who is really not
a man at all, but an efreet. He found us again less than four days after
you had left us, Smith Pasha!... He found us in Cairo, and to Karamaneh
he made the forgetting of all things--even of me--even of me..."

Nayland Smith snapped his teeth together sharply; then:

"What do you mean by that?" he demanded.

For my own part I understood well enough, remembering how the brilliant
Chinese doctor once had performed such an operation as this upon poor
Inspector Weymouth; how, by means of an injection of some serum prepared
(as Karamaneh afterwards told us) from the venom of a swamp adder or
similar reptile, he had induced amnesia, or complete loss of memory. I
felt every drop of blood recede from my cheeks.

"Smith!" I began...

"Let him speak for himself," interrupted my friend sharply.

"They tried to take us both," continued Aziz still speaking in that
soft, melodious manne