n address and bearing a London postmark."

"Well?"

"As nearly as I can render the message in English, it reads: 'Although,
because you are a brave man, you would not betray your correspondent in
China, he has been discovered. He was a mandarin, and as I cannot write
the name of a traitor, I may not name him. He was executed four days
ago. I salute you and pray for your speedy recovery. Fu-Manchu.'"

"Fu-Manchu! But it is almost certainly a trap."

"On the contrary, Petrie--Fu-Manchu would not have written in Chinese
unless he were sincere; and, to clear all doubt, I received a cable this
morning reporting that the Mandarin Yen-Sun-Yat was assassinated in his
own garden, in Nan-Yang, one day last week."

CHAPTER VIII. DR. FU-MANCHU STRIKES

Together we marched down the slope of the quiet, suburban avenue; to
take pause before a small, detached house displaying the hatchet boards
of the Estate Agent. Here we found unkempt laurel bushes and acacias
run riot, from which arboreal tangle protruded the notice--"To be Let or
Sold."

Smith, with an alert glance to right and left, pushed open the wooden
gate and drew me in upon the gravel path. Darkness mantled all; for the
nearest street lamp was fully twenty yards beyond.

From the miniature jungle bordering the path, a soft whistle sounded.

"Is that Carter?" called Smith, sharply.

A shadowy figure uprose, and vaguely I made it out for that of a man in
the unobtrusive blue serge which is the undress uniform of the Force.

"Well?" rapped my companion.

"Mr. Slattin returned ten minutes ago, sir," reported the constable. "He
came in a cab which he dismissed--"

"He has not left again?"

"A few minutes after his return," the man continued, "another cab came
up, and a lady alighted."

"A lady!"

"The same, sir, that has called upon him before."

"Smith!" I whispered, plucking at his arm--"is it--"

He half turned, nodding his head; and my heart began to throb foolishly.
For now the manner of Slattin's campaign suddenly was revealed to me. In
our operations against the Chinese murder-group two years before, we had
had an ally in the enemy's camp--Karamaneh the beautiful slave, whose
presence in those happenings of the past had colored the sometimes
sordid drama with the opulence of old Arabia; who had seemed a fitting
figure for the romances of Bagdad during the Caliphate--Karamaneh, whom
I had thought sincere, whose inscrutable Eastern soul I had presum