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He was watching Nayland Smith, and revealing his irregular yellow teeth the teeth of an opium smoker in the awful mirthless smile which I knew. "God!" whispered Smith, "the Six Gates!" "Your knowledge of my beautiful country serves you well," replied Fu-Manchu gently. Instantly I looked to my friend ... and every drop of blood seemed to recede from my heart, leaving it cold in my breast.
I had some vague idea that the rasping voice of Fu-Manchu broke once through the turmoil, and when, with my wrists tied behind me, I emerged from the strife to find myself lying beside Smith in the passage, I could only assume that the Chinaman had ordered his bloody servants to take us alive; for saving numerous bruises and a few superficial cuts, I was unwounded.
There, below, in that groaning hulk, I knew more of icy terror than any of our meetings with the murder-group had brought to me before; and through my brain throbbed a thought: the girl had betrayed us! "You supposed that I was alone?" suggested Fu-Manchu. "So I was." Yet no trace of fear had broken through the impassive yellow mask when we had entered.
Nothing of the Thames-side activity of the riveting and scraping the bumping of bales the bawling of orders the hiss of steam penetrated to this perfumed place. In the pool of tinted light lay the deathlike figure of a dark-haired boy, Karamaneh's muffled form bending over him. "At last I stand in the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu!" whispered Smith.
"Can you restore Weymouth's sanity?" rapped Smith abruptly. "I cannot save you from the hangman, nor" his fists clenched convulsively "wouldy I if I could; but " Fu-Manchu fixed his brilliant eyes upon him. "Say no more, Mr. Smith," he interrupted; "you misunderstand me. I do not quarrel with that, but what I have done from conviction and what I have done of necessity are separated are seas apart.
The manner in which it had come into our possession suggested that it might contain something of the utmost value to the Yellow group. For we knew the house of John Ki to be, if not the head-quarters, certainly a meeting-place of the mysterious organization the Si-Fan; we knew that Dr. Fu-Manchu used the place Dr.
But the facts were against her. "Such a declaration is worthless," I said, as coldly as I could. "You are a traitress; you betray those who are mad enough to trust you " "I am no traitress!" she blazed at me; her eyes were magnificent. "This is mere nonsense. You think that it will pay you better to serve Fu-Manchu than to remain true to your friends.
She was speaking rapidly, nervously. "If I help you to take Dr. Fu-Manchu tell you where he is to be found ALONE will you promise me, solemnly promise me, that you will immediately go to the place where I shall guide you and release my brother; that you will let us both go free?" "I will," I said, without hesitation. "You may rest assured of it." "But there is a condition," she added.
No hard details remain in my mind of the dealings of that night. Fu-Manchu arrested Fu-Manchu, manacled, entering the cottage on his mission of healing; Weymouth, miraculously rendered sane, coming forth; the place in flames. And then? To a shell the cottage burned, with an incredible rapidity which pointed to some hidden agency; to a shell about ashes which held NO TRACE OF HUMAN BONES!
A low shuddering sound, which I cannot hope to describe, but alas I can never forget, broke from the lips of the tortured man. "In China," resumed Fu-Manchu, "we call this quaint fancy the Six Gates of joyful Wisdom. The first gate, by which the rats are admitted, is called the Gate of joyous Hope; the second, the Gate of Mirthful Doubt.
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