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Further opening was impossible because of iron brackets screwed firmly into the casements which prevented the windows being raised or lowered further. It was a precaution adopted after long experience of the servants of Dr. Fu-Manchu. Now, as I stood looking from the half-strangled man upon the bed to those screwed-up windows, the fact came home to my mind that this precaution had proved futile.

"He has good reasons!" replied Nayland Smith grimly; "if that man really possesses information inimical to the safety of Fu-Manchu, he can only escape doom by means of a miracle similar to that which hitherto has protected you and me."

"It calls for you!" said Fu-Manchu. "At half-past twelve it calls for Graham Guthrie!" The door closed and darkness mantled us again. "Smith," I said, "what was that?" The horrors about us were playing havoc with my nerves. "It was the Call of Siva!" replied Smith hoarsely. "What is it? Who uttered it? What does it mean?" "I don't know what it is, Petrie, nor who utters it. But it means death!"

Fu-Manchu's last home in England had been within a temple of his only Master. Save for nondescript litter, evidencing a hasty departure of the occupants, and a ship's lantern burning upon the altar, the chapel was unfurnished. Nothing menaced us, but the thunder hollowly crashed far above. To cover his retreat, Fu-Manchu had relied upon the noxious host in the passage and upon the wall of water.

One of your servants can accompany me, and give the signal when I return with the peacock. Mr. Nayland Smith and yourself, or another, will join me at the corner of the street where the raid took place last night. We shall then give you ten minutes grace, after which we shall take whatever steps we choose." "Agreed!" cried Fu-Manchu. "I ask but one thing from an Englishman; your word of honor?"

A voice was speaking in the lighted room; yet I could have sworn that Kâramanèh had come, not from there but from the room beyond from the far end of the passage. But the voice! who, having once heard it, could ever mistake that singular voice, alternately guttural and sibilant. Dr. Fu-Manchu was speaking!

The bell was ringing furiously, although midnight was long past. Whom could my late visitor be? Almost certainly this ringing portended an urgent case. In other words, I was not fated to take part in what I anticipated would prove to be the closing scene of the Fu-Manchu drama. "Every one is in bed," I said, ruefully; "and how can I possibly see a patient in this costume?"

No man was better equipped than this gaunt British Commissioner to stand between society and the menace of the Yellow Doctor; I respected his meditations, for, unlike my own, they were informed by an intimate knowledge of the dark and secret things of the East, of that mysterious East out of which Fu-Manchu came, of that jungle of noxious things whose miasma had been wafted Westward with the implacable Chinaman.

Of all that had gone before, and of what was to come in the future, I thought nothing, knew nothing. Our long fight against the yellow group, our encounters with the numberless creatures of Fu-Manchu, the dacoits even Karamaneh were forgotten, blotted out.

Another short sharp cry followed but not in the voice of Fu-Manchu a dull groan, and the sound of a fall. With Smith still grasping my wrist, I shrank back into the doorway, as something that looked in the darkness like a great ball of fluff came rapidly along the passage toward me. Just at my feet the thing stopped, and I made it out for a small animal.