forever, a lost soul, in this place deep below the world of living men. . . .
Blind panic seized him. He began to run along tunnel after tunnel, turning right, turning left, crying out madly. His exertions reduced the fraction of candle almost to disappearing point. He ran on. In some way it came to him that the life of Nayland Smith was at stake. He must gain the upper air or disaster would come, not to Nayland Smith alone, but to all humanity. The candle now a tenuous disc, became crushed between his trembling fingers. . . .
It was at this moment that he awoke.
The apartment was very still. Save for the immutable voice of the city-which-never-sleeps, there was no sound.
Hepburn groped for his slippers. There were no cigarettes in the room. He decided to go into the sitting-room for a smoke and a drink. That ghastly dream of endless tunnels had shaken him.
The night was crystal clear; a nearly full moon poured its cold luminance into the rooms. Without turning on any of the lights—for he was anxious to avoid wakening Nayland Smith, a hair-trigger sleeper—he found his way to the sitting-room. There were cigarettes on the table by the telephone. He found one, but he had no means of lighting it.
As he paused, looking around, he saw through an open door the moon-bathed room beyond. It was the room which he had fitted up as a temporary laboratory; from its window he could just see the roof of the hotel where Moya Adair lived. He remembered that he had left matches there. He went in, crossed and stared out of the window.
His original intention was forgotten. He stood there, tense, watching. . . .
From a window of an out-jutting wing of the Regal-Athenian, one floor below and not twenty yards away, Dr. Fu Manchu was looking up at him!
Some primitive instinct warned him to reject the chimera—for that the man in person could be present he was not prepared to believe. This was a continuation, a part, of his uncanny dream. He was not awake. Brilliant green eyes gleamed in the moonlight like polished jade. He watched fascinatedly.
His impulse—to arouse Smith, to have the building surrounded—left him. Those wonderful eyes demanded all his attention. . . .
He found himself busy in the laboratory—of course he was still dreaming—preparing a strange prescription. It was contrary to all tradition, a thing outside his experience. But he prepared it with meticulous care—for it was indispensable to the life of Nayland Smith. . . .
At last it was ready. Now, he must charge a hypodermic syringe with it—an intravenous injection. It was vital that he should not awake Smith . . . .
Syringe in hand, he crept along the corridor to the second door. He listened. There was no sound.
Very quietly, he opened the door and went in.
Nayland Smith lay motionless in bed, his lean brown hands outside the coverlet. The conditions were ideal, it seemed to Mark Hepburn in his dream. Stealthily he stole across the room. He could not hope to complete the injection without arousing Smith, but at least he could give him some of the charge.
Lightly he raised the sleeve of his pyjama jacket. Smith did not stir. He pressed the needle point firmly home. . . .
Mark Hepburn felt himself seized from behind, jerked back and hurled upon the floor by unseen hands!
He fell heavily, striking his head upon the carpet. The syringe dropped from his fingers, and as Nayland Smith sprang upright in bed the predominant idea in Hepburn’s mind was that he had failed; and so Smith must die.
He twisted over, rose to his knees. . . . and looked up into the barrel of a revolver held by Fey.
“Hepburn!” came sharply in Nayland Smith’s inimitable voice. “What the devil’s this?”
He sprang out of bed.
Fey, barefooted and wearing pyjamas, looked somewhat dishevelled in the glare of light as Nayland Smith switched on lamps: spiritually he was unruffled.
“It’s a mystery, sir,” he replied, while Hepburn slowly rising to his feet and clutching his head, endeavoured to regain composure. “It was the tinkling of the bottles that woke me.”
“The bottles?”
Mark Hepburn dropped down into a chair.
“I was in the laboratory,” he explained dully. “Frankly, I don’t know what I was doing there.”
Nayland Smith, seated on the side of the bed, was staring at him keenly.
“I got up and watched.” Fey continued, “keeping very quiet. And I saw Captain Hepburn carefully measuring out drugs.
Then I saw him looking about as if he’d lost something, and then I saw him go to the window and stare out. He stayed there for a long time.”
“In which direction was he staring?” snapped Nayland Smith.
Hepburn groaned, continuing to clutch his head. The memory of some strange, awful episode already was slipping from his mind.
“I thought, at a window down to the right and below, sir. And as he stood there so long, I slipped into the sitting-room and looked out from there.” He paused and cleared his throat. “I was still looking when I heard Captain Hepburn come out. I shouldn’t have behaved as I did, sir, but I had seen Captain Hepburn’s eyes. . . .”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, sir, it might have been that he was walking in his sleep! And so, when I heard him coming, I ducked into
