President Fu Manchu

a corner and watched him go by. I followed him right to your door. He opened it very quietly. I was close behind him when he crossed to the bed——”

Now, suddenly, in a stifled voice:

“The syringe!” Hepburn cried, “the syringe! My God! Did I touch you?”

He sprang up wildly, his glance questing about the floor.

“Is this what you mean, Hepburn?” Nayland Smith asked. He picked up a fountain pen, at the same time glancing down at his left arm. “My impression is that you jabbed the nib into me!”

Mark Hepburn stared at the fountain pen, fists clenched. It was a new one bought only that day, his old one had been smashed during operations in the Chinatown raid. So far as he could remember he had never filled it. The facts, the incredible facts, were coming back to him. . . . He had prepared a mixture: of what it was composed he hadn’t at this moment the slightest idea. But he had imagined or had dreamed that he charged a hypodermic syringe with it. He must have charged the fountain pen, for he had no hypodermic syringe in his possession!

Nayland Smith’s penetrating regard never left the troubled face, and then: “Was I dreaming,” Hepburn groaned, “or was I hypnotized? By heaven! I remember—I went to the window and saw his eyes! He was watching me.”

“Who was watching you?” Smith asked quietly.

“I don’t know who it was, sir,” Fey interrupted with an apologetic cough, “but he had one of the most dreadful faces I have ever seen in my life. The moonlight was shining on him. I saw his green eyes.”

“What!”

Nayland Smith sprang to his feet. From out of his varied experience an explanation of the strange incident, phan-tomesque, arose. He stared hard again at Mark Hepburn.

“Dr. Fu Manchu is the most accomplished hypnotist alive,” he said harshly. “During those few moments that you watched him from the window above Wu King’s he must have established partial control.” He pulled on a dressing-gown which lay across the foot of the bed. “Quick, Fey, get Wyatt! He’s on duty in the lobby.”

Fey ran out.

Nayland Smith turned, threw up the window and craned forward. Over his shoulder:

“Which way, Hepburn?” he snapped.

Mark Hepburn, slowly recovering control of his normal self, leaned on the sill and pointed.

“The wing on the right, third window from the end, two floors below this.”

“There’s no one there, and the room is dark.” The wail which tells that the Fire Department is out, a solo rarely absent from New York’s symphony, rose, ghostly, through the night. “I have had an unpleasant narrow escape. Beyond doubt you were acting under hypnotic direction. Fey’s evidence confirms it. A daring move! The Doctor must be desperate.” He glanced down at the fountain pen which lay upon a little table. “I wonder what you charged it with,” he murmured meditatively. “Dr. Fu Manchu assumed too much in thinking you had hypodermic syringes in your possession. You obeyed his instructions—but charged the fountain pen; thus probably saving my life.”

It was only a few moments later that Wyatt, the government agent in charge below, found the night manager and accompanied by two detectives was borne up to the thirty-eighth floor of the hotel wing in which the suspected room was located.

“I can tell you there’s no one there, Mr. Wyatt,” the manager said, twirling a large key around his fore-finger. “It was vacated this morning by a Mr. Eckstein, a dark man, possibly Jewish. There’s only one curious point about it——”

“What’s that?” Wyatt asked.

“He took the door key away. . . .” Mr. Dougherty smiled grimly; his Tipperary brogue was very marked. “Unfortunately, it often happens. But in this case there may have been some ulterior motive.”

The bedroom, when they entered, was deserted; the two beds were ready for occupation by incoming guests. Neither here nor in the bathroom was there evidence pointing to a recent intruder. . . .

The detectives were still prowling around and Nayland Smith on the fortieth floor of the tower was issuing telephone instructions when a tall man, muffled in a fur topcoat—a man who wore glasses and a wide-brimmed black hat—stepped into an elevator on the thirtieth floor and was taken down to street level. . . .

“No one is to leave this building,” rapped Nayland Smith, until I get down. Don’t concentrate on the tower; post men at every elevator and every exit.”

Wyatt, the night manager, and the two detectives stepped out of the elevator at the end of the huge main foyer. The tall man in the fur coat was striding along its carpeted centre aisle. The place was only partially lighted at that late hour. There was a buzz of vacuum cleaners. He descended marble steps to the lower foyer. A night porter glanced up at him, curiously, as he passed his desk.

A man came hurrying along an arcade lined by flower shops, jewellers’ shops and other features of a luxury bazaar, but actually contained within the great hotel, and presently appeared immediately facing the elevator by which Wyatt and his party had descended. Seeing them he hurried across, and:

“No one is to leave the building!” he cried. “Post men at all elevators and all entrances.”

The tall visitor passed through the swing doors and descended the steps to the sidewalk. A Lotus cab which had been standing near by drew up; opening the door, he entered. The cab moved off. It was actually turning the Park Avenue corner when detectives, running from the westerly end of the building, reached the main entrance and went clattering up the steps. One, who seemed to be in charge, ran across to the night porter. Federal Agent Wyatt was racing along the foyer towards them.

“Who’s gone out,” the detective demanded, “in the last five minutes? Anybody?”

But even as the startled man began to answer, the Lotus cab was speeding along almost deserted streets, and Dr. Fu Manchu, lying back in the corner, relaxed after a dangerous and mentally intense effort which he had every reason to believe would result in the removal of Enemy Number One. Nayland Smith’s activities were beginning