confined here during any considerable time. I am similarly equipped. A Thug of hideous aspect, whom I recognize as an old servant of Doctor Fu Manchu, has waited upon me excellently.”
He indicated the remains of a meal on a ledge in the niche beside him.
“Knowing the doctor’s penchant for experiments in toxicology, frankly, my appetite has not been good.”
I stood up and moved cautiously forward, dragging the chains behind me.
“No, no!” Smith smiled grimly. “It is well thought out, Kerrigan. We cannot get within six feet of one another.”
I stood there at the full length of my tether watching him where he sat.
“What I was about to ask is: do you happen to have any cigarettes?”
I clapped a hand to my pocket. My automatic, my clasp knife, these were gone—but not my cigarettes!
“Yes, the case is full.”
“Do you mind tossing one across to me? I have a lighter.”
I did as he suggested, and he lighted a cigarette. Returning to the immovable chair I followed his example; and as I drew the smoke between my lips I asked myself the question: Am I sane? Is it a fact that I and Nayland Smith are confined in a cell belonging to the Middle Ages?
That gruesome moaning arose again—and died away.
“What is it, Smith?”
“I don’t know. I have been wondering for some time.”
“You don’t think it’s some wretched—”
“It isn’t a human sound, Kerrigan. It seems to be growing louder. . . However—how did you fall into this?”
I told him—and I was perfectly frank. I told him of Ardatha’s visit, of the sounds which I had heard out on the canal side, of all that had followed right to the time that I had fallen into the trap prepared for me.
“There would seem to be a point, Kerrigan, where courage becomes folly.”
I laughed.
“What of yourself, Smith? I have yet to learn how you come to be here.”
“Oddly enough, our stories are not dissimilar. As you know, I did not turn in when you left me, but I put out the lights and stared from the window. The room was not ideal in view of the peril in which I knew myself to be. But I noted with gratitude a moored gondola in which a stout policeman was seated, apparently watching my window. It occurred to me that the sitting-room windows were equally accessible and, quietly, for I assumed you had gone to bed, I went in to look.
“I found that one was wide open and as I moved across to close it, I heard voices in your room. My first instinct was to dash in, but I waited for a moment because I detected a woman’s voice. Then I realized what had happened. Ardatha had paid you a secret visit!
“Knowing your sentiments about this girl, I was by no means easy in my mind. However, I determined not to disturb you or to bring you into the matter in any way. But here was a chance not to be missed.
“Dropping out of the sitting-room window (which the man in the gondola could not see) I tripped and fell. The sound of my fall must have attracted your attention. I discovered a half-gate which shut me off from the courtyard directly below your room. I tried it very gently. It was not locked. Knowing that Ardatha must have approached from the other end, I crept past your window and concealed myself in a patch of shadow near the small bridge which crosses the canal at that point.
“When Ardatha came out (I recognized her from your description) I followed; and my experiences from this point are uncommonly like your own. She entered the old stone storehouse facing the Palazzo Mori; and
He paused.
“Now, I want to make it quite clear, Kerrigan: I have no evidence to show that Ardatha suspected she was being followed. The presence of the woman whom I found in that room may have been accidental, but as I looked in I saw her . . .”
“You saw whom?”
“Good God!”
“My theories regarding her identity were confirmed. I had been right. Failing the presence of Doctor Fu Manchu in the case, she could only be a spirit, a creature of another world. For myself, I had seen her consigned to a horrible death. But woman or spirit, I knew now that she had to be silenced. I sprang forward to seize her—”
“I know!” I groaned.
“At that moment, Kerrigan, my usefulness to the world ended.”
He stared down at the smoke arising from the tip of his cigarette.
“You say you recognized her. Who is she?”
“She is Doctor Fu Manchu’s daughter.”
“What!”
“Unchanged from the first moment I set eyes upon her. She is a living miracle, a corpse moving among the living. But—here we are! And frankly, I confess here we deserve to be!”
He paused for a moment as if listening—perhaps for that awe some moaning. But I could detect no sound save a faint drip-drip of water.
“Of course you realize, Smith,” I said in a dull voice, “that Rudolf Adion is in the hands of Doctor Fu Manchu?”
“I realize it fully. I may add that I doubt if he is alive.”
Why I should have felt so about one who was something of a storm centre in Europe I cannot say, but momentarily forgetting my own peril I was chilled by the thought that Rudolf Adion no longer lived, that the power which swayed a nation had ceased to be. We were silent for a long time, sitting there smoking and staring vacantly at each other. At last:
“As I see it,” said Nayland Smith, “we have just one chance.”
“What is that?”
“Ardatha!”
“Why do you think so?”
“Now that I know her Oriental origin, which all along I had suspected, I think if she learns that you are here she will try to save you.”
I shook my head.
“Even if you are right I doubt if she would have the power . . . and I am sorry to say that I believe her to be utterly evil.”
“Let us pray that she is not. She risked perhaps more than you understand to save you once before. If she fails to try again . . .”
That unendurable moaning arose, as if to tell us that Ardatha would fail—that all would fail.
* * *
I don’t know how long I had been sitting there in hopeless dejection when I heard a slow, soft footstep approaching. I glanced across at Nayland Smith. His face was set, expressionless.
A rattling of keys came, and the heavy door swung open. At the same moment a light set somewhere behind that squat pillar sprang up, and I saw as I had suspected a fully equipped torture chamber. Nocturnal insects rustled to cover.
Dr Fu Manchu came in . . .
He wore a plain yellow robe having long sleeves, and upon his feet I saw thick-soled slippers. His phenomenal skull was hidden by a mandarin’s cap, perhaps that which I had found in a hut on the Essex marshes.
I am unable to record my emotions at this moment, for I cannot recall that I had any. When on a previous occasion I had found myself in the power of the Chinese doctor, I had been fortified by the knowledge that Nayland Smith was free, that there was a chance of his coming to my aid. Now we were fellow captives. I was numbly resigned to whatever was to be.
Seated on Dr Fu Manchu’s left shoulder I saw a tiny, wizened marmoset. I thought that it peered at me
