“What now?” I whispered.

“Let me think,” replied Smith.  “A false move would destroy us.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Since last night.”

“Is Fu-Manchu—­”

“Fu-Manchu is here!” replied Smith, grimly—­“and not only Fu-Manchu, but—­another.”

“Another!”

“A higher than Fu-Manchu, apparently.  I have an idea of the identity of this person, but no more than an idea.  Something unusual is going on, Petrie; otherwise I should have been a dead man twenty-four hours ago.  Something even more important than my death engages Fu-Manchu’s attention—­and this can only be the presence of the mysterious visitor.  Your seductive friend, Karamaneh, is arrayed in her very becoming national costume in his honor, I presume.”  He stopped abruptly; then added:  “I would give five hundred pounds for a glimpse of that visitor’s face!”

“Is Burke—­”

“God knows what has become of Burke, Petrie!  We were both caught napping in the establishment of the amiable Shen-Yan, where, amid a very mixed company of poker players, we were losing our money like gentlemen.”

“But Weymouth—­”

“Burke and I had both been neatly sand-bagged, my dear Petrie, and removed elsewhere, some hours before Weymouth raided the gaming-house.  Oh!  I don’t know how they smuggled us away with the police watching the place; but my presence here is sufficient evidence of the fact.  Are you armed?”

“No; my pistol was in my raincoat, which is missing.”

In the dim light from the broken window, I could see Smith tugging reflectively at the lobe of his left ear.

“I am without arms, too,” he mused.  “We might escape from the window—­”

“It’s a long drop!”

“Ah!  I imagined so.  If only I had a pistol, or a revolver—­”

“What should you do?”

“I should present myself before the important meeting, which, I am assured, is being held somewhere in this building; and to-night would see the end of my struggle with the Fu-Manchu group—­the end of the whole Yellow menace!  For not only is Fu-Manchu here, Petrie, with all his gang of assassins, but he whom I believe to be the real head of the group—­a certain mandarin—­is here also!”

CHAPTER XIII

THE SACRED ORDER

Smith stepped quietly across the room and tried the door.  It proved to be unlocked, and an instant later, we were both outside in the passage.  Coincident with our arrival there, arose a sudden outcry from some place at the westward end.  A high-pitched, grating voice, in which guttural notes alternated with a serpent-like hissing, was raised in anger.

“Dr. Fu-Manchu!” whispered Smith, grasping my arm.

Indeed, it was the unmistakable voice of the Chinaman, raised hysterically in one of those outbursts which in the past I had diagnosed as symptomatic of dangerous mania.