“Be calm, Mr. Henderson,” he said sternly.  “It is your plain duty to your client.”

“God be my witness that I doubt it,” replied Henderson, and opened the door.

We descended the steps.  The air beneath was damp and chill.  It touched us as with clammy fingers; and the sensation was not wholly physical.

Before the narrow mansion which now sufficed Lord Southery, the great engineer whom kings had honored, Henderson reeled and clutched at me for support.  Smith and I had looked to him for no aid in our uncanny task, and rightly.

With averted eyes he stood over by the steps of the tomb, whilst my friend and myself set to work.  In the pursuit of my profession I had undertaken labors as unpleasant, but never amid an environment such as this.  It seemed that generations of Stradwicks listened to each turn of every screw.

At last it was done, and the pallid face of Lord Southery questioned the intruding light.  Nayland Smith’s hand was as steady as a rigid bar when he raised the lantern.  Later, I knew, there would be a sudden releasing of the tension of will—­a reaction physical and mental—­ but not until his work was finished.

That my own hand was steady I ascribed to one thing solely—­ professional zeal.  For, under conditions which, in the event of failure and exposure, must have led to an unpleasant inquiry by the British Medical Association, I was about to attempt an experiment never before essayed by a physician of the white races.

Though I failed, though I succeeded, that it ever came before the B.M.A., or any other council, was improbable; in the former event, all but impossible.  But the knowledge that I was about to practice charlatanry, or what any one of my fellow-practitioners must have designated as such, was with me.  Yet so profound had my belief become in the extraordinary being whose existence was a danger to the world that I reveled in my immunity from official censure.  I was glad that it had fallen to my lot to take at least one step—­ though blindly—­into the future of medical science.

So far as my skill bore me, Lord Southery was dead.  Unhesitatingly, I would have given a death certificate, save for two considerations.  The first, although his latest scheme ran contrary from the interests of Dr. Fu-Manchu, his genius, diverted into other channels, would serve the yellow group better than his death.  The second, I had seen the boy Aziz raised from a state as like death as this.

From the phial of amber-hued liquid which I had with me, I charged the needle syringe.  I made the injection, and waited.

“If he is really dead!” whispered Smith.  “It seems incredible that he can have survived for three days without food.  Yet I have known a fakir to go for a week.”

Mr. Henderson groaned.

Watch in hand, I stood observing the gray face.

A second passed; another; a third.  In the fourth the miracle began.  Over the seemingly cold clay crept the hue of pulsing life.  It came in waves—­in waves which corresponded with the throbbing of the awakened heart; which swept fuller and stronger; which filled and quickened the chilled body.