As we rapidly freed the living man from the trappings of the dead one, Southery, uttering a stifled scream, sat up, looked about him with half-glazed eyes, and fell back.  “My God!” cried Smith.

“It is all right,” I said, and had time to note how my voice had assumed a professional tone.  “A little brandy from my flask is all that is necessary now.”

“You have two patients, Doctor,” rapped my friend.

Mr. Henderson had fallen in a swoon to the floor of the vault.

“Quiet,” whispered Smith; “He is here.”

He extinguished the light.

I supported Lord Southery.  “What has happened?” he kept moaning. 
“Where am I?  Oh, God! what has happened?”

I strove to reassure him in a whisper, and placed my traveling coat about him.  The door at the top of the mausoleum steps we had reclosed but not relocked.  Now, as I upheld the man whom literally we had rescued from the grave, I heard the door reopen.  To aid Henderson I could make no move.  Smith was breathing hard beside me.  I dared not think what was about to happen, nor what its effects might be upon Lord Southery in his exhausted condition.

Through the Memphian dark of the tomb cut a spear of light,
touching the last stone of the stairway.

A guttural voice spoke some words rapidly, and I knew that Dr. Fu-Manchu stood at the head of the stairs.  Although I could not see my friend, I became aware that Nayland Smith had his revolver in his hand, and I reached into my pocket for mine.

At last the cunning Chinaman was about to fall into a trap. 
It would require all his genius, I thought, to save him to-night. 
Unless his suspicions were aroused by the unlocked door,
his capture was imminent.

Someone was descending the steps.

In my right hand I held my revolver, and with my left arm about Lord Southery,
I waited through ten such seconds of suspense as I have rarely known.

The spear of light plunged into the well of darkness again.

Lord Southery, Smith and myself were hidden by the angle of the wall; but full upon the purplish face of Mr. Henderson the beam shone.  In some way it penetrated to the murk in his mind; and he awakened from his swoon with a hoarse cry, struggled to his feet, and stood looking up the stair in a sort of frozen horror.

Smith was past him at a bound.  Something flashed towards him as the light was extinguished.  I saw him duck, and heard the knife ring upon the floor.

I managed to move sufficiently to see at the top, as I fired up the stairs, the yellow face of Dr. Fu-Manchu, to see the gleaming, chatoyant eyes, greenly terrible, as they sought to pierce the gloom.  A flying figure was racing up, three steps at a time (that of a brown man scantily clad).  He stumbled and fell, by which I knew that he was hit; but went on again, Smith hard on his heels.