but I feel inclined to put down the `lascar’ as the dacoit who was murdered by Fu-Manchu!  It is sheer supposition, however.  But that Cadby meant to pay another visit to the place in a different `make-up’ or disguise, is evident, and that the Tuesday night proposed was last night is a reasonable deduction.  The reference to a pigtail is principally interesting because of what was found on Cadby’s body.”

Inspector Weymouth nodded affirmatively, and Smith glanced at his watch.

“Exactly ten-twenty-three,” he said.  “I will trouble you, Inspector, for the freedom of your fancy wardrobe.  There is time to spend an hour in the company of Shen-Yan’s opium friends.”

Weymouth raised his eyebrows.

“It might be risky.  What about an official visit?”

Nayland Smith laughed.

“Worse than useless!  By your own showing, the place is open to inspection.  No; guile against guile!  We are dealing with a Chinaman, with the incarnate essence of Eastern subtlety, with the most stupendous genius that the modern Orient has produced.”

“I don’t believe in disguises,” said Weymouth, with a certain truculence.  “It’s mostly played out, that game, and generally leads to failure.  Still, if you’re determined, sir, there’s an end of it.  Foster will make your face up.  What disguise do you propose to adopt?”

“A sort of Dago seaman, I think; something like poor Cadby.  I can rely on my knowledge of the brutes, if I am sure of my disguise.”

“You are forgetting me, Smith,” I said.

He turned to me quickly.

“Petrie,” he replied, “it is my business, unfortunately, but it is no sort of hobby.”

“You mean that you can no longer rely upon me?”
I said angrily.

Smith grasped my hand, and met my rather frigid stare with a look of real concern on his gaunt, bronzed face.

“My dear old chap,” he answered, “that was really unkind. 
You know that I meant something totally different.”

“It’s all right, Smith;” I said, immediately ashamed of my choler, and wrung his hand heartily.  “I can pretend to smoke opium as well as another.  I shall be going, too, Inspector.”

As a result of this little passage of words, some twenty minutes later two dangerous-looking seafaring ruffians entered a waiting cab, accompanied by Inspector Weymouth, and were driven off into the wilderness of London’s night.  In this theatrical business there was, to my mind, something ridiculous—­almost childish—­ and I could have laughed heartily had it not been that grim tragedy lurked so near to farce.

The mere recollection that somewhere at our journey’s end Fu-Manchu awaited us was sufficient to sober my reflections—­Fu-Manchu, who, with all the powers represented by Nayland Smith pitted against him, pursued his dark schemes triumphantly, and lurked in hiding within this very area which was so sedulously patrolled—­Fu-Manchu, whom I had never seen, but whose name stood for horrors indefinable!  Perhaps I was destined to meet the terrible Chinese doctor to-night.