The smoky lamp in the middle of the place afforded scant illumination, serving only to indicate sprawling shapes—­ here an extended hand, brown or yellow, there a sketchy, corpse-like face; whilst from all about rose obscene sighings and murmurings in far-away voices—­an uncanny, animal chorus.  It was like a glimpse of the Inferno seen by some Chinese Dante.  But so close to us stood the newcomer that I was able to make out a ghastly parchment face, with small, oblique eyes, and a misshapen head crowned with a coiled pigtail, surmounting a slight, hunched body.  There was something unnatural, inhuman, about that masklike face, and something repulsive in the bent shape and the long, yellow hands clasped one upon the other.

Fu-Manchu, from Smith’s account, in no way resembled this crouching apparition with the death’s-head countenance and lithe movements; but an instinct of some kind told me that we were on the right scent—­ that this was one of the doctor’s servants.  How I came to that conclusion, I cannot explain; but with no doubt in my mind that this was a member of the formidable murder group, I saw the yellow man creep nearer, nearer, silently, bent and peering.

He was watching us.

Of another circumstance I became aware, and a disquieting circumstance.  There were fewer murmurings and sighings from the surrounding bunks.  The presence of the crouching figure had created a sudden semi-silence in the den, which could only mean that some of the supposed opium-smokers had merely feigned coma and the approach of coma.

Nayland Smith lay like a dead man, and trusting to the darkness, I, too, lay prone and still, but watched the evil face bending lower and lower, until it came within a few inches of my own.  I completely closed my eyes.

Delicate fingers touched my right eyelid.  Divining what was coming, I rolled my eyes up, as the lid was adroitly lifted and lowered again.  The man moved away.

I had saved the situation!  And noting anew the hush about me—­ a hush in which I fancied many pairs of ears listened—­I was glad.  For just a moment I realized fully how, with the place watched back and front, we yet were cut off, were in the hands of Far Easterns, to some extent in the power of members of that most inscrutably mysterious race, the Chinese.

“Good,” whispered Smith at my side.  “I don’t think I could have done it.  He took me on trust after that.  My God! what an awful face.  Petrie, it’s the hunchback of Cadby’s notes.  Ah, I thought so.  Do you see that?”

I turned my eyes round as far as was possible.  A man had scrambled down from one of the bunks and was following the bent figure across the room.

They passed around us quietly, the little yellow man leading, with his curious, lithe gait, and the other, an impassive Chinaman, following.  The curtain was raised, and I heard footsteps receding on the stairs.

“Don’t stir,” whispered Smith.