“The severed fingers—­” I said; and swooned.

How Smith got me through the trap I do not know—­nor how we made our way through the smoke and flames of the narrow passage it opened upon.  My next recollection is of sitting up, with my friend’s arm supporting me and Inspector Ryman holding a glass to my lips.

A bright glare dazzled my eyes.  A crowd surged about us, and a clangor and shouting drew momentarily nearer.

“It’s the engines coming,” explained Smith, seeing my bewilderment.  “Shen-Yan’s is in flames.  It was your shot, as you fell through the trap, broke the oil-lamp.”

“Is everybody out?”

“So far as we know.”

“Fu-Manchu?”

Smith shrugged his shoulders.

“No one has seen him.  There was some door at the back—­”

“Do you think he may—­”

“No,” he said tensely.  “Not until I see him lying dead before me shall I believe it.”

Then memory resumed its sway.  I struggled to my feet.

“Smith, where is she?” I cried.  “Where is she?”

“I don’t know,” he answered.

“She’s given us the slip, Doctor,” said Inspector Weymouth, as a fire-engine came swinging round the corner of the narrow lane.  “So has Mr. Singapore Charlie—­and, I’m afraid, somebody else.  We’ve got six or eight all-sorts, some awake and some asleep, but I suppose we shall have to let ’em go again.  Mr. Smith tells me that the girl was disguised as a Chinaman.  I expect that’s why she managed to slip away.”

I recalled how I had been dragged from the pit by the false queue, how the strange discovery which had brought death to poor Cadby had brought life to me, and I seemed to remember, too, that Smith had dropped it as he threw his arm about me on the ladder.  Her mask the girl might have retained, but her wig, I felt certain, had been dropped into the water.

It was later that night, when the brigade still were playing upon the blackened shell of what had been Shen-Yan’s opium-shop, and Smith and I were speeding away in a cab from the scene of God knows how many crimes, that I had an idea.

“Smith,” I said, “did you bring the pigtail with you that was found on Cadby?”

“Yes.  I had hoped to meet the owner.”

“Have you got it now?”

“No.  I met the owner.”

I thrust my hands deep into the pockets of the big pea-jacket lent to me by Inspector Ryman, leaning back in my corner.

“We shall never really excel at this business,” continued Nayland Smith.  “We are far too sentimental.  I knew what it meant to us, Petrie, what it meant to the world, but I hadn’t the heart.  I owed her your life—­ I had to square the account.”

CHAPTER VII

Night fell on Redmoat.  I glanced from the window at the nocturne in silver and green which lay beneath me.  To the west of the shrubbery, with its broken canopy of elms and beyond the copper beech which marked the center of its mazes, a gap offered a glimpse of the Waverney where it swept into a broad.  Faint bird-calls floated over the water.  These, with the whisper of leaves, alone claimed the ear.