“Significant!”

“Of course.  But he argues that he has crossed Tibet from the Kuen-Lun to the Himalayas without being assassinated, and therefore that it is unlikely he will meet with that fate in London.  I left him dictating the book from memory, at the rate of about two hundred words a minute.”

“He is wasting no time.”

“Wasting time!  In addition to the Yucatan book and the work on Tibet, he has to read a paper at the Institute next week about some tomb he has unearthed in Egypt.  As I came away, a van drove up from the docks and a couple of fellows delivered a sarcophagus as big as a boat.  It is unique, according to Sir Lionel, and will go to the British Museum after he has examined it.  The man crams six months’ work into six weeks; then he is off again.”

“What do you propose to do?”

“What can I do?  I know that Fu-Manchu will make an attempt upon him.  I cannot doubt it.  Ugh! that house gave me the shudders.  No sunlight, I’ll swear, Petrie, can ever penetrate to the rooms, and when I arrived this afternoon clouds of gnats floated like motes wherever a stray beam filtered through the trees of the avenue.  There’s a steamy smell about the place that is almost malarious, and the whole of the west front is covered with a sort of monkey-creeper, which he has imported at some time or other.  It has a close, exotic perfume that is quite in the picture.  I tell you, the place was made for murder.”

“Have you taken any precautions?”

“I called at Scotland Yard and sent a man down to watch the house, but—­”

He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

“What is Sir Lionel like?”

“A madman, Petrie.  A tall, massive man, wearing a dirty dressing-gown of neutral color; a man with untidy gray hair and a bristling mustache, keen blue eyes, and a brown skin; who wears a short beard or rarely shaves—­I don’t know which.  I left him striding about among the thousand and one curiosities of that incredible room, picking his way through his antique furniture, works of reference, manuscripts, mummies, spears, pottery and what not—­sometimes kicking a book from his course, or stumbling over a stuffed crocodile or a Mexican mask—­ alternately dictating and conversing.  Phew!”

For some time we were silent.

“Smith” I said, “we are making no headway in this business.  With all the forces arrayed against him, Fu-Manchu still eludes us, still pursues his devilish, inscrutable way.”

Nayland Smith nodded.

“And we don’t know all,” he said.  “We mark such and such a man as one alive to the Yellow Peril, and we warn him—­if we have time.  Perhaps he escapes; perhaps he does not.  But what do we know, Petrie, of those others who may die every week by his murderous agency?  We cannot know everyone who has read the riddle of China.  I never see a report of someone found drowned, of an apparent suicide, of a sudden, though seemingly natural death, without wondering.  I tell you, Fu-Manchu is omnipresent; his tentacles embrace everything.  I said that Sir Lionel must bear a charmed life.  The fact that we are alive is a miracle.”