“No one else knows it,” said West, and staggered unsteadily to the safe.  Clearly his mind was in a dazed condition, but, setting his jaw with a curious expression of grim determination, he collected his thoughts and opened the safe.

He bent down, looking in.

In some way the knowledge came to me that the curtain was about to rise on a new and surprising act in the Fu-Manchu drama.

“God!” he whispered—­we could scarcely hear him—­“the plans are gone!”

CHAPTER XIX

I have never seen a man quite so surprised as Inspector Weymouth.

“This is absolutely incredible!” he said.  “There’s only one door to your chambers.  We found it bolted from the inside.”

“Yes,” groaned West, pressing his hand to his forehead.  “I bolted it myself at eleven o’clock, when I came in.”

“No human being could climb up or down to your windows.  The plans of the aero-torpedo were inside a safe.”

“I put them there myself,” said West, “on returning from the War Office, and I had occasion to consult them after I had come in and bolted the door.  I returned them to the safe and locked it.  That it was still locked you saw for yourselves, and no one else in the world knows the combination.”

“But the plans have gone,” said Weymouth.  “It’s magic!  How was it done?  What happened last night, sir?  What did you mean when you rang us up?”

Smith during this colloquy was pacing rapidly up and down the room.  He turned abruptly to the aviator.

“Every fact you can remember, Mr. West, please,” he said tersely; “and be as brief as you possibly can.”

“I came in, as I said,” explained West, “about eleven o’clock and having made some notes relating to an interview arranged for this morning, I locked the plans in the safe and turned in.”

“There was no one hidden anywhere in your chambers?” snapped Smith.

“There was not,” replied West.  “I looked.  I invariably do.  Almost immediately, I went to sleep.”

“How many chloral tabloids did you take?” I interrupted.

Norris West turned to me with a slow smile.

“You’re cute, Doctor,” he said.  “I took two.  It’s a bad habit, but I can’t sleep without.  They are specially made up for me by a firm in Philadelphia.”

“How long sleep lasted, when it became filled with uncanny dreams, and when those dreams merged into reality, I do not know—­ shall never know, I suppose.  But out of the dreamless void a face came to me—­closer—­closer—­and peered into mine.