Coolness returned to me, suddenly, unaccountably.  I doubted not for an instant that the best friend I had in the world lay dead there at the feet of the hellish girl who called herself Zarmi, and I knew since it was she, disguised, who had driven him to his doom, that she must have been actively concerned in his murder.

But, I argued, although the damp night air was pouring in through the door which Zarmi now held open, although sound of Thames-side activity came stealing to my ears, we were yet within the walls of the Joy-Shop, with a score or more Asiatic ruffians at the woman’s beck and call....

With perfect truth I can state that I retain not even a shadowy recollection of aiding Fletcher to move the chest out on to the brink of the cutting—­for it was upon this that the door directly opened.  The mist had grown denser, and except a glimpse of slowly moving water beneath me, I could discern little of our surrounding.

So much I saw by the light of a lantern which stood in the stern of a boat.  In the bows of this boat I was vaguely aware of the presence of a crouched figure enveloped in rugs—­vaguely aware that two filmy eyes regarded me out of the darkness.  A man who looked like a lascar stood upright in the stern.

I must have been acting like a man in a stupor; for I was aroused to the realities by the contact of a burning cigarette with the lobe of my right ear!

“Hurry, quick, strong feller!” said Zarmi softly.

At that it seemed as though some fine nerve of my brain, already strained to utmost tension, snapped.  I turned, with a wild, inarticulate cry, my fists raised frenziedly above my head.

“You fiend!” I shrieked at the mocking Eurasian, “you yellow fiend of hell!”

I was beside myself, insane.  Zarmi fell back a step, flashing a glance from my own contorted face to that, now pale even beneath its artificial tan, of Fletcher.

I snatched the pistol from my pocket, and for one fateful moment the lust of slaying claimed my mind....  Then I turned towards the river, and, raising the Browning, fired shot after shot in the air.

“Weymouth!” I cried.  “Weymouth!”

A sharp hissing sound came from behind me; a short, muffled cry ... and something descended, crushing, upon my skull.  Like a wild cat Zarmi hurled herself past me and leapt into the boat.  One glimpse I had of her pallidly dusky face, of her blazing black eyes, and the boat was thrust off into the waterway ... was swallowed up in the mist.

I turned, dizzily, to see Fletcher sinking to his knees, one hand clutching his breast.

“She got me ... with the knife,” he whispered.  “But ... don’t worry ... look to yourself, and ..._him_....”

He pointed, weakly—­then collapsed at my feet.  I threw myself upon the wooden chest with a fierce, sobbing cry.

“Smith, Smith!” I babbled, and knew myself no better, in my sorrow, than an hysterical woman.  “Smith, dear old man! speak to me! speak to me!...”