“Such things don’t enter into my sphere, Mr. Smith,” he replied, “but no doubt the proper department at the Yard have seen it.”

“I know they have seen it!” snapped Smith; “but they have also been unable to read it!”

Weymouth looked up in surprise.

“Indeed,” he said.  “You are interested in this, then?”

“Very!  Have you any suggestion to offer respecting it?”

Moving from my seat I, also, bent over the paper and read, in growing astonishment, the following:—­

ZAGAZIG-Z,-a-g-a;-z:-I-g,a,-a,ag-a,z;-
        I;-g:z-a-g-A-z;i-:g;-Z,,-a;-gg-_-z-i;-
        G;-z-,a-g-:a-Z__I_;-g:-z-a-g;-a-:Z-,i-g: 
        z,a-g,-a:z,i-g.

“This is utterly incomprehensible!  It can be nothing but some foolish practical joke!  It consists merely of the word ‘Zagazig’ repeated six or seven times—­which can have no possible significance!”

“Can’t it!” snapped Smith.

“Well,” I said, “what has Zagazig to do with Fu-Manchu, or to do with us?”

“Zagazig, my dear Petrie, is a very unsavory Arab town in Lower Egypt, as you know!”

He returned the paper to the pocket of his over-coat, and, noting my bewildered glance, burst into one of his sudden laughs.

“You think I am talking nonsense,” he said; “but, as a matter of fact, that message in the paper has been puzzling me since it appeared—­ yesterday morning—­and at last I think I see the light.”

He pulled out his pipe and began rapidly to load it.

“I have been growing careless of late, Petrie,” he continued; and no hint of merriment remained in his voice.  His gaunt face was drawn grimly, and his eyes glittered like steel.  “In future I must avoid going out alone at night as much as possible.”

Inspector Weymouth was staring at Smith in a puzzled way; and certainly I was every whit as mystified as he.

“I am disposed to believe,” said my friend, in his rapid, incisive way, “that the dacoit met his end at the hands of a tall man, possibly dark and almost certainly clean-shaven.  If this missing personage wears, on chilly nights, a long tweed traveling coat and affects soft gray hats of the Stetson pattern, I shall not be surprised.”

Weymouth stared at me in frank bewilderment.

“By the way, Inspector,” added Smith, a sudden gleam of inspiration entering his keen eyes—­“did I not see that the s.s._Andaman_ arrived recently?”

“The Oriental Navigation Company’s boat?” inquired Weymouth in a hopeless tone.  “Yes.  She docked yesterday evening.”

“If Jack Forsyth is still chief officer, I shall look him up,” declared Smith.  “You recall his brother, Petrie?”

“Naturally; since he was done to death in my presence,” I replied; for the words awoke memories of one of Dr. Fu-Manchu’s most ghastly crimes, always associated in my mind with the cry of a night-hawk.