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Page 13
"There is some cord in my right-hand pocket," said Smith; "I came
provided. Tie her wrists."
I obeyed him, silently. The girl offered no resistance, but I think I
never essayed a less congenial task than that of binding her white
wrists. The jeweled fingers lay quite listlessly in my own.
"Make a good job of it!" rapped Smith, significantly.
A flush rose to my cheeks, for I knew well enough what he meant.
"She is fastened," I said, and I turned the ray of the torch upon her
again.
Smith removed his hand from her mouth but did not relax his grip of
her. She looked up at me with eyes in which I could have sworn there
was no recognition. But a flush momentarily swept over her face, and
left it pale again.
"We shall have to--gag her--"
"Smith, I can't do it!"
The girl's eyes filled with tears and she looked up at my companion
pitifully.
"Please don't be cruel to me," she whispered, with that soft accent
which always played havoc with my composure. "Every one--every one-is
cruel to me. I will promise--indeed I will swear, to be quiet. Oh,
believe me, if you can save him I will do nothing to hinder you." Her
beautiful head drooped. "Have some pity for me as well."
"Karamaneh" I said. "We would have believed you once. We cannot, now."
She started violently.
"You know my name!" Her voice was barely audible. "Yet I have never
seen you in my life--"
"See if the door locks," interrupted Smith harshly.
Dazed by the apparent sincerity in the voice of our lovely captive--
vacant from wonder of it all--I opened the door, felt for, and found,
a key.
We left Karamaneh crouching against the wall; her great eyes were
turned towards me fascinatedly. Smith locked the door with much care.
We began a tip-toed progress along the dimly lighted passage.
From beneath a door on the left, and near the end, a brighter light
shone. Beyond that again was another door. A voice was speaking in the
lighted room; yet I could have sworn that Karamaneh had come, not from
there but from the room beyond--from the far end of the passage.
But the voice!--who, having once heard it, could ever mistake that
singular voice, alternately guttural and sibilant!
Dr. Fu-Manchu was speaking!
"I have asked you," came with ever-increasing clearness (Smith had
begun to turn the knob), "to reveal to me the name of your
correspondent in Nan-Yang. I have suggested that he may be the
Mandarin Yen-Sun-Yat, but you have declined to confirm me. Yet I know"
(Smith had the door open a good three inches and was peering in) "that
some official, some high official, is a traitor. Am I to resort again
to the question to learn his name?"
Ice seemed to enter my veins at the unseen inquisitor's intonation of
the words "the question." This was the Twentieth Century, yet there,
in that damnable room . . .
Smith threw the door open.
Through a sort of haze, born mostly of horror, but not entirely, I saw
Eltham, stripped to the waist and tied, with his arms upstretched, to
a rafter in the ancient ceiling. A Chinaman who wore a slop-shop blue
suit and who held an open knife in his hand, stood beside him. Eltham
was ghastly white. The appearance of his chest puzzled me momentarily,
then I realized that a sort of tourniquet of wire-netting was screwed
so tightly about him that the flesh swelled out in knobs through the
mesh. There was blood--
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