The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer Page A

the service of Dr.
Fu-Manchu. I groaned aloud in my despair and misery.
    Something stirred, near to me in the room, and set my nerves
creeping with a new apprehension. I became fully alive to the
possibilities of the darkness.
    To my certain knowledge, Dr. Fu-Manchu at this time had been in
England for fully three months, which meant that by now he must be
equipped with all the instruments of destruction, animate and
inanimate, which dread experience had taught me to associate with
him.
    Now, as I crouched there in that dark apartment listening for a
repetition of the sound, I scarcely dared to conjecture what might
have occasioned it, but my imagination peopled the place with
reptiles which writhed upon the floor, with tarantulas and other
deadly insects which crept upon the walls, which might drop upon me
from the ceiling at any moment.
    Then, since nothing stirred about me, I ventured to move,
turning my shoulders, for I was unable to move my aching head; and
I looked in the direction from which a faint, very faint, light
proceeded.
    A regular tapping sound now began to attract my attention, and,
having turned about, I perceived that behind me was a broken
window, in places patched with brown paper; the corner of one sheet
of paper was detached, and the rain trickled down upon it with a
rhythmical sound.
    In a flash I realized that I lay in the room immediately above
the archway; and listening intently, I perceived above the other
faint sounds of the night, or thought that I perceived, the hissing
of the gas from the extinguished lamp-burner.
    Unsteadily I rose to my feet, but found myself swaying like a
drunken man. I reached out for support, stumbling in the direction
of the wall. My foot came in contact with something that lay there,
and I pitched forward and fell… .
    I anticipated a crash which would put an end to my hopes of
escape, but my fall was comparatively noiseless—for I fell upon the
body of a man who lay bound up with rope close against the
wall!
    A moment I stayed as I fell, the chest of my fellow captive
rising and falling beneath me as he breathed. Knowing that my life
depended upon retaining a firm hold upon myself, I succeeded in
overcoming the dizziness and nausea which threatened to drown my
senses, and, moving back so that I knelt upon the floor, I fumbled
in my pocket for the electric lamp which I had placed there. My
raincoat had been removed whilst I was unconscious, and with it my
pistol, but the lamp was untouched.
    I took it out, pressed the button, and directed the ray upon the
face of the man beside me.
    It was Nayland Smith!
    Trussed up and fastened to a ring in the wall he lay, having a
cork gag strapped so tightly between his teeth that I wondered how
he had escaped suffocation.
    But, although a grayish pallor showed through the tan of his
skin, his eyes were feverishly bright, and there, as I knelt beside
him, I thanked heaven, silently but fervently.
    Then, in furious haste, I set to work to remove the gag. It was
most ingeniously secured by means of leather straps buckled at the
back of his head, but I unfastened these without much difficulty,
and he spat out the gag, uttering an exclamation of disgust.
    "Thank God, old man!" he said, huskily. "Thank God that you are
alive! I saw them drag you in, and I thought… "
    "I have been thinking the same about you for more than
twenty-four hours," I said, reproachfully. "Why did you start
without—"
    "I did not want you to come, Petrie," he replied. "I had a sort
of premonition. You see it was realized; and instead of being as
helpless as I, Fate has made you the instrument of my release.
Quick! You have a knife? Good!" The old, feverish energy was by no
means extinguished in him. "Cut the ropes about my wrists and
ankles, but don't otherwise disturb them—"
    I set to work eagerly.
    "Now," Smith continued, "put that filthy gag in place again—but
you need not strap it so tightly! Directly they find that you are
alive, they will treat you