LITMIR.BIZ

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      know a broken window at the back where we could climb in. Then we

      could get through to the front and watch from there."

      "Good!" cried the Inspector. "See you are not spotted, though; and if

      you hear the whistle, don't mind doing a bit of damage, but be inside

      Shen-Yan's like lightning. Otherwise, wait for orders."

      Inspector Ryman came in, glancing at the clock.

      "Launch is waiting," he said.

      "Right," replied Smith thoughtfully. "I am half afraid, though, that

      the recent alarms may have scared our quarry--your man, Mason, and then

      Cadby. Against which we have that, so far as he is likely to know,

      there has been no clew pointing to this opium den. Remember, he thinks

      Cadby's notes are destroyed."

      "The whole business is an utter mystery to me," confessed Ryman. "I'm

      told that there's some dangerous Chinese devil hiding somewhere in

      London, and that you expect to find him at Shen-Yan's. Supposing he

      uses that place, which is possible, how do you know he's there

      to-night?"

      "I don't," said Smith; "but it is the first clew we have had pointing

      to one of his haunts, and time means precious lives where Dr. Fu-Manchu

      is concerned."

      "Who is he, sir, exactly, this Dr. Fu-Manchu?"

      "I have only the vaguest idea, Inspector; but he is no ordinary

      criminal. He is the greatest genius which the powers of evil have put

      on earth for centuries. He has the backing of a political group whose

      wealth is enormous, and his mission in Europe is to PAVE THE WAY! Do

      you follow me? He is the advance-agent of a movement so epoch-making

      that not one Britisher, and not one American, in fifty thousand has

      ever dreamed of it."

      Ryman stared, but made no reply, and we went out, passing down to the

      breakwater and boarding the waiting launch. With her crew of three,

      the party numbered seven that swung out into the Pool, and, clearing

      the pier, drew in again and hugged the murky shore.

      The night had been clear enough hitherto, but now came scudding

      rainbanks to curtain the crescent moon, and anon to unveil her again

      and show the muddy swirls about us. The view was not extensive from

      the launch. Sometimes a deepening of the near shadows would tell of a

      moored barge, or lights high above our heads mark the deck of a large

      vessel. In the floods of moonlight gaunt shapes towered above; in the

      ensuing darkness only the oily glitter of the tide occupied the

      foreground of the night-piece.

      The Surrey shore was a broken wall of blackness, patched with lights

      about which moved hazy suggestions of human activity. The bank we were

      following offered a prospect even more gloomy--a dense, dark mass, amid

      which, sometimes, mysterious half-tones told of a dock gate, or sudden

      high lights leapt flaring to the eye.

      Then, out of the mystery ahead, a green light grew and crept down upon

      us. A giant shape loomed up, and frowned crushingly upon the little

      craft. A blaze of light, the jangle of a bell, and it was past. We

      were dancing in the wash of one of the Scotch steamers, and the murk

      had fallen again.

      Discords of remote activity rose above the more intimate throbbing of

      our screw, and we seemed a pigmy company floating past the workshops of

      Brobdingnagian toilers. The chill of the near water communicated

      itself to me, and I felt the protection of my shabby garments

      inadequate against it.

      Far over on the Surrey shore a blue light--vaporous,

      mysterious--flicked translucent tongues against the night's curtain.

      It was a weird, elusive flame, leaping, wavering, magically changing

      from blue to a yellowed violet, rising, falling.

      "Only a gasworks," came Smith's voice, and I knew that he, too, had

      been watching those elfin fires. "But it always reminds me of a

      Mexican teocalli, and the altar of sacrifice."

      The simile was apt, but gruesome. I thought of Dr. Fu-Manchu and the

      severed fingers, and could not repress a shudder.

      "On your left, past the wooden pier! Not where the lamp is--beyond

      that; next to the dark, square building--Shen-Yan's."

      It was Inspector Ryman speaking.

      "Drop us somewhere handy, then," replied Smith, "and lie close in, with

      your ears wide open. We may have to run for it, so don't go far away."

      From the tone of his voice I knew that the night mystery of the Thames

      had claimed at least one other victim.

      "Dead slow," came Ryman's order. "We'll put in to the Stone Stairs."

      CHAPTER VI

      A SEEMINGLY drunken voice was droning from a neighboring alleyway as

      Smith lurched in hulking fashion to the door of a little shop above

      which, crudely painted, were the words:

      "SHEN-YAN, Barber."

      I shuffled along behind him, and had time to note the box of studs,

      German shaving tackle and rolls of twist which lay untidily in the

      window ere Smith kicked the door open, clattered down three wooden

      steps, and pulled himself up with a jerk, seizing my arm for support.

      We stood in a bare and very dirty room, which could only claim kinship

      with a civilized shaving-saloon by virtue of the grimy towel thrown

      across the back of the solitary chair. A Yiddish theatrical bill of

      some kind, illustrated, adorned one of the walls, and another bill, in

      what may have been Chinese, completed the decorations. From behind a

      curtain heavily brocaded with filth a little Chinaman appeared, dressed

      in a loose smock, black trousers and thick-soled slippers, and,

      advancing, shook his head vigorously.

      "No shavee--no shavee," he chattered, simian fashion, squinting from

      one to the other of us with his twinkling eyes. "Too late! Shuttee

      shop!"

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