LITMIR.BIZ

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about to cry out again,

      when, mustering all my presence of mind and all my failing courage, I

      recognized that I had better employment of my energies, and began to

      swim straight ahead, desperately determined to face all the horrors of

      this place--to die hard if die I must.

      A drop of liquid fire fell through the darkness and hissed into the

      water beside me!

      I felt that, despite my resolution, I was going mad.

      Another fiery drop--and another!

      I touched a rotting wooden post and slimy timbers. I had reached one

      bound of my watery prison. More fire fell from above, and the scream

      of hysteria quivered, unuttered, in my throat.

      Keeping myself afloat with increasing difficulty in my heavy garments,

      I threw my head back and raised my eyes.

      No more drops fell, and no more drops would fall; but it was merely a

      question of time for the floor to collapse. For it was beginning to

      emit a dull, red glow.

      The room above me was in flames!

      It was drops of burning oil from the lamp, finding passage through the

      cracks in the crazy flooring, which had fallen about me--for the death

      trap had reclosed, I suppose, mechanically.

      My saturated garments were dragging me down, and now I could hear the

      flames hungrily eating into the ancient rottenness overhead. Shortly

      that cauldron would be loosed upon my head. The glow of the flames

      grew brighter . . . and showed me the half-rotten piles upholding the

      building, showed me the tidal mark upon the slime-coated walls--showed

      me that there was no escape!

      By some subterranean duct the foul place was fed from the Thames. By

      that duct, with the outgoing tide, my body would pass, in the wake of

      Mason, Cadby, and many another victim!

      Rusty iron rungs were affixed to one of the walls communicating with a

      trap--but the bottom three were missing!

      Brighter and brighter grew the awesome light the light of what should

      be my funeral pyre--reddening the oily water and adding a new dread to

      the whispering, clammy horror of the pit. But something it showed

      me . . . a projecting beam a few feet above the water . . . and directly

      below the iron ladder!

      "Merciful Heaven!" I breathed. "Have I the strength?"

      A desire for laughter claimed me with sudden, all but irresistible

      force. I knew what it portended and fought it down--grimly, sternly.

      My garments weighed upon me like a suit of mail; with my chest aching

      dully, my veins throbbing to bursting, I forced tired muscles to work,

      and, every stroke an agony, approached the beam. Nearer I swam

      . . . nearer. Its shadow fell black upon the water, which now had all

      the seeming of a pool of blood. Confused sounds--a remote uproar--came

      to my ears. I was nearly spent . . . I was in the shadow of the beam! If

      I could throw up one arm. . .

      A shrill scream sounded far above me!

      "Petrie! Petrie!" (That voice must be Smith's!) "Don't touch the

      beam! For God's sake DON'T TOUCH THE BEAM! Keep afloat another few

      seconds and I can get to you!"

      Another few seconds! Was that possible?

      I managed to turn, to raise my throbbing head; and I saw the strangest

      sight which that night yet had offered.

      Nayland Smith stood upon the lowest iron rung . . . supported by the

      hideous, crook-backed Chinaman, who stood upon the rung above!

      "I can't reach him!"

      It was as Smith hissed the words despairingly that I looked up--and saw

      the Chinaman snatch at his coiled pigtail and pull it off! With it

      came the wig to which it was attached; and the ghastly yellow mask,

      deprived of its fastenings, fell from position! "Here! Here! Be

      quick! Oh! be quick! You can lower this to him! Be quick! Be

      quick!"

      A cloud of hair came falling about the slim shoulders as the speaker

      bent to pass this strange lifeline to Smith; and I think it was my

      wonder at knowing her for the girl whom that day I had surprised in

      Cadby's rooms which saved my life.

      For I not only kept afloat, but kept my gaze upturned to that

      beautiful, flushed face, and my eyes fixed upon hers--which were wild

      with fear . . . for me!

      Smith, by some contortion, got the false queue into my grasp, and I,

      with the strength of desperation, by that means seized hold upon the

      lowest rung. With my friend's arm round me I realized that exhaustion

      was even nearer than I had supposed. My last distinct memory is of the

      bursting of the floor above and the big burning joist hissing into the

      pool beneath us. Its fiery passage, striated with light, disclosed two

      sword blades, riveted, edges up along the top of the beam which I had

      striven to reach.

      "The severed fingers--" I said; and swooned.

      How Smith got me through the trap I do not know--nor how we made our

      way through the smoke and flames of the narrow passage it opened upon.

      My next recollection is of sitting up, with my friend's arm supporting

      me and Inspector Ryman holding a glass to my lips.

      A bright glare dazzled my eyes. A crowd surged about us, and a clangor

      and shouting drew momentarily nearer.

      "It's the engines coming," explained Smith, seeing my bewilderment.

      "Shen-Yan's is in flames. It was your shot, as you fell through the

      trap, broke the oil-lamp."

      "Is everybody out?"

      "So far as we know."

      "Fu-Manchu?"

      Smith shrugged his shoulders.

      "No one has seen him. There was some door at the back--"

      "Do you think he may--"

      "No," he said tensely. "Not until I see him lying dead before me shall

      I believe it."

      Then

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