How long I lay there alone I had no means of computing. My mind was busy with many
matters, but principally concerned with my fate in the immediate future. That Dr. Fu-
Manchu entertained for me a singular kind of regard, I had had evidence before. He had
formed the erroneous opinion that I was an advanced scientist who could be of use to him
in his experiments and I was aware that he cherished a project of transporting me to some
place in China where his principal laboratory was situated. Respecting the means which
he proposed to employ, I was unlikely to forget that this man, who had penetrated further
along certain byways of science than seemed humanly possible, undoubtedly was master
of a process for producing artificial catalepsy. It was my lot, then, to be packed in a chest
(to all intents and purposes a dead man for the time being) and despatched to the interior
of China!
What a fool I had been. To think that I had learned nothing from my long and dreadful
experience of the methods of Dr. Fu-Manchu; to think that I had come alone in quest of
him; that, leaving no trace behind me, I had deliberately penetrated to his secret abode!
I have said that my wrists were manacled behind me, the manacles being attached to a
chain fastened in the wall. I now contrived, with extreme difficulty, to reverse the
position of my hands; that is to say, I climbed backward through the loop formed by my
fettered arms, so that instead of their being locked behind me, they now were locked in
front.
Then I began to examine the fetters, learning, as I had anticipated, that they fastened with
a lock. I sat gazing at the steel bracelets in the light of the lamp which swung over my
head, and it became apparent to me that I had gained little by my contortion.
A slight noise disturbed these unpleasant reveries. It was nothing less than the rattling of
keys!
For a moment I wondered if I had heard aright, or if the sound portended the coming of
some servant of the doctor, who was locking up the establishment for the night. The
jangling sound was repeated, and in such a way that I could not suppose it to be
accidental. Some one was deliberately rattling a small bunch of keys in an adjoining
room.
And now my heart leaped wildly--then seemed to stand still.
With a low whistling cry a little gray shape shot through the doorway by which Fu-
Manchu had retired, and rolled, like a ball of fluff blown by the wind, completely under
the table which bore the weird scientific appliances of the Chinaman; the advent of the
gray object was accompanied by a further rattling of keys.
