Nayland Smith leaned against the edge of the dressing-table, attired in pyjamas. The little
stateroom was hazy with smoke, and my friend gripped the charred briar between his
teeth and watched the blue-gray clouds arising from the bowl, in an abstracted way. I
knew that he was thinking hard, and from the fact that he had exhibited no surprise when
I had related to him the particular's of the attack upon Karamaneh I judged that he had
half anticipated something of the kind. Suddenly he stood up, staring at me fixedly.
"Your tact has saved the situation, Petrie," he snapped. "It failed you momentarily,
though, when you proposed to me just now that we should muster the lascars for
inspection. Our game is to pretend that we know nothing--that we believe Karamaneh to
have had a bad dream."
"It would be useless, Petrie," he interrupted me. "You cannot suppose that I overlooked
the possibility of some creature of the doctor's being among the lascars. I can assure you
that not one of them answers to the description of the midnight assailant. From the girl's
account we have to look (discarding the idea of a revivified mummy) for a man of
unusual height--and there's no lascar of unusual height on board; and from the visible
evidence, that he entered the stateroom through the porthole, we have to look for a man
more than normally thin. In a word, the servant of Dr. Fu-Manchu who attempted the life
of Karamaneh is either in hiding on the ship, or, if visible, is disguised."
With his usual clarity of vision, Nayland Smith had visualized the facts of the case; I
passed in mental survey each one of the passengers, and those of the crew whose
appearances were familiar to me, with the result that I had to admit the justice of my
friend's conclusions. Smith began to pace the narrow strip of carpet between the dressing-
table and the door. Suddenly he began again. "From our knowledge of Fu-Manchu and of
the group surrounding him (and, don't forget, surviving him)--we may further assume that
the wireless message was no gratuitous piece of melodrama, but that it was directed to a
definite end. Let us endeavor to link up the chain a little. You occupy an upper deck
berth; so do I. Experience of the Chinaman has formed a habit in both of us; that of
sleeping with closed windows. Your port was fastened and so was my own. Karamaneh is
quartered on the main deck, and her brother's stateroom opens into the same alleyway.
Since the ship is in the Straits of Messina, and the glass set fair, the stewards have not
closed the portholes nightly at present. We know that that of Karamaneh's stateroom was
open. Therefore, in any attempt upon our quartet, Karamaneh would automatically be
selected for the victim, since failing you or myself she may be regarded as being the most
obnoxious to Dr. Fu-Manchu.
I nodded comprehendingly. Smith's capacity for throwing the white light of reason into
the darkest places often amazed me.
