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turned to her in sudden doubt.
    “Are there people here?”
    “I hope not. It is used sometimes by fishers, but nobody lives in it.”
    In fact, the tumble-down place proved to be deserted. It was so far decayed that not even an eel fisherman would have consented to live there. The palm roof was full of holes and the bamboo framework largely collapsed. When he had tied up the boat, he secretly charged his .38 and slipped its comforting weight into a pouch inside his ragged pants.
    “I must find my way along the bank to the end of the creek, Yueh Hua, and watch for the motor boat.”
    She touched his arm. “Please, let me come, too.”
    * * *
    They set out together in blazing sunshine. There was a sort of path through thick undergrowth, but evidently it hadn’t been used for a long time. Then came the bare banks lower down. There was a wandering gully, though, which gave good cover and led them to the river only some yards above the creek.
    They had trudged along in silence. Now both looked upstream. The raft was no longer in sight. The river appeared deserted. They sat down side by side among the rushes and wildgrass, watching a slow tide go whispering by. Tony felt that Yueh Hua was furtively studying him. He glanced at her.
    She smiled. “What is your honorable name, if you please?”
    “My family name is Wu. I am called Chi Foh.”
    “Mine is Kwee. You don’t belong in this part of China?”
    He looked at her searchingly. She was still smiling.
    “No. My father—” He hesitated. He had nearly said “was a merchant.”—“is a storekeeper in Hong Kong. I was brought up there.”
    “I suppose, Chi Foh, he was ruined by the war?”
    But he didn’t answer. He had heard the asthmatic coughing of Colonel Soong’s motor craft. They were coming back, close to the right bank.
    Yueh Hua grasped his hand. He saw that her lips trembled. “We must lie behind these rushes, Chi Foh. We can see from there, but they won’t see us.”
    They crept back from the bank and lay down next to each other. The old cruiser was very close now.
    Almost unconsciously, he put his left arm around Yueh Hua’s shoulders.
    From where he lay, he couldn’t see Soong in the stern. But he could see a man who stood up in the bows. It was the giant Nubian.
    Then he heard a clear, imperious voice. It sent a trickle of ice down Tony’s spine.
    “I fear, Colonel Soong, that you are wasting valuable time.”
    The motor boat had swung around slightly on the current. He saw Soong in the stern, field glasses in hand, and he saw someone else seated in the cabin behind the man at the wheel. A figure wrapped in a dark cloak.
    Yueh Hua shuddered so violently that he glanced at her anxiously. Every trace of color had left her face.
    “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered, and held her closely. “They can’t see us.”
    But she didn’t answer. Colonel Soong’s harsh voice was raised unsteadily. “I assure you, Most High, it is not so. The escaped prisoner must certainly have come this way.”
    “I regret that I cannot share your confidence.” The words were spoken in sibilant, cultured Chinese. Then in another language, which Tony thought might be Arabic, a short sentence followed.
    The Nubian spun around and stood at attention. He shook his head and answered briefly in the same guttural tongue.
    “I was inclined—” Fu-Manchu was addressing Soong—“to send Mahmud ashore again to search the hut on the creek. But he assures me no one has been there. I believe him, for he has the instincts of a hunting leopard.” The motor cruiser had drifted now to within a few yards of the bank. It was plain enough that “Mahmud” on his former visit must have followed the gully in which they lay, that if he did come ashore again he could hardly fail to stumble over them.
    Tony fingered the useful weapon in his pocket. The big Negro, if he came, might carry a gun. Soong was armed. There might be other arms on board. But there were only four men to deal