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dollars, as you suggest.”
    “I supply them to many American gentlemen,” Achmed declared, accepting the ten dollars that he claimed to be their price.
    Brian concluded that many American gentlemen who visited Cairo must be wealthy American gentlemen. Achmed, indicating those shops that were in sight, told him where amber goods, silk robes, authentic antique pieces might be bought cheaply. Brian thanked him and stood up to go.
    Glancing once more into the shadows, he saw that the girl’s remarkable eyes—they were amber eyes—seemed to be fixed upon him…
    He looked in briefly at some of the shops Achmed had recommended, but bought nothing. Coming out of the last one, which stocked scimitars, Saracen daggers, and other queer Oriental weapons, he found himself staring into a shady alley nearly opposite. He had caught a glimpse of lustrous amber eyes!
    The girl from Achmed’s had followed him. Why? Was she a prostitute, or had she some other purpose? Perhaps she was a member of Achmed’s household, instructed to find out if he did any business upon which Achmed could claim a commission.
    He strode off at a pace that gave many of the leisurely Egyptians a jolt and called down on him dreadful curses, which, fortunately, he didn’t understand. He recovered his good humor in a street that seemed to lead to a city gate, turned right into another, now hopelessly lost, and saw the minaret of a mosque right ahead. He glanced back quickly. There was no sign of the Arab girl.
    But from behind came shouts and a sound of many running feet. The sound drew nearer. Brian wondered if he had started a riot. The word
“Inglizi”
sometimes rose above the roar of voices.
He
might be the person referred to!
    He put on a spurt, passed the mosque, and, looking back, saw the head of what was evidently an excited mob pouring around the corner.
    Just as he was clear of the mosque, out from its courtyard spurted a party of Egyptian police. He noticed an open doorway almost beside him, darted in, and found it led to nowhere but a rickety staircase. He heard wild shouting and the sounds of fighting outside, then a shot.
    Brian started upstairs, as the tumult suggested that the police were being pushed back. On the first dark landing he nearly knocked over a water jar that stood near the head of the stairs. But the house seemed to be inhabited only by a variety of stenches. He mounted higher. The battle now was raging immediately outside the door below. Went up another flight, and found himself on the flat roof. He saw all sorts of pans, jars, and indescribable litter lying about, but nobody was up there. Brian crouched and looked over the low parapet down into the street.
    The rioters had been rounded up by the armed police. They were all young, wild-eyed, typical tinder for a rabble-rouser. They were falling back, three of them carrying a wounded comrade. Brian could see a second group of police extended in line before the mosque. The rioters were trapped.
    He sighed with relief. Slightly raising his head, he looked across the street to find out if he had been observed from there. He saw something that staggered him.
    A heavy iron gate in a high wall that he remembered having noticed as he ran into the doorway below opened on the tree-shaded courtyard of a fine old Arab house. Mushrabîyeh windows overhung the courtyard on one side, but directly facing Brian were two large barred windows. Evidently there must be another that he couldn’t see, for the room was well lighted. And in this room, pacing restlessly about, he saw a tall, lean man who smoked a pipe, and who seemed, to be talking angrily to someone else who wasn’t visible from Brian’s viewpoint.
    The shouts below had merged into sullen murmurs as the young rowdies were taken in charge by the police and marched off. Brian scarcely noticed them now. He was watching. And at last he was sure.
    The man in the barred room was Nayland Smith.
    * * *
    Dr. Fu Manchu sat on a divan in the