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intended for snaring.
    "What were you about to do?" I demanded sharply—but in my heart,
poor fool that I was, I found admiration for the exquisite arch of
Karamaneh's lips, and reproach because they were so tremulous.
    She spoke then.
    "Dr. Petrie—"
    "Well?"
    "You seem to be—angry with me, not so much because of what I do,
as because I do not remember you. Yet—"
    "Kindly do not revert to the matter," I interrupted. "You have
chosen, very conveniently, to forget that once we were friends.
Please yourself. But answer my question."
    She clasped her hands with a sort of wild abandon.
    "Why do you treat me so!" she cried; she had the most
fascinating accent imaginable. "Throw me into prison, kill me if
you like, for what I have done!" She stamped her foot. "For what I
have done! But do not torture me, try to drive me mad with your
reproaches—that I forget you! I tell you—again I tell you—that
until you came one night, last week, to rescue some one from—"
There was the old trick of hesitating before the name of
Fu-Manchu—"from him, I had never, never seen you!"
    The dark eyes looked into mine, afire with a positive hunger for
belief—or so I was sorely tempted to suppose. But the facts were
against her.
    "Such a declaration is worthless," I said, as coldly as I could.
"You are a traitress; you betray those who are mad enough to trust
you—"
    "I am no traitress!" she blazed at me; her eyes were
magnificent.
    "This is mere nonsense. You think that it will pay you better to
serve Fu-Manchu than to remain true to your friends. Your
'slavery'—for I take it you are posing as a slave again—is
evidently not very harsh. You serve Fu-Manchu, lure men to their
destruction, and in return he loads you with jewels, lavishes
gifts—"
    "Ah! so!"
    She sprang forward, raising flaming eyes to mine; her lips were
slightly parted. With that wild abandon which betrayed the desert
blood in her veins, she wrenched open the neck of her bodice and
slipped a soft shoulder free of the garment. She twisted around, so
that the white skin was but inches removed from me.
    "These are some of the gifts that he lavishes upon me!"
    I clenched my teeth. Insane thoughts flooded my mind. For that
creamy skin was red with the marks of the lash!
    She turned, quickly rearranging her dress, and watching me the
while. I could not trust myself to speak for a moment, then:
    "If I am a stranger to you, as you claim, why do you give me
your confidence?" I asked.
    "I have known you long enough to trust you!" she said simply,
and turned her head aside.
    "Then why do you serve this inhuman monster?"
    She snapped her fingers oddly, and looked up at me from under
her lashes. "Why do you question me if you think that everything I
say is a lie?"
    It was a lesson in logic—from a woman! I changed the
subject.
    "Tell me what you came here to do," I demanded.
    She pointed to the net in my hands.
    "To catch birds; you have said so yourself."
    "What bird?"
    She shrugged her shoulders.
    And now a memory was born within my brain; it was that of the
cry of the nighthawk which had harbingered the death of Forsyth!
The net was a large and strong one; could it be that some horrible
fowl of the air—some creature unknown to Western naturalists—had
been released upon the common last night? I thought of the marks
upon Forsyth's face and throat; I thought of the profound knowledge
of obscure and dreadful things possessed by the Chinaman.
    The wrapping, in which the net had been, lay at my feet. I
stooped and took out from it a wicker basket. Karamaneh stood
watching me and biting her lip, but she made no move to check me. I
opened the basket. It contained a large phial, the contents of
which possessed a pungent and peculiar smell.
    I was utterly mystified.
    "You will have to accompany me to my house," I said sternly.
    Karamaneh upturned her great eyes to mine. They were wide with
fear. She was on the point of speaking when I extended my hand to
grasp her. At that, the look