The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu

A GENTLEMAN to see you, Doctor.
From across the common a clock sounded the half-hour.
Ten-thirty! I said. A late visitor. Show him up, if you please.
I pushed my writing aside and tilted the lamp-shade, as footsteps sounded on the landing. The next moment I had jumped to my feet, for a tall, lean man, with his square-cut, clean-shaven face sun-baked to the hue of coffee, entered and extended both hands, with a cry:
Good old Petrie! Didn't expect me, I'll swear!
It was Nayland Smith—whom I had thought to be in Burma!
Smith, I said, and gripped his hands hard, this is a delightful surprise! Whatever—however—
Excuse me, Petrie! he broke in. Don't put it down to the sun! And he put out the lamp, plunging the room into darkness.
I was too surprised to speak.
No doubt you will think me mad, he continued, and, dimly, I could see him at the window, peering out into the road, but before you are many hours older you will know that I have good reason to be cautious. Ah, nothing suspicious! Perhaps I am first this time. And, stepping back to the writing-table he relighted the lamp.
Mysterious enough for you? he laughed, and glanced at my unfinished MS. A story, eh? From which I gather that the district is beastly healthy—what, Petrie? Well, I can put some material in your way that, if sheer uncanny mystery is a marketable commodity, ought to make you independent of influenza and broken legs and shattered nerves and all the rest.