"Thank you, Kâramanèh," I said softly.
She suppressed a little cry as I spoke her name, and drew back into the shadows.
"I believe you are my friend," I said, "but I cannot understand. Won't you help me to understand?"
I took her unresisting hand, and drew her toward me. My very soul seemed to thrill at the contact of her lithe body....
She was trembling wildly and seemed to be trying to speak, but although her lips framed the words no sound followed. Suddenly comprehension came to me. I looked down into the street, hitherto deserted ... and into the upturned face of Fu-Manchu!
Wearing a heavy fur-collared coat, and with his yellow, malignant countenance grotesquely horrible beneath the shadow of a large tweed motor cap, he stood motionless, looking up at me. That he had seen me, I could not doubt; but had he seen my companion?
In a choking whisper Kâramanèh answered my unspoken question.
"He has not seen me! I have done much for you; do in return a small thing for me! Save my life!"
She dragged me back from the window and fled across the room to the weird laboratory where I had lain captive. Throwing herself upon the divan, she held out her white wrists and glanced significantly at the manacles.
"Lock them upon me!" she said rapidly. "Quick! quick!"