A voice droned from a bunk:
"Cheal kegur men ms ka-dheer!"
The police were moving from bunk to bunk, scrutinising the occupants.
The uproar had penetrated to them even in their drugged slumbers.
There were stirrings and mutterings and movements of yellow hands.
"But where is 'The Scorpion'?"
He turned and stared at the wall from which the matting had been torn. And out of the little niche in the cunningly masked door the green-eyed joss leered at him complacently.
PART IV
THE LAIR OF THE SCORPION
CHAPTER I
THE SUBLIME ORDER
Stuart awoke to a discovery so strange that for some time he found himself unable to accept its reality. He passed his hands over his face and eyes and looked about him dazedly. He experienced great pain in his throat, and he could feel that his neck was swollen. He stared down at his ankles, which also were throbbing agonisingly—to learn that they were confined in gyves attached by a short chain to a ring in the floor!