"By the way," I said, "have you Oriental guests with you, at the moment?"
"No, monsieur," he assured me.
"Not a certain Oriental lady?" I persisted.
M. Samarkan slowly shook his head.
"Possibly monsieur has seen one of the ayahs? There are several
Anglo-Indian families resident in the New Louvre at present."
An ayah? It was just possible, of course. Yet …
CHAPTER IV
THE FLOWER OF SILENCE
"We are dealing now," said Nayland Smith, pacing restlessly up and down our sitting-room, "not, as of old, with Dr. Fu-Manchu, but with an entirely unknown quantity—the Si-Fan."
"For Heaven's sake!" I cried, "what is the Si-Fan?"