For to-night! At last the patient months of waiting were over and it had all narrowed down to this. To-night I should win or lose all that made life worth living; and the fast taxi that took me back to Richmond within twenty minutes of receiving the telegram, carried a man singing. CHAPTER TEN The wind was getting up on Richmond Hill and masses of cloud were scudding from the South and obscuring the light of the moon, when at about half-past nine a small, well-appointed motor coupe drew up in front of the great gate at the tower inclosure. The small closed-in car was painted dead black, the man who drove it was in livery, and a professional-looking person in a fur coat stepped out and pressed the electric button of a small door in the wall by the side of the huge main gates. In his hand he had a little black bag. In a moment the door opened a few inches and a large, saffron-colored, intelligent face could be seen in the aperture. "The doctor!" said the gentleman from the coupe. The door opened at once to admit him. He turned and spoke to the chauffeur. "As I cannot tell you how long I shall be, Williams," he said, "you had better go back to the surgery and wait there. I have no doubt I can telephone when I require you." The man touched his cap and drove off, and the doctor found himself in a vaulted passage, to the right of which was a brightly lit room. Standing in the passage and bowing was a gigantic Chinaman, Kwang-su, the keeper of the gate, in a quilted black robe lined with fur. The man bowed low, and a second Chinaman came out of the room, a thin ascetic-looking person. "Ah, Dr. Thomas!" he said, "we've been expecting you. I am secretary to Mr. Morse. Perhaps you will come this way." He led the doctor down the passage, unlocked a further door and the two men emerged into the grounds, proceeding down a wide, graveled road, bordered by strips of lawn and lit at intervals with electric standards. In the distance there were ranges of lit buildings with figures flitting backwards and forwards before the orange oblongs of doors and windows. In another quarter rose the lighted dome of the great Power House from which the low hum of dynamos and the steady throb of engines could be faintly heard in pauses of the gale. It was exactly like standing at night in the center of some great exhibition grounds, save that straight ahead, overshadowing everything and covering an immense area of ground, were the bases of the three great towers, a nightmare of fantastic steel tracery such as no man's eye had beheld before in the history of the world. "So far, so good," said Pu-Yi with a sigh of relief. "That was excellently managed, the motor-car was quite in keeping. Your wonderful little friend who speaks my language so well is already in the compound with some of the men. He will await here to take any orders that may be necessary." I was trembling with excitement and could hardly reply.