"I remember him perfectly." "He has come, I think, to seek our assistance." "Yes, yes!" cried Aziz, laying his hand upon my arm with a gesture painfully reminiscent of Karamaneh--"I came only to-night to London. Oh, my gentlemen! I have searched, and searched, and searched, until I am weary. Often I have wished to die. And then at last I come to Rangoon...." "To Rangoon!" snapped Smith, still with the grey eyes fixed almost fiercely upon the lad's face. "To Rangoon--yes; and there I hear news at last. I hear that you have seen her--have seen Karamaneh--that you are back in London." He was not entirely at home with his English. "I know then that she must be here, too. I ask them everywhere, and they answer 'yes.' Oh, Smith Pasha!"--he stepped forward and impulsively seized both Smith's hands--"You know where she is--take me to her!" Smith's face was a study in perplexity now. In the past we had befriended the young Aziz, and it was hard to look upon him in the light of an enemy. Yet had we not equally befriended his sister?--and she.... At last Smith glanced across at me where I stood just within the doorway. "What do you make of it, Petrie?" he said harshly. "Personally I take it to mean that our plans have leaked out." He sprang suddenly back from Aziz, and I saw his glance travelling rapidly over the slight figure as if in quest of concealed arms. "I take it to be a trap!" A moment he stood so, regarding him, and despite my well-grounded distrust of the Oriental character, I could have sworn that the expression of pained surprise upon the youth's face was not simulated but real. Even Smith, I think, began to share my view; for suddenly he threw himself into the white cane rest-chair, and, still fixedly regarding Aziz: "Perhaps I have wronged you," he said. "If I have, you shall know the reason presently. Tell your own story!" There was a pathetic humidity in the velvet eyes of Aziz--eyes so like those others that were ever looking into mine in dreams--as glancing from Smith to me he began, hands outstretched, characteristically, palms upward and fingers curling, to tell in broken English the story of his search for Karamaneh.... "It was Fu-Manchu, my kind gentlemen--it was the _hakim_ who is really not a man at all, but an _efreet_. He found us again less than four days after you had left us, Smith Pasha!... He found us in Cairo, and to Karamaneh he made the forgetting of all things--even of me--even of me...." Nayland Smith snapped his teeth together sharply; then: "What do you mean by that?" he demanded. For my own part I understood well enough, remembering how the brilliant Chinese doctor once had performed such an operation as this upon poor Inspector Weymouth; how, by means of an injection of some serum, prepared (as Karamaneh afterwards told us) from the venom of a swamp adder or similar reptile, he had induced _amnesia_, or complete loss of memory. I felt every drop of blood recede from my cheeks. "Smith!" I began....