"Try this way, boys!" cried Kelly, and rushed up the stair. The four men followed him. The lantern was left on the floor. Dunbar stared about him. Sowerby and several other men entered. Suddenly Dunbar saw Gaston Max lying on the floor. "My God!" he cried--"they have killed him!" He ran across, knelt and examined Max, pressing his ear against his breast. Inspector Kelly reaching the top of the stairs and finding the door locked, hurled his great bulk against it and burst it open. "Follow me, boys!" he cried. "Take care! Bring the lantern, somebody." The fourth man grasped the lantern and all followed the Inspector up the stair and out through the doorway. His voice came dimly: "Mind the beam! Pass the light forward...." Sowerby was struggling with the door by which Miguel and Ah-Fang-Fu unseen had made their escape and Dunbar, having rested Max's head upon a pillow, was glaring all about him, his square jaw set grimly and his eyes fierce with anger. 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! He was lying upon a deep _diwan,_ which was covered with leopard-skins and which occupied one corner of the most extraordinary room he had ever seen or ever could have imagined. He sat up, but was immediately overcome with faintness which he conquered with difficulty. The apartment, then, was one of extraordinary Oriental elegance, having two entrances closed with lacquer sliding doors. Chinese lamps swung from the ceiling, illuminated it warmly, and a great number of large and bright silk cushions were strewn about the floor. There were tapestries in black and gold, rich carpets and couches, several handsome cabinets and a number of tall cases of Oriental workmanship containing large and strangely bound books, scientific paraphernalia, curios and ornaments. At the further end of the room was a deep tiled hearth in which stood a kind of chemical furnace which hissed constantly. Upon ornate small tables and pedestals were vases and cases--one of the latter containing a number or orchids, in flower.