Even as I leaned from the platform, surveying that incredible scene (incredible in a street of Soho), another devotee of hashish entered-- a tall, distinguished-looking man, wearing a light coat over his evening dress. "Gad!" whispered Smith, beside me--"Sir Byngham Pyne of the India Office! You see, Petrie! You see! This place is a lure. My God! ..." He broke off, as I clutched wildly at his arm. The last arrival having taken his seat in a corner of the divan, two heavy curtains draped before an opening at one end of the room parted, and a girl came out, carrying a tray such as already reposed before each of the other men in the room. She wore a dress of dark lilac-colored gauze, banded about with gold tissue and embroidered with gold thread and pearls; and around her shoulders floated, so ethereally that she seemed to move in a violet cloud; a scarf of Delhi muslin. A white yashmak trimmed with gold tissue concealed the lower part of her face. My heart throbbed wildly; I seemed to be choking. By the wonderful hair alone I must have known her, by the great, brilliant eyes, by the shape of those slim white ankles, by every movement of that exquisite form. It was Kâramaneh! I sprang madly back from the rail ... and Smith had my arm in an iron grip. "Where are you going?" he snapped. "Where am I going?" I cried. "Do you think--" "What do you propose to do?" he interrupted harshly. "Do you know so little of the resources of Dr. Fu-Manchu that you would throw yourself blindly into that den? Damn it all, man! I know what you suffer!--but wait--wait. We must not act rashly; our plans must be well considered." He drew me back to my former post and clapped his hand on my shoulder sympathetically. Clutching the rail like a man frenzied, as indeed I was, I looked down into that infamous den again, striving hard for composure. Kâramaneh listlessly placed the tray upon the little table before Sir Byngham Pyne and withdrew without vouchsafing him a single glance in acknowledgment of his unconcealed admiration. A moment later, above the dim clamor of London far below, there crept to my ears a sound which completed the magical quality of the scene, rendering that sky platform on a roof of Soho a magical carpet bearing me to the golden Orient. This sound was the wailing of a reed pipe. "The company is complete," murmured Smith. "I had expected this."