He was gazing at the trapdoor--which was slowly rising; inch by inch ... inch by inch ... Fascinatedly, raptly, we all gazed. A head appeared in the opening--and some vague, reflected light revealed two long, narrow, slightly oblique eyes watching us. They were brilliantly green. "By God!" came in a mighty roar from Weymouth. "It's Dr. Fu-Manchu!" As one man we leapt for the trap. It dropped, with a resounding bang-- and I distinctly heard a bolt shot home. A gutteral voice--the unmistakable, unforgettable voice of Fu-Manchu-- sounded dimly from below. I turned and sprang back to the rail of the platform, peering down into the hashish house. The occupants of the divans were making for the curtained doorway. Some, who seemed to be in a state of stupor, were being assisted by the others and by the man, Ismail, who had now appeared upon the scene. Of Kâramaneh, Zarmi, or Fu-Manchu there was no sign. Suddenly, the lights were extinguished. "This is maddening!" cried Nayland Smith--"maddening! No doubt they have some other exit, some hiding-place--and they are slipping through our hands!" Inspector Weymouth blew a shrill blast upon his whistle, and Smith, running to the rail of the platform, began to shatter the panes of the skylight with his foot. "That's hopeless, sir!" cried Weymouth. "You'd be torn to pieces on the jagged glass." Smith desisted, with a savage exclamation, and stood beating his right fist into the palm of his left hand, and glaring madly at the Scotland Yard man. "I know I'm to blame," admitted Weymouth; "but the words were out before I knew I'd spoken. Ah!"--as an answering whistle came from somewhere in the street below. "But will they ever find us?" He blew again shrilly. Several whistles replied ... and a wisp of smoke floated up from the shattered pane of the skylight. "I can smell _petrol_!" muttered Weymouth. An ever-increasing roar, not unlike that of an approaching storm at sea, came from the streets beneath. Whistles skirled, remotely and intimately, and sometimes one voice, sometimes another, would detach itself from this stormy background with weird effect. Somewhere deep in the bowels of the hashish house there went on ceaselessly a splintering and crashing as though a determined assault were being made upon a door. A light shone up through the skylight. Back once more to the rail I sprang, looked down into the room below-- and saw a sight never to be forgotten. Passing from divan to curtained door, from piles of cushions to stacked-up tables, and bearing a flaming torch hastily improvised out of a roll of newspaper, was Dr. Fu-Manchu. Everything inflammable in the place had been soaked with petrol, and, his gaunt, yellow face lighted by the evergrowing conflagration, so that truly it seemed not the face of a man, but that of a demon of the hells, the Chinese doctor ignited point after point.... "Smith!" I screamed, "we are trapped! that fiend means to burn us alive!"