“Couldn’t be done, Petrie,” he said, huskily.

His words referred to the state of the windows.  Although the night was oppressively hot, these were only opened some four inches at top and bottom.  Further opening was impossible because of iron brackets screwed firmly into the casements which prevented the windows being raised or lowered further.

It was a precaution adopted after long experience of the servants of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

Now, as I stood looking from the half-strangled man upon the bed to those screwed-up windows, the fact came home to my mind that this precaution had proved futile.  I thought of the thing which I had likened to a feather boa; and I looked at the swollen weals made by clutching fingers upon the throat of Nayland Smith.

The bed stood fully four feet from the nearest window.

I suppose the question was written in my face; for, as I turned again to Smith, who, having struggled upright, was still fingering his injured throat ruefully: 

“God only knows, Petrie!” he said; “no human arm could have reached me . . .”

For us, the night was ended so far as sleep was concerned.  Arrayed in his dressing-gown, Smith sat in the white cane chair in my study with a glass of brandy-and-water beside him, and (despite my official prohibition) with the cracked briar which had sent up its incense in many strange and dark places of the East and which yet survived to perfume these prosy rooms in suburban London, steaming between his teeth.  I stood with my elbow resting upon the mantelpiece looking down at him where he sat.

“By God!  Petrie,” he said, yet again, with his fingers straying gently over the surface of his throat, “that was a narrow shave—­a damned narrow shave!”

“Narrower than perhaps you appreciate, old man,” I replied.  “You were a most unusual shade of blue when I found you . . .”

“I managed,” said Smith evenly, “to tear those clutching fingers away for a moment and to give a cry for help.  It was only for a moment, though.  Petrie! they were fingers of steel—­of steel!”

“The bed,” I began . . .

“I know that,” rapped Smith.  “I shouldn’t have been sleeping in it, had it been within reach of the window; but, knowing that the doctor avoids noisy methods, I had thought myself fairly safe so long as I made it impossible for any one actually to enter the room . . .”

“I have always insisted, Smith,” I cried, “that there was danger!  What of poisoned darts?  What of the damnable reptiles and insects which form part of the armory of Fu-Manchu?”

“Familiarity breeds contempt, I suppose,” he replied.  “But as it happened none of those agents was employed.  The very menace that I sought to avoid reached me somehow.  It would almost seem that Dr. Fu-Manchu deliberately accepted the challenge of those screwed-up windows!  Hang it all, Petrie! one cannot sleep in a room hermetically sealed, in weather like this!  It’s positively Burmese; and although I can stand tropical heat, curiously enough the heat of London gets me down almost immediately.”