A voice that I could never forget, strive how I would, a voice that haunted my dreams by night, and for which by day I was ever listening, cried out from some adjoining room.

“Ta’ala hina!” it called.  “Ta’ala hina, Peko!”

It was Karamaneh!

The effect upon the marmoset was instantaneous.  Down came the bunch of keys upon one side of the shade, almost falling on my head, and down leaped the ape upon the other.  In two leaps it had traversed the room and had vanished through the curtained doorway.

If ever I had need of coolness it was now; the slightest mistake would be fatal.  The keys had slipped from the mattress of the divan, and now lay just beyond reach of my fingers.  Rapidly I changed my position, and sought, without undue noise, to move the keys with my foot.

I had actually succeeded in sliding them back on to the mattress, when, unheralded by any audible footstep, Karamaneh came through the doorway, holding the marmoset in her arms.  She wore a dress of fragile muslin material, and out from its folds protruded one silk-stockinged foot, resting in a high-heeled red shoe. . . .

For a moment she stood watching me, with a sort of enforced composure; then her glance strayed to the keys lying upon the floor.  Slowly, and with her eyes fixed again upon my face, she crossed the room, stooped, and took up the key-ring.

It was one of the poignant moments of my life; for by that simple act all my hopes had been shattered!

Any poor lingering doubt that I may have had, left me now.  Had the slightest spark of friendship animated the bosom of Karamaneh most certainly she would have overlooked the presence of the keys—­of the keys which represented my one hope of escape from the clutches of the fiendish Chinaman.

There is a silence more eloquent than words.  For half a minute or more, Karamaneh stood watching me—­forcing herself to watch me—­and I looked up at her with a concentrated gaze in which rage and reproach must have been strangely mingled.  What eyes she had!—­of that blackly lustrous sort nearly always associated with unusually dark complexions; but Karamaneh’s complexion was peachlike, or rather of an exquisite and delicate fairness which reminded me of the petal of a rose.  By some I had been accused of raving about this girl’s beauty, but only by those who had not met her; for indeed she was astonishingly lovely.

At last her eyes fell, the long lashes drooped upon her cheeks.  She turned and walked slowly to the chair in which Fu-Manchu had sat.  Placing the keys upon the table amid the scientific litter, she rested one dimpled elbow upon the yellow page of the book, and with her chin in her palm, again directed upon me that enigmatical gaze.

I dared not think of the past, of the past in which this beautiful, treacherous girl had played a part; yet, watching her, I could not believe, even now, that she was false!  My state was truly a pitiable one; I could have cried out in sheer anguish.  With her long lashes partly lowered, she watched me awhile, then spoke; and her voice was music which seemed to mock me; every inflection of that elusive accent reopened, lancet-like, the ancient wound.