A soft rustling reached my ears—­intimately feminine. 
The girl was stealing down!

I leaped out into the hall, and she turned and fled blindly before me—­ back up the stairs!  Taking three steps at a time, I followed her, bounded into the room above almost at her heels, and stood with my back to the door.

She cowered against the desk by the window, a slim figure in a clinging silk gown, which alone explained Mrs. Dolan’s distrust.  The gaslight was turned very low, and her hat shadowed her face, but could not hide its startling beauty, could not mar the brilliancy of the skin, nor dim the wonderful eyes of this modern Delilah.  For it was she!

“So I came in time,” I said grimly, and turned the key in the lock.

“Oh!” she panted at that, and stood facing me, leaning back with her jewel-laden hands clutching the desk edge.

“Give me whatever you have removed from here,” I said sternly, “and then prepare to accompany me.”

She took a step forward, her eyes wide with fear, her lips parted.

“I have taken nothing,” she said.  Her breast was heaving tumultuously.  “Oh, let me go!  Please, let me go!” And impulsively she threw herself forward, pressing clasped hands against my shoulder and looking up into my face with passionate, pleading eyes.

It is with some shame that I confess how her charm enveloped me like a magic cloud.  Unfamiliar with the complex Oriental temperament, I had laughed at Nayland Smith when he had spoken of this girl’s infatuation.  “Love in the East,” he had said, “is like the conjurer’s mango-tree; it is born, grows and flowers at the touch of a hand.”  Now, in those pleading eyes I read confirmation of his words.  Her clothes or her hair exhaled a faint perfume.  Like all Fu-Manchu’s servants, she was perfectly chosen for her peculiar duties.  Her beauty was wholly intoxicating.

But I thrust her away.

“You have no claim to mercy,” I said.  “Do not count upon any.  What have you taken from here?”

She grasped the lapels of my coat.

“I will tell you all I can—­all I dare,” she panted eagerly, fearfully.  “I should know how to deal with your friend, but with you I am lost!  If you could only understand you would not be so cruel.”  Her slight accent added charm to the musical voice.  “I am not free, as your English women are.  What I do I must do, for it is the will of my master, and I am only a slave.  Ah, you are not a man if you can give me to the police.  You have no heart if you can forget that I tried to save you once.”

I had feared that plea, for, in her own Oriental fashion, she certainly had tried to save me from a deadly peril once—­at the expense of my friend.  But I had feared the plea, for I did not know how to meet it.  How could I give her up, perhaps to stand her trial for murder?  And now I fell silent, and she saw why I was silent.