Silent, intently still, we stood and listened.  The sound of a guttural voice was clearly distinguishable from somewhere close at hand!

Smith extinguished the lamp.  A faint luminance proclaimed itself directly ahead.  Still grasping my arm, Smith began slowly to advance toward the light.  One—­two—­three—­four—­five paces we crept onward ... and I found myself looking through an archway into a medieval torture-chamber!

Only a part of the place was visible to me, but its character was unmistakable.  Leg-irons, boots and thumb-screws hung in racks upon the fungi-covered wall.  A massive, iron-studded door was open at the further end of the chamber, and on the threshold stood Homopoulo, holding a lantern in his hand.

Even as I saw him, he stepped through, followed by on of those short, thick-set Burmans of whom Dr. Fu-Manchu had a number among his entourage; they were members of the villainous robber bands notorious in India as the dacoits.  Over one broad shoulder, slung sackwise, the dacoit carried a girl clad in scanty white drapery....

Madness seized me, the madness of sorrow and impotent wrath.  For, with Karamaneh being borne off before my eyes, I dared not fire at her abductors lest I should strike her!

Nayland Smith uttered a loud cry, and together we hurled ourselves into the chamber.  Heedless of what, of whom, else it might shelter, we sprang for the group in the distant doorway.  A memory is mine of the dark, white face of Homopoulo, peering, wild-eyed, over the lantern, of the slim, white-clad form of the lovely captive seeming to fade into the obscurity of th passage beyond.

Then, with bleeding knuckles, with wild imprecations bubbling from my lips, I was battering upon the mighty door—­which had been slammed in my face at the very instant that I had gained it.

“Brace up, man!—­Brace up!” cried Smith, and in his strenuous, grimly purposeful fashion, he shouldered me away from the door.  “A battering ram could not force that timber; we must seek another way!”

I staggered, weakly, back into the room.  Hand raised to my head, I looked about me.  A lantern stood in a niche in one wall, weirdly illuminating that place of ghastly memories; there were braziers, branding-irons, with other instruments dear to the Black Ages, about me—­and gagged, chained side by side against the opposite wall, lay Sir Lionel Barton and another man unknown to me!

Already Nayland Smith was bending over the intrepid explorer, whose fierce blue eyes glared out from the sun-tanned face madly, whose gray hair and mustache literally bristled with rage long repressed.  I choked down the emotions that boiled and seethed within me, and sought to release the second captive, a stockily-built, clean-shaven man.  First I removed the length of toweling which was tied firmly over his mouth; and—­

“Thank you, sir,” he said composedly.  “The keys of these irons are on the ledge there beside the lantern.  I broke the first ring I was chained to, but the Yellow devils overhauled me, all manacled as I was, half-way along the passage before I could attract your attention, and fixed me up to another and stronger ring!”