"Well?" rapped my companion.

"Mr. Slattin returned ten minutes ago, sir," reported the constable.
"He came in a cab which he dismissed--"

"He has not left again?"

"A few minutes after his return," the man continued, "another cab came
up, and a lady alighted."

"A lady!"

"The same, sir, that has called upon him before."

"Smith!" I whispered, plucking at his arm--"is it--"

He half turned, nodding his head; and my heart began to throb
foolishly. For now the manner of Slattin's campaign suddenly was
revealed to me. In our operations against the Chinese murder-group two
years before, we had had an ally in the enemy's camp--Karamaneh the
beautiful slave, whose presence in those happenings of the past had
colored the sometimes sordid drama with the opulence of old Arabia;
who had seemed a fitting figure for the romances of Bagdad during the
Caliphate--Karamaneh, whom I had thought sincere, whose inscrutable
Eastern soul I had presumed, fatuously, to have laid bare and
analyzed.

Now, once again she was plying her old trade of go-between; professing
to reveal the secrets of Dr. Fu-Manchu, and all the time--I could not
doubt it--inveigling men into the net of this awful fisher.