There, high above the sleeping ship's company, with the carpet of the
blue Mediterranean stretched indefinitely about us, we three stood
looking at one another. By virtue of a miracle of modern science, some
one, divided from me by mile upon mile of boundless ocean, had spoken
--and had been heard.

"Is there no means of learning," I said, "from whence this message
emanated?"

Platts shook his head, perplexedly.

"They gave no code word," he said. "God knows who they were. It's a
strange business and a strange message. Have you any sort of idea, Dr.
Petrie, respecting the identity of the sender?"

I stared him hard in the face; an idea had mechanically entered my
mind, but one of which I did not choose to speak, since it was opposed
to human possibility.

But, had I not seen with my own eyes the bloody streak across his
forehead as the shot fired by Karamaneh entered his high skull, had I
not known, so certainly as it is given to man to know, that the giant
intellect was no more, the mighty will impotent, I should have
replied:

"The message is from Dr. Fu-Manchu!"

My reflections were rudely terminated and my sinister thoughts given
new stimulus, by a loud though muffled cry which reached me from
somewhere in the ship, below. Both my companions started as violently