The blood seemed to be forcing itself into my eyes--I
choked--I felt that my end was come. And, raising my hands to my
throat, I found it to be swollen and inflamed. Then the floor upon
which I lay seemed to be rocking like the deck of a ship, and I glided
back again into a place of darkness and forgetfulness.
My second awakening was heralded by a returning sense of smell; for I
became conscious of a faint, exquisite perfume.
It brought me to my senses as nothing else could have done, and I sat
upright with a hoarse cry. I could have distinguished that perfume
amid a thousand others, could have marked it apart from the rest in a
scent bazaar. For me it had one meaning, and one meaning
only--Karamaneh.
She was near to me, or had been near to me!
And in the first moments of my awakening I groped about in the
darkness blindly seeking her. Then my swollen throat and throbbing
head, together with my utter inability to move my neck even slightly,
reminded me of the facts as they were. I knew in that bitter moment
that Karamaneh was no longer my friend; but, for all her beauty and
charm, was the most heartless, the most fiendish creature in the
service of Dr. Fu-Manchu. I groaned aloud in my despair and misery.
Something stirred near to me in the room, and set my nerves creeping
with a new apprehension. I became fully alive to the possibilities of
the darkness.
To my certain knowledge, Dr.
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