" He sprang suddenly back
from Aziz, and I saw his glance travelling rapidly over the slight
figure as if in quest of concealed arms. "I take it to be a trap!"
A moment he stood so, regarding him, and despite my well-grounded
distrust of the Oriental character, I could have sworn that the
expression of pained surprise upon the youth's face was not simulated
but real. Even Smith, I think, began to share my view; for suddenly he
threw himself into the white cane rest-chair, and, still fixedly
regarding Aziz:
"Perhaps I have wronged you," he said. "If I have, you shall know the
reason presently. Tell your own story!"
There was a pathetic humidity in the velvet eyes of Aziz--eyes so like
those others that were ever looking into mine in dreams--as glancing
from Smith to me he began, hands outstretched, characteristically,
palms upward and fingers curling, to tell in broken English the story
of his search for Karamaneh....
"It was Fu-Manchu, my kind gentlemen--it was the _hakim_ who is really
not a man at all, but an _efreet_. He found us again less than four
days after you had left us, Smith Pasha!... He found us in Cairo, and
to Karamaneh he made the forgetting of all things--even of me--even of
me...."
Nayland Smith snapped his teeth together sharply; then:
"What do you mean by that?" he demanded.
For my own part I understood well enough, remembering how the
brilliant Chinese doctor once had performed such an operation as this
upon poor Inspector Weymouth; how, by means of an injection of some
serum, prepared (as Karamaneh afterwards told us) from the venom of a
swamp adder or similar reptile, he had induced _amnesia_, or complete
loss of memory.
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