Nayland Smith leant against the edge of the dressing-table, attired in pyjamas. The little stateroom was hazy with smoke, and my friend gripped the charred briar between his teeth and watched the blue-grey clouds arising from the bowl, in an abstracted way. I knew that he was thinking hard, and from the fact that he had exhibited no surprise when I had related to him the particulars of the attack upon Kâramanèh, I judged that he had half anticipated something of the kind. Suddenly he stood up, staring at me fixedly.
 
"Your tact has saved the situation, Petrie," he snapped. "It failed you momentarily, though, when you proposed to me just now that we should muster
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the lascars for inspection. Our game is to pretend that we know nothing—that we believe Kâramanèh to have had a bad dream."
 
"But, Smith—" I began.
 
"It would be useless, Petrie," he interrupted me. "You cannot suppose that I overlooked the possibility of some creature of the Doctor's being among the lascars. I can assure you that not one of them answers to the description of the midnight assailant. From the girl's account we have to look (discarding the idea of a revivified mummy) for a man of unusual height—and there's no lascar of unusual height on board; and from the visible evidence, that he entered the stateroom through the port-hole, we have to look for a man more than normally thin. In a word, the servant of Dr. Fu-Manchu who attempted the life of Kâramanèh is either in hiding in the ship, or if visible, is disguised."
 
With his usual clarity, Nayland Smith had visualized the facts of the case; I passed in mental survey each one of the passengers, and those of the crew whose appearances were familiar to me, with the result that I had to admit the justice of my friend's conclusions. Smith began to pace the narrow strip of carpet between the dressing-table and the door. Suddenly he began again.
 
"From our knowledge of Fu-Manchu—and of the group surrounding him (and, don't forget, surviving him)—we may further assume that the wireless message was no gratuitous piece of melodrama, but that it was directed to a definite end. Let us endeavour to link up the chain a little. You occupy an upper-berth; so do I. Experience of the Chinaman has formed a habit in both of us: that of sleeping with closed windows. Your port was fastened and so was my own. Kâramanèh is quartered on the main deck, and her brother's stateroom opens into the same alleyway. Since the ship is in the Straits of Messina, and the glass set fair, the stewards have
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not closed the port-holes nightly at present. We know that that of Kâramanèh's stateroom was open. Therefore, in any attempt upon our quarter, Kâramanèh would automatically be selected for the victim, since failing you or myself she may be regarded as being the most obnoxious to Dr. Fu-Manchu."
 
I nodded comprehendingly. Smith's capacity for throwing the white light of reason into the darkest places often amazed me.
 
"You may have noticed," he continued, "that Kâramanèh's room is directly below your own. In the event of any outcry, you would be sooner upon the scene than I should, for instance, because I sleep on the opposite side of the ship. This circumstance I take to be the explanation of the wireless message, which, because of its hesitancy (a piece of ingenuity very characteristic of the group), led to your being awakened and invited up to the Marconi deck; in short, it gave the would-be assassin a better chance of escaping before your arrival."
 
I watched my friend in growing wonder. The strange events, seemingly having no link, took their place in the drama, and became well-ordered episodes in a plot that only a criminal genius could have devised. As I studied the keen, bronzed face, I realized to the full the stupendous mental power of Dr. Fu-Manchu, measuring it by the criterion of Nayland Smith's. For the cunning Chinaman, in a sense, had foiled this brilliant man before me, whereby if by naught else I might know him a master of his evil art.
 
"I regard the episode," continued Smith, "as a posthumous attempt of the Doctor's; a legacy of hate which may prove more disastrous than any attempt made upon us by Fu-Manchu in life. Some fiendish member of the murder group is on board the ship. We must, as always, meet guile with guile. There must be no appeal to the Captain, no
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public examination of passengers and crew. One attempt has failed; I do not doubt that others will be made. At present, you will enact the rôle of physician-in-attendance upon Kâramanèh, and will put it about for whom it may interest that a slight return of her nervous trouble is causing her to pass uneasy nights. I can safely leave this part of the case to you, I think?"
 
I nodded rapidly.
 
"I haven't troubled to make inquiries," added Smith, "but I think it probable that the regulation respecting closed ports will come into operation immediately we have passed the Straits, or at any rate immediately there is any likelihood of bad weather."
 
"You mean—"
 
"I mean that no alteration should be made in our habits. A second attempt along similar lines is to be apprehended—to-night. After that we may begin to look out for a new danger."
 
"I pray we may avoid it," I said fervently.
 
As I entered the saloon for breakfast in the morning, I was subjected to solicitous inquiries from Mrs. Prior, the gossip of the ship. Her room adjoined Kâramanèh's, and she had been one of the passengers aroused by the girl's cries in the night. Strictly adhering to my rôle, I explained that my patient was threatened with a second nervous breakdown, and was subject to vivid and disturbing dreams. One or two other inquiries I met in the same way, ere escaping to the corner table reserved to us.
 
That iron-bound code of conduct which rules the Anglo-Indian, in the first days of the voyage had threatened to ostracise Kâramanèh and Azî............