In looking over my notes dealing with the second phase of Dr. Fu-Manchu's activities in England, I find that one of the worst hours of my life was associated with the singular and seemingly inconsequent adventure of the fiery hand. I shall deal with it in this place, begging you to bear with me if I seem to digress.  
Inspector Weymouth called one morning, shortly after the Van Roon episode, and entered upon a surprising account of a visit to a house at Hampstead which enjoyed the sinister reputation of being uninhabitable.
 
"But in what way does the case enter into your province?" inquired Nayland Smith, idly tapping out his pipe on a bar of the grate.
 
We had not long finished breakfast, but from an early hour Smith had been at his eternal smoking, which only the advent of the meal had interrupted.
 
"Well," replied the Inspector, who occupied a big armchair near the window, "I was sent to look into it, I suppose, because I had nothing better to do at the moment."
 
"Ah!" jerked Smith, glancing over his shoulder.
 
The ejaculation had a veiled significance; for our quest of Dr. Fu-Manchu had come to an abrupt termination by reason of the fact that all trace of that malignant genius, and of the group surrounding him, had vanished with the destruction of Cragmire Tower.
 
"The house is called The Gables," continued the Scotland Yard man, "and I knew I was on a wild-goose chase from the first—"
 
"Why?" snapped Smith.
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"Because I was there before, six months ago or so—just before your present return to England—and I knew what to expect."
 
Smith looked up with some faint dawning of interest perceptible in his manner.
 
"I was unaware," he said with a slight smile, "that the cleaning-up of haunted houses came within the province of New Scotland Yard. I am learning something."
 
"In the ordinary way," replied the big man good-humouredly, "it doesn't. But a sudden death always excites suspicion, and—"
 
"A sudden death?" I said, glancing up; "you didn't explain that the ghost had killed any one!"
 
"I'm afraid I'm a poor hand at yarn-spinning, doctor," said Weymouth, turning his blue, twinkling eyes in my direction. "Two people have died at The Gables within the last six months."
 
"You begin to interest me," declared Smith, and there came something of the old, eager look into his gaunt face, as, having lighted his pipe, he tossed the match-end into the hearth.
 
"I had hoped for some little excitement, myself," confessed the Inspector. "This dead-end, with not a shadow of a clue to the whereabouts of the Yellow fiend, has been getting on my nerves—"
 
Nayland Smith grunted sympathetically.
 
"Although Dr. Fu-Manchu had been in England for some months, now," continued Weymouth, "I have never set eyes upon him; the house we raided in Museum Street proved to be empty; in a word, I am wasting my time. So that I volunteered to run up to Hampstead and look into the matter of The Gables, principally as a distraction. It's a queer business, but more in the Psychical Research Society's line than mine, I'm afraid. Still, if there were no Dr. Fu-Manchu it might be of interest to you—and to you, Dr. Petrie—because it illustrates the fact that, given the right sort of subject, death
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can be brought about without any elaborate mechanism—such as our Chinese friends employ."
 
"You interest me more and more," declared Smith, stretching himself in the long, white cane rest-chair.
 
"Two men, both fairly sound, except that the first one had an asthmatic heart, have died at The Gables without any one laying a little finger upon them. Oh! there was no jugglery! They weren't poisoned, or bitten by venomous insects, or suffocated, or anything like that. They just died of fear—stark fear."
 
With my elbows resting upon the table cover, and my chin in my hands, I was listening attentively, now, and Nayland Smith, a big cushion behind his head, was watching the speaker with a keen and speculative look in those steely eyes of his.
 
"You imply that Dr. Fu-Manchu has something to learn from The Gables?" he jerked.
 
Weymouth nodded stolidly.
 
"I can't work up anything like amazement in these days," continued the latter; "every other case seems stale and hackneyed alongside the case. But I must confess that when The Gables came on the books of the Yard the second time, I began to wonder. I thought there might be some tangible clue, some link connecting the two victims; perhaps some evidence of robbery or of revenge—of some sort of motive. In short, I hoped to find evidence of human agency at work, but, as before, I was disappointed."
 
"It's a legitimate case of a haunted house, then?" said Smith.
 
"Yes; we find them occasionally, these uninhabitable places, where there is something, something malignant and harmful to human life, but something that you cannot arrest, that you cannot hope to bring into court."
 
"Ah," replied Smith slowly; "I suppose you are right. There are historic instances, of course:
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Glamys Castle and Spedlins Tower in Scotland, Peel Castle, Isle of Man, with its Maudhe Dhug, the grey lady of Rainham Hall, the headless horses of Caistor, the Wesley ghost of Epworth Rectory and others. But I have never come in personal contact with such a case, and if I did I should feel very humiliated to have to confess that there was any agency which could produce a physical result—death,—but which was immune from physical retaliation."
 
Weymouth nodded his head again.
 
"I might feel a bit sour about it, too," he replied, "if it were not that I haven't much pride left in these days, considering the show of physical retaliation I have made against Dr. Fu-Manchu."
 
"A home-thrust, Weymouth!" snapped Nayland Smith, with one of those rare boyish laughs of his. "We're children to that Chinese doctor, Inspector, to that weird product of a weird people who are as old in evil as the Pyramids are old in mystery. But about The Gables?"
 
"Well, it's an uncanny place. You mentioned Glamys Castle a moment ago, and it's possible to understand an old stronghold like that being haunted, but The Gables was only built about 1870; it's quite a modern house. It was built for a wealthy Quaker family, and they occupied it, uninterruptedly and apparently without anything unusual occurring for over forty years. Then it was sold to a Mr. Maddison—and Mr. Maddison died there six months ago."
 
"Maddison?" said Smith sharply, staring across at Weymouth. &quo............