Click "free sample" to read the whole book no need to purchase.Dr. Petrie is surprised by a late-night visitor, "a tall, lean ... square cut ... sun-baked" man who turns out to be his good friend (ex-Assistant Commissioner Sir Denis) Nayland Smith of Burma, formerly of Scotland Yard, who has come directly from Burma. We then learn that various men associated with India are the target of an assassination by the Chinese master criminal Dr. Fu Manchu, who seems to have been active in Burma (as distinct from India), in places such as Rangoon, Prome, Moulmein, and the "Upper Irrawaddy" and who comes to England with dacoits and thugs. Fu Manchu is pursued from the opium dens of Limehouse in the East End of London to various country estates. We learn that Dr. Fu Manchu is a leading member not of "old China", the Mandarin class of the Manchu dynasty, or "young China", a new generation of "youthful and unbalanced reformers" with "western polish" – but a "Third Party". Nayland Smith is outwitted several times by Fu Manchu and thus he reflects more the narrow escapes of the later Bulldog Drummond rather than the "logical" superior approach of the earlier Sherlock Holmes.