The Gas Works. A Scene from The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu

Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie had just escaped from the clutches of Fu-Manchu and are now foating down a river.

"Far over on the Surrey shore a blue light—vaporous, mysterious—flicked translucent tongues against the night's curtain. It was a weird, elusive flame, leaping, wavering, magically changing from blue to a yellowed violet, rising, falling.

"Only a gasworks," came Smith's voice, and I knew that he, too, had been watching those elfin fires. "But it always reminds me of a Mexican teocalli, and the altar of sacrifice."

The simile was apt, but gruesome. I thought of Dr. Fu-Manchu and the severed fingers, and could not repress a shudder."

The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, Sax Rohmer, Chapter 5