ed for a moment to take
breath. The window remained open, as Phil Abingdon had left it. He
stepped into the room with its elegant Persian appointments. It was
empty. But as he crossed the threshold, he paused, arrested by the sound
of a voice.

"A statement will be placed before you," said the voice, "and when you
have signed it, in a few minutes you will be free."

Nicol Brinn silently dropped flat at the back of a divan, as Rama Dass,
coming out of the room which communicated with the golden screen, made
his way toward the distant door. Having one eye raised above the top
of the cushions, Nicol Brinn watched him, recognizing the man who had
accompanied the swooning lady. She had been deposited, then, at no great
distance from the house.

He was to learn later that poor Mrs. McMurdoch, in her artificially
induced swoon, had been left in charge of a hospitable cottager, while
her solicitous Oriental escort had sped away in quest of a physician.
But at the moment matters of even greater urgency engaged his attention.

Creeping forward to the doorway by which Rama Dass had gone out,
Nicol Brinn emerged upon a landing from which stairs both ascended and
descended. Faint sounds of footsteps below guided him, and although from
all outward seeming he appeared to saunter casually down, his left hand
was clutching the butt of a Colt automatic.

He presently found himself in a maze of basements--kitchens of the
establishment, no doubt. The sound of footsteps no longer guided him. He
walked along, and in a smaller deserted pantry discovered the base of a
lift shaft in which some sort of small elevator worked. He was staring
at this reflectively, when, for the second time in his adventurous
career, a silken cord was slipped tightly about his throat!

He was tripped and thrown. He fought furiously, but the fatal knee
pressure came upon his spine so shrewdly as to deprive him of the
strength to raise his hands.

"My finish!" were the words that flashed through his mind, as sounds
like the waves of a great ocean beat upon his ears and darkness began to
descend.

Then, miraculously, the pressure ceased; the sound of great waters
subsided; and choking, coughing, he fought his way back to life, groping
like a blind man and striving to regain his feet.

"Mr. Brinn!" said a vaguely familiar voice. "Mr. Brinn!"

The realities reasserted themselves. Before him, pale, wide-eyed, and
breathing heavily, stood Paul Harley; and prone