but more that were personal. He found
himself resenting the intrusion of this wealthy Oriental into the
life of the girl who sat there before him. And because he could read a
kindred resentment in the gloomy eye of Doctor McMurdoch, he was drawn
spiritually closer to that dour character.

By virtue of his training he was a keen psychologist, and he perceived
clearly enough that Phil Abingdon was one of those women in whom a
certain latent perversity is fanned to life by opposition. Whether
she was really attracted by Ormuz Khan or whether she suffered his
attentions merely because she knew them to be distasteful to others, he
could not yet decide.

Anger threatened him--as it had threatened him when he had realized that
Nicol Brinn meant to remain silent. He combated it, for it had no place
in the judicial mind of the investigator. But he recognized its presence
with dismay. Where Phil Abingdon was concerned he could not trust
himself. In her glance, too, and in the manner of her answers to
questions concerning the Oriental, there was a provoking femininity--a
deliberate and baffling intrusion of the eternal Eve.

He stared questioningly across at Doctor McMurdoch and perceived a
sudden look of anxiety in the physician's face. Quick as the thought
which the look inspired, he turned to Phil Abingdon.

She was sitting quite motionless in the big armchair, and her face had
grown very pale. Even as he sprang forward he saw her head droop.

"She has fainted," said Doctor McMurdoch. "I'm not surprised."

"Nor I," replied Harley. "She should not have come."

He opened the door communicating with his private apartments and
ran out. But, quick as he was, Phil Abingdon had recovered before he
returned with the water for which he had gone. Her reassuring smile was
somewhat wan. "How perfectly silly of me!" she said. "I shall begin to
despise myself."

Presently he went down to the street with his visitors.

"There must be so much more you want to know, Mr. Harley," said Phil
Abingdon. "Will you come and see me?"

He promised to do so. His sentiments were so strangely complex that
he experienced a desire for solitude in order that he might strive to
understand them. As he stood at the door watching the car move toward
the Strand he knew that to-day he could not count upon his intuitive
powers to warn him of sudden danger. But he keenly examined the faces of
passers-by and stared at the occupants of those cabs and cars wh