wits. I could
not credit my eyes. I could not gather my reason. I was breathless,
transfixed!

I looked up at the face of the Sheik and found that, in place of the
malicious wink with which he proclaimed himself a victor in a game of
draughts, his glass eyes, with their whites in sharp contrast to his
swarthy wax skin, were both wide open and set in a glare of such
ferocity and malign hatred that they seemed to flash the fire of life
and lighten the gloom of the corner with rays of evil.

I laughed. I forced myself to laugh, but it was with no mirth, and then,
hesitating for a moment and seized by the temptation to tear the
automaton to shreds, to discover what was within its exterior, I turned,
crunched the paper in my closed fist, and almost ran out through the
lines of wax figures--the Garibaldis, the Jenny Linds, the Louis
Napoleons, and the Von Moltkes--into the sunlight.

No man can blame me for my excitement or even my terror, for the Sheik
had written, "You are in danger! Withdraw before it is too late, and
never see the old man or child of his again!"

Had the time been the Middle Ages, or the place a strange quarter of the
Orient, I might not have been so shocked at the knowledge which a tawdry
machine, or the mountebank behind it, seemed to have of the affairs of
persons against whom no charge of contact with the lower strata of life
could be brought. But in our civilization, where nothing but the
commonplace is to be expected, I was wholly unnerved.

"Come," said I to myself, having walked to the far side of the open
square, "sit on this bench, unfold the paper, and use your intelligence
to overcome the hysteria which last night's experience and this odd
affair of the Sheik have aroused. Be sensible. This message is a matter
to be explained, just as all things are to be explained by any one who
is not the victim of superstitious fear."

This determination immediately cleared my reason. After all, there was
nothing to solve.

"Whoever controls the mechanism has seen me with the Judge," said I,
"and doubtless has heard him mention his daughter, and perhaps has
observed the effect of her name on me. Furthermore, he, or, as the Judge
said, the man or woman behind the Sheik, has even seen me with Julianna
and might well have drawn conclusions. The message was written in ill
temper or as a piece of malicious mischief. And there's an end to it!"

Whereupon I tore the scrap across the middle and, dropping i