ther who made me draw back. Even in the dim light I
could see that he was white--oh, so white! I thought he had been taken
ill suddenly and was weak. And yet one hand was clutching his big cane
and the muscles and veins stood out on the back as if he were raising
the stick to defend himself."

"He was ill!" I cried.

"Yes, I think that must have been it. He was ill. And since then he has
brooded so--particularly when he does not know I am watching him.
Margaret has noticed it, too. She has spoken to him as I did and he has
laughed her fear away, I suppose."

"Perhaps, after all, it is nothing--just as he says," I suggested,
turning toward her as we walked.

"Perhaps not," she said. "I am sure you are a good and cheerful friend
to say so. Nevertheless, I have been worried and restless and this
afternoon I long for amusement. Can't we do something queer and
extraordinary--go somewhere--do something?"

I thought her requirement a difficult one to fill at five o'clock in the
afternoon, walking through the old, dull, and worn-out part of the city,
where we found we had arrived without purpose in our journey. More than
that, I am naturally of conservative tastes; the bizarre, the bohemian,
and the unconventional forms of amusement have never beckoned to me. I
am not an adventurer by choice.

"We have less than an hour before us," I said to her. "And I am at a
loss to suggest--"

There I hesitated. A thought had come to me. I saw her eyes dance with
expectancy--with that expression of eagerness that lights the faces of
those to whom the world, with all its goodness and badness, beauty and
ugliness, tranquillity and turbulence, is still unexplored.

"The Sheik of Baalbec!" I exclaimed.

"The Sheik of Baalbec!" she repeated. "I have heard so much of him, but
have never seen him. That is just the thing!"

"You shall try your skill with him," I said. "You shall meet him face to
face, look into his evil glassy eyes, watch his brown fingers move on
mechanical levers, see his lungs and heart of geared wheels and little
pulleys and--"

"And what?" she cried.

"Battle with him--wit against wit--skill against skill--and win!"

"You seem to bear the Sheik a grudge," she said, and as we went up the
steps of the old Natural History Building, where romping children of the
tenements scattered banana peels and papers, she repeated the remark.

"I've taken a dislike to the automaton," I said. "It is an uncanny
creature. It gi