e handle, he
entered, and stood looking about him with some curiosity.

It was a small room, luxuriously but sombrely furnished. Heavy
curtains were drawn more than half-way across the windows, and the
room was so dark that at first he was not sure whether it was indeed
empty. On a small black oak table in the middle of the rich green
carpet, stood a crystal ball. There was nothing else unusual about the
apartment, except the absence of any pictures upon the walls, and a
faint aromatic odor, as though somewhere dried weeds were being
burned.

Some curtains opposite him were suddenly thrust aside. A woman stood
there looking at him. She was of middle height, fair, with a
complexion which even in that indistinct light he could see owed
little of its smoothness to nature. She wore a loose gown which seemed
to hang from her shoulders, of some soft green material, drawn around
her waist with a girdle. Her eyes were deep-set and penetrating.

"You wish to see me?" she asked.

He held out the note.

"If you are Madame Helga," he answered.

She came a little further into the room, looking at him with a slight
frown contracting her pencilled eyebrows. He had no appearance of
being a client.

"You have brought a letter, then?" she asked.

"My name is Bertrand Saton," he explained. "This letter was given to
me in Paris more than a year ago, by an elderly lady. I have carried
it with me all that time. At first it did not seem likely that I
should ever need to use it. Unfortunately," he added, a little
bitterly, "things have changed."

She took the letter, and tore open the envelope. Its contents
consisted only of a few lines, which she read with some appearance of
surprise. Then she turned once more to the young man.

"You are the Mr. Bertrand Saton of whom the writer of this letter
speaks?" she asked.

He nodded.

"I am," he answered.

She looked him over from head to foot. There was scarcely an inch of
his person which did not speak of poverty and starvation.

"You have had trouble," she remarked.

"I have," he admitted.

"The lady who wrote that letter," she said, "is at present in Spain."

He turned to go.

"I am not surprised," he answered. "My star is not exactly in the
ascendant just now."

"Don't be too sure," she said. "And whatever you do, don't go away.
Sit down if you are tired. You don't seem strong."

"I am not," he admitted. "Would you like," he added, "to know what is
the matter with me?