ear a low guttural
gurgling sort of noise rising from the thick throat, issuing from the
monstrous mouth. Zoraida did not appear to hear but sat rigid,
waiting. At last, when all but one opaque shaded lamp were
extinguished and the room was cast into shadowy gloom, Kendric,
impelled by environment, a curious dread and perhaps the will of
Zoraida, sat down on the stool.

"Clap-trap, you say!" scoffed Zoraida. "Watch the first mirror!"

At first the mirror reflected nothing save the shadowy room and a
vague, half-seen line of other mirrors. But while Kendric watched
there came a swift change. Somewhere a lamp had been lighted--several
lamps, for there was a brilliant light. He saw reflected what appeared
to be a small room with a door in one wall. He saw the door open and a
man come in; it was either the man who just now had obeyed Zoraida's
commands or his twin-fellow. The man began hooking together what
appeared to be several frames of steel bars. Working swiftly he shaped
them into a steel cage hardly larger than to accommodate a man
standing. Kendric's heart leaped and then stood still. He remembered
words which Juanita, terrified by idle threat from him, had spoken.

He sat like a man in a trance. The dim mirrors seemed unreal. What he
saw elsewhere--was it a reflected reality or was his mind under the
spell of Zoraida's? Was she through hypnosis projecting a lying image
into his groping consciousness? Absolutely, he did not know. He drew
his eyes away from the vision of that room and turned them
questioningly upon Zoraida. Stern she was and rigid and white, a dim
figure in that dim light save alone for her eyes; they burned
ominously, glowing like a cat's.

A quick shifting of the image in the glass jerked back his straying
attention. The man had completed his brief labors with the steel
frames which now made a strong cage; he shook the bars with his hand as
though trying them, and they were firm in their places. He opened a
section which turned on hinges so that a narrow door swung back. Then
he drew away and across the room. And now the remarkable thing was
that though he moved several paces, still he remained in full view at
the center of the mirror.

Plainly in a complicated series of reflectors there were mirrors which
were being turned as the man moved, cunningly and skilfully adjusted to
his slow progress; otherwise would he have passed out of the scope of
Kendric's vision. As it w