main room into the corridor, he took the key from the lock of that,
too, replacing it upon the outer side, and leaving the door itself
slightly ajar.

"Now then for you, Mr. 'The Red Crawl,'" he said, as he walked to the
baron's table, and, sinking down into a deep chair beside it, leaned
back with his eyes closed as if in sleep, the faint light of the moon
half-revealing his face. "I want that password, and I'll get it, if I
have to choke it out of your devil's throat! And she said that she would
be grateful to me all the rest of her life! Only 'grateful,' I wonder?
Is nothing else possible? What a good, good thing a real woman is!"

* * * * *

How long was it that he had been reclining there waiting before his
strained ears caught the sound of something like the rustling of silk
shivering through the stillness, and he knew that at last it was coming?
It might have been ten minutes, it might have been twenty--he had no
means of determining--when he caught that first movement, and, peering
through the slit of a partly opened eye, saw the appalling thing drag
its huge bulk along the balcony and, with tentacles writhing, slide over
the low sill of the window, and settle down in a glowing red heap upon
the floor. Fake though he knew it to be, Cleek could not repress a swift
rush and prickle of "goose-flesh" at sight of it.

For a few seconds it lay dormant; then one red feeler shot out, then
another, and another, and it began to edge its way across the carpet to
the chair. Cleek lay still and waited, his heavy breathing sounding
regularly, his head thrown back, his limp hands lying loosely, palms
upward. Nearer and nearer crept the loathsome, red, glowing thing.

It crawled to his feet, and still he was quiet; it slid first one
tentacle and then another over his knees and up toward his breast, and
still he made no movement; then, as it rose until its hideous beaked
countenance was close to his own, his hands flashed upward and clamped
together like a vise--clamped on a palpitating human throat. In the
twinkling of an eye the tentacles were wrapped about him, and he and
"The Red Crawl" were rolling over and over on the floor and battling
together.

"Serpice, you low-bred hound, I know you!" he whispered, as they
struggled. "You can't utter a cry. You shan't utter a cry to bring help.
I'll throttle you, you beastly renegade, that's willing to sell his own
country--throttle you, do you he