aid on a superb octagon table. 'They were
good tricks, were they not?' said Ombos, with an easy laugh. His keen
eyes smote keen into mine. 'Now you will in truth be able to go away and
tell people how I tricked you, how it was plainly all a cheat.'

"At that moment Margot came in with a big apron tied about her. She
greeted me pleasantly, setting a tray down on the table.

"'We do our own work here, Captain Crabbe,' she said. 'Do you want to
make yourself useful?'

"I rose promptly. My little adventure into the occult world with Ombos
had been rather exhilarating. I was glad when she told me to follow her
out, through a long corridor into the kitchen, where she gave me a
can-opener and a tin of sardines.

"'Open those up and turn them into this little dish, please. And if you
have any hygienic aversion to tinned things, please forget it. Otherwise
you will have to eat some of my hot teacakes.'

"Margot was standing at the table, cleaning a crisp head of celery. The
position showed me her profile, with a little wisp of black hair
escaping near one ear.

"We sat down to one of the most cheerful meals three people have ever
enjoyed. We sat chatting there for nearly an hour. All the while I was
trying to reconcile this man Ombos who sat talking boyishly with the
student of occultism and black magic I had talked with an hour or so
before. If I had felt any resentment of the tricks he had played on me
it would have vanished utterly. Afterwards Margot made real Turkish
coffee over a dainty spirit lamp ... once--in a critical stage in the
coffee-making, too--she looked up and her eyes sought mine; then her red
lips parted in a smile. She poured out the coffee deftly, blowing out
the lamp, and put the little copper pot on a plate.

"Ombos surveyed his coffee with the air of a connoisseur, his head
turned on one side.

"Margot produced the bowls of cigarettes and reached over my shoulder to
offer me one. 'You want Egyptian?' she said smiling. 'You see I have a
good memory--you smoked them last time.'

"A warm faint perfume came from her hair.

"It was ten o'clock when I rose to leave, Ombos and Margot came out to
the front to say good night: my last glimpse, as I walked down the
_pave_ street, was of Margot--a bare-headed figure, with wistful grey
eyes, calm with the mysterious wisdom of pure womanhood. She waved her
dainty lace handkerchief to me.

"That was the last of Ombos in the flesh. The next day, after German