his man, what wrong the latter
had done him. His action was wholly unreasoning; he knew that he
wished to overtake the wearer of the mask and to tear it from his
head; upon that he acted!

He discovered that despite the tropical heat of the night, he was
shuddering with cold, but he disregarded this circumstance, and ran
on.

The pursued stopped before an iron-studded door, which was opened
instantly; he entered as the runner came up with him. And, before the
door could be reclosed, Cairn thrust his way in.

Blackness, utter blackness, was before him. The figure which he had
pursued seemed to have been swallowed up. He stumbled on, gropingly,
hands outstretched, then fell--fell, as he realised in the moment of
falling, down a short flight of stone steps.

Still amid utter blackness, he got upon his feet, shaken but otherwise
unhurt by his fall. He turned about, expecting to see some glimmer of
light from the stairway, but the blackness was unbroken. Silence and
gloom hemmed him in. He stood for a moment, listening intently.

A shaft of light pierced the darkness, as a shutter was thrown open.
Through an iron-barred window the light shone; and with the light came
a breath of stifling perfume. That perfume carried his imagination
back instantly to a room at Oxford, and he advanced and looked through
into the place beyond. He drew a swift breath, clutched the bars, and
was silent--stricken speechless.

He looked into a large and lofty room, lighted by several hanging
lamps. It had a carpeted divan at one end and was otherwise scantily
furnished, in the Eastern manner. A silver incense-burner smoked upon
a large praying-carpet, and by it stood the man in the crocodile mask.
An Arab girl, fantastically attired, who had evidently just opened the
shutters, was now helping him to remove the hideous head-dress.

She presently untied the last of the fastenings and lifted the thing
from the man's shoulders, moving away with the gliding step of the
Oriental, and leaving him standing there in his short white tunic,
bare-legged and sandalled.

The smoke of the incense curled upward and played around the straight,
slim figure, drew vaporous lines about the still, ivory face--the
handsome, sinister face, sometimes partly veiling the long black eyes
and sometimes showing them in all their unnatural brightness. So the
man stood, looking towards the barred window.

It was Antony Ferrara!

"Ah, dear Cairn--" the husky musical