assailant should keep her word. So he lay
still.

"Why do you want to kill me?" he asked, a little tensely.

There was no reply, yet somehow he knew that he was being watched. Ever
so slightly those curtains around which the arm had come, were being
parted. Through the chink some one was looking at him. The thought came
that he might call out for help, and once more his unseen enemy read his
thought.

"You must be very quiet," the voice said,--that voice which it was
difficult for him to believe was not the voice of a child. "If you even
speak above a whisper, it will be the end. I wish to look at you."

A little wider the crack opened, and then he began to feel hope. The
hand which held the stiletto was shaking, he heard something which
sounded like quick breathing from behind the curtains--the breathing of
a woman astonished or terrified--and then, so suddenly that for several
seconds he could not move or take advantage of the circumstance, the
hand with its cruel weapon was withdrawn around the curtain and a woman
began to laugh, softly at first, and then with a little hysterical sob
thrusting its way through that incongruous note of mirth.

He lay upon the bed as though mesmerised, finding at his first effort
that his limbs refused their office, as might the limbs of one lying
under the thrall of a nightmare. The laugh died away, there was a sound
like a scraping upon the wall, the candle was suddenly blown out. Then
his nerve began to return and with it his control over his limbs. He
crawled to the side of the bed remote from the curtains, stole to the
little table on which he had left his revolver and an electric torch,
snatched at them, and, with the former in his right hand, flashed a
little orb of light into the shadows of the great apartment. Once more
something like terror seized him. The figure which had been standing
by the side of his bed had vanished. There was no hiding place in view.
Every inch of the room was lit up by the powerful torch he carried, and,
save for himself, the room was empty. The first moment of realisation
was chill and unnerving. Then the slight smarting of the wound at
his throat became convincing proof to him that there was nothing
supernatural about this visit. He lit up half-a-dozen of the candles
distributed about the place and laid down his torch. He was ashamed to
find that his forehead was dripping with perspiration.

"One of the secret passages, of course," he muttered