's
hands."

"And may God give you that help!" she answered fervently as she moved
towards the dressing-room door. "Ah, what a man! what a man!"

Then, in a twinkling she was gone, and Cleek stood alone in the silent
room. Giving her and the baron time to get clear of the other one, he
went in on tiptoe, locked the door through which they had passed, put
the key in his pocket, and returned. Going to the door which led from
the 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, and 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 squirming tentacles
writhing, slide over the low sill of the window, and settle down in a
glowing red heap upon the floor; and--fake though he knew it to be--he
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, beside him; and 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 higher--rose until its
hideous beaked countenance was close to his own, his hands flash