him, Dick went down the steps with a fairly firm
tread. But he went down into a world that for him was all darkness--
darkness of chaos--carrying an entity that was not his, but belonged
Heaven knew to whom.

The streets, the traffic, meant nothing to him. Their roar was
within his head; and on his ears, nostrils, chest, lay a pressure as
of mighty waters. Rapidly as he walked, he felt himself all the
while to be lying fathoms deep in those waters, face downwards, with
drooped head, held motionless there while something within him
struggled impotently to rise to the surface. The weight that held
him down, almost to bursting, was as the weight of tons.

The houses, the shop-fronts, the street-lamps, the throng of dark
figures, passed him in unmeaning procession. Yet all the time his
feet, by some instinct, were leading him towards the water; and
by-and-by he found himself staring--still face downwards--into a
black inverted heaven wherein the lights had become stars and swayed
only a little.

He had, in fact, halted, and was leaning over the parapet of the
Embankment, a few yards from Cleopatra's Needle; and as he passed the
plinth some impression of it must have bitten itself on the retina;
for coiled among the stars lay two motionless sphinxes green-eyed,
with sheathed claws, watching lazily while the pressure bore him down
to them, and down--and still down. . . .

Upon this dome of night there broke the echo of a footfall.
A thousand footsteps had passed him, and he had heard none of them.
But this one, springing out of nowhere, sang and repeated itself and
re-echoed across the dome, and from edge to edge. Dick's fingers
drew themselves up like the claws of the sphinx. The footsteps drew
nearer while he crouched: they were close to him. Dick leapt at
them, with murder in his spring.

Where the two men grappled, the parapet of the Embankment opens on a
flight of river-stairs. Mr Markham had uttered no cry; nor did a
sound escape either man as, locked in that wrestle, they swayed over
the brink.

They were hauled up, unconscious, still locked in each other's arms.

'Queer business,' said one of the rescuers as he helped to loosen
their clasp, and lift the bodies on board the Royal Humane Society's
float. Looks like murderous assault. But which of 'em done it by
the looks, now?'

Five minutes later Dick's eyelids fluttered. For a moment he stared
up at the dingy lamp swinging overhead; then his li