of the public--typical in every respect, save for the
fur-clad figure outstretched upon the settee.

And now the peeping light indiscreetly penetrated to the hem of a silken
garment revealed by some disarrangement of the civet fur. To the eye
of an experienced observer, had such an observer been present in Henry
Leroux's study, this billow of silk and lace behind the sheltering fur
must have proclaimed itself the edge of a night-robe, just as the ankle
beneath had proclaimed itself to Henry Leroux's shocked susceptibilities
to be innocent of stocking.

Thirty seconds were wanted to complete the cycle of the day, when one of
the listless hands thrown across the back of the chesterfield opened and
closed spasmodically. The fur at the bosom of the midnight visitor began
rapidly to rise and fall.

Then, with a choking cry, the woman struggled upright; her hair, hastily
dressed, burst free of its bindings and poured in gleaming cascade down
about her shoulders.

Clutching with one hand at her cloak in order to keep it wrapped about
her, and holding the other blindly before her, she rose, and with that
same odd, groping movement, began to approach the writing-table. The
pupils of her eyes were mere pin-points now; she shuddered convulsively,
and her skin was dewed with perspiration. Her breath came in agonized
gasps.

"God!--I... am dying... and I cannot--tell him!" she breathed.

Feverishly, weakly, she took up a pen, and upon a quarto page, already
half filled with Leroux's small, neat, illegible writing, began to
scrawl a message, bending down, one hand upon the table, and with her
whole body shaking.

Some three or four wavering lines she had written, when intimately,
for the flat of Henry Leroux in Palace Mansions lay within sight of the
clock-face--Big Ben began to chime midnight.

The writer started back and dropped a great blot of ink upon the paper;
then, realizing the cause of the disturbance, forced herself to continue
her task.

The chime being completed: ONE! boomed the clock; TWO!... THREE! ...
FOUR!...

The light in the entrance-hall went out!

FIVE! boomed Big Ben;--SIX!... SEVEN!...

A hand, of old ivory hue, a long, yellow, clawish hand, with part of a
sinewy forearm, crept in from the black lobby through the study doorway
and touched the electric switch!

EIGHT!...

The study was plunged in darkness!

Uttering a sob--a cry of agony and horror that came from her very
soul--the woman sto