, SOMEONE--one whom he did not
see but only heard, one whom with all his soul he hoped had not seen
HIM--passed rapidly.

Another shriek, more frightful than any which had preceded it, struck
the trembling man as an arrow might have struck him. He dropped upon
his knees at the side of the bed and thrust his fingers firmly into
his ears. He had never swooned in his life, and was unfamiliar with the
symptoms, but now he experienced a sensation of overpowering nausea;
a blood-red mist floated before his eyes, and the floor seemed to rock
beneath him like the deck of a ship....

That soul-appalling outcry died away, merged into a sobbing, moaning
sound which defied Soames' efforts to exclude it.... He rose to his
feet, feeling physically ill, and turned to close his door....

They were dragging someone--someone who sighed, shudderingly, and whose
sighs sank to moans, and sometimes rose to sobs,--across the apartment
of the dragon. In a faint, dying voice, the woman spoke again:--

"Not Mr. King!... NOT MR. KING!... Is there no God in Heaven!... AH!
spare me... spare"...

Soames closed the door and stood propped up against it, striving to
fight down the deathly sickness which assailed him. His clothes were
sticking to his clammy body, and a cold perspiration was trickling down
his forehead and into his eyes. The sensation at his heart was unlike
anything that he had ever known; he thought that he must be dying.

The awful sounds died away... then a muffled disturbance drew his
attention to a sort of square trap which existed high up on one wall
of the room, but which admitted no light, and which hitherto had
never admitted any sound. Now, in the utter darkness, he found himself
listening--listening...

He had learnt, during his duties in Block A, that each of the minute
suites was rendered sound-proof in some way, so that what took place in
one would be inaudible to the occupant of the next, provided that both
doors were closed. He perceived, now, that some precaution hitherto
exercised continuously had been omitted to-night, and that the sounds
which he could hear came from the room next to his own--the room which
opened upon the corridor that he had never entered, and which now he
classified, mentally, as Block B.

What did it mean?

Obviously there had been some mishap in the usually smooth conduct
of Ho-Pin's catacombs. There had been a hurried outgoing in several
directions... a search?

And by the accident