loped, mantled, choked, by the perfume of ROSES!

The door, which, although it had opened easily, had seemed to be a
remarkably heavy one, swung to behind him; he heard the click of the
lock. Like a trapped animal, he turned, leaped back, and found his
quivering hands in contact with books--books--books...

A lamp lighted up in the center of the room.

Soames turned and stood pressed closely against the book-shelves,
against the book-shelves which magically had grown up in front of the
door by which he had entered. He was in the place of books and roses--in
the haunt of MR. KING!

A great clarity of mind came to him, as it comes to a drowning man; he
knew that those endless passages, through which once he had been led
in darkness, did not exist, that he had been deceived, had been guided
along the same corridor again and again; he knew that this room of roses
did not lie at the heart of a labyrinth, but almost adjoined the cave of
the golden dragon.

He knew that he was a poor, blind fool; that his plotting had been
known to those whom he had thought to betray; that the new key which
had opened a way into this place of dread was not the key which his
accomplice had given him. He knew that that upon which he had tripped at
the outset of his journey had been set in his path by cunning design, in
order that the fall might confuse his sense of direction. He knew that
the great vase of poppies had been moved, that night....

God! his brain became a seething furnace.

There, before him, upstood the sandalwood screen, with one corner of the
table projecting beyond it. Nothing of life was visible in the perfumed
place, where deathly silence prevailed....

No lion has greater courage than a cornered rat. Soames plucked the
pistol from his pocket and fired at the screen--ONCE!--TWICE!

He heard the muffled report, saw the flash of the little weapon, saw
the two holes in the carven woodwork, and gained a greater, hysterical
courage--the courage of a coward's desperation.

Immediately before him was a little ebony table, bearing a silver bowl,
laden to the brim with sulphur-colored roses. He overturned the table
with his foot, laughing wildly. In three strides he leapt across the
room, grasped the sandalwood screen, and hurled it to the floor....

In the instant of its fall, he became as Lot's wife. The pistol dropped
from his nerveless grasp, thudding gently on the carpet, and, with his
fingers crooked paralytically, h