turned the key in the lock. My next thought was for my
companion--the Miss Greenlow of American days. She was sleeping next
door to me, with an intervening door between us.

I hammered loudly upon this, and finally opened it. I knew she always
locked her outer door, but feared she might go into the passage, not
realising the danger in the moment of waking, and might fall into the
murderer's hands. So I called out: "Wake up--wake up, Miss
Greenlow!--_but don't open your door_. Someone is being murdered out
there."

I had heard every other door in the passage opening, and the scared
inmates rushing to and fro, so there was no question of feeling bound to
give the alarm.

Miss Greenlow, being an extremely lymphatic person, was still sleeping
the sleep of the just. I gave her a good shake at last, finding knocks
and calls of no avail; but she only turned over sleepily, murmuring:
"Oh, it's all right! I don't suppose there is anything much the
matter--do go to bed again!"

So I returned to my own room, and as the horrible screams had now
ceased, I opened my door very gently, and looked down the dimly lighted
passage. My room was a corner one, exactly at the head of the wide
staircase; to the left-hand side, for anyone mounting the stairs.
Exactly opposite my door, with a wide passage between, was the room
which had been pointed out to me as belonging to the famous French
_modiste_.

Miss Greenlow was evidently the only person in the hotel who had slept
through the horrors of that night, for small groups were gathered
together at various points along the corridor, and at every door some
scared man or woman was looking out, anxious, like myself, to solve the
dreadful mystery.

At that moment my eyes lighted on my special German waiter talking in a
hushed whisper to a musjig--in the usual red coat. So I beckoned to him,
and very reluctantly he came to my door.

Being asked in German what was the meaning of the shrieks we had heard,
he said at once that a lady had been taken ill suddenly.

The man was a bad liar, and a child would have seen that he was
repeating a made-up story. But nothing more could be got out of him, so
I dismissed him impatiently, saying: "What is the good of telling me
such nonsense? I shall find out for myself to-morrow."

Once more I shut and locked the door, and lay for an hour or two
thinking over the ghastly disturbance, and wondering who could have been
the hapless victim. It was now about