but his lids drooped with sheer weariness. Perhaps an hour passed in this way, when suddenly his blood congealed with dread.

He felt the presence of the hand of Reginald Clarke — unmistakably — groping in his brain as if searching for something that had still escaped him.

He tried to move, to cry out, but his limbs were paralysed. When, by a superhuman effort, he at last succeeded in shaking off the numbness that held him enchained, he awoke just in time to see a figure, that of a man, disappearing in the wall that separated Reginald’s apartments from his room� .

This time it was no delusion of the senses. He heard something like a secret door softly closing behind retreating steps. A sudden fierce anger seized him. He was oblivious of