He looked into a large and lofty room, lighted by several hanging lamps. It had a carpeted divan at one end and was otherwise scantily furnished, in the Eastern manner. A silver incense-burner smoked upon a large praying-carpet, and by it stood the man in the crocodile mask. An Arab girl, fantastically attired, who had evidently just opened the shutters, was now helping him to remove the hideous head-dress. She presently untied the last of the fastenings and lifted the thing from the man's shoulders, moving away with the gliding step of the Oriental, and leaving him standing there in his short white tunic, bare-legged and sandalled. The smoke of the incense curled upward and played around the straight, slim figure, drew vaporous lines about the still, ivory face--the handsome, sinister face, sometimes partly veiling the long black eyes and sometimes showing them in all their unnatural brightness. So the man stood, looking towards the barred window. It was Antony Ferrara! "Ah, dear Cairn--" the husky musical voice smote upon Cairn's ears as the most hated sound in nature--"you have followed me. Not content with driving me from London, you would also render Cairo--my dear Cairo--untenable for me." Cairn clutched the bars but was silent. "How wrong of you, Cairn!" the soft voice mocked. "This attention is so harmful--to you. Do you know, Cairn, the Sudanese formed the extraordinary opinion that I was an _efreet_, and this strange reputation has followed me right down the Nile. Your father, my dear friend, has studied these odd matters, and he would tell you that there is no power, in Nature, higher than the human will. Actually, Cairn, they have ascribed to me the direction of the _Khamsin_, and so many worthy Egyptians have made up their minds that I travel with the storm--or that the storm follows me--that something of the kind has really come to pass! Or is it merely coincidence, Cairn? Who can say?" Motionless, immobile, save for a slow smile, Antony Ferrara stood, and Cairn kept his eyes upon the evil face, and with trembling hands clutched the bars. "It is certainly odd, is it not," resumed the taunting voice, "that _Khamsin_, so violent, too, should thus descend upon the Cairene season? I only arrived from the Fayum this evening, Cairn, and, do you know, they have the pestilence there! I trust the hot wind does not carry it to Cairo; there are so many distinguished European and American visitors here. It would be a thousand pities!" Cairn released his grip of the bars, raised his clenched fists above his head, and in a voice and with a maniacal fury that were neither his own, cursed the man who stood there mocking him. Then he reeled, fell, and remembered no more. * * * * * "All right, old man--you'll do quite nicely now." It was Sime speaking. Cairn struggled upright ... and found himself in bed! Sime was seated beside him.