She felt as though she must scream. The mute telephone, the unanswered bell, the sudden appearance of this frightening, apelike creature in the room, above all, his forbidding, ominous silence, produced a culminating effect of terror upon her. And, though she wilted before the fixed stare of those burning eyes beneath the bristling black eyebrows, she could not look away. Suddenly there came an interruption. Two men emerged from the bedroom door and took up their position behind the stranger. One was a narrow-chested youth whose pointed nose and snarling mouth had something of the rodent about them, his sallow cheek slashed by a long white scar. The other was a gross and burly fellow with a bullet neck, close-cropped hair, and small pig eyes. “Niemand da?” asked the clubfooted stranger. “Kein Mensch, Herr Doktor!” replied the youth with the scarred face. The voices broke the spell that had seemed to bind her. Her eager American vitality came to her aid. She began to study with interest this man of whom Francis Okewood had told her. “Strong as an ox, brave as a lion, cunning as a rogue elephant,” he had called him. And cautious as a cat, she told herself as she watched him peering about the room with quick, suspicious glances, his gaze always returning to the door as though he feared interruption. He gave a curt order in German to the men behind him, then removed his black wide-awake hat, displaying a glistening mass of iron-grey stubble. “Miss Maxwell,” he said with a fawning civility that struck chill upon her, “I have come to fetch the ikon!” This time he spoke in English, harshly, with a thick guttural accent. She clasped her hands tightly together. They were as cold as ice. “I—I have not got it,” she faltered. A deep furrow appeared between the cripple’s bushy eyebrows. “I advise you not to play with me,” he said. He took a step forward. The thud of his heavy boot shook the floor. “Where is it?” he cried hoarsely. “I . . . I left it . . . at home!” stammered the girl. His great arm shot out. A huge hairy paw, hot and soft, clamped itself with a vice-like grip about her wrist. Of a sudden his face was distorted with fury, so that his heavy sallow cheeks trembled beneath their thatch of loose black hairs. He might have been a huge man-ape chattering with passion as he shook her in that iron grasp. “You lie! You lie!” he spat at her. “You brought it here to the spy, Okewood. That ikon is here, you understand me? Donnerwetter, are you going to give it up?” With a supreme effort he regained his self-control. But he did not relax his grasp on her hand. “If you refuse, I have the means to make you!” “Herr Doktor,” said a suave voice from the other side of the room, “won’t you let go Miss Maxwell’s wrist? I’m afraid you’re hurting her!”