At the touch of his fingers on her shoulder, she started and with a quick motion drew away. Her hand emerged from the cushions clutching a long sharp steel skewer used in Syria for grilling meat. It was Antoinette, wide-eyed with terror. She cried out, and stabbed at Farrell with the skewer. The point raked his cheek as he seized her wrist. "'Toinette! Don't you recognize me?" he whispered hoarsely. She regarded him for a moment, puzzled and incredulous. The skewer dropped from her fingers. But before she could cry out in amazement, Farrell continued, "Not a word! If any one passes by, start raising the devil! Don't seem to recognize me ... understand?" She nodded, but he saw that she did not grasp the point that might make the difference between life and death. She was still bewildered. "Oh, Glenn...." She stroked his cheek and regarded him, still incredulously. "Are you--isn't this--my dear, this is that awful garden I dreamed of. Only, now I have my own body, and I don't wake up----" "Pipe down!" he commanded in a low, tense voice. "I'm supposed to be one of these devils! You're not dreaming. Pull yourself together----" He heard footsteps approaching. They were steady, not the jerky lurchings of wine and hasheesh intoxication. Whoever it was, was for Farrell a death sentence if Antoinette in her hysteria spoke one false word. "Scream! Claw me! As you treated the others!" Then he seized her in his arms and murmured drunken endearments in her ear. But Antoinette was too dazed by the meeting to play her part. She clung to Farrell as the one fragment of reality in all that unending nightmare of hasheesh-drugged assassins who courted her favor, and pawed her, and abandoned their advances only at the suggestion of more amiable brides of _al jannat_. Instead of clawing and defying Farrell, she clung to him, sobbing hysterically. * * * * * That deliberate tread of doom, soft slipper shod, drew nearer, paused. Farrell trembled like a trapped animal. He sought with his own feigned drunken, amorous approaches to drown her betraying sobs and murmurs. The swish-slap of slippers ... another halt. Farrell felt the intentness of the gaze at his back. He broke from Antoinette's embrace and turned. Standing just within the entrance of the tiny room was Shirkuh the necromancer. He had seen Farrell at the château, face to face. And he had heard. He knew. "Ah ... La Dorada has lured you to the Garden?" he murmured with deadly emphasis on the dead woman's name. The smile was slow and mocking; the relentless eyes burned with a fanatical hatred. For a moment Farrell was paralyzed with terror, and horror at the doom from which Antoinette had no further chance of escape. Shirkuh relished the encounter, and gloated--but just an instant too long.