Hassim sprang at me, but I hurled him backward and with one stride reached the screen and flung it aside with an incredible effort of strength. Then I shrank back, hands outflung, shrieking. A tall, gaunt figure stood before me, a figure arrayed grotesquely in a silk brocaded gown which fell to the floor. From the sleeves of this gown protruded hands which filled me with crawling horror--long, predatory hands, with thin bony fingers and curved talons--withered skin of a parchment brownish-yellow, like the hands of a man long dead. The hands--but, oh God, the face! A skull to which no vestige of flesh seemed to remain but on which taut brownish-yellow skin grew fast, etching out every detail of that terrible death's-head. The forehead was high and in a way magnificent, but the head was curiously narrow through the temples, and from under penthouse brows great eyes glimmered like pools of yellow fire. The nose was high-bridged and very thin; the mouth was a mere colorless gash between thin, cruel lips. A long, bony neck supported this frightful vision and completed the effect of a reptilian demon from some mediæval hell. I was face to face with the skull-faced man of my dreams! _8. Black Wisdom_ "By thought a crawling ruin, By life a leaping mire, By a broken heart in the breast of the world And the end of the world's desire." --Chesterton. The terrible spectacle drove for the instant all thoughts of rebellion from my mind. My very blood froze in my veins and I stood motionless. I heard Hassim laugh grimly behind me. The eyes in the cadaverous face blazed fiendishly at me and I blanched from the concentrated Satanic fury in them. Then the horror laughed sibilantly. "I do you a great honor, Mr. Costigan; among a very few, even of my own servants, you may say that you saw my face and lived. I think you will be more useful to me living than dead." I was silent, completely unnerved. It was difficult to believe that this man lived, for his appearance certainly belied the thought. He seemed horribly like a mummy. Yet his lips moved when he spoke and his eyes flamed with hideous life. "You will do as I say," he said abruptly, and his voice had taken on a note of command. "You doubtless know, or know of, Sir Haldred Frenton?" "Yes." Every man of culture in Europe and America was familiar with the travel books of Sir Haldred Frenton, author and soldier of fortune. "You will go to Sir Haldred's estate tonight----" "Yes?" "_And kill him!_" I staggered, literally. This order was incredible--unspeakable! I had sunk low, low enough to smuggle opium, but to deliberately murder a man I had never seen, a man noted for his kindly deeds! That was too monstrous even to contemplate. "You do not refuse?" The tone was as loathly and as mocking as the hiss of a serpent. "Refuse?" I screamed, finding my voice at last. "Refuse? You incarnate devil! Of course I refuse! You----"