Hansen snored on. I seated myself and began to study the Turkish shoes which clothed my feet. Zuleika had worn Turkish slippers--how she floated through my waking dreams, gilding prosaic things with her witchery! Her face smiled at me from the fog; her eyes shone from the flickering lamps; her phantom footfalls re-echoed through the misty chambers of my skull. They beat an endless tattoo, luring and haunting till it seemed that these echoes found echoes in the hallway outside the room where I stood, soft and stealthy. A sudden rap at the door and I started. Hansen slept on as I crossed the room and flung the door swiftly open. A swirling wisp of fog had invaded the corridor, and through it, like a silver veil, I saw her--Zuleika stood before me with her shimmering hair and her red lips parted and her great dark eyes. Like a speechless fool I stood and she glanced quickly down the hallway and then stepped inside and closed the door. "Gordon!" she whispered in a thrilling undertone. "Your friend! The Scorpion has him!" Hansen had awakened and now sat gaping stupidly at the strange scene which met his eyes. Zuleika did not heed him. "And oh, Steephen!" she cried, and tears shone in her eyes, "I have tried so hard to secure some more elixir but I could not." "Never mind that," I finally found my speech. "Tell me about Gordon." "He went back to Kamonos' alone, and Hassim and Ganra Singh took him captive and brought him to the Master's house. Tonight assemble a great host of the people of the Scorpion for the sacrifice." "Sacrifice!" A grisly thrill of horror coursed down my spine. Was there no limit to the ghastliness of this business? "Quick, Zuleika, where is this house of the Master's?" "Soho, 48. You must summon the police and send many men to surround it, but you must not go yourself----" Hansen sprang up quivering for action, but I turned to him. My brain was clear now, or seemed to be, and racing unnaturally. "Wait!" I turned back to Zuleika. "When is this sacrifice to take place?" "At the rising of the moon." "That is only a few hours before dawn. Time to save him, but if we raid the house they'll kill him before we can reach them. And God only knows how many diabolical things guard all approaches." "I do not know," Zuleika whimpered. "I must go now, or the Master will kill me." Something gave way in my brain at that; something like a flood of wild and terrible exultation swept over me. "The Master will kill no one!" I shouted, flinging my arms on high. "Before ever the east turns red for dawn, the Master dies! By all things holy and unholy I swear it!"