The mysterious chamber had undergone another Protean change. To speak more by the book, there was no longer any chamber. The door framed nothing but blackest darkness. Neither ceiling, nor walls, nor floor could be distinguished. By this time the Bohemian had struggled to his feet, and now hobbled in the direction of the door. "Back, back," cried the bandit, "this is no place for you, nor for any christened man. The foundations of this house are laid in hell. Back, back, as you value your infinite soul!" "To heel," shrieked the Bohemian, and he whipped our his sword, "lest I strike you in the place where you live! This is my hour, and you shall not be the only one to take her between your hands." Before Haquin could forestall him, he had leaped the grinning door, and disappeared in enigmatical gloom. He was scarcely lost to sight, when a shriek rang out, beyond conception awful. It was his death-note. The whole air curdled. Iron Haquin fell upon his knees. What grimmest of riddles the victim solved no man shall ever know. His body--even as his soul--was lost in that abysmal horror. For a while Haquin gazed at it, and saw no sign, nor heard what could be called a sound. It was a grave that gave up no dead. At last, the outlaw rose and crossed himself, and closed the door upon its secret. Withdrawn to his corner, he set himself to think what monstrous enigma couched behind there. The worst of it was that it threw still more suspicion on the woman. But was she a woman at all? In his wanderings across Europe, from sea to sea, he had never lost the Jewess out of mind. Whenever it was possible to acquire later news of her, he spared no pains to do so. But the gossip, through which alone at such a distance he could keep himself in touch with her circumstances, was always vague, and often contradictory. He had been circumstantially assured of her death, and as circumstantially undeceived. But now he began to wonder if that report might have had foundation. To assume that upon losing her the Rabbi had supplied her place with a familiar culled from the females of the pit, would explain nearly all that he had seen. Was it woman or nightmare that couched behind there? He had arrived at no decision when the door again flew open, and he stretched out his head for the next development. But the panoramic capacity of the door seemed, for the time being, to have played itself out. The view was only the old one of the laboratory out of which the Rabbi stepped.