The first door had on the panel a card with his uncle's name. He knocked, and at the same instant noticed that the door was ajar. No answer came. His finger found the electric push button. He could hear it buzzing inside. Twice he pushed it. "Nobody at home, looks like," he said to himself. "Well, I reckon I'll step in an' leave a note. Or maybe I'll wait. If the door's open he's liable to be right back." He stepped into the room. It was dark. His fingers groped along the wall for the button to throw on the light. Before he found it a sound startled him. It was the soft faint panting of some one breathing. He was a man whose nerves were under the best of control, but the cold feet of mice pattered up and down his spine. Something was wrong. The sixth sense of danger that comes to some men who live constantly in peril was warning him. "Who's there?" he asked sharply. No voice replied, but there was a faint rustle of some one or some thing stirring. He waited, crouched in the darkness. There came another vague rustle of movement. And presently another, this time closer. Every sense in him was alert, keyed up to closest attention. He knew that some one, for some sinister purpose, had come into this apartment and been trapped here by him. The moments flew. He thought he could hear his hammering heart. A stifled gasp, a dozen feet from him, was just audible. He leaped for the sound. His outflung hand struck an arm and slid down it, caught at a small wrist, and fastened there. In the fraction of a second left him he realized, beyond question, that it was a woman he had assaulted. The hand was wrenched from him. There came a zigzag flash of lightning searing his brain, a crash that filled the world for him--and he floated into unconsciousness. CHAPTER VII FOUL PLAY Lane came back painfully to a world of darkness. His head throbbed distressingly. Querulously he wondered where he was and what had taken place. He drew the fingers of his outstretched hand along the nap of a rug and he knew he was on the floor. Then his mind cleared and he remembered that a woman's hand had been imprisoned in his just before his brain stopped functioning. Who was she? What was she doing here? And what under heaven had hit him hard enough to put the lights out so instantly? He sat up and held his throbbing head. He had been struck on the point of the chin and gone down like an axed bullock. The woman must have lashed out at him with some weapon. In his pocket he found a match. It flared up and lit a small space in the pit of blackness. Unsteadily he got to his feet and moved toward the door. His mind was quite clear now and his senses abnormally sensitive. For instance, he was aware of a faint perfume of violet in the room, so faint that he had not noticed it before.