This was not the fact. For a moment, looking from the opening, I had ample opportunity, without being seen, to observe all that spread itself before me. A painted drop hung against the wall, upon which, in delicate colors of Italian blue and rich green, was stretched a vast, imposing, and beautiful view of the Gardens of Versailles, with a wealth of flowers in full bloom extending along the velvet greensward into the depth of the landscape, where, white and regal, walls and pillars rose toward the clear sky of spring. A modern grotesque had invaded this regal scene and forbidden ground, and had placed his cot, disordered with newspapers and ragged red blankets, so boldly in the foreground that at first sight the impropriety of his presence was shocking. I could see that the man sat upon his cot cross-legged; his back, pitifully thin under a spare white shirt, was turned toward me. With one sinewy, aged hand he fondled the wisps of faded hair upon his head; with the other he moved small objects over a flat board. He was a lonely monarch upon a throne of squalor; he was playing a solitary game of chess! "The Sheik of Baalbec!" I whispered to myself. The creature stopped, looked up at the skylight and its green curtains and drew a miserable sigh from the depths of his lungs. It was such a sigh that I could not restrain a shudder. "Julianna," said I. He drew his head down between his shoulders like a frightened turtle and held himself stiffly as one who has been doused with a pail of ice water. For several moments he did not move; when at last he turned around, his expression was patient rather than vicious, sad rather than terror-stricken. "What do you want?" he said, and held his mouth open so that he, too, seemed like an automaton, the springs of which had failed. The pause gave me the opportunity to observe that he was not the man with the gold fillings. Indeed, the only part of him which seemed well preserved--which, as it were, he had saved from the wreck--was a row of white, even teeth! "What do you want?" he repeated. "I have never seen you before. I know no reason for your speaking a word to me." "Your daughter--" I began. "I have no daughter," he cried, his eyes blazing with sudden passion. "Who are you? I tell you that you are talking nonsense. I have no daughter!" "Fine words," I said threateningly; "fine words. But this is no time for them. She is in vital danger--" "Danger!" he screamed, clawing at the red blankets. "My God! Has it come? What form? Quick, I say! What form?" "It is because you can shed light upon it that I have come," said I. "We know little. She has sent her husband away--" "Damn him!" he choked. "She has locked herself in her room. She has been so for three weeks. The maid--" "Margaret Murchie," he whispered. "She believes that I am dead?" I nodded. "I know nothing," he said. "The girl is not of me or mine." "Come, come," said I. "It is time for disclosure."