"Tell me," said I, touching her fingers with my own. "In the first place, the dog was acting as I have never seen him act before. I noticed that, the first thing. He was cowering and slinking along as if he feared the most terrible punishment. But that was nothing. It was father who made me draw back. Even in the dim light I could see that he was white--oh, so white! I thought he had been taken ill suddenly and was weak. And yet one hand was clutching his big cane and the muscles and veins stood out on the back as if he were raising the stick to defend himself." "He was ill!" I cried. "Yes, I think that must have been it. He was ill. And since then he has brooded so--particularly when he does not know I am watching him. Margaret has noticed it, too. She has spoken to him as I did and he has laughed her fear away, I suppose." "Perhaps, after all, it is nothing--just as he says," I suggested, turning toward her as we walked. "Perhaps not," she said. "I am sure you are a good and cheerful friend to say so. Nevertheless, I have been worried and restless and this afternoon I long for amusement. Can't we do something queer and extraordinary--go somewhere--do something?" I thought her requirement a difficult one to fill at five o'clock in the afternoon, walking through the old, dull, and worn-out part of the city, where we found we had arrived without purpose in our journey. More than that, I am naturally of conservative tastes; the bizarre, the bohemian, and the unconventional forms of amusement have never beckoned to me. I am not an adventurer by choice. "We have less than an hour before us," I said to her. "And I am at a loss to suggest--" There I hesitated. A thought had come to me. I saw her eyes dance with expectancy--with that expression of eagerness that lights the faces of those to whom the world, with all its goodness and badness, beauty and ugliness, tranquillity and turbulence, is still unexplored. "The Sheik of Baalbec!" I exclaimed. "The Sheik of Baalbec!" she repeated. "I have heard so much of him, but have never seen him. That is just the thing!" "You shall try your skill with him," I said. "You shall meet him face to face, look into his evil glassy eyes, watch his brown fingers move on mechanical levers, see his lungs and heart of geared wheels and little pulleys and--" "And what?" she cried. "Battle with him--wit against wit--skill against skill--and win!" "You seem to bear the Sheik a grudge," she said, and as we went up the steps of the old Natural History Building, where romping children of the tenements scattered banana peels and papers, she repeated the remark. "I've taken a dislike to the automaton," I said. "It is an uncanny creature. It gives me the impression of an evil soul attached to a lot of metallic gears. Personally I should be glad to have the opportunity of tearing it to pieces and seeing it scattered on the ground--a heap of red cotton rags, hair stuffing, and broken levers."