“He has always avoided a direct answer when I have asked him that,” she said. “But it is only reasonable to suppose that it does. His translation of the writing I have never seen. But he has been dieting in a most extraordinary manner for nearly a year! Since the workmen completed it, no one but himself has been inside the chamber which he has had constructed at the end of his study; and he spends hours and hours there every day--and every night!” Her anxiety became more evident with each word. “You saw that he ate nothing at dinner,” she continued, “and taxed him with faddism. But it is something more than that. Why has he sent the servants away to-night? Oh, Doctor Fairbank! I have a dreadful foreboding! I am so afraid!” The light in her eyes, suddenly upturned to him in the vague half-light, the tone in her voice, the appeal in her attitude--were unmistakable. Fairbank had been abroad for three years, and I could see that between these two was an undeclared love, and almost I felt that I intruded. Moris Klaw looked away for a moment, too. Then-- “My dear young lady,” he rumbled, paternally, “do not be afraid. I, the old know-all, so fortunately am here! Perhaps there is danger--yes, I admit it; there may be danger. But it is such danger as dwells here”--he tapped his yellow brow--“it is a danger of the mind. For thoughts are things, Miss Brearley--that is where it lies, the peril--and thought things can kill!” “Ailsa! Fairbank! Mr. Klaw!” came Brearley’s voice. “We have none too much time!” “Proceed, my friends,” rumbled Moris Klaw; “I am with you.” And, oddly enough, I was comforted by his presence; so, it was evident, were the girl and the doctor; for Moris Klaw, beneath that shabby, ramshackle exterior, Moris Klaw, the Wapping curio dealer, was a man of power--an intellectual ark of refuge. In the Egyptologist’s study all appeared much the same as when last I had set foot there. The cases filled with vases, scarabs, tablets, weapons, and the hundred-and-one relics of the great dead age with which the student had surrounded himself; the sarcophagi; the frames of papyri--all seemed familiar. Brearley sat at the huge writing table, littered, as of yore, and in picturesque confusion. “We must begin almost immediately!” he said, as we entered. A danger spot burned lividly upon either pale cheek. His eyes gleamed brilliantly. The prolonged excitement of his strange experiment was burning the man up. His nerve centres must be taxed abnormally, I knew. Brearley glanced at his watch. “I must be very brief,” he explained, hurriedly, “as it is vitally important that I commence in time. Beyond the bookcase, there, you will see that a part of the room has been walled off.”