"Heavens!" muttered Weymouth, close to my ear, "I can never travel that road!" "Nor I!" was my scarcely audible answer. In a anguish of fearful anticipation I listened for the cry and the dull thud which should proclaim the fate of my intrepid friend; but no such sounds came to me. Some thirty seconds passed in this fashion, when a subdued call from above caused me to start and look aloft. Nayland Smith was peering down from the railing on the roof. "Mind your head!" he warned--and over the rail swung the end of a light wooden ladder, lowering it until it rested upon the crest astride of which I sat. "Up you come!--then Weymouth!" Whilst Smith held the top firmly, I climbed up rung by rung, not daring to think of what lay below. My relief when at last I grasped the railing, climbed over, and found myself upon a wooden platform, was truly inexpressible. "Come on, Weymouth!" rapped Nayland Smith. "This ladder has to be lowered back down the trap before another visitor arrives!" Taking short, staccato breaths at every step, Inspector Weymouth ascended, ungainly, that frail and moving stair. Arrived beside me, he wiped the perspiration from his face and forehead. "I wouldn't do it again for a hundred pounds!" he said hoarsely. "You don't have to!" snapped Smith. Back he hauled the ladder, shouldered it, and stepping to a square opening in one corner of the rickety platform, lowered it cautiously down. "Have you a knife with a corkscrew in it?" he demanded. Weymouth had one, which he produced. Nayland Smith screwed it into the weather-worn frame, and by that means reclosed the trapdoor softly, then-- "Look," he said, "there is the house of hashish!" CHAPTER XXVI "THE DEMON'S SELF" Through the glass panes of the skylight I looked down upon a scene so bizarre that my actual environment became blotted out, and I was mentally translated to Cairo--to that quarter of Cairo immediately surrounding the famous Square of the Fountain--to those indescribable streets, wherefrom arises the perfume of deathless evil, wherein, to the wailing, luresome music of the reed pipe, painted dancing-girls sway in the wild abandon of dances that were ancient when Thebes was the City of a Hundred Gates; I seemed to stand again in el Wasr. The room below was rectangular, and around three of the walls were divans strewn with garish cushions, whilst highly colored Eastern rugs were spread about the floor. Four lamps swung on chains, two from either of the beams which traversed the apartment. They were fine examples of native perforated brasswork. Upon the divans some eight or nine men were seated, fully half of whom were Orientals or half-castes. Before each stood a little inlaid table bearing a brass tray; and upon the trays were various boxes, some apparently containing sweetmeats, other cigarettes. One or two of the visitors smoked curious, long-stemmed pipes and sipped coffee.