From the table drawer I took out a Browning pistol, slipped it into my pocket and crossed to the narrow hallway. It was in darkness, but I depressed the switch, lighting the lamp. Toward the closed door I looked --as the soft rapping was repeated. I advanced; then hesitated, and, strung up to a keen pitch of fearful anticipation, stood there in doubt. The silence remained unbroken for the space, perhaps of half a minute. Then again came the ghostly rapping. "Who's there?" I cried loudly. Nothing stirred outside the door, and still I hesitated. To some who read, my hesitancy may brand me childishly timid; but I, who had met many of the dreadful creatures of Dr. Fu-Manchu, had good reason to fear whomsoever or whatsoever rapped at midnight upon my door. Was I likely to forget the great half-human ape, with the strength of four lusty men, which once he had loosed upon us?--had I not cause to remember his Burmese dacoits and Chinese stranglers? No, I had just cause for dread, as I fully recognized when, snatching the pistol from my pocket, I strode forward, flung wide the door, and stood peering out into the black gulf of the stairhead. Nothing, no one, appeared! Conscious of a longing to cry out--if only that the sound of my own voice might reassure me--I stood listening. The silence was complete. "Who's there?" I cried again, and loudly enough to arrest the attention of the occupant of the chambers opposite if he chanced to be at home. None replied; and finding this phantom silence more nerve-racking than any clamor, I stepped outside the door--and my heart gave a great leap, then seemed to remain inert, in my breast.... Right and left of me, upon either side of the doorway, stood a dim figure: I had walked deliberately into a trap! The shock of the discovery paralyzed my mind for one instant. In the next, and with the sinister pair closing swiftly upon me, I stepped back--I stepped into the arms of some third assailant, who must have entered the chambers by way of the open window and silently crept up behind me! So much I realized, and no more. A bag, reeking of some hashish-like perfume, was clapped over my head and pressed firmly against mouth and nostrils. I felt myself to be stifling--dying--and dropping into a bottomless pit. When I opened my eyes I failed for some time to realize that I was conscious in the true sense of the word, that I was really awake. I sat upon a bench covered with a red carpet, in a fair-sized room, very simply furnished, in the Chinese manner, but having a two-leaved, gilded door, which was shut. At the further end of this apartment was a dais some three feet high, also carpeted with red, and upon it was placed a very large cushion covered with a tiger skin.