“I will remove the illusion,” he said, “and give you others more pretty.” He smiled meaningfully--an evil, leering smile. “When will you come?” he asked. Ford glanced about him nervously. “I shall stay now,” he said. “I confess, in the streets and in my lodgings I am frightened. You give me confidence. I want to stay near you. I feel safe with you. If you will give me writing-paper, I will send for my things.” For a moment the Jew hesitated, and then motioned to a desk. As Ford wrote, Prothero stood near him, and the reporter knew that over his shoulder the Jew was reading what he wrote. Ford gave him the note, unsealed, and asked that it be forwarded at once to his lodgings. “To-morrow,” he said, “I will call up our Embassy, and give my address to our Naval Attache. “I will attend to that,” said Prothero. “From now you are in my hands, and you can communicate with the outside only through me. You are to have absolute rest--no books, no letters, no papers. And you will be fed from a spoon. I will explain my treatment later. You will now go to your room, and you will remain there until you are a well man.” Ford had no wish to be at once shut off from the rest of the house. The odor of cooking came through the hall, and seemed to offer an excuse for delay. “I smell food,” he laughed. “And I'm terrifically hungry. Can't I have a farewell dinner before you begin feeding me from a spoon?” The Jew was about to refuse, but, with his guilty knowledge of what was going forward in the house, he could not be too sure of those he allowed to enter it. He wanted more time to spend in studying this new patient, and the dinner-table seemed to offer a place where he could do so without the other suspecting he was under observation. “My associate and I were just about to dine,” he said. “You will wait here until I have another place laid, and you can join us.” He departed, walking heavily down the hall, but almost at once Ford, whose ears were alert for any sound, heard him returning, approaching stealthily on tiptoe. If by this maneuver the Jew had hoped to discover his patient in some indiscretion, he was unsuccessful, for he found Ford standing just where he had left him, with his back turned to the door, and gazing with apparent interest at a picture on the wall. The significance of the incident was not lost upon the intruder. It taught him he was still under surveillance, and that he must bear himself warily. Murmuring some excuse for having returned, the Jew again departed, and in a few minutes Ford heard his voice, and that of another man, engaged in low tones in what was apparently an eager argument. Only once was the voice of the other man raised sufficiently for Ford to distinguish his words. “He is an American,” protested the voice; “that makes it worse.”