There was something so ominous and threatening in all the unexpectedness of these things that Griscombe felt his spirits becoming overshadowed by an overmastering sense of impending evil. It was only when he discovered that Miss Desmond was becoming perturbed by a similar emotion of dismay, and that she was clinging to him with an exceeding tenacity, that, by an effort of will, he overmastered his accumulating fears, and, in spite of the cloud of apprehension that threatened to overshadow him, regained command of his courage once more. "What does this mean!" exclaimed Miss Desmond in a hurried and terrified whisper. "What strange place is this to which we have been brought?" "Have courage," replied our hero, steadily, but in the same subdued tone. "You are in no danger. We have probably come to the wrong house, that is all. Wait but a little while, and all will be explained." But, though our hero spoke with so much courage, his heart was exceedingly burdened with a sense of impending calamity; for he seemed to feel the network of circumstances that had been gathering about him for these few days past enwrapping both him and his ward in ever tightening meshes. At that instant the figure of a man appeared emerging suddenly from out the gloom. He was tall and thin, and was clad in a long flowing robe of Oriental design. Desiring Griscombe and the young lady to follow him, and without waiting for any question or refusal, he turned, and immediately led the way up a broad uncarpeted stairway to the floor above. Here a narrow thread of light outlined a door opening upon the landing, as though emitted from a considerable illumination within. This door, as they approached it, was suddenly flung open; and the next moment our hero found himself with his companion in an apartment flooded with such a dazzling brilliancy that, coming as he had from the obscurity without, he was for a time entirely blinded by the unusual radiance. Little by little, however, his sight returned to him; and he discovered that he and the young lady were in a room of extraordinary dimensions, suffused with an oppressive warmth, heavy with perfume, and flaming with a thousand radiant and variegated colors. Surrounding him and his companion on all sides was a multitude of attendants of a foreign aspect, all clad in extraordinarily rich and sumptuous costumes of an Oriental pattern. Immediately upon his appearance with the young lady hanging upon his arm, this crowd of attendants parted, forming, as it were, a vista through which our hero and his companion could behold the farther extremity of the saloon. It was thus that Griscombe first beheld him who, his instinct instantly told him, was the spider who had woven all this web of mystery in which he had become so singularly entangled.