The book-lined wall behind him was unbroken by any opening. Slowly, as a man awaking from a stupor, Soames gazed around the library. It contained no door. He rested his hand upon one of the shelves and closed his eyes. Beyond doubt he was going mad! The tragic events of that night had proved too much for him; he had never disguised from himself the fact that his mental capacity was not of the greatest. He was assured, now, that his brain had lost its balance shortly after his flight from Palace Mansions, and that the events of the past two hours had been phantasmal. He would presently return to sanity (or, blasphemously, he dared to petition heaven that he would) and find himself...? Perhaps in the hands of the police! “Oh, God!” he groaned--“Oh, God!” He opened his eyes... A woman stood before the sandalwood screen! She had the pallidly dusky skin of a Eurasian, but, by virtue of nature or artifice, her cheeks wore a peachlike bloom. Her features were flawless in their chiseling, save for the slightly distended nostrils, and her black eyes were magnificent. She was divinely petite, slender and girlish; but there was that in the lines of her figure, so seductively defined by her clinging Chinese dress, in the poise of her small head, with the blush rose nestling amid the black hair--above all in the smile of her full red lips--which discounted the youth of her body; which whispered “Mine is a soul old in strange sins--a soul for whom dead Alexandria had no secrets, that learnt nothing of Athenean Thais and might have tutored Messalina”... In her fanciful robe of old gold, with her tiny feet shod in ridiculously small, gilt slippers, she stood by the screen watching the stupefied man--an exquisite, fragrantly youthful casket of ancient, unnameable evils. “Good evening, Soames!” she said, stumbling quaintly with her English, but speaking in a voice musical as a silver bell. “You will here be known as Lucas. Mr. King he wishing me to say that you to receive two pounds, at each week.”... Soames, glassy-eyed, stood watching her. A horror, the horror of insanity, had descended upon him--a clammy, rose-scented mantle. The room, the incredible, book-lined room, was a red blur, surrounding the black, taunting eyes of the Eurasian. Everything was out of focus; past, present, and future were merged into a red, rose-haunted nothingness... “You will attend to Block A,” resumed the girl, pointing at him with a little fan. “You will also attend to the gentlemen.”...