"Again a film gathered in the light and I saw the Albertus Magnus for a moment. Then it changed to Ombos, himself.... A lean and grim form with dim mocking features, and yellow eyes that glittered and flickered.... "And again the vision blurred and faded into light. Then Ombos dashed the lamp aside, and the room was in red darkness ... the silence and darkness seemed to endure for an eternity. I heard the hiss of a quick indrawn breath at last ... it was my own breathing.... I opened my eyes. "I was in the small room where I had taken tea with Ombos and Margot some weeks before. Supper was laid on a superb octagon table. 'They were good tricks, were they not?' said Ombos, with an easy laugh. His keen eyes smote keen into mine. 'Now you will in truth be able to go away and tell people how I tricked you, how it was plainly all a cheat.' "At that moment Margot came in with a big apron tied about her. She greeted me pleasantly, setting a tray down on the table. "'We do our own work here, Captain Crabbe,' she said. 'Do you want to make yourself useful?' "I rose promptly. My little adventure into the occult world with Ombos had been rather exhilarating. I was glad when she told me to follow her out, through a long corridor into the kitchen, where she gave me a can-opener and a tin of sardines. "'Open those up and turn them into this little dish, please. And if you have any hygienic aversion to tinned things, please forget it. Otherwise you will have to eat some of my hot teacakes.' "Margot was standing at the table, cleaning a crisp head of celery. The position showed me her profile, with a little wisp of black hair escaping near one ear. "We sat down to one of the most cheerful meals three people have ever enjoyed. We sat chatting there for nearly an hour. All the while I was trying to reconcile this man Ombos who sat talking boyishly with the student of occultism and black magic I had talked with an hour or so before. If I had felt any resentment of the tricks he had played on me it would have vanished utterly. Afterwards Margot made real Turkish coffee over a dainty spirit lamp ... once--in a critical stage in the coffee-making, too--she looked up and her eyes sought mine; then her red lips parted in a smile. She poured out the coffee deftly, blowing out the lamp, and put the little copper pot on a plate. "Ombos surveyed his coffee with the air of a connoisseur, his head turned on one side. "Margot produced the bowls of cigarettes and reached over my shoulder to offer me one. 'You want Egyptian?' she said smiling. 'You see I have a good memory--you smoked them last time.' "A warm faint perfume came from her hair. "It was ten o'clock when I rose to leave, Ombos and Margot came out to the front to say good night: my last glimpse, as I walked down the _pave_ street, was of Margot--a bare-headed figure, with wistful grey eyes, calm with the mysterious wisdom of pure womanhood. She waved her dainty lace handkerchief to me.