The small apartment resembled an ancient tomb, as the walls and ceiling were painted vividly with hieroglyphics, glowing in crimson and blue and yellow and emerald green. Through a stained-glass skylight overhead a dim, coloured light streamed just sufficiently to reveal the weird looks of the room. It was faked, of course, but very cleverly faked, as the Colonel secretly admitted; even to the attendant, who, apparently a true Eastern, was attired in a garb which one of Pharaoh's fan-bearers might have worn appropriately. The floor was covered with linoleum painted to resemble marble, and there was a quaintly-shaped table of ebony, two or three antique and uncomfortable chairs, copied from furniture of the XIX. Dynasty, and a weird-looking teak sofa, covered with bright yellow cushions. What with the grotesquely-painted walls, the sparsity of furniture, the dim light, the scented atmosphere, and the strangely-dressed attendant, who salaamed profusely, Colonel Towton felt as though he had stepped at one stride across the Mediterranean to a resuscitated Memphis. The man was a slim, straight native, with handsome, haughty features of the Brahmin type, and Towton wondered that he had broken caste to cross the Black Water. He had keen, black eyes, which took in the looks of the English sahib in a single flash, notwithstanding that he stood with crossed arms and downcast eyes. Towton wondered if he spoke English, and, for the sake of an experiment, addressed him in Tamil. The dark-skinned man replied in very fair English, with an inquisitive glance at this stranger who spoke the Indian dialect so glibly. "Is your mistress in?" enquired the Colonel, speaking Tamil. "Within, sahib, and she waits," was the reply in Anglo-Saxon. Immediately following these few words Towton was led into the inner room, and the attendant closed the door after him, leaving the client alone with Diabella. The room was decorated much in the same tomb-like fashion as the other one, but there were mummies standing round the wall at intervals in their richly adorned coffins, and the two windows looking on to Bond Street were draped with rich Eastern stuffs to entirely exclude the light of day. But several lamps, burning perfumed oil, dangled from the ceiling, and the room was filled with a mellow radiance, eminently suited to the object for which it was used. Towton shrewdly surmised that the peculiar decorations, the exclusion of daylight for the use of artificial illumination, and the highly-scented atmosphere which prevailed even more strongly here than it had done in the outer room, were all meant to daze the senses of Diabella's clients so that they might more readily credit her assertions. It was all cleverly conceived and carried out.