In a few seconds she unbolted the door, and opening it I encountered her in a pale pink _robe-de-chambre_, her luxuriant chestnut hair falling about her shoulders, her large dark brown eyes haggard and startled, her hands clenched, her countenance white to the lips. "What has happened, Miss Seymour?" I asked, glancing quickly around the room. "I--I hardly know," she gasped in breathless alarm. "Only--only," she whispered, in a low voice, "I--I've seen the hand--the Hand of Death-- again!" "Seen it again!" I echoed; but she raised her finger and pointed to her father's door. "Tell me the circumstances," I whispered. "There is something very uncanny and unnatural about this which must be investigated. Last night it appeared to me a hundred and twenty miles away, and now you see it to-night. Are you quite sure you saw it." I asked the latter question because it was still dark, and she had switched on the electric light. "I felt a cold rough contact with my cheek, and waking saw the hand again! I burn a night-light--as you see," and she pointed across to a child's night-light in a saucer upon the washstand. "And it vanished as before?" "Instantly. I thought I heard a slight sound afterwards, but I must have been mistaken." "Yes," I said, making a quick examination of the room, and looking beneath the bed. "There is certainly nothing here." I noted that the communicating door between her room and her father's was still secured by the small brass bolt. "Well," I declared, "it is utterly inexplicable." My voice evidently awakened Shaw, for we heard him tap at the door and ask in a deep, drowsy voice-- "What's the matter in there, Asta?" "Oh, nothing at all, Dad," was the girl's reply. "Only I fancy there must be a rat in my room--and Mr Kemball is looking for it." "Didn't you scream?" he asked wearily. "Yes," I said, as she unbolted the door, and her father entered. "Miss Seymour's scream woke me up." "Did you see the rat?" Shaw asked me. "No," I laughed, in an endeavour to conceal our fear. "I expect if there is one it has got away down its hole. I've searched, but can find nothing." "Ah!" growled the man awakened from his sleep. "That's the worst of these confounded Continental hotels. Most of them are overrun with vermin. I've often had rats in my room. Well, dear," he added, turning to Asta, "go to bed again, and leave your electric light on. They won't come out then." The girl and I exchanged glances, and after a hearty laugh at the frightened spectacle we all three presented, we again parted, and I returned to my room. What was the meaning of that inexplicable apparition of the hand? Why had the dying man warned me of it? I could quite see Asta's reluctance to tell her father what she had seen, knowing well how he--plain, matter-of-fact man--would laugh at her and declare that she had been dreaming.