powerless. The gun lowered in her hand as his passion-torn face came closer to her, but she kept her grip upon it. Heedless of his danger, he took her, too exhausted longer to resist, in his mad embrace. He clutched between them for the gun. But he was an instant too late. A muffled shot sounded. He recoiled from her, staggering, his hand at his side.
For a second neither seemed to comprehend what had happened. Then blood began to stain his white vest under his hand. He looked at the stained hand and then at her, and the expression upon his paling face turned to fiendish hate. With a bound toward her he seized her wrist in a vice-like grip while he applied a match to the powder in the metal container on the desk. The flames shot up and with his free hand he held in the midst of them the seal of the Bengal tiger, hurling weird Indian maledictions upon her as he did so. When the seal was red-hot, she came out of her half swooning state to realize incredibly his awful purpose. The mask was gone. He was wholly the hate-maddened Oriental!
Carmelita was too late. With a last display of his failing strength, he twisted her wrist violently until the upper part of her body was flung across the flat-topped desk. In a flash he had ripped her torn gown nearly to
