that you traveled up and down the world almost constantly after the acquisition of your fortune necessarily confession of wrongdoing. But"—he fixed his eyes challengingly on our host—"but what of the other occurrences? How comes it that Madame your wife (God rest her spirit!) was found floating in the Seine with such a red ball clutched in her poor, dead hand?
"Me, I have recognized this ball. It is a bead from the rosary of a Buddhist lama of that devil-ridden gable of the world we call Tibet. How came Madame to be grasping it? Who knows?
"When next we see one of these red beads, it is on the occasion of the sudden sad death of the young Monsieur, your son.
"Later, when you have fled like one pursued to America and settled in this small city which nestles in the shadow of the great New York, comes the death of your daughter, Mademoiselle Charlotte—and once more the red ball appears.
"This afternoon Mademoiselle Haroldine finds the talisman of impending doom in her purse and forthwith swoons in terror. Dr. Trowbridge and I succor her and are conveying her to you when a storm arises out of a clear sky. We change vehicles and I leave the red bead behind. All goes well until—pouf!—a bolt of lightning strikes the carriage in which the holder of this devil's rosary seems to ride, and demolishes it. But horses and coachman are spared. Cordieu, it is more than merely strange; it is surprizing, it is amazing, it is astonishing! One who does not know what Jules de Grandin knows would think it incomprehensible.
"It is not so. I know what I have seen. In Tibet I have seen those masked devil-dancers cause the rain to fall and the winds to blow and the lightning bolts to strike where they willed. They are worshipers of the demons of the air, my friends, and it was not for nothing the wise old Hebrews named Satan, the rejected of God, the Prince of the Powers of the Air. No.
"Very well. We have here so many elements that we need scarcely guess to know what the answer is. Monsieur Arkright, as the roast follows the fish and coffee and cognac follow both, it follows that you once wrested from the lamas of Tibet some secret they wished kept; that by that secret you did obtain much wealth; and that in revenge those old heathen monks of the mountains follow you and yours with implacable hatred. Each time they strike, it would appear, they leave one of these beads from the red rosary of vengeance as sign and seal of their accomplished purpose. Am I not right?" He looked expectantly at our host a moment; then, with a gestured application for permission from Haroldine, produced a French cigarette, set it alight and inhaled its acrid, ill-flavored smoke with gusto.
James Arkright regarded the little Frenchman as a respectable matron might look at the blackmailer threatening to disclose an indiscretion of her youth. With a deep, shuddering sigh he slumped forward in his chair like a man from whom all the resistance has been squeezed with a single titanic pressure. "You're right, Dr. de Grandin," he admitted in a toneless voice, and his eyes no longer seemed to take inventory of everything about him. "I was in Tibet; it was there I stole the Pi Yü Stone—would God I'd never seen the damned thing!"
"Ah?" murmured de Grandin, emitting a twin column of mordant smoke from his narrow nostrils. "We make progress. Say on, Monsieur; I listen with ears like the rabbit's. This Pi Yü Stone, it is what?"
Something like diffidence showed in Arkright's face as he replied, "You won't believe me, when I've told you."
