Soames lay back upon the bed. This time he was past further panic and come to a stage of sickly apathy. He lay, now, because he could not sit upright, because stark horror had robbed him of physical strength, and had drained the well of his emotions dry.
Gradually—so that the operation seemed to occupy an interminable time, the door opened, and in the opening a figure appeared.
The switch clicked, and the room was flooded with electric light.
Ho-Pin stood watching him.
Soames—in his eyes that indescribable expression seen in the eyes of a bird placed in a cobra’s den—met the Chinaman’s gaze. This gaze was no different from that which habitually he directed upon the people of the catacombs. His yellow face was set in the same mirthless smile, and his eyebrows were raised interrogatively. For the space of ten seconds, he stood watching the man on the bed. Then:—
“You wreturn vewry soon, Mr. Soames?” he said, softly.
Soames groaned like a dying man, whispering:
“I was…taken ill—very ill.”…
“So you wreturn befowre the time awranged for you?”
His metallic voice was sunk in a soothing hiss. He smiled steadily: he betrayed no emotion.
“Yes…sir,” whispered Soames, his hair
