that long, dark face that had been foisted on him tricks to do—lift an eyebrow, frown. There was scarcely any perceptible pause between the wish and its performance. He found to his discomfiture that the face answered instantaneously to the slightest emotion, even to his fainter secondary thoughts; as if these unfamiliar features were not entirely within control. He could not, in fact, without the glass before him, tell precisely what that face was expressing. He was still, it seemed, keenly sane. That he would discover for certain when Sheila returned. Terror, rage, horror had fallen back. If only he felt ill, or was in pain: he would have rejoiced at it. He was simply caught in some unheard-of snare—caught, how? when? where? by whom? 

 

 CHAPTER TWO

 But the coolness and deliberation of his scrutiny, had to a certain extent calmed Lawford’s mind and given him confidence. Hitherto he had met the little difficulties of life only to vanquish them with ease and applause. Now he was standing face to face with the unknown. He burst out laughing, into a long, low, helpless laughter. Then he arose and began to walk softly, swiftly, to and fro across the room—from wall to wall seven paces, and at the fourth, that awful, unseen, brightly-lit profile passed as swiftly over the tranquil surface of the looking-glass. The power of concentration was gone again. He simply paced on mechanically, listening to a Babel of questions, a conflicting medley of answers. But above all the confusion and turmoil of his brain, as a boatswain’s whistle rises above a storm, so sounded that same infinitesimal voice, incessantly repeating another question now, ‘What are you going to do? What are you going to do?’ 

 And in the midst of this confusion, out of the infinite, as it were, came another sharp tap at the door, and all within sank to utter stillness again. 

 ‘It’s nearly half-past eight, Arthur; I can’t wait any longer.’ 

 Lawford cast a last fleeting look into the glass, turned, and confronted the closed door. ‘Very well, Sheila, you shall not wait any longer.’ He crossed over to the door, and suddenly a swift crafty idea flashed into his mind. 

 He tapped on the panel. ‘Sheila,’ he said softly, ‘I want you first, before you come in, to get me something out of my old writing-desk in the smoking-room. Here is the key.’ He pushed a tiny key—from off the ring he carried—beneath the door. ‘In the third little drawer from the top, on the left side, is a 

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