white dove. Ah, priest,
priest of Abydos, I have returned to life to expose your infamy, and
after so many years of silence, I name thee murderer, hypocrite, liar!"

A dry, hollow laugh accompanied these words, while a choked voice
responded, "No! Mercy!"

It was Padre Salvi, who had been overcome with terror and with arms
extended was slipping in collapse to the floor.

"What's the matter with your Reverence? Are you ill?" asked Padre
Irene.

"The heat of the room--"

"This odor of corpses we're breathing here--"

"Murderer, slanderer, hypocrite!" repeated the head. "I accuse
you--murderer, murderer, murderer!"

Again the dry laugh, sepulchral and menacing, resounded, as though
that head were so absorbed in contemplation of its wrongs that it
did not see the tumult that prevailed in the room.

"Mercy! She still lives!" groaned Padre Salvi, and then lost
consciousness. He was as pallid as a corpse. Some of the ladies
thought it their duty to faint also, and proceeded to do so.

"He is out of his head! Padre Salvi!"

"I told him not to eat that bird's-nest soup," said Padre Irene. "It
has made him sick."

"But he didn't eat anything," rejoined Don Custodio shivering. "As
the head has been staring at him fixedly, it has mesmerized him."

So disorder prevailed, the room seemed to be a hospital or a
battlefield. Padre Salvi looked like a corpse, and the ladies,
seeing that no one was paying them any attention, made the best of
it by recovering.

Meanwhile, the head had been reduced to ashes, and Mr. Leeds, having
replaced the cloth on the table, bowed his audience out.

"This show must be prohibited," said Don Custodio on leaving. "It's
wicked and highly immoral."

"And above all, because it doesn't use mirrors," added Ben-Zayb,
who before going out of the room tried to assure himself finally,
so he leaped over the rail, went up to the table, and raised the
cloth: nothing, absolutely nothing! [40] On the following day he
wrote an article in which he spoke of occult sciences, spiritualism,
and the like.

An order came immediately from the ecclesiastical governor prohibiting
the show, but Mr. Leeds had already disappeared, carrying his secret
with him to Hongkong.

CHAPTER XIX

THE FUSE

Placido Penitente left the class with his heart overflowing with
bitterness and sullen gloom in his looks. He was worthy of his name
when not driven from his usual course, but once irritated he was a
veri