markable in
these days. May I ask how it was acquired?"

"My father was a famous Egyptologist," I replied. "All that I know I
learned from him. Are you also familiar with the country?"

"There are few things and fewer countries with which I am not familiar,"
he replied, somewhat conceitedly, but still watching me and speaking
with the same peculiar gravity. "Some day I shall hope to offer you
conclusive evidence on that point. In the meantime the hour grows late.
I thank you and bid you farewell."

Then, with a bow, he passed on, and a moment later I, too, had quitted
the house and was making my way homeward, trying to collect my
impressions of the evening as I went.

CHAPTER III.

To infer that my introduction that evening to the beautiful violinist
and her diabolical companion, Monsieur Pharos, produced no effect upon
me, would be as idle as it would misleading. On leaving Medenham House I
was conscious of a variety of sensations, among which attraction for the
woman, repugnance for the man, and curiosity as to the history and
relationship of both could be most easily distinguished. What was
perhaps still more perplexing, considering the small, but none the less
genuine, antagonism that existed between us, by the time I reached my
own abode I had lost my first intense hatred for the man, and was
beginning to look forward, with a degree of interest which a few hours
before would have surprised me, to that next meeting which he had
prophesied would so soon come to pass. Lightly as I proposed to myself
to treat it, his extraordinary individuality must have taken a greater
hold upon me than I imagined, for, as in the afternoon, I soon
discovered that, try to divert my thoughts from it how I would, I could
not dispel his sinister image from my mind. Every detail of the
evening's entertainment was vividly photographed upon my brain, and
without even the formality of shutting my eyes, I could see the crowded
room, the beautiful violinist standing, instrument in hand, beside the
piano, and in the chair at her feet her strange companion, huddled up
beneath his rug.

By the time I reached home it was considerably past midnight; I was not,
however, the least tired, so, exchanging my dress coat for an old velvet
painting jacket, for which I entertained a lasting affection, I lit a
cigar and began to promenade the room. It had been a fancy of mine when
I first took the studio, which, you must understand, was of more