did it to help me. You must come with me to the town clinic at once.
Mr. Selby's gone already. There'll be no danger if you come at once."

"Danger?" repeated Mr. Baruch. "I have not understood." But though in
all truth he did not understand, a foreboding of knowledge was chill
upon him. He cleared his throat. "What did he die of?"

Miss Pilgrim's tears had overflowed. She had a difficulty in
speaking. But her stammered words came as clearly to his ears as
though they were being shouted.

"Smallpox!"

He sat down heavily in the chair whence he had risen to receive her,
and Miss Pilgrim through her tears saw him shrivel in a gust of utter
terror. All his mask of complacency, of kindly power, of reticence of
spirit fell from him; he gulped, and his mouth sagged slack. She
moved a pace nearer to him.

"But it'll be all right, Mr. Baruch, if you'll just come to the
clinic at once and be vaccinated. It's only because we touched him
and the rugs. There isn't any need to be so frightened."

She could not divine the vision that stood before his strained eyes
the white face of a woman, weary with her ailment, and the beautiful
thing that blanketed her, beautiful and venomous like a snake. His
senses swam. But from his shaking lips two words formed themselves:

"My wife!"

"Oh, come along, Mr. Baruch!" cried Miss Pilgrim. "Your wife hasn't
touched the rugs. She'll be perfectly all right!"

He gave her a look that began abjectly but strengthened as it
continued to something like a strange sneer. For he was a
connoisseur; he knew. And he was certain that Fate would never leave
a drama unfinished like that.

XII

THE DAY OF OMENS

The velvet-footed, rat-faced valet moved noiselessly in the bedroom,
placing matters in order for his master's toilet. He had drawn the
curtains to admit the day and closed the window to bar out its
morning freshness, and it was while he was clearing the pockets of
the dress clothes that he became aware that from the alcove at his
back, in which the bed stood, eyes were watching him. Without hurry,
he deposited a little pile of coins on the edge of the dressing-table
and laid the trousers aside; then, with his long thief's hands
hanging open in obvious innocence, he turned and saw that his
master had waked in his usual uncanny fashion, returning from
slumber to full consciousness with no interval of drowsiness and
half-wakefulness. It was as if he would take the fortunes of the day
b