" she whispered, glancing fearfully back toward the closed
door--"Fo-Hi has something that make people to die; and only he can
bring them to life again. Do you believe this?"

She looked up at him rapidly, her wonderful eyes wide and fearful. He
nodded.

"Ah! you know! Very well. On that day in Cairo, which I am taken
before him--you remember, I tell you?--he ... oh!"

She shuddered wildly and hid her beautiful face against Stuart's
breast. He threw his arms about her.

"Tell me," he said.

"With the needle, he ... inject ..."

"Miska!"

Stuart felt the blood rushing to his heart and knew that he had paled.

"There is something else," she went on, almost inaudibly, "with which
he gives life again to those he had made dead with the needle. It is
a light green liquid tasting like bitter apples; and once each week
for six months it must be drunk or else ... the living death comes.
Sometimes I have not seen Fo-Hi for six months at a time, but a tiny
flask, one draught, of the green liquid, always comes to me wherever
I am, every week ... and twice each year I see him--Fo-Hi ... and
he ..."

Her voice quivered and ceased. Moving back, she slipped a soft
shoulder free of it s flimsy covering.

Stuart looked--and suppressed a groan.

Her arm was dotted with the tiny marks made by a hypodermic syringe!

"You see!" she whispered tremulously. "If I go, I die, and I am
buried alive ... or else I live until my body ..."

"Oh, God!" moaned Stuart--"the fiend! the merciless, cunning fiend!
Is there _nothing_ ..."

"Yes, yes!" said Miska, looking up. "If I can get enough of the green
fluid and escape. But he tell me once--it was in America--that he
only prepares one tiny draught at a time! Listen! I must stay, and if
he can be captured he must be forced to make this antidote ... Ah!
go! go!"

Her words ended in a sob, and Stuart held her to him convulsively,
his heart filled with such helpless, fierce misery and bitterness as
he had never known.

"Go, please go!" she whispered. "It is my only chance--there is no
other. There is not a moment to wait. Listen to me! You will go by
that door by which I come in. There is a better way, through a tunnel
he has made to the river bank; but I cannot open the door. Only _he_
has the key. At the end of the passage some one is waiting----"

"Chunda Lal!" Miska glanced up rapidly and then dropped her eyes again.

"Yes--poor Chunda Lal. He is my only friend. Give him this."