igns to indicate her wishes, and motioning Smith-Oldwick to follow
her she went to the hangings and opening them disclosed the alcove.
It was rather more than an alcove, being a fair-sized room heavy
with rugs and hangings and soft, pillowed couches. Turning at the
entrance she pointed to the corpse upon the floor of the outer
room, and then crossing the alcove she raised some draperies which
covered a couch and fell to the floor upon all sides, disclosing
an opening beneath the furniture.

To this opening she pointed and then again to the corpse, indicating
plainly to the Englishman that it was her desire that the body be
hidden here. But if he had been in doubt, she essayed to dispel it
by grasping his sleeve and urging him in the direction of the body
which the two of them then lifted and half carried and half dragged
into the alcove. At first they encountered some difficulty when
they endeavored to force the body of the man into the small space
she had selected for it, but eventually they succeeded in doing
so. Smith-Oldwick was again impressed by the fiendish brutality of
the girl. In the center of the room lay a blood-stained rug which
the girl quickly gathered up and draped over a piece of furniture
in such a way that the stain was hidden. By rearranging the other
rugs and by bringing one from the alcove she restored the room to
order so no outward indication of the tragedy so recently enacted
there was apparent.

These things attended to, and the hangings draped once more about
the couch that they might hide the gruesome thing beneath, the girl
once more threw her arms about the Englishman's neck and dragged him
toward the soft and luxurious pillows above the dead man. Acutely
conscious of the horror of his position, filled with loathing,
disgust, and an outraged sense of decency, Smith-Oldwick was also
acutely alive to the demands of self-preservation. He felt that
he was warranted in buying his life at almost any price; but there
was a point at which his finer nature rebelled.

It was at this juncture that a loud knock sounded upon the door of
the outer room. Springing from the couch, the girl seized the man
by the arm and dragged him after her to the wall close by the head
of the couch. Here she drew back one of the hangings, revealing a
little niche behind, into which she shoved the Englishman and dropped
the hangings before him, effectually hiding him from observation
from the rooms beyond.

He heard