ond recognized as that he had heard on the
telephone. "Please to follow me!"

He led the way across a long low tap-room through a door and past
the open trap-door of a cellar to a staircase. On the first
landing, lit by a window looking out on a dreary expanse of fen,
he halted Desmond.

"That's her room," he said, pointing to a door opposite the head
of the staircase, half a dozen steps up, and so saying, the
yellow-faced man walked quickly downstairs and left him. Desmond
heard his feet echo on the staircase and the door of the tap-room
slam.

He hesitated a moment. What if this were a trap? Suppose
Mortimer, growing suspicious, had made use of Nur-el-Din to lure
him to an ambush in this lonely place? Why the devil hadn't he
brought a revolver with him?

Then Desmond's Irish blood came to his rescue. He gave his head a
little shake, took a firm hold of his stick which was a stoutish
sort of cudgel and striding boldly up to the door indicated,
tapped.

"Entrez!" said a pretty voice that made Desmond's heart flutter.

CHAPTER XVI. THE STAR OF POLAND

The room in which Desmond found Nur-el-Din was obviously the
parlor of the house. Everything in it spoke of that dreary period
in art, the middle years of the reign of Victoria the Good. The
wall-paper, much mildewed in places, was an ugly shade of green
and there were dusty and faded red curtains at the windows and
draping the fireplace. Down one side of the room ran a hideous
mahogany sideboard, almost as big as a railway station buffet,
with a very dirty tablecloth. The chairs were of mahogany,
upholstered in worn black horsehair and there were two pairs of
fly-blown steel engravings of the largest size on the wall. In
the centre of the apartment stood a small round table, covered
with a much stained red tablecloth and there was a door in the
corner.

The dainty beauty of Nur-el-Din made a very forlorn picture amid
the unmatched savagery of this English interior. The dancer, who
was wearing the same becoming gray tweed suit in which Desmond
had last seen her, was sitting sorrowfully at the table when
Desmond entered. At the sight of him she sprang up and ran to
meet him with outstretched hands.

"Ah!" she cried, "comme je suis heureuse de vous voir! It is good
of you to come!"

And then, without any warning, she burst into tears and putting
her hands on the man's shoulders, hid her head against his chest
and sobbed bitterly.

Desmond took one of he