we
must neglect no minor chance. Try with your pocket-knife if you can
force the lock. I am trying to break this one."

Truth to tell, the idea had not entered my half-dazed mind, but I
immediately acted upon my friend's suggestion, setting to work with the
small blade of my knife. I was so engaged, and, having snapped one
blade, was about to open another, when a sound arrested me. It came
from beneath my feet.

"Smith," I whispered, "listen!"

The scraping and clicking which told of Smith's efforts ceased.
Motionless, we sat in that humid darkness and listened.

Something was moving beneath the stones of the cellar. I held my
breath; every nerve in my body was strung up.

A line of light showed a few feet from where we lay. It
widened--became an oblong. A trap was lifted, and within a yard of me,
there rose a dimly seen head. Horror I had expected--and death, or
worse. Instead, I saw a lovely face, crowned with a disordered mass of
curling hair; I saw a white arm upholding the stone slab, a shapely arm
clasped about the elbow by a broad gold bangle.

The girl climbed into the cellar and placed the lantern on the stone
floor. In the dim light she was unreal--a figure from an opium vision,
with her clinging silk draperies and garish jewelry, with her feet
encased in little red slippers. In short, this was the houri of my
vision, materialized. It was difficult to believe that we were in
modern, up-to-date England; easy to dream that we were the captives of
a caliph, in a dungeon in old Bagdad.

"My prayers are answered," said Smith softly. "She has come to save
YOU."

"S-sh!" warned the girl, and her wonderful eyes opened widely,
fearfully. "A sound and he will kill us all."

She bent over me; a key jarred in the lock which had broken my
penknife--and the collar was off. As I rose to my feet the girl turned
and released Smith. She raised the lantern above the trap, and signed
to us to descend the wooden steps which its light revealed.

"Your knife," she whispered to me. "Leave it on the floor. He will
think you forced the locks. Down! Quickly!"

Nayland Smith, stepping gingerly, disappeared into the darkness. I
rapidly followed. Last of all came our mysterious friend, a gold band
about one of her ankles gleaming in the rays of the lantern which she
carried. We stood in a low-arched passage.

"Tie your handkerchiefs over your eyes and do exactly as I tell you,"
she ordered.

Neither