pushed high up against the
ceiling.

It was the position of this lamp which had changed. For now it swung
so low over the pillow that the silken fringe of the shade almost
touched my friend's face as he lay soundly asleep with one
lean brown hand outstretched upon the coverlet.

I stood in the doorway staring, mystified, at this phenomenon; I might
have stood there without intervening, until intervention had been too
late, were it not that, glancing upward toward the wooden block from
which ordinarily the pendant hung, I perceived that no block was
visible, but only a round, black cavity from which the white flex
supporting the lamp swung out.

Then, uttering a horse cry which rose unbidden to my lips, I sprang
wildly across the room ... for now I had seen something else!

Attached to one of the four silken tassels which ornamented the
lamp-shade, so as almost to rest upon the cheek of the sleeping man,
was a little corymb of bloom ... the _Flower of Silence!_

Grasping the shade with my left hand I seized the flex with my right,
and as Smith sprang upright in bed, eyes wildly glaring, I wrenched
with all my might. Upward my gaze was set; and I glimpsed a yellow
hand, with long, pointed finger nails. There came a loud resounding
snap; an electric spark spat venomously from the circular opening
above the bed; and, with the cord and lamp still fast in my grip, I
went rolling across the carpet--as the other lamp became instantly
extinguished.

Dimly I perceived Smith, arrayed in pyjamas, jumping out upon the
opposite side of the bed.

"Petrie, Petrie!" he cried, "where are you? what has happened?"

A laugh, little short of hysterical, escaped me. I gathered myself up
and made for the lighted sitting-room.

"Quick, Smith!" I said--but I did not recognize my own voice. "Quick--
come out of that room."

I crossed to the settee, and shaking in every limb, sank down upon it.
Nayland Smith, still wild-eyed, and his face a mask of bewilderment,
came out of the bedroom and stood watching me.

"For God's sake what has happened, Petrie?" he demanded, and began
clutching at the lobe of his left ear and looking all about the room
dazedly.

"The Flower of Silence!" I said; "some one has been at work in the top
corridor.... Heaven knows when, for since we engaged these rooms we
have not been much away from them ... the same device as in the case
of poor Hale.... You would have tried to brush the thing away ..."

A ligh