g stood two enormous
stuffed birds, moldering and decrepit, regarding the sudden illumination
with unblinking, bead-like eyes. Between them a small dancing faun in
greenish bronze tripped a Bacchic measure with head thrown back in a
transport of derisive laughter.

For a long moment the three of us faced the silent, disordered room, in
which the little bronze faun alone seemed alive, convulsed with
diabolical mirth at our entrance. Somehow it recalled to me Leavitt's
own cynical laugh. Suddenly Miss Stanleigh made toward the photographs
above the bookshelves.

"This is he," she said, taking up one of the faded prints.

"Yes--Leavitt," I answered.

"_Leavitt_?" Her fingers tightened upon the photograph. Then, abruptly,
it fell to the floor. "Yes, yes--of course." Her eyes closed very
slowly, as if an extreme weakness had seized her.

In the shock of that moment I reached out to support her, but she
checked my hand. Her gray eyes opened again. A shudder visibly went over
her, as if the night air had suddenly become chill. From the shelf the
two stuffed birds regarded us dolefully, while the dancing faun, with
head thrown back in an attitude of immortal art, laughed derisively.

"Where is he? I must speak to him," said Miss Stanleigh.

"One might think he were deliberately hiding," I muttered, for I was at
a loss to account for Leavitt's absence.

"Then find him," the girl commanded.

I cut short my speculations to direct Williams to search the hut in the
rear of the bungalow, where, behind bamboo palings, Leavitt's Malay
servant maintained an aloof and mysterious existence. I sat down beside
Miss Stanleigh on the veranda steps to find my hands sooty from the
touch of the boards. A fine volcanic ash was evidently drifting in the
air and now to my ear, attuned to the profound stillness, the wind bore
a faint humming sound.

"Do you hear that?" I whispered. It was like the far-off murmur of a
gigantic caldron, softly a-boil--a dull vibration that seemed to reach
us through the ground as well as through the air.

The girl listened a moment, and then started up. "I hear
voices--somewhere."

"Voices?" I strained my ears for sounds other than the insistent ferment
of the great cone above our heads. "Perhaps Leavitt----"

"Why do you still call him Leavitt?"

"Then you're quite certain----" I began, but an involuntary exclamation
from her cut me short.

The light of Williams's lantern, emerging from behind the