rror came solution. Carl glanced intently at the jumbled list
and fell feverishly to working from a different viewpoint. From the
cryptic snarl came presently the single English word in the cipher--his
name. The keen suspicion of his hot brain had, at last, been right.
For every letter in the alphabet, four symbols had been used
interchangeably but whether they pointed up or down or right or left,
their significance was the same. There were no word divisions.

When at last Ronador's frantic message to the Baron lay before him,
Carl was grateful for the quiet monastery days in Houdania with Father
Joda. They had given him an inkling of the language.

Some of the message, to be sure, was missing--for Themar had been
interrupted--and some of it unintelligible. But clear and cold before
his fevered eyes lay the words which marked him irrevocably for the
knife of a hired assassin. There was no suggestion of sealing his lips
with gold, as in a drunken moment he had suggested in his letter. The
seal of death was safer than the seal of gold. Seeing the sinister
command there before him, even though the knowledge was not new, Carl
felt a nameless fury rise in his reeling brain. He must
live--live--live! he told himself fiercely. With the vivid, lovely
face of Keela tormenting him to sensual conquest, he must live no
matter what the price! How safeguard his life from the men who were
hunting him?

What if Diane were to--_die_? Carl shuddered. Then the sirocco of
fear and hate centering about her, would blow itself out forever and
his own life would be safe, for the secret would be worthless. These
men--Tregar, Ronador, Themar--scrupled for vastly different reasons to
take the life of a woman.

Money! Money! He must have money! And if Diane were to _die_, the
great estate of Norman Westfall would revert to him of course; there
was no other heir. Why had he not thought of that before? In that
instant he knew that barely a year ago the treacherous thought would
have been for him impossible, that slowly, insistently he had been
sliding deeper and deeper into the dark abyss of degradation where all
things are possible.

There had been intrigue and dishonor of a sort in the letter to
Houdania, but not this--Oh, God! not this horrible, beckoning Circe
with infamous eyes and scarlet robes luring him to the uttermost pit of
the black Inferno.

But Diane had flashed and mocked him as a child when he was sensitive