see you fit again," his father had said;
but?--perhaps he had been wrong--perchance the affection had been
deeper than he had suspected; and now this endless carnival of
supernatural happenings had strained the weakened cells, so that he
was become as a man in a delirium!

Where did reality end and phantasy begin? Was it all merely
subjective?

He had read of such aberrations.

And now he sat wondering if he were the victim of a like
affliction--and while he wondered he stared at the rope of silk. That
was real.

Logic came to his rescue. If he had seen and heard strange things, so,
too, had Sime in Egypt--so had his father, both in Egypt and in
London! Inexplicable things were happening around him; and all could
not be mad!

"I'm getting morbid again," he told himself; "the tricks of our
damnable Ferrara are getting on my nerves. Just what he desires and
intends!"

This latter reflection spurred him to new activity; and, pocketing the
revolver, he switched off the light in the study and looked out of the
window.

Glancing across the court, he thought that he saw a man standing
below, peering upward. With his hands resting upon the window ledge,
Cairn looked long and steadily.

There certainly was someone standing in the shadow of the tall plane
tree--but whether man or woman he could not determine.

The unknown remaining in the same position, apparently watching, Cairn
ran downstairs, and, passing out into the Court, walked rapidly across
to the tree. There he paused in some surprise; there was no one
visible by the tree and the whole court was quite deserted.

"Must have slipped off through the archway," he concluded; and,
walking back, he remounted the stair and entered his chambers again.

Feeling a renewed curiosity regarding the silken rope which had so
strangely come into his possession, he sat down at the table, and
mastering his distaste for the thing, took it in his hands and
examined it closely by the light of the lamp.

He was seated with his back to the windows, facing the door, so that
no one could possibly have entered the room unseen by him. It was as
he bent down to scrutinise the curious plaiting, that he felt a
sensation stealing over him, as though someone were standing very
close to his chair.

Grimly determined to resist any hypnotic tricks that might be
practised against him, and well assured that there could be no person
actually present in the chambers, he sat back, resting h