-opened the door!"

"They would have said that you repented your awful act, too late.
Although it is almost impossible for a man to strangle himself under
such conditions, there is no jury in England who would have believed
that Antony Ferrara had done the deed."

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE HIGH PRIEST, HORTOTEF

The breakfast-room of Dr. Cairn's house in Half-Moon Street presented
a cheery appearance, and this despite the gloom of the morning; for
thunderous clouds hung low in the sky, and there were distant
mutterings ominous of a brewing storm.

Robert Cairn stood looking out of the window. He was thinking of an
afternoon at Oxford, when, to such an accompaniment as this, he had
witnessed the first scene in the drama of evil wherein the man called
Antony Ferrara sustained the leading _role_.

That the _denouement_ was at any moment to be anticipated, his reason
told him; and some instinct that was not of his reason forewarned him,
too, that he and his father, Dr. Cairn, were now upon the eve of that
final, decisive struggle which should determine the triumph of good
over evil--or of evil over good. Already the doctor's house was
invested by the uncanny forces marshalled by Antony Ferrara against
them. The distinguished patients, who daily flocked to the
consulting-room of the celebrated specialist, who witnessed his
perfect self-possession and took comfort from his confidence, knowing
it for the confidence of strength, little suspected that a greater ill
than any flesh is heir to, assailed the doctor to whom they came for
healing.

A menace, dreadful and unnatural, hung over that home as now the
thunder clouds hung over it. This well-ordered household, so modern,
so typical of twentieth century culture and refinement, presented none
of the appearances of a beleaguered garrison; yet the house of Dr.
Cairn in Half-Moon Street, was nothing less than an invested
fortress.

A peal of distant thunder boomed from the direction of Hyde Park.
Robert Cairn looked up at the lowering sky as if seeking a portent. To
his eyes it seemed that a livid face, malignant with the malignancy of
a devil, looked down out of the clouds.

Myra Duquesne came into the breakfast-room.

He turned to greet her, and, in his capacity of accepted lover, was
about to kiss the tempting lips, when he hesitated--and contented
himself with kissing her hand. A sudden sense of the proprieties had
assailed him; he reflected that the presence o