ossed
to the windows and looked out over the somewhat silent square. A
hurdy-gurdy was playing in the corner opposite the club, just
visible from where he stood. The members were passing in and out. The
commissionaire stood stolidly in his place, raising every now and
then his cab whistle to his lips. A flickering sunlight fell upon the
wind-shaken lilac trees in the square enclosure. Inspector Jacks found
himself wishing that the perfume of those lilacs might reach even to
where he stood, and help him to forget for a moment that subtler and to
him curiously unpleasant odor which all the time became more and more
apparent. So overpowering did he feel it that he tried even to open the
window, but found it an impossible task. The atmosphere seemed to him to
be becoming absolutely stifling.

He turned around and walked uneasily toward the door. He decided
then that this was some sort of gruesome nightmare with which he was
afflicted. He was quite certain that in a few minutes he would wake
in his little iron bedstead with the sweat upon his forehead and a
reproachful consciousness of having eaten an indiscreet supper. It could
not possibly be a happening in real life! It could not be true that his
knees were sinking beneath the weight of his body, that the clanging of
iron hammers was really smiting the drums of his ears, that the purple
of the room was growing red, and that his veins were strained to
bursting! He threw out his arms in a momentary instinct of fiercely
struggling consciousness. The idols on the walls jeered at him. Those
strangely clad warriors seemed to him now to be looking down upon his
discomfiture with a satanic smile, mocking the pygmy who had dared to
raise his hand against one so jealously guarded. Clang once more went
the blacksmith's hammers, and then chaos!...

The end of the nightmare was not altogether according to Inspector
Jacks' expectations. He found himself in a small back room, stretched
upon a sofa before the open French-windows, through which came a
pleasant vision of waving green trees and a pleasanter stream of fresh
air. His first instinct was to sniff, and a sense of relief crept
through him when he realized that this room, at any rate, was free from
abnormal odors. He sat up on the couch. A pale-faced Japanese servant
stood by his side with a glass in his hand. A few feet away, the man
whom he had come to visit was looking down upon him with an expression
of grave concern in his