rient, had looked out at me.

As I paced slowly along the pavement toward that lighted window, my
heart was beating far from normally, and I cursed the folly which,
in spite of all, refused to die, but lingered on, poisoning my
life. Comparative quiet reigned in Museum Street, at no time a busy
thoroughfare, and, excepting another shop at the Museum end, commercial
activities had ceased there. The door of a block of residential chambers
almost immediately opposite to the shop which was my objective, threw
out a beam of light across the pavement, but not more than two or three
people were visible upon either side of the street.

I turned the knob of the door and entered the shop.

The same dark and immobile individual whom I had seen before, and whose
nationality defied conjecture, came out from the curtained doorway at
the back to greet me.

"Good evening, sir," he said monotonously, with a slight inclination of
the head; "is there anything which you desire to inspect?"

"I merely wish to take a look around," I replied. "I have no particular
item in view."

The shop man inclined his head again, swept a yellow hand
comprehensively about, as if to include the entire stock, and seated
himself on a chair behind the counter.

I lighted a cigarette with such an air of nonchalance as I could summon
to the operation, and began casually to inspect the varied objects of
interest loading the shelves and tables about me. I am bound to confess
that I retain no one definite impression of this tour. Vases I handled,
statuettes, Egyptian scarabs, bead necklaces, illuminated missals,
portfolios of old prints, jade ornaments, bronzes, fragments of rare
lace, early printed books, Assyrian tablets, daggers, Roman rings, and
a hundred other curiosities, leisurely, and I trust with apparent
interest, yet without forming the slightest impression respecting any
one of them.

Probably I employed myself in this way for half an hour or more, and
whilst my hands busied themselves among the stock of J. Salaman, my mind
was occupied entirely elsewhere. Furtively I was studying the shopman
himself, a human presentment of a Chinese idol; I was listening and
watching; especially I was watching the curtained doorway at the back of
the shop.

"We close at about this time, sir," the man interrupted me, speaking in
the emotionless, monotonous voice which I had noted before.

I replaced upon the glass counter a little Sekhet boat, carved in wood