eaven or
Hell--!"

He broke off abruptly. Having entered noiselessly in his padded shoes,
Shaik Tsin now stood before Victor, offering a low obeisance.

"You took your time," Victor grumbled. And Shaik Tsin smiled serenely. "I
want you to tend the door to-night," Victor pursued. "Eleven is expected at
any moment. You need not announce him, simply show him in."

"Hearing is obedience."

"Wait"--as the Chinaman began to bow himself out--"Karslake is still in his
room, I suppose?"

"Yes, master."

"And Nogam?"

"Has just gone to his."

"When did you last search their quarters?"

"During dinner."

"And of course found nothing?" Shaik Tsin bowed. "Make sure neither leaves
his room to-night. Set a watch outside each door."

"I have done so."

Victor gave a sign of dismissal.

XIII

THE TURNIP

In a spacious chamber beneath the eaves, hideously papered and furnished
with cheerless, massive relics of the early Victorian era, the man Nogam
pursued methodical preparations for bed.

Spying eyes, had there been any--and for all Nogam knew, there were--would
have seen him follow step by step a programme from whose order he had
departed by scarcely as much as a single gesture on any night since his
first installation in the house near Queen Anne's Gate.

Loosening the waistcoat of his evening livery, he freed the heavy silver
watchchain from its buttonhole, drew from its pocket an old-fashioned
silver watch of that obese style which first earned the portable timepiece
its nickname of "turnip," and opening its back inserted a key attached to
the other end of the chain. Its winding was a laborious process,
prodigiously noisy. Once finished, Nogam shut the back with a loud click,
and reverently deposited the watch on the marble slab of the black walnut
bureau.

Then he hung coat and waistcoat over the back of a chair which stood
between the foot of his bed and the door. Sheer chance may have decreed
selection of this chair for the purpose on Nogam's first night in the room;
whether or no, it was not in character that, having established this
precedent, Nogam should depart from it. And in any event, the coat-draped
chair effectually eclipsed a possible keyhole view of the room.

Notwithstanding, Nogam pursued his bedtime rites with precisely the same
deliberation and absence of perceptible self-consciousness as before. One
never knew: there might be other peepholes in the walls.

His trousers, neatly fol