super-audacious man who now had
entrusted to him the secret of his residence.

Hastily descending from the bus, he walked quickly forward to the
nearest tobacconist's and turned in the entrance to note if the man who
might be in the taxi would betray his presence.

He did.

The Stetson appeared from the window, and a pair of keen grey eyes fixed
themselves upon the door wherein Sheard was lurking.

A rapid calculation showed the pressman where lay his best chance.
Darting across the road, he dived, rabbit-like, into the burrow of the
Tube, got his ticket smartly, and ran to the stairway. With his head on
a level with the floor of the booking-offices he paused.

An instant later the canoe-shaped brogues came clattering down from
above. The American took in the people in the hall with one
comprehensive glance, got a ticket without a moment's delay, and jumped
into a lift that was about to descend.

Two minutes afterwards Sheard was in a cab bound for the house of
Severac Bablon. The New Journalism is an exciting vocation.

He discharged the cabman at the corner of Finchley Road, and walked
along to No. 70A.

Opening the monastic looking gate, he passed around a trim lawn and
stood in the porch of one of those small and picturesque houses which
survive in some parts of red-brick London.

A man who wore conventional black, but who looked like an Ababdeh Arab,
opened the door before he had time to ring. He confirmed Sheard's guess
at his Eastern nationality by the manner of his silent salutation.
Without a word of inquiry he conducted the visitor to a small room on
the left of the hall and retired in the same noiseless fashion.

The journalist had anticipated a curious taste in decoration, and he was
not disappointed. For this apartment could not well be termed a room; it
was a mere cell.

The floor was composed of blocks--or perhaps only faced with layers of
red granite; the walls showed a surface of smooth plaster. An unglazed
window which opened on a garden afforded ample light, and, presumably
for illumination at night, an odd-looking antique lamp stood in a niche.
A littered table, black with great age and heavily carved, and a chair
to match, stood upon a rough fibre mat. There was no fireplace. The only
luxurious touch in the strange place was afforded by a richly Damascened
curtain, draped before a recess at the farther end.

From the table arose Severac Bablon, wearing a novel garment strangely
like a