Across the street the voluntary shadow detached itself from cover in the areaway, and skulked after him.  He paid no heed.  But when the shadow rounded the corner, it saw only a dark and empty street, and pulled up with a grunt of doubt.  Simultaneously something not unlike a thunderbolt for force and fury was launched, from the dark shelter of a doorway near by, at its devoted head.  And as if by magic the shadow took on form and substance to receive the onslaught.  A fist, that carried twelve stone of bone and sinew jubilant with realization of the hour for action so long deferred, found shrewdly the heel of a jawbone, just beneath the ear.  Its victim dropped without a cry, but the impact of the blow was loud in the nocturnal stillness of that bystreet, and was echoed in magnified volume by the crack of a skull in collision with a convenient lamppost.

Followed a swift patter of fugitive feet.

Tempered by veils of mist, the lamplight fell upon a face upturned from a murmurous gutter, a yellow face, wide and flat, with lips grinning back from locked teeth and eyes frozen in a staring question to which no living man has ever known the answer.

The pattering footsteps grew faint in distance and died away, the street was still once more, as still as Death....

In the study of Prince Victor Vassilyevski the man Sturm put an impatient question: 

“Well?  What you make of it—­hein?”

Shaik Tsin looked up from a paper which he had been silently examining by the light of the brazen lamp.

“Number One says,” he reported, smiling sweetly, while his yellow forefinger moved from symbol to symbol of the picturesque writing:  ’"The blow falls to-night.  Proceed at once to the gas works and do that which you know is to be done.’"

“At last!” The voice of the Prussian was full and vibrant with exultancy.  He threw back his head with a loud laugh, and his arm described a wild, dramatic gesture.

“At last—­der Tag!  To-night the Fatherland shall be avenged!”

Shaik Tsin beamed with friendliest sympathy Sturm turned to go, took three hurried steps toward the door, and felt himself jerked back by a silken cord which, descending from nowhere, looped his lean neck between chin and Adam’s apple.  His cry of protest was the last articulate sound he uttered.  And the last sounds he heard, as he lay with face hideously congested and empurpled, eyeballs starting from their deep sockets, and swollen tongue protruding, were words spoken by Shaik Tsin as that one knelt over him, one hand holding fast the ends of the bowstring that had cut off forever the blessed breath of life, the other flourishing a half-sheet of notepaper.

“Fool!  Look, fool, and read what vengeance visits a fool who is fool enough to play the spy!”

He brandished the papers before those glazing eyeballs.

In an eldritch cackle he translated: