She gave a scream of terrible relief and rushed into the blackness and as she rushed a dog leapt straight at her shoulders.

She screamed again and swung-to the door with all her strength; it shut upon the dog, breaking its back; it remained ajar to her pursuers.

There still was hope.  She knew the way; they did not.  Could she but get to her bedroom behind the massive doors, could she but reach the telephone, the instrument she had regarded as her finest toy, she would soon have the police running to the rescue.  She fled down the narrow passage which led to a jumble of small rooms; she even paused for a moment to listen to the cursing of those who ran behind her, stumbling in the narrow way.

She fled through the farthest door; she was free; there but remained the shallow flight of marble stairs to the suite wherein her bedroom lay.

Then she stopped, and, shrieking, flung out her arms.

To right, to left and upon the flight of stairs, there stood her servants.

The men and the women she had flogged and kicked, thinking to heal their wounds and bruises and dim their memories by throwing gold amongst them on the morrow.

They made no movement, they simply stood and stared.

Her head-veil and mantle had gone; her under-garments were torn to shreds, leaving exposed the slender body which leaned sideways like a tree which had been struck by lightning.  Her matted hair fell far below her waist; it made a frame to the horrible face, one side of which was as that of an old, old hag, and the other, grimed with dirt, flecked with foam, was yet as lovely as a jewel.

They shrank back and still further back; they made the sign to scare away the spirit of evil; thinking her possessed of Eblis, the devil, they would not have touched her for a gold piece.

They turned their heads at the sound of rushing footsteps; they motioned her to move on; believing her mad, they gave her a chance, for in the East you dare not turn your hand against the mentally afflicted.

She ran.

And after her came the pack in full cry.

Across great rooms, lit by hanging lamps, scented with brasiers of perfumed wood, she fled, slipping upon chinchilla rug or glaring monstrous hearthrug of Berlin wool, in her desperate haste to quit the house.

Out into the air she must get; under the trees in the garden; under the moon; down the broad paths to the wall at the end.

There was no wall too high for her to climb in her extremity.  Her face was grey; her eyes sunk in black:  orbits; her nose pinched, with nostrils which blew and flattened like bellows to her laboured breathing.

A hand clutched at her streaming hair and missed it as she sped down the garden; they were upon her heels, dogs jumping at her face as she ran.

She was blind, deaf, almost dead when the great gorilla-shaped arms of Bes closed about her.