Then Ho-Pin again approached the bed and M. Max became again a dead man.

The silken pyjamas which the detective wore were subjected to gentle examination by the sensitive fingers of the Chinaman, and those same fingers crept beetle-like beneath the pillow.

Silently, Ho-Pin stole from the room and silently closed the door.

M. Max permitted himself a long breath of relief.  It was an ordeal through which few men could have passed triumphant.

The silence of the place next attracted the inquirer’s attention.  He had noted this silence at the moment that he entered the cave of the golden dragon, but here it was even more marked; so that he divined, even before he had examined the walls, that the apartment was rendered sound-proof in the manner of a public telephone cabinet.  It was a significant circumstance to which he allotted its full value.

But the question uppermost in his mind at the moment was this:  Was the time come yet to commence his explorations?

Patience was included in his complement, and, knowing that he had the night before him, he preferred to wait.  In this he did well.  Considerable time elapsed, possibly half-an-hour... and again the door opened.

M. Max was conscious of a momentary nervous tremor; for now a woman stood regarding him.  She wore a Chinese costume; a huge red poppy was in her hair.  Her beauty was magnificently evil; she had the grace of a gazelle and the eyes of a sorceress.  He had deceived Ho-Pin, but could he deceive this Eurasian with the witch-eyes wherein burnt ancient wisdom?

He felt rather than saw her approach; for now he ventured to peep no more.  She touched him lightly upon the mouth with her fingers and laughed a little low, rippling laugh, the sound of which seemed to trickle along his sensory nerves, icily.  She bent over him—­lower—­lower—­and lower yet; until, above the nauseating odor of the place he could smell the musk perfume of her hair.  Yet lower she bent; with every nerve in his body he could feel her nearing presence....

She kissed him on the lips.

Again she laughed, in that wicked, eerie glee.

M. Max was conscious of the most singular, the maddest impulses; it was one of the supreme moments of his life.  He knew that all depended upon his absolute immobility; yet something in his brain was prompting him—­prompting him—­to gather the witch to his breast; to return that poisonous, that vampirish kiss, and then to crush out life from the small lithe body.

Sternly he fought down these strange promptings, which he knew to emanate hypnotically from the brain of the creature bending over him.

“Oh, my beautiful dead-baby,” she said, softly, and her voice was low, and weirdly sweet.  “Oh, my new baby, how I love you, my dead one!” Again she laughed, a musical peal.  “I will creep to you in the poppyland where you go... and you shall twine your fingers in my hair and pull my red mouth down to you, kissing me... kissing me, until you stifle and you die of my love....  Oh! my beautiful mummy-baby... my baby."...