“Ikfil el-bab!” came now, in the voice of Ho-Pin,—­and nearer.

“Let me go!... only let me go, and I will never breathe a word. ...  Ah!  Ah!  Oh!  God of mercy! not the needle again!  You are killing me!... not the needle!"...

Soames staggered on to his own room and literally fell within—­as across the cave of the golden dragon, behind him, someone—­one whom he did not see but only heard, one whom with all his soul he hoped had not seen him—­passed rapidly.

Another shriek, more frightful than any which had preceded it, struck the trembling man as an arrow might have struck him.  He dropped upon his knees at the side of the bed and thrust his fingers firmly into his ears.  He had never swooned in his life, and was unfamiliar with the symptoms, but now he experienced a sensation of overpowering nausea; a blood-red mist floated before his eyes, and the floor seemed to rock beneath him like the deck of a ship....

That soul-appalling outcry died away, merged into a sobbing, moaning sound which defied Soames’ efforts to exclude it....  He rose to his feet, feeling physically ill, and turned to close his door....

They were dragging someone—­someone who sighed, shudderingly, and whose sighs sank to moans, and sometimes rose to sobs,—­across the apartment of the dragon.  In a faint, dying voice, the woman spoke again:—­

“Not Mr. King!...  Not Mr. King!...  Is there no God in Heaven!...  Ah! spare me... spare"...

Soames closed the door and stood propped up against it, striving to fight down the deathly sickness which assailed him.  His clothes were sticking to his clammy body, and a cold perspiration was trickling down his forehead and into his eyes.  The sensation at his heart was unlike anything that he had ever known; he thought that he must be dying.

The awful sounds died away... then a muffled disturbance drew his attention to a sort of square trap which existed high up on one wall of the room, but which admitted no light, and which hitherto had never admitted any sound.  Now, in the utter darkness, he found himself listening—­listening...

He had learnt, during his duties in Block A, that each of the minute suites was rendered sound-proof in some way, so that what took place in one would be inaudible to the occupant of the next, provided that both doors were closed.  He perceived, now, that some precaution hitherto exercised continuously had been omitted to-night, and that the sounds which he could hear came from the room next to his own—­the room which opened upon the corridor that he had never entered, and which now he classified, mentally, as Block B.

What did it mean?

Obviously there had been some mishap in the usually smooth conduct of Ho-Pin’s catacombs.  There had been a hurried outgoing in several directions... a search?

And by the accident of his returning an hour earlier than he was expected, he was become a witness of this incident, or of its dreadful, concluding phases.  He had begun to move away from the door, but now he returned, and stood leaning against it.