end.  The native was dead.  The window, which was a very small one, was securely fastened inside and strongly barred without.  There was nothing to show by what means entry had been gained.  Yet it was the general opinion of those who saw the corpse that the man had been destroyed by some wild beast.  A photograph was taken of the body after death, a copy of which is still in my possession.  In it are distinctly shown lacerations about the neck and the lower portion of the abdomen, as if they had been produced by the claws of some huge and ferocious animal.  The skull is splintered in half-a-dozen places, and the face is torn to rags.

That was more than three years ago.  The whole business has remained as great a mystery as ever.  But my attention has once or twice been caught by trifling incidents, which have caused me to more than suspect that the wild tale told by that murdered native had in it at least the elements of truth; and which have even led me to wonder if the trade in kidnapping was not being carried on to this very hour, and if women of my own flesh and blood were not still being offered up on that infernal altar.  And now, here was Paul Lessingham, a man of world-wide reputation, of great intellect, of undoubted honour, who had come to me with a wholly unconscious verification of all my worst suspicions!

That the creature spoken of as an Arab,—­and who was probably no more an Arab than I was, and whose name was certainly not Mohamed el Kheir!—­was an emissary from that den of demons, I had no doubt.  What was the exact purport of the creature’s presence in England was another question, Possibly part of the intention was the destruction of Paul Lessingham, body, soul and spirit; possibly another part was the procuration of fresh victims for that long-drawn-out holocaust.  That this latter object explained the disappearance of Miss Lindon I felt persuaded.  That she was designed by the personification of evil who was her captor, to suffer all the horrors at which the stories pointed, and then to be burned alive, amidst the triumphant yells of the attendant demons, I was certain.  That the wretch, aware that the pursuit was in full cry, was tearing, twisting, doubling, and would stick at nothing which would facilitate the smuggling of the victim out of England, was clear.

My interest in the quest was already far other than a merely professional one.  The blood in my veins tingled at the thought of such a woman as Miss Lindon being in the power of such a monster.  I may assuredly claim that throughout the whole business I was urged forward by no thought of fee or of reward.  To have had a share in rescuing that unfortunate girl, and in the destruction of her noxious persecutor, would have been reward enough for me.

One is not always, even in strictly professional matters, influenced by strictly professional instincts.

The cab slowed.  A voice descended through the trap door.