There was a man in the room surely enough. He was but half dressed; he had fallen forward over a table, apparently in a state of collapse. He seemed to be seeking something; and then Seymour saw that he was clutching at a bottle of brandy, of which he appeared to be in evident need. There was no suggestion of intoxication about him, so that Seymour had no hesitation in forcing a few drops of the potent fluid between the man's pallid lips.

Strange as the situation was, Seymour did not fail to notice the extraordinary way in which his companion's face was cut and scarred and bound with sticking plaster. Then he suddenly realized to whose assistance he had come. This was surely the man Jack Masefield had told him about--the man who had sent him the ring, and who knew the whole history of the Nostalgo business. The invalid opened his eyes presently, and gazed in a dull kind of way at Seymour.

"I have been ill," he said. "Since my operation I have been accustomed to these kind of fainting fits. It was very good of you to come to my assistance."

"Not at all," Seymour said. "I was in my room on the other side of the corridor, and I heard you cry out. Is there anything more I can do for you?"

"Yes," the stranger said. There was a strange thrill in his voice. "Take off that mask of yours, and let me see my old friend Seymour once more. I should have recognized your tones anywhere."

"I am glad that my old chum Ferris should recognize me," Seymour said, in a voice that trembled a little. "But I dare say that you will wonder why I am here. I can assure you it is no coincidence. But what have you been doing to your face? The last time I saw you you were what I am now."

With a bitter laugh Seymour swept his disguise away, and the hideous likeness to Nostalgo stood confessed.

"There is a picture for you," Seymour laughed; "and upon my word you are not much better. Are you attempting to get rid of those damning marks that you and I are meant to carry to the grave--those marks of a scoundrel's vengeance?"

"But I shall not carry them to the grave," Ferris said. "My dear friend, if I had the pluck and courage you yourself possess, I should not have cared so much. But that scoundrel Anstruther haunts me like my own shadow. I managed to elude his search; I hid myself in London. He knew I was here somewhere, and he hit upon that devilish scheme for preying on my imagination. I am alluding to those Nostalgo posters. Most people regard them as no better than an ingenious advertisement, but the scalding truth is known to me. They meet my eye whenever I take my secret walks abroad; they deface the hoardings to remind me that I am still Anstruther's slave."

The speaker wiped his heated face. He made a more or less successful attempt to hide his deep feelings.

"I had almost lost hope," he continued. "I had made up my mind to be blackmailed to my last farthing by Anstruther, when fortune brought me in contact with a clever French doctor who had heard something of the vengeance of the Nostalgos. He assured me that he had treated one of us with absolute success. I found out that my young friend was a brilliantly clever surgeon, and after a little natural hesitation I decided to place myself in his hands. He operated upon the muscles of my face with a view to removing the hideous mask which disfigures what was once a passably good-looking face. The shock to my system was great, and I am but slowly recovering. But when I do recover, I feel quite certain that I shall be as I was before I fell into the hands of Anstruther's creatures in Mexico. I am a pretty sight now, I admit; but if you look at me you will see that the repulsive hideousness has gone."

Seymour gazed long and thoughtfully into the white face of his companion. There was a sudden uplifting of his heart, and the tears rushed to his eyes. It was no ordinary weakness that moved him like this.

"I see, I see," he murmured. "Once you are yourself again, you can defy Anstruther; indeed, he would not know you at all. I have had to fight him at a terrible disadvantage. If only I could remove this terrible scourge from my face--then I could stand up to him, and his reign would not be for long. But events are pressing so fast that I could not possibly spare the time at present to follow out the treatment to which you have been subjected. But afterwards I shall be only too glad to place myself in the same hands that you have been through. The mere thought that some day or other I shall be able to walk the streets like any other man that God has made, fills me with such a joy that I could sit down and cry like a child.

"But why be so fearfully afraid of Anstruther?" Seymour asked.

"Because I am in his power," Ferris whispered. "I have done a great wrong in my time, and Anstruther knows it. That fiend seems to discover everything. Fortune has enabled me to redress the wrong, but Anstruther holds the proofs of my guilt. I really ought to have gone to my relatives and confessed everything, and defied him. But with a face like mine!"

"I understand," Seymour said grimly. "But, unless I am greatly mistaken----"

Seymour broke off suddenly, and snapped out the electric light. He took the astonished Ferris by the arm, and fairly bundled him into his bedroom. There was no time to explain. A fresh idea had suddenly come to Seymour, and he decided to put it through. His quick ear had told him that somebody was fumbling at the door of the sitting-room, and that somebody could be none other than Gillmore. The burglar had evidently not yet arrived, or Seymour would have heard something of the mysterious note. His idea now was to gain possession of the note and Gillmore at the same time.

"What on earth is the matter?" Ferris whispered.

Seymour clicked his lips for silence. He could hear Gillmore in the sitting-room by now. He slipped from the bedroom into the corridor, and approached his foe by the other door. But apparently Gillmore's ears were as quick as those of his antagonist. He pitched the letter on the table, and, seeing that escape by way of the door had been cut off, coolly flung up the window and fell headlong out. Seymour repressed a shuddering cry. Gillmore evidently cruelly miscalculated the distance to the ground, for as Seymour looked out of the window he could hear a series of heavy groans below. It was obviously his duty to give the alarm and send for a doctor without delay, but this he hesitated to do.

He called Ferris in, and explained rapidly to him what had happened. The distance from the window to the ground was some twenty feet.

"I am going to fetch him up," Seymour explained. "I suppose you have got one of our old lassos amongst your baggage? You have............