That stealthy touch brought Arlee half upright, shot with ghastly alarms. Her heart stopped beating; it stood still in the cold clutch of terror. The breath seemed to have left her body.

Once more she felt the hands gropingly upon her. It came from the back side of her bed, reaching apparently from the very wall. And then she heard a voice whispering, "Be still—I do not hurt you. Be still."

It was a woman\'s voice, soft, sibilant, hushed, and the frozen grip of fear was broken. She was trembling now uncontrollably.

"Who is there?"

"S-sh!" came the warning response, and then, her eyes staring into the shadowy recess, she saw the curtains at the back side of the bed were parting as a figure appeared between them.

"Give me a box, a book—somethings to put here in this lock," commanded the voice peremptorily, and in a daze Arlee found herself extending a magazine across the bed toward the half-seen figure, who turned and busied herself about the curtains a moment, then came straight across the bed into the room beside Arlee.

"Now you see who I am," said the astonishing intruder calmly.

Mutely Arlee shook her head, seeing only a figure about her own height clad in a dark negligée. Dumfounded she stood watching while her visitor deliberately lighted a candle.

"So—that is better," she observed, and in the light of the tiny taper between them the two stood facing each other.

Arlee saw a girl some years older than herself, a small, plump, rounded creature, with a flaunting and insouciant prettiness. Her eyes were dark and bright, her babyish lips were full and scarlet, her nose was whimsically uptilted. Dark hair curled closely to the vivid face and fell in ringlets over the white neck.

"You don\'t know me?" she said in astonishment at Arlee\'s eyes of wonder. "He has not told you?" Incredulity, impertinent and mocking, darted out of the dark eyes. "What you think then—you what got my room?"

"Your room?" Arlee echoed faintly. She flung a quivering hand toward the bed. "How did you get in here? I locked the door——"

"You see how I came—I came by the panel," She waited a moment, watching the wide blue eyes before her, the parted lips, the white cheeks in which the blood was slowly stealing back, and incredulity gave way to astonished acceptance. "You don\'t know that, either? That is very funny."

"Did you lock it?" was Arlee\'s next breathless question. "What was that you said about putting in a magazine? Did you leave it open?"

The other girl reached quickly and caught her arm, as Arlee turned toward the bed. "No, no, if it goes shut we cannot open it inside," she warned. "It does not open this side unless you have the key. It opens from without. But he will not come in now—he is at the Khedive\'s palace. We are all right."

"But I want to get away," cried Arlee. She turned upon this other girl great eyes of pitiful entreaty, eyes where the dark shadows about them lay like cruel bruises on the white flesh. "I must get away at once. Won\'t you help me?"

"Help you? I would help myself, if I could. But there is no way out. It is no use." The unknown girl spoke with a bitterness that brought conviction. Piteously the flare of hope and spirit wilted.

"You are sure?" she questioned faintly. "There is no way out?"

"No way, no way!" The other shook her head impatiently. "Do I not know? Let us talk of that again. Now I came to see you, to see what pretty face had sent me packing!" She laughed, but there was ugliness in the laughter, and catching up the candle she held it before Arlee, her face impudently close, her eyes black darts of curiosity.

"Well you are pretty enough," she said coolly. "Hamdi has always the good taste. But do you think you will keep my room from me—h\'m?"

"I do not want your room," said Arlee with passionate intensity. "I do not want to stay here. I want only to go away. Oh, there must be a way. Please help me—please." She choked and broke down, the tears hot in her eyes.
\'\'I do not want to stay here\'\'

"\'I do not want to stay here\'"

The other girl abruptly drew her down on the couch and settled herself beside her among the cushions. "Here—be comfortable—let us be comfortable and talk," she said. "Do not cry so—What, you are so soon sorry? You want to be off?"

Desperately Arlee steadied her shaking voice. "I must go at once."

"You got enough so soon?"

"Enough!" was the quivering echo.

"What you come for then?"

"Come for? I did not know what I was coming into. I thought—but tell me," she broke off to demand, "tell me about the plague. Was there any quarantine at all? How soon was it over? What is really happening?"

"Quar—quar—what you mean?"

"The plague? Has there been a plague here? Have people had to stay in the palace on account of it?"

"Oh—h!" The indrawn breath was eloquent of enlightenment. "Is that somethings he said to you?"

"Yes, yes. Isn\'t it true? Wasn\'t there any plague?"

With eyes of dreadful apprehension she saw the other shake her head in vigorous denial. "No plague," she said decisively. "My maid—she know everything. No sickness here."

"Then it was all a lie." Arlee\'s eyes fixed themselves on the dancing candle flame, swaying in the soft night air. She tried to think very coolly and collectedly, but her brain felt numb and fogged and heavy. The sight of that tortured candle flame hypnotized her. Faintly she whispered, "Then it was all—an excuse," and, at that, sharp terror, like a knife, cleaved her numbness. She turned furiously to her visitor.

"But he would not dare make it all up!"

She saw the callousness of the shrug. "Why not—he is the master here!" Her own heart echoed fearfully the words. She stammered, "But—but I wrote—I had a letter—there must——"

"What in all the world are you saying?" demanded the other. "What is this story?" and as Arlee began the quick, whispered narration she listened intently, her little dark head on one side, nodding wisely at intervals.

"So—you came to have tea," she repeated at the close, in her quaintly inflected, foreign-sounding English. "And you stay because of the plague? So?"

"But I wrote—I wrote to my friends and——"

"And gave him the letters!"

"But I had a letter from my friends—or a telegram rather." Arlee knitted her brows in furious thought. "And it sounded like her."

"Does he know her, that friend?" questioned the other and at Arlee\'s nod, "Then he could write it himself—that is easy on telegraph paper. He is so clever, that devil, Hamdi."

"But my friends knew where I was going"—slowly the mind turned back to trace the blind, careless steps of that afternoon. "At least he said he\'d leave a note—Oh, what a fool I was!" she broke off to gasp, seeing how that forethought of his, that far-sighted remark, had prevented her from leaving a note of her own. And she remembered now, with flashing clearness, that upon her arrival he had carelessly inquired if she, too, had left a note of explanation. How lightly she had told him no! And what unguessed springs of action came perhaps from that single word! For so cleverly had the trap been swiftly prepared that if anything had gone wrong, if anyone had become aware of her intentions, it could have passed off as a visit and she would have returned to her hotel prattling joyously of her wonderful glimpse into the seclusion of Turkish aristocracy!

"But the soldier with the bayonet," she said aloud. "There was one on the stairs."

"A servant."

"Oh, if I had passed him!"

"You could not—he would run you through on a nod from Hamdi. They watch that stairs always—day and night."

Day and night—and she was alone here, in this grim palace, alone and helpless and forsaken.... What were her friends thinking about her? Where did they think she was? Her thoughts beat desperately upon that problem, trying to find there some ray of hope, some promise that there were clues which would lead them to her, but she found nothing there but deeper mystery and fearful surmise. He was clever enough to cover his traces. No one had known of his connection with her departure.... Perhaps he had sent them some false and misleading message like the one he had sent her.... What were they thinking? What did they believe? This was Friday night, and she had been gone since Thursday afternoon.

In that moment she saw with merciless clarity the bitter straits that she was in.

"Oh, he is a devil!" her companion was reaffirming with an angry little half-whisper sibilant with fury. "Look how he treat me—me, Fritzi Baroff! You do not know me? You do not know that name? In Vienna it is not so unknown—Oh, God, I was so happy in Vienna!" She stopped, her breast heaving, with the flare of emotion, then went on quickly, with suppressed vehemence, "I was a singer—in the light opera. I dance, too, and I was arriving. Only this year I was to have a fine r?le—and it all went, zut, it all went for that man! I was one fool about him, and his dark eyes and his strange ways.... I thought I had a prince. And he worship me then, too—he follow me, he give me big diamonds.... So he take me here—it was to be the vacation!"

She gave a strangling little laugh. Arlee was listening with a painful intensity. She was living, she thought, in an Arabian nights.

"I stay at the hotel first till he make this like a private apartment for me," went on the little dancer, "and when I come here he do everything for me. I have luxury, yes, jewels and dresses and a fine new car. Then, by and by, I grow tired. It was always the same and he was at the palace, much. And he would not let me make acquaintance. We quarrel, but still I have a fancy for him, and then, you understand, money is not always so easy to find. Life can be hard. But I get more restless, I want to go back on the stage and I, well, I write some letters that he finds out. Bang, goes the door upon me! He laugh like a fiend. He say that I am to be a little Turkish lady to the end of my life. Oh, God, he shut me up like a prisoner in this place, and I can do nothing—nothing—nothing!"

She beat out angry emphasis on the palm of one hand with a clenched little fist. "I go nearly mad. I lose my head. He laugh—he is like that. He is a devil when he turns against you, and, you understand, he had somethings new to play with now.... Sometimes he seem to love me as before, and then I would grow soft and coax that he take me to Europe some day, and then when I think he mean it—Oh, how he laugh!" She drew in her breath sharply. "Sometimes I think he will take me again—sometime—but I cannot tell. And the days never end. They are terrible. My youth is going, going. And my youth is all I have."

She looked at Arlee with eyes where her terror was visible, and all the lines of her pretty, common little face were changed and sharpened, and her babyish lips dragged down strangely at the corners.

A s............