Who was the “man with the limp”?  What was the Si-Fan?  Lastly, by what conceivable means could the flower, which my friend evidently regarded with extreme horror, have been introduced into Hale’s room, and why had I been required to pronounce the words “Sakya Muni”?

So ran my reflections—­at random and to no clear end; and, as is often the case in such circumstances, my steps bore them company; so that all at once I became aware that instead of having gained the lobby of the hotel, I had taken some wrong turning and was in a part of the building entirely unfamiliar to me.

A long corridor of the inevitable white marble extended far behind me.  I had evidently traversed it.  Before me was a heavily curtained archway.  Irritably, I pulled the curtain aside, learnt that it masked a glass-paneled door, opened this door—­and found myself in a small court, dimly lighted and redolent of some pungent, incense-like perfume.

One step forward I took, then pulled up abruptly.  A sound had come to my ears.  From a second curtained doorway, close to my right hand, it came—­a sound of muffled tapping, together with that of something which dragged upon the floor.

Within my brain the words seemed audibly to form:  “The man with the limp!”

I sprang to the door; I had my hand upon the drapery ... when a woman stepped out, barring the way!

No impression, not even a vague one, did I form of her costume, save that she wore a green silk shawl, embroidered with raised white figures of birds, thrown over her head and shoulders and draped in such fashion that part of her face was concealed.  I was transfixed by the vindictive glare of her eyes, of her huge dark eyes.

They were ablaze with anger—­but it was not this expression within them which struck me so forcibly as the fact that they were in some way familiar.

Motionless, we faced one another.  Then—­

“You go away,” said the woman—­at the same time extending her arms across the doorway as barriers to my progress.

Her voice had a husky intonation; her hands and arms, which were bare and of old ivory hue, were laden with barbaric jewelry, much of it tawdry silverware of the bazaars.  Clearly she was a half-caste of some kind, probably a Eurasian.

I hesitated.  The sounds of dragging and tapping had ceased.  But the presence of this grotesque Oriental figure only increased my anxiety to pass the doorway.  I looked steadily into the black eyes; they looked into mine unflinchingly.

“You go away, please,” repeated the woman, raising her right hand and pointing to the door whereby I had entered.  “These private rooms.  What you doing here?”

Her words, despite her broken English, served to recall to me the fact that I was, beyond doubt, a trespasser!  By what right did I presume to force my way into other people’s apartments?

“There is some one in there whom I must see,” I said, realizing, however, that my chance of doing so was poor.