“Open the door!  Oh, for God’s sake be quick!”

Completely mystified, and not a little alarmed, I threw open the door, and in there staggered a woman heavily veiled, so that I could see little of her features, but by the lines of her figure I judged her to be young.

Uttering a sort of moan of terror she herself closed the door, and stood with her back to it, watching me through the thick veil, while her breast rose and fell tumultuously.

“Thank God there was someone at home!” she gasped.

I think I may say with justice that I had never been so surprised in my life; every particular of the incident marked it as unique—­set it apart from the episodes of everyday life.

“Madam,” I began doubtfully, “you seem to be much alarmed at
something, and if I can be of any assistance to you------”

“You have saved my life!” she whispered, and pressed one hand to her bosom.  “In a moment I will explain.”

“Won’t you rest a little after your evidently alarming experience?” I suggested.

My strange visitor nodded, without speaking, and I conducted her to the study which I had just left, and placed the most comfortable arm-chair close beside the table so that as I sat I might study this woman who so strangely had burst in upon me.  I even tilted the shaded lamp, artlessly, a trick I had learned from Harley, in order that the light might fall upon her face.

She may have detected this device; I know not; but as if in answer to its challenge, she raised her gloved hands and unfastened the heavy veil which had concealed her features.

Thereupon I found myself looking into a pair of lustrous black eyes whose almond shape was that of the Orient; I found myself looking at a woman who, since she was evidently a Jewess, was probably no older than eighteen or nineteen, but whose beauty was ripely voluptuous, who might fittingly have posed for Salome, who, despite her modern fashionable garments, at once suggested to my mind the wanton beauty of the daughter of Herodias.

I stared at her silently for a time, and presently her full lips parted in a slow smile.  My ideas were diverted into another channel.

“You have yet to tell me what alarmed you,” I said in a low voice, but as courteously as possible, “and if I can be of any assistance in the matter.”

My visitor seemed to recollect her fright—­or the necessity for simulation.  The pupils of her fine eyes seemed to grow larger and darker; she pressed her white teeth into her lower lips, and resting her hands upon the table leaned toward me.

“I am a stranger to London,” she began, now exhibiting a certain diffidence, “and to-night I was looking for the chambers of Mr. Raphael Philips of Figtree Court.”

“This is Figtree Court,” I said, “but I know of no Mr. Raphael Philips who has chambers here.”

The black eyes met mine despairingly.