MIDNIGHT AND MR. KING

      Leroux clutched at the corner of the writing-table to steady himself

      and stood there looking at the deathly face. Under the most favorable

      circumstances, he was no man of action, although in common with the rest

      of his kind he prided himself upon the possession of that presence of

      mind which he lacked. It was a situation which could not have alarmed

      “Martin Zeda,” but it alarmed, immeasurably, nay, struck inert with

      horror, Martin Zeda's creator.

      Then, in upon Leroux's mental turmoil, a sensible idea intruded itself.

      “Dr. Cumberly!” he muttered. “I hope to God he is in!”

      Without touching the recumbent form upon the chesterfield, without

      seeking to learn, without daring to learn, if she lived or had died,

      Leroux, the tempo of his life changed to a breathless gallop, rushed

      out of the study, across the entrance hail, and, throwing wide the flat

      door, leapt up the stair to the flat above--that of his old friend, Dr.

      Cumberly.

      The patter of the slippered feet grew faint upon the stair; then, as

      Leroux reached the landing above, became inaudible altogether.

      In Leroux's study, the table-clock ticked merrily on, seeming to hasten

      its ticking as the hand crept around closer and closer to midnight.

      The mosaic shade of the lamp mingled reds and blues and greens upon the

      white ceiling above and poured golden light upon the pages of manuscript

      strewn about beneath it. This was a typical work-room of a literary man

      having the ear of the public--typical in every respect, save for the

      fur-clad figure outstretched upon the settee.

      And now the peeping light indiscreetly penetrated to the hem of a silken

      garment revealed by some disarrangement of the civet fur. To the eye

      of an experienced observer, had such an observer been present in Henry

      Leroux's study, this billow of silk and lace behind the sheltering fur

      must have proclaimed itself the edge of a night-robe, just as the ankle

      beneath had proclaimed itself to Henry Leroux's shocked susceptibilities

      to be innocent of stocking.

      Thirty seconds were wanted to complete the cycle of the day, when one of

      the listless hands thrown across the back of the chesterfield opened and

      closed spasmodically. The fur at the bosom of the midnight visitor began

      rapidly to rise and fall.

      Then, with a choking cry, the woman struggled upright; her hair, hastily

      dressed, burst free of its bindings and poured in gleaming cascade down

      about her shoulders.

      Clutching with one hand at her cloak in order to keep it wrapped about

      her, and holding the other blindly before her, she rose, and with that

      same odd, groping movement, began to approach the writing-table. The

      pupils of her eyes were mere pin-points now; she shuddered convulsively,

      and her skin was dewed with perspiration. Her breath came in agonized

      gasps.

      “God!--I... am dying... and I cannot--tell him!” she breathed.

      Feverishly, weakly, she took up a pen, and upon a quarto page, already

      half filled with Leroux's small, neat, illegible writing, began to

      scrawl a message, bending down, one hand upon the table, and with her

      whole body shaking.

      Some three or four wavering lines she had written, when intimately,

      for the flat of Henry Leroux in Palace Mansions lay within sight of the

      clock-face--Big Ben began to chime midnight.

      The writer started back and dropped a great blot of ink upon the paper;

      then, realizing the cause of the disturbance,