The flesh was black with the passing of the centuries; but as I
looked I saw upon the right cheek-bone a small triangular scar, and the
secret of the mummy flashed upon me. I was looking at the dead body of
the man whom I had decoyed into that house. There was no thought or design of action in my mind. I held the accursed
coin in my hand, burning me with a foretaste of hell, and I fled as I
would have fled from pestilence and death, and dashed into the street
in blind horror, not knowing where I went. I felt the gold coin grasped
in my clenched list, and threw it away, I knew not where, and ran on and
on through by-streets and dark ways, till at last I issued out into a
crowded thoroughfare, and checked myself. Then, as consciousness
returned, I realized my instant peril, and understood what would happen
if I fell into the hands of Lipsius. I knew that I had put forth my
finger to thwart a relentless mechanism rather than a man; my recent
adventure with the unfortunate Mr. Headley had taught me that Lipsius
had agents in all quarters, and I foresaw that if I fell into his hands,
he would remain true to his doctrine of style, and cause me to die a
death of some horrible and ingenious torture. I bent my whole mind to
the task of outwitting him and his emissaries, three of whom I knew to
have proved their ability for tracking down persons who for various
reasons preferred to remain obscure. These servants of Lipsius were two
men and a woman, and the woman was incomparably the most subtle and the
most deadly. Yet I considered that I too had some portion of craft, and
I took my resolve. Since then I have matched myself day by day and hour
by hour against the ingenuity of Lipsius and his myrmidons. For a time I
was successful; though they beat furiously after me in the covert of
London, I remained _perdu_, and watched with some amusement their
frantic efforts to recover the scent lost in two or three minutes. Every
lure and wile was put forth to entice me from my hiding-place. I was
informed by the medium of the public prints that what I had taken had
been recovered, and meetings were proposed in which I might hope to
gain a great deal without the slightest risk. I laughed at their
endeavors, and began a little to despise the organization I had so
dreaded, and ventured more abroad. Not once or twice, but several times,
I recognized the two men who were charged with my capture, and I
succeeded in eluding them easily at close quarters; and a little hastily
I decided that I had nothing to dread, and that my craft was greater
than theirs. But in the mean while, while I congratulated myself on my
cunning, the third of Lipsius's emissaries was weaving her nets, and in
an evil hour I paid a visit to an old friend, a literary man named
Russell, who lived in a quiet street in Bayswater. The woman, as I found
out too late, a day or two ago, occupied rooms in the same house, and I
was followed and tracked down. Too late, as I have said, I recognized
that I had made a fatal mistake, and that I was besieged. Sooner or
later I shall find myself in the power of an enemy without pity; and so
surely as I leave this house I shall go to receive doom. I hardly dare
to guess how it will at last fall upon me. My imagination, always a
vivid one, paints to me appalling pictures of the unspeakable torture
which I shall probably endure; and I know that I shall die with Lipsius
standing near and gloating over the refinements of my suffering and my
shame. Hours, nay, minutes, have become very precious to me. I sometimes pause
in the midst of anticipating my tortures, to wonder whether even now I
cannot hit upon some supreme stroke, some design of infinite subtlety,
to free myself from the toils. But I find that the faculty of
combination has left me. I am as the scholar in the old myth, deserted
by the power which has helped, me hitherto. I do not know when the
supreme moment will come, but sooner or later it is inevitable, and
before long I shall receive sentence, and from the sentence to execution
will not be long. *       *       *       *       *

I cannot remain here a prisoner any longer. I shall go out to-night when
the streets are full of crowds and clamors, and make a last effort to
escape. *       *       *       *       *

It was with profound astonishment that Dyson closed the little book, and
thought of the strange series of incidents which had brought him into
touch with the plots and counterplots connected with the Gold Tiberius. He had bestowed the coin carefully away, and he shuddered at the bare
possibility of its place of deposit becoming known to the evil band who
seemed to possess such extraordinary sources of information. It had grown late while he read, and he put the pocket-book away, hoping
with all his heart that the unhappy Walters might even at the eleventh
hour escape the doom he dreaded. ADVENTURE OF THE DESERTED RESIDENCE. "A wonderful story, as you say; an extraordinary sequence and play of
coincidence. I confess that your expressions when you first showed me
the Gold Tiberius were not exaggerated. But do you think that Walters
has really some fearful fate to dread?" "I cannot say. Who can presume to predict events when life itself puts
on the robe of coincidence and plays at drama? Perhaps we have not yet
reached the last chapter in the queer story. But, look, we are drawing
near to the verge of London; there are gaps, you see, in the serried
ranks of brick, and a vision of green fields beyond." Dyson had persuaded the ingenious Mr. Phillipps to accompany him on one
of those aimless walks to which he was himself so addicted. Starting
from the very heart of London, they had made their way westward through
the stony avenues, and were now just emerging from the red lines of an
extreme suburb, and presently the half-finished road ended, a quiet lane
began, and they were beneath the shade of elm-trees. The yellow autumn
sunlight that had lit up the bare distance of the suburban street now
filtered down through the boughs of the trees and shone on the glowing
carpet of fallen leaves, and the pools of rain glittered and shot back
the gleam of light. Over all the broad pastures there was peace and the
happy rest of autumn before the great winds begin, and afar off, London
lay all vague and immense amidst the veiling mist; here and there a
distant window catching the sun and kindling with fire, and a spire
gleaming high, and below the streets in shadow, and the turmoil of life. Dyson and Phillipps walked on in silence beneath the high hedges, till
at a turn of the lane they saw a mouldering and ancient gate standing
open, and the prospect of a house at the end of a moss-grown carriage
drive. "There is a survival for you," said Dyson; "it has come to its last
days, I imagine. Look how the laurels have grown gaunt, and weedy, and
black, and bare, beneath; look at the house, covered with yellow wash
and patched with green damp.