The flap of the letter box began to move, and I formed a sudden determination. Making no sound in my heelless Turkish slippers I crept close up to the door and dropped upon my knees.
Thereupon the flap became fully lifted, but from where I crouched beneath it I was unable to see who or what was looking in; yet I hesitated no longer. I suddenly raised myself and thrust the revolver barrel through the opening!
"Who are you?" I cried. "Answer or I fire!" — and along the barrel I peered out on to the landing.
Still no one answered. But something impalpable — a powder — a vapour — to this hour I do not know what — enveloped me with its nauseating fumes; was puffed fully into my face! My eyes, my mouth, my nostrils became choked up, it seemed, with a deadly stifling perfume.
Wildly, feeling that everything about me was slipping away, that I was sinking into a void, for ought I knew that of dissolution, I pulled the trigger once, twice, thrice…
"My God!" — the words choked in my throat and I reeled back into the passage—"it's not loaded!"
I threw up my arms to save myself, lurched, and fell forward into what seemed a bottomless pit.
Chapter 20
THE GOLDEN PAVILION
When I opened my eyes it was to a conviction that I dreamed. I lay upon a cushioned divan in a small apartment which I find myself at a loss adequately to describe.