For the first time since our meeting that night, the girl turned her eyes from me and glanced up at Stacey, a sudden warm blush stealing over her face and throat and as quickly departing, to leave her even more pale than before. She grasped Stacey’s hand in both her own—and looked again at me.
“Send for Mr. Nayland Smith without delay!” she said, and her sweet voice was slightly tremulous. “He must be put on his guard!”
I started up.
“Why?” I said. “For God’s sake tell us what has happened!”
Aziz who evidently was as anxious as myself for information, and who now knelt at his sister’s feet looking at her with that strange love, which was almost adoration, in his eyes, glanced back at me and nodded his head rapidly.
“Something”—Karamaneh paused, shuddering violently—“some dreadful thing, like a mummy escaped from its tomb, came into my room to-night through the porthole...”
“Through the porthole?” echoed Stacey, amazedly.
“Yes, yes, through the porthole! A creature tall and very, very thin. He wore wrappings—yellow wrappings—swathed about his head, so that only his eyes, his evil gleaming eyes, were visible.... From waist to knees he was covered, also, but his body, his feet, and his legs were bare...”
“Was he—?” I began...
“He was a brown man, yes,”—Karamaneh divining my question, nodded, and the shimmering cloud of her wonderful hair, hastily confined, burst free and rippled about her shoulders. “A gaunt, fleshless brown man, who bent, and writhed bony fingers—so!”