me, for the valet bowed me out of the elevator and, re-entering, disappeared.
The Arab salaamed. Opening the door, he salaamed again. I walked over its threshold. A clock began to chime midnight.
“Welcome, James Kirkham! You are punctual to the minute,” said some one.
The voice was strangely resonant and musical, with a curious organ quality. The speaker sat at the head of a long table where places were laid for three. That much I saw before I looked into his eyes, and then for a time could see nothing else. For those eyes were of the deepest sapphire blue and they were the alivest eyes I had ever beheld. They were large, slightly oblique, and they sparkled as though the very spring of life was bubbling up behind them. Gem-like they were in color, and gem-like were they in their hardness. They were lashless, and as unwinking as a bird’s—or a snake’s.
It was with distinct effort that I tore my gaze from them and took note of the face in which they were set. The head above them was inordinately large, high and broad and totally bald. It was an astonishing hemisphere whose capacity must have been almost double that of the average. The ears were long and narrow and distinctly pointed at the tips. The nose was heavy and beaked, the chin round but massive. The lips were full, and as classically cut and immobile as of some antique Greek statue. The whole huge, round face was of a marble pallor, and it was unwrinkled, unlined and expressionless. The only thing alive about it were the eyes, and alive indeed they were— uncannily, terrifyingly so.
His body, what I could see of it, was unusually large, the enormous barrel of the chest indicating tremendous vitality.
Even at first contact one sensed the abnormal, and the radiation of inhuman power.
“Be seated, James Kirkham,” the sonorous voice rolled out again. A butler emerged from the shadows at his back and drew out for me the chair at the left.
I bowed to this amazing host of mine and seated myself silently.
“You must be hungry after your long ride,” he said. “It was good of you, James Kirkham, thus to honor this whim of mine.”
I looked at him sharply but could detect no sign of mockery.
“I am indebted to you, sir,” I answered, as urbanely, “for an unusually entertaining journey. And as for humoring what you are pleased to call your whim, how, sir, could I have done otherwise when you sent messengers so —ah—eloquent?”
“Ah, yes,” he nodded. “Dr. Consardine is indeed a singularly persuasive person. He will join us presently. But drink—eat.”
The butler poured champagne. I lifted my glass and paused, staring at it with delight. It was a goblet of rock crystal, exquisitely cut, extremely ancient I judged—a jewel and priceless.
“Yes,” said my host, as though I had spoken. “Truly one of a rare set. They were the drinking glasses of the Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid. When I drink from them I seem to see him surrounded by his beloved cup-companions amid the glories of his court in old Baghdad. All the gorgeous panorama of the Arabian Nights spreads out before me. They were preserved for me,” he went on, thoughtfully, “by the late Sultan Abdul Hamid. At least they were his until I felt the desire to possess them.”
“You must have exercised great—ah—persuasion, sir, to have made the Sultan part from them,” I murmured.
“As you have remarked, James Kirkham, my messengers are—eloquent,” he replied, suavely.
I took a sip of the wine and could not for the life of me hide my pleasure.
“Yes,” intoned my strange host, “a rare vintage. It was intended for the exclusive use of King Alfonso of Spain. But again my messengers were— eloquent. When I drink it my admiration for its excellences is shadowed only by my sympathy for Alfonso in his deprivation.”
I drank that wine, worshipfully. I attacked with relish a delicious cold bird. My eye was caught by the lines of a golden compote set with precious stones. So exquisite was it that I half arose to examine it more closely.
“Benvenuto Cellini made it,” observed my host. “It is one of his masterpieces. Italy kept it for me through the centuries.”
“But Italy would never voluntarily have let a thing like that go from her!” I exclaimed.
“No, quite involuntarily, oh quite, I assure you,” he answered, blandly.
I began to glance about the dimly lighted room and realized that here, like the great hall, was another amazing treasure chamber. If half of what my eyes took in was genuine, the contents of that room alone were worth millions. But they could not be—not even an American billionaire could have gathered such things.
“But they are genuine,” again he read my thoughts. “I am a connoisseur indeed—the greatest in the world. Not alone of paintings, and of gems and wines and other masterpieces of man’s genius. I am a connoisseur of men and women. A collection of what, loosely, are called souls. That is why, James Kirkham, you are here!”
The butler filled the goblets and placed another bottle in the iced pail beside me; he put liqueurs and cigars upon the table and then, as though at some signal, he withdrew. He disappeared, I noted with interest, through still another wall panel that masked one of the hidden lifts. I saw that he was a Chinese.
“Manchu,” observed my host. “Of princely rank. Yet he thinks to be my servant the greater honor.”
I nodded casually, as though the matter were commonplace and butlers who were Manchu princes, wine lifted from King Alfonso, goblets of an Arabian Nights’ Caliph and Cellini compotes everyday affairs. I realized that the game which had begun in Battery Park a few hours before had reached its second stage and I was determined to maintain my best poker face and manner.
“You please me, James Kirkham,” the voice was totally devoid of expression, the lips scarcely moved as it rolled forth. “You are thinking —‘I am a prisoner, my place in the outer world is being filled by a double whom even my closest friends do not suspect of being other than I; this man speaking is a monster, ruthless and conscienceless, a passionless intellect which could—and would—blow me out if he desired as carelessly as he would blow out a candle flame.’ In all that, James Kirkham, you are right.”
He paused. I found it better not to look into those jewel-bright blue eyes. I lighted a cigarette and nodded, fixing my attention on the glowing tip.
“Yes, you are right,” he went on. “Yet you ask no questions and make no appeals. Your voice and hands are steady, your eyes untroubled. But back of all, your brain is keenly alert, poised on tiptoe to seize some advantage. You are feeling out for danger with the invisible antennae of your nerves like any jungle-man. Every sense is alive to catch some break in the net you feel around you. There is a touch of terror upon you. Yet outwardly you show no slightest sign of all this—only I could detect it. You please me greatly, James Kirkham. Yours is the true gambler’s soul!”
He paused again, studying me over the rim of his goblet. I forced myself to meet his gaze and smile.
“You are now thirty-five,” he continued. “I have watched you for years. I was first attracted to you by your work in the French Espionage Service during the second year of the war.”
My fingers stiffened involuntarily about my glass. None, I had thought, had known of that hazardous work except the Chief and myself.
