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 a narrow passage on the second floor of the Maison d'Or.

Ten seconds, perhaps, I stood to assure myself that I was all right. Then I drew my revolver, and putting it to the full cock, I began to look about me. It was plain in a minute that I was in a passage with doors opening down one side of it. The glimmer of a light showed at the far end; but elsewhere it was all dark, and, what was more, strangely silent. The air itself was heavy, like the air of a bakehouse. I had to gasp for my breath; there was a choking sensation in my throat which nearly made me faint. Stinking fumes, like the fumes of stale opium, filled all the corridor and seemed to exude from the rooms. I staggered under the power of them, and had to bite my lips to prevent myself coughing.

So far as furniture went, there was little that I could see in the passage. A heavy carpet was soft to the feet, and thick curtains, made of some soft stuff, were hung over the openings to the doors. Yet what appeared more curious than any thing was the queer silence in the place. While I stood there, half choking for my breath, and half hidden behind one of the thickest of the curtains, I didn't hear so much as a creak of a door or the fall of a foot. The house might have been a dead-house with spectres for tenants.

You may ask me, fairly enough, what I had meant to do when I crossed the gap and forced my way into this queer place. I can only answer that I