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 the skin before they smothered him. Caution they smothered instantly; resistance too.

'I have a message for you from my aunt,' he said, as though he brought an invitation to a picnic. Henriot sat in shadow, but his companion's face was in a patch of light that followed them from the windows of the central hall. There was a shining in the light blue eyes that betrayed the excitement his quiet manner concealed. 'We are going⁠—the day after tomorrow⁠—to spend the night in the Desert; she wondered if, perhaps, you would care to join us?'

'For your experiment?' asked Henriot bluntly.

Vance smiled with his lips, holding his eyes steady, though unable to suppress the gleam that flashed in them and was gone so swiftly. There was a hint of shrugging his shoulders.

'It is the Night of Power⁠—in the old Egyptian Calendar, you know,' he answered with assumed lightness almost, 'the final moment of Leyel-el-Sud, the period of Black Nights when the Desert was held to encroach with⁠—with various possibilities of a supernatural order. She wishes to revive a certain practice of the old Egyptians. There may be curious results. At any rate, the occasion is a picturesque one⁠—better than this cheap imitation of London life.' And he indicated the lights, the signs of people in the hall dressed for gaieties and dances, the hotel orchestra that played after dinner.

Henriot at the moment answered nothing, so great was the rush of conflicting emotions that came he knew not whence. Vance went calmly on. He spoke with a simple frankness that was meant to be disarming. Henriot never took his eyes off him. The two men stared steadily at one another.