On the instant he produced his own and gave it to her. She glanced at it, then handed it back.
"It is not his," she said quietly. Her gaze rested steadily upon Osborne's face for some moments, then she said:
"How exceedingly kind of you to come all this way, and in the middle of the night, just to find out if a purse picked up at your club happens to belong to the guest of a friend of yours."
In her low, soft voice there was a touch of irony, almost of mockery. Looking at her now, I felt puzzled. Was she what she appeared to be, or was this amazing beauty of hers a cloak, a weapon if you will, perhaps the most dangerous weapon of a clever, scheming woman? Easterton had told us that Gastrell was a bachelor. Gastrell had declared that he had never before met either Jack Osborne or myself. Yet here at the address that Gastrell had given to the taxi-driver was the very woman the man calling himself Gastrell, with whom Osborne had returned from Africa, had passed off as his wife.
"My husband isn't in at present," she said calmly, a moment later, "but I expect him back at any minute. Won't you come in and wait for him?"
Before either of us could answer she had walked across the hall, unlocked and opened a door, and switched on the light in the room.
Mechanically we followed her. As we entered, a strange, heavy perfume of some subtle Eastern scent struck my nostrilsI had noticed it in the hall, but in this room it was pungent, oppressive, even overpowering. The apartment, I noticed, was luxuriously furnished. What chiefly attracted my attention, however, were the pictures on the walls. Beautifully executed, the subjects were, to say the least, peculiar. The fire in the grate still burned brightly. Upon a table were two syphons in silver stands, also decanters containing spirits, and several tumblers. Some of the tumblers had been used. As I sank, some moments later, into an easy chair, I felt that its leather-covered arms were warm, as if someone had just vacated it.
And yet the door of this room had been locked. Also, when we had arrived, no light had been visible in any of the windows of the house, and the front door had been chained and bolted.
"Make yourselves quite at home," our beautiful hostess said, and, as she spoke, she placed a box of cigars, newly opened, upon the table at my elbow. "I am sorry," she added, "that I must leave you now."
There was a curious expression in her eyes as she smiled down at us, an expression that later I came to know too well. Then, turning, she swept gracefully out of the room, closing the door behind her.
I looked across at Osborne. For some moments neither of us spoke. The mysterious house was still as death.
"Well, Jack," I said lightly, though somehow I felt uneasy, "what do you make of it, old man?"
"It is just as I thought," he answered, taking a cigar out of the box and beginning to trim it.
"How do you mean'just as you thought'?" I asked, puzzled.
"Gastrell is an impostor, andand that isn't his wife."
He did not speak again for some moments, being busily occupied in lighting his long cigar. Presently he leaned back, then blew a great cloud of smoke towards the ceiling.
Suddenly we heard a click, like the wooden lid of a box suddenly shut.
"Hullo!" he exclaimed suddenly, "what's that?"
"What's what?"
"Why! Look!" he gasped.
His gaze was set upon something in the shadow of a small table in a corner of the roomsomething on the floor. In silence, now, we both stood staring at it, for Osborne had risen suddenly. Slowly it moved. It was gradually gliding along the floor, with a sound like paper being pushed along a carpet. Whence it came, where it began and where it ended, we could not see, for the shadow it was in was very deep. Nor was its colour in the least discernible.
All we could make out was that some long, sinuous, apparently endless Thing was passing along the room, close to the wall farthest from us, coming from under the sofa and disappearing beneath the table.
All at once Osborne sprang towards me with an exclamation of alarm, and I felt his grip tighten upon my arm.
"Good God!" he cried.
An instant later a broad, flat head slowly reared itself from beneath the red table-cover which hung down almost to the floor, rose higher and higher until the black, beady, merciless eyes were set upon mine, and in that brief instant of supreme suspense my attention became riveted on the strange, slate-grey mark between and just behind the reptile's cruel eyes. Then, as its head suddenly shot back, Osborne dashed towards the door.
Once, twice, three times he pulled frantically at the handle with all his force.
"Good God! Berrington," he cried, his face blanched to the lips, "we're locked in!"
Almost as he spoke, the serpent with head extended swept forward towards us, along the floor.
I held my breath. Escape from its venomous fangs was impossible.
We had been trapped!
CHAPTER III
A HAMPSTEAD MYSTERY
With a shriek of alarm I leapt to the further side of the table which stood in the middle of the room, and at that moment hurried footsteps became audible.
Our wild shouts for help had evidently been heard, for someone was hurrying down the bare oak stairs into the hall.
"Hang this confounded lockit catches!" we heard a voice exclaim as the handle turned. Then an instant later the door was flung open, and Gastrell stood before us.
"I am dreadfully sorry, you fellows," he said apologetically, "that you should have been alarmed in this way, because I can assure you that my tame cobra, 'Maharaja,' is quite harmlesslook at him now," and we saw that the horrid reptile had swung round the instant its master had entered, and was sliding towards his feet. "He's a pet of mineI brought him home with me, and he follows me like a dogno, you needn't be in the least nervous," he added quickly, seeing that I instinctively edged away as the reptile passed. "I'm awfully sorry to have kept you waiting. I must apologize, too, for that confounded doorI myself got locked in here the other day. My wife told you I was out, but I was not. I came in by the side door, and she didn't know I was back, because I went straight upstairs. If you'll wait a moment I'll take our friend 'Maharaja' out."
He left the room, and the snake slid rapidly along the floor after him, almost, as he had said, like a dog following his steps.
"A nice cheerful pet to keep," I remarked, annoyed at my experience; but at that moment the mysterious Gastrell bustled in alone.
"So sorry," he said, and, after thanking us for coming out so far to ascertain if he had lost his purse, he pulled up a chair, seated himself between us, lit a big cigar, and helped us to whiskey from a silver tantalus.
"You had better add the soda yourselves," he said. "And now there is something I want to say to you both. You must have been surprised at my declaring so emphatically this evening that I had not met either of you beforeeh?"
"I can answer for myself," Osborne exclaimed quickly. "Are you going to admit, after all, that you were on the Masonic?"
"Of course! Who else could it have been? Any more," he added, addressing me, than it could have been someone other than me whom you met in Geneva?"
"Then why did you deny it?" Osborne said rather irritably, looking hard at him with an expression of disapproval and mistrust, while my eyes wandered to that little gold medallion upon his chain.
"Because I had to,that is, it was expedient that I should," was his reply. "I have a reason for not wanting it to be generally known that I am married,least of all did I want Easterton, whose house I have just leased, to know me to be a married man; indeed, I told him some weeks ago that I was a bachelorI had to, for reasons which I can't reveal at present."