little dazed. She shot a quick glance over the auditorium. No one but herself and the woman in the rear seemed to have noticed anything unusual. Again her eyes went back to the stage; and then, as if a hazy idea in the back of her mind had all at once leaped into dazzling clarity, she bent abruptly toward her father.

“Dad—look!” she whispered tensely, tugging at his sleeve. “Don’t you see? It’s——”

She stopped, shrugged a little, and her hand dropped limply to her knee. The fall of the curtain and the flare-up of the lights seemed to have blotted out an illusion. Mr. Hardwick, gray and lean and looking rather uncomfortable in his full-dress suit, adjusted his glasses on his thin nose, and looked at her gravely.

“My goodness, child! What is the matter?” he murmured.

“Nothing, dad. I forgot that—that you wouldn’t understand.” She drew the palm of her hand across her forehead. “Isn’t the air stifling?”

“Too much excitement for you, I am afraid.” He smiled as if his practical sense had found a satisfactory answer. “Your mother was just like that. Whenever she got a bit wrought up, she always said things that I couldn’t understand. Now——”

The hangings parted and Vincent Starr stepped inside the box. Helen gave him a swiftly appraising glance. His face was flushed and he looked tired, as if his last ounce of energy had been spent in the emotional tempest of Marius, but a swift look of animation brightened his face as she introduced her father. The first thing one usually noticed about Vincent Starr was his pale, placid eyes. They seemed to give the lie to his magnetic smile, his vivacious manners, and his deep and perfectly modulated voice. As once or twice before in his presence, Helen felt fascinated and repelled.

“You are doing my daughter a great honor,” murmured Mr. Hardwick.

“Not at all.” Starr laughed softly, but Helen thought she detected a slight discord that might have been due to either nervousness or fatigue. “Miss Hardwick has placed me under a very great obligation. Her play is splendid. The last act is particularly strong, as you will see in a few minutes. You must give me your opinion of——”

Helen heard no more. She had glanced toward the rear of the house just in time to see a mysterious smile on the face of the woman seated in the last row. In vain Helen tried to read and interpret it. Presently the woman took a pencil from her bag and began to write on a page torn from her programme. Finally she summoned an usher, handed him what she had written, and nodded in the direction where Helen was sitting. The attendant glided away, and a few moments later he stood bowing before Starr.

“A lady sent you this, sir,” he announced.

Starr murmured an apology to Helen and her father and unfolded the note. His face, dark and almost effeminately smooth—the face of a dreamer rather than a man of action—showed a look of boredom hinting that he was weary of receiving notes from feminine admirers. Then, as he glanced at the writing, his expression suddenly changed. A look of fear crossed his face, but it vanished so quickly that Helen could not be sure she had read its meaning correctly. He crumpled the note in his hand and glanced at his watch.

“It’s almost time for the curtain,” he murmured, quite himself once more. “I hope to see both of you later.”

With that he was gone. Helen stole a glance at the woman in the rear. Her face bore an expression of amusement and sly triumph, but it afforded no clew to what the note had contained. Then the lights faded out and the curtain rose upon the final act. The scene depended for its full effect on almost total darkness, and the only illumination in the house was a smoldering camp fire in one corner of the stage and the small red lights over the exits. Marius stood in the center, almost totally wrapped in shadows, and in the distance were heard the strains of strange, wild singing. The spirits of evil were creeping out of the darkness to make their last sorcerous appeal.

Helen felt herself tingling with suspense. She did not know why, unless it was due to the look of fear she had seen in Starr’s face as he read the note. She glanced toward the rear, but the auditorium was now so dark that she could no longer see the mysterious woman, although she imagined her hair ornament was gleaming dully in the gloom.

Of a sudden she opened her eyes wide, straining her pupils against the darkness. She could not be quite sure, but she thought a shadow had emerged from one of the exits and was gliding silently toward the woman in the rear. She sat very still while little shivers ran up and down her back, and she was vaguely wondering at an odd change in Starr’s voice. It drooped, grew hoarse and uncertain, and there were pauses between the words. She felt he was trying to conquer a sense of unreasoning dread. A feeling of dizziness seized her, but her imagination formed a picture of a dark shape stealing softly, silently toward where the woman sat.

Acting on an irresistible impulse, she rose and hurried from the box, deaf to her father’s mild remonstrance. Without volition on her part, her feet seemed to carry her swiftly up the heavily carpeted aisle. She heard a jumble of noises in her head and felt a tightening at the throat. She rounded the last tier of seats and rushed forward, guided only by a feeble red gleam over one of the exits. A dim shape, a shade darker than the surrounding dusk, was moving a few feet ahead of her.

All at once, as if the hesitancy in Starr’s voice had cast a deadening spell over the actors and the audience, an uneasy silence fell upon the house. Helen sensed it as she sped along in the wake of the creeping shadow. A few steps more, and she could make out the woman’s figure, vaguely outlined against the gloom, and just behind it stood the shadowy shape whose furtive movements Helen had followed since she left the box.

The happenings of the next few moments were like a swift, horrible dream. Suddenly she felt limp and cold. Within reach of her arm a hand moved, and the motion seemed to strike a hideous note through the surrounding stillness. A cry rose and died in her throat. She staggered back against a post and stood there motionless while a dark shape brushed past her. She recoiled as a hand touched hers in passing, and she caught a fleeting but unforgettable glimpse of a face.

It was gone in a moment, but the swarthy features, framed by coarse black hair that reached to the shoulders, the flat, short nose, the thick and jutting lower lip, the great eyes with their lambent flames that seemed to send streaks of fire into the darkness, gave her a feeling that something evil and loathsome had passed.

CHAPTER II—“MR. SHEI”

For a moment longer she leaned against the pillar. Then she heard laughter—laughter that was low and sibilant and edged with the insinuating twang that sometimes characterizes the laughter of a madman. It was soft and gentle, yet she thought it was the most fearful sound she had ever heard. It gripped and shook her, and she knew instinctively that it came from the woman in the rear.

Something urged her forward, but her nerves and limbs rebelled. Others beside herself must have heard that soul-shaking laughter, for the hush that had fallen over the house ended abruptly in a jumble of loud sounds. The curtain descended with a rhythmic chugging, there were exclamations of surprise and horror, and the audience sprang from their seats as the lights went on. With startled faces they looked to left and right and rear, and several of them excitedly inquired what had happened. No one seemed to know, but as if moved by a single impulse, they scrambled in the direction whence the laughter came. Then they stopped, huddled in a half