ing everything. In the
general glare thrown on the fog, the fainter light was invisible, but
across a plot of kitchen garden I saw where it had been; a square, squat
building of concrete, flat roofed, vining plants in boxes drooping over
its cornice; the typical garage of such an establishment, but nearly
double the usual size. The light had come from there, but how? In the
short time that the lamps of the machine were showing it up to me, there
seemed no windows on this side; only the double doors for the car's
entrance--closed now--and a single door which was crossed by two heavy,
barricading planks nailed in the form of a great X.

Worth ran the machine close up against the doors, jumped down, and I
could see his tall form, blurred by the mist, moving about to slide them
open. The lamps of the roadster made little showing now as he rolled it
in. Then these were switched off and everything down there was dark as a
pocket. For a time I sat and waited for him to light up and call me,
then started down. The fog was making the kind of dimness that has a
curious, illusory character. I suppose I had gone half the distance of
the garden walk, when, thrown up startlingly on the obscurity, I saw a
square of white, and across that shining screen, moved the silhouette of
a human head. The whole thing danced before my eyes for a bare second,
then blackness.

With Cummings' queer hints in my mind, I started running across the
garden toward it. About the first thing I did was step into a cold
frame, plunging my foot through the glass, all but going to my knees in
it; and when I got up, swearing, I was turned around, ran into bushes,
tripped over obstructions, and traveled, I think, in a circle.

Then I began to go more cautiously. No use getting excited. That was
only Worth I had seen. And still I was unwilling to call, ask him to
show a light. I groped along until my outstretched fingers came across
the corner of a building, rough, stonelike--the concrete garage and
study. I felt along, seeing a bit now, and was soon passing my hands
over the barricading planks of that door.

I might have lit a match, but I preferred to find out what I could by
feeling around, and that cautiously. I discovered that the door had been
broken in, the top panels shattered to kindling wood, the force of the
assault having burst a hinge, so that the whole thing sagged drunkenly
behind the heavy planks that propped it, while a strong bolt, quite
usel