and the town amid
those scarred and smoking hillocks!... Invisible phenomena! Mysterious
harmonies! The influence of the night solaced and uplifted him and
bestowed on him new faculties of perception.

At length, deciding, after characteristic procrastination, that
he must really go to bed, he wound up his watch and put it on the
dressing-table. His pockets had to be emptied and his clothes hung or
folded. His fingers touched the notes in the left-hand outside pocket
of his coat. Not for one instant had the problem of the bank-notes
been absent from his mind. Throughout the conversation with Rachel,
throughout the interval between her retirement and his own, throughout
his meditations in the bedroom, he had not once escaped from the
obsession of the bank-notes and their problem. He knew now how the
problem must be solved. There was, after all, only one solution, and
it was extremely simple. He must put the notes back where he had found
them, underneath the chair on the landing. If advisable, he might
rediscover them in the morning and surrender them immediately. But
they must not remain in his room during the night. He must not examine
them--he must not look at them.

He approached the door quickly, lest he might never reach the door.
But he was somehow forced to halt at the wardrobe, to see if it
had coat-holders. It had one coat-holder.... His hand was on the
door-knob. He turned it with every species of precaution--and it
complained loudly in the still night. The door opened with a terrible
explosive noise of protest. He gazed into the darkness of the landing,
and presently, by the light from the bedroom, could distinguish the
vague boundaries of it. The chair, invisible, was on the left. He
opened the door wider to the nocturnal riddle of the house. His hand
clasped the notes in his pocket. No sound! He listened for the ticking
of the lobby clock and could not catch it. He listened more intently.
It was impossible that he should not hear the ticking of the lobby
clock. Was he dreaming? Was he under some delusion? Then it occurred
to him that the lobby clock must have run down or otherwise stopped.
Clocks did stop.... And then his heart bounded and his flesh crept. He
had heard footsteps somewhere below. Or were the footsteps merely in
his imagination?

Alone in the parlour, after Rachel had gone to bed, he had spent some
time in gazing at the _Signal_; for there had been absolutely
nothing else to do, and he cou