emed, such darkness before! The stillness--he
had never known silence so heavy, so full of strange, premonitory
pulsings; a silence that seemed so incongruously full of clamouring
whispers in his ears! It must be those imagined whispers that were
affecting his nerve--for now, as he gained the landing and slipped his
automatic from his pocket, his hand was shaking with a queer twitching
motion.

For an instant, fighting for his self-composure, he stood striving
to locate his surroundings through the darkness. The staircase was a
circular one, making the landing nearly at the front of the house, and
rearward from this, the Tocsin had said, a hallway ran down the centre,
with rooms on either side. The first room to the right, therefore,
should be just at his hand. He reached out, feeling cautiously--there
was nothing. He edged to the right--still nothing; edged a little
farther, a sense of bewilderment growing upon him, and finally his
fingers touched the wall. It was very strange! The hallway must be much
wider than he had understood it to be from what she had said!

He moved along now straight ahead of him, his hand on the wall, feeling
for the door--and with every step his bewilderment increased. Surely
there must be some mistake--perhaps he had misunderstood! He had come
fully twice the distance that one would expect--and yet there was
no door. Ah, what was that? His fingers closed on soft, heavy velvet
hangings. These could hardly be in front of a door, and yet--what else
could it be? He drew the hangings warily apart, and felt behind them. It
was a window; but it was shuttered in some way evidently, for he could
not see out.

Jimmie Dale stood motionless there for fully a minute. It seemed absurd,
preposterous, the conviction that was being forced home upon him--that
there were no rooms on the right-hand side of the corridor at all!
But that was not like the Tocsin, accurate always in the most minute
details. The room must be still farther along. He was tempted to use
his flashlight--but that, as long as he could feel his way, was an
unnecessary risk. A flashlight upstairs, where a sleeping-room door
might be ajar, or even wide open, where some one wakeful, THAT man
himself, perhaps, might see it, was quite another matter than a
flashlight in the closed and deserted library below!

He went on once more, still guiding himself by a light finger touch upon
the wall, passed another portiere similar to the first, and,