inst the wall.

Shorthouse was within two feet of the door on to the landing; his
position commanded a good view of the main staircase leading down into
the darkness, and also of the beginning of the servants' stairs going to
the floor above; the heavy stick lay beside him within easy reach.

The moon was now high above the house. Through the open window they
could see the comforting stars like friendly eyes watching in the sky.
One by one the clocks of the town struck midnight, and when the sounds
died away the deep silence of a windless night fell again over
everything. Only the boom of the sea, far away and lugubrious, filled
the air with hollow murmurs.

Inside the house the silence became awful; awful, he thought, because
any minute now it might be broken by sounds portending terror. The
strain of waiting told more and more severely on the nerves; they
talked in whispers when they talked at all, for their voices aloud
sounded queer and unnatural. A chilliness, not altogether due to the
night air, invaded the room, and made them cold. The influences against
them, whatever these might be, were slowly robbing them of
self-confidence, and the power of decisive action; their forces were on
the wane, and the possibility of real fear took on a new and terrible
meaning. He began to tremble for the elderly woman by his side, whose
pluck could hardly save her beyond a certain extent.

He heard the blood singing in his veins. It sometimes seemed so loud
that he fancied it prevented his hearing properly certain other sounds
that were beginning very faintly to make themselves audible in the
depths of the house. Every time he fastened his attention on these
sounds, they instantly ceased. They certainly came no nearer. Yet he
could not rid himself of the idea that movement was going on somewhere
in the lower regions of the house. The drawing-room floor, where the
doors had been so strangely closed, seemed too near; the sounds were
further off than that. He thought of the great kitchen, with the
scurrying black-beetles, and of the dismal little scullery; but,
somehow or other, they did not seem to come from there either. Surely
they were not _outside_ the house!

Then, suddenly, the truth flashed into his mind, and for the space of a
minute he felt as if his blood had stopped flowing and turned to ice.

The sounds were not downstairs at all; they were _upstairs_--upstairs,
somewhere among those horrid gloomy little servants'