tottered off to the smoking-room, where he
did the best he could with sandwiches and coffee.

Having got through the time as best he could till eleven o'clock, he
went up to bed.

The room to which he and Lucille had been assigned by the management was
on the second floor, pleasantly sunny by day and at night filled with
cool and heartening fragrance of the pines. Hitherto Archie had always
enjoyed taking a final smoke on the balcony overlooking the woods,
but, to-night such was his mental stress that he prepared to go to bed
directly he had closed the door. He turned to the cupboard to get his
pyjamas.

His first thought, when even after a second scrutiny no pyjamas were
visible, was that this was merely another of those things which happen
on days when life goes wrong. He raked the cupboard for a third time
with an annoyed eye. From every hook hung various garments of Lucille's,
but no pyjamas. He was breathing a soft malediction preparatory to
embarking on a point-to-point hunt for his missing property, when
something in the cupboard caught his eye and held him for a moment
puzzled.

He could have sworn that Lucille did not possess a mauve neglige. Why,
she had told him a dozen times that mauve was a colour which she did
not like. He frowned perplexedly; and as he did so, from near the window
came a soft cough.

Archie spun round and subjected the room to as close a scrutiny as that
which he had bestowed upon the cupboard. Nothing was visible. The window
opening on to the balcony gaped wide. The balcony was manifestly empty.

"URRF!"

This time there was no possibility of error. The cough had come from the
immediate neighbourhood of the window.

Archie was conscious of a pringly sensation about the roots of his
closely-cropped back-hair, as he moved cautiously across the room. The
affair was becoming uncanny; and, as he tip-toed towards the window, old
ghost stories, read in lighter moments before cheerful fires with
plenty of light in the room, flitted through his mind. He had the
feeling--precisely as every chappie in those stories had had--that he
was not alone.

Nor was he. In a basket behind an arm-chair, curled up, with his massive
chin resting on the edge of the wicker-work, lay a fine bulldog.

"Urrf!" said the bulldog.

"Good God!" said Archie.

There was a lengthy pause in which the bulldog looked earnestly at
Archie and Archie looked earnestly at the bulldog.

Normally, Archie was a dog-