the book, fearful of
anything calculated to distract him from the mood of tense resistance.
His life, and more than his life, depended upon his successfully
opposing the insidious forces which beyond doubt, invisibly surrounded
that lighted table.

There is a courage which is not physical, nor is it entirely moral; a
courage often lacking in the most intrepid soldier. And this was the
kind of courage which Robert Cairn now called up to his aid. The
occult inquirer can face, unmoved, horrors which would turn the brain
of many a man who wears the V.C.; on the other hand it is questionable
if the possessor of this peculiar type of bravery could face a bayonet
charge. Pluck of the physical sort, Cairn had in plenty; pluck of
that more subtle kind he was acquiring from growing intimacy with the
terrors of the Borderland.

"Who's there?"

He spoke the words aloud, and the eerie sound of his own voice added a
new dread to the enveloping shadows.

His revolver grasped in his hand, he stood up, but slowly and
cautiously, in order that his own movements might not prevent him from
hearing any repetition of that which had occasioned his alarm. And
what had occasioned this alarm?

Either he was become again a victim of the strange trickery which
already had borne him, though not physically, from Fleet Street to the
secret temple of Meydum, or with his material senses he had detected a
soft rapping upon the door of his room.

He knew that his outer door was closed; he knew that there was no one
else in his chambers; yet he had heard a sound as of knuckles beating
upon the panels of the door--the closed door of the room in which he
sat!

Standing upright, he turned deliberately, and faced in that direction.

The light pouring out from beneath the shade of the table-lamp
scarcely touched upon the door at all. Only the edges of the lower
panels were clearly perceptible; the upper part of the door was masked
in greenish shadow.

Intent, tensely strung, he stood; then advanced in the direction of the
switch in order to light the lamp fixed above the mantel-piece and to
illuminate the whole of the room. One step forward he took, then ... the
soft rapping was repeated.

"Who's there?"

This time he cried the words loudly, and acquired some new assurance
from the imperative note in his own voice. He ran to the switch and
pressed it down. The lamp did not light!

"The filament has burnt out," he muttered.

Terror grew upon