oor interrupted me. I jumped up,
darted across the room and threw myself under the bed. "Don't let anyone
in," I whispered. The rap was repeated. Sarakoff's voice sounded
without.

"Let me in. It's all right. He's gone. The front door is bolted." I
crawled out and unlocked the door. Sarakoff, looking rather pale, was
standing in the passage. He carried a poker. "Symington-Tearle's in the
coal-cellar," he announced. "He won't come out."

I wiped my brow with a handkerchief.

"Good heavens, Sarakoff," I exclaimed, "this kind of thing will lead to
endless trouble. I had no idea the terror would be so uncontrollable."

"I'm glad you feel it as I do," said the Russian. "When you threatened
me with a pair of scissors this morning I felt mad with fear."

"It's awful," I murmured. "We can't be too careful." We began to descend
the stairs. "Sarakoff, you remember I told you about that dead sailor? I
see now why that expression was on his face. It was the terror that he
felt."

"Extraordinary!" he muttered. "He couldn't have known. It must have been
instinctive."

"Instincts are like that," I said. "I don't suppose an animal knows
anything about death, or even thinks of it, yet it behaves from the very
first as if it knew. It's odd."

A door opened at the far end of the hall, and Symington-Tearle emerged.
There was a patch of coal-dust on his forehead. His hair, usually so
flat and smooth that it seemed like a brass mirror, was now disordered.

"Has he gone?" he enquired hoarsely.

We nodded. I pointed to the chain on the door.

"It's bolted," I said. "Come into the study."

I led the way into the room. Tearle walked to the window, then to a
chair, and finally took up a position before the fire.

"This is extraordinary!" he exclaimed.

"What do you make of it?" I asked.

"I can make nothing of it. What's the matter with me? I never felt
anything like that terror that came over me when Ballard approached me."

Sarakoff took out a large handkerchief and passed it across his face.
"It's only the fear of physical violence," he said. "That's the only
weak spot. Fear was formerly distributed over a wide variety of
possibilities, but now it's all concentrated in one direction."

"Why?" Tearle stared at me questioningly.

"Because the germ is in us," I said. "We're immortal."

"Immortal?"

Sarakoff threw out his hands, and flung back his head. "Immortals!"

I crossed to my writing-table, and picked up a heavy vo