e, long-continued knocking on the door below, as of
some one who had already knocked in vain.

Cramped and heavy-limbed, he felt his way across the room and lit a
candle. He stood listening awhile: his eyes fixed on the door that hung
a little open. All in the room seemed acutely fantastically still. The
flame burned dim, misled in the sluggish air. He stole slowly to the
door, looked out, and again listened. Again the knocking broke out, more
impetuously and yet with a certain restraint and caution. Shielding the
flame of his candle in the shell of his left hand, Lawford moved slowly,
with chin uplifted, to the stairs. He bent forward a little, and stood
motionless and drawn up, the pupils of his eyes slowly contracting and
expanding as he gazed down into the carpeted vacant gloom; past the dim
louring presence that had fallen back before him.

His mouth opened. 'Who's there?' at last he called.

'Thank God, thank God!' he heard Mr Bethany mutter. 'I mustn't call,
Lawford,' came a hurried whisper as if the old gentleman were pressing
his lips to speak through the letter-box. 'Come down and open the door;
there's a good fellow! I've been knocking no end of a time.'

'Yes, I am coming,' said Lawford. He shut his mouth and held his
breath, and stair by stair he descended, driving steadily before him the
crouching, gloating menacing shape, darkly lifted up before him against
the darkness, contending the way with him.

'Are you ill? Are you hurt? Has anything happened, Lawford?' came the
anxious old voice again, striving in vain to be restrained.

'No, no,' muttered Lawford. 'I am coming; coming slowly.' He paused to
breathe, his hands trembling, his hair lank with sweat, and still
with eyes wide open he descended against the phantom lurking in the
darkness--an adversary that, if he should but for one moment close his
lids, he felt would master sanity and imagination with its evil. 'So
long as you don't get in,' he heard himself muttering, 'so long as you
don't get in, my friend!'

'What's that you're saying?' came up the muffled, querulous voice; 'I
can't for the life of me hear, my boy.'

'Nothing, nothing,' came softly the answer from the foot of the stairs.
'I was only speaking to myself.'

Deliberately, with candle held rigidly on a level with his eyes, Lawford
pushed forward a pace or two into the airless, empty drawing-room, and
grasped the handle of the door. He gazed in awhile, a black oblique
shadow flun