e highroad, a tramcar went rocking by, doubtless
bearing a few belated workers homeward. The stark incongruity of the
thing was appalling. How little those weary toilers, hemmed about
with the commonplace, suspected that almost within sight from the car
windows, in a place of prosy benches, iron railings, and unromantic,
flickering lamps, two fellow men moved upon the border of a horror-land!

Beneath the trees a shadow carpet lay, its edges tropically sharp; and
fully ten yards from the first of the group, we two, hatless both, and
sharing a common dread, paused for a moment and listened.

The car had stopped at the further extremity of the common, and now with
a moan that grew to a shriek was rolling on its way again. We stood
and listened until silence reclaimed the night. Not a footstep could be
heard. Then slowly we walked on. At the edge of the little coppice we
stopped again abruptly.

Smith turned and thrust his pistol into my hand. A white ray of light
pierced the shadows; my companion carried an electric torch. But no
trace of Eltham was discoverable.

There had been a heavy shower of rain during the evening just before
sunset, and although the open paths were dry again, under the trees
the ground was still moist. Ten yards within the coppice we came upon
tracks--the tracks of one running, as the deep imprints of the toes
indicated.

Abruptly the tracks terminated; others, softer, joined them, two sets
converging from left and right. There was a confused patch, trailing off
to the west; then this became indistinct, and was finally lost upon the
hard ground outside the group.

For perhaps a minute, or more, we ran about from tree to tree, and from
bush to bush, searching like hounds for a scent, and fearful of what we
might find. We found nothing; and fully in the moonlight we stood facing
one another. The night was profoundly still.

Nayland Smith stepped back into the shadows, and began slowly to turn
his head from left to right, taking in the entire visible expanse of the
common. Toward a point where the road bisected it he stared intently.
Then, with a bound, he set off.

"Come on, Petrie!" he cried. "There they are!"

Vaulting a railing he went away over a field like a madman. Recovering
from the shock of surprise, I followed him, but he was well ahead of me,
and making for some vaguely seen object moving against the lights of the
roadway.

Another railing was vaulted, and the corner of a secon