his room. He, too, had extinguished his candles, and the
place was in darkness. As I climbed in, he grasped my wrist to silence
me, and turned me forcibly toward the window.

"Listen!" he said.

I turned and looked out upon a prospect which had been a fit setting for
the witch scene in Macbeth. Thunder clouds hung low over the moor, but
through them ran a sort of chasm, or rift, allowing a bar of lurid light
to stretch across the drear, from east to west--a sort of lane walled by
darkness. There came a remote murmuring, as of a troubled sea--a hushed
and distant chorus; and sometimes in upon it broke the drums of heaven.
In the west lightning flickered, though but faintly, intermittently.

Then came the call.

Out of the blackness of the moor it came, wild and distant--"Help!
help!"

"Smith!" I whispered--"what is it? What..."

"Mr. Smith!" came the agonized cry... "Nayland Smith, help! for God's
sake...."

"Quick, Smith!" I cried, "quick, man! It's Van Roon--he's been dragged
out... they are murdering him..."

Nayland Smith held me in a vise-like grip, silent, unmoved!

Louder and more agonized came the cry for aid, and I became more than
ever certain that it was poor Van Roon who uttered it.

"Mr. Smith! Dr. Petrie! for God's sake come... or... it will be ...
too... late..."

"Smith!" I said, turning furiously upon my friend, "if you are going to
remain here whilst murder is done, I am not!"

My blood boiled now with hot resentment. It was incredible, inhuman,
that we should remain there inert whilst a fellow man, and our host to
boot, was being done to death out there in the darkness. I exerted all
my strength to break away; but although my efforts told upon him, as his
loud breathing revealed, Nayland Smith clung to me tenaciously. Had my
hands been free, in my fury, I could have struck him, for the pitiable
cries, growing fainter, now, told their own tale. Then Smith spoke
shortly and angrily--breathing hard between the words.

"Be quiet, you fool!" he snapped; "it's little less than an insult,
Petrie, to think me capable of refusing help where help is needed!"

Like a cold douche his words acted; in that instant I knew myself a
fool.

"You remember the Call of Siva?" he said, thrusting me away irritably,
"--two years ago, and what it meant to those who obeyed it?"

"You might have told me..."

"Told you! You would have been through the window before I had uttered
two words!"

I realized th