is at your
elbow. We can see our way to the door well enough, now."

In order to carry out these instructions, it became necessary for me to
remain a few paces in the rear of my companion, and I think I have never
experienced such a pang of nameless terror as pierced me at the moment
of extinguishing the light; for Smith had not yet opened the door, and
the utter darkness of the Gables was horrible beyond expression. Surely
darkness is the most potent weapon of the Unknown. I know that at the
moment my hand left the switch, I made for the door as though the hosts
of hell pursued me. I collided violently with Smith. He was evidently
facing toward me in the darkness, for at the moment of our collision, he
grasped my shoulder as in a vise.

"My God, Petrie! look behind you!" he whispered.

I was enabled to judge of the extent and reality of his fear by the
fact that the strange subterfuge of addressing me always as Pearce was
forgotten. I turned, in a flash....

Never can I forget what I saw. Many strange and terrible memories are
mine, memories stranger and more terrible than those of the average
man; but this thing which now moved slowly down upon us through
the impenetrable gloom of that haunted place, was (if the term be
understood) almost absurdly horrible. It was a medieval legend come to
life in modern London; it was as though some horrible chimera of the
black and ignorant past was become create and potent in the present.

A luminous hand--a hand in the veins of which fire seemed to run so
that the texture of the skin and the shape of the bones within were
perceptible--in short a hand of glowing, fiery flesh clutching a short
knife or dagger which also glowed with the same hellish, internal
luminance, was advancing upon us where we stood--was not three paces
removed!

What I did or how I came to do it, I can never recall. In all my years
I have experienced nothing to equal the stark panic which seized upon me
then. I know that I uttered a loud and frenzied cry; I know that I tore
myself like a madman from Smith's restraining grip...

"Don't touch it! Keep away, for your life!" I heard...

But, dimly I recollect that, finding the thing approaching yet nearer,
I lashed out with my fists--madly, blindly--and struck something
palpable...

What was the result, I cannot say. At that point my recollections
merge into confusion. Something or some one (Smith, as I afterwards
discovered) was hauling me by main for