Let's make sure no one--nothing--is down here."

I stood silent with Mary, while they prowled about the lower floor.

"It may have come and gone," I whispered.

"Yes." She was trembling against me.

* * * * *

It seemed to me an eternity while we stood there listening to the
faint footfalls of Larry and Alten. Once they must have stood quiet;
then the silence leaped and crowded us. It is horrible to listen to a
pregnant silence which every moment might be split by some weird
unearthly sound.

Larry and Alten returned. "Seems to be all clear," Alten whispered.
"Let's go into the back yard."

The little yard was dim. The big apartment house against its rear wall
loomed with a blank brick face, save that there were windows some
eight stories up. Only a few windows overlooked this dim area with its
high enclosing walls. The space was some forty feet square, and there
was a faded grass plot in the center.

We crouched near the kitchen door, with Mary behind us in the room.
She said she could recall the cage having stood near the center of the
yard, with its door facing this way....

Nearly an hour passed. It seemed that the dawn must be near, but it
was only around four o'clock. The same storm clouds hung overhead--a
threatening storm which would not break. The heat was oppressing.

"It's come and gone," Larry whispered; "or it isn't coming. I guess
that this--"

And then it came! We were just outside the doorway, crouching against
the shadowed wall of the house. I had Mary close behind me, my rifle
ready.

"There!" whispered Alten.

We all saw it--a faint luminous mist out near the center of the
yard--a crawling, shifting ball of fog.

Alten and Larry, one on each side of me, shifted sidewise, away from
me. Mary stood and cast off her dark overcoat. We men were in dark
clothes, but she stood in gleaming white against the dark rectangle of
doorway. It was as we had arranged. A moment only, she stood there;
then she moved back, further behind me in the black kitchen.

And in that moment the cage had materialized. We were hoping its
occupant had seen the girl, and not us. A breathless moment passed
while we stared for the first time at this strange thing from the
Unknown.... A formless, glowing mist, it quickly gathered itself into
solidity. It seemed to shrink. It took form. From a wraith of a cage,
in a second it was solid. And so silently, so swiftly, came this thing
out o