mprehendingly, then raised his head.

Inch by inch his eyes moved until they reached the top shelf of the
overmantel and stopped. A shiver shook him as he lay back in his
chair, his widespread fingers clutched at the chair arms, a tiny bead
of perspiration showed upon the broad forehead.

Staring down at him, shining evilly in the moonlight, was a glistening,
unwavering eye.

Just a slanting mother-o'-pearl eye in the battered head of a god or
goddess of India, with features almost obliterated by the passage of
centuries.

For a full minute Sir Jonathan sat staring up at the eye which stared
back; then moving with a convulsive jerk, ran both hands through the
mane of silvery hair as though to lift some crushing load from about
his head; and turning sideways in his chair stretched out one hand
between the eye above and his own as he clumsily seized the pen in the
shaking fingers.

"Ah! my God!" he muttered, "the answer is still there, on the tip of my
tongue, before my eyes, within reach of my fingers, and I cannot grasp
it--ah!--yes----"

Slowly and with infinite pain he wrote, printing the letters in thick
and crooked capitals, whilst his breath whistled through the dilated
nostrils and one foot beat unceasingly against the desk.

"The answer to the problem concerning Leonie Hetth is in the third
volume upon----"

His hand stopped suddenly when the fingers involuntarily spread wide
apart, letting fall the pen which rolled across the book; and the
silvery head turned inch by inch until the grey eyes had lifted to the
one shining in the shadows.

And there commenced a desperate, a bitter struggle for a child's
reason, perhaps for a child's life, as the moon gently withdrew her
light.

Like the clammy wraiths of fog upon the moor, like the searching
tentacles of some blind monster of the sea, fear crept upon the
splendid old man in this still hour of the night.

It held his hands, it was folded about his mouth, it pounded violently
upon his gallant heart, whilst the eye looked him between the eyes, so
that his brain was seared as strive he might to turn away his head he
kept his face turned piteously upward.

"What is it," he muttered thickly, as though his tongue clove to the
roof of the mouth, "what is it that is pulling me, pressing upon me,
choking me! I have no body, no--no hands--I--have--no power to
move--I----"

And then he screamed, though but a whisper fell, as with a spasmodic
jump of his w