entered that room. But
Claude, though he feared, though he shuddered, though unearthly terrors
pressed upon him, possessed a charm that supported his courage: the
memory of the scene in the room below, of the scalding drops falling on
the white skin, of the girl looking at him with that face of pain. The
devil was strong, but there was a stronger; and in the strength of love
the young man approached the door and tried it. It was locked.

Somehow the fact augmented his courage. "Where the devil is, is no need
of locks," he muttered, and he felt above the door, then, stooping,
groped under it. In the latter place he found the key, thrust out of
sight between door and floor, where doubtless it was Basterga's custom
to hide it. He drew it out, and with a grim face set it in the lock.

"Quick!" muttered a voice in his ear, and turning he saw that the Syndic
was trembling with eagerness. "Quick, quick! Or he may return!"

Claude smiled. If he did not fear the devil he certainly did not fear
Basterga. He was about to turn the key in the lock when a sound stayed
his hand, ay, and rooted him to the spot. Yet it was only a laugh--but a
laugh such as his ears had never caught before, a laugh full of ghastly,
shrill, unearthly mirth. It rang through the passage, through the
house, through the night; but whence it proceeded, whether from some
being at his elbow, or from above stairs, or below, it was impossible to
say; and the blood gone from his face, Claude stood, peering over his
shoulder into the dark corners of the passage. Again that laugh rose,
shrill, mocking, unearthly; and this time his hand fell from the lock.

The Syndic, utterly unmanned, leant sweating against the wall. He called
upon the name of his Maker. "My God!" he muttered. "My God!"

"_There is no God!_"

The words, each syllable of them clear, though spoken in a voice shrill
and cracked and strange, and such as neither of them had ever heard
before, were beyond doubt. Close on them followed a shriek of weird
laughter, and then the blasphemy repeated in the same tone of mockery.
The hair crept on Claude's head, the blood withdrew to his heart. The
key which he had drawn out of the lock fell from the hand it seemed to
freeze.

With distended eyes he glared down the passage. The words were still in
the air, the laughter echoed in his brain, the shadows cast by the
shaking rushlight danced and took weird shapes. A rustling as of black
wings gathered about hi