he felt as though bound hand and foot, but there
was nothing to be done except to wait until his invisible enemy should
choose to inflict his will on him and achieve his doom. And yet the
agony of this suspense was so terrible that he felt that if it lasted
much longer something must inevitably break inside him . . . and just as
he was thinking that eternity could not be so long as the moments he was
passing through, a blessed unconsciousness came over him. He woke
from this state to find himself face to face with one of the office
messengers, who said to him that he had been given his number two or
three times but had taken no notice of it.

Fletcher executed his commission and then went upstairs to his office.
His fellow-clerks at once asked what had happened to him, for he was
looking white. He said that he had a headache and was not feeling quite
himself, but made no further explanations.

This last experience changed the whole tenor of his life. When fits of
abstraction had occurred to him before he had not troubled about
them, and after his first strange experience he had felt only vaguely
interested; but now it was a different matter. He was consumed with
dread lest the thing should occur again. He did not want to get back
to that green world and that oily sea; he did not want to hear the
whistling noise, and to be pursued by an invisible enemy. So much did
the dread of this weigh on him that he refused to go to the telephone
lest the act of telephoning should set alight in his mind the train of
associations and bring his thoughts back to his dreadful experience.

Shortly after this he went for leave, and following the doctor's advice
he spent it by the sea. During all this time he was perfectly well, and
was not once troubled by his curious fits. He returned to London in the
autumn refreshed and well.

On the first day that he went to the office a friend of his telephoned
to him. When he was told that the line was being held for him he
hesitated, but at last he went down to the telephone office.

He remained away twenty minutes. Finally his prolonged absence was
noticed, and he was sent for. He was found in the telephone room stiff
and unconscious, having fallen forward on the telephone desk. His face
was quite white, and his eyes wide open and glazed with an expression
of piteous and harrowing terror. When they tried to revive him their
efforts were in vain. A doctor was sent for, and he said that Fletcher