him down the corridor. Graham came,
too. The detective locked the door leading to the private hall and
slipped the key in his pocket.

"Nobody will get through there any more than they will through the other
door which I'll watch."

With Graham's help he made a quick inspection of the room, searching the
closets and glancing beneath the bed and behind the furniture.

"There's no one," he said, preparing to depart. "I tell you there's no
chance of a physical attack."

His unimaginative mind cried out.

"I tell you you'll find nothing, learn nothing, for there's nothing here
to find, nothing to learn."

"Just the same," Graham urged, "you'll call out, won't you, Bobby, at
the first sign of anything out of the way? For God's sake take no
foolish chances."

"I don't want the light," Bobby forced himself to say. "My grandfather
and Howells both put their candles out. I want everything as it was when
they were attacked."

Rawlins nodded and, followed by Graham, carried the candle from the room
and closed the broken door.

The sudden solitude and the darkness crushed Bobby, taking his breath.
Yellow flames, the response of his eyes to the disappearance of the
candle, tore across the blackness, confusing him. He felt his way to the
wall near the open window. He sat down there, facing the bed.

At first he couldn't see the bed. He saw only the projections of his
fancy, stimulated by Silas Blackburn's story, against the black screen
of the night. He understood at last what the old man had meant. The
darkness did appear to possess a physical resistance, and as the minutes
lengthened it seemed to encase all the suffering the room had ever
harboured. But he wouldn't close his eyes as his grandfather had done.
It was a defence to keep them on the spot where the bed stood while his
mind, in spite of his will, pictured, lying there, still forms with
bandaged heads. He wouldn't close his eyes even when those fancied
shapes commenced to struggle in grotesque and impotent motion, like ants
whose hill has been demolished. Nor could he drive from his ears the
echoes of delirium that seemed to have lingered in the old room. He
continued to watch the darkness until the outlines of the room and of
its furniture dimly detached themselves from the black pall. The snow
apparently caught what feeble light the moon forced through, reflecting
it with a disconsolate inefficiency. He could see after a time the
pallid frames of the window