tealthily across the floor. Yet, as I heard
it, it was neither the tread of a man nor a regular footstep, but
rather, it seemed to me, a confused sort of crawling, almost as of
someone on his hands and knees.

I unlocked the door in less than a second, and passed quickly into the
front room, and I could feel, as by the subtlest imaginable vibrations
upon my nerves, that the spot I was standing in had just that instant
been vacated! The Listener had moved; he was now behind the other door,
standing in the passage. Yet this door was also closed. I moved swiftly,
and as silently as possible, across the floor, and turned the handle. A
cold rush of air met me from the passage and sent shiver after shiver
down my back. There was no one in the doorway; there was no one on the
little landing; there was no one moving down the staircase. Yet I had
been so quick that this midnight Listener could not be very far away,
and I felt that if I persevered I should eventually come face to face
with him. And the courage that came so opportunely to overcome my
nervousness and horror seemed born of the unwilling conviction that it
was somehow necessary for my safety as well as my sanity that I should
find this intruder and force his secret from him. For was it not the
intent action of his mind upon my own, in concentrated listening, that
had awakened me with such a vivid realization of his presence?

Advancing across the narrow landing, I peered down into the well of the
little house. There was nothing to be seen; no one was moving in the
darkness. How cold the oilcloth was to my bare feet.

I cannot say what it was that suddenly drew my eyes upward. I only know
that, without apparent reason, I looked up and saw a person about
half-way up the next turn of the stairs, leaning forward over the
balustrade and staring straight into my face. It was a man. He appeared
to be clinging to the rail rather than standing on the stairs. The gloom
made it impossible to see much beyond the general outline, but the head
and shoulders were seemingly enormous, and stood sharply silhouetted
against the skylight in the roof immediately above. The idea flashed
into my brain in a moment that I was looking into the visage of
something monstrous. The huge skull, the mane-like hair, the wide-humped
shoulders, suggested, in a way I did not pause to analyze, that which
was scarcely human; and for some seconds, fascinated by horror, I
returned the gaze and stared int