o the dark, inscrutable countenance
above me, without knowing exactly where I was or what I was doing. Then
I realized in quite a new way that I was face to face with the secret
midnight Listener, and I steeled myself as best I could for what was
about to come.

The source of the rash courage that came to me at this awful moment will
ever be to me an inexplicable mystery. Though shivering with fear, and
my forehead wet with an unholy dew, I resolved to advance. Twenty
questions leaped to my lips: What are you? What do you want? Why do you
listen and watch? Why do you come into my room? But none of them found
articulate utterance.

I began forthwith to climb the stairs, and with the first signs of my
advance _he_ drew himself back into the shadows and began to move too.
He retreated as swiftly as I advanced. I heard the sound of his crawling
motion a few steps ahead of me, ever maintaining the same distance. When
I reached the landing he was half-way up the next flight, and when I was
half-way up the next flight he had already arrived at the top landing.
And then I heard him open the door of the little square room under the
roof and go in. Immediately, though the door did not close after him,
the sound of his moving entirely ceased.

At this moment I longed for a light, or a stick, or any weapon
whatsoever; but I had none of these things, and it was impossible to go
back. So I marched steadily up the rest of the stairs, and in less than
a minute found myself standing in the gloom face to face with the door
through which this creature had just entered.

For a moment I hesitated. The door was about half-way open, and the
Listener was standing evidently in his favourite attitude just behind
it--listening. To search through that dark room for him seemed hopeless;
to enter the same small space where he was seemed horrible. The very
idea filled me with loathing, and I almost decided to turn back.

It is strange at such times how trivial things impinge on the
consciousness with a shock as of something important and immense.
Something--it might have been a beetle or a mouse--scuttled over the
bare boards behind me. The door moved a quarter of an inch, closing. My
decision came back with a sudden rush, as it were, and thrusting out a
foot, I kicked the door so that it swung sharply back to its full
extent, and permitted me to walk forward slowly into the aperture of
profound blackness beyond. What a queer soft sound my bare