been through horror before. I had seen a man,
supposedly dead on the operating table, jerk suddenly to his feet and
scream. I had seen a young girl, not long before, awake in the midst of
an operation, with the knife already in her frail body. Surely, after
those definite horrors, no _unknown_ danger would send me cringing back
to the man who was waiting so bitterly for me to return.

Those were the thoughts pregnant in my mind as I groped slowly,
cautiously along the corridor of the upper floor, searching each closed
door for the indistinct number 4167. The place was like the center of a
huge labyrinth, a spider-web of black, repelling passages, leading into
some central chamber of utter silence and blackness. I went forward with
dragging steps, fighting back the dread that gripped me as I went
farther and farther from the outlet of escape. And then, after losing
myself completely in the gloom, I threw aside all thoughts of return and
pushed on with a careless, surface bravado, and laughed aloud.

* * * * *

So, at length, I reached that room of horror, secreted high in the
deeper recesses of the deserted warehouse. The number--God grant I never
see it again!--was scrawled in black chalk on the door--4167. I pushed
the half-open barrier wide, and entered.

It was a small room, even as M. S. had forewarned me--or as the dead
mind of that thing on the grate had forewarned M. S. The glow of my
out-thrust match revealed a great stack of dusty boxes and crates, piled
against the farther wall. Revealed, too, the black corridor beyond the
entrance, and a small, upright table before me.

It was the table, and the stool beside it, that drew my attention and
brought a muffled exclamation from my lips. The thing had been thrust
out of its usual place, pushed aside as if some frenzied shape had
lunged against it. I could make out its former position by the marks on
the dusty floor at my feet. Now it was nearer to the center of the room,
and had been wrenched sidewise from its holdings. A shudder took hold of
me as I looked at it. A living person, sitting on the stool before me,
staring at the door, would have wrenched the table in just this manner
in his frenzy to escape from the room!

* * * * *

The light of the match died, plunging me into a pit of gloom. I struck
another and stepped closer to the table. And there, on the floor, I
found two more things that b