ble house should be at two o'clock in the
morning. Yet from the hall below came an undefinable something which
made me feel that she was there; a breathing influence that woke every
nervous sensibility within me, and made my heart-beats so irregular that
I tried to stop them lest my own presence should be betrayed. She was
there, a creeping, baleful figure, blotting the moonshine with her tall
shadow, as she passed, panther-like, to and fro before that closed door,
or crouched against the wall in the same attitude of listening which I
myself assumed. Or so I pictured her as I clung to the balustrade above,
asking myself how I could cross that strip of moonlight separating me
from that vantage-point I longed to gain. For that I knew her to be
there was not enough. I must see her, and learn, if possible, what the
attraction was which drew her to this fatal door. But how, how, how? If
she were watching, as secrecy ever watches, I could not take a step upon
that platform without being discerned. Not even if a friendly cloud came
to obscure the brightness of the moon, could I hope to project my dark
figure into that belt of light without discovery. I must see what was to
be seen from the step where I stood, and to do this I knew but one way.
Taking up the end of my long cloak, I advanced it the merest trifle
beyond the edge of the partition that separated me from the hall below.
Then I listened again. No sound, no stir. I breathed deeply and thrust
my arm still further, the long cloak hanging from it dark and
impenetrable to the floor below. Then I waited. The moonlight was not
quite as bright as it had been; surely that was a cloud I saw careering
over the face of the sky above me, and in another moment, if I could
wait for it, the hall would be almost dark. I let my arm advance an inch
or so further, and satisfied now that I had got the slit which answers
for an arm-hole into a position that would afford me full opportunity of
looking through the black wall I had thus improvised, I watched the
cloud for the moment of comparative darkness which I so confidently
expected. It came, and with it a sound--the first I had heard. It was
from far down the hall, and was, as near as I could judge, of a jingling
nature, which for an instant I found it hard to understand. Then the
quick suspicion came as to what it was, and unable to restrain myself
longer I separated the slit I have spoken of with the fingers of my
right hand, and looke