ook here--this is where the creepy business begins. If, on consideration,
you feel you'd rather read about cricket or politics or something, I'll
excuse you.)

A little later, as Mrs. Pottigrew was crossing the hall, she was stopped
short by a strange, gasping choky sound which came from the study. There
followed the crash of a chair being overturned; the door opened and her
husband staggered out with scared eyes in a face as white as marble, and
beads of sweat on his brow.

When a stiff brandy had restored the power of speech to Mr. Pottigrew, he
described the remarkable and alarming seizure he had just experienced.

He had turned his arm-chair to the French-window, he said, with the
intention of enjoying a quiet smoke, and no sooner had he seated himself
and leaned back than an indescribable feeling of suffocation had crept upon
him, and at the same time he had been aware of a curious loss of control
over his jaws, so that he had been unable to prevent his mouth opening to
its widest extent. When he had tried to rise to his feet an invisible force
had seemed to be holding him down, and it was only by a tremendous effort
of will that he had managed to keep his senses and struggle to the door.

He resolutely refused to see a doctor, but, deciding that the attack was a
warning that he had been overdoing it, he retired forthwith to bed. By the
morning he felt so well that he prescribed for himself a few quiet days by
the sea. And so he packed his bag and took himself off by an early train to
Brighton.

That afternoon was marked by another disagreeable occurrence. After the way
of her kind, Mrs. Pottigrew's Aunt Charlotte was attracted by the idea of
using a room from which normally the female members of the household were
excluded. So she took her needlework into the study and prepared to spend a
quiet hour or so in the armchair facing the French-window.

Hardly had she settled down when she too experienced the same feeling of
suffocation and the same involuntary opening of the jaws which Mr.
Pottigrew had described. She struggled against it, but, lacking the
will-power of her robust nephew-by-marriage, she was overcome by
unconsciousness. When she came to, a little dazed and faint, a few moments
later, she was dismayed to discover that her expensive dental-plate--a full
set--was lying on the floor, shattered beyond repair.

Not being a person of vivid imagination, she attributed her transient
illness to intense sym