from his soul and Jim Shorthouse sprang out of bed and across
the floor in a single bound. He knew that ghastly murder had been
done--the murder by a father of his son.

With shaking fingers but a determined heart he lit the gas, and the
first thing in which his eyes corroborated the evidence of his ears was
the horrifying detail that the lower portion of the partition bulged
unnaturally into his own room. The glaring paper with which it was
covered had cracked under the tension and the boards beneath it bent
inwards towards him. What hideous load was behind them, he shuddered to
think.

All this he saw in less than a second. Since the final lurch against the
wall not a sound had proceeded from the room, not even a groan or a
foot-step. All was still but the howl of the wind, which to his ears
had in it a note of triumphant horror.

Shorthouse was in the act of leaving the room to rouse the house and
send for the police--in fact his hand was already on the door-knob--when
something in the room arrested his attention. Out of the corner of his
eyes he thought he caught sight of something moving. He was sure of it,
and turning his eyes in the direction, he found he was not mistaken.

Something was creeping slowly towards him along the floor. It was
something dark and serpentine in shape, and it came from the place where
the partition bulged. He stooped down to examine it with feelings of
intense horror and repugnance, and he discovered that it was moving
toward him from the _other side_ of the wall. His eyes were fascinated,
and for the moment he was unable to move. Silently, slowly, from side to
side like a thick worm, it crawled forward into the room beneath his
frightened eyes, until at length he could stand it no longer and
stretched out his arm to touch it. But at the instant of contact he
withdrew his hand with a suppressed scream. It was sluggish--and it was
warm! and he saw that his fingers were stained with living crimson.

A second more, and Shorthouse was out in the passage with his hand on
the door of the next room. It was locked. He plunged forward with all
his weight against it, and, the lock giving way, he fell headlong into a
room that was pitch dark and very cold. In a moment he was on his feet
again and trying to penetrate the blackness. Not a sound, not a
movement. Not even the sense of a presence. It was empty, miserably
empty!

Across the room he could trace the outline of a window with rain
str