ding to the
horror of the thing and it seemed clear to me that he was going mad. Of
course, Madame la Comtesse and her brother tried to reason him out of
what he declared, tried to make him believe that it was all fancy, that
he did not really see the fearful thing; it was equally in vain that I
myself tried to persuade him to leave the place before his reason became
unsettled. Last night"--she paused, shuddered, put both hands over her
face, and drew in a deep breath--"last night, I, too, saw 'The Red
Crawl,' Mr. Cleek--I, too! I, too!"

"You, Miss Lorne?"

"Yes. I made up my mind that I would--that, if it existed, I would have
absolute proof of it. The countess and her brother had scoffed so
frequently, had promised the baron so often that they would set a
servant on guard in the corridor to watch, and then had said so often to
poor, foolish, easily persuaded Athalie that it was useless doing
anything so silly, as it was absolutely certain that her father only
imagined the thing, that I determined to take the step myself, unknown
to any of them. After everybody had gone to bed, I threw on a loose,
dark gown, crept into the corridor, and hid in a niche from which I
could see the door of the baron's room. I waited until after
midnight--long after--and then--and then----"

"Calm yourself, Miss Lorne. Then the thing appeared, I suppose?"

"Yes; but not before something equally terrible had happened. I saw the
door of the countess's room open; I saw the countess herself come out,
accompanied by the man who up till then I had believed, like everybody
else, was her brother."

"And who is not her brother, after all?"

"No, he is not. Theirs is a closer tie. I saw her kiss him. I saw her go
with him to an angle of the corridor, lift a rug, and raise a trap in
the floor."

"Hullo! Hullo!" ejaculated Cleek. "Then she, too, knows of the passage
which leads to the sewers. Clearly, then, this Countess de la Tour is
not what she seems, when she knows secrets that are known only to the
followers of---- Well, never mind. Go on, Miss Lorne, go on. You saw her
lift that trap; and what then?"

"Then there came up out of it the most loathsome-looking creature I have
ever seen: a huge, crawling, red shape that was like a blood-red spider,
with the eyes, the hooked beak, and the writhing tentacles of an
octopus. It made no sound, but it seemed to know her, to understand her,
for when she waved her hand toward the open door of her