y she stood to profit by it was utterly beyond my
comprehension, as was the position of Dr. Damar Greefe in the matter.

On I walked and on, unconsciously increasing my pace as is my way when
I am lost in abstraction; and, perhaps stimulated to greater mental
clarity by the exercise, some of my doubts were dispersed and I became
convinced at last that the shadowy figure which had dogged my
footsteps on the night of the crime--the owner of those blazing eyes
which had watched me from my garden--the woman who had stolen the
amulet from my writing-table, and the woman who had mutilated Edward
Hines, were one and the same as my visitor at the Abbey Inn--and the
unseen speaker who had conversed beneath my window on the night of my
arrival at Upper Crossleys!

Here then was a definite chain linking the Red House with Friar's
Park, or at least with its vicinity, and now so clearly did my ideas
fit themselves each into its correct place, that I determined upon the
identity of that other speaker who had stood in the shadows opposite
the Inn when I had awakened in the night. Mentally I recaptured the
high, rather coarse tones of his voice, and remembering how, touched
by the spell which had seemed to lie upon the whole country-side, I
had thought of him as Asmodeus, the master of the witches' revels, I
determined that my judgment had been not inexact. For now I identified
the speaker as Dr. Damar Greefe!

So far my meditations had proceeded and I suppose I was about half-way
on my journey towards the Abbey Inn, when all at once I became aware
again of that uncomfortable feeling of surveillance. As on that night
when returning from the Red House to my cottage I had experienced a
conviction that I was followed, so now a like conviction impressed
itself upon my mind. But whereas on the former occasion I had been
less fearful than curious, now I was aware of a positive dread of this
follower whose presence I had detected, by what sense I know not, and
of a certainty of a very grave menace.

Accordingly, I determined upon a certain plan which I proceeded to put
into execution without delay. I was traversing a stretch of
moon-bathed road at the moment that I first fell a victim to this
unpleasant suspicion which indeed was more than a suspicion, when
ahead of me I observed a patch, some twenty yards in extent, which was
entirely overshadowed by trees. For at this point the woods, clothing
a slope which ran right down to the road, c