n years takes some beating."

Dominey poured himself out a glass of brandy with a steady hand.

"You've been neglecting things here, Mangan," he complained. "You ought
to have come down and exorcised that ghost. We shall have those smart
maidservants of yours off to-morrow, I suppose, unless you and I can get
a little ghost-laying in first."

Mr. Mangan began to feel more comfortable. The brandy and the warmth of
the burning logs were creeping into his system.

"By the by, Sir Everard," he enquired, a little later on, "where are you
going to sleep to-night?"

Dominey stretched himself out composedly.

"There is obviously only one place for me," he replied. "I can't
disappoint any one. I shall sleep in the oak room."

CHAPTER X

For the first few tangled moments of nightmare, slowly developing into a
live horror, Dominey fancied himself back in Africa, with the hand of an
enemy upon his throat. Then a rush of awakened memories--the silence of
the great house, the mysterious rustling of the heavy hangings around
the black oak four-poster on which he lay, the faint pricking of
something deadly at his throat--these things rolled back the curtain of
unreality, brought him acute and painful consciousness of a situation
almost appalling. He opened his eyes, and although a brave and callous
man he lay still, paralysed with the fear which forbids motion. The dim
light of a candle, recently lit, flashed upon the bodkin-like dagger
held at his throat. He gazed at the thin line of gleaming steel,
fascinated. Already his skin had been broken, a few drops of blood
were upon the collar of his pyjamas. The hand which held that deadly,
assailing weapon--small, slim, very feminine, curving from somewhere
behind the bed curtain--belonged to some unseen person. He tried to
shrink farther back upon the pillow. The hand followed him, displaying
glimpses now of a soft, white-sleeved arm. He lay quite still, the
muscles of his right arm growing tenser as he prepared for a snatch at
those cruel fingers. Then a voice came,--a slow, feminine and rather
wonderful voice.

"If you move," it said, "you will die. Remain quite still."

Dominey was fully conscious now, his brain at work, calculating his
chances with all the cunning of the trained hunter who seeks to avoid
death. Reluctantly he was compelled to realise that no movement of his
could be quick enough to prevent the driving of that thin stiletto into
his throat, if his hidden