was very near to screaming--to bring the
servants to her rescue. But she dared not do it. Before she was half-way
to the bell, before the cry was out of her mouth she would feel his
fingers close about her throat.

* * * * *

Mrs. Repton had begun to tell her story with reluctance, dreading lest
Thresk should attribute it to a woman's nerves and laugh. But he did not.
He listened gravely, seriously; and, as she continued, that nightmare of
an evening so lived again in her recollections that she could not but
make it vivid in her words.

"I had more than a mere sense of danger," she said. "I felt besides a
sort of hideous discomfort, almost physical discomfort, which made me
believe that there was something evil in that room beyond the power of
language to describe."

She felt her self-control leaving her. If she stayed she must betray her
alarm. Even now she had swallowed again and again, and she wondered that
he had not detected the working of her throat. She summoned what was left
of her courage and tossing her book aside rose slowly and deliberately.

"I think I shall copy Stella's example and lie down for an hour," she
said without turning her head towards Ballantyne, and even while she
spoke she knew that she had made a mistake in mentioning Stella. He would
follow her to discover whether she went to Stella's room and told what
she had seen to her. But he did not move. She reached the door, turned
the handle, went out and closed the door behind her.

For a moment then her strength failed her; she leaned against the wall by
the side of the door, her heart racing. But the fear that he would follow
urged her on. She crossed the hall and stopped deliberately before a
cabinet of china at the foot of the stairs, which stood against the wall
in which the library door was placed. While she stood there she saw the
door open very slowly and Ballantyne's livid face appear at the opening.
She turned towards the stairs and mounted them without looking back.
Halfway up a turn hid the hall from her, and the moment after she had
passed the turn she heard him crossing the hall after her, again with a
lightness of step which seemed to be uncanny and inhuman in so heavy and
gross a creature.

"I was appalled," she said to Thresk frankly. "He had the step of an
animal. I felt that some great baboon was tracking me stealthily."

Mrs. Repton came to Stella Ballantyne's door and was careful not to