ut while I'm away."

"Yes, it can," shouted Eustace. "It's getting out now. It's climbing up
the plug chain. No, you brute, you filthy brute, you don't! Come back,
Saunders, it's getting away from me. I can't hold it; it's all slippery.
Curse its claw! Shut the window, you idiot! The top too, as well as the
bottom. You utter idiot! It's got out!" There was the sound of
something dropping on to the hard flagstones below, and Eustace fell
back fainting.

* * * * *

For a fortnight he was ill.

"I don't know what to make of it," the doctor said to Saunders. "I can
only suppose that Mr. Borlsover has suffered some great emotional shock.
You had better let me send someone to help you nurse him. And by all
means indulge that whim of his never to be left alone in the dark. I
would keep a light burning all night if I were you. But he _must_ have
more fresh air. It's perfectly absurd this hatred of open windows."

Eustace, however, would have no one with him but Saunders. "I don't want
the other men," he said. "They'd smuggle it in somehow. I know they
would."

"Don't worry about it, old chap. This sort of thing can't go on
indefinitely. You know I saw it this time as well as you. It wasn't half
so active. It won't go on living much longer, especially after that
fall. I heard it hit the flags myself. As soon as you're a bit stronger
we'll leave this place; not bag and baggage, but with only the clothes
on our backs, so that it won't be able to hide anywhere. We'll escape it
that way. We won't give any address, and we won't have any parcels sent
after us. Cheer up, Eustace! You'll be well enough to leave in a day or
two. The doctor says I can take you out in a chair to-morrow."

"What have I done?" asked Eustace. "Why does it come after me? I'm no
worse than other men. I'm no worse than you, Saunders; you know I'm not.
It was you who were at the bottom of that dirty business in San Diego,
and that was fifteen years ago."

"It's not that, of course," said Saunders. "We are in the twentieth
century, and even the parsons have dropped the idea of your old sins
finding you out. Before you caught the hand in the library it was filled
with pure malevolence--to you and all mankind. After you spiked it
through with that nail it naturally forgot about other people, and
concentrated its attention on you. It was shut up in the safe, you know,
for nearly six months. That gives plenty of time for thinkin