there was something else in the room with him, something nameless,
stealthy, silent, sinister; having knowledge of him, where he stood and
what he was, while he knew nothing of it, only that it was there,
keeping surveillance over him, itself unseen in its cloak of darkness.

Then with a resolute effort of will he mastered his imagination,
reminding himself that spirits gifted in the matter of moving material
objects such as candlesticks, frequent only the booths of seance
mediums.

Without a sound he stepped back one pace, then two to one side, away
from the table. They were long strides; when he paused he was well away
from the spot where he had stood when the light was extinguished and
where, consequently, a hostile move might be expected to develop.
Otherwise his plight was little bettered; he did not quite know where
he was in relation to the doors and the pieces which furnished the
room. That old-time habit of memorising the arrangement of furniture in
a room immediately on entering it had failed through disuse in course
of years. He was acquainted with the plot of this drawing-room in a
general way but by no means with such accuracy as was needed to serve
him now.

So he waited, straining to cheat that opaque pall of night of one
little hint as to his whereabouts who had removed the light.
Resurrecting another old trick, he measured time by pulse-beats, and
stood unstirring and all but breathless for three full minutes. But
perceptions stimulated to extra sensibility by apprehension of danger
detected nothing. And his hearing was so keen, he told himself, no
breath could have been drawn in that time without his having knowledge
of it. Still, he knew he was not alone. Somewhere in that encompassing