self-confidence, and the power of decisive action; their forces were on
the wane, and the possibility of real fear took on a new and terrible
meaning. He began to tremble for the elderly woman by his side, whose
pluck could hardly save her beyond a certain extent.

He heard the blood singing in his veins. It sometimes seemed so loud
that he fancied it prevented his hearing properly certain other sounds
that were beginning very faintly to make themselves audible in the
depths of the house. Every time he fastened his attention on these
sounds, they instantly ceased. They certainly came no nearer. Yet he
could not rid himself of the idea that movement was going on somewhere
in the lower regions of the house. The drawing-room floor, where the
doors had been so strangely closed, seemed too near; the sounds were
further off than that. He thought of the great kitchen, with the
scurrying black-beetles, and of the dismal little scullery; but,
somehow or other, they did not seem to come from there either. Surely
they were not _outside_ the house!

Then, suddenly, the truth flashed into his mind, and for the space of a
minute he felt as if his blood had stopped flowing and turned to ice.

The sounds were not downstairs at all; they were _upstairs_--upstairs,
somewhere among those horrid gloomy little servants' rooms with their
bits of broken furniture, low ceilings, and cramped windows--upstairs
where the victim had first been disturbed and stalked to her death.

And the moment he discovered where the sounds were, he began to hear
them more clearly. It was the sound of feet, moving stealthily along the
passage overhead, in and out among the rooms, and past the furniture.