clicking was repeated.

"There is someone downstairs in my study!" muttered Stuart.

He became aware that the fear which held him was such that unless he
acted and acted swiftly he should become incapable of action, but he
remembered that whereas the moonlight poured into the bedroom, the
staircase would be in complete darkness. He walked barefooted across
to the dressing-table and took up an electric torch which lay there.
He had not used it for some time, and he pressed the button to learn
if the torch was charged. A beam of white light shone out across the
room, and at the same instant came another sound.

If it came from below or above, from the adjoining room or from

Outside in the road, Stuart knew not. But following hard upon the
mysterious disturbance which had aroused him it seemed to pour ice
into his veins, it added the complementary touch to his panic. For
it was a kind of low wail--a ghostly minor wail in falling
cadences--unlike any sound he had heard. It was so excessively
horrible that it produced a curious effect.

Discovering from the dancing of the torch-ray that his hand was
trembling, Stuart concluded that he had awakened from a nightmare
and that this fiendish wailing was no more than an unusually delayed
aftermath of the imaginary horrors which had bathed him in cold
perspiration.

He walked resolutely to the door, threw it open and cast the beam of
light on to the staircase. Softly he began to descend. Before the