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Page 30
"Please sit down a while," I said. "You have evidently been seriously
alarmed."
Still there was no sign from Coates, whose voice would have been
welcome music to my ears, for I could not reconcile myself to this
woman's presence, strive how I might, nor could I understand how she
had come to be wandering alone in such a place at that hour. One bond
of sympathy there was between us. I could forgive any one fearing
those awful eyes, for I had feared them myself; and I could no longer
doubt that some strange apparition was haunting the vicinity.
"Believe me, I quite understand," I said, turning to my visitor. "It
is most extraordinary, but I believe there is some unusually large cat
frequenting the neighborhood at present."
I stood by the side table and was on the point of pouring out a glass
of water when the woman raised her white-gloved hand in a gesture of
refusal.
"Thank you," she said, "thank you, but I am quite recovered, and
indeed if the cause of my alarm is no more than a cat, as you say, I
will proceed."
She laughed, and her laughter was low-pitched, but very musical. In
the light of the shaded table-lamp I could see the gleam of white
teeth through her veil, but I could not imagine why she swathed
herself in that manner. Yet in spite of this enwrapping she could not
disguise the fact that she possessed remarkably large and beautiful
eyes. She seemed now to have recovered her composure, but I noted that
she made no attempt to remove her veil.
"Are you quite sure that you will not be nervous on your way?" I
asked.
"Oh, no. I am staying with some friends quite near," she explained,
detecting my curiosity; "and I was indiscreet enough to wander out at
this hour to post a letter."
Possibly this explanation might have satisfied me; it is even possible
that I should have thought little more about the incident at that time
when I lived in a constant turmoil of episodes even stranger, but by
one of those accidents which sometimes seem to be directed by the hand
of an impish fate, I was to learn who or what my visitor was. When I
say I was to learn what she was, perhaps I err; more correctly I was
to learn what she was not, namely, an ordinary human being.
It was as she rose to depart that the hand of fate intervened. I had
only one lamp burning in the room, a table-lamp; and at this moment,
preceded by a sudden accession of light due to some flaw of the
generating plant, the filament expired, plunging the room into
darkness! I stood up with a startled cry. I do not deny that I felt
ill at ease in the gloom with my strange visitor; but worse was to
come. Looking across the darkened room to the chair upon which she was
seated, I saw a pair of blazing eyes regarding me fixedly!
Something in their horrid, luminous watchfulness told me that my
slightest movement was perceptible to my uncanny visitor of whom I
could see nothing but those two fiery eyes.
What I did or what occurred within the next few seconds I am not
prepared to state in detail. I know I uttered a hoarse cry and threw
myself back from those dreadful eyes which seemed to be advancing upon
me. The cry awakened Coates. I heard the pad of his bare feet upon the
floor as he leaped out of bed, and an instant later his door was
opened and he came blundering out into the darkened passage.
"Hello, sir!" he cried, in a half-dazed voice. "Here, Coates!" I
replied, and my tones were far from normal.
Falling over a chair on his way, Coates came running into the study.
An impression I had of a flying shape, and the dimly seen square of
the open window (for that side of the cottage lay in shadow) seemed
momentarily to become blackened.
"Bring a light, Coates!" I cried. "The lamp has gone out."
"Matches on the table, sir," said Coates.
Instantly I remembered that this was the case, that they lay in fact
near to my hand. I struck one, and in its flickering light looked
about the room. My visitor had gone--palpably through the window, for
certainly the front door had not been opened.
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