“Take off your shoes and carry them in your hand.  Always do that.  It is the only safe way.”

He laughed again, thinking: 

“What a careful conscience!”

He retained only one more impression.  He was dully aware that some time had passed.  He shivered.  He thought the wind had grown angry with him, for it no longer whispered.  It shrieked, and he could make nothing of its wrath.  He struggled frantically to emerge from the pit.  The quality of the blackness deepened.  His fright grew.  He felt himself slipping, slowly at first then faster, faster down into impossible depths, and there was nothing at all he could do to save himself.

* * * * *

“Go away!  For God’s sake, go away!”

Bobby thought he was speaking to the sombre figure in the mask.  His voice aroused him to one more effort at escape, but he felt that there was no use.  He was too deep.

Something hurt his eyes.  He opened them and for a time was blinded by a narrow shaft, of sunlight resting on his face.  With an effort he moved his head to one side and closed his eyes again, at first merely thankful that he had escaped from the black hell, trying to control his sensations of physical evil.  Subtle curiosity forced its way into his sick brain and stung him wide awake.  This time his eyes remained open, staring about him, dilating with a wilder fright than he had experienced in the dark mazes of his nightmare adventure.

He had never seen this place before.  He lay on the floor of an empty room.  The shaft of sunlight that had aroused him entered through a crack in one of the tightly drawn blinds.  There were dust and grime on the wails, and cobwebs clustered in the corners.

In the silent, deserted room the beating of his heart became audible.  He struggled to a sitting posture.  He gasped for breath.  He knew it was very cold in here, but perspiration moistened his face.  He could recall no such suffering as this since, when a boy, he had slipped from the crisis of a destructive fever.

Had he been drugged?  But he had been with friends.  There was no motive.

What house was this?  Was it, like this room, empty and deserted?  How had he come here?  For the first time he went through that dreadful process of trying to draw from the black pit useful memories.

He started, recalling the strange voice and its warning, for his shoes lay near by as though he might have dropped them carelessly when he had entered the room and stretched himself on the floor.  Damp earth adhered to the soles.  The leather above was scratched.

“Then,” he thought, “that much is right.  I was in the woods.  What was I doing there?  That dim figure!  My imagination.”