“What is it?  What’s there? Who’s there?”

A sound of scuttling caused his knees to bend under him for a moment; but that, he knew, was a mouse.  That was not something that his stomach turned sick and his mind reeled to entertain.  That other sound, the like of which was not in the world, had now entirely ceased; and again he called....

He called and continued to call; and then another terror, a terror of the sound of his own voice, seized him.  He did not dare to call again.  His shaking hand went to his pocket for a match, but found none.  He thought there might be matches on the mantelpiece—­

He worked his way to the mantelpiece round a little recess, without for a moment leaving the wall.  Then his hand encountered the mantelpiece, and groped along it.  A box of matches fell to the hearth.  He could just see them in the firelight, but his hand could not pick them up until he had cornered them inside the fender.

Then he rose and struck a light.

The room was as usual.  He struck a second match.  A candle stood on the table.  He lighted it, and the flame sank for a moment and then burned up clear.  Again he looked round.

There was nothing.

There was nothing; but there had been something, and might still be something.  Formerly, Oleron had smiled at the fantastic thought that, by a merging and interplay of identities between himself and his beautiful room, he might be preparing a ghost for the future; it had not occurred to him that there might have been a similar merging and coalescence in the past.  Yet with this staggering impossibility he was now face to face.  Something did persist in the house; it had a tenant other than himself; and that tenant, whatsoever or whosoever, had appalled Oleron’s soul by producing the sound of a woman brushing her hair.

VII

Without quite knowing how he came to be there Oleron found himself striding over the loose board he had temporarily placed on the step broken by Miss Bengough.  He was hatless, and descending the stairs.  Not until later did there return to him a hazy memory that he had left the candle burning on the table, had opened the door no wider than was necessary to allow the passage of his body, and had sidled out, closing the door softly behind him.  At the foot of the stairs another shock awaited him.  Something dashed with a flurry up from the disused cellars and disappeared out of the door.  It was only a cat, but Oleron gave a childish sob.

He passed out of the gate, and stood for a moment under the “To Let” boards, plucking foolishly at his lip and looking up at the glimmer of light behind one of his red blinds.  Then, still looking over his shoulder, he moved stumblingly up the square.  There was a small public-house round the corner; Oleron had never entered it; but he entered it now, and put down a shilling that missed the counter by inches.