And so, without accident, without incident, without hearing a sound but the faint noise of his own movements, Max got back to the point where he had started.

Then he paused and listened at the inner door.

In spite of everything, he refused to yield to the suggestion that Carrie had anything to do with his incarceration.  Would she not, on finding that he had disappeared, make an effort to get him out?

While he was standing between doubt and hope, on the alert for any sound on the other side which should suggest the presence of the girl herself and give him the cue to knock at the door again, his attention was attracted by a slight noise which thrilled him to the marrow; for it came, not from outside, but from some part of the room itself, in which he had supposed himself to be alone with the dead body of a man.

Instantly he put his back to the door and prepared to stand on the defensive against the expected attack of an invisible assailant.

That was the awful part of it, that he could not see.  For a moment he thought of creeping back to the rubbish heap in the corner and trying to find, amongst the odds and ends lying there, some sort of weapon of defense.  But a moment’s reflection told him that the act of stooping, of searching, would put him more at the mercy of an assailant than ever.  There was absolutely nothing to do but to wait and to listen.

And the noise he heard was like the drawing of a log of wood slowly along the floor.  This was followed by a dull sound, like the falling of a log to the earth.

And then there followed two sounds which made his flesh creep:  The first was the creaking, and cracking of wooden boards, and the second was a slow, sliding noise, which lasted, intermittently for what seemed an hour.

When the latter noise ceased something fell heavily to the ground.  That was a sound there was no mistaking, and then the creaking went on for what seemed a long time, and ceased suddenly in its turn.

And then, again, there was dead silence, dead stillness.

By this time Max was as cold as ice, and wet from head to foot with the sweat of a sick terror.  What the sounds meant, whence they proceeded, he could not tell, but the horror they produced in him was unspeakable, never to be forgotten.

He did not move for a long time after the sounds had ceased.  He wanted to shout, to batter with his fists on the doors, the window.  But a hideous paralysis of fear seemed to have taken possession of him and benumbed his limbs and his tongue.

Max was no coward.  He was a daring rider, handy with his fists, a young man full of spirit and courage to the verge of recklessness, as this adventure had proved.  But courage must have something to attack, or at least to resist, before it can make itself manifest; and in this sickening waiting, listening, watching, without the use of one’s eyes, there was something which smacked of the supernatural, something to damp the spirits of the bravest man.