“Bring him up here, Billy,” she said, turning to the butler.

Billy started to obey.  But the darkness of the corridor seemed to appall him anew the moment he took a step toward it.

“You give candle, please?” he asked with a pleading expression.  “Don’t like dark.”

Miss Cornelia handed him one of the two precious candles.  Then his present terror reminded her of that one other occasion when she had seen him lose completely his stoic Oriental calm.

“Billy,” she queried, “what did you see when you came running down the stairs before we were locked in, down below?”

The candle shook like a reed in Billy’s grasp.

“Nothing!” he gasped with obvious untruth, though it did not seem so much as if he wished to conceal what he had seen as that he was trying to convince himself he had seen nothing.

“Nothing!” said Lizzie scornfully.  “It was some nothing that would make him drop a bottle of whisky!”

But Billy only backed toward the door, smiling apologetically.

“Thought I saw ghost,” he said, and went out and down the stairs, the candlelight flickering, growing fainter, and finally disappearing.  Silence and eerie darkness enveloped them all as they waited.  And suddenly out of the blackness came a sound.

Something was flapping and thumping around the room.

“That’s damned odd.” muttered Beresford uneasily.  “There is something moving around the room.”

“It’s up near the ceiling!” cried Bailey as the sound began again.

Lizzie began a slow wail of doom and disaster.

“Oh—­h—­h—­h—­”

“Good God!” cried Beresford abruptly.  “It hit me in the face!” He slapped his hands together in a vain attempt to capture the flying intruder.

Lizzie rose.

“I’m going!” she announced.  “I don’t know where, but I’m going!”

She took a wild step in the direction of the door.  Then the flapping noise was all about her, her nose was bumped by an invisible object and she gave a horrified shriek.

“It’s in my hair!” she screamed madly.  “It’s in my hair!”

The next instant Bailey gave a triumphant cry.

“I’ve got it!  It’s a bat!”

Lizzie sank to her knees, still moaning, and Bailey carried the cause of the trouble over to the window and threw it out.

But the result of the absurd incident was a further destruction of their morale.  Even Beresford, so far calm with the quiet of the virtuous onlooker, was now pallid in the light of the matches they successively lighted.  And onto this strained situation came at last Billy and the Unknown.

The Unknown still wore his air of dazed bewilderment, true or feigned, but at least he was now able to walk without support.  They stared at him, at his tattered, muddy garments, at the threads of rope still clinging to his ankles—­and wondered.  He returned their stares vacantly.