Having got through the time as best he could till eleven o’clock, he went up to bed.

The room to which he and Lucille had been assigned by the management was on the second floor, pleasantly sunny by day and at night filled with cool and heartening fragrance of the pines.  Hitherto Archie had always enjoyed taking a final smoke on the balcony overlooking the woods, but, to-night such was his mental stress that he prepared to go to bed directly he had closed the door.  He turned to the cupboard to get his pyjamas.

His first thought, when even after a second scrutiny no pyjamas were visible, was that this was merely another of those things which happen on days when life goes wrong.  He raked the cupboard for a third time with an annoyed eye.  From every hook hung various garments of Lucille’s, but no pyjamas.  He was breathing a soft malediction preparatory to embarking on a point-to-point hunt for his missing property, when something in the cupboard caught his eye and held him for a moment puzzled.

He could have sworn that Lucille did not possess a mauve neglige.  Why, she had told him a dozen times that mauve was a colour which she did not like.  He frowned perplexedly; and as he did so, from near the window came a soft cough.

Archie spun round and subjected the room to as close a scrutiny as that which he had bestowed upon the cupboard.  Nothing was visible.  The window opening on to the balcony gaped wide.  The balcony was manifestly empty.

“Urrf!”

This time there was no possibility of error.  The cough had come from the immediate neighbourhood of the window.

Archie was conscious of a pringly sensation about the roots of his closely-cropped back-hair, as he moved cautiously across the room.  The affair was becoming uncanny; and, as he tip-toed towards the window, old ghost stories, read in lighter moments before cheerful fires with plenty of light in the room, flitted through his mind.  He had the feeling—­precisely as every chappie in those stories had had—­that he was not alone.

Nor was he.  In a basket behind an arm-chair, curled up, with his massive chin resting on the edge of the wicker-work, lay a fine bulldog.

“Urrf!” said the bulldog.

“Good God!” said Archie.

There was a lengthy pause in which the bulldog looked earnestly at Archie and Archie looked earnestly at the bulldog.

Normally, Archie was a dog-lover.  His hurry was never so great as to prevent him stopping, when in the street, and introducing himself to any dog he met.  In a strange house, his first act was to assemble the canine population, roll it on its back or backs, and punch it in the ribs.  As a boy, his earliest ambition had been to become a veterinary surgeon; and, though the years had cheated him of his career, he knew all about dogs, their points, their manners, their customs, and their treatment in sickness and in health.  In short, he loved dogs, and, had they met under happier conditions, he would undoubtedly have been on excellent terms with this one within the space of a minute.  But, as things were, he abstained from fraternising and continued to goggle dumbly.