“Colonel Wragge—or the sister?” I asked hurriedly, for the gong was sounding.
“Neither directly,” he said from the door. “Something far older, something very, very remote indeed. This thing has to do with the ages, unless I am mistaken greatly, the ages on which the mists of memory have long lain undisturbed.”
He came across the floor very quickly with a finger on his lips, looking at me with a peculiar searchingness of gaze.
“Are you aware yet of anything—odd here?” he asked in a whisper. “Anything you cannot quite define, for instance. Tell me, Hubbard, for I want to know all your impressions. They may help me.”
I shook my head, avoiding his gaze, for there was something in the eyes that scared me a little. But he was so in earnest that I set my mind keenly searching.
“Nothing yet,” I replied truthfully, wishing I could confess to a real emotion; “nothing but the strange heat of the place.”
He gave a little jump forward in my direction.
“The heat again, that’s it!” he exclaimed, as though glad of my corroboration. “And how would you describe it, perhaps?” he asked quickly, with a hand on the door knob.
“It doesn’t seem like ordinary physical heat,” I said, casting about in my thoughts for a definition.
“More a mental heat,” he interrupted, “a glowing of thought and desire, a sort of feverish warmth of the spirit. Isn’t that it?”