Stiffly he arose to stretch himself. Something turned gleaming eyes at him. It was Spit, very quiet now, crouched comfortably on the floor, watching two doors—the open one into the bedroom and the closed one at the foot of the stairs. Man and cat eyed each other a moment. Then the man in turn looked toward a door—the entrance to his own room, beyond which waited his blankets and easy couch of bough-tips.
After all, why not? He could sit against the wall there, rest his legs and back, and still keep awake. Better take the cat in there, too; then he wouldn’t start clawing up toward the bacon-shelf or making other disturbance. Might as well be comfortable. As soon as he heard the ha’nt begin to tramp around he could slip out and see whatever might be seen. All right, he would do it.
By patient persistence, he inveigled the suspicious but curious Spit into the rear room. Entering it himself, he had an afterthought: he reached to the attic door, turned its knob, swung it open, leaving free access for the stair-bumping spook. Then he went into his room and almost closed the door, leaving it only a little ajar to obviate the fumbling and noise of knob-turning when the time to leap out should come. Making sure that Spit still was there, he relaxed against the wall, gun ready beside him. And——
In less than twenty minutes all good intentions and cats and ha’nts were obliterated from his mind by the velvety hand of Sleep.
What time it was when he awoke he never knew. But awake he did, to find himself lurching upward, every nerve tense, his gun clutched in his right hand.
The door was open wider now—open nearly a foot. In the room beyond lay slanting moonlight.
Out there, something was struggling.
Something was making a low, ghastly, inhuman noise.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE DEMON OF THE DARK
Douglas felt his hair lift and his skin prickle, ice-cold. But he knocked the door wide and plunged out. In the moonshine stood no horrible figure. The noise was coming from the floor: a growling sound, a slithering scrape, irregular paddings, and the scratch of claws on wood.