But in the dead silence of Okar there was no suggestion of sound. It must have been in the ghostly hours between midnight and the dawn—though a cold terror that had gripped Maison would not let him get up to look at the clock that ticked monotonously on the sideboard.
He lay, clammy with sweat, every sense strained and acute, listening. For, from continued contemplation of imaginary dangers he had worked himself into a frenzy which would have turned into a conviction of real danger at the slightest sound near him.
He expected sound to come; he waited for it, his ears attuned, his senses alert.
And at last sound came.
It was a mere creak—such a sound as a foot might make on a stairway. And it seemed to have come from the stairs leading to Maison's rooms.
He did not hear it again, though, and he might have fought off the new terror that was gripping him, if at that instant he had not remembered that when leaving the lower room he had forgotten to lock the rear door—the door through which Morley had entered earlier in the evening; the door through which Silverthorn had departed.
He had not locked that door, and that noise on the stairs might have been made by some night prowler.
Aroused to desperation by his fears he started to get out of bed with the intention of getting the revolver that lay in a drawer in the sideboard.
His feet were on the floor as he sat on the edge of the bed preparatory to standing, when he saw the door at the head of the stairs slowly swing open and a figure of a man appear in the opening.
The light in the room was faint—a mere luminous star-mist—hut Maison could see clearly the man's face. He stiffened, his hands gripping the bedclothing, as he muttered hoarsely: