An angry glance from Frederik sent him into his own room like a rabbit into its warren.
Frederik, the fragments of the picture clenched in his sweat-damp hand, glowered after the retreating lad and took a step toward the fire. The movement brought him close to the desk. The lamp had suddenly burned very low. But for the faint gleam of firelight the room was in almost total darkness.
And out of that gloom leaped a Face. A Face close to Frederik's own;—a Face indescribably awful in its aspect of unearthly menace. The face of Peter Grimm. Not kindly and rugged as in life, or even as since the Dead Man's return. But terrible, accusing, bathed in a lurid glow.
Frederik, with a scream of crass horror, reeled back. The bits of cardboard tumbled from his fear-loosened grip and strewed the surface of the desk.
"My God!" croaked Frederik, his throat sanded with terror. "My God! Oh, my God!"
The Face was gone. The room was in shadow again and very silent. The dropping of a charred ember from andiron to hearth made the panic-stricken man jump convulsively.
Scarce breathing, crouched in a position of grotesque fright, the fear-sweat streaming down his face, Frederik Grimm peered about him through the flickering gloom. The place seemed peopled with elusive Shapes. His teeth clicked together as his loosened jaw was nerve-racked. He shivered from head to foot.
"I—I thought——" he began, half aloud.
Then he fell silent, afraid of his own voice in that dreadful silence. For a moment he cowered, numb, inert. Then he remembered the fragments of the photograph that still strewed the table.
"I must get rid of them," he thought.