CHAPTER I. A VISITOR AT NIGHT
The room seemed strangely silent when Bruce Duncan awoke. It was uncanny in this front room of the old house; he had noticed that before during the month he had lived there since his uncle's death. But the silence had never seemed so ominous as now.
One comfort to his disturbed mind was the beam of light that came through the transom of the door to the right of the bed. It fell upon the hearth of the old stone fireplace at the right wall of the room. Duncan turned his eyes momentarily in that direction; an instant later, he was staring at the window again.
For he had heard a strangely sibilant whistle — close and ominous — as though it came from among the bushes on the ground a full story below the window.
There was a rustle outside as if a slight breath of wind had stirred the thick ivy vines that covered the stone masonry of the house. Then a head and shoulders were silhouetted in the dimness of the open window. A grotesque form slipped over the sill.
The figure stole softly toward the bed. Duncan did not move. Somehow he seemed powerless to move.
He turned his eyes to follow the actions of the strange visitor from the night, and his gaze was transfixed as the being came into the light from the transom.
The figure was that of an apelike man — a weird, stoop-shouldered creature whose arms were long and whose fingers were bony claws. The face was wizened, and the eyes gleamed wickedly in the light.
The creature's head turned toward the bed. Instinctively, Bruce Duncan closed his eyes and lay as if asleep. He had no will to move a muscle; he could only wait and wonder in the midst of this real nightmare.
The side of the bed sagged slightly as though a form was pressing against it. The creature was stooping over him now. Duncan could feel a warm breath against his forehead. His heart thumped furiously in this moment of weird suspense, and he lay motionless as a waxwork figure, waiting for the clawlike fingers to close about his neck.