"I went in while it was perfectly dark. I took a position on the stairs because I had been told the--the THING--had been seen from the stairs, and I thought that where it had been seen once it would be seen again. I had presumed it was some trick of a shadow, or moonlight, or something of the kind. So I sat waiting calmly. I am not a nervous man--that is, I never have been until now.
"I took no light of any kind with me. It seemed an interminable time that I waited, staring into the reception-room in the general direction of the library. At last, as I gazed into the darkness, I heard a noise. It startled me a bit, but it didn't frighten me, for I put it down to a rat running across the floor.
"But after awhile I heard the most awful cry a human being ever listened to. It was neither a moan nor a shriek--merely a--a cry. Then, as I steadied my nerves a little, a figure--a blazing, burning white figure--grew out of nothingness before my very eyes, in the reception-room. It actually grew and assembled as I looked at it."
He paused, and The Thinking Machine changed his position slightly.
"The figure was that of a man, apparently, I should say, eight feet high. Don't think I'm a fool--I'm not exaggerating. It was all in white and seemed to radiate a light, a ghostly, unearthly light, which, as I looked, grew brighter. I saw no face to the THING, but it had a head. Then I saw an arm raised and in the hand was a dagger, blazing as was the figure.
"By this time I was a coward, a cringing, frightened coward--frightened not at what I saw, but at the weirdness of it. And then, still as I looked, the--the THING--raised the other hand, and there, in the air before my eyes, wrote with his own finger--_on the very face of the air_, mind you--one word: 'Beware!'"
"Was it a man's or woman's writing?" asked The Thinking Machine.
The matter-of-fact tone recalled Hatch, who was again being carried away by fear, and he laughed vacantly.
"I don't know," he said. "I don't know."
"Go on."