How did they come there, low down--not a foot above the floor of the veranda? Could they indeed be the eyes of an animal in spite of the white eyeballs on which the rays shone with such a sickly gleam; did they belong to some household dog which had chosen this spot for its night's repose? Yet--yet--if such was the case, why did it not sleep curled up or stretched out, instead of peering through the latticework with its eyes close to the slats, as though determined to see all that was in the room and all that was going on in it. No! it could not be that, while, also it was not what he had deemed it might be a few minutes ago--the eyes of a snake. It was impossible, since the eyes of a snake would have been much closer together.
They were--there could be no doubt about it! the eyes of a human being, man or woman. And they were not Zara's. He was sure of that.
But still they glared into the room, glared through the dusky sombreness of the lower part of it, of that part of the floor which, even now, the moonlight was not illuminating. And then to his astonishment he saw, as the light flooded the apartment more and more, that those eyes were staring not at him but towards another portion of the room; towards where the bed stood enveloped in the long hanging folds of the mosquito curtains, which, to his distempered mind, seemed in the weird light of the tropical night to look like the hangings that enshroud a catafalque--a funeral canopy.
His hand, shaky though he knew it was from whatever ailed him, was on his revolver; for a moment or so he lay there asking himself if he should fire at that wizard thing, that creepy mystery outside his room; if he should aim fair between those glistening eyeballs and trust to fortune to kill or disable the mysterious watcher? But still, however, he refrained; for, if his senses were still in his own possession, if his mind was still able to understand anything, it understood that near the bed in which he should have been sleeping had it not been for the evil odours exhaled from it to-night, there was something that might be a more fitting object of his discharge than the creature outside.
"If," he thought to himself, "I am neither mad nor delirious nor drenched with fever, those eyes are watching something in this room, and that something is not myself."
Should he turn his head; could he turn it towards that dark patch behind the mosquito curtains which was not illuminated with the moon's rays? Could he do it as a man turns in his sleep--restlessly--so that in the action there might be nothing which should alarm whatever lurked in the darkness over there; the thing that, having got into his room in the night full of evil intentions towards him, was now itself being watched, suspected, perhaps trapped. Could he do it?
As he meditated thus, feeling sure now that his stupor, his density of mind, was not what it had been--recognising with a feeling of devout thankfulness that, whatever his state might hitherto have been, his mind was now becoming clear and his intellect collected, he prepared to put this determination into practise. He would roll over on to his right side, as he had seen sleepy sailors roll over on to theirs in the watch below; he would roll over too, with his hand securely on the butt of his revolver. And then--if--if, as he felt certain was the case, there was some dark skulking thing hiding behind his bedhead, if he should see another pair of eyes gleaming out in the rays of the moon--why, then, woe befall it! He had had enough of these midnight hauntings from one visitant or another in this house of mystery; he would fire straight at that figure, he would kill it dead, if so it must be, even if it were Sebastian himself.
As he turned, imitating a sleeper's restlessness, as well as he was able, there came two interruptions--interruptions that stayed his hand.
From near the bed--he was right! those eyes outside had been watching something that was inside there!--close to him, across the room, he heard a sound. A sound that was half a one, half an inward catching of the breath, a gasp. Yet so low, so quickly suppressed, that none who had not suspected, none who had not been on the watch for the slightest sign, would have heard or noticed it. But he had heard it!
The other was a noisier, a more palpable interruption. Sebastian, below in the great saloon on the front was singing to himself, loudly and boisterously, and then, equally boisterously, was wishing Madame Carmaux "Good-night." Answering evidently, too, some question, which Julian could not hear put to him by her, and expressing also the hope that she would feel better soon.