I

For the twentieth time Bertram Pollard went to the door of the little room he called his “study” and listened. He heard nothing but the slow tick-tock of a grandfather’s clock at the end of the narrow hall; that, and his own breathing which seemed loud.

The silence of the house in Holland Street, Kensington, was horrible to him; yet better than the rapid footsteps of a doctor, the quick rustle of a nurse’s starched dress, the strange inexplicable noises of something being dragged across the room upstairs, water being poured out, a glass falling and smashing, and other sounds which had scared him when his wife was in pain.