A stranger noise I never heard. I experience a difficulty in describing it. It was as if some wild beast was inside the room, and was beside itself with fury. Yelling, snarling, screeching—a horrid, gasping noise—these sounds seemed to follow hard upon each other. And, mingled with them, were faint cries as of some one in extremity of both pain and terror. At that sound I ceased to hesitate. I turned the handle. I stepped inside. The sight I saw I am not likely to forget.
Lawrence was struggling frantically with some strange creature whose character I was not able to distinguish. From this creature proceeded those hideous sounds. It was a mass of whirling movement. I had never seen a being so instinct with frenzied action. Every part seemed to be in motion at once; and with its whole force it was assailing Lawrence. He seemed to be offering a feeble resistance, as, hauled this way and that, he staggered to and fro.
But, against such an attack, his efforts were vain. Presently he fell headlong to the floor. The creature, stooping, rained on to his motionless body a hail of blows, making all the time that horrid, gasping noise, and then was still.
I had been conscious all the time that there was something about the creature which was terribly human. It appeared to be covered with a flowing robe of some shining, silken stuff, whose voluminous skirts whirled hither and thither as it writhed and twisted. Now that it became motionless there broke on my ears the sound of a woman’s laughter.
I am not a nervous subject. Nor am I, I believe, a physical coward. But I am compelled to own that, instead of attempting to interfere, or offering the assistance which I had only too good reason to suppose was urgently needed, at the sound of the laughter, like some frightened cur, I turned and fled. And not the least strange part of the whole business was that, as it seemed, immediately after, I woke up. Woke to find that, however it might appear to the contrary, I certainly had been asleep, for I was sitting up in bed covered with sweat and trembling in every limb.
I looked about me. The blind was up before the long French window. I remember drawing it up, as was my usual habit, before I got into bed. The moon was shining through. All at once a sound caught my anxious ear. I started forward to learn from whence it came. From the window! I stared with all my eyes. I was wide awake now, of that there could be no sort of doubt whatever. In the moonlight I could see that some one was standing on the other side of the pane—a faint, mysterious figure. The latch was raised; it was a little rusty, I could hear it creaking. The window was pushed open, as by an unaccustomed hand, with something of a jerk. Out of the moonbeams, like some spectral visitant, a woman stepped into the room.
CHAPTER II.
THE WOMAN WHO CAME THROUGH THE WINDOW
I held my breath, staring in amazement. The figure was real, that was obvious. And yet, how could a woman have gained my window from without? Where had she come from at that hour of the night? What did she want, now that she was here?
A vague wonder passed through my mind as to whether her object might not be felony. She had left the window open—I could feel the cool night-air—and stood inside it, as if listening. Was she endeavouring to discover if her entrance had been discovered? She had but to use her eyes, and look straight in front of her, to see me sitting up in bed, staring. I was as visible as she was. So far as I could judge she remained motionless, looking neither to right nor left. Presently she sighed, as some tired child might do, a long-drawn sigh, as if the action brought relief to her breast. Then I was persuaded that she was at any rate no thief—there was something in the sound of that sustained respiration which was incompatible with the notion of a feminine burglar.
She came a little forward into the room, doubtfully, as if uncertain of her surroundings. She stumbled against a chair, the contact seeming to startle her. I saw her put her hand up to her head, with the gesture of one who was trying to collect her thoughts.