"No, damn it, Val, I hadn't hold of your hand. The hand I touched was much harder, and the finger was bigger, thicker. I say, this is ghastly."
Again he shook himself, and cast a searching glance upon the little room.
"Somebody has been in here with us, sitting between us in the dark," he repeated. "Good God, who is it?"
Valentine looked doubtful, but uneasy too.
"Let us go through the rooms," he said.
They took a candle, and, as on the previous night, searched, but in vain. They found no trace of any alien presence in the flat. No book, no ornament, had been moved. No door stood open. There was no sound of any footsteps except their own. When they came to Valentine's bedroom, Rip leaped to greet them, and seemed in excellent spirits. He showed no excitement until he had followed them back into the tentroom. But, arrived there, he suddenly stood still, raised one white paw from the ground, and emitted a long and dreary howl. The young men stared at him, and then at each other.
"Rip knows somebody has been here," Julian said.
Valentine was much more uncomfortably impressed by the demeanour of the dog than by Julian's declaration and subsequent agitation. He had been inclined to attribute the whole affair to a trick of his friend's nerves. But the nervous system of a fox-terrier was surely, under such circumstances as these, more truth-telling than that of a man.
"But the thing is absolutely impossible," he repeated, with some disturbance of manner.
"Is anything that we can't investigate straight away absolutely impossible?"