I stole quietly into the passage. It was in darkness. How odd it is that in moments of doubt instinctively one shuns the dark and seeks the light. I pressed the switch lighting the hall lamp, and stood looking at the closed door.
Why should this late visitor have rapped in so uncanny a fashion in preference to ringing the bell?
I stepped back to my table and slipped a revolver into my pocket.
The muffled rapping was repeated. As I stood in the study doorway I saw the flap of the letter-box slowly raised!
Instantly I extinguished both lights. You may brand me as childishly timid, but incidents were fresh in my memory which justified all my fears.
A faintly luminous slit in the door showed me that the flap was now fully raised. It was the dim light on the stairway shining through. Then quite silently the flap was lowered. Came the soft rapping again.
“Who’s there?” I cried.
No one answered.
Wondering if I were unduly alarming myself, yet, I confess, strung up tensely in anticipation that this was some device of the phantom enemy, I stood in doubt.
The silence remained unbroken for thirty seconds or more. Then yet again it was disturbed by that ghostly, muffled rapping.