By ten o'clock, the castle was quiet and dark, everything locked up for the night, and we were all settled upstairs; Jane with a novel and her smelling salts. She had not come down for dinner; one of the servants reported that she looked like a ghost.
I was very uneasy myself. I had no sooner entered my bedroom when a queer apprehension seized me. I was shivering all over. Restlessly, I paced up and down, trying to diagnose my case. The strange experiences and the excitement of the day had been a little too much for my nerves, perhaps. No; it wasn't that; something deeper, something harrowing, possessed me.
No sound came from within the castle. Everything seemed enveloped in a weird-like silence, the silence that often precedes a storm. I was unable to set my thoughts in order. The whole affair did not ring entirely true. What was the meaning of all that had happened? Surely, some one held the secret.
I tried to think these things out slowly, but try as I would, I couldn't make my cogitations run along prescribed paths. I kept asking myself questions. What would the world think of this latest, incredible revelation? But was it so incredible? Were not scientists agreed that there are probabilities in interplanetary travel which do not overstep the boundaries of accepted natural laws? And what about this frightening creature from Mars, Henry had brought into the castle and put to bed, across the hall from me? What was it doing? For I was certain, in my present disturbed state of nerves, that it was up to something.
Niki, I knew, had been relieved as guard for the night by the two chauffeurs, George and William, whom Henry had assigned to take turns in keeping watch at the bedside of this uncouth stranger within our gates.
The creature interested me more and more as I thought about it; by midnight, it had become a fearsome obsession. In my temporary aberration, I imagined it creeping about the castle, in the dark, trying doors—Pat's door. I wondered if she had taken my advice to have an extra lock put on her bedroom door.
In my anxiety about her, I finally turned off the lights in my room, and opened my door just a crack, to satisfy myself that everything was as quiet and secure as the deep silence denoted.
My room is one of six sleeping rooms on the second floor, which opens on a broad hall, reached by a short flight of stairs, leading from the landing in the gallery of the main staircase. Four of these were now occupied by members of our family. Henry's suite is at the east end of the hall, and mine at the west end. Between us, with bright southern exposure, are Jane's and Pat's bedrooms.
Across the hall, with windows fronting on the Sound, are the two principal guest rooms. The Blue Room, formerly occupied by McGinity, a nobly proportioned apartment, and the State Apartment, in which was ensconced the visitor from Mars. These two apartments are separated by an archway, spanning the landing of the short stairway from the gallery.
Practically the same arrangement holds on the third floor; that is, the six sleeping rooms open on a broad hall—rooms almost never used. But two of them were in use this night—McGinity in one, and Olinski in another. The servants sleep in a back wing, which is built on a lower level than the second floor. A rear stairway, rather awkwardly placed, connects the service wing with the second floor.