Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/231



first emotion that swept over Val was one of unreasonable, incontrollable fear. It was the fear of the unknown, an emotion that overwhelms the senses not under the direction of the brain. Why the vision of the mysterious man at the window should so have affected him Val could scarcely have told; instinctively, however, Val had felt that this was not a being of any word he knew—rather was it something that returned to walk the earth at night when storms raged and the elements lashed the earth in fury.

Yet the figure, even in that brief glance, had seemed flesh and blood enough. There was something in that face that reminded Val of something—of something he had known, or had seen. He could not place the memory anywhere, at present, but even in the wave of fear that covered him momentarily he thought of it, and now that the apparition was gone it occurred to his mind insistently. Who was this old man, and what did he want here?

The storm shattered its waves resonantly, thunderously, upon the empty shell that resembled a house. The room was now as black as something the other side of the eternal pit; strain his eyes as he would Val could make out nothing except the dim rectangle that he knew was the window. What was the meaning Rh