Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/326

294 human—shifted its position. I was awakened—at least I believe it was this which awakened me—by a creaking of the floor boards in my room, and, with what seemed a causeless, but was certainly one of the most oppressive feelings of chilling terror I have ever experienced, I started upright in my bed. He was there, again at my writing desk, and rustling the papers. For an instant I remained motionless; and in that instant, alarmed by the slight sound I had made, he fled noiselessly, pattered through the door between the rooms and loudly slammed it shut, slammed Lawler's outer door behind him, and had gone. I crashed the door open, ran across the creaking floor of the other room—where Lawler, awakened by the slamming of the doors, had whisked out of bed—and opened the door into the corridor. Lawler's servant, aroused, but still dazed with sleep, blubbered that he had seen no one, though the man must have stepped over his very body. A dozen other servants, sleeping before their masters' doors in the corridor, had awakened likewise, but cried out shrilly that they had seen no one. Lawler, too, though the noise of the man's passage had brought him out of bed, had not seen him. When I examined my writing desk I found, as before at Cairo, that nothing had been taken. The literary delight of looking over your letters seems to be all that draws him—of course, I am joking; for there must be a real reason. What it is that he is searching for, why it is that he follows me, for he has never intruded on anyone else so far as I can learn, I would like to know—I would like to know—I would like to know! The native servants asked in awe-struck whispers whether I noticed if his feet were turned backwards; for it seems they believe that to be one of the characteristics of a ghost. But the man was flesh and blood—I am sure of it; and I am bound that if he comes again I will learn his object, for I sleep now with my pistol under my pillow, and next time—I shall shoot!"

Trant, as he finished the last words, looked up suddenly at Miss Waldron, as though about to ask a