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Our conversation was interrupted at this point by Denby, who came to report that he had examined the moat, the roadside, and the bank of the stream, but found no footprints or clew of any kind. "No one left the grounds of Redmoat last night, I think," he said. And his voice had awe in it. That day dragged slowly on.
All anticipation is keener, be it of joy or pain, than the reality whereof it is a mental forecast; but that inactive waiting at Redmoat, for the blow which we knew full well to be pending exceeded in its nerve taxation, anything I hitherto had experienced. I felt as one bound upon an Aztec altar, with the priest's obsidian knife raised above my breast!
Why his life had been spared, I cannot conjecture, but provision had been made against his recovering consciousness and revealing the secret of the shrubbery. The ruse of releasing the mastiff alone had terminated the visit of the unbidden guest within Redmoat.
For I, within my very bones, felt it to be the calm before the storm. When, later, we men passed to the library, we seemed to leave that atmosphere behind us. "Redmoat," said the Rev. J. D. Eltham, "has latterly become the theater of strange doings." He stood on the hearth-rug. A shaded lamp upon the big table and candles in ancient sconces upon the mantelpiece afforded dim illumination. Mr.
But the mere idea of this thing which she believed to be in Redmoat, without the apparition of the green eyes, must have prostrated a victim of "nerves." "Have you seen such a creature, Miss Eltham?" She hesitated again, glancing down and pressing her finger-tips together. "As father awoke and called out to know why I knocked, I glanced from my window.
"How could anyone get into his room?" "I cannot imagine. But I am not sure it was a man." "Miss Eltham, you alarm me. What do you suspect?" "You must think me hysterical and silly, but whilst father and I have been away from Redmoat perhaps the usual precautions have been neglected. Is there any creature, any large creature, which could climb up the wall to the window?
It became more and more incomprehensible how anyone could have entered and quitted Redmoat during the night. The barbed-wire fencing was intact, and bore no signs of having been tampered with. Smith and I undertook an exhaustive examination of the shrubbery.
I knew what it meant to us, Petrie, what it meant to the world, but I hadn't the heart. I owed her your life I had to square the account." NIGHT fell on Redmoat. I glanced from the window at the nocturne in silver and green which lay beneath me.
He waved his hand vaguely towards the several cabinets about the shadowed room. "It was shortly afterwards that I allowed my hobby for playing at forts to run away with me." He smiled an apology. "I virtually fortified Redmoat against trespassers of any kind, I mean. You have seen that the house stands upon a kind of large mound.
I will reconsider my position and talk this matter over again with you to-morrow." Thus, then, the storm blew over. Yet I had never experienced such an overwhelming sense of imminent peril of a sinister presence as oppressed me at that moment. The very atmosphere of Redmoat was impregnated with Eastern devilry; it loaded the air like some evil perfume.
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