Lizard fashion, a hideous unclad shape crawled past beneath me amongst the tangle of ivy and low plants. The moonlight touched it for a moment, and then it was gone into denser shadows.
A consciousness of impending disaster came to me, but, because of its very vagueness, found me unprepared. Then suddenly I saw young Wales. He sprang into view above the hedge, against which, I presume, he had been crouching; he leapt high in the air as though from some menace on the ground beneath him. I have never heard a more horrifying scream than that which he uttered.
"My God!" he cried. "Margery! Margery!" and yet again:
"Margery! Help!"
Then he was down, still screaming horribly, and calling for aid. The crawling thing made no sound, but the dreadful screams of Wales sank slowly into a sort of sobbing, and then into a significant panting which told of his agony.
I snatched up my kit, raced out of the room and down the stairs. I was held a moment at the door by the heavy and nu merous bolts, but fumbled my way to the open at last. I almost fell over Aubrey where he lay inert upon the ground. I wasted no time in futilities, but busied myself with my restoratives at once. I found the wound quickly, having an inkling of where it would be — upon the neck. I got a terrific dose of ammonia down his throat and went about the cauterising. Margery came rushing out of the house over to us.
"Be quiet!" I commanded her. She had started to sob. "What did you see?"
"I don't know," she quavered. "What was it?"
I was instantly put at rest on one subject. She had not had time to glimpse the horrible thing which had attacked her lover. "It's a snakebite," I said at random. "He'll be all right. He's coming to now," I told her and gave her no time to collapse. "You must get back to your room at once. People will come. Your husband will have heard. Do you understand?"
For answer, she turned and fled. I breathed relief. I had spoken true. Aubrey was stirring. I would have him out of this, with another stiff dose of the ammonia and a poultice. His life was safe, though he might carry a scar on his neck for the rest of his days. It was Drurock, turning up fully dressed, but dishevelled and red-eyed from sleep, who helped me carry Aubrey to his room. We deposited our six-foot burden on the bed. I faced our host across the unconscious form of my friend.
"I'll have a few more minutes with him and then he can sleep it off," I told him, levelly. "That's fortunate, for I think I could have proved a murder charge."
He blinked and said nothing.
"When I'm through here," I said with authority, "I think you and I may as well talk it out. Will you wait for me in the library?"
He nodded imperceptibly and turned to go. I thought it just as well to add:
"I shall be very much on the alert — and armed." * * *
"To be specific, Drurock, I mean to maintain that these phenomena are conjured out of the soil beneath this house."
"Conjured?" "And I think we know the conjuror," I retorted, and went on: "What stumps me is your having put so many of the clues in my hands. It's as if you wanted me to smoke you out."
"I have still to be convinced that you have 'smoked me out,' as you put it," he said, equably, and then added, on a note of self-communion: "If the secret is out — well, maybe it was time at last."
"Do I have to prove my reasoning?"
"Well," he shrugged, "isn't that the scientific method?"
"If I could stage a demonstration," I retorted, "would that be more convincing than words?"
He nodded.
"May I have an axe?"
He was taken aback for a moment. Then, a slow smile spread over his face.
"Mr McAllister," he said, "it was due me."
"Due?"
"That I should finally encounter another man with a brain as good as my own. I shall bring you the axe." * * *
Although Drurock had agreed to act exactly as I might direct, he stared in almost comic surprise when he learned the nature of the directions.
Placing two large silk handkerchiefs upon the table, I saturated them with the contents of a bottle which I had brought with me in my kit. I handed my host one of the handkerchiefs.
"Tie that over your mouth and nostrils," I said. "Whatever happens, don't remove it unless I tell you." I significantly tapped the revolver which lay in my pocket. "I'm taking you at your word. It is time for the secret to be out."
I rose, finally, perspiring from the task I set myself. The hole I had chopped down through parquetry and under-flooring was about a foot in diameter. It was really disgustingly hot. Despite the hour, which was one for dawn breezes to stir and cool the air, the wall thermometer stuck at high level. If anything, the mercury rose. Ensconced in his favourite sprawling pose on the couch against the wall Drurock made no move either to deter or assist me.
I opened windows and doors. A little ventilator near the ceiling worked by a hanging wire, caught my eye and I opened that, too.
"And now," I explained, when I had finished my prepara tions, "we have opened all the avenues. The thing can come through the door. It can enter through a window or it may — as I expect it will — ooze up through that hole in the floor-ooze up from the arsenious mass, that buried store of poison beneath our feet. So far, am I right?"
"I am audience," he purred. "I make no comment. I only applaud."
An hour passed. I had an impression that Drurock dozed off and on. I read the thermometer. The temperature had not abated a fraction of a point since sunset and, sitting immobile as I was, I found myself bathed in sweat. Despite the open doors and windows, not a breath of air stirred in the place.
Then, of a sudden, I thought I sensed a change in temperature. I shot a glance at the thermometer. It was falling with a rapidity that was visible. The conditions favourable to condensation were at work. My senses became more than ever alert. I glanced across at Henry Drurock. I believe that his eyes were keener organs of vision than the normal human pair. He had come half erect and was staring at the hole in the floor.
I followed his gaze. I was some minutes before I too perceived the very thin miasmic vapour which was rising — rising, ever rising from the aperture.
Now the column rising from the hole became thicker. A credulous observer of the ghostly phenomenon might well have expected it to progress on to some sort of materialisation into ectoplasmic form. Becoming more dense, it rose more rapidly, although it remained from start to finish a vapour not much lighter than air. It rose like a column of oily smoke until it touched the ceiling, where it mushroomed out among the rafters. I saw wisps of it sucked into the little ventilator and drawn away.
I looked to Drurock. He shrugged.
I thought I heard a door open somewhere overhead. I glanced at my companion but he, apparently, had heard nothing. He made no sign, though I thought he held his head cocked in the position of one intensely expectant of a sound or a sight. Again I thought I heard a movement, was sure some one had stirred. The sound resembled the rustling of silk and I thought it came from the stair. And then, as in a flash, I connected little bits of evidence together and knew what I had done.
"Where does that ventilator lead?" I cried, leaping to close it even as I exclaimed.
"I am under the impression it communicates With my wife's room," he said banteringly, through the handkerchief.
And now the sounds upon the stair became plainly audible. Some one was breathing stertorously out there and that some one was coming down on hands and knees or — or — I uttered an oath as I recalled the vision of the horrible thing which had slithered serpent-wise into my room a few hours back. That — and Margery? Another sound came from overhead. A second person was moving without concealment. A door slammed. I heard Aubrey's voice lifted in shrill dismay.