It was dark in the room, save where the moonlight stole in through the window and stretched a filmy path across the floor until, in a strange, nebulous way, it threw into relief a cheval-glass that stood against the opposite wall. And in the glass a shadowy picture showed: The reflection of a man's figure seated in a chair, but curiously crouched as though about to spring, the shoulders bent a little forward, the head outthrust, the elbows outward, strained with weight, the hands clenched upon the arms of the chair. And then suddenly, with a low, snarling oath, the more vicious for its repression, the figure sprang from the chair, and stood with face thrust close against the mirror.  
It was Captain Francis Newcombe.
 
He stared into the glass, his fists knotted at his sides. It was as though the two faces flung a challenge one at the other, each mocking the other in a sort of hideous imitation of every muscular movement. They were distorted—the lips drawn back, displaying teeth as beasts might do; and in the shadows the eyes were lost, only the sockets showing like small, black, ugly, cavernous things.
 
The minutes passed—long minutes. A metamorphosis was taking place. The faces became more composed; they became debonair, suave—and finally they smiled at one another as though a truce had been proclaimed.
 
Captain Francis Newcombe swung back to the chair, and flung himself down in it again. It was over for the moment. For the moment! Yes, that was it—for the moment! But it would come again. Last night in his bunk on the Talofa he had lain awake, and lived through hell. To-day, behind his mask of complaisance, fear had gnawed. Fear! And it had been his boast that fear and he were strangers.
 
His lips grew tight.
 
Well, his boast still held good! What man had ever stood before him, and taunted him with fear! This was fear in a different sense. It was a fear of the intangible, of what he could not reach, or see, of what he could not materialise into actual form. It was the fear of the unknown.
 
He was on his feet again.
 
"Damn you!" he snarled. "Come out into the open and fight! You hell-hound, you spawn of the devil, come out, show your face—"
 
No! Quiet! That would not do! He was in control of himself again, wasn't he? It was a game of wits against wits, of cunning matched against cunning. But against whom—and what was the stake this unknown, who had come to plague and torment him, played for? Revenge? The law? A Nemesis rising up out of forgotten things?
 
His mind prodded and sifted and strove, and in its striving seemed to jar and jangle and crunch like the parts of some machinery in motion, which, out of gear, threatened at any moment to demolish itself.
 
If he went mad—like Mr. Marlin! Ha, ha!
 
"By God!" he muttered grimly. "This is bad—a bad bit of nerves. If it was the same blighter who fired at me on shipboard, and it must have been, why didn't he fire at me again last night when he had an even better chance, instead of yowling through the darkness?"
 
That was better! It was the one trump card in his hand; the card that, as he had watched the daylight creep in through the tiny portholes of the Talofa that morning, had determined him, not only to carry on, but to make it serve as a trap to put an end to this skulking familiar who had fastened itself upon his trail. That wasn't fear, was it?
 
Shadow Varne! Who was the fool who dared to challenge Shadow Varne!
 
He was smiling now—but his lips were thin and merciless.
 
It could no longer be held attributable to some crazed, irresponsible act, that shot on shipboard, which chance had elected should be fired through his stateroom window rather than through any other. Logic now denied that. The man who had fired that shot, and the man who had screamed out in taunting mockery at him last night, were one and the same. Well, who was it, then, who had been on the liner, and was now on Manwa Island?
 
There were only two. Runnells and Locke!
 
Had Runnells had time to change his shoes, or, granting the time, had cunning enough to have thought of doing so? No; the chances were a thousand to one against it. Locke, then? But Runnells had said that Locke hadn't left the Talofa. Were Runnells and Locke in cahoots together? They had been extremely friendly on the way down. But Locke—it was preposterous! He knew who Locke was—a young American business man of good family. It was curious, though, that Polly should have made that remark to-day—about a trip like this on such short acquaintance. No; there was nothing in that. It had happened too naturally. Locke had a good many pairs of shoes. Like Runnells', none of them had been wet; but he was not sure he had found all of them in the darkness in the cabin with Locke—supposedly at least—asleep there on the opposite bunk. Locke could easily have hidden a tell-tale pair; and Locke was decidedly the kind of man who would have had the intelligence to do so.
 
But how could Locke know him as Shadow Varne?
 
Well, there was Runnells!
 
His jaws set with a snap. Was it Runnells? There was one way to find out—within the next ten minutes—with his hands at Runnells' throat! No; that would not do—not yet—save as a last resort. If it were not Runnells, then any act like that on his part would disclose his hand, arouse Runnells' suspicions that this trip to Manwa Island was perhaps, after all, not entirely a holiday jaunt!
 
He began to pace up and down the room—but noiselessly, without sound. His subconscious mind imposed the necessity for silence.
 
His hands clenched until the nails bit into the palms. Who was it? What did it mean? What was at the bottom of it? There was no answer that solved the question even to the satisfaction of a tormented brain that would have grasped with eager relief at even a plausible conclusion. The law? If the law had proof that he was Shadow Varne, he would not be an instant at liberty—though he would never be taken alive again—not even under the helpless condition that had done him down in Paris for the first and only time, as that old busybody, Sir Harris Greaves, the fool who loved to play with lighted matches over a powder cask, had so unctuously set forth. But perhaps the law did not have proof, had only suspicion—was only playing a game to trip him into disclosing his identity. Revenge? Then why not another shot last night, as on the liner; why—
 
The cycle! The infernal and accursed cycle again!
 
Well, whoever it was, they would play with Shadow Varne, would they? Fools! Did they think he was one, too—that he could not see the weak spot in their attack? Something was holding them back here on the island from a shot as on the liner; here, for some reason, an attempt to inspire fear was evidently being resorted to instead. Something kept them from coming out into the open; something necessitated this cat-and-mouse game. Something, if exposure were actually within their power, prevented them from exposing him.
 
That was it! That was it exactly—the one point on which he would stake everything and play out the game. Curse them and their childish tricks to frighten him! Exposure was the only thing he feared, because that would ruin every chance of success here; but if he was safe from exposure, or if exposure were only delayed long enough—and it need not be very long delayed, at that—he would have got, as he meant to get, in spite of God, or man, or the devil, what he had come for!
 
There was another angle. What had transpired might not have anything to do with what had brought him here.
 
Of course not! Why should it—essentially? But it was a menace, a hideous thing. It made him think of a picture he had seen somewhere—a gibbet at a bleak, wind-swept, dark-skyed cross-road with a figure dangling from it. One of those damned steel-plate engravings of the highwaymen days in England!
 
The unknown!
 
For a moment he stood still—and then suddenly both fists were raised above his head. That was a reason above all others why he should go on. The stakes were on the table. It was not merely a question of old Marlin's money. Win or lose here, the menace of that voice that shrieked the name of Shadow Varne for all to hear now hung over his whole future. It must either be removed, or he, Shadow Varne, promised with ghastly certainty to take the place of that dangling, swaying thing upon the gibbet chain. The menace was here. What better chance was there to fight it than here and now? Who was the more cunning? Who would misplay a card?
 
Not Shadow Varne!
 
A grim and cold composure came. He had two birds to kill with one stone now—that was all! Frighten Shadow Varne away? Bah! They did not know Shadow Varne—save only as a name to be screeched out from some safe retreat in the darkness! What might transpire in the secret recesses of his heart, the purely human fact that dismay and fear might prey at ugly moments upon him, was one thing; to halt him, to make him even hesitate, was another! He had never hesitated; he had but moved the more quickly, speeded up his plans, for time was a greater object now. He was at work at this very moment—waiting until the house was quiet for the night.
 
Well, it was time now, wasn't it?
 
A small flashlight played on the dial of his wrist watch.
 
Just midnight!
 
He nodded his head sharply, slipped across the room, and, with the door ajar, stood listening. A minute passed—another. There was no sound. He stepped out into the great, wide hall, and closed his door softly behind him.
 
It was like a shadow moving now.
 
That was Locke's room there; Polly's here—Dora Marlin's opposite. He passed them by, silently descended the great staircase, made his way back along another wide hallway, and finally halted before a door. This was Mr. Marlin's room. He listened intently. The sound of regular breathing, as of one asleep, was distinctly audible from within.
 
He smiled grimly as he turned away, and cautiously let himself out through a French window in the living-room which opened on the verandah. From here, he dropped lightly to the lawn.
 
The money was not hidden in the house. He was spared from the start any loss of time in an abortive search of that kind. There was too much significance attached to the old maniac's act of creeping stealthily in and out under his own verandah in the dead of night; especially when added to this had been the information gleaned from Polly that Mr. Marlin was in the habit of stealing out of the house at intervals for a succession of nights on end, though at a later hour each night. It was the obvious! But why a later hour each night? Rather queer! But the man's brain was queer! Why try to square insanity with the rational?
 
It was the secret under the verandah that interested him.
 
But his mind, as he made his way noiselessly along the edge of the bushes that fringed the verandah, reverted with a certain disturbing insistence to Polly. The girl hadn't stopped talking about going back to England! She said he had promised her she should when her education was finished. Well, perhaps he had—as one makes a promise to quiet a child! She wanted to be with her mother. Quite natural! But she hadn't any mother; and, if things went right here, he was rather inclined to believe that hereafter he preferred America to England as a permanent place of residence. He had reiterated his promise, of course. He couldn't afford to do anything else—yet. Sooner or later, he would have to "explain" to Polly; but when that time came, unless he had lost a certain facility in explanations that had never failed him yet, he should be able to turn even the fact that he had kept Mrs. Wickes' death from her to his own account. And tell the truth, even if somewhat inverted, at that! Solicitude would be the keynote—that, since Mrs. Wickes was not really her mother, her visit here need not be spoiled by ill news that would keep. Solicitude—and all that sort of idea. It was a good thing Mrs. Wickes was dead. Polly wouldn't want to live in England now. Mrs. Wickes' death settled that problem, which, otherwise, he would have had to find some other way of settling.
 
A minor matter! Very minor! Why should it even have crossed his mind? There was first the money; then, as a corollary, when that was found, the distressingly fatal accident that would overtake poor old Mr. Marlin—and, woven into the warp and woof of this, the twisting of a certain windpipe that would screech its indiscretions for the last time to a far different tune!
 
Ah, that was more like Shadow Varne!
 
He parted the bushes and slipped in under the verandah. This was the spot where the old madman had disappeared from view last night. His flashlight was switched on now. It showed a well-defined path, if it could be called a path, where through much usage the earth and gravel had been pressed down close up against the side of the house. It led toward the rear. He followed it. It took him around the corner of the house, and here, under a flight of steps that led to the verandah above, he found himself confronted with a basement door. Captain Francis Newcombe smiled. He had never ranked the task of probing the old fool's actions as one that demanded much ingenuity, or as presenting any particular difficulty. It was simply a question of watching the other without being seen himself; and with the man's mode of exit and entry from and into the house already known, the rest would almost automatically take care of itself.
 
He opened the door and stepped inside. The flashlight disclosed an ordinary basement storeroom, and, at one side, a flight of stairs. Captain Francis Newcombe moved quickly, but without sound now. He crossed the basement and crept up the stairs. Here, at the top, another door confronted him. With the flashlight out, he opened this door cautiously—and again a smile touched his lips. He had rather expected it! The door opened on the lower hall, and almost directly opposite Mr. Marlin's room.
 
He stepped across the hall and listened again at the old man's door. There still came from within the sounds of occupancy; but instead now of the regular breathing as of one asleep, it was the sound as of one moving softly around within.
 
Captain Francis Newcombe retreated to the stairs, closed the door behind him, descended the stairs, left the basement, and selected a spot amongst the trees at the edge of the lawn where he could command a view of the shrubbery bordering the verandah. It was still a little earlier than the hour last night when, according to Polly, Mr. Marlin had gone out, and if, in the bizarre workings of a warped brain, a ............