Jane waked that night, and did not know why she waked. After a moment it came to her that she had been dreaming. In her dream something unpleasant had happened, and she did not know what it was. She sat up in the darkness with her hands pressed over her eyes, trying to remember.  
The vague feeling of having passed through some experience oppressed her far more than definite recollection could have done.
 
She got up, switched on the light, and began to pace up and down, but she could not shake off that feeling of having left something, she did not know what, just behind her, just out of sight. She looked round for the book she had been reading, but she remembered now that she had left it downstairs. She looked at her watch. It was three o’clock. The house would be absolutely still and empty. It would not take her two minutes to fetch the book from the drawing-room. She slipped on Renata’s dressing-gown, put out her light, and opened the door.
 
 
With a little shock of surprise she saw that the corridor was dark. Some one must have put out the light which always burned at the far end. Instead of the usual faintly glow, there was darkness thinning to dusk, and just at the stairhead a vivid splash of moonlight. After a moment’s Jane slipped out of her room, leaving the door ajar. Somehow she had not reckoned upon having to cross that brightly lighted space. She came slowly to the head of the stairs and looked down into the hall. It was like looking into the blackness and silence of a vast well. She could see nothing—nothing at all. The moon was shining in through the rose window above the great door. There was a shield in the window, a shield with the Luttrell arms, and the light came through the glass in a great beam shot with colour, and struck the portrait of Lady Heritage and the vine leaves and grapes on the newel just below. The window and the portrait were on the same level, and the ray seemed to make a brilliant cleavage between the silvery dusk above and the gloom below.
 
Jane the stairs, walking carefully so as to make no noise. At the foot she turned sharply to the left and passed the study door, the fireplace, and the steel gate which shut off the north wing. The door of the Yellow Drawing-Room was straight in front of her. She opened it softly and went in.
 
The book would be on the little table to the right of the fireplace, because she remembered putting it there when Lady Heritage made an unexpectedly early move. She stood for a moment visualising the arrangement of the chairs, and then walked straight to the right place. The book was where she had left it, put down open, a bad habit for which Jimmy had often her. She was back at the door with it, and just about to pass the threshold when she heard a sound. Instantly she stood still, listening. The sound came from the other end of the hall, where the shadows lay deepest round the massive oak door.
 
 
“But there can’t be any one at the door at this hour,” said Jane—“there can’t, there can’t possibly.”
 
The sound came again, something between a and a creak, but so faint that no hearing less acute than Jane’s would have caught it.
 
“It’s on the left of the door, Willoughby Luttrell’s picture....”
 
Jane suddenly pressed her hand to her lips and made an involuntary movement , for there was an unmistakable click, and then, slow and faint, a footfall. Jane stood , staring into the darkness of the corner. She thought she heard a sigh, and then the footsteps crossed the hall, coming nearer. At the stair foot they paused, and then began to .
 
Jane gazed into the deeply shadowed space where the footfall sounded, but nothing—not the slightest glimpse of anything moving—came to her straining sight.
 
She looked up and saw the level ray of moonlight overhead. Whoever climbed the stair must pass up into the light and be visible, but from where she stood she could only see the side of the stair like a black wall. But she must see—she must. If some one had come out of the darkness where there was no door she must know who it was. Her bare feet made no sound as she moved from the sheltering . Step by step she kept pace with those slow mounting footsteps. She passed the steel gate, and, feeling her way along the wall, came to a standstill by the cold black . Then, with her whole body tense, she turned and looked up. There was a darker shadow among the shadows, a shadow that moved , towards the beam of moonlight. Jane watched, breathless, and from where T............