is occupied, I want to appear as if I were quite alone. Do you
understand?"

"Perfectly."

I saw Burroughs settled in a chair on the landing; then I entered the
room and closed the door without latching it, and there was a certain
feeling down my spine, in spite of the knowledge that I had a comrade
near at hand.

It was quite beyond me how Quarles could undertake to stay there all
alone. I could have done it had I been convinced that danger could only
come from a material foe; it was the idea of the supernatural which beat
me. I was not skeptic enough to be unmoved.

I had determined to sit beside the bed; but remembering that Greaves had
been found on the bed I first of all lay down for a minute or two. The
bed was not made up, but the mattresses were there with blankets over
them, and the hangings were in place. The key to the mystery might lie in
some hidden mechanism in the bed. Then I settled myself in the chair
beside the bed, my hand in my pocket on my revolver.

This kind of waiting is always a trial. The silence, the bodily
inactivity while the mind is strained to be keenly alert, have a sort of
hypnotic influence. An untrained man will certainly fancy he hears and
sees things, and even a trained man has to light hard against the desire
to sleep. There comes a longing for something, anything, to happen. I
think I got into a condition at last in which I should have welcomed a
ghost. There was no church clock near to break the monotony with its
striking; time seemed non-existent.