Clementina

Wogan slid his hand beneath his pillow, and drew the knife from its

sheath as silently as the door opened. The strip of black ceased to

widen, there was a slight scuffling sound upon the floor which Wogan was

at no loss to understand. It was the sound of a man crawling into the

room upon his hands and knees.

Wogan lay on his side and felt grateful to his host,--an admirable

man,--for he had painted his door white, and now he crawled through it

on his hands and knees. No doubt he would crawl to the side of the bed;

he did. To feel, no doubt, for Mr. Wogan's coat and breeches and any

little letter which might be hiding in the pockets. But here Wogan was

wrong. For he saw a dark thing suddenly on the counterpane at the edge

of the bed. The dark thing travelled upwards very softly; it had four

fingers and a thumb. It was, no doubt, travelling towards the pillow,

and as soon as it got there--but Wogan watching that hand beneath his

dosed eyelids had again to admit that he was wrong. It did not travel

towards the pillow; to his astonishment it stole across towards him, it

touched his chest very gently, and then he understood. The hand was

creeping upwards towards his throat.

Meanwhile Wogan had seen no face, though the face must be just below the

level of the bed. He only saw the hand and the arm behind it. He moved

as if in his sleep, and the hand disappeared. As if in his sleep, he

flung out his left arm and felt for the sign-board standing beside his

bed. The bed was soft. Wogan wanted something hard, and it had occurred

to him that the sign-board would very well serve his turn. An idea, too,

which seemed to him diverting, had presented itself to his mind.

With a loud sigh and a noisy movement such as a man halfway between

wakefulness and sleep may make he flung himself over onto his left side.

At the same moment he lifted the white sign-board onto the bed. It

seemed that he could not rest on his left side, for he flung over again

to his right and pulled the bedclothes over as he turned. The sign-board

now lay flat upon the bed, but on the right side between himself and the

man upon the floor. His mouth uttered a little murmur of contentment, he

drew down the hand beneath the pillow, and in a second was breathing

regularly and peacefully.

[Illustration: "WITH HIS RIGHT ARM HE DROVE HIS HUNTING KNIFE DOWN INTO

THE BACK OF THE HAND."--Page 69.] The hand crept onto the bed again and upwards, and suddenly lay spread

out upon the board and quite still. Just for a second the owner of that

hand had been surprised and paralysed by the unexpected. It was only

that second which Wogan needed. He sat up, and with his right arm he

drove his hunting knife down into the back of the hand and pinned it

fast to the board; with his left he felt for, found, and gripped a mouth

already open to cry out. He dropped his hunting knife, caught the

intruder round the waist, lifted him onto the bed, and setting a knee

upon his chest gagged him with an end of the sheet. The man fought

wildly with his free hand, beating the air. Wogan knelt upon that arm

with his other knee.