Pauline had put the book down on the bed, and was bending over the fire pulling the coals together with the poker. She performed this homely, natural, everyday action more to reassure herself, to convince herself that she was in an everyday world, than because the fire needed attention. For the strange mystery of the speechless creature on the bed, helpless as though bound with chains and gagged by the devices of tortures, had seized and terrified her. She held the poker in the air and listened. Not a sound save the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece! From all the sleeping house, not a sound. She might have been alone with the living corpse in the house, and yet she knew that Rosie, and Josephus Ilam, and the nurse, and the halfdozen servants, were in various rooms of it, perhaps sleeping, perhaps trying to sleep.

There was a sudden sharp noise behind her, near the bed.

She started violently and glanced round in fear. It was merely the book—the harmless and amusing “The Lady or the Tiger?”—which had slipped from the bed to the floor. Yet how could it have slipped? Had the paralytic, who was incapable of the slightest movement, after all twitched a limb and so shaken the book off the bed? Absurd. She had merely placed the book too close to the edge of the bed; that was all. Nothing more natural, nothing more probable. Her nervous fright was grotesque.

She rose, picked up the book, and looked again at her charge. The burning, blazing eyes were still dropping tears, and the tears ran in a deep furrow down either cheek. Softly Pauline wiped them away, her own eyes moist. The tragedy of the life’s end of this old, old woman, whom every one had regarded as fierce and formidable, rendered helpless in a moment by no one knew what horrible visitation, chilled her heart’s core.

“What can she want? What is troubling her?” thought Pauline frenziedly.

And then she imagined that perhaps she had mistaken all the symptoms of those eyes, and that Mrs. Ilam had wished her to continue to read. She resumed the book, and read very slowly in a fairly loud voice. And instantly the eyes began to blink irregularly—fast, then slow—and the eyeballs themselves moved slightly from side to side. Obviously the patient was not content.

Pauline put down the book again in despair.

The eyeballs still moved slightly to and fro.

“She wants something in the room. What can it be?”’ said Pauline to herself. “It may be she is thirsty.”

She went to the night-table and poured a few drops of water into the invalid’s cup, and brought it near Mrs. Ilam’s lips. But the eyes seemed to close as if in refusal, and the face, which could only wear one expression—that of grief—to deepen its inexpressible melancholy.

And then an idea occurred to Pauline, and shone on her brow like a light.

“Listen,” she said kindly to the aged woman. “I will ask you some questions. The answers will be only yes or no. If you mean ‘no’ try to keep your eyelids still, but if you mean ‘yes’ blink them! as much as you can. Do you understand?”

The eyelids blinked; and then they continued their terrible entranced stare at a spot on the ceiling exactly above their owner’s head.

“Good,” said Pauline. “Are you in pain?”

No movement of the eyelids.

“Are you thirsty?”

A slight flickering, which the patient clearly endeavoured to suppress.

“You want something?”

The eyes blinked.

“Is it some person?”

The eyelids were steady.

“Something in this room?”

A violent blinking.

“Is it in a drawer?”

The eyelids were steady.

“Then I can see it as I stand here?”

The eyes blinked again. Pauline set the cup down on the night-table, and gazed round the room. She went to the mantelpiece, and gave a list of the things on it: candlestick, clock, matches, vases, keys, medicine-bottle, a piece of crochet work, a long knitting-needle, a picture post-card. There was no response from the invalid.

“How foolish I am!” murmured Pauline. “She cannot possibly want any of these things.” Then she saw a few old letters half-hidden behind the clock. “Is it there?” she asked, holding the letters near to Mrs. Ilam.

But there was still no response. She put back the letters and went to the ottoman, on which was a large family Bible. But it was not the Bible that Mrs. Ilam wanted, nor a spectacle case that lay on the Bible. Then Pauline catalogued one by one the contents of the dressing-table, and then the contents of the washstand, still with no result. At last, she came to a chest of drawers, covered with a piece of white crewelwork, and bearing some wax flowers, two small vases, a black lacquered box, sundry folded linen, several books, and a few faded photographs. She described the photographs and the linen and the books, as these seemed to be the most likely objects, and then she came to the lacquered box. And suddenly, the eyes began to blink furiously.

“You want this box?”

The eyes continued to blink.

She brought it to the bed: It was about eight inches square and three inches in depth, and beautifully inlaid with mother-of-pearl in a design to resemble a bunch of roses—just such a little cabinet as our grandmothers valued, such as was scorned as being Early Victorian during the aesthetic movement of the eighties and nineties, but such as we ourselves are beginning to recognize as beautiful. It had prominent brass hinges, and a keyhole, and it was locked.

“Do you want me to open it? It’s locked.”

The eyes were moderately still.

“Then you wish it put somewhere else?”

They blinked.

“In a drawer?”

No response.

“On the dressing-table?”

No response.

“Near you?”

The eyes blinked,

“On the bed?”

No response.

“Under the bed?”

No response.

Pauline was at a loss.

“Under your pillow?” she hazarded at length.

The eyelids moved up and down, if not with joy, at any rate with satisfaction.

And very carefully Pauline raised the pillow, and

Mrs. Ilam’s head, and slipped the box underneath both the pillow and the bolster.

“There; is that right?”

The tragic eyes blinked, and a slight sigh emanated weakly from between those thin pale lips. But, slight as it was, it seemed to have come from the innermost depths of the stricken woman’s being. It might have been a sigh to indicate that her last wish was realized.

“I shall lie down now,” said Pauline, and turning out all the electric lights except the tiny table lamp on the table, she stretched herself on the couch which stood at the foot of the great bed, and she drew a rug over her and shut her eyes and told herself that she must sleep. But she could not sleep. Her brain was as busy as the inside of a clock and electric lights seemed to be burning and fizzing in it, extinguishing themselves and relighting themselves. What strange house had she and Rosie wandered into? What was the hidden secret of this paralysis, and of Josephus Ilam’s worn and worried mien, and of the sudden arrival and equally sudden departure of Carpentaria? And, above all, what was the meaning of the old woman’s desire for the box. What was in the box?

Do not imagine that Pauline regretted having come. She did not. Except under the passing influences of night and of the presence of illness, she was not a bit superstitious; nor was Rosie. They were not afraid of mysteries. They were intensely practical young women, incapable of being frightened or repulsed by what they did not understand. And that Pauline was a girl entirely without the timidity of the doe, she abundantly proved in the next few minutes. As she lay on the couch she could see, without moving her head, the French window. She fancied that the heavy crimson curtain was somewhat pulled aside in one place, at a height of about four feet from the ground, and she fancied that she could see the end of a finger on the end of the curtain. “No,” she said to herself, “this is ridiculous. There cannot possibly be a finger there. I must not be silly,” and she resolutely shut her eyes. The next time she opened them, the fire had blazed up a little and, more than ever, the something on the edge of the curtain resembled a finger.

Her little heart beating, but courageously, she noiselessly rose up from the couch and approached the window.

It was the end of a finger on the edge of the curtain—a finger with a rounded and very white finger-nail I Moreover, the curtain trembled slightly, as it would do if held by some one who was endeavouring not to move. Pauline remembered that the French window behind the curtain had purposely been left slightly open, and that it gave on to a balcony, as most of the windows of the bungalow did.

She advanced resolutely, and drew aside the curtain.