I lay perfectly still, with every nerve tingling, and every muscle taut, and listened intently. The noise came from the window which was shut, and my heart began to beat more thickly with a dread and terror which had neither form nor shape. Slowly I remembered the mews outside, and felt instantly thankful that because of its proximity I had shut the window, instead of sleeping with it wide open, as is my custom. Was murder taking place out there? What was that hideous, choking sound, that surged in with guttural gasps from out the darkness, and which suggested nothing so much as a frenzied struggle of loathing and agonized fear? I lay shuddering and quaking as with the grip of ague. My imagination instantly constructed the scene so vividly suggested by the nature of the sounds. A man's hands were on the throat of a woman, and he was deliberately strangling the life out of her struggling body. I was sick with unspeakable agonies of dread, and for quite five minutes I could not summon force or motion to my limbs. If some unfortunate was being done to death it was clearly my duty to run to the window and give the alarm by shrieking "murder," but now I began to wonder if that awful struggle was taking place outside or just inside my room. Though the mews was well lit my blind was drawn down, and the room was in darkness, except for a faint reflection shining in from a street lamp. I had only to stretch out my hand in order to switch on a light above my bed, but a paralysis of fear held me. That noise of infinite pain, of frantic, dying agony, those convulsive, ghastly groans and scuffling of feet, and wrestling, writhing bodies, were spell-binding beyond the power of human conception, and the most awe-inspiring fantasy. I tried to reason with myself, but the horror scattered all reasoning, yet a sense of duty, of natural humanity, and anger with my own fears, kept tugging at me. It seemed as if the sounds were losing force, were beginning to die out. I was lying still in abject terror, whilst a fellow-creature was being deliberately done to death. A blind fury with myself, and the murderer, suddenly superseded fear. Without turning on the light I jumped out of bed, and knocking up against the furniture in my haste, I dashed towards the faint light coming in from the street. In another moment I had thrust aside the blind, and thrown the window wide. I know I shouted out something; I have no idea what. I thrust my head out between the iron bars, and looked to right and left. I could see absolutely nothing. The street was quite empty, and so well lit that I could see from end to end of it. I drew in my head, and stood there silently, and quivering still with excitement, as one does when awakened with the broken fragments of an evil dream.