Not caring to do this, Mayhewe made no further remarks, but hastened upstairs. No one was about, and the noise of his footsteps sounded strangely loud in the silent emptiness of the passages. He entered his room at last, hung his coat and hat on the door, and, crossing to his seat in front of a small mirror, sat down. "After all," he said to himself, "I'm glad Talbotson won't be here to-night. I'm not in a mood for talking, and the fellow bores me to distraction." He lit a cigarette, leaned back in a more comfortable attitude, and for some minutes allowed himself to revel in the luxury of a perfectly blank state of mind. Suddenly the handle of the door turned--a solitary, isolated sound--and he sat up sharply in his chair. "Who's there?" he shouted. There was no response. "I couldn't have latched it properly," he reasoned, and once again he leaned back in his chair and smoked. Five or six minutes passed in this fashion, and he was thinking of beginning to dress, when there was another noise. Something behind him fell on the floor with a loud flop. Once again he turned swiftly round. It was his hat--a hard felt bowler. It had fallen from the door peg on which he had hung it, and was still feebly oscillating. "It is curious how one sometimes notices all these little things," he reflected. "I dare say door handles have turned and hats have fallen a thousand times when I might have heard them and haven't. I suppose it is because everything is so very quiet and I'm alone in this part of the building." Then he glanced at his coat--a long, double-breasted ulster--and rubbed his eyes thoughtfully. "Why," he exclaimed, "what a curious shape the thing has taken! It's swelled out just as if someone were inside it. Or has my eyesight suddenly gone wrong?" He leaned forward and examined it closely. No. He was not mistaken. The coat was no longer untenanted. There was something inside it--something which filled it like he had done; but it was something to which he could ascribe no name. He could see it there, and mentally feel that it was peering at him with eyes full of the most jibing mockery and hate; but he could not define it. It was something quite outside his ken, something with which he had had no previous acquaintance. He tried to whistle and appear nonchalant, but it was of no avail. The coat--his coat--had something in it, and that something was staring back at him. What a fool he had been to come so early. At last, with a supreme effort, he took his eyes from the door, and, swinging round in his chair, resumed smoking. He sat thus for some moments, and then a board close behind him creaked.