Of course there is nothing in a creak--boards and furniture are always creaking, and most people attribute the creaking to a change in the temperature. So did Mayhewe. "The room is beginning to get warm--the gas has heated it," he said; "that is why." Still he gradually lowered his eyes, and when they rested on the mirror in front of him, he gave the barest suspicion of a start. In the mirror were reflected the door and the coat, but the latter hung quite limply now. There was nothing whatever filling it out. What in Heaven's name had become of the thing? Where had it got to? Close beside Mayhewe was the grate, and a sudden rustling in it, followed by a hurried descent of soot, made him laugh outright. The explanation was now so very simple. The wind was responsible for it all--for the door handle, the hat, the coat, and the creak. How truly ridiculous! He would dress. With that object in view he threw the end of his cigarette in the fender and, rising, was about to quit his seat, when his eyes fell on his gloves. He had thrown them quite carelessly on the wash-stand, almost immediately in front of him, and he had noticed nothing remarkable about them then. But now--surely it could not be the wind this time; there were hands in them, and these hands were strangely unlike his own. Whereas his fingers had blunt, spatulate tips, the tops of these fingers were curved and pointed like the talons of some cruel beast of prey, and the palms were much longer and narrower than his own. He stared at them, too fascinated to do otherwise, and it seemed to him that they shifted their position and came nearer to him, with a slow, stealthy, silent motion, like that of some monstrous spider creeping murderously towards its helpless victim. He watched them for some moments quite motionless, and then, yielding to a sudden fit of ungovernable fury, he threw his tobacco pouch at the nearest. It rolled convulsively over on its back after the manner of some living stricken creature, and then, gradually reassuming its shape, stealthily began once more to approach him. At last his nerves could stand it no longer. A demoniacal passion to smash, burn, torture it seized him, and, springing to his feet, he picked up his chair, and, swinging it round his head, brought it down with the utmost frenzy on the wash-stand. He was looking at his handiwork--the broken china, chair legs, and gas shade--when the door of his room opened and the call-boy timidly entered. Mayhewe kept the stage waiting some minutes that night, but the management did not abuse him nearly so violently as he had anticipated, and the next evening he was allotted another room.