_If indeed you still care for me, don't enter library again under any consideration or for any purpose. Coming._ The message was signed with my dear girl's initials, and it was plain that it had been written under stress of emotion. In spite of my equivocal position (for really I could not bring myself to believe that John Thaneford intended actual personal violence), and the extreme discomfort of being trussed up like a hog going to the slaughter pen, I was conscious that, after all these months of alienation, some mysterious barrier had fallen and the long misunderstanding was in a fair way of being cleared up. And so, although my temples were thumping like a steam engine and the pain in my arms and legs was deadening to a terrifying numbness, my spirits rebounded to an extravagant height; my heart sang again. "If you still care for me!" And then that wonderful word: "Coming." I was wildly, deliriously happy, for now everything must come right. What a fool I had been through all these doleful months! how wholeheartedly would I make my confession; how tender and generous would be my absolution--but a sudden realization of things as they really were checked, like a cold douche, my satisfying glow of well-being. If danger actually existed for me within the library walls I was ill prepared to meet it, sitting fast bound in my chair with "Black Jack" Thaneford opposite me, an evil smile upon his lips and the glint of a spark in the dead blackness of his half-closed eyes. And then, of a sudden, I became horribly afraid. Not of John Thaneford, for all that he hated me and had me in his power, but of the Terror, unknown, unseen, and unheard, that lurked within the circle of these walls; whose coming none could foresee and none prevent; for whose appearance the ultimate stage had been set and the final watch posted. Remember, I had nothing tangible upon which to base even a fragment of theory, and all of our original clues had proved worthless. Here were neither dim, midnight spaces, nor hollow walls, nor underlying abysses. Just a big, almost empty room, devoid of alcoves and odd corners, and withal flooded with the sunshine of a perfect June day. The only feature out of the common was the secret outlet behind the chimney-breast, and some time ago I had replaced the original lock by one of the latest, burglar proof pattern. There were only two keys, one on my own bunch and the other in Betty's possession; certainly the peril was not likely to appear in that quarter; that would have been too obvious, even amateurish.