She remembered Larry’s story of how this man had come toward him with his hands up, and how he had crushed the bulb in his powerful fist. He must be animal strong, she thought. Wasn’t there a danger of his being shocked by the electric current? At that she looked up quickly. The light had been fixed without any regard to appearance. The long wire came from the ceiling at one end of the room and was loosely tacked to the ceiling as far as the centre, where it passed over a hook and hung downwards, with a little tin reflector over the pear-shaped lamp. She reached for the lamp and turned it round. “Two hundred volts,” she read, ground upon the crystal glass. She tried to unhook the wire by throwing up the loose end, but it was some time before she succeeded, and at last the loose part fell and the lamp jerked to the floor and almost touched it. She caught the loose flex in her hand and pulled gently, and the thin wire brackets which held the flex to the ceiling came away without any difficulty. The switch was near the door, and she walked across and turned it off. Putting one foot upon the flex, near to where it entered the aperture of the shade, she pulled with all her might and after several attempts it snapped. She was in darkness, but her nimble fingers plucked at the loose end of the wire, and with her finger-nails she cleared away the rubber casing which enclosed the tiny thread-like strands of copper. Soon she had something that felt like a loose-haired broom in her hands, and she was satisfied. She thought she heard a noise in the passage, and, running to the switch, turned the current on again. She groped in the half-darkness for her bag and found it, took out her gloves and put them on, then felt gingerly for the hanging strands. She took them in her hands and held the “brush” before her, being careful not to touch one exposed strand. Pushing away the shade and the globe with her foot, she waited in the centre of the room. And then the door opened. “Here I am again, dearie,” and her breath came quickly as she heard the door locked from the inside. “You think I’m a funny-looking fellow, don’t you?” He did not know that the light was out, for he lived in everlasting darkness. For a time he made no attempt to come near her. She could just see the shape of him by the evening light which filtered through the narrow window. “Tony missed him,” he said, by way of conveying information. “Missed him!” he said contemptuously. “If I’d had my eyes, I’d have got the devil! I’d get him now with this little gun of mine, blind as I am, if I could hear him move. But we’ll have Holty yet, my darling. We’ll have him and cut his heart out. He’ll wish he was never born.” He lowered his voice, and said something which was not intelligible to the girl. Then he seemed to recall the object of his visit.