I knew that I had slept at my post; I was convinced that I was now widely awake; yet I _dared_ not admit to myself that what I saw was other than a product of my imagination. I dared not admit the physical quivering of the bed, for I could not, with sanity, believe its cause to be anything human. But what I saw, yet could not credit seeing, was this: A ghostly white face, which seemed to glisten in some faint reflected light from the sitting-room beyond, peered over the bedrail; gibbered at me demoniacally. With quivering hands this night-mare horror, which had intruded where I believed human intrusion to be all but impossible, clutched the bed-posts so that the frame of the structure shook and faintly rattled.... My heart leapt wildly in my breast, then seemed to suspend its pulsations and to grow icily cold. My whole body became chilled horrifically. My scalp tingled: I felt that I must either cry out or become stark, raving mad! For this clammily white face, those staring eyes, that wordless gibbering, and the shaking, shaking, shaking of the bed in the clutch of the nameless visitant--prevailed, refused to disperse like the evil dream I had hoped it all to be; manifested itself, indubitably, as something tangible--objective.... Outraged reason deprived me of coherent speech. Past the clammy white face I could see the sitting-room illuminated by a faint light; I could even see the Tûlun-Nûr box upon the table immediately opposite the door. The thing which shook the bed was actual, existent--to be counted with! Further and further I drew myself away from it, until I crouched close up against the head of the bed. Then, as the thing reeled aside, and-- merciful Heaven!--made as if to come around and approach me yet closer, I uttered a hoarse cry and hurled myself out upon the floor and on the side remote from that pallid horror which I thought was pursuing me. I heard a dull thud ... and the thing disappeared from my view, yet-- and remembering the supreme terror of that visitation I am not ashamed to confess it--I dared not move from the spot upon which I stood, I dared not make to pass that which lay between me and the door. "Smith!" I cried, but my voice was little more than a hoarse whisper-- "Smith! Weymouth!" The words became clearer and louder as I proceeded, so that the last-- "Weymouth!"--was uttered in a sort of falsetto scream. A door burst open upon the other side of the corridor. A key was inserted in the lock of the door. Into the dimly lighted arch which divided the bed-room from the sitting-room, sprang the figure of Nayland Smith! "Petrie! Petrie!" he called--and I saw him standing there looking from left to right. Then, ere I could reply, he turned, and his gaze fell upon whatever lay upon the floor at the foot of the bed. "My God!" he whispered--and sprang into the room. "Smith! Smith!" I cried, "what is it? what is it?"