"I know only what he told me, Clay." Her voice broke, and her eyes gleamed with tears. Her warm arms were suddenly around me, clinging with the pressure of urgent need. "Remember I love you, Clay!" she sobbed. "Whatever you may be, remember that I love you." * * * * * She was still in my arms when Doctor Kyle came back up the stairs, walking with a hasty, shaken step. His voice quick and nervous, he called: "Clay, will you please come with me for a moment? And hurry! I think our lives are all in danger, if you don't." Doubtfully, I said, "But why?" "You'll understand when we have talked," he said, "but now there's no time. Come!" I drew away from Valyne, and followed him. Unobtrusively, I loosened the .45 under my coat. I found no need of the weapon, however--then. The great cellar of my memory had been cut in half with a heavy wall of new masonry. There was a massive connecting door, studded with iron bolts, pierced with a small opening thickly barred. Eben Hand and his wife were waiting at the foot of the steps, beside Sarah Kyle. Hand's fingers were moving rapidly, as his wife watched them in the light of a kerosene lamp on a rough deal table. On the floor was another red circle, where the can of blood had rested. The three were silent as I came down the steps. They retreated from me, as if I had been somehow--dreadful. Doctor Kyle led me to the grating, and I became aware of a peculiar odor from beyond. It was an animal scent, powerful, acrid, unpleasant, yet certainly the scent of no animal I knew. Through the bars came a whining, low, eager, bestial. "Speak to it," Doctor Kyle told me, swiftly. "Doesn't matter what you say. Just use a firm, friendly tone----" As I hesitated, some fiend of fortuity thrust into my mind Poe's macabre lines: They are neither man nor woman-- They are neither brute nor human-- They are Ghouls. As I spoke it, a stronger wave of that feral effluvium came through the grating. It rocked me with nausea. I heard the clatter of a chain, the shuffling of some great, clumsy body. And stark horror peered through the bars, with eyes like twin scarlet pits of flaming hell. Its half-glimpsed face was monstrous, swollen, livid, queerly hairy, without a nose. It was the face of nothing sane or right or normal. One fearful glimpse brought home the fearful aptness of my quotation. Then I heard a massive body drop in jangling chains upon the floor beyond. There was a low, singular sound, not unlike the contented purr of a gigantic cat. Then the sound of lapping.... When I looked at the others, in the lamp's yellow glow, their apprehensive tension was gone, although they still looked askance at me. "It's satisfied," said Josepha Hand, looking at her husband's fleeting white fingers. "Now it's willing to feed." I swung upon my foster-father. "Now," I pressed him, "you've got to tell me!" His fleshless head jerked toward the steps.