Suffocatingly strong in the room was that acrid, animal stench. Reeling with its nausea, I stumbled back toward the door. But an idea had struck me. The others had seemed unaware of the odor; perhaps I had an abnormal sensitivity to it. If I could follow the trail---- Faintly, then, I heard Valyne's scream. I ran up the two flights of stairs to her room, vainly cursing the blind folly that had left her alone. Sarah Kyle came clattering along behind, carrying the lamp. "Valyne!" I gasped, at the door. "Valyne, are you all right?" The answer was the bang of a loose shutter. The door was still locked. I kicked it twice, thrust my arm through the hole to twist the key that she had left in the lock. The yellow flicker of Sarah Kyle's lamp showed that the room was empty. The bed was turned down; a filmy pink night-dress was laid across the pillow. The window was open; the unfastened shutter banged again. Ashen-faced, Sarah Kyle was staring out into the frosty dark. "It was outside," she whispered. "It climbed over the tool shed, and broke through the window. It has carried the poor darling out into the forest." Her voice became a thin, fervid scream. "I wish to God my husband had killed that fiend when it was born!" "Where"--the wild whisper leapt from my lips--"where are the others?" I heard her say, "Searching----" Then my frantic voice was ringing through the gloomy halls: "Doctor Kyle! It has taken Valyne!" Ghastly echoes gibbered at me. "Where could they all be?" "Searching," said Sarah Kyle. "They must be outside." "God! I can't stand here wasting time! Where could it have taken her?" The stooped old hag came suddenly toward me and thrust the sputtering lamp into my face. The skeletal fingers of one claw-like hand sank savagely into my arm. Her piercing eyes transfixed me. Her high voice sank to a strained and husky whisper. "Don't ye know, Clay? Doesn't your own sleeping demon whisper it to your own stained soul? Won't your own dark blood draw ye there?" Instinctively jerking back, I demanded: "What do you mean?" Her fingers clung to my arm with a terrible strength, and her voice rasped on with its unthinkable accusation: "Have ye never felt the call of the elder dark beings that are your kin, Clay? Are ye never drawn to the black altar on the mountain, where your evil father came to your mother? Have ye no sense of the secret power of that circle of stones----" "You mean"--the gasp broke from my lips--"you mean it has taken her--there?" Her shriveled head jerked to a quick, sinister nod. "It knows the place," she said, "for your mother often took it there. She told me it was ever most content in the occult power of that mystic circle. It must have taken Valyne there. And may she die before the demon-child is born!" _5. The Beast in the Beast_