From behind her that voice, so extraordinarily like—and yet in some vague fashion more arresting, more resonant than her husband’s, broke incredibly out once more. ‘You will please leave the key, Sheila. I am ill, but I am not yet in the padded room. And please understand, I take no further steps in “this awful business” until I hear a strange voice in the house.’ Sheila paused, but the quiet voice rang in her ear, desperately yet convincingly. She took the key out of the lock, placed it on the bed, and with a sigh, that was not quite without a hint of relief in its misery, she furtively extinguished the gas-light on the landing and rustled downstairs. She speedily returned. ‘I have brought the book.’ she said hastily. ‘I could only find the one volume. I have said you have taken a fresh chill. No one will disturb you.’ Lawford took the book without a word. And once more, with eyes stonily averted, his wife left him to his own company and that of the face in the glass. When completely deserted, Lawford with fumbling fingers opened Quain’s ‘Dictionary of Medicine.’ He had never had much curiosity, and had always hated what he disbelieved, but none the less he had heard occasionally of absurd and questionable experiments. He remembered even to have glanced over reports of cases in the newspapers concerning disappearances, loss of memory, dual personality. Cranks... Oh yes, he thought now, with a sense of cold humiliating relief, there _had_ been such cases as his before. They were no doubt curable. They must be comparatively common in America—that land of jangled nerves. Possibly bromide, rest, a battery. But Quain, it seemed, shared his prejudices, at least in this edition, or had hidden away all such apocryphal matter beneath technical terms, where no sensible man could find it, ‘Besides,’ he muttered angrily, ‘what’s the good of your one volume?’ He flung it down and strode to the bed, and rang the bell. Then suddenly recollecting himself, he paused and listened. There came a tap on the door. ‘Is that you, Sheila?’ he called, doubtfully. ‘No, sir, it’s me,’ came the answer. ‘Oh, don’t trouble; I only wanted to speak to your mistress. It’s all right.’ ‘Mrs. Lawford has gone out, sir,’ replied the voice. ‘Gone out?’ ‘Yes, sir; she told me not to mention it; but I suppose as you asked—’ ‘Oh, that’s all right; never mind; I didn’t ring.’ He stood with face uplifted, thinking. ‘Can I do anything, sir?’ came the faint, nervous question after a long pause. ‘One moment, Ada,’ he called in a loud voice. He took out his pocket-book, sat down, and scribbled a little note. He hardly noticed how changed his handwriting was—the clear round letters crabbed and irregular.